tanks are crazy tough right?

Since I've hit fiddy, I've had a ton of content open up to me, so the learning has been slow in some places, quicker and others. Downed all the new dungeons with few problems though Pharos Sirius still eludes me this point... last boss is a pain lol. I pretty much DF all the way, then run LS/FC members afterwards once I get it down, but DF, people seem to have an issue with me starting out in sword oath. I've had little reason to go shield oath against stash mobs and my ilvl is high enough now I can sustain it. During any instead that I'm OT, I use sword oath as well, but if I know I'm about to switch, I immediately switch to shield. Some people, however, still flip out on me anyway.

Did I miss something? Last I checked I was still pretty durable even in sword oath, so why the flak when they haven't even seen anything to gauge my competence by? Is oath switching really that big a problem? I'm currently learning Garuda EX now that I'm up to that stage. Still haven't progressed past the first phase due to too many people dying, so I just started experimenting. Using both oaths while OT when I pull either sister (opinions keep varying on who needs to be pulled), only thing that kills me is downburst when I've forgotten to dodge it (honestly didn't know what the target thing was about, so that doesn't happen anymore). But here's my thing. If I could contribute more dps, shouldn't I do it? Especially fights I know like the back of my hand. I understand the comfort aspect of it, if I'm not main tanking, what's the issue here?

Some dps have to hold back if you are not using shield oath, it gives a massive enmity boost (especially since 2.1). I guess it depends on who you play with.

Personally, I believe you should play however you'd like to play. As a tank, your overall dot is not that much. V depending on how you spec'd your character. The problem is, that most people want you to either play in a traditional manner, or in their own style. Whatever the case, they should first allow you to proove yourself before offering suggestions.

Really depends how geared you are for the content.

To be honest I stay in shield oath the majority of times unless it's burning a boss (AK for example) and I'm ilevel 86.

Means the healer can DPS instead of me :)

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Originally Posted by Raagnar

Some dps have to hold back if you are not using shield oath, it gives a massive enmity boost (especially since 2.1). I guess it depends on who you play with.

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One of the tanks in my FC honestly has no trouble holding hate in sword oath against DPS who don't hold back. I've even stolen hate from shield oath PLDs while using Sword oath. The damage you're dealing gives you enmity that's sort of equivalent to normal combos in shield oath, with the downside of not taking reduced damage (remember Shield oath drops your own damage dealt)

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Originally Posted by NintenPyjak64

One of the tanks in my FC honestly has no trouble holding hate in sword oath against DPS who don't hold back. I've even stolen hate from shield oath PLDs while using Sword oath. The damage you're dealing gives you enmity that's sort of equivalent to normal combos in shield oath, with the downside of not taking reduced damage (remember Shield oath drops your own damage dealt)

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Like I said, it depends on who you play with. i85-90 dps pull A LOT of enmity. If you are tanking a crowd in sword oath, good luck! your "dmg" enmity is only coming from what you hit. shield oath enmity buffs flash.

Its also very easy to pull hate from a shield oath pld using sword oath depending on where you are in the fight. sword oath has no enmity suppression so when im using it while offtanking I have to hold back most of the time unless the other pld is close to i90 also.

A little known tidbit about the Oaths is that they're somewhat bugged. If you go from Shield oath to Sword oath you keep the emnity gains from Shield Oath.

There's a reddit post on the subject, but I and my friend have noticed it too. We used to think other tanks were bad because they couldn't keep emnity off of us, but it just turns out it's a bug.

You don't keep the damage reduction though.

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Originally Posted by Curcio

A little known tidbit about the Oaths is that they're somewhat bugged. If you go from Shield oath to Sword oath you keep the emnity gains from Shield Oath.

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I wouldn't build any habits or strategies on it though -- SE has said they will fix in the next patch.

I really wanted to use Sword Oath in places like AK and WP to speed up the runs, so I played with it quite a bit. The runs just always worked out faster with Shield Oath. With Sword, I had to throw out an extra 2-3 flashes to keep groups of mobs under control, which took a solid 5-7 seconds of attack time out of my GCD. Overall, my damage output seemed the same or a bit higher with 2 Flashes, and an extra round of attack combo. The healer also had more time to DPS, and the groups were more well controlled overall.

I still switch to Sword for single target stuff like the wall, although I switch back to Shield right before the 2nd Repel to tank bees.

In Garuda EX, as OT, I'll Sword Oath up until the first set of plumes, and then it's all Shield Oath from there.

There are two area's of thought on this. First is Shield oath isn't just about the Emnity boost.(taking the known bug aside) Shield oath grants a 20% damage reduction.

If you're not straining the healers, and you're not losing threat to DPS is the extra 20% damage increase and 50dmg per swing worth it? Hard question to answer. My Whm can do pretty damn good dps...especially in groups because I can holy for 600dmg each and crit pretty often.

By you taking 20% more dmg is that going to limit how often I can dps? Is your additional dps going to outweigh my dps? I doubt it. For the average encounter, sub primals and raid encounters, you really don't "need" shield oath if geared ok. But I think there are side effects of doing this that really doesn't help. I'm going to out dps you even with that dps increase from sword oath.

As a healer i'd rather you stay in shield so I can Stoneskin and regen you then unload most of my mana into Holy and stoneII. Thats just me though (i'm both a pld and whm)