A question about Tanking

I was running a dungeon yesterday (level 100) on my WAR and at the very end of the dungeon, right before we left - one of the DPS said "bro...Tank... you really need to read your abilities" and then left lol. Mind you, I never dropped below half health, never lost aggro on anything, and my damage was decent considering my Ok'ish gear. I do the WAR rotation as best I can and rotate mitigation CD's (Rampart, ToB, Damnation, and then throw in EQ and/or reprisal when needed) . I am left wondering if I am missing some obvious stuff about tanking.
So my question is - what are some common mistakes with tanking/WAR in particular that you can think of. Perhaps this will help me to better understand what that guy was talking about.

Sounds like they had no reason to complain.

The only thing weird I can think that I did was use Shake It Off a couple times. The healer was new to playing SCH and died a couple times, so I just through it up to help out the party.

Only thing I can think of is if you used Nascent Flash instead of Bloodwhetting, I've seen some warriors do that before.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

I was running a dungeon yesterday (level 100) on my WAR and at the very end of the dungeon, right before we left - one of the DPS said "bro...Tank... you really need to read your abilities" and then left lol. Mind you, I never dropped below half health, never lost aggro on anything, and my damage was decent considering my Ok'ish gear. I do the WAR rotation as best I can and rotate mitigation CD's (Rampart, ToB, Damnation, and then throw in EQ and/or reprisal when needed) . I am left wondering if I am missing some obvious stuff about tanking.
So my question is - what are some common mistakes with tanking/WAR in particular that you can think of. Perhaps this will help me to better understand what that guy was talking about.

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Just a quick heads up that's valid for any type of multiplayer content in the entirety of the web: When someone critizes you and then immediately drops group - ignore them. If they had anything of value to say, they would stay around and talk to you - like tell you what you did wrong and how to improve. If they cannot be bothered to do this, you should not bother with their "opinion".

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

Just a quick heads up that's valid for any type of multiplayer content in the entirety of the web: When someone critizes you and then immediately drops group - ignore them. If they had anything of value to say, they would stay around and talk to you - like tell you what you did wrong and how to improve. If they cannot be bothered to do this, you should not bother with their "opinion".

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Thanks. It bothered me, ngl. I'm starting to think the player was being toxic just for the sake of being toxic.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Only thing I can think of is if you used Nascent Flash instead of Bloodwhetting, I've seen some warriors do that before.

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Nah, def didn't do that. But I can see people making that mistake.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

Thanks. It bothered me, ngl. I'm starting to think the player was being toxic just for the sake of being toxic.

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It's always been a tactic that they save their rude comment for the end then immediately exit. Although, one thing that changed was when they let us visit other worlds, which makes it possible to reply to them, so I think they do it less now. If they do it and it's rude enough, it's an easy report.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

I do the WAR rotation as best I can and rotate mitigation CD's (Rampart, ToB, Damnation, and then throw in EQ and/or reprisal when needed) . I am left wondering if I am missing some obvious stuff about tanking.

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It's really hard to offer any useful advice when I can't see exactly what you were doing, but seeing "read your tooltips" makes me think perhaps using something like Thrill or Reprisal on their own, as if it was a big defensive cooldown.

I've seen an influx of tanks recently that will wall pull on DRK and then try to tank it with only dark mind (and die in 2 GCDs) as if that 10% mit is going to do anything when they have their 40% available. It's like they know which buttons are defensives but haven't bothered reading what they actually do.

They were just mad because the gaze upon my cuteness

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

Thanks. It bothered me, ngl. I'm starting to think the player was being toxic just for the sake of being toxic.

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Exactly. You know all this shorts with "funny pranks" where people go into Walmart and behave like total imbeciles? You just ran into the virtual version of such a sad clown.
When you can tank a dungeon in decent speed and without anyone dying, you're fine.

If you're really worried, you can start your next few dungeons saying something like "Hi, am new to tanking, please just tell me if I can improve somewhere". In my experience, at the end people will either tell you that you're doing fine, or come up with some really helpful tips.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

It's really hard to offer any useful advice when I can't see exactly what you were doing, but seeing "read your tooltips" makes me think perhaps using something like Thrill or Reprisal on their own, as if it was a big defensive cooldown.

I've seen an influx of tanks recently that will wall pull on DRK and then try to tank it with only dark mind (and die in 2 GCDs) as if that 10% mit is going to do anything when they have their 40% available. It's like they know which buttons are defensives but haven't bothered reading what they actually do.

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It's usually TBN and that's it.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

The healer was new to playing SCH and died a couple times, so I just through it up to help out the party.

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The one thing I might suggest and feel free to ignore me if the timing was impossible, is that using Nascent Flash might have saved the healer. Speaking generally though, absent evidence of the events, it sounds like you can safely ignore that guy.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

The only thing weird I can think that I did was use Shake It Off a couple times. The healer was new to playing SCH and died a couple times, so I just through it up to help out the party.

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I'll start with the same sentiment that most people here had, which is that most of the time it's better to just ignore this stuff, but Warrior does have some odd nuances, and this is one of them. Shake it Off removes a considerable number of your personal buffs if they are active. If you used Shake during mob pulls in particular, you may have unwittingly ripped Thrill, Bloodwhetting, or Damnation off of yourself, which would put considerable pressure on your healer. Also, if you see the healer is dying a lot, you can use Nascent Flash on them (particularly if they weren't dying in one hit) to help stabilize them, as it heals them and you at the same time. A lot of times in dungeons, while Bloodwhetting is technically better than Nascent Flash, both of them heal you to full every GCD, so the difference to you is pretty minimal. Healing a new healer back up to full so they aren't panicking as often, however, can help prevent them from dying as much.

So an anecdote, a few years ago, during EW, I got Dead Ends on roulette, I was on DPS, I believe Dancer, the Healer was clearly struggling the entire, and the other DPS died quite a few times, but I was doing my part for the most part. On the last boss, I doze off a little and get nicked by the butterfly lasers, which apply a heal-to-full Doom, don't get healed at all, even popped Second Wind to help, and die, that was the only mistake that I made the entire run. The Healer doesn't rez me at all, and spent the entire rest of the fight, like 60% or more of the boss HP I don't quite remember, with just the Tank and Healer. At the end, when I was waiting the loot to be rolled for, the Tank says something to the effect of "Maybe if you stopped dying so much she'd heal you", and immediately leaves, again, I took one avoidable hit the entire dungeon, and the death could've been prevented.

The point that I am getting to is that sometimes someone in a dungeon will identify there is some sort of problem with the party, and for some reason, decide it is your fault, maybe they aren't paying enough attention, maybe they are friends with the person that is being the problem and want to not blame them, but it happens, and there is nothing you can do other than accept they are wrong.

Tbf, that's usually enough in dungeons.

Were you overlapping mitigation or using Provoke in the middle of rotation while already having the pack aggro'd?

Other than that, I can't possibly think what the problem could have been.

As with pretty much everyone else, I'd say it's best to not take it personally. If anything the fact that you're on here asking about it shows you do actually care and want to improve, which is more than the majority of the player base would be able to say about themselves.

That said, while it's tough to give any real advice without seeing what happened I do think it's still curious that the criticism was as specific as it was. Most whiners would have just said that you suck or something to that effect. Maybe the person was right or maybe they were wrong, and they could have been a lot more helpful even if they were right by sticking around and asking if you wanted some advice instead of just scooting. Either way, it wouldn't hurt to take another look at the tool tips just in case as there might legitimately be something you missed or misunderstood.

Yeah, as a years-long tank, you did fine. Even if someone died, it's fine! Stuff happens.

A tip I've been thinking about because I've been running into it but might as well put here because people will be reading and posting tank tips is: In 2-tank content, if you're not main tanking, make sure you don't turn your stance on until after your initial burst, and then use Shirk as needed. This'll help avoid aggro fights. It's a problem I've been having to deal with where off tanks will fight me for aggro non-stop but also not want to take the initiative to be the guy who pulls and starts the fight.

But yeah, you're doing fine! If there's any rough edges, you'll smooth them out as you play. Don't worry too much!

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

Nah, def didn't do that. But I can see people making that mistake.

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I am a warrior main so ill help you best i can

warrior has 2 sets of mig one is healing one is rare physical defense. sense i main warrior mostly

Warriors filler dps isn't really the best dps there 1/2/3 and 1.2.3
There rotation breaks into two pathways
Heavy Swing, Maim, Storm Path (storm path heals and generates more fury (faster get to 100 fury the better)
Heavy Swing, Naim , Storm Eye (storm eye gives you attack damage buff) do want start with this and also have the buff before you into fel-cleave state it buff does have a timer need keep track of it

Fell Cleave- is your big single target attack. when go into fell cleeve phase you want pull out many fell-cleeves as position best to wait until have at least 50-100 fury have storm eye buff active

Fell Cleave phase or bursty damage phase in raiding enviroment you probably want some of your teammates buffs before you use every high damage ability have on your kit. want dumb and squeeze much damage as you can during this phase.

All Tanks follow same principle when they under the dungeon
1. Turn on Tank Stance
2. Make Sure you hit all targets with overpower or twice with an overpower + Steel cyclone or Orogeny- first hits on enemies are most important. two hits normally means that have good threat two hits normally enough that when go to next pack of mobs if your team is hitting them while running to next pack that they wont lose threat. also means when make it to next pack give them additional smack
3. pop defensive cooldown slowly and effective remeber these timers 30. 60. 90. 120 240+ these are timers of each of your cool-downs way they are like this cause if you use them sparingly you always have cooldown for each encounter you face
4. Warriors Invur has lowiest cooldown in the game so ok for you use it won't need too on 4 man dungeon bosses so only time worth using is massive pulls
5. only pop 1 defesnive cooldown at a time

however warrior is different warrior has two different sents of defensive cooldowns
your personal healing cool-downs
and your defensive cooldowns

Rampart, Reprisal, Damnation. Arms Lengh are your hard defensive cooldowns use them based on the there cooldown timer don't put all your eggs in single basket on single pull. use them sparingly use them effectively

Rare Healing Abilities are
Thrill of Battle.Equilbrium use these when need healing has

Shake It Off + Nascent Flash are abilities that you use on your team mates or try to the help your team mates even though these are used in teamplay they cannnot however protect players from incoming damage best way to use them wait until damage happens then use them. for best effect however paladin is better suited at protecting teammates from incoming damage then a warrior is with its team support watch is used completely different from each other

Melee DPS like Samurai or Monk watch cry moment they take any damage will really be thankful if you nascent flash them. you can save them if they take a big hit

Berserk/Inner release/Infurate- you should only use these abilities when go into warrior burst phase watch series of fell-cleaves and really high burst damage you want squeeze as much damage as you can during this phase. want generate much fury as you can dump everything on the boss

Most Importiant cooldown in dawntrail - is bloodletting should use this between trash pulls everytime its off cooldown it has lowiest cooldown bloodbath like ability in the game. should pop this when ever your doing big pulls

-- Here is how you actually pull in a dungeon --
1. Defiance -
2. Sprint ( make sure your ahead of your party at all times but pay attention where everyone is)
3. Use Tomahawk or Onslaught pull or bridge the gap
4. AoE Two Times - make sure all enemies are hit with your attack. then go to next group. use part 3 on second group
5. Stop Pop 1 Defensive cooldown - if your healer is far behind then pop your holmgang or pop your bloodletting a defensive cooldown watch your own hp if drops too low use equil
6. always have bosses reveal there asses to your party so they can get spanked. try your best stay out orange feilds of death. yes you are tank but tanking unnessercy damage that could just avoided by stepping out way isn't what real tanks do.
7. hold your ground. tanks should move to often unless dodging attacks. but have go right back. melee dps has positionals. an really do not want the boss slapping your dps.

however bosses and monsters when put these orange telegrath attacks on the ground do not panic. all have to do step out orange feilds. wait until they disappear then go back where you were.

game has built in threat meter that can tell you how much enimity your actually doing by looking at party screen if you see a bar filled to the max and that means you have threat on that target. everyone else is behind you


if you die sometimes its not your fault. sometimes its dps fault or something its healers fault. all you can do try your best play your job. dps in party everyone responsability if the dps slacks on there dps or healer just sits there waiting for you take damage then no its not your fault its theres


Materia -

Critical Hit, Direct Hit, Determination maybe maybe little skill speed

2.5 (no skill speed) isnt really bad
2.41 or 2.43 (gives you somewhat faster rotation at cost losing some damage) not actually bad either.

normally dont really want to go past 2.41 however having no skill speed at all is completely fine

Tencity is not good stat for group content sometimes gear you get this stat is forced upon you you should always go for more damage . cause more damage over all normally means less damage you take in long run


also warrior is very squishy if it wasn't for its continueless healing it has so like most tanks need to use deffys at the time times. dont panic. just be smooth i play with reallife defensive cooldown reminder in rl i have

Very hard to tell just based on your words and also very hard to tell without a log to actually look at your rotation.

I had a AST in a lvl 95 dungeon today (still working on my mentor roulette..lol) who gave me, every single card..I was on Tank..

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

So an anecdote, a few years ago, during EW, I got Dead Ends on roulette, I was on DPS, I believe Dancer, the Healer was clearly struggling the entire, and the other DPS died quite a few times, but I was doing my part for the most part. On the last boss, I doze off a little and get nicked by the butterfly lasers, which apply a heal-to-full Doom, don't get healed at all, even popped Second Wind to help, and die, that was the only mistake that I made the entire run. The Healer doesn't rez me at all, and spent the entire rest of the fight, like 60% or more of the boss HP I don't quite remember, with just the Tank and Healer. At the end, when I was waiting the loot to be rolled for, the Tank says something to the effect of "Maybe if you stopped dying so much she'd heal you", and immediately leaves, again, I took one avoidable hit the entire dungeon, and the death could've been prevented.

The point that I am getting to is that sometimes someone in a dungeon will identify there is some sort of problem with the party, and for some reason, decide it is your fault, maybe they aren't paying enough attention, maybe they are friends with the person that is being the problem and want to not blame them, but it happens, and there is nothing you can do other than accept they are wrong.

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Now that you say it... there was an Aurum Vale run years ago I still remember. The healer was massively struggling, and I had to use every defensive I had to survive the single group pulls I was forced to do.
Then a DD with the same surname as the healer asked me something like "tank do you know what a defensive is?"
Pro: they did it during the dungeon, not at the end before leaving immediately.
Con: I kept every defense I had constantly on cooldown, because the healer was so bad. And if they cared to look, they could see under my portrait that I was using my defensives.

I rolled my eyes, thought about an answer for a moment... then silently continued the horrible run, since discussions that start like this never get you anywhere. But it was a text book example of "my buddy is struggling, but it's my buddy, so it must be someone else's fault".

This happens all the time, there's no reason to open a thread about this just because someone typed 1 sentence. Blacklist, mute, whatever is your pick. We can't know here what you did wrong or not, nor that it cares in a dungeon if it went all good.

Being toxic, refusing to elaborate, and leaving in casual content certainly is a choice. Especially considering that content outside of extremes, savage, etc, are very forgiving.

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Originally Posted by Allooutrick

Being toxic, refusing to elaborate, and leaving in casual content certainly is a choice. Especially considering that content outside of extremes, savage, etc, are very forgiving.

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Unsalvageable community if "bro...Tank... you really need to read your abilities" is considered "being toxic".

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Were you overlapping mitigation or using Provoke in the middle of rotation while already having the pack aggro'd?

Other than that, I can't possibly think what the problem could have been.

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It is possible I fat fingered two cooldowns at the same time during the last boss. I thought about it after the guy said something and that was the only thing that came to mind. But it's not like it mattered. Somebody mentioned using Nascent flash to save the healer. The first time the healer died was on the very first boss. They didn't move out of a nuke and well.. yeah they died. The second time was during the last boss, and it was the same thing. They just got nuked. However, I actually didn't even think about using nascent flash to try and save somebody who is in trouble. So that is a good tip. I don't play WAR as a main I play RPR, but I have really enjoyed playing my WAR a lot more lately.

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Originally Posted by RenkoBernkastel

Unsalvageable community if "bro...Tank... you really need to read your abilities" is considered "being toxic".

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It's not what he said that's toxic, it's that he said it and didn't stick around to tell me what I was doing wrong. Which I would have been completely open to because I'm always happy to learn and do better. I have no problem with people criticizing me, but if you're not going to try to help me understand what I did wrong, then I can improve. And after all this is just a dungeon In daily roulettes. It's not like it was difficult content.

I was just curious if I was missing something and looking for pointers. I'm not looking to call anybody out or talk about toxicity to be honest. So I felt like as somebody who doesn't typically tank much, if there are some obvious things that people do that I could easily miss (which a couple have been pointed out and I appreciate) then that's all I was looking for. I'm in an FC but nobody ever talks in it (not even sure anyone is ever even on lol) and quite honestly I don't know why I'm still in it. I pretty much play the game alone, so I don't really have anybody to run anything by in game. Otherwise I would have just asked people in my FC if was active.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

I was just curious if I was missing something and looking for pointers. I'm not looking to call anybody out or talk about toxicity to be honest. So I felt like as somebody who doesn't typically tank much, if there are some obvious things that people do that I could easily miss (which a couple have been pointed out and I appreciate) then that's all I was looking for. I'm in an FC but nobody ever talks in it (not even sure anyone is ever even on lol) and quite honestly I don't know why I'm still in it. I pretty much play the game alone, so I don't really have anybody to run anything by in game. Otherwise I would have just asked people in my FC if was active.

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Sorry this was in response to "This happens all the time, there's no reason to open a thread about this just because someone typed 1 sentence. Blacklist, mute, whatever is your pick. We can't know here what you did wrong or not, nor that it cares in a dungeon if it went all good."

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

It's not what he said that's toxic, it's that he said it and didn't stick around to tell me what I was doing wrong. Which I would have been completely open to because I'm always happy to learn and do better. I have no problem with people criticizing me, but if you're not going to try to help me understand what I did wrong, then I can improve. And after all this is just a dungeon In daily roulettes. It's not like it was difficult content.

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If you have the drive space and cpu/gpu capacity available while running FF, you could try recording your play with OBS (or other recording software of your preference) and watch it back if you feel like something went badly and just see what, if anything, you could have done differently to make it better.

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

and my damage was decent considering my Ok'ish gear

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Have you ever actually checked?

Anyways, all I can think of is that you didn't use Bloodwhetting, and warrior mains have this obsession with it, and start getting tilted if they don't see it used enough. Like, yeah, it's the most powerful cooldown you have in trash pulls, and unless they had to actually cast GCD heals on you .. shrug.

Since you said the SCH died a few times, it might be a friend of the DPS, and they are trying to shift blame on you to cover for the scholar's bruised ego, "it's not your fault, you're too focused on trying to heal the warrior that isn't mitigating correctly."

But people who get upset in dungeons about people playing poorly are usually the types that have a big ego but are too scared to do content where their ego would get flattened.

None. I don't think you have done anything problematic. But how did the scholar die?

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

It is possible I fat fingered two cooldowns at the same time during the last boss.

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They were just pricks, then. People are weird.

I probably wouldn't overthink it, a lot of players will try and shift the blame wherever possible, or are just generally looking for whatever excuse to be antagonistic.

Taking your statements at face value (Since there's nothing really to contradict it), that you actually do rotate your CDs, did your rotation to the best of your ability, kept aggro etc., -- I would be inclined to just ignore and move on.

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Originally Posted by RenkoBernkastel

Unsalvageable community if "bro...Tank... you really need to read your abilities" is considered "being toxic".

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I personally don't think it's toxic. Just lack of a better word while hurrying to get off the site at the end of a break.

well I could probably see one thing per say and it's shake it off unless they changed it I remember doing a better shield of you have some ability on tho I take them off

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Originally Posted by Cyrnix

Thanks. It bothered me, ngl. I'm starting to think the player was being toxic just for the sake of being toxic.

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In a game like this it’s easy to become a perfectionist and start seeing every non-hyper efficient action as a problem, especially when people have limited time. However, individuals of different skill levels play this game and it’s not realistic to expect everyone to play at the highest efficiency possible.

In their mind they may have thought they were trying to help the community but of course people have a hard time understanding how their words affect others.

I’m sorry this person bothered you. At the end of the day you all cleared and I hope you had fun while doing it :)

It's a little difficult to have anything to offer when the story goes "I did everything right and someone said something smarmy and left". Maybe you weren't using bloodwhetting or something. What are you looking for here?

Remember, its never the tanks fault. c: jokes aside, dude was probably just a toxic player. Best to ignore and move on.

did you use bloodwhetting with full health?