Paladin adjustments = PALLY BUFFS!

[SpookyGhost]

and also bring the least to the table from a mitigation perspective - Parry is actually made worse by a high block rate shield.

While it's true that having high block rate results in Parry, as a secondary stat, being worse, the best shields now are Towers due to Sheltron and (to an extent) Bulwark. On top of this, block is 1-9% more powerful than Parry atm so if you could've parried instead of blocked, it was better to block anyway. PLD, mitigation-wise, is fine - it only suffers slightly in magic fights compared to the other two. It's biggest problem is the lack of DPS, which is being addressed.

[Jpec07]

While it's true that having high block rate results in Parry, as a secondary stat, being worse, the best shields now are Towers due to Sheltron and (to an extent) Bulwark. On top of this, block is 1-9% more powerful than Parry atm so if you could've parried instead of blocked, it was better to block anyway. PLD, mitigation-wise, is fine - it only suffers slightly in magic fights compared to the other two. It's biggest problem is the lack of DPS, which is being addressed.

I forget where it was (though I think it was somewhere here), where someone mapped out the mitigation available through cooldowns and passive attributes to the three tanks, and found that Paladins mathematically actually have the worst mitigation options of the three - and to my knowledge, it's been this way since the Warrior buffs of 2.x. And that just sits funny with me when I remember Yoshi talking about Paladins as supposedly the most defensive tank, and the tank who takes the least damage. Maybe if they sit there and spam Stoneskin between each combo that's true, but that's an awfully specific circumstance.

[SpookyGhost]

*post*

It depends on how the fight is paced, how many hits the tank busters are, whether there's cleaves or not, etc. but basically Sheltron destroys that argument for any fight that isn't magic based (so, unfortunately, just A3S, Thordan EX, and Ravana EX atm). Not only is it ~29% damage reduction, it can be stacked with other CDs - obviously not additively but I think the only equivalent of Sheltron + Sentinel is DA + DM + Shadow Wall + Reprisal, and I'm not sure if that even adds up to enough. On top of this, an advantage of both DRK and PLD is that their short-CD-high-damage-reduction abilities are available out of their tank stances, unlike WAR which needs Defiance for IB. I think WAR might have the most overall mitigation in a given fight if using tank stance, but DRK/PLD have the highest burst mitigation rotation available to them with or without their tank stances. PLD also uniquely has Divine Veil, though that hasn't really needed utilizing yet.

[Jpec07]

*SpookyPost*

Aha, that's what I hadn't considered. Burst mitigation is definitely the name of the game here, especially considering most of the mitigation tanks have to do in raids revolves around big, single hits (or intermittent periods of heavy incoming damage).

I will also admit, I hope they keep inflated tank HP in mind when designing the next encounters. We'll be walking in with 20k (if we've prepared), which could make some mechanics hurt a lot less than they otherwise might.