Tank shortage is going to get worse.

I dont think tankings boring. Tanking 3-4 mobs at a time with no sleeper gets kinda crazy :p keeps me up.

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Originally Posted by Aerenvel

its when its a bunch of small adds come and we want to AOE em down and flash works up to 3 times before diminishing returns nulls it,

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The DR effect is on the blind, you will still build enmity with each flash use. It is so you cannot get free extra mitigation for perma-blinding a boss (assuming you have magesong to use flash every 3rd GCD)

Useful website
http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

Flash is actually the highest enmity builder for a noncombo single skill use, so if you have DD that dont let you get far enough into you first rage of halone combo, use flash first, it BLINDS the mob for more mitigation and adds enough threat to give you the 3 GCD against that DD, after that your in a normal threat rotation.

I just enjoy being good at what I do. Sure the job isn't the most fun in the world, but I know everyone in a group appreciates a great tank. I am working to build up my Warrior after I finish with Dragoon. I also want to be a positive community member and be patient with players that are new to dungeons/encounters. I'm noticing a little too much elitism going on at the higher levels at the moment and it's toxic to the FF14 community at large. If you want to be elitist and speed run everything then you should do it within your grand company, not a part of the community at large through duty finder/shout. Bottom line, some people will get tired of the queues and start leveling tanks.

Nearly ever single time I tank outside of an LS or FC arranged team I get people who run off, pull, or fight whatever they want despite me numbering mobs. I give all of these people friendly instruction, and ask nicely for them to not do these things. They never care or sometimes just explode at me about it. The largest issue of all is keeping on the mob I selected as main, even despite it being numbered. These same people usually never move during boss fights, and never handle adds.

There was even a fight where we had a monk who would not get off main boss no matter what (they did speak english). So it was up to me and another DD to grab adds, me kiting boss around as monk just spams to all shit through the fight.

I've gotten Warrior to 50 now, and I'm pretty much done with it. Except for my friends and people from LS or FC I am never going to play it. It only ever gets worse. I'm switching to a Bard and I don't care how long the duty finder is. I had gladiator at 22 and was ready to 50 it next but that thing is going to collect dust forever now.

People in this game are absolutely horrible to their tanks.

I know others in my LS who don't want to tank anymore or are beginning to feel that way. Not even to mention the people who flip out and such. Like when we fought the female judge and it was directly stated "if she targets you, and you get the message, the adds will have some pre-hate on you and be difficult to peel off, dont panick". Healer then proceeds to bitch out our add tank about not grabbing mobs off her. I've seen it happen more than once in castrum runs from healers or dps.

I'm just going DD and never looking back. I know the strats, I don't even need to be told what to do. I'm going to quietly/silently enjoy my dungeon runs after a long queu and never involve myself again in trying to teach morons. I'm not going to waste my time even talking to them anymore, its never worth it.

I'm a good tank and I only have problems with absent-minded DPS now, at 46. That being said, tanks need work. Just because the better players are happy with tanking does not mean that it is in a good state. Having queued heals quite a few times now, I have noticed a LOT of bad tanks. Disproportionately so. The severe shortage of tanks (IMO) can be chalked up to:

1) The high learning curve.
2) The GCD providing additional pressure on tanking in many situations.
3) The reliance on others keeping their threat in check / on target.
4) The rather simple and slow pace of tanks.

I think the proof is in the tank shortage. Some people, especially on the forums, will be okay with the game's status no matter what. The actual representation of tanks in-game says that the current state of tanking is in need of some assistance. Having tanked for the last ten years or so in every MMO I've ever played, FF's is my pick for the most cumbersome and dissatisfying. The GCD is my major annoyance. While I like the pace of the game, the GCD does stress tanking. I'm not used to multi-target threat being out of my hands. Yes, I tab target with a solid rotation. No, I do not have many problems. I'm not the average player though.

This all being said, tank or die!

As a 50 MRD who has done through the entire storyline and ampudor (haven't done wandering palace or HM's yet) I absolutely love my marauder. I do get tank burnout a bit as it would nice to be able to just kick back and only be responsible for myself like dps, but meh them the breaks.

I will admit the 30-40 range can be a little rough but by the time you get to end game things get pretty rocking.

I remember when I was doing the first of the two endstory dungeons PM I think.. the one with Ultima weapon. Everyone in the party was their first time through but my friend and I had got the strat page on the web for the fights so we had an idea and explained as we went along. Anyways we just beat Ultima phase one and while loading into P2 one of our healers dc. So there we are sitting with 30 minutes on the timer left with only 1 healer. None coming from a reque and none of us wanted to have to do all this over again. So we talked as a group and said screw it lets go.

First round through we got him to 25% with one healer and myself tanking with about 5.5k health and pulling every bloody healing trick in the book out I could manage.

Second round he had a fraction of a health bar, someone had blown the LB early and we didn't get him before he nova'ed.

Third round he died and we nuked the last guy with 5 mins on the timer.

I learned so much about survival tanking in that 25 minutes lol and fully realized the depths of warrior tanking at least. If I have one complaint it is that special moment when you are pulling a 3 or 4 mob heavy hitting group and you have a super heavy hitting dps in the group. Can you get enough aggro over that heavy hitter to start tabing and hitting the other mobs before 1 of them peels and tries to eat the healer who had to drop heavy heals at the very begging of the fight. but on most bosses by the time their health bars are at 50% I have so much of a hate lead that I go full dps/healing rotation skills with only the hate rotation thrown in once every 5 or 6 sets for the rest of the fight.

EDIT: Oh and P.S. While it is nice to have a lot of the defensive and offensive CD's off the GCD. The animation CD still makes those painful too.

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Originally Posted by Norbi

Level 25 is a little soon to be judging a class. You've only gotten like 40% of your available toolset at that point.
Stick with it, it gets better.

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That's the problem, the classes are unfinished to begin with in my opinion. But to force you to deal with an extremely limited toolset from the start is NOT the way to encourage people to get into tanking or to continue sticking with it until it stops sucking.

Like it or not there's simply not enough survivability or threat generation tools for a VERY long time, and leaving WARs without any extra active mitigation even in the endgame is really bad too.

it is nice to get a 15sec que as a pld that's always cool.

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Originally Posted by Kyp

The DR effect is on the blind, you will still build enmity with each flash use. It is so you cannot get free extra mitigation for perma-blinding a boss (assuming you have magesong to use flash every 3rd GCD)

Useful website
http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

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Thanks for this, there's a wealth of information here and the numbers and empirical data to back it up @.@.

Marauders should especially look down into the "Non-Defiance Tanking" section for some interesting ideas, obviously meant to be practiced before applied to end-game tanking situations.

For me Final Fantasy 14 had the best PLD skills and spells to use. I'll admit i was very disappointed when i saw PLD gets stuck with a Cure I...Almost no real point to even have that it seems since it heals for like 150 health. What is that? Like 1 hit? PLD is way too squishy on final fantasy 14 i will say that. It's like, if you give any class with high health some decent enity tools they can tank just as easily as PLD can in this game.
I never had issues keeping enmity unless some BLM decided to spam AOE spells. Or other DPS'ers decided to fight the #2 Marked mob til it was dead instead of the one i had targeted. I did not do any dungeons with Shield Oath(20% damage mitigation and increased enmity?) yet. PLD is still a very good tanking class, I just miss my heals. :(

love my tank,

only tank for FC. someone always looking for a tank. dont even have to bother with the duty finder noobs. and if i do it's insta -Q PEACE

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Originally Posted by Dashuto

I know others in my LS who don't want to tank anymore or are beginning to feel that way. Not even to mention the people who flip out and such. Like when we fought the female judge and it was directly stated "if she targets you, and you get the message, the adds will have some pre-hate on you and be difficult to peel off, dont panick". Healer then proceeds to bitch out our add tank about not grabbing mobs off her. I've seen it happen more than once in castrum runs from healers or dps.

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This for me is probably the most annoying. Many people cannot seem to grasp the fact that at certain points during some boss fights enmity cannot be controlled by the tank.

OP's description just helped me make up my mind that I want to tank in this game.

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Originally Posted by Dartanum

This for me is probably the most annoying. Many people cannot seem to grasp the fact that at certain points during some boss fights enmity cannot be controlled by the tank.

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It's why, for the dungeons I'm used to now, the Temple Guardian for example, I say right off the bat before we start the fight, "Watch for AoE attacks. I can pull all the aggro in the world from him and he'll still do random AoE attacks around the room. Be very careful." No one's had an issue during any of those runs, and if one of us dies, it's an immediate "damn it sorry about that" from whichever one of us bit it. No hate, no yelling. But, I imagine this'll get worse as I get closer to endgame runs.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

the GCD sucks for tanking

the buffs for agro are at later lvls (30 for War , 40 for PLD)

lack of aoe at low lvls (war has overpower spam i guess) , but pala needs circle of scorn at 35 (30 for shield oath)

flash as OCD will be an amazing change

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Yes, it would be amazing... amazingly overpowered.

Circle of scorn is horrible threat, it's just good for getting on the threat table and pulling a little bit of aoe damage.

Maybe it depends on the server, but on Famfrit, you will come across a GLD every five seconds. There are a bunch of 40+ PLD too.

The fact that a lot of people get abuse as a tank when something goes wrong (even though it's not always their fault) doesn't help the popularity of tanking classes either.
I myself am enjoying tanking so far, even though I'm only lvl 22. But in all honesty, I'm deathly afraid of the duty finder due to some of the jerks in there. (And it's not just in this game)

If people would be nicer and more forgiving, I think half of the problem would already be solved, really.

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Originally Posted by Cubester

The fact that a lot of people get abuse as a tank when something goes wrong (even though it's not always their fault) doesn't help the popularity of tanking classes either.
I myself am enjoying tanking so far, even though I'm only lvl 22. But in all honesty, I'm deathly afraid of the duty finder due to some of the jerks in there. (And it's not just in this game)

If people would be nicer and more forgiving, I think half of the problem would already be solved, really.

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Im gonna be honest. Almost all dungeons pre 50 are extremelu easy to tank. You need to do them so when yiu get to 50 at least youll know the basics. DPS and healers have to deal with a lot of different things too. Its definately not just the tank at end game.

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Originally Posted by jdlswan

I quit being a tank because of other bigot tanks and their friends while fighting Ifrit HM. When someone starts the fight off with "eww, your black?" you know you know its gonna be a stressful fight. I would try to tank but his mage friend would cast as i was starting the fight making it very hard to hold aggro. Of course you fully knew it was him since the mage died first but THEN they would blame it on me. So my tank PLD will sit on the side lines for now.

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Its not those people that make me not want to tank, those people actually make me laugh and i get alot of pleasure at wasting their time, the ego guys are just waste of time trolls anyways, its the clueless noobs that expect you to do everything for them that erks me the wrong way, why even queue for dungeons if you are just going to act like a braindead log

as a 44 pld my main issue with the job is how damn gimp cure is. with a scholar healer its not a problem but with a whm healer it can be. i have a little over 1000 mp and like nothing to spend it on since it only takes 4-5 flashes to get solid aggro on adds. also the tool tips are all messed up because it seems like i generate aggro way faster with sword oath than with shield.

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Originally Posted by Zaiken

Not really that fun, you spam the 3 skills over and over again along with flash to get hate. You mark the Target so hoping the DPS would target that monster. You constantly have to tell them to attack only the Target you attack. Ranger always keep stealing your hate showing off their DPS. Our sub job skill Cure are pathetic making it worthless. Our damage is laughable.

I hope they buff the Tank damage more, and at least gave them Cure 2.

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I slightly agree, but Cure2 is the healers main heal. I hate to sound greedy but give tanks that and what are healers going to do? I mean yeah I already get bored if my tank doesn't take enough damage and I have to to idle for 5 seconds before I can heal them. :(
I however would like tanks to have Regen or a slightly less powerful form of it. Not a straight up heal but it is useful and will really help in PvE as you guys wont get slaughtered so fast. :/

What sucks most is the 2,5 SEC GCD for a PALADIN at 50 -_-. U cant pump out enough enmity/hatred as a DPS does in a short time, even a Healer with a few AOE Heals will out agro u :(.

So: Not fun to play, feels not responsive enough and buff shield oath-- a 2nd Tank paladin with sword oath and normal rotation will out agro u aswell :(

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Originally Posted by nimrod

What sucks most is the 2,5 SEC GCD for a PALADIN at 50 -_-. U cant pump out enough enmity/hatred as a DPS does in a short time, even a Healer with a few AOE Heals will out agro u :(.

So: Not fun to play, feels not responsive enough.

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Give this man a cupi doll. Not only that we have no instant on me hate, yes provoke but we all know how it works and the mob you used it on for that DPS getting attacked hasn't slowed down on their attack so that 1 sec of snap is already taken back while you are still slamming the button hoping it works again while you try to also break off the flash key.

@OP

To me it looks like you're trying to trade a boring gameplay to another boring gameplay. It's not really the class/job fault, it's what you want. Let me explain, you said glad/paladin is boring, low damage, high stress and exchange it with high dmg low stress that no one can pull monster off u, so where is the challenge on that? Tank is designed so you have take care if someone else takes hate chasing them if needed and that's one of the beauty of it. If you take that away then you might as well just be a dps.

And so far in the duty finder I've encountered a good tank never loses hate if he wants to. I can tell a very BIG difference between a good tank, an ave. tank & a bad tank. If ur losing hate either your dps isn't targeting ur target or u are just lazy on recovering hate from it.

With this thread you partially admitted that you're an ave. tank if not a bad one.

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Originally Posted by Quincy

@OP
With this thread you partially admitted that you're an ave. tank if not a bad one.

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Yes I am a bad tank. Been doing it for 10 years... leading successful raids in every game I play... all while being the worlds worst tank.


Tanking in FFXIV is the most boring tanking I have seen in any game... No other way to describe it. It is boring. Many people loved Pld in FFXI and threat was basically never an issue for them. Threat does not mean fun or interesting gameplay and it certainly doesn't if any idiot can totally ruin that gameplay. How creative is a class/role that is 100% dependent on others to be able to do that job. DPS and Heals will always be doing their job, with or without a tank... sure they won't do it long without a tank but they can still do it. No amount of effort will allow a tank in the current game to tank if their group is stupid.

They seem to have tried to go the active mitigation route other games are going (see WoW). Problem is they didn't use the entire system. You don't have a real choice of threat, survival or balance. You have the option of using all of your abilities and being a normal tank or not using them and sucking.

As others have pointed out the GCD for tanks is bad and needs to change. They would probably need to nerf out threat a little bit and reduce the cost of abilities to make up for the using of them more often. It would be exactly the same as now but much more fast paced and would allow for a lot more control over the battlefield. It would also make DPS/Healing more fun... sitting around for 5+ seconds isn't fun.

Don't get me wrong I like the generally slower pace of FF games but the GCD system is really clunky with tanks. FFXI gameplay was a snails pace compared to this but if you needed to through out a lot of threat and/or survival tools in a big hurry you could and that is fun.

Also of note... After the updates I decided to mess around with my MRD and found that they get awesome exp in fates that I can't pull off on my much higher Gld no mater how hard I try which is really odd. So I run an instance at 15 and am amazed at how easy and fun it is but figured there is no way Mrd is that much easier than Gld. So I go back to Gld and do an instance... no threat problems at all.

I have no idea what the heck happened but my play style didn't change over night while not playing but all of a sudden my abilities are working. Provoke which never worked no mater how I used it now works perfectly. Even when people where not focusing what they should have been I was doing ok. I have no idea what the heck is going on but I am happy it is better. I still have a major issue with my OCD abilities not activating and don't understand why that is but overall most of the problems vanished with a few hours time.

I don't see Marauder as tank. I see them as local, defended, damage dealers. Gladiator isn't a tank. It's crowd control with low damage and a critical demand for a healer.

Add me to the list of tanks who "just can't hang." It is way too hard to aggro enemies without a decent group taunt. I also run out of TP just trying to get the damn mobs away from the healer and dps. I always thought I'd be a good tank, this game is proving otherwise. I will never claim to be a great tank again! I just want to dps or heal now. Thanks for listening.

I enjoy tanking, it's my favorite role... however I'm more and more tempted to just play my bard anytime I go into DF simply because I'm tired of the mass numbers of derpy dps that don't seem to understand basics like don't blow your dd cool downs and biggest attacks the instant I throw my shield. Also I'm getting so tired of dps and healers that run away when they do get aggro... RUN TOWARDS ME! I haven't really struggled with enmity on mobs unless I'm just well outgeared by the dps. The problem being most of those dps don't seem to understand enmity or the need to scale back damage until I've gotten a lead... and just keep going at full power as the mob is eating their face.

I will say this though, as item level average increases I notice more and more that flash simply doesn't keep up for aoe enmity and hallowed ground is not making up the difference. I do worry that flash will simply not generate enough enmity later on to keep up unless SE somehow makes it scale with weapon damage or something.

I really don't have any complaints with tanking so far. PLD isn't the best at AoE threat, but you have to mark the adds in the order you want them to die. Most DPS are smart enough to follow the kill-order you set up.

I usually open AoE pulls with 2 Flashes in a row, one FB>SB>RoH combo, followed by another Flash. If you mark the mobs with a kill-order, you should never lose aggro. I agree that it's not as simple as WoW tanking, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it stressful. I enjoy tanking that requires more input than two keystrokes and a nap.

Compared to FFXI you can tank in your sleep in FFXIV :O

This is my first game I've mained a tank. I find normal "trash mob" groups to be the most difficult to control. Bosses for the most part are easy.

Maybe if people worshiped tanks and gave us money and women there would be more of us around...

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Originally Posted by Mariwanna

Add me to the list of tanks who "just can't hang." It is way too hard to aggro enemies without a decent group taunt. I also run out of TP just trying to get the damn mobs away from the healer and dps. I always thought I'd be a good tank, this game is proving otherwise. I will never claim to be a great tank again! I just want to dps or heal now. Thanks for listening.

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I have no idea what you and the OP are talking about but do you know that both PLD and WAR have a basic combo that will constanly keep the aggro on them if they keep it in their rotation? You guys might want to try using it more often :/

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Originally Posted by Arkine

Maybe if people worshiped tanks and gave us money and women there would be more of us around...

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Or a few men! I wouldn't mind a Cid minion to feed me crumpets while I tank.

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Originally Posted by Rin_Kuroi

Or a few men! I wouldn't mind a Cid minion to feed me crumpets while I tank.

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That would just make it awkward for everybody.

The thing that is going to reduce the amount of tanks more then anything is not the game play but infact the stressy fits/ abuse from other players who refuse to be tanks but decide they're the subject matter experts! During endgame content I've had that much abuse from people trolling players that I might just leave the tank class and go dps.

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Originally Posted by Nickylad

The thing that is going to reduce the amount of tanks more then anything is not the game play but infact the stressy fits/ abuse from other players who refuse to be tanks but decide they're the subject matter experts! During endgame content I've had that much abuse from people trolling players that I might just leave the tank class and go dps.

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Yep, the first time in a dungeon can be really difficult as a tank, not only do you have to defend against the monsters but often you have to be defending yourself from party members who have not an ounce of patience. Depending on my mood i'll either try to put them on the defensive to shut them up or leave the group. Don't forget tanks are in demand so finding a new group is very easy.

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Originally Posted by Grembo

I have no idea what you and the OP are talking about but do you know that both PLD and WAR have a basic combo that will constanly keep the aggro on them if they keep it in their rotation? You guys might want to try using it more often :/

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As long as people don't go haywire and attack everything you didn't mark.