Paladin too overpowered, nerf their damage output!

[Tegernako]

They're far from overpowered. WAR dished out an immense amount of damage throughout much of 2.0 and 3.0 whilst PLD was forced to hit like a wet noodle by comparison. It's fair for PLD to finally be in a strong spot after being stuck in a horrible spot for the better part of two expansions.

This is a complete lie. I didn't even play 2.0 when it was relevant (joined after weeping city) and even I know that PLD was not bad in both damage or utility for 2.0.

3.0 was bad because it had meta issues that kept it from being...meta not because it couldn't do damage.

Reading the tank forums makes me wonder if the people who claim that WAR doesn't have the best defense in the game have never read their skill tooltips. 20% damage reduction +100% parry rate on a 90 sec CD, +20% max HP plus heal and 30% damage reduction on 2 min CDs, and an immunity on a 3 min CD. How is that even the worst defense? WAR has the best defense in the game by a massive margin, and that's not even counting Inner Beast, which honestly isn't counted cause using Defiance guts your DPS by way too much. Seriously though, WAR has a CD for every tank buster a fight can throw and a lot of CDs to spare for stray damage. WAR doesn't need a shield...
DRK, on the other hand is in dire need of defensive CD recast reductions for anything non-magical.

So this is what I think.

WAR does not have a single unique CD that does not involve either taking damage or dishing out damage excluding two (something the other tanks share). They are on a low CD because everything about WAR is based on taking damage and dishing it out unlike PLD and DRK which have skills that give them sustain or reduction without damage being a factor. The 100% parry is really good...but it also requires you to be taking damage to even work.

It also has by far, the worst tank stance in the entire game, one that is not affected by effects from abilities (like SCH's fairy healing doesn't give the 20% extra healing the tooltip says it does). The only time it ever gives an equivalent amount of damage reduction is when WAR is at full health with defiance on, at any other point it's worse then PLD/DRK's stance. For instance lets assume all three tanks have 20k health. if an attack that does exactly 20k hits DRK/PLD with their stance on, they will survive it. If it hits WAR with their tank stance on they will die.

The short CD's are to make up for how WAR plays different from other tanks. It also has very little self sustain now that BB is gone, and IB and Path are nerfed in the amount they heal.

DRK does have the worst defensive CD though. I don't disagree. Just trying to explain why I think WAR is the way it is, it's because of how the job plays and how it has to take and dish out damage in order to get any of those incredible benefits you just listed. Also as you admitted, IB destroys WAR's overall dps which means ppl generally avoid using it.

I mean, imagine how WAR would be if their CD's were like the other tanks right now. It'd be really bad wouldn't it? You can see now how much WAR as a job depends on those low CD's because everything it does is about damage whether it's taking it or dishing it out. And you can not do that if you have long CD's. Yes they are really good CD's but it's to make up for us having to be more aggressive in taking damage as well.

The fact that our level 70 abillity, our so called "raid utility" is just pure damage reinforces that notion I'd think

[Duelle]

3.0 was bad because it had meta issues that kept it from being...meta not because it couldn't do damage.

3.0's meta revolved around dealing as much damage as possible. PLD didn't have a way to circumvent the built-in limits from Shield Oath the way WAR did (because swapping out of Shield Oath cost MP, broke combos and cost you a GCD), so they got hit the hardest and fell under the most scrutiny during Heavensward. Gordias being designed for DRK didn't help, between DRK's higher DPS potential (which helped with the DPS checks) and magic tankbusters for it to mitigate. That people decided that Divine Veil and Clemency were worthless because they couldn't be used all the time was the nail in the coffin at the time.

Basically, a good chunk of the post-Gordias patches and hotfixes involved the devs attempting to move PLD in a specific direction in response to the meta that was forming. This includes the buffs to Royal Authority, Goring Blade, Circle of Scorn and changes to Shield Swipe (memory's fuzzy, but I know they also did something to Shield Oath's damage penalty). And the reason for that was PLD not dealing enough damage.

WAR does not have a single unique CD that does not involve either taking damage or dishing out damage excluding two (something the other tanks share). They are on a low CD because everything about WAR is based on taking damage and dishing it out unlike PLD and DRK which have skills that give them sustain or reduction without damage being a factor.

Raw Intuition is a click-to-activate mitigation cooldown. It's a frontal physical damage Rampart because of parries being capped at 20% mitigation (which already outclasses Bulwark due to being 100% proc rate and having half the cooldown).

Vengeance only dishes out damage when you take a hit. Remove that aspect and it's no different from Shadow Wall (it's actually better because it has a 120s cooldown compared to Shadow Wall's 180s cooldown and lasts 15s instead of 10s while offering the exact same mitigation).

Thrill of Battle is not dependent on you dealing or taking damage. 20% extra HP doesn't sound like much until you factor the boost from Defiance.

Holmgang might be the only ability that shows its worth when taking damage, since hitting that invincibility threshold (1 HP) is the only way you can tell the ability is doing its job.

The 100% parry is really good...but it also requires you to be taking damage to even work.

That's no different from any other cooldowns. Popping Sentinel during a no-damage phase is as useful as popping Raw Intuition during same.

It also has by far, the worst tank stance in the entire game, one that is not affected by effects from abilities (like SCH's fairy healing doesn't give the 20% extra healing the tooltip says it does). The only time it ever gives an equivalent amount of damage reduction is when WAR is at full health with defiance on, at any other point it's worse then PLD/DRK's stance.

This is only because of what was done to Defiance with the expansion (which was either an oversight or because the devs thought abilities doing increased healing to WAR was overpowered somehow). Pre-Stormblood, Defiance's HP boost plus the bonuses to healing received gave WAR the exact same eHP as a PLD in Shield Oath. In fact, we had that discussion for a while to squash the misconception that WAR was an off-tank or should not main tank because of Defiance offering no passive mitigation like Shield Oath.

For instance lets assume all three tanks have 20k health. if an attack that does exactly 20k hits DRK/PLD with their stance on, they will survive it. If it hits WAR with their tank stance on they will die.

If all three tanks have baseline 20K health, that means that PLD/DRK would take 20% less damage in Shield Oath/Grit while having 20K HP. A WAR in Defiance would have 25K HP (24K pre-Stormblood) and the bonuses to healing received. The PLD/DRK would take net damage of 16K damage assuming no adlo, having 4K HP left. The WAR would take the full 20K and have 5K HP left. They'd be fine.

[Reynhart]

This is only because of what was done to Defiance with the expansion (which was either an oversight or because the devs thought abilities doing increased healing to WAR was overpowered somehow). Pre-Stormblood, Defiance's HP boost plus the bonuses to healing received gave WAR the exact same eHP as a PLD in Shield Oath.

No, Defiance was always slightly lower than ShO (and Grit) in terms of eHP and never worked on abilities. But, WAR's toolkit easily compensate for that slight handicap, to the point where it's meaningless.

[aleph_null]

No, Defiance was always slightly lower than ShO (and Grit) in terms of eHP and never worked on abilities. But, WAR's toolkit easily compensate for that slight handicap, to the point where it's meaningless.

If anything I'd say defiance is very powerful in progression, where there are a lot of "oh shit" moments where parts you plan to be in dps stance go wrong and you have to immediately go into tank stance. Combine that with equilibrium for hp top up and inner beast for the next few seconds, and on top of that the lack of cost to switch back to dps stance, those make war really good for progression. You are absolutely right that we cannot see defiance vs grit/shield oath in a vacuum, since we have inner beast and equilibrium locked behind it. On the other hand, as a war staying in tank stance costs more dps than the other tanks, even back in 3.x so if you stay in defiance all the time you're punished harder than the other tanks in terms of dps.

[Reynhart]

If anything I'd say defiance is very powerful in progression

I'm only talking about raw eHP.

[Chrono_Rising]

WAR does not have a single unique CD that does not involve either taking damage or dishing out damage excluding two (something the other tanks share). They are on a low CD because everything about WAR is based on taking damage and dishing it out unlike PLD and DRK which have skills that give them sustain or reduction without damage being a factor. The 100% parry is really good...but it also requires you to be taking damage to even work.

This doesn't really make sense to me, if we are talking about mitigation they all are going to revolve around taking damage. As you've stated Warrior has raw intuition which works as a mitigation (different from the other two) and warrior has other eHP buffs like thrill of battle (which is a nice pinch heal as well). Parry only works against physical attacks, the analog on dark is dark mind which only works on magical attacks, and paladin has bulwark which works on everything but is RNG and on a rediculous timer. Self sustain wise you have equilibrium, though it does come with tank stance penalty, pld has clemecy (spammable but an even larger dps loss), and dark knight has soul eater (grit locked because reasons) and abyssal if there are enough adds to justify the huge mp cost.

It also has by far, the worst tank stance in the entire game, one that is not affected by effects from abilities (like SCH's fairy healing doesn't give the 20% extra healing the tooltip says it does).

This is partially true, the warrior healing bonus is not affected by things like tetra or essential or any other instant cast ability outside of regens. However, the sch fairy healing is buffed by warrior tank stance. I did some testing last night, my dark and paladin get healed for approximately 3100 per embrace, switching to warrior and the embraces went to approximately 3700, which is a 20% bonus. Similar results obtained with whispering dawn, but not with Fey Union.

The only time it ever gives an equivalent amount of damage reduction is when WAR is at full health with defiance on, at any other point it's worse then PLD/DRK's stance. For instance lets assume all three tanks have 20k health. if an attack that does exactly 20k hits DRK/PLD with their stance on, they will survive it. If it hits WAR with their tank stance on they will die.

Is this to say that the warrior have 20k hp in tank stance, or the warrior is at 20k before tank stance and then switches into tank stance to get 25k, but remains at 20k because they don't get healed for the switch? If its the latter (and I think it is) then either 1 of 2 things failed:
(1) the warrior entered tank stance too late to be healed by the healer and did not have equilibrium up to heal themselves (in this case the pld and dark may die as well since the server tick may not see the mitigation until after the attack if it was put up this late)
(2) the healer does not understand how warrior tank stance works (nothing you can do about that, it is alarming considering how long warrior has been around. More frightening I've met warrior's who didn't understand they did not have mitigation on their tank stance).

The real advantage of warrior's tank stance is the fact that they can very fluidly switch stances at no cost to themselves other than the damage penalty from tank stance. Warrior's do have the highest damage penalty in this respect, but when you consider how little you need to be in tank stance in most single target fights the lost gcd from dark knight or paladin activating tank stance for such a short period of time likely balances warrior's higher penalty (I wonder if anyone has mathed this one out).

This is also ignoring the fact that in most of savage, even undergeared tanks are able to leave tank stance for 99% of the fight (I have not cleared v4s but we are progressing and I see nothing to indicate I must be in tank stance yet). When you take that into account the short cooldowns of warrior put them into a mitigation tier of their own in comparison to dark knight and paladin.

[Fernosaur]

WAR does not have a single unique CD that does not involve either taking damage or dishing out damage excluding two (something the other tanks share). They are on a low CD because everything about WAR is based on taking damage and dishing it out unlike PLD and DRK which have skills that give them sustain or reduction without damage being a factor. The 100% parry is really good...but it also requires you to be taking damage to even work.

I hope this doesn't come off as mean, but I have no idea what you mean by this entire paragraph, sorry. At least in the context of my post?

I'm talking strictly about defensive CDs, ie. Rampart, Vengance, Sentinel, etc. WAR has 5 defensive CDs on extremely short recasts. Only four if the fight is exclusively magical due to Raw Intuition only working on physical damage. If anything, PLD and DRK also have skills which absolutely require them to be getting hit (Shield Swipe and Blood Price, not to mention Shield Oath building oath through blocks). I don't know what's the point you're trying to make here, whether or not you're taking damage doesn't change the fact that WAR's CD suite has a much higher uptime than the other two tanks due to the short recasts and abundance in number.

[B][I][U][COLOR="darkred"] It also has by far, the worst tank stance in the entire game, one that is not affected by effects from abilities (like SCH's fairy healing doesn't give the 20% extra healing the tooltip says it does). The only time it ever gives an equivalent amount of damage reduction is when WAR is at full health with defiance on, at any other point it's worse then PLD/DRK's stance. For instance lets assume all three tanks have 20k health. if an attack that does exactly 20k hits DRK/PLD with their stance on, they will survive it. If it hits WAR with their tank stance on they will die.

The short CD's are to make up for how WAR plays different from other tanks. It also has very little self sustain now that BB is gone, and IB and Path are nerfed in the amount they heal.

Embrace from SCH's fairy does get buffed by Defiance because Embrace is a spell, as is Whispering Dawn. It doesn't affect Tetra, Lustrate, Essential, etc, no, but quite honestly whether a tank stance is great or not isn't even THAT important for balance because you'll avoid tank stance anyways if you're optimizing. And when it comes to mitigation out of tank stance, Warrior is way superior to both of the other tanks. DRK has a great tool for tank busters in TBN, but is awfully lacking for stray damage. PLD is so-so when it comes to stray damage tools due to the very lenthy CD on Sentinel and Hallowed Ground.

I agree with Lyth on most things they said: if they keep buffing WAR we're gonna find ourselves in a situation very similar to HW.