If you're going the path of the Warrior, you can't neglect the path of the Paladin either. You need Provoke!
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So far Tank seems pretty easy to me.
Then again I main Monk and know the encounters already which drasticly reduces the learning curve and being a melee main helps with the knowledge of placing the mobs just right for the DPS to do their jobs properly.
Holding aggro became very easy since they buffed Defiance and Shield Oath too.
I'd say the trickiest part is learning the encounter and knowing when to use which Cooldown, but than again every class has to go through that.
Other than that tanking is really fun and relaxing.
Basic tanking as a Warrior is not much more difficult than basic tanking as a Paladin. Grab all the enemies, face them away from the rest of the team, and get hit.
At low levels, you have a 1-2 combo to generate hate, Overpower which is a cone AOE to generate hate, and a ranged pull. You can actually do passable as a WAR tank up to level 50 by purely pulling with the ranged pull, hitting overpower twice to generate initial hate, and then doing nothing but your hate combo, maybe an extra overpower if fights drag on long. If you lose hate on a mob, more overpower! At level 30, it becomes a 1-2-3 combo.
There is a secondary combo that is 1-2-3a or 1-2-3b. Step 2 makes you do more damage, 3a will decrease monster damage by 10% and give a small heal, 3b gives the monster a slashing debuff. You can use those in between your hate combos once you feel confident that you can skip a hate combo here and there.
I find tanking on WAR far easier than healing.
How far should I level gladiator? It is already 22 so I got provoke. Should I go any further if I want to play Marauder?
22forever.
Holding hate on single target is simple, cuz' you can do it with your eyes close.
It's multiple hate control that's hard. ie: T4.
And not mentioning tanks swap while dodging and hate control. ie: Titan EM during adds.
(unless you clear EM on your first try, please don't tell me EM is not that hard.)
If you know the exact position where the mobs you need to control spawn it's just as simple, you obviously don't wanna overdo it with Flash while tanking the blue guys in Turn 4 other than that it's just communication, if you know which of them gets focused you can easily hold aggro. (Especially with the recent buffs to the tank stances.)
Tank swapping (ie: Titan/Ifrit EM.) isn't new to MMOs either, alot games work with that kind of mechanic.
While I agree it might be a lil overwhelming for new players it's actually a nice change from the simple just standing there watching vids on youtube while pressing 1,2,3 with an occasional tank CD aka Titan HM.
I'm not saying that the content, is easy. I'd say the difficulty of the extreme modes for example feels just right.
What I'm trying to say is that there should be no reason to be afraid of tanking, it's not all that difficult how some people make it out to be.
At first there might be a little more pressure on you since people will notice if you screw big time because that usually leads to a wipe but once you get used to the encounters you'll be fine.