Defiance still lacking in comparison to Shield Oath

[Sephirah]

Wow, relax.

How can you argue your point, when you haven't experienced it for yourself? You're just going off what other people have said.

I'm not trying to argue about anything. A good healer friend of mine has told me many times that they have no problems healing war or pld. I've never once said that WAR couldn't main tank, you're more than welcome to. However without the mitigation PLD gets it will be harder. This thread is proof of that. My whole point is that Faction is hung up on the idea that being an "offtank" means you're sub par, and that's not the case, it just means they designed the class differently to fill other roles. The way I see it Faction has 2 options, either learn how to deal with main tanking as a WAR and stop complaining that PLD has an "easier" time. Or switch to PLD for the mitigation. They don't need to change WAR to make it a better tank, if they did then as I mentioned before, there would be no reason to be a PLD.

[Kitru]

My whole point is that Faction is hung up on the idea that being an "offtank" means you're sub par, and that's not the case, it just means they designed the class differently to fill other roles.

The problem with this statement is that "offtank" *isn't* a role. The game pretty obviously follows the traditional holy trinity design: DPS, heals, tank. "Offtank" as a role doesn't fit within that confines because it's simply substandard DPS combined with substandard tanking. That's pretty much *the* definition of a sub par class within a game that utilizes class/role specialization: why bring a class that can't DPS *or* tank effectively?

The question isn't whether it's proper for the classes to be designed with different mechanics. The question is whether it's appropriate for said classes to end up with unequal functionality for their intended role due to the difference in their given mechanics. Damage isn't a major balancing factor for tanks, since it's not what you bring a tank for. Saying that the increase in tank DPS is a suitable exchange for a lower survivability is akin to suggesting that, for a healer class, having higher DPS is a suitable exchange for having worse heals.