A tank's lament

Any good tanking guide out there will let you know that maintaining agro is top priority. The better guides out there will also let you know that you get so many tools to establish agro, that your top priority is also the easiest thing in groups for you to accomplish. Because of this, extensive guides will indeed focus on putting out more damage. It's what actually brings intricate, engaging gameplay into tanking.

I have witnessed tanks get harassed for staying in tank stance in normal duties, but that is about the extent of it. I got trolled one time, but that had nothing to do with my damage output. I do agree that it is odd that anyone would give this kind of grief to a tank, especially after sitting in the queue for a long time. But no one in any of the PUGs I've been in were dumb enough to actually kick the tank for such reasons. I definitely feel it is a role that requires a good set of armor. Both inside and outside the game.

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Originally Posted by RyuujinZERO

I ask because I've been tanking on and off since ARR launch, yet the same cycle repeats. I reach a level of confidence where I try get in on current tier of relevant raid content (Not savage! - Just extreme)... and promptly get kicked out and insulted for not DPSing enough as main tank (Prompting me to lose all confidence in tanking ability and go play something else for several more months); and to be clear this is "not enough", not "not at all".

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I find this hard to believe. I've tanked with with some awful co-tanks - ones in actual savage content, in most recent memory seeing ones in A11S doing less than 900 was a regular occurence and it was more common for people to stay silent than call them out. With the whole spook of getting banned for mentioning dps numbers, even when people do get called out it's in a "i don't wanna be that guy buuut" kinda way.

If you're getting kicked regularly you're doing something really, really wrong.

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Originally Posted by HoodRat

The argument for dps stance isn't that you need it to meet dps requirements, it's that there's just almost no reason at all to use tank stance.
That's not true at all.

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Which is also why i wish they'd actually buff it. Anyway going back to the topic.


If we talk about farmed or nearly down content where the group does everything relatively flawlessly, then yes I agree. Tank stance isn't especially useful once you've passed the progression stage.

However, I do not consider the extra damage worthwhile during early progression when everyone keep dying and when you don't necessarly recognize every tank buster.
20% less damage taken remove a lot of stress from healers when the fight isn't properly understood and people keep taking random damage. Since GCD is the most valuable thing for a healer, every GCD the tank stance free me is a GCD I can use to save someone's ass from a failed dodge.

For instance, I've just done Shinryu and unfortunately it was a fail. Healer died from a Spike+AoE fire combo and some dps were slow on dodging the next ark rhai, when the dragon's head came down the group wasn't in top shape and tank were at 60-70%. With a WHM with -25% less heal and nearly no MP and me as a SCH with no Ether left (yes, it was going bad don't worry), we started healing the heads. And see at this very moment, if the tanks had switched to Tank Stance and popped some mitigation, we wouldn't have had to shoot some heal to keep them alive while we were doing the heads, and doing so would have given us enough time to heal the two head that already started on not fully healed DPS.

This is a very nich exemple, but these kind of bad situation happen all the time when you learn a fight.
IMO, the extra dps these tank did had no value, we wipe and altough it wasn't entirely the Tanks fault, they could have made a terrible situation much less terrible.
They could have popped defensive CD to help us stabilise the situation, when the WHM died and the Dragons head came down, they could have started being more defensive, the PLD could have healed instead of doing more Holyshot when he had 15% left, yet they were still tunnel visionning their dps which ultimately leaded us to a wipe.


My point is that, unless the boss actually dies, the extra damage has no value. If you have a SAM with 6.5k dps but he keeps ignoring an add which makes the group wipe, your SAM dps is useless because he's not doing what he's suppose to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but for me the first goal of a MT (two tanks in Shin case) is to Survive while holding aggro. 20% permanent mitigation is not something that should be laughed at. I honestly cannot count the number of times tank died simply because they were in DPS stance and the heals couldn't heal them quick enough. (I've seen some tank die on the waterfall damage, like being at 30% when the waterfall is coming doesn't ring any bell)

So going back to the former poster, if everything is fine I would say do not hesitate to go DPS stance, afterall there's a point where enough mitigation is enough. On the other hand, you should never be shy to go back in tank stance if the situation is turns ill.

If you die because of a lack of mitigation (like, if being in tank stance would have actually saved you), you failed at your job.
The same holds for healers or dps, if I let someone die to push a last stoneIV, I failed as a healer, I will never be able to do enough dps to cover his death, same goes for a DPS who tries to push too hard sometime, no matter your dps, if you die you will never recover -25% less dps for 2min.
Worst, you might actually be absent for an important mechanic. (Like a Dragon Head on the MT in P3shin....)

And just quoting Anna saying that if you get constently banned because of "low dps", I'm sorry but (s)he's right.
I have NEVER seen a tank being kicked for low dps and I am myself not a top tier DPS DRK (but I've often had healers tell me I was a piece of cake to heal)
If you get regularely kicked for low dps or wathever, you are probably the faulty person in this story.



btw, you guys think he's still reading? he's done 0 replies. Almost feels like a troll post

I agree with everything a man above me wrote.

The main job as a tank is to tank, thats how the game design is, not other way around. Just because you could make the dungeon 30 seconds faster doesnt mean its worth risking a wipe by losing aggro or just failing at tanking the mobs and lose more than 30 seconds on respawning.
Not sure about warrior, but shield oath and Grit stance on DRK and PLD are essential in most activities to keep themselves alive. 20% dmg on a tank with 1k-2k will do no difference at all, but the saved MP and time on a healer side will do, as well as additional group of mobs on the pull.
The only place you should switch to offence stance is when you fight boss, which does not do too much damage to you and other party member, because surprise surprise, healer need to heal himself and others also, if the boss will pull out aoe and healer will need to use resources to heal everyone not only a tank, then you are risking a wipe when trying to fight boss with a wet noodle stance when healer will not be able to heal you in time.
I am using tank stance all the time, with few exception of the bosses i know its safe to do more damage, never been blamed for damage.
My job is to keep aggro and make it safe, not to do dmg, if you want to do dmg switch to dps.
Maybe some savage and extreme content will require a high dps from everyone to get pass it, but 95% of other duties does not really push a tank to offensive stance.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

I view these kinds of threads with extreme skepticism. All the horrible stories of abuse these tanks/healers suffer for not pushing out dps is so far removed from anything I've actually seen in game. It more seems like using the forum to propagate their anti tank/healer dps agenda using fictitious, or at least greatly embellished, tales of misfortune than anything else.

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Yup. Every thread about getting 'constantly kicked' from parties or banned 'for no reason' by GMs are usually 1 sided, exaggerated, leave out important details, or straight up lies. The best case (if you can call it that) are people just so out of touch they are borderline delusional and honestly believe they did nothing wrong while to any outsider its plainly obvious. These things just don't happen regularly, but the posts make it sound like it's an epidemic. Reasonable people don't have these issues. Its an issue with the player, not the community 99/100.

First of all, It'd be good to know what kind of party did you join as you first attempt tanking. I started to tank a bit as omega weekly cap got removed. Although I'm super familiar with the fights as DPS, I still join practice party from the beginning because I'm not used to tanking. Before I joined I even relearned the timeline and planned all my CDs. I ended up clearing 1st to first half of 4th floor quite easily as both MT and ST in few attempts. I feel like the main reason you got booted is not about dps. Like even a DPS isn't dpsing properly is not likely to get booted unless he dies way too much. Even it is, the party isn't worth staying anyway because they are just as bad if not worse than you if they need your extra dps for the extreme clear/farm this late since the release.

As for how much dps loss it is in tank stance, let's say tank stance boost your by around 10%~15% and tank stance is a 20% loss. This results in around 40% dps difference between full tank stance and full dps stance. Considering a tank doing 2.5k~3.5k dps, that's a 700~1k dps for whole raid from a single player (it's less for DRK, around 25%). Note that for current raid tier dps requirement is 19k~24k, which can result in 3~5% enrage. It is not a good idea to leave the dps loss to DPS to deal with especially in prog, not to mention there are many like-minded healer. The extra ~250 for each DPS to push can be from requiring good rotation and uptime to nearly flawless execution, which is not happening unless DPS take their job seriously and have learned the fight well. But again this is for savage raid. For normal raid/extreme it should not matter, nor it should in daily roulette. While it doesn't matter, dropping tank stance can surely make things go faster if you make sure to hold aggro and don't die. Plus it can be more fun. In FFXIV there are very few things require tank stance to survive, like you either pop sheltron/thrill/RI/TBN with another CD, or simply use your invuln. Important thing about dropping tank stance though is be sure to make the most value out of your CDs, as this can make healer's job easier. You should not drop it unprepared and ask healer to shield you all the time. For example, O1S you should pop rampart right after boss first AA so you mitigate 2 wyrm tail + twin bolt. Same thing goes to O2S's tank buster and tank swap. On O3S you might want to delay your CD for there's often aoe damage and AA after buster.

Interestingly though, things I've noticed after pugging a lot is that good tank not only do more damage but also often mitigate better than the tank who need tank stance. Same thing goes to healer, a good healer do damage and keep raid alive with bunch of MP left but bad ones are often out of MP with low damage output. I think Dungeon bosses are pretty good practice for tanking. Just try to mitigate with CD only and then dps as much as you can, you can't even die with no CD and tank stance for tank buster there.