Reevaluation to Tanks Stances and Related Abilities

[Donjo]

Snip. This post is long enough. No need to put another book on top!

That's not quite what I meant. I said that the party would feel it, not merely notice it. I meant with this that the consequences of the Tank messing up in this manner are not only obvious but severe as well.

You expressed a concern about vagueness. I certainly didn't mean to express such sentiments. Let's see if I can help out with that.

Enabling the rest of the party to perform their roles efficiently: This may be better if defined as a "do not": Do not do something that prevents a party member from performing their primary duties. Positioning is arguably the biggest aspect of this from a Tanking perspective. If the monster is constantly moving, no DPS will be able to efficiently DPS. If the monsters aren't positioned quickly, you're delaying the kills. If you spin a monster in circles, the melee DPS cannot hit their positionals. If you run out of the range of the Healer's spells, they can't heal you. Tanks quite simply have the most methods available to them to directly interfere with the party's ability to perform their roles.

Ensure that the fight is as easy as possible: Easy is, in most cases, certainly subjective. We'll need to focus on more objective examples of this then. The obvious example in the context of this thread is that being hit in the face without a Tank Stance on makes you more difficult to heal. Whether the Healer can handle it or not is irrelevant; you would be objectively easier to keep alive if you were in a Tank Stance. Another example is cleaves; don't point them at the party. Unnecessary damage increases the burden on Healers. Other more situational examples would be taking over mechanics that don't explicitly require a Tank to perform them but would, for example, give DPS more uptime if you took care of it instead.

Now, you presented one situation that makes things more interesting: slipping out of the Tank Stance in order to beat a Hard Enrage. Enabling the performance of roles has no compromise, but this is an example of a time when keeping the fight easy can be bent. You misunderstand when you posit that the ability to win is equivalent to making the fight easier. Situations like those barely there enrage wins are the result of one of the most important aspects of undergeared progression: calculated increases of risk to the party(making the actual performing of the fight more difficult) in exchange for gaining the DPS necessary to win. The alternative is playing it safe and then hitting the enrage. It was really easy to get there, but you didn't win.

To go back to the idea that a Tank messing this stuff up has more severe repercussions than other roles, I can illustrate this with an example.

First, the Bad Tank. This Tank holds aggro and has the defenses to avoid dying, but he spends his days endlessly kiting monsters around, spinning them in circles, getting people cleaved, and turning his back to enemies whenever possible. This makes fights far more difficult and far longer than they ever needed to be and the members of this party will run far, far away from this Tank whenever they see him again.

In comparison, I would present one of the most famous examples of a DPS not fully utilizing their ability to ease the burden of a party: The Bard who does not sing. They do their DPS and everything falls pretty smoothly, but no songs. The other party members might identify that the healer could have used some MP in that one pull, or Foes might have been useful in this other one, but it's not too much of a bother because it didn't cause anything to explicitly go awry. It's possible that nobody will even notice that this Bard didn't sing because the dungeon/fight went smoothly in spite of it.

When a Tank messes these things up, it's irritating, it slows things down, it makes the game more difficult, and it gets people killed. If a DPS/Healer messes these things up, it just makes non-raid content slightly more difficult. A Tank who fails the duties I'm describing will not be wanted or effective in any content. A DPS or Healer who fails these duties will only be eschewed from raids because those actions otherwise will not be necessary. That is why they're important enough for Tanks that I named them as primary duties. For everyone else, they're not quite as "primary", so to speak.

These "extra jobs" are not given to the Tank by the community because of some perception of leadership. They're given to the Tank by the game itself because Tanks are deliberately designed to be the best at performing them. This is one of the major points of the Holy Trinity: every role is best at the things they are supposed to be doing. A Tank who isn't the leader still needs to be doing them.

Well, um, I apologize for the wall. I hope I have explained my thoughts adequately without seeming argumentative. If you don't agree, that's fine. Hopefully you at least know where I'm coming from now. Getting a factual answer on the "true duties of the Tank" would require speaking to the devs, and I don't know about you but I certainly cannot speak Japanese.

[Asierid]

1. Makes Threat more difficult to keep

Not at all. Threat is stupid easy to maintain these days.

2. Makes you less effective at not dying

I have the same cooldowns with or without tank stance (outside of IB). The main issue is the HP decrease, and there are no bosses outside progression that require that much HP to take a hit.

3. Increases stress on the party and thus makes them less able to perform their roles efficiently

I do as much if not more DPS than most of the party members while providing the tank buffs through cool downs. There is no stress unless the healer is not paying attention and trying to heal in Cleric Stance.

4. Increases the overall difficulty of the fight

Fight is over faster, thus less damage is going out and less healing is needed.

This whole argument is about bad tanking, not tank stances at all. Just because some tank you ran with sucks does not mean the system is flawed. The system works as intended, the players are just trying to shift the blame because they cannot handle adjust to situations on the fly. All these points you mentioned are met regardless of stance.

[SpecialKK]

But even in WoW tanks had stances, Warrior had defensive stance, Pally had Divine Fervor or w/e, Druid had to be in bear form and DK needed to be in Frost Rune or whatever.

Stances simplify the need of separating Main-tank and Off-tank roles. Tanking? Turn on tank stance, pretending to be DPS/OT? Turn it off. What this game needs to fix this "silliness" and "untanklike behavior" problem is to make encounters require tank stances. Up the damage of auto attacks to a level where regen doesn't tick higher than the raid boss's auto-attack.

Stances going oGCD for non-WAR tanks is fine if WAR gets healed 25% of its current health when swapping as well. That would make them balanced.

Wouldn't that put DRK at a great disadvantage?

[Donjo]

...

If you are outside of a Tank Stance, you are producing less enmity. Therefore, it is more difficult to stay ahead of your party members. This is basic mathematics.

Whether or not you are easy to heal outside of the Tank Stance is irrelevant. Turning it on will make it even easier to heal you. This is basic logic.

A faster kill that comes from a Tank or Healer going out of their way to increase DPS results in a shorter fight that is more difficult during its duration than the alternative slower but easier fight. Overall numbers are not as meaningful as what happens in the heat of battle.

The idea isn't that the four points are 100% not being met outside of a Tank Stance. The point is that all of them are being met better when inside one. Therefore, being outside of the Tank Stance is less tank-like than being inside of it.

[Dererk]

Everyone is going on about tank dps but instrd why not just incress the dps's dps I know shocker huh.

Lets have all tanks give a none stacking buff to the whole party's dps while they are in tank stance.

We'll call it Wardens grace. Gives a 5% damage boost to all party members for so long as a tank stance is active can not be stacked. Can not affect tanks in tank stance lowers hate gain to tanks not in tank stance.

Have people not in tank stance benefit from this so they have a reason to turn off their tank stance to boost dps. And it will give tanks more reasons to be in their tank stance if they are tanking.

There this would be a good reason to be in tank stance because then it will up the whole party's dps healers included.

Any one who disputes this idea in no way cares about pushing phases, progression , or mitigation. Because as some have been saying damage is a mitigation this will just make sure that the damage is coming from the dps. And if they do dispute this they just care about doing more damage and in this case they've chosen the wrong role to play.

[RapBreon]

That's not quite what I meant. I said that the party would feel it, not merely notice it. I meant with this that the consequences of the Tank messing up in this manner are not only obvious but severe as well.

0.o. It doesn't matter, the entire premise and conclusion are circular. "These duties exist because if we fail these duties everyone will feel us fail our duties".

Enabling the rest of the party to perform their roles efficiently: This may be better if defined as a "do not": Do not do something that prevents a party member from performing their primary duties. Positioning is arguably the biggest aspect of this from a Tanking perspective. If the monster is constantly moving, no DPS will be able to efficiently DPS. If the monsters aren't positioned quickly, you're delaying the kills. If you spin a monster in circles, the melee DPS cannot hit their positionals. If you run out of the range of the Healer's spells, they can't heal you. Tanks quite simply have the most methods available to them to directly interfere with the party's ability to perform their roles.

Adding 'do not' to the front of it doesn't automatically make it tank specific.

Ensure that the fight is as easy as possible: Easy is, in most cases, certainly subjective. We'll need to focus on more objective examples of this then. The obvious example in the context of this thread is that being hit in the face without a Tank Stance on makes you more difficult to heal. Whether the Healer can handle it or not is irrelevant; you would be objectively easier to keep alive if you were in a Tank Stance. Another example is cleaves; don't point them at the party. Unnecessary damage increases the burden on Healers. Other more situational examples would be taking over mechanics that don't explicitly require a Tank to perform them but would, for example, give DPS more uptime if you took care of it instead.

I'll agree with your example devoid of contextual meaning. But it falls in the same vein of DPS (specifically DPS) are obliged not to stand in stuff. Hypotheticals, devoid of the complexity and nuance that the actual fights that spur on these debates involving tanks in DPS stance create.

Now, you presented one situation that makes things more interesting: slipping out of the Tank Stance in order to beat a Hard Enrage. Enabling the performance of roles has no compromise, but this is an example of a time when keeping the fight easy can be bent. You misunderstand when you posit that the ability to win is equivalent to making the fight easier. Situations like those barely there enrage wins are the result of one of the most important aspects of undergeared progression: calculated increases of risk to the party(making the actual performing of the fight more difficult) in exchange for gaining the DPS necessary to win. The alternative is playing it safe and then hitting the enrage. It was really easy to get there, but you didn't win.

Uhhh. This is what I meant by situational (relative would've been a better word). The most difficult component to the fights we're referencing is the DPS enrage. As you have noticed this sub-forum is full of wah wah tanks crying about having to do damage. You can be as 'easy' to heal as you want, hell take 4 tanks and 4 healers, it would be 2ez to get through those mechanics. But I'm sticking to my guns when I say "making the fight go from impossible to possible" is probably one of the biggest contributions to making it easier (as impossible is considerably difficult I would imagine).

To go back to the idea that a Tank messing this stuff up has more severe repercussions than other roles, I can illustrate this with an example.

First, the Bad Tank. This Tank holds aggro and has the defenses to avoid dying, but he spends his days endlessly kiting monsters around, spinning them in circles, getting people cleaved, and turning his back to enemies whenever possible. This makes fights far more difficult and far longer than they ever needed to be and the members of this party will run far, far away from this Tank whenever they see him again.

In comparison, I would present one of the most famous examples of a DPS not fully utilizing their ability to ease the burden of a party: The Bard who does not sing. They do their DPS and everything falls pretty smoothly, but no songs. The other party members might identify that the healer could have used some MP in that one pull, or Foes might have been useful in this other one, but it's not too much of a bother because it didn't cause anything to explicitly go awry. It's possible that nobody will even notice that this Bard didn't sing because the dungeon/fight went smoothly in spite of it.

When a Tank messes these things up, it's irritating, it slows things down, it makes the game more difficult, and it gets people killed. If a DPS/Healer messes these things up, it just makes non-raid content slightly more difficult. A Tank who fails the duties I'm describing will not be wanted or effective in any content. A DPS or Healer who fails these duties will only be eschewed from raids because those actions otherwise will not be necessary. That is why they're important enough for Tanks that I named them as primary duties. For everyone else, they're not quite as "primary", so to speak.

A smaller margin for error (presuming it exists) does not duplicate your responsibilities.

Well, um, I apologize for the wall. I hope I have explained my thoughts adequately without seeming argumentative. If you don't agree, that's fine. Hopefully you at least know where I'm coming from now. Getting a factual answer on the "true duties of the Tank" would require speaking to the devs, and I don't know about you but I certainly cannot speak Japanese.

I just disagreed with you trying create points out of nothing :P. I was crazy drunk last night (I know I'm a party animal) and just wanted to drive-by comment, sorry if I offended.

[Phoenicia]

Wouldn't that put DRK at a great disadvantage?

How? DRK, very much like PLD, instantaneously gets 25% effective health boost the second Grit, very much like ShO, is activated. War getting healed 25% of its current health is exactly getting 25% effective health boost in Defiance. Defiance has "gaps" that aren't in the other tank stances, which is why it is oGCD.

Is oGCD stance dancing an advantage? Hell yeah! But does it have disadvantages? Currently yes!

For PLD and DRK to get oGCD stances, all stances have to be brought in line with each other.

If you are outside of a Tank Stance, you are producing less enmity. Therefore, it is more difficult to stay ahead of your party members. This is basic mathematics.

Yes, if you are struggling with aggro, you should not be out of tank stance. As you are producing less enmity. But once you surpass everyone else's enmity, math doesn't matter as long as the function "My aggro > their aggro" is true. Being 2000 enmity ahead is like being 2,000,000 enmity ahead. Both make the above function "true". As long as said function is true, boss will not face someone else but the tank.

Being out of tank stance is completely irrelevant if I can hold aggro by my DPS alone (AKA being top DPS) because the actual DPS in the party can't handle a rotation more complex than 1, 2, 3 or can't find the boss's flank to land that Heavy Thrust when it's their darned fault because the boss is not moving.

Whether or not you are easy to heal outside of the Tank Stance is irrelevant. Turning it on will make it even easier to heal you. This is basic logic.

Again, as long as the healer is NOT spending ANY additional GCDs healing me, healing me is NOT any harder.

If the Regen ticks and/or Fairy Heals higher than Auto-attacks while in DPS stance (and they do in most cases!), there is no reason to switch to tank stance to make auto-attacks hit even less, making Regen and Fairy just do more overhealing.

If a healer casting 1 or 2 Cure IIs tops me off after burst, it doesn't matter if I'm in tank stance or not as the healer's "Duty" of keeping me topped off is fulfilled by exactly the same number of GCDs.

A faster kill that comes from a Tank or Healer going out of their way to increase DPS results in a shorter fight that is more difficult during its duration than the alternative slower but easier fight. Overall numbers are not as meaningful as what happens in the heat of battle.

The only increased difficulty in the entire party falls back on the tank(s) doing the stance-dancing themselves, not the party.

The idea isn't that the four points are 100% not being met outside of a Tank Stance. The point is that all of them are being met better when inside one. Therefore, being outside of the Tank Stance is less tank-like than being inside of it.

Look back at the point-by-point answers. However, a tank should know when to go back into tank stance to make sure those points are met.

A tank SHOULD go to tank stance to get that aggro lead if they can't get it while out of tank stance.

A tank SHOULD go to tank stance to mitigate an incoming damage burst (a stream of hard hits or a tank buster) so the healer doesn't spend absurd amounts of GCDs just healing them back.

Aside from that, the rest of "duties of the tank" (position, not spinning mob, handling mechanics, etc) can be fulfilled regardless of tank stance.

TL;DR: A tank staying in DPS stance when they shouldn't be as an example of "bad tanking". A tank GOING OUT of tank stance when it safely can is an example of excellent tanking.

[Asierid]

If you are outside of a Tank Stance, you are producing less enmity. Therefore, it is more difficult to stay ahead of your party members. This is basic mathematics.

You don't need any extra threat past a well established initial rotation. Considering (At least from a WAR standpoint) that my main DPS rotation is threat based, and my starting one consists of Unchained/Zerk, no one is pulling anything before the boss dies. Regardless of what stance I choose after my first pacify.


You need enough to hold the boss. Anything more is wasted.

Whether or not you are easy to heal outside of the Tank Stance is irrelevant. Turning it on will make it even easier to heal you. This is basic logic.

How is this irrelevant? Re-read that statement.

Whether or not you are easy to heal outside of the Tank Stance is irrelevant.

How is healing a tank in DPS stance with cool downs, which is the same as in tank stance, BTW, irrelevant? This kind of counters the entire point you are attempting to make while side stepping a valid fact I just pointed out. Making your heals larger at this point is just a waste of DPS time that could be spent killing the damn boss. Hell, if you can ignore your healing crit boner for a minute, you can even just throw a few regens up when Conv is popped and I'm good until they fall off. DPS your heart out.

A faster kill that comes from a Tank or Healer going out of their way to increase DPS results in a shorter fight that is more difficult during its duration than the alternative slower but easier fight. Overall numbers are not as meaningful as what happens in the heat of battle.

It is not more difficult. Please. Now we're over exaggerating and throwing crap at a wall to see what sticks.

Overall numbers are meaningful when a majority of content in this game is on an enrage timer. Tank DPS is also considered in these fights when they balance them, just so you know.

The idea isn't that the four points are 100% not being met outside of a Tank Stance. The point is that all of them are being met better when inside one. Therefore, being outside of the Tank Stance is less tank-like than being inside of it.

No, the idea is that these four points are vague opinions on how tanks should play. We could just read an actual definition of a tank instead of using skewed rhetoric. Notice the part where it says attract the attention of monsters? We do that. Have large HP pools and special armor to tank with? We have that.

Nothing more, nothing less. This, again, is a thread geared towards bad tanks and bad healers. It has nothing to do with the system, which does its job.

I still find it amusing that we're attempting to argue that a shorter fight isn't better...

[Phoenicia]

I still find it amusing that we're attempting to argue that a shorter fight isn't better...again!

FIFY in blue text!

[Duelle]

2. It's going to happen anyways. Getting rid of the threat bonus will not stop tanks from tanking in DPS stance, because as of right now, more deeps is king.

Only because the skills either have inherent enmity modifiers that react to damage delivered (example: Halone combo used in Sword Oath) or the jobs having enmity leads that allow them to switch to DPS stance without incident (Dark Arts Power Slash combo or Berserk+Unchained+Butcher's Block combo, which is then upkept by using an enmity combo in DPS stance).

I guess that switching stances should act as an enmity drop of sorts if you want to discourage tanks tanking in DPS stance. This would be a good thing in the long run since it removes one of the factors that is skewing comps, alleviates the "WAR is required" thing a little bit, and has the bonus of having tanks play like tanks. I'm sure that a WAR and DRK in Defiance/Grit would still outdamage a PLD in Shield Oath, so things would be alright on that end.

PS: Another option would be making defensive cooldowns less effective in DPS stance. Hate to say this, but we sort of brought this on ourselves.