very few tanks and some of them suck in dong their job

[Balor]

As a tank, before I start any dundeons I make the following clear:
- DPS, you pull it, you tank it. Follow the Kill order.
- Healer, if a DPS continues to do this, let them die. Learning the hard way is sometimes the best way to learn.

With this made clear with each pug dungeon, I have had no difficulties

[moriandrio]

As a tank when you first go in make sure targets are marked.

Rotation for PLD

Shield lob secondary target.
Flash Provoke 3rd target
Combo primary target
Flash
And you should have hate held as long as dd focuses fire

If you have it make sure you are using Shield Oath. Use other skills as necessary.

Another tank that wastes a GCD cause he doesn't know how his skill works.
Provoke is useless unless someone else has high hate....

[Eewec]

I have to say I've only done a few dungeons so far in XIV. Still really learning what's where and how that new skill I just picked up affects the fight. That said;

1) Doesn't have to be the Tank that marks the mobs. Did 1 dungeon and 1 person had been through before so they got that job... worked quite well.
2) Yeah.... what is it with people doing their best to pull as much agro as possible off the tank? Sometimes it ain't the tank at fault for losing agro.
3) Sometimes it works if the Tank keeps the boss agro while the rest clears the others, especially if you can grab their agro too, but that doesn't always work. That said, we went through Copperbell and got the first timer bonus for doing exactly that. I kept the boss busy and slowly whittled him down while the others cleared everything else out. Come to think of it, we did the same in Tam-Tara.

...cont.

[Eewec]

3 cont) Think we were all kinda stumped by the slimes, but we killed 'em in the end as I held agro and the healer did their thing while we worked out what we had to do. That said, most of the time you have to concentrate your fire on one mob at a time.
4) If your going to sleep a mob, do the tank a favour and mark the mob as such... makes doing our job that much easier in the heat of battle. Oh and really, targeting the one I'm hitting like a food blender trying to keep agro, with 'Sleep'... somehow that's not going to work well.
5) If the tank is lining up on one group, don't decide to attack a completely different group. Yeah, *big surprise* we all died on that one.
6) Running off *if* you get agro... yeah that ain't going to help anyone, including the tank, save you.
7) Running in before the tank... yeah too often happens.

These are the things that just make the Tank face-palm when they happen.

[ReplicaX]

very few tanks and some of them suck in dong their job

Large majority of DPS and a good % of them suck at doing their job.
- Many do not watch their own hate meter and adjust accordingly.
- Many mage DPS do not help the tank at all. When they can Sleep unengaged mobs.
- Many DPS fail at engaging properly marked mob order.
- Many DPS fail at proper usage of AoE skills and their effects.

Low number of healers and some of them suck.
- Forget their primary role is healing the Tank.
- Get hate by many mobs from healing the Tank. Don't Repose the unengaged mobs.
- Esuna, yep. Use it.
- DoTs do help out, if you have time inbetween healing you should be casting them.

My point is simple. All the Dungeons from 15 to 50 are for learning your class/job to ready you for end game besides getting xp and loot. For a lot of players, Tank classes are a longer learning curve.

It seems many ppl are impatient, wanting to grind through content aka 1 dungeon clears and move on. Forgetting it is all a learning experience with a community full of players with different learning curves and past MMO experience if any.

I understand why we have so few tanks in Duty Finder. They fear backlash from impatient ppl. If you wanna clear content and be impatient, then find a group of like minded ppl in your world with experience in the classes needed and grind through it.

[Bahram]

I just started tanking in this game after playing a few MMOs. I prefer to heal and I do it well, but this time around I thought to myself, "Why not give it a go?" I went with GLD, because shields are awesome.

I learned a lot right off the bat. Even though I was still learning, some things were readily apparent to me: flash was an easy way to hold hate off the healer and moderate AOE damage, riot blade replenished my reserves for flash purposes, FB>SB>RoH was single target threat generation, pull with shield lob, provoke mobs that get loose, etc. I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of marking the targets - I assumed that unless I needed to say something, it would make sense to kill each mob in alphabetical order. I'll definitely start marking at least the first and second mobs in every pack I pull, I'm glad that this thread has been informational for me. I even learned about the blue bar for threat, which will be super helpful in the future. I wish someone would have told me, but I haven't had too much trouble keeping threat so far anyways. Every once in a while a mob got loose, and I'd provoke/shield lob it back to me. I don't get hit by red circles, period. I'd like to consider myself as moderately competent, and eventually learning how to excel with enough practice and investigation.

I typically do the dungeons with my friend. We are leveling side by side, including doing the dungeons for the story quest and the optional dungeons. I've had a couple bad experiences with people running ahead into mobs, refusing to give me even the time to initially flash. They were generally either silent or rude in response to a very simple "Please don't run ahead like that" and "Please attack the one I am targeting." No one once mentioned that marking was even possible. Each time I wasn't having fun tanking it was because I felt like I was babysitting people who were hostile or didn't care enough to even engage me. I typically like to at least greet my random Duty Finder comrades and wish them well upon leaving. One time, I was so frustrated I just left the DF immediately after completion. I skipped the cutscene. I really didn't care at that point.

So why do I preface with so much information? Because I want you to understand when I explain the conversation I had with my friend. When we discussed doing Haukke Manor with two random DPSers, we both came to the conclusion that we should just do it with our FC when we can. It's less of a headache, people are friendlier and they're more receptive to correction. Sure, I'm just one tank, but I guarantee that I'm not the only one that came into DF optimistic and decided to avoid it after some crappy experiences. You want to know why there are so few tanks to play with? Because they quit trying. Because they decided to play with people that they knew weren't going to be complete d-bags. Hell, I bet a lot of people coming from WoW figured this is how it would be and didn't go in at all. My feelings aren't hurt, I just don't enjoy playing in that kind of environment. That isn't to say those were all my experiences - most people I played with in DF were perfectly fine.

I know it's a lot, but if you got through it I do appreciate you reading and understanding my perspective on this. Thank you.

[Jayrune]

This thread makes me feel rather good about how often I've been told that I'm a good tank at the end of a dungeon run.

Though it also makes me wonder how I'll fair at higher levels, I've only just unlocked haukke manor so i haven't gotten to the "real" dungeons yet.

[SkyeWindbinder]

6) Running off *if* you get agro... yeah that ain't going to help anyone, including the tank, save you.

I can't tell you how many times an overzealous DD took aggro away from the tank and then ran off in a panic, leaving me as a healer to choose to either fail at healing him and have to hear him crying later about how he died because I didn't give him magical bandaids, OR have to chase him down just to heal him because he won't stand freakin' STILL.

Just to let you know, I always chose the former. I'm not going to chase down an idiot to heal him and take my healing away from the tank, who's actually doing him damn job.

[Azurein]

-snip-

Bravo good sir, bravo!

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Yeah and it doesn't help when players harass the tank for sucking either! I went into my first instance the other day and two out of the 4 other people were some of the rudest players I've ever partied with! They seemed to have more to say with how I should be tanking than they did about doing their own roles.

I would run in to grab hate and before I could even tag a pack of mobs with flash the DPS and casters were already hitting them and healing me for no reason.. and it was apparently my fault for not using flash. If a caster decides to pull on their own as that group did I'll let the mob kill you. If you let the tank run in and grab hate first before doing anything else it makes the task far easier.

I can see this game lacking tanks badly later on just because of how people treat them. It'll be like it was in WoW on some of the servers where you'll have to pay someone to go with you if you need a tank.