For every one tank who can actually pull that off there are several others who can't in my experience. Playing healer I've come across quite a few tanks who thought they could tank with sword oath but the hate was everywhere, fairy death, dps aggro, they just couldn't handle it. I hope this doesn't become the norm for people who can't hold hate because it only makes everybody elses lives more difficult.

I actually had one tank the other night who refused to go into shield oath and who only used fight or flight, trying to say he shouldn't have to be using defensive buffs because they cut into his dps time, as if it didn't matter that he was taking so much damage that I could barely get any dots up after shadow flare. He was pulling about 6 mobs at a time in snowcloak but could only hold hate on 3-4 of the mobs on average. He finally caved when the ninja in the party pulled the boss off of him and then switched to shield oath. The rest of the run went fine but there was a lot of resistance/blame put out there.

That said, I'm all for capable tanks not using shield oath or defiance but please know whether you can actually handle it or not. Just don't sit there playing the blame game if you're the one losing hate please because holding hate is your primary job in my opinion.