Reminder that war is still good.

[Saeno]

Huh? What dimension were you playing in? In hardcore groups PLD was almost always OT - Sword oath made PLD top dps tank, and back then magic attacks couldn't be blocked or parried. WAR was almost always MT. Im not sure why you're making mention of agro concerns - PLD in an OT role used Sword oath, not shield oath. Agro was not a concern, if it was then the WAR was bad.

To get more information of what people did back then, I skimmed through many different clear and speed kill videos on ARR and all of them had PLD pulling. I myself have rarely seen WAR pull. If you wanted to maximize DPS on tanks, you could just have the PLD pull in Sword oath and now both tanks are doing their top DPS. I still think it was better for WAR to pull with Unchained and have the PLD voke after the WAR used their cooldowns so the WAR didnt have to fight for aggro. WAR out of Defiance did comparable numbers to PLD in Sword oath. PLD may have not been able to block magic at the time but their mitigation was similar because WAR did not have Raw or Rampart at the time. Also, most hard hitting attacks in 2.x were Physical damage. Things like Flare breath were scary, but not so bad with a MNK and apoc.

PLD in sword oath still spams Halone. WAR does not spam Butchers block. It should be obvious why aggro is an issue. I've played a lot of WAR in 2.x and I always disliked trying to beat the aggro generation of PLD while also staying out of Defiance. Unchained helped but this was when Unchained was on a 2 minute recast and cost 5 wrath stacks.

Back then Path had no benefits other than the heal, so it was Eye in to BB, path was rarely touched and only used as OT while defiance was on, allowing for wrath accumulation and reducing agro concerns.

Path also reduced all damage dealt by 10%. Path was the single greatest skill in the entire game. If you didn't have Path up you were actively making things harder for your team only for a 30 potency gain over 15 seconds.

I'd argue that RI is one of the best - Sure, TBN is the best but it can be put on other players, it isnt limited to the caster like RI, and so that comparison only works in a vacuum. RI can literally be used on cooldown to make WAR the tank that takes the less damage overall through the whole fight - affording healers more time to do damage. Rampart and Vengence can be used on tank busters, and TBN, HOS, Intervention can all be cast by the other tank on a WAR MT. Sure, Thrill is nice, but i dont agree with "no other tank can do what equilibirum does" - It has the same potency as Aurora. Also, both Celemency and aurora can be cast on other people, equilibirum can not.

Using Raw on cooldown does not make it the best. In fact using a Cooldown just for the sake of putting it on CD is bad practice because you will then not have it for when you need it. This is what makes Sheltron for example better than Raw. On top of having basically the same effect on a 1 second longer duration, you can also keep it on standby for when you actually need it and then have another sheltron ready sooner than later depending on your gauge. Raw is good, but it's not the best. All of them are around the same power level. Raw intuition does not push WAR to be the MT over the other tanks. I also don't agree with Raw being limited to the caster as Nascent Flash is also pretty good. It lasts 1 second longer than Raw but it also has a better effect than intervention in most cases. It benefits both tanks where all other short CD's benefit just 1.

All the facts point to the effect that SE WANTS WAR to be the defacto "Main tank", all its cooldowns are selfish and plentiful, and the only tank that has a healing received increase.

None of the tanks in this game are pushed to be a main or off tank. Main or off tank should be determined by strats and tank invul placements.
WAR also only has a healing received increase if you use Thrill. Thrill needs that healing increase attached to it because otherwise it is a much weaker CD than most others in terms of effective HP.
All tanks have a lot of CD's and WAR isn't exactly selfish. It's selfish with Equilibrium but that's about it.

[Soraki-Muppe]

Yea honestly I'm really enjoying being able to use Equilibrium more freely. I don't really like what they did with Thrill, CD reduction is nice but getting a lv78 trait for an effect we had access to since ARR just rubs me the wrong way. Really lazy on SE's part.

IMHO all the WAR changes for this expansion seems lazy.
Use infuriate and you get access to chaos attacks that both use older animations.
They removed way more then they added, the result a job that feels boring. Still good, just boring.

[BarretOblivion]

None of the tanks in this game are pushed to be a main or off tank. Main or off tank should be determined by strats and tank invul placements.
WAR also only has a healing received increase if you use Thrill. Thrill needs that healing increase attached to it because otherwise it is a much weaker CD than most others in terms of effective HP.
All tanks have a lot of CD's and WAR isn't exactly selfish. It's selfish with Equilibrium but that's about it.

I would have to disagree with you on this part. WAR is indeed designed to be the MT for three big reasons.

1) Nascent flash. You get half your cure potency on your OT with nascent flash resulting in healing that... is so bad that it might be an auto attack and some change if set up, this results in only a 10% mitigation on your OT which is equivalent to a reprisal on a TB which your OT is going to do anyways. Meanwhile all other OT skills have more mitigation so WAR kinda loses on the OT side on that because Nascent is a decent self heal even in Savage when its 100%.

2) Vengeance, namely the potency tied to it. It might only be 50 potency but if you use it on your opener with IR (like most high tier WAR have been doing) it add helps boost its damage. With out being MT and using Vengeance on cooldown or during every TB you can that is a total of about 250-300 potency in the long run, its not much but its about 1 GCD you are throwing away.

3) Holmgang still exists. The fact that holmgang is still the shortest tank invuln allowing more usages than any other tank makes WAR still preffered to MT on top of the other reasons. Unfortunately WAR is not excatly played much in Savage outside of Leviathan, which there WAR actually brings a strong Nascent flash you should be using on cooldown the entire fight (except the 4th TB) and then Holmganging TB 1&3. Since Leviathan is auto attacking both tanks you end up gaining a total party healing of 50% on Nascent making it actually pretty good on healers to focus a bit more on DPS or mechanics. Any help right now in Leviathan is appreciated by healers cause the heal checks in there... are pretty dicey.

[Saeno]

1) Nascent flash. You get half your cure potency on your OT with nascent flash resulting in healing that... is so bad that it might be an auto attack and some change if set up, this results in only a 10% mitigation on your OT which is equivalent to a reprisal on a TB which your OT is going to do anyways. Meanwhile all other OT skills have more mitigation so WAR kinda loses on the OT side on that because Nascent is a decent self heal even in Savage when its 100%.

That healing is not strong when used on regular CD's but 3 GCD's worth of healing is not a bad amount. The 10% mit is still really good because it's the same as a naked intervention, which is also a good move on its own. I find Nascent to be a better version of a naked intervention and even at 20% mit intervention, if you can Inner chaos during Nascent, you can heal both tanks for a decent amount. I dont think Nascent is bad enough to make it worse than Raw, especially when in some situations Nascent is better than Raw for just yourself.

2) Vengeance, namely the potency tied to it. It might only be 50 potency but if you use it on your opener with IR (like most high tier WAR have been doing) it add helps boost its damage. With out being MT and using Vengeance on cooldown or during every TB you can that is a total of about 250-300 potency in the long run, its not much but its about 1 GCD you are throwing away.

This I can agree with. Vengeance potency is only available when you take physical damage and you can't take that if you're OT obviously. I personally think that this should also force the holmgang on the first TB of the fight because you're now down a 30% mitigation tool while the OT on the opener still has theirs available. In fights where the damage is all magic like in Innocence or Voidwalker I don't think WAR is a mandatory MT at all. I personally prefer PLD MT for innocence for their ability to get full uptime when moving the boss during quad starbirth and DRK MT for Dark mind on shadowflame. In Leviathan, if a PLD is one of the tanks I prefer using Hallowed on the first Rip current because otherwise you do not get another Hallowed before Black smokers.

3) Holmgang still exists. The fact that holmgang is still the shortest tank invuln allowing more usages than any other tank makes WAR still preffered to MT on top of the other reasons. Unfortunately WAR is not exactly played much in Savage outside of Leviathan, which there WAR actually brings a strong Nascent flash you should be using on cooldown the entire fight (except the 4th TB) and then Holmganging TB 1&3. Since Leviathan is auto attacking both tanks you end up gaining a total party healing of 50% on Nascent making it actually pretty good on healers to focus a bit more on DPS or mechanics. Any help right now in Leviathan is appreciated by healers cause the heal checks in there... are pretty dicey.

This goes hand in hand with my earlier statement. Your pulling tank should be determined by your tank invul placements. If your group prefers Holmgang on TBs then it's something you can obviously do. However, in cases like Titan, you can only holmgang 2 out of the 3 stone crushers. This means mitigating the first hit and then holmgang the last 2 which then means your WAR is tapped on CD's while your OT still has everything available. This is a good place to tank swap. Or, if your group prefers, you can use the other tank invul for the opener instead since the others cover all 3 hits. At the end of the day it all comes down to what your team prefers. This isnt like SB where one tank was clearly the best at pulling and another tank was awful at it. I see no reason why any tank can't pull if you prefer to use invuls on other mechanics during prog while tank swapping the tank busters during prog.

[whiskeybravo]

This goes hand in hand with my earlier statement. Your pulling tank should be determined by your tank invul placements. If your group prefers Holmgang on TBs then it's something you can obviously do. However, in cases like Titan, you can only holmgang 2 out of the 3 stone crushers. This means mitigating the first hit and then holmgang the last 2 which then means your WAR is tapped on CD's while your OT still has everything available. This is a good place to tank swap. Or, if your group prefers, you can use the other tank invul for the opener instead since the others cover all 3 hits. At the end of the day it all comes down to what your team prefers. This isnt like SB where one tank was clearly the best at pulling and another tank was awful at it. I see no reason why any tank can't pull if you prefer to use invuls on other mechanics during prog while tank swapping the tank busters during prog.

This is true with Leviathan. We started out with me pulling and holmganging the first buster, but have since changed to have the PLD pull and hallowed so that he can have hallowed again for black smokers.