Stance Dance/Gathering Adds and Dungeons

Hello guys,

I enjoy at the moment tanking with all three classes.
I've a Warrior level 53, Paladin level 51 and Dark Knight level 36.

So far I feel like Paladin is totally useless, because you only have one long CD AE damage skill. Flash feels pretty useless (How much enmity it produces anyway?).
Warrior is pretty neat but runs out of TP pretty quick. Especial in dungeons with mass pulling and bombing. Dark Knight is easy mode for me so far.
So beside that I asking myself about the stance dance. Sometimes I can't even proper catch new adds, because of the GCD. But it would be even worse when I start to dance with the stances because of the 10s CD as Warrior or the extra GCD as a Paladin.

How do you guys manage that? And is it even worth to stance dance in Dungeons or later Raid bosses (when you active tank)?

Flash generates slightly less enmity than overpower because it doesn't do damage. Flash also doesn't get boosted by flight or flight ( it gets boosted by WAR's berserk though.)

Weave flash's and rotate targets with rage of halone combo.Use spirits within whenever it's free on the target you have the least hate on.Circle of scorn use whenever it's on cooldown.
If a mob sneaks out of your range,cast provoke and follow with shield lob.As provoke only puts your 1 hate above highest person it's a good follow up to keep that agro while the monster moves back to you.
Opening a pull on a boss with fighter or flight is a must.It boosts your overall damage which means it boosts your hate.

On a side note.Warrior should never be running out of TP.The fact the job can use both overpower and flash means you should be rotating the 2 to save tp as opposed to just mashing the overpower skill.

Well I rotate my single spells and put Overpower after each combo in between to manage my TP. Works neat.
But when I have very potent DPS, a provoke and a lob is nothing which holds aggro for long, because DPS obviously don't stop.
Now we can debate if it's the DPS fault or mine, but I want like them a smooth and quick run through the dungeon. So I try to give my DPS as much DPS uptime as possible (For only that reason Tank and healer exist).

The typical argument concerning stance dancing is that the more you learn a dungeon or an encounter, the more you should be trying to weave in stance dancing, when you know you're not going to be taking a significant amount of damage, and when you don't need the extra enmity generation.

However, stance dancing isn't necessary for most content (progression raiders are extremely adamant about it being needed in savage raiding). You can do it if you want to and if your healer says it's okay (proponents will say they won't notice if you do it right), but you shouldn't feel like you have to.

If a healer can stance dance at ease, a tank stance-dance must be use wisely and always with the healer approval
Otherwise you might die pretty pretty quick

As healer i've found only a few player that were able to stance dance in tank while I didn't notice it because of self heal and correct mitigation

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Remember that stance dance is good as war if you rotate CD correctly
Practicly useless as PAL because the DPS boost is minimal while the damage taken high
As dark knight you almost never remove grit except very high DPS need

Okay thanks for your opinions guys.

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Originally Posted by Nekotee

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Remember that stance dance is good as war if you rotate CD correctly
Practicly useless as PAL because the DPS boost is minimal while the damage taken high
As dark knight you almost never remove grit except very high DPS need

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the bold applies to all tanks and the information about paladin and dark knight is incorrect. Especially since its beneficial to take off grit when you can thanks to blood weapon. As long as you can rotate through cooldowns and play it smart then there should be no problem between the different tanks.

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Originally Posted by Perilos

... I feel like Paladin is totally useless...

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http://www.justpushstart.com/wp-cont...ghing-hyur.gif

Nah, for real though, paladins make great off-tanks with cover, and makes great main tanks because it has best physical damage mitigation where if you can cycle your defensive CDs properly, you can tank in sword oath in most raids and still mitigate more damage than the other two classes.

get all tank classes to 60 and that's where they become easier to play. Warrior gets equilibrium which in eliminates TP issues, if anything at all, paladin has tp issues if the fight goes on and on.

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Originally Posted by Perilos

But when I have very potent DPS, a provoke and a lob is nothing which holds aggro for long, because DPS obviously don't stop.

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You should never be pulling with provoke (well, almost never; there are those rare occasions where the mob is WAY over there and you do it for fun...). Use it if you happen to lose aggro at some point and need to snatch it back. Voke w/ overpower should give you enough to put some distance between you and the dps that took it from you. Also, Flash doesn't interrupt your combo, so if you already have a Butcher's ready, you could provoke-flash-Butcher's and really get that hate back without killing your combo. Warrior's mp pool isn't great, so you are limited to the amount of Flashes you'll, so it's good you're alternating Overpower and Flash after your combos, as you rotate targets.

besides warrior who is told "you get to dance stances" i dont really feel the other two were designed to, the mp cost and gcd penalties just seem to ride the train a bit, I honestly feel like stance dancing is an unintended design that the community created to try to pump more dps in than normal, its not a bad thing, but i feel like its clunky for a reason for the other two. Given that, were still recovering from the dps fetish days of gordias where it was the end all be all, and since SE has pretty much done everything they can to prevent tanking out of tank stance,(lose 300 attack power, enmity in tank stance increased in 3.2) so... if youre not able to tank out of grit/shield oath, id say you proable werent supposed to anyway. Remember the weight is on the dps now. Im also REALLY surprised that healer accuracy in dungeons was fixed, i feel like mixed messages here, tanks cant dps but scholars can? why.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Im also REALLY surprised that healer accuracy in dungeons was fixed, i feel like mixed messages here, tanks cant dps but scholars can? why.

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Accuracy was an issue in Lost City of Amdapor (hard) and Antitower, not the DPSing part. Especially Calcabrina where both dps gets to be dolls and healers are required to nuke them down. It's not very efficient to do so when stoneIII/Holy/healersnukeyounameit misses many times in just a normal dungeon. Tanks don't have an accuracy issue since their gear has it. Healers have no accuracy in gear at all.

Accuracy wasn't fixed. They just decreased the accuracy requirement to hit for casters for the healers since they put no acc on their equipment.

Don't spam overpower a bunch and you won't run out of TP. You only need to hit all the mobs with it once or twice before you can start tab targeting with your combo rotation. Make sure to target the mob in the middle when you use overpower. I wouldn't change to dps stance when you are actively tanking something (as in they are hitting you) since you might get a healer with low skill and/or lag in a dungeon. I haven't tanked the raids yet, but from what I hear you use tank stance to establish aggro and for tankbusters and dps stance otherwise.

I didn't try stance-dancing until I was a 60 WAR so do not think that it is required early on. My advice for stance dancing is to use the white bars in the job icons on the party list to gauge how much enmity leeway you have. Is your bar full white and everyone else is at less than half? Throw a defensive CD on and go into your damage dealing stance. Is a tank buster coming up, are you running out of cooldowns, or is your party gaining on you with enmity? Go back into defensive/tanking stance.

The better your groups' damage is, there's less reason and its more difficult to be in damage-dealing stance (in dungeons, not applicable to raids). If I know/see that my healer is trying to maximize their time in Cleric Stance, I may choose to stay in tank stance longer.

Bottom line is that this is advance tanking tactics, so if you are still wanting to practice keeping enmity and rotating cooldowns, there's no shame in putting off stance dancing until you are more comfortable. Welcome to tanking and good luck!

I'd like to ask a follow on question... as i've just started tanking DD and AV... I find i am moving a ton avoiding the mobs telegraphs, sort of circling the pack, i am not losing threat, but it feels .. awkward. Am i handling these large packs (ie 6 plus mobs) correctly by moving in and out of telegraphs?

In large packs, your DPS should be using their AOE as much as their battle resources permit. The goal, then, is to keep the mobs tightly packed and mostly-immobile while dodging telegraphs as much as possible.

You should never stand in telegraphs, unless the scenario specifically demands that you stand in a telegraph for the purpose of completing a mechanic.

you dont want to move them all around like crazy, the same for small packs but you dont want to eat the aoe either, its a matter of a dance, learning to move just enough and making sure the mobs are clumped together. if you havent tried a dps like blm out, you should just to find out how closely you/and other dps like them, but this isnt so much a necessity, since playing several jobs i try to keep mobs grouped up super tight, and if i have a melee like mnk or drg i really try my best to keep them clumped and all facing the same so their backs and sides are really equal. when dodging aoes, youll find eventually that you can sometimes get away with in and out without even moving the target, the idea would be as close to this effect as you can without eating the aoe

Generally speaking, you want to avoid all AoE but as you become more comfortable with the role you may find that you'd rather eat one or two for the sake of not moving anything on the melee classes - especially if you have a decent buff up.

Stance Dancing is totally worth and in high end raiding it is basically required.
In dungeons, I will maintain tank stance when holding large groups of mobs; too much incoming damage for battle stance to handle and tank stance enmity generation bonus is required for party safety.
Against bosses; I will start a fight in tank stance, then after the first complete enmity rotation I generally switch to battle stance and use my CDs in rotation. I can usually stay in battle stance for nearly the entire boss fight before the DPS finally catch up to my enmity lead.

In raids, you must learn which periods in the battles you can afford to stance dance because the incoming damage at several points will tear you a new one in battle stance, causing a group wipe.