How/Where I learned to Tank

[Tzain]

In short, I was wondering if anyone else, who was initially new to tanking, found AK to be where they really learned the ins and outs of the role?

I'm the opposite. I play tanks in nearly every MMO I've played since 1998. This time I started with a healer. Since that day I've been basically teaching tanks the basics of MMOs in approximately 50-60% of the groups I play with (which is fine! Since someone taught me all those years ago. I didn't just wake up and know all this!). The tactics are present in almost all the dungeons, it's just that the game allows players to brute force their way through the tactics.

Haukke manor is really the first place that starts to try and really teach you the basics. Patrol managing, Line of Sight pulls, multi-boss agro, interrupt and management of diminishing returns, Bosses with Phases. It's all in there. After Haukke is Brayflox, which really doesn't teach much about tanking until the last boss, where positioning and planning is key to an easy success. After that is Qarn, which is really more focused on kill priority than anything else, and most of that is on the damage dealers. Cutter's Cry seems to put the most pressure on healers (not that there isn't pressure for everyone, but I started really feeling it here more than anywhere else.) Then....there's Stone Vigil.

Basically everything Stone Vigil or later is going to assume you learned your lessons well and is going to punish you for failure. Sure a good player or two can carry you through, but these are the places that should be approached tactically. Stone vigil puts Kill priority with CC, some can be slept, but the big nasties cant. There are lots of patrols and at least one room where a line of sight helps immensely. Now that I think of it, it's really not unlike Haukke. Darkhold comes up next I believe, and I've taught at least half a dozen tanks how to properly pull mobs in that zone. Between the Purple safe zones and the patrols, it's very easy to go too far at the wrong time and get your face eaten but with some forethought and choosing your fighting ground carefully you can really minimize the pain.

After going through all that, AK shouldn't be anything new. It's just might be the first time that one realizes they're being tested on the lessons they were taught starting at level 15.

Of course, if a class leveled entirely in FATE and didn't do the guildhests or the dungeons to learn their craft, then it's a bit like skipping a year of university and showing up at the final exam.

Which guildhests would you recommend? I am not sure if I am an endgame person or if I will go into coil, but it is good to know. I have done them all at least once, and only one or two were really hard. I think the one with all the gigas was pretty tough if I remember right.

The answer is all of them. And usually two to three times until you understand what you are supposed to do and WHY you are supposed to do it. Once you know what they are trying to teach you, you can move on. I love guildhests, I think they should really have better rewards to get more people to do them repeatedly and really learn their stuff.