Guardian tanking a raid in offensive stance?

[MasterMoonRaven]

<p>This topic might have been done before. Been looking through forum here though and haven't found it so if this is a repeat, my apologies.</p><p> I raided with a guardian the other day who seems to prefer to tank raids in offensive stance. My concerns were mentioned but never got a solid answer and now my curiousity is bursting to know why.</p><p>So simple question....Should a guardian be tanking a raid in offensive stance? All the proper utility is in place in the MT group....dirge, 3 healers, and hate transfer, plus one. Healers were working double time to keep a flat line on tank's health that was fluctuating. So what is the need to be in offensive stance? </p><p>Side note: This is in a T7 raid zone with T7 raiders. Not sure if that makes a difference with the outcome of any questions.</p>

[Ferunnia]

If you're running a raid dps over 20k offensive stances makes a it a heck of a lot easier for a guard to keep aggro. If you aren't I don't know that offensive is as necessary, and if your tank isn't already in good gear (i.e. at least halfway fabled) offensive can hurt survivability. High end raid tanks run in off. stance because they need the dps and frankly, they're so geared that defensive stance only adds like 1 or 2% survivability. Also, a lot of the higher end guilds run their mt in off stance with a temp/defiler as the only healers in the group, with a coercer/assassin/dirge filling in the other spots, only switching in an extra healer I believe on the avatar fights. Any raid tanks feel free to opt in if I didn't answer this fully, I am trying to get a guard raid viable and I've trolled the boards here till me eyes have nearly bled, plus I have tried out different strats on lower level raids to test things. From my experience, with ToS, Guardian Sphere, Dragoon's Reflexes, and block you aren't really that worried about survivability since we already can soak a ton of damage, mit/avoid notwithstanding.

[MasterMoonRaven]

<p>Raid ran 15,840 DPS on zone parse. No where near 20k DPS. Tank's gear was partially fabled, partially legendary. All KoS gear.  </p>

[Wilin]

<p>Like the above poster says, it's dependent on the tanks gear and healers. I tank KoS trash in offsensive stance. KoS named and EoF, I start in defensive stance and switch over to offsensive stance as soon as I see the mobs debuffs pile on.</p><p>Edit: That's with full KoS fabled, a couple EoF fabled, mystic/inq/dirge/coercer/swashie in MT. I've done the easier T7 zones with only 4 healers in the raid.</p>

[MasterMoonRaven]

But with 8 healers in raid including defiler in MT group and tank's health still fluctuating badly.

[Wilin]

<cite>MasterMoonRaven wrote:</cite><blockquote>But with 8 healers in raid including defiler in MT group and tank's health still fluctuating badly.</blockquote><p> Maybe some of the healers were afk? Err...maybe there were 4 shaman and 4 clerics? Wards would overwrite each other, reactives will too. Maybe the tanks gear is such that they need to start out in defensive stance until debuffs have landed? A debuffed trash mob can be tanked by most of the classes in the game.</p>

[Ferunnia]

Make sure your people are doing what they need to be doing with debuffs. Also make sure your MT is buffed properly, and also that he's using what buffs he needs to be using as the fight goes on, and not tossing them all up at once, then letting them refresh. Much better to spread em out, if they're needed at all.

[Cornbread Muffin]

<cite>MasterMoonRaven wrote:</cite><blockquote>But with 8 healers in raid including defiler in MT group and tank's health still fluctuating badly.</blockquote><p>Wilin has the right idea here - either your healers are terrible or you have tons of the same classes overwriting each other's heals. Or both. You probably don't have debuffers doing their job either if it remains tough to keep a guardian alive the entire fight.</p>

[HomeChicken]

yah its been pretty well covered so far, if the raid is doing high dps, most will switch to offstance. but starting out raiding a lot would be better off going more defensive until they learn the mobs or agro becomes a major factor in not killing a mob basicly whatever works for you go for it, some tanks go defensive (stance, AA spec, gear) others go more offensive

[TuinalOfTheNexus]

<cite>MasterMoonRaven wrote:</cite><blockquote>But with 8 healers in raid including defiler in MT group and tank's health still fluctuating badly.</blockquote><p> Bad healers, bad debuffers, not bad tank.</p><p><i>If you think the mit and +def/parry from defensive stance are gonna make a huge difference to damage taken you're sorely mistaken.</i> The greatest impact on tank damage recieved is from debuffs, predominantly Rogue ones, and Dirge and Templar buffs.</p><p>When you tank trash, your primary responsibility is to hold aggro. Keeping you alive is the job of the rest of the raid. Admittedly, you have a few panic buttons that can help with survivability, but I don't hesitate to use both offensive stance and a 2-hander (I'm lucky enough to have one of the few decent ones) in places like LoA when group aggro is important. When you can push 3kdps with a 2H/cyclone on a group the value of going all out offensive becomes apparent.</p><p>There's a good argument that a less-well equipped tank should be even more keen to use offensive stance than a well-geared one. Because quality of weapon makes such a big impact on DPS, you're simply not going to hold a Warlock (or even a Wizard) going full burn in defensive with a crappy 1.6 weapon like Ascendant or Frostwrath. Your only real hope is to minimise avoidance so inflaming defense procs as much as possible, and do all you can to ensure a high hit rate. Of course, if the DPS classes don't have a clue, then aggro is less of an issue, but it only takes one person out of the whole raid to put out high dps to pull the mob off you.</p>

[Sir_Halbarad]

As the others have said, it must have been the healers/debuffers. Personally, I run every KoS zone in offensive stance, only switching to defense when tanking vyemm and alzid together. Doing all of EoF (I have seen so far) in Offensive as well when mobs are debuffed. My healers dont see a difference and my dps'ers thank me. /shrug Maybe your healers werent curing? some debuffs reset stats to 0 which can lead to bad damage spikes.