When should I drop tank stance?

[Snarky_Sunseeker]

And now, part deux:

What?
Tell your DPS/healers to use their emnity reduction tools, and your off-tank to feed you with shirks.

If you expect randos to just follow whatever commands you bark at them without question, you're expecting a bit much my friend. :P

If you do two emnity rotations that means you're spending a minimum of six GCDs before even approaching your opening burst...

Outside of Savage, does this really even matter? Never mind, I'll answer it for you: It doesn't. No need to thank me. ^^

The only time you should dip back into tank stance is when multiple people die...

And you're entitled to your opinion.

Bosses also don't live long enough for more than one tank-stance emnity combo to be necessary.

Sorry, but did you even read what I posted? I said that it's usually safe to go right into DPS stance after two or three enmity combos when fighting a boss in 4-man dungeons. The only exception to that I mentioned is if an unusually high amount of damage taken warrants going back into defensive stance.

It happens a LOT more often than you would think if you are a part of that trifecta. For me, tank stance is the exception not the rule when it comes to most content.

Aana, outside of Savage content, this really doesn't matter. Seriously, it doesn't. Ok, so you stay in DPS stance the whole fight... And assuming all goes well, DPS uses their enmity reducing cooldowns, your healers are on the ball, etc. etc., your reward for this is... you clear a few minutes faster? Yeah, really.

Unfortunately, in my experience, people STILL die to mechanics that we should've mastered three times over by now, healers aren't always focusing on you, DPS is blasting away without any regard for enmity gen, and most of the time, you find yourself casting a Clemency to self-heal just to take some heat off the poor healers who are scrambling to get people back up. If staying in Shield Oath means that I keep the boss under control by virtue of the fact that I'm 1) never going to lose enmity, and 2) very unlikely to die, then I fail to see the issue with that. The only time DPS matters is when it's a critical DPS phase. That's it.

In closing, I just want to remind everyone that there are no endless races against the clock in Normal content. No unforgiving timers. No lofty DPS threshholds. So please, stop applying Savage logic to everything, especially when you can't control variables like you can in statics where you get to cherry pick everyone who fits your standards of what the ideal player is. It simply doesn't happen in PUGs, so you adapt and overcome, even if it means you have to sacrifice DPS or carry others.