'allo there dps, fine day we're having. Question for ya!

[Marveth]

*clap clap clap*
Great points op.
Yes it might sound like mmo 101 to some but fact is, these issues persist.
As a BLM myself I know that I sometimes pull aggro. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. But what I have noticed though is that tanks really hate this. I know tanks get yelled at a lot and I understand it feels bad when someone take hate.
But know this, in ffxiv hate management is not a one man job. If you pull hate when the tank is doing his best then maybe you are the one doing it wrong. This is group play people not a dps race on a parser list.
Even if the tank is bad, pulling aggro will just make it harder for him and you will fail more.

[Avedis1134]

Personally, I don't care if the tank marks targets or not. I have a /assist macro, so I'm always attacking what the tank is. It's nice when they mark a whole group so I know what they intend to fight 2nd and 3rd etc, but its not required. I don't know what the difficulty is. /assist <2>...

[Trihuuger]

*clap clap clap*
Great points op.
Yes it might sound like mmo 101 to some but fact is, these issues persist.
As a BLM myself I know that I sometimes pull aggro. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. But what I have noticed though is that tanks really hate this. I know tanks get yelled at a lot and I understand it feels bad when someone take hate.
But know this, in ffxiv hate management is not a one man job. If you pull hate when the tank is doing his best then maybe you are the one doing it wrong. This is group play people not a dps race on a parser list.
Even if the tank is bad, pulling aggro will just make it harder for him and you will fail more.

This is why a votekick function is needed. If the tank is bad, I should be able to kick him the hell out of my group. Likewise as a tank, if the DPS are being retarded, I should be able to eliminate the retardation. This whole touchy feely care bear BS of "Lets try and get along and teach eachother" is a damned joke. People are about as capable as they will ever be at the start of any given instance. There is only one mechanic in this game in PuG'able content where knowing what to do will help, and that is the various things that can happen when Demon Wall does Repel.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

come inside meet the misses!

[Steeled]

It's pretty stupid to complain about this kind of behaviour because it's a behaviour limited to only DPS.

It essentially boils down to 'people make mistakes'. If tanks could somehow attack 'the wrong target', most of them probably would.

I don't see any reason to assume that DPS are playing worse than any tank or healer because they attack the wrong mob.

Oh it's not, tanks can attack the wrong targets too. Tanks can also switch far too frequently. Part of switching targets is establishing enough hate on your primary target that you can switch and take care of business.

Simply, if you're attacking something different than a tank's marked target (casting dots doesn't count), you're hurting the group more than helping.

If the tank isn't marking a target, he's Doing It Wrong.

- If an enemy is being on the healer, I will attack/burst it, because from my experience it's far easier for a healer to heal me, than it is for them to heal themselves while tanking, yes I am aware it's more healing than the mob being on the tank, but 99% of the time the tank is too clueless to notice and pull it back anyway.

Most definitely.

Also because there's a chance, while they're being hit, for the spell to be interrupted. If you play a class with a stun, you can also mitigate you're incoming damage.[/quote]

Yes, absolutely. If for no other reason than it's more vital that the healer live than the dps, no offense. It's still the tank's "fault", but you do what you can. In other games, where dps could taunt/provoke, I certainly would taunt off the healer if the tank wasn't doing his job.

That said, my main pet peeve with a LOT of tanks, is they have a habit, of opening on 1 target (not marking anything mind you), then randomly switching sometime after they've hit it 1-2 times, this more or less means I get to tank the trash mob for the remainder of it's life. I agree dps attacking the wrong target when things are marked is annoying, but as a dps I have to say I find a good tank maybe... 1 in 10 runs, so for the most part I've given up, and assume the tanks won't be able to hold threat on me and I should just be prepared self-tank things.

I will say it's tough when you have a single target beast like Bard and summoner in the same group. You want to establish hate for the Bard but you know the summoner is up to naughty things. (I'm joking, the summoner is playing his job how it is most useful).

From my experience there is too much of an emphasis placed on "watching threat" on trash mobs, when I have my cooldowns up, trash mobs really don't have the life for the tank to get solid threat, yes I COULD in theory delay attacking for 10+ seconds, but what's the point of that when by then the mob would be at around half hp?

Agreed.

On the other hand, I hope threat is adjusted at some-point though because it can be very difficult for overgeared healers, to heal undergeared tanks without pulling, If the tank is undergeared they're likely taking excessive damage, if the healer is overgeared they generate a lot of threat, a single cure II might crit for 3000+ (and unless you KNOW your next attack is going to be a crit you may overheal some). This is the one major flaw I see in the threat system currently because.. I've noticed most tanks who lose threat consistently to healers are also unable to pull off the healers (who are now heal bombing themselves to not die).

Well, in most cases, the healer can do a few things. They can sleep targets, they can try to heal reactively rather than proactively, and they can even (I'm not really fond of this) equip a lesser set of gear. Healing threat does need changed though. The only healer I couldn't hold hate off of was one determined to have it. I mean ALL he did was chain-cast cure 2's.

Summoner DoTs (bane'd DoTs, that is) and shadowflare don't break sleep.

Which means sleep is actually amazing for summoners, as they can do near full (you lose out on thunder) AoE dps while the targets are asleep, and won't worry about ripping aggro.

When one target is down, the tank can provoke the sleeping target and won't need to worry.

Bards cannot sustain AoE, and their flaming arrow also does not break sleep.

To be clear to anyone who might not understand, the reason you would provoke after switching to the target is because the dots do build hate while sleeping, the mobs just stay in place, basically suffocating in their sleep. When they wake, they find their target.

Feels like I just read MMO gaming 101.

Some people (not implying you're one) need to attend the class.

[Kyronex]

Personally, I don't care if the tank marks targets or not. I have a /assist macro, so I'm always attacking what the tank is. It's nice when they mark a whole group so I know what they intend to fight 2nd and 3rd etc, but its not required. I don't know what the difficulty is. /assist <2>...

Yes, you can use assist to target the tank's target but that target isn't necessarily the one that should be focused on. Like I mentioned above, some tanks frequently switch back and forth between targets. If one is marked as "1" then I know that's the mob that should die first and if the tank switches to another one temporarily I know that he'll eventually go back to "1". I can just focus on that target instead of constantly hitting assist to see which one he's attacking all the time. It may be easy for a MNK to swtich targets but SMNs take time to cast spells (about 7 secs for the main dots).

For those tanks that do mark their targets, kudos to you.

[glen7187]

Just my experience in the tanking role, I do mark my targets but I also switch targets a lot. I do this to get as much hate on all targets as I possibly can but I do expect the DPS to concentrate on the marks in order. With that said, I also try to gauge the DPS in my party to see how much hate they actually generate and I change my play style accordingly. If I see I have DPS pulling the hate way too fast, then I won't switch targets a lot but rather concentrate on the one target so I don't lose hate.

With that said, it is still very difficult if the DPS split up and attack different mobs and pull hate rather quickly. There just isn't enough AoE enmity skills to pull the hate off both. So then it becomes which DPS should I try to pull the hate off of first? Most DPS understand after a few fights and try to focus on the same mob after.

My personal pet peeve when I am tanking is when DPS go off ahead and pull the targets themselves... This is not FFXI lol

[Vagrant-0]

You realize that the overwhelmingly vast majority of tanks in this game don't have the first clue as to how to mark targets

Everyone can mark targets. Sure, it may not be as organized since you would have to know what target the tank is going for, but this can be done easily with a simple macro.

/mk circle <tt>
/p Tank's target is marked with circle, please focus your damage there
/assist <t>

or for healers

/mk circle <tt>
/p Tank's target is marked with circle, please focus your damage there
/ac "cure" <t>

Just click with the tank selected after the initial round of flash/overpower. Super simple. Can even add one of your abilities at the end of the macro to attack the target right away. Nobody has an excuse, just make sure that only one person is marking things.

[dragonczarxi]

the only thing i will add as a long time dps from days of yor.....
1) marking targets are great, but if the mob dies and it takes you 3 min to mark second target (this happens alot oddly...) dont scream at the dps that stands back a foot or 2 trying to figure out second target, or immediatly yell at him for cranking on the wrong one cause u refuse to or cant mark second target.....
2) mark primary target, throw a spear at it, then switch immediatly and /kick your dps for attacking target 1 like we has been from start of dungeon run.
3) ask if the dps understands the threat table to begin with. been playing since cb, asked numerous times about the numbers in the party list and yet no one ever thought to say "o, thats your threat you should keep that low." just found out a week ago that the numbers and colors were your threat levels.

[Steeled]

Everyone can mark targets. Sure, it may not be as organized since you would have to know what target the tank is going for, but this can be done easily with a simple macro.

Preferably, only the tank should be marking targets. It's just part of the role. Mark targets.

Like I mentioned above, some tanks frequently switch back and forth between targets. If one is marked as "1" then I know that's the mob that should die first and if the tank switches to another one temporarily I know that he'll eventually go back to "1".

This. I occasionally run into dps that switch targets as I move on to the next (when <1> is almost dead, I mark a new target with <1>), and I politely explain to them to stick with the almost dead target, I'm just marking ahead of time for them so that they know what to attack next.

There's no need to make the time to mark <2,3,4>, especially sometimes because pulls change. If someone agros something more dangerous, I'm switching. You can continue to kill <1> if you like but my next target may not have been what I would have initially marked <2>