Offensive and Defensive Tanking

[Tristin2]

<p>I'm really interested in moving away from defensive tanking and choosing offensive tanking for several reasons.  As i read most of the forums these days, people are giving up on defensive tanking for the additional DPS you might be able to get with offensive.</p><p>Does the extra Mit from the defensive stance all that worth while these days?  With the new expansion steadily approaching and with the anticipation of additional AA points to spend, will make our classes even more diverse i think.</p>

[Harvash]

<cite>Tristin2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm really interested in moving away from defensive tanking and choosing offensive tanking for several reasons.  As i read most of the forums these days, people are giving up on defensive tanking for the additional DPS you might be able to get with offensive.</p><p>Does the extra Mit from the defensive stance all that worth while these days?  With the new expansion steadily approaching and with the anticipation of additional AA points to spend, will make our classes even more diverse i think.</p></blockquote><p>Defensive Stance is a farce...put it far away on a hot bar.</p><p>Only use for defensive is possibly pulling an epic named to absorb the alpha hit and quickly throwing up the offensive after pull.</p><p>Defensive makes you hit less (lowers combat skills), generating less aggro - the aggression bump is peanuts compared to actually doing damage to the mob.</p><p>And, finally, anyone in reasonable gear (i.e. at least level appropriate and proly not handcrafted..lol) can do any solo and heroic content without it.</p><p>EDIT: As a matter of fact, my guard tanks in offensive with 2h..lol, no complaints from the healers</p>

[Xalmat]

If all you want is the extra mitigation, without the penalties of reduced combat skills, use the level 4 Defense stance. You still gain the 15% extra mitigation, and you only suffer an extremely minor offensive hit, when compared to the higher level versions.

[Raahl]

<p>Hey Eneoki - What's your Guardian's name.  I'd like to see how they are equipped.</p><p>Tristin - I MT in defensive stance 99% of the time.  I have little to no problems with aggro with a Dirge and sometimes a swashie or assassin in my group.  I'm around 75% KoS fabled as far as armor goes.  I am STR/AGI/INT spec'd.  I use sword and board.  When trying to tank in Offensive stance it makes a good difference in me taking damage.  Consider it 15% more damage that your healers have to heal.</p><p>Now tanking in Offensive stance is doable, I just think you'll proabably need the best of the best equipment in the game to make the 15% from the defensive stance not worth it.  Right now, that's the only reason I'm in it while tanking.</p>

[Aristigon]

There's almost no need to tank in defensive stance ever. Unless you don't have halfway decent gear.

[Wilin]

<p>I go off stance by default and def stance only if I see my health spike. If it does happen, I take careful note to remember the encounter and I'll start that encounter in def stance next time but switch to off stance as soon as the debuffs are on. It seems to make the most difference on multi-mob fights where I'm tanking 3+ epics at once.</p>

[Zo]

If your dying would wipe the raid, then tank in Defensive.If you are not in danger of dying, tank in Offensive.

[BigRed1]

<p>I use offensive stance duel wield while MTing for my guild. There are a few mobs I go defensive for and flip in a tower shield, most floor bosses in EH, Mayung in TTR and MMIS and Trayloth<spelling></p><p>I would use a 2 hander instead of duel wield but currently I really dont have one that is werth switching out for. The fact is if your guild is pushing serious raid dps it gets to be next to impossible to hold agro in defensive stance when burning through trash. My guild does any where from 35k-44k dps on trash fights, with some of our big dpsers spiking to over 5kdps. With duel wield in offensive stance I average @ 1700-2200dps on most trash.</p><p>Even if your gear is not the best out there I would still use offensive..start the fights in defensive with a tower shield and once the mob is in and you have your initial taunts and you see all the debuffs starting to stack on the mob flip to offensive stance and switch out to your dps set..be it a buckler, a second one hander or a 2 hander. Most mobs are a cake walk once debuffed.</p><p>just realized I never updated my sig. </p><p>my Guardian is Monggo on Oasis</p>

[Harvash]

<cite>Raahl wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hey Eneoki - What's your Guardian's name.  I'd like to see how they are equipped.</p><p>Tristin - I MT in defensive stance 99% of the time.  I have little to no problems with aggro with a Dirge and sometimes a swashie or assassin in my group.  I'm around 75% KoS fabled as far as armor goes.  I am STR/AGI/INT spec'd.  I use sword and board.  When trying to tank in Offensive stance it makes a good difference in me taking damage.  Consider it 15% more damage that your healers have to heal.</p><p>Now tanking in Offensive stance is doable, I just think you'll proabably need the best of the best equipment in the game to make the 15% from the defensive stance not worth it.  Right now, that's the only reason I'm in it while tanking.</p></blockquote>Guards name is Harvash, but not worth looking at tbh, its a mix of MC and treasured crap as I level up.  However, that just further solidifies what I am saying - you don't have to be all fabled out, you just have to know what your doing and make sure the healer isn't sleeping.  Afaik, most of the fighters are offensive stance, my monk which is my raid main toon almost never comes out of full offensive - even if tanking or OT, occassionally going to balanced stance on pulls for things like contested mobs, etc.

[Scyen]

i do 2 x 1H weapon for tanking if lazy taunting and thats fine even with epic

[MaitreyaSuvo]

<p>i tank in defensive, and i do not have anywhere near the best gear out there. i don't even have all masters yet, but i am doing okay for my guild. i have alot of trouble holding agro, but i do not see a reason to leave defensive. in raids, my crush skill is still 446 in defensive and i land almost as many hits as fellow assassins. i could stand to have more strength and my AOE agro is poor, but i can parse around 1k with a dirge/warden and hold agro decently with an assassin's hate transfer. </p><p>i am a 70 guardian on venekor. </p><p>P.S. i hate my buckler.</p>

[Harvash]

<cite>MaitreyaSuvo wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i tank in defensive, <snip>  i have alot of trouble holding agro, <snip>i can parse around 1k with a dirge/warden and hold agro decently with an assassin's hate transfer. </p><p>i am a 70 guardian on venekor. </p><p>P.S. i hate my buckler.</p></blockquote>This is the main reason your not holding aggro - more hits = more hate.  1k dps from a guard in a decent length of fight is going to be ftl.  Seriously, try offensive stance, you won't go back.

[TuinalOfTheNexus]

<p>I used to be a big advocate of offensive stance, but I'm finding myself using defensive more these days.</p><p>I'm at about 2k dps on a single target in defensive (cookie cutter str/sta/int/SoD or GBH/howler), and this seems to be all I need to hold single target aggro. I'm looking at parses these days and seeing very little DPS gain from offensive stance (~100) and a fair avoidance loss, particularly without the EoF set bonus.</p><p>If I really want to push my own parse up, then I can drop crafted rings/underworld legplates/crit gear etc. in, but I guess I'm mellowing with experience and preferring to relax the healers a bit (and let them put out a few hundred more DPS each) rather than trying to set ZW records. I think I've probably gained a little confidence in tanking to appreciate I don't need to push myself 100% to hold aggro (except on 3+ mob group encounters), and can worry more about lining up the next pull and positioning.</p><p>I think until you've got the gear to put out the high parses, then offensive stance is definitely the way to go, particularly if you need to hold aggro against a well-geared dps class. But you eventually seem to reach a threshold where single target aggro is trivial, and then it becomes a case of pushing up your own dps a few hundred more just for bragging rights, potentially at the expense of raid DPS and survivability.</p><p>But, then, I do still sometimes pull the 2H out, spec agi, and make the raid spam heal me while I parse 4k on groups <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>