Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
Oh please.
[...]
Tanking is not hard. The following can make tanking hard:
Healers that instantly heal you the moment you drop 5% or spam HoTs on pull -> instant healer aggro.
DPS that go FULL DERP on one single mob and ignore the aggro indicator. Sure ofc they will rip threat off you if they tunnel on one mob in an AoE scenario.
Crap gear vs downscaled DPS. This one can truly be a pain, esp for a new player that doesn't have the luxury of crafting a quick HQ set.

Tanking by itself is probably the easiest role in FF.
Sure. Tanking on your own is real easy. You're guaranteed to hold aggro.

Literal interpretation aside, when you run low-level dungeons as a new tank, you're almost guaranteed to run into one of the above listed "things that make tanking hard". Just ran a levelling roulette on an alt (as a lvl18 pgl), and the DRK in that instance had trouble holding aggro. Partially because they didn't spam Unleash enough, partially because the AST healer insisted on DPSing on a completely different target from the one the tank and DDs were on.

Of course, those first three dungeons can be done with a 4 DD party, no tanks and no healers. So on that front, it's "no biggie", and when I run them I don't always bother trying to grab stray mobs back if they're at half hp or less. But for someone who's still learning how to tank, it can be extremely stressful to "fail", which if it happens too often (or bad enough) can lead to them thinking "I'm not good enough to tank, I'd better quit" before even getting to level 25.

When I'm on my synched DRG and meet an unsynched (or barely synched, i.e. still not overgeared) tank in the first four dungeons... It takes approximately one HT plus two or three Impulse Drives to bring me from no aggro to orange triangle. On the target the tank is on. A bit more than that if the tank is in "experienced player" type of gear, i.e. pink or HQ level-appropriate gear. (Or the brand-new/dungeon lvl15 gear, if that's the best for the level.)

With "inconsiderate" DDs (or healers), it can be hell on a tank still trying to figure out what to do. The lowered dps output doesn't help. Impossible? No. More difficult? Yes, though experienced tanks probably won't notice that much of a difference (if any).