Quote Originally Posted by Megguido View Post
25% more HP isn't superior to 20% less damage taken. To compare those you have to consider effective HP.

WAR gains 25% more HP, which translates directly into 25% more effective HP.
PLD and DRK take 20% less damage, which also translates into 25% more effective HP. Grit and ShOath makes it so you can receive 25% more unmitigated damage.
I agree, all tank stances on their own make it possible to survive the same size hit, which is as you said measured by eHP. Warrior is just wearing its eHP on its sleeve so to speak.

But there is also another way to look at this, which I posted in another post, which is the amount of damage mitigated by an attack. In this way, if we are surviving a tank buster with only tank stance, then the buster must be doing less than 1.25 times our HP. If we use tank stance to take a hit, then leave stance, then you can actually see warrior has a great stance. This is because the amount of HP in defiance doesn't need to be healed, effectively the HP buffer is extra HP over what we actually need. Lets put some numbers on it.

My tank has 66k HP in a full party with food. This means if paladin and dark knight take a hit with only tank stance, then they can mitigate up to 16.5k, which decreases as the damage of the attack decreases. If I get hit with an attack for 82.5k I mitigate 16.5, if I get hit with an attack for 50k I only mitigate 10k.

Warrior doesn't get mitigation, but it does get an HP buffer, that buffer is 16.5k (at my HP). But that buffer doesn't need to be healed and it doesn't change depending on how hard you get hit. If you get hit for 50k you still can ignore 16.5k of it while the dark knight and paladin only ignore 10k. This isn't an issue, unless the common strategy is to then drop tank stance, in which case warrior has mitigated more and has higher eHP after tank stance comes off than the other two.

TL;DR: I agree with you, all stances allow for tanks to take the same size hit. But the common strategies in the game favor warrior's tank stance over that of paladin and dark knight, though it does take more planning.