Stance Dancing Advice

[WolfKid]

Hello, as the title says, I'd like some advice when it comes to stance dancing. I'm still trying to get the hang of it. Dungeons it's not a huge deal, but when it comes to the extremes I start to get paranoid and rarely turn it off whenever I'm tanking. Sephirot Ex for example, I main DRK and sometimes I'm the one tanking. First phase I'm perfectly aware of when he uses his busters, The problem is countering it. I always had Grit on (with another buff on of course) when he's about to hit me. I rarely turned Grit off during the first phase. I fear that without that perma 20% buff on, he would've destroyed me, or put me in a critical state, and then proceed to get destroyed by his cleave. I'd like to hear what others would do during that, or any other extreme trial.

[Sarcatica]

You want to measure how many Chesed you get before phase 2. If you get 2 Chesed, you can rotate Shadowskin+Dance > Shadow Wall for the 2 tank busters. This enables you to use Shadowskin on the adds phase to mitigate the damage from the overzealous DPS from AOE, it hurts quite a bit when the party decides to AOE the adds so take a little bit of care. If you get 3 Chesed, best to tank 3rd one in Grit since I assume you are talking about DF runs which will have different results. You can decide to use LD at any Chesed if you can coordinate with your healers to top you up.

Note: Talking about overall DPS since you might even get 4 Chesed in DF.

Basically cycle reliable CDs on big tank busters: Ala Morn and fire breaths at last phase for Nidex, Chesed and Daat for Sephirot, Knights' LBs and Heavenly Heel for Thordan, Blinding Blade for Ravana.

[Lyth]

First phase I'm perfectly aware of when he uses his busters, The problem is countering it. I always had Grit on (with another buff on of course) when he's about to hit me. I rarely turned Grit off during the first phase. I fear that without that perma 20% buff on, he would've destroyed me, or put me in a critical state, and then proceed to get destroyed by his cleave.

It depends on how much damage you're taking from the tankbuster based off of gear and healer buffs. When you use Grit together with Shadowskin, you're stacking two damage reduction effects.

Let's say that you start with 25k HP, and you go to around 10k with both buffs up (i.e. 15k damage). You're seeing 64% (0.8*0.8) of the incoming damage without any buffs (i.e. you would have taken about 23k damage without any buffs). If you just used Shadowskin without Grit, you'd take 80% of this damage (i.e. about 18k), leaving you with 6k HP after the tankbuster. If you used Shadow Wall without Grit, you'd take 70% (16k damage), leaving you with 9k HP.

Whether you consider to this to be "critical" depends on your healer. Do they consistently top you off before the cleave? If not, how much HP do you need?

In each case, you need to ask yourself whether Grit was necessary. If so, is it required for every hit? If Shadowskin + Grit is enough to mitigate one hit (36% DR), do still you need Grit up when you're using Shadow Wall (30% DR)? This is especially worth considering on PLD, where Sentinel out of stance (40% DR) gives you more mitigation than Rampart and Shield Oath combined (36% DR). Also, if it does turn out that you need additional mitigation, is there an alternate way to get yourself to a safe HP threshold (i.e. add in Foresight/Sheltron/Dark Mind)?

Think of Grit as being an additional cooldown, except that it's always available and costs MP and dps to use. There's nothing wrong with using it when you have to, but it should be a conscious decision based off of how much damage you're expecting and what HP threshold is safe. The most important thing here is that you're aware and trying to experiment.

[Kitfox]

It's been a long time since I did Sephi Ex but another thing you want to ask yourself is if you need more emnity or not. I remember healers creeping up on me in the first phase of Sephi even with tank stance on, while in the last phase you can easily stay in DPS stance and be fine on hate.

[shao32]

dont get paranoid about stance dancing in extremes, stance dancing in those dutys is a team job, you need to trust much in you healers if you want to turn it off or know very very well the fight and know if you gear is enough to take it off with randoms.

all content is desing whitout MT dps in mind so no stress ^^.

[SpookyGhost]

With current gear I'm pretty sure you can do all of Seph EX w/o Grit, the only things that can hurt a bit are the busters in phase 1 and the final tower in the last phase (since you'll have adds on you as well).

As a general rule of thumb, the best place to not be in tank stance is when you're taking nothing but autos. From there it depends on how much damage you're taking via cleaves, tank busters, etc. and what CDs you have available to combat that damage. When learning content it's a good idea to stay in tank stance for everything (unless you're OTing obv) and then find the gaps where you can be in DPS stance. Another thing to keep in mind is your main healer has to be competent, a situation you feel comfortable to be out of tank stance in might cause too much trouble for them to be worth it. As an example, Seph EX currently doesn't REQUIRE any stance dancing to beat so if your healer is stressed out by it then there's no reason not to just chill in tank stance.