Tanking Frustration: I blame WoW

[Tanoshii]

Tanking in this game is so mind-numbingly stupid. It can completely be out of your hands if your healer wants to Regen everybody or spam that overheal. At least in WoW you had something else to do besides a basic threat combo. Even if threat didn't matter, at least there was other buttons to push. Once you have aggro on a boss in this game, you never lose it anyway unless you die.

[Rok]

Tanking in this game is perfect, and follows suit from FFXI. Stupid DPS = dead DPS. I've played every single MMO that's come out in the past 11 years and I was so sick of it for one simple reason; I love to tank. My most recent MMO before FFXIV was Rift, and that put the icing on the cake. I was so tired of just being needed because I'm a tank. There was no skill involved besides running my character into whatever I wanted and spamming buttons. It didn't matter what buttons. Any button. Tank = instant que and easy mode in every fricken MMO. At least in this game there is a bit of a challenge brought back, and not just a challenge for me, a challenge for my whole party to not be idiots about healing and DPS.

As a veteran and top notch MMO player, I thank Square Enix personally for giving me something to care about while tanking. As well as not following the example the United States has recently of making its population as retarded as possible.

[Keneblerz]

What I meant is take the time out of poking stuff to actually look at your hate, I'm not talking about bosses resetting hate, I'm talking about full boar spammers who face roll in the first 5 secs.

By "looking at your hate," you mean observing the mobs? Or is there a threat meter im not aware of? Im just asking, not trying to be condescending. And on the topic of DD's, for those that are willing to listen you can always guide them to be better. Won't take more than a few suggestions. Or just see where their at. Remember alot of person who play this game may be first timers.

[Ehayte]

By "looking at your hate," you mean observing the mobs? Or is there a threat meter im not aware of?

There are 3 Enmity indicators in this game. They follow in order of usefulness:
#1 - In your party window, to the left of a member's class icon is a white meter with a number next to it - if the number is 1 or A, the mob is about to smack that person. Everyone that has some hate as a number, in order of how much hate they have. There is also that white meter that fills up, the more fill the meter is, the more enmity someone has. So if it says you are #1, but the healer's says #2 and the bar is almost full, you are about to lose aggro.
#2 - In the (default) left of your UI over your main chat, there is a list of things that have you on their hate list. If the icon is green, they see you, yellow, they are pretty upset with you, red, they are targeting you.
#3 - Red lines/Sounds - When a mob targets something new, a red line will go to them from the mob. If it is you, it will make a soft noise.

[Keneblerz]

There are 3 Enmity indicators in this game. They follow in order of usefulness...

I see, thanks for that. I never realized it. I normally eyeball it based on how long i havn't used flash or how much the healer is using cure/regen. When i see the red line i immediately use provoke followed up shield lob or something and resume shield bashing anythign that moves . I kid, but thankfully my healers don't have to work so hard unless i goofed on establishing threat.

[saber_alter]

The same goes for the healer. He has a sleep spell for a purpose.

you know, this is my biggest complaint for CNJ/WHM. not enough sleep.

i understand it when there are idiot DDs on the team spamming AOE, but most of the time that doesn't happen and they're too focused on the Healing part and not the damage mitigation part (and i'm not talking about stoneskin here.)

(also i would like to apologize (in advance) to any CNJ/WHM that use sleep that i have negated by attacking what they just casted it on. i'm sorry.)

[jovination]

I find there is just to much rage, this is really a game. There are people who act like idiots yes, but it is no fun to just "let them die" to learn. What I do is ask them, well what do YOU want me to do? If they say spam AoE hate gen the whole time they can see my tp/mp drain and become unable to do ANY hate gen and wipe the party. Gives them a good guilt trip that the first time it was just them, and when the tank tries to correct its a wipe.

Typically I will tomahawk a mob that gets away, usually turning it around long enough for an overpower/flash and regain it. Also swapping to it for a quick hate rotation to make sure it doesn't leave and move to the next one. Doing this I can typically hand keeping hate from spammy dps, most freak out when they see the mob turn, if your lucky they will look for the mob everyone else is attacking and refocus.

[jovination]

Why does SE make me shorten posts >.>

What I am getting at is I hate WoW and how its rotation or get out. If you do not "maximize" you are bad, I like this game and 11 for the fact that you could play how you wanted, not really one predefined way. Adapting to the situation in this game is key, mistakes happen how well you can handle it and prevent a wipe is the true duty of the tank.

[Khyranthir]

Funny thing is that I remember threat meters being a pretty important mod to have when I was raiding in WoW. Mind you, I only played from vanilla up to Cataclysm so I'm not familiar how much the mechanics have changed. But I would have thought that WoW's raiding community would at least be aware of threat management upon joining FFXIV. Having it be part of the game and not some add-on is a godsend.

Granted, WoW was full of idiots too. Can't say they'd be any different once they get here.

[Kerrath]

Funny thing is that I remember threat meters being a pretty important mod to have when I was raiding in WoW. Mind you, I only played from vanilla up to Cataclysm so I'm not familiar how much the mechanics have changed.

Threat ceased to be an issue in 3.0, aka the pre-patch for WotLK. After that point, if someone pulled aggro, it was the tank's fault. 3.0 increased the DPS of all tanks. Later, (forgot when) threat went from 2x to 5x, and then after that, vengeance was added, which was a mechanic that made tanks do even more dps than before. After Cataclysm the DPS requirement to pull aggro from a non-retarded tank (aka at their computer, monitor turned on, keyboard plugged in, mouse plugged in, connected to the internet, logged into the game, conscious, paying attention, hands on mouse+keyboard, eyes open, not physically or mentally disabled) was astronomical. This has stayed true through to mists of pandaria. btw if a couple of the things i previously mentioned were missing you could probably still hold aggro.

Coincidentally, if a DPS didn't install Omen after the launch of WotLK, I didn't give a shit as a tank, because never once did I lose aggro, even during the time when I was using a wonky non-responsive mouse that would periodically die and the keys started to fall out of my keyboard at a regular rate.