New Tank Tips

I played my first dungeon today (Sastasha) and I 'think' I did well? I tried to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, It seems as though I set the pace, the person who ultimately leads the way through the dungeon and I'm the one who ultimately decides which targets to pull. Secondly, I have to make sure I'm on every targets shit list at all times (or if I lose it, gain it back asap). Lastly, I try to position myself so that any targets I'm pulling are facing away from the rest of the team. Nobody went down and I don't think anyone but myself even hit half health at any stage. The way I played it was shield lob to pull targets from a distance, flash when they get close and a combination of fast blade and savage blade. Every now and then I would flash again as well as popping rampart and fight or flight as able. (also convalescence when my health got lower than 50%)

So anyway, does anyone have any tips for improving how I play as a tank?

Learn how the other roles play. For example, if you keep turning a monster by circling around it, a monk will have trouble using its positional moves(flank/rear). A party loves a tank that goes the extra mile to make things easier for the dps.

Also get good at remembering how fights work. This helps you to plan your defensive cooldowns just before taking big hits.

When tanking you want to build your enmity as fast as you can. Learn your skills to learn what combination will give you more enmity (like as a PLD Flash-> Fast Blade -> Flash -> Savage Blade will net you better enmity than Flash-> Fast Blade-> Savage Blade-> Flash because of the increased enmity (note that you will also need to learn which skills work within your combos and which ones break them).

I don't actually tank myself, but a good general tip is to pay attention to the aggro symbols by mobs. If it isn't a red square, you lost aggro to someone. Just figured I'd mention this since a friend of mine didn't see it when he was tanking until I brought it up. (He was new too, of course.) A bit of healer perspective though, don't be afraid to do larger pulls. A lot of newer tanks in easier content are afraid to pull more than one pack at a time even if the healer/themselves are breezing through it. You can either ask if they mind, or just watch your health for a bit and see how they're doing. If they're easily topping you off and/or spending a lot of time DPS'ing, it means they could probably handle bigger pulls.

Congratulations on your first dungeon and welcome to the world of tanks! It can be a brutal world out there, but we're all thankful we have someone like you to take the hit for us. Please keep that small comfort in mind, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

As for tips:

As you gain levels, you will eventually gain access to more of your damage combos. Early on, it's easy to simply use your enmity combo. However as you play tank more, be aware that extra enmity does little good. You only need enough enmity to keep the enemy's attention and can output the rest as your damage combo.

If you have the chance, try to play a healer and gain insights into how they play. As a tank, you rely on your healer quite a bit, and the healer spends a large amount of their attention on tanks; so playing as a healer can teach you many tricks other tanks use (such as CD and positioning) that you might not normally see as a tank. Healers also have decently fast dungeon queues, so it's not hard to level up solely in dungeons and use the experience to supplement your tanking or techniques.

The only advice I can give you is try not to get sour by hot head DPS people who think they are the tank and pull everything under the sun while you are marking. Then you have many mob sets on your butt and the healers job becomes a nightmare and most likley the DPS will blame you.