Does Tank Stance mean you're "bad?"

[lawlHT]

Uhm.. No.. Staying in dps stance longer than say vengeance.. Is just taxing the healer. but hey do what you want.

Oh no, the healer has to toss out cures occasionally instead of jumping in place waiting for me to lose 1/10 of my hp. This mentality that you have to choose between tank dps and healer dps needs to die. Good groups maximize both, bad groups insist that the tank remain in tank stance on bosses we already outgear

[MoarLegion]

Don't the tank stances either increase HP or reduce damage? There's very few times where having your tank stance off is a good idea since the healer can put out a LOT more dps than a tank, and if you don't have that mitigation then they can't do so.

Healer DPS is no where near the same level in practice or theory, save PLD vs SCH(lowest tank DPS vs highest Healer DPS).

On topic; You are a tank, your job is maintaining aggro and mitigating damage. Tank DPS gets more focus in this game because boss AA is not a major threat, and major incoming damage comes from tank busters. Because we KNOW when the tank busters are coming, we can plan our mitigation accordingly.

That said, board stance is a tool, and knowing your kit and when to use those various tools separates the good from the bad. If you need tank stance to successfully fulfill those two obligations(aggro and mitigation), then use it.

I admit this may not make sense, but doing good DPS as a tank is less about the DPS and more about optimizing, squeezing out every bit to get the job done. If getting the job done means spending more time in board stance than not, that's what you do, and the inverse applies.

[Melian]

... The OP here is about someone complaining that a tank used a defensive/enmity stance in the Void Ark? When hate wasn't being kept without it?

Seriously?

Point 1: Keeping hate is more important than maximizing damage about 99.9% of the time. If you can boost damage while keeping hate sure, why not. But if the guy wasn't keeping hate...
Point 2: It's the Void Ark. You can complete this half asleep. If you want to min-max your performance because you enjoy it, that's great and more power to you. You probably should. But for the Void Ark really... just go in, do it, and get out.
Point 3: What other people have said. Defensive stances are great, but you can probably (certainly) get more mileage out of your job if you use the offensive stance as well at the right times. So do that. Just not if it makes us circle back to point one and results in tanks that can't hold enmity.
Point 4: Lastly, in stuff like the Void Ark, if you're there and not main tanking you really can help out a little bit more by keeping your offensive stance on. Won't cut five minutes off the run or anything, but you might as well. Just make sure the main tank can keep enmity.... because yeah. And if s/he can't, s/he probably shouldn't be the main tank. But that said, you're definitely not ruining anyone's day if you do the whole thing in defensive stance anyways. Just don't try to pull hate off the MT for no reason, because that's obnoxious and moving stuff for no reason is counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst (ie: don't spam voke and RoH combo for no reason when you're not trying to take hate).

[bounddreamer]

I've rarely tanked in Void Ark and I'm a tank main. I use Void Ark to gear up my alt jobs. I don't know about other people but based on most performances I'd say a lot of people are doing the same. -_- When I do tank in Void Ark (at my healer's request, bc he doesn't like healing other tanks) if I am MT I have my tank stance on. Because it's a 24 man raid and I ain't taking any chances. MT's job is to hold hate and take hits.

[kensatsu]

24 Raid don't change anything, if anyone is doing more aggro than you it should be a tank ? that's fine but not a dps/heal.
You make enough aggro to swap to dps stance, and don't sleep , keep your eyes open, as soon someone take aggro, you have to react directly swap to tank stance again and provoke.
If you don't have this reaction, it's something you need to practice because a main tank swapping to dps stance have to be able to do that.
When you swap to dps stance you have to deal with that, if a drg pull more aggro than you in savage, you can't react fast ?, it's a wipe. i say drg because when it happen to me it's all time a drg XD or a other tank, Blm lucky on procc can be a deal when we start a fight.
Pull enough aggro in the beggining and it don't happen most of the time. but it's still can happen, you can't be sure someone will not have a crit chance with him so always keep an eyes on your aggro.

swap Dps = Need to watch the aggro and react fast if you loose it+ know when we can do it +compensate with defense CD, if you are not confortable about this it's too soon to swap dps stance in everything, but you still need to fail for the training sake XD, maybe the 24 man raid is not the better place for this.

Don't forget the tank stance : learn to use shieltron /inner beast on almost every cleave of a damaging phase, is the better way to keep all the rest of CD for any tank buster
For Savage/Thordan it be easy to heal if you MT this way (except any magical cleave for the pld)

to what the OP say : if the tank take a lot of time to get aggro back, he can play better with more experience, any tank can be bad, to average, good, or exellent

[bounddreamer]

If you don't have this reaction, it's something you need to practice because a main tank swapping to dps stance have to be able to do that.
When you swap to dps stance you have to deal with that, if a drg pull more aggro than you in savage, you can't react fast ?, it's a wipe. i say drg because when it happen to me it's all time a drg XD or a other tank, Blm lucky on procc can be a deal when we start a fight.

Actually I don't "need" to swap to dps stance in casual content. Savage? Yes, I can and must stance dance. And do, quite successfully. Void Ark? No, it's not a requirement.

There's a huge difference between Void Ark via duty finder, and Savage with my static. There's different levels of trust, skill, and even the type of gear I'll use. As long as the tank holds hate, no one has a right to complain or backseat tank in a DF party.

[kensatsu]

it's not a requierment like you said, i am sure some tank wanna dance anyway,
I would do it even if it's not a requierment because i am sure it would not be a problem.i am just pretty confident with this. so i do for almost everything.
i think it's more a problem when tank do it when it's not a requierement and when still not confortable enough for this, maybe some tank think not swap dps is bad this days.
we can agree a good tank can be as Tank stance or Dps stance as long he hold agro and is healable.

[bounddreamer]

i think it's more a problem when tank do it when it's not a requierement and when still not confortable enough for this, maybe some tank think not swap dps is bad this days.
we can agree a good tank can be as Tank stance or Dps stance as long he hold agro and is healable.

Agree 100%.

I also think it's bad when the community at large thinks a tank MUST run without their tank stance in a raid. Dps stance or no, if they are getting the job done, people don't really have a right to complain how they're doing it.

[Melian]

Outside of fights with hard DPS checks (typically not a thing in DF until you can use the echo, and the check stops being that hard) I don't see why anyone would care.

If your void ark run is slow, look to the 15 sleeping DD's, not the stance your two off tanks are using. I guarantee that outside of a parser log, you'll never - ever - notice the difference between a Void Ark run where the OT's are fully using offensive stance and one where they're always in a defensive stance.

If your tank was loosing hate when he should have had it in an offensive stance though, there's again no question as to what he should have done. Keeping enmity, clearly, is more important than a tiny dps increase when no DPS check is present.

[SpookyGhost]

If your void ark run is slow, look to the 15 sleeping DD's, not the stance your two off tanks are using. I guarantee that outside of a parser log, you'll never - ever - notice the difference between a Void Ark run where the OT's are fully using offensive stance and one where they're always in a defensive stance.

I don't think this is the argument. I mean, yeah alright it won't result in a wipe in Void Ark if one of the OTs is in his tank stance the whole time... but that can also snowball into other things, like "1 DPS AFKing isn't that bad", "We can do this without 1 Alliance", "We can do this with just the 8 of us", etc. It can also result in aggro ping ponging all over the place, which could result in all of their deaths, which would inevitably lead to everyone else dying. As an example, back in WoD I recall tanks bouncing hate around and getting everyone shot with the laser eyebeam... multiple times... until we wiped.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain the argument is that one of the tanks should've attempted to get aggro back and once aggro was settled they could all go back to their business as usual. However, none of them apparently turned on tank stance and instead just let everyone burn.

Agree 100%.

I also think it's bad when the community at large thinks a tank MUST run without their tank stance in a raid. Dps stance or no, if they are getting the job done, people don't really have a right to complain how they're doing it.

I don't think this is a good mentality to have in a raid scenario. If you are in a situation wherein you can be in DPS stance and that results in a net group DPS gain while not compromising your survivability, then you should be in DPS stance. By not being in DPS stance there you are making it more difficult for your group to meet a DPS check or push a phase faster. As an example, if you aren't in DPS stance during the HoP check in A3S then you are putting massive amounts of weight on the DPS' shoulders when it's unnecessary. You are a part of a group, and to kill a boss you need to make it's life bar reach 0 - which means that if anyone at any time can push DPS harder in any way without compromising other things, then they should. This is not always the case, there are instances where tank stance is beneficial and in previous raid content (ie T12, T13, etc) you needed to be in tank stance to reasonably survive the tank busters, and in the case of T13 (in progression) you needed it all the time.

But yeah, basically, if you can push group DPS without getting yourself killed, you should and by choosing not to do it then you're only hurting your group. This is the case for every job, including healers. A lot of people don't like it, but a lot of people shouldn't be raiding.