Enough is enough

[Ipkonfig]

HP != Mitigation. As you add HP to a tank, if you don't equally increase the healers ability to heal that gain in HP then it means nothing, hence why Defiance was changed to give an increase in HP AND incoming healing to bring it in line with base Shield Oath instead of its orignal Wrath stacks giving healing bonus making Defiance half a tank stance.

Paladin was the required main tank for all of coil. Groups would run PLD/WAR, PLD/PLD, or even just PLD and drop the WAR for a DPS. Now that the lines are more blurred and you can bring any tank composition you want Paladins are going to whine till they are the best of the best again? I was forced to PLD for a very long time, and now, I don't even plan on taking it to 60 and pray that I don't because I've always found it boring. World first A2S had a Paladin in the group, there are still plenty of Paladins out there and plenty of groups that bring Paladin. My Savage group's other tank is leveling PLD so he can DRK/PLD if needed at the request of the group leader.

I can agree with an enmity increase for Paladin since the original intention of RoH having a lower coefficient was that they had to spam it even if they were off-tanking which, if Butcher Block and RoH were equal would result in the Paladin taking aggro, but now with Royal Authority there is no reason for them to not be equal.

I can't see a reason to buff anything else. Regardless of what people say Paladin still has the best physical mitigation of the three tanks, and yes right now there are a few magic mechanics that don't favor Paladin's CD options, but A2S is a perfect Paladin fight. Having a shield alone is ~10% overall physical mitigation and that's passive. People also seem to down play Hallowed Ground which is the most amazing cooldown in the game sooooooo many mechanics have been cheated/skipped by using Hallowed Ground.

[Praesul]

Paladin was the required main tank for all of coil. Groups would run PLD/WAR, PLD/PLD, or even just PLD and drop the WAR for a DPS. Now that the lines are more blurred and you can bring any tank composition you want Paladins are going to whine till they are the best of the best again? I was forced to PLD for a very long time, and now, I don't even plan on taking it to 60 and pray that I don't because I've always found it boring. World first A2S had a Paladin in the group, there are still plenty of Paladins out there and plenty of groups that bring Paladin. My Savage group's other tank is leveling PLD so he can DRK/PLD if needed at the request of the group leader.

Can we please stop with the PLD main tank only boogieman? That literally never happened after the WAR rework. PLD was never THE main tank, and if someone clinged to that belief they were either ignorant or stubborn. Everything was perfectly main tanked by a WAR, and in fact was more efficient from a damage perspective. I main tanked all of coil as a WAR, and we always had our PLD in sword oath because Slashing debuff + sword oath DPS was greater than PLD MT + WAR OT.

WAR took more fluff damage than PLD obviously, because PLD gets % damage reduction and shield blocks, but sustained damage was ALMOST never a big concern. Most damage threats in the game are the hug tank busters, and WAR would literally always have something up for everyone one. Storm's Path, Inner beast at the VERY least combined with Defiance, and then a cooldown like Vengeance or Thrill of Battle. Bam, tank busters taken care of. If you needed to cheese a mechanic with HG, it was as easy as swapping, popping HG, and swapping back if need be.

WAR MT was always best after 2.1, and is still very good in HW. People's misconceptions shouldn't be taken into account when talking job balance.

And for God's sake, WAR is almost REQUIRED to do hard content in this game. People like to go on and on about butthurt PLD's angry that they're not the "MT King" anymore, yet WAR is the one tank that should be in every comp. No WAR comps do less damage and actually have less raidwide mitigation just because they don't have a WAR. WAR + DRK or WAR + PLD is better than the alternatives, but apparently that's okay and not a problem? Come on.

[Ipkonfig]

snip.

You are completely incorrect, first no PLD in Sword Oath was out DPSing a WAR OT unless the WAR just wasn't good, and we're talking BiS left side and full crafted/melded accessories. On pre-echo Twintania WAR OT could get very close to a mid tier DPS I still ended up going MNK instead of WAR when we switched to single tank for Dragon Kick and MNK was the highest DPS at the time.

I feel bad groups if they had WAR MTs in brand new content, i.e. less than optimal gear levels. PLD is more forgiving so if you don't know the mechanics well you can still clear while WAR requires a perfect cool down rotation because Inner Beast is on the global and buff delay. If you're even a second off on getting it up it won't effect the incoming tank buster. Pretty much if Inner Beast isn't up before the cast gets to half then it won't effect the damage. Also that "fluff" damage is pretty detrimental in new content since your healers are also under-geared so any means of reducing that is welcomed. Plenty of top tier groups had their PLDs meld DEX into fending accessories for even more "fluff" mitigation when they were pushing world firsts.

I challenge you to show concrete proof of a world first clear that used a WAR MT, pre-Heavensward. Even the first 5 clears will have PLD MT.

On top of PLDs dominating the MT slot in world firsts, there were also very few fights that actually required two tanks, and PLD was the optimal choice for a single tank since they have far more "Oh S@#$!" buttons.

[Praesul]

You are completely incorrect, first no PLD in Sword Oath was out DPSing a WAR OT unless the WAR just wasn't good, and we're talking BiS left side and full crafted/melded accessories. On pre-echo Twintania WAR OT could get very close to a mid tier DPS I still ended up going MNK instead of WAR when we switched to single tank for Dragon Kick and MNK was the highest DPS at the time.

This has been tested many times in the past Check the comments for further clarification on the rotation and stats. The gap became even bigger the lower the delay on the PLD's sword, because it gains even bigger benefits from Sword Oath.

As for world first groups clearing with PLD MT? Yeah no duh. When it's a competition, stability and consistency is more important because you get to see more phases of a fight, giving you more insight on the encounter. Sacrifices are made in bleeding edge content, like using melded accessories with vit on DPS and healers just to be able to survive things despite the option of accessories with more damage stats being there. Of course they're going to have the PLD MT, because their goal is to clear before others do, and healing a WAR requires more effort.

[Phoenicia]

[URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1wz31r/pld_war_dps_what_gives/"]

That analysis was based on WAR rotation SE/SP, not SE/BB. Also WAR juggling Defiance to use Unchained+IB then dropping Defiance did more DPS than not popping defiance at all.

Anyways, it's awash, my WAR used to do 450 DPS in 130 gear while my PLD mate used to do 430~440.

The DPS difference between WAR OT and PLD OT hasn't been solidly proven. But the WAR MT / PLD OT definitely proved to do more DPS than the opposite.