Should one tank in tank stance?

I wish to get some opinions here. Should the main tank of an activity actually use a "tank stance" to tank? I have heard that it is alright to not only use tank stance to "tank", but to also remain in tank stance for the duration of the activity. On the flip side, I have also heard that a tank should only be in tank stance for a partial amount of the time of the activity. At times, I have also heard that a tank should not be in a "tank stance" at all no matter the activity or circumstance. Personally, I think that it is perfectly fine for a tank or main tank to be in "tank stance" for the duration of an activity. I have yet to be yelled at for doing so. I have been yelled at more for dropping "tank stance" when tanking and on rare occasions, I have been yelled at for not using more of my defensive abilities more often such as Blackest Night or cross-class abilities such as Rampart. So many people saying so many thing have gotten be a bit confused. So, I ask you good people here: Am I wrong in believing that it is alright for the main tank or only tank in an activity to remain in a "tank stance" for the duration? Is it wrong for said tank to be in a tank stance at all in an activity? Let me hear your thoughts. Thank you for your time.

You should be using tank stances until you're playing at a point where you're trying to optimize your damage, at which point it's better to be in your DPS stance. That requires you to know the boss you're fighting and the damage it will do to you, when to use your defensive cooldowns for the best effect, having your healers being ready to keep you alive through that damage, and having your DPS managing their enmity properly so that you're able to hold aggro without being in a tank stance.

If you're just doing dungeons/normal mode boss fights, or aren't planning to push your damage to its limits, then tank stances are fine. They can make the fights go smoother than the DPS boost would if you don't know that the rest of your party will be doing their role optimally.

I see. Very insightful, indeed. Thank you for your time.

A tank in tank stance cannot complete the last 5 SSS dummies even in i390 gear, fact (Suzy / Alpha Savage 1-4)

While trash mob pulls in dungeons should be tank stanced so you can make big pulls easier almost no Boss (or sub boss) requires you to stay in tank stance after the opener. (Thats 8 seconds in Tank stance, maybe 10, rip pld)

From Sastasha to Praetorium, tank stance only makes tanking easier for tanks who doesnt know how to do mechanics or dodge aoes properly.

And while everyone will just say "Just Tank stance so you can easily clear " it doesnt mean Tank stance is a must during boss fights

A lot of people blame the tanks in dps stance in both Burn and Arboretum last bosses, but even then knowing when to use CDs makes all damage incoming negligable

For dungeons, once sufficiently geared, you'd only need tank stance for large pulls. The individual bosses and other limited target fights such as primal fights, savage, etc. you'll only use your tank stance for initial enmity. The rest of the fight will be spent in your dps stance.
DRK and PLD can use their stance as an extra defensive cooldown if needed, though they rarely are.

You generally have two reasons people will be against this. Enmity and damage reduction.
Enmity is easy, everyone plays with it. This is why you pull in tank stance but swap out shortly after. Between diversion, lucid dreaming, and tactician/refresh, everyone has ways to reducing and lowering their enmity. Plus with Shirk, any tank swaps will only boost the MT's enmity further. It shouldn't be an issue.
Damage reduction is also easy. Nothing can one-shot you without suitable warning. Fights are heavily scripted, everyone will know when the tank busters happen. When a cooldown will be needed. Very rarely would you need a cooldown in addition to a tank stance. Ideally you'd never need it. The most dangerous thing to a tank in the game is big pulls in dungeons, and that's why I mentioned they're generally done in tank stance.

Of course, both of these assume everyone knows how to play decently enough. If someone makes a mistake you can't readily expect anything to work out very smoothly, no matter what role is at fault.

On a final thought, tanks that do everything in tank stance do a lot less than the 20% some people think they do. The slowdown to the kills are rather noticeable. I think the only worse thing to kill speed is a non-dpsing healer lol.
The benefits of using your dps stance is a lot more than just attacks dealing more damage. The abilities you can use in the stance, along with things being unable to kill you if they're dead first (or just phase changing), just make the entire fight easier.

Both JD and King, thank you for your insight.

I consider tank stances to be a tool. For all 3, they're useful when you're learning new content (or still gearing up) in order to provide you with some safety net, but once you've mastered the fight, you shouldn't really need beyond the initial enmity rotation. The only time this becomes a problem is on longer fights in PUG content where the DPS don't use their enmity dumps. Grit is also unique in that DRKs need it to use Blood Price, so it's essential to use on a packs. PLD and WARs don't have that restriction. With that in mind, tanks need to use their cool downs more. I've seen this as I level the healers. I've started telling tanks who are new they really should use Anticipation on cool down, as it will be available every other, if not every pack. I notice people tend to save the CDs for boss fights and tank busters, but there's more than enough tools to handle those in non savage content.

You should start off in tank stance. If there is another tank, it will signal to them that you want to main tank and it will also make establishing aggro easier no matter the content. In dungeons most tanks will keep tank stance on for mob pulls and then switch to DPS stance for bosses after aggro is generated. For raids, use tank stance to establish an aggro lead with a couple of aggro combos, then switch to DPS. The damage reduction loss isn't a big deal in these cases and for PLD in particular, you gain much faster Oath gauge generation which gives you the ability to consistently Sheltron and increase defense.

Staying in tank stance for the duration of the content isn't optimal, but it's not terrible. I don't mind it unless I'm the main tank and the offtank is the one that keeps tank stance on.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

For dungeons, once sufficiently geared, you'd only need tank stance for large pulls. The individual bosses and other limited target fights such as primal fights, savage, etc. you'll only use your tank stance for initial enmity. The rest of the fight will be spent in your dps stance.
DRK and PLD can use their stance as an extra defensive cooldown if needed, though they rarely are.

You generally have two reasons people will be against this. Enmity and damage reduction.
Enmity is easy, everyone plays with it. This is why you pull in tank stance but swap out shortly after. Between diversion, lucid dreaming, and tactician/refresh, everyone has ways to reducing and lowering their enmity. Plus with Shirk, any tank swaps will only boost the MT's enmity further. It shouldn't be an issue.

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I'll just add to this that enmity controls have moderately long cooldowns. Unless the party is willing to stop and wait between pulls, they might not always be available. I tend to not use enmity reduction on mobs outside of the first pull because I'd rather not rip the boss off the tank. Everyone has to watch aggro, but I think the tank bears a little more responsibility outside of boss fights.

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Originally Posted by Delily

I consider tank stances to be a tool. For all 3, they're useful when you're learning new content (or still gearing up) in order to provide you with some safety net, but once you've mastered the fight, you shouldn't really need beyond the initial enmity rotation. The only time this becomes a problem is on longer fights in PUG content where the DPS don't use their enmity dumps. Grit is also unique in that DRKs need it to use Blood Price, so it's essential to use on a packs. PLD and WARs don't have that restriction. With that in mind, tanks need to use their cool downs more. I've seen this as I level the healers. I've started telling tanks who are new they really should use Anticipation on cool down, as it will be available every other, if not every pack. I notice people tend to save the CDs for boss fights and tank busters, but there's more than enough tools to handle those in non savage content.

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Unfortunately theres not much space on xhotbars for all of the roles skills, and most tanks I know, or at least DRKs, choose Awareness over Anticipation.
In real terms, in the perfect situation, they each translate into a ~4% mitigation.
However, Parry is only valid against physical attacks, and Crit is checked before Parry (if you receive a critical hit, it can't be parried) so there's no point in using both at once.

In addition, WAR require Awareness for Raw Intuition (probably why they save it) and I believe PLDs base parry rate is lower to account for shield blocks, so Anticipation isn't as effective for them. (probably why they don't use it)

If you're playing with keyboard and mouse then sure, it's free mitigation, when it works.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I'll just add to this that enmity controls have moderately long cooldowns. Unless the party is willing to stop and wait between pulls, they might not always be available. I tend to not use enmity reduction on mobs outside of the first pull because I'd rather not rip the boss off the tank. Everyone has to watch aggro, but I think the tank bears a little more responsibility outside of boss fights.

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The tank should have no issues holding enmity in a boss fight. So long as they start in tank stance and use a few enmity combos, with the odd top up, there should be no trouble whatsoever. There's nothing wrong with a tank doing this in most dungeons, their damage isn't a crucial factor like endgame raids.

Pulling mob packs however is quick, and depending on enemy placement you don't always have enough time to use all your enmity skills before they disperse and then you're playing a game of cat and mouse chasing them around. That's when you want your DPS to use their enmity cooldowns.

Sera, Pyur, and Delily, thank you for your insights. The information, I feel, is coming quite nicely.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I'll just add to this that enmity controls have moderately long cooldowns. Unless the party is willing to stop and wait between pulls, they might not always be available. I tend to not use enmity reduction on mobs outside of the first pull because I'd rather not rip the boss off the tank. Everyone has to watch aggro, but I think the tank bears a little more responsibility outside of boss fights.

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Between pulls? If it's just dungeon mobs, the tanks likely going to stay in tank stance anyway. If it's a boss, skills are reset on death. If you're farming wins on a primal or savage or something, the tank shouldn't require much assistance for enmity by the end, so usually timers aren't a consideration there either.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

The tank should have no issues holding enmity in a boss fight. So long as they start in tank stance and use a few enmity combos, with the odd top up, there should be no trouble whatsoever. There's nothing wrong with a tank doing this in most dungeons, their damage isn't a crucial factor like endgame raids.

Pulling mob packs however is quick, and depending on enemy placement you don't always have enough time to use all your enmity skills before they disperse and then you're playing a game of cat and mouse chasing them around. That's when you want your DPS to use their enmity cooldowns.

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I suppose that's one way of looking at it, although if you do end up having to use Diversion, etc, on a pack of mobs it might not be off cooldown for the next pack. Positioning and dispersing mobs shouldn't be an issue if the DPS wait for the tank to establish aggro on everything.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Between pulls? If it's just dungeon mobs, the tanks likely going to stay in tank stance anyway. If it's a boss, skills are reset on death. If you're farming wins on a primal or savage or something, the tank shouldn't require much assistance for enmity by the end, so usually timers aren't a consideration there either.

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I was referring to dungeon mobs yeah. Ideally tank stance should be enough but I have found myself in situations where I had to use enmity reductions to keep mobs on the tank. Gear will play a part in this, so it might not be the tank's "fault", but if the DPS are consistently able to gain on the tank on the enmity list then cooldowns won't comeback fast enough to be used for every dungeon pull.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I was referring to dungeon mobs yeah. Ideally tank stance should be enough but I have found myself in situations where I had to use enmity reductions to keep mobs on the tank. Gear will play a part in this, so it might not be the tank's "fault", but if the DPS are consistently able to gain on the tank on the enmity list then cooldowns won't comeback fast enough to be used for every dungeon pull.

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Yes it'll generally be gear that plays the biggest part in it, which is why my post started with that.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

For dungeons, once sufficiently geared,

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You can hand wave away anything when people are still learning. It's once you're at level cap, once you're at ilvl cap, you gotta maintain some expectations.

I gave 24 hours of consideration to everyone's input on tank issue. Now, I have made it known that throughout my career as a tank, I kept tank stance on, and I have had no issues in keeping it on be it with myself or other main tanks. Being that, everyone's views here have been insightful, and given such I have things to add:

Using tank stance for mob pulls everyone can agree with here. Although, I have from other sources, heard people say that you should not tank stance, at all. I do not agree with "not using tank stance no matter the circumstance." There are times where tank stance is needed.


In party play, be it with a premade party or one made by the roulettes, I do not expect my team members to cater to my own playstyle more than I expect them to do as their role intends. Healers to keep the party alive, damage dealers to dps, and myself as a tank to keep the mobs away from the healer and dps. If the tank dies, 70% chance that the entire party dies. If the healer dies, 90% chance that the entire team dies. My needs are simple in party play. Do your job and that is enough. With that said, I do not expect the damage dealers in the group to use anti-enmity cooldowns just so I can trade hate for damage. A premade party, perhaps I can ask this, but premade or no, if I requested it, and they told me to go to hell, I would not fault them. Like I said, my needs are simple, and they are easily and universally understood.



Now, this does not mean that I will not drop tank stance when it is needed. If there is an encounter that requires extra damage to be dealt, I have dropped tank stance to fill in that role. I do that on any content that requires a "dps race", and back when Warrior was one of the top damage tanks, I shelled out Fell Cleaves on bosses. Alas, Warrior is not what it used to be. So, I understand the practice of increased dps as a tank on bosses, and by what I understand, everyone here agrees with dropping tank stance on bosses after first establishing aggro. This, I could do more, so long as hate is not lost from me too many times, at which I will just remain in tank stance and be fine for it.



On the issue of damage reduction vs. dealing damage, as a tank, I err on the side of staying alive rather than trying to out damage that dragoon or monk. Logically speaking, your damage is for naught if you die before you have slain your enemies. Granted, I know that staying alive is not just on the tank, but on the healer. But, why not give myself and possibly my team every advantage that I can? Damage reduction is just, in my opinion, the better and more useful choice. YES, I KNOW SOME OF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS AND YOU HAVE MADE YOUR REASON WHY VERY CLEAR!! I wanted to put that in all capital letters so you all can understand that I understand. I also pop defensive cooldowns that can be used.

You all have advice that I will use, so your time and your words have not fallen upon death ears.

Seriously, thank you all for your time here.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Between pulls? If it's just dungeon mobs, the tanks likely going to stay in tank stance anyway. If it's a boss, skills are reset on death. If you're farming wins on a primal or savage or something, the tank shouldn't require much assistance for enmity by the end, so usually timers aren't a consideration there either.

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Not necessarily. Provided the gear discrepancy between the tank and DPS isn't too high, you don't even need tank stance anymore. I have done both The Burn and Saint Mochi Hard without touching Grit the entire run. The damage dealt is negligible even if you pull the entire room. Even in the event you do need snap aggro, you can pull with tank stance and drop it immediately after. And no, the healers still have ample opportunity to DPS.

Now I wouldn't recommend this more aggressive approach unless you're confident in your tanking. But it's perfectly visible, and altogether not exactly difficult to do mass pulls without tank stance in Expert dungeons. They're a complete joke for the most part.

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Originally Posted by JustinHiryu

Using tank stance for mob pulls everyone can agree with here. Although, I have from other sources, heard people say that you should not tank stance, at all. I do not agree with "not using tank stance no matter the circumstance." There are times where tank stance is needed.


In party play, be it with a premade party or one made by the roulettes, I do not expect my team members to cater to my own playstyle more than I expect them to do as their role intends. Healers to keep the party alive, damage dealers to dps, and myself as a tank to keep the mobs away from the healer and dps. If the tank dies, 70% chance that the entire party dies. If the healer dies, 90% chance that the entire team dies. My needs are simple in party play. Do your job and that is enough. With that said, I do not expect the damage dealers in the group to use anti-enmity cooldowns just so I can trade hate for damage. A premade party, perhaps I can ask this, but premade or no, if I requested it, and they told me to go to hell, I would not fault them. Like I said, my needs are simple, and they are easily and universally understood.

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I feel there's the error being made here of a false "either-or" situation. When it comes to tank stance, sometimes the mitigation isn't needed EVEN in large trash mob pulls. If you use Shadow Wall and grit on, you're actually receiving 44% in terms of mitigation. that extra 14% from using grit is pretty minor, so it's worth turning off in order to capitalize on the situation and pump out serious damage.

I want to make the point that when you are playing well and with skill, you can have excellent personal dps and drop tank stance AND still not put a strain on your healer or the rest of the party. You won't even need to ask the DPS to cater to you because achieving high DPS naturally means achieving high levels of threat. Your excellence does not have to be at anyone's expense.

And again, there does not have to be a choice between damage or mitigation. A boss's regular damage is handled easily by regens, and cooldowns can handle tank busters fine. Cooldowns, and TBN especially, handle the rest just fine. In the worst case scenario of taking a tank buster without ANY cooldown, you are still going to be fine because nothing significant ever happens after a dungeon boss's "tank buster."

Threat-wise, you can get away without tank stance even in current dungeons on large trash pulls (I've done this on accident a time or two, rushing through dungeons with no stance whatsoever even).

That said, the flip-side there is you probably want tank stance in those cases so your healer doesn't wish death upon you (remember it reduces damage taken as well).

Unless I'm feeling particularly lazy, I'll typically swap to my DPS stance on bosses when I have aggro control, but will typically do tank stance on trash (and I typically pull large on trash).

I just feel that if tanking in dps stance is preferable over to tank stance then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the gameplay in that department.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Now I wouldn't recommend this more aggressive approach unless you're confident in your tanking. But it's perfectly visible, and altogether not exactly difficult to do mass pulls without tank stance in Expert dungeons. They're a complete joke for the most part.

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Every once in a while, I'll queue with friends and heal an EXR on Paladin, just for the funsies of it.

Even with me somewhat gimping the party, my other tank friend still finds plenty of time to drop tank stance safely. There's literally no reason not to once you've reached a certain level of confidence/comfort with the content.

24-Man and normal 8-man content: Do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die. Preferably tank stance for opener only.
Dungeon trash: Always tank stance as PLD, preferably tank stance for DRK and WAR unless you're confident and certain abilities are off cooldown. Ultimately do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die.
Dungeon bosses: Do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die. Preferably tank stance for opener only.
Savage/EX 8-man content: Tank stance for your opener, DPS stance for the rest of the fight. You should never have to dip back into tank stance outside of rare situations (i.e., Wave Cannon Kyrios in O11s to ease up the burden on the healers a little). This also means however that you should have your cooldowns mapped out and not miss a single tankbuster.

it should be off as much as possible.

what "as much as possible" means will vary wildly by situation. it's an art not a science.

quite frankly the WORST answers are "always" and "never"

I've been seeing this being brought up a lot lately. "I have never been yelled at before" does not mean you're doing it right. It just means you're not doing it terribly wrong. That's just another way of saying you're at the very least doing the minimal amount of effort required to complete a certain duty.

So, about tanking an entire encounter in tank stance, most people are ok with that. But then again, most people would also be ok with you doing the Manderville Dance in front of the boss for the entire duration as well, as long as you keep threat. That's how it is. Those who are not, usually don't care enough to try and change one person's mind about how they play cause "you don't pay my sub" and stuff like that.

In the end it comes down to what are you looking forward to do in this game. Casual duties like Dungeons, Normal Raids, Alliance Raids, you'll hardly ever get yelled at for doing anything at all, unless it directly affects other players like getting them cleaved to death, so you don't even need to worry about other stuff like dropping Tank Stance.
However the moment you step on more challeging content, where optimization actually plays a much bigger role, you most definitely will start to get yelled at if you don't play your role to the best of its capabilities. It's safe to say that most players that attempt harder content are not very fond of people who are not willing to put in the effort.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Unfortunately theres not much space on xhotbars for all of the roles skills, and most tanks I know, or at least DRKs, choose Awareness over Anticipation.
In real terms, in the perfect situation, they each translate into a ~4% mitigation.
However, Parry is only valid against physical attacks, and Crit is checked before Parry (if you receive a critical hit, it can't be parried) so there's no point in using both at once.

In addition, WAR require Awareness for Raw Intuition (probably why they save it) and I believe PLDs base parry rate is lower to account for shield blocks, so Anticipation isn't as effective for them. (probably why they don't use it)

If you're playing with keyboard and mouse then sure, it's free mitigation, when it works.

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I'm sorry, if there is not enough space on your hotbar to put your abilities on it, you need to make space. There are multiple hotbars, cross hotbars. 'Not enough space' is not an excuse because you are just choosing not to use it.

Every time I see the title of this thread I think of that Boromir meme "one does not simply walk....".

Tanks should never drop tanks stance unless they are completely way over Geared for the instance. Recently I was tanking the new instances while leveling up my alts to 70. And I thought man am I just a failed healer why is this tank dropping from 100% down to 10% of Health in a matter of seconds in about roughly 1 global cooldown. And then I noticed they were eating tank Buster's even while using their cool downs but they dropped their tank stance increasing the damage taken by 20%. In a heavy fights were there is a lot of AOE damage happening tanks who drop tank stands are complete idiots and retards that have no thought to anyone else except themselves. Healers should not have to heal a dungeon like it's a 24 man raid with heavy stress. A lot of healers that are joining these new dungeons aren't really geared nobody is at item level 400 doing a level 63 dungeon. And to the couple of tanks that I saw at 400 doing too low level dungeons FYI mobs still hurt you cannot pull the entire insta and expect a Healer at item level 273 appropriate to the instance to be able to keep you up. At the end of the day it is all about common sense if you look at your health bar and it's dropping Superfast don't tell the Healer they failed look in the mirror.

I was healing it not tanking.

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Originally Posted by Lordfurious

Tanks should never drop tanks stance unless they are completely way over Geared for the instance. Recently I was tanking the new instances while leveling up my alts to 70. And I thought man am I just a failed healer why is this tank dropping from 100% down to 10% of Health in a matter of seconds in about roughly 1 global cooldown. And then I noticed they were eating tank Buster's even while using their cool downs but they dropped their tank stance increasing the damage taken by 20%. In a heavy fights were there is a lot of AOE damage happening tanks who drop tank stands are complete idiots and retards that have no thought to anyone else except themselves. Healers should not have to heal a dungeon like it's a 24 man raid with heavy stress. A lot of healers that are joining these new dungeons aren't really geared nobody is at item level 400 doing a level 63 dungeon. And to the couple of tanks that I saw at 400 doing too low level dungeons FYI mobs still hurt you cannot pull the entire insta and expect a Healer at item level 273 appropriate to the instance to be able to keep you up. At the end of the day it is all about common sense if you look at your health bar and it's dropping Superfast don't tell the Healer they failed look in the mirror.

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Tank busters are fine to eat without tank stance. Cooldowns are preferred. AOE damage is the same. A good tank wouldn't make it an issue to any healer.
The key issue here is you mentioned it's a level 63 dungeon. Levelling dungeons are often excluded from the general rule of tank stance use, and are often encouraged to use tank stance as much as possible since you cannot reasonable expect people to be overgeared for it. And in some cases the ilvl sync just messes with you more than you'd think.

Yes there are a lot of bad tanks out there, they take advice at face value, such as "Don't use your tank stance to kill things faster" without actually thinking about why.
The only way we can help is with posts like these, encouragement ingame, and maybe a few wipes to get the point across.

There is no reason to stay in tank stance 100% of the time. If you're not losing enmity/aggro tank stance is a complete waste to be in unless you are using the damage mitigation from it to soak a tank buster.


People have this mentality that as long as you hold aggro on the boss and use CDs at the right time that you're playing optimally as a tank, when this couldn't be further from the truth.


There isnt enough consistent damage going out to warrant tanking like that, all damage is completely scripted. There is no reason to keep building enmity if the boss is already on you, you're deliberately making the fight take longer by not utilizing the damage aspect of your kit by remaining in tank stance the entire time.


I honestly think that people need to break from this mentality of a "Pure Tank", you're severely gimping yourself otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Selova

I honestly think that people need to break from this mentality of a "Pure Tank", you're severely gimping yourself otherwise.

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I'm surprised people still asking for or thinking that "Pure Tank" is what they want when MMOs have been steering away from them since mid-2000s in games like Aion or Tera where tanks have the potential to burst harder than DPS, especially for PvP purposes. Because even though I did play the "Pure turtle and no damage" tanks of FFXI and Vanilla WoW, I preferred ones that could dish out damage in return. And let's face it, tanking is considered a "boring" role because it doesn't deal out damage and solo play "took too long".

On topic...

Think of tank stance as a tool that you can temporary go into to benefit from the "bonuses" it gives, but minimize its up-time because of the penalties they impose. Be it the pure increase in effective health or the access to some tank-stance exclusive abilities such as Inner Beast for added mitigation and healing, equilibrium for healing or even good ol' Blood Price to get a free 20 Blood Gauge during downtime. Granted the MP cost is made up for in other means.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

I'm surprised people still asking for or thinking that "Pure Tank" is what they want when MMOs have been steering away from them since mid-2000s in games like Aion or Tera where tanks have the potential to burst harder than DPS, especially for PvP purposes. .

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There have always been mmos where the most effective 'tanking' is to have the mobs attention but not take damage. My example is Ragnarok Online. I heard most boss fights were dealt with by kiting. And i used that tactic to kill zombies as a priest. But I never got high enough to see pro kiters.

More modern games simply hilighted their system differences in comparison to usually one other game.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Tank busters are fine to eat without tank stance. Cooldowns are preferred. AOE damage is the same. A good tank wouldn't make it an issue to any healer.
The key issue here is you mentioned it's a level 63 dungeon. Levelling dungeons are often excluded from the general rule of tank stance use, and are often encouraged to use tank stance as much as possible since you cannot reasonable expect people to be overgeared for it. And in some cases the ilvl sync just messes with you more than you'd think.

Yes there are a lot of bad tanks out there, they take advice at face value, such as "Don't use your tank stance to kill things faster" without actually thinking about why.
The only way we can help is with posts like these, encouragement ingame, and maybe a few wipes to get the point across.

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At the end of the day it boils down to this: tanks are not the only people in the party. When they choose to do what they want it affects the rest of the group and often ruins the gaming experience for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that one player shouldn't have the ability to affect other people's gameplay in such a manner. I often think of tanks as Divas. We've all asked that tank nicely to please stop dropping stance when things aren't going well. 99% of the time it is followed by some horrible comments usually something like do better healer. So my personal opinion will not change on the subject I do not think that one player should have the ability to ruin the experience for everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Lordfurious

At the end of the day it boils down to this: tanks are not the only people in the party. When they choose to do what they want it affects the rest of the group and often ruins the gaming experience for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that one player shouldn't have the ability to affect other people's gameplay in such a manner. I often think of tanks as Divas. We've all asked that tank nicely to please stop dropping stance when things aren't going well. 99% of the time it is followed by some horrible comments usually something like do better healer. So my personal opinion will not change on the subject I do not think that one player should have the ability to ruin the experience for everyone else.

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Literally any party member can ruin the instanced experience for the rest of the group if they're not up to snuff. Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight? Or being a tank that has a healer that would prefer just to stand there and idle instead of trying to contribute with a bit of damage, despite us rotating cooldowns and mitigating enough damage that we're never in any real danger? Or being a tank for a healer who thinks their only button in their kit is cure? Those ones are the worst because your health is in a near constant state of flux. Regens and OGCDs are scary, I guess. It's absolutely maddening. Especially since, because healers have basically zero accountability in this game outside of Savage, I can't really try and correct them or provide advice without them getting uppity.

And that doesn't even go into how soul crushing most instances are if your DPS are bad. Spending 45 minutes in an EXR is a pretty clear cut example, to me, of DPS 'ruining' my experience. Everybody can do this, tanks just have a bigger spot light to screw up in when they're not up to standard.

i think its fine wherever you want go tank stance or not as long you doing your job properly. those who turn off their tank stance want to maximize their damage and usually (in most case) they know what are they doing, then there is people like me who just prefer to play it safe and sound. again as long they still keep the mob aggro, sure why not, let them play their style.

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Originally Posted by Lordfurious

At the end of the day it boils down to this: tanks are not the only people in the party. When they choose to do what they want it affects the rest of the group and often ruins the gaming experience for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that one player shouldn't have the ability to affect other people's gameplay in such a manner. I often think of tanks as Divas. We've all asked that tank nicely to please stop dropping stance when things aren't going well. 99% of the time it is followed by some horrible comments usually something like do better healer. So my personal opinion will not change on the subject I do not think that one player should have the ability to ruin the experience for everyone else.

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You personal opinion should be more malleable and open, rather than closed-minded. Open to new information. But hey that's just my personal opinion. Your opinion seems to be based on stress given to you by bad tanks. I encounter bad players of every role. It's a lot easier to just ignore them, excel at what I'm doing to help move on past them that much quicker.

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Originally Posted by SargentToughie

Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight?

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BOY DO I!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdNVt3Zo0k
(Don't hate on Madelza, great healer just mistakes happen and it was fun fight to do)

In theory, I would like it where tanks use tank stance when they need to tank, and dps stance is relegated to a tool when soloing stuff like quests, or parts of a boss fight where you don't need to tank anything like Omega level checker or ifrit nails.

In practice, the way the game is designed means you generally don't want to be in tank stance full time on a boss.

However, going dps stance isn't required for any casual, duty finder content. When doing normal mode alphascape, you don't need to do it. If you're comfortable with it, you know the fight well enough and the group seems solid, you can go for it. If you're unsure of the group though, it's fair IMO to stay in tank stance the whole time. At least if you're MTing. Because in a pug, you don't know if that dps is going to use their enmity tools. You don't know if that ninja will use shadewalker. You don't know if the healers are both on the ball, you don't know if the other tank knows what shirk is etc. So while in a premade group where you know everyone's all the ball you can get away with barely using tank stance, it's not always a good idea in pugs.

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Originally Posted by SargentToughie

Literally any party member can ruin the instanced experience for the rest of the group if they're not up to snuff. Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight? Or being a tank that has a healer that would prefer just to stand there and idle instead of trying to contribute with a bit of damage, despite us rotating cooldowns and mitigating enough damage that we're never in any real danger? Or being a tank for a healer who thinks their only button in their kit is cure? Those ones are the worst because your health is in a near constant state of flux. Regens and OGCDs are scary, I guess. It's absolutely maddening. Especially since, because healers have basically zero accountability in this game outside of Savage, I can't really try and correct them or provide advice without them getting uppity.

And that doesn't even go into how soul crushing most instances are if your DPS are bad. Spending 45 minutes in an EXR is a pretty clear cut example, to me, of DPS 'ruining' my experience. Everybody can do this, tanks just have a bigger spot light to screw up in when they're not up to standard.

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Pulling a large group of mobs because everyone is overgeared, then watching the monk and bard sit at full TP breaks my heart. Bonus points if I'm taking so little damage that healer doesn't need to heal, and instead of dpsing decides to sit there or top off my 500 (out of 70k) missing HP.

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Originally Posted by Reinfeld

Pulling a large group of mobs because everyone is overgeared, then watching the monk and bard sit at full TP breaks my heart. Bonus points if I'm taking so little damage that healer doesn't need to heal, and instead of dpsing decides to sit there or top off my 500 (out of 70k) missing HP.

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"Tank is at 71000 HP out of their total HP pool of 72000? Better wind up that cure button."

I swear to god sometimes it feels like I've got PTSD from the sound effect of cure going off by the time the dungeon is over.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

You personal opinion should be more malleable and open, rather than closed-minded. Open to new information. But hey that's just my personal opinion. Your opinion seems to be based on stress given to you by bad tanks. I encounter bad players of every role. It's a lot easier to just ignore them, excel at what I'm doing to help move on past them that much quicker.



BOY DO I!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdNVt3Zo0k
(Don't hate on Madelza, great healer just mistakes happen and it was fun fight to do)

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Thank you for telling me what I can and cannot think. I didn't know that I had to run my opinion by you to make sure they were correct before I put them onto screen.

Do you know how soul-crushing is to watch a tank press Sprint run with a ton of mobs on him when he finally stops has 5% HP left. Not a problem I'm usually on my White Mage will just pop benediction. What's that one and a half seconds and he's back down to 5% again. And this goes on for about a minute or so. Darn DPS aren't geared enough to get the mobs down quick enough. Darn I've used every cool down in my spell book but the tank is taking damage faster than I can output heals and I'm higher geared than tank 400 iLvl.

Better yet do you know how soul-crushing it is to watch a tank Rush up to a boss get hit one time and it's at 5% health? So yes sometimes us healers to stand in stuff because we don't have a choice if we stopped healing the tank dead. I can think of a number of times I've eaten in AOE because if I didn't and I moved away from the mechanic and stops healing the tank the whole entire party would go down. Tanks and DPS that don't have to make critical decisions. The healers decision on who do I heal can sometimes makes a difference of whether or not the party is successful. I can't just have to hold hate and mitigate damage. DPS can fail and stand in the fire as they normally do. Don't worry that's the healers fault to yep I will raise you for the sixth time on this one boss.

It's easy to look at it things from a one-sided perspective I tend to look at it from everybody's perspective. I have level 70 tanks and healers that are well geared those are the two classes that I primarily play.

I propose this challenge to all of you. Coming to Duty Finder as a Healer heal some of these bad tanks that drop their stance and do not have the gear supported to do so. After you have successfully done that I will gladly value your opinions or perhaps listen to you tell me that I shouldn't have the opinion I have but until that time keep rocking your tanks you're probably one of the bad ones.