I don't want to tank dungeons anymore...

[Kosmos992k]

A concerned Eorzean and fellow player.

If a PLD thinks there's any significant benefit to self-casting SS before every pull, then I dispute he "knows" his own skill set. It's meticulous, unnecessary and obnoxious.

Meticulous? Perhaps. Unnecessary? Perhaps, perhaps not. Obnoxious? No, not really, that's your opinion and a judgmental one at that. Either way if a player chooses to take those 2.5 seconds before every pull, and there are, hypothetically, 30 pulls in the dungeon; that amounts to a whole 85 seconds of precious time that is, in your opinion, wasted. Is your time really that valuable? If so, why are you wasting it playing video games?

Not that anyone other than the tank should be pulling, but is there an actual defense to making pulls far below the group's ability to handle? Slightly smaller pulls for safety concerns maybe, but 2-3 when the group can easily handle 5-6 I don't understand the reasoning behind it. It's inefficient, it's slow, and it voids the instance of any challenge at all. I haven't read through every post in this thread so maybe I've missed it, but is there a reason other than I'm the tank, I set the pace, if I want to pull slowly because I feel like it then that's what we're going to do?

A defense? Sure, let's see now... You know there are quite a lot of players who do not run, re-run, and re-run dungeons over and over in farm mode. There are players new to tanking, or the game, who aren't good a gauging the party's ability to handle things, there are tanks who are not confident in their own gear or ability to handle big pulls, there are tanks who've been burned by poor healing or over-reaching DPS before and so take things more cautiously. There are many players who are simply not comfortable with big pulls.

It seems to me that your point of view is that the tank should conform to your way of thinking about how a tank should play. That's not your place to decide how the tank should play - unless you're the tank. If you're not, and you're DPS, and the tank pulls slower than you prefer, so what? The tank is not imposing their view of how you should DPS on you, you're free to go hog wild and obliterate everything you can, as fast as you can each pull. In fact if you stop worrying about the tank and pay attention to performing excellently yourself, you might be surprised at how fast a dungeon can pass.

[Almalexia]

Meticulous? Perhaps. Unnecessary? Perhaps, perhaps not. Obnoxious? No, not really, that's your opinion and a judgmental one at that. Either way if a player chooses to take those 2.5 seconds before every pull, and there are, hypothetically, 30 pulls in the dungeon; that amounts to a whole 85 seconds of precious time that is, in your opinion, wasted. Is your time really that valuable? If so, why are you wasting it playing video games?

You jump to conclusions. I said nothing about wasted time. We are talking about a player's capacity to understand their own skill set.

A PLD gains no meaningful benefit casting SS before every pull. If no one contests this, he will continue to do it - he will carry with him the impression that it is somehow useful.

A quicker dungeon run is only a side-effect.

[Kosmos992k]

You jump to conclusions. I said nothing about wasted time. We are talking about a player's capacity to understand their own skill set.

A PLD gains no meaningful benefit casting SS before every pull. If no one contests this, he will continue to do it - he will carry with him the impression that it is somehow useful.

A quicker dungeon run is only a side-effect.

It's pretty logical to conclude from your statement "It's meticulous, unnecessary and obnoxious", that you consider the use of StoneSkin by a PLD in a dungeon to be a waste of time, both theirs and yours. I'm not debating the worth of SS, that's a different argument. But I think you're wrong to call it obnoxious.

[Almalexia]

But I think you're wrong to call it obnoxious.

There's no argument to be had there.

[Shihen]

It seems to me that your point of view is that the tank should conform to your way of thinking about how a tank should play.

You're inferring a lot from a few lines of text. You did provide some valid points that I didn't consider, so thank you for that. However, no one is imposing their view on how the tank should play when he is doing the best he can. The issue is that when it looks like the tank is not doing the best he can, the reason is not obvious to anyone other than the tank. One response might be to say that it's his character and not the party's problem, but when one person is making decisions for four, the other three have a right to give their input on it. Not comfortable with large pulls? That's fine, say that. But 'Well, I'm not telling you how to play, stop telling me how to play.' is not really an acceptable answer.