Skill vs Job

[Februs]

My point is, is that a PLD doesn't have time to watch their teams full time. But a WAR has to be DPSing full time. Because a PLD has a healer that's doing the bulk of the healing, they only have to watch out for their team whenever it's needed. A WAR, although, having two DPS on their side still has to help DPS to net a kill for their team. With this line of thought, I think playing a PLD is much easier than playing a WAR.

Sorry, but I'm gonna have to disagree here. If anything, Pld's have to divide their focus FAR more than any War does. To be a good Pld in PvP means that you're not just watching your team. You're watching both your team and the enemy team full time.

As you said, War's do basically one thing: Dps (even when they're suppressing an enemy healer). All they have to really worry about is the target that is right in front of them. Pld's, on the other hand, have to divide their time between supporting their Dps (Full Swing/DoTs/Burst), defending their healer (clemency, DV, testudo, cover, or stunning enemy dps), AND running interference on the enemy healer (stuns/silence/knockback) so that the Dps can take full advantage of the Full Swing Timer. At any given time, a Pld has to make a judgement call on when and where they are needed most, and how they can best fulfill that role. To make that judgement, they have to be more aware of what's happening around them then just about anyone. On top of this, they also have to adequately judge which CD's they are willing to sacrifice in the process, because they won't that CD again for another 2 minutes.

Pld defensive utility is not so easily managed. Almost all of their defensive moves are on a 180 second CD timer. That's a long time to be working around. You can pop them on the fly, sure, but you'd be wasting them if you use them at the wrong moment. Even Clemency can't be used willy-nilly. A Pld has to exercise good judgement for every move they use or else it's wasted utility. By comparison, the only judgement War's have to make is which target they want to attack, and even then, they're not solely responsible for killing.

Both Pld's and War's have access to Full Swing, and all teams have two Dps characters. If two Dps can kill a target with a Pld, than a War's additional burst is a nice bonus, but it's not required for that kill. So long as a War is providing the same Dps support as a Pld, then anything extra is just icing on the cake. Further still, a War's burst is readily available far more frequently than any of Pld's kit (that includes both offensive and defensive), so by comparison it's much easier to use because the consequences are far less severe if you don't score that kill. None of this is to downplay how hard it is to play war, mind you. It's still a tank, and tanks are one of the hardest roles to play in PvP, but I definitely wouldn't say that War is more difficult to use in PvP settings than Pld. Having a singular focus on dps burst to score kills (which War's are ultimately not responsible for) is not equal in difficulty to dividing your attention across two entire parties and managing how best to use every CD you have while adapting to the circumstances in which you have to use them.