Noob question on defiance and warrios

[Rbstr]

Fracture is good to use, especially after level 28 with the trait, as long as it gets to tick the entire length of the DOT. It's 300 potency, so it's tied with Inner Beast as your strongest attack.
But it is situational to some extent. It will burn TP.

Defiance vs. Shield Oath is pretty much a wash numerically. Paladins get to block, which means they mitigate more of the autoattacks and smaller hits. But Warriors often have better mitigation for "tank killer" attacks than Paladins, as they can usually Beast all of them. Vengeance and Thrill of Battle on 2-minute timers also make for really great survivability against the big hit moves.

[Altijacek]

Playing warrior is very fun and rewarding experiment with it and ask around! Our damage output can be pretty insane too. You asked about foresight. At lower levels, it's almost useless; this is because it increases your defense stat by a certain percentage. If your defense is 100 then it becomes 120. I think mathematically, about 14 points of defense reduce damage about 1% or so. But this is nothing if enemies are hitting for 50 damage. So you wouldn't notice it. Later on though, wow. It's great. It also doesn't work on magic damage.

[Credor]

Though as far as Foresight goes it is a fantastic skill. It's not as good as PLD's Bulwark (I think this is the nearly identical skill name) for the following reason:
Foresight increases your physical defense by 20% (way more noticeable at higher levels) for 15 seconds. Bulwark, due to a PLD trait, increases their defense and magic defense by 20%. So, it just may be that you're activating Foresight against magical attacks and therefore don't see it serving any use.

Foresight is very weak comparing to Bulwark or Rampart. Foresight increase physical defense by 20%, that means about 8% of physical damage mitigation. Bulwark increase chance (block rate) of shield block. With end-game shield this means ~90% chance of mitigate physical damage by 30%. Rampart is 20% magical/physical damage mitigation.

Like I said before, PLD's have some more passive mitigation thus they are more suited against Spike damage (Hell they can get crit immunity for a short period of time), WAR on the other hand deals more damage than a PLD does. So we often help out on DPS while tanking. Do not let the term "Off tank" fool you, main tank simply means we won't be tanking the boss (Unless a tank-swap mechanic is in place). A lot of WAR tanks therefor switch to Strength accessories later on instead of Vit ones for some higher DPS output.

Facts:
1. PLD has more mitigation skills, has shield and better efficiency of heal compared to received damage. For these reasons in most party's PLD is MT
2. WAR deals more damage in Defiance than PLD in Shield Oath, is better in dmg aspect for MT role but see point 1.
3. PLD deals more damage in Sword Oath than WAR without Defiance, Sword Oath gives PLD near 30% more dmg than Shield Oath, but again - see point 1.
4. High-ends FC with superb healers for max overall damage plays with WAR MT and PLD OT, according to points 2 and 3.
5. A lot of WAR (and some PLD also) switch to crafted i110 accessories, which gives STR boost and safe VIT level.

[seekified]

WARs survive well for a short time against a lot of mobs - popping Foresight, Bloodbath and Vengeance and then spamming Overpower on a group of adds will sometimes make your healer wonder why he's even there. If mobs don't start dying within 20 seconds though, that's a different story. I'm really not familiar enough with PLDs to make a statement, but I've been told they can survive stuff that WARs can't because of Rampart, Bulwark and a generally higher parry rate, but yeah.

[Credor]

I'm really not familiar enough with PLDs to make a statement, but I've been told they can survive stuff that WARs can't because of Rampart, Bulwark and a generally higher parry rate, but yeah.

True, PLD can active mitigate over 70s and has shield with 30% physical mitigation (PLD's parry has weaker efficiency than on WAR because when shield work - parry not)

[RecklessLion]

I hated the early stages of warrior to be honest. It felt useless till lvl 40 then everything started making sense. I heard the same same for paladin. I'll have to play that class all the way through to actually say what's best for me. Right now I love being a warrior, decent damage and high health. When I run in to deal with adds I use defiance, infuriate, berserk, unchained, thrill of battle, blood bath, and AOE spam hoping to stay alive long enough for healer to control my health bar. I may be doing to much for an initiation but Im starting to believe warrior shine by using insane health and life steal to survive.

[seekified]

I hated the early stages of warrior to be honest. It felt useless till lvl 40 then everything started making sense. I heard the same same for paladin. I'll have to play that class all the way through to actually say what's best for me. Right now I love being a warrior, decent damage and high health. When I run in to deal with adds I use defiance, infuriate, berserk, unchained, thrill of battle, blood bath, and AOE spam hoping to stay alive long enough for healer to control my health bar. I may be doing to much for an initiation but Im starting to believe warrior shine by using insane health and life steal to survive.

The problem is really that around level 30, the DPS classes start getting some very powerful stuff that generate a craptonne of aggro very quickly. Keeping up with that and still managing your health as a tank in those levels can be very tricky at times.

Your method with the AoE spam tends to work very well for me as well when I do huge pulls - a Sacred Soil and a couple of adlos on that and there's no way we're going down as long as Bloodbath and Vengeance are up.

[TheMurrkin4]

And don't waste TP dropping fracture on things that won't last 18+ seconds lol

[technole]

And don't waste TP dropping fracture on things that won't last 18+ seconds lol

Couldn't agree more about how situational it is. One is just asking for TP drain if they are tagging anything that walks with it.

[pandabearcat]

While leveling my warrior, the biggest difference I noticed was that I was running out of TP -constantly-, even with invigorate.

I only really use fracture on bosses, but I have to sit between pulls if I ever use more than 2 or 3 overpower.

While as a pali, I can easily spam 3-5 flashes if needed and have mana to spare, not to mention that TP doesn't even dip if I get a lot of shield procs.

I am less worried about mitigation on a warrior (which I hear is pretty balanced now). Mostly I'm just not sure why I'm running out of TP constantly. I tend to just go 1-2 and only go to maim when its dropping, at the same time refreshing fracture if its fallen off.