Looking for help with tanking

[Kennar]

Just a quick bump...

Marking a kill order isn't really done in regular dungeons (from my experience), but it can be a good tool for newbie tanks that don't yet have a tanking stance and may not have the very best gear. If the damage dealers are not on the same page as you (or each other) and targeting different enemies in a trash pack, the mobs die more slowly and it's more difficult to hold hate on the entire group. Simply marking one mob in the pack that you want killed first can be enough to get the DDs to focus on a single target, and by the time it dies you should have enough of a lead on enmity to hold the other two or three mobs in the pack.

As you progress and gain more abilities, the trash in normal dungeons is much easier to tank, but when a BLM in Sastasha rips a mob away from you before you've had a chance to even Flash it, it sure slows things down and makes for a frustrating run.

[Rongway]

Marking a kill order isn't really done in regular dungeons (from my experience), but it can be a good tool for newbie tanks that don't yet have a tanking stance and may not have the very best gear. If the damage dealers are not on the same page as you (or each other) and targeting different enemies in a trash pack, the mobs die more slowly and it's more difficult to hold hate on the entire group. Simply marking one mob in the pack that you want killed first can be enough to get the DDs to focus on a single target, and by the time it dies you should have enough of a lead on enmity to hold the other two or three mobs in the pack.

Marking a kill order is never a good idea.

Marking singularly high priority targets, such as bees, transformers, and summoners is a good thing because the marks are mechanically important.

Marking mechanically unimportant targets because you're not AoEing liberally trivializes the mark system in later encounters that actually have mechanically important marks, and results in the current group dying more slowly because DoT and AoE damage isn't being maximized. DDs that are not AoEing should be DoTing everything and then switching to the target that has the most health, as health bars fluctuate.

If the tank is geared and the tank is AoEing enough, there is nothing the DDs can do to pull things off him. DDs should take advantage of this and DoT all the things and target the highest health mobs.

[Niwashi]

Marking a kill order is never a good idea.

It's pretty rare for me to disagree with anything Rongway posts, but I'm going to here. Kennar's post specified "for newbie tanks that don't yet have a tanking stance and may not have the very best gear". This means low level dungeons where there isn't much AoE available. When DPS is primarily single target, it really does go a lot faster and smoother if they focus on the same single target and marking one is is a good way to promote that.

I will agree that in high level dungeons with an experienced and well-geared tank, the usefulness of marking a kill order pretty much disappears (apart from specific high priority targets, as mentioned), but that's a far stretch from discouraging it everywhere.

... and then switching to the target that has the most health, as health bars fluctuate

That should be "the target that has the least health" if you want to quickly cut down on the number of mobs hitting the tank. The less work it is for the healer to keep up with incoming damage, the more chances they'll have to switch into damage dealing themselves. (Not to mention that it can be essential with a new or under-geared healer who otherwise may not always be able to keep up with incoming damage.)

[Hasrat]

When DPS is primarily single target, it really does go a lot faster and smoother if they focus on the same single target and marking one is is a good way to promote that.

While I mostly agree, also worth considering that probably too often, you're just as likely to get overgeared overeager DPS that will intentionally ignore marks just because "lulz who cares it's trash."

In my early days, I enjoyed occasional marking, or at least focusing down, of vaguely problematic mobs. Often things that had some form of AoE, because, why wouldn't we want that dead so we can stop dodging out of the attack? But, most would rather just burn everything.