Is asking a tank to use his enmity+ buff rude?

[Lucavern]

At least for PLD, if they don't have any Oath on chances are they recently changed jobs, died, or did some action that took off their Oath and forgot/didn't notice to put it back on. I've found myself doing that more than I'd like to admit. Personally I read "please use your threat skill" as something very different than you intend without additional context. I would instead ask them to turn on their tanking stance.

Now, if your group IS overgearing the content, there is little reason to use the tank stance (at least for PLD, can't speak for WAR). When I run AK with friends/FC I never run with Shield Oath anymore, it is Sword Oath the entire run. Never have any threat issues either, unless dps are being stupid. However, when your group is overgearing the content, a dps can easily take a number of hits if they pull hate. If I am doing WP speed-runs, I'll use ShieldOath on the trash pulls, and as soon as we are at the boss switch to Sword Oath.

Hell, I'd personally use Sword Oath for any current content other than Coil and MAYBE Titan, depending on the healer(s). This statement only applies if you and your group are overgearing the content, and does not apply if you are at the current contents gear level (I.e. AF/AK gear while running AK).

[Gamemako]

Occasionally while healing WP or AK I'll run into a tank that doesn't use his enmity modifier (Shield Oath or the Axe buff thingy for Warriors) resulting in threat going directly to me...

The net enmity boost from these stances, after accounting for the damage reduction, is 20% for PLD and ~15% for WAR (depending on average number of Wrath stacks). If your tank is unable to keep aggro without the tank stance, it is unlikely to keep aggro with the tank stance. The stance is only necessary from an enmity standpoint if your DPS heavily outgear your tank. With Defiance, I can keep aggro against anything but a bad WHM with ilvl55 gear -- that includes all relic+1 MNK and SMN (had to do it with a really bad SMN who wouldn't control his pet the other day and kept attacking the last mob first). Bad WHM are a hopeless cause, though. I hate having to babysit the healer by removing Regen after every group of mobs because the WHM keeps dumping it back on at the end.

Now, if the tank isn't using the tank stance, you should speak up. Even if the tank intends to use it, he might simply not notice, especially if it's PLD and has no additional cues to hint that he's forgotten it.

Now, if your group IS overgearing the content, there is little reason to use the tank stance (at least for PLD, can't speak for WAR). When I run AK with friends/FC I never run with Shield Oath anymore, it is Sword Oath the entire run.

At the risk of derailing this thread somewhat, I would like to expand on this slightly. PLD especially should use Shield Oath even when outgearing content. Additional healer DPS will absolutely crush the potential gain from using Sword Oath in most cases, and the damage-free nature of your AoE enmity makes Shield Oath even more useful. Against bosses, yes, you will often see gains from using Sword Oath. There's no way the WP Goobbue or jelly are going to put out enough damage to tax the healer -- the jelly requires no healing at all beyond Regen or the fairy as long as you're walking past the Fire and DPS are wiping out the adds before they debuff.

[Lucavern]

At the risk of derailing this thread somewhat, I would like to expand on this slightly. PLD especially should use Shield Oath even when outgearing content. Additional healer DPS will absolutely crush the potential gain from using Sword Oath in most cases, and the damage-free nature of your AoE enmity makes Shield Oath even more useful.

I disagree, but it depends on the party. For my friends/FC groups, the healer is usually overgearing the content as well and has no issue DPSing and healing while I'm in Sword Oath. If I am in a random pug/DF group, I will start out in Shield and gauge the group. If the group seems to handle themselves alright, I'll switch to Sword and help wreck face.

[Gamemako]

I disagree, but it depends on the party.

One cast of Holy will do as much damage as you do over an entire pull from Sword Oath. The loss of just one GCD alone to additional healing from Sword Oath makes it disadvantageous. I will try to show this mathematically.

Let's assume you need 4 uses of Flash in Shield Oath to maintain aggro through the pull. Because the full 50% from Shield Oath is given (Flash is not damage-based), this is 6 Flashes in Sword Oath, a loss of 5 DPS-seconds. We will assume 6 targets for the purpose of this analysis.

Shield Oath potency per second: (150 + 200 + 260)/7.5 + 100/3 + 6*250/25 + 300/30 = 184.67 base * 0.8 = 147.73 potency per second
Sword Oath potency per second: (150 + 200 + 260)/7.5 + 100/3 + 6*250/25 + 300/30 + 50/2.32 = 206.22 potency per second

DPS gain per second: 0.400 DPS-seconds per second

Time to equivalence: 17.5 seconds

Assume 40-second encounter duration (probably overestimate). Total DPS gain: 9 DPS-seconds -- 1329.57 potency.
WHM holy: 240 potency * 6 opponents * 1.3 maim & mend * 1.1 cleric stance * ~1.4 stat and weapon damage differences = 2882.88 potency.

If WHM loses just one GCD to healing, you're well behind in total DPS.

This isn't the most exacting analysis, but it should give you a good idea of why Shield Oath is a better option for mob situations. Start in it and stay in it. When it comes to bosses... well, that jelly does probably 200 DPS and you need no Flash, so over the duration, healer loses one GCD per 25 seconds. PLD gains 10 DPS-seconds in that much time, or around 1350 potency. Holy would be less than 500 against one target. Either way, Sword Oath wins out in situations with few targets and low damage rates.

//EDIT:

How much does Sword Oath actually add for total Dmg?

I've had the occasional PLD want to "make the run faster" but given how much extra time I have to spend out of cleric stance healing them I question whether the net increase is actually positive.

Sword Oath adds 50 potency per autoattack. In total, it is 40-45% more DPS over Shield Oath depending on the number of opponents (inversely proportional due to CoS contribution).

[Lucavern]

One cast of Holy will do as much damage as you do over an entire pull from Sword Oath.
SNIP

I don't recall at any point stating that I explicitly use a WHM as my healer. Your math looks right, and I agree about the dps gains comparing PLD dps vs Holy usage. Things that I don't think you are calculating on however: MP conservation/usage to keep that rate of Holy usage throughout entire run (I've seen WHM try to do this and be OOM halfway through run when chain/multi-group pulling). I've also done runs where I had a SCH as my healer who stayed in Cleric Stance the entirety of the run and let Eos heal, and only needed to cast 1-3 heals himself throughout the entire run.

As I said earlier, I feel that it really depends on the party composition, and the individual players involved. At this point however, we have gone completely off-topic from the OPs post. I'll continue this discussion in a different post if you want Gamemako, but I don't want to further derail the thread.

[Gamemako]

I do not believe that is the case, because if it were, then a Tank in Shield oath/Defiance would be generating more enmity than a Tank in sword oath/not in defiance.

It does in fact generate more enmity than a tank without. This is necessary for PLD in particular, who would otherwise be forced to do nothing at all when not main-tanking.

What he's referring to is that it takes much more STR or DET to make up for weapon damage. Damage, and by association, threat, does not scale for a tank as quickly as +1 on weapon.

I believe that would be misleading. There is only one weapon upgrade to make in Coil and only one weapon upgrade to make for Titan HM. You are comparing ilvl60 to ilvl70 or ilvl80 to ilvl90. These are not great jumps; the difference in STR scaling is minimal between the two (2.5-3%). This would not change your stat allocation decisions. One way or the other, though, you can hold enmity on ilvl90 players going full blast when wearing ilvl55 gear, so if you're losing enmity, it's your fault. This large buffer is why tanks often forgo relic+1 when other options are available.

I will note, however, that I did interpret that player's comments to be the (somewhat common) misconception that "increased enmity" is a flat bonus rather than a multiplier.

I'll continue this discussion in a different post if you want Gamemako, but I don't want to further derail the thread.

Might be worth doing later.

[Lord_Zlatan]

the jelly requires no healing at all beyond Regen or the fairy as long as you're walking past the Fire and DPS are wiping out the adds before they debuff.

im not sure I understand what you mean by "walking past the fire". care to explain?

[Maelwys]

im not sure I understand what you mean by "walking past the fire". care to explain?

Fire, like most targetted magic attacks, can be dodged reliably 100% of the time by breaking line of sight with a mob before the casting timer ends.
If you walk through the geometry of the blob so that you're at his back (just as if you were dodging a "cone attack") this breaks line of sight.

It's the same with a lot of mobs, e.g. the Psycheflayer in AK - Void Thunder III can be dodged the exact same way, so that you only have to stun "Mind Melt".

[Lord_Zlatan]

Fire, like most targetted magic attacks, can be dodged reliably 100% of the time by breaking line of sight with a mob before the casting timer ends.
If you walk through the geometry of the blob so that you're at his back (just as if you were dodging a "cone attack") this breaks line of sight.

It's the same with a lot of mobs, e.g. the Psycheflayer in AK - Void Thunder III can be dodged the exact same way, so that you only have to stun "Mind Melt".

I knew you could do that with void thunder in AK, but did not know that about the blob... that is very useful. TYVM