There are already two dps-tank jobs, please don't make Paladin the third.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

There is a lot of misconceptions going on out there when it comes to tank mitigation (and in-game data in general). I will address it in a sec.

In physical fights PLD should generally mitigate more....

Not to underline your knowledge of tanking, Spooky. (You are one of the few tanks I respect on these forums.) But this triggers me... Just because a tank can reduce more damage, it doesn't mean it mitigates more.

Disclaimer:I do not main a tank anymore. And the rest here is just a wall of text trying to open an insight of general tanking that a lot of people do not fully grasp. I do not mean any disrespect nor do I mean to sound condescending to anyone!

The difference in dealing with the different tools of mitigation, and healers' misconceptions of what is easier to work with rather than what is more "effective" gives a wide-spread misconception out on these forums. But they're just misconceptions.... Here is why:

1. Damage Mitigation is not necessarily damage reduction. Damage mitigation is all about reducing the severity of that damage. Hence improving survival. How do we measure survival? Simple, how many hits does the boss need to do to kill you without healer's intervention. Mathematically it is referred to as "effective" Health or damage.

While damage reduction IS one way to mitigate (and probably the most common). Healing post damage and HP padding (Thrill of Battle, Stoneskin, Adloquiem and IB's pre-damage heal) are other VERY good form of mitigation. As a matter of fact, unless an attack outright removes 81+% of your MAX HP, ToB mitigates more damage than Ramps/IB/Shadowskin. Combine ToB with IB and its effectiveness is sky rocketed. Let's not forget ToB gives 20% max HP regardless of your current HP while Ramps and co only increase effective HP of whatever you currently have.

Basically, if you have 100 HP and boss does 10 damage. Reducing damage by 20% and increasing your health by 25% has the same effect, the boss will need 13 hits instead of 10 to kill you. At the same time, healing 2-3 damage post-damage will net the same result. Or healing once for 25-30% of your HP. All those tools "mitigated" the severity of the boss's attacks from 10 hits to die to 13 hits to die. Only difference between those tools is how the healer and tank should go at coordinating between those tools.

2. Magnitude isn't everything! PLD's "spectacular" damage reduction is VERY WELL countered by the effy, near terrible, up time. Hallowed Ground may have the strongest "effect" from a defensive CD, but due to its obscene CD, it is probably one of the least effective in a fight. It will never reduce as much damage as Rampart, Sentinel or IB over the course of 7 minutes. Though it may prevent deaths and cheese some mechanics... It will do so at a much lower frequency than the equivalent tools the other two tanks have, albeit it will require the least healer intervention.

Frequency of availability makes CDs "better". There is a reason Vengeance and Inner Beast are the "best" defensive tools. And that is their availability for every other tank buster (And in some cases EVERY buster) in the case of vengeance. And availability for EVERYTHING that is not Auto Attack in the case of Inner Beast. True, turtling on WAR is a lot of wasted potential DPS, but we're talking "mitigation" here.

3. Number of CDs mean nothing, if those CDs are too situational to matter. I see a lot of people count PLD's "defensive" CDs and say they're 10 or so...

• Convalescence is not a mitigation CD, it's a healing boost (A recovery CD if you may).
• Cover is there for thematic purposes and is almost useles.
• People cry about how "useless Iron Will" is, even though it's barely "defensive" as it is a utility CD, not defensive. And I'm one of the ones saying it's useful.
• Awareness is difficult to calculate in terms of eHP and you can never predict what damage it prevented. Unless it's used in a scenario where crits are 100% guaranted.
• Bulwark is iffy at best being only physical and never 100% reliable. Has an obscenely long CD of 3 minutes and a laughable up time of 15 seconds. Compare it to Raw Intuition... Heck, compare it to Dark Dance... I don't care if your tower shield blocks 50% damage, the unpredictability and laughable up time make it a CD I only use to supplement another. Such as the laughable Foresight.
• Sheltron shoots itself in the foot with its timing and bosses not stopping auto-attacks while casting potentially popping the block with an auto only so you eat that 23k buster and blocks never precede crits. Again, damage type limited CD.
• Hallowed Ground has an eternity for a CD... Heck we delay when we pull because of how retardedly long that CD is.

Basically, PLD's "reliable" defense is really down to: Rampart and Sentinel. Of course, Shield Oath.. But I like to treat tank stances as "baseline" defense.

4. Practicality; This in part could belong to the above point, but clutchy and clunky tools are only that, clutch and clunk..

Doesn't matter if you can pretend to be able to heal yourself for 1200 potency and or pad your HP by 10% if the reaction time for those is retardedly long. Paladin doing anything trying to cast those will first have to wait 2.5 seconds GCD, then cast for 3 seconds. If you can get hit for more than 10% of your max HP, you risk getting interrupted... And those bosses are merciless. Compare those to the instant, oGCD, CD boostable Equilibrium, Inner Beast and Second Wind? Souleater is more mitigation than the PLD's shield and Clemency combined over the course of any fight. Physical be it or magical.

We can clearly see who has the "better" tools.

Divine Veil, while in theory blocks a LOT of damage, is very clunky and requires healer intervention. Divine Veil is probably one of (if not THE) most impractical defensive tools in the game currently.

TL;DR: The better tank is the tank that takes the most hits, having the most effective health while needing the least heals, where self heals + healing received from healers is the most effective. Tanks are roughly VERY close to one another based on encounter with WAR having the most effective health and PLD receiving most effective healing, and WAR and DRK both having more effective self heals than PLD. However, outside of Hallowed Ground, PLD is probably the furthest from being the best combination of both among the three tanks.

The reason there is a blatant problem with PLD: PLD is taxed by lower DPS and 0 raid DPS contribution for an imaginary defensive advantage that does not exist, nor is needed in the current meta.

The issue was so deep that SE had to change the tank's main damage stat, re-evaluating and looking at tank traits, AND shifting from sever DPS checks to mechanic checks in the upcoming savage instead of just simply buffing PLD and/or nerfing the other tanks.

Again, I do not mean disrespect or to sound condescending to anyone. But this topic has been triggering me for a while when people tell a tank to change the job they like playing (and play better at) because it's a WAR/DRK and not PLD or whatever.

[Syzygian]

snip

Haha, this captures how I feel when people pidgeon-hole DRK as a "magic mitigation tank" ...pre-3.0, tanks hand CDs that mitigated both (Rampart, Vengeance) and CDs that mitigated only physical (Bulwark, Foresight, etc.), and then DRK comes along with an extra one that mitigates magic specifically (why the other tanks didn't have something like this always struck me as weird) and its like omg, magic tank, lowest defense (wat), inferior to PLD, blah blah like they wouldn't have sold their souls for such a cooldown the first time any of them saw something like Akh Morn.

[SpookyGhost]

Not to underline your knowledge of tanking, Spooky. (You are one of the few tanks I respect on these forums.) But this triggers me... Just because a tank can reduce more damage, it doesn't mean it mitigates more.

I read through this a few times, and while I do have things I'd nitpick at, I largely agree. I think there's a lot to consider when comparing WAR's kit to PLD's, one often overlooked is Sheltron being available outside of tank stance - while (hopefully) staying in DPS stance for 99% of the fight won't remain to be a thing, in the time it takes Unchained to come back up for what is essentially a free IB you can use Sheltron 4 times. But this really starts delving into the realm of hypotheticals and situation-to-situation comparisons that is just too much of a mess to get into. PLD's defensive kit is definitely not all it's chocked up to be, there was a very good reason that people were considering running 2x WAR in physical fights before changes were announced (not only did you get similar mitigation, you also got the massive boon of DPS that came with those crazy axe wielders).

Anyway, really informative post, and highlights a lot of things often overlooked by a lot of people. Good stuff, Phoenicia. ( ' - ' )b

[Phoenicia]

Anyway, really informative post, and highlights a lot of things often overlooked by a lot of people. Good stuff, Phoenicia. ( ' - ' )b

Well, I wrote that totally on the spot so I missed a lot of things and my points could've been way more organized, detailed and accurate. I just wanted to point out that just because something could "look" great doesn't mean it's great. You have to look at the whole picture to know if something is as it seems, without going into specifics as to how WAR loses IB out of tank stance while PLD/DRK keep all their tools or how easy some tools are to utilize and what-not.

I'm sure whatever you nitpick with me is discussion worthy. But the post was just a kneejerk reaction of something's been bothering me for a long time now. The illusion that PLD mitigates more is so 2.0 now. Simply mitigation =/= reduction.

[Duelle]

Hallowed Ground may have the strongest "effect" from a defensive CD, but due to its obscene CD, it is probably one of the least effective in a fight. It will never reduce as much damage as Rampart, Sentinel or IB over the course of 7 minutes.

That's not exactly a good metric to use. I'll admit that part of the issue with Hallowed Ground is that it's one of those "identity" things that got a pass when they implemented PLD (hence why in the JP version the ability is called Invincible after its FFXI counterpart). Expecting it to be used frequently as is would be beyond unreasonable since it negates all incoming damage with no attached downside (no damage penalty while active, no loss of all aggro upon use).

Now whether people would be willing to lose Hallowed Ground in place of something that can be used more regularly remains to be seen. I spoke out against HG back in 1.23 because I've seen invincibilities get out of hand before, so I'd shed no tears if HG were to leave us.

Frequency of availability makes CDs "better". There is a reason Vengeance and Inner Beast are the "best" defensive tools.

You're ignoring differences in gameplay. PLD is designed as a traditional tank with cooldowns that are supposed to be used during oh shit moments. WAR is designed partly around active mitigation, which is why Inner Beast works the way it does. PLD defensive cooldowns and what WAR has in their place serve very different purposes. Or at least, they're supposed to serve different purposes.

Cover is there for thematic purposes and is almost useless.

Oh if only someone were to come up with a better version of Cover.

Awareness is difficult to calculate in terms of eHP and you can never predict what damage it prevented. Unless it's used in a scenario where crits are 100% guaranted.

Agreed. This was a bad idea from the start and IMO has always been a waste of a slot. The only fight that justified its existence was Shiva EX when in bow mode. Then with 3.0 WAR gets more mileage out of it because of how it negates the downside of Raw Intuition.

Sheltron shoots itself in the foot with its timing and bosses not stopping auto-attacks while casting potentially popping the block with an auto only so you eat that 23k buster and blocks never precede crits. Again, damage type limited CD.

I think part of the problem here is that doing anything else with Sheltron invalidates Bulwark on some level.

It could have easily been a "block every attack for the next 10 seconds" type of ability, but at that point they might as well just redesign Bulwark to work like this and replace Sheltron with something else. That might not be a bad idea, actually...

Doesn't matter if you can pretend to be able to heal yourself for 1200 potency and or pad your HP by 10% if the reaction time for those is retardedly long. Paladin doing anything trying to cast those will first have to wait 2.5 seconds GCD, then cast for 3 seconds.

This is an obvious knock on Clemency, so I'll present to you the choice. You either get hybrid utility with its inherent downsides/opportunity cost (and Clemency to be anywhere near balanced absolutely needs to have an opportunity cost if it can be used on party members), or you get an instant self heal on a 20-25s cooldown.

The reason there is a blatant problem with PLD: PLD is taxed by lower DPS and 0 raid DPS contribution for an imaginary defensive advantage that does not exist, nor is needed in the current meta.

This doesn't paint the whole picture. The truth of the matter is that PLD was designed around a certain paradigm and playstyle, but the game has made that paradigm ineffective partly through developer decisions (DPS race-focused encounters) and partly through the player-created metagame (circumventing tank staples by being able to pump out more damage than intended for a tank via WAR triple Fel Cleaves et al).

The issue was so deep that SE had to change the tank's main damage stat, re-evaluating and looking at tank traits, AND shifting from sever DPS checks to mechanic checks in the upcoming savage instead of just simply buffing PLD and/or nerfing the other tanks.

Depending on how far they went with the changes (really wish they would talk about this in detail instead of making us wait for patch notes), this is either a step in the right direction or a band-aid on a bullet wound.

[Aaliyahrose]

I think part of the problem here is that doing anything else with Sheltron invalidates Bulwark on some level.

It could have easily been a "block every attack for the next 10 seconds" type of ability, but at that point they might as well just redesign Bulwark to work like this and replace Sheltron with something else. That might not be a bad idea, actually...

The Sheltron ability was designed block attacks that require timing i.e. Thordan's cleve attack or A3S hand swipe. These of which do enough damage that cause healers to throw out a Cure 2 or Lustrate. It also restores mana, so you can continue to Stoneskin/Clemency you or a party member.

[Duelle]

The Sheltron ability was designed block attacks that require timing i.e. Thordan's cleve attack or A3S hand swipe. These of which do enough damage that cause healers to throw out a Cure 2 or Lustrate. It also restores mana, so you can continue to Stoneskin/Clemency you or a party member.

Except that, as established, boss auto-attacks can consume Sheltron and you're SOL at that point. Timed blocks work in games that require precise gameplay (see: Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, the Soul Calibur games). FFXIV is far from that and a different approach to that ability should be considered.

I'd be willing to start by reducing the duration of Sheltron to 5s and making it block all incoming attacks and see how that goes. This way you can go for that illusion of timed blocking while not making the ability overpowered nor making it easy for it to go to waste.

[Violette]

Except that, as established, boss auto-attacks can consume Sheltron and you're SOL at that point. Timed blocks work in games that require precise gameplay (see: Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, the Soul Calibur games). FFXIV is far from that and a different approach to that ability should be considered.

I'd be willing to start by reducing the duration of Sheltron to 5s and making it block all incoming attacks and see how that goes. This way you can go for that illusion of timed blocking while not making the ability overpowered nor making it easy for it to go to waste.

Thing is, as we can see with Heavenly Heel, it's wonderful against PHYSICAL tank busters with a cast.
It'd eat Flatten for breakfast. It's more victim of circumstance than a bad ability.

[Shurrikhan]

Except that, as established, boss auto-attacks can consume Sheltron and you're SOL at that point. Timed blocks work in games that require precise gameplay (see: Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, the Soul Calibur games). FFXIV is far from that and a different approach to that ability should be considered.

I'd be willing to start by reducing the duration of Sheltron to 5s and making it block all incoming attacks and see how that goes. This way you can go for that illusion of timed blocking while not making the ability overpowered nor making it easy for it to go to waste.

I'd honestly just prefer to see changes in terms of AAs no longer being able to go off simultaneously or near-simultaneously with tank busters. Beyond that, Shelltron is easy enough to time. I've never lost a Shelltron meant for Thordan's cleave or heel on an AA, or even prior to a rotorswipe or Caduceus cleave in minsynced T4/T1. For its animation and the niche it seems intended to fill, an extended block would make a lot more sense, and would certainly give it more significance in AoE pulls, but I don't think it's exactly necessary either. First block + 1.5 seconds thereafter would be more than enough time. I'd be more inclined to say that it and/or Bulwark's inability to affect magic damage taken whatsoever are larger points of evidence of a broken toolkit.

[Duelle]

Thing is, as we can see with Heavenly Heel, it's wonderful against PHYSICAL tank busters with a cast.
It'd eat Flatten for breakfast. It's more victim of circumstance than a bad ability.

At least in my own experiences, auto attacks still process while a boss is midcast and preparing high damage attacks, so the element that devalues Sheltron is there. If the intent of the ability is to guarantee a block because of a big incoming hit, turning it into guaranteed blocking for 5s basically meets that intent while giving some leeway.

For its animation and the niche it seems intended to fill, an extended block would make a lot more sense, and would certainly give it more significance in AoE pulls, but I don't think it's exactly necessary either. First block + 1.5 seconds thereafter would be more than enough time. I'd be more inclined to say that it and/or Bulwark's inability to affect magic damage taken whatsoever are larger points of evidence of a broken toolkit.

5 seconds isn't that much time, to be honest. Uptime would still be pretty low considering it'd still have a 30s cooldown.

The devs have already said something to the effect of never allowing shields to block/mitigate magic, so that particular point is not worth pursuing at the moment.