Tanking frustration when others pull

[Paikis]

EDIT: Just noticed you're not 60 yet. The answer is to keep your gear up-to-date and pull slightly more than you think you can, use cooldowns and spam Unleash. You're going to want WAR to level 2 (yes really) for Foresight and PLD to 22 for Provoke, but more so for Convalesence. At 35 you'll get Blood Price which you can use to generate rediculous amounts of mana to fuel your AoE spam. As a tank, your primary job is to keep agro, if you need to empty your entire mana bar into Unleash spam to do that, then that's what you do. While leveling, I'd say absolute minimum of one unleash per target then start tabbing through targets and hitting them with your combos. If you lsoe agro on groups, add more Unleash spam.


How do I deal with DPS pulling things before me? How do I deal with DPS deliberately targetting things that I'm not targetting and trying to pull things off me? It's simple my friend. I'll explain with an example of the dungeon I just ran for my 60 roulette; Aetherochemical Research Facility.

Firstly, you wait for buffs. The first pull (in ARF) is probably the most damage you're going to have to deal with for the whole dungeon, get your Protect. Then as Lyth says above, you hit sprint. Mages can't cast much while they're running and melee wont hit sprint because they need that TP. But as a DRK, you only need a small amount of TP to kill things, and your initial agro will be gained with MP. Then you run through every mob you can get to and you hit them all with Unmend or Unleash while you're running. This is important because sometimes, you'll be with some wise-guy DPS who wants to attack things while you're still trying to round things up or your healer will get nervous and throw you a heal mid-pull. Hit. Everything. Once you've hit everything and you're running to that first wall-trap thingy, hit some defensive cooldowns, I typically start with Shadowskin because it lasts for a while longer than Shadow Wall and doesn't require Dark Arts (which you might not have mana for yet). Then, once you get to the wall-trap thingy, you hit Abyssal Drain... a lot. You mash the ever-living day-lights out of that bad-boy until you're about to run out of mana (or like I do, when you've still got 2 in the tank). Then you hit Blood Price and use the infinite mana that this generates (assuming Holy is either not being cast or no-longer stunning things) to spam MOAR Abyssal Drain. At this point, you can stare at the DPS right in the face and dare them to pull something off you. If Blood Price wears off and you're not at full mana with a pile of corpses and gil-gained messages, get better DPS.

So to sumarise:
1. You stop the DPS from pulling for you, by sprinting to get there first so you can pull it and by making sure that there isn't anything left that they CAN pull.
2. You keep yourself alive through this with liberal use of defensive cooldowns.
3. You stop the DPS from being able to pull things off of you by targetting everything and by getting hit lots to generate infinite mana (for 20 seconds) so that you can continue hitting everything. If you're a WAR, use Vengeance for agro. If you're a PLD, you either dump your entire mana bar into Flashing, then Riot Blade to regen and repeat... or you just cry in the corner.
4. You win.

[WeekendSoja]

As someone said you are not 60 yet, I would just go at the pace you feel comfortable and adjust as you get the pro-active pt members.

At 60, I don't even care about pt composition lol, I find it easier to run as fast as I can and be told to slow down than to deal with hyper active pt members and chase them around for Agro.

Though it all boils down to playstyle, where my playstyle is the non-stop runner...I have more fun watching all the chaos than playing things safe, rarely do I get a complaint lol

[Aurius]

Its up to the tank to decide the pace of the dungeon, no different from a raid, if the tank dies because of too many mobs it's over, but if a dps dies because he attacked first then he wont get a raise

I agree, to an extent. The whole party decides pace, if dps is slow, trash won't die and you'll burn all of your cds on one pack. If heals can't keep up (either gear or skill) you die and that always sucks. I as the tank am but one limiting catalyst to the equation.

[Fluffernuff]

Honestly, in the few months since I've started playing/tanking, this has never been an issue for me. the only time I every dealt with this was as a fresh little sproutling GLD in the lowbie dungeons and this was because I was going far too slow. people are impatient, after all. most people arent in the duty finder to socialize and wait around for other people, after all. theyre in there to get it done and move on.

even in the lowbie dungeons, though, you can mitigate people from doing this. you can mark the target youre about to shield lob/tomahawk/unmend before the pull while youre moving, after all. i generally will ranged hit a mob and do a "drive-by" AoE or 2 for the rest- even if someone pulls early. After all, a ranged puller will be behind you. the mobs still need to run past you to go munch on your overzealous buddy. 9 times out of 10, Flash and Unleash will clip the suckers before they bother with the ranged(this is also why i like flash on WAR, i dont have to deal with the added awkwardness of OP on pulls like these). its rare ive had a mob sneak through the AoEs, and even if they do, you can turn around, AoE them a couple times, and then resume pulling the next pack.

As a side note, this tactic also helps when healers pre-apply regens, though its not foolproof

As for if ranged DPS do this on bosses? there's no helping that. I mean, yu can start with 'Voke+ranged just fine in this case, but it ruins everyone's openers. it doesnt screw over just the tank. it screws over the other DPS as well. if this happens consistently, i have no issues booting a DPS that consistently pre-pulls bosses

[MirielleLavandre]

Thanks again for all the responses and as I get from 50-60 on DRK I'll keep the tips/etc. in mind I was mostly asking because when I do low level roulettes and such, I'll end up in the beginner dungeons (Sastasha, Halatali, Tam Tara, Haukke) and this is where my question originated from - how to deal with people pulling things because they want to treat these low level dungeons as if they are the same as the level 60 ones. To me, I'm fine with speed running (especially given DRK's AoE threat abilities), but at the levels of 15-40 it may be a bit more difficult. I suppose I just get so annoyed when synched i240s keep running ahead while I'm doing those lowbie dungeons even when we have a new sprout healer or sub-par dps and was wondering what you all did in those situations

[Martin_Arcainess]

I think my sig says it all really.

[Launched]

I think my sig says it all really.

Is that an extract from the "How to be a Bad Tank" book? It seems to be very popular.

[WeekendSoja]

Is that an extract from the "How to be a Bad Tank" book? It seems to be very popular.

Perfect response lol! If Agro is made I tank it...letting people die because of it seems pretty petty. Like a heavy case of (...'s).

Man, laughed a little too loud at work to that response.

[ADVSS]

Thanks again for all the responses and as I get from 50-60 on DRK I'll keep the tips/etc. in mind I was mostly asking because when I do low level roulettes and such, I'll end up in the beginner dungeons (Sastasha, Halatali, Tam Tara, Haukke) and this is where my question originated from - how to deal with people pulling things because they want to treat these low level dungeons as if they are the same as the level 60 ones. To me, I'm fine with speed running (especially given DRK's AoE threat abilities), but at the levels of 15-40 it may be a bit more difficult. I suppose I just get so annoyed when synched i240s keep running ahead while I'm doing those lowbie dungeons even when we have a new sprout healer or sub-par dps and was wondering what you all did in those situations

ive actually been thinking about doing the zeta quest again because im noticing that my synched down level 60 blm isnt dealing close enough damage than it was with the glroious level 50 weapon on some level 50 roullettes. DRK has some really good aoe aggro generation pretty much all the way up from the lowest dungeons to the current ones. Theres a couple posters i want you to consider, the one about youe gear, keep it current and best for your level, esp your weapon, and the other one, about end game tanking, was brilliant, though i never use sprint, i can see how it would be amazing for drk only. When you get more confident, this will just be something youll laugh about in the future, i dont worry if dps play that game, cause i will always take it back, unless they run way the hell out of my los. and guess what? well i got 20 mobs on me and one is 2 miles down the road with entrance runnng caster, guess itll come back eventually. AS A DPS from formerly being a tank, i will always run to the tank, if i see the flashy ding and red lines on me during a pull. AS A HEALER the same exact thing. Irs common sense, why have a tank rush to you with 10 or more enemies some possibly cleaving to get 1 mob off you when you could bring the mob to them and hope they grab it off properly before you die. I dont really worry about speedy dps if theyre in a hurry and it seems like they can kill enemies fastly, ill just grab it off them after the prepull, when ive caught up. Youll get this confident too, also get those cross class skills. get them asap like yesterday

[Malicewolf]

In the lower level dungeons, many DPS pull because they CAN tank the mobs so long as the healer is willing to heal them. I've actually gone into the lower dungeons with premades of 3 DPS and 1 healer and we had zero issue's getting through it. The only issue is, aggro would often jump between multiple people if you tried to do a bigger pull, but a good healer can deal with that without too much trouble. By no means am I saying that I think this makes a DPS pulling for the tank acceptable, but the fact is that a DPS CAN tank the lower level dungeons. Heck, in sastasha, i've gone in with premade groups and we all literally separated in different directions and were fine so long as you don't take on too many at once (and perhaps kite a bit where necessary). So when the player KNOWS that they won't die if they pull, they often will. Bad etiquette is all.

However, most will back you up when these things happen and you can just vote kick (unless you ended up joining a premade). For me, if they do something like that, sometimes I just let them do their thing and simply try to turn it into a fun thing. I have a troll set for my PLD with healer accessories and cure as a cross class, so if they want to switch roles, I'll just change to my heal set, start spamming cure on the DPS tanking and tell the healer to DPS because I got this :P

Or just face pull such a big pack that the DPS get's scared to take ANY aggro :P

If the DPS aren't going to follow the roles, then neither will I and I'll get a good laugh too. They will usually back off or the whole group gets a good laugh and you continue doing the ridiculous role swap.