10 steps to being a bad PLD

[Kitru]

another step to being a bad tank: you eat AOEs. all of them.

I'll add a 14th: eating avoidable casts. In AK, the first boss regularly casts Void Thunder that can be dodged by just running behind the boss during the ability's 3 second cast, and I've seen *so* many PLD tanks just eat it because "the healer will take care of it" (it's the only major source of tank damage in the entire fight; if you avoid that and interrupt Mind Melt, like the tank *should* be since it's on a 30 sec CD just like Brutal Swing, the healer can DPS pretty much the *entire* fight). The blob boss in WP is the same: it casts Fire, which just so happens to be 90% of the damage the tank will take, and it can be completely avoided by just running behind the boss.

As an addendum to this, I've met *so* many PLDs that think that they're supposed to stun these very same casts rather than just avoid them by running for half of a second and then proceed to just eat the damage if they're GCD locked and can't stun. There's no reason to stun a cast that is single target that you can just run behind the boss to avoid, with no issue, especially since, as soon as the cast finishes, while the effect is animating, you can run back to where you were and the boss won't have moved at all so even the mDPS can't complain at you. Thankfully, most of the WARs I end up dealing with have learned the secret of avoiding casts rather than thinking that everything is supposed to be interrupted, largely because they actually have to dodge said casts to avoid them rather than having a stun on standby at all times.

[Merlee]

Wow Kitru, I have done around 100 runs of AK in the DF as a healer. I have seen 1 tank to stun both abilities (1. AK) and none to run behind the boss.

Really good information, thanks.

[sheepysheepy]

Wow Kitru, I have done around 100 runs of AK in the DF as a healer. I have seen 1 tank to stun both abilities (1. AK) and none to run behind the boss.

Really good information, thanks.

same never seen either, i figured first boss must be uninteruptable, damn plds

[Yamitri]

snip

Didnt know that, i just stunned both and felt i should be done with it.

[Diswin]

[...]I've met *so* many PLDs that think that they're supposed to stun these very same casts rather than just avoid them by running for half of a second and then [...]

There is no such thing like "half of a second" in FFXIV. You never know what server think about toon's position. You never know what other players see on their screens. You even not sure in what you see on your own screen. You *love* walls of text? Check one about latency and positioning issues.

...the healer can DPS pretty much the *entire* fight [...]

Want to DPS the *entire* fight? There are a plenty of solutions. E.g. switch tool in main hand and re-queue. Simple, right?

[Lord_Zlatan]

There is no such thing like "half of a second" in FFXIV. You never know what server think about toon's position. You never know what other players see on their screens. You even not sure in what you see on your own screen. You *love* walls of text? Check one about latency and positioning issues.
Want to DPS the *entire* fight? There are a plenty of solutions. E.g. switch tool in main hand and re-queue. Simple, right?

At no point in your incoherent rambling did you present anything that resembles a rational thought. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.

[Kitru]

There is no such thing like "half of a second" in FFXIV. You never know what server think about toon's position. You never know what other players see on their screens. You even not sure in what you see on your own screen. You *love* walls of text? Check one about latency and positioning issues.

If your latency is so bad that you can't move 2y behind a boss before a 3 second cast finishes, I have to wonder if you ever managed to do Garuda without eating every single Slipstream; it's the exact same thing for Void Thunder and Fire: you run behind the caster during the cast and avoid the damage. Sure, you *can* just eat the damage and let the healers keep you alive through it, but anyone that does that is going to be considered an idiot. There are abilities that the developers pretty obviously intended for tanks to avoid by running out of LoS during the cast, and they're not just on a few bosses either; the only difference between the casts I'm talking about and the various breath abilities that tanks dodge for more obvious reasons is that the ST casts don't have a red zone telling you to GTFO; as far as their damage and the effect upon the rest of the fight goes, they're exactly the same though and, if you're eating them, you're eating damage that you *should* be avoiding.

Want to DPS the *entire* fight? There are a plenty of solutions. E.g. switch tool in main hand and re-queue. Simple, right?

I want to speed up the fight/dungeon. If a healer has empty GCDs, it behooves that healer to switch over to Cleric Stance and throw down with some damage. If you're just standing around, you're not really helping your group out and, if you're a tank and you're eating damage just to give your healer something to do, you're actually making it harder on your group which will slow things down. It's the tank's job to decrease the load on the healer and, if the tank can manage to make that load next to zero, *they should* because it allows the healer to contribute in other ways.

When I'm healing, I'm always ready to throw down heals, but there are a lot of fights where the incoming damage *should* be low enough, given a lack of idiocy and undergearedness on the tank's part, that I should be able to speed things up by DoTing up the boss (or, if things are going well, just straight up DPSing the entire time and letting Eos handle all of it; I can actually do that on most of the bosses in AK/WP). I do the same thing on Titan for all phases except for p5 since healing load is low outside of everything except for Tumult and Mountain Buster (not to mention that Lustrate and Stoneskin are both fully effective while in Cleric Stance).

Any healer that *only* heals is doing the absolute minimum to help out their group. A truly good healer is going to recognize those times when anything else they'd do would be overheal and start DPSing to speed things up. Getting pissed off and telling someone that knows enough about the content to know these situations automatically that they should just go reroll to DPS because you, as a tank, are either too lazy or too oblivious to avoid easily avoidable damage has nothing to do with the healer doing their job incorrectly or having rolled the wrong job. Honestly, if you think that you should be able to make every mistake imaginable that doesn't *explicitly* wipe the group and just have the healer clean up after you, *you* are the one that rolled the wrong job.

[dark494]

*snip*

Everything the boss does can be silenced and stunned and pacified. I've never had a problem doing either, brd's can chime in and do the same, as can every other class with stuns, and it doesn't really matter. It's not like the boss can actually do enough meaningful damage to matter. Why don't you go yell at the healers that insist on standing in the giant red radius of death (not behind a pillar) because they don't know how to dodge?

[Kitru]

Everything the boss does can be silenced and stunned and pacified.

They're spells, not special attacks, so they can't be pacified. You'd be surprised at how few actual "special attacks" bosses have and how little Pacification actually ends up doing.

It's not like the boss can actually do enough meaningful damage to matter.

It depends upon how you define "meaningful". If you define it as "actually putting pressure on the healer", then, no, nothing that the first boss in AK does is actually meaningful. If you define it as "forcing the healer to use a GCD to heal instead of DPS", then, yes, it is meaningful. Iron Justice on the Dullahan trash isn't really "meaningful" damage in the first sense since any tank will be able to survive it easily and any healer should be able to heal through it no problem, but you're still going to tell tanks to stop eating it.

The point I make is that there are a *lot* of tanks out there, especially PLDs because they're used to avoiding damage with Shield Bash and ignoring any other avenues of ability avoidance, that will take damage that is easily avoidable. Bad tanks just eat it and expect their healers to pick up the slack. Good tanks just avoid it outright because damage not taken is better than damage healed, even if the end result from the tank's perspective is exactly the same.

Why don't you go yell at the healers that insist on standing in the giant red radius of death (not behind a pillar) because they don't know how to dodge?

Who says I don't do that? I get on the case of anyone that takes avoidable damage. I yell at BRDs that don't interrupt the third Tumult to reduce the massive raid damage on p5 Titan. I yell at DPS that just stand there instead of running from the blob boss in WP or eat the inhale on the first boss. I yell at DPS that eat Catastrophe, Murder Hole, or Thunderstorm in AK.

I get on the case of anyone that just takes unavoidable damage often enough that it's apparent that it wasn't just an isolated incident. However, that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about what tanks, specifically PLDs, should not be doing and eating easily avoidable casts is one of those things. A bad PLD is going to just eat every single one of those casts; a mediocre PLD will stun or silence them; a good PLD will recognize that stunning or silencing them is a waste of resources and just dodge them at the cost of nothing.

[HiirNoivl]

Everything the boss, (Psychflayer) does can be silenced and stunned and pacified. I've never had a problem doing either, brd's can chime in and do the same, as can every other class with stuns, and it doesn't really matter. It's not like the boss can actually do enough meaningful damage to matter. Why don't you go yell at the healers that insist on standing in the giant red radius of death (not behind a pillar) because they don't know how to dodge?

If there are two Ranged DD in a party I just run circles around the pillar (for BRDS) or just continually run through him (for mages), laughing gleefully and taking no damage. Also, Mind Melt can be LoS'ed behind the pillars.

All in all I only take damage if there are Melee in the party. XD