Perspective as "THE OTHER" tank class.

[Vortok]

If you overgear the instance to the point that the stronger defensive cooldowns of a PLD don't matter to keep the tank alive, then sure Overpower actually doing damage will make it the better option.

Holy blows Overpower's damage out the window, as not only do healers have a ton of Mind (compared to tanks generally not having tons of strength) that gets converted with Cleric Stance (+10% damage on top), they generally have plenty of Crit or Determination as well that tanks, as a general rule, won't have in abundance. As long as PLD allows a WHM to spam more Holys than they could with a WAR (Hallowed Ground says hi), they'll still be the faster option. I'm sure someone can do the math to figure out how many extra Holy spells a WHM needs to get off compared to the number of Overpowers used before the pull is dead.

With a SCH the extra durability a PLD's cooldowns provide is less of a concern, since SCH doesn't have a whole lot of aoe oomph past Shadowflare (roughly equal to one holy if it's up for the full 30s duration). They usually aren't gonna have time to cast dots and bane them (to a mere 3 other targets) and Miasma II hits like a wet noodle. The Slow from Shadowflare also lowers the incoming damage, making a WARs lack of hyper-awesome defensive cooldowns less of an issue as well (compared to the few seconds of stun from Holy followed by nothing for the rest of the pull). There is the haste buffs from Selene, but depending on their rotation of choice a BLM is often waiting on static mana regen ticks (every 3s) to repeat their aoe rotation so haste from Selene may not really speed things up for them all that much. That's all mostly to say that much like PLD vs WAR, SCH can do just fine as well if the player doesn't have WHM leveled (though a bit more clearly behind WHM in terms of speed provided) and probably is better paired with a WAR so that Overpower can offset the loss of Holy, as the PLD cooldowns shouldn't be needed.

There's also the point that a PLD can afford to use sprint, though I think that's mostly a 'at a lower gear level than WAR' thing, as eventually arriving with low TP won't matter for the WAR either. Likely more of a gear level of the party as a whole (how fast packs die) rather than PLD vs WAR gear difference.


That said, both tanks can do the instance pretty fast. Everyone knows that how good your WHM is (and aoe dps in general) is a large factor in how fast the run goes.

Post 2.1 should be interesting for WARs at multiple gear levels, between the Vengeance buff, the ability to Inner Beast as Holy is hitting stun DR to smooth the transition into healing/eek out another Holy (otherwise Steel Cyclone/Unchained may be the better usage), and being able to spend Wrath from Infuriate without losing the healing buff in general.