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.)

[Alphras]

no shake it off is legit bad using or not using it will not change the warrior's life, it could've been a bit more useful if berserk wasn't changed and it will never have a moment when you can use that to save your life or be useful in a big way for that matter

The frustrating thing is that they wanted to remove these kind of abilities with the expansion...

[Phoenicia]

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.

I dropped Maim from the calculation because it can be up whither you're in defiance or not. So in Defiance maim mitigates the 25% dip and take you back to 90% of base damage. In Deliverance you're at 126% of base damage (buffs stack multiplicatively). So instead of saying 36% in comparison to baseline, I made having maim a baseline and said there is a 30% damage variance.

Same thing for DRK where I considered Darkness' 15% damage increase baseline and DRK only loses 20% when they Grit.

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 snip

You said in your own post that "trash" damage doesn't matter and whatever % of "trash" you mitigate is still trash and surviving tank busters is what mattered. But even then, whatever PLD "passively" mitigated, WAR and DRK mitigated as well via self heals and higher parry. But again this is not even worth discussing for the simple fact whatever % of 0 is still 0.

But back to the topic, if surviving the tank busters is all that matters while dishing out the most damage, then unless the math on PLD doing 30% more damage over the other two is true, PLD will stay out of the meta as it is the worst out of the three.

The whole point out of my earlier post is that people should contain their knee-jerk reactions and not get their panties in twists until the actual raids, or at the very least the final patch notes come out live.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I dropped Maim from the calculation because it can be up whither you're in defiance or not. So in Defiance maim mitigates the 25% dip and take you back to 90% of base damage. In Deliverance you're at 126% of base damage (buffs stack multiplicatively). So instead of saying 36% in comparison to baseline, I made having maim a baseline and said there is a 30% damage variance.

Same thing for DRK where I considered Darkness' 15% damage increase baseline and DRK only loses 20% when they Grit.

I think I must have misunderstood what you were talking about, as this doesnt seem to relate to what I was saying. So I must have been thinking the wrong thing.
(Otherwise Maim and Dark Side would have been comparable.)
EDIT: Ok rereading, I did, I thought you meant something else.

You said in your own post that "trash" damage doesn't matter and whatever % of "trash" you mitigate is still trash and surviving tank busters is what mattered. But even then, whatever PLD "passively" mitigated, WAR and DRK mitigated as well via self heals and higher parry. But again this is not even worth discussing for the simple fact whatever % of 0 is still 0.

I was trying to be a bit more exaggeration/over simplifying, to get an idea across, but I'm confused where % of 0 is 0 came from.
EDIT: I think I get what you mean now, if I assume correctly, you mean its "0" because if its irrelevant, then it should be treated as 0, correct?

But back to the topic, if surviving the tank busters is all that matters while dishing out the most damage, then unless the math on PLD doing 30% more damage over the other two is true, PLD will stay out of the meta as it is the worst out of the three.

I dont see how a tank with more survival of the 3 would make it worse than the other 2, while also including the early builds +30% more DPS.
Did I misunderstand?

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

In the first part, I was talking about why WAR tanks do not play defensively because of the DPS "dip" when they do so.

In the second part, you got it right.

Third part: If the current math of PLD doing 30% more than WAR and PLD is WRONG and all tanks do the same damage: WAR holmgang every 3 minutes and DRK LD every 5 minutes will be better than PLD HG or just pure mitigating as the long CDs make it the worst.

Otherwise, if PLD DOES do 30% more damage, PLD + PLD is where it will be, and both DRK and WAR will spread the salt here on the forums. Better get prepare your salt containers for we're getting free salt! Also please refer to Salt-- I mean White Mage.

Alternatively, if raid damage reduction utility becomes important and/or OT helping MT mitigation, DRK and PLD will be the good OTs and WAR will be the bad one. But then again WAR and PLD looking to be better MTs than DRK. As I said earlier, all we have to do is just wait and see. Until then it's all pure speculations.

Cheers!
~Phoenicia~