Are you a conservative or a liberal tank?

[Emerald Archer]

I agree with most of this, except you should use externals rotationally and save your own CDs for oh shit moments.

During a damage spike, the healers are focusing on like 7 other things at once, making snap judgments about who to heal and in what order and with what spell. It's really bad to have them throwing an external on a tank at that time even though it's off the GCD. Furthermore, you put yourself at extra risk because you will always be able to react to your situation more quickly than other people can react to your reaction.

As in Oh-shit moment I was thinking more of tank specific things. Taunt swapping issues/other tank dying/getting bonds when you weren't the tank who was meant to.

But tbh, I've played healer, if the healer can't throw the external on you despite shit hitting the fan (Especially considering it's off the GCD, I mean come on) then they're a really shitty healer. Just make a macro for each tank, if the tank calls it, hit the macro. Shit isn't on the gcd so you can literally doing it while waiting the gcd to cast your next ability.

[Bathory]

I'm pretty conservative til I take that big shot then I'm like "WELL, TIME TO PAY ATTENTION AGAIN" /pops big cooldown

[Taladendren]

Neither, agree with all the others who says separating them into two groups is a mistake.

As a DH, everything but meta is on a 1 min or less CD and I use those liberally and save meta in almost every case for an "oh shit" button.

However, if you don't have a plan for your CD usage going into a boss, you're not tanking nearly as well as you could. You need what abilities come in when, what you're doing with your OT, and then plan what CDs to use when. IMO, if you could fit in 3+ more uses of something like barkskin (1 min CD, flat 20% damage reduction), you're probably doing it wrong.

The fights don't really change, so planning is pretty easy - I need X to survive bonds or annihilate, so I'll save it then. I don't really need Z, but I can line it up so it's off cd at the 2-stack annihilate without losing much uptime, so I'll do that. If you don't need a CD for anything specific, just use whenever is best to minimize or smooth damage taken.

Bottom line, there really is a right answer for optimizing your CDs in most situations - spend enough time in the damage taken tab in your logs and you'll find it.

[Super Kami Dende]

I'm an Anarchist Tank.

ANYTHING GOES MOTHERFUCKER!

[Shoat]

What is spectral deflection ? Passive magic damage reduc ?

Passive "big hit" reduction.
Bone shield reduces all damage by 16% (chance to "crit" for 8% more).
Spectral deflection makes it so any really big incoming damage (25% of health) triggers bone shield again and, thus, gets reduced again.
It used to be regarded lowly due to taking a bone shield charge away, because back in the day bone shield charges were a hassle to keep stacked up (every source of damage, including dots and periodic AOE, would use up a charge), but nowadays only spectral deflection and melee attacks hits take charges away (but everything else still gets reduced by bone shield without taking a charge), so that complaint is moot.

It's basically 1/2 of our 3m CD Icebound Fortitude with no cooldown, in exchange for activating itself outside our control and not countering multiple fast tiny-medium hits.

also spectral deflection is bad, don't take it.

No it isn't. "Take the DPS talents" is bad advice.
That's like saying purgatory is bad and suggesting people to take bone shield for moar dps.
Our first priority as tanks is to survive on whatever content is at our guild's current cutting edge, not to have high dps, so I wish people would stop giving others advice that just boosts their performance on trivial content.

Dealing +15% DnD damage and getting 10 runic power every 15-30 seconds (depending on crimson scourge) from rapid decomp does nothing to counter any real danger, it just makes trivial content slightly more comfortable and makes you look better in logs.
Reducing 100 energy scythes, etraeous casts, highly-stacked krosus dots, big mechanics that you can't walk out of, bosses in enrage and other murderous shit by another big 16% chunk literally turns wipes into kills.


I'm sick and tired of guides and forum posts online telling other tanks to adjust their gear and talents for dps instead of pure survival, because experience tells me it's disconnected form tanking reality.

It might work out to be better in a perfect world where everyone plays perfectly at all times, and it might be what experts suggest in in guides, but the only explanations accompanying it involve something along the lines of valuing dps more, I think one older post by troxism said something along the lines of "not worth losing so much dps over not-needed survivability", which is the worst advice imaginable to any tank currently fighting their way through mythic (this isn't emerald nightmare where 5/7 bosses hit like a wet paper towel).
I have not yet wiped a single wipe that would have been a kill if one tank had done 10, 20 or even 50% more DPS, let alone the much tinier amount that one talent offers. Tank dps is only relevant for perfect play (which only exists on spreadsheeds, and maybe sometimes in world firsts) and trivial content.

[hasslehoof]

sd is shit because it lowers the amount of heart strikes you use, which means you get less overall healing whilst also doing less dps. that's not even including the rp you lose from not having RD

none of the bosses are like pre-nerf helya where she would literally two shot you without massively overgearing it. you can CD through anything that's half dangerous and be fine without it. you're gimping your own dps and self healing for damage you'd survive anyway.

[beatmyface]

I identify as a really big toaster, with fur

[Orangetai420]

It depends on how well I know the content. Until I know what to expect I will rotate my CDs unless the journal informs me of an ability I should be saving them for. Once I know the instance I can save my CDs for when they are needed most, but until then I just YOLO tank. I'd rather wipe and learn that way over reading about everything and spoiling the sense of discovery - I'll check out the journal but that's it nowadays. I used to be the type of player that would watch videos and read strats, but TBH it sucks all the fun out of raiding for me.

I'm sure it helps that I have good awareness and reaction times, even if I don't know the fight I've been playing long enough to know wtf is going on.