Tank shortage is going to get worse.

[gyugotsugo]

I dont think tankings boring. Tanking 3-4 mobs at a time with no sleeper gets kinda crazy keeps me up.

[Kyp]

its when its a bunch of small adds come and we want to AOE em down and flash works up to 3 times before diminishing returns nulls it,

The DR effect is on the blind, you will still build enmity with each flash use. It is so you cannot get free extra mitigation for perma-blinding a boss (assuming you have magesong to use flash every 3rd GCD)

Useful website
http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

Flash is actually the highest enmity builder for a noncombo single skill use, so if you have DD that dont let you get far enough into you first rage of halone combo, use flash first, it BLINDS the mob for more mitigation and adds enough threat to give you the 3 GCD against that DD, after that your in a normal threat rotation.

[Kizenny]

I just enjoy being good at what I do. Sure the job isn't the most fun in the world, but I know everyone in a group appreciates a great tank. I am working to build up my Warrior after I finish with Dragoon. I also want to be a positive community member and be patient with players that are new to dungeons/encounters. I'm noticing a little too much elitism going on at the higher levels at the moment and it's toxic to the FF14 community at large. If you want to be elitist and speed run everything then you should do it within your grand company, not a part of the community at large through duty finder/shout. Bottom line, some people will get tired of the queues and start leveling tanks.

[Dashuto]

Nearly ever single time I tank outside of an LS or FC arranged team I get people who run off, pull, or fight whatever they want despite me numbering mobs. I give all of these people friendly instruction, and ask nicely for them to not do these things. They never care or sometimes just explode at me about it. The largest issue of all is keeping on the mob I selected as main, even despite it being numbered. These same people usually never move during boss fights, and never handle adds.

There was even a fight where we had a monk who would not get off main boss no matter what (they did speak english). So it was up to me and another DD to grab adds, me kiting boss around as monk just spams to all shit through the fight.

I've gotten Warrior to 50 now, and I'm pretty much done with it. Except for my friends and people from LS or FC I am never going to play it. It only ever gets worse. I'm switching to a Bard and I don't care how long the duty finder is. I had gladiator at 22 and was ready to 50 it next but that thing is going to collect dust forever now.

People in this game are absolutely horrible to their tanks.

I know others in my LS who don't want to tank anymore or are beginning to feel that way. Not even to mention the people who flip out and such. Like when we fought the female judge and it was directly stated "if she targets you, and you get the message, the adds will have some pre-hate on you and be difficult to peel off, dont panick". Healer then proceeds to bitch out our add tank about not grabbing mobs off her. I've seen it happen more than once in castrum runs from healers or dps.

I'm just going DD and never looking back. I know the strats, I don't even need to be told what to do. I'm going to quietly/silently enjoy my dungeon runs after a long queu and never involve myself again in trying to teach morons. I'm not going to waste my time even talking to them anymore, its never worth it.

[Laeore]

I'm a good tank and I only have problems with absent-minded DPS now, at 46. That being said, tanks need work. Just because the better players are happy with tanking does not mean that it is in a good state. Having queued heals quite a few times now, I have noticed a LOT of bad tanks. Disproportionately so. The severe shortage of tanks (IMO) can be chalked up to:

1) The high learning curve.
2) The GCD providing additional pressure on tanking in many situations.
3) The reliance on others keeping their threat in check / on target.
4) The rather simple and slow pace of tanks.

I think the proof is in the tank shortage. Some people, especially on the forums, will be okay with the game's status no matter what. The actual representation of tanks in-game says that the current state of tanking is in need of some assistance. Having tanked for the last ten years or so in every MMO I've ever played, FF's is my pick for the most cumbersome and dissatisfying. The GCD is my major annoyance. While I like the pace of the game, the GCD does stress tanking. I'm not used to multi-target threat being out of my hands. Yes, I tab target with a solid rotation. No, I do not have many problems. I'm not the average player though.

This all being said, tank or die!

[Blackcat75]

As a 50 MRD who has done through the entire storyline and ampudor (haven't done wandering palace or HM's yet) I absolutely love my marauder. I do get tank burnout a bit as it would nice to be able to just kick back and only be responsible for myself like dps, but meh them the breaks.

I will admit the 30-40 range can be a little rough but by the time you get to end game things get pretty rocking.

I remember when I was doing the first of the two endstory dungeons PM I think.. the one with Ultima weapon. Everyone in the party was their first time through but my friend and I had got the strat page on the web for the fights so we had an idea and explained as we went along. Anyways we just beat Ultima phase one and while loading into P2 one of our healers dc. So there we are sitting with 30 minutes on the timer left with only 1 healer. None coming from a reque and none of us wanted to have to do all this over again. So we talked as a group and said screw it lets go.

First round through we got him to 25% with one healer and myself tanking with about 5.5k health and pulling every bloody healing trick in the book out I could manage.

Second round he had a fraction of a health bar, someone had blown the LB early and we didn't get him before he nova'ed.

Third round he died and we nuked the last guy with 5 mins on the timer.

I learned so much about survival tanking in that 25 minutes lol and fully realized the depths of warrior tanking at least. If I have one complaint it is that special moment when you are pulling a 3 or 4 mob heavy hitting group and you have a super heavy hitting dps in the group. Can you get enough aggro over that heavy hitter to start tabing and hitting the other mobs before 1 of them peels and tries to eat the healer who had to drop heavy heals at the very begging of the fight. but on most bosses by the time their health bars are at 50% I have so much of a hate lead that I go full dps/healing rotation skills with only the hate rotation thrown in once every 5 or 6 sets for the rest of the fight.

EDIT: Oh and P.S. While it is nice to have a lot of the defensive and offensive CD's off the GCD. The animation CD still makes those painful too.

[ZyloWolfBane]

Level 25 is a little soon to be judging a class. You've only gotten like 40% of your available toolset at that point.
Stick with it, it gets better.

That's the problem, the classes are unfinished to begin with in my opinion. But to force you to deal with an extremely limited toolset from the start is NOT the way to encourage people to get into tanking or to continue sticking with it until it stops sucking.

Like it or not there's simply not enough survivability or threat generation tools for a VERY long time, and leaving WARs without any extra active mitigation even in the endgame is really bad too.

[Aerenvel]

it is nice to get a 15sec que as a pld that's always cool.

[Rassiel]

The DR effect is on the blind, you will still build enmity with each flash use. It is so you cannot get free extra mitigation for perma-blinding a boss (assuming you have magesong to use flash every 3rd GCD)

Useful website
http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

Thanks for this, there's a wealth of information here and the numbers and empirical data to back it up @.@.

Marauders should especially look down into the "Non-Defiance Tanking" section for some interesting ideas, obviously meant to be practiced before applied to end-game tanking situations.

[DeceptionsWrath]

For me Final Fantasy 14 had the best PLD skills and spells to use. I'll admit i was very disappointed when i saw PLD gets stuck with a Cure I...Almost no real point to even have that it seems since it heals for like 150 health. What is that? Like 1 hit? PLD is way too squishy on final fantasy 14 i will say that. It's like, if you give any class with high health some decent enity tools they can tank just as easily as PLD can in this game.
I never had issues keeping enmity unless some BLM decided to spam AOE spells. Or other DPS'ers decided to fight the #2 Marked mob til it was dead instead of the one i had targeted. I did not do any dungeons with Shield Oath(20% damage mitigation and increased enmity?) yet. PLD is still a very good tanking class, I just miss my heals.