Does the ffxiv tutorial ever tell you how to use the target circle?

Recently I was told that when on a melee class like monk and ninja the ring you see on targets has an "open" area which is basically the back and anything else is the flank (sides) and the arrow up front is face. Why doesn't the ffxiv tutorial ever tell us this? This just made playing monk 100 times more fun. No wonder no one plays monk if they don't understand this ring..
I hope they add it to the tutorial, it's too important.
By the way I joined ffxiv before the smith tutorials but I feel like it should be explained better. Anyone else find out about this really late?

I was told some time in Heavensward. I've been playing FFXIV since the legacy campaign in 1.0...

While it didn't affect me much because I tend to tank/heal, it was definitely handy once I started testing out classes where it matters.

I...honestly thought this was pretty common sense? Where have you been attacking this whole time if you weren't aware of this? Because the front half is usually cleave range for a lot of bosses that are looking at tanks.

Wow I’m even more unobservant than I thought. I mean, I haven’t played a melee class yet, but I’ve never noticed any openings in the target circles, just a totally closed ring and the arrow up front?

It should be something that is covered though. When I first started playing with melee dps, I was confused because I thought flank and rear were the same, my knowledge of the definitions at the time being a bit fuzzy. If the tutorial is meant to teach, it shouldn’t leave such vital elements out.

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Originally Posted by Pondera

It should be something that is covered though. When I first started playing with melee dps, I was confused because I thought flank and rear were the same, my knowledge of the definitions at the time being a bit fuzzy. If the tutorial is meant to teach, it shouldn’t leave such vital elements out.

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Oh, yea, if we're talking solely flank and rear, I can understand that - that confused me as well when I first played on monk.

I am very concerned right now, I thought it was obvious what the ring was about when I saw it rotate with the mob, but that might be my experience starting the game as a Monk talking .

I use the ring to determine mob facing to try and sneak past it if I don't feel like fighting it or during the All Saint's Wake mansion event. (unless I'm playing NIN, then I sneak past)

It's actually never explained and I played Monk all the way to 50 and some end game stuff during 2.0 without knowing the exact point at where flank ended and behind began. I'd make these long swings from side to right behind the mob each time until I found out lol. A friend pointed it out to me back then.

The thing is though. Many people now level DPS through Palace of the Dead and all those mobs in there have no indications when you target them. They have a full circle all the way around them, even the bosses. POTD gives me a bad taste in my mouth, I feel like it can breed players that end up at level cap with little knowledge of how to properly play jobs. At the very least it has the potential to breed bad melee.

Another thing that is very annoying and I'm not sure how much can be done about it. But when a certain target is under severe attack by many players and all those effects are going off it can sometimes be very hard to see the targets directional graphic on the ground. In that case, I end up just defaulting back to my old technique of going far to the side and then directly behind to just make sure lol.

It's really not surprising that this is a thing many people miss and that they only figure out late into playing a melee job. It really isn't glaringly obvious, especially with what I've mentioned above.

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Originally Posted by Skeltal-Bons

I am very concerned right now, I thought it was obvious what the ring was about when I saw it rotate with the mob, but that might be my experience starting the game as a Monk talking .

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Unfortunately what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to others, when I played the game back in 1.0 I completely forked up the ring concept as well, I knew what was the front but I didn’t understand exactly where on the ring did rear and flank fit into...new players may not know that and this is part of the trying to get better initiative no matter how obvious it is