Why do so many tanks never seem to use their defensive skills these days?

Foresight, Shadowskin, etc.

It is mainly DRKs thus far (one of which, at 60, got indignant when I finally pointed out that was making it difficult to keep him alive), but this goes any tank that doesn't make good use of defensive skills during battle.

Had a pld in stone vigil normal, didnt even have shield oath and used provoke to pull... What is this ffxi?

well for one foresight has always been garbage lol

for two probably because they are used to playing a dps and not popping defensives ever too

I don't get the "foresight is garbage" thing.

I mean, don't get me wrong, foresight is garbage in a lot of situations, but if your in a dungeon and you pull a big pack of adds and all are physical damage, you'll notice a 20% increase in defense.

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Originally Posted by Slappah

I don't get the "foresight is garbage" thing.

I mean, don't get me wrong, foresight is garbage in a lot of situations, but if your in a dungeon and you pull a big pack of adds and all are physical damage, you'll notice a 20% increase in defense.

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It's a 20% increase to your defensive stat. That doesn't equate to 20% decrease in physical damage. The buff is entirely situational on the level of your gear. Gear with higher amounts of physical defense result in a stronger buff. However, realize, this is only 5% more defense than what Protect gives you, and it is ONLY physical defense, completely useless on magical damage, unlike protect. This skill's usefulness though increases with each release of new tiers of gear. Though, its scaling is still unknown given the higher damage new bosses and mobs do with each patch. The best way to tell the real difference is by using the new unsyncing function for the dungeons and running old content, and watching the damage then looking at the difference.

If I remember correctly, wasn't the damage reduction from Foresight somewhere between 3-7% in 2.0?

I'm not sure how well that reflects on the reduction it'll have in 3.0 content, but I'd imagine the results will be fairly similar. It'll be a nice little reduction to have (because why the hell not? More mitigation is more mitigation, afterall), but not anything that you can count on to actually save your life or worry about saving for the right moment as a clutch mitigation tool. Think of it more as a quality of life utility for your healers.

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Originally Posted by Kiteless

If I remember correctly, wasn't the damage reduction from Foresight somewhere between 3-7% in 2.0?

I'm not sure how well that reflects on the reduction it'll have in 3.0 content, but I'd imagine the results will be fairly similar. It'll be a nice little reduction to have (because why the hell not? More mitigation is more mitigation, afterall), but not anything that you can count on to actually save your life or worry about saving for the right moment as a clutch mitigation tool. Think of it more as a quality of life utility for your healers.

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It's something like 8-12% when I last saw the math sussed out at the end of 2.5. It's "okay," it's just hard to really get a read on how effective it is for reducing damage. I usually pair it with Awareness, since the two of them alone aren't incredible defensive CDs.

The question wasn't "How good is Foresight?" it was "Why don't tanks use cooldowns?"

I think the basic reason is because they don't think they need to. If I'm not at risk of being killed, I don't need to use my cooldowns, so I should save them for when I am at risk of dieing. This is the mentality of a couple of people I've spoken to about this issue. People only go looking for a panic button when they're actually panicing, not realising that it's usually too late by that stage. How many panic situations would be avoided if you'd been using your cooldowns pro-actively? What if you'd already had Vengeance/Inner Beast/Rampart/Sentinel/{DRK ability goes here} active when that massive hit came in? You'd have saved yourself from being low in the first place.

As for Foresight, just use it on cooldown. The bonus is so small that you're not going to save yourself from anything by using it, just throw it out there as often as you can to make the most of a below average defensive ability. I usually just blow it every time it's up and I'm pulling something. Trash mobs? Foresight. Bosses? Foresight. Levers? Foresight. Miquotes in bars? Fore... OK, OK, I don't go to bars, but you get the idea. I do the same thing with Featherfoot and Bloodbath, alternating the three of them.

Of course that's just my opinion of how things should be done. YMMV, and if you're running into tanks that aren't using cooldowns, they're probably just bad and wont listen to advice anyways. Sucks to be you.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

The question wasn't "How good is Foresight?"

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That actually was, indeed, the question that Ceodore, Kiteless, and myself were responding to. Threads frequently have multiple points of conversation going on in them.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

Foresight, Shadowskin, etc.

It is mainly DRKs thus far (one of which, at 60, got indignant when I finally pointed out that was making it difficult to keep him alive), but this goes any tank that doesn't make good use of defensive skills during battle.

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It's kinda based on need, alot of good tanks typically save their defensive cooldowns for either big pulls or powerful hits. It's not that they can't use them for lesser fights, but it becomes more of a mentality of saving them when they need to use them or in dire straights.

As for DRK, I speculate it's partially due to the fact it's a new job and not all the kinks (and upcoming job adjustments) have been worked out yet, but I also think it's because DRK is introducing alot of players to the Tank Role which can be difficult to grasp and have a very harsh learning curve when you hit that 50/60 mark and have to compete for hate against people who have significantly higher ilv than them.