How can you tell a bad tank?

There are two types of tanks in this game.

One kind needs a big heal every 10 seconds or so, while the other tank, it's like they arent wearing any armour! I watch their health bar and I swear, it's just constantly dropping so fast! Is the second type an indication you have a bad tank on your hands?

Step 1: Target them at the start and look at their gear. Make an initial judgement based on ilvl.
Step 2: Note how aggressively they perform the first opportunity to wall-to-wall pull. It's recommeneded to play conservatively on initial pulls to judge them, especially if step 1 rates them as "paper".
Step 3: Target them through the first trash pull and watch their cooldown performance. Mitigation abilities: Are they using them?

You should have a good idea of how hard your task will be with these three judgements.

I like your comment regarding CDs. I did the Vault yesterday for the first time as AST, and it was wipe city with a DRK tank. I felt I had to do my entire arsenal every pull (lightspeed, you name it) just to keep the tank alive. Eventually, a DPS quit, and so did I feeling like the worst healer in the world. I get now I should have bene 2 instead of bene 1. I was determined to persevere though, so I went right back into the vault. I will learn to be the better healer!

Get another DRK tank, but first thing I notice when we pull - so many extra things light up beside the name when the pull happens! Health, instead of dropping like a broken faucet, only gradually going down. I throw our gravity, all is good cause tank isn't dropping like a rock. We do the entire dungeon with no wipes, I was still traumatized from previous tank, so I was scared to DPS - but it made me realize so much of the issue in the previous dungeon was the tank.

When they go an entire dungeon run and don't use a single defensive CD.

Seen way too many of them.

- no defensive CD even with 4++ enemy - minus point

- didnt try to dodge telegraph attack - another minus point

- instantly blame healer or someone else if tank die even when healer already try their best, and with dps leaning on healer side - this is the lowest bar for me, if i see tank doing this. i dont care how long he play as tank, i dont care, he's a bad tank in my eyes.

These are totally minor complaints compared to the above, but mine is pull uncertainty.

If the tank has been prebuffed with with a shield or similar, the healer is ready. Waiting until Divine Benison wears off, while probably not intentional, is aggravating and a waste of my skills.

For the love of Zodiark, once a tank starts running to the boss like they are going to pull, they really need to pull. Nothing like 3 or 7 other people popping cooldowns and precasting just to have the tank stop, so you cancel, then a second later they go. Please commit.

If a tank wants to pull wall to wall, fantastic, I'm right there and ready. But spending 3 globals on one trash pack, waiting for everyone's aoe to pop underneath, and then running to the next pack--it's a waste of time. All that wasted dps make the second half of the large pull worse because we spent our cooldowns running instead of smacking.

If the tank isn't using AoE skills after pulling 2 packs, that's a red flag. For DRKs, if their mp is either half full or full, at any point in the dungeon while foes are present, that's also a red flag. I was dpsing in Amaurot and we had a DRK tank. Her mp was almost always full or almost full. It meant she wasn't properly burning into Edge and Flow. It's nice when they can throw out a free cast, but if they have at least 6k mp, they should throw out an Edge/Flow anyway, and use the other 3k for TBN if needed. Otherwise, more Edge/Flow.

If a healer or dps breaks aggro from a tank, once or twice, it's fine - it happens. Just reestablish that enmity and move on. But more than that is another red flag. It means they're not paying attention

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if their mp is either half full or full, at any point in the dungeon while foes are present, that's also a red flag

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i give it okay if it half full for DRK and PLD, sometimes tank just want the easy way out (just do aoe combo and thats that) and i admit i do that too when iam doing my dailies (in case of PLD i save some just in case of emergency heal), i mean the important aspect is the defensive CD for me at least.

but in boss fight i agree, if i see DRK or PLD mp is not empty 80% of the time during boss fight, thas bad. not the worst, but bad yeah.

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Originally Posted by gumas

i mean the important aspect is the defensive CD for me at least.
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I think my first DRK tank in the Vault did nothing other than tank stance (grit) and DPS.

Is there an easy way to tell if a defensive CD has been used?

Second tank, so much more would light up other than grit, and healing was easy - so I like to think those were defensive CDs.

More generally, I'd like to be able to ask the tank to use defensive CDs when I it's not being done and we're wiping.

I guess seeing them go from 100% to 20% over and over during a pull (i.e., after every heal they get) is a good sign that defensive CDS arent being used?

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Originally Posted by Forever_Learning

There are two types of tanks in this game.

One kind needs a big heal every 10 seconds or so, while the other tank, it's like they arent wearing any armour! I watch their health bar and I swear, it's just constantly dropping so fast! Is the second type an indication you have a bad tank on your hands?

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tank mitigation is only two factors gear, and cooldowns. Cooldowns is only some of the time, mostly its gear, but since many tanks are in a dungeon in order to get gear, it's kind of unreasonable to expect them to be max gear.

i would say a good tank plays to the team, so they should adapt to thier mitigation, groups dps, and healer's heals

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Originally Posted by Physic

i would say a good tank plays to the team, so they should adapt to thier mitigation, groups dps, and healer's heals

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What's your feeling on the following:

I tried telling the tank to pull less in a somewhat cheeky way.

I said: If you keep pulling like that, I will have to spend the entire time spamming heals and have no room for DPS.

Tank said: Keep spamming heals, we already have two DPS.

So, I did, but then he needed as much healing during the boss fights as during the large pulls, so it was a wipe fest till a DPS left.

I keep looking back on it thinking I should have said something like 'That's not really how pulls are supposed to go' or 'do something more than just grit!'

Oh man. There are so many ways a tank can work against the party: A tank holding aggro can deliberately face the boss towards the party so everyone gets cleaved; they can shirk a DPS player or healer for giggles; they used to be able to stay in DPS stance and get one-shotted by an unmitigated tank buster; they can see their MT sitting on 5 stacks of vuln^ and not provoke. Tanks that don't protect anything other than their inflated egos.

Yup. I'll take a squishy tank any day over the aforementioned. Squishy =/= bad tank. Squishy simply means the tank needs better gear, to pull less, and/or use mitigative CDs better. On the other end of the token, I've had tanks who are nigh invincible think they are gods, treating everyone like crap, and just abusing their tank privileges by doing things like not avoiding AoEs, not using cooldowns, initiating vote kicks for no good reason, or pulling wall to wall without considering the safety of it.

Not using a CD or only saving the cd for bosses.
The size of their pulls
Not keeping the boss positioned properly (pulling out of dps aoes or keeping the boss’s positional unreachable)

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Originally Posted by Forever_Learning

What's your feeling on the following:

I tried telling the tank to pull less in a somewhat cheeky way.

I said: If you keep pulling like that, I will have to spend the entire time spamming heals and have no room for DPS.

Tank said: Keep spamming heals, we already have two DPS.

So, I did, but then he needed as much healing during the boss fights as during the large pulls, so it was a wipe fest till a DPS left.

I keep looking back on it thinking I should have said something like 'That's not really how pulls are supposed to go' or 'do something more than just grit!'

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nah, there isn't much you can do, he didn't seem that interested in adapting his gameplay to the current team, you tried, that's all you can do.

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Originally Posted by Forever_Learning

There are two types of tanks in this game.

One kind needs a big heal every 10 seconds or so, while the other tank, it's like they arent wearing any armour! I watch their health bar and I swear, it's just constantly dropping so fast! Is the second type an indication you have a bad tank on your hands?

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Rng does play a role here. While crits are not that scary in boss fights since only some enemies guarantee a big skill will be a crit. In trash pulls this can cause big chunks of random damage. Better the tanks gear, less this is a problem. Gear is the biggest factor in 4man content. Skill levels always vary but once your sync or ilvl capped you have a significant advantage no matter how badly a tank is played.

Now when they have terrible gear and skill. Best start praying to the mother crystal because that is going to be a stressful run at times.

I can forgive a tank pulling 3-4 mobs at a time, rather than 7-8-12 depending on how many packs are between them and the next wall. If you don't know me, you don't know how attentive my healing is or if I tunnel vision too often with my holy spam, so pulling slow is preferential as long as you're ready for the next pack immediately after.

I can forgive forgetting CDs once or twice a run, because sometimes you just don't necessarily remember parts of your kit. That, or a run is going so smoothly you don't even think about it.

But holy fuck, does it annoy me when a Tank doesn't realize they're undergeared, or their healer is undergeared, and starts running like a loon from the getgo.

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Originally Posted by tesni_g

These are totally minor complaints compared to the above, but mine is pull uncertainty.

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Skittish tanks are the bane of my existence. aka stutter stepping.

Wait until AFTER my adlo wears off to charge in.

Things tanks SHOULDN'T do:

1). Stack ALL of the defensive cooldowns before even pulling the first enemy (while running up to an enemy). This means the tank is clearly using a macro that fires everything on cooldown.
2). Balls-to-the-Wall on Pull #1 without even trying to gauge how good the healer is.
3). Not caring about which enemy is the most dangerous/should be killed first. For example, the Lv73 dungeon features 1 enemy in the middle of the first few packs that buffs the enemies around it. Its buff spell can be stopped but it needs to be done QUICK. Most tanks don't care and so these groups take absolutely forever to kill because the mobs got buffed.
4). A tank should have at least 50% more health than the DPS. If the DPS has 50k, the tank should have at least 75k. If they don't, they probably have terrible gear. Of course, if the DPS is level sync'd and the tank ain't, then it might be more like 30%. If the tank has about the same max health as the DPS/heals... something is very very wrong. Broken gear, bad gear, etc. I have actually seen this a few times. It's a nightmare to heal such tanks.
5). A tank who throws their weapon and just mashes sprint and keeps running. Should use at least one AoE to make sure you have the mobs.
6). Not using Mitigation on Tank Busters. I don't know about WAR, DRK, or GNB, but I know PLD has Shelltron. I've also seen lots of PLDs who don't care to save it for tankbusters and end up eating the full tankbuster with no mitigation.
7). Multipull after wiping on the very same Multipull (I've had tanks do this, we wipe because someone decided they should be pulling 2+ groups in some <Lv40 dungeon when I have zero instant casts, we wipe, and they.......do it again and we wipe again)

A Tank SHOULD:

1). Instead of dumping all of their cooldowns at once, space them out. If they have multiple defensives, use the best one once you're done moving and all of the mobs come to them. Then when that one wears off, pop the second one.
2). Know the fights, and know when to pop mitigation abilities (esp for Tank Busters).
3). Use Group Defense abilities (Path of Arms, Divine Veil, Clemency, etc)
4). Pull the first group, single to gauge the healer's experience and talent before going crazy on multipulls (or better yet, ask).
5). Know what healers can do what at what levels. For example, a <Lv50 WHM has no Instant-Cast Heals. Lv50 WHMs only have Benediction as their only Instant Heal. They don't get Solace until.... 52? 54? something like that? Keep this in mind when doing these huge pulls.

You know one thing that shouts that a tank is good?
SPRINT, its the best defensive cooldown during large pulls.
The damage a tank takes while sprinting to the second mob pack is way less that one that merely runs there.

Staying on topic others have already given their two cents, and you have a better understanding of how tanks should work. Key thing is looking for buffs/cooldowns.

The biggest and most common one is Rampart - 90s cooldown reduces damage taken by 20% for 20 seconds, can typically use it every pull or every other pull depending. EVERY tank has this ability, it's a role ability, you can't miss it, one of the most useful and fairly short cooldowns a tank can have. Looks like a Blue brick wall buff with a red background (mostly blue on the bottom, red on the top).

Next we have Arm's Length, and while this does prevent knockback it also slows any enemy that hits you by 20%. 2 minute cooldown, lasts 15 seconds, typically won't work on bosses, but it's perfect for big trash pulls. Icon looks like a guy standing doing a falcon punch to the top left side of the buff. Another role ability, there isn't a tank who won't have this, plenty of tanks who won't have it on their bar though, or forget it's an actually useful cooldown.

Every other cooldown is tank based, but typically every tank will have a very short cooldown mitigation ability they can use, such as The Blackest Night for DRKs, or Raw Intuition for WARs. Typically short duration, but very fast cooldowns that can be popped multiple times during big pulls and bosses.

Then you have the beefier damage reduction cooldown, 30% damage reduction for 10s with a 2 minute cooldown. All tanks have one they're just called different things, Warriors is a little more fancy because it deals damage back for every hit they take while under the effect.

Honorable mentions will be the odd things some tanks get, examples would be Camouflage for Gunbreakers, increases parry rate and reduces damage, Dark Mind for DRKs which reduces magic damage taken by 20%, etc. All tanks get variants of useful cooldowns such as these that you may or may not see a version of on other tanks. Thrill of Battle is a good example for Warriors as it increases their max HP but also increases any healing done to them by 20%, sadly Convalescence used to do the healing buff and it was useable by all tanks but they took it out and only gave it to the warrior instead.

Finally you have the O-Sh*t button that grants invulnerability for a period of time, typically has a longer cooldown, and each tanks is different in how they work.

Back to the main topic, if you see a tank using any of these before a pull, not at all, or all at once, they're a bad tank. The more cooldowns you use at any given time is typically a bad thing due to diminishing returns on abilities that reduce damage, and once they're over, you've got nothing else to use. Much like most healers don't typically pop everything at once, we can, but it's not efficient, same goes for tanks.

Good tanks will typically use a single cooldown first, Rampart being the most common, and then cycle through their other cooldowns as necessary.

Great tanks will by vocal about their cooldowns, and I don't mean typical things like popping a damage reduction cooldown and having a macro for it (although it can be useful to some healers), but I'm talking about the ones who talk to their healers, ask questions. "Are you comfortable with big pulls?" "I plan to use my invuln for the next pull, just a heads up" "First tank buster I can heal myself through it". It's the little things of communication that help.

I go through both sides daily as a healer and as a tank. As a healer I typically let the tank know I can handle big pulls as long as they use cooldowns, if I'm having issues keeping up, or my mana is low and I have no cooldowns to help I will say something. As a tank, I will ask the healer first and foremost if they're ok with big pulls, why I'm only pulling a small pack of mobs due to having no cooldowns up for a big pull, etc. I always look at their mana before a pull and if I see them down 25% without a Lucid currently going I'll either wait a few moments or just ask if they're ok to keep going. I would rather go through a dungeon/raid/whatever a little slower if it means we can do it successfully without any wipes.

A good tank will communicate to his/her healer before they start. Ask your healer a simple question, "big pulls ok with you?". Or something similar.

It warns them what's coming, or communicates to you what pace you should go as well as your healer feels they are about to be taken care of.

Cuz at the end of the day, and this may seem strange in saying but, the tank has to take the responsibility of making things easier for the healer.

You can have a bad healer and still look like a good tank, but it's very difficult to look like a good healer when you have a bad tank.

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Originally Posted by Forever_Learning

Is there an easy way to tell if a defensive CD has been used?

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after defensive CD is used no. but if they use defensive CD there should a skill icon appear on their party ui

https://picr.ws/d/6ds.png

like that

No sprint.

How can you tell a bad tank?

/tell Bad Tank Hello! How are you today?

;D sorry I couldn't resist

The first thing I say in any 4 man dungeon is this:
"Please pull big" Or "Pull big please. <3"

If they won't do it without saying something or complain about that, then I know they're crap. Right off the bat. Sometimes I'll leave and switch characters for a bit due to the penalty, because it's the difference between 30 minute runs and 15 minute runs sometimes...

Above gear, unless their gear is just trash (which I use HP to gauge typically just off hand), the usage of cds makes or breaks a tank. A sign of a good tank is one you do not have to baby constantly with heals.

But that's just my opinion and experience. :3

For me, i have high tolerance for tanks, no matter how they pull ( big pull is a plus for me), new or veteran, how clunky they use the defensive cd, my worst taboo for tanks is when they didn't manage their agro.
Its usually happen when new adds appear, some are either too lazy or they didn't even know what is happening around them
Then dps start to run around like headless chicken, the misery... Chaos

I call them out.

"Use some cooldowns please so we can clear faster." if they pull wall to wall and expect me to blast through 6 lustrates and aldo shields, I'll call them out. Not in a dickbagish way through, I'll be nice the first time. The next time you're just being annoying and lazy.

I try to play every class so I know how each class fundamentally works regarding their personal healing / abilities.

Small example : I won't heal a dragoon unless they are under 75% cause I know they have Bloodbath and second wind, so usually their full rotation would give back around 10-14k hp [I also know their icons / rotations so I can deduce if they need a little help or not]

Also if you use superbolide when you're at half health you deserve what you get. God that skill is a burning bag of ass

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Originally Posted by gumas

but in boss fight i agree, if i see DRK or PLD mp is not empty 80% of the time during boss fight, thas bad. not the worst, but bad yeah.

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Shouldn't the PLD always be accumulating MP towards full most of the time anyways?

• Requiescat's 50% buff and instant cast effect is only activated if the PLD as 8000+ MP.
• Requiescat has a 60s cooldown which lines up nicely with the PLD rotation to recover to full MP.
• Confiteor (the 800 potency finisher) requires Requiescat.

Requiescat lasts 12s, so basically the PLD will only be spending MP 20% of the time (and basically dump all the MP within that 12 seconds) while trying to accumulate MP 80% of the time.

Threat is so braindead now if a tank repeatedly loses threat on packs they need to be kicked.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Shouldn't the PLD always be accumulating MP towards full most of the time anyways?

• Requiescat's 50% buff and instant cast effect is only activated if the PLD as 8000+ MP.
• Requiescat has a 60s cooldown which lines up nicely with the PLD rotation to recover to full MP.
• Confiteor (the 800 potency finisher) requires Requiescat.

Requiescat lasts 12s, so basically the PLD will only be spending MP 20% of the time (and basically dump all the MP within that 12 seconds) while trying to accumulate MP 80% of the time.

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With the new Requiescat instant cast, you can get all 5 casts out now in that time (2k MP each) so a PLD should have full MP to maximize damage.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Threat is so braindead now if a tank repeatedly loses threat on packs they need to be kicked.

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Had a GNB in Mehg who would pull a pack of mobs, aoe once, then start single targeting them. Was leveling my MCH and every pull I'd have at least 2 or 3 mods peel off to attack me...

Baby Pulls in higher content
Dies to Tankbuster all the time
Does shit dmg

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Skittish tanks are the bane of my existence. aka stutter stepping.

Wait until AFTER my adlo wears off to charge in.

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This so much. I can deal with not sprinting, no cooldowns, single pulls and whatnot. But standing there wobbling about infront of a boss just drives me utterly spare. Bosses have been the med break part of a dungeon for years now, just go! ;)

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

No sprint.

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Why is sprinting actually a thing? Are there any benefits for it? Personally I hate it when tanks are sprinting away with mobs in tow and thankfully none of my friends are doing it. Going 'normally' gives the DDs the time and opportunity to build up their buffs or applying DoTs before the Mobs finally huddle, so they can instantly starting AoE once the tank stops (otherwise you have to do that first when you actually want to AoE but can't because as SAM I have first to go through half of my single-target-rotation to activate both buffs and as DNC I want to do my steps before the huddle so I can use the finish as soon as we stop)

Also I've seen enough tanks dying simply because the healer couldn't keep up with them when they were sprinting ahead and vanished around a corner and sprouts may be unable to cope if you go too fast in a new dungeon. That's why, when I'm playing tank, I usually don't sprint.

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

Why is sprinting actually a thing? Are there any benefits for it?

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I always sprint after hitting the first target(s) of the pull until the end of the pull. It will make the pull time shorter, resulting in less damage taken and allowing everyone to start doing proper damage on the whole pull asap. All other party members should sprint too. When I'm healing, I sprint with the tank, heal them mid-pull if necessary, but mostly focus on single-target DoTing every monster while running.

When I'm healing I sprint with the tank too, if they do it, but with PUGs you never know and chances are the tank is just sprinting ahead of everyone.
And again, while Monks may like it, as a SAM I have no chance to catch up to build my buffs with a sprinting tank if I'm lacking behind. But if they don't sprint I can use sprint myself to catch up easily and do my preparations mid-pull.

Sure, a shorter pull-time means lesser dmg but from experience with decent equip those mid-pull-dmg isn't really a problem, especially compared to the risk of an healer not keeping up with your sprinting. And also, If the DDs can't do their preparations mid-pull the actual dmg you take will be probably much higher because the huddle-time will be longer.

Good tanks use their cooldown and know/memorize/track healer cooldown and take DPS job/gear/AOE capacity into account .... and he pull according to that.

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

Sure, a shorter pull-time means lesser dmg but from experience with decent equip those mid-pull-dmg isn't really a problem, especially compared to the risk of an healer not keeping up with your sprinting. And also, If the DDs can't do their preparations mid-pull the actual dmg you take will be probably much higher because the huddle-time will be longer.

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In all of my years of playing XIV DF dungeons, I have never seen a situation in which a healer couldn't keep up with a sprinting tank. And sprint pulls were already done in 2.0. It is something that may happen, but shouldn't happen. If an individual healer is having trouble with keeping up for some reason (like being a new to the game or the job or not being familiar with controls or whatever), they should simply ask for the tank to not use it, and that problem is solved.


You are right that in the end it's a question of what is the most effective. If the tank pulls without sprint, the pull itself will take longer, enemies are stacked slower for AoE DPS, tank will take more mid-pull damage which might affect their cooldown usage (less cooldowns for when everything is gathered), and healer may need to use their time during pull on healing spells or abilities (I personally prefer saving OCDs for when the pull is done) instead of DPS. Ranged and casters should not be affected, but at least for some melees it might lower their overall DPS for that pull.


I can't really estimate which way is more effective DPS wise, it also might depend on the party composition, but as a tank and a healer I definitely do prefer sprint pulls because I find them a bit safer (because less damage taken as the pull last a shorter time and not all enemies will reach the sprinting tank while running) and from my perspective the faster we get the pull to stop and into the AoE burn mode the better.