Why does Clemency get interrupted? And why does Sword/Shield Oath reset combo?

[Brian_]

I think this entire comparison is incredibly unfair to PLD. As someone that plays both WAR and PLD, you basically took the non-existent, "I'm not playing my class correctly," scenario for WAR.

The normal scenario is you FC after a Heavy Swing or in the middle of Maim / SE / SP / SS / BB. You should never be FCing before a HS. If you're planning to mitigate an incoming tank buster, that means you will probably be using Vengeance which grants 1 stack. You also have Raw Intuition, Berserk, and Infuriate. So, if you FC at a bad time, it takes you a minimum of 0 GCDs to IB. Without Infuriate, it takes you a minimum of 2 GCDs. With just Berserk, RI or Vengeance, it takes you 5-6 GCDs. At most, it's 7 GCDs, never 8.

TBF, using some of those CDs to cover for a mistake is a DPS loss, too.

On PLD, you always need to plan ahead by 3 GCDs (the 3 combo GCDs) to not break a combo. If we're talking strictly about DPS loss, it's much more punishing than WAR. Losing a GCD while in ShO is something like a ~200 potency loss. Losing a GCD while in SwO is something like a ~300 potency loss. SwO is something like a ~100 potency gain per combo GCD. I think the gain in oGCDs is something like ~15 potency per GCD. You need to make up for ~500 lost potency through SwO uptime when stance dancing. To put that in perspective, if you somehow mess up so badly that you don't spend a single GCD in SwO, you basically just lost a Fell Cleave worth of potency.