Tank Stances.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

alot of warriors actually tend to not use butchers , well the ones that follow xenos guides he doesnt recommend it because it can make the mt have to go back into tank stance. But I dont like yorumi idea either tho haha

Actually. You can weave Butcher's in every third combo. Still, if you're doing a lot of tank swaps (which you should), you'll get plenty of Blocks off.

I will say this once again, and this will probably be my last post in this forum, because it's become an echo chamber that passive aggressively drowns divergent opinion, so pay attention:

MAXIMIZING YOUR DPS IS AN INCIDENTAL GOAL TO TANKING AND SHOULD NOT BE USED TO MEASURE A PLAYER'S PERFORMANCE AS TANK. YOUR PRIMARY GOAL AS A TANK IS MANAGING INCOMING DAMAGE, WHICH IS PRIMARILY ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH KEEPING HATE, NAVIGATING MECHANICS, AND MANAGING YOUR COOLDOWNS AND ABILITIES TO SURVIVE THE HITS YOU ARE TAKING.

Yes, good DPS is good, and people should strive to maximize their output. Killing things faster pushes phases, and makes things slightly more convenient to your party members. But as a tank, your ability to output damage is a background goal. You are built to generate enmity and maximize your survival. A player who spends 100% of their time tanking in their defensive stance is not somehow performing 20-30% worse than a player who does the entire thing in their DPS stance.

Good on you if you tank in DPS stance, but don't you dare look down on players who don't (that last part wasn't necessarily targeted at you, but it is something I've seen a lot of here).

Please do not speak on tanking when you do not know how to do it efficiently.

All forms of healing and mitigation have a threshold in this game. Once said threshold is reached, only damage matters. If I can mitigate Punishing Heat with Dark Mind, it's a waste being in Grit because healer potency is tuned so high, they'll overheal me beyond a certain point. In fact, Essential Dignity benefits from waiting until the tank drops significantly as it gains upwards of 1,000 potency the lower the target's HP gets. With only a 40 second cooldown, this can be properly coordinated where the Astro barely needs to drop Cleric yet still perform their role. A tank who maintains tank stance throughout the fight when it isn't necessary is not playing the job optimally. One could even argue it puts greater stress on the healers because that 800-1,000 DPS difference may determine whether you skip a mechanic. Killing A12S before Communion and the subsequen Holy Bleed means the healers get to avoid a massive healer check. You simply won't achieve that without good tank and healer DPS, though echo helps nowadays. You're clinging to the idea each job needs to adhere to the holy trinity and that simply isn't the case. FFXIV does very little to force either tanks or healers to perform their primary role with any regularity.

Of course, all of this only applies outside prog. I neither expect nor care if an inexperienced tank stays in tank stance throughout the fight. They're learning. After a few clears though? You should be looking to optimize. Screaming this is an echo chamber because actual tanks disagree with you is, quite frankly, stupid.

[Lyth]

To that end it might be interesting if they added reduced enmity generation to deliverance and sword oath, and maybe blood weapon or something for drk(you get the meaning). It would mean when you go offensive you very quickly start losing the enmity race to real dps classes. It would widen the skill gap between good and bad tanks but no more so than already exists among healers(ie some healers can do significant damage while others don't even seem to have cleric stance on their bar).

As long as enmity management cooldowns such as Unchained, Shadewalker, and Smokescreen are around, this won't really change tanking all that much. If you know how much additional enmity you need, you can also frontload it into the start of the fight (or anywhere else that the additional mitigation from defensive stance use could help out).

In fairness, I don't think we're that bad, yet. Those Amdapori mages are still locked in the middle of a 100+ page ethical debate over whether healers should ever be harming other creatures at all. I think the most commonly voiced concern is over the trade-off between DoT uptime and Netflix downtime. At this point, it's not even a skill gap, but a participation gap.

Thankfully, our own little debate is more preoccupied with whether you can still be authorised to tank if you aren't wearing your little badge of tankiness. I, for one, keep misplacing the silly thing in combat. I always assumed that the important part was the colour of your job icon, but some people like the extra reassurance. You wouldn't want the blue to accidentally get stained red with the blood of your foes, after all.

If the community ends up in a situation where we start discussing whether armoured knights should be trained in the art of waving their weapons tauntingly at their opponents instead of the art of simply beating the stuffing out of them, then we'll be in trouble.

[SpookyGhost]

Actually. You can weave Butcher's in every third combo.

Sorry, this is a bit off topic, but could you expand on this?

[Yorumi]

As long as enmity management cooldowns such as Unchained, Shadewalker, and Smokescreen are around, this won't really change tanking all that much. If you know how much additional enmity you need, you can also frontload it into the start of the fight (or anywhere else that the additional mitigation from defensive stance use could help out).

Yeah it was mainly a quick off the cuff idea. To me the main issue with tanking is just that it's kind of boring. Funny enough I prefer pld to warrior just cause pld has more off-gcds so I have to press buttons slightly faster. Right now there's little concern about enmity, combos are pretty standardized without the things that make real dps interesting, and for main tanking a lot of fight mechanics just ignore the tank(which then makes me think why? So what if a main tank gets teleported away isn't that what the other tank is for to take over then?). Regardless of how it happens I just hope they make tanking more interesting in SB.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Sorry, this is a bit off topic, but could you expand on this?

If you only Block every third combo, Warrior won't pull hate from either tank. The only exception to this is during a swap, where you should spam Eye. So like...

Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Storm's Eye
Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Storm's Eye
Heavy Swing -> Skull Sunder -> Butcher's Block

Delay it once more if you happen to do a tank swap in between. Keep in mind, this only matters if the current MT drops stance. If they aren't (pug groups often won't), then rotate Eye/Block normally. You'll never pull hate if they have stance up. You can also default back to Eye/Block rotation if you have a Ninja managing tank aggro.

[aleph_null]

If you only Block every third combo, Warrior won't pull hate from either tank. The only exception to this is during a swap, where you should spam Eye.

Delay it once more if you happen to do a tank swap in between. Keep in mind, this only matters if the current MT drops stance. If they aren't (pug groups often won't), then rotate Eye/Block normally. You'll never pull hate if they have stance up. You can also default back to Eye/Block rotation if you have a Ninja managing tank aggro.

Eh if the other tank is a drk better not use block at all, they have no natural way to maintain the enmity lead without grit or power slashes, even the enmity lead afforded by shadewalker would eventually be overcome by the war's higher single target dps, especially since smokescreen could be used on the group's highest dps (caster/brd/mnk).