Quote Originally Posted by Ladon View Post
MT switching mechanics which keep the game interesting would not be possible without provoke. It also allows a tank to actually get back in the fight if they die and get raised. The skill is anything but underwhelming.

And as mentioned above, as a general utility, it is the only far range skill tanks have.
But other games have provokes/taunts that work just fine but have the added benefit of being useful outside 1 or 2 niche scenarios. SWTOR's taunt for example made any enemy taunted glued to you for 6 seconds, giving you time to build threat and working just fine for a tank swap. The main point I'm trying to make is the current provoke is only useful in a handful of situations, maybe really only in some 5% of situations, while the other 95% of the time it's just a waste of a hotbar space.

The problem being most content you need enemies on you fast, and provoke doesn't generate threat on it's own, nor does it force enemies to attack you. Effectively tanks have no burst threat to work with, when that's what a provoke is meant to do. In XI I would provoke an enemy/boss and it gives me a chance to keep them on me at the start of a pull. In SWTOR I could taunt enemies and have 6 seconds of breathing room to get my aoe's off to build the threat I need. In XIV I run in, flash, and hope there's no over zealous BRD or WHM to rip threat off me. If they do provoke is worthless, because 99% of the time they will continue to DPS or heal after I provoke and I can only watch as I have to try and winning a ranged threat battle to get it back, or abandon the rest of the enemies I'm trying to tank too.

As it stands it's the most underwhelming threat generating ability I've seen in an MMO to date.