A little tip for a WAR trying to learn

[Braven]

Actually warrior tank stance is almost exactly the same effectiveness as paladin’s shield oath. It is not just extra hp, it is the 20% healing modifer that increases survivability and healing efficiency and effectiveness. 20% healing boost (and more hp) provides basically the same benefit as 20% mitigation. What makes it worse than paladin is the fact the damage hit is 20% instead of 15%, though this is offset by abilities that ignore the damage penalty. Another downside is that it takes at least one heal to start being as effective (to fill up the higher max HP) so the benefit is effectively delayed a bit. This is to balance the fact it is oGCD, unlike paladin. You are basically using a healer GCD to activate while paladin uses their own to activate (when switching mid-battle). If you start out a battle in defiance, this is not really a downside (just like the GCD isn’t a downside for paladin out of combat).

The main argument for not using tank stance is that tank DPS is better than healer DPS. As a result, if you are not at risk of a wipe from the lost mitigation, it is better for the healer to be healing more and DPSing less, than for the warrior to DPS less by staying in tank stance. The trick is knowing if the healer is capable of keeping up (and if they happy with healing more often and DPSing less).

I think the vast majority of players are not measuring precise damage output. However, they will notice if your a pain to heal or you get KOed. Unless you are sure there is no risk involved or you need defiance for a specific beast ability or burst phase, it is probably better to stick with defiance most of the time when tanking. The actual DPS advantage, when factoring lost healer DPS, is quite small between the two and really not worth the additional risk for most players.