What they mean by "change the damage calculations of tanks"?

[Alahra]

What now?

Purely in terms of physical mitigation, here's how the two of them break down:

DRK can Parry, but PLD can also Parry and Block. In terms of passive physical mitigation, PLD is stronger here. Whether or not these tools are RNG isn't necessarily relevant when comparing their total ability to mitigate physical damage.

Shadowskin and Rampart are exact clones of each other, so there's no difference here. They both have access to Foresight.

DRK's Shadow Wall is 30% reduction, while PLD's Sentinel is 40%. PLD is again stronger for this cooldown.

Reprisal lowers damage by 10%, and its nearest equivalent is Rage of Halone, which lowers STR by 10%. Reprisal is somewhat based on RNG and can't be kept up 100% of the time because of its cooldown, so (in terms of physical mitigation only), Rage of Halone is better than Reprisal.

Dark Dance and Bulwark are roughly comparable: Dark Dance offers 20% Parry, while Bulwark offers 60% Block, but with a cooldown three times as long as Dark Dance. Dark Dance has a slightly longer duration, meaning that, over time, it ends up better for physical mitigation than Bulwark.

DRK has no real equivalent to Shelltron, so PLD has one physical mitigation tool that DRK lacks.

DRK also has no real equivalent to Stoneskin, which gives PLD one more tool for physical mitigation (it also applies to magical mitigation but that's not what we're discussing here).

The last point of comparison is between Living Dead and Hallowed Ground, the former of which sort of provides mitigation, but it places an undue burden on healers, which makes Hallowed Ground stronger for mitigation than Living Dead.

So PLD is better than DRK in terms of physical mitigation in the following ways:

• Passive Mitigation (Parry+Block > Parry alone)
• Sentinel vs. Shadow Wall
• Rage of Halone (because of its 100% uptime, it is better at physical mitigation--the fact that Reprisal mitigates all damage isn't relevant when debating the statement "DRK's physical mitigation is weaker than PLD's")
• Shelltron
• Stoneskin
• Hallowed Ground vs. Living Dead

DRK is better than PLD for physical mitigation on the following items:

• Dark Dance vs. Bulwark

So, overall, yes, PLD has an edge when it comes to physical mitigation over DRK. Is that edge great enough to really matter? They're probably not perfectly balanced since DRK's edge in magical mitigation is probably a bit larger than PLD's edge over DRK in physical mitigation.

But it is entirely correct to say PLD is better-equipped than DRK for physical mitigation.