Dear melee DPS...

[Krylo]

If it costs zero extra effort for me, why would I ask the tank to work harder?

Because the tank working harder there is how they contribute to the run. Might as well ask why I should be expected to do anything but stand next to a mob and spam bootshine. It's easier for me! Make the run go a lot slower, and be less fun, but easier for me!

Also, my own experience tanking is that I get bored with small pulls and when things aren't dangerous. It's easier but also less fun. Same with healing.

And no, there's no hard feelings.

[Zfz]

if a tank/healer can't handle that extra pressure, the tank shouldn't be multipulling

Tanks use cooldowns to manage AoE packs. There are no tanks in this game capable of maintaining the same damage reduction indefinitely. A pack of 8 may be perfectly survivable while 40% damage reduction is up; but it will become a heavy drain on healer MP when it runs out and you go into 20% damage reduction, and it may finally be fatal (i.e. only lucky crits from the healers will have any chance of keeping you up) when you run out of defensive cooldowns.

It helps tremendously to reduce a pack of 8 down to 6 or 5 by the time the tank's major cooldown has finished. With less incoming damage, the tank will be able to maintain the same healing requirement when he only has access to less powerful cooldowns.

8 enemies * 500 dmg per 3 seconds = 4000 per 3 seconds, @ 40% DR you take 2400 per 3 seconds
6 enemies * 500 dmg per 3 seconds = 3000 per 3 seconds, @ 20% DR you take 2400 per 3 seconds

v.s.

8 enemies * 500 dmg per 3 seconds = 4000 per 3 seconds, @ 40% DR you take 2400 per 3 seconds
8 enemies * 500 dmg per 3 seconds = 4000 per 3 seconds, @ 20% DR you take 3200 per 3 seconds

Now add to the fray some mobs that may surprise the healer with a party-wide AoE hitting everyone for 2k. Or a PBAOE with petrify effect for 6~9 seconds. Or a stun on the tank that happens to coincide with a telegraphed AOE hitting the tank for 4k, followed up by auto-attacks that will land 100% because the tank is stunned. All these are easily avoidable if the tank is given time to act. But stun resist builds up and mob casts may overlap and sooner or later one of these casts will come through even if you have the world's best tank player at the helm. These are the types of enemies that should be killed asap.

These numbers are all for illustration purposes and aren't actual in-game numbers. But the situations described are all real.

If the party has enough firepower to always finish packs within the tank's cooldown, then sure, why not. Do whatever you like to maximize your total dps. But otherwise it can be a big disservice to both the tank and the healer to try spreading out your targeting so that you're always maximizing your AOE dps.

[Saggo]

If it costs zero extra effort for me, why would I ask the tank to work harder?

To make the run quicker for everyone, healer and tank too. Quicker runs means more farming/leveling, everyone wins. Tanks can rotate combos just fine in a large pull. Tank defensive CDs are more influenced by the state of the healer than the size of the pull (if the healer can handle it, CDs just aren't needed as much).

I like what Krylo said, if the healer can't handle the pressure, you shouldn't mass pull in the first place, or at least alternate pull sizes.

Pressure on the healer ultimately boils down to ilvl and skill, but I've found as many PUGs communicating what they can/can't as I've had that didnt. Really PUGs can communicate just fine, they just need to do it.

[Krylo]

Snip

And if the DPS can't AoE down the entire pack before you run out of cooldowns/HP then the DPS isn't good enough for you to be multipulling.

Edit: Let me put it another way:

If you AREN'T doing AoE rotations, why pull multiple packs? The only reason to do so is to AoE them down and kill them faster, but if you're doing 8 mobs and single target DPSing them all down you kill them at the same rate as if you had pulled the two-three packs seperately. SLOWER actually, because you aren't getting out of combat TP/MP regen between kills, which can become a problem on large packs.

[Lantia]

snip

Sorry but are you serious about this?
8 Mobs as NIN:
Start Fight:
Rotation: Katon + Kassatsu Doton
Should I now cast deathblossom until I can recast Katon/Doton? Wuhahahaha never ever. To less dmg on single targets. As a poster was posting above: 3200 dmg every 3 secs just because you would like to be "faster" and kill all at the same time is insane as healer cannot do DPS and tank will also have a hard time. Totally social

Take the 20 Secs more per pack and life with it.

[Colorful]

Sorry but are you serious about this?
8 Mobs as NIN:
Start Fight:
Rotation: Katon + Kassatsu Doton
Should I now cast deathblossom until I can recast Katon/Doton? Wuhahahaha never ever. To less dmg on single targets. As a poster was posting above: 3200 dmg every 3 secs just because you would like to be "faster" and kill all at the same time is insane as healer cannot do DPS and tank will also have a hard time. Totally social

Take the 20 Secs more per pack and life with it.

Not to mention that you'd be running out of TP even with Invigorate incredibly quick, and if you're continually pulling large group after another then that's a bad idea.

[Saggo]

Tanks pretty much do the same thing for any pull. Pull, AoE enmity, CD, AoE enmity a few times, rotate combos. Or just spam AoE enmity if you're feeling lazy that day.

4 mobs or 8, neither one is harder for a tank because neither one changes up the rotation radically.

You can say the tank takes 800 less damage if you kill 2 mobs first, but if the fight lasts 3 seconds longer because of it, you've already taken more damage than you've saved.

If the healer can handle the load, there's no objective reason to not AoE, it doesn't take much ilvl progression until a healer can safely Holy, Bane, or whatever AST does these days.

[Krylo]

Sorry but are you serious about this?
8 Mobs as NIN:
Start Fight:
Rotation: Katon + Kassatsu Doton
Should I now cast deathblossom until I can recast Katon/Doton? Wuhahahaha never ever. To less dmg on single targets. As a poster was posting above: 3200 dmg every 3 secs just because you would like to be "faster" and kill all at the same time is insane as healer cannot do DPS and tank will also have a hard time. Totally social

Take the 20 Secs more per pack and life with it.

I guess if you want to do ~150 potency with every attack instead of 800 potency that's up to you. And to be fair death blossom is a bit shitty 'cause of the TP to damage ratio (although at 8 mobs, again, that's 800 potency, just do it until you get to ~550 tp, invig, keep doing it until ~500 tp, then switch to single target rotation while swapping targets and spreading dots if stuff isn't dead yet--and if stuff isn't at least mostly dead by then your tank shouldn't have pulled that much. The DPS is too low) and the fact that you can't goad yourself.

That said, even if you aren't death blossoming you should be swapping targets and spreading dots around as much as possible, both so that your own Doton can tick out on all enemies instead of some fraction of the enemies, and so that the other DPS's AoEs and DoTs aren't weakened by you. It'll clear the pack faster and keep the run moving quicker.

But, like I said, I don't care what you do. Just don't pretend that what you're doing is optimal or people that swap targets/AoE are doing it wrong. Because they aren't.

If the healer can handle the load, there's no objective reason to not AoE, it doesn't take much ilvl progression until a healer can safely Holy, Bane, or whatever AST does these days.

This is what I'm trying to get at. And if you don't have that much ilvl progression you shouldn't be doing big pulls, anyway. It's pointless if you can't survive AoEing them.

[Reka121402]

IMO, aoe'ing large groups is good plan for premades because there is communication and teamwork towards a common goal (quick clears).

For PUGs, I've always seen slow and steady be a smooth run, 9/10 when a tank pulls large groups they usually go down for any one of the many reasons mentioned already.

[Zfz]

If you AREN'T doing AoE rotations, why pull multiple packs?

As I said way back in my first comment of this thread, I'm not talking about using single-target skills to burn down those. Trash is trash and they can be annoying, at worst you can wipe if people are running it absent-minded (I believe most of us are, by the 100th time we're running the same dungeon).

What I'm talking about, is your single-target skills. For example the BLM will still do Fire 3 after Transpose to go back into Astral Fire. There are often single-target skills within AOE rotations. Those skills should land on the most annoying/dangerous targets, to take them out a few seconds earlier.

I'm not talking about focus fire on single targets in a pack of 6. I'm talking about AOEing and dumping your single-target parts of that AOE rotation onto priority targets.