I don't understand the point of the various tank/dps stances for tanks

[Sarcatica]

Stop this already. If you want turtle tanking go back to wow. Tank DPS is the most interesting thing of tanking at FF XIV and there's people complaining about it? Tanks were already nerfed. Here's the deal. Do you wanna be a defensive Tank? Stay at Tank instance. Wanna play risky and live at the edge? Go for DPS.
Everyone is Happy. Now just stop this.
There's no content in this game that requires tank DPS just stop this already

The tank dps is still a legitimate concern in week 1-4 prog (no tomes weapon upgrade). Just imagine, tanks that clears in week 7++ have the same dps number as those who cleared in week 1-4. Same as healer dps. Just think about that.

Also, let's see if Ultimate will highlight the dps disparity, because it probably will. 99% of the raiding population have no chance of clearing it in its era, just like how SCOB Savage was (most people cleared those in i130 vs in i110).

[gti443]

What's with this turtle obsession? Is there some weird psychological thing I'm missing where doing the same DPS in a tank stance and utilizing tank stats is somehow icky but doing it in DPS stance with DPS stats is not?

[Sarcatica]

What's with this turtle obsession? Is there some weird psychological thing I'm missing where doing the same DPS in a tank stance and utilizing tank stats is somehow icky but doing it in DPS stance with DPS stats is not?

This is the conundrum that most players get hit. My 1st clear for o3s was with 70%+ Grit uptime in week 1, and guess what? Most tanks struggle to even do 2.4k with so many gear up their arsenal. A good amount of them even have less tank stance uptime than when I was doing progression. The gap is still that big.

[zipzo]

Stop this already. If you want turtle tanking go back to wow. Tank DPS is the most interesting thing of tanking at FF XIV and there's people complaining about it? Tanks were already nerfed. Here's the deal. Do you wanna be a defensive Tank? Stay at Tank instance. Wanna play risky and live at the edge? Go for DPS.

What's with this turtle obsession? Is there some weird psychological thing I'm missing where doing the same DPS in a tank stance and utilizing tank stats is somehow icky but doing it in DPS stance with DPS stats is not?

Interesting, more people who, beyond all logical reasoning, seem to think I'm talking about anything to do with DPS, even though I'm not.

Is this some kind of disease that afflicts FFXIV tank players? The equivalent of short man's disease except with your DPS as a tank in FFXIV?

Let me make this clear for you, because it appears you're having difficulty:

I want tank stance to be required for tanking, or removed entirely.

Do you see the words "Damage" or "DPS" anywhere in that quote? No? Okay then.

I don't care if the damage penalty is removed from the tank stance, I just want tank stance to be sensibly useful for it's intended purpose. At least in my reality, it can be turned on and off pending tank switches. The way it is now, it has next to zero use in an ideal circumstance.

[Thela]

Stop this already. If you want turtle tanking go back to wow. Tank DPS is the most interesting thing of tanking at FF XIV and there's people complaining about it? Tanks were already nerfed. Here's the deal. Do you wanna be a defensive Tank? Stay at Tank instance. Wanna play risky and live at the edge? Go for DPS.
Everyone is Happy. Now just stop this.
There's no content in this game that requires tank DPS just stop this already

I don't see anyone complaint about tank dps at all? Why does it have to be 1 or the other though? You can still keep the same focus on executing your dps rotations while making the actual tanking play more fun and engaging.

[Mekhana]

Uh... no don't take Grit away. Least thing I want is to be forced to tank everything in open world PVE. Like when I run into a A-S Rank Hunt without healers.

[zipzo]

Uh... no don't take Grit away. Least thing I want is to be forced to tank everything in open world PVE. Like when I run into a A-S Rank Hunt without healers.

This aligns just fine with my "either/or" scenario. Just turn off your tank stance, whatever it is, and boom you're not generating a whole lot more threat than other players as long as you don't use your enmity combo.

Don't pull aggro though, because without tank stance you'll get pumpernickled.

[whiskeybravo]

Just imagine, tanks that clears in week 7++ have the same dps number as those who cleared in week 1-4. Same as healer dps. Just think about that.

Way to make me feel wholly inadequate equipping an axe ; ;

Lol jk, it is kinda crazy to think about. Damn I suck

[Felorr]

I've been on the fence about participating in this thread. After reading a lot of responses on pages 8 through 10, I see a lot of good points that have helped me come to a conclusion.

What is the point of two stances? Why not just bake everything into one system? I think it has a lot to do with what Yoshi-P said a while back about the difficulty level of the jobs. He wanted to lower the skill floor and raise the skill ceiling. Normally tough to do. The stances given to tanks is what allows it. At a low skill floor, you have tanks sitting in tanks stance clearing content. At a high skill floor, you have tanks optimizing with healers to stay in dps stance 100% of the time, also clearing content. I think the point of tank stance is to give everyone the tools needed to clear content.

The fights were obviously tuned for entry level gear (someone mentioned their tank stance uptime on their week 1 clear of v3s, mine was 20.9% tank stance uptime). Could it have been done with 0% tank stance? Probably, but we we're far more concerned with clearing quickly than optimizing around that. Lower skilled players and groups will need more tank stance to clear.

Tanking in XIV is unique. The damage is almost entirely in the busters; predictable and easy to cover with cooldowns. Any AoE is negligible by comparison purely do to the fact that your healers are healing it on everyone regardless. You don't NEED tank stance to handle the autos. It just makes all of the aforementioned damage sources easier to deal with.

Even looking at the tuning of these fights in current BiS, tank stance is really just a tool to make the tanking role easier. It's useful for certain situations: pugging, shaky heals, "playing it safe" etc. I use it for trash in 4-mans and turn it off for bosses. I did the same with WAR in ARR, but thankfully now the dps side of the job is fleshed out.

TL;DR
Tank stance makes up the difference in skill to allow all players to clear content. I view tank stance as a crutch. Not that it's a bad thing. Yoshi-P wants the jobs to have both a low skill floor and high skill ceiling. Tanks do this by using tank stance more at lower skill levels, and not at all at higher skill levels.

[MauvaisOeil]

What is the point of two stances? Why not just bake everything into one system? I think it has a lot to do with what Yoshi-P said a while back about the difficulty level of the jobs. He wanted to lower the skill floor and raise the skill ceiling.

That's around the inverse of his real words. He wanted to raise the skill flood and lessen the gap between low and high skilled players (By lowering the skill ceiling or simply raising the skill floor high enough, who knows), which ends up beeing contrary to your argumentation.