Warrior in Heavensward. A bit nervous about the Overlap with Dark Knights

[Donjo]

I personally think it's just too soon to make such large assumptions about what the exact numbers are. It's, for example, possible that WAR and DRK will decisively beat out PLD's MT DPS despite the additional abilities PLD is getting. We just can't know for sure. What we do know though is that problems may arise with interclass balance if their abilities to do damage are not close enough. However, for all of the failures SE has exhibited when it comes to balancing us against the enemy, they have proven themselves very competent at balancing classes against each other. I see no reason to assume that they'll shoot themselves in the foot in this particular regard. All we can do is wait.

[Reynhart]

I think the "balance" is wider than "Their damage output is close".

For example, PLD could do significantly less damage than WAR or DRK but pack far more mitigation, thus requiring less healing, allowing the healer to DPS more.
So we could say that the total DPS of "PLD+Healer" can be close to "WAR+Healer" or "DRK+Healer", keeping the party balanced.

On the other hand, DRK could deal more but require the main healer to be entirely focused on healing duty, thus dealing less damage.

Since they mentionned having designed the new content to include the healers' DPS...

[Donjo]

They mentioned only Alexander Hard as being tuned to include healer DPS in mind. Alexander Normal was stated to not have it in mind and from that we can reasonably assume that nothing else does either. Balancing all of the classes based on a mere four fights isn't quite sound. Thus, projected healer attention probably isn't a metric by which the Tanks are being balanced. Hopefully they learned their lesson with 2.0 Warrior: people like it when one tank doesn't require significantly more healer attention than another. Thus, that is ideally a concern they've worked out long ago.

[ManaKing]

I don't think I would worry about WAR too much. It's been overshadowing PLD pretty hard for a while now. PLD is getting some nice things that will probably bring it more favor, which is a good thing. It looks like PLD is getting pulled out of the DPS basement and they are letting them cover you party which will be attractive.

I really see 3 options now instead of insisting on a main class. All 3 will wear the same armor. It's not like you can't play all 3 on the same character.

I currently raid on PLD, but I heavily prefer WAR. PLD has nice utility and mitigation and laughable damage and hate generation compared to WAR. When I'm not in a raid I always go WAR because I personally think it's more fun and it gets things done faster. WAR is also better at solo content because of it's self heals.

I'm looking forward to DRK because I'd love to drop PLD as MT for so that my raid can share tanking as WAR + DRK. Neither myself or our other tank enjoy playing PLD compared to WAR, but we do it for Limit break and debuffs. I know other people who ONLY PLAY PLD and that is weird to me, but different strokes and whatnot.

[Casper]

I know other people who ONLY PLAY PLD and that is weird to me, but different strokes and whatnot.

Pld is one of those jobs that are so easy at the moment that anyone can play them decently even if they half ass it. Imo, after the changes coming, some groups are up for a rude awakening if they had slacking pld / blm / brd (drg ?) that relied on their job being easier to get by.

[Xenosan]

I doubt Delirium Blade will get a mitigation bonus debuff. That makes 2 Mitigation combos for DRK and with no Damage Up option. Looking at the trajectory for 3.0 tank combos:

PLD:
RoH Combo -> Hate & Mitigation
New Riot Combo -> DoT
New Combo -> Debuff (hinted at Slashing debuff) == Increasing Damage inflicted

WAR:
BB Combo -> Hate
Path Combo -> Debuff giving better Mitigation
Eye Combo -> Debuff increasing Damage inflicted

DRK:
Power Slash Combo -> Hate
SoulEater Combo -> Self Heals == Mitigation
Delirium Combo -> ???

..
Delirium will have to be an Offense boosting debuff, or else they are lacking a Damage Up debuff that WAR has and PLD is getting. Souleater already fills the role of Mitigation boosts through the Siphon Blade combo tree.

Straight Vulnerability Up or Magic Vulnerability Up debuff. Could be another Slashing debuff, but that's no fun.
...

Storm's Path is the best Mitigation combo of the pack. DRK's Souleater is useless when OTing and PLD RoH's Strength Down doesn't hold a candle to Path's Damage Down.

[Reynhart]

Thus, projected healer attention probably isn't a metric by which the Tanks are being balanced. Hopefully they learned their lesson with 2.0 Warrior: people like it when one tank doesn't require significantly more healer attention than another. Thus, that is ideally a concern they've worked out long ago.

PLD and WAR doesn't require the same attention already. That's why PLD is considered the safest MT.
And even is healer DPS is not required, it's far more important to balance a party than balancing every job of the same role.
This is why "lower" DPS jobs bring more "raid utility".

Besides, they already stated that they're going to increase the Defensive part of the PLD.
Quote from LLXXI : As before, paladins are excellent from a defense standpoint, so we have made adjustment in a way where it makes it possible to increase the defense stats for all party members.

[Instrumentality]

They mentioned only Alexander Hard as being tuned to include healer DPS in mind.

Woah, where did they say this?

[Xenosan]

Don't recall the exact link, but they said for 2.x they didn't factor in Healer DPS for burn phases and such when designing raids.

For Alex Hard and post 3.0 they are now keeping Healer DPS in mind when designing fights and mechanics. Meaning Healer dps being more of an expectation and less of a dps crutch/phase pusher

[karateorangutang]

Pld is one of those jobs that are so easy at the moment that anyone can play them decently even if they half ass it. Imo, after the changes coming, some groups are up for a rude awakening if they had slacking pld / blm / brd (drg ?) that relied on their job being easier to get by.

Yeah this is gonna be interesting. I main PLD mostly for aesthetic reasons, but I am really looking forward to there being more to the job. Raising the bar on the skill level output in the class is something we have been asking for awhile now and the delivery has been satisfactory.

As for the OP though, I'm having a hard time seeing WAR simply be overshadowed. Even if they are somewhat similar in how the classes are designed I see alot more resource management happening in the DRK abilities so far. I think there's gonna be alot of choices to be made im fights... which means they cant do it all.

I just cant wait to get new shinies.