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

I still have yet to experience the toxic endgame community but I have basically level pld to 50 in DF and warrior to 38 and have only experienced a toxic player once. If it is my first time in the dungeon then I let everyone know, if they don't like it then they can wait 45 minutes in the queue for a different tank. I am also a solid tank and have dual monitor setup so I always have boss strats up on second monitor for new encounters.

The best advice I can give to tanks is to level other classes and learn their mechanics so you have a better understanding of what to do when grouped with certain classes, what is getting cast on you and the enemy (e.g. buffs/debuffs), their CDs and traits and what level they get things, etc. With BLM I expect sleept targets, with SMN I expect to flash more often because of Bane, etc.

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

And the most annoying thing in any pug regardless of class is touched on in the post above: People who don't read party chat or reply when asked simple questions like "who is new?" or "Can you use X on Y?" then get butthurt and annoyed when they feel "forced" to respond to simple questions after they fail. Like said poster, don't put tanks on a pedestal. Treat people like you want to be treated until they treat you otherwise, then they are fair game.

Nice post. I have seen multiple new players give up on tanking due to how people have treated them. I've never had any issues, but I'm not new to MMOs, and I do alright as a tank (I think). I am very patient, and I try to help when I can. I never tell anyone that they suck, or that they should die in a fire. I try to give helpful advice, and continue tanking to try and get them through the content. One example was in story mode Titan. I was helping a FC member clear it. The FC member, as well as the two randoms were new to the fight. We spent around 70 minutes in there if I remember correctly, and I stuck it out the whole time. I kept giving advice on what needed to be done, or where people should stand, but everyone kept dying (mostly due to not being able to dodge landslides). We never did clear Titan with that group, but I hope that the practice helped them for future groups.

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Originally Posted by Shinebox

DPS can never do wrong in this game.

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Final Sting and Doom would like to have a word with you.

That's why I love love love Sunken Temple. DPS are easily carried as they faceroll their way through Brayflox then they queue temple and are expected to actually do stuff and wipe over and over again. It's hilarious.

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Originally Posted by Nonlinear314

Final Sting and Doom would like to have a word with you.

That's why I love love love Sunken Temple. DPS are easily carried as they faceroll their way through Brayflox then they queue temple and are expected to actually do stuff and wipe over and over again. It's hilarious.

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I really hope you realize he was being sarcastic.

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Originally Posted by Noahlimits

I really hope you realize he was being sarcastic.

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Really? You really hope so? Well, I really really hope so too, for your sake, because apparently my understanding is really important to you.

Thanks for your concern, stranger.

I gotta say, between the 3 roles, Tank is the only one I have to steel my nerves on when I queue up for DF.

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Originally Posted by MadMacallan

6. Other MMOs are Different
As I mentioned, skills like Flash are brutally ineffective most of the time. Damage-generated hate is totally overrated so we're left using things like Circle of Scorn which by the way, doesn't actually increase threat aside from the laughable damage it produces. That being said, whether or not you think other MMOs suck because after several years of dedicating your life to them you suddenly refer to them as things people should go back to when they piss you off and you're awful at insulting people, I've tanked in practically all of them, and AOE hate was a hell of a lot easier. Rift, WoW, and others all provided an arsenal to tanks that kept the MOBs sticky and the healers from a permanent limp.

Mad Macallan

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Only thing I will disagree with, and its a very tiny quibble...

In classic and early BC, WoW tanking had even less AoE tools than we get in FFXIV:ARR.

This MMO, FFXIV, is really a semi return to 'oldschool' tanking. Where building enmity is not easy, and DPS can easily overtake any tank if they try...

Its actually easier here - the threat meter is built in. I remember the mess of trying to get everyone use an addon for threat back in classic WoW, and not just that, but the same version of that addon... One person out of sync in a raid roster, and the entire thing was worthless...
- Plus it was a monster addon that would eat about 10FPS off your connection all by itself, by virtue of being a hack that would parse all 40 people's combat logs in real time, punch them through transdimensional Vogon-calculus, and come back with excel spreadsheets on the lower half of your screen...

Tanks now who think getting enmity is hard... noobs who need to get offa my lawn! :)
(Ok, its hard by anything made after 2008)

Rest of your post, I'm with you. But nobody in game is really listening... I've been reading posts like this since I started tanking in 2006, in every MMO I've done it in.

As far as my experiences have been, ALL classes can be jerks. However, the ones with the biggest egos are generally tanks. I had a tank stand in green poison (scorpion boss in Toto-rak) and wipe us. I said "You need to get out of that green crap", and his reply was "You trying to pick a fight?" This was a full darklight geared pally that was obviously there to help someone else queue up faster. My question though is, how is telling someone that standing in stuff is bad trying to pick a fight? Needless to say when I asked him how I was picking a fight, the answer was only silence.

TL;DR - In my experience, all jobs can be jerks, but tanks have the biggest egos.