I'm a level 67 paladin... Who does not know how to tank.

[Bright-Flower]

Leveling a PLD currently, the amount of flag I have gotten for switching to Sword for bosses is amazing. It is like every second dungeon run the healer -while not contributing any damage- will show an amazing APM typing something along the lines of "Shouldn't you be in Shield Oath?" the second I turn blue. I am at a point where I just politely excuse myself that my tanking style doesn't fit the Healers comfort zone and leave the dungeon. Really no need for that kind of discussions anymore.

I mean I guess I get it, but yeah generally in dungeon bosses, unless you're undergeared or you don't know the boss mechanics and may take unnecessary damage, shield oath isn't really needed once you get a head start on enmity. In a EX roulette, I focus my defensive cooldowns around large pulls on the trash, and then mostly just use sheltron or reprisal etc during the big hitters to smooth things over. Dungeon bosses are generally pretty light on damage. Now, my first few times in a dungeon I'll just stay shield oath while I'm learning the mechanics, but once I get how the boss works shield oath full time is overkill. Though I'll generally just go shield oath if the healer complains about it, but so far none have seemed to notice me swapping stances on bosses, or at least they don't comment on it.

[YukinoAmidala]

Good lord...

I'm not trying to troll. But anyway, thanks.

I'm serious about not using shield lob. There was a time in a dungeon when a player asked me to use shield lob, and I simply said "No... Flash is enough. Trust me. I've done this multiple times without shield lob." And then he/she accepted it and we finished the dungeon just fine. So that's that.

Shield lob is literally designed for pulling. You should ALWAYS use this to pull a boss. As others have said as well, make sure you are watching the agro list by swapping targets and checking where the other party members stand. If someone is close to taking agro, use a skill with increased emnity generation to prevent losing agro on the mob.

[KaivaC]

I never use that ranged shield attack and I never use that weak-butt rotation that increases enmity. I've gone this far without them and I prefer to keep it that way.

What are your thoughts about my confusion.

You can't be serious right now. You're confused about why other players give you grief, but you're in a level 63 dungeon and refusing to use the tools you need to keep enmity. Boi, you need to go back to the Hall of Novice and learn your basics all over again before you even attempt to post another one of these threads. Because it's clear you've either forgotten or ignored your foundation. Your primary job is to hold aggro. A tank in most situations should not ever, for any reason outside of mechanics, lose aggro.

[Sabora_Makingai]

Leveling a PLD currently, the amount of flag I have gotten for switching to Sword for bosses is amazing. It is like every second dungeon run the healer -while not contributing any damage- will show an amazing APM typing something along the lines of "Shouldn't you be in Shield Oath?" the second I turn blue. I am at a point where I just politely excuse myself that my tanking style doesn't fit the Healers comfort zone and leave the dungeon. Really no need for that kind of discussions anymore.

I totally get that. When I was leveling my PLD I stayed in Tank stance the whole time cause I wasn't used to the boss/fight. Once I hit max, I started going sword for the extra deeps. Cool downs arent really a problem as you really only end up using Sheltron+Rampart for tank busters and thats about it.

[Super_Bee_Brian]

You can't be serious right now. You're confused about why other players give you grief, but you're in a level 63 dungeon and refusing to use the tools you need to keep enmity. Boi, you need to go back to the Hall of Novice and learn your basics all over again before you even attempt to post another one of these threads. Because it's clear you've either forgotten or ignored your foundation. Your primary job is to hold aggro. A tank in most situations should not ever, for any reason outside of mechanics, lose aggro.

I hold aggro 90% of the time. You're saying it's not enough?

Like I said, I've gotten COMMENDATIONS as a tank. People give me grief only 30% of the time. What I am wondering about is why this is the case and why won't EVERYONE just tell me I suck?

If 90% of the dungeons I did ended up as a failure because of my lack of fundamental skills, then yes, I'll change for the better. But I'm really doing fine without them.

[Melichoir]

It's not so much that I don't know how to tank. It's more like, I don't understand it.

Seriously... In dungeons, 40% of the time people are neutral about me, 30% they love me, and 30% think I'm garbage. For example, these past few days I've spammed that Shisui of the Violet Tides dungeon about a dozen times. The first 11 times I got a bunch of commendations. And the last one, one of the players said the following...

You... (dramatic pause) ... are garbage.

Here's my basic formula for drawing aggro...

Move forward. Once the monsters are close, I use flash twice, and then fight.

Here's my formula if it's a boss...

Move forward. Once the boss is close, I use that ability, whatever its called (the one that supposedly puts you on top of its enmity list or something), and then use flash twice.

90% of the time I draw aggro successfully. But for some reason, the rare times I fail, I get scolded severely by the other players.

I don't understand. Why the inconsistency in people's view of me as a tank? If I suck, I should suck all the time. But no. Whenever I get complimented, I get insulted as well. It's really bugging me.

I never use that ranged shield attack and I never use that weak-butt rotation that increases enmity. I've gone this far without them and I prefer to keep it that way.

What are your thoughts about my confusion?

Thanks.

First and foremost, go get discord and join the discord server "The Balance", theyll be able to help clear up tanking stuff.

But for right this moment, heres probably whats happening

Most players are neutral to you because you keep aggro and theyre like "Aiite, thats cool. GJ

Those that love you are probably either nice people and you have a charming personality, or theyre....'ok' at the game.

Those that hate you are either elitists or people who can see youre not a great tank.

If you can keep aggro, youre average. Keeping aggro as a tank isnt all that difficult typically, particularly if you have Shield Oath up. Now, time for the breakdown. Based on what you posted here, JUST HERE, you are a subpar tank who doesnt understand his class and skills. I am not saying that to be mean, nor am I saying it to be rude. Im just telling you what is the objective truth here. Based on your own account, you dont understand the skills you have in your toolkit, and its severely hampering youre ability as a tank. You are probably holding aggro decently (and this is a guess) because youre in Shield Oath 100% of the time and are not in lvl 70 dungeons. When you start getting into dungeons with serious gear disparity as well as players who have their full kits and know what to do, youre going to start seeing yourself having a greater difficulty keeping aggro.

As I said, go to the discord server I recommended. Lots of helpful and good info there. But in the mean while, heres a few things:

1) Your Rage of Halone combo is not 'weaksauce'. It is your enmity builder. Youre not supposed to use it all the time, granted, but when engaging a single target (like a boss) it is not a terrible idea to use the combo once, maybe twice to gain initial aggro, then swap to doing DPS combos like goring blade and Royal Authority.
2) When engaging single targets, using Shield Lob is also recommended in gaining initial threat at the very beginning.
3) Provoke and Ultimatem put you at top Threat + 1. Using it when you initiate is meaning less because the top threat at the get go is 0. This means whne you provoke out the gate, all you are getting is 1 enmity on the target. Your autoattacks can generate more enmity than that. Virtually anyones can. Using it when youre at top threat also only means you get a +1 enmity, making it meaningless. You use provoke when you are tank swapping or when you are really behind in threat and need to have it right then and there.
4) Enemies are generally tagged to one another. That means when you pull one, the others nearby will also come with you, and generally focus on you if youre the person who pulled. Shield lobbing to pull one enemy then rotating into flash spam (2-3 is fine), then using Total Eclipse is not a bad idea. If you are having trouble maintaining aggro on a particular mob because your DPS is blowing them up, then use single target, while using flash every so often to make sure you maintain hate on the other mobs.

There are advanced tricks and tips for tanking properly (like dropping out of Tank stance into DPS stance) among other things, but these are some of the immediate basics that come up.

Also in regards to something you said a little ways down:

I'm serious about not using shield lob. There was a time in a dungeon when a player asked me to use shield lob, and I simply said "No... Flash is enough. Trust me. I've done this multiple times without shield lob." And then he/she accepted it and we finished the dungeon just fine. So that's that.

Again, not to sound mean, but you are wrong here. You are literally gimping your ability to tank in favor of some misplaced idea about what skills should do what. If you dont believe me, go ask people who do the highest tier of content. They will tell you the same thing. Shield lob is a thing, and you should be using it. Youre main priority to be a tank. Stay a live, hold aggro. The better and more efficiently you do that, the easier and better it is for your party. So saying you dont use RoH and Shield Lob cause 'reasons', is like saying youre not going to ever use Rampart 'cause youve gotten along fine without it all this time.

You dont want people to be mad and call you garbage, then really, give a lot of thought about what youre being told here. You are asking others for their PoV, so please take it with serious consideration when we say "Hey, these things you should be doing."

[Vidu]

Good lord...

I'm not trying to troll. But anyway, thanks.

I'm serious about not using shield lob. There was a time in a dungeon when a player asked me to use shield lob, and I simply said "No... Flash is enough. Trust me. I've done this multiple times without shield lob." And then he/she accepted it and we finished the dungeon just fine. So that's that.

Because that player couldnt be botehred to argue with you over something no one needs to argue about - shield lob is your best/fundamental skill to pull; Rage of Halone is your best/fundamental way to build up the significant aggro-lead, so you can safely drop into Sword Oath and focus on DPSing.

Asking for advice and even saying "Well, I know I lack fundamental skills, but I dont wanna use them", sounds very much like trolling to me. You say you know better already, yet refuse to do so?

Also: People dont call you out all the time, because they cant be bothered. They want to get their dungeon done and over with. That people are actually bothering to critisizes you on multiple occassions should clearly tell you that you do infact should use your fundamental toolset. There is no reason not to.

[Liam_Harper]

I hold aggro 90% of the time. You're saying it's not enough?

Like I said, I've gotten COMMENDATIONS as a tank. People give me grief only 30% of the time. What I am wondering about is why this is the case and why won't EVERYONE just tell me I suck?

Yes, it's not enough.

You're getting grief 30% of the time because about 30% of your groups understand the fundementals of tanking and can see exactly where you're playing sub-optimally. 30% don't and generally throw comms at tanks or healers if you held agro. The rest are neutal as long as they finish the dungeon.

Provoke and 2 flashes, while it will "work" a lot of the time, is always going to be both inferior dps and agro to shield lob, 2 Emnity combo's and go dps stance.

It sucks if people gave you grief, I don't agree with rudeness, but you've been getting some good advice. If you want to be a better tank and improve, you should use it.

[Super_Bee_Brian]

(What Melichoir said...)

This is a great post. Honest and respectful at the same time. Thanks.

[Vaer]

Look at the small bars next to the job icons in the party list - that's the threat meter. It shows the enmity list for your current target. If they are overtaking you use more enmity abilities. The idea is to make sure you always have the largest amount, when you get into optimization you want to have the highest amount by a slight bit and just use DPS combos instead and keeping yourself at the top as the fight goes on and balancing it. If you are just getting comfortable you can give yourself a large lead, most people in dungeons won't care. The weak combo (I'm guessing you're talking about Halone) that increases enmity is actually really high enmity. It has a multiplier attached to it so even if it does weak damage it generates a lot of enmity. You want to use this at the beginning to build a lead and then manage it after that.

Flash x2 is sometimes not enough without some other stuff if you have DPS that know what they are doing depending on their gear and yours.

Usually what I do for a trash pack is I'll lob the first mob, flash them when they get to me, use circle of scorn. I'll fast blade the mob that got lobbed, switch to another mob, savage blade, and halone the last mob. I distribute the combo to put some enmity on each mob so I don't lose them immediately depending on which mob the DPS decide to hit. Then i'll check the enmity list and use more flashes as necessary and pop a small cooldown like Rampart. If i'm double pulling i'll pop a bigger defensive cd and start using total eclipse when the hate is ok.

For bosses, lob, spirits within, halone combo x1-2, Scorn somewhere in there. After that Sword oath, flight or fight and dps combos if I think the healer can handle it. Else just dps in shield, keeping track of the enmity throughout the fight.

If you get a straggler you can use Provoke and lob/flash to get it back. This sometimes happens if DPS decide to hit things before you get situated or regens are on you. Ultimatum works as well (it is actually around you so you have to position properly) if someone pulls more than one mob off of you due to AoE, just flash them afterwards.