WAR raid "UTILITY" (Tank Balanced achieved?)

[Chrono_Rising]

Thanks for reminding me Chrono, I do wish more people understood what TBN being a DPS loss really means. Most just parrot "ITS A DPS LOSS" like its the end of the world. As you state, it is -6 potency per use. Considering 15 sec is roughly 1600 potency (6 gcds, avg 266ish) then you loose 6 out of 1600 potency if you use TBN on cooldown. That is 0.389%. A fraction of 1%. Another way, if you do 3000 DPS during a fight, use TBN out of grit EVERY 15 sec for the ENTIRE fight, your DPS would drop by a whopping 11.6. 11 dps per 3 THOUSAND. Technically it is a DPS loss in the most literal terms. But dear god it doesn't have any practical meaning. THIS IS NOT WHY DRK HAS PROBLEMS. Jesus. Its completely inconsequential to balance.

Yes, but this is a completely unnecessary penalty. Giving that 6 potency to drk isn’t about fixing the balance per se and 6 potency won't make dark op as hell either, 6 potency will not close the damage gap even slightly; its making the class consistent with its own design (everything and its mother is 140 potency gain when using dark arts TBN costs a dark arts and returns a dark arts – 6 potency why LOL) while simultaneously not punishing the tank for mitigating. As you said, fixing this part of TBN’s mitigation aspect just makes the utility favorable to use and increases darks standing with its own utility.

War has 1 more CD than Drk without an equivalent (ToB). Pld does too (only if you use passage as a personal mitigation tool instead of raid mitigation which is debatable itself. I don't see it used that way.) So yes, in tank stance, war has the most personal mitigation CDs and is the toughest to kill between that bonus, equilibrium, and IB generally being a smidge better than both TBN/Shelltron for mitigation while doing excellent tank stance damage (upheaval, IB ignoring penalty, Unchained+zerk etc). However, the point is generally to AVOID tank stance in the current meta so being the best tank in tank stance isn't all its cracked up to be.

Dark: Rampart, TBN, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind
Warrior: Rampart, TOB, Vengence, Raw intuition (Am I missing one?)
The issue here is one of usefulness and uptime. Vengeance and raw intuition are both longer and vengeance is on a shorter cooldown than Shadow wall on dark. Raw intuition is on a longer cooldown, but the cooldown is not proportional to the duration, it is 30 seconds shorter than you would expect compared to dark mind. The difference comes from TBN, but again the meta optimizing world wants to avoid this for being a small loss for mitigating (please just give us the 6 potency). Sure it can help healers, but why not tank swap constantly and have both tanks cycle their mitigation without the dps loss (possible with paladin war) and have even more mitigation for healers to dps. In fact this works well since shirk is a tank dps gain and needs frequent reuse (minute to minute and a half reuses to maximiz). It is crazy but you don’t need tank stance, or enmity combo. But these small differences in mitigation duration add up and make warrior not as squishy as one would expect, provided we aren’t trying to solo tank things anymore. The issue is this turn does not utilize as many magical autos, which puts dark mind at a disadvantage for in between mitigation, where warrior and paladin are both well equipped to deal with these things. As for paladin, bulwark is a chance at mitigating. Which means it might be helpful, or it might not be, I’ll definitely pop it and it probably will help, buts it is not 100% parry, and its cooldown is eternal. Paladin also has its natural block rate, but like parry no one can plan around these and so we sorta pretend they aren't their even though they do add up to paladin taking less damage overall.

Warrior excels with mitigation because war’s kit is packed with shorter duration cooldowns which mitigate for longer than the other two alternatives, without considering its extra mitigation which is definately a major a dps loss and should only be used in an emergency.

This is why war is the 'OT' all the time. Because we cant MT in DPS stance nearly as well as either pld or drk. Please remember these points before parroting out for the millionth time that "War has the best mitigation so drk needs buffs" as justification. The way the game is played war has the least mitigation. Who the hell sits in tank stance for fights? The entire goal of the last few years of tank meta has been to get OUT of tank stance. I'm not trying to 'woe is us wars' or anything. But I do want people to at least see the whole picture. Deliverance tanking is REALLY painful, yet there is a persistent idea that war has all this mitigation, but its completely locked behind defiance. War deliverance tanking is a serious liability to the group pld/drk do not share.

I disagree that warrior tanking in dps stance detracts from the groups, as the interval it is tanking for can be covered by its mitigation kit, and by the time it is time to tank again (after the other tank has their turn) your cooldowns will likely be back up and ready for use, this is not mirrored as well in the other tanks. While we are talking about meta, warrior does fine while main tanking in dps stance, and does it about as well as the other two (provided blood spiller is given that 6 dps). The problem comes from trying to solo tank a turn in dps stance the entire time. However, this isn’t unique to warrior, it is much less than optimal for any of the tanks to solo things. While technically possible its shorting either the tanks or the healers or worse everyone. Frequent tank swapping is one meta practice that really needs to make its way into more of gaming life as it is very beneficial to both tanks and healers.