Tanking frustration when others pull

[SessionZero]

I think it largely stems from the notion that the tank is the de facto "leader" of the group and a DPS who pulls an extra pack of mobs is somehow circumventing the leader's "authority," nebulous as it may be. A lot of A type personalities gravitate to tanks (literally every raid team I've ever been in, the raid leader is a tank) and having a DPS insinuate that the ideal pace is not being met ruffles feathers.

Admittedly I used to be like this but now I don't care. My tank classes are geared enough that pulling hate back is a breeze, and I'd rather my DPS keep their buffs and burn mobs faster than cowtow to some implied authority of the almighty tank.

[Lyth]

I think it largely stems from the notion that the tank is the de facto "leader" of the group and a DPS who pulls an extra pack of mobs is somehow circumventing the leader's "authority," nebulous as it may be. A lot of A type personalities gravitate to tanks (literally every raid team I've ever been in, the raid leader is a tank) and having a DPS insinuate that the ideal pace is not being met ruffles feathers.

This might have been true historically, in games with 40-man raids and a "Main Tank". Under such conditions, your MT needed to be your most consistent player. Gearing your tank was a priority. Nowadays, it's nearly the opposite. You're actually more likely to run into that personality type on other roles now, unless they happen to be an anachronism from a bygone era. To play the tank role well, you're expected to be flexible where your teammates are often not.

NIN players in particular often tend to be the most stubborn when it comes to pulls, mainly because some of them are completely dependent on having Huton built into the pull macro in order to time their opener correctly.

I think a tank's preferences in pulls have more to do with the fact that positioning is central to our role. If someone pulls early, it displaces the boss off-centre. This can result in some awkward positioning, which in turn can impact your melee players. The initial pull in A7S is a particularly good example of this, as the positioning is fairly tight and influences whether your melee lose uptime during 8-bombs or not. It's much harder to correct for bad positioning after the fact, and it often results in unnecessary movement.

There are times where it is entirely appropriate for a dps to pull, but it comes down to individual benefit vs. raid benefit. In DF, it doesn't particularly matter. In more challenging content, this is probably something that should be discussed in advance.