Why mark targets?

[Darkstride]

In my experience, a lot of tanks who refuse to mark are the same tanks that can't keep aggro on multiple mobs. Don't complain about what mob(s) your group chooses to DPS if you actively take no part in group organization. I especially like it when the tank tells DPS to just watch the enemy health bars. Again, my experience. I don't personally care if a tank marks or not as long as they aren't a jerk about the possible consequences.

[JonBigwood]

It seems to me that you think (the one who started the thread), as it is so frequent to find Duty Roulette overgeared players everywhere, the normal situation is being overgeared and marking is not that important. In a normal situation where the group is not overgeared, the sooner the first mob dies (and second, etc.), the more probabilities of things going well, less damage received, and probably things go quicker (the less mobs there remain alive, the quicker they die, less damage received, the more a healer can DPS, and healers DPS is strong if they have the possibility to use it.) I think marking 1 might be enough so that the effort concentrates in that one, that might be important (the right Tonberry, the healer mob, etc.) or just convenient for quick deaths. Once that 1 is dead you can mark 1 the next to die on the list. If you manage to mark quickly, mark more numbers. Sometimes it is not necessary, in places where it is evident all know well the place and wiping with trash mobs is very unlikely, and the tank will have no problems to keep enmity.

[MrDiezel]

Sleeping targets is pretty much the worst thing possible for damage, and is to be avoided. Party compositions are not made to always include a WHM or BLM with sleep, and the dungeons simply aren't tuned to require it.

A lot of techniques in the game are based off team composition. The purpose of sleep isnt to maximize damage, its to save your tushie. Especially if, like you said in your original post, none of your DPS have AoEs. DoTs can tick through sleep if applied beforehand.

[MrDiezel]

For Bard, I'll Windbite and Venomous Shot a second target, but mostly for Bloodletter proc against the first.

Unrelated to this post, im a fresh Bard. If you apply Windbite and Venomous Shot to multiple targets, does each application help proc the Bloodletter refresh?? Cuz if so.... thats kinda amazing

[C-croft]

Unrelated to this post, im a fresh Bard. If you apply Windbite and Venomous Shot to multiple targets, does each application help proc the Bloodletter refresh?? Cuz if so.... thats kinda amazing

i believe so, couple with straight shot and MNK x-class for maximum effect.

[Grembo]

.....using only single-target combos yields inferior damage.

Mnk says hi.

[Maku]

Unless you have the kings of AoE (BLMs) and a Prince (BRD) to back them up AoE is usually slower than single target focusing.

[Viridiana]

Second, you are in fact fundamentally wrong about the DPS of dots and AoEs. For melee, at least. For both monk and dragoon one of our DoTs is in the tail end of a combo, DoTs also take far too long to tick down completely, more than the encounter should last after the application of the first comboless one so there would be a long stretch of time where we should use our AoE attacks.

It takes Demolish 9 seconds, maximum, to beat out Snap Punch. IOW, if the target will live more than the next 9 seconds, Demolish > Snap Punch in all ways. For Touch of Death, it takes a bit longer, more like 18 seconds. But, then, all MNKs know that Touch of Death is one of the first things you drop anyway.

For BRD, multi-dotting is the best thing you can do for damage. It takes Venomous Bite 6 seconds and Windbite 9 seconds to match/outpace Heavy Shot, respectively. If you have a target up that doesn't have a dot on it yet, the only thing you should be considering is enmity and time to live (unless you're massively low on TP).

I don't know DRG very well, so I'll leave it to someone else to decide what's worth it there.

[WellFooled]

If you're applying DoTs evenly across enemies and also spreading your single-target weaponskills, then almost all enemies will take longer than 18-30 seconds to fall.
[/B]

In this case you may be maximizing damage, but at the expense of other things. For example, when you kill a monster it can no longer deal damage to you, which means the healer and tank's jobs gets easier. However if you deal equal amounts of damage to all monsters you'll have to put up with the max amount of damage sustained for the entire duration of the pull.

There are also many situations where an enemy group isn't sitting in a tiny little compact space. You've got ranged monster hitting you from afar. To spread dots and single target weaponskills out evenly would require the melee dps to run from target to target after every GCD, which would ruin your dps.

There are also many situations where a single monster poses way more of a threat (or maybe just an annoyance) than other monsters (like the succubus in AK, who can hit you with powerful AoE magic) and should be killed so that threat is eliminated. This is also the case in dozens of boss fights. If you don't kill the adds, they'll eventually overwhelm you.

[UrbanLucrece]

Not marking is not related to DDs getting more clear initiativ to DoT secondary targets, though if you mark targets at least they know which the secondary target is. I.e main target is not worth DoT'ing unless the DoT would get 4-5 ticks mostly, and not often that happens i.e monk having crossed fracture. Also you'll lose hate eventually in some situations, use the mark system and not be lazy :-)