DPS is the job of DPS.

[Gemina]

Actually, War defiance doesn't give any additional mitigation. It does give a max 25% hp and does increase healing received by 20%. That being said, it doesn't help when getting hit by a tank buster, hard hitting mobs, etc and is only reliant on either being healed or self healing.

My question wasn't loaded if anyone takes it that way, and I am curious if there are any abilities other than tank stance that provide a perpetual 20% mitigation. DRK is the only tank I am familiar with.

However, is this information accurate?

Defiance:

Increases maximum HP by 25%, while reducing damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity.

Increases own HP recovery via healing magic by 20%.

Effect ends upon reuse.

Using certain actions while under the effect of Defiance will increase your Beast Gauge, increasing parry rate to a maximum of 10%. The Beast Gauge returns to 0 when Defiance ends.

Cannot be used with Deliverance.

Shares a recast timer with Deliverance.

Anyway, I do agree that the whole meta of tanks leaving tank stance to kill things faster is not accurate. It comes down to the mathematics which others I think have already worked out to some extent. Killing all enemies faster as a better form of mitigation is thrown around a lot without the context of how it works in actuality.

With all players of equal skill playing their roles properly, I'm personally not sure what would be more useful. Say for example, I stay in deliverance to increase my dps and my overall dps goes up by "x" amount minus healer dps due to spending time healing more.

Does healer dps while I'm in tank stance do more overall dps?
OR
Does staying in dps stance while healer spends more time healing do more dps.

I don't know tbh.

Awesome! You know exactly where I am coming from. I totally get both tanks and healers trying to be as offensive as possible in order to optimize, and kill things efficiently, but the individual mindset in these threads drives me batshit.