seeing all these total newbie tank is hilarious

[winsock]

My point is that there is a level of comprehension and self-sufficiency that one can and should expect from even brand new players.

And what level is that? The performance described in the OP isn't exactly uncommon and is something you can expect from newer tanks. This isn't a one-off.

You do not appear to be setting this standard based on actual new player performance.
Are your expectations reasonable? or have you put this arbitrary standard in place so you feel justified or better about yourself when you look down on/laugh at/harass new players? They had it coming right?

[ToasterMan]

If I didn't enjoy teaching others, I never would have taught university.

Then you of all people should know that many people learn differently. Someone could read an entire book on tanking and they still wouldn't understand it until they actually set foot in there and started doing it for themselves. I know this because I am one of those people. It's why people say that university doesn't prepare you for the real world.

It's the same thing for raiding. I can repeat Mr. Happy videos until the cows come home. I'll never truly understand those mechanics until I try doing them. And guess what? I fail at them. Usually multiple times until I get it. Does my raid team make fun of me for it? Of course not. So why should it be okay to do it to new tanks? Especially when we already have a shortage of them?

[Just-Communication]

If you see beginners not wearing the gear you earn from the Novice Hall, then a gentle nudge in the direction of the smith might alleviate some of the issues with basics. The gear you're given is essentially the best beginner gear a new player can acquire short of crafters or the market board. The Novice Hall does teach you about enmity, plus the range/size of flash/overpower. The smiths have a giant sprout over the heads right next the place the player first spawns after the intro cutscene, at the adventurer's guild. There is no excuse for a GLD or MRD to not know the basics of enmity and their core role in a party before the first dungeon - they even put a smith outside Sastasha - and the Novice Hall is smack dab outside Aleport. The only way a player would miss it is if they are in blind rush and do not care to read anything or explore anything but to get to their next level.

However. It does not teach about working with other players in a team. It does not teach you that other players can build enmity and take it from you. It does not teach you that adds may not always appear in one convenient package, or that as a result of taking additional damage it may be wise to pop cooldowns even in the presence of a dedicated healer. And so on.

I agree that learning can come from both experience and tutoring.

But. Before anyone gets too comfy on their high horse, let it be said that only a small percentage of players are actually pioneers - who go into content blind and put in the time and patience to learn the fight from start to finish. Most others - including those veterans who think they're all that - are just glorified copycats.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

It does a good job of giving you all the information you need. Skills are all spread out, and each one has a potency (better than showing exact damage numbers for comparisons), combo effects, and any bonus effects like damage buffs. Anyone with common sense should be able to level up, see that they got Maim, and realise that it's going to be a damage increase. With the exception of BLM getting Fire IV at 60, every other job has a good, self-explanatory skill progression and we really shouldn't need a popup that says "You hit level 30, here's exactly what you should be doing".

I only have a single problem with tank skills while leveling: you can't see the exact enmity modifiers so it's not obvious just how strong Flash, Overpower and Unleash are. Apart from that, I don't think anyone has a good reason for hitting 50 (or even 30) without a decent idea of how to play their job.

But does it? Is this how we actually play? Yes, the combo system in the game is understandable to everyone, and I never really run into someone who doesn't know how to do their combo outside of one GLD that didn't and went with the other combo since it had more damage, but couldn't keep hate so I told him the other one is better for that purpose.

However, as someone who has instructed a lot of tanks how to play at early levels, (to get their basics going), I still don't feel the game prepares you to play with other people as a Tank. Tank is unique in that it's designed to be the initiator, but in lower level dungeons, the DPS or sometimes Healers don't care about their role cause they can get away with doing the entire run without the Tank, and bursting huge DPS that the lowly Tank can't keep up with as the other players have the advantage on gear and how fast they strike (as in, attacking before the tank gets the first pull in). They don't get the proper experience how to be a Tank because the meta for lower levels is to ignore that cause "lul let's speedrun 4 tomez".

Then people wonder why a Tank gets up to a certain level and doesn't know how to do basic things. Now, if the early game was actually balanced around level sync, as in, a DPS and Healers dying if they were sitting there tanking mobs, then yeah, that'd give newbie Tanks enough time to learn.

They need to do something about this.

[ToasterMan]

They need to do something about this.

The developers have some work to do in regards to early tank balance.

Gladiator as a tank is........completely worthless. It has absolutely no hope in regards to holding hate against level synced players. Meanwhile, Marauder doesn't have this issue. This is because flash doesn't do any damage, while overpower does do damage. In fact, Marauder in general does more damage, which equals more hate. Gladiator is suppose to be the go to tank for beginners. Why is it the hardest tank to start out with? Why is tanking in general harder in the early levels than it is in endgame? It makes no sense, and the icing on the cake is that Shield Oath doesn't come until level 40, while the other tanks get theirs at 30.

[Launched]

The developers have some work to do in regards to early tank balance.

Gladiator as a tank is........completely worthless. It has absolutely no hope in regards to holding hate against level synced players. Meanwhile, Marauder doesn't have this issue. This is because flash doesn't do any damage, while overpower does do damage. In fact, Marauder in general does more damage, which equals more hate. Gladiator is suppose to be the go to tank for beginners. Why is it the hardest tank to start out with? Why is tanking in general harder in the early levels than it is in endgame? It makes no sense, and the icing on the cake is that Shield Oath doesn't come until level 40, while the other tanks get theirs at 30.

Flash is 600 potency, Overpower is 120 potency with a x5 multiplier. They generate the same amount of enmity unless Overpower crits (which isn't reliable at those low levels) or Berserk is up, but that has a 90s cooldown. Spending 2 GCDs to put up Maim will increase the enmity on each Overpower, but it also means you spent 2 GCDs not generating 600 enmity per target which actually puts GLA ahead in enmity. Skull Sunder is the same potency and has the same enmity multiplier as Savage Blade, and again if you're going to keep up Maim that's going to be an enmity loss because you're only doing Skull Sunder every 4th GCD instead of every 2nd GCD. So MRD can do more damage but it actually leads to less enmity.

I'd also be perfectly happy with Deliverance being moved to level 30 and Defiance being moved to 40, because you really don't need the bonuses from tank stance until DPS are getting things like AF3/GL3 at around 40, and dungeons don't really hurt until Stone Vigil.

Low level tank problems are exaggerated by people who don't know how strong the aoe abilities are.

[Mikazuki_Aura]

Gladiator as a tank is........completely worthless. It has absolutely no hope in regards to holding hate against level synced players.

Flash is 600 potency, Overpower is 120 potency with a x5 multiplier...Low level tank problems are exaggerated by people who don't know how strong the aoe abilities are.

Aside from these two skills having equal enmity it is also worth noting that PLD has the ability to spam Flash due to Riot Blade, while WAR cannot spam either Overpower or Flash due to the lack of a MP generating ability, and the innate regeneration limit of Overpower. Considering that Halone and Flash, both enmity generating skills, are also debuffs capable of reducing a target's damage to the tank, it is possible for a PLD at low levels to maintain aggro against extreme AoE conditions (AST, BLM, BLM) by going FB>RB>Flash on say, 6 targets, while a warrior would have problems with both withstanding the incoming damage from that without the later defensive buffs, as well as having enough resources to generate more AoE threat than the DPS/Heal threat in abovementioned extreme condition.

Warriors were given Defiance at level 30 to balance out their lack of mitigation options at that point, while Paladins have no such problem. Paladins, on the other hand, had craptastic damage in 1v1 settings which Sword Oath fixes, which is not a problem for Warriors as they have maim, berserk, etc. The current setup for the Stances is correct. If Paladins were to have their stance level order swapped, Paladins would have more trouble dealing with smaller groups when their damage is so low. If Warriors were to have their stance level order swapped, good Warriors would still be incapable of maintaining aggro (or surviving) against a 6-mob AoE situation due to their innate resource restrictions on enmity generation skills. The Paladin is simply better at generating sustained enmity than the Warrior is, and pays for this by being worse in damage. In a meta where enmity generation is easy, the Warrior has the superior overall situation here, but saying Paladins are weak in enmity generation is simply not true. Paladins are the easiest class to learn how to tank in; while most Paladins never go anywhere near running out of MP (unless they die and are resurrected on the spot with zero MP), the class allows for them to use far more Flashes than people generally use.

The only cases in which Paladins have problems holding enmity are when healers insist on using AoE nukes followed by AoE heals off cooldown in a party where DPSers are mostly single-target based. In that situation, the tank is forced to decide whether to continue Halone to save the DPSers, or to continue the Flash-RB tack to save the healer. But that would be a case of a terrible healer with zero situational awareness, rather than any problem with the tank. In particular this also applies only before level 40. After that, even crazy healers can be covered once Shield Oath shows up.

I wouldn't advocate Warriors use their enmity stance unless they really need to, however. It forms a bit of a crutch that makes them less effective at maintaining threat with damage later on. Tanking stances should only ever be used when DPS output is either so high that it is not possible to maintain effective aggro without it, or the healer is so incompetent it is not possible to survive without its damage reduction. It's usually the second case because DPS that good are rare.

Incidentally, a cross-classed Flash will get the same benefits from Berserk that Overpower does, though it is usually better to save Flash for doubleflashing during the 5s period after Berserk which low level healers rarely know how to Esuna away, as there is literally nothing else they can do in that period.

Edit:
Enmity values are obtainable here. It's a bad thing that SE does not make these values visible in the UI itself, it makes things unnecessarily problematic for new tanks.

[Kaeoni]

I wanna say I'm not saying this to anyone in particular, just sharing my experience as a stand alone statement and isn't meant to be taken as abrasive to any reply to the OP's statement.

There was no hall of the novice when i started tanking, Fate grinding was actually the best exp in the game. Got to 50 as a Pld and jumped into Amdapor Keep. Luckily I was grouped with people who understood my predicament. It was a thing back then believe it or not haha. They gave me a solid foundation and tips I still use to this day. I was extremely fortunate to get those 3 people in my first dungeon on Pld. And I gotta say, thank you to them, and everyone else who takes the time to actually help people. Regardless of if you have a crown next to your name or not... Most "mentors" couldn't talk their way out of a wet paper bag and only got the crown because it looks cool. I have mentor status now, But I don't play as often as I used to so I don't have the time to enter long term dialog without using up all my free time. So I don't wear the crown. But If I enter a dungeon and see someone struggling I'll always take a few minutes to try help anyone who needs it.

Not saying what I did was the right thing to do (jumping into Amdapor as my first pld dungeon), just offering a weird perspective into a possibility even today.

I was a good Apoc Dark Knight and Nin/war tank in ffxi, so i thought It couldn't be much different, and on most boss fights the same rules apply... But I specifically had trouble with trash pulls since I undervalued my Aoes ability to hold threat.

However..
Regardless of tooltips (and lets face it, they don't tell us all the information they could/should), hall of the novice and the many teaching tools that are actually woven into the fabric of the games dungeons/boss fights, Or even time you've spent on this game. Everyone deserves a little help if they're misunderstanding how to properly play a class, regardless of if it's a tank or not. The trick to getting through to those people is to not be a facetious asshole. Especially if you're in a DF dungeon, Sure you might never see them again and you could just grin and bear it... But is helping out a random stranger such a horrible inconvenience? You don't technically -gain- anything by doing it. But it's a nice thing to do and could positively influence a player for the rest of their adventures in the game. Like 3 random stranger did for me so long ago.

[Makeda]

Yep and that's the issue with new players they just skim/skip over everything and then when you try to teach them anything *crickets* nothing.

Basically the problem with new players is they're new.

The problem with the rest of the people is they forget what that was like...

If I'm doing something not "perfect according to somebody else" and they start yammering at me... I will often just purposefully go in for what I know to be a bad rotation... or do something, if I can find it, to wipe their toon (even if I have to faceplant to do it)... just because I get tired of some people nerd raging and back seat driving other players.

[Awful]

If I'm doing something not "perfect according to somebody else" and they start yammering at me... I will often just purposefully go in for what I know to be a bad rotation... or do something, if I can find it, to wipe their toon (even if I have to faceplant to do it)... just because I get tired of some people nerd raging and back seat driving other players.

I don't get this you want to wipe the group/their character just to get a point across? Then what you said that the rest of the playerbase forgets what it's like to be new, is that contrary to your statement or is it mostly contradictory to what it is? If that's the case, then why bother teaching new people anything, by your words we should just take any helpful tips and just throw ourselves away because it's better then taking 2 mins of typing and learning something new that you didn't.

God forbid we teach people in an MMO anything these days without it being nerd raging to others, I help people and I actually talk to them and give them advice they can either take it or leave it. But when I teach players that:

-Foes doesn't lower your dmg
-Melding Piety doesn't help as a drk
-Cycle your CDs as a tank and learn how to pair them
-Move the melee mobs to the caster mobs so you can AoE them down together
Etc

I'm not gonna take my group down with me if they don't want to listen it's a game to play and enjoy we're all not super PvE raiders and top parse players but I at least want people to get better, it's different then "okay this guy is screaming at me to do this in a condenscending way". I just type out whatever it is that I say and if it's really pressing I'll use <se.X> to get their attention but I don't spam it, you might see it as back seat driving but it's really not, we're all new and you shouldn't point antagonize new people and you certainly shouldn't purposefully wipe a group over something so minute.