How/Where I learned to Tank

[Maelwys]

I'm by no means new to Tanking, but have found FFXIV to be quite flimsy with regards to aggro control compared to other MMORPGs.

I made a point of levelling via dungeons and the main story for my first tank class, so had it a little easier upon hitting endgame... but you're right in that at WP and AK level you'll come across a wide variance in Player gear and skill levels.

Hate isn't as binary here as in other games - once you have a Tank hitting a mob, you can't guarantee that a High-output DPS class (or worse, a healer!) won't pull hate off them. Don't get me wrong, I like the marking system, and it's reasonably easy to tell roughly where everyone's hate levels are on a bunch of mobs, and you can tell exactly where hate levels are on the mob you're currently targetting (in fact the only issues I've had with the targetting and hate readouts is in big Fates such as Behemoth and Odin where the target keeps vanishing due to graphic redraw limits)... but tanks actually have to work pretty hard to keep aggro against well-played characters of an equal or higher gear level.

It basically comes down to:
(i) Spamming Flash/Overpower
(ii) Rotating a three-step +enmity multiplying combo over and over again, only pausing to recast buffs.
(iii) Using Provoke when you need to get back on top of the hate ladder.

We have some other abilities (+damagetype buffs or stuns on the GCD, MP recharging combos, etc) which are nice to weave in in terms of utility and/or CC, but not in terms of hate generation. Part of the problem is that overhealing and regeneration effects pull a lot of aggro which you need to race to keep up with - even if you can keep up with a +1 relic DD going all-out, chances are you won't keep up with a +1 Relic WHM if they decide to start spamming Cure II or Medica II.

Hate wasn't black and white in FFXI either, but at least there you had a few guaranteed "Give me a big spike of hate" ranged abilities such as that game's version of "Provoke", and 'Oh crap' buttons like "Invincible" which basically ensured you were going to be the main target for the forseeable future. FFXIV doesn't have that... the closest thing we have here to a "give me hate now" move is Provoke followed by an already-queued-up Rage of Halone or Butcher's Block combo, and that's not doable at range. The result is that there are certain endgame encounters where you really need to know exactly WHEN and WHERE a bunch of adds will spawn mid-fight if you are to have any hope of pulling hate on them before they wafflestomp half of your party...

[Jubez187]

You make good points, but with overhealing giving lots of Hate, it really puts some pressure on other classes..which I think is good. Everyone needs to be over the bar or else it all fails. If the tank taking too much damage, the healer will have to heal more, and take aggro, while you're trying to get the healer in the clear the DPS start to pull. Binary mechanics are never great for a game, and tank and spanks can be a snooze fest sometimes. I think the system they have now does a pretty good job at what it's trying to do

EDIT: Whoops, this was in reply to Maelwys's post