Why Nobody Plays Warrior

[Ehayte]

Uhh... WARs don't suck.

WAR sucks started with BCoB when Inner Beast only had a 3x dmg heal attached to it (no mitigation) and they were getting whomped by death sentence constantly, 2 PLD was the main group composition for the mid-core groups in BCoB progression. Oh yeah and Vengeance didn't have mitigation attached to it, and all Holmgang did was stick the mob to you, it did not save you from death. Also, Defiance only granted its healing bonus based on the amount of stacks of wrath you were holding, so using IB/SC/Unchained was dangerous. Everything was changed to how we know it now in patch 2.1 I believe.

However, even then, in off-tank situations and in situations where the party was overgeared WAR was EXTREMELY strong. WARs were able to heal themselves for 2k+ with an inner beast, and when you only have 7-8k hp in defiance that's a big deal. WARs were soloing portions of dungeons like WP, and mediocre players could take 4 WARs into AK or WP and clear it with no problem.

With the WAR changes, they actually have very very good burst mitigation, which is why they can skate so low on vitality to increase their strength. IB+CD is almost always a recipient to survive an attack that a similarly spec'd paladin would have to burn 2 major CDs to survive. Probably where it comes from now is that good WARs are going into PUG situations STR spec'd and expecting an inexperienced healer to keep them alive in high damage situations, and bad WARs don't handle the job correctly (it is harder than PLD to use optimally) and don't mitigate damage or do damage correctly.

If only we had an in-game parser you would see how truly truly bad some DPS are at their jobs, but right now its hard to tell : D

EDIT:

It is also true that PLDs can mitigate more damage due to Bulwark, Rampart and Hallowed Ground, while WARs rely more on a bigger health pool and regenerative skills which is a more reactive tanking style rather than actual mitigation.

This is also somewhat of a misconception (and you forgot Sentinel). eHP (effective hit points) for each tank are roughly the same, due to the decreased damage for the PLD and in increased total health and healing effectiveness for the WAR. The only recovery skills WAR uses are IB and Bloodbath, and if you are using IB it is almost always to mitigate damage, not recover hit points. There are some situations (the end of a holmgang, extremely heavy constant damage like T9's Bahamut's Claw attacks) where a double IB's extra healing will really help, but even on a STR spec'd WAR we are talking 1200-1400 dmg healed after 2 inner beasts if you are not zerk'ed and don't crit. That won't even save you from an auto attack from a Bennu in T12 - but the 20% mitigation might. WAR's actually have to plan further ahead for their mitigation than PLD's do, ask any progression WAR and they can probably tell you when they need to start building wrath to mitigate an attack when they are MTing, or when they need to switch back on defiance to be able to infuriate to mitigate an attack. All a PLD has to do is go, "Oh shit! Critical Rip... Rampart! I choose you!"