War's a bit squishy?

[TouchandFeel]

Keep in mind a lot of WAR's sustainability for large dungeon pulls comes from it's self-healing effects on offensive abilities and proper utilization of them in tandem with your defensive CDs.

What I found effective (moreso at 70 when IR replaces Berserk) is to switch-off between the following:

- For one pull do Berserk/IR+Steel Cyclone spam, making sure to cycle in an Infuriate if using Berserk so that you get 3 Steel Cyclones out during Zerk. This should do a hefty amount of AoE damage, establish strong aggro and provide enough self-healing to pretty much offset the incoming damage. From this point I usually cycle into the standard Overpower spam and pop lower end defensive CDs like Rampart as necessary until the pack has been thinned enough that I can switch over to Deliverance and focus more on just killing off the remainders as quickly as possible since incoming damage is now much lower.

- If Berserk/IR is on cooldown for a pull, I then usually pop Unchained, put up Vengeance for the mitigation and the little extra damage it does and go into Overpower spam. I also pop Infuriate to toss out as many Steel Cyclones as I can and tend to save Equilibrium for a little self-heal top-off here. Once the pack is sufficiently thinned and healing isn't much of a concern I pop over to Defiance and focus on clean up duty.

I find doing the above helps spread out mitigation, factoring in both defensive CDs and self-healing, as well as helping to boost DPS out of IR/Zerk by pairing Vengeance with Unchained+OP, leading to a fairly smooth cadence going from mass pull to mass pull and pretty much makes it so you can do IR/Zerk+Cyclone one mass pull and then Unchained+OP+Vengeance the next pull and then back to IR/Zerk+Cylcone for the next and so on in the cycle.

A couple of extra things to keep in mind.

- Always keep up your Storm's Eye damage buff! You want to make sure that it is up before starting Unchained+Overpower or IR/Zerk+Cyclone spam or you will be losing out on a hefty chunk of DPS and potential self-healing. I personally like to try to pre-prep it for the next pull by doing a Storm's Eye combo on the last enemy of a pack just as it is going down so that the duration is refreshed and ready to go for the next pull. If the buff drops before you get the pull all under control and grouped up, do a quick Overpower or two to establish group agro and quickly get out a SE combo to get the buff up and then go nuts with the spam.

- While Defiance is a dps loss over Deliverance, even with Unchained, a dead tank is an even greater dps loss. People love to parrot the meta mantra of avoiding tank stance, but that is only partially true and should only really become a goal once you have become somewhat comfortable with the job. If you are in situations of very high incoming damage, like with mass dungeon pulls, and your healer is being put under a lot of strain even with proper CD usage, you should probably be in Defiance and looking for additional ways to offset the damage such as making sure to take advantage of the huge amount of self-healing WAR has access to.

At lvl70, WAR is imo the best at dealing with large dungeon pulls because IR+Cyclone spam just melts mob packs and provides so much self-healing that you are virtually invincible.

[vVAstrAVv]

Id say you probably never want to stack rampart and vengeance

Vengeance is 30 percent and youll probably get a heal toss when a tb is coming anyways

Between pulls i cycle between vengeance/ir spam in deliverance (you can defiance if youre worried but you have ToB and conva if you need them anyways so itd only be for ss healing)
And rampart/ unleash overpower spam while the other set cools off

Once you hit 70 and get decent gear its all youll need for pulls really. The rest will be boss mit

[Maeka]

Paladins soak damage with all the blocking, as compared to DRK and WAR, especially when you use the blocking cooldown.

And then, on top of that, you have Shield Oath. Nothing like pulling a huge pack of enemies, popping the block cooldown and watch your SO gauge max in a few seconds and hearing "THONK THONK THONK THONK" and seeing all of those Blocks popping up on the screen and then popping the Sheltrons whenever you can. So much fun.

So, if WAR seems squishier than a PLD, that could be part of the reason. PLDs have less HP but they also take way less damage per hit too. And of course, Clemency helps too. It won't keep you alive solo, but if your healer is in a bad spot, it saves lives if used right.

I'm looking forward to leveling my WAR, it's on my to-do list, so maybe I'll post my own thoughts about all the tanks once I get them all up. DRK's like 55 now, so it doesn't have too much further to go (but I know it'll get lots of game-changing abilities in Stormblood, lol).