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.