The trouble with telling tanks W2W pulls are a mandatory norm.

[Rinhi]

Never said it was a pro gamer move or what have you, but when I get a healer in Amaurot who can't keep me up despite me rotating all my CDs, including Arm's Length and Superbolide, W2W probably isn't that much fun for them.

that's on the healer, though, not you

[Bright-Flower]

I prefer big pulls, but if the tank and/or healer aren't geared or experienced enough for it, then I'm fine with taking it slower. If someone wants to insist on a mass pull speedrun, you never know what you're getting in a roulette and should form a premade party first.

[Packetdancer]

Using mitigation and doing your rotation properly should be the bare minimum for anyone playing this game. Anyone not doing that should be kicked.

So, I agree it's the bare minimum for a tank to use their mitigations, just like any job should be doing the basics of what their job is. I'm not sure I agree on the kicked part.

See, while I get exasperated when I see a tank who doesn't seem to use cooldowns (or uses all the cooldowns... at the same time) or a healer who seems to think Cure 1 is a viable healing strategy in level 80 content, I also have enough friends who are fresh to the game and going through stuff that I am aware on a visceral level just how bad this game is at actually teaching a player anything about their job. Even at a fundamental level beyond the most basic parts of their role.

Arm's Length notes on the tooltip that it inflicts "Slow" on mobs that do physical damage to you. I've run into a lot of players who think that means the mobs will move more slowly -- but in FFXIV, that's "Heavy", while "Slow" causes you to attack more slowly/less often. People don't mouseover tooltips (especially when using controller), so while they might recognize that the clock debuff icon is slow-down-the-casts while the person crawling under a heavy weight is moving slower, they won't know the name (and so never even try using Arm's Length as a mitigation). Additionally, the game ain't great at clarifying what's physical versus magical damage; I've seen people use Arm's Length + Reprisal as a mitigation (yay!) during the rare trash pulls that do predominantly magical damage (...less yay).

For black mage, if you stack Swiftcast and Triplecast, they won't consume at the same time. Popping Swiftcast during Triplecast, the Swiftcast "next cast is instant" buff doesn't get eaten until all stacks of Triplecast are gone, meaning you can triplecast, weave Swift in during one of the three instant casts, and have your fourth cast also be instant. Neither ability's tooltip notes this anywhere, at least that I'm aware of; it's easy to assume that if you pop Swiftcast during Triplecast it will just be wasted since things are already instant-casts. Heck, for black mage, even the fact that damage is increased during Astral Fire is only noted in an aside in the job guide (and briefly in the text of the pop-up tooltip when the gauge first appears).

We all may understand that leveling dungeons hit harder than endgame ones, but that's a product of this game's odd gear syncing system and not what many new players would expect -- I've run into a lot of fresh players who assume leveling dungeons will be easier than endgame ones, and so figure that if they can't pull big in Doma Castle, they really shouldn't be pulling big in the Ghimlyt Dark or the Burn. The game doesn't exactly do anything to correct that impression.

The game is not hard to play, but a lot of things we take for granted are things that people find through experimentation (which folks are wary to do in duties with random other folks) or through community knowledge. But a lot of people aren't used to going to places like the Balance, or SaltedXIV, or AhkMorning, or whatever else to read up on the finer fiddly details of jobs and game balance -- and the game does them no favors there in terms of what information it offers.

If you want to learn -- for instance -- a proper black mage rotation at a given level, the game doesn't really give you any useful tools to discover that for yourself.

And we, as a community, can become prone to either exasperation to the point of snappishness ("the tank isn't mitigating properly, so we should kick them, possibly yelling at them first") or wariness ("ugh, fine, whatever -- the tank isn't doing anything they should, but I don't want to get in a confrontation or hear the 'you don't pay my sub' cliche get enacted, so I'm going to just sit here and silently stew until we finish the run").

And while that's understandable, it doesn't do much to help folks learn their job.

I've seen people who tried wall-to-wall pulls in leveling dungeons, watched it go down in flames and freak out a healer, and so get gun-shy and try small pulls going forward; explaining that, no, due to gear sync, endgame dungeons are somewhat counter-intuitively often easier than leveling dungeons (because people will more dramatically outgear them, plus have whatever their expansion capstone ability is) or other bits of advice can help restore their confidence. I've seen healers who tried to heal through giant pulls in early ARR -- well before that's something easily done -- and who became convinced big pulls were suicidal, so simply dug in their heels after that, and who can be shown that big pulls are feasible.

Heck, I've seen folks with transient reasons for small pulls, folks who are thinking "there's construction going on outside my house and it's distracting, and I just don't feel confident in pulling big when I can't focus since I'm not a tank main" or "I'm on Comcast and my connectivity has been godawful today; I'm going to pull smaller so if I get pokeball'd there's a chance the rest of the party can survive."

I'd rather learn why a tank isn't pulling big, and maybe help with their confidence if they're open to it, rather than just judge-and-kick. And maybe they aren't open to it, and sure that can be frustrating when you know a dungeon can easily take half the time you're spending in there... but in the end, it's a game. And I did queue up for a roulette, which inherently is something of a wildcard when it comes to what I'm going to get.

So I'll shrug and power through a slower-than-usual run, because not every run has to be a speed-run. But I'll usually try to figure out what's going on first.

Never said it was a pro gamer move or what have you, but when I get a healer in Amaurot who can't keep me up despite me rotating all my CDs, including Arm's Length and Superbolide, W2W probably isn't that much fun for them.

To be fair, I'd argue that Amaurot is another outlier; healers freshly arrived to that dungeon who aren't paying attention to their debuff bar can be caught by surprise at the 30% hit to healing potency they take while a Roiler is up and tethered to them, and I've seen more than one panic and struggle to heal up a tank in the midst of that. And those last two pulls, if you take them wall-to-wall, have a couple of mobs in them which can hit far harder than someone expects to find in a trash pull.

It's not a difficult dungeon to heal or tank, but it's one where I think it's a lot easier for a party of random folks to stumble than most level 80 dungeons are.

[TaleraRistain]

I think solutions like that are more akin to locking away the cookie jar. They expect players to show some consideration and teamplay, and only when enough players show they can't, developers will intervene and make it impossible.

They did intervene, just not in the way we expected. Now we have Trusts, so people just wanting to go through MSQ don't have to put up with nonsense like we see in this thread.

[Awha]

Never said it was a pro gamer move or what have you, but when I get a healer in Amaurot who can't keep me up despite me rotating all my CDs, including Arm's Length and Superbolide, W2W probably isn't that much fun for them.

I mean I never said you did just that I do not get why people make it seem like w2w is some task that requires great skill.

Also if you were using your tool kit that fail is on the healer not you.

[Gothicshark]

When tanking the Golden rule is never pull harder than the healer can deal with. If you don't know the healer always ask at the start. On this note Healers should also pipe up and say "New to Healing" so the tank can start slowly and build the healer up. I should also say most classes don't have AOE until after level 30, and some don't even get good AOE until 49 or 50 and it's tied to a quest. So be mindful that the DPS might not be able to burn them down at low levels.

[ForteNightshade]

Well, I suppose all I can say at this point is "congratulations on being a better tank than I am".

Not sure why I expected anything else on the forums.

Correction. I am a more practiced tank then you not necessarily better. There really isn't a skill approach to wall pulls nor are there any tricky tricks. You just do it and rotate your CDs, spacing them out accordingly. If you die, then the healer did something wrong. You mention Amaurot in a subsequent post. If you went through most of your CDs, including Super and still died to a wall pull. That is entirely on the healer having absolutely no idea what they're doing. None of Amaurot's pulls are overly dangerous. Either they were too focused on Holy spam or simply don't know how to heal properly. It could also be the DPS being low, though even then the mobs don't hit that hard. So that would be some single target nonsense.

In either scenario, you weren't the problem. Part of wall pulling is knowing when you did everything correct.

There is no bar and no one is "literally useless" if the pulls are small. Tank is still holding aggro and taking mitigated damage; Healer is still healing more efficiently than any other class can; the dungeon is still getting completed. Roles not being necessary for small pulls isn't the same as roles being useless.

If your role is healer and the outgoing damage is so minuscule you literally never press a single heal, then you're functionally a DPS doing less damage. That same logic applies to tanks, though more in Expert as Leveling dungeon may have the occasional "spicy" mob. The point still stands. Both tank and healer only serve a purpose if they're actually, ya know, tanking or healing. If a melee DPS can keep themselves alive with a spot heal every so often, then the tank is mathematically useless. It'd be no different than bring two healers instead of a DPS. Sure, you can do it and clear easily but you're just doing less damage for no reason.

All of this is why you'll see DPS or healers pull. They know the mobs aren't threatening. Which makes small pulls pointless. Furthermore, at 71+, you have access to Trusts, giving an entire system dedicated to players who want to go at their own pace.

Also, a majority rules case is what vote kick exists for. The entire point is that the group doesn't ever have to concede to one person's point of view, or one set of arbitrary rules

I never said otherwise. You're misconstruing my argument. I mentioned majority rules in the sense of large pulls becoming the standard in DF because people adapted to how little damage mobs deal. That being said, it still applies to the dungeon itself. If I happen to be in a group with three people who wanna take it slow, then I'll either adapt myself or simply leave. Funny enough, it's never happened in all my thousands of dungeon runs. 95% of them are "go fast"

[van_arn]

I will say if you’re unwilling or unable to tank or heal large pulls in expert roulette, it’s time for introspection. You’re certainly incompetent, but you can either do better or find something else to play if you don’t want to do better.

If the cause is the healer/tank you’re paired with, then replace them.

[Goji1639]

If your role is healer and the outgoing damage is so minuscule you literally never press a single heal, then you're functionally a DPS doing less damage. That same logic applies to tanks, though more in Expert as Leveling dungeon may have the occasional "spicy" mob. The point still stands. Both tank and healer only serve a purpose if they're actually, ya know, tanking or healing. If a melee DPS can keep themselves alive with a spot heal every so often, then the tank is mathematically useless. It'd be no different than bring two healers instead of a DPS. Sure, you can do it and clear easily but you're just doing less damage for no reason.

All of this is why you'll see DPS or healers pull. They know the mobs aren't threatening. Which thereby makes small pulls pointless. Furthermore, at 71+, you have access to Trusts.

Again, useless and unnecessary are 2 different things; you're conflating these concepts. There are technically dungeons that you can wall to wall without a Healer, assuming WAR or PLD tank, so replacing the Healer with another DPS is faster. It doesn't mean healers are useless in those dungeons, just unnecessary. No role in this game is useless, because completing things as fast as possible isn't necessary in any of this content.

I never said otherwise. You're misconstruing my argument. I mentioned majority rules in the sense of large pulls becoming the standard in DF because people adapted to how little damage mobs deal. That being said, it still applies to the dungeon itself. If I happen to be in a group with three people who wanna take it slow, then I'll either adapt myself or simply leave. Funny enough, it's never happened in all my thousands of dungeon runs. 95% of them are "go fast"

Majority rules isn't about preference, though; it's about what people are willing to tolerate. If it was as simple as fast run vs. slow run I'd obviously always vote for fast. If it's an uncomfortable Healer/Tank who wants to take it slow, however, I'm perfectly fine voting with them towards a slower run, and the majority of people would likely feel the same. It doesn't happen often that you see a tank in expert taking it slow, but when it does happen the majority of people are content to let it happen.

[TheMightyMollusk]

There has not been a single Expert dungeon except for pre-nerf Baelsar's Wall where wall pulling has every been challenging.

The first big pull after the second boss in Hells' Lid could be kinda spicy if you weren't ready for it.