You hear in theory a lot over forums but practice isn't theory. In practice damage mitigation changes depending on circumstances. Wars tend to hold IB for large attacks, not all some. Effectively lowering their damage mitigation while pld can simply rotate cooldowns. Even if a pld breaks his cooldowns apart allowing 5 seconds to be not buffed it still maintains the same mitigation over a 3 minute period which is the time it takes for all his defensive cycle to start over. War cannot do this, and it's down time between cooldowns is to large. In theory, they mitigate the same, but this s on paper. But in practice, most of the time pld will mitigate more. PLD doesn't even require the use of Stoneskin or Bloodbath which are viable skills. Bloodbath because it's a CD usuable to increase mitigation dropping the ability to cure or whatever your last unused ability may be. Stoneskin because you can use it after big hits to make the next hit smaller or before big hits to make it smaller, either or.