Fencer, Retaliation And Tanking

You make retaliation cry if you use a single axe. Great axe gives so much more tp when it procs.

He's not dismissing it because nobody does it, he's dismissing it because it legitimately doesn't work and gave the reason why. Your CE generation would be completely and utterly *** by the damage you take as a blood tank relying on damage to generate CE. PDT gear does not give much in the way of offensive stats, so while you're staying alive you're generating even less enmity.
You're not doing that on anything that justifies a true tank and especially not with an OAT axe. Further, you don't WS in enmity gear like PLD can and should with Atonement.

Maybe the OP means having something like WAR/DNC, with waltzing and animated flourishes in addition to Provoke for CE and VE generation. Sadly this all hinges on the proc rate of Retaliation and DA, as WAR doesn't get Shield Mastery for extra TP like PLD, and TP will be used up so often that WSing for damage might not (won't) occur enough to generate needed enmity (depending on the gimpness of the DD's.)

But honestly, as others mentioned, Fencer seems most likely included to be part of the WAR-sub package for higher-levels.

war/thf with SA+TA+Rampage

that is what Fencer is for

SA with a crit based WS...

It's obviously supposed to be used with Calamity :P

Great Axe

Pld is the best all around tank and will probably be that way until the servers shut down. Now that that is out of the way, there is nothing wrong with exploring the possibility of war tanking. As a war myself I am interested in seeing what war can do at its full tanking potential.

As of now at 80 war shield skill caps at 255 with no merits or gear and just gained the two new job traits shield mastery and shield defense bonus. Fencer is a small edition and imo doesn't really help war at all, even for tanking. Restraint I feel is going to make sense in future updates because as of now it makes no sense at all. Now like most of you have quoted to be an efficient tank you need to sub nin and blink tank. With the edition of shield mastery it makes it possible for war to be able to get shadows up alot easier. They also can reach a currently higher haste cap than pld can lowering the recast time.

The problem with war is it is currently hard for them to hold hate on most eg enemies because all they have at the moment is provoke and their damage to hold hate for them. I wouldnt count war out just yet though, all it will take is one job ability or weapon skill and they would be at the top with pld as best tank. A weapon skill comparible to atonement would instantly put war up top with pld.

War also has tons of different gearing options from a mix of pdt, haste, gaxe, axe and shield and enmity builds so depending on what SE decides to give war in the upcoming updates the correct way to gear would be more clear. Here are a few builds I thought of:





Now as I was building these it is incredibly hard to resist the natural dd want of wanting to add haste, especially for nin recast but I just wanted to show a little of the enmity and pdt potential of war. Both the weapons would be the trial of magians pdt paths. Any other gearsets or ideas I'd be glad to hear.

p.s Please don't add any just level pld or forget war tanking war is DD onry comments, I have pld leveled and I dont enjoy playing it as much as war. War was meant to be a versatile job not just a dd and thats hopefully how it will turn out to be.

Single Wield WAR set. DMG+18 and OAT on Richardet's Axe. Capped Haste.