Warnock witnessed his side fail to win a top-flight match for the fourth game in a row, as James McArthur's first Palace goal was quickly cancelled out by Peter Crouch's 13th-minute leveller at Selhurst Park.
The 66-year-old believes Palace were good value for three points in a tightly contested game, but agreed his team were punished for failing to hold on to the lead for longer than two minutes.
"It was like a war of attrition. If I was a journalist I'd lead on that and use it as a first paragraph," Warnock told his post-match media conference.
"It's difficult when from the first minute you get teams that have got a set way and are timewasting from the start, but you have to cope with that.
"Our biggest problem is that we didn't keep the lead for long enough. I think you've seen how many efforts on goal they've had and really we had to keep the lead longer than we did, that's the problem.
"We were actually attacking trying to get the second goal [before Stoke equalised]. I mean what should we do? Put 11 men behind the ball and protect?
"We wanted a second goal and we were in a good position to do that. You shouldn't get caught on the counter like that. That's the only blip defensive wise and we coped quite well with whatever else they had to throw at us."
Palace's hopes of finding a winner were not helped when striker Marouane Chamakh exited play in the 76th minute with an apparent hamstring problem.
The Moroccan sustained a similar injury earlier in the season, but Warnock is hopeful that the issue is not serious.
"When Chamakh came off we didn't threaten them enough," he added. "I don't know yet [how bad it is].
"I don't think it's as bad as the one at Newcastle or last season, hopefully it will be a couple of weeks. I don't think it will be anything drastic."
