Is it time for SE to give PLDs a good bump in terms of DPS?

[Reynhart]

It will de doable with any combo. Just not in the same way.
Like I said, If the PLD does less damage than the WAR but allows the healers to do more damage because less healing will be necessary, the overall damage of the party will be the same.

So, it's not important if all tanks don't do the same DPS as long as their utility offer something else.

[Paikis]

Sure, but they can't make tanks so different that content is not doable with any combo. Think about 2.0 when people would bail in DF if both tanks were WARs and most coil groups were double PLD.

SE is designing jobs so they all bring similar benefits to the raid as a whole.

2.0 where playing WAR took some skill, gear, timing and class knowledge. Coil was completely doable with a WAR MT, and I know this because I did it. Doing it as a WAR wasn't face-roll easy like it was with the Paladin though, so a mediocre PLD could do it, but it took a good WAR to keep up... and there weren't many.

[SpookyGhost]

2.0 where playing WAR took some skill, gear, timing and class knowledge. Coil was completely doable with a WAR MT, and I know this because I did it. Doing it as a WAR wasn't face-roll easy like it was with the Paladin though, so a mediocre PLD could do it, but it took a good WAR to keep up... and there weren't many.

You got carried by exceptional healers (source: WAR'd up to T5, realized I was literally just stressing out my healers, switched to PLD until WAR got buffed). WAR took 0 skill - you sat on 5 stacks, waited for a big hit, and then hit IB. Then you built 5 again to repeat the same process. Path didn't even exist, Vengeance didn't exist outside of just popping it on CD or for big packs to do more damage, SC was a waste of Wrath unless you had Infuriate after spending the 5 Wrath on SC because of how Wrath used to work, etc. etc. You were basically playing with a penalty with a WAR in the party, which wasn't a very good feeling when you chose WAR as your main.

Thankfully all that changed, though it did sort of homogenize the two tanks rather than make WAR's mitigation more unique/meaningful. That's a completely different discussion, though, so I guess we should be happy they're changing things up a bit for all 3 tanks in the expansion.

[Kaonis]

You got carried by exceptional healers (source: WAR'd up to T5, realized I was literally just stressing out my healers, switched to PLD until WAR got buffed). WAR took 0 skill - you sat on 5 stacks, waited for a big hit, and then hit IB. Then you built 5 again to repeat the same process. Path didn't even exist, Vengeance didn't exist outside of just popping it on CD or for big packs to do more damage, SC was a waste of Wrath unless you had Infuriate after spending the 5 Wrath on SC because of how Wrath used to work, etc. etc. You were basically playing with a penalty with a WAR in the party, which wasn't a very good feeling when you chose WAR as your main.

This. I played a WAR pre-2.1 also. Switched to PLD and it was noticeable instantly how much less damage I took. Literally every person I hear claiming WAR MT is as viable as PLD ignores the good and incredibly overgeared healers with them. The argument is kind of lost when a healer claims healing a WAR is just fine when they are about 95%+ BIS.

[Sleigh]

To be fair 2.0 WAR wasn't bad in the sense that you wouldn't want to bring one in T5, because it still had Storm's Eye. It was just a terrible main tank.

I would reckon you'd wanna bring a 2.0 WAR to T2 and T5. T1 debatable. T4, that's when double PLD made the most sense to me.

[SpookyGhost]

T1 didn't really matter, but could be cheesed extremely early on with 2x PLD due to WAR basically getting its face teared into unless you milked it with cures.

T2 WAR had it's up sides because of SE, but 2x PLD also gave you 2 backup silences and eliminated the need for 2x BRD as many groups often did anyway.

T4 WAR was actually quite good at, simply because of the massive AOE aggro that OP generated on top of actually dealing damage. Obviously a WAR would fall flat like a pancake tanking Dreadnaughts, but that's why PLD existed.

T5 was... weird? WAR certainly couldn't MT it unless for some reason you wanted to prove your group was really good at carrying you, but they were ok on OT. SE, as mentioned, was pretty valuable damage-wise (though under appreciated at the time). Where WAR kind of lost its flavor was when it actually had to tank snakes... and couldn't stunlock Dreadknights... and soaked the balls in the last phase like a pillow getting pounded with bricks. 2x PLD was all around safer, despite lacking the utility of SE, since groups weren't really too concerned about tank damage way back when.

[Paikis]

You got carried by exceptional healers (source: WAR'd up to T5, realized I was literally just stressing out my healers, switched to PLD until WAR got buffed). WAR took 0 skill - you sat on 5 stacks, waited for a big hit, and then hit IB. Then you built 5 again to repeat the same process. Path didn't even exist, Vengeance didn't exist outside of just popping it on CD or for big packs to do more damage, SC was a waste of Wrath unless you had Infuriate after spending the 5 Wrath on SC because of how Wrath used to work, etc. etc. You were basically playing with a penalty with a WAR in the party, which wasn't a very good feeling when you chose WAR as your main.

Thankfully all that changed, though it did sort of homogenize the two tanks rather than make WAR's mitigation more unique/meaningful. That's a completely different discussion, though, so I guess we should be happy they're changing things up a bit for all 3 tanks in the expansion.

This. I played a WAR pre-2.1 also. Switched to PLD and it was noticeable instantly how much less damage I took. Literally every person I hear claiming WAR MT is as viable as PLD ignores the good and incredibly overgeared healers with them. The argument is kind of lost when a healer claims healing a WAR is just fine when they are about 95%+ BIS.

I'm sure my healers were good. But I'm also sure that they told me they prefered me to tank as a WAR because it was better at handling the tank-buster hits and the rest of the time there was no real danger of any tank dieing because auto-attacks were easily healed (turn 1 being the only time they prefered me to play as PLD). Reducing a hit by 2k is only better than healing 3.5-4k afterwards if you get killed by not reducing it.

I remember arguing about this at the time (pre-2.1). It was me and maybe 3-4 other guys who had bothered to get a full set of penta-melded gryphonskin gear as well as Bravura Zenith saying it was fine, and everyone else trying to tell us that WAR sucked and wasnt viable. Turns out everyone who was saying WAR was bad were gearing their WAR like a PLD or playing it as their less-geared alt. They just had the standard Bravura and were gearing for VIT and then wondering why their pathetic little Inner Beasts weren't keeping them alive. Even the devs said that they were doing it wrong.

Turns out that being able to heal yourself for 3.5-4k on a crit is actually pretty good. The rest of the changes in 2.1 were OK, but I really dislike the Inner Beast change.

Oh well, complaints from another time. I'll give the DRK a shot and see which tank I like the feel of more.

[Casper]

nonsensical stuff

No really. What the hell. Healing is just way worse than applying a damage reduction for anything that matters. Also pre 2.1 healing 3.5k -- care to show that ? Somehow i have big doubt about it. For one you are assuming it crits, good luck relying on that, for second, even with that, it wasn't that much. Inner beast is a much, much better ability now, period.

"Reducing a hit by 2k is only better than healing 3.5-4k afterwards if you get killed by not reducing it." That's exactly the point. Who care when it's not life threatening ? Seriously ?

[Syfer22]

So we've touched on the state of things in 2.0... How do they stack up now between WAR and PLD on the cusp of Heavensward?

[Launched]

Stuff

2.0 WAR was awful because it didn't have any mitigation. You were pretty much a PLD with Shield Oath and no cooldowns. You had to hope that you didn't get blown up by tank busters, because all you could do was heal after it, which is useless when you died in one hit. A PLD could take the same hit with a cooldown active and take way less damage.