Semi-dumb question about OT

[Valdegarde]

Warrior and Paladins will want to use abilities that have enmity modifiers even when off tanking to be able to do damage, so this can lead to a situation where they slowly creep up on the main tank's enmity throughout the fight. Shirk helps, provoke -> shirk even more, and it places you second on the enmity list.

As an off tank you should always be ready to take the reins, but if the main tank needs to use an extra Power Slash/Butcher's Block/Rage of Halone due to your excess creeping, that's lost overall damage and even possibly lost resources that could have been used for defense. Stormblood has made enmity a very manageable group effort.

Many, many fights in this game have the off tank purely acting as another DPS. And, if you play your cards right you may even beat out many DPS in damage.

[Campi]

Even as MT you don't stay the whole time in Tank-Stance.

[Lina_Slayer]

One thing that needs to be said is that on FFXIV DPS is king, in the harder fights (Savage, Extreme Primals) a tank who can maximize his damage by staying for as long as possible out of tank stance can (and often will) be the difference between a clear and an enrage, so yeah if you are not tanking you should be on Sword Oath and even if you are tanking you should also be often on Sword Oath as well, on this game a good tank is not only someone who can survive and keep the boss from hitting the party, but someone who can do all that while doing as much damage as possible.

[Mantu]

One thing that needs to be said is that on FFXIV DPS is king, in the harder fights (Savage, Extreme Primals) a tank who can maximize his damage by staying for as long as possible out of tank stance can (and often will) be the difference between a clear and an enrage, so yeah if you are not tanking you should be on Sword Oath and even if you are tanking you should also be often on Sword Oath as well, on this game a good tank is not only someone who can survive and keep the boss from hitting the party, but someone who can do all that while doing as much damage as possible.

Thank you to all for a lot of good information. I am definitely starting to play with stance dancing even when MTing. I tend to stay in Shield Oath in 4 man content, but in some 8 man fights, after I get an Enmity lead in Shield, I switch to Sword Oath.

[whiskeybravo]

Thank you to all for a lot of good information. I am definitely starting to play with stance dancing even when MTing. I tend to stay in Shield Oath in 4 man content, but in some 8 man fights, after I get an Enmity lead in Shield, I switch to Sword Oath.

Also, because I didn't see it mentioned, make sure you assert your PLD dominance by making WARs and DRKs pull

It's not optimal for PLD to pull and it's a bigger DPS loss for them to do Halone than it is for the other 2 tanks to do their aggro combo. It's a bigger DPS loss to stance dance on PLD because you lose the GCD and MP. I mean it's not going to kill your run, but just something to consider when you're ready to start optimizing the little things.

Since you're still leveling, I'll mention you should be OK pulling bosses in 4-man dungeons in sword oath. I did

[Hruodig]

Thank you to all for a lot of good information. I am definitely starting to play with stance dancing even when MTing. I tend to stay in Shield Oath in 4 man content, but in some 8 man fights, after I get an Enmity lead in Shield, I switch to Sword Oath.

It's good that you're getting more comfortable tanking in sword oath, but I'll say that imo, 4 man content is the place to practice this. Generally speaking all 4 man content is a joke difficulty wise, so it would be good to practice tanking dungeon bosses in dps stance. I'd say still tank trash in shield oath though.

[PLitz]

I understand that my job as OT is to pick up the adds. But what about when there are no adds? Am I then essentially DPS? Should I switch into Sword Oath to maximize the damage? Is there any benefit to having me remaining in Shield Oath so I can at least be second on the enmity list?

In general, the role of the off-tank in this game is to relieve the main tank if and when they run out of defensive cooldowns or when they're hit with a mechanic that forces them to swap. As a rule of thumb the off-tank grabs adds, though this is not always the case.

Paladin fits either sub-role well, they just suck at establishing initial enmity, so always have your Dark Knight/Warrior pull. Personally, I prefer Paladin to main tank after the pull (when possible) because they gain extra damage from Shield Swipe procs and mitigate a substantial amount of damage with shield blocks.