Chain armor vs Plate armor

[Kreegan]

If these things are as you say, it sucks that War's top level skill is inferior to a lower level Theatrics' skill. It seems less and less viable to go below War's 4th row skills, Hamstring and War Cry seem to be the class' peak, the higher levels are just padding.
Anyway, it's rather clear that Theatrics have better defensive capabilities than (non-tanking) War (which is weird, because War is supposed to be the defensive class). The thing is that even strictly defensive Theatrics is very often pummeled by any type of War while at the same time he/she can take out the maddened Rages who in turn make a short work of any defensive War. Something is messed up.

[Dainoji]

I'm not sure War is supposed to be "The Defensive" glad in the arena. Given the Theatrics skill tree and fighting styles I think they are both meant to have the ability to be defensive glads but in a different way. War should be able to tank and absorb damage better and theatrics should be able to scum (i.e. make the other glad pass out) better. This is all on paper of course. In reality it isn't quite happening that way. I've got Chuck Norris my theatrics glad spec'd to scum and he does it a lot but not enough to be competitive across the board, and I've got Pharaoh my war glad spec'd to tank and it also works with limited success.

The problem right now and it's no secret to those of us who have been around for awhile is defense is really hard to pull off. In the early days of the game defense was strong and people complained and it was nerfed big time to prevent boring fights. Now the players have reached the "end game" and different issue are coming to light, the same kind of stuff that always happens in a MMO. I've written Nate and I'm sure others have and he is aware of the issues and has said he'll be looking at them. If we can get defense to work as designed (or at least how I think it was meant to work) I think we'd open up a lot of new possibilities and strategies and given the game's track record and the devs willingness to listen to us and improve the game I'm just being patient as I know it will happen. Until then I'll try and hone my my defensive glads and see what they can do!