A Thread By A Tank For Future/Current Tanks.

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Originally Posted by Lasair_Shiorai

I have no idea the reason but the enemies would break focus from him mid way into the battle then set their sites on the healer.

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Two possibilities I can think of:

- The tank was using DPS-oriented combos instead of high-enmity combos. He would generate less enmity than he might otherwise, and if he isn't being defensive he'd have to be healed more, causing more heal enmity.

- Overhealing. In this game overhealing causes threat the same as regular healing. Spamming heals when they aren't needed generates a lot of unnecessary threat. Better to keep the tank close to full health but not aim to fill him up with every cast (unless you know a big hit is coming).

The only thing DPS might have contributed to that situation would be to get hit a lot by AoE or enemy skills, since that would force the healer to heal them and generate more healing enmity.

I am sure there are tanks out there that need experiences and there are many people(myself included) that are okay with that but from my experience the tanks i have to deal with that are bad are just plain bad.

1.) if you are a 50 tank and still have not learned the proper rotation to hold agro, that's your fault, all the mimicking in the world wont fix it.

2.) If i specifically show you where and how to pull a boss(AK last boss comes to mind) and you screw it up 5 times in a row and get it right the 6th time and reply with "well you should of told me to do it that way the first time" nd yes this actually happens than you are bad.

3.) If people explain simple mechanics such as "move the dragon off the green stuff" and u tunnel than yes you are bad.

There are times when the tank is getting chewed out for mistakes that i due to them being inexperienced and in those cases i do defend them but there are A LOT of tanks that do the above and it is irritating. Low levels its w/e but at level 50 you should get a general understanding of how your class works and if you cant do simple things suck as hold agro at 50 than you cant expect a lot of people to have patience with you.

Thanks for the thread ! It's nice to see a topic like this about us tanks :)

yesterday I was tanking on my little baby marauder, lvl 11. I joined the lvl 10 training ground. some little whitemage (!!) decided to cast medica (!!!) right of the bat and zing had about 10 enemies on him. what does little whitemage do? run away of course, stopping every few seconds to cast cure. needless to say, whitemage died, then lay on the ground watching us run around in circles (naturally the two dps also decided running around in circles would be a good idea, while keep on attacking)
I took the time to type in chat 'revive please and don't run away from me when you have aggro'... to which mister whitemage just replied with 'no u deserve to die u suck'
a miracle happened and the dps and I were able to kill the first rush of mobs (I was getting healed by one of them)
then the whm revived and I tell the archer to draw one of the next group out so we don't get the boss in right away. what does the whitemage do? puts his freaking dot on the boss and the whole 'I'm a headless chicken' game starts all over again.
mind you, this is the first guildhest, specifically called 'training grounds'. you are supposed to LEARN in this. if someone's trying to help you - which I honestly did, because I have 10+ years of 'experience' healing in MMOs, then you don't get all cocky. you also don't tell people they suck. you tell them what they did wrong (and I'm 110% sure I didn't actually do anything wrong. it's not like there's so many different skills I could have used at lvl 11. I could probably have used cure to try and 'outaggro' the healer's heals... ahem) but I bet this whitemage behaves the same way in dungeons actually appropriate for their level, too (with the only difference being that a tank has more skills to 'counter' the derp)

I wanted to curl up in a ball for an hour after that experience.

reason why I'm posting this?
I dislike tanking. or at least it's not my 'favourite job' by any means.
why I do it anyway? because you only truly know 'what it's like' if you actually play the role. my main focus for now is bard and whitemage. so this idiot of a whitemage made me especially upset. when you have people like that in your group there is literally NOTHING you can do as a tank. you can only pray the dps single out a target, you get aggro of a handful of enemies so the spamheals don't do too much.

same way I do encourage tanks to AT LEAST level up a healer for a couple of levels so they realise how easy it is to get aggro - especially in early levels - and how much they need to look out for us (really, your just is not .just. to watch the dps. a dps can usually take 1-2 hits but a healer can surely not. you do not want them busy with healing themselves instead of healing you ;D)

Another pet peeve of mine is 8 mans and who get's to be the main tank and the off tank. I was in an 8 with another war (both war's) with 5200 hp and he had 4900 hp. I had better rings, neck, I had food etc etc. I also had a better weapon. As such I was able to tank stuff and hold threat, but he kept loosing it. Also I had provoke and his gladiator was only level 10 or so and didn't have provoke. Yet he kept calling Main Tank on all the bosses. Every single encounter I had to watch the boss leave and go after our healer. Where I would have to provoke it, then get into an enimity rotation on it. Get it in position, then switch back to a DPS rotation so he could get hate back, but nope the WHM got it again. So I just held it the whole fight.

Then after the encounter he's like "Man, don't provoke it, I couldn't get it off you for nothing". But that was intentional. I stayed in my enmity rotation for the entire encounter and I was pulling a lot more than him so of course he couldn't get it off me.

My point... The person with the best hate management/gear should be Main Tanking. I really can't think of a reason why this should not be true.

In another dungeon run, I had 5200 hp and the other WAR (2 again) had 5700 and had their hard mode ifrit weapon, blue rings, etc (really nice gear) so he main tanked the entire encounter and I was cool with that. They were better suited for it. They were also experienced with the run and we did a speed run, clearing it in 30 mins for 100 tombs.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

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I can totally relate. Hahah.

My second point is that many tanks are Egotistically bad players. What I mean by this is they let their ego's and their pride drive them. They are blinded by it. They don't see they are having threat issues and that the person they told to OT isn't. They just want to keep trying when they obviously cannot succeed due to gear/rotation etc. And the OT is sitting their the whole time like "When is he going to realize that I can do this and we could be done with this".

Tanks need to realize their weaknesses and other's strengths and make plays accordingly and not let their ego/pride get in the way.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

My point... The person with the best hate management/gear should be Main Tanking. I really can't think of a reason why this should not be true.

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I don't know if I 100% agree with that. A lot of bosses in Castrum are actually easier for the MT than the OT. For example, the ones with adds can leverage provoke much better. Since the other tank you were with didn't have provoke, he was really only good for Main Tanking honestly.

With that said, if he couldn't hold threat he didn't know what he was doing. I had no problem in CM with horrible gear (Stone Vigil Axe). It likely had nothing to do with his gear, just him not knowing that he needs to use butcher's block.

And if you're ever on OT duty, imo you should still keep an eye on threat meters. Just put yourself in between the tank and where all the other high DPS / Heals are, so if the tank does die the boss will immediately switch to you. You can do this pretty easily outside of defiance, because you will be doing more damage and this will generally offset the enmity generation. Just be mindful of how often you butcher's block.

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Originally Posted by Hachiko

And if you're ever on OT duty, imo you should still keep an eye on threat meters. Just put yourself in between the tank and where all the other high DPS / Heals are, so if the tank does die the boss will immediately switch to you. You can do this pretty easily outside of defiance, because you will be doing more damage and this will generally offset the enmity generation. Just be mindful of how often you butcher's block.

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This is what provoke is good for, no need to maintain threat for any of the fights yet as OT, if MT dies provoke and use a threat grab skill, then start ur rotation up.
Now if they add neat mechanics later where being a specific posistion on the threat table matters, THAT would be cool

I usually play a DD in just about every mmo, but as can be seen, I'm not one to shy away from tanking. I've tanked for my FC-to-be (just need to think of the name) several times and been very lucky in that none of them have ever given me a hard time... though that might be because we're all newbs and have no clue what we're doing. XP

It's been a blast so far, regardless, but I have to admit: I've made a lot of friends out in the field simply by pulling adds off of them or by stepping between them and something that is giving them a hard time on my glad/mar! Met my first in-game friend doing that. :)