My Opinion on why WAR is the superior Tank.

[Kerberon]

One question if someone can answer it. War's have more hp but they're missing out on block. Extra mitigation creates more "effective health" for the PLD. At similar gear levels which one comes out ahead numerically? I'm fairly new and willing to accept most of what the OP says about damage etc. However for me the big thing with tanking is making sure I can take the most amount of damage while needing the least amount of work from the healer. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Kitru]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

PLD has block (30% chance for 25% mitigation or thereabouts but no parry), and WAR has Inner Beast (30% uptime on 20% mitigation and you can still parry), which makes it basically a wash. WAR and PLD have the same eHP (20% DR is the same as 25% +hp as far as eHP is concerned), and PLD has a *tiny* advantage in stance based mean mitigation (20% DR is the equivalent of 25% +healing; WAR has only 20%) but that advantage is offset by the WAR self heals which brings it back in line.

Basically, WAR and PLD are so well balanced right now that it's practically impossible to say definitively that one tank is better than the other without getting into specific content. The only major differences are based around damage (WAR has better damage) and utility (PLD has better utility). There's an argument than PLD is woefully underpowered in the AoE department because, while Flash is balanced as an enmity tool (since it costs MP, it's basically free; Overpower and SC generate more per use, but they're also more expensive so they're not as spammable), PLD has laughably bad AoE damage, but its enmity is alright, which is something that could potentially be addressed.

As to the OP, WAR is actually going to have a more stable incoming damage profile specifically because of IB. IB shouldn't be compared to Rampart or any other part of the PLD CD suite; IB is the WAR response to PLD shield block. Since shield blocking is an RNG mechanism but IB is guaranteed flat DR, (properly played) WAR actually has a much more stable incoming damage profile. Also, you really shouldn't bring up RoH as a major advantage of the PLD. Storm's Path reduces damage by a helluva lot more (10% STR translates into something like 7% less physical damage whereas SP is just straight up 10%) and it applies to magic as well as physical damage.

As to the CD suites, if you only look at the magnitude of the CDs while they're active, of course WAR is going to look rather pitiful; the advantage of the WAR CD suite is that it's got low CDs which translate into higher relative uptimes compared to what PLD gets. If you do the math, the value of the two CD suites, over time, is basically the same. The only reason that some people seem to think that PLD has the "better" CD suite (other than HG being *way* better than Holmgang as an uber CD) is that they assume that they'll follow a similar use paradigm. A WAR should be actively using their CDs, actively trying to keep them on CD and staggering them; PLDs are best served by holding back and only using them in emergency/high risk situations because, if they start using them actively, they're not likely to have a CD up when they hit an emergency. WAR CDs are low enough that, unless you're popping them simultaneously, you'll almost always have at least 1 at your disposal so the "risk" of not having one when you really need it is negligible (especially since, if you're using them proactively, you'll often preempt the emergency).

[Huntington]

Glad I got a reply from you Kitru, was expecting one.

[Kerberon]

PLD has block (30% chance for 25% mitigation or thereabouts but no parry)

I didn't realize that PLD didn't get anything from parry. Parry has been on all my low level tank gear as a GLD and I assumed it did something for me. =(


edit*

He means paladins don't have the ability to parry if they block. You can't Parry an already blocked attack.

Ah thank you, that makes much more sense and works like I thought it did. Replying this way since I'm still locked to just a couple posts per day to ask questions.

[ZDamned]

I didn't realize that PLD didn't get anything from parry. Parry has been on all my low level tank gear as a GLD and I assumed it did something for me. =(

He means paladins don't have the ability to parry if they block. You can't Parry an already blocked attack.

[Kitfox]

IB is the WAR response to PLD shield block.

I've heard you say this on a number of threads and I'm kinda curious what makes you think this way. From limited numbers between me and my friend, PLD's parry+block rate seems to equal WAR's parry rate, at least to the degree that they're comparable. Just glancing over something I got from running brayflox HM: as PLD I was getting around 8% parry and 17% block, give or take RNG, while I heard from my raid tank doing some parry testing that he was getting around 25% parry rate. From this I'm assuming blocks are calculated before parry, and since you can't parry and block at the same time PLD's get a significantly lower parry rate.

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

[Kitru]

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

In all of the testing I've done, PLD has a significantly better chance to Block or Parry than a WAR has to simply Parry (to determine whether it's absolute parity for Parry, all you'd need to do is take the shield off of a PLD and make sure neither axe nor sword has any parry on it; if the numbers are not significantly different, it's identical), and Blocks are always bigger than Parries (in the same gear except for MH/OH, my WAR parries for 24% whereas my PLD with the Onion Shield blocks for 26%). I actually considered that WAR might have a higher natural Parry chance than PLD, but I've seen absolutely no evidence for this (and I've yet to see anyone else actually put up numbers to support it either).

[Inosaska]

I actually considered that WAR might have a higher natural Parry chance than WAR

LOL Well that some damn nice logic going on here (Btw just poking fun Kitru <3)

[Menae]

I've heard you say this on a number of threads and I'm kinda curious what makes you think this way. From limited numbers between me and my friend, PLD's parry+block rate seems to equal WAR's parry rate, at least to the degree that they're comparable. Just glancing over something I got from running brayflox HM: as PLD I was getting around 8% parry and 17% block, give or take RNG, while I heard from my raid tank doing some parry testing that he was getting around 25% parry rate. From this I'm assuming blocks are calculated before parry, and since you can't parry and block at the same time PLD's get a significantly lower parry rate.

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

What are your respective parry numbers? What was he testing parry on? Need a little more hard info before I'm going to reject the hypothesis that both classes get x% parry from y parry.

[Kitfox]

What are your respective parry numbers? What was he testing parry on? Need a little more hard info before I'm going to reject the hypothesis that both classes get x% parry from y parry.

I did a controller test yesterday of 2886 hits and seems like my live numbers were skewed a lot. Probably forgot to factor out the dodges and most like had a ton of hits from unblockable angles. At 506 parry and 193 block rate I ended up at 16,0% parry and 25,5% block. So it was just me jumping to conclusions without having controlled numbers. Posting more numbers in the parry thread incase they help someone.