So what is PLD good at?

[Launched]

Stuff

Block's never been important in coil progression, and it won't be important in Alexander because fights will be designed for all 3 tanks.

You've clearly never used Holmgang right, so I'm not going to argue about it besides saying that if you don't pop it early your healers will have around 5s to heal you up, and autoattacks after a tankbuster aren't going to outdamage those heals.

PLD can't afford to use Rampart and Sentinel at the same time, because . IB's only cooldown is Wrath, so WAR always has it to stack with another cooldown. It's why they're so good: 20% mitigation on every tankbuster PLUS an extra effect. PLD can't just use Convalescence, Awareness or Foresight as cooldowns because of how weak they are, but WAR can use them along with IB.

[Dynalon]

...

I did not have coils in mind, WARs might struggle more than PLDs in new dungeons. But if you want an example where the block or so called "weak awareness" shine then for instance T5, those little snakes crit a lot and can be blocked, back in the days of progression awareness + block was definitely better than anything what WAR could bring.
PLD can't afford to use Rampart and Sentinel at the same time why exactly? PLD can do it and will do it if situation requires it. No idea why Convalescence is weak, if I use your logic against you then Defiance is weak as well, because it provides "only" healing bonus. Healing bonus and damage reduction are just different sides of the same coin ...

Anyway you will understand when you melt to some trash pack in the new dungeon.

[elemental10]

A key difference of course being that, a pld can potentially run out of cooldowns. A good war will be able to rely on Path + IB every. Single. Time. They need it. Plus additional CD's. It's like quality vs quantity. PLD has stronger mitigation, WAR has more frequent and reliable mitigation. PLD's shortest cooldown defensive is 90 seconds. WAR can IB every 20, with a free one via infuriate, every 60 seconds. Now personally, I'm not saying one way or another which is superior. As far as I'm concerned, each excels at different things, and at the end of the day, a good pld and a good war are entirely interchangable. Things are not as black and white as you seem to be arguing.

Oh I'm sorry that you think I'm arguing about which is better. I'm just stating my opinion on what PLD is good at and it requires a bit of comparison.

I agree that none of them are actually superior. I just wanted to show what PLD is good at, as some people here cannot really tell.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

Yep many healers I speak to prefer a PLD over a WAR main tank because of the fact healers need to heal a lot more unless they are max geared that is.

[Cabalabob]

Yep many healers I speak to prefer a PLD over a WAR main tank because of the fact healers need to heal a lot more unless they are max geared that is.

Sounds about right, when i'm healing I much prefer a PLD tank because they need less babysitting than a WAR does.

[Launched]

I did not have coils in mind, WARs might struggle more than PLDs in new dungeons. But if you want an example where the block or so called "weak awareness" shine then for instance T5, those little snakes crit a lot and can be blocked, back in the days of progression awareness + block was definitely better than anything what WAR could bring.
PLD can't afford to use Rampart and Sentinel at the same time why exactly? PLD can do it and will do it if situation requires it. No idea why Convalescence is weak, if I use your logic against you then Defiance is weak as well, because it provides "only" healing bonus. Healing bonus and damage reduction are just different sides of the same coin ...

Anyway you will understand when you melt to some trash pack in the new dungeon.

Dungeons aren't going to be any problem for WAR. Leveling dungeons were fine, all the dungeons added since 50 were fine. "Back in the days of progression", WAR was a completely different job. It was an awful tank, which was fixed in 2.1, which made it the better main (or solo) tank for T5 because you had IB for every single Death Sentence.

PLD can't use Sentinel and Rampart at the same time because of their cooldowns, and because of how mitigation stacks. If you popped both for the first Flatten in T13, you'd reduce the damage by 52% (not 60%), and then have no reliable cooldown except Hallowed for the next. During progression that's a big problem because phases go on longer and you'll take more tankbusters. WAR stacks IB with every single cooldown because its only limit is Wrath.

Defiance has nothing to do with Convalescence. It's functionally identical to Shield Oath: you have the same eHP as a PLD, you lose the same percentage of your eHP when you get hit, you get healed for the same percentage. Anyone that thinks WAR takes more incoming damage simply doesn't understand the maths behind Defiance. Convalescence does nothing to affect incoming damage on PLD, you can't use it before something like Flatten and expect it to keep you alive while WAR can use it with IB to reduce incoming damage AND increase healing after.

[Instrumentality]

words

In any fight with physical auto-attacks a Paladin will by default take a noticeable percent (greater than 5% variance on auto attack damage) less amount of damage. On a fight like turn 13 where that adds up to thousands of HP not needing to be healed that leaves plenty of room for your healers to DPS harder and for them to handle not baby sitting your tank.


Tank busters have never been an issue to survive for any tank. I don't know why people think it's a big deal that you can mitigate them one or three or even five percent more efficiently when a tank's greatest contribution to any fight outside of damage on target is smoothed damage income and predictability of damage income. Paladin mitigation is not dependent on someone else. They provide the absolute smoothest damage income of the current tanks and that's fantastic for both healing and healer dps.

Is Paladin tanking boring? Yeah. Is Paladin MT dps bad? Yeah? Is Paladin the best MT for damage income? Yeah. Is WAR the best MT for DPS? Yeah.

Edit: Unless you main tank in sword oath for everything now, which you should.

[Kyant]

There is nothing wrong with PLD. PLD is stronger with single target hate than warrior and I don't have much issue with hate even with multi targets. Running endgame dungeons like WP/AK(Hard Mode) with i130 dps I'm able to hold hate with my i116 (and using i90 weapon - don't hate I took a break from the game). PLD can do anything WAR can do, but yes PLD really is just a 3 hit combo over and over again except for using a defensive ability here and there. Against endgame bosses PLD is probably stronger, provided you know when to use cooldowns. I think the biggest reason WAR seems that much stronger is for the extra HP pool... With pld is you miss using an ability at the right time you might get hit so hard you are only 1 or 2 auto attacks from death, whereas a WAR has so much HP that even if they don't have a defensive ability up they still have a nice bit of HP left over.

[SpookyGhost]

WAR: 11250 HP (in Defiance)
PLD: 9000 HP (in Shield Oath)

Tank buster: 8000 damage (completely unmitigated)

WAR and PLD both don't pop any CDs.

WAR: 11250 - 8000 = 3250 HP remaining
PLD: 9000 HP - 6400 (Shield Oath is -20% damage taken) = 2600

Auto attack: 3250 damage (completely unmitigated)

WAR: 3250 - 3250 = dead
PLD: 2600 - 2600 = dead

WAR won't die any faster than PLD, PLD won't die any faster than WAR. WAR takes like 1% more healing to actually heal up, though - which is pretty much negligible.

[Zophar]

PLD is stronger with single target hate than warrior.

Ok, I just have to say, my experience has been, frankly, exactly the opposite. It may seem like PLD's single target is a little stronger, but I'd say that is because all PLD has is an enmity combo. MT, OT or dps mode, enmity combo all day every day. WAR on the other hand -can- spam enmity combo for days, but a proper WAR tank combines it with his other attacks. Usually Storm's Eye. Maybe Storm's path if it's a high damage scenario. I've tanked over many PLDS, and I've never had any real problems. A big part of it too, is just that, currently, WAR just has stronger dps utility, and that helps a lot with enmity.