Warrior potency

[Argyle_Darkheart]

PLD has the worst mitigation.

Okay, so you actually just don't know what "utility" means in the context of the broader discussion.

Only bads think Clemancy is usable when it's a massive DPS loss to PLD's already terrible DPS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

DPS loss isn't an immediate non-starter, especially not during prog, but thanks for proving my point.

If you're in a position to use Clemancy, you've either already wiped...

What does "already wiped" mean? Does that mean that there's no hope of recovery, or that the run is doomed to hit enrage? This distinction is extremely important.

...or are doing easy content that doesn't really matter.

What if I told you that there are valid (emphasis on "valid"—not "optimal") planned usages of Clemency in Ultimate content? Would you even be able to wrap your head around how/why that might be the case?

I'd rather a WAR throw Bloodwhetting up instead of a PLD Clemancy me because I know they're sacrificing so much DPS for it.

What if Nascent Flash is on CD or simply won't mitigate enough? I guess the PLD should just let you die, since that won't cause any DPS loss for the PLD.

Then you have wings, which again, not particularly usable for DPS loss and I'm not even sure it works on all boss transitions.

Again, you don't know how the game works. You can "flash" Passage of Arms for the damage reduction between GCDs.

[Renathras]

I honestly DON'T like complex DPS rotations. Call me bad or casual or whatever insults, but it's why I left PLD and picked up WAR. That and I REALLY hate that PLD's transition from magic to melee phase does a 180 (leading into Royal instead of Goring) at level 90 vs doing literally any synced content where you want to go into Goring if I que for anything on PLD that isn't Expert Roulette. Screwing with muscle memory on that level is just beyond obnoxious. PLD's damage rotation is on par with many of the DPS Jobs now. While one can argue it isn't hard, per se, 1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-5-1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-1-2-3-6-7-7-7-7-8-8-8-8 then 1-2-4-5-5-5-1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-1-2-3-6-7-7-7-7-8-8-8-8 for the rest of the fight (dropping off the initial Goring) as just the GCDs and ignoring oGCD weaves or mitigation oGCD weaves is hardly "simple". I would argue this is more complex than SMN, RDM, MCH, and possibly BRD and DNC (maybe some of the Melees, too, but I don't play Melees)

A tank with a rotation that is as involved as DPS Job rotations I don't consider simple. Tanks have additional duties and things they're responsible for, which is why they're supposed to have somewhat simpler rotations. And this is before getting into PLD's cursed opener and weird Skill Speed cutoffs that MIGHT make you use all Atonements or might leave you dropping 1 per cycle so your buffs continue to align, nor that weird early FoF opener that is highly counterintuitive.

WAR, by contrast, is about right for an "easy" tank. It's not one button spam like healers, has an upkeep buff, several CDs, and some stuff you want to not overcap while also pooling as is practicable for burst. GNB kind of hits the midpoint between the two while being rigid like PLD while DRK hits the midpoint being high APM burst and a bit more flexible.

Honestly, I think, in terms of rotation, all the Tanks right now are in a pretty good place as there's a wide appeal to different skill and combat style of players. Some people legitimately can't do high APM Jobs due to latency or mental/physical issues (e.g. carpel tunnel), and likewise long and involved or rigid rotations vs not. So right now we have a good spread across all four Tanks.

Contrast healers, where every one has basically an identical damage kit, and Tanks look fantastic by contrast.

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And as far as "DPS loss!" goes: The biggest DPS loss is a dead DPS Job. One Clemency is a DPS gain over a dead DPSer.

[Lieri]

I honestly DON'T like complex DPS rotations. Call me bad or casual or whatever insults, but it's why I left PLD and picked up WAR. That and I REALLY hate that PLD's transition from magic to melee phase does a 180 (leading into Royal instead of Goring) at level 90 vs doing literally any synced content where you want to go into Goring if I que for anything on PLD that isn't Expert Roulette. Screwing with muscle memory on that level is just beyond obnoxious. PLD's damage rotation is on par with many of the DPS Jobs now. While one can argue it isn't hard, per se, 1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-5-1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-1-2-3-6-7-7-7-7-8-8-8-8 then 1-2-4-5-5-5-1-2-3-1-2-4-5-5-1-2-3-6-7-7-7-7-8-8-8-8 for the rest of the fight (dropping off the initial Goring) as just the GCDs and ignoring oGCD weaves or mitigation oGCD weaves is hardly "simple". I would argue this is more complex than SMN, RDM, MCH, and possibly BRD and DNC (maybe some of the Melees, too, but I don't play Melees)

A tank with a rotation that is as involved as DPS Job rotations I don't consider simple. Tanks have additional duties and things they're responsible for, which is why they're supposed to have somewhat simpler rotations. And this is before getting into PLD's cursed opener and weird Skill Speed cutoffs that MIGHT make you use all Atonements or might leave you dropping 1 per cycle so your buffs continue to align, nor that weird early FoF opener that is highly counterintuitive.

WAR, by contrast, is about right for an "easy" tank. It's not one button spam like healers, has an upkeep buff, several CDs, and some stuff you want to not overcap while also pooling as is practicable for burst. GNB kind of hits the midpoint between the two while being rigid like PLD while DRK hits the midpoint being high APM burst and a bit more flexible.

Honestly, I think, in terms of rotation, all the Tanks right now are in a pretty good place as there's a wide appeal to different skill and combat style of players. Some people legitimately can't do high APM Jobs due to latency or mental/physical issues (e.g. carpel tunnel), and likewise long and involved or rigid rotations vs not. So right now we have a good spread across all four Tanks.

Contrast healers, where every one has basically an identical damage kit, and Tanks look fantastic by contrast.

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And as far as "DPS loss!" goes: The biggest DPS loss is a dead DPS Job. One Clemency is a DPS gain over a dead DPSer.

PLD playstyle is not complicated or harder than WAR in my opinion. Where as a WAR you need to keep attention to Storms eye timer, as a PLD you need to keep attention to Dots timers. Those are the only two things you really need to be careful about. The combos are basic and the weavings are easy.

One thing that is annoying about PLD magic phase is how Requiescat and Holy Spirit animations are so underwhelming. Theres no satisfaction when pressing those where as WAR burst feels impactful.

[Absurdity]

PLD playstyle is not complicated or harder than WAR in my opinion. Where as a WAR you need to keep attention to Storms eye timer, as a PLD you need to keep attention to Dots timers. Those are the only two things you really need to be careful about. The combos are basic and the weavings are easy.

One thing that is annoying about PLD magic phase is how Requiescat and Holy Spirit animations are so underwhelming. Theres no satisfaction when pressing those where as WAR burst feels impactful.

Paladin is by far the most complicated tank, that is however only the case when you try to optimize it because paladin's rotation has vastly more potential to be optimized around specific fights compared to every other tank.


If you only look at paladin's basic rotation it is incredibly simple, but you will also never reach the full potential of the job.

How? You really need to quantify this statement, because PLD has two raid mitigation abilities to the other tanks' one, a spammable targeted heal, and Cover (lol). I won't mention the nuances of Intervention, since each tank has a counterpart ability with its own nuances that make it better or worse than the others in certain situations.

Paladin does certain have some issues with it's mitigation, some have always been there and some are specific to this raid tier.
Sure, you have 2 party mitigation abilities but at the same time they are more restricted than every other tanks'.


-Passage of Arms can really only be used by triggering it for the quick 3 second mitigation, channeling it for the entire duration is too much of a dps loss even if you would be able to catch multiple aoes with it. On top of that you need to actually be able to have the entire party stacked up for the mechanic you want to mitigate which further limits it's flexibility.

-Divine Veil is good but the fact that it still requires a GCD heal to trigger the shield and doesn't apply to the paladin itself isn't great. Being able to trigger it with Holy Spirit is a double edged sword as well. While it allows you to apply the shield yourself during your magic damage phase at the same time it limits the flexibility of Veil because depending on the timing of your rotation and upcoming mechanics you can't make use of it's unique benefit, being able to cast it early but delay triggering the barrier for almost 30 seconds.

-In exchange for more party mitigation paladin lacks personal mitigation which is rather noticeable with how much tank damage there is this tier.

-Holy Shelltron suffers from unique restrictions despite not offering much more mitigation than the other tanks' equivalents. Because block doesn't work on damage over time effects, crits or while you're stunned it is significantly weaker in both DSR and the current raid tier.

That said warrior suffers from similar issues this tier.

-Thrill of Battle is currently quite terrible because the DoT strength of current tank busters is dependant on how much damage the initial hit does, since Thrill just increases your eHP but doesn't offer any additional mitigation it does literally nothing to reduce the bleed damage you're going to take.

-Holmgang suffers from the exact same problem. If you use it to solo shared busters for example you will survive the initial hit but take significant bleed damage without combining it with additional mitigation, somewhat defeating the whole point of using Holmgang in the first place.

[Renathras]

You people...define "simple" very differently than I do.

MCH and WAR have kind of simple rotations going on. More or less a 1-2-3 with some stuff that can be defined as either "use on CD/first come first served" or "pool but don't overcap". I THINK MCH's current optimal play is to use its non-combo GCD buttons whenever they come up, buffed with Reassemble whenever it's up, and make sure not to use Hypercharge if one is within 7-8 sec of coming off CD so it won't drift. WAR's is occasionally replace -3 with -4 to upkeep a buff that's very generous in that you can overwrite it once without it being a DPS loss (e.g. it stacks to 60 seconds so overwriting it ONCE/using it twice in a row isn't inherently harmful like, say, a WHM casting Dia two times in a row being a significant DPS loss is). MCH and WAR have their core rotation and about 4 (I think) GCDs besides that, with about 3-4 oGCDs besides those.

Contrast PLD, which as I noted not counting any oGCDs (of which it has...what, four?) you already have 8 buttons and they must be used in a pretty specific and rigid order.

GNB is rigid (and thus easy to not lose my place in it - for my structured brain/learning style, it's the easiest to play well, I think), and has 7 GCDs and 4 oGCDs. But unlike PLD, there's no real interaction between them as long as you don't wiff your Gnasing Fang combo. PLD actually has interactions between Royal and Atonement (namely that you have to do Royal to unlock 3x Atonements), Goring and...whichever their last sword thing is that also puts up its DoT, two separate buffs for physical and magical phases, respectively, and that's before getting into all the utility spells. Even its short duration CD is more complex with GNB having one they can cast on themselves or a party member, PLD has two separate ones - like WAR - but also has a third one in the form of Cover. And unlike WAR and GNB which are simple CDs, PLD's is tied to a gauge. For...reasons...?

Contrast PLD with RDM 1-4-1-5 back and forth, with 2-4/5 3-4/5 mixed in sometimes to build Mana, then 6-7-8-4/5-1-1 as its burst phase. It has an oGCD for buffing damage (itself and party), another it can use in burst for a second combo, and it has two oGCD damage attacks (one AOE and one single target, but you use both since, unlike WAR, they don't share a CD), and Corps-a-corps and Engagement/Disengagement. In theory it has Reprisal as a movement tool, but this is GENERALLY avoided. So the typical RDM rotation might be something like 1-4-1-5-2-4-1-5-3-5-6-7-8-4/5-1-1-1. That's honestly no harder than PLD.

EDIT (for space):

SMN is even easier.

PLD has a rotation that is complicated for a tank - probably the most complicated for tanks if you include the cursed opener and the weird dropping an Atonement every cycle or two at different speed breakpoints to align everything - and it's easily on par with several of the damage dealers in terms of button presses, APM, and rotational complexity.

BUT, I will grant that all of this is opinion - as I said myself, I find WAR approachable, but I find GNB is easier for me to keep up the optimal rotation since the rigidity of it makes it easy to not lose my place unlike WAR. I think what specifically makes WAR so friendly to me is that overbuffing with Storm's Eye isn't an issue (at least as long as you aren't wasting raid buff window GCDs on it), whereas on PLD, if you use Goring combo twice in a row, that's a pretty major DPS loss as your Royal/Atonement is ALSO now jacked and you may have overwritten a Goring DoT with a weaker DoT, and at the last have a DPS loss from that, even before getting to having drifted your Royal combo off-kilter. If you use Storm's Eye a second time with your buff still at 25 seconds or so......well, nothing bad happened. \o/

So to each their own, I suppose...

But yeah: PLD's rotation is on par with a DPSer's rotation, which already makes it at last medium challenge/difficulty, especially when you consider the weird optimization stuff PLD's rotation has going with it AND that you're still a tank, meaning you're doing all that while doing other tanky stuff like mitigations and positioning bosses and tank swaps, oh and since you're a PLD, you also have their slate of party support stuff in there to throw out, too.

I'll...stick with non-PLD tanks, thanks. I'm glad some people love PLD and it's there for them. I'm...probably not one of those people, so I'll stick with what my smooth brain can handle, lol

[dspguy]

I'm sure there are plenty of cases where TBN is superior. Personally, I've found the ability to heal myself and another player is huge. It doesn't cost GCDs directly (like Clemency). There are rarely back-to-back huge damage hits that would mean the regen-like effect of having to wait 4 GCDs for 4 smaller heals is ever a big deal. The way I see it, if there's a shared tank buster, the DRK can shield either himself or the other tank. Each tank could pop one CD, then apply Nascent Flash to the other tank - 4 hits later, back to full. Healers keep on DPSing.

I don't raid, so there are probably merits of TBN that I don't appreciate. It really sounds like splitting hairs to me.

[Undeadfire]

I'm sure there are plenty of cases where TBN is superior.

TBN/HOC have always been more superior in the Savage/Ultimate scenes, Nascent can't do much if there's nothing to attack, or gain, or terribly useless thrown on non physical damage players. TBN ignores the damage reduction penalties and HOC is a literal Rampart on it's own.

[fulminating]

I wonder why it might be beneficial to store an edge and carry it into raid buffs, particularly on a job with as strong burst as dark knight.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Clemency is fine as it is personally but clemency in it's current state doesn't really need to "tax" PLD on anything like GNBs Aurora, Oblation on drk or equilibrium on war, as all of those abilities have more general use then clemency? (I don't really know if they compare but PLD lacks two general mits)

Nothing really compares to Clemency, which is fine given Clemency's opportunity cost.

PLD should get an equivalent to Thrill of Battle/Dark Mind/Camouflage (if only to avoid another DSR P6 situation), but I don't think it needs an equivalent to Equilibrium/Aurora. That said, I would maybe make its equivalent to Thrill et al. slightly stronger than its counterparts to compensate.

Also with intervention it's just worse holy shelltron while other tanks get the same or a better effect from using it on yourself.

I don't really agree, but no other tank even has an equivalent to Holy Sheltron + Intervention. To be clear, I'm not saying they should; short CD differences are fairly balanced and interesting across the tanks.

My main gripe with the Idea of pld being "utility tank" is the fact that some of it's utility is very outdated or super situational

I wouldn't characterize PLD as the "utility tank," but it does have the "most" utility at the moment. However, it doesn't necessarily have the "best" utility, nor is it obviously notably advantaged in this regard.

If Divine Veil were clearly superior to its counterparts, then the situation would be different—but it's not. In reality, Divine Veil is sometimes better due to clever use of its activation window allowing "extra" uses across a fight, but it's usually slightly worse.

[Absurdity]

Nascent is an incredible support tool, if you can coordinate with your co-tank. In pugs you can't really give up the 20% self mitigation from Bloodwhetting or you'll drive your healers insane with how much bleed damage you take.