Will fighter start "Stance Dancing"

[Soefje]

<p>I can see situations in tougher fights where it will be best for fighters to start in defensive stance, hit all their taunts, dance to offensive stance and DPS until the taunt refresh, then dance into defensive stance and repeat the cycle.  I know in other MMOs that fighters have done this to maximize abilities.</p><p>Have any fighters on Test done this to see if it works?</p>

[Maroger]

<p><cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I can see situations in tougher fights where it will be best for fighters to start in defensive stance, hit all their taunts, dance to offensive stance and DPS until the taunt refresh, then dance into defensive stance and repeat the cycle.  I know in other MMOs that fighters have done this to maximize abilities.</p><p>Have any fighters on Test done this to see if it works?</p></blockquote><p>That is somewhat more difficult to do if you solo. Maybe in a group or raid it is more easily done.</p>

[Junaru]

<p>Most good fighters will stance dance with the old system. Often my Monk would start a fight in D-stance and switch to O-stance once a mob is debuffed.</p><p>I personally feel you will see more fighters going no stance more then anything.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Most good fighters will stance dance with the old system. Often my Monk would start a fight in D-stance and switch to O-stance once a mob is debuffed.</p><p>I personally feel you will see more fighters going no stance more then anything.</p></blockquote><p>I suspect if that's the case, you'll find penalties attached to tanking outside of a stance. It's pretty clear that the design intent here is to force fighters to choose: tank in defensive, dps in offensive, no middle ground.</p>

[Junaru]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Most good fighters will stance dance with the old system. Often my Monk would start a fight in D-stance and switch to O-stance once a mob is debuffed.</p><p>I personally feel you will see more fighters going no stance more then anything.</p></blockquote><p>I suspect if that's the case, you'll find penalties attached to tanking outside of a stance. It's pretty clear that the design intent here is to force fighters to choose: tank in defensive, dps in offensive, no middle ground.</p></blockquote><p>There already are penalties for not being in a stance. You now lose the buffs that have merged with the stances. But as long as you can keep aggro and don't die there is no reason to be in D-stance. The buffs you lose wont equal the 50% damage hit you take in D-stance.</p>

[Soefje]

<p><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Most good fighters will stance dance with the old system. Often my Monk would start a fight in D-stance and switch to O-stance once a mob is debuffed.</p><p>I personally feel you will see more fighters going no stance more then anything.</p></blockquote><p>Not sure how many plate tanks were doing this.  I typically look at the group.  If I have good healers and low on DPS, I go offensive.  If we have a lot of DPS and I am not so sure about the healers, I go defensive.  I rarely change back and forth in the middle of a fight.</p><p>I know early on, the recast timers were long enough you couldn't do this, several GUs back they change the recast timers to make this possible, just never did it.</p><p>Had to do it all the time in AOC.  Even solo.</p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>Its doable - I wouldn't say its ideal or easy though. There is a 20% difference in damage taken between offensive and defensive stance, and given that taunts are detaunts in offensive stance you want to make darn sure you are in defensive when you taunt.</p><p>ACT is nice for this as the latest version shows you how much you taunted/detaunted so you can practise your stance changes.</p><p>I found against the yellow Skyfire solo mobs * :</p><p>Defensive the whole time:</p><ul><li>77% Melee hit rate </li><li>800 extdps</li><li>4.6 threat</li></ul><p>Swapping stances for attacks then back to defensive to taunt</p><ul><li>86% Melee hit rate</li><li>894 extdps</li><li>4.9k threat</li></ul> <p>Higher threat when stance dancing? Mainly I think as fights were a lot shorter, so I didn't run out of good stuff to cast</p><p>Key things to note - this is with 8 pts in Battle Leadership - autoattack in defensive stance would suffer more without this and against orange mobs. Went down to 66% to hit when i removed the points</p><p>* Why soloing? Well most times I've been on testcopy there have been only 20 or so on, and a fair few of them are level 1's.  At 80 - its almost entirely tanks.</p>