Common mistakes new tanks make

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Originally Posted by SyndellJigokusakebigoe

If you watch the Enemy List there are symbols next to each mob. A Square flashing red/yellow you have Agro. Upward arrow red/ylw means youre 2nd on its hate list. Downward ylw is 3rd after that it means youre 4th or lower. The symbol will change the INSTANT you lose agro even before it starts moving to new target.

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Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for this. I'm somewhat new to MMO's and am generally a fairly casual solo player (3 month old twins and a 4 year old will do that), but the required grouped story quests in FF XIV have forced me to learn how to tank in a hurry. I'm still learning the ropes, and this sort of info is extremely helpful...certainly far more helpful than getting constantly cursed at throughout a dungeon run because you happened to lose aggro and let the healer get hit once. :)

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Originally Posted by Ekko

The dragon in Brayflox's uses its breath every 20 or so, anyway I found out that drifting left or right was a good way to deal with it instead of running away.

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I don't always drift, but when I do, it's my name.

That aside, I just went to stone vigil and the first trash mobs wiped us (we cleared it first time, tho, so lesson learned). I guess you can put overeager pulls there. Also, when tanking a boss and another objective appears (that you have to kill, like ifrit's spike), some tanks went and tried to deal with the object, with the AoE-laden boss tagging along. That didn't work well with the melee DPSes.

7. Tunnel vision

Many tanks will only look forward, disregarding the possibility of enemies coming from behind.

Things I've seen from tanks over the last two days:

1) Spamming nothing but Rage of Halone. You have to do the full Fast->Savage->Rage combo in order to get aggro, not just spam Rage. It won't work, and your Ifrit group will hate you.

2) Spamming everything but the Fast->Savage->Rage combo. Your single-target rotation should not be Shield Lob->Shield Lob->Flash->Shield Swipe->Savage->Rage->Provoke (while having aggro)->Shield Lob.

I really wish I were making these two up, but I'm not :(

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Originally Posted by Murdok

I mark my mobs, I cast flash 3 or 4 times in the beginning to makes sure I've got aggro on me, shift+F for my focus target and switch between the one's I prioritized.

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Shift-F is a new one for me. What does that do?

Tanks! Please don't let this happen to your healer!

http://i.imgur.com/4JrKcH8.jpg

Nothing pisses off a healer more than seeing you focused on the boss and ignoring adds, forcing the healer to tank all the adds while still having to heal you.

And nothing pisses off a healer even more, when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

If any new tanks can't find the problem in this screenshot, please reply and I'll happily go into a long explanation for you.

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I'm up to my daily limit so here are the replies to posts below:

@Reinheart: After asking him to tank the adds, twice, he replies "hello, so you think you can do it?" or something close to those lines. That reply was the last straw so I told him my main Lv.44 PLD's name and left group :(

@RhazeCain: yes, there's always exceptions to the rule.

@sybase: no, not in this game because we don't have the 10%/30% aggro threshold, and healing enmity seems a lot higher than other MMOs. You can see from the picture that one of the adds is down to a sliver of health yet is still chewing on me. Something like that more often than not will not work in this game unless the healer stops healing. And in a situation like this, the healer can do nothing but spam self heals. Remember it's not 1 add on the healer. This is 6 adds, and you can see the string of red numbers there. That's the kind of damage and frequency of damage I was taking.

And look at the screenshot, it's a small enclosure, so the tank should have been picking them up.

Now for some background. In this fight, sets of three adds spawn at regular intervals. These adds spawn behind the boss, and they would have to make their way through the tank, to even get to me. Note "set of 3", but the picture has 6 adds. That's because the DPS could only manage to bring 2 adds down to low health before the next set spawned. So the DPS was at fault, too. In fact, they used Sleep on the adds. So lack of knowledge on the encounter is also one cause.

But all that is not the point. The point is there are adds that spawned. As a tank, you should always pick them up. Especially when you don't know the mechanics. Adds are more often meant to be picked up by the tank than not. Some adds are weak and don't need to be picked up, and then there are some that should not be picked up, but these are rare.

@Zfz lol that's terrible, well should let him/her go this time it's still Brayflox could of been a new tank trying to learn still.

But yeah as a tank your main goal is to keep hate on everything you can, at least for the 4 man dungeons, for 8 man, you got 2 tanks in some (talking from 1.x experience, haven't played end game in ARR yet) where 1 main tank tanks boss, while 2nd tank tanks rest of the adds, etc.

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when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

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Zfz is mostly correct, and for that particular fight (Brayflox 1st boss iirc) 100% correct, but I would like to point out that there are fights where really the tank can't mess with adds and DPS has to do it. Last boss Amdapor Keep comes to mind. However, the reason is not usually because tank would lose agro -- it's because there's some mechanic (AE's usually) that follow the boss or tank around and you DON'T want them going that other place.

If a tank really would lose agro to healer after having a good while on the boss, that tank just sucks badly.

Oh should just mention this for NON-TANK players, since I noticed some didn't know and got pissed off at the tank...
Bosses uses moves that targets random players time to time even if the tank has 100% hate, it's not the tanks fault or anything... If you're not the tank and see the hate list and it's flashing red (like Zfz's image above) then something is wrong with the Tank, but if it's not then it's that bosses random move so it's your responsibility to dodge those moves.

Had one noob getting all pissed off over this one and everyone else in PT was trying to explain and he/she didn't want to listen and just left LOL

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Tanks! Please don't let this happen to your healer!

[Nothing pisses off a healer more than seeing you focused on the boss and ignoring adds, forcing the healer to tank all the adds while still having to heal you.

And nothing pisses off a healer even more, when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

If any new tanks can't find the problem in this screenshot, please reply and I'll happily go into a long explanation for you.

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While I don't know the mechanics to the fight in this screenshot, good dps will pick up adds aggro'd to the healer and take them to the tank to be picked up by a normal flash rotation. Quite often you don't want the tank running to adds on the healer with boss in tow allowing the boss to AoE the whole group. However, the tanks response of "not my problem" is not acceptable.