I'm Getting More Confused about a WAR's Ability to Tank

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

From my experience (Warrior since 2.0 and Paladin since 2.3) they both work well when played well and they both fail when played poorly. With that said: Warrior is a bit more difficult to play well. Really though, in most fights that suggest two tanks I prefer having a Warrior AND a Paladin cause they're tanking brothers for life.

[kro]

Simply put, a WAR needs to pop Inner Beast and a defensive CD for the big hits while a PLD only needs to pop a CD. If a WAR goes into a fight with only a vague understanding of the timing of those big hits, then they will not be able to mitigate properly. PLD can mitigate everything on reaction as long as they are frugal with their CD usage.

You also tend to get a lot of WARs that spec STR and use (old i110) STR accessories without having the overgeared left side or healers to back it up. Random PLDs almost universally go full VIT.

[Giantbane]

At it's base PLD will win, but when you compare CD. Other than Hollowed vs Holmgang. WAR cd pretty much win over PLD cd. Why? See Dmg mitigation is multiplicative so when PLD uses Rampart. He loses 4% of the mitigation while WAR gets full 20% with IB. That doesn't end there, Like stated IB have more "up time" than rampart making it more useful than rampart. I myself would pair SP with Vengance and IB or SP with Thrill of battle and convo and IB

This really doesn't make any difference. You're correct in that the damage reduction is multiplicative, which reduces the overall effect of rampart to a 16% reduction of the original incoming damage, but this doesn't really mean it's more or less effective on the PLD vs. the WAR because the WAR is always taking more damage (and has a larger HP pool). The problem is that you're looking at that % reduction in terms of how it reduces the original incoming damage, not in how the damage effects the tank's HP pool.

For instance if a PLD has 8000 hp, a WAR with the same gear and Defiance will have 10000 hp.
Both tanks take a hit for 1000 damage.

With shield oath, the PLD gets hit for 800 damage, which means he loses 10% of his HP.
With the WAR will take the full 1000 damage, but since he has 10000 hp due to Defiance, he's still losing the same 10% of his HP.

Next we add in mitigation abilities.

With shield oath and rampart, it mitigates 36% of the damage (0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64 damage taken, 1 - 0.64 = 0.36 damage mitigated). The PLD takes 640 damage. 640 / 8000 = 8% of his hp lost
With inner beast, 20% is mitigated, and the WAR takes 800 damage. 800 / 10000 is 8% of his hp lost.

So you see, while the damage mitigated by rampart is only an extra 16% of the base damage value, the effect it has on the PLDs HP is the same as Inner Beast for the WAR.

As has been stated, the big advantage to the WAR is that Inner Beast has a much shorter cool down than any other damage reduction ability. So when absorbing a big predictable hit (like a death sentence or whatever), Inner Beast will always be available. This is in addition to their other mitigation/survival abilities. A PLD may run out of cooldowns in a similar situation.

[Giantbane]

Simply put, a WAR needs to pop Inner Beast and a defensive CD for the big hits while a PLD only needs to pop a CD. If a WAR goes into a fight with only a vague understanding of the timing of those big hits, then they will not be able to mitigate properly. PLD can mitigate everything on reaction as long as they are frugal with their CD usage.

Inner Beast is every bit as strong as a PLD's Rampart, it just doesn't last as long and requires better timing. If a PLD can survive a big hit with just Rampart, the WAR can survive the same hit equally well with a properly timed Inner Beast.

You also tend to get a lot of WARs that spec STR and use (old i110) STR accessories without having the overgeared left side or healers to back it up. Random PLDs almost universally go full VIT.

This is definitely part of it.

Another thing is the PLD's shield. A PLD standing still mitigates more than a WAR due to the shield and the ability to block. A stupid WAR that doesn't do anything is going to appear squishier than a stupid PLD because of this.

I also think random PLDs tend to cycle their cooldowns better to mitigate random damage. It's easy to cycle a PLDs defensive abilities by just using one after the other. PLDs seem to do this frequently because it's a pretty simple concept. However with a WAR, you don't have as many basic "press this to improve survivability" abilities as a PLD would, you're pretty much limited to Vengenace and Thrill of Battle+Convalescence (used together is almost as good as rampart) and a collection of lesser abilities you can stack to some benefit (bloodbath, defiance, awareness, mantra, second wind, etc). To properly cycle, the WAR needs to save his inner beast (and 2x inner beast when infuriate is up and you're not using it for vengeance) to use in between his other cooldowns, even better if you can time inner beast for when you're damaged to take advantage of the heal. Your average WAR will just fire off Inner Beast whenever it's up, which causes the damage mitigation to be very inconsistent, leading to times where no cooldown is up and the WAR will look to be taking more damage.

Finally many WARs will forgo defensive abilities in exchange for MOAR DAMAGE! Using Steel Cyclone instead of Inner Beast for AoE or not using their SP combo (choosing to go SE>BB or just BB because they think they're PLDs). By trading their defense for damage, it will give the impression that the WAR is squishier. In this scenario, the truth is that the WAR is squishier because he chose to be, not because he actually was.

[VanilleFang]

Eh.

I find Warriors to be basically the same as Paladins. I feel I have to heal them more often for some reason... I dunno, but I've never found Warriors lacking at all.

I make note of what Tank I have, but I literally see them both as one thing: Tank. That's it. Neither one being more preferred (usually). Their Job doesn't matter to me, Warrior = Paladin. I'm very much a casual player and don't do Coils so take this however you want.

Sorry if I insulted any tanks with this post. ]:

[Synestra]

Also from a Healer POV, Warrior alone can't make miracles. You have to play with good healers that understand how to heal a warrior. A good WHM should Stoneskin the WAR a lot, even midfight (and above all, during your super Thrill of battle), and always have a Regen on him to benefit from the +20% heal bonus (also refresh it while Convalescence is up!). If your healers are not doing that, they are not maximizing the potential of the WAR, and that could result in a "so much damages!" feeling.

This is propably biggest diffirence between WAR and PLD, WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up while PLD can be left alone for few seconds even in bigger pulls. Inexperienced healers usually dont like WAR tanks >_<

[aisustrong]

all the time I've spent healing, I prefer wars
they actually press more than 5 buttons

and all the really really terrible tanks I've had while healing were pld/gla
durr what's flash, I'm totally a dps class,I gots a sword

[Blueskyy]

[QUOTE=Synestra;2736620]This is propably biggest diffirence between WAR and PLD, WAR kinda requires good healer to back him

In speed runs like brayflox hard. Warrior don't even need a healer. Go check out Lucrezia running WAR,DRG,MNK and BLM in brayflox hm.

Tho I agree a little on "WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up" but you know how much a Good WAR can heal back himself? My hp sits at 10800 lets put it at 10000 for easier calculations. (If you count only the heal back of ToB it's 8k ), My Inner beast hits 1k with berserk which in turn heals me back 1k, when added up with blood bath, it's 1200. Also WAR have Second wind which will work better with berserk. Healing me 600 or 800 with crit if im not wrong. If done in one go, the heal back is amazing. And also Healer do tent to heal a warrior or overheal back to max hp when he's in ToB which is unnecessary

[Blueskyy]

This really doesn't make any difference.

Hmm my post might be misleading but what i meant is WAR always have an option to pair up his "small cd aka IB" with big cds like vengance and thrill. PLD can do that too but with the long "CD timer" on their "Def CD" (I hope that's not confusing) it's more wasteful to do that. I understand about the whole get hit % hp thing but the last sentence is pretty much what i was trying to say. Just that maybe my english is bad so I can't fully express myself thro words

[Kelya]

In speed runs like brayflox hard. Warrior don't even need a healer. Go check out Lucrezia running WAR,DRG,MNK and BLM in brayflox hm.

Tho I agree a little on "WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up" but you know how much a Good WAR can heal back himself? My hp sits at 10800 lets put it at 10000 for easier calculations. (If you count only the heal back of ToB it's 8k ), My Inner beast hits 1k with berserk which in turn heals me back 1k, when added up with blood bath, it's 1200. Also WAR have Second wind which will work better with berserk. Healing me 600 or 800 with crit if im not wrong. If done in one go, the heal back is amazing. And also Healer do tent to heal a warrior or overheal back to max hp when he's in ToB which is unnecessary

I have no doubts how a WAR can self-heal a lot without a healer, and I will always prefer a WAR in speed runs as a WHM.

However you can't do it very often ( 120s ToB/Second wind and 90s Berserk). In coil you will survive the first big hit, but not the second if you don't have good healers.

By good healers I mean healers that understand how is designed the WAR and how to heal him accordingly. If you have bad healers, no matter what you do in coils situations, you will feel taking so much damages in comparaison to the PLD, and the first to complain will be the healers themself, putting the fault on the WAR... That may explain why a lot of healers always stand for the "PLD is easier to heal than WAR".

With the passive buff of +20% healing bonus provided by Defiance, Healers definitively are one of the main keys to influence WAR gameplay/survivability.

So actually, WAR in general is very dependant from his healers, be it only to be measured at his fair value.