PLD + DRK synergy; WAR falling behind?

[Claire_Pendragon]

Just pointing out 1 thing:

WAR mitigates more damage than PLD, even if PLD can block magic damage. Reason: WAR has way more CDs to stack up. Been this way since ARR. Just convert their CDs to effective health and compare them. And now WAR gets rampart on top of their already superior arsenal. The only time PLD mitigates more damage than WAR is during Hallowed Ground, which is 10 seconds every 7 minutes, and when split over the course of a fight is still not enough to make up the difference between WAR and PLD.

Reason why WAR doesn't play defensively: It sacrifices too much damage to obtain said mitigation. One example: Inner Beast vs Fell Cleave. Also going from +5% in Deliverance to -25% in Defiance (biggest dip between 3 tanks). Also tank swaps make any difference in mitigation obsolete anyways. The difference between PLD and WAR mitigation is within 5~7% over a fight anyways.

Just wanted to point out WAR has this because Maim is +20%, which in 2.x acted as a DPS stance for them, and in 3.x made them do more than DRK in grit+DS.
Otherwise I agree with everything you say.

EDIT: After doing the math -25% +20% is the opposite of what I said -20%+15% would be. The +2 potency was on DRK, not WAR.

And before you give me crap about shield block and shield oath, reducing damage isn't the only way to "mitigate" damage.

Assuming PLD will do 30% more DPS or so than the two other tanks is just napkin math really on numbers that Yoshi-P clearly stated are no where near final. Not to mention most of the tooltips were mistranslated and/or had absolutely wrong potency values (Fester being 200 potency but doing 50% more damage than Painflare's 200 potency is one example). I wouldn't jump the gun until the 16th of June.

PLD + DRK synergy is just something I don't get. DRK will get 1 shield move.. ONE... And it's basically a single target Divine Veil.. So bleh. Anything else that comes close to utility DRK has is just cross-role ability which is available to all three tanks. And based on the same napkin math that everyone is getting a kneejerk reaction to, DRK will be the lowest DPS tank.

As I said, I wouldn't fuss about it until the 16th of June comes out.

~Phoenicia~

I also want to explain that PLD "mitigates" more "passive dmg" out of the 3 tanks.
The trash dmg, auto attacks, etc.
But for tank busters, WAR usually handles them the best.

And Honestly, most bosses do garbage dmg until tank busters.
So in Savage, its not about mitigating dmg, it's about surviving tank busters.

A tank in full time DPS stances, no mitigation, even the weak ones, can be kept up til the end of the fight, if there is no tank buster, just fine.
Looking at DRK/WAR speed runs, they will rely on living dead/holmgang, just to save on CDs. (More so WAR, for more fell cleaves)

(Obviously not the most effective way to do this, as stacking CDs, while constant tank swapping is more effective.)

The point I'm trying to make, is that all a tank needs to do, is survive a tank buster. Not necessarily mitigate it.
(And example is WARs being able to increase max HP. If that max HP goes away, then they have effectively mitigated some dmg. If it remains like with defiance, then they technically didnt mitigate any dmg. But they did their job of surviving it.)