Is asking a tank to use his enmity+ buff rude?

[Lecan]

Occasionally while healing WP or AK I'll run into a tank that doesn't use his enmity modifier (Shield Oath or the Axe buff thingy for Warriors) resulting in threat going directly to me. I do try to hold back, but there's only so much healing I can put off before people start to be in danger. However, when I ask (something along the lines of 'please use your threat skill'), half the time the tank or one of the DPS will either throw a fit or just drop. I understand wanting to do more damage to get through the dungeon faster and I understand trying to challenge yourself, but I don't want every trash pull in dungeons I overgear (not significantly as you can see on my Lodestone) to be a constant struggle due to someone else not playing as expected.

Am I being rude? Is there a 'good' way to ask someone to change what they are doing to make my dungeon runs a little easier?

[Skull_Angel]

If they are unable to secure hate w/o the buff they should definitely turn it on. Otherwise it's kind of up to the healer; if they're taking mass damage that is hard to manage w/o the buff up, they probably should be using it.

[NeonC]

Level the tank classes first, get an understanding of them then offer advice imo.

[Lecan]

Thanks for the responses. I do now see the difference between asking about a skill and a stance, so maybe that's why it was taken as rude.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

Level the tank classes first, get an understanding of them then offer advice imo.

Ignore this fool. If the tank is smart, they should turn it on when they see themselves taking too much damage or loosing too much threat.
It's not rude at all! Just ask nicely!

[Lucavern]

At least for PLD, if they don't have any Oath on chances are they recently changed jobs, died, or did some action that took off their Oath and forgot/didn't notice to put it back on. I've found myself doing that more than I'd like to admit. Personally I read "please use your threat skill" as something very different than you intend without additional context. I would instead ask them to turn on their tanking stance.

Now, if your group IS overgearing the content, there is little reason to use the tank stance (at least for PLD, can't speak for WAR). When I run AK with friends/FC I never run with Shield Oath anymore, it is Sword Oath the entire run. Never have any threat issues either, unless dps are being stupid. However, when your group is overgearing the content, a dps can easily take a number of hits if they pull hate. If I am doing WP speed-runs, I'll use ShieldOath on the trash pulls, and as soon as we are at the boss switch to Sword Oath.

Hell, I'd personally use Sword Oath for any current content other than Coil and MAYBE Titan, depending on the healer(s). This statement only applies if you and your group are overgearing the content, and does not apply if you are at the current contents gear level (I.e. AF/AK gear while running AK).

[Gamemako]

Occasionally while healing WP or AK I'll run into a tank that doesn't use his enmity modifier (Shield Oath or the Axe buff thingy for Warriors) resulting in threat going directly to me...

The net enmity boost from these stances, after accounting for the damage reduction, is 20% for PLD and ~15% for WAR (depending on average number of Wrath stacks). If your tank is unable to keep aggro without the tank stance, it is unlikely to keep aggro with the tank stance. The stance is only necessary from an enmity standpoint if your DPS heavily outgear your tank. With Defiance, I can keep aggro against anything but a bad WHM with ilvl55 gear -- that includes all relic+1 MNK and SMN (had to do it with a really bad SMN who wouldn't control his pet the other day and kept attacking the last mob first). Bad WHM are a hopeless cause, though. I hate having to babysit the healer by removing Regen after every group of mobs because the WHM keeps dumping it back on at the end.

Now, if the tank isn't using the tank stance, you should speak up. Even if the tank intends to use it, he might simply not notice, especially if it's PLD and has no additional cues to hint that he's forgotten it.

Now, if your group IS overgearing the content, there is little reason to use the tank stance (at least for PLD, can't speak for WAR). When I run AK with friends/FC I never run with Shield Oath anymore, it is Sword Oath the entire run.

At the risk of derailing this thread somewhat, I would like to expand on this slightly. PLD especially should use Shield Oath even when outgearing content. Additional healer DPS will absolutely crush the potential gain from using Sword Oath in most cases, and the damage-free nature of your AoE enmity makes Shield Oath even more useful. Against bosses, yes, you will often see gains from using Sword Oath. There's no way the WP Goobbue or jelly are going to put out enough damage to tax the healer -- the jelly requires no healing at all beyond Regen or the fairy as long as you're walking past the Fire and DPS are wiping out the adds before they debuff.

[Lucavern]

At the risk of derailing this thread somewhat, I would like to expand on this slightly. PLD especially should use Shield Oath even when outgearing content. Additional healer DPS will absolutely crush the potential gain from using Sword Oath in most cases, and the damage-free nature of your AoE enmity makes Shield Oath even more useful.

I disagree, but it depends on the party. For my friends/FC groups, the healer is usually overgearing the content as well and has no issue DPSing and healing while I'm in Sword Oath. If I am in a random pug/DF group, I will start out in Shield and gauge the group. If the group seems to handle themselves alright, I'll switch to Sword and help wreck face.

[Gamemako]

I disagree, but it depends on the party.

One cast of Holy will do as much damage as you do over an entire pull from Sword Oath. The loss of just one GCD alone to additional healing from Sword Oath makes it disadvantageous. I will try to show this mathematically.

Let's assume you need 4 uses of Flash in Shield Oath to maintain aggro through the pull. Because the full 50% from Shield Oath is given (Flash is not damage-based), this is 6 Flashes in Sword Oath, a loss of 5 DPS-seconds. We will assume 6 targets for the purpose of this analysis.

Shield Oath potency per second: (150 + 200 + 260)/7.5 + 100/3 + 6*250/25 + 300/30 = 184.67 base * 0.8 = 147.73 potency per second
Sword Oath potency per second: (150 + 200 + 260)/7.5 + 100/3 + 6*250/25 + 300/30 + 50/2.32 = 206.22 potency per second

DPS gain per second: 0.400 DPS-seconds per second

Time to equivalence: 17.5 seconds

Assume 40-second encounter duration (probably overestimate). Total DPS gain: 9 DPS-seconds -- 1329.57 potency.
WHM holy: 240 potency * 6 opponents * 1.3 maim & mend * 1.1 cleric stance * ~1.4 stat and weapon damage differences = 2882.88 potency.

If WHM loses just one GCD to healing, you're well behind in total DPS.

This isn't the most exacting analysis, but it should give you a good idea of why Shield Oath is a better option for mob situations. Start in it and stay in it. When it comes to bosses... well, that jelly does probably 200 DPS and you need no Flash, so over the duration, healer loses one GCD per 25 seconds. PLD gains 10 DPS-seconds in that much time, or around 1350 potency. Holy would be less than 500 against one target. Either way, Sword Oath wins out in situations with few targets and low damage rates.

//EDIT:

How much does Sword Oath actually add for total Dmg?

I've had the occasional PLD want to "make the run faster" but given how much extra time I have to spend out of cleric stance healing them I question whether the net increase is actually positive.

Sword Oath adds 50 potency per autoattack. In total, it is 40-45% more DPS over Shield Oath depending on the number of opponents (inversely proportional due to CoS contribution).

[Lucavern]

One cast of Holy will do as much damage as you do over an entire pull from Sword Oath.
SNIP

I don't recall at any point stating that I explicitly use a WHM as my healer. Your math looks right, and I agree about the dps gains comparing PLD dps vs Holy usage. Things that I don't think you are calculating on however: MP conservation/usage to keep that rate of Holy usage throughout entire run (I've seen WHM try to do this and be OOM halfway through run when chain/multi-group pulling). I've also done runs where I had a SCH as my healer who stayed in Cleric Stance the entirety of the run and let Eos heal, and only needed to cast 1-3 heals himself throughout the entire run.

As I said earlier, I feel that it really depends on the party composition, and the individual players involved. At this point however, we have gone completely off-topic from the OPs post. I'll continue this discussion in a different post if you want Gamemako, but I don't want to further derail the thread.