Tanking issues

I picked up FF14 a few months back, I really got into the swing of it and felt like I was doing great, getting lots of commendations, no group wipes due to my own fault and feeling good generally.

But since lvl50 I seem barely able to maintain hate

In Leviathan I was off-tanking. I was doing my standard rotation for heavy swing, skull sunder, butchers block, with heavy swing maim storms eye/path to keep up the damage buff, and I was spamming overpower/flash regularly. I used provoke early on because it wasn't going on me, used a few overpowers and a flash, but as soon as I used my main combo it went to orange and I could not get it back again until provoke came back up.
I had to abandon the healers to the adds because whenever I tried leaving the tail to get the adds, not only could I not get the adds to orange with 3 overpowers, the tail would have dropped off me by this point and take a provoke to get back.

So for the love of god please tell me what's going wrong?

What kind of gear you got? If the DPS out gear you, they're going to steal hate super easy.

Well just from checking your gear that is likely alot of the culprit. Even capped at fifty your gonna be running with people that have gear that are at least 40 levels higher than what your wearing. So thats probably the bulk of your issue. From what you said of your rotation it seems fine, just make sure you pull with unchained up, SE > BB combo for initial hate.

Additionally, if you ran Leviathan uncapped... you wont have a prayer of holding hate on a lvl 60 DPS.

Your ilevel is really far behind compared to pretty much anyone, you simply don't do enough damage to keep up.

Your Axe, in particular is really far behind. It's only ilvl 70. If the people in your leviathan run have finished Heavensward they are getting level synced and are around ilvl130. (Or if it's an uncapped run they're potentially >100 ilvl above you)
You just need to upgrade gear. You should be able to pick some stuff up relatively easily.

They really should add ilvl sync to the post-50 story trials, like they have with dungeons.

Not really your fault. As karateorangutang said, most people you will meet on you way to Ishgard will be 20-40 ilvls higher than you. Close to the end of 2.x MSQ, you will get an i110 HQ weapon, but until then your best weapon will be the i115 NQ one from the marketboard. Dont waste your gil on the HQ weapon. Once you have the i110 axe from the story quest, things will become better. Until then, most people won't care, if you can keep hate or not ;).

And if anyone blames you, just ignore them. They have no idea, what it means to play a new character in 2 years old content ;).

Right ok, thanks guys I was really freaking out that I was a terrible tank! I mean evidently I kind of am but it's a fixable problem and not down to my own mechanics so I'm happy with that!
And yes I agree they should ilvl sync these ones, since I have to go through to them to actually get to heavensward, right now it feels like I've wasted money on the expansion because I haven't even seen any of it yet.

You'll get there. Work on unlocking the roulettes and the crystal tower raids. They will get you up over i110 pretty fast. Once you pass lvl 51 then HW hands out above lvl 50 gear like it's candy at an old folks home. So dont fret! Help is around the corner.

You can buy ~i115 gear from vendors in ishgard and a few other places I believe, or the market boards for fairly cheap, especially if you have gil from doing lots of story quests. Not holding hate in the i90 job quest gear against potentially i130+ players is definitely probably not any fault in how you are playing, just gear up and keep at it :)

Judging from your pic you are a Warrior, you are currently in the best possible place you can be as a new tank, if you have the stack mechanics down then everything is on your side, good luck and enjoy it!

See if you can have someone in your FC straw purchase some HW vendor gear for you that is ilvl 110. A new weapon will run you approx. 25k. Note that you'll get one for free during your HW quests, HQ even, but if you've got a ways to go til then, or if you don't have HW yet, the weapon might make life infinitely easier and speed things along while running the quests as well

Well just burned half a mill but got myself a full set of i115 gear, hopefully that does the trick!! Thanks again for replying guys