Strange and annoying new tanking trend

[MirielleLavandre]

I've been around for quite awhile, and in all my time in FF14 since ARR release, I've never encountered the kind of tank play that I've found to be prevalent and, honestly, quite annoying recently.

In at least every other leveling roulette I do each day, the tank (usually a new player or a returner) will pull one or two groups, stop - the dps and myself will engage - and then when the mob pack or packs are about dead will rush off to the next pack without waiting for everyone to kill the pull. It is most annoying when they pull one pack, wait till 1/2 are about half dead, then run off pulling this one single mob pack to the next. I mean, what is going on with tanks just not doing standard 2 or 3 pack pulls and just stopping...like, staying put?

I always w2w pull when on my PLD, but healing these kind of tanks is super annoying - and it is even worse when I'm on a dps job and they just run off trailing mobs...Is this a common thing for others, or common in other games?

[KitKatnip]

Is this something they are doing throughout the whole dungeon run or just the beginning? If it's just the beginning maybe they are trying to get a feel for what the healer can handle or what they themselves can handle and are later pulling more as they get more confident.

Or maybe they don't realize that pulling a bunch of packs at once and burning them all down is a thing?

[Myrany]

Maybe a new tank that is not super confident yet either in his/her/their skills or in how to navigate the dungeon so they go slower. I tend to see this in early dungeons more than later ones. Particularly if the tank doesn't know the layout of the place.

[Tibowmew]

I've been around for quite awhile, and in all my time in FF14 since ARR release, I've never encountered the kind of tank play that I've found to be prevalent and, honestly, quite annoying recently.

In at least every other leveling roulette I do each day, the tank (usually a new player or a returner) will pull one or two groups, stop - the dps and myself will engage - and then when the mob pack or packs are about dead will rush off to the next pack without waiting for everyone to kill the pull. It is most annoying when they pull one pack, wait till 1/2 are about half dead, then run off pulling this one single mob pack to the next. I mean, what is going on with tanks just not doing standard 2 or 3 pack pulls and just stopping...like, staying put?

I always w2w pull when on my PLD, but healing these kind of tanks is super annoying - and it is even worse when I'm on a dps job and they just run off trailing mobs...Is this a common thing for others, or common in other games?

As a healer main, I also find it annoying since I can't cast anything other than my dots while running. Sometimes it's newer tanks though, who are still feeling out the dungeon, so I don't give them a hard time about it. If it's continuous, or bothers you that much, you could just mention it in chat. Either finish a mob, or do a bigger pull and stay put.

[kaynide]

... (usually a new player or a returner)...

I mean, there you go.

All you need do is ask politely if the tank/healer is comfortable with doing larger pulls, or if they are fine with how the dungeon is being run. If you are running into it regularly, I dunno, maybe make a macro with your politely worded question/suggestion?

I've been PLD main since launch and I pull wall to wall or one group at a time depending on how I'm feeling any particular day and who I'm running with. I've even done what you described above depending on the dungeon and who I'm with.

[Liam_Harper]

Sounds like a WoW habit. "Chain pulling" was a popular way to run dungeons there, you'd pull some packs and once enough of the mobs in that pack had died you'd move to the next pack without stopping. This is because it's far easier to dps while running in that game, so you'd always be on the move through the dungeon with a decent sized pull on the tank that would be constantly aoe'd down, rather than waiting for the last few stragglers to die.

In ff14 this clearly doesn't work because aoe'ing a pack of running mobs is almost impossible. The tanks probably mean well and they're trying to play optimally, they just haven't learned it's different here.

[Anienai]

This is a WoW thing.

[Akava]

This is common in other MMOs and its called "Chain Pulling". The idea is to pull two packs, kill most of it then pull the next one in an attempt to consistently be fighting two packs. Mostly because in those other MMOs pulling Wall to Wall would result in a wipe. It also works there because there's no major benefit to being out of combat. Might be worth talking to the tanks about it and suggesting they try wall-to-wall instead.

Edit: Damn Liam beat me to it lol.

[Naoki34]

I've been around for quite awhile, and in all my time in FF14 since ARR release, I've never encountered the kind of tank play that I've found to be prevalent and, honestly, quite annoying recently.

In at least every other leveling roulette I do each day, the tank (usually a new player or a returner) will pull one or two groups, stop - the dps and myself will engage - and then when the mob pack or packs are about dead will rush off to the next pack without waiting for everyone to kill the pull. It is most annoying when they pull one pack, wait till 1/2 are about half dead, then run off pulling this one single mob pack to the next. I mean, what is going on with tanks just not doing standard 2 or 3 pack pulls and just stopping...like, staying put?

I always w2w pull when on my PLD, but healing these kind of tanks is super annoying - and it is even worse when I'm on a dps job and they just run off trailing mobs...Is this a common thing for others, or common in other games?

It's a way to stall when the dps is low, the heal unable to heal big packs or the CDs are not up.

It's only a problem for beginners, this kind of action destabilizes beginners rather easily, what do you want?

Take everything until the next wall, some heal are not able to heal that, so we delay for them.

[Espon]

It's a WoW mentality. In that game, dungeons are strictly timed and enemies tended to hit really hard in higher difficulties, so what you would do is chain pull while kiting everything from one pack to the next. This doesn't really work in FF14 as moving enemies are difficult hit even with good latency causing buffs to fall off on the DPS, and the fact that there's almost always a gate after every 2 enemy packs that will not open until everything is dead. We don't really have the ability to slow down enemies to effectively kite either, as very few jobs can inflict heavy, where as slows are very common in WoW. You're better off just tanking 2 packs at once.