War's a bit squishy?

[aqskerorokero]

Drk prevents incoming damage, War reacts to it.

[Megguido]

Drk prevents incoming damage, War reacts to it.

Aren't WAR defensive CDs used the same way as DRK ? I mean, Holmgang, Vengence, Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, all those are used preemptively, in the same way you would use TBN or Dark Mind.

[Tex_Mex]

It's worth noting that even with up to date gear, pulling multiple packs in Bardam's is sometimes just not a good idea. Those mobs hit significantly harder than anything in previous dungeons and it can sometimes be tough on healers if they are below average. Since this thread is about WAR differences from the other 2 tanks, and since I haven't seen anyone explain it yet, this seems like a good time to talk about one minor difference between tank stances.

Defiance is slightly inferior to the other 2 tank stances due to a really strange mechanic:
Defiance - "Increases maximum HP by 25%, while reducing damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity. Increases own HP recovery via healing magic by 20%."

Notice the wording there. It says healing "magic." This has some unfortunate implications. Healing magic DOES NOT include healing abilities, only healing spells. To put that in perspective, here are some healing abilities that are not affected by Defiance: Equilibirium, Lustrate, Tetragrammation, Excogitation, Essential Dignity, etc. At higher levels, a huge portion of healing comes from these skills. This definitely seems like it was a developer oversight. I mean even a WAR's own Equilibrium is not affected. This can lead to some feeling of squishiness for a WAR versus the other 2 tanks; however, it is not completely debilitating or anything. WAR is still considered an incredibly effective tank right now.

[Jscagg]

Firstly I just want to thank everyone for their responses, it has given me quite a bit of insight into warrior as a class! Now to answer some questions: Someone had asked if I'm pairing Raw Intuition with Awareness, and I am in fact doing just that. I will admit that I actually have the two moves macro'd to avoid any blunders of accidentally hitting one and not the other. Whenever I use that macro I always check my buffs and make sure both are up, and not just one. So no extra squishiness comes from accidental crits due to Intuition. Caitlinzulu also mentioned pairing an Beserk with an AoE for healing, but since Beserk doesn't offer healing anymore, we can't do that, sadly! I also failed to realize that the war tank stance doesn't give damage reduction, it just gives an HP increase. Don't ask me how I didn't notice that...

I also believe that what vVAstrAVv said might be true, drk has two CD's for normal use, and one that is very situational for magic. Coming from that onto War, which has so many CD's, some of which need to be paired with others to be fully effective, like Thrill of Battle paired with Conv, I think I'm not popping things correctly and so I feel much squishier than I am. I start fighting a group of things and pop Rampart and Vengeance and that's it, when I have a few other CD's I can be using but I don't think of. That actually brings another question to mind, does Rampart and Vengeance stack together? I'm just curious if they're worth stacking together, or if I should use them separately.

[Megguido]

I would suggest to not macro your defensive skills. You want to activate those at a precise moment, you need it to be as responsive as possible. Macros aren't responsive. Also sometimes you want to use Raw Intuition without Awareness (to boost Shake it Off shield for example), or just to mitigate a guaranteed critical hit (like Shinryu ex' or Halicarnassus' tankbuster). You don't have that much buttons to deal with as a warrior, I'm sure you can do great with Raw Int and Awareness on a separate button

On the WAR vs DRK topic, a common mistake is thinking "more cooldown" = "better". For example, WAR has a 20% HP boost on a 120s cooldown, DRK has a 20% HP shield on a 15s cooldown. Also a warrior has to sacrifice its own damage output to use on-demand mitigation (Inner Beast), whereas PLD and DRK can use Sheltron or The Blackest Night without any drawback. What makes WAR's defensive kit OP isn't its 3782 defensive abilities, it's Holmgang.

Also, while pulling several mobs in dungeons, you want to cycle through all your cooldowns, starting with the most powerful. For example, start with Vengence, then Rampart, then Awareness + Raw Int, then Thrill + Convalescence. Rampart and Vengence stack together, but in a multiplicative way (it's not 20%+30% = 50%, it is 20%*30% = 44% damage reduction).

[Tex_Mex]

Also, while pulling several mobs in dungeons, you want to cycle through all your cooldowns, starting with the most powerful. For example, start with Vengence, then Rampart, then Awareness + Raw Int, then Thrill + Convalescence. Rampart and Vengence stack together, but in a multiplicative way (it's not 20%+30% = 50%, it is 20%*30% = 44% damage reduction).

Megguido nailed it here. Proper cooldown cycling is incredibly important for large pulls in SB dungeons. The layout and order he listed are exactly what I use as well. And considering how short all the CD's are, you will just about always have some of them up for the next pull. No 3 minute CD's here! (F-YOU Sentinel)

[347SPECTRE]

The AoE ability they were referring to is 'Steel Cyclone'

[Aana]

The leveling process is all over the map with tanks. But its so short lived and temporary I wouldn't worry about it much. War will become much stronger at lv 70 for dungeons when inner release allows you to spam 5+ steel cyclones with guaranteed crit/DH and kill packs easily while gaining boatloads of health to the point of invulnerability every 90 seconds. 60-69 you wont have that in your pocket while Drk will have all of their mass pull tools available. War used to have 20 second zerk+Bloodbath at an extraordinarily low level to mass pull, but that is all gone now leaving mass pull warrior a little behind until that function is returned in another form (steel cyclone inner release spam) at 70. Similarly Drk doesn't get TBN until 70 making it suffer from tank buster actions much more than the readily available inner beast war has while leveling.

Without your full kit at 70 there will be gaps for every tank until it all comes together. As SE has changed, removed, added abilities to all tanks over the years and expansions the leveling process has gotten a little wonky. But its really a very short lived annoyance as the game settles in at 70, and at that point all tanks have what they need to get the job done.

[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.

[TouchandFeel]

60-69 you wont have that in your pocket while Drk will have all of their mass pull tools available ... Similarly Drk doesn't get TBN until 70 making it suffer from tank buster actions much more than the readily available inner beast war has while leveling.

The italicized part of the quote isn't really true though.
As you pointed out DRK doesn't get TBN until lvl70 and TBN is a foundational piece of it's AoE/mass pull capabilities. Not only is it a big part of soaking damage since Dark Mind does squat in pretty much all trash pulls, leaving DRK well behind in defensive CDs to use if they don't have TBN; it is also necessary to keep your MP up so that you can keep casting Abyssal since you have to cast and break TBN to get the 50 Blood to then use Quietus that then gives you back MP so you can keep going.

DRK definitely doesn't have all it's tools pre lvl70 just like WAR doesn't. PLD really has it the best in this regard since Passage has pretty much nothing to do with mass pulls.

The rest of the post was quite true though and the leveling process can really be awkward with job kits only really coming together at 70 and that people shouldn't really worry about min/maxing before level cap.