7 Reasons You Should Be Nicer to Tanks (And People in General)

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Originally Posted by Livilda

This is a good thread and you should feel good.

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pretty much this

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Originally Posted by Trancery

Jack Macallen, I love your posts. Your writing style is great and you make a lot of great points. It's the way you do it that makes these threads so entertaining to read. They are informative while also being quite funny.

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Thanks Trancery! I appreciate the props, and I plan on "doing it again" and again. Assuming of course, I don't slip something inappropriate and ban-worthy in future posts.

Which I probably will. On accident. But not on accident.

I can't win.

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Originally Posted by Livilda

This is a good thread and you should feel good.

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Kinda off topic, but I really like your signature.

Good post, but should apply to everyone and not just tanks. In general, everyone could use a little more patience and tolerance. The game does not have a skill requirement to play, and everyone has different levels of commitment and interests. Too often people are expecting perfect performance from random players. We all get frustrated with things, but there are nice ways of telling people they need more practice without telling them to kill themselves.

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Originally Posted by Livilda

This is a good thread and you should feel good.

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That is a good signature and you should feel good.

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Originally Posted by MadMacallan

It's a little tough to concern yourself with saving the same guy that tells you to die of cancer because you lost threat for three seconds on a violent fish.

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Oh my god so true xD. I think this relates in any kind of mmorpg as well.

Why can't I click the like button any more?

I love tanking. :3 I've never been yelled out.

What is this thread? :O

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

I love tanking. :3 I've never been yelled out.

What is this thread? :O

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You're either not telling the whole truth, don't use the DF very often, or don't play as tank as often as you say you do.

I find roughly one jerk per day in the doody finder, more often than not they're taking their frustrations out on me as tank. Sometimes I legitimately screw up, more often though they're just jerks.

I just make them take them 45 minute penalty queue while I find an instant group after my 15 minute re-entry timer wears off.

Really? I just leveled a new tank alt from 1-45 completely in Duty Finder and never saw a problem. ._. Same with AK when I do Duty finder I just say "Hi." And everyone says "Hello!" and we get to it.

If anyone leaves party it's usually me because we just wiped 3 times to Psycheflayers golem. :(

Eh, forget it. Not worth starting something in a thread that's actually not someone whining about end game.

You know this is an interesting topic to me. Because I have definitely seen this, where DPS constantly harassed a tank, even until the tank quit. The other day I was in Sastasha. And the DPS was basically insulting and calling names the tank for not knowing how to target. I respond "no need to be rude. besides this is the first dungeon, maybe he is new and needs practice" And the answer was "you should never roll a tank if you are new". Which is terrible advice obviously. If nobody ever rolls a class when they are new, nobody every will roll that class. It wasn't even a bad run. I have had much worse performance wise. But attitude wise. Definitely a "toxic" DPS.

But honestly in terms of frequency I find as healer I get it more than tanks do, and often from the tank. Which is sad, because the best tanks I have had are nice, polite, willing to work with me or the DPS until we get something down. But they are the rare exception anymore. Early on especially during the beta I thought most tanks were nice.. But I guess they all got fed up and quit, or just only run a static anymore...

I guess I've been both lucky as a DPS to never see tanks taking much crap (unless they got put into a Speed-group, then all bets are off), and as a tank as I have never gotten much crap except by a healer once in Brayflox. I promptly told that jerk that if he wants to tank so much then he can do it himself, which earned me a rude reply and him leaving right before the final boss. Sucked to be him since the Battlemage Robe dropped off of Aiatar, ha!

Anecdotes aside, you really hit the nail on the head, especially when you talk about how undeniably visible the tank is: everyone can tell if the tank is doing a good or bad job at any point in the fight, because one wrong move, one delayed stun, one loss of aggro will be shown by the another player taking damage or the monster running away from the tank. It's always a bit of a downer for me when I'm tanking and that happens because I'm always dreading one of the DPS or healers getting on my case about, but outside of that one incident it's never happened. I guess it's because I try to be as polite as possible; if it's my first time tanking the dungeon, I'll tell them at the start. If I haven't tanked in a while, or if I'm using WAR after I've been tanking as a GLD for a week, I tell them that I might be rusty. If I lose aggro, or accidentally go off of the mark-order (ex. forgetting/not seeing a Bee in Qarn trash mobs and thus not marking it), I'll apologize after the fight.

My party's responses? Usually very positive--I often get complimented on being a better tank than most, or at the very least receive a "np :-)". I'm not sure if this is because I am a good tank, or if it's just from being much more open towards the group about being, well, human. A lot of politeness can go a long way, I guess =)

Hi again Mr. Macallan.

I switched from my Paladin to the White Mage for the grand Wandering Palace runs so I'd get a chance to read your stuff. I also rediscovered my love for Holy spam and actually being able to hit for more than what a... err, well, spanking paddle does. Damn you, Darklight Macuahuitl. <_<

Yes, this is a marriage proposal. Now, get in my belly!

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

doody finder

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~*~original joke alert~*~

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Originally Posted by ThanMazus

~*~original joke alert~*~

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Indeed. I've called it that since day 1, I wasn't trying to be original.

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

Really? I just leveled a new tank alt from 1-45 completely in Duty Finder and never saw a problem. ._. Same with AK when I do Duty finder I just say "Hi." And everyone says "Hello!" and we get to it.

If anyone leaves party it's usually me because we just wiped 3 times to Psycheflayers golem. :(

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This was pretty much my experience. I've never once run into a group that bad talked. I've yet to see these big mouthed dps as well. There have been two times that I've seen complaints. One was a tank to linkshell (didn't know I was in the same linkshell) bad mouthing me and the other was in an ifrit party who was another tank yelling at the dps and the other healer because they kept getting killed and messing up stuns or something.

I played scholar since 15 purely through dungeons so I could actually experience them. Even in aurum vale as a scholar, which is more difficult than whm, not one person who complained.

Yeah, it seems it tanks and healers get all the hate from from other PCs and even monsters :-/

This one time I tanked AK, I had this little scholar go face pull mobs. When asked to not do so, he says "I'm bored, I do what I want." so I tell him "Alright, you can tank the next few set of mobs." He goes off and says "I can do that all the while you're not getting heals!" and so we bicker back and forth until finally making it to the first boss where the DRG complains about my not tanking the golems which he has the ability to kill on his own. I tell him "You have the capability of destroying it without my aid. My primary focus is the boss." he goes off to say "When I tank, I make sure to protect everyone!". That's all fine and dandy, but hell; you should be able to kill the damned thing without my intervention.

Later on, we get to Demon Wall, 2 wipes later because the DPS and the SCH were terrible... They argue, and then leave. I get some more competent people in there and skip away to victory. Tanking is pretty simple and straightforward, I learned from watching other tanks do their job in dungeons. But my god, when I mark targets and single target DPS just go balls to the wall on one I wasn't focusing on, I just let them die. Stupidity deserves death. Kill in order, or die. Simple enough.

Of course you have these random groups where your whm will hit on you and ask if you have a ram suit to sex her up in...

Your writing needs a little work. Keep it up!

As a healer I find that it's usually the tank that's rude to everyone else and I feel like its because the only people (or a lot of them) are more of the hardcore type, the type that knows what they're doing, they are going for the best gear and want everyone to be on their level, and if they aren't the they can just go to another run in 2 minutes. And most times they don't take criticism well at all. Like when a tank pulls the full boss in AK, there are a bunch of ways I've seen it done and some of them are just not good and even saying so they get all defensive and tell tell me that that's how it's done. This is just from my experience with random tanks(DF) but some tanks are nice and I try to be helpful for them. But most times i just tell them when they're doing something that makes my job harder such as tanking in a wrong spot or not grabbing adds.
This is how I see them because the ones who are mean awe always the ones with full DL and or relic and trying to speed through things when we has some new DDs or something, and they never talk until something goes wrong

Thanks for this post. As a tank, I have received a lot of criticism (while some was actually constructive, most was basically insults and bad words).

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

Interesting, because as a tank I've found the general group of people that are rudest to me are healers.

Funny how that works, isn't it? ^_^

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as a tank, you don't generally interact with other tanks in a 4man dungeon, outside of primal battles where either it's 3 shot or it's not happening.

as a healer, they don't generally interact with other healers...

See how that works?

as a dps...you get tanks yelling at you for sleep pulling,
yelling at you for pulling agro on boss when it's at 30%...
yelling at healers when THEY are the ones that break sleep...
can go on...
i have seen plenty nice tanks, also seen healers who don't heal DD, generally it's the tanks making threats "pull once more and i leave" ....i pull with sleepga after tank starts running up to the enemies...some tanks go out of their way to break sleep.
then wonder how the healer got agro when they don't know where their aoe emnity spells are...
on my SCH i've had my fairy tanking...without even forcing it to spam heals...

rude tanks are common, rude healers slightly less so,
and lazy DD who wouldn't be able damage their way out of sastasha at 50(if level sync didn't exist) are kind of common as well.

if one of the 3 is in a party it's tolerable...but get 2 or 3 of those types combined?

really it'snot as much of a tank said this or heals said that, or DD can't do enough damage...

it's bad players people...different types..different levels...but just bad.

a 50 legacy mage asking me for help on the level 45 class quest...because he keeps dying...turns out he didn't know astral ice restores mana...seriously? how'd he do the previous class quests????????

some people....i try to help them... but bad includes attitude

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Originally Posted by Adaline

.i pull with sleepga after tank starts running up to the enemies

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Whoa, I think that's your problem. If it isn't established and okay with everyone in the party, you shouldn't be pulling with sleepga. Doing it AFTER the tank has pulled and established hate on everyone I can see, but pulling with it shouldn't be done unless the tank and everyone else is okay with it.

Am I the only one that has used the DF with very positive results?

Granted I don't use it as much a I did a month ago, but even now I still run WP 5 times a week or more if I want some extra tomes, the vast majority of the time soloqueing, sometimes duoqueueing with one DPS.

I think since release I've had...2 assholes? One I hesitate to even count, a healer in brayflox who was (I think) more annoyed with the lag he was getting on the last boss than anyone in particular (I can understand that bleeding into some rather acidic comments). The other was a typical 'DPS being a douche' in CM because the other tank hadn't been there before and askeed for some info on the strats (this was during the CM speedruns, post AK nerfs).

Other than that I've always had groups that were either nice and joking around for the duration, or just quiet and efficient.

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Originally Posted by Lafier

but tanks have the biggest egos.

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Maybe that's why we're tanks! We like being the cool dude that takes command and we get the feeling that we hold more responsibility than a mere DPS-peasant. We're people that like to feel important and want attention. Or well, at least I am. ;)

The higher you fly the harder you fall ya know? We sit on our high horse feeling grand so when you make us look bad, we get very hurt.

I loved this, thanks for the laugh.

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Maybe you perceive being a healer as a pet class where everyone in your party is a mindless thug sent to slaughter your enemies

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I may or may not have just fallen out of my chair laughing. It's a rare game/class where I find myself enjoying healer classes, but I need to level one now just for this.

+1 from a tank main. I can see where the OP is coming from, although I haven't experienced any myself, since I usually receive glowing praise. I'm actually in my current FC now, because I ran DF Cutter's Cry from who knows back when with a member, and he was so impressed with me, he bugged his officers to invite me (brag brag brag lol).

I've recently re-rolled a DPS, and I've tried my best not to give up on any of the newer tanks I come across. Sure they are sometimes slow, and they irk me a little when they don't mark, but where possible, I teach them how to tank, since as a more experienced player, I should be imparting knowledge to the newer players. Helps as well that I rolled a BLM for my DPS class, so I can use Sleepga when things get ugly.

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Originally Posted by Nonlinear314

This is a silly thread. When I'm not tanking, all I see in DF is cowards who are afraid to call out the tank because they waited in a queue and so they walk on eggshells and don't say anything while bad tank goes around being bad. If a tank sucks, does stuff like pull with sprint and provoke, doesn't mark and offers bad strats then the tank will be called out on it by yours truly.

Too many tanks act like divas because they get instant queues when most of them don't have the skills to back up their attitude.

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Uh, sometimes pulling with Provoke is the right thing to do, as it has a much longer range than Shield Lob. A prime example is the Succubi in AK. But in general cases, yes Shield Lob is the correct tool as it is a threat builder whereas Provoke is a threat copy (and on the pull there should be no threat yet to actually copy).

So...

We see tanks complaining about people being jerks to them while tanking.

We see healers complaining about people being jerks to them while healing.

We see DPSers complaining about people being jerks to them while DPSing.

There is a common thread between us.

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Originally Posted by TeganLaron

I'm not too sure where this opinion comes from to be honest. In line with the thread's generalisation of the community, I would say that tanks are the rudest most belligerent class I tend to come across. Most likely due to your number two point "we're a dying breed." Tanks know they can talk to and treat people however they want, because people need them. So we just have to put up with it.

Again I would like to reiterate that I am simply generalising in line with the thread, as I have of course met many tanks who were polite decent people like everybody else. However in terms of which group of people I've found to be rudest to me personally, tanks all the way I'm afraid.

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It's probably best to just think that people, in general, are rude. The role they take is just a vessel for them to take on with their being a d-bag. The OP might have been going upon the tanks perspective on the matter, but that's probably the most justifiable of stances to go on with this game. The example he gave:

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Tank: Should I tank him near where he's standing?
DPS 1: OH F***
DPS 2: lol
Me: Yeah, face him away from the party and stand close to the fruit.
DPS 1: Another noob tank lol go back to Africa (I made that Africa thing up, but he was probably a racist so it's fair)

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really does happen... a lot. It's far less forgiving for tanks to be doing things for the first time (having done research beforehand is irrelevant) than it is for DPS and healers. People react heavily to that, but so do some tanks on the matter. The main difference is the ratio. 1 tank raging is less likely than it is for 2 DPS.

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Originally Posted by Ri_ri

I'll tank again when there's a "No BRD" and "No BLM" option. It's always them.

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Im blm and im never rude to anyone, unless they are rude to me first.

Someone else mentioned it, and it's true. Different classes have different perspectives on who can be the biggest jerks in part because only DPSers see other DPSers while leveling up ... at least until they have their alts going.

So far, I only have my PLD at cap. I'm working now on a healer, but he's still way low. This means that I never get the chance to run with other tanks, except in Primals and CM, so oddly I often depend on suggestions for new tanking approaches to dungeons I already know from friends I run with in the game who have pugged stuff with other tanks through the DF.

I generally run either with full FC groups or with a FC core that we fill out with the DF. I've had very few bad experiences with those filled-out positions. Sometimes folks are more experienced than others, but only a few times have I seen actual verbal abuse. Perhaps I've just been lucky.

But in general, I agree with most of what the OP has to say. The mechanics of tanking isn't necessarily harder than the other roles, but it is much more stressful and any mistake you make is immediately evident and can lead to a group wipe.

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Originally Posted by MadMacallan

3. So Make a Tank
Here's the thing about exclusivity. If you go to a movie theater, short of smuggling in your own no frills Brand of Twizzlers (they're called Red Vines; you can buy them at WalMart. Or steal them from homeless people)

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I can't believe in 8 pages nobody talked about the most important part of this post.
Red Vines are not the no frills version of Twizzlers, they are the king of licorice and Twizzlers are the disgusting tasting also-rans.

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Originally Posted by Dochas

I can't believe in 8 pages nobody talked about the most important part of this post.
Red Vines are not the no frills version of Twizzlers, they are the king of licorice and Twizzlers are the disgusting tasting also-rans.

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I was always taught to be a tolerant person. To be respectful of the fact that people are different from me. But you... those blasphemous words...

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...on-d3hyvov.jpg

my first comment on bad/stupid dps, since i tank ofte, i let them die if they do stupid stuff, like intentionally pull agro at start and on trash mobs. if they wanna feel accomplished, i let them do it from the seat of the ground, i maintain enough threat to keep mobs off the healer(unless they do the famous medica 2 spam)

but i do agree, some people are just so stupid, people ask for help (this happened to me the first time i did WP) and they ignore the question or chat log, but complain the second its not done "their way"

now a days i just screw with people, i will go into AK with an i50 weapon and pld af and claim im new, watch them leave, then pop on my relic and full DL and queue for new people

There are many variables to be aware of, before pointing fingers.

My own personal advice....

Check the tank's gear upon entering the instance and balance your heals/damage accordingly if you notice the tank's gear isn't on par with your own.
If the tank is watching the cutscene, they're probably new, be patient & offer polite advice.
If you want a speed run, don't use the duty finder.
Let the tank pull, unless it's like Succubus in AK & the tank knows someone else is going to pull it.
Know what mobs are weak enough to AoE, otherwise keep it in your pants.

Last, but not least....

Watch the threat bars..... yeesh....

I think the real take-away here is, no matter what class you are playing as it would be prudent to behave. Maybe, I mean just maybe, there might be something to this crazy acting like a fully functioning adult member of society and showing some common decency to other people you encounter. Amazingly this works outside of the game as well, though many are not superheros in real life so they tend to keep their mouths shut. Try and be patient with your fellow players and offer advice in a way that is not threatening or demeaning, it's been working pretty well for me so far.

This is why I mostly choose different language tab on duty finder queue. Most of the time things would go much much smoother than when I played with English speakers... Too much shit talking for nothing.