Unchained. Seriously, why are we not abusing this skill?

[Brian_]

For the third time, using 5 stacks for Unchained in the first place prevents you from using Fell Cleave. So, to use your "msot powerful defensive cooldown" you have to sacrifice one opportunity of using your most powerful skill. Is that clear now ?

In my very first post, I stated multiple times that YES, YOU PAY 5 STACKS FOR IT. Did I ever deny that? NO. I said in explicit terms that was the cost. You pay 5 stacks for what amounts to one of the best defensive CDs in the game.

Now, tell me what DRK or PLD needs to sacrifice to gain 25% eHP for a short time ? Nothing. And especially none of their damage by being forced in tanke stance.

Again, no. You don't have the combined effect of Thrill Of Battle and Convalescence, you just have the effect of...Defiance. Having 25% more HP and receiving 20% more Healing is less than the effect of Rampart.

You make it sound like tank stance has an awesome effect on mitigation, where, technically, it has not. Any defensive cooldown gives you higher mitigation than your tank stance. What makes tank stances good is the fact that they can have 100% uptime. But since you advise to stay in Defiance only for the duration of Unchained, then it loses that property. What also makes Unchained+Defiance less powerful than Rampart is that it doesn't increase your HP, so, you'd technically need to heal yourself, to really gain that 25%eHP. Will you burn another cooldown to gain the exact same eHP increase ? Equilibirum, maybe ?

Every good tank views their tank stance as an additional defensive CD. Unfortunately, for PLD and DRK, that defensive CD comes at a very high cost so it's their last option. As Layla Bell and Xeno put it, using Grit is like using an IB that deals no damage, doesn't heal you, and then gimps your damage. WARs have the benefit that their equivalent does not have so extreme a cost because of Unchained. You speak of Rampart and Shadowskin as if those two CDs aren't also 2 of the best defensive CDs in the game. Or, that Defiance + Unchained isn't basically the same.

Thrill of Battle boosts your max HP by 20% and heals you for that amount.

Convalescence increases the healing you receive by 20%.

Defiance boosts your max hp by 25% and the healing you receive by 20%. Gaining access to Equilibrium's heal is much better than ToB's healing component because you can control when you get that burst of HP back rather than have it front loaded.

So, come again about how it isn't their combined effect or better in practice.

But really, if you want to look at theory, then let's look at theory --

Do you know how ShO and Defiance compare?

25% max HP increase boosts your eHP the same exact amount that 20% damage reduction does. Do the math.

What is not equivalent is the value of healing. That is why Defiance has the healing boost that it does. All in all, the gap in healing is in the single digits. So, the effective survivability is basically a wash -- a point that people have always said about Defiance vs. ShO. It really doesn't matter that Defiance doesn't heal you unless you are in a situation where you need the max eHP immediately (in which case you can just Equilibrium).

So you pay what amounts to ~370 potency worth of DPS over the duration of Unchained for a defensive CD on par with Rampart and Shadowskin with slight side-perks like a boosted party shield with Adlo + deploy, significantly better enmity generation, and flexibility with self-healing. Also, what people don't often mention is how the massive ballooning of tank HP vs. the lesser scaling of damage has influenced this balance. When you have 34k HP + Equilibrium, you can live a long time with only supplementary healing from HoTs and fairies. That's a big boost from 27k HP + no Equilibrium. Your healers can top you off and then go to DPS town with little worry.

[Reynhart]

Every good tank views their tank stance as an additional defensive CD.

It is, but in your case, you're not talkin just about Defiance, but Defiance + Unchained, which means that you're restricted by a cooldown. Besides, what makes WAR great at mitigation is Inner Beast. Without it, it has clearly less mitigation tools than PLD or DRK. So that defensive setup, in this situation, is cheaper for PLD and DRK than for WAR.

I'll make calculations on how PLD and WAR would compare on these 20 seconds :
Let's suppose that both tanks are in DPS stance, with every combo already active (Maim, Eye, Goring Blade, Halone...)

As a WAR, you pop Defiance+Unchained, then do the combo you mentionned : Eye combo (150+190+270) - BB combo (150+200+280)+ HS (150) + Maim (190) for a total of 1580 potency. With buffs, you have 1580*1.2(Maim)*1.1(Eye) = 2085 potency with a 25% eHP increase thanks to Defiance.

As a PLD, you pop Rampart, then do (at worst) Halone Combo (150+200+260), RA combo (150+200+340)+FB (150) + RB (230) for a total of 1680 potency. BUT, you also have a tick of Goring Blade and Sword Oath for approximately each GCD adding up to 800 potency. I'll remove two ticks of Goring because the GCD is lower, so 700. So 1680+700 = 2380. For the same eHP increase thanks to Rampart. On top of that, PLD will probably have Sheltron available to stack.

So, if the mitigation from your tank stance is enough to survive those 20s, then WAR is actually weaker than PLD on that window (And keep in mind that I didn't count Storm's Eye for the PLD). So, it would be better to let the PLD tank for that time, in SwO with Rampart, and use those abandon stacks for Fell Cleave while staying in Deliverance.

[Syhrwyb]

Reading is hard though! BabyRage

[Gameplayzero]

Reading is hard though! BabyRage

honestly these forums have been rather frustrating to go through lately. Same with healer forums too. Maybe brian was possibly including our little "argument" in my xeno thread, but there are a lot of people just saying stuff just to say stuff. They are arguing just for the sake of arguing and being childish/rude. When there are actual civilized debates with actual data/examples its really fun learning things (which is why I even bother coming here still), but some people just want to add their personal opinions into things and make it worse.

I even question if a lot of the people here actually raid or research before chiming in. This is why I wish the skill gap for the game was higher. Right now you could have a monkey play a tank/dps in expert roulette (OR BOTH) and completely get through the instance still. Its just a lot of people aren't punished except in raid content and don't know right vs wrong.

internet be damned.

[Brian_]

No, what makes WAR great at mitigation is the fact that they are a WAR. Like I said earlier, WAR has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to mitigation and that is the reason why we do not need to dig deep enough in our toolkit that Unchained becomes relevant. So, IB or no IB, WAR is more than adequately equipped for all the current content in this game. As a raiding WAR, I never use IB. But, because you are just running your mouth on topics you don't understand, of course you wouldn't know this.

Between Holmgang having a 180s recast (as opposed to the 300s recast of LD and the 420s recast of HG) and Vengeance / Thrill having a 120s recast (as opposed to the 180s recasts of Shadow Wall and Sentinel), WAR has a very easy time with mitigation. The only time where they don't have adequate mitigation without IB is in the hypothetical scenario where you are taking a magic tank buster that demands high mitigation on a <120s recast in a situation where you cannot tank swap. That situation will remain hypothetical because the PLD is even more hopeless given those conditions.

What you fail to comprehend is that Unchained + Defiance exists in addition to a toolkit that is already over equipped for current damage intake.

Rampart does not.

And great, PLD does more damage than WAR over a very selective 20s window. If only you structured tank swaps in raid content in 20s intervals.

[Reynhart]

As a raiding WAR, I never use IB. But, because you are just running your mouth on topics you don't understand, of course you wouldn't know this.

So you're not using IB and only stay in Defiance for the duration of Unchained ? Great...then a PLD can do better than you.

Between Holmgang having a 180s recast (as opposed to the 300s recast of LD and the 420s recast of HG) and Vengeance / Thrill having a 120s recast (as opposed to the 180s recasts of Shadow Wall and Sentinel), WAR has a very easy time with mitigation.

How convenient to forgot that Sheltron gives a better eHP increase that Thrill Of Battle, right ? And has a recast of 30s, allowing it to be paired with every other mitigation cooldown.
It's not that difficult to calculate that Thrill Of Battle + Vengeance + Raw Intuition offer less mitigation than Sheltron + Rampart + Sentinel + Bulwark. Do the math...

What you fail to comprehend is that Unchained + Defiance exists in addition to a toolkit that is already over equipped for current damage intake.

That's exactly where you're wrong. Unchained lowers your mitigation toolkit.

[Brian_]

So you're not using IB and only stay in Defiance for the duration of Unchained ? Great...then a PLD can do better than you.

How convenient to forgot that Sheltron gives a better eHP increase that Thrill Of Battle, right ? And has a recast of 30s, allowing it to be paired with every other mitigation cooldown.
It's not that difficult to calculate that Thrill Of Battle + Vengeance + Raw Intuition offer less mitigation than Sheltron + Rampart + Sentinel + Bulwark. Do the math...

That's exactly where you're wrong. Unchained lowers your mitigation toolkit.

No, I basically spend 100% of A5S - our current A8S progression in Deliverance.

Bulwark and Sentinel have 180s CDs. That means you will often not be able to use them on consecutive tank busters. I don't even know why I bother with people who clearly don't raid yet want to talk about things that only matter for raiding and use standards as stupid as "hey if you use all your CDs you have higher mitigation so PLD>WAR!" As a PLD, you are almost always rotating Rampart + some light CDs, Sentinel, and Hallowed Ground to create a full CD rotation for an encounter. Bulwark is not a CD you use to mitigate important damage.

Take early A1S progression for example. Back then, PLDs had to stack Rampart, Sentinel and ShO in order to survive. Because the next tank buster was roughly 120 seconds later, they needed to use HG to mitigate that one because Sentinel was not yet off CD. But, WARs could just use Thrill and Vengeance for all three because their CDs were short enough. As such, they had a ton of flexibility with their CDs because they still had Holmgang in their back pocket.

Or, look at A7S P3-->P5. If you use Sentinel on the first P3 Uplander Doom, it will not be ready for the P5 Uplander Doom during ball-phase. WARs don't have this problem even without the use of IB because of the shorter CD on Vengeance and Thrill.

That is why WARs are more than adequately equipped to deal with all current content even without IB. They have way more mitigation than they need.

How about you actually do some content that actually demands you know how to play your job before you tell other people "facts" and ask them to do some irrelevant math.

And how Unchained lowers a WAR's mitigation toolkit when it's purely a bonus is beyond me.

[JackFross]

It is my oppinion that a WAR that's MT'ing should rely on Inner Beast rather than Unchained, as it can hold aggro anyway and the 6 seconds of mitigation and the 300 potency self-heal offers more Raid-wide benefits than "Pulling harder on the boss I'm already pulling and holding".

Man, I stopped reading this post at the DPS stuff. I never realized how WILDLY off-base you are toward the topic of this thread.

Let me break this down for you. The WAR is changing their opener from Deliverance all the way to:

[Defiance>Infuriate>wait for the timer>vengeance>Unchained on pull]>
Tomahawk>2 combos>Deliverance>Berserk>Fell Cleave>normal Berserk opener.

Literally ALL YOU LOSE is 5% on those first 7 GCDs.

In contrast, the PLD or DRK get to open the fight out of tank stance and use zero enmity grabbing moves (which constitute a DPS loss for either other tank), only using one when they provoke off the WAR at Pacification to assume their proper spot in the MT position.

I am completely baffled as to how you're missing this point - or how anyone is missing this point and still whining and bitching about "BUT MUH DEEPS" when it's a drastic raid DPS boon to have the WAR pull with Defiance+Unchained, rather than force the DRK or PLD into tank stance on pull in order to hold against the bursting DPS.

How convenient to forgot that Sheltron gives a better eHP increase that Thrill Of Battle, right ?

I'm just gonna go ahead and tap you on the head and give you a sticker.

Sheltron looks really good on paper, but its uses are so few and far between for anything other than Shield Swipe procs. It requires a very specific situation for it to be worthwhile, and PLD sees a very tiny amount of those scenarios in Savage Midas - if they even see any at all. Almost every physical tank buster in Midas is multiple hits back-to-back, which makes Sheltron basically worthless, whereas Thrill+Equilibrium works significantly better.
"But that's two cooldowns!"
Equilibrium is a 60s CD that is usually used in Deliverance for a TP boost. Trading a TP boost for a health boost to mitigate incoming damage is not using an extra CD.

[AaronHughes]

A warrior's enmity combo, Butcher's Block, is their highest potency combo. In comparison, a Paladin's Rage of Halone combo is 90! potency less than Royal Authority. So naturally a Paladin will want to avoid using RoH as much as possible, while Butcher's Block is a natural part of a warrior's highest DPS rotation. We've already established that PLD/DRK benefit from holding the boss's aggro, but almost ironically they are the worst classes to generate hate with. Warrior is the only class that can almost completely negate the damage penalty of their tank stance thanks to Unchained, and it would be a waste to not let them do it. One fell cleave does not make up for both tanks getting to stay in dps for the entirety of a fight. Pacification is a convenient time to provoke, and remember you can accomplish all of this without the need for shadewalker from a NIN.

Of course we're talking about high level play, not your average pug.

[MagiusNecros]

The only encounter that is both relevant and affording Sheltron higher eHP than Thrill of Battle is Sephirot Extreme in the first phase of the fight. The final phase of A8N (not sure re: A8S, since I don't know the DRP timings there) counts, too, I suppose.

The real question I'd be asking is why does Sheltron block all the damage for the one TB attack in Sephy Ex but doesn't for any other physical only TB in any other trial. Eh? EH!?