Squishy tanks... is it me or them?

[Driskus]

A lot of it definitely depends on the healer & tank's gear, and how well the tank is using cooldowns, and knowing when to switch back to tank stance. If one or the other is undergeared enough, it can be hard to keep the tank alive, even on single-pack pulls. Many of the tanks I see will stay in DPS stance even when things start going downhill, which makes matters worse.

I make it a habit to check gear on the other party members at the start of a dungeon. If I see an undergeared tank I'll usually save stuff like Presence of Mind for the inevitable Cure II spam, otherwise I'll try and push DPS as much as possible, especially if there's an undergeared DPS or two that would cause the tank to run out of cooldowns.

On the tank side, while leveling PLD through Heavensward dungeons, I could always tell when I was even slightly undergeared, because the damage ramped up enough to notice it. During SB dungeons I was mostly using gear from the dungeon I was in once I hit Bardam's. I had most of it already from runs while on WHM. I find I have to switch back to Shield Oath and use Clemency more frequently in SB where in HW the damage going out was fairly low even in Sword Oath as long as I was properly geared (with The Vault being the single exception, that place sucks). I do try to put out decent DPS when I can though I'm not the type to do trash packs in DPS stance, unless its a single mob that I know isn't going to cause problems.