Paladin Shield/Sword Oath Usage

[shao32]

No, that's wrong. Shirk is aggro control, tank swap is changing tanks because of a debuff that would deal more damage than a tank could mitigate .

what i mean i s no need of use of tank stance thanks of provoke/shirk combo

[winsock]

It took me awhile to adjust from WoW's "tanks are complete defense" mindset, to changing to FF's "tanks are enmity-holding dps" mindset.

I think some clarification here might help. In ffxiv, defense and enmity are extremely important, but only until you have "enough". After you have "enough", there is usually little benefit to adding more, so you might as well add offense.

My question is when to use shield oath, and when to use sword oath.

The generic answer is ensure you hold threat, then use whatever will result in the shortest clear time. There really isnt a nice "you need to do X every time" answer for this because it's based on circumstances that aren't going to remain consistent.

If I'm tanking a dungeon, do I just permanently keep shield oath up for enmity, or do I use sword oath to get my gauge built up faster?

The speed of your gauge is a secondary concern. The primary concern is which oath will allow you to clear the content fastest while holding threat. If shield oath will allow you to clear something faster (ex: reducing the total number of pulls for a section), it's worth it.

If I'm main tanking a boss, do I always use shield oath... Or do I only use shield oath in times of high damage, sword oath during the rest?

Currently, the high damage sections of a dungeon boss should never be high enough to kill you, so it's usually just a question of whether or not you need the additional emnity from shield oath. It's not uncommon to spend the majority of a boss fight in Sword Oath. During high damage (such as tank busters), you can stay in sword oath, but you should almost always mitigate that damage with something. Shelltron and reprisal are nice for this. Your bigger cooldowns like rampart and sentinel are also very good, but keep in mind that if you arent on the very last boss, you may have a large group of mobs to pull afterwards that you'll want those cooldowns for.

[Hruodig]

Part of being a good tank in this game isn't just knowing when to swap stances, but also knowing the fight well. If you chill out in dps stance and don't know when tank busters/cleaves/periods of high damage are, then you're not being as good of a tank as you could be. It's *essential* to know when to use defensive cds when you're pushing your dps, as it's very much a team sport. Your hp is both yours and your healer's concern, and you should be working together to manage both it and your own dpses (healers wanna maximize their dps as well).

In a dungeons generally you should just stay in shield oath for trash pulls. On bosses, you can usually just do 1 rage of halone combo in shield oath and then swap to sword for the rest of the boss. This is gonna depend on your own gear and the skill of your dps in comparison to you.

[Reinha]

A good rule of thumb is using Shield Oath for trash and Sword Oath for bosses. You can do the following to get a good enmity lead. Usually it's enough to keep aggro for an entire dungeon boss fight.

(Shield Oath is on)
Shield Lob
Rage of Halone combo
Fast Blade + Riot Blade + Sword Oath (+ Fight or Flight) + Goring Blade

[SilentVoice]

beware of casters in dungeons, especially BLMs yesterday i stole aggro from tank in Sword Oath on boss as BLM, even though i used Diversion. Now imagine that in dungeons you get all sorts of people, and some won't even bother to use Diversion
At least as DRK, which i occasionally play, i always start boss encounter in Grit, and after 2-3 enmity combos, empowered with Dark Arts, i switch Grit off and that is enough threat generated for me

[Dualgunner]

No, that's wrong. Shirk is aggro control, tank swap is changing tanks because of a debuff that would deal more damage than a tank could mitigate .

True, tank swaps still exist. But provoke + shirk makes them trivial to the point of not needing tank stance.

[ChaozK]

You could consider tank stance like training wheels. There is no shame in using it but the higher you go up in skill level the rarer its use becomes. Generally in hardcore groups there is barely any use of tank stance due to highly optimized play, while in contrast its absolutely common to see tanks in dutyfinder stay in tank stance 100% of the time. Its a question of comfort level.

[RLofOBFL]

beware of casters in dungeons, especially BLMs yesterday i stole aggro from tank in Sword Oath on boss as BLM, even though i used Diversion. Now imagine that in dungeons you get all sorts of people, and some won't even bother to use Diversion
At least as DRK, which i occasionally play, i always start boss encounter in Grit, and after 2-3 enmity combos, empowered with Dark Arts, i switch Grit off and that is enough threat generated for me

Replace Diversion with Lucid

[Jukebox12]

Replace Diversion with Lucid

Should have both

[RLofOBFL]

Should have both

I only use Lucid now, to great success. I haven't taken aggro ever if i use Lucid when I'm #2 and almost tied with tank. The BLM opener isn't bursty enough unless you maybe crit every single hit to take aggro, at least in my experience.

But I mean....you're not wrong. I just got super sick of swapping in surecast for Shin and 4S so I tried Lucid only and it works for me so meh.