Should one tank in tank stance?

[SargentToughie]

Now I wouldn't recommend this more aggressive approach unless you're confident in your tanking. But it's perfectly visible, and altogether not exactly difficult to do mass pulls without tank stance in Expert dungeons. They're a complete joke for the most part.

Every once in a while, I'll queue with friends and heal an EXR on Paladin, just for the funsies of it.

Even with me somewhat gimping the party, my other tank friend still finds plenty of time to drop tank stance safely. There's literally no reason not to once you've reached a certain level of confidence/comfort with the content.

[Lumadurin]

24-Man and normal 8-man content: Do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die. Preferably tank stance for opener only.
Dungeon trash: Always tank stance as PLD, preferably tank stance for DRK and WAR unless you're confident and certain abilities are off cooldown. Ultimately do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die.
Dungeon bosses: Do what you want as long as you hold aggro and don't die. Preferably tank stance for opener only.
Savage/EX 8-man content: Tank stance for your opener, DPS stance for the rest of the fight. You should never have to dip back into tank stance outside of rare situations (i.e., Wave Cannon Kyrios in O11s to ease up the burden on the healers a little). This also means however that you should have your cooldowns mapped out and not miss a single tankbuster.

[Buzzwords]

it should be off as much as possible.

what "as much as possible" means will vary wildly by situation. it's an art not a science.

quite frankly the WORST answers are "always" and "never"

[Lilyth]

I've been seeing this being brought up a lot lately. "I have never been yelled at before" does not mean you're doing it right. It just means you're not doing it terribly wrong. That's just another way of saying you're at the very least doing the minimal amount of effort required to complete a certain duty.

So, about tanking an entire encounter in tank stance, most people are ok with that. But then again, most people would also be ok with you doing the Manderville Dance in front of the boss for the entire duration as well, as long as you keep threat. That's how it is. Those who are not, usually don't care enough to try and change one person's mind about how they play cause "you don't pay my sub" and stuff like that.

In the end it comes down to what are you looking forward to do in this game. Casual duties like Dungeons, Normal Raids, Alliance Raids, you'll hardly ever get yelled at for doing anything at all, unless it directly affects other players like getting them cleaved to death, so you don't even need to worry about other stuff like dropping Tank Stance.
However the moment you step on more challeging content, where optimization actually plays a much bigger role, you most definitely will start to get yelled at if you don't play your role to the best of its capabilities. It's safe to say that most players that attempt harder content are not very fond of people who are not willing to put in the effort.

[Izsha]

Unfortunately theres not much space on xhotbars for all of the roles skills, and most tanks I know, or at least DRKs, choose Awareness over Anticipation.
In real terms, in the perfect situation, they each translate into a ~4% mitigation.
However, Parry is only valid against physical attacks, and Crit is checked before Parry (if you receive a critical hit, it can't be parried) so there's no point in using both at once.

In addition, WAR require Awareness for Raw Intuition (probably why they save it) and I believe PLDs base parry rate is lower to account for shield blocks, so Anticipation isn't as effective for them. (probably why they don't use it)

If you're playing with keyboard and mouse then sure, it's free mitigation, when it works.

I'm sorry, if there is not enough space on your hotbar to put your abilities on it, you need to make space. There are multiple hotbars, cross hotbars. 'Not enough space' is not an excuse because you are just choosing not to use it.

[Steelbreeze]

Every time I see the title of this thread I think of that Boromir meme "one does not simply walk....".

[Lordfurious]

Tanks should never drop tanks stance unless they are completely way over Geared for the instance. Recently I was tanking the new instances while leveling up my alts to 70. And I thought man am I just a failed healer why is this tank dropping from 100% down to 10% of Health in a matter of seconds in about roughly 1 global cooldown. And then I noticed they were eating tank Buster's even while using their cool downs but they dropped their tank stance increasing the damage taken by 20%. In a heavy fights were there is a lot of AOE damage happening tanks who drop tank stands are complete idiots and retards that have no thought to anyone else except themselves. Healers should not have to heal a dungeon like it's a 24 man raid with heavy stress. A lot of healers that are joining these new dungeons aren't really geared nobody is at item level 400 doing a level 63 dungeon. And to the couple of tanks that I saw at 400 doing too low level dungeons FYI mobs still hurt you cannot pull the entire insta and expect a Healer at item level 273 appropriate to the instance to be able to keep you up. At the end of the day it is all about common sense if you look at your health bar and it's dropping Superfast don't tell the Healer they failed look in the mirror.

[Lordfurious]

I was healing it not tanking.

[Canadane]

Tanks should never drop tanks stance unless they are completely way over Geared for the instance. Recently I was tanking the new instances while leveling up my alts to 70. And I thought man am I just a failed healer why is this tank dropping from 100% down to 10% of Health in a matter of seconds in about roughly 1 global cooldown. And then I noticed they were eating tank Buster's even while using their cool downs but they dropped their tank stance increasing the damage taken by 20%. In a heavy fights were there is a lot of AOE damage happening tanks who drop tank stands are complete idiots and retards that have no thought to anyone else except themselves. Healers should not have to heal a dungeon like it's a 24 man raid with heavy stress. A lot of healers that are joining these new dungeons aren't really geared nobody is at item level 400 doing a level 63 dungeon. And to the couple of tanks that I saw at 400 doing too low level dungeons FYI mobs still hurt you cannot pull the entire insta and expect a Healer at item level 273 appropriate to the instance to be able to keep you up. At the end of the day it is all about common sense if you look at your health bar and it's dropping Superfast don't tell the Healer they failed look in the mirror.

Tank busters are fine to eat without tank stance. Cooldowns are preferred. AOE damage is the same. A good tank wouldn't make it an issue to any healer.
The key issue here is you mentioned it's a level 63 dungeon. Levelling dungeons are often excluded from the general rule of tank stance use, and are often encouraged to use tank stance as much as possible since you cannot reasonable expect people to be overgeared for it. And in some cases the ilvl sync just messes with you more than you'd think.

Yes there are a lot of bad tanks out there, they take advice at face value, such as "Don't use your tank stance to kill things faster" without actually thinking about why.
The only way we can help is with posts like these, encouragement ingame, and maybe a few wipes to get the point across.

[Selova]

There is no reason to stay in tank stance 100% of the time. If you're not losing enmity/aggro tank stance is a complete waste to be in unless you are using the damage mitigation from it to soak a tank buster.


People have this mentality that as long as you hold aggro on the boss and use CDs at the right time that you're playing optimally as a tank, when this couldn't be further from the truth.


There isnt enough consistent damage going out to warrant tanking like that, all damage is completely scripted. There is no reason to keep building enmity if the boss is already on you, you're deliberately making the fight take longer by not utilizing the damage aspect of your kit by remaining in tank stance the entire time.


I honestly think that people need to break from this mentality of a "Pure Tank", you're severely gimping yourself otherwise.