tanks not using cooldowns?

[Jamillion]

snip.

Intelligent use of cooldowns does involve cycling them though. Sure you don't use strong cooldowns unnecessarily but he's referring to people that save all their CDs then blow their load and die. Realistically, cooldowns exist for tankbusters, and for allowing healer DPS. Cooldowns are not for popping off in a chain at the last second.

[Jpec07]

As a scholar in a dungeon, it annoys the hell out of me seeing a tank use defensive buffs on pulls where even my fairy falls asleep from lack of damage to heal. it's a total waste of cooldowns. made even worse by that tank then making a big pull and not popping any defensive buffs because there on all cooldown. this includes convalescence. not technically a defensive buff but seeing tanks use it on small assed pulls that need next to no healing is really annoying. even more annoying are the tanks that pop convalescence half way through a big pull when 2/3 of the mobs are already dead and healing the rest is a cake walk...

On my Paladin I use them as needed. I won't use convalescence on a pull if I know the next pull in a minutes time is going to be a bigger one. it makes more sense to use it at a time where incoming damage is going to be at a peak. I won't use it and then run into that big pull without it. because it's in that big pull where it would provide the most help to the healer. I won't use rampart if a scholars fairy or whms regen is pretty much keeping me up.

Intelligent, anticipatory use on an as needed basis is much better than cycling or rotating them.

On this (bolded), I think we can agree (I also fixed to include "anticipatory," because thinking ahead is substantially rewarded here). Using Rampart on a low-damage 3-mob pull when you've got a high-damage 6-mob pull coming up is silly, and bad gameplay (though arguably, so isn't taking those three mobs by themselves and not pulling them to the next group). Effective cooldown usage is the greatest nuance of tank gameplay in FFXIV, and it's what separates the great tanks from the good.

Having a rotation is a good idea when you're taking enough damage to need it (i.e. start of a bigger pull, boss fights, etc.), but if you've only got one and a quarter mobs left before the pull is done, or the boss is one LB away from faceplanting, the incoming damage has been reduced enough to where not using a CD won't hurt you.

[Kazumac]

...

Absolutely anticipation of known high damage times and if using a cooldown now means not having it then, save the cooldown. Absolutely agree.

There are so many tanks I see that just never use them. Saving them for a rainy day or something. Then when they hit 20% health it's like, here healer... There's all of my cooldowns. SAVE MEH! I think the cycling response is just a reaction to this "save for some unknown potentially sticky situation" mentality in some tanks. It is an effort to just get people used to using them.

[Jpec07]

Absolutely anticipation of known high damage times and if using a cooldown now means not having it then. Absolutely agree.

There are so many tanks I see that just never use them. Saving them for a rainy day or something. Then when they hit 20% health it's like, here healer... There's all of my cooldowns. SAVE MEH! I think the cycling response is just a reaction to this "save for some unknown potentially sticky situation" mentality in some tanks. In an effort to just get people used to using them.

Precisely this. I would rather have a tank who plans their cooldowns around the instance than one who just rotates them for the sake of rotating them; but I would very, very much rather have a tank who uses them rotationally over a tank who "saves them for a rainy day."

EDIT: One might say the best tank is one with...Foresight.

[Whiteroom]

Rare is the tank I see in dungeons who uses cooldowns. A8 was particarily bad last night as well, no swaps or CD being used, resulting in a good amount of tank death. It got so bad, that when I got a couple of tanks working togeather on my last run, I was maga over healing them, because I had to spam every other run. Every week before this was great so far...

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Strength tanks needed to use cooldowns a lot more then Vitality tanks.

[Tanathya]

Strength tanks needed to use cooldowns a lot more then Vitality tanks.

No.
/10char

[Awful]

Strength tanks needed to use cooldowns a lot more then Vitality tanks.

Facepalm..okay just to reiterate since you have NO EXPERIENCE TANKING I'll educate you. Wearing Str or Vit back in 3.0 did not mean tanks took different dmg it all came down to which tank used their cds more effectively. If a str died more often because it was a bad tank same goes for vit they take the same dmg. THEY TAKE THE SAME DAMAGE.

Please stay out of the tank forums since you clearly have no idea about the basic ideology of the class.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Facepalm..okay just to reiterate since you have NO EXPERIENCE TANKING I'll educate you. Wearing Str or Vit back in 3.0 did not mean tanks took different dmg it all came down to which tank used their cds more effectively. If a str died more often because it was a bad tank same goes for vit they take the same dmg. THEY TAKE THE SAME DAMAGE.

Please stay out of the tank forums since you clearly have no idea about the basic ideology of the class.

They had less HP; I also have a ton of experience. Less HP means you had to learn to use your cooldowns more because you had much less soaking and padding to take damage. My tank gained almost 7k more health; which means I don't have to use cool-downs as much anymore.

Strength tanks were much more skilled then vitality tanks in almost every aspect; since they "HAD" to use cool-downs to survive. I feel like the vitality change lowered the skillcap for tanks.

I've been tanking since 2004. When did you start tanking in games?

This is all pretty common sense stuff too...

[Jpec07]

Strength tanks needed to use cooldowns a lot more then Vitality tanks.

Are you somehow trying to insinuate that tanks have less of a need to use CDs now that Strength tanking isn't a thing anymore? Because that's not true at all.

Are you suggesting that higher HP means you have more wiggle room and can be more conservative with your cooldowns? Because that's actually kinda true, though you're not really going to meet that kind of threshold unless you go back 2-3 patches or an expansion.

Are you suggesting that a more aggressive playstyle that involves stance dancing more frequently will require more heavy cooldown usage to compensate for the lack of passive damage reduction from the tank stance? Because that's also true.

But if you are in any way insinuating that tanks do not need to use cooldowns in combat, you are incorrect.