Pld Oath's on GCD

[Launched]

Why, in listing the delay to gain the eHP bonus from Defiance, does no one ever mention the delay in losing the healing bonus from HoTs? So you need a Lustrate to be topped off instantly after, sure. But you can also drop Defiance after Regen and ride on a Convalescence effect for all HoTs applied before for the next 18/21 seconds, every time. The delay works both ways.

That boost to one Regen is incredibly tiny compared to losing HP when dropping Defiance or not boosting any healing ability when in Defiance.

[Shurrikhan]

That boost to one Regen is incredibly tiny compared to losing HP when dropping Defiance or not boosting any healing ability when in Defiance.

This is what I feel the larger issue is with Defiance, and I'm 90% sure it was an oversight. During ARR, all healing abilities were %HP, so Defiance did in fact affect them. But come HW, Lustrate was changed to a potency heal, and WHM and AST each got potency heal abilities of their own, such that now Benediction is the only ability that technically scales with Defiance, even while a lot more of our crucial healing now comes from abilities.

Of all things, that's what I'd want to fix, more so than the 20% missing hp after swap. And if anything after that, I'd just like to see the damage penalty reduced to 20% instead. Idk, for whatever reason I like that I have to enter tank stance that wee bit earlier or carry my own Equilibrium for it. I like that the pacing is faintly different, and not just because the others are clunky.

Again, though, I'd be fine with seeing the WAR automatically gain some or even all of that margin so that no longer has to enter tank stance a bit sooner than the other tanks to increase his eHP, but at that point the WAR's got no right to complain about ability stances or the like on DRK or PLD.


For the HP lost from dropping Defiance, though... why would you wait until 80% HP to drop Defiance and return to Deliverance? If you're not going to have to stay in it for another upcoming tankbuster, you'll usually get your HoT (if there wasn't one up already) before you're topped.

Typically when changing to your offensive stance, it's because the big hit is behind you and you're entering a period of less damage. As such, who cares about a 20% increase in whatever happens to be left of a HoT's timer?

Meanwhile, the ability to swap to your tank stance while the tank buster is being cast, have it take full effect instantly, mitigate the buster and then immediately swap back is something just about every (good) tank would absolutely wet their pants in excitement over.

A period of less damage taken is not a period of over-healing-if-there's-so-much-as-a-HoT-on-you. And the more of that white damage is accounted for by those HoTs, the fewer healer GCDs are spent out of dpsing.

When that instant swap in and out comes at a cost of over 500 potency (PLD life, and nearly DRK's), it makes for a very sad pants-wetting. Defiance's dps penalty is harsh, especially when you add Deliverance's 5 to 10% buff against it, but it's not that harsh.

[Paikis]

When that instant swap in and out comes at a cost of over 500 potency (PLD life, and nearly DRK's), it makes for a very sad pants-wetting. Defiance's dps penalty is harsh, especially when you add Deliverance's 5 to 10% buff against it, but it's not that harsh.

I was refering to the situation that was suggested by the OP, namely Oaths/Grit are off GCD. Which means instant everything and less than a GCD spent in your tank stance. In reality it'd probably still be one or two GCDs in tank stance though, just to be sure. But you wouldn't need to be entering it early to get topped off, and then stuck in it for 10 seconds because your tooltip says no.

Either way, there are some very real penalties associated with Defiance, and the proposal to remove penalties from Oaths doesn't sit well with me.

[SpookyGhost]

Assuming you're tanking most of a fight out of tank stance:

PLD actually needs 2 GCDs to get back to full effectiveness after swapping to ShO. Yes, they can drop ShO similar to DRK by just turning it off - but they started in SwO and eventually will need to hit that button again. However, it is true that it only takes 1 GCD for a PLD to gain 20% damage reduction at the cost of 15% damage dealt until you turn it off.

DRK takes only 1 GCD total to go back and forth since it works similar to 2.0 WAR, in that it has no DPS stance (Darkside is persistent so doesn't come in to play here). So DRK can turn on Grit in 1 GCD to gain 20% damage reduction at the cost of ~20% damage dealt until you turn it off.

WAR takes 0 GCDs to go back and forth due to Defiance and Deliverance both being oGCD. This gives WAR an advantage of +1 damage-dealing GCD every time PLD or DRK need to use their tank stance. Defiance increases WAR's max HP by 25% (but doesn't heal the difference) and boosts healing received by 20%, at the cost of ~30% damage (Deliverance + Maim -> Defiance + Maim) and healing abilities being unaffected by the stance. But (and this is pretty important) Deliverance also gives you +~25% damage dealt on top of 2% Crit per Abandon stack. This isn't even taking into account the differences between Berserk + IR vs FoF vs Blood Weapon, or all the differences in oGCDs between the three tanks, but generally WAR isn't actually getting a raw end of the deal DPS-wise especially due to one important thing: Unchained.

Unchained allows you to, every 2 minutes for 20s, be in Defiance and recieve all of it's effects, at only the cost of 5% damage dealt + losing the crit stacks from Abandon + a Fell Cleave/Decimate. Which sounds like a raw deal, but realistically you're gaining all this HP, all this extra healing (HoTs can even be kept buffed if applied before switching back to Deliverance), and all this extra aggro on top of not really being weighed down by the damage penalty. You can do this at any time that you have 5 stacks or Infuriate as well (5 stacks is better since you'd need to do something like Fell Cleave -> Infuriate -> Defiance -> Unchained which is 3 oGCDs which is probably not going to work out), barring Unchained is off CD and realistically you'll only ever want to be in Defiance every 2min+.

So, ignoring the DPS penalty, WAR doesn't gain it's extra eHP when entering tank stance whereas the others do and healing abilities don't get the bonus they're meant to from Defiance. There are 2 realistic ways of healing that missing bit of HP:

1. Equilibrium
2. Healer GCD/oGCD

Equilibrium, especially if it crit, would put you up to your max HP - however, by using it this way you do put yourself in a situation where you can't use it for the damage you're about to receive. But, assuming that your healer is pre-healing and all that then Equilibrium shouldn't be necessary for that and would be more beneficial in getting your HP to full from the swap to tank stance.

There's also the option of a healer GCD/oGCD (Cure, Tetra, Assize, Lustrate, etc) - with a healer GCD you're losing out on a GCD of healer damage, with a healer oGCD you're losing out on a healing resource.

There's also an interesting 3rd option and that would be stacking HoTs from some previous damage (Med2 + Regen + etc) which would need to cover the autos you're taking as well as healing you back to full. This is significantly less reliable and very situational, so I decided not to count it.

Now, about Defiance's inability to boost healing abilities, I don't really have an argument for that outside of "WAR has a lot of self healing so it kinda makes up for it". The biggest abilities you'll see affected by this are Tetra, Assize, Essential Dignity, and Lustrate.

So. WAR can essentially go to full by just using an oGCD 60s healing CD, can enter tank stance for practically free (5% + crit stacks + Fell Cleave), and is only realistically negatively affected by it's lack of healing bonus to healing abilities.

IMO, stance dancing is a bit inbalanced, especially for PLD. I think some changes need to be made and I think the best way to go would be to take all of them off the GCD and just balance around that, because honestly ShO/SwO/Grit just feel super clunky compared to Defiance/Deliverance.

[shao32]

nop never, plus the benefic of Shiel oath/grit vs defiance you are forgething one important think and is paladins and dark knigths dont have some skills lock behind the tank stance and another few in dps stance, paladin and dark knigths can use all they skills no matter the stance up (except blood weapon).

in other words PLD and DRK dont need to change stance at the same lvl as WAR need, a good reason is both can stay in dps stance and use a lot of defensives to keep it, but war only have vengeance, raw and foresight to mitigate in deliverance apart of the self heals.

[Brannigan]

Defiance, the only tank stance that is off global and doesn't cost mana has the downside of NOT making you tankier as soon as it is applied

This is always the argument against, buy why does it matter? Tank stances don't need to be 100% equal. Warrior has other advantages that easily make up for paladin and dark knight gaining that edge over them. Dark Knight manages to do fine on DPS without a direct Fight or Flight/Berserk analog, for example.

[Lambdafish]

This is always the argument against, buy why does it matter? Tank stances don't need to be 100% equal. Warrior has other advantages that easily make up for paladin and dark knight gaining that edge over them. Dark Knight manages to do fine on DPS without a direct Fight or Flight/Berserk analog, for example.

This! The arguement against the change is "That would make PLD OP". Really? PLD? OP? In this meta? If anything, having the ability to stance dance into DPS stance would bring it more in line with the other tanks.

[SpookyGhost]

nop never, plus the benefic of Shiel oath/grit vs defiance you are forgething one important think and is paladins and dark knigths dont have some skills lock behind the tank stance and another few in dps stance, paladin and dark knigths can use all they skills no matter the stance up (except blood weapon).

This is a fair argument, though realistically WAR only needs to be in Defiance to use IB and Equal when Unchained is up anyway. The extra 20% mitigation (on top of it not being flat 20%) isn't really necessary most of the time. An example of a 60s CD rotation for WAR could be IB + Equal + Thrill + Convo -> Vengeance + RI -> repeat. For shorter TBs you simply have to space things out a bit more. Regardless, though, you are right in that Sheltron and DA + DM (which are essentially their answers to IB) are available out of tank stance and this can make PLD/DRK tankier without costing themselves DPS. However, the main argument for oGCD stances I think isn't really related to that, but rather how clunky it feels to turn off and on their stances vs WARs - which, imo, is a valid complaint, it just doesn't seem like one when the only time you use tank stance is in your opener. Wait until 3.4 prog then people will start complaining again I'm sure.

[Lyth]

If you make Shield Oath oGCD, you essentially remove the damage penalty associated with it. It then becomes an on-demand Rampart which only costs MP to use, and MP is a bit of a throwaway resource on PLD as it is. You now have a physical + magical sheltron with a negligible recast.

Deliverance removed one of the biggest costs for stance dancing on WAR. Swapping out of stance also used to cost you all of your stacks in 2.x.

[Sweetgrass]

The only problem is that, if PLD Oaths/Grit were off GCD, it would be a heavy buff to the classes, as they would be able to flick them on/off on demand. Of course, this would bring the classes closer to WAR's throne of dominance, which obviously the devs cannot do.

Joking aside, I don't know why they are still on GCD, the change is much needed when WAR has every advantage possible in the game right now compared to the other two tanks.