You know, I don't miss cleric stance, but... (thinking about pre-ShB stuff)

[Enjuden]

Tank stances weren't considered useless. One of them was for generating enmity and reducing incoming damage, while the other was for doing damage, and stance dancing was extremely common. It was also common for the off tanks to use their damage stance and the main tank to want to generate enmity and damage reduction.

I struggle to believe you that I was the only one using Cleric Stance to deal damage.

It wasn't common at all. I've ran that content for hundreds of hours back then, the tanks never bothered to use tank stance. It simply wasn't needed if you used strength accessories. There was nothing in the game that did enough damage to matter on that, where the only exception to the rule is week 1 Gordias. BTW, Gordias week 1 was mathematically impossible to clear and outscaled players, so you couldn't even tank the damage with Vit accessories regardless.

Not to mention you lost threat to dps unless you were actively trolling and only did the aggro combo in tank stance. As for why on that, you lost 15% damage with the stance on. You will hit enrage with the thing on unless you outgeared the content. Once Shirk came into play in Stormblood, it was considered entirely useless for obvious reasons.

I struggle to believe your reading comprehension was so poor that you somehow misread Cleric Stance wasn't used. "The stances were widely considered useless outside of Cleric Stance." Where in that sentence did you somehow grasp Cleric Stance wasn't used?

[Shipp]

It wasn't common at all. I've ran that content for hundreds of hours back then, the tanks never bothered to use tank stance. It simply wasn't needed if you used strength accessories. There was nothing in the game that did enough damage to matter on that, where the only exception to the rule is week 1 Gordias. BTW, Gordias week 1 was mathematically impossible to clear and outscaled players, so you couldn't even tank the damage with Vit accessories regardless.

Not to mention you lost threat to dps unless you were actively trolling and only did the aggro combo in tank stance. As for why on that, you lost 15% damage with the stance on. You will hit enrage with the thing on unless you outgeared the content. Once Shirk came into play in Stormblood, it was considered entirely useless for obvious reasons.

I struggle to believe your reading comprehension was so poor that you somehow misread Cleric Stance wasn't used. "The stances were widely considered useless outside of Cleric Stance." Where in that sentence did you somehow grasp Cleric Stance wasn't used?

You are mistaken. Stance dancing was normal due to the mitigation the stance offered. Massive pulls in dungeons without a WHM to holy spam stun (prior to the Diminishing Returns added to it due to the broken stun locking) most definitely were helped by using the stance since SCH could not reliably "oh ****" button you back to full.

Trying to think back on raids and I am still struggling to think of a time in ARR and HW where stance dancing for tanks was not the norm.

[Jeeqbit]

It wasn't common at all. I've ran that content for hundreds of hours back then, the tanks never bothered to use tank stance. It simply wasn't needed if you used strength accessories.

It was like a 50% split at best. A lot of casual players "believed" in using exclusively tank stance, whereas the "raider" and "DPS" type players were more interested in using exclusively DPS stance as much as possible. At least in Stormblood, when Savage was easier to do due to cross-world PF, I even saw this split where some Savage PFers just used tank stance the whole time.

I struggle to believe your reading comprehension was so poor that you somehow misread Cleric Stance wasn't used. "The stances were widely considered useless outside of Cleric Stance." Where in that sentence did you somehow grasp Cleric Stance wasn't used?

"I don't know why we're romanticizing a mechanic that players did not use outside of story content, and even then it was rare."

[Valence]

Trying to think back on raids and I am still struggling to think of a time in ARR and HW where stance dancing for tanks was not the norm.

It was normal for WAR due to Unleashed allowing you to ignore the damage reduction of Defiance if I remember correctly. You'd usually open with WAR as the MT due to that since the WAR wouldn't lose any DPS to build up aggro, then you could tank swap if needed.
But otherwise, at least in HW and onward, tank raiders would just run content in dps stance because vs all bosses the added mitigation wasn't needed. You could open the fight in tank stance to build up aggro though, people did that especially without a WAR as mentioned above. It was in dungeons or even extreme with more casual players that you'd see people sit in tank stance or stance dance. Dungeons because mitigation wasn't a joke in some pulls, and also because you had to adjust to the people you'd get in the party, whether it was the healer unable to follow and/or the dps not killing things fast enough.

[PaulH]

Ah Scholar for me was peak with CS, controlling Selene/EOS as I see fit with embrace, 6 or so dots with cross class Thunder and Aero, protect and stone skin, co-healing with my WHM friend meaning they did a lot of it lol it was fun even though CS was janky and risk/reward attached to it, don’t miss the keepers Hymn change of stats. The silliness of protect wars at start of a raid/dungeon etc. I suppose i like the button nature busy nature of the game, job interaction and enmity it just felt satisfying. The game has moved on and that’s fine too and i continue to play dps now as for me healers got dull and the job interplay of trinity, enmity changes and removal of dots took away some of that joy for me.

[Shipp]

It was normal for WAR due to Unleashed allowing you to ignore the damage reduction of Defiance if I remember correctly. You'd usually open with WAR as the MT due to that since the WAR wouldn't lose any DPS to build up aggro, then you could tank swap if needed.
But otherwise, at least in HW and onward, tank raiders would just run content in dps stance because vs all bosses the added mitigation wasn't needed. You could open the fight in tank stance to build up aggro though, people did that especially without a WAR as mentioned above. It was in dungeons or even extreme with more casual players that you'd see people sit in tank stance or stance dance. Dungeons because mitigation wasn't a joke in some pulls, and also because you had to adjust to the people you'd get in the party, whether it was the healer unable to follow and/or the dps not killing things fast enough.

I had quit towards the end of HW, so that may very well be the case for that time period forward.

[Jeeqbit]

It was normal for WAR due to Unleashed allowing you to ignore the damage reduction of Defiance if I remember correctly. You'd usually open with WAR as the MT due to that since the WAR wouldn't lose any DPS to build up aggro, then you could tank swap if needed.

I knew of WARs that did this in HW for sure. In Stormblood I'd get the WARs to open savage fights.

You could open the fight in tank stance to build up aggro though, people did that especially without a WAR as mentioned above.

I did this on PLD. I opened a fight in tank stance and did 1 enmity combo, then switched. In Stormblood, I found that I needed to do 3 enmity combos before switching to prevent losing aggro. Sometimes I could get away with less enmity combos if the party wasn't good or was making great use of enmity-reduction abilities, but it varied greatly depending on the party.

It was in dungeons or even extreme with more casual players that you'd see people sit in tank stance or stance dance. Dungeons because mitigation wasn't a joke in some pulls

Personally I used tank stance the entire time for trash. PLD didn't have much AoE in HW and then in Stormblood, Bloodbath was given to the DPS instead.

To me, this is what stance dancing was but it was something to think about and keep track of, whereas there is nothing to think about now.

[Basteala]

FFXIV (much like Retail WoW) are modern games and threat management is a design of the past when combat used to me slower and more methodical. I 100% guarantee you that with today's battle design being full DDR and DPS running further ahead of the tank to pull it will result in a mess to re-educate people to play slower, to wait for tanks to build up threat before they can attack and so on.

There's still FFXI and WoW Classic for those types of mechanics, but personally I don't think there's a place for threat management in FFXIV anymore.


As for stances in general, I don't mind if stance gameplay comes back in some form, but is stance juggling in a dungeon something players might enjoy nowadays? (genuine question as I haven't played FFXIV when stances were still a thing, and in Classic WoW you don't really want to go off defensive when tanking as Prot Warrior)

I mean that would be fine if FF14 didn't insist on slowing down dungeons with so many invisible walls. Mass pulling Braylox Hard is fun.

[Valence]

I did this on PLD. I opened a fight in tank stance and did 1 enmity combo, then switched. In Stormblood, I found that I needed to do 3 enmity combos before switching to prevent losing aggro. Sometimes I could get away with less enmity combos if the party wasn't good or was making great use of enmity-reduction abilities, but it varied greatly depending on the party.

Yeah Paladin had a bit of trouble keeping up with sudden big bursts of DPS damage. During O12S M/F prog I had to swap to the light party of the DRK as a MCH for the re opener after M/F split, else the PLD wouldn't be able to keep up with the burst aggro generation even with Quelling up. But I guess it was one of the most extreme pairings you could find back then: the most sustain oriented tank and the craziest burst damage dps job competing for aggro on resource ready re-openers (aka bursting immediately without pre heating)... That's an illustration of what I liked about it, you had to talk to your team mates and adjust things around because every job had their pros and cons to play around, much like MCH/SMN were unable to kill their adds in time in O7S because their filler damage was too low, that kind of stuff.