Tank Balance

[Ercapote]

Tempered will - an ability that changes nothing either if you use it or don't, serve no purpose but apply laziness on your tank just so you just don't move a mechanic that is not lethal and has ways to avoid mostly easy 100% of time - don't need it

cover - ability only helpful when you you suck at your job because if someone is getting hit on a mob you should look at your aggro game cuz its weak, (last time I use it was 4 month ago on t13) I still haven't found a single ability on any other class that sit for so long with no purpose at all beside the help it provides are barely helpful since it only cover physical attacks and have the risk to kill you if healers aren't paying attention.

pacification - if it's broken then why put it on the first place? rarely see this ability doing something again just move to feet two the left and can be easily avoided with least amount of effort - don't need it

blind - only makes mobs miss 2, 3 hits, not that big of a help compare to DRK AOE galore or WAR. - no big of a difference either on the healing so not helpful at all

shield bash - is good no one complain about it " I THINK" - kinda useless on bosses and 100% of the situation you don't need the LONGEST STUN since it's only use as an interrupt and the only raid that made use of this LONG STUN was t5, still DRK, WAR stun would work just fine for any other content + is stronger.

clemency - good ability VERY SITUATIONAL, rarely useful with the recast time healers already heal what they need you for and recover the mp, making clemency mostly a lose in dps and mp. so meh.

I know they are situational but on top of that they are barely helpful and only take spots where other abilities more useful could be.

[karateorangutang]

snip

I think his frustration is getting in the way of his argument. Some of these abilities would not suffer from some tweaking to make them more useful in more situations. Flash and the pacification effect would be fine.

Tempered Will and cover are both extremely situational and not useful in some later content. Half the time tempered will is used so you can be lazy... not because its needed. If it gave a regain effect then there would be a choice in the process of using it. Shield Oath would give it the original effect and Sword Oath would give it a regain effect like goad. Do i blow it and chance getting pushed or do I wait and guarantee my survival of a mechanic.

All I want for cover is to be able to block a magic attack for somebody. That would make it way more useful as an OT ability.

Lastly, and I may get strung up for this, I'd like to see Sword Oath go away entirely. There is literally no reason for it to be an activate ability, it should be passively on. Do you ever not use a stance?
Shield Oath overrides it, keep it on the GCD. In return PLD gets a smoother stance dance and make the job even more accessible for new players without sacrificing effectiveness.

[Drakkaelus]

Useless? You keep using that word. I'm not sure it means what you think it means.

As long as a skill, item, or strategy has at least one situation in which it is useful, it is not useless. So stop saying that. It's wrong. The word you are looking for is "situational".

Having only one situation where an ability is remotely useful is pretty much what I'd consider dead weight. What good is an ability that's so situational that there's rarely, if ever, an actual situation to use it in? I don't think anyone would accuse Bulwark, Dark Mind or Sheltron of being useless even it they aren't useful all the time. But there's that, and then there's, "only good if something hits you when you're riding your chocobo...kinda".

To me, that's the biggest difference between the WAR's kit and the PLD's. It's not the DPS, it's the fact that everything was designed with a practical purpose for use in practical situations. Not a bunch of gimmicky crap where you can count the number of times you've used it in the hundreds of hours you've been playing the game on one hand. Or a bunch of additional effects that don't actually affect anything. They knew exactly what they wanted the WAR to be and it shows in it's kit.

PLD's got crap all over the place and too much of it ends up unused in too many situations. It feels sloppy and none of it flows together very well.

[NFaelivrin]

Tempered Will is a specially egregious ability because for the most part anytime you'd want to use it you can simply, well, not use it, by dodging whatever knockback is coming. If the anti-knockback ability was removed entirely and replaced with a 300 TP restore you'd see that skill suddenly jump from "why even have it on my hotbars" to pretty damn good. The only times I've used it in 3.0 are so I can look cool not getting knocked back by Pillars of Heaven in Ravana, and the last time I used it before that was so I could be lazy and not dodge a divebomb in T13.

[Ercapote]

the last time I used it before that was so I could be lazy and not dodge a divebomb in T13.

ROLF. me too

[Eye_Gore]

so meanwhile every other class has useful abilities that are constanly used for greater beneficial purposes, pally sit here with 4 or 5 abilities that take dust there in the hotbar for that moment "every once in a while when the planets align" not only that, but also our supper defense kit, also puts in trash other 3 or 4 abilities if the boss uses magic damage. hell we should call pally " The situational tank class" only use when that moment on that dungeon.

Probably why it's considered the easiest class to play

[Ercapote]

Probably why it's considered the easiest class to play

is the easiest because it almost requires no skills compare to the other tanks or any other class in the game, while WAR has staking/stance system and I really fun dps/self-sustain/raid-aid/defense kit and DRK also has a really MP manipulation/dps/raid-aid/ and defense kit just a good as paladin, paladin has a........ a good.... paladins have CD yyeeyy most of which are useless on magical fights

[Dererk]

I know OP said something about not getting into how over powered war is but feel like it needs to be said.

One of the big reasons war can put out alot more damage than the others is because wars Storms Eye gives a slashing resistance down debuf to mobs.

This can up dps alot also they can give more debuffs than the other tanks and aren't dropped for a new one like how PLD can't have both the Goring blade and rage debuff on the same mob at once.

And still parry is unless in large amounts or if at all useful. If parry would just improve mitigation we would go for full vit right side.

Oh wait we can't thou because SE thought it was a good idea to make VIT the most important tank stat when we still need a decent amount of str to keep hate on the mobs.

[Sapphidia]

This can up dps alot also they can give more debuffs than the other tanks and aren't dropped for a new one like how PLD can't have both the Goring blade and rage debuff on the same mob at once.

Just got to leap in to correct here:

Goring Blade and Rage of Halone debuffs can both be on the mob with no problem. In fact the standard "hybrid rotation" which optimises dps/debuffs/threat is Goring -> Rage -> Royal and has basically 100% uptime on both. The only reason paladins drop the rage of halone debuff is because rage of halone itself does less damage than Royal Authority.

Also, Storms Eye is not something to consider when comparing tank damage. Ninjas can provide it too, and often a Warrior is present as an offtank when a DRK/PLD is main tanking. In virtually all cases that matter when tank DPS is being compared, tests are done with the Slashing Debuff applied. Even accounting for this Warriors are way ahead of the other two.