New Tank Advice

[Rymm]

Provoke is basically useless outside of the endgame tank swap.

While tanking is much, much easier now than when ARR launched, I would hesitate to make blanket statements like this. Please don't encourage new tanks to ignore any of their skills. Many are situational but that doesn't mean they are unimportant or "useless".

Provoke specifically is for tank swaps (as Kewitt mentioned) but also for quickly grabbing back mobs if and when you lose aggro. You shouldn't use it to pull, but it'll put you back on the top of the aggro list and snap the mob back to you immediately.

[Lammas]

While tanking is much, much easier now than when ARR launched, I would hesitate to make blanket statements like this. Please don't encourage new tanks to ignore any of their skills. Many are situational but that doesn't mean they are unimportant or "useless".

Provoke specifically is for tank swaps (as Kewitt mentioned) but also for quickly grabbing back mobs if and when you lose aggro. You shouldn't use it to pull, but it'll put you back on the top of the aggro list and snap the mob back to you immediately.

With its 25y range compared to your ranged GCDs 15y it's actually a pretty nice tool for initiating aggro on some pulls. You get the mobs to group up on you from a bit further away to hit your AOEs earlier and go about your day towards the next mob.
Needed? No. Nice to have for some specific situations, yeah.

Important thing about Provoke in casual content is to not just bake it into your rotation. In content where there are more than 1 tank you'll cause grief, despair and facepalms if you do that while someone else is tanking. Use if where it's needed, not when it lights up.