PLD any better than WAR?

[Mahri]

There's a slight difference in advantage to both, but they both get the job done quite well. Play whichever one you have more fun with/like the look of the gear more. There are no wrong choices.

[RiceisNice]

The only reasonable answer is to take both. They each excel at one area while being mediocre in others; having both in a raid group composition will help each other fill in each other's short comings.

When it comes to 4 man or old content though, it doesn't make too much of a difference.

[myahele]

It depends on what kind of Tank you wanna be. I find that PLD offers more supportive abilities for the party.
1. They can spam Stun and Silence (while WARs stun is on cool down)
2. Hallowed Ground is great
3. Cover is very useful to help protect a party members
3. Access to Stoneskin and Protect. Ideally you wont have to use either if your healers are good, but is sure is nice to help stoneskin either yourself or a party member. You won't be needing the MP anyways.

The only issue I have it that it's abit harder to keep aggro leveling up and even in endgame dungeons

[Lemuria]

The upside to running a Paladin is you don't actually need a single cross-class skill. Most of the Warrior skills are mildly useful at best, almost meaningless at worst. Conversely, if you're running a Warrior you'll want most of Paladin's cross-class skills. I'm talking about Convalescence, Provoke and Flash.

Paladin has the best damage mitigation of the two jobs. The shield blocks an average 25% damage each time and kicks in fairly reliably at high levels. That's on top of your parry. Additionally they have Rampart and Sentinel, two skills which have a solid amount of damage reduction. They also have the best emergency skill out of the two - Hallowed Ground. Making them invulnerable to almost everything for 10 seconds. Sorry fellow WAR's, but Holmgang sucks.

The two-combo nature of WAR hurts as much as it helps in some cases. Since your DPS combo doesn't have aggro generation beyond the usual bonus granted by Defiance. That said, Warrior does at least have one DR skill which is on its own cooldown and doesn't deplete your wrath to activate called Vengeance. Also, bloodbath and overpower is a lot of fun to use.

As far as tanking goes, I think Paladin has a clear edge for most content. Warrior is still a very competent tank, but Paladin just has too much raw damage reduction to beat easily.

[Ceodore]

Don't listen to anyone who tells you one is better than the other for whatever reasons. Both tanks, when in capable hands, are equally viable and totally capable for any situation. Take it from someone who specializes in tanking, there is no draw back to either tank. Paladin may have block, but since you can only either block or parry, never both at once, block causes a diminishing number of parries. It's the "Oh, I can also block" mind set of paladins that is misleading, as the number of times you block also decreases the number of times you will parry an attack, meaning that for Warriors, every point of parry is worth more benefit than a Paladin, since blocking an attack is calculated before parrying.

The toggle skills for both classes are not quite equal, with Warriors receiving approximately 3% less overall mitigation from theirs, a number that is easily made up for with proper cooldown usage and wrath useage.

I will say this much. I never recommend for someone who wants to tank to start with Warrior. I recommend beginning with Paladin, since even a bad Paladin amounts to a little bit of something, where a bad Warrior is sooo much worse. I consider Paladin to be a class that tanks should try to graduate first before beginning Warrior, especially since Flash and Convalescence are two must have skills. Paladin will teach you the basics of tanking: proper CD usage, positioning, AOE dodging, MP and TP balance, all things that you really should try to master before becoming a Warrior, especially the MP and TP usage. If you can understand that, you can actually be a warrior that doesn't beg for Army's Paeon or Goads. Learn how cooldowns interact with one another also. This can make a tremendous difference in survivability. Bloodbath, on the surface may seem straight forward, but it isn't. Try combining it with Vengence in a large mob pull. Convalescence + Second Wind. The cooldowns on a Warrior may not seem as strong as those on a Paladin, but they have a shorter cooldown than most of the ones Paladins use, and have more synchronization, allowing you to get more bang for your buck.

Many Paladin cooldowns actually have the opposite effect compared to Warrior cooldowns, due to their Shield Oath. The damage mitigation from Shield Oath is calculated first, followed by the mitigation from your cooldowns. This means that the true amount of damage you mitigate with a skill like Rampart compared to the initial amount of flat damage is actually less than 20%. It's only really 20% of the damage that has already been reduced by 20%. While it's still mitigation, it's still a case of diminishing returns. Compare that to Warriors, where their toggle buff is actually able to boost convalescence's effect. Sure, warrior only gets a 20% healing bonus from convalescence as opposed to Paladins getting a 30% boost. However, that 20% boost is actually closer to 24%, since the healing bonus from Defiance is calculated first, increasing the base healing that is then boosted again by Convalescence.

So, contrary to the post above me, the edge Paladin has is actually blunted by very very poor cooldown synchronization. About the only cooldowns that Paladins have that combines well is Bloodbath and Fight or Flight, and even that is nothing when compared to Warriors combining Bloodbath with such skills as Vengence, Unchained, and Berserk. Especially since the damage increase from Fight or Flight is actually stunted by Shield Oath, where Unchained completely negated the damage reduction from Defiance, then when combined with Berserk, increases damage output the full 50%. Coincidentally enough too, they both last 20 seconds, and Unchained has the same CD as Vengence, and Berserk has the same CD as Bloodbath. My normal cooldown usage for big trash pulls switches between Foresight, Convalescence+Second Wind, Awareness, on one, then Bloodbath+Vengence, 10 seconds into Bloodbath, Infuriate+Unchained (If I don't have full Wrath to begin with) and Berserk. By the time two large pulls are done, my first set of CDs are ready for use for a third pull, and I just switch back and forth.

Also, I am not a hypocrite. I followed my own advice and raised Paladin first. In fact, Paladin is my main class, and I have used it the most, and I know it the most. It is my most cherished class, and I only advanced into Warrior after mastering Paladin. I am still mastering Warrior myself, and still discovering its capabilities. I only recently realized how strong Bloodbath+Vengence is myself. I don't boast about Warrior's synchronization out of some biased love for Warriors, since I truly love Paladin more. I just simply recognize how strong Warrior really is in capable hands. Do not for a second consider one less than the other for any reason. The real difference between them is the player. Anyone who says one is better than the other simply doesn't know what they are talking about.

TLDR: Why not both?

[Lemuria]

The cooldowns on a Warrior may not seem as strong as those on a Paladin, but they have a shorter cooldown than most of the ones Paladins use

A warrior 'cooldowns' consist of three major skills. Thrill of Battle, Bloodbath and Vengeance. The latter, a 30% DR skill actually has a longer recharge time than the equivalent Paladin skill, Rampart (90s for Rampart, 120s for Vengeance). Bloodbath is beneficial when tanking larger groups, but overall it's HP gain isn't making up much lost ground. ToB is essentially just a self-heal.

Unchained doesn't have any mitigation benefits, and Infuriate is just a means to regenerate wrath for GCD skills. Their other skills aren't really cooldowns since they're on the GCD and reliant on either Infuriate (such as Inner Beast) or mob HP (such as Mercy Stroke).

Other CDs are borrowed largely from Paladin and Monk. Let's also remember that Paladin has a permanent 20% DR from Shield Oath, so mitigation wise the PLD will always win. Further on the note of mitigation, Paladin can also mitigate damage dealt to party members by using Cover, giving it a significant edge over Warrior.

Warrior is not about preventing damage. It's about soaking it up and dishing it back out. It has a single DR skill (unless you count Holmgang, I don't since you'd need to be mostly dead before you'd see a benefit). Storms path would be a great skill if it was AoE, but since it's single target it's unwieldy to try and use it on trash.

I'm not saying it can't tank. Far from it. But from the perspective of a player, Paladin is simply better at it. It's a defender, and a protector. Warrior is just a meat shield with a big axe.

[Ceodore]

Let's go through the list here.

A warrior 'cooldowns' consist of three major skills. Thrill of Battle, Bloodbath and Vengeance. The latter, a 30% DR skill actually has a longer recharge time than the equivalent Paladin skill, Rampart (90s for Rampart, 120s for Vengeance). Bloodbath is beneficial when tanking larger groups, but overall it's HP gain isn't making up much lost ground. ToB is essentially just a self-heal.

You're missing Foresight in this list too, which has an equivalent CD as Rampart. Yes, it doesn't increase magic defense, but it also has the added benefit for scaling with your defense stat, meaning that its potency goes up as your stat increases. Rampart will always be a simple flat 20% damage reduction from damage you are taking. This means that its potency is calculated after your defense already reduces the damage, resulting in a diminishing return as defense increases. I would compare Vengeance more to Sentinel than Rampart, but for shits and giggles, let's compare it to both. Vengeance has a longer CD than Rampart, and a shorter duration, however, it also has a higher potency than Rampart (30%) so no, it's not an equivalent skill at all. Vengeance has a lower CD than Sentinel, and a lower Potency, but a longer Duration. The difference essentially is that neither Rampart nor Sentinel are actually significantly better than Vengeance. They really equal out with only minor differences between the skills. Vengeance is really more like the middle ground between Rampart and Sentinel. However, Vengeance has the added bonus of causing damage back to melee attackers. This is where Bloodbath comes in to make Vengeance shine above the rest. That damage caused by Vengeance also triggers Bloodbath, meaning that as you take melee damage, you also recover hp equal to 25% of the damage done by Vengeance. Then, we have Overpower for more AOE damage to recover more HP, then we have Steel Cyclone for even more AOE damage for even more HP recovery. Combine Unchained and Berserk with those AOE damaging skills under Bloodbath, and you have even more HP recovery, as the amount of HP you recover from Bloodbath is % based, not potency or flat. Also, you drastically underestimate the worth of Thrill of Battle. Again, effect is % based, so it scales higher with higher gear, and it even increases with Defiance, as the amount is based on your HP pool after Defiance. 20% hp on a 12k HP warrior is 2.4k, worth more than most cures.

Unchained doesn't have any mitigation benefits, and Infuriate is just a means to regenerate wrath for GCD skills. Their other skills aren't really cooldowns since they're on the GCD and reliant on either Infuriate (such as Inner Beast) or mob HP (such as Mercy Stroke).

While not mitigating damage, HP recovery means less work on your healer to recover your hp. It means you are a more self sustaining system. Unchained and Berserk should not be used so liberally unless you are off tanking, and even then, they should be used in conjunction with skills like Bloodbath and Inner Beast for more bang.

Other CDs are borrowed largely from Paladin and Monk. Let's also remember that Paladin has a permanent 20% DR from Shield Oath, so mitigation wise the PLD will always win. Further on the note of mitigation, Paladin can also mitigate damage dealt to party members by using Cover, giving it a significant edge over Warrior.

Paladin can mitigate Melee damage done to a party member, so the usage of Cover is very limited. While Holmgang won't mitigate damage to a party member, its capability to keep a mob on you, and away from your healer can not be ignored. Of the fights that come to mind, the Giant Bavarois in Wanderer's Palace is the most prevalent, as Cover and Holmgang here have the same desired effect. While Cover allows you to keep the target from taking damage from Flail, Holmgang will keep the boss from moving to the target, protecting them from Flail as well. I have also confirmed that this works. They both have varying degrees of application, of course, but in many cases, their effects are entirely similar. Also, to say that many of the CDs are drawn from cross class skills is like being a snotty kid saying "These are my toys and I don't like you playing with them". The fact is, Warriors take these cross class skills and can use them with other skills for better effect. (Convalescence+Second Wind, Second Wind if potency based, meaning it is effected by Convalescence. Convalescence is also boosted by Defiance) Also, that Shield Oath Paladins are so proud of is the central reason why their major cooldowns lose effectiveness. Stacking Damage Reduction skills results in loss of potency between the skills. It's a fundamental flaw. Defiance doesn't have this issue, and in fact, it has an opposite effect on skills such as Convalescence, increasing its effectiveness.

Warrior is not about preventing damage. It's about soaking it up and dishing it back out. It has a single DR skill (unless you count Holmgang, I don't since you'd need to be mostly dead before you'd see a benefit). Storms path would be a great skill if it was AoE, but since it's single target it's unwieldy to try and use it on trash.

Of course you wouldn't use Storm's Path on trash, to try to hit 9 or 10 mobs with it would be pointless. Warriors have plenty more much stronger and more potent cooldowns for this situation, which have quick recovery times. It's for boss fights. Paladin has Rage of Halone, sure, but Storm's Path is actually stronger, because instead of just 5% of strength, you're completely reducing the boss' damage out put by 10%. And no Warrior should have trouble with agro on a boss fight even throwing in Storm's Path in their rotation.

I'm not saying it can't tank. Far from it. But from the perspective of a player, Paladin is simply better at it. It's a defender, and a protector. Warrior is just a meat shield with a big axe.

Neither class is actually better. Both have different capabilities which balance out. Paladin has Shield Oath, sure, but Shield Oath also causes many of its important cooldowns to become worth less. My biggest point was this. Warriors synergize much better than Paladins. None of their cooldowns or skills make any of their other cooldowns or skills weaker or worth less. Many of them infact make other cooldowns and skills worth exponentially more. Paladins on the other hand drastically fail in this concept, or fall short of what Warriors can do with these skills. Bloodbath is in fact, amazing, when used correctly. To knock it (as I have before in the past when I was a young, inexperienced Warrior) just shows a lack of understanding.

I'd like to add another thing. Warriors for the most part on boss battles try to stick to using their Wrath and Wrath generating skills on boss battles and try to save their big 'cooldowns' for large trash pulls where they will be most effective. Inner Beast is superb for reducing damage from big spike hits, and Storm's Path is excellent to keep up to both heal some damage and reduce the damage coming in.

PLD more tanky, WAR faster aggro. So usually PLD is the better mt and war the better ot

Umm, no. Paladin generally gets placed in the MT role because as an OT, they bring very little worthwhile skills to the table compared to Warriors. As an OT warrior, keeping up Storm's Path and Storm's Eye (so Ninjas can focus more on straight out damage) is excellent. So Warriors get placed in the role of OT just because Paladins are lacking in that role, not because Paladins are simply better MTs. As an MT Warrior, keeping up Storm's Path for damage in reduction is excellent. In fact, to give a good comparison, Warriors are a lot like White Mages. In a majority of fights, having two White Mages is just fine, since their skills stack so well with one another, but having two scholars usually means one is constantly over writing the other's shields. With Warriors, having two in a fight causes no draw back in DPS and even has no draw back with survivability, and in fact, increases dps over a 1 Paladin, 1 Warrior set up. But a 2 Paladin party loses DPS without Storm's Eye. It is even easy to see how Warriors can bring the same durability to the table as a Paladin when MT. With a flat 10% damage reduction from the boss and a healing in increase of 20%, it's all too easy. If you want to get technical, sure, just using the toggle skills, Paladin's Shield Oath will always beat Defiance, but if a tank is just using their toggle skills, then they are a bad tank, no matter which class they are on. Warrior simply has more indepth and versatile combinations that work well together, where Paladins often lose effectiveness on their cooldowns because of Shield Oath.

Also, the whole Holmgang vs Hallowed Ground thing is pointless. If you come to the point where you must pop Hallowed Ground then chances are, things are screwing up. Holmgang in fact has more applications with a lower CD. Most notably is T10, where you can avoid having to tank swap when you are inflicted with Vuln Up by holmganging at the correct time for the Wild Charge. You can both eat the Charge and the Crackle Hiss with Vuln Up on you and still be sitting pretty. Word of advice for that situation, have Inner Beast ready as well as Convalescence and Second Wind combination and Thrill of Battle for after the Hiss to help with padding your HP for anything unforeseen and to keep your healers from having a heart attack.

Again, I love Paladin, it's my main, I'll never get rid of it or abandon it or tire of it, but I will also recognize its faults as well as the strengths of the other tank class, and ignorance towards either one's skills and capabilities is unbecoming of any tank.

[Asierid]

Foresight

A worthless ability. 5-6%~ lower damage against a boss chunking you for 4-6k a hit every minute and a half? k. You use it when you have nothing else, you don't rely on it. So basically we have Vengence/IB/Thrill (Doesn't even increase eHP much either) vs Sentinel/Rampart/Bulwark/Foresight(ha). That's fair.

While not mitigating damage, HP recovery means less work on your healer to recover your hp.

Your healer is not relying on your meager path/bloodbath skills to keep you alive against progression bosses. Cure/2 is still healing you for the thousands, self-heals or not. This is moot.

Paladin can mitigate Melee damage done to a party member, so the usage of Cover is very limited. While Holmgang won't mitigate damage to a party member, its capability to keep a mob on you...

Unless they are casters or are using an ability. Another moot point. Having to burn holmgang "to keep a mob on you" means you need to stop using it as a crutch (Which isn't even it's purpose) and get better at managing threat. Hollowed ground is an immunity with freedom of movement, Holmgang is a wannabe CD, no immunity, roots you, and heaven forbid if that mob is just out of range. It's flat out better.
Cover has way more utility in the form of heavy boss abilities such as MB on Titan EX.

Both tanks can do anything in the game, the difference is pretty small and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But to say PLD isn't better than WAR in that small gap (especially considering this argument has been done to death since the WAR rework back in 2.x) is just being ignorant to the numbers and the way the game works. There are few fights where IB is needed compared to the flat, passive (and using proper rotations in those CDs) reductions of PLD, most of the game is based around scripted heavy hits around the rotated cooldowns of PLD rather than the "Oh shit IB" of WAR. Plus they do way better OT damage as proven in this forum before.

Oh, and Ninja's bring slashing now. We can stop trying to argue that WAR using Eye is some kind of gamebreaking utility buff.

[Ceodore]

A worthless ability. 5-6%~ lower damage against a boss chunking you for 4-6k a hit every minute and a half? k. You use it when you have nothing else, you don't rely on it. So basically we have Vengence/IB/Thrill (Doesn't even increase eHP much either) vs Sentinel/Rampart/Bulwark/Foresight(ha). That's fair.

IDK where you're getting your calculations, but a 20% increase in your defense is not 5~6% reduction in damage. In fact the real reduction changes with gear, so already, you've popped a hole in your own statement. The more defense you have base, the higher the amount increased is.

Your healer is not relying on your meager path/bloodbath skills to keep you alive against progression bosses. Cure/2 is still healing you for the thousands, self-heals or not. This is moot.

Did you not notice my point was against packs of mobs? No shit Bloodbath isn't going to do as much healing with only one target, never said it would.

Unless they are casters or are using an ability. Another moot point. Having to burn holmgang "to keep a mob on you" means you need to stop using it as a crutch (Which isn't even it's purpose) and get better at managing threat. Hollowed ground is an immunity with freedom of movement, Holmgang is a wannabe CD, no immunity, roots you, and heaven forbid if that mob is just out of range. It's flat out better.
Cover has way more utility in the form of heavy boss abilities such as MB on Titan EX.

Didn't say I used it for threat, I said I used it for certain boss mechanics. Wild Charge + Crackle Hiss in T10, Giant Bavarois when he starts to chase down a party members for Flail. Of course Hallowed Ground is flat out better, never said it wasn't a great skill. However, compare it to the cooldown on Holmgang as well. I am usually able to eat four or five wild charges + Crackle Hiss in T10 because the cooldown is short enough. Each has their up sides and down sides, so saying that the skill is a wanna be CD shows you're ignorant.

Both tanks can do anything in the game, the difference is pretty small and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But to say PLD isn't better than WAR in that small gap (especially considering this argument has been done to death since the WAR rework back in 2.x) is just being ignorant to the numbers and the way the game works. There are few fights where IB is needed compared to the flat, passive (and using proper rotations in those CDs) reductions of PLD, most of the game is based around scripted heavy hits around the rotated cooldowns of PLD rather than the "Oh shit IB" of WAR. Plus they do way better OT damage as proven in this forum before.

First, never said one was better than the other, but to assume that either is better is idiocy. Second, you'd have to be also an idiot to say IB is only needed in a few fights. Any and every fight in this game has a use for IB. IB isn't an oh shit button. It's on a GCD, making it something that should to be used on planned hits. If you're popping it just to throw it out there, then you're wasting it. For flat damage reduction which can be maintained on a boss, Storm's Path is great (10% damage reduction). And then on top of the 10% reduction in damage from Storm's Path, we also are getting 20% more HP from healing spells with Defiance. Both these aspects can be maintained through out a fight. Paladin gets 20% damage reduction, and can maintain a 5% strength reduction on the boss through the fight. So I ask, what's your point? Also, Storm's Path has a lot of strength behind it, since all the boss' damage is reduced by 10%, which includes magic damage as well, which I'd like to point out, Rage of Halone does not effect since it only lowers strength. It also means that Storm's Path reduces damage by 10% for the entire party, where Shield Oath only effects the Paladin.

Oh, and Ninja's bring slashing now. We can stop trying to argue that WAR using Eye is some kind of gamebreaking utility buff.

Ninja brings a skill that Warrior has already, great. You obviously don't realize that Ninjas prefer it if the Warrior keeps up Storm's Eye instead, so that they can focus more on pure damage instead of having to keep up a debuff.

Also, all your quotes are snippets of what I said, leaving them lacking context. How about you actually read what I wrote instead of trying to make it seem like I am saying something that I'm not. Or maybe quote a point in its entirety instead of small bits.

[DrOstler]

PLD more tanky, WAR faster aggro. So usually PLD is the better mt and war the better ot