hall of the novice wrong?

[Suzuka196]

i remember running through on dps, tank, and healer, dps spcifically states that they should focus on the mob the tank is attacking. i understand people want to do other things, but would it not go faster if i am tanking, we could rotate through mobs instead of people trying to spread the damage and let the tank get more damaged, so... i think t he dps controls the dungeon, not the tank or healer: dps each mob > tank takes less damage> healer doesnt need to HEAL as much and can focus on helping the fight, not standing around with glowing fingers (how i feel as a healer)

[Ferth]

The hall of novices is verrrrry rudimentary information that doesn't really apply to how most dungeons end up being run. Once the dps start learning AOE abilities most dungeon runs will be pulling several groups at once, popping defensive cooldowns while the dps kill everything simultaneously.

I think more than anything the Hall of Novices is there for people who are really new to MMOs in general so they know what class they are playing as and what is generally expected of them when they are that role.

[DeaconMoore]

You should focus your tanks target, you should use AoE's in most instances vs 3+ enemies. The game doesn't play like Classic WoW dungeons. You don't usually need to CC anything, running out of mana is usually a non-issue, taking on more than 1 pack isn't asking for a wipe, runners getting away grabbing multiple packs of mobs isn't going to happen, the tank shouldn't be losing aggro easily. It's a zergfest and an AoE one where applicable.

[Lelila38]

There's also classes like Smn or Brd, whose dmg relies on dots. Those classes will try and put those dots up on as many mobs as they can to maximise their effectiveness. Also healers generate hate on all mobs, just by healing the tank.
Hall of Novice teaches the very basic of the basics. As a tank you should always hold hate on all the mobs you have pulled, for that, keep using your aoe ability (flash on pld, overpower on war, can't remember drk) a couple times at the start of the pull, if you feel like you're losing hate, use it more.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

so... i think t he dps controls the dungeon, not the tank or healer: dps each mob > tank takes less damage> healer doesnt need to HEAL as much and can focus on helping the fight, not standing around with glowing fingers (how i feel as a healer)

You... hit your head when you were a child do you ?

Srsly, it's the TANK who got the control on the dungeon, it's not the dps, it's not the heal. The tank can take as much trash as he can, or play more safely by pulling one pack by one pack.

And people don't "spread" Damage, it's something called Area of Effect (AoE) If you got an attack with 300 potency on an single target and an other with 150 but touching every single mobs around you, what will you choose ? For myself, their is not doubt cause you got Potency x Number of target, the AoE is much more efficient on large group of mobs.

[Suzuka196]

When I talk about spreading damage, I am referring to the DPs that do single damage and focus the mobs the tank doesn't attack. I'm not talking about dots or aoe, that's a different subject entirely. And no, I didn't hit my head as a child, thank you for your concern though... I was just curious why as a dark knight, why my main target is always the last to die

[DRKoftheAzure]

I was just curious why as a dark knight, why my main target is always the last to die

Trolls... simple as that... also DRK has Sole Survivor for HP and MP recovery due to how garbage Darkside has become now which Sole Survivor can be used as a marker for killing the mob you want dead first, but people tend to ignore all DRK pointless abilities since DPS is the way to go and DRK Abyssal Drain is "so good you don't need Unleash" when the reality is that Unleash generates more aggro then Abyssal Drain and Dark Arts effect isn't doing DRK any favors aside from pointing out how outdated DRK is in general this expansion... but on the plus side you can use DRK to just piss off PUGs if that's what you like about DRK... but DRK does need more love though...

[Rongway]

would it not go faster if i am tanking, we could rotate through mobs instead of people trying to spread the damage and let the tank get more damaged, so... i think t he dps controls the dungeon, not the tank or healer: dps each mob > tank takes less damage> healer doesnt need to HEAL as much and can focus on helping the fight, not standing around with glowing fingers (how i feel as a healer)

Here's an example with numbers.

Let's say you have a Lv30 BRD as one of your DDs.

Venomous Bite has a total potency of 340, and Windbite has a total potency of 360. Once those are up, the primary GCD attack is Heavy Shot, which is 150, with a 20% chance of forcing a crit on the next Straight Shot, so let's say for every five Heavy Shots, they get a 200ish potency Straight Shot.

BRD30 total single target potency per eight GCDs: 1650


Now let's say you pull a group of three mobs.
If you DoT each of them and then use two Quick Nocks (110 per target per GCD), you do 3 x (340 + 360 + 110 + 110).

BRD30 total AoE potency per eight GCDs: 2760
(this is a 67% gain over the single target potency)


Now let's say you have a Lv30 WHM as your healer. At Lv30 in a 3 mob pull, a healer should realistically need to heal at most once every three or four GCDs, but for the sake of argument let's say that when all three targets are alive, the healer heals every other GCD, so in eight GCDs this WHM can do single target DPS of 230 (Aero) + 3 x 200 (Stone II). Total 830. Assume that killing targets allows the WHM to nuke more, up to 8/8 GCDs: 230 + 7 x 200 = 1630. This is maximum gain of 800 potency per eight GCDs. This is less than the 1110 potency the BRD would have gained from AoEing. If there were two BRDs, the party would be doing at least 1420 potency less than they could.

This is almost another whole single target BRD's worth of damage!


The difference only gets larger as levels go up and standard pull sizes get bigger. Consider a Lv70 BRD with six targets. By 70, BRD gets upgraded DoTs, Caustic Bite (570) and Stormbite (670). Instead of crit Straight Shot, they get Refulgent Arrow (300). Again, using the same eight GCD timing, the single target DPS would be 570 + 670 + 6 x 150 + 300 = 2290. And let's say for AoE, he uses Stormbite on each target and then fills the other two GCDs with Quick Nock, for 6 x (670 + 110 + 110) = 5340. This is 133% more damage than single target. And we haven't yet even started considering the bonus damage they get from the bajillion oGCD Rains of Death.

Some other jobs' potencies (GCDs only, not normalized across jobs):

(Lv30 single target vs Lv30 AoE(3 targets))
RDM: 2055ish vs 2400
BLM: 2142ish vs 2946ish
MNK (6 GCDs): 1242 vs 1472

(Lv70 single target vs Lv70 AoE(6 targets))
RDM: 2280ish vs 4800ish
BLM: 3222ish vs 8404ish (slightly complicated)
MNK (6 GCDs): 1242 vs 2470


tl;dr: It's definitely faster for DDs to spread DoTs and AoE things than to focus all attention on one target at a time, so tanks should AoE liberally as well to maintain enmity on everything.

[SummerScorcher]

Trolls... simple as that... also DRK has Sole Survivor for HP and MP recovery due to how garbage Darkside has become now which Sole Survivor can be used as a marker for killing the mob you want dead first, but people tend to ignore all DRK pointless abilities since DPS is the way to go and DRK Abyssal Drain is "so good you don't need Unleash" when the reality is that Unleash generates more aggro then Abyssal Drain and Dark Arts effect isn't doing DRK any favors aside from pointing out how outdated DRK is in general this expansion... but on the plus side you can use DRK to just piss off PUGs if that's what you like about DRK... but DRK does need more love though...

Dark Knight is completely viable. Where it falters is when compared to the other two tanks/in 8 man content. Unleash generates more aggro so you should ignore AD? What? Though it's a nice bonus, you use Abyssal for the damage, not the aggro it provides. I'd much rather have a good Dark Knight, than a Warrior or Paladin who doesn't know what he's doing. Also, dps doing single target in AoE situations is probably just them being bad.

[Lelila38]

Wall of text

He specifically clarified a couple posts above that he's not talking about aoe situations, but about people just single targeting mobs other than the tank.

@Op: if that's the case in levelling dungeons, chances are people are new and simply don't know better. Try to remind them friendly to please focus on the target of the tank. There's also the option to mark the one you're on. That was rather common for a while, but kinda got out of fashion. If they still hit other mobs and give you a hard time, you can only deal with it, do your best to hold hate and finish the run, kick them or leave yourself.