My apologies, just one last question in regards to the tanks.

[Renryuu]

Hello, I greatly apologize for being such a bother on the boards but I have one last question that (well it's less of a question and more of a request on advice) has to do with the 3 tanks in general. Currently, I have 55 Drk, 42 Pld, and 16 Mrd. Honestly I don't really see myself ever doing Mrd/War since I'm a bigger fan of swords and I'd rather not level up yet another class from such a low level.

Logic dictates that I should just level Drk to 60 and use it, but I can't help but have a nagging feeling that if I want to be a proper tank, I should go Pld. I just want to be a tank that can best help a group as a whole and could even eventually get into non savage raiding once I get things sorted out. So I wanna ask those that have much better experiences than I do, of Drk and Pld, which would be the most beneficial to a group in non-savage levels of content?

[Kitfox]

DRK is by far the better tank for casual content along with WAR. PLD is absolutely terrible for any dungeon or AoE situation since Flash doesn't do damage. All tanks are proper tanks. DRK is in no way less of a tank than PLD is.

[Rongway]

PLD is absolutely terrible for any dungeon or AoE situation since Flash doesn't do damage.

An invincible PLD spamming Flash with a healer spamming Holy/Gravity will out damage a DRK/WAR spamming AoE moves with a healer spamming Cure.

A good DRK/WAR can be an exception, but even a terrible PLD is still easier to heal than a mid tier DRK/WAR.

[Kitfox]

An invincible PLD spamming Flash with a healer spamming Holy/Gravity will out damage a DRK/WAR spamming AoE moves with a healer spamming Cure.

I challenge your idea with a DRK in Living Dead spamming AoE damage with no tank stance, with WHM spamming Holy and topping DRK off with a Benediction at the end of Walking Dead. Also, do not underestimate WAR's AoE burst even if the healer had to heal them a little more, it's insane and definitely on par with WHM Holy spam. Both cases also come with a shorter cooldown than Hallowed Ground. PLD is still the worst tank for dungeons.

[Rongway]

I challenge your idea with a DRK in Living Dead spamming AoE damage with no tank stance, with WHM spamming Holy and topping DRK off with a Benediction at the end of Walking Dead. Also, do not underestimate WAR's AoE burst even if the healer had to heal them a little more, it's insane and definitely on par with WHM Holy spam. Both cases also come with a shorter cooldown than Hallowed Ground. PLD is still the worst tank for dungeons.

PLD doesn't need Hallowed Ground to be sitting at near-full HP for the entirety of a ginormous pull. An AST can put up regens on a PLD and then cast nothing but Gravity til the end of the fight, and still have the resources to do it again on the next pull. Any non-PLD tanks for whom that can also be said are outliers and certainly not the norm.

[Launched]

PLD doesn't need Hallowed Ground to be sitting at near-full HP for the entirety of a ginormous pull. An AST can put up regens on a PLD and then cast nothing but Gravity til the end of the fight, and still have the resources to do it again on the next pull. Any non-PLD tanks for whom that can also be said are outliers and certainly not the norm.

Wrong, PLD's cooldowns aren't any better suited to tanking big packs than WAR/DRK. Those two should be easier to heal on almost every pull because they can get high self healing from their aoe damage and they have cooldowns that are at least as good as PLD's.

[Malicewolf]

PLD doesn't need Hallowed Ground to be sitting at near-full HP for the entirety of a ginormous pull. An AST can put up regens on a PLD and then cast nothing but Gravity til the end of the fight, and still have the resources to do it again on the next pull. Any non-PLD tanks for whom that can also be said are outliers and certainly not the norm.

dot dot dot
Yea, are you talking about doing copperbell or something? The new dungeons mobs pack a decent punch even without grabbing huge pulls. Yes, a good healer can keep a good tank up without issues, but PLD's aren't THAT invincible (i would know, I main one). I've tanked the ground plenty of times due to lack of heals and sometimes, trusting my healer too much ("yea yea, don't worry i'm just going to get the 10% buff, i'll bene you in time for sure!" *dead*)

But I've also played WAR and by no means do I feel like I'm better off as a PLD doing big pulls. Infact, I usually sustain MORE damage because the mobs die more slowly. Best I can do is fight or flight, bloodbath, circle of scorn. And a holy spamming WHM has a downfall too. If the other 2 DPS are derps that can't help AoE, the WHM is OOM and you're low hp with no CD's and probably long out of mana (riot blade and sheltron all day). Could Clemency as well, but that takes up 2/5 of your mana, which means after 2, good luck flashing to hold aggro.

I've had plenty of good WHM's holy spam big pulls while I'm my WAR and it goes beautifully. Usually much better than big pulls with my PLD. A good PLD will make big pulls even as a PLD go well, yes. But a good WAR or DRK will too. And they'll kill the mob faster doing it.

[Seku]

An invincible PLD spamming Flash with a healer spamming Holy/Gravity will out damage a DRK/WAR spamming AoE moves with a healer spamming Cure.

A good DRK/WAR can be an exception, but even a terrible PLD is still easier to heal than a mid tier DRK/WAR.

Someone doesn't know how to play a "mid tier" DRK/WAR.

To the OP. As I said in your other post. As far as cool downs go, PLD and DRK play just about the same when it comes to their standard cool downs at the start, thus playing PLD isn't going to 100% teach you how to tank. DRK is probably about to get a bit harder for you and as you gain new skills, I'd slow down the leveling and get use to your oGCD's and mixing your defensive cool downs together a bit or the damage you take will more than likely go up.

[Rongway]

Someone doesn't know how to play a "mid tier" DRK/WAR.

I know how to play a fabulous AST, and while Launched's points about what should be are true on paper, they are at least not true in execution on Primal's DF. In DR:Expert and DR:60, for 9/10 PLDs trash pulls are three GCDs of buffs going up and then Gravity spam til everything's dead, while I can only say that for at most 1/10 of the DRKs and WARs I've been paired with.

In this case I'm not making any claims about potency math and theory, nor am I saying that WAR and DRK played to their potential are anything but amazing. I'm saying that in practice, as AST, on Primal, in DF, when paired with random DRKs/WARs, there be more healing and far less gravitying than there would be on the same sized pulls with a PLD.

[Kitfox]

...I'm saying that in practice, as AST, on Primal, in DF...

I only ever see about 1 in 30 people who can actually play the game and their class at any decent level in DF. Maybe we should base our arguments on actual class mechanics instead of anecdotal evidence with low-skill, low-incentivized players? Otherwise we can just conclude no healer class is capable of DPS, especially AST, and all DPS classes are terrible because a decent WAR/DRK will out damage them in DF. Nothing to do with math of course, but who cares about theory when the reality obviously dictates otherwise.

You could have a point about PLD being easier to play, but that's only really true when talking about the offensive aspects of the class regarding their rotation. Defensively, all tanks just pop cooldowns and basically spam one ability for some AoE hate. There are valid good points to PLD, but running dungeons is not one of them. They're good for high physical damage bosses due to STR debuff and shield mitigation, frequent single-hit tank busters due to Sheltron, and cheesing hard mechanics with Hallowed Ground, hands down the best tank ultimate.