Why am I not seeing more shirk?

[DrCynapsis]

I was informed about tanks opening in dps stance with Shirk today. Sounds powerful. Where do I use it in say SusiEx? Straight away? Or a couple GCDs in? Hang on, are you saying MT pull, OT shirk then Provokes, then MT Shirk, so original MT that pulled is actually OT!? Am I overthinking this!?

[Cadmus]

MTs shouldn't have Shirk on their bar. There's 5 more important things actually useful for their job of survival.

OT can fit shirk in over Convalescence or Foresight.

NIN shadewalking + OT shirking is good enough if MT wants to pull in S.O. And on swaps a warr/DRK don't have to worry about losing aggro to a no-shirk PLD since there's no enmity in PLD combos anymore.

MT would have to go back to Shield Oath a minute after opener to keep aggro. But that's the point of MTing. You secure the run/clear and keep things as simple as possible for team (especially keep any (unnecessary) shirk-vokes out of things). And less dmg you take = less healers have to watch you = more DPS healers do. So evens out for the party either way.

I'm just talking about what I foresee in Savage content.

[aleph_null]

I was informed about tanks opening in dps stance with Shirk today. Sounds powerful. Where do I use it in say SusiEx? Straight away? Or a couple GCDs in? Hang on, are you saying MT pull, OT shirk then Provokes, then MT Shirk, so original MT that pulled is actually OT!? Am I overthinking this!?

You still need a ninja with shadewalker to pull in dps stance without aggro combo. When I *tried* optimize in a susano ex run as pld I'd pull with goring blade (shadewalker on nin, smokescreen on brd, diversion on the other dps), pop sentinel and bulwark for the first assail and auto attacks, then around 30s into the fight the OT provokes the boss off me to take the second assail, and I'll shirk on him. After the big sword phase he'd take one stormsplitter before we do another tank swap, and that's where he'd shirk on me. For lakshmi It's quite similar, I open with goring blade, take one tank buster with sentinel + sheltron, the OT provokes to take the second tank buster, I'll shirk on him there, then provoke the boss off him after the tank buster.

I haven't tried pulling in dps stance without a ninja, but it might be risky even if you do an aggro combo at the start, since brd/mch don't have diversion, so without smokescreen they might overtake your aggro quickly.

You secure the run/clear and keep things as simple as possible for team (especially keep any (unnecessary) shirk-vokes out of things). And less dmg you take = less healers have to watch you = more DPS healers do. So evens out for the party either way.

During progression yeah, keeping it simple might help the group through mechanics or phases, but for content farming I'd say shirk isn't even complicated to use as long as there is communication (agree before pulling where you'd do tank swaps so the healers know too). The "turtle tanking = more healer dps" argument has been discussed for ages, and it's generally agreed on that in most cases (nearly every single ex trial and savage floor in 3.x, maybe excluding a8s), assuming the tanks and healers are competent enough, the extra healer dps afforded by tank stances' extra mitigation doesn't outweigh the dps loss from the dmg penalty of tank stances. Furthermore healers can still do respectable amount of dps even when the tanks are in dps stance most of the time. Of course, tank swaps to utilize both tanks' cds is important, so if your group is stuck in the "MT and OT" mentality your MT might struggle with mitigation without tank stance.

[Cadmus]

Yea, I'm not droppin into a random farm party tho and tryin to organize with the other tank and 2 healers when to do things lol. Not with the crap shoot ptf is when it comes to tanks. Remember KISS - keep it simple stupid.

IF you got a tank partner you know, and a competent healer, then sure add extra swaps to the run to stay in DPS stance more (wouldn't advise that for savage prog tho).

Edit: snip.