So what exactly IS the issue with Warrior?

[KrenianKandos]

Hey all,

Leveling my WAR and already got PLD at level 50 and I'm failing to see what the issue is. This is probably due to the fact I haven't done much endgame but I'm trying to prepare myself for when I start on what issues I would run into when tanking as a Warrior. To me, it feels like they play like DKs in World of Warcraft and as such, should be sustaining themselves and helping WHM/SCH mana pools (That's their mitigation)

So could someone kindly tell me what 'issues' i'd run into that people constantly state Warriors are weaker than Paladins for tanking purposes? I'm not exactly seeing the problem here.

[Ipkonfig]

It's manageable but it is true that double Paladin is safer and easier than PLD/WAR. The problem is inherent in our self healing mechanics, more often than not you will end up causing overhealing. You fire off a 2500 HP Inner beast heal right as a 2k+ Cure 2 hits, but you only needed 3k HP. It's best to run as a WAR with a healer you've run many instances with so they know how you react to mechanics and realize they don't need to worry when you drop to half, you have your own means of healing, so instead of firing all their cooldowns for a huge Cure 2, they may know that you will Inner Beast and they only need a standard Cure.

[Ipkonfig]

Also in terms of burst damage WARs handle it pretty awful. In Coil the WAR is at the mercy of the RNG, especially in Turn 1. The standard tanking method is to ignore slime feeding after the split and burn till both go down at the same time. The issue is that WAR has no means of reducing incoming damage, our mitigation is based solely on our own ability to output damage, this isn't something that slowly increases like Cads damage each stack. The last time I tried Turn 1 as a WAR Cad got to 5 stacks, I was sitting at just over 8k with group/food, and a Hood followed instantly by a crit auto two shot me (looked like one shot), no time for a healer or me to even react went from full to dead, went back later and saw the two hits and the time stamps in my LogRep after and it was about 300 more than enough to insta gib me. When I tank it as PLD I rotate CDs, starting at 4 stacks so it's extremely smooth the whole fight.

[Xenobius]

So could someone kindly tell me what 'issues' i'd run into that people constantly state Warriors are weaker than Paladins for tanking purposes? I'm not exactly seeing the problem here.

Warriors are fine before you reach endgame.
In fact, they're more fun to play during the lower levels, 30-50 especially, and you can do Castrum/Praetorium/AK/WP/Ifrit/Garuda HM just fine.
Problems start to surface when you face Titan HM and later on, in Coil.
PLD's superior defensive cooldowns, utility (Silence!) and overall survivability (shield block AND parry work so much better than just parry) make them choice tanks for any content that matters. That, and the fact that most Warrior skills are lackluster to say the least.

[Conna]

Warriors can't tank double dreadnaughts or twintania, however SE has already stated that if a paladin can war should be able to.

[MBTL90]

There are three issues: 1.Inherent math deficieny with wrath/defiance compared to shield oath 2. cooldowns 3. scaling

1. Wrath+defiance is worse than shield oath. We'll start with baseline 1000hp, and incoming 200 damage
Paladin:
1000 HP
Takes 160 Damage (200 *.8 reduction from shield oath)
Paladin at 840 Health after hit
Healers need to heal 160 to top off tank.

Warrior:
1250 HP (1000*1.25 bonus from defiance)
Takes 200 Damage
at 1050 HP after attack
The same heal that the paladin needs, 160 hp, heals the war for 184 HP(160 *1.15 from wrath). This is not enough to heal the war fully
War end up not topped off.
In essence, although Defiance and Shield Oath provide the same effective eHP, the increased healing from wrath doesn't scale well enough to match the extra health from defiance. This also assumes that wars have 5 stacks of wrath the whole time, which is often not the case.

2. Cooldowns: I'm not going to list line by line why wars are inferior here, but just taking a quick look at the CD's available to each class should make it apparent who is superior here. Even if Wars could match Paladins on Rampart/Sentinel, Hallowed Ground is in a class by itself as far as tanking CD's go. Another issue with the cd suites of both classes is the nature of how boss fights are in this game. Taking damage in this game is rarely about constant mitigation over long fights. There are short periods of extreme damage, followed by periods of relative safety. So far, boss fights in this game put a premium on burst mitigation, IE using of CD's. Examples are Death Sentence in t5, double dreads in t4, High stacks in t1, and mountain busters on titan. Even if wars are superior tanks outside of cd's vs. a paladin, there are very few fights where this actually shines. A fight where this style of tanking would actually have been useful would be something like Patchwerk from Naxxramas in WoW, where the Tanks take sustained High damage for the whole 5 min fight.

3. Scaling: Wars scale off Gear, while Paladins scale off incoming damage. The main way that wars have to mitigate damage is through a high initial buffer, and self healing. Inner beast will recover HP based on cooldowns popped, and the wars gear. The problem is, these numbers don't really change. A geared war tanking AK will look like a god, because since the incoming damage is so low, he can self heal most of it, requiring very little outside healing. As content becomes harder, however, enemy mobs begin to hit a lot harder compared to what the war is healing. The warrior is still healing himself for the same ammount as he was in AK, but the bosses are dealing much more damage, so the Warrior isn't mitigating nearly as much damage compared to the whole of what he is taking. By contrast, Paladins mitigation scales with incoming damage, since it is percentage based. 20% off say an incoming 400dps from AK isn't all that strong. But 20% off an incoming 1000-2000 dps from coil is much stronger. The harder the content, the better paladin's mitigation becomes when compared to the fairly linear method of warriors.

Now all that being said, wars are still decent tanks. They can still tank pretty much everything in the game. They are just worse in almost every single way compared to Paladins. This isn't just a preference/playstyle call either. Scholars and White Mages are both effective healers with their own niches and skills. Outside of small corner cases like double sch in a raid or the first boss of the lvl 47 instance, there isn't really a strong preference of one over the other. Paladins are currently just numerically better than wars.

[Maqaqa]

Hmmmm WAR can tank Twintania... i wouldnt suggest it but it is definately possible. But if you have a PLD/WAR combo its pointless for the WAR to tank it, the PLD is better at it, while the WAR provides more damage against conflags.

The issue with WAR is lacking any kind of % damage reduction and not being as brokenly OP as PLD is.
This isnt PLDs fault of course, but the difference in damage taken is quite drastic and SE's fault.

Causing overhealing with IB doesnt help either.

[KrenianKandos]

Thanks MBTL90 for the breakdown; good to know.

Also thanks to the rest of you for your input.

It sounds like the numbers in question don't match the increase in difficulty when it comes to the healing portion of warrior mitigation. I presume this will be addressed in 2.1 with the changes. At the least if I grind for gear on my PLD or WAR, they feed themselves which means I'll be gearing both and then can choose, depending on the situation. (Bar the relic stuff, talking mostly about Darklight armor.)

[Claire_Pendragon]

well from what i read (and havnt done at all) people are saying a lot of differing things, but one that stands out, is PLDs ability to remove all or most dmg for short bursts, during peaks of high dmg.
(Aka, boss does too much dmg, go invincible, and have DPS quickly burn down the boss)

IF this is the case, then something comparable (maybe) would be to have a similar length cool down, that doesnt make the WAR invincible, but "almost".

I'd suggest a "Counter Heal".

Idealy healing back all damage taken. BUT the catch is, you need to survive each hit, in order to heal it back. (aka it cant 1 shot you.) Maybe every time you are healed, during this temp buff, you gain 1 stack of wrath.

(Again, this only applies if my assumption is correct. Which it probably isn't.)

[Necaust]

Hey all,

Leveling my WAR and already got PLD at level 50 and I'm failing to see what the issue is. This is probably due to the fact I haven't done much endgame but I'm trying to prepare myself for when I start on what issues I would run into when tanking as a Warrior. To me, it feels like they play like DKs in World of Warcraft and as such, should be sustaining themselves and helping WHM/SCH mana pools (That's their mitigation)

So could someone kindly tell me what 'issues' i'd run into that people constantly state Warriors are weaker than Paladins for tanking purposes? I'm not exactly seeing the problem here.

Main tanked few years on the DK. War doesn't feel anything like it.