Quote Originally Posted by Reynhart View Post
No, Defiance was always slightly lower than ShO (and Grit) in terms of eHP and never worked on abilities. But, WAR's toolkit easily compensate for that slight handicap, to the point where it's meaningless.
If anything I'd say defiance is very powerful in progression, where there are a lot of "oh shit" moments where parts you plan to be in dps stance go wrong and you have to immediately go into tank stance. Combine that with equilibrium for hp top up and inner beast for the next few seconds, and on top of that the lack of cost to switch back to dps stance, those make war really good for progression. You are absolutely right that we cannot see defiance vs grit/shield oath in a vacuum, since we have inner beast and equilibrium locked behind it. On the other hand, as a war staying in tank stance costs more dps than the other tanks, even back in 3.x so if you stay in defiance all the time you're punished harder than the other tanks in terms of dps.