Farewell stance dancing!

I have been playing my PLD up to 78 and about to hit 79, and the fact that I no longer have to stance dance is so perfect.

With all the crazy crap you have to deal with as a tank pre SHB, stance dancing was the one thing that needed to go as #1. When I heard sword oath was removed I was like "Oh no! My solo stance!" But then I thought about what I was losing. Stress! Seriously this was the smartest thing SE did for all the tanks.

Much like how healers should DPS and tanks should DPS I feel takes away from the classes that we choose. I for one wanted to tank and take all the punishment for everyone. I didn't sign up to push my DPS higher then a MNK while switching back and forth to hold hate. That's just stupid! And I think SE saw this as a community problem, and put tanks back in the tank corner, DPS in the DPS corner, and heals the same.

I didn't like that toxic environment of DPS making tanks feel like our DPS sucks...because it does! I will never get BLM level numbers so stop expecting it.

Good Riddance Sword Oath, Deliverance, and Darkside (persay).

Thoughts?

yes i do enjoy the changes to the tank stance
being able to use equilibrium heal without flicking on a stance
or having a skill locked to a stance

I like the change. I mean it wasn’t like I was ever using defiance in raids anyway besides on pull, so it just ensures dps who didn’t use aggro controlling moves won’t be a problem for tanks.

I feel that stances had untapped potential that we'll now never see, same with enmity management to a degree too.

That said, given how they were, the practical effects of the changes are fine.

I wanted tank stances to be gone completely, but all things considered this is the next best thing to that.

I love it. I feel so free as a tank now. I was actually thinking about switching from being a tank right before ShB but not anymore.

I think something that needs to be pointed out is that aggro is now completely in the hands of the MT and OT, which is fantastic imo.

I'm glad. Being an OT and seeing the MT lose aggro to me while they're stance dancing and I'm just in OT stance is annoying. So now they have no choice but to actually keep aggro.

I liked stance dancing when it actually counted for something. But with the game and its meta moving in a direction that trivialized the entire process, removing it was putting a now useless system out of its misery.

I barely stance danced but I feel they went overboard on the changes. To the point I think it's even less impactful now.

Okay so, we now have a flat 20% damage reduction right? Well because that's baked in you don't actively see/feel the damage reduction. And Aggro is so dead easy the stance is "Do you want to effortlessly hold aggro" button. Yes that's actually a big effect but because of how bloody effortlessly it is, I forget to turn it back on because I just think it's baked into the class. Which at the rate it's going, that's gonna happen next expansion.

Maybe 'impactful' isn't the word. Noticeable might be but I've seen far more tanks forget to turn it on at the start of a dungeon than I have before the change, myself included.

I just find it strange they decided to throw in the towel on the idea rather than balancing them around the community's lust for DPS.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I barely stance danced but I feel they went overboard on the changes. To the point I think it's even less impactful now.

Okay so, we now have a flat 20% damage reduction right? Well because that's baked in you don't actively see/feel the damage reduction. And Aggro is so dead easy the stance is "Do you want to effortlessly hold aggro" button. Yes that's actually a big effect but because of how bloody effortlessly it is, I forget to turn it back on because I just think it's baked into the class. Which at the rate it's going, that's gonna happen next expansion.

Maybe 'impactful' isn't the word. Noticeable might be but I've seen far more tanks forget to turn it on at the start of a dungeon than I have before the change, myself included.

I just find it strange they decided to throw in the towel on the idea rather than balancing them around the community's lust for DPS.

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I for one say good riddance to the old system, as I felt it was sort of clunky after 3.0. Stance dancing was OK if you built up enough hate, but with DPS dancing on the edge of pulling hate it was sort of a "situational" method of tanking. For Warrior I felt it was pretty simple to swap back and forth, since it did push a lot of DPS that way. But for PLD it was pitiful, the trade off was something to be desired.

I'm glad SE saw this "clunky" way of tanks doing DPS, and just did away with tanks wanting to bump up their DPS during windows of opportunity. They just leveled the playing field and gave us a much better flow for combat as a tank.

That's my opinion anyway, and I play all the tanks. PLD is in such a sweet spot and I would hate for them to change it since I have been waiting for this moment for 5 years. Don't change PLD! Fix DRK since it needs it more!