If Paladin is "specialized in defense" shouldn't its defense be better always?

[Reynhart]

Every Shield Swipe proc is a delay in GCD, can be a DPS increase or decrease depending if you spread your combo on several targets or if you have the time to finish your combo.
Every Stun can be a bit too late if the casting bar is short and your GCD is on.
Every stance change is a reset to your combo, meaning that your DoT and RoH will fall.
You need to think your cooldown rotation to match the frequence of tank busters so that you'll have one ready each time.
You'll need to follow the pattern of attacks to cast Clemency (even as a main tank) without being interrupted.

As for Dark Arts, it costs a lot of MP. Would you use it on each Dark Passenger, each Dark Mind, each Soul Eater and some Power Slash ? Or even with Adyssal Drain ? Do you need Carve and Spit to gain MP or do damage ?
Grit prevents you from using Blood Weapon, Darkside is needed to use several skills, and Soul Eater only heals you with Grit. You have plenty of things to think about if you want to max out DRK.
In fact, I'm pretty sure very few people had already managed to "perfect" DRK's gameplay.

Sorry, but stance dancing on WAR is still the more forgiving, just because it converts Wrath to Abandon and back, meaning you can prepare your damage in tank stance, and strike immediatly in DPS stance.

Yes, WAR's previous entire toolkit was far too behind. No mitigation skill, no oh-shit button and a tank stance which was massively behind the PLD.

I haven't done T5 as a WAR, but I suppose people didn't expect tank swaps, so WAR was in a really bad spot. With Vengeance and tank swapping (On top of Stoneskin and Adloquium), I'm sure it would have been perfectly viable.

Yes, "proactive vs reactive" is a personal opinion. It's just that WAR had Thrill Of Battle from the start, and Defiance is clearly a reactive skill, so I think it'd a more "coherent" toolkit.
And you'd still keep Vengeance and Raw Intuitionn which are proactive.

What would be better for WAR, though (Yes, some ideas to make WAR even better) is for WAR skills to not be "locked" behind Defiance/Deliverance. I'd like every Wrath/Andon skill to work like Equilibrium.
For example, under Defiance, Inner Beast would heal you, and under Deliverance, it would basically become Fell Cleave by gaining potency. This would allow WAR's toolkit to have the same number of skills than others job, and more room to make more interesting skill...because, let's be honest, Steel Cyclone and Decimate could be the same skill.

Wrath/Abadon could also be fused and only give a different buff depending on stance, since nothing gives specifically one or the other.

And again, lorewise, your Inner Beast is something that makes you unleash your rage to kill everything and very difficult to control. In-game, the only thing that makes WAR laugh maniacally is spamming Fell Cleave