Beef between WAR and PLD tanks

[Marianno]

I've been in multiple 8-man dungeons as a DPS and noticed this. It started slowly and then gradually started to increase. Everytime I'm in a 8-man group with a PLD and WAR tank the PLD feel that most WAR are incompetent at tanking and thus should not be a MT and only good as a OT. I decided to play on my WAR class and noticed this again. I had more HP than the PLD I was in a trail with and this was Titan EX. The PLD tank has 7129 hp and 8637 HP after I eat food but about 8461 hp without food. The PLD wanted to be MT. While I have no problem with PLD being MT I didn't think that he would have survived most ofthe blows dealt to him during the fight. Not that the PLD tank was incompetent or anything but I think the more HP you ahve as a tank the better, or I could be wrong. Most of the members in teh group even wantedthe PLD to be Mt and wanted me to be OT. I understand that WAR OT is good DPS for a tank and can pretty damn OP for a tank if played correctly. However, my question is, Am I wrong for telling the PLD to let me be MT instead and he be OT considering the HP difference and hate difference between us both? What's the grand difference between the two tanking classes?

Note: The PLD tank did have a hard time keeping hate and I turned Defiance off so that he could keep hate but he could not keep hate completely. Not to mention he did get thrashed pretty badly with the mountain busters and did get knocked off the cliff a plethora of times and we did wipe due to this many times. So all in all its just minor mistakes of not anticipating titan's move set that caused that PLD tank to make little mistakes and we wiped.

[Moonwolfthegrey]

Long story short, a good war is as good as a good PLD
For everything

[SpookyGhost]

Taking a quick look at your Lodestone profile (assuming this is your best gear), you have 6446 HP. If the PLD had 7129 HP, there's actually quite a big gear difference there. Something a lot of people don't seem to know is that WAR and PLD both have two different tanking stances - Defiance (WAR) increases your base HP by 25% and increases healing received by 20% whereas Shield Oath (PLD) reduces damage by 20%. These, baseline, are equivalent to eachother. So the best way to tell who actually has more HP is if you have more than the PLD without Defiance on.

Now, specifically for Titan EX (imo) it's better that the PLD is off tank regardless as they have access to Hallowed Ground and Tempered Will which greatly reduces their worry about avoiding landslides during the add phase. A WAR is perfectly capable of doing this as well, its just slightly more complicated (Holmgang can also stop landslides from knocking you off, though it also stops you from moving).

There are fights where PLD is a better MT than WAR (mainly for Hallowed Ground), and there are situations where WAR is the better MT (fights with predictable bursts of big damage, IE death sentence in T5). Both tanks can tank equally well, as Moonwolf said, so when deciding who should MT and who should OT its usually on a fight to fight bases and based on who's the more geared of the two. I don't really agree with WAR always getting stuck on the OT role (as the combination of WAR MT/PLD OT actually does more damage than PLD MT/WAR OT when played properly) but if you get stuck with that job then you're just going to have to suck it up and queue a Butcher's Block.

[Marianno]

lol that's what I've been doing lately, just sucking it up. But it is kind of baffling to me as to the grand scheme of teh difference between the two tanks. I should like to think that they are both jobs that are completely capable of getting the job done regardless

[Eye_Gore]

I thought the basic difference was that a GLA/PLD tank while having a lower overall HP, had a higher defense and was better at mitigating damage taken to compensate for the lower HP. Where a MRD/WAR tank had the highest HP to take more damage, but could do more overall damage. Thus the two would seem to equal out and it really doesn't matter. While one may seem to be better in a situation, it shouldn't matter as long as the player knows what they are doing.

[Krindor]

As Spooky mentioned the tank was better geared unless you're using DPS accessories. But generally I feel that WAR is more suited to tank predictable spiky damage encounters due to inner beast which nets the same amount of mitigation as shield oath, and also having higher health.

[YanderePrincess]

I didn't think that he would have survived most ofthe blows dealt to him during the fight. Not that the PLD tank was incompetent or anything but I think the more HP you ahve as a tank the better

the more Effective HP, the better. You had 8.6k after your +25% hp from Defiance, right? That Paladin's 7.1k HP, however, is made more effective by his 20% damage reduction from Shield Oath, which makes that 7.1k more like 8.5k HP, so he was actually about on par with you at a baseline. When you figure in shield blocking, rampart, bulwark, etc., his effective HP is significantly higher.

Now, that said, your effective HP is above 8.6k as well because of Vengeance and Inner Beast, but the point remains. You can't judge a Paladin purely by the fact he has less HP than the warrior.

As for Titan Ex, my experience has been you generally would rather have the WAR OT just because they're better at rounding up the adds than a Paladin usually is, not that a Paladin can't do it. Also, Paladins have more overall defensive cooldowns to cycle through for pre-empting big hits. Warrior can do this, too, with Inner Beast, but it's easier to find a Paladin who can pop his defensive cycle his defensive cooldowns than to find a warrior who uses Inner Beast correctly.

[Uliq]

Ok I'll explain the diff in war vs pld. Pld is a defense buff, war is a damage buff. While war pretends to tank in most instances it's really up to the healer to keep war alive. So in cases where you say war is actually better, spike damage encounters, all you have to do is use pld buffs as a war would use his. Only rotate foresight and bulwark till the spike damage comes up. this gives you a IB ability with more dr and duration by rotating rampart and sentinel when it's up. PLD prevails at tanking. As for hold do what the warrior does, screw defense. Stop buffing full HP and buff str or str/hp and let the healers manage. If you have a healer who heals a war regularly you won't have an issue. Both tanks tank equally well when the players A: know how to tank, meaning keeping hate and B: when players know when to buff but for war it's harder to stay alive due to the 2 defense buffs vs 4 defense buffs.

[Uliq]

The 25% heal buff from defiance on i110 isn't enough compared to how healers heal plds. 2 heals pld at full or almost. 2 heals war at half or a little above. This is vs the fact the pld gets hit way softer then war due to auto dr, which increases as level and armor increase vs 20% health increase which only increase with armor. There is also block percentage of pld which increases as pld's ilvl increase and/or gains a new shield vs parry and dodge which only increases as ilvl increase. Wars main reason as MRD is long forgotten and we are left with basically a shit class due to the indecision of Developers and their ability to not think ahead. We had this problem already and in one or two updates, when pld gains a new shield and enemies have to hit harder to make up for it, we'll have the same issues as we had in 2.1.

[SpookyGhost]

Now I remember why I stopped checking the OF...