Tank Stances.

[Lyth]

[...]

I don't think it really matters to most posters here whether you use tank stance or not in practice. There are also plenty of players out there who don't mind either way. If you're happy with the way that you play, don't worry about it.

Tanking discussions are often done from the standpoint of self-improvement. Text doesn't lend itself particularly well to discussing the positional aspects of tanking; these would lend themselves much better to a VOD review. So most of what you see discussed here will be in terms of rotations, cooldown usage, and dps output.

For the player looking to improve their tank dps, the first question usually asked is: "What's your defensive stance uptime?" This is because it has the biggest overall impact on your dps and gives insight into how you tank.

If you try to claim that defensive stance uptime doesn't impact your dps, or if you try to claim that it interferes with healer dps, people will disagree with you. This is because these statements are factually incorrect. It's nothing personal against you or your playstyle.

The real reason why the "defensive stance debate" bothers people so much is because they feel compelled to "keep up" with other tanks out there. Honestly, you don't have to. If you show up to a story-mode dungeon or trial in half-decent gear and just do your basic enmity moves in defensive stance, most people will be thrilled just to see you. They might even think that you're the greatest tank that they've ever seen. Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

There will always be better tanks out there. Even if you took away defensive stances entirely, or you locked players into them, you're not going to equalise player skill. Some people just have been practising for longer. Tanks will still find ways to improve themselves and and make themselves more useful and desirable to their team. That's not to mention that inflating enmity generation across the board by a flat rate creates new problems when off-tanking. So you're still not off the hook there, either.

If you're satisfied with your current level of performance, then that's great. But please allow others with a drive for self-improvement to seek it out.

[...]

I don't recall previously replying to you in particular. Most of these discussions tend to go in circles, after all, and I probably won't convince you either way. I just wanted to correct a few misconceptions that were scattered throughout the thread. If some of these were yours, my response was aimed at the readers who might be misguided by them.

To be frank, I did find the backtracking in your posts to be confusing. At first, you seemed to suggest that defensive stance usage only mattered in progression raiding and speedruns. Then you extended it to savage raiding in general. Now it looks like you are suggesting that the only content where it doesn't matter are story mode trials and dungeons. This is a fairly sizeable chunk of content to be calling "niche".

Now that I've had a chance to look at your character, however, I can better understand where you're coming from. During the levelling process, you are absolutely correct to focus on the fundamentals and your rotation, and stance dancing isn't really a priority. It can be quite a change from what you're previously used to on MNK, and you need time to adjust. Later on, when you finally hit 60 on your first tank job and get some entry level gear, you can start to experiment more. Defensive stance usage and tank dps doesn't really matter so much until you start entering into pug farm content (i.e. ex trials, simple raids) where there's a chance of failure.

If someone forces you out of your comfort zone while you're trying to get down the basics, don't hesitate to explain your situation to them. But don't let this deter you from trying out stance dancing when you're ready.

Toxicity doesn't come from metas. It comes from players. If you adopt a defensive, antagonistic stance, you'll see toxicity wherever you go. If you stay positive, and try to push yourself for the sake of your team, you'll see that it's a wonderful community.

[KingFrost]

...

I only thought you were replying to me since your post directly referenced a post mine, saying how a few minutes matter for enrage timers when I was referencing content where that usually doesn't matter, and you still haven't properly read my posts, lol. I specifically called raiding and savage material niche.

Not really sure how I'm misleading anyone. Top tier content - Stance dance (Once again, this is expected for that level of play. Blah blah mastery blah blah). Outside of that it's not a necessity, but a welcome addition to DPS. So it's really not that big a deal for how much it's being discussed and how much discord it breeds here. Feel like I've said this 4 times now.


I've done on content raiding​ with a tank. This was back in the Coil days. Mainly stuck to trials tho. Played War since it sucked and didn't like it after the expansion. I'm already fairly used to changing stances when it makes sense to maximize damage. I do it now when just leveling, but none of my posts were about defending myself and my play, just the game and community in general.