Tanks that think they are DPS, just stop...

[Lyth]

Why not? A tank that melds a tank stat should logically be much more tanky than someone that chooses to use STR, at the expense of taking, for example, 25-30% more damage on average that CD's alone shouldn't be able to accommodate.

Percent damage reduction can easily get out of hand. In this game, the devs have traditionally kept it in check by linking DEF/MDEF to gear tiers, so that the amount of damage that tanks receive is fairly uniform.

You can have a lot of variation in secondary stats. You have to account for tanks in entry level gear with much lower Tenacity, and tanks in higher level gear with potentially much higher tenacity. If it scaled too briskly, you could have a fairly significant difference in the damage taken, which could make encounter design for different skill and gear levels much more challenging. Tenacity could be much more powerful if it was a primary stat, as primary stats are generally gained at fixed amounts with each tier of gear, and you won't have two tanks with different amounts.

Make no mistake, %DR stats in MMOs are very powerful, and devs are usually fairly cautious with them. For all of our interest in doing solid dps, if stacking %DR gave us big enough returns, we'd prioritise it in a heartbeat. This is the sort of thing that can trivialise tanking in encounters.

[HoodRat]

So, back in 2.0, the only Tank that had a "DPS stance" was Paladin, via Sword Oath, and Warriors had nothing more than Defiance in terms of having a "stance" whatsoever, which is already their Tank stance. Dark Knight did not exist back in 2.0 either, so these were the only two Tanks in the game, and, thus, Tanking outside of Tank stance in 50+ content was almost never a thing, at least not to my knowledge.

It was. The whole dps meta began in ARR. I don't know why people think it started in HW, I guess because it was actually necessary to clear Gordias Savage.

[Kinkoz]

It was. The whole dps meta began in ARR. I don't know why people think it started in HW, I guess because it was actually necessary to clear Gordias Savage.

I did say that I had no knowledge of people attempting to Tank outside of a Tank stance back in the old, 2.x Hardcore content. Off-tanking without Defiance on or in Sword Oath, sure, but I'd personally never encountered a case where someone would try to actively Tank without their Tank stance active. It just never seemed to be viable, or possible, back then, especially not in Coil.

[Fyce]

You're throwing out a LOT of theoretical circumstances here while treating them as hard evidence. The problem with that is, with the way content has been designed thus far, anything that hits for as hard as your maximum HP, MORE than your maximum HP, or just a LITTLE BIT LESS than your maximum HP is generally stuff that's intended to force you to use your panic, last ditch "not die" button (Hallowed, Holmgang, Living Dead) in order to survive regardless of how high your maximum HP value is.

You are talking like someone who absolutly have no clue how tank busters work in Savage and sometimes Extreme bosses... Yet you've tanked A11S. Tank busters hitting for more than your actual max HP is something extremely frequent. You should know that by now.
You don't have to pop your "ultimate" cooldown each time.

I mean... Here's some math: Let's say that you are a DRK with 45k HP. The Tank buster will hit you for 60k without any kind of mitigation. If you swap in Tank stance, you'll be hit for 48k (20% mitigation). If you swap in tank stance and hit Shadow wall, you'll be hit for ~34k (44% reduction). That's more than enough to survive and be healed without dying on the next auto-attack. Even if it crits. If, ontop of that, you add a healer's shield or a DPS mitidation cooldown, it'll be more than fine.
You don't need Living dead for a TB like that.

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My Bene restores the same amount of HP to a tank with 30k and one with 50k

I'm sorry, what? If you bene a 30k Tank, your bene will do 30k. If you bene a 50k tank, your bene will do 50k.
If you use your bene 3 times during a fight on a 30k tank, your bene will have healed for 90k HP (disregarding overheal).
If you use your bene 3 times during a fight on a 50k tank, your bene will have healed for 150k HP (disregarding overheal).

Can't you see the difference? I said that I wasn't good at math, but I'm kind of relieved that some people are actually way worse. It's kind of worriying too.

WHM Divine Ben is a different thing, but being tied to lilies, is that even a thing?

Well, yes? Cure II -> Benison right before a tank buster and that's it. It's even better than Stoneskin.

I don't want to sound harsh, but it seems that you never played anything higher than expert roulette.

[Synestra]

I stayed in tank stance, and even as I was doing Omega Normal yesterday, I didn't need to use a single Halone combo if I tanked in tank stance, unless I tank swapped on Exdeath to solidify hate. Our boost to enmity modifiers are that good, really.

Yeah if you use tank stance you really only need that one initial enmity combo if even that, now when you step out of tank stance you will notice how DPS starts to creep up pretty fast specially SAM's and good BRD's. Does anyone know if they adjusted tank stance modifiers? it just feels stronger than before when it comes to enmity generation.

[Kuwagami]

Your first question is the correct analysis of the situation, although you seem to be mistaking Medica and Medica 2 with one another. Medica was perfectly fine to spam as a group heal. Medica 2, on the other hand, was not, as spamming the skill to heal partywide damage had a tendency to generate ridiculous amounts of Healer enmity

Basing your argument on players who are really bad at their job is just deserving you. Who in their right mind would spam a 200 potency heal when you have a 300 potency one available? You do medica2 once and are done with it. So yeah, Tanks paired with non-trash healers had zero problem holding hate back in 2.0. And even less problems after SE improved enmity modifiers. If you had played any tank back during this time and had any end-game experience with it, you'd know that. Especially in Titan Ex since the enmity modifiers had already been improved at that point.

[Ash_]

As a DRK I wield the largest, sharpest, heaviest weapon in game... theoretically it should kill in one hit. But instead the paper from a tome hits harder.

Can SE just drop the idea tanks shouldn't be able to do decent DPS in tank stance? Hell, why not get rid of stances completely, it seems redundant. Just apply the tank stance as trait, like they changed NIN's poison effects to a trait.

[Sarcatica]

I did say that I had no knowledge of people attempting to Tank outside of a Tank stance back in the old, 2.x Hardcore content. Off-tanking without Defiance on or in Sword Oath, sure, but I'd personally never encountered a case where someone would try to actively Tank without their Tank stance active. It just never seemed to be viable, or possible, back then, especially not in Coil.

I was doing 400dps++ easily as a PLD in T10 at STR BiS, 250-260dps top in T13 with some crafted str/vit mix. The meta was already there, just not realized earlier. FFlogs also helped the DPS meta quite a bit during 3.x. Majority of the community just wasn't buying the fact that the DPS meta was already dated as far as 2.0 where good raid tanks already were doing crafted accessories for more DPS.

EDIT: to give perspective, normal tanks in t10 did somewhere like 150-200dps on farm parties. good ones are about 250dps++. for t13, pld normally did 130-170dps. on my normal runs, i usually got 200-210 if the adds in there died so quick.

[Mnemosynia]

Just wanna put a disclaimer in this thread for tanks, most the people talking in this thread are not tanks you can freely disregard most if not all of this opinions.

[Tufelhunden]

I think depsite of you being a healer, a tank or a dps, the any class should be having fun while playing that class.... i play healer because i like multi-tasking, dpsing while keeping people alive, i also play DPS when i dont want to babysit people, because i like to maximise my dmg.... Tanks play tanks because they like to be in the front line and mitigate damage but also DPSing, if the tanks themselves are nto having fun because of their dmg being too low, do you think the right solution is just go and yell at them "GET OVER IT AND KEEP TANKING SO I CAN KEEP DOING MY DPS STUFF! " well, longer Ques for you then.

This is it in a nut shell. I enjoy learning the fights and doing what i can to make sure everyone survives. However, i also wish to maximize my tank DPS to help as well. If i want to go brain dead i just DPS and only worry about myself.