As a tank, what should I know/do to make it easier on Healer?

[MXMoondoggie]

I think everything I could say has been covered I said a bunch in another similar thread. Most important I think is don't stop and start and pay attention to your surroundings. If you LoS the Healer they will have to correct their position and you are losing healing time because of that. Not good if you have tons of incoming damage. And again start and stop is very stressful because after you stop the current mobs will catch up to you starting to do damage then when you move again they are still doing damage. The Healer has two choices in that situation 1) hope you pop some CD's to stay up or 2) throw heals out and probably pull threat on the next mob pack you attack. An experienced Healer can probably do number 2 quite easily and pull them to you for a provoke without being killed but they shouldn't have to and it causes unneeded problems. If you stop just stay as you are until all mobs are dead.

The only other things are that the hardest thing you will probably learn is not keeping threat but knowing when you have lost it. DPS or Healers can always do a huge crit and push up the threat table and it's your job to be looking at snapping mobs and bosses back that you are about to lose. DPS and Healers that know what they are doing will lower their output if they know they are getting threat and that means less party output. What a Tank does is not only protect the party from damage they keep output at maximum so things take the least time possible.

And finally don't be a diva. Yes your role is important but no more than any other in party synergy. A self important Tank makes everyone more miserable and lose morale for a dungeon or raid. Know your own faults and work to correct them and when you have knowledge share it with others to help them. Sometimes it's fine to be firm with new people to teach them to stop repeated mistakes but encourage people when they do well and don't make fun of them. Don't sulk when things are not going well and hold everyone hostage to kick you because you want to leave. If you want to walk away take the 30 minutes and quit whining.

If a party can't handle huge pulls don't sulk about it either or belittle them with "Oooh guess we need to go slow i will just do one mob at a time baby pulls lololol"

[AriaEnia]

Full vit accessories for me. I find it easier for healers (newbie as well as the pro ones) and they feel more comfortable to dps with holy and not to overheal if I go full vit.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

play a pld and cycle cds and shield bash/shield swipe spirits within aoeing mobs.

[rawker]

1. always communicate with the healer, esp if you're going to do a huge pull.
2. cycle your defensive cooldowns, wisely. you should never, ever, stack 2 different defensive cooldowns or use your strongest defensive cooldown on a small pull.
3. check who dps are. don't give your healers a hard time by pulling a huge mob with a dragoon and monk as your dps.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

And for the love of the Twelve, make sure you get all the aggro. I really hate it when tanks either tunnel vision one mob and ignore the rest or they don't manage hate properly and aggro bounces all over the place.

[spelley]

- Actually use your low/mid CDs during "regular" pulls. It reduces the healing required and allows the healer to DPS/regen mana
- If a pull is taking a decent amount of time (most dungeons as you level up the pulls take a little bit once you hit 30-50 dungeons), don't forget to use Overpower/Flash every once and a while so the healer doesn't grab aggro
- Rotate your aggro combo between mobs if possible for same reason as the above
- While leveling, stay aware of whether the healer (or BLM) is sleeping mobs so you don't wake them up with an Overpowered.
- If you see a wandering monster is getting close and WILL engage, pull it with Shield Lob/Tomahawk and Overpower/Flash any new mobs that are coming in because if they aggro by walking into you, they WILL go for the healer.

[Risvertasashi]

If you go into high end content...

1. Know which CDs only work on physical attacks. Sometimes I see physical-only CDs used on magical attacks, which just makes us healers miserable.
2. Generally know the fight and plan out CDs. Note that not every big attack is a tank buster, but just because it's not a tank buster doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.
3. Big attack coming and you don't have any CDs for it? Call that out! It's much easier if we have a few seconds to plan around it instead of "ohshi the tank's at 10% and I only had a cure I precasted."

The others' advice here looks pretty solid but I will say one thing. Try to anticipate incoming damage (this will get easier as you run content more) and have a CD popped before you're low on health. Do be aware that, at least until the expac, WHMs have a longer lead time for a heal going off than SCHs.

[Endeleon]

Thank you all very much! Looks like the thing to watch out most for is my CDs and keeping an eye of WHM MP(beyond what I've already been aware of). Do healers always cast stoneskin before? I've had a few that never cast that(later dungeons) so I wasn't sure if that was something that is only necessary sometimes, maybe they felt I didn't wait long enough for it so I will make sure to wait a good amount of time.

Having not done any other content besides light party, how do you not steal aggro from main tank? Should I just not use my rotation?

My biggest problem so far on my CDs is I get a bit panicky still so I kind of get tunnel vision just making sure I have all the aggro(I'll admit that at this time I am not the best tank. I have some great runs and some horrible runs and I'm hoping to have less of the horrible ones). I've been practicing by repetitively doing low lvl dungeons to get used to working with others so I'm hoping it will be easier to stay calm use them properly.

[SpookyGhost]

1. Good healers will have a SS on you before you move onto the next pack as long as MP permits. Some healers are unaware of this but they can still be good healers. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen, but it's good for the damage you take while pulling one trash pack to the next. If you're going one pack at a time then SS starts being slightly less valuable.

2. Switch to Sword Oath. If you're dropping threat, use Fracture and then continue RoH combo spamming (or do a Riot Blade combo if you're worried about the other tank's threat). If you want to get aggro from the MT, switch to Shield Oath -> Fast Blade -> Provoke -> Savage Blade -> RoH.

3. The best way to go about CD usage is to plan which ones you're going to use per pull. I'll usually just save Sentinel and Hallowed for bigger/dangerous pulls and use my other CDs for the smaller ones. It gets a lot easier the more you do it, but it is the main focus of your job so it's good to practice and prepare for it.

[Seryl199]

Don't worry too much about tunnel vision, just try to pick your head up when you notice it. As you continue to tank you'll learn your rotations through muscle memory, and you'll continue to grow and gain experience in how to handle different situations. You'll find yourself panicking less and focusing more on the battle as a whole, rather than strictly competing for enmity.

Low levels are great for learning the basics of handling enmity, but you'll really want to get hands on experience with using your full kit of CD's regularly. You can have almost continual uptime rotating your lesser CD's, and experiencing how they affect the damage coming at you will give you a feel for what the ideal CD will be for certain scenarios.