Vet gamer returning and would like some insight please

[ZioSerpe]

Hahahahahahahaha! Oh my god!

Haha... Oh wait. You are serious...

Umm. Well besides the fact that WAR is borderline, if not completely, overpowered SCH itself was a terrible idea and a game's balance nightmare. If you truly think they are the most well done jobs in the game I can't help but think you are clueless to how a game's actual balance works and re blind to how much problems both jobs have caused with their screwy kits and power. Being overpowered is NOT the same as being well designed.

This is coming from someone who mained SCH.

But apparently being overpowered means not being well designed...
Warrior is well designed, ok is overpowered, but that doesn't mean is badly designed, your argumenrt is bad.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Thanks, very helpful. My wife plays a scholar main and whitemage as her offspec. As a paladin I wouldnt benefit as much from stoneskin and protect. Is there a tank that meshes better with scholar then others at 60? I am leaning toward warrior atm. Thinking I will like situations where I get to offtank so I can not always be locked into tanking the boss 24/7 and get to roam around a bit.

Dungeons yeah WHM or SCH would cover that nicely but when it comes to Raiding it helps save MP for them,

[aleph_null]

If you plan to only have one tank leveled up to 60, I recommend war or drk. They're better than pld for dungeons due to pld's lack of aoe dmg, and has higher single target dps as well (war wins among the 3 tanks, since drk won't have storm's eye in 1 tank dungeons). War and drk are also much better when you do unsync lower lv dungeons with your wife as a healer (sometimes you have to do lv 50 contents and many of them can be done with 2 geared lv 60s so you don't have to wait for duty finder).

For raiding, nearly every single group out there has a war due to how powerful it is in terms of dps and utilities (and how bad a pld/drk composition is compared to pld/war or drk/war). While pld and drk are also desired for raids, you might be expected to be able to switch around between the two depending on the raid, pld excels in physical dmg heavy fights, while drk excels in magic dmg heavy fights, and the other tank slot is almost always reserved for war. This will become less relevant due to overgearing though.

However since you mentioned that you don't like the complexity of rotations of melee dps jobs, you probably want to know that drk has more off-gcd skills that are weaved between gcd skills, as well as resource (mp) management, making it more complex than war/pld (pld is the simplest tank, rotation wise).

[shao32]

wait we going again to WAR vs PLD/DRK performance war again..... sigh.

"WAR is the standard every other job should live up to" thats make me laugh, all jobs have flaws all of then except the mighty WAR, and the job dont have any weaknes in any field, the only weaknes is the "dps loose" the main WARs are using like a excuse, defiance and WAR skill set is the best mitigation set of the game plus self heals, have the best suppot and best dps, but yeah we live in the DPS era so if you loose dps then hey you have a flaw of the job even if you compared to the other tanks you still have the best dps except vs DRK on MT on same conditions.

[Brian_]

wait we going again to WAR vs PLD/DRK performance war again..... sigh.

Except his post wasn't about performance, it was about design. And regardless of performance, WAR is better designed than DRK and PLD and should be the standard for tank design.

Having proc based skills / conditions like Reprisal, Shield Swipe, Low Blow in a game that splits MT up-time and doesn't offer alternative means of activation is bad design. Having tanks that rely on Parry / Block for optimization when those stats are complete dead weight outside of when they're taking hits is bad design.

With WAR, their conditional benefits / CDs like Vengeance and RI have an important usage outside of when they're getting hit because they enable your triple FC rotation and at least give a stack. Equilibrium has a function both in Defiance and in Deliverance that is relevant to the purpose of each stance (more sustain = better survivability, more TP = more DPS). You have actual options for how you spend your resources that again has synergy with your stance rather than just spend MP = DPS. Your CDs have actual synergy like Berserk buffing the healing factor of Blood Bath, Equilibrium, and Second Wind rather than the counter synergy of Dark Dance / DADP and Blood Price or the complete lack of cohesive design with FoF and Flash / Clemency. You have one defensive kit that works well regardless of damage type rather than this forced physical / magic BS that has MTs juggling two jobs for progression. You have innate TP sustain from 0 TP GCDs and Equilibrium rather than the suggestion that you beg for Goad or bribe your BRD / MCH when you bottom out on TP.

WAR should be the standard for tank design. Maybe you enjoy playing poorly designed jobs for the challenge but PvE shouldn't be about you trying to fight against crappy job design.

[shao32]

snip

so you idea of the tank future is make PLD and DRK one man army too? PLD and DRK work pretty well in the rolethey sets and desing have nothing to do, most of the WAR power (for not say all) is about numbers, DPS, they mitigation and they recast and they self heals, they can make PLD like WAR by only changing ftf to be a AP% increse, reducing the coldowns of rampath and sentinel a lot and making clemency instan cast, change divine veil or reduce recast a lot and some damage aoe on flash, booom there PLD at level of a war and i dont touch cover.

what i want to say the job desing no mather, WAR desing can be call trash the moment another tank do the same or more with more or less the same effort ergo what it was doing WAR this expansion, nothing more.

[aleph_null]

Personally I don't think it matters much whether the devs choose to nerf war or buff pld and drk, people will simply figure out the new best compositions and optimize around them. If somehow in a later patch/expansion the new optimal raid composition uses drk/pld then I'll just move on and level and gear up both.

[Vicus]

Thanks for all the assistance. Randomly I went and leveled a black mage and I am having a blast. Go Figure.

[Llus]

Be careful if you're looking for end-game raids because PLD doesn't synergize as well with DRK. PLD/DRK combo is almost never wanted because DRK as MT procs more damage (and defense - reprisal, 20% damage down + 210 potency attack after parrying a blow, low blow 30% chance of reset after a parry) and PLD in an OT role paried with DRK vs WAR as OT paired with DRK is a raid DPS 101 mistake. At this point, WAR is a no-brainer OT everyone wants and DRK is the MT everyone wants (there are situations where this is reversed though). DRK is much harder to play very well vs PLD or WAR; and MP isn't a huge issue once you know the rotations. Their defensive CDs are on-par with both WAR and PLD and bring a huge DPS boost to overall raid damage. If you're choosing between PLD and WAR; go WAR - but do some research on DRK. I suspect SE will do something about the imbalance with PLD in an OT role pairing with DRK; but don't expect anything any time soon.

[Brian_]

My idea of the future of PLD and DRK is one where they're equally capable as MTs and OTs, synergistic with various comps, have no dead skills, have utility that is always relevant even if it's sometimes quite marginal, no counter synergy or lack of synergy between their skills, are fluid and intuitive to play, and are thematically consistent. Because that's what WAR is right now. I don't see how any reasonable person could disagree with wanting that for all tanks.

Again, you are fixated on performance. The original post was not about performance, it was about design. Even if you buff PLD and DRK numbers to imbalanced levels and flush WAR out of the meta, the fact that WAR has better design doesn't change.