When should I drop tank stance?

[Aana]

This, pretty much.

For bosses, I start in Shield Oath, then Shield Lob -> Circle of Scorn -> Flash -> Aggro combo 2x -> Sword Oath + Rampart -> Goring Blade combo under Fight or Flight -> Royal Authority combo 2x.

This is what I try to do. Sometimes I only use one aggro combo. Sometimes I fumble things and start the Goring Blade combo too early. Oops.

I find that people almost never use their aggro tools. This keeps me ahead, and it is noticeable how much damage I do in Sword Oath. I do occasionally replace Royal Authority combos with Rage of Halone combos if I feel uneasy.

I also try to preempt add phases by switching back to Shield Oath before the adds spawn -- but I have successfully grabbed and held aggro in Sword Oath. I've also been unsuccessful, which is why I started trying to preempt things.

Assuming you are similar gear to your party, that is really overkill. Better safe than sorry though i suppose. The flash is unnessesary and just hurts your damage. Two aggro combos also should not be needed.

The aspect i feel a lot of people forget is that you need to do damage if you want to drop tank stance. You must be fluent in your tanks proper damage rotations. Every point of damage is enmity. The opener is just to get a lead and make up for your lower damage than a regular DPS. You start with a big lead and through the fight the other DPS should be slowly catching up once you drop tank stance because they do more damage than you. But the more damage YOU put out the longer it takes for them to catch you and the less aggro you need up front to ride out to the end of the fight. Also, more damage is shorter fights=less time for dps/healers to catch your enmity so your initial boost doesnt need to carry you as long.

Part of aggro management is learning to put up big numbers yourself. More damage you can do, the less aggro you need to fluff up your enmity bar up front. Tanks have pretty simple damage patterns compared to DPS. Work those into muscle memory so you dont let it slip during real fights and you can focus your active mind on the fight itself. Positioning, CDs, etc while the damage just pours out like water.

Sometimes the solution isnt to do more enmity combos, but to do more fell cleaves(insert class specific damage actions).

[Lynesse]

Assuming you are similar gear to your party, that is really overkill. Better safe than sorry though i suppose. The flash is unnessesary and just hurts your damage. Two aggro combos also should not be needed.

I'm experimenting with it, but I don't like to take chances. I'm leveling and learning -- and so are most of the people who would benefit from this thread -- I'm not playing the DPS race yet.

I'm not level synced and the healer and DPS typically are. It is not overkill. It's especially important during certain awkward leveling phases when our gear begins to fall off.

This keeps me marginally ahead of my WHM and DPS who front-load their damage and refuse to use Diversion. The Flash is for certain people/classes, like RDMs who Fleche + Contra Sixte immediately, or who have built up enough mana in the previous pull to open with their melee combo -> Fleche + Contra Sixte. The Flash will be especially necessary when I start getting RDMs with Verflare.

If everyone used their aggro tools, it wouldn't be such an issue. I haven't seen a single person use Diversion.

Your advice is idealistic, but it's not the most practical.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

It is overkill, usually pulling in shield with shield lob and one aggro combo, and use circle and spirits weaved through your aggro combo is more than enough, both will be back up under fof, after that it's on your healer and DPS to work with you if not...a few slaps from a boss should make them realise the importance of aggro mitigation

[Elkanah]

This keeps me marginally ahead of my WHM and DPS who front-load their damage and refuse to use Diversion. The Flash is for certain people/classes, like RDMs who Fleche + Contra Sixte immediately, or who have built up enough mana in the previous pull to open with their melee combo -> Fleche + Contra Sixte. The Flash will be especially necessary when I start getting RDMs with Verflare.

As someone who mains all tanks and RDM/BLM exclusively, I've never needed to use flash in my rotation for almost any situation (except add pulls) against a RDM or MNK/SAM in the beginning. Shield lob > Circle of Scorn and 1 smack of Rage of Halone before you start would be easily more than enough on a single target. For very obvious reasons, flash for packs (understandable).

[DeepbloodEclipse]

I'd say that in general most bosses can be tanked in DPS stance, there's really very few bosses that truly require you to stay hardcore tank stance only. I say that you should always pull mobs in tank stance, since you really need to have experience and a healer you can trust if you are going to be pulling mobs in DPS stance. Except Warriors, they have a DPS stance, and a bigger DPS stance

[Claire_Pendragon]

This heavily reminds me of 2.0 Halatali as GLA/PLD.
People would argue "You must suck as GLA/PLD if your DPS can rip off hate from you."
Im like, there's literally only 2 options at this low of a level.
Threat combo, or flash.

No oGCDs to weave except FoF / mitigations.
No complex rotations or anything.

of course not every DPS could pull hate, but the best played DPS would build up more threat than a tank could generate on a boss fight. (of equal gear/skill)
The ONLY thing keeping me higher in threat, was if I got a full GCD off before them. (Sprinting and Shield lob.)
If there was a BRD who ranged or BLM who started casting as i ran up, then they held hate the entire fight, even with a voke prior to a FoF+savage blade in combo. (If they were geared and good)
Heck WHM could do even more DPS than everyone else at that level.
(Level 20 copperbell/halatali were poorly designed for tanks)

I had people argue with me "you must suck". Asked them to jump on their tank to prove me wrong. I jumped on WHM/BLM (mostly WHM), and every time, I proved them wrong by just spamming stone2 as WHM, and NOTHING ELSE. No cures, nothing. They would voke, and then the very next stone2 would pull hate back, and id be tanking till im either dead or the fight ends. (in the case of copperbell, no heals are needed until the last boss, so WHM can tank the 1st 2 bosses just fine. Last boss requires you to heal yourself between stone2s, and cures wont generate enough hate to overtake a tank.)

With the examples you gave above though, i havent done very much testing, but it might not have been possible for them to overtake you, even if they do get extremely close. (I did my extensive testing back in 2.0, and now i just dont care about what the limits are.)

the best and worst RDMs cant be that much different, due to how RDM is on the easy side of playing. When people told me what my DPS was as RDM in savage, the difference of 50 DPS would be a massive percentile difference, where as 50dps wouldnt be much of a difference to a MNK or SAM for example.
But then looking at the DRG/BRD, they dont really hit as hard as SAMs/BLMs, but they do compliment eachother. So I couldnt really say much in their case.

At Lv60 you do have more DPS options, so they do need to weave in threat reductions, but sometimes the threat meters are deceptive.

When I used to do A12S, the WHM of my group was solo healing, and would be right up my butt in threat. I had to do extra powerslash combos (our WAR didnt want to start the fight for extra threat, and we had no NIN) but after the add phase, no matter how close the WHM got in threat, he would never over take me, but it always looked like he was a hair from overtaking threat.

So its really hard to say based on threat meters.

[geekgirl101]

Dropping tank stance sounds silly to me, you risk losing aggro and dropping dead from taking too much damage. I've been put off ever wanting to heal Arum Vale ever again because tanks run in there with sword oath and are taking more damage than can logically be healed for with adds splitting off and hitting me and the dps, and then the tanks blame the healer for not healing them enough! I've burned through every bit of mana spamming nothing but heal spells with people at near death just so a tank could play dps in sword oath. It's not a dps job!

[Hierro]

Dropping tank stance sounds silly to me

Hey buddy, I think you got the wrong door. The casual club's two blocks down.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Trying to base dropping tank stance opinions due to a bad run in Aurum Vale sounds silly to me.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Considering most jobs are missing a huge chunk of their toolkit at level 49 versus 60 or 70, where is becomes easier to tank outside of tank stance. It was either a PLD being unaware, foolish or just ignorant of other party members, especially in AV.

But honestly you can't compare dropping tank stance in AV to dropping tank stance later in the game when more tools are available for everyone. More so in savage raids and ex. trials tanking in DPS stance is pretty much expected after progression.