Tanking habits

[Itseotle]

Actually this line of thinking is wrong. The times sololy depend on your group make up.

However if you have 2 monks or 2 ninjas in your group then guess what. you will spend 1 min on each group of mob not 5. Why cos we do more dps single target . However if you mass pull we're so slow at it and run out of tp that it actually takes 6mins to kill the mobs where as if you took them in packs of 3 you would have done it in 2 mins.

don't bite of more than your group can chew.

Yea this isn't exactly right. If a DRG can do 400 single target DPS on one mob that is fine. If that same DRG can only do 150 DPS on 1 mob using AOE attacks, then thats bad, BUT it becomes on-par (not accounting for TP) at just 3 mobs. Now when the Tank has like 6+ Mobs, all of a sudden that DRG doing 150 DPS a mob x6 is now dealing 900 DPS, which is now justified with the higher TP cost. Personally back in those Brayflox HM runs of old, I used to do over 1400 DPS (no joke) to some of those bigger trash packs as DRG.

Now granted MNK aoe is very very bad no matter how many mobs there are, but from my understanding NIN aoe is fairly decent, as is BRD when were talking 5+ mobs, and although the "sweet spot" for SMN is 4 targets, MiasmaII, Shadow Flare, and Tri-disaster has no cap like Bane does, so there dps increases as mob count does as well. Now granted if the over-all aoe dps of the group is low then your DPSers will run out of resources (TP/MP) to do dps and then THATS when you know your tank has pulled more than the group can handle.

so tldr; if your group has resources available, its faster to AOE than it is to Single Target. If you are going to be using AOE dps, then the more mobs you pull, the less resources and time you will use overall.

Also want to comment to his:

1. it's stressfull
2. it's boring cos your just spaming aoes
3. it's risky cos your likely to wipet

Those 3 points you made are actually kind of contradictory. You say its stressful and risky, and yet also boring. If your stressed out then your really not bored.. your stressed. I like playing both DPS and Healer when it comes to big pulls. DPS is pressure to kill things fast before the Healer/Tank run out of cooldowns and die. That pressure for me is the challenge, and with challenge comes fun. What fun would I have if I just spammed 1-2-3 with no threat of anything bad going to happen? When I am healing, there is the pressure to keep the tank alive. If that is easily managed, I can force it to be harder by adding my own DPS to the mobs. And again, challenge brings fun, and I like that fine line between healing and dpsing. Now as tank... I don't really enjoy as much as the others truthfully because of people who like to complain about-every-single-thing. I got you into your dungeon, now get off my back unless I am being absolutely terrible. But even when I do tank I enjoy challenging myself. I could pull 1 mob... and again 1-2-3 until its dead but where is the challenge in that? Pull more and juggle threat management and damage reduction.

[Mercuito]

Yea this isn't exactly right. If a DRG can do 400 single target DPS on one mob that is fine. If that same DRG can only do 150 DPS on 1 mob using AOE attacks, then thats bad, BUT it becomes on-par (not accounting for TP) at just 3 mobs. Now when the Tank has like 6+ Mobs, all of a sudden that DRG doing 150 DPS a mob x6 is now dealing 900 DPS,

Which is exactly your thinking problem. yes the DRG is doing 900DPS but to each of those 6 mobs he is doing 150 dps. Now the rate with which the mobs die will still be that of a DRG doing 150 dps to each of them. which means each of them will die 4 times slower than if the drg single targeted them individually. This is 4 times more up time of the tank getting hit. and assuming they all die at the same time. it would have been faster to take each of them down individually at 400-500 dps than it would to take them down at 150 dps.

[Noxifer]

Which is exactly your thinking problem. yes the DRG is doing 900DPS but to each of those 6 mobs he is doing 150 dps. Now the rate with which the mobs die will still be that of a DRG doing 150 dps to each of them. which means each of them will die 4 times slower than if the drg single targeted them individually. This is 4 times more up time of the tank getting hit. and assuming they all die at the same time. it would have been faster to take each of them down individually at 400-500 dps than it would to take them down at 150 dps.

Umm... What?

Say a mob can take 450 damage before dying (to make it easier)

Fighting 6 mobs one by one, but doing 450 damage per rotation, it means 6 mobs take 6 rotations to die.

Fighting 6 mobs together, but doing 150 AoE damage per rotation, it means 6 mobs take 3 rotations to die (3x150, applied to all mobs).

So yes, the mobs die faster individually, but the end result is still that the 6 mobs are dead much faster if you AoE them down. If you increase the numbers and have 9 mobs in the same group, they still take 3 rotations to die, since all enemies take the same damage from one attack. One by one, they'd take 9 rotations to die.

(Note: I'm using "damage per rotation" instead of "damage per second", since it just looked silly saying 6 mobs took 6 seconds to die :3 And since it's really late, I don't trust myself to go for higher numbers and get the math accurate ^^; )

But yes, it does mean that some of the mobs will damage the tank for longer. Which is why you have defensive cooldowns. When I pull three mobs, I rarely have to bother with defensive cooldowns, because I don't take much damage from them (expert roulette dungeons exempt, since those mobs do hit harder :3 ). If the tank isn't geared for a speed run, or the healer isn't geared to heal a speed run -- or the dps aren't geared enough to support a speed run by killing things quickly enough -- then a speed run will not work. You wipe, and get to start over again.

Personally I prefer killing things group by group, but if I have a healer I trust and if I have at least one (well-geared) AoE-heavy class, I can pull two or three groups even in dungeons I'm not that familiar with. The only places I've ever pulled more than that is Brayflox HM and Wanderer's Palace. Mainly because I'm familiar enough with those two places to know how much I can take. And that's often because I've had healers or dps who've told me to "pull more". If I see the "someone is new to this place", I never do it. And especially in WP, I do tend to take the time while waiting for the dungeon to start to check out the gear of the rest. If one or more people are still in i70 gear or below, I'll limit pulls to two or three groups at the most; even with a non-overgeared healer, that's how much I know I can handle -- heck, I've had a scholar on lazymode (aka /follow on someone in the group) in there, with just Eos keeping me alive through that XD

As for the "pull mobs into boss rooms", I suspect those would be either troll tanks or failed lockouts (where you pull mobs to just outside the boss room, tank stays just on the inside and someone pulls the boss over -- once the area is locked, the mobs de-aggro and go back to their spots).

Yes, some tanks do seem to like biting off more than they can chew, but for at least some of those I actually suspect it's because they've always been told by DFed people to "pull more!" (and when they don't, been called 'crap tank' and people drop out) and then think that's what you're supposed to do if you want to be a good tank, instead of realizing it's more the opposite way around. That was one of the reasons I stopped DFing dungeons for a long while, back when I was still learning, and only went with friends.

This only count for high level dungeons. In low level dungeon the gear is only ~ 4 level over the dungeon level.

Except he was talking about Wanderer's Palace and upwards.... which means lvl50 dungeons o.o

[Mercuito]

Those 3 points you made are actually kind of contradictory. reduction.

They are perfectly fine. if they weren't fine how would I feel them.

1. They are stress full cos it puts a huge responsibility on you to kill that many mobs that your not easily capable off in a short amount of time. hence stress
2. to attempt to do so requires you to spam 3 buttons over and over again. hence boring
3. risky cos it's likely that even with all your efforts you will fail. hence risky

you've just proven my point that this is just a stupid situation to be in.

There are many types of stress my friend. and not all are enjoyable challenge. the kind involved here is not only boring it's annoying. So are you saying SE should make a boss that has a 50% chance of kills the raid at the last 10% cos it's stressfull and there fore fun........please get real