A tank's lament

[F_Maximillian]

No it isn't needed but depending on the class you play (especially warrior) staying in tank stance and simply "tanking" is a major loss in damage contribution with not enough benefits to justify it. If all 4 dps got a damage cut that tanks get from doing that you wouldn't beat a single enrage timer in the current content. It is theoretically possible to clear most if not all fights in game (outside of ultimate I'd imagine) with tanks in tank stance doing aggro combos the whole time and healers doing nothing but healing provided you have absolutely stellar dps that never mess anything up. However, you could argue that sitting in tank stance spamming an aggro combo and tossing out an occasional heal in scripted fights is far from stellar performance so that creates a huge gap in effort input which isn't fair to half the group..

It isn't necessary in dungeons and casual content but it certainly helps things go smoother and quicker. If you need it for blind progression to be safe that's one thing, but generally speaking tank stance and aggro combo spam is even less necessary than the extra damage so you may as well do some more damage. If you're entering extreme primals and above people have standards that you need to adapt to because the devs have admitted time and time again players figure out better ways to tackle content than they do. If you don't wish to adapt you're always free to make your own group and lay down the groundwork that you're a tank who tanks. Just don't expect too much success in finding people okay with that that can clear the content.

Now I'm waiting for all those dps advocate tank saying that it's all about dps.

If you want you can p.m me and we would do a boss together so I can see how you tank.

I'm curious as to what you mean by this.

[Sylvain]

I'm curious as to what you mean by this.

There are many tank who go Dps >> everything else and since I said it wasn't mandatory I would be quoted and said I was wrong.
I didn't happen tho xD

Also some people seem to have missed the line where he said he wasn't doing savage and restricted himself to extreme.
Any tank saying you need to tank in dps stance to meet those boss dps requirement spent too much time in savage and forgot what extreme actually is.

However, the poster didn't specify his rotation and I would like to add that regarding aggro management, you should not need more than 1 or 2 aggro combo to hold enmity if you stay in tank stance. I personally do 2 to be safe but once that is done I spam my regular dps rotation. I'd you in fact spam the aggro rotation then I would recommand changing this habit, aggro is like healing, once you have enough any extra is useless. Overheal is as relevant as over aggroing.

[HoodRat]

Also some people seem to have missed the line where he said he wasn't doing savage and restricted himself to extreme.
Any tank saying you need to tank in dps stance to meet those boss dps requirement spent too much time in savage and forgot what extreme actually is.

The argument for dps stance isn't that you need it to meet dps requirements, it's that there's just almost no reason at all to use tank stance.

If you never use your tank stance, you'll never hold aggro unless you're playing with really bad DPS

That's not true at all.

[Sylvain]

The argument for dps stance isn't that you need it to meet dps requirements, it's that there's just almost no reason at all to use tank stance.
That's not true at all.

Which is also why i wish they'd actually buff it. Anyway going back to the topic.


If we talk about farmed or nearly down content where the group does everything relatively flawlessly, then yes I agree. Tank stance isn't especially useful once you've passed the progression stage.

However, I do not consider the extra damage worthwhile during early progression when everyone keep dying and when you don't necessarly recognize every tank buster.
20% less damage taken remove a lot of stress from healers when the fight isn't properly understood and people keep taking random damage. Since GCD is the most valuable thing for a healer, every GCD the tank stance free me is a GCD I can use to save someone's ass from a failed dodge.

For instance, I've just done Shinryu and unfortunately it was a fail. Healer died from a Spike+AoE fire combo and some dps were slow on dodging the next ark rhai, when the dragon's head came down the group wasn't in top shape and tank were at 60-70%. With a WHM with -25% less heal and nearly no MP and me as a SCH with no Ether left (yes, it was going bad don't worry), we started healing the heads. And see at this very moment, if the tanks had switched to Tank Stance and popped some mitigation, we wouldn't have had to shoot some heal to keep them alive while we were doing the heads, and doing so would have given us enough time to heal the two head that already started on not fully healed DPS.

This is a very nich exemple, but these kind of bad situation happen all the time when you learn a fight.
IMO, the extra dps these tank did had no value, we wipe and altough it wasn't entirely the Tanks fault, they could have made a terrible situation much less terrible.
They could have popped defensive CD to help us stabilise the situation, when the WHM died and the Dragons head came down, they could have started being more defensive, the PLD could have healed instead of doing more Holyshot when he had 15% left, yet they were still tunnel visionning their dps which ultimately leaded us to a wipe.


My point is that, unless the boss actually dies, the extra damage has no value. If you have a SAM with 6.5k dps but he keeps ignoring an add which makes the group wipe, your SAM dps is useless because he's not doing what he's suppose to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but for me the first goal of a MT (two tanks in Shin case) is to Survive while holding aggro. 20% permanent mitigation is not something that should be laughed at. I honestly cannot count the number of times tank died simply because they were in DPS stance and the heals couldn't heal them quick enough. (I've seen some tank die on the waterfall damage, like being at 30% when the waterfall is coming doesn't ring any bell)

So going back to the former poster, if everything is fine I would say do not hesitate to go DPS stance, afterall there's a point where enough mitigation is enough. On the other hand, you should never be shy to go back in tank stance if the situation is turns ill.

If you die because of a lack of mitigation (like, if being in tank stance would have actually saved you), you failed at your job.
The same holds for healers or dps, if I let someone die to push a last stoneIV, I failed as a healer, I will never be able to do enough dps to cover his death, same goes for a DPS who tries to push too hard sometime, no matter your dps, if you die you will never recover -25% less dps for 2min.
Worst, you might actually be absent for an important mechanic. (Like a Dragon Head on the MT in P3shin....)

And just quoting Anna saying that if you get constently banned because of "low dps", I'm sorry but (s)he's right.
I have NEVER seen a tank being kicked for low dps and I am myself not a top tier DPS DRK (but I've often had healers tell me I was a piece of cake to heal)
If you get regularely kicked for low dps or wathever, you are probably the faulty person in this story.



btw, you guys think he's still reading? he's done 0 replies. Almost feels like a troll post