Tanking habits

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Originally Posted by Sadana

I main BLM and I don't like entire room pulls. :/ Even with Quelling Strikes, I'm going to end up pulling hate and it's annoying. Only time I really don't mind is if we have BLM/BLM/WHM or BLM/BRD/WHM or BLM/WHM/WHM in the party... then we just smoke everything and it's ridiculous. And only with people I know, not pugs. But when tanks EXPECT we want to do this or even pass the blame onto my class, I roll my eyes. <Thanks for the offer, but I have to pass>.

eta: Does it really hurt to CHECK with the party first? :/

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This is pretty much a non-issue for me since Flash was buffed and CoS was given an enmity effect. At most I will lose a mob or two toward the end (when I'm out of mana) but at that point they're nearly dead anyway.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I've definitely had more complaints about small pulls than I have about large.

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Right? If it's not complaints, it's DPS facepulling additional mobs to "help" me.

As a career tank I agree that pulls get stupid sometimes. It's hard though, as I have gotten grief from parties for not pulling enough or fast enough or whatever. I think there are many people other than just tanks that are expecting speed runs these days. I love tanking and always will but there is definitely more stress involved in it than other roles. Everyone expects a ton out of you and wants you to pull/place/whatever exactly how they want it.

If you don't like how the tank is pulling then say something. If he continues to do it... then yeah, there is a problem. I think you will find that most of us are just trying to do what the community finds "normal" these days.

Pulling everything up to first boss in wanderers palace is fun cause its actually a challenge! But I'd never do that if I werent in a group of only FC members unless the others wanted me to!

Edit: Also this

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I've definitely had more complaints about small pulls than I have about large.

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My tank character recently got to level 50, and in ilvl 51 or so I tried pharos sirius, and the healer complained that I didn't pull enough creeps even though I was struggling to keep hate for 2 groups at once.

I feel bad for new tanks that just hit 50, I already knew all the mechanics, and my characters attitude helps me if someones mean (She just tells them theyre silly and keeps doing what she did)

I had one healer bail on me in brayflox hm cause my ilvl was too low apparantly.
We got another one and finished it.

To OP, I guess I was affected in one of your DF run last night on Qarn HM.
I try to always be attentive to others during runs, so the first pack is always a test more or less.
During first pack, I asked for TP regen but did not received it from you. No biggy, perhaps you did not see the chat line.
Run was kind of smooth, chat was blank, then before or after 2nd boss, you just wrote, and I'm quoting : "Tanks have very bad habits in this game".
To what I immediatly replied something like : "Just tell me what you dislike and I do my best to adjust accordingly". You just said "its cool mate" or something, and it was it.

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Originally Posted by Cadmar

If you don't like how the tank is pulling then say something. If he continues to do it... then yeah, there is a problem. I think you will find that most of us are just trying to do what the community finds "normal" these days.

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You should believe Cadmar, just try to act nicely, you'll see that most tanks will listen to what you say.
For the records, the run ended up without any death, and the healer was a static mate, also other DPS was a BLM, so I based this run given the context. It could have been very different if you had expressed the desire to.

Tanks and other player are rarely playing against you.

Edit: It wasn't you. You don't have a NIN. Sorry then ;)

Personally, I wish they'd remove some of the mechanics that force you to keep your pull size small. When I enter a dungeon, I check everyone to see what I'm working with and also ask the group if they want big or small pulls. I even adjust my accessories between DPS and Fending accordingly to deal with the size decided. If you have 2 melees, sure keep it small and consistent stream but if you have 2 BLMs and a competent healer, why not go as fast as possible? After running a dungeon for the 200th time, I just want to get in, get everyone their poetics as fast as reasonably possible and get out again to do other things.

It may be boring to you to spam the same AoE skill over and over again but it's equally boring to me to only have to keep hate on 3 mobs. It takes very little skill, even without marking targets, once you're used to it. I'd much rather have the option be there for when I do get an ideal speed run group than to be forced to keep pull sizes to 3-6 mobs all the time.

Furthermore, even melee DPS have decent AoE skills at their disposal. Everyone talks about how limited MNK is when it comes to AoE so we'll take that as an example. If you wait until the mobs are grouped and then use Blood for blood > Internal Release > Perfect Balance > Rock Breaker x5 > Howling Fist > and then go into your normal combo ending it in Rock Breaker everytime, you can easily put out about 2.5k damage to all mobs in the span of 5 MNK GCDs, with the added benefit of keeping GL3 up while picking off the survivors. I would assume that DRG and NIN have similar options when utilized correctly. Will you match 2 Flare happy BLMs? No, probably not. Will you do enough damage to take the group down before a competent tank/healer run out of resources. Most likely.

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Originally Posted by Mercuito

This sounds amazing. and I wish all tanks did this. however what really happens is as soon as the doors open the tank goes charging into the mobs and runs past then to the next pack. He doesn't care if you can handle it. It's like being chained to a raging bull and having to clean up his mess as soon as he makes it.

What's even better is they don't even wait for you to finish a pack once they got bored of one pack they're off to the next

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While I don't always inspect the players I always look at the group composition before deciding how big a pack to pull. If there's no real AoE DPS, I do smaller pulls and only start moving to the next pack when I'm sure the last mob of the previous pull will be dead by the time I've pulled new mobs. If there's AoE I ask if it's alright for me to do big pulls and if they say yes I go for it. While sometimes it can be frustrating for me to pull slowly I try to remind myself that I'm running with three other people and what's best/most fun for the group should take precedence which generally makes the runs go much more smoothly than if I just charge ahead and do whatever I feel like.

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Originally Posted by Mercuito

Actually this line of thinking is wrong. The times sololy depend on your group make up.

However if you have 2 monks or 2 ninjas in your group then guess what. you will spend 1 min on each group of mob not 5. Why cos we do more dps single target . However if you mass pull we're so slow at it and run out of tp that it actually takes 6mins to kill the mobs where as if you took them in packs of 3 you would have done it in 2 mins.

don't bite of more than your group can chew.

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Yea this isn't exactly right. If a DRG can do 400 single target DPS on one mob that is fine. If that same DRG can only do 150 DPS on 1 mob using AOE attacks, then thats bad, BUT it becomes on-par (not accounting for TP) at just 3 mobs. Now when the Tank has like 6+ Mobs, all of a sudden that DRG doing 150 DPS a mob x6 is now dealing 900 DPS, which is now justified with the higher TP cost. Personally back in those Brayflox HM runs of old, I used to do over 1400 DPS (no joke) to some of those bigger trash packs as DRG.

Now granted MNK aoe is very very bad no matter how many mobs there are, but from my understanding NIN aoe is fairly decent, as is BRD when were talking 5+ mobs, and although the "sweet spot" for SMN is 4 targets, MiasmaII, Shadow Flare, and Tri-disaster has no cap like Bane does, so there dps increases as mob count does as well. Now granted if the over-all aoe dps of the group is low then your DPSers will run out of resources (TP/MP) to do dps and then THATS when you know your tank has pulled more than the group can handle.

so tldr; if your group has resources available, its faster to AOE than it is to Single Target. If you are going to be using AOE dps, then the more mobs you pull, the less resources and time you will use overall.

Also want to comment to his:

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Originally Posted by Mercuito

1. it's stressfull
2. it's boring cos your just spaming aoes
3. it's risky cos your likely to wipet

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Those 3 points you made are actually kind of contradictory. You say its stressful and risky, and yet also boring. If your stressed out then your really not bored.. your stressed. I like playing both DPS and Healer when it comes to big pulls. DPS is pressure to kill things fast before the Healer/Tank run out of cooldowns and die. That pressure for me is the challenge, and with challenge comes fun. What fun would I have if I just spammed 1-2-3 with no threat of anything bad going to happen? When I am healing, there is the pressure to keep the tank alive. If that is easily managed, I can force it to be harder by adding my own DPS to the mobs. And again, challenge brings fun, and I like that fine line between healing and dpsing. Now as tank... I don't really enjoy as much as the others truthfully because of people who like to complain about-every-single-thing. I got you into your dungeon, now get off my back unless I am being absolutely terrible. But even when I do tank I enjoy challenging myself. I could pull 1 mob... and again 1-2-3 until its dead but where is the challenge in that? Pull more and juggle threat management and damage reduction.

My attitude on this issue changes depending on what class I'm playing. If I'm healing, I always state in advance things like "I haven't done this one before, please don't pull too big" or "Honestly I am super lazy/tired tonight, don't make me work too hard." But if I've been through the dungeons before and I'm just there for tomes or whatever, I will let the tank know how big of pulls I can handle and let them go for it if they want to.

If I play DPS, I just sit down, shut up, and let the tank and healer hash out pulls. I'm just there to kill stuff; the number of things I have to kill won't change no matter the size of the pull. XD

Had a tank last night in Sastasha HM doing some big pulls, including pulling the whole last room at once. I was Bard, other DPS was Dragoon, healer was Scholar so no holy, but nevertheless, we cleared them out at a decent pace without any issue. I think that deciding how to do pulls shouldn't automatically be based on party composition--two great melee players can down big packs of mobs faster than two crappy Black Mages who don't know their rotations, etc. I like the idea of a "tester" pull at the beginning to gauge your group's ability and then go with the flow from there.

I think the bottom line for me is that people need to agree. If someone doesn't want to speed run, I always side with that person even if I personally hate the dungeon and want out of there as soon as possible, because forcing someone to play content in a way that wasn't really intended by the creators and in a way that the person might not be comfortable with seems really unpleasant to me. That's all. :)

It's 'boring' to spam aoes? I find it boring to spend 20 min in a dungeon like WP I've been doing for a year when I could be done in 10.

There's nothing inherently wrong with speed runs unless the group can't handle the stuff the tank grabs. Some are better judges of this than others so just communicate with your party. I've played other classes enough to know their aoe capabilities by glancing at their gear and tanked enough to know how to balance my CDs and work with my healer. Not to mention seeing how a 1st medium pull goes to verify for the rest of the dungeon. Not everyone has that experience or knowledge though. Just communicate if you are uncomfortable.

Stopped at WP comment. OP I hope you didn't kill everything on that initial first large pull, because you can skip most of it... and get to boss in like 2 minutes time, shaving off lots of time on the run. Also you don't think killing one group at a time, and spending an extra 15 minutes in a dungeon isn't more boring? lol PS. I'm one of those tanks that checks party configuration and even ask if everyone is ok. I'm sure some may be pressured, in their own mind, to say ok sure. But others want to just get it over with just like me. If I'm in a low level, unless I'm with a bunch of Atma people, I pull slowly, and kill everything unless otherwise advised.

I can't get my mind off of WP. I mean even back with ilvl70 Darklight we were pulling huge, and wiping the mobs out without much trouble. Now we have ilvl100+ plus people dropping in there, it should take seconds to kill those mobs now..regardless of what DPS class we are talking about. As far as the lower dungeons like WP and AK.