Quote Originally Posted by Nova_Dresden View Post
I've had BLMs in groups that were WAY overgeared (only thing they didn't have was any coil drops) and perpetually bitched that I couldn't keep stuff off of them. The first boss in Castrum Meridianum is an excellent example because one BLM with relic +1 made that dungeon hell. After his first Astral Fire rotation there was nothing me or the other tank could do to pull it off of him. Nothing. Provoke didn't do anything, spamming everything we had, using all MP on Flash, etc. I was only able to buy him a few second with Cover when it was up, but nothing the warrior tank did even phased it. And during all that bitching about taking damage it never occurred to that BLM to SLOW DOWN. He had one speed on his damage output that he was unwilling to adjust, and it's stuff like that that makes a lot of tanks either bitter or just quit.
In that kind of situation, I probably would have spoken up in party chat with something along the lines of: "OK guys, let Black Mage Evilwizardington have his fun. {Manawall} {Tank} {You can have this}."

And if he still didn't back down, let him tank the boss.

Seriously. If he's fully Relic/Tome geared in an AF party and refuses to slow down, let him tank and faceplant, and then leave him chewing dirt until the boss is beaten (if he hasn't ragequit before then). As long as your healers don't waste their entire MP bar trying to keep him alive, the remaining party members will easily complete the boss after the "problem player" is out of the picture. In those situations the best thing a Tank can do for the party is make sure they stay #2 on the aggro list so that hate goes back to where it should be once the overeager party member dies. Your responsibility as a Tank is to protect the rest of the party as best you can - maintain a good hate lead over the rest of the players, let the idiot faceplant, and then the remaining members of the party can continue the fight as normal.

I can sort of understand if you had been fighting trash mobs and the BLM kept focussing on one target and pulling hate from it - if they're highly geared then they can tank a trash mob without much bother, so it wouldn't have been a problem for the rest of you. Bosses are another story. No sympathy for them there.

Technically a Summoner could also pull that same level of ST DPS on a boss, so I suppose all this would apply to them too... (though not so much on the trash mobs - if they're spreading their DoTs out then it'll be a lot easier to hold hate on even if they're rocking a relic)

All gear being equal, I agree with PiedPiper. A good Tank should never lose hate to similarly-geared DPS players (though occasionally they might bottom out their MP and TP trying to do so!!) and shouldn't lose hate to Healers apart from in exceptional circumstances. But the "starter" endgame dungeons (CM, Castrum, Ifrit, and especially WP) will often see wide variances in the type of gear people bring, and it can sometimes help to be a wee bit flexible...