To switch or not to swtich...

[Nightz_End]

About a month ago I started playing FFXIV starting off as a pint-sized Arcanist for no particular reason. Not much longer after, I decided to switch to Marauder and give tanking a go. Things went pretty smoothly for the earlier dungeons, but now after just recently reaching level 50 it seems the learning curve got dramatically steeper. Now I'm not only competing with the enemies, but with my own party as well (between keeping the hate and positioning enemies properly for every boss or mob pull). From what I've seen endgame from my husband playing is that the tank gets little margin of error without the risk of killing a full party from one bad move. Seems to me that tanking is better suited for my experienced players. All this in mind, I'm tempted to switching over to DPS for my main class.

Here are my questions:
Should I just bite the bullet and keep the tank train going?
If not, what DPS class would you recommend for a somewhat new player?

[Viridiana]

Tanking will get progressively easier as you get better gear. If you feel that you're having aggro issues at 50, it's most likely that the DPS you're grouping with are just much better geared than you are (just because you're a fresh 50). Aggro will become substantially easier as you upgrade your weapon and left side gear.

If you decide you want to switch to a reasonably simple DPS class, though, BRD is probably the easiest to do reasonably well at. BLM is the next easiest, in theory.

As for whether you should switch? Basically up to you. Just ask yourself if you're willing to deal with both the learning-the-encounter stress and the keeping-everything-alive stress at the same time. And there's always the option of leveling a DPS just as your learning-the-encounter class. . .

[Judge_Xero]

Keep on tanking. Just make sure to get good, because it's easier to tell a bad tank than an AFK DD.

IMO it's the most fun and rewarding position.

[KikoriL]

Freshly hitting 50 is a hard spot for tanks. Without the STR and weapon damage from i90 gear all around and up, it's incredibly tricky to hold hate properly against dps that don't give you a few seconds to do your thing. It is a class that needs you to very well know the fight you're getting into, since a bad positioning can be more dangerous or inhibiting than almost any individual mechanic.
Don't be afraid to spam a little Syrcus Tower to get a few i100+ pieces while watching other tanks do most of the heavy hit taking. Practice helps and numbers help.

[Jim_Berry]

FI like tanking to be honest. Unfortunately, I keep it strickly to dungeons and some Primals. I'll admit that I'm afraid to take her into harder content like T5 and up, Shiva, Ramuh, and Ifrit. I'm not even confident with Garuda Ex. I COULD go DF and learn it, but a tank can have negative results on a battle more than a DPS can.

[Jim_Berry]

I guess my main problem with tanking is that I still mentally live in the tank past when both tanks are needed. I'm not confident in grabbing adds during Titan Ex, for example, but I can sure enough do proper switching.

In Leviathan Ex earlier, the PLD (I was WAR) died early somehow, but the battle went on. I eventually had to tank head and tail, grab water bubbles, and Sahagin. I was surprised with this that I decided to go DF. Nope, wasn't good. I screwed up on Garuda Ex and Ramuh Ex so hard that I logged and played Sonic Dash on my phone.

[AniCelestine]

Tanking boils down to knowing all the skills you have, when to use them, what the use them on, do you have to use it later, or so you have to use the skill now. And how good your gear is, is your party enough AoE dmg packed so your CD's last the duration of the pull, do you know all the mechanics of the fights, do you know the spanw places of adds, do you know how to easily/fast grab the aggro, do you know exactly when the adds are coming, are you prepared to it.

if you can keep up with all the things you have to pay attention to and execute them well, then you should keep tanking, or if you feel like you want to be able to do all that. Keep practising. If you doubt yourself you'll just hold yourself back.

So if you really want to be able to tank, go out there and practice, watch videos on YouTube, run content, and keep in mind, it's not always tank's fault. If a blm/brd for example uses all their burst abilities from a range at a add you're supposed to tank, when you haven't even got a first hit on the add, it's their fault for not allowing you to properly get aggro on it before starting with heavy nuking. There really isn't anything that should die so fast there wouldn't be time to wait 3 seconds for the tank to properly aggro the add.