Defiance still lacking in comparison to Shield Oath

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Healer chipping in here.

If the Warrior plays closer to the way Derza mentioned, this is a non-issue for me so far.

Also, damage does come into mitigation, because the shorter time the enemy is alive, the less damage a player takes, which can translate into less MP and TP used.

In my observation, it is the player AND the party that determines how effective the tanking preference is. They are equal in roles, but CANNOT be played with the same mindset. If you compare an ability 1:1, no, Warrior will not look that attractive. The whole of the playstyle must be factored.

[Sephirah]

It was intended that PLD be main tanks and WAR be offtanks, Square did this on purpose, so I'm not sure why you're complaining about not being main tank. If you wanted to main tank, you should switch to PLD it's that simple.

I also see a bunch of people saying being PLD is easy, not sure what you guys are talking about, but it requires a lot of focus and managing targets, from what I've seen. I'm not saying it's more complex than WAR, as I have no clue how complicated it is having never played it. But don't be mad at PLD for doing what it was made to do, an let WAR do what it's supposed to do.

[Derza]

It was intended that PLD be main tanks and WAR be offtanks, Square did this on purpose, so I'm not sure why you're complaining about not being main tank. If you wanted to main tank, you should switch to PLD it's that simple.

I also see a bunch of people saying being PLD is easy, not sure what you guys are talking about, but it requires a lot of focus and managing targets, from what I've seen. I'm not saying it's more complex than WAR, as I have no clue how complicated it is having never played it. But don't be mad at PLD for doing what it was made to do, an let WAR do what it's supposed to do.

Where was it ever stated that paladins would be main tanks and warriors off tank? I'd like a link to this. As far as I know they are both meant to be able to main tank.

[Sephirah]

Where was it ever stated that paladins would be main tanks and warriors off tank? I'd like a link to this. As far as I know they are both meant to be able to main tank.

This is an old interview, but I'm pretty sure they have kept this in mind moving forward.

"JPGAMES.DE: The marauder is a very good damage dealer and also, for example in the Ifrit fights, a really good tank, even a better one than the gladiator. What are your plans for the marauder and its job warrior? How can the paladin/gladiator keep up?

Yoshida Naoki: We are going to make sure to do everything to get the balance right and then we are going to make adjustments to that. For example, the marauder is going to be a really strong attacker, but we don’t want to spoil all the gladiator’s tank positional skills.

http://www.bluegartr.com/archive/ind.../t-107491.html

[Windrunner]

It seems clear to me they intend for WAR to deal more dmg/aoe for offtanking and pld to be main. /shrug

Their only clear intent is that they want two kits with different tools and playstyles to be able to clear the content. Warrior deals more damage, has more health and is more self sufficient whereas Paladin has more mitigation and takes more reliable and manageable amounts of damage. How you use these kits is up to you, but they both fill the tanking role for all current content.

[Sephirah]

Their only clear intent is that they want two kits with different tools and playstyles to be able to clear the content. Warrior deals more damage, has more health and is more self sufficient whereas Paladin has more mitigation and takes more reliable and manageable amounts of damage. How you use these kits is up to you, but they both fill the tanking role for all current content.

The debate isn't if they can main tank, of course they CAN, but it's if they are better at it or not, and right now, they are not.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

The debate isn't if they can main tank, of course they CAN, but it's if they are better at it or not, and right now, they are not.

This is just me repeating from a healer standpoint, haven't had enmity or MP issues with a good main tank yet. The more I party with good representatives of each, the more my resource situation looks the same, but my execution is different.

But it seems a lot of players are not prepared to play Warrior like a Warrior and play it like a Paladin. And with that in mind, it's been easier to heal the random Paladin than it is the random Warrior.

[Junk4Brains]

I have to say to the OP I partially agree but as a whole I really disagree.
Where I agree is that YES, PLD is the much easier tank to play. But easier =/= better. To give an example, I could take a TV dinner and pop it in the microwave and call it a meal.... Or I can put the time and effort into preparing a home cooked meal. And while a TV dinner might be the easier one to prepare not many people would say that it is better than a well prepared meal from fresh ingredients. So yes, WAR takes a little more effort but effort is not always a bad thing.

As for the topic itself I posted in another thread something that pertains to this:

What you have here is HP Recovery vs. Mitigation.
Now if you are only taking Mitigation into account here, yes PLD trumps WAR quite soundly.

Now lets look at HP recovery. PLD has only two real tools to aid to this purpose. Cure/Convalescense, Bloodbath/Fight or Flight.
Warrior has Defiance...yes Defiance.

If a PLD and a WAR both have 4000hp, a warrior in defiance has 5000hp. You might think 'Oh that is just buffer hp and once it is gone the PLD has the edge.' To which I'd say you are wrong. Remember, when it combat characters naturally regenerate 2% of their health every 3 seconds. So that 1000hp difference translates to 20hp every 3 seconds the PLD is not getting. That is a free 400hp a minute for doing nothing.
Then you have the big hitter, Inner Beast. 300 potency 300% heal based off the damage it does. And it came be used roughly every 13-20 seconds. (Twice in a row every five minutes with Infuriate.)
You also have Storm's Path which also has a potency of 300 (after you factor in the 20% boost from Maim that combo's into it.) And it heals for 50% of the damage dealt...every five seconds. (And gives 2 Wrath stacks towards using Inner Beast again in the process)
Then you have the wraith stacks themselves....that while up add .3% bonus to all healing spells cast on you as well as GLD's Convalescense. (Also at .2% bonus to crit chance which boosts healing from Storm's Path)
Then you have Thrill of Battle which is a straight 20% heal/health buff. Great for an emergency heal and even better to use at the start of a battle or even prior to a casting of stoneskin from your friendly WHM.
And then you have Second Wind. Which now works quite wonderfully with Berserk which in turn works quite wonderfully will most of the above means of healing.
And then you have Blood Bath.... which is 30 seconds of free heals off the damage you do. Which is in turn aided by the stacks of wrath you have as well as Internal Release (for a quick boost to 30% crit rate not counting stats or gear).
Oh and almost forgot about Mercy Stroke. In a one on one fight this move is not much but in a fight with adds. Even though both classes have this skill the hp recovery is capped to 20% of your max health (so again Defiance means a bigger return.) and WAR's can use it 30 seconds sooner.

Needless to say a WAR will be recovering A LOT more HP than a PLD ever will. And while PLD's cure is not that bad, it has two real big short comings (and no its not the amount of the heal!) The two biggest short comings of cure is 1. It sits on the GCD AND has a cast time... which means that is a good 5-6 seconds of inactivity. Which leads to its second short coming. Cure has very poor enmity values. Meaning a PLD who is curing themselves is a PLD who is not doing damage or generating hate. Turning PLD's cure into a more situational tool than one that sees regular use. This means that while a PLD does mitigation much more damage than WAR the damage that it does take it will NEED a healer to get it back effectively while a WAR who doesn't mitigate as much damage has much more adequate tools to recover that lost HP so in the end it balances out.

But to elaborate a little more. With the same two base 4k health tanks. If you have a boss that roughly hits for 600 damage every 3 seconds. That boss is doing 2400 damage a minute. As stated above in that one minute the added 400hp from natural regen means the Warrior is taking 2000 damage. And what is 20% of 2400? 480. So the PLD is taking 1920. A difference of 80 damage not including any other skills.

What I see to be the most common flaw in what separates a good WAR from a poor WAR is the understanding of the difference between effective self-healing and maximum self-healing. A poor WAR will see the two as basically the same thing. They blow all their cooldown to make their Inner Beasts or Bloodbaths as strong as possible. And yes all that big impressive healing LOOKS good with all those big numbers popping up but you fast forward 20-30 seconds later and they are still taking damage but they don't have any cooldowns left to deal with it. In that aspect WAR and PLD are not that different. If you have a PLD who starts the fight putting up all their cooldowns at once going. "I am so leet! With my 90% damage reduction! Fear my SHIELD!" They are going to find themselves in the fight one minute later without any cooldowns.

So like with PLD, you have to SPACE OUT your cooldowns. Which brings up another point. Everyone looks at how much damage a PLD can mitigation no one really pays attention to how OFTEN they can mitigate it. Just looking at the time values of duration/recast PLD's cooldowns look like this....
Major
Rampart 20/90s
Sentinal 10/180
Foresight 20/120
Hallowed Ground 10/420

Minor
Bulwark 15/180
Awareness 20/120
Convalescense 20/120

As you can see their shortest cooldown is 90s and after that its 120+. If you add up the duration of their major mitigation skills you get 60s. So PLD has MORE cooldowns but they are all at higher recasts so weaving them together and spacing them out takes a little more forethought and planning. And then you look at WAR which don't have as many major cool downs but their two main mitigation tools (Featherfoot and Foresight) sit on 90 second recasts. Inner Beast which sits on a 15-20 second recast. Storm's Path which is a small heal but sits on a 5-7.5 second recast. Which when you take in Internal Release sitting on a 60s recast and Berserk sits on a 90s recast there is little reason IB shouldn't be buffed just about every time you use it.

Internal Release > Inner Beast > Storm's Eye Combo > Butcher's Block Combo > Maim Combo > Berserk > Inner Beast > Storm's Path > Butcher's Block Combo > Storm's Eye Combo > Inner Beast. That rotation takes up 42.5 seconds. The first IB has a boosted 30% crit rate. The second two if nothing gets in the way of your timing will have a 50% boost from Berserk. You have a 19 second window before you can Internal release again. By then you should have a butt-load of hate so just pop Bloodbath and spam Storm's Path. Two rotations you'll have killed 15 seconds of that 19 seconds and gained for stacks. By the time you use Maim the third time 17.5 seconds will have passed.

So you have a pretty high crit chance heal, and two big heals, three small heals (one of which has a 50% boost), and 30 seconds of heals from Blood Bath.

That is A LOT of healing and I only used 2 DPS cooldowns and 1 healing cooldown. And I can repeat that roughly every 1 minute. (there is a 15 second gap between the next Berserk but if I need it that badly Unchained/Infuriate fills the gap nicely.) Not to include the 20% heal for Thrill of Battle, the free heal in Second Wind, Feather Foot, Foresight, Infuriate and Unchained mentioned above, Convalescence/Awareness. Quite honestly if a boss is doing enough damage to overcome a warrior's self healing 9 times out of 10 that amount of damage will over come the mitigation of a PLD too. The only exception being Hallowed Ground applied to extreme conditions.

Think this is all a case of 'the grass is always greener on the other side' kind of things. I see posts of PLD's complaining how strong WAR is and I see posts of WAR's complaining how strong PLD is. I agree, PLD and WAR are not equal. They are DIFFERENT. Yes there are some fights that will be more advantageous to bring a PLD and some will cater themselves to WAR's skill set. Does it mean those fights will be impossible for the other class? No, it just means those classes have to work a little harder to get the same effects. But this is not a game that one character is stuck to one class. If you really feel PLD is that much better level one up for those fights, but there are people out there tanking content with BOTH tanks and getting the job done. So if you enjoy WAR that much put in the effort, make the most of your strengths and play as a team and you'll be fine.

[Sephirah]

They are DIFFERENT. Yes there are some fights that will be more advantageous to bring a PLD and some will cater themselves to WAR's skill set. Does it mean those fights will be impossible for the other class? No, it just means those classes have to work a little harder to get the same effects. But this is not a game that one character is stuck to one class. If you really feel PLD is that much better level one up for those fights, but there are people out there tanking content with BOTH tanks and getting the job done.

Thank you, that's exactly what I was trying to say when I said:

"...don't be mad at PLD for doing what it was made to do, an let WAR do what it's supposed to do."

Again nowhere have I said that WAR can't be maintank, if you can do it, go for it. But don't be mad because you thought that was your classes strength, when really it was something else.

[Derza]

Thank you, that's exactly what I was trying to say when I said:

"...don't be mad at PLD for doing what it was made to do, an let WAR do what it's supposed to do."

Again nowhere have I said that WAR can't be maintank, if you can do it, go for it. But don't be mad because you thought that was your classes strength, when really it was something else.

Huh? how is anything he said supporting your claims? You sir are so confusing to me.