seeing all these total newbie tank is hilarious

[AmarantCorahl]

Uhm, Honestly though, mind you i did skim over some of the pages.
Has anyone actually given any thought to the fact, said tank in the OP's little anecdote, could have been just a kid around 13-14 years old?
Given the PG rating of the game being rated at Teen, one should account for that.

And getting into games and mmo's in particular myself at that age I can surely attest to the fact that a 13 year old kid pulls of some dumbass shyte, not because he doesn't want to learn to play the game, or his class for that matter, but simply because youthful impatience and the drive to do "this one cool thing after this other cool thing" tends to take priority over all the rest.

And let's hypothetically assume that this was the case in the OP's story, then, the aforementioned statements of trying to teach this person how to play and explaining it over a multitude of times and having patience with that player is not only a necessity, but also our duty as older more experienced players.

These are just my 2 cents, i merely figured I should raise the point as it had seemingly not been done so before now.

Greets.

[RokkuEkkusu]

You are missing one important thing from that list: Your weapon. The weapon is by far the most important piece of equipment for doing damage and generating aggro.

Thanks for catching that. Have an upvote. I also had a regular level 15 sword and shield at the time, eventually getting the item level 17 ones during dungeon. However, my point still stands since others have brought up the level discrepancy and the job stones increases damage output from other party members.

[Illmaeran]

As a player who's returned after a year and a half, and who's been considering leveling his PLD, this thread is making me seriously think twice about it; especially as my PLD is lvl 52. Who's going to believe someone with this level is "new again" to the class and cut them some slack? Who's going to believe that said player isn't prepared to do speed runs with massive AoE trains pulled to just before the boss? Reading all of this vitriol about tanks from the tanking community personally has me astounded. We all know the pressures of tanking and accept that as part of the role, but as a community we should be supporting up-and-coming or returning tanks rather than tearing them down.

As soon as I got the PLD job I didn't most of my leveling via dungeons so I had a pretty good grasp of the class at the time. However; after coming back and trying out a couple guildhests to see if I remembered anything proved to me that I had lost "the touch". In this case it didn't have anything to do with not knowing skills, it was about lost muscle memory and getting the mental state of tanking back.

One may disparage new, inexperienced, or less-than-perfect tanks; just keep in mind that these people are trying, and that most "new" peoples' circumstances are different from those who've been playing regularly for years. If, for some reason you find yourself in a dungeon as DD, keep in mind that someone else is tanking so that you can level your damage class, just as you play your tank so someone else can DD.

[spelley]

*snip*.

I'm in almost the exact same situation as you. Came back after a 1.5 year absence (birth of my son), played as my DRG exclusively for a couple weeks to get back into things and now pretty nervous about getting back into using my DRK. Basically went trial by fire and ran a couple of Expert Roulettes after doing some dummy tests. Felt really awkward and I apologized ahead of time doing large pulls. Likely, I'll just do smaller pulls in the future until I get my muscle memory back and I'd suggest you do the same. Pull as much as you feel comfortable and come out at the start saying that you are just back from a long hiatus and getting back into the game. Thus far I haven't run into any assholes.

[Yorumi]

Thus far I haven't run into any assholes.

For the most part they're rare. Just get them through the dungeon in a reasonable competent manner and you'll be fine and get back into things rather quickly. You might occasionally get someone telling you to pull more but in that case just do it and if you die, oh well now they look stupid.