I've been tanking since the very start of 2.0.

I completely fell in love with final fantasy xiv, and the classes that I enjoyed playing the most have always been the tanks.

I've tried playing some DPS roles (summoner being my favorite among them) and healers (though I find myself very lacking in the healing department).
I like to think I do good work - I seldom cause a wipe (of course it can happen from time to time, but I'm generally a quick learner). I know my rotations, I know how to hold enmity almost exclusively (almost!) by just playing with my dps rotation.

All of that, but one thing escapes me still - I never know the right time to swap stances.


I never really thought it was an actual thing I needed to worry about, it seemed obvious to me that the tank stance should only be dropped when I'm off-tanking, or when I have a healer that refuses to do anything other than spam-heal. But I've read differently on the forums very often, and it's starting to make me question my play-style.

So I'd really like to learn, in which circumstances are other tanks doing their stance swaps? Me personally, I've always been eerie because as a (bad) healer I absolutely hated tanks that did that - it effectively forced me into a situation where all I could do was heal them and nothing else.


So what am I missing? How do I improve from here? I hate feeling like the paladin that melded parry, I'd like to perform better.