New tank perspective, my apologies to established TNKs I've met B4

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

As a good tank your post just screams bad tanking, sorry, there's no other way to put it. You can't notice a mob's hp is dropping faster than whatever you decided to attack first, and switch to ensure hate is kept on it? OK.

This is the reason marking is such a useless thing; a good tank can hold hate on all mobs without it, and when cycling thru mobs, pay extra attention to whatever's in most need of additional threat generated.

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Marking is not a useless thing. Reducing the damage generated by multiple mobs by eliminating them in order you enable:
1. the healer to recover MP more quickly.
2. allow the healer to participate offensively.
3. for WARs, they can save more TP for dealing damage instead of spamming OP.
4. both tank classes will spend more time doing damage and less time using their aoe aggro generators.

Im not saying it's the tanks responsibilty to mark, or that he doesn't need to hold aggro regardless of what's being attacked. But your just plain wrong about marking for priority. It's absolutely useful.

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Originally Posted by Kiyyto

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Let's kill a reactionary stereotype and help you improve your game.


1. Duty Finder DPS generally aren't bad players. There's a hysterical stereotype amongst tanks that most players you meet though DF are complete crap who need their hands held like children. For the most part, this isn't true. Are there bad players in DF? Of course there are. There are bad players everywhere. So why do tanks mistakenly conclude that most dps players in DF are garbage?

Answer: Because as a tank, you experience content much more often than they do. On average, you've run a dungeon three times by the time they get to do it once. You know all the tricks, you know the easiest ways to manage a boss, you know how to avoid gimmicks like the stupid eye thing in Dzemael Darkhold. And like a lot of people, once you've gained experience at something, you don't like sharing knowledge. Do you ask before you start pulling if anyone needs instructions? Do you read the dungeon message to see if anyone there is new to the place? Do you view info on your teammates to see if they have any level 50 jobs (which means they're experienced.) I do all that stuff. I've never failed to complete a run either. (Not counting one rage quit when a healer kept trolling me.)

To conclude, being new isn't the same as being bad.

2. Do you mark? More importantly, do you mark quickly? People who don't like marking have strong opinions on why marking is pointless. Good for them, yay! Mark targets anyway. It's just helpful for pugging. Marked targets die faster, the tank takes less damage and saves cooldowns, the healer spends less time healing and can participate in dps, it's just common sense. Marking works. But people who disdain it do it for the simple fact that it takes too long. No one wants to stand around for ten seconds waiting for you to tab and click, it's boring. So use this macro:

/mk Triangle
/focustarget
/ac "Target Forward"
/mk attack2 <t>
/ac "Target Forward"
/mk attack3 <t>
/target <f>
/mk attack1 <f>

Bind it to your F1 key. Now you can mark 1-2-3 targets in less than a second while on the move. Now the pulls are quicker, the fights are faster, and every other run someone will ask how you're marking so quickly. You're welcome. "But wait," you say. "What if I mark and they STILL hit the wrong target???!!" In that case, just switch targets and hit the same thing as them, it's a frickin' VIDEO GAME, c'mon bro. As long as it gets dead and you keep aggro, then who cares? I've been tanking in MMO's for ten years. You really just gotta learn to go with the flow. (But keep marking. It's like Pavlov's dogs, they'll eventually get it.)

3. Make a macro explaining Your weakness. I have a macro I use to give a short message to my pugs if I'm in a dungeon where I can't use shield oath. "Hello, nice to meet you! No Tank stance in this dungeon, so be careful with your AOE threat!" Boom. I've said hello, and I've also asked them to help me out. This is a team based game you can't do it all alone. If someone pulled off me, they'll know it's because they weren't paying attention, so I'm in the clear. Drama averted.

so, TLDR: Most randoms aren't bad, use a marking macro, and use an introductory macro to help explain why people need to watch their threat for dungeons where you can't use a tank stance. Grats, now you've just eliminated 90% of the stuff that makes a bad run. Go forth and conquer.

Sorry to say. But as a a player who main Tank if you blame entirely on tanks. You either 1)Main a DPS or 2) Have not tanked enough 3) Wasn't severally overgeared and 4) Never met DPS who can generate extremely high aggro. AKA good dps.

I don't want to point fingers but please don't self proclaim yourself as a good tank when you obviously didn't even go into high level contents with tank before (From Achievements point of view)


Now lets put the blame aside and help you improve your game play rather than point fingers.

Firstly gain more experience. Think more about what you can improve rather than pointing fingers and expect others to get better. Because they won't if they are pointing fingers themselves

What you can do.

1) Use 1 or 2 more AOEs as starter

2) Use your CDs like fight or flight for PLD Unchain/ Berserk for WAR. I know you don't always have them up but it will improve your overall performance

3) Split your combo. Example. You marked mob 1. One dps is hitting mob 1 the other is hitting mob 2. And that DPS is a melee dps who can generate high burst aggro from start. Don't panic. Take your time to get the aggro back.

How to do it. there are many different ways. Since you open on mob one. You obviously have more aggro on mob 1 so after doing one full combo on mob one, start comboing on mob 2 and alternate it. You play around with how you split your combo, I'm just giving an example. 2nd way is to do combo 1 and 2 then provoke > combo 3 since combo 3 have the most aggro. 3rd way is if the 1st mob is low on health like 30% or less, feel free to switch to the 2nd mob since even if you lose aggro on the first mob, it will only be for about a few seconds. There are many ways to do it. You can experiment and play around with it.

4) Start next pull early. When you are hitting the last mob till about 15% of the HP. Feel free to either stun it or let ranged dps finish it. There's no need to stay around hitting it because your job is to tank well. If you start the next pull early, you can use one or 2 more aoes or even split your combos from start.

There are many more ways these are some of my own. My point is if you are new. Have a open mind and accept that you are bad. Since no one is good from the start especially when Tanks have a Wider learning curve than DPS. Don't care about those butt hurt self proclaim pros but i won't blame them since any people who main dps will fire back when insulted.

I don't know. It seems to me that OP is still a greenhorn when it comes to tanking.

Tips: If you did try your best to hold aggro, OP and yet they still manage to snatch aggro off you, meaning they are way high Ilv than you. If it is the case, they sure can tank the remaining HP on the said mob themselves without you bothering taking it back. I am serious.

I've been paired with amazing DPS in DF while running dungeons for my books. When I check gear first and I see a NIN in full 130 gear and zodiac weapon and I can still hold aggro from him with my old atma weapon, I know he's clearly helping me by lowering his DPS. Same with BLM who wait a bit before AoEing everything. With these DPS, I never had troubles holding hate.
Flashing during rotation helps a lot. Spliting your combo too, especialy when DPS aren't attacking the same mob. The most common mistake I see from fresh tanks is tunnelvisionning a single mob and ignoring the others. Of course they will lose aggro.

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Originally Posted by Blueskyy

rabble-rabble-rabble-rabble

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lulz, should I link my world of warcraft armory? Should I start pouring over the minutia of experience for my Everquest, and DAOC toons? Is this the only game you've ever played, diddums? Kinda sounds like it if you're going to get that moist over a constructive paragraph that wasn't even aimed at you. Congrats on that WOD clear, I guess? It must have felt like a real achievement after all those heroic and world shattering turn 3 clears. Pffffft.

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

lulz, should I link my world of warcraft armory? Should I start pouring over the minutia of experience for my Everquest, and DAOC toons? Is this the only game you've ever played, diddums? Kinda sounds like it if you're going to get that moist over a constructive paragraph that wasn't even aimed at you. Congrats on that WOD clear, I guess? It must have felt like a real achievement after all those heroic and world shattering turn 3 clears. Pffffft.

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I don't think his comment was aimed at you either.

So I keep noticing parts of this thread like "should follow marks", "watch agro", etc. Point I want to make is that, in common situations, it is possible to just be such a good tank that it's near impossible for DPS to rip agro.

Let me clarify what I mean exactly: I don't mean FCoB or fights that actually have tough mechanics. I do mean all of the 4-man lvl50 content and ST/WoD. Assume that the tank has at least a minimal understanding of the fights and similar gear levels.

As a warrior main since 2.0, with Ragnarok and ~i120, I can tank groups of trash (AE = Overpower, etc) and not lose agro even when DPS wants to go hard on a single target. To get agro, a DPS would have to pop multiple cooldowns and hit 1 target hard as possible while I'm AEing. However, if I'm AEing, highest DPS for them is to AE as well -- and that has no chance of getting agro unless I screwed up somehow. Single target, pretty much same thing: no chance unless I screwed up. I assume it is same for PLD, but my experience is limited.

Lower levels are also a bit different: level and gear differences there mean a lot. When I was doing it (to level GLD, and 2nd character), I didn't really care if DPS got agro. Let them get hit. They can probably take it well enough to live in those low level situations. Especially if healer isn't complaining. Might make some effort to take it back, but not too much.

So as you can see, "should follow marks", "watch agro", etc... At some point that's just unnecessary. And sadly, a lot of time is spent in this game in minimally challenging scenario -- might as well faceroll that stuff.

Oh, forgot something that personally helps me a lot. OP, try disabling party member names in a dungeon. I find nameplates on party members and their pets really distracts the hell out of me during a run, so I have it set so that only enemies have nameplates while in a party. Leaves my field of vision nice and clear.

Hello. Fairly new to FFZIV, but I appreciate the discussion and have a few thoughts.

As a noob, when tanking, I'm fairly new to marking and so not as quick to mark. However, on many of my light parties, the healer would usually mark, which I kind prefer, as the healer tends to have a better view of the field and I feel can provide better commands. I still do and hold aggro.

I didn't really bother, so much protecting DPS, as they were really independent as they are supposed to be there to protect the body of the group, consisting of healer and tank.

Any opinion on who is designated marker? I'm only lv 35 all the way across, so haven't even done endgame. Thanks.