Few clarifications between paladin/warrior

[Kimura410]

I switched to warrior for t8. The main thing that I am wondering about concerns the debuffs by each tank. Paladin does a 10% strength reduction, while Storms path does 10% damage dealt reduction. So do this mean storms path mitigates all damage from a boss, even magic damage? Would there ever be a case where the ROH str debuff would be better, like if the boss had a ridiculously high amount of str attributes?

Also, Im pretty sure I know the answer to this, but to clarify; paladin has an automatic 20% damage mitigation while using shield oath. the tradeoff for warrior is a 20% increase of cures. Obviously, the paladins is better, right? But by how much? Do the two stances offer about the same benefit, or is shield oath just much better? A warrior not having the 20% mitigation would mean it would take more mana to heal him, although he has the 20% cure increase (and more hp), so does it end up evening out?

Just started looking at the warriors ability set a lot closer and want to make sure I understand. Thanks.

[aerolol]

Yes Storm's Path mitigates magic damage too. It's very good on Leviathan EX waves that damage all the party, for example.

Most (if not all) relevant bosses have physical and magical attacks, so in theory Storm's Path is better than Rage of Halone.

Please note that while PLD only has 1 full-combo, which is aggro and debuff, Warrior has virtually 3, and only one is a full aggro combo, the other 2 are debuffs which should be up all the time, specially Storm's Path.

The PLD dmg mitigation and WAR increased HP and cure potency even out.

The biggest difference comes from Stoneskin and Adloquium. For these the increased HP make a hell lot of a difference.

A good White Mage will always Stoneskin a Warrior who has used Thrill of Battle, and regen a WAR/PLD who has activated Convalescence.

Also don't underestimate Marauder's skills such as Bloodbath, Fracture and Vengeance.
Together they heal you thousands of HP while active and Vengeance also causes damage to enemies attacking you.

[Kimura410]

wow good points about stoneskin regen and adlo. i don't think our healers have been doing this for me, ill have to point this out. I think I'm starting to jump on the warrior bandwagon

[sheepysheepy]

wow good points about stoneskin regen and adlo. i don't think our healers have been doing this for me, ill have to point this out. I think I'm starting to jump on the warrior bandwagon

if they got to turn8 without knowing things like that you must be lucky :P

[Kitfox]

The biggest difference comes from Stoneskin and Adloquium. For these the increased HP make a hell lot of a difference.

Just to be clear, the HP makes no difference. PLD and WAR benefit equally from Stoneskin and Adloquium. While WAR will receive a stronger shield by number, PLD's shield will wear off slower because of mitigation. (Adloquium is actually better on PLD because they receive minimally larger heals when mitigation is counted in, but that's splitting hairs.)

[Snorgrind]

Just to be clear, the HP makes no difference. PLD and WAR benefit equally from Stoneskin and Adloquium. While WAR will receive a stronger shield by number, PLD's shield will wear off slower because of mitigation. (Adloquium is actually better on PLD because they receive minimally larger heals when mitigation is counted in, but that's splitting hairs.)

exactly, ppl need to get it out of their heads that stoneskin and adlo is better on war, everything is better on PLD by 5% (shield oath vs defiance)

[Traek]

exactly, ppl need to get it out of their heads that stoneskin and adlo is better on war, everything is better on PLD by 5% (shield oath vs defiance)

Stone Skin is equal on WAR and PLD (you might have meant this), but Adlo is definitely splitting hairs better on PLD.

Do the two stances offer about the same benefit, or is shield oath just much better? A warrior not having the 20% mitigation would mean it would take more mana to heal him, although he has the 20% cure increase (and more hp), so does it end up evening out?

It has been answered many times, and I advise perusing these tank forums, which many of your questions will be answered. In the end, both tanks if played right are very near equivalent since 2.1. Play which one you like, and/or what is best for the fight at hand. Shield Oath > Defiance *technically* because of the 5% difference in healing received (25% native to Shield Oath, 20% Defiance), while -20%DR = +25% HP. Warrior should make up the tiny difference in IB/BloodBath. Again it is splitting hairs.

Also don't underestimate Marauder's skills such as Bloodbath, Fracture and Vengeance.
Together they heal you thousands of HP while active and Vengeance also causes damage to enemies attacking you.

Eh.. Bloodbath and Fracture are hardly something to consider in the equation. If a Warrior is pulling 180 DPS (pretty generous for the average and vast majority of 'meh' Warriors), over the 30 seconds (numbers can be further padded with zerk/unchained of course) they'll heal themselves for 1350 over the course of the whole CD. It is basically the equivalent of one Cure from a geared healer over that 30 seconds. Not to mention you can be topped off for many of the hits, which will just be over-curing on yourself, adding to nothing.

Fracture is a TP starve for minimal DPS increase. Use it if you are in a fight you aren't going to bottom out in TP, or disengaging a boss for encounters, but most of the time it is not even in the rotation. Keeping up debuffs is a higher priority anyways.

[Kitru]

so in theory Storm's Path is better than Rage of Halone.

Not in theory. Universally. Rage of Halone is something like a 7% decrease in physical damage dealt (STR and attack power are linked) whereas SP is a 10% reduction in *all* damage dealt. SP reduces more physical damage while also reducing magical damage.

[quote]the other 2 are debuffs which should be up all the time, specially Storm's Path.[/quoite]

SP should always be up, but SE doesn't necessarily. The only way to maintain both 100% of the time is via the SE>SP rotation, which is *not* going to keep decent DPS from pulling aggro (at least on its own; if you do the uber-enmity attack string every 2 minutes when you have your CDs up, you can get away with SE>SP the rest of the time). Most of the time, a tank will be doing BB>BB>SP or BB>SP since it maintains the more important debuff while generating enough enmity to keep you ahead of the DPS. BB>SE>SP is another variant, but I'm not fond of it because it doesn't have 100% uptime on SP.

The PLD dmg mitigation and WAR increased HP and cure potency even out.

No, they don't. PLD is a 20% reduction in damage taken, which is 25% effective increase to healing received (as well as a 25% increase to effective hit points). Since WAR is only 20%, from a pure stance based view, PLD has a 4.167% advantage in mean mitigation. This made up by all of the WAR self heals though (IB, SP, Bloodbath) so it's a wash from a holistic point of view.

The biggest difference comes from Stoneskin and Adloquium. For these the increased HP make a hell lot of a difference.

As has already been stated, Stoneskin provides the *exact* same benefit to PLD as it does to WAR because they have the exact same eHP. PLD gets a *slight* advantage over WAR from Adloq, however.

A good White Mage will always Stoneskin a Warrior who has used Thrill of Battle, and regen a WAR/PLD who has activated Convalescence.

Stoneskin has a 3 sec cast time (compared to 2 with a 2.5 sec GCD for the other heals) and costs the same amount as a Cure II. Stoneskin cannot crit and, even then, provides significantly less than a Cure II in the first place and ToB only brings it up to being slightly worse than a non-crit Cure II (my WAR gets ~2k Cure IIs from equally geared healers; at my ~9k hp, without ToB, a WHM Stoneskin is worth 1620; with ToB, it's still only worth 1944). So it's slower and heals for less than the equivalent heal (it also doesn't have a proc like Cure II does, but the Overcure proc is kinda terrible).

There are only 3 times that a WHM should be casting Stoneskin on you during combat: when you significantly overgear the WHM (such that a Cure II is, on average, worth less than a Stoneskin, which basically only happens when you have an i60-70 WHM thanks to crits), when you're already at full/near full hp and won't be taking damage by the time Stoneskin finishes casting (this is best used right before a big smash to the face since damage spikes kill and abs shields are your best friends for preventing spike death).

Also don't underestimate Marauder's skills such as Bloodbath, Fracture and Vengeance.
Together they heal you thousands of HP while active and Vengeance also causes damage to enemies attacking you.

Fracture is a joke. Because it's a non-combo GCD, it interferes with debuff uptimes and Wrath stack generation, which means that the *slight* increase in damage dealt that it provides is nearly a wash, not to mention that it actually increases your TP consumption so in any long fight where you stand the chance of running out of TP, it's actually a DPS loss.

Saying that Bloodbath will heal you for thousands without providing a timeframe is basically meaningless; it would be just as true to say that it will heal you for millions because, if you use it enough times, it will. I deal roughly 150-160 DPS in tank stance for most fights, which means that Bloodbath provides around 12.5-13.33 hp/sec (33% uptime * 25% healing * 150-160 DPS) over time and roughly 1125-1200 per use (30 secs * .25 healing * 150-160 DPS) spread out over 30 seconds. A vast majority of Bloodbath's healing will result in effective overhealing (even if it heals you, it often pushes heals you would have been getting anyways into overhealing). This isn't to say that you shouldn't use it; it's got no cost whatsoever (it doesn't even have an opportunity cost because we *have* to have it as WARs). It's just that you really shouldn't think of Bloodbath as being anywhere near a major contributor; you'll get about as much healing out of SP and no one uses SP for the self-heal.

Vengeance only provides appreciable damage when you're in an AoE situation. Even then, unless you know that you're not going to need it to survive some heavy hits in the next 2 minutes, it should be held in reserve as a tank CD because that's it's real purpose. Also, it provides a Wrath stack, which is often forgotten. Try to use it when you're not at 5 stacks so you get full benefit from it.