Quote Originally Posted by Tegernako View Post
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.