Dark Knight and stance dancing

[MagiusNecros]

inner beast is much like a conditional rampart/shadowskin, and not really much similar to the stances by themselves. and just as a war can do deliverance -> inner beast both drk and pld can do grit/shieldoath -> shadowskin/rampart. only difference being one needs stacks and the other two needs time

More like they all need time. Whether it be GCD locks, recast times, etc. PLD/DRK use up resources to make an immediate change and are on GCD while Warrior sacrifices nothing but 10 seconds until they can revert into a different stance. And technically they could run a 20 second pseudo Defiance mode in Deliverance through Thrill of Battle and Convalescence.

[SuperUguu]

More like they all need time. Whether it be GCD locks, recast times, etc. PLD/DRK use up resources to make an immediate change and are on GCD while Warrior sacrifices nothing but 10 seconds until they can revert into a different stance. And technically they could run a 20 second pseudo Defiance mode in Deliverance through Thrill of Battle and Convalescence.

but the entire point is, as a pld or drk, you gain an immediate effect of 20% badass, where you as a warrior gain absolutely nothing unless you got 5 stacks ready or your next heal. pld and drk work on a matter "ok, it's done" and war is "one moment please"

and as the topic is about the reason for the cost of changing stances, that is exactly why, pld and drk gain so much more the moment they hit that button, where as warrior doesn't gain a nugget of anything until he or his healer does something about it.

[Drkdays]

I don't really stance dance as drk, I'll judge based on my group whether or not I need it for a given pull/boss and if I do I don't usually take it off because of the MP cost of resetting it, unless it's going to be a prolonged fight and I trust my healer to keep me up. Lately though I've been using it less and less, even for settling agro at the beginning because I have little trouble holding agro even without grit. For instance, last lost city hard I ran without using grit at all.

[Ragology]

but the entire point is, as a pld or drk, you gain an immediate effect of 20% badass, where you as a warrior gain absolutely nothing unless you got 5 stacks ready or your next heal. pld and drk work on a matter "ok, it's done" and war is "one moment please"

and as the topic is about the reason for the cost of changing stances, that is exactly why, pld and drk gain so much more the moment they hit that button, where as warrior doesn't gain a nugget of anything until he or his healer does something about it.

This is correct.

(Gonna copy paste what I wrote once in a similar topic)

DRK and PLD have a penalty for stance dancing because their stances activate immediately while WAR's does not.

First I'll explain how the stances work (for those who don't know)

DRK and PLD get a 20% incoming damage reduction while WAR gets 25% more hp. Lets say that all three tanks have 100 base HP and then turn on their tank stances.

PLD 100 HP
WAR 125 HP
DRK 100 HP

And now a mob throws 5 rocks at them, doing 25 damage each.

Since PLD and DRK get damage reduced, the rocks only do 20 damage to them. They will be killed in exactly 5 hits. (20 x 5 = 100)

WAR takes the full 25 Damage, also dying in 5 hits. (25 x 5 = 125)

In this case, the stances are equal.

Now lets say all three tanks were fighting as off tanks but have decided to provoke and tank swap.

PLD and DRK are at their 100 HP base and ready to to go already. WAR on the other hand is stuck at 100 until it gets a heal since switching to tank stance increases the health pool without filling it.

If the same mob decides to hurl 25 damage rocks at them, PLD and DRK can take 5 hits before dying while WAR would be killed by the 4th rock. (25 x 4= 100)

In short, making sheild oath and Grit as convenient as Defiance would turn it into an extra 20% damage reduction ability with unlimited uptime and short cooldown.

[Aurius]

The large mp cost is mitigated with blood weapon, skill speed aside 6 gcds at 238 mp is 1428 mp, which is more than grit costs. You also get 238 per auto attack, and physical ogcd. Stance dancing is harder on drk we just have to be more on top of our resources than the other tanks. We need to know there's a 15s window where grits not needed, but it's totally manageable, albeit harder

[MagiusNecros]

Wouldn't call it stance dancing tbh. Darkside is always up and you only really toggle Grit on and off.

Only real class that changes is Warrior and PLD only has one Oath up at any time.

[HatsoonMike]

I just want them to make Grit completely off GCD, have it be like Defiance used to be. It's really annoying wasting time between GCDs pressing Grit, making sure it fell off because it sometimes doesn't due to latency, and making sure I don't press it twice, putting it back on. Just make it a quick toggle for fucks sake.

[Awful]

Drk and Pld are punished compared to War however Drks have the highest MT potential out of all the tanks since Darkside is 15% and grit is -20% dmg you only lose 5% dmg, War has unchained + Berserk and is the safest to be in Defiance with once you have that threat lead. Pld gets hit the hardest and penalized with a GCD and losing -20% for being an MT bringing the lowest DPS out of all 3 tanks for main tanking with Fight or Flight being good as a 60 sec CD but their DPS output compared to the other tanks is just lacking.

Tldr; I find just being a pld stance dancing is clunkier compared to drk/war as they have the resources/dmg/threat.

Edit: forgot Plds is -15% now forgot

[Chronons]

Snip

Stance dancing is a bigger investment for DRKs as opposed to the other tanks for two specific reasons. The first, as you mentioned, is the resource requirement of it. Stepping out of Grit costs nothing (maybe a little bit of GCD delay as you have to wait for it to be ready, but it doesn't actually cost a GCD to drop), while having to step back in is a big MP investment and a GCD. The second reason it is a bigger investment is that once you step out of Grit the gains of Power Slash combo diminish rapidly. You are dropping Grit to push DPS and for DRK that is accomplished via Delirium and DA Souleaters. Since neither of those combos have emnity modifiers attached to them (unlike PLDs or WARs DPS combos) maintaining emnity is a strict DPS race between you and the actual DPS classes. That means that the DPS are more likely to force you to resort to a Power Slash combo or -shivers- push you back into Grit than if you were PLD or WAR.

Basically, DRKs have to be more conservative about stance dancing compared to the other two so we can maximize the time that we do get to spend out of Grit. However, I think that is fair considering that we have the lowest cost of being in tank stance. (-5% DRK vs -15% PLD vs -20% WAR to damage dealt)

[Shinzee]

Keep wondering why ppl consider darkside with the dmg penalty of grit but never do the same with maim on warrior which is barely any work to keep up just as darkside.
Also a war loses 5% from stepping out of deliv and gets a 25% dmg penalty for entering defiance with maim adding 20% dmg.
A pld loses 15% and the 50 pot aa from sword oath which result in roughly 10 to 11% of their total dps.
A drk loses 20% from grit with a 15% gain from darkside but gets locked out of blood weapon the only "offensive" cd a drk has.