Should one tank in tank stance?

[SargentToughie]

At the end of the day it boils down to this: tanks are not the only people in the party. When they choose to do what they want it affects the rest of the group and often ruins the gaming experience for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that one player shouldn't have the ability to affect other people's gameplay in such a manner. I often think of tanks as Divas. We've all asked that tank nicely to please stop dropping stance when things aren't going well. 99% of the time it is followed by some horrible comments usually something like do better healer. So my personal opinion will not change on the subject I do not think that one player should have the ability to ruin the experience for everyone else.

Literally any party member can ruin the instanced experience for the rest of the group if they're not up to snuff. Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight? Or being a tank that has a healer that would prefer just to stand there and idle instead of trying to contribute with a bit of damage, despite us rotating cooldowns and mitigating enough damage that we're never in any real danger? Or being a tank for a healer who thinks their only button in their kit is cure? Those ones are the worst because your health is in a near constant state of flux. Regens and OGCDs are scary, I guess. It's absolutely maddening. Especially since, because healers have basically zero accountability in this game outside of Savage, I can't really try and correct them or provide advice without them getting uppity.

And that doesn't even go into how soul crushing most instances are if your DPS are bad. Spending 45 minutes in an EXR is a pretty clear cut example, to me, of DPS 'ruining' my experience. Everybody can do this, tanks just have a bigger spot light to screw up in when they're not up to standard.

[Canadane]

At the end of the day it boils down to this: tanks are not the only people in the party. When they choose to do what they want it affects the rest of the group and often ruins the gaming experience for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that one player shouldn't have the ability to affect other people's gameplay in such a manner. I often think of tanks as Divas. We've all asked that tank nicely to please stop dropping stance when things aren't going well. 99% of the time it is followed by some horrible comments usually something like do better healer. So my personal opinion will not change on the subject I do not think that one player should have the ability to ruin the experience for everyone else.

You personal opinion should be more malleable and open, rather than closed-minded. Open to new information. But hey that's just my personal opinion. Your opinion seems to be based on stress given to you by bad tanks. I encounter bad players of every role. It's a lot easier to just ignore them, excel at what I'm doing to help move on past them that much quicker.

Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight?

BOY DO I!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdNVt3Zo0k
(Don't hate on Madelza, great healer just mistakes happen and it was fun fight to do)

[Lordfurious]

You personal opinion should be more malleable and open, rather than closed-minded. Open to new information. But hey that's just my personal opinion. Your opinion seems to be based on stress given to you by bad tanks. I encounter bad players of every role. It's a lot easier to just ignore them, excel at what I'm doing to help move on past them that much quicker.



BOY DO I!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdNVt3Zo0k
(Don't hate on Madelza, great healer just mistakes happen and it was fun fight to do)

Thank you for telling me what I can and cannot think. I didn't know that I had to run my opinion by you to make sure they were correct before I put them onto screen.

Do you know how soul-crushing is to watch a tank press Sprint run with a ton of mobs on him when he finally stops has 5% HP left. Not a problem I'm usually on my White Mage will just pop benediction. What's that one and a half seconds and he's back down to 5% again. And this goes on for about a minute or so. Darn DPS aren't geared enough to get the mobs down quick enough. Darn I've used every cool down in my spell book but the tank is taking damage faster than I can output heals and I'm higher geared than tank 400 iLvl.

Better yet do you know how soul-crushing it is to watch a tank Rush up to a boss get hit one time and it's at 5% health? So yes sometimes us healers to stand in stuff because we don't have a choice if we stopped healing the tank dead. I can think of a number of times I've eaten in AOE because if I didn't and I moved away from the mechanic and stops healing the tank the whole entire party would go down. Tanks and DPS that don't have to make critical decisions. The healers decision on who do I heal can sometimes makes a difference of whether or not the party is successful. I can't just have to hold hate and mitigate damage. DPS can fail and stand in the fire as they normally do. Don't worry that's the healers fault to yep I will raise you for the sixth time on this one boss.

It's easy to look at it things from a one-sided perspective I tend to look at it from everybody's perspective. I have level 70 tanks and healers that are well geared those are the two classes that I primarily play.

I propose this challenge to all of you. Coming to Duty Finder as a Healer heal some of these bad tanks that drop their stance and do not have the gear supported to do so. After you have successfully done that I will gladly value your opinions or perhaps listen to you tell me that I shouldn't have the opinion I have but until that time keep rocking your tanks you're probably one of the bad ones.

[Selova]

There is no reason to stay in tank stance 100% of the time. If you're not losing enmity/aggro tank stance is a complete waste to be in unless you are using the damage mitigation from it to soak a tank buster.


People have this mentality that as long as you hold aggro on the boss and use CDs at the right time that you're playing optimally as a tank, when this couldn't be further from the truth.


There isnt enough consistent damage going out to warrant tanking like that, all damage is completely scripted. There is no reason to keep building enmity if the boss is already on you, you're deliberately making the fight take longer by not utilizing the damage aspect of your kit by remaining in tank stance the entire time.


I honestly think that people need to break from this mentality of a "Pure Tank", you're severely gimping yourself otherwise.

[Phoenicia]

I honestly think that people need to break from this mentality of a "Pure Tank", you're severely gimping yourself otherwise.

I'm surprised people still asking for or thinking that "Pure Tank" is what they want when MMOs have been steering away from them since mid-2000s in games like Aion or Tera where tanks have the potential to burst harder than DPS, especially for PvP purposes. Because even though I did play the "Pure turtle and no damage" tanks of FFXI and Vanilla WoW, I preferred ones that could dish out damage in return. And let's face it, tanking is considered a "boring" role because it doesn't deal out damage and solo play "took too long".

On topic...

Think of tank stance as a tool that you can temporary go into to benefit from the "bonuses" it gives, but minimize its up-time because of the penalties they impose. Be it the pure increase in effective health or the access to some tank-stance exclusive abilities such as Inner Beast for added mitigation and healing, equilibrium for healing or even good ol' Blood Price to get a free 20 Blood Gauge during downtime. Granted the MP cost is made up for in other means.

[Alestrae]

I'm surprised people still asking for or thinking that "Pure Tank" is what they want when MMOs have been steering away from them since mid-2000s in games like Aion or Tera where tanks have the potential to burst harder than DPS, especially for PvP purposes. .

There have always been mmos where the most effective 'tanking' is to have the mobs attention but not take damage. My example is Ragnarok Online. I heard most boss fights were dealt with by kiting. And i used that tactic to kill zombies as a priest. But I never got high enough to see pro kiters.

More modern games simply hilighted their system differences in comparison to usually one other game.

[gumas]

i think its fine wherever you want go tank stance or not as long you doing your job properly. those who turn off their tank stance want to maximize their damage and usually (in most case) they know what are they doing, then there is people like me who just prefer to play it safe and sound. again as long they still keep the mob aggro, sure why not, let them play their style.

[Bright-Flower]

In theory, I would like it where tanks use tank stance when they need to tank, and dps stance is relegated to a tool when soloing stuff like quests, or parts of a boss fight where you don't need to tank anything like Omega level checker or ifrit nails.

In practice, the way the game is designed means you generally don't want to be in tank stance full time on a boss.

However, going dps stance isn't required for any casual, duty finder content. When doing normal mode alphascape, you don't need to do it. If you're comfortable with it, you know the fight well enough and the group seems solid, you can go for it. If you're unsure of the group though, it's fair IMO to stay in tank stance the whole time. At least if you're MTing. Because in a pug, you don't know if that dps is going to use their enmity tools. You don't know if that ninja will use shadewalker. You don't know if the healers are both on the ball, you don't know if the other tank knows what shirk is etc. So while in a premade group where you know everyone's all the ball you can get away with barely using tank stance, it's not always a good idea in pugs.

[Reinfeld]

Literally any party member can ruin the instanced experience for the rest of the group if they're not up to snuff. Any idea how soul crushing it is being a tank and watching your healer die to avoidable AoE in the first 5 seconds of a boss fight? Or being a tank that has a healer that would prefer just to stand there and idle instead of trying to contribute with a bit of damage, despite us rotating cooldowns and mitigating enough damage that we're never in any real danger? Or being a tank for a healer who thinks their only button in their kit is cure? Those ones are the worst because your health is in a near constant state of flux. Regens and OGCDs are scary, I guess. It's absolutely maddening. Especially since, because healers have basically zero accountability in this game outside of Savage, I can't really try and correct them or provide advice without them getting uppity.

And that doesn't even go into how soul crushing most instances are if your DPS are bad. Spending 45 minutes in an EXR is a pretty clear cut example, to me, of DPS 'ruining' my experience. Everybody can do this, tanks just have a bigger spot light to screw up in when they're not up to standard.

Pulling a large group of mobs because everyone is overgeared, then watching the monk and bard sit at full TP breaks my heart. Bonus points if I'm taking so little damage that healer doesn't need to heal, and instead of dpsing decides to sit there or top off my 500 (out of 70k) missing HP.

[SargentToughie]

Pulling a large group of mobs because everyone is overgeared, then watching the monk and bard sit at full TP breaks my heart. Bonus points if I'm taking so little damage that healer doesn't need to heal, and instead of dpsing decides to sit there or top off my 500 (out of 70k) missing HP.

"Tank is at 71000 HP out of their total HP pool of 72000? Better wind up that cure button."

I swear to god sometimes it feels like I've got PTSD from the sound effect of cure going off by the time the dungeon is over.