I really would like to tank, but

[Austthenoob]

With my focus being more towards new player assistance, I'd say you're doing great with the friendly folk helping out here. As for support, if you ever doubt yourself because of others, don't. Rise to a challenge and be the kind of tank you want to be. Or bail and chill, who needs negativity?

[LimeSamurai]

This is good, however now that you're @50 you'll be seeing a lot more AOE heavy DPS so just a double Flash won't always work. The better your weapon, the less Flash you can get away with, but if DPS start AOEing then Flash like it's your only button.

Of course Ill use Flash or CoS depending on amount of AoE, like the other day where I had a Bard n Dragoon going AoE crazy, all I did was Flash and Riot Blade.

With my focus being more towards new player assistance, I'd say you're doing great with the friendly folk helping out here. As for support, if you ever doubt yourself because of others, don't. Rise to a challenge and be the kind of tank you want to be. Or bail and chill, who needs negativity?

I'm getting over the negativity at this point mostly due to this forum topic where its all encouragement and tips. Also helps that I'm not alone in this kinda situation lol

[Gorlioliolio]

Are you people saying you never finished a pull with savage or halone queued up but that next pull is just too far away for it to be up long enough to run there? Pulling with provoke properly is a skill and as long as dps doesn't ranged something before it gets to me they wont get hit by it during my halone animation lock. If done right it is the best way to secure agro on the first mob coming in or just any single pull, hell half the time I spend the last 10% of a mobs life spamming fast blade so I have better agro ready for next pull and use provoke fully on purpose, in that case if it's a single mob provoke>savage>halone, if multiple provoke>flash>savage>flash, guess what I get to skip a useless fast blade by not throwing a shield.

[JimboTCB]

Are you people saying you never finished a pull with savage or halone queued up but that next pull is just too far away for it to be up long enough to run there? Pulling with provoke properly is a skill and as long as dps doesn't ranged something before it gets to me they wont get hit by it during my halone animation lock. If done right it is the best way to secure agro on the first mob coming in or just any single pull, hell half the time I spend the last 10% of a mobs life spamming fast blade so I have better agro ready for next pull and use provoke fully on purpose, in that case if it's a single mob provoke>savage>halone, if multiple provoke>flash>savage>flash, guess what I get to skip a useless fast blade by not throwing a shield.

The thing is, you're talking about a very specific scenario where you're pulling multiple packs one after the other quickly enough that your combo is still in effect after killing the last mob in the previous pack. For the most part when people talk about pulling, it's in the context of an initial pull on either a boss or a fresh pack of mobs with no existing aggro, and in those cases getting into the habit of using provoke to pull is quite harmful.

Yes, there may be very limited and specific circumstances where pulling with Provoke is the appropriate course of action, but 99.9% of the time it's a derpy way of pulling that wastes a cooldown you might need again soon, and it's a bad habit to get into. I'd bet my ass that the majority of tanks pulling with Provoke are doing so because they don't understand how the skill works as opposed to doing it deliberately because they're taking full advantage of the situation.

[Gorlioliolio]

The thing is, you're talking about a very specific scenario where you're pulling multiple packs one after the other quickly enough that your combo is still in effect after killing the last mob in the previous pack. For the most part when people talk about pulling, it's in the context of an initial pull on either a boss or a fresh pack of mobs with no existing aggro, and in those cases getting into the habit of using provoke to pull is quite harmful.

Fresh pack of mobs with no existing agro? That's exactly what I'm talking about, you finish the pack you are on, spam fast blade to finish off last mob (if you don't suck you should have more than enough agro to do this) and run as fast as you can to the next pull, if you run and fast blade while the mob is low you don't really need provoke, but a lot of packs are spaced out making provoke great.

With a boss, yes you want all the agro you can get right off the bat for those annoying dps that don't give you time so you should lob right? Even if you just fought some mobs and still have a combo half going?

Except that the combo will more than likely be lost if you run up to the boss to use it, forcing you to shield lob, while I agree opening with provoke is the worst possible thing you could do in a coil or trial type fight if you know what you are doing you can open up on damn near any 1 group boss with savage/halone without needing to lob by using provoke. If you are even somewhat intelligent you can see the huge agro difference between this and lob>fast>savage>halone on your meters allowing your dps to open up a second or 2 sooner which they like to do anyways.

That initial pull you're talking about happens 3-4 times in a dungeon, first pull, pull after boss 1 pull after boss 2 and final boss after the stupid cutscene slows down half your group. So basically about 10% of the total dungeon. In other words 99.9% is a stupid number you just pulled out of your arse, go count all the mobs in every dungeon and average it out if you want a real amount but the situation I am talking about happens the vast majority of the time if the tank has a clue what they are doing.

But hey if you need provoke because you are prone to losing agro during a fight anyways then do what you want.