Tank Stances.

[Jpec07]

You're joking right? Do you play Drk at all? You realize that with a Shadowskin and spamming Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain not only makes AoE groups die faster, but actually healing me taking stress off the healer? And if the healer is DPSing while i'm doing this then they have to heal less more DPS > ends the trash faster thus requiring less healing while I can sustain myself and have Sole Survivor up healing me for another 7.5k. But yeah they're totally spamming Cure IIs :P.

And that's all I wanted clarified from the OP, I disagree with increasing the damage in the stance then what's the point in leaving the stance if the damage has been buffed? The only changes really needed are changing Oaths for Paladins because it takes a GCD, same with Drk activating Grit, if all the tanks activated tank stance much like Warriors could then it'd be easier.

There's nothing wrong with not using your tank stance because the good tanks know how to juggle CDs to smooth out damage and increase their own DPS.

Can we drop this idea that dropping your tank stance makes you a good tank? It's bullshit, and not something people should strive towards when they're still learning the job. Your number one job as a tank is to keep things hitting you. Dropping your tank stance is antithetical to this.

"But DPS!"

You are a TANK. You're not a Dragoon. You're not a Ninja. You're not a Monk. You're not a Samurai. Your job is to focus enemy damage on yourself and survive it. If you want to do better DPS, go play one of those jobs. Tanking well means minimizing the chances of losing threat, and minimizing the chances of dying.

It doesn't make you somehow better if you like to play more dangerously. It makes you a liability. Yes, maximize your damage output (because that's how mitigation in this game works), but don't do so at the cost of making it easier for you to lose hate. Say you have a SMN who, after using Quelling Strikes on their first Dreadwyrm Trance, gets a lucky string of crits while setting up their second. While you're sitting there with your stanceless sea urchins, the mobs (except for your main target) all turn away and nuke the SMN before either you or the healer can react.

Also, yes, I do DRK. It's quite fun when PLD gets boring and my FC healer claims to be too tired to heal me on WAR. But in my experience in sitting next to said healer, DA-AD doesn't heal for anywhere near enough to be sustainable (even on big pulls). Almost invariably, I hear from her how I'm being hit really hard, even when I do exactly what you're doing. I'd challenge you, next time you're in a dungeon, to ask your healer to only use Regen on you while you're doing that and see how long you last.

Of course this also is a symptom of the fact that healers in this game are way too powerful for the amounts of damage that mobs put out. There is almost no consequence for this type of reckless playstyle, because healers can usually just heal through the damage anyway, with almost no downside.

[FallenWings]

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How about you drop the idea that tank stance makes you a better tank player. It's exactly what people should strive for when learning to play better, since the ultimate goal is to be able to tank without tank stance.

Excess mitigation and enmity does absolutely nothing to the progression of a fight. A tank, in this game is more than a one dimensional meatwall and it's about damn well time you learned that, especially after how long ago that the meta has already been established.

You are a tank under a different and arguably better definition. Hold aggro, don't go one shot, do maximum DPS.

The fact of the matter is you hold too much value for '20% Mitigation and 50% more aggro" when both are completely unnecessary and neuter your own damage output, thus lowering OVERALL RAID DPS and *gasp* group survivability in the long term! There is no CHANCE to losing threat or dying if you understand the extent of your own toolset.

And I've asked my healer how he felt about healing me in large trash pack pulls without Grit. "It's faster why? Nothing is different." My anecdote against yours. Stop making bulldongo scenarios to support your own narrow minded view.

[Wyndam]

snip

Excess mitigation and enmity does absolutely nothing to the progression of a fight. A tank, in this game is more than a one dimensional meatwall and it's about damn well time you learned that, especially after how long ago that the meta has already been established.

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My 2 cents as a filthy casual, I just wanna point out that if you try to do this before your gear supports it you're going to have a bad time. It might be easy to get said gear right now, but we do have a new expansion coming up where suddenly we might not have excess mitigation for a while. We might have new or returning players coming in deciding what class to play and all they hear is "DPS, DPS, DPS!" even for the tank roles. They need to know the basics and actually possess the excess mitigation before making that trade is a wise decision.

[Awful]

Snip.

Okay so your definition of a tank is to just sit there and do 100-300 damage while hitting 1-2-3? That's not why people play tank, yes they want to handle mobs, yes they want to position them, but that's not wholly the reason at all. This isn't about "new tanks" this is about tanks and tank stance in general this is about common sense, since you decided to retort with a gigantic paragraph I think i'll educate you since you don't have an understanding that more DPS means that your healers heal you less, encounters are faster, less babysitting.

I have done many experts as a tank, i'm in full i270 way overgeared for the content I ran with my Whm friend who only Regen'd me (he's ilvl 262) and I only used Shadowskin + DA/Abyssal and guess what? He Holy'd, Assized and the mobs were dead and I took no damage how could this possibly be!? Am I playing reckless? No, in short i'm not, I had a Brd/Smn DPS combo things melted, Foes gave me more health back since Abyssal is magic in case you didn't know. I was hitting an average of 1200 Abyssal Drains normally, and crits were roughly 2.1k, I even got Baelsars Wall where I wasn't in Grit at all and we did just fine I dipped to 40% but then Abyssal Drained and shot back up to 80% because self healing.

So no dropping tank stance doesn't make you a liability I was actively using CDs, actively DPSing 100% of the time, 100% threat uptime and I got 2 comms out of it, this isn't show boating this is telling you the cold hard facts that this game is built around a DPS meta. You can turtle tank stance all you want and yes it is good for learning how to keep threat, but the end game goal if people want to push and learn themselves they have to drop tank stance or you won't reach that goal.

Look at Gordias for example if you didn't drop tank stance, didn't have STR accessories you weren't clearing it, period, same for A11S since it's the wall most people who are into raiding meet that wall quite inevitably get stuck on. Even if you are a perfect tank, don't get hit by an vulens and use your CDs properly and you're doing 400-600 DPS and you wipe at 1-2% guess whose fault it is? Yours. Tanks are required in end game raiding to DPS and i'm sure you know this but i'm reinforcing it so what's wrong with this in dungeons?

I'm not advocating for people to get out of their comfort zone and drop tank stance altogether no, but you are certainly wrong about a tank dropping their tank stance to push themselves further or show that they can mitigate out of tank stance while keeping threat. So please don't try to educate someone who knows how mitigation works I play how I play you do you, I honestly don't really care, end of the day I have fun with this game while waiting for SB and trying to be the best tank that I strive to be if that's so wrong and I don't push it on others why should you care?

Edit: the SMN was around ilvl 268-269 with a 270 weapon, BRD was 263ish I wanna say the only time the BRD almost pulled threat was the opener due to the burst they can do but after that it died down.

[Hierro]

Also, yes, I do DRK. It's quite fun when PLD gets boring and my FC healer claims to be too tired to heal me on WAR.

Granted, I disagree with your post for the same reasons everyone else does, but this part caught my eye. This implies WAR is especially hard to heal, but my healers always tell me what a joy it is to heal me, and that's taking into account I do my pulls in deliverance. the amount of life steal from berserk, blood bath, and aoe spam is more than enough, especially with regens. Yes, your challenge has been done by me and my healers without the knowledge it was even a challenge.

[Potatlin]

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Really? That's funny because I PLAY with a tank who doesn't sit in tank stance on. All the time. Oddly enough, there's never been an issue! In fact, I usually just slap regens on him and then forget he exists while I DPS. It has never been a problem even doing larger pulls. This is with my WHM in sub-par gear.

When DPS is slow my mana drains and the stun resistance to holy builds up. If anything, I find slow DPS more of a liability. Pretty sure if you maximize DPS without hindering the party, yeah...I think that makes you a better player.

If you don't wanna focus on DPS then that's your choice but don't run around pretending like that somehow players who put in the extra effort aren't better players than you, or that they're actually worse. I don't even care that much about lazy tanks so long as they don't hold the group back but your holier-than-thou attitude about not being good enough to manage out of tank stance is what's annoying.

[winsock]

Can we drop this idea that dropping your tank stance makes you a good tank? It's bullshit...
...
You are a TANK. You're not a Dragoon. You're not a Ninja. You're not a Monk. You're not a Samurai. Your job is to focus enemy damage on yourself and survive it. If you want to do better DPS, go play one of those jobs.

Dropping tank stance can be a marker of a good tank and I'd like to take a crack at convincing you of that.

This is the easiest point to make as you mentioned you make big pulls. Anytime you have decided to pull more than the absolute minimum number of mobs, you are deciding to increase the amount of healing required. The payoff for pulling more than the minimum is higher dps and a faster clear time, so many tanks do it. Increasing the HPS requirement in exchange for more DPS is pretty normal in FFXIV, so if dropping tank stance results in more party dps, why not?

I would argue that tanks dropping tank stance are similar to tanks who make large pulls. Both can go overboard and cause more harm than good, but the ones who do it well are good players.