WAR vs PLD HP values and EHP.

[Savish]

As a Warrior player, I have to ask you one question: What are cooldowns? I don't think we get those.

Featherfoot/Second Wind/Internal Release/Mantra/Infuriate/Foresight/Blood Bath/Berserk/Holmgang... you know those cooldowns...
You just want all the damage reduction cooldowns of a paladin without sacrificing your health pool/damage/self healing because that is balance right.

[Kitru]

You just want all the damage reduction cooldowns of a paladin without sacrificing your health pool/damage/self healing because that is balance right.

The argument that WAR somehow has an advantage thanks to a large health pool is simply fallacious. The 20% DR provided by Shield Oath is the explicit mathematical equivalent of a 25% increase in max hp. Any paladin complaining about WARs having more hp as if it were some advantage that they have over PAL is deluding themselves.

The balancing factor for the self healing is the fact that PAL gets a shield, which increases their mitigation by about the same amount as a WAR's self healing does.

The only WAR CD that needs to be fixed is Foresight: 20% Defense is a pittance (someone did the math; it's ~5% DR). If it's only going to apply to physical attacks, it should be *stronger* than the 20% DR that Bulwark provides. If it's changed to apply to magic defense as well, it still needs to be buffed so that it's actually something approaching a *real* tank CD: 50% +def, which should be equal to ~10%.

[Kiteless]

Berserk could do with either changing it to a flat damage increase, or getting rid of the downtime (either one; right now, Paladin actually has a better DPS booster). And Bloodbath could do with not being entirely useless.

[Kerrath]

As a Warrior player, I have to ask you one question: What are cooldowns? I don't think we get those.

infuriate? why does everyone like to act like infuriate doesnt exist i dont get it.

[brainchild]

Is this a joke? I mean you can't possibly be serious with this useless post, you completely ignored cooldown/duration timers for all skills and warrriors self healing to make it look like paladins have a massive advantage honestly these warrior whine threads are becoming ridiculous.

Warrior cooldowns are terrible.

[Nosiahk]

I main-ed WAR in 1.0 and 2.0. They were great in 1.0. But as soon as I got my hands on PLD. OHHHHHHMAAAAAIIIIIGAWWDDD!!! PLD is a much better tank than WAR in 2.0. Face it!

[Takamorisan]

The problem with warriors they have no mitigation mechanics.
They should give a advanced parry mechanics to warriors in order to tank, using the wrath mechanics.

I'm starting to figure that I can't MT end game content , I'm harvesting gear for Titan, but if I wish to go to coil of bahamut, I will have to accept the fact that I'm a glorified trash tank.

[AlexisLed]

I main-ed WAR in 1.0 and 2.0. They were great in 1.0. But as soon as I got my hands on PLD. OHHHHHHMAAAAAIIIIIGAWWDDD!!! PLD is a much better tank than WAR in 2.0. Face it!

This is not the point...Stop to be selfish, i personally love warrior as tank and not paladin so i wil never be a pally, i mite go dps or quit instead. SE need to tweak warrior for future and actual endgame content as tank, saying "i go pally cause a better tank" will not change anything if we like warrior....

[TessaJalloh]

unfortunately for warriors, SE has never really been very good at deciding their true role. This is why it's always sort of been a game of nerfs and buffs between WAR and PLD. in XI, warriors were tanks early on, then not, then they were, then not. Same thing seems to be happening in XIV now too.

Warriors need to be able to parry a LOT more often than they do now, in order to offer a competetive edge for just why warriors can be used as a main tank. HOWEVER, for 8 man content such as binding coil, and for crystal tower, i've always felt Paladin and Warrior should be there at the same time, together, synergising from each other.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Well, of course the OP is theoretical and doesn't take into account CDs rotation, but that's the point of most theorycrafting, at least in a basic, one-dimensional form: to show min/max hard numbers. This shows explicitely that a PLD could theoretically take a 28k hit without dying, whilst WAR would be dead long before that. This kind of analysis helps us understand the game better, inform strategies, and probably suggest changes to the game mechanics or jobs skills. But the whole picture is much, much wider than that.

Your health pool should be based on the actual content of the game, not on a theoretical maximum
Now, as for tanking in real situations, the logic is most often the same in terms of priority. Since OP used EHP as an acronym for "Effective Heath Points", I hope using EH for "Enough Health" won't be confusing, but please bear with me: while EHP is theoretical and, as many of you mentioned, almost never to be seen in real situations (since you don't, and probably can't, fire all CDs at once, albeit for a very short overlapping time), Enough Health is a very practical value: EH is based on the actual content of the game, and designates the "barely minimum health value one must have in order to sustain the largest hits possible in the game". It's a value we deduce from real boss mechanics and values (how much they hit, at which frequency compared to healing, possibility of several hits at once, etc). It's something that takes experience to know, and it may vary from one tank to another, since not everyone has the same way of firing CDs (we all measure against a "perfect" reaction against all situtions, but since we can't predict the future, it's always a choice that may or may not pay depending on which CD we used at some point and what we'll face before a CD becomes available again; some of us being more conservative, others being more all-in, and randomness of some boss skills being added to the mix).

It's this value, EH, that a tank should focus primarily, and the logic is that one shouldn't go too much over it, because anything above would be a simple waste of stat points that could be put to better use somewhere else. While having the bare minimum is probably a bad idea unless you're a super-perfect-omniscient player, going too much over it is only comfort meant to alleviate bad choices in-fight. Namely, in our case, less health could be traded for STR for instance, to increase both mitigation via Parry and damage itself. I don't know how much gear can actually be tweaked as well, but I'd think materias, besides bonus points, may help us do just that: go easier on health/defense and increase some other stats, probably offensive as much as possible. And I'd wager, for instance, that a PLD cannot benefit from STR as much as a WAR does, if you take into account both mitigation and damage done.

A tank's DPS may not (always) be much, but it can, and often does, make a difference
Because, in most case, since a raid is only limited to so many players, the actual DPS of the tank does indeed matter in the end: what (however little) contribution the tank can make to the overall DPS of the whole raid may be the difference between a wipe at a few % or a down. And that, in my opinion, is where WAR clearly make up for their somewhat much smaller health pool. Wait, let me rephrase that: as long as a WAR survives and doesn't drain the healers mana too much, its contribution to the raid's DPS is where it will shine! Also, as we become more and more overgeared for specific encounters, who needs a weak PLD when a WAR would do and help the raid take down bosses faster?

Consider this: having 28k of EHP instead of 13k will never really matter if the biggest hit you can take is 10k. This should probably be nuanced with the fact that healing indeed is an easier job on a PLD than it is on a WAR, due to mitigation and raw heal values, but please bear with me a little bit more. Consider this simple priority list for a tank in pretty much any MMORPG:
1) Survive. (this is where EH comes into play)
2) Hold aggro.
3) Minimize damage taken and healing required (through self heals, damage reduction CDs and such).
4) Support the raid with CDs (i.e. Cover and such).
5) Deal as much damage as possible.

While 1-3 are obvious, and 4 is, to my knowledge, again an advantage of the PLD, 5 is definitely in favor of WAR. And that, my dear friends, is probably where WAR can make a noticeable difference in real situations. While it's true a PLD will die much less easily, their contribution to the raid's DPS is much less important, thus it's probably realistic to imply that a raid with a WAR tank will down a boss a bit faster. Thus require less healing overall, and much more than simply the difference between a PLD and a WAR: quicker fights means less boss damage overall to the raid, thus less mana drain for the healers, and possibly a difference between a wipe and a down.

PLD versus WAR isn't a clear-cut comparison yet, we need more experience, and more data
It's a bit too early, probably, to draw conclusions, and especially when considering only a simple factor such as EHP. EHP gives us a very valuable insight on how tanks works, and is a valid comparison, but that's far from being the whole picture.

This debate is still totally open, in my opinion, and mind you: I play PLD as you can see.

My intuition is that, boss-wise, a PLD will be prime for progression content, while a WAR may shine later on and actually be the prime choice for content farming. For encounters where the difficulty is the sheer overall raid damage (thus placing a heavy burden on healers, and not so much of the tank's survival), a WAR may even be the best choice for progression.