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

[Flipside101]

My off-class has been WAR for quite some time, but recently I leveled up PLD and now they share the same gear; I get they have different styles, but the more I play PLD, the more I started to doubt WAR. It didn't help that when I was still in T9 progression pug, someone else wanted to tank Nael as WAR and he was getting smashed. Hard. The guy just changed into PLD and we had way better progression.

I don't see a feasible logic for the 25% healing/HP vs a flat 20% mitigation especially since raids always have some kind of tank cruncher. Also, block not only procs more frequently than parry, it also mitigates more. WAR is literally a meat shield, with defensive capabilites that seem to be an after-thought than actual synergy to their class/job as a whole.

In a raid setting where precision is so important and there will always be inevitable raid-wide dmg, giving healers a high(er)-maintenance tank just makes their lives that much harder. And yes I DO POP CD'S when appropriate.

[RhazeCain]

You're aware that most raid scenarios are built for 2 tanks, correct?

[stoxastic]

The Defiance vs Shield Oath conversation does have them to be about equal in terms of how they help the tank survive. You do have a point about the shield though. PLDs do have an advantage in tanking because of shield mitigation.

When played properly, WAR mitigation is actually really good and has better total up time compared to PLD. By building wrath stacks and using them on Inner Beast, you can have a decent up time on the skill (6 seconds of 20% mitigation per ~9 global cooldowns or 22.5 seconds). That's pretty good. Obviously you can't just use IB whenever you want but with Infuriate and Vengeance there are times where a WAR can go ahead and use IB for a free 20% mitigation for 6 seconds and high dps skill. Typically PLD needs to save all their cooldowns for specific tank killer moves, a WAR can have IB up for all tank killer moves as well as some extra IBs thrown in the mix.

PLD is also much easier to play mechanically so I think a lot of players can play PLD up to their potential but cannot realize the same potential on WAR. Having IB on the GCD makes it much harder to time the skill for big hits and you have to know they're coming. If you are stuck in the GCD while the big attack is charging you might be too late. MT WARs need to be more familiar to the raid encounter than PLDs, as they will need to proactively IB as opposed to reactively using cooldowns.

[Brannigan]

Defiance and Shield Oath are very similar, with Defiance falling only very slightly behind and requiring something like 4% more healing. The actual percentage of total HP lost on any given attack is identical for paladin and warrior (So an equally geared paladin and warrior should lose the same amount of their HP bar when taking an attack).

Shield blocking is roughly equivalent to Inner Beast in terms of mitigation. It depends on the item level of your shield, but you should get 6~8% overall physical mitigation from a shield, while Inner Beast will give you about 6% mitigation if you use it every time it is available. The difference is that you can choose to use Inner Beast to block specific attacks (and magic), which is an option paladin doesn't have. When it comes to tank busters, they're pretty similar. Paladin has Rampart/Sentinel/Bulwark/Foresight/Hallowed Ground and warrior has Foresight/Infuriate/Thrill of Battle/Vengeance/Holmgang. Each skill set has its pros and cons, but I think that generally warrior is better at dealing with 1-minute timer tank busters and anything faster than that.

It sounds to me like your Nael tank just didn't know how to play warrior.

[Rbstr]

I don't see a feasible logic for the 25% healing/HP vs a flat 20% mitigation especially since raids always have some kind of tank cruncher.

Well you should see feasible logic these two things things are nearly identical in practice (it's only a 20% healing buff, though):
Two tanks have 100hp as a base value. They take an attack that does a base damage of 100hp.
A paly takes 80 damage (20% reduction) and is left with 20% of his HP.
A war takes 100 damage and is left with 20% left over (since he has 125 to start)

Say the healer uses an 80hp heal
Paly gets 80% of his HP back
War gets 76.8% of his HP back (heal hits him for 96 HP)
This is hardly any different in the end with typical over-healing. Lustrate has the exact same effectiveness between the two jobs.

The real "difference" comes in the additional mitigation options that really matter. Sentinel, Rampart, HG (and maybe bulwark) vs. Vengeance, Inner Beast, Holmgang.
Either set can be better depending on the timing of the fight. Inner Beasting every tank-buster is often better than what a Paladin is capable of.

[aisustrong]

stop trying to play war like pld
play war like war and itll live just as long, if not longer

[Izsha]

They are both good as evidenced by endgame raid groups almost universally opting for 1 of each. Everything in the game has been tanked by both tanks many times over. War takes a little more finesse is all. It's easier to "mess up" on war because the timings are more strict and you have to manage your Wrath stacks. IB lasts for 6 seconds, building Wrath takes 17 to 20ish sec. So you need to plan ahead on war. If you don't you either: sit on Wrath afraid to use it, or spend it and don't have it when you need it and there is now plan B of a shield block saving you. If you are unfamiliar with a fight pld is safer. Once you know a fight well, they both do about the same.

[Ashkendor]

I found warrior to be kind of tricky to learn a fight on, mostly because of IB being on the GCD. My FCoB static wanted me to play warrior, but I'm fairly inexperienced at it. I found it really stressful to be trying to learn warrior as well as trying to learn the fight mechanics. We swapped me back to PLD and the turn went a lot more smoothly. Luckily we've picked up another tank that's a dedicated warrior. ^^

[Giantbane]

I found warrior to be kind of tricky to learn a fight on, mostly because of IB being on the GCD. My FCoB static wanted me to play warrior, but I'm fairly inexperienced at it. I found it really stressful to be trying to learn warrior as well as trying to learn the fight mechanics. We swapped me back to PLD and the turn went a lot more smoothly. Luckily we've picked up another tank that's a dedicated warrior. ^^

This is the reason why PLD is the "simple" tank class. For anybody that likes to complain about that.

[LionKing]

Your Warrior simply does not know when to use INNER BEAST which is the best skill available for Warrior, arguable on the same level of that Sentinel of Paladin. Coming from both Pal and War background, I can say that Pal is the example of PASSIVE TANKING, while Warrior represents ACTIVE TANKING. And playing Warrior is way more fun than playing Paladin.