Enthusiastic Tanks

[Fannah]

Just in case (I'm not saying it's enough), I just wish to add some numbers to the discussion : for warriors, tank stance put their dmg power at 80%, and the dps stance at 105%. Just by looking at those number : 105/80 = 1.3125 --> in tank stance, the tank deal 31.25% more dps than in tank one, without even counting the new skills he has access to (and the more you have dps, the more you generate enmity too, and again I'm not saying it's enough to compensate for a long while).

Now that's said, the warrior's tank stance only make healing effects used on them better of 20%. I am wondering if it really can make a difference for the healer to be from "I could have a lot of dps while tank is in tank stance" to "I can't even land a damage oGCD because the tank is in dps stance".
If a warrior is in dps stance and use defensive CDs, I guess he will be tanky enough for a little while to let healers at least use their best dmg oGCD and maybe some important dmg GCD (but I don't know healers enough to know what deals most of their dmg).

[Feidam]

I don't think it is fair to predict that a tank will not reactivate tank stance when theory crafting. For example, I could predict the healer just isn't going to DPS at all, and it would make the discussion a moot point.

Another example would be HW PLD, it was worth while to drop tank stance briefly for SoC. 12% loss was worth it. SB is new enough to where I don't have a data, so I was asking if he actually had numbers or if it was speculation

I'm not theory crafting with that statement. A large portion of the tanks I've healed once they leave tank stance they are out of it until the start of the next pull. It maybe anecdotal but it is in game experience.

However, if the tank truly stance dances it's a bit different. Not many seem to optimize like that though. Of course so far SB has changed stance dancing for all but the DRK. Both paladin and warrior lose resources if they change stances.

[Feidam]

Now that's said, the warrior's tank stance only make healing effects used on them better of 20%. I am wondering if it really can make a difference for the healer to be from "I could have a lot of dps while tank is in tank stance" to "I can't even land a damage oGCD because the tank is in dps stance".
If a warrior is in dps stance and use defensive CDs, I guess he will be tanky enough for a little while to let healers at least use their best dmg oGCD and maybe some important dmg GCD (but I don't know healers enough to know what deals most of their dmg).

Healers don't really have ogcd dps skills. So if we are not able to get casts in there is not much dpsing going on. But you do highlight my question some. Is that extra 31ish percent of damage from the tank in dps stance worth more than a healers dps contribution if they are not forced into heal botting. Those are the numbers we need. If healers dps out weighs that of the gains by the tank when. Dps stance then the healer's dps should be given priority. Of course this goes both ways should the opposite be true.

[Kethic]

Not picking sides here. Just throwing out some numbers I've seen.

Most tanks seem to hang out between 1200 and 2000, with a heavy average towards the middle of that range. Most healers also seem to hang out in the 600 to 1800, with thier bias depending on if they are only using dots, or if they are getting casts off.

I know I've maintained over 2,600 on an EX dummy, and about 2,000 as White Mage on an easy DREX boss.

None of these numbers take into account AoE differences between healers and tanks.

[MoroMurasaki]

Do you actually have numbers on this or are you just speculating?

Some stuff to consider:
* Tank stance can be dropped at any time, it doesn't have to stay down the entire pull.
* It has little to no impact with certain skills / effects like hallowed ground , AoE stuns, blind, etc
* Damage reduction suffers from diminishing returns. Ex: ShO is only worth about 12% of total dmg if sentinel is active.
* Item level

It seems like your counter is based around the idea that tanks will stance dance which I have yet to see apart from one WAR that did it very well in Shisui. It seems like most consider the resource loss prohibitively costly which I can understand. I haven't really healed too many DRK's but I know their setup is a bit different.

That being said you didn't address the core argument here - none of the tanks are out DPSing their healers in AoE, especially if that healer is a WHM. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to drop tank stance, in single target go for it, but if I have Aero3, PoM/ThinAir/Holy and Assize there is not a tank that can keep up with that on 3+ enemies. You don't need a parser to see that.

The other situation I would see swapping being viable is if there are particularly poor DPS who eat lots of damage. If I'm AoE healing anyways you might as well join in the fun and help kill things.

[winsock]

That being said you didn't address the core argument here - none of the tanks are out DPSing their healers in AoE, especially if that healer is a WHM.

They don't need to outdps the healer to justify leaving tank stance. They just need to create a net gain in party DPS.

[MoroMurasaki]

They don't need to outdps the healer to justify leaving tank stance. They just need to create a net gain in party DPS.

Which will likely not happen in a situation with 3+ enemies because their AoE is not on par with a healer's. The tank in tank stance is hitting one thing at a time and causing the healer to have to heal him keeping them from hitting multiple things at a time. Full circle.

I'm not saying with a strong tank that situationally this isn't viable but for the majority of players who are pugging casual content this does not make sense.

You are wasting what would be damage GCD's and mana healing you to help your personal DPS increase.

[EbonySeraphim]

WHM is special in that DPSing helps a lot. Your 7 seconds of stun extend the tank's cooldowns quite a bit (since it's not 7 consecutive seconds, more like 10s of mitigation)

This for sure. I recently started realizing that starting Holy spamming at the start of a pull is usually inefficient as most (reasonable) tanks will have cooldowns then. This is very inefficient as the defensive cooldown mitigates damage from attacking enemies, not stunned ones. So now I start to spam Holy after their cooldowns are coming off or at most I'll throw out one to stun long enough to throw out an Aero 3 if I haven't already put that out there.

The context of "just before a boss fight" seems irrelevant as most bosses don't start a fight putting on the pain until 20seconds or more into a fight and the first is usually just an AoE you can cast a normal Medica II to mitigate. Throw a Regen on the tank and keep a lily on deck and you should be able to handle any surprise long enough for healing cooldowns to come back.

[AlexSag]

I apologize as I am totally guilty of this. I generally pull as much as I can and let the chips fall where they may. I have, however, had healers ask me to pull less and I've always respected that request. The last thing I want is for the person keeping me alive. To have a panic attack.

[TaleraRistain]

If a tank's health is going down like panties on prom night, then there's not room for me to dps. I'm busy. If the party doesn't like it, then the tank needs to pull less. My first job is to keep everyone alive. Give me windows to dps and I have no issues doing so, and can do it rather effectively. But party health and well-being comes first.

I've told some tanks to stop pulling like insane monkeys before. There are some tanks either from gear or from cooldown usage who just should not pull big.