is WAR the best MT now?

[Ragology]

You're missing one thing about Defiance, the healing boost.

Suppose you're in Deliverance, but under 80% on you max HP. Taking a hit after that, wether you stay in Deliverance of switch to Defiance, is the same.
After the hit, you switch to Defiance and the healing boost will help you compensates for the hit you received previously.

On the other hand, if you take a hit out of your tank stance in PLD or DRK, you have no mean of mitigating its effect afterward.

So, in the end, ShO and Grit are only proactive mitigation, while Defiance is both proactive (with the HP boost), and reactive, hinting again that WAR is more "supposed" to switch stances (Which is pretty much confirmed by the wrath/abandon convertion)

Aren't Paladin's easier to heal though? by 4% or something if I remember correctly?

..

Okay I've found an old post from reddit and will bold the the relevant portion:

Shield Oath is a flat 20% damage reduction. Defiance is a flat 25% health increase, plus a 20% healing increase.
Assume a PLD and WAR have the exact same stats, and both have exactly 5000 hit points. If an attack with a raw damage (before mitigation) of 3000 damage hits the Paladin, it is reduced by 20% from shield oath, so the paladin only takes 2400 damage. The paladin is now at 2600 hp, 52% health. If that same attack were to hit a Warrior, it would do 3000 damage, but because the Warrior has defiance, he has 6250 health instead of 5000. After the attack the warrior has 3250 health, 52% health.
Notice that the health percentage for both tanks is exactly the same after the attack. If the same attack were to hit again, the Paladin would be down to 200 health, 4%, and the warrior would be down to 250 health, 4%.
In terms of ability to take damage, they're the same.
Let assume, after these two attacks, both tanks are healed by a divine seal + crit cure 2 for 4000 health. The paladin goes from 200 to 4200 health, and is now at 84% health. The warrior gets healed for 4000+20% for a total of 4800, bringing his total hp to 5050, 80.8% health. If another heal were cast for 800, the paladin would be at 5000 heath, 100%, and the warrior would be at 5050 + 800*1.2, 6010, 96.16%.
Conclusion
In terms of ability to take damage, Shield Oath and Defiance are exactly the same. In terms of recovering from that damage, Shield oath is slightly better, but only slightly. To say that Paladins are better because they have a 20% constant increase in damage mitigation is a fundamental misunderstanding of Defiance in light of the built in healing increase, which functions to make Defiance and Shield oath almost exactly identical in terms of effectiveness, with only a very slight advantage going to Paladins in terms of health recovery.
tl;dr - Shield Oath and Defiance are almost exactly identical in terms of effectiveness, with a (very) slight advantage going to Paladins in terms of health recovery.
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