Quote Originally Posted by Instrumentality View Post
You are doing less damage than you otherwise could while keeping hate against your warrior offtank and he is harming your raids' dps output. The tradeoff to do an enmity combo on the MT is greater than the loss of your warrior doing SE/SE. Hope this helps.

For every extra enmity combo you have to do because of an offtank, you lose >80 potency. For every SE/SE combo you have to do as a WAR you lose 20 potency. It's really not hard to figure out which is a bigger raid dps loss.
being more specific, my exact combo rotation is: RoH combo > Goring > RA combo - when I PLD. On a fight like Thordan, I prefer keeping the RoH debuff up as much as possible, but there are phases where I skip this in favor of a RA combo. ***Not leading into a discussion about mitigation.

Moving to a fight like A1s that is more magic based, my starting combo was the same, but I would slide into a Goring > RA > RA > , <repeat> , <sub one RA for RoH>, <go back to goring/RA x2>
It got spicy if I tried to squeeze in a 3rd RA combo before re-applying RoH, or if I pulled and stayed in SwO, or the double/triple crit fell cleave. (keep in mind this is pre-split). Perhaps you and I have a different (however slight) of a definition of what an "extra emnity combo" is. Perhaps the difference is simply the fact that the PLD OT rotation is different from it's MT rotation. WAR uses the same combo for either MT/OT role, DRK - outside of opener - uses it's DPS rotation almost exclusively in MT role. (it is weirdly wonderful to maintain hate and simply dps as a DRK, but kind of odd that the enmity combo is as avoidable as it is today).

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Unless you/anyone wish to toe the line of tank homogenization, PLD is built differently from the other tanks in concern to the MT rotation. Playing it optimally as a MT is different game play, than playing it optimally as OT and I view these roles as different within any fight, just as a main healer/off healer role is different. It is, quite frankly, a different mindset than what a DRK/WAR MT enters a fight with.
Perhaps our separation is based upon the ideal that PLD MT is not meant to be the same series of buttons (offensive) as PLD OT. In which case, I should have worded my opening post differently.

But, Instrumentality, you have alluded to a point I made a while back on another thread. Playing PLD as MT is not optimal damage wise, in any situation. PLD’s best role in the game today is as OT. As MT role, WAR’s don’t need defiance and can still run their highest potency combo (self healing, yo), and DRK’s barely need grit (but have skills that counter grits damage reduction) and barely use their enmity combo anyway (outside of initial pull). 20 seconds into a fight, PLD pulls weaker numbers as MT than both tank classes, by a significant portion. The amount of separation in the OT numbers is not quite so severe, but yes PLD is still in the cellar. A WAR or DRK lose less sliding from OT to MT than what a PLD does.

@syz – I was referring to what spookyghost mentioned – the ridiculous burst that 3xFC is under the Berserk/et all timer. And to be fair, I was pushing that line as much as I could at the time (and it was early for me as a DRK, I was still toying with openers – this was just after 3.1 ish). I did not mean to imply I always lose hate there, but I didn’t state otherwise. I haven’t lost hate as a DRK to any co-tank in quite some time.

Having said ALL OF THAT, it could be my fault because I put on a different hat when I PLD MT than when I PLD OT. I personally view the two roles almost as different classes. Which the other tank classes don’t have to do at all.