PSA: Provoke and You.

[Sqwall]

Provoke and shirk are one in the same honestly. In 8 man savage content it's damn near required to have shirk on you hotbar with a /2 target macro. It's not something you would ever use in "normal" content.

So people using provoke over and over are either trolling for fun, Or they really don't know how the skill works at all.

Early ARR this was all you saw as enmity worked off of damage/skill modifiers until you got your stance which helped much more. This was a huge pain when players got there weapon relic in ARR and you had to out DPS that as a tank. BLM and DRG come to mind.

I still see some players using provoke every single time it's ready after the ShB enmity changes. Politely say "Hey, you don't have to provoke at all...just AOE and DPS you got the hate."

FFXI this was at the core of tanking. You had to constantly be using provoke w/e it was off cooldown. Enmity was completely different though as it was based off of damage/heals/self-heals/ enmity modifiers. There was no stances in FFXI so you had to always be doing more damage as a tank. Paladins were great at this as enmity gains from self healing were typically higher then damage enmity.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Provoke and shirk are one in the same honestly. In 8 man savage content it's damn near required to have shirk on you hotbar with a /2 target macro. It's not something you would ever use in "normal" content.

I never did like Shirk... tanks having a BLM enmity dump never sat right with me... I would gladly trade Shirk for enmity combos if I could...

So people using provoke over and over are either trolling for fun, Or they really don't know how the skill works at all.

If they aren't using Shirk then they are probably trolling for fun... if they have tank stance on when they hit Provoke, then it probably means they want to main tank but are not generating enough even though Tank stance should do that...

Early ARR this was all you saw as enmity worked off of damage/skill modifiers until you got your stance which helped much more. This was a huge pain when players got there weapon relic in ARR and you had to out DPS that as a tank. BLM and DRG come to mind.

I remember that being a thing in Heavensward as well though I might be misremembering...

I still see some players using provoke every single time it's ready after the ShB enmity changes. Politely say "Hey, you don't have to provoke at all...just AOE and DPS you got the hate."

Provoke is okay if you want to start a pull with it or someone couldn't hold their... excitement... and just rips enmity from a distance(oh look a BLM)...

FFXI this was at the core of tanking. You had to constantly be using provoke w/e it was off cooldown. Enmity was completely different though as it was based off of damage/heals/self-heals/ enmity modifiers. There was no stances in FFXI so you had to always be doing more damage as a tank. Paladins were great at this as enmity gains from self healing were typically higher then damage enmity.

Wait... so I actually enjoy FFXI style tanking, without even playing FFXI, because FFXIV 2.0-4.5x was similar in to how tanking was in FFXI was when leveling a tank...?

That actually blows my mind, in a good way.

[Sqwall]

Wait... so I actually enjoy FFXI style tanking, without even playing FFXI, because FFXIV 2.0-4.5x was similar in to how tanking was in FFXI was when leveling a tank...?

That actually blows my mind, in a good way.

Yeah FFXIV "sort of" borrowed from 2 camps of thought here from other MMO's.
1. Enmity generation in FFXI, by using modifiers to skills that increase enmity or decreased it for some DPS classes. These came in the form of skills, items, potions, abilities. Where this was DIFFERENT was enmity came is SMALL amounts at one time.

Example: WAR/NIN uses utsusemi: Ichi to cast 3 shadows on self...then uses provoke for hate. WAR/NIN doesn't take damage for 3 attacks while the mob is focused on them. Meanwhile the PLD/WHM heals his wounds and then uses provoke off WAR/NIN. rinse repeat.

DPS and healers had to be aware of what was going on as to NOT GRAB the mobs attention and refrain from using certain skills/magic until the tanks were in sync. i.e. WHM uses elemental seal (x2 potency on next spell) + Curaga (party LARGE heal). This would result in a party wipe as by doing this the enmity dump would fall on the WHM and stay there until the WAR or PLD could "catch up". I ave been in a group where we had 3 consecutive provokes go off AND STILL the hate was on the WHM for doing this.

Battles were VERY party/class dependent in FFXI with this dynamic of tanking, and the WHOLE party had to be paying attention as to not pull hate. I vividly remember as a RNG/NIN class I literally had to just STOP DPSING to lower my enmity so the tanks could catch up...ultimately NIN was the main tank near the end of my tenure in FFXI


2. Agro table from WoW and this worked much like FFXI did, but was way more skill dependent. And agro wasn't in small doses but LARGE dumps of hate and whoever had the most hate was gonna get smacked. The modifiers/multiplers were reserved mostly for tanks.

With a stance on you did more damage which in turn generated more agro towards you. DPS had to be more aware so as not to pull ahead of the #1 in the agro table like all MMO's, but this was MUCH less severe.

Example: First 2 minutes of Onixia in vanilla was just the tanks establishing agro, which allowed the whole raid to go bonkers with insane DPS without issue. Healers using range/wands doing literally 100 points of damage during the opener lol.

ARR, HW, Stormblood, all adopted this style of a "hybrid hate" generation for all the party members involved. This made raids VERY compelling for hate managment. ShB just made it stupid simple to hold hate, and removed Diversion from the game. The only time I see agro creep is when I have a WHM or SCH in the group.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

As for ShB's Provoke being "stronger", coulda fooled me, because I've seen tanks pull with Voke and the mob goes to the first DPS who touches it, esp when I'm playing DNC. All I have to do is use the first ability in my rotation and wham. The mob is mine. I've also pulled aggro with casting Jolt as RDM.

It's a fact Provoke is stronger in ShB as it has a boost in enmity, while previously, Provoke only placed you 1 point ahead of the enmity lead, and it's recast is now 30 seconds down from 40 seconds. DNC front loads it's burst, and to some degree so does RDM, so even with PLD typically using Holy Spirit to pull instead of shield lob (more dps), DNC can still rip aggro for a second.

I have, however, never seen any scenario where Shield Lob failed to keep an enemy on me long enough for me to Eclipse the pack. I have seen MCHs and BRDs dumping Quick Nock/Spread Shot and pulling the other mobs for a split sec, but that tends to get sorted out before they even get hit usually, or if they do get hit, it's scratch damage.

If you check the tooltips on the tanks basic ranged skills, all have an enmity modifier on top of the stance bonus enmity, which is a significant boost compared to Provoke, but sometimes, certain situations allow for faster reaction times picking up adds using Provoke, or it allows and extra GCD to be gained, that would be lost using ranged skill to pull. Certain tank openers will just have the tank run in and face pull, then kick their rotation off on the first GCD.

As for bosses, personally, I always use the gap closer to pull a boss, and then follow that up with Spirits and then Scorn. Never lost a boss, not once. If I don't have the gap closer because of Level Sync, Shield Lob always works just fine. There may be niche situations like someone mentioned some caster mobs in special pulls in some dungeons, but those are the exception, not the rule.

This is by far the worst means to pull a boss, using gap closers to pull screws over your melee getting to the boss and delays positionals (in certain circumstance), and typically creates more issues to positioning the boss (can screw with ninja's who pre pop doton as well). You should always hold your first Spirits Within until you've at least used Fight or Flight. As mentioned above, typically Holy Spirit is a better means to pull for paladin on bosses. Dungeon trash, either Intervene, Shield Lob or Total Eclipse.

And the arguments about enmity combos are so eye-roll worthy: There are no scenarios, absolutely none, where enmity combos are needed.

This I do agree with you on, even last expac, enmity combos seen one use per fight, and then forgotten about, tanks have more than enough tools to manage enmity as it is. More frustrating was the tanks in 8 or 24 man content, that insisted on OT then subsequently spam their enmity combo preventing veteran tanks to tank in DPS stance. The removal of enmity combos at least made a significant improvement there, As for the provoke spamming tanks, I typically let them keep it, unless said person tanking will be a detriment to the party / alliance, in which case, I will Provoke back when safe to do so.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I never did like Shirk... tanks having a BLM enmity dump never sat right with me... I would gladly trade Shirk for enmity combos if I could...

Shirk in concept was a good idea considering how easy it was to mess up tank swaps in ARR and HW. Often the current MT would need to stop attacking completely so that the new MT could start generating a solid lead. The problem was more in Shirk's implementation. If Shirk had just been a 25% enmity dump instead of a 25% enmity transfer Circle Shirk and the 100% DpS stance meta wouldn't have occurred in StB.

I remember that being a thing in Heavensward as well though I might be misremembering...

It occurred in both 2.0/2.1 and 3.0/3.1. This is why both 4.0/4.1 and 5.0/5.1 have a much smaller relative entry/max ilevel stat differences.

Wait... so I actually enjoy FFXI style tanking, without even playing FFXI, because FFXIV 2.0-4.5x was similar in to how tanking was in FFXI was when leveling a tank...?

FFXI tanking is not really similar to 2.0 to 4.5's tanking. Sqwall left out that enmity in FFXI decays. FFXI actually has 2 forms of enmity: Time-volatile and Damage-volatile which decrease based on the associated factor (Time-volatile decreased as time passed while damage-volatile decreased whenever a monster dealt damage to you). FFXI tanking was mainly built around constantly spamming enmity generators while the DpS waited for a big enough gap that they could burst without becoming the primary target.

ARR, HW, Stormblood, all adopted this style of a "hybrid hate" generation for all the party members involved. This made raids VERY compelling for hate managment.

Not really. A properly geared Vit tank paired with equally geared dps had little to no chance of losing hate even without enmity combos in ARR, HW and StB as long as they were in tank stance and doing a proper rotation. Enmity only became a factor when trying to tank in DpS stance and tanks were only really able to maintain their enmity leads due to the damage increase from using strength accessories intended for the Monk and Dragoon.

ShB just made it stupid simple to hold hate, and removed Diversion from the game. The only time I see agro creep is when I have a WHM or SCH in the group.

It was always intended to be stupid simple to hold hate. The Player base just ended up discovering a way to increase party damage by shifting enmity management responsibilities from the tanks to the dps.

[Maeka]

It's a fact Provoke is stronger in ShB as it has a boost in enmity, while previously, Provoke only placed you 1 point ahead of the enmity lead, and it's recast is now 30 seconds down from 40 seconds. DNC front loads it's burst, and to some degree so does RDM, so even with PLD typically using Holy Spirit to pull instead of shield lob (more dps), DNC can still rip aggro for a second.

I've never seen anybody rip a mob off of me with Shield Lob. Not once. I suppose it could happen between pulls, like if a RDM were to have Verholy/Verflare and/or that Lv80 closer ready from the previous pull and dumps that from the start or something similar, maybe? Or a BRD dumping Barrage? Maybe a MCH who likes opening with Reassemble+Drill/Air Anchor? But other than extreme cases like that, nope. Doesn't happen.

If you check the tooltips on the tanks basic ranged skills, all have an enmity modifier on top of the stance bonus enmity, which is a significant boost compared to Provoke, but sometimes, certain situations allow for faster reaction times picking up adds using Provoke, or it allows and extra GCD to be gained, that would be lost using ranged skill to pull. Certain tank openers will just have the tank run in and face pull, then kick their rotation off on the first GCD.

The original point was, that Shield Lob (and similar) generates more threat on pull than Provoke and I've seen plenty of pulls off the tank with Provoke and none with Shield Lob, so.......

This is by far the worst means to pull a boss, using gap closers to pull screws over your melee getting to the boss and delays positionals (in certain circumstance), and typically creates more issues to positioning the boss (can screw with ninja's who pre pop doton as well). You should always hold your first Spirits Within until you've at least used Fight or Flight. As mentioned above, typically Holy Spirit is a better means to pull for paladin on bosses. Dungeon trash, either Intervene, Shield Lob or Total Eclipse.

FoF can be used while dashing into the boss. *shrug* Never said it couldn't, I didn't really see a reason to mention it. As for "positioning issues", I've never seen it. The boss stops exactly where he is (he'll move a tiny amount) and then I run through him to turn him around almost immediately upon pulling, and he stays right there unless I want him to do otherwise or the fight is scripted (Rukshs Dheem for example) to have the boss move. I don't get why you'd want the boss charging halfway across the arena towards you?

This I do agree with you on, even last expac, enmity combos seen one use per fight, and then forgotten about, tanks have more than enough tools to manage enmity as it is. More frustrating was the tanks in 8 or 24 man content, that insisted on OT then subsequently spam their enmity combo preventing veteran tanks to tank in DPS stance. The removal of enmity combos at least made a significant improvement there, As for the provoke spamming tanks, I typically let them keep it, unless said person tanking will be a detriment to the party / alliance, in which case, I will Provoke back when safe to do so.

What inspired me to write the OP was a WoD run at the Ahriman boss. Two of the tanks, both in Ironworks gear, both newbies, spamming Provoke on cooldown, and one tank that actually knew what he was doing.

We asked the two newbies to stop provoking and let the experienced tank have him. The newbies ignored requests and kept voking off of each other, even when the experienced tank decided to go to OT mode.

So no matter what, we were screwed as that boss has a number of cone and direction-based attacks, etc.

[Leiron]

Can either of you come up with better ideas that DON'T involve the ONE enmity toggle, Provoke, Shirk, and the ONE ranged attack that all tanks have? Because I am actually interested in hearing what ideas you would have instead.

There are none? This is simply a learn to play issue.

[WhyAmIHere]

So, we just wiped three times in WoD on the 2nd boss and the duty was eventually abandoned because we had two newbie tanks who were just spamming provoke left and right even though we asked them to stop, and that brings to mind just how many tanks I see in dungeons not using Provoke properly.

So, how does Provoke actually work?

Well... it puts you at the top of the Enmity/Hate list, and then adds a small amount of Enmity, and...... that's it. That's all it does. It does almost nothing if the mob is idle, and it does pretty much nothing if the enemy is already attacking you. This is NOT Final Fantasy XI.

So please, stop spamming it. You're supposed to use Provoke when you need to tank a mob NOW and you don't have very much enmity on it, such as an OT picking up a boss after the MT dies, or to grab a mob some DPS pulled off of you.

Please don't:

1). Pull with Provoke. Use Tomahawk/Shield Lob/Unmend/That GNB ranged attack instead. People who pull with Provoke almost always immediately lose whatever they pulled to the first person who touches the enemy and then Provoke is on cooldown.

2). Macro it in with regular rotation abilities. No, you do not need to use Provoke every time you use Fast Blade, Heavy Swing, etc. This only ensures that your Provoke is on CD whenever you do need it, and it will only anger everybody else in a multi-tank group, such as an Alliance Raid or any 8-man fight.

coulda swore in ShB they changed provoke from being x+1 to enmity to x+100 in terms of generated enmity

[Liam_Harper]

coulda swore in ShB they changed provoke from being x+1 to enmity to x+100 in terms of generated enmity

ShB Provoke is a 2000 potency value, dependent on current attack power and affected by global damage modifiers. It's quite a hefty value now.

[ReiMakoto]

I've never seen anybody rip a mob off of me with Shield Lob. Not once. I suppose it could happen between pulls, like if a RDM were to have Verholy/Verflare and/or that Lv80 closer ready from the previous pull and dumps that from the start or something similar, maybe? Or a BRD dumping Barrage? Maybe a MCH who likes opening with Reassemble+Drill/Air Anchor? But other than extreme cases like that, nope. Doesn't happen.



The original point was, that Shield Lob (and similar) generates more threat on pull than Provoke and I've seen plenty of pulls off the tank with Provoke and none with Shield Lob, so.......



FoF can be used while dashing into the boss. *shrug* Never said it couldn't, I didn't really see a reason to mention it. As for "positioning issues", I've never seen it. The boss stops exactly where he is (he'll move a tiny amount) and then I run through him to turn him around almost immediately upon pulling, and he stays right there unless I want him to do otherwise or the fight is scripted (Rukshs Dheem for example) to have the boss move. I don't get why you'd want the boss charging halfway across the arena towards you?



What inspired me to write the OP was a WoD run at the Ahriman boss. Two of the tanks, both in Ironworks gear, both newbies, spamming Provoke on cooldown, and one tank that actually knew what he was doing.

We asked the two newbies to stop provoking and let the experienced tank have him. The newbies ignored requests and kept voking off of each other, even when the experienced tank decided to go to OT mode.

So no matter what, we were screwed as that boss has a number of cone and direction-based attacks, etc.

It doesnt matter if you rip hate immediatly with your first hit, the tank will take the boss back again almost immediatly if you do and at worst you'll take an auto attack, not a big deal.

Using FoF before dashing to a boss will kill your damage, as it will probably cuck you out of a gcd across the FoF window as well as you starting fof on the wrong gcd. By dashing to the boss you delay your melees reaching the boss unless they also use a gap closer (which is bad for thier damage), whereas a shield lob or provoke pull will nicely put it in the center and have the melees hit it straight away, the positioning issues also arise because after a gap closer you're in a short animation lock before you can turn the boss. This is not to mention the fact that unless mechanics dictate otherwise, having the boss in the center is usually more beneficial