Tanks can't keep aggro.

[Dotsusama]

I believe he popped an irony cooldown, buddy

Irony doesn't work that way. You mean sarcasm.

[AlexanderThorolund]

I find it quite amusing when a tank fails and rage quits and we complete the rest of the dungeon with me healing/tanking and DPSing.

Omniclass

[technole]

It's been awhile because I don't usually do roulettes without one of my linkshell tanks, or if I'm going completely random I'll do the tanking myself. In duty finder land I would say the biggest tank offenders that will lose aggro the most are those that pull while not in tank stance. So Deliverance, No Grit(s), and Sword Oats.

What ends up happening is there are DPS and healers which ultimately are better geared than the tank and will burst higher threat at the pull. The tank is just not doing their job right in this sense and basically are pulling like they are just another DPS with no threat advantage.


It leads to poor tank play, and they probably do it because they have gotten away with it with previous DF parties with bad DPS. Basically it's okay to tank in DPS stance, but you have to pull correctly and generate enough threat first. If you think you can pull in Deliverance as a hotshot i190 warrior and you didn't realize you have a i209 Dragoon, and a i210 white mage ready to burst some DPS at the pull you are in or a rude awakening.

As for losing hate in the pull even when pulling in tank stance, that is the tank's issue for not keeping AoE threat, or just focusing on one mob. This is what I tell anyone who wants to tank: "DPS AoEs don't listen to your measly target numbers, learn to get rid of those training wheels as soon as possible".

[Austthenoob]

As a tank, I've never set up a mob rotation, outside of leveling old pre 40, and I've had zero issue with threat. I'm usually under geared compared to the folks I run with, so I've had great practice throughout my career as a tank in a few games.

[Februs]

At equal level, if a Tank is losing aggro then either they suck at Tanking, or the Healer / Dps are being asshats. Pld's have the lowest enmity multiplier by far (Cuz' SE is stubborn and refuses to fix anything that is wrong with that job, for some reason), and even they can hold enmity if they use their rotation correctly. Drk's and War's shouldn't have any problems at all establishing and keeping enmity.

There are only 4 occasions in which a Tank should be losing enmity. 1) They're dead. Can't hold hate if you're dead. 2) The healer is a Troll and is doing stupid things like pre-casting Regen on you before each mob pulls. It's not the Tank's fault if the Healer doesn't know how over-healing enmity works. 3) The Dps are suicidal and are either pulling things on their own, power focusing your off targets, or splitting up and attacking separate targets from one another, therby dividing the Tank's attention. And 4) They are under-geared or out-geared by the Dps/Healer... All of these things can be worked around if the tank is paying attention, though. They just have to nerf their Dps/Mitigation for the sake of compensating for the team.

It's also noteworthy that a lot of the DF tanks people run into are not actually Tanks. They're Dps/Healers who got fed up with long que times and swapped to get their Roulette's done. No surprise that they don't know the job well when it's not their main.

[technole]

At equal level, if a Tank is losing aggro then either they suck at Tanking, or the Healer / Dps are being asshats. Pld's have the lowest enmity multiplier by far (Cuz' SE is stubborn and refuses to fix anything that is wrong with that job, for some reason), and even they can hold enmity if they use their rotation correctly. Drk's and War's shouldn't have any problems at all establishing and keeping enmity.

...

It's also noteworthy that a lot of the DF tanks people run into are not actually Tanks. They're Dps/Healers who got fed up with long que times and swapped to get their Roulette's done. No surprise that they don't know the job well when it's not their main.

Regen pre-pull isn't going to cause anything more than an annoyance as it doesn't require a provoke to gain that hate. Tanks can simply click it off if they notice a mistimed one. It's not always the healer's fault for those (last mob dies before it's full effects, or tank hesitates on pull). A simple lob/scorns is going to take it back right away.

Some PLDs can't hold threat is because they usually are undergeared, full of VIT, and not hitting Halone combo and just whacking their Royal Authority. I know many get annoyed at having to use Halone. But if they wise up with stats, actually pull with Shield Lob instead of face pulling, and using Scorns on cooldown in AoE mobs they wouldn't have so much trouble.

Plus many of these tanks haven't leveled up solely on dungeons, you know where you actually get to play your job all-the-time. The amount of "oh I leveled on FATEs" tanks I hear in some places is almost sickening. Level 60 isn't the level to learn to tank.

[Twilite]

Better Tanks than me have given me some sound advice. "If they want to keep taking the hate from you let them keep it."

You say it like healers are trying to take aggro intentionally. You're a tank. You know better. Heal spells are silent creepers in enmity. If you only worry about the DPS attacking your target, the healer is going to be staring at red triangles on every fight, for that reason alone is why AOE threat is necessary.

Also I'll be very bold and say those aren't better tanks than you telling you that. Those are morons.

[Februs]

Regen pre-pull isn't going to cause anything more than an annoyance as it doesn't require a provoke to gain that hate. Tanks can simply click it off if they notice a mistimed one. It's not always the healer's fault for those (last mob dies before it's full effects, or tank hesitates on pull). A simple lob/scorns is going to take it back right away.

It's true that it is just an annoyance, but honestly it can be a really BIG annoyance.

The biggest problem is having to backtrack to re-establish enmity. Tank's anticipate the mob's route on each pull. They are typically expecting to be the fixed point to which the mobs go on sight. If Regen pulls hate from the start, the mobs don't go straight to the Tank. They go straight to the Healer. Depending on where the Healer is standing, the Tank can miss their AoE enmity grab because the mob ran in a completely different direction than the Tank was expecting them to go. That means you have to go backwards to get hate on targets you should have gotten the first time. It really is inefficient. It's slower. It wastes additional Tp/Mp. It wastes additional Def CD's during the backtrack. It wastes time on offensive buffs that you're not making the best out of. It wastes Dps positionals ... it's just one big waste. What should be a smooth and organized run turns into a functional but vastly less efficient run, especially if the healer is inexperienced.

For experienced healers, its no big deal because they know how to position or work with the Tank, but anyone who has main-ed a Tank has seen a healer who runs away from them when they steal hate. It's awful, and the Tank has to chase them around trying to get it back. I've also seen a healer who griped at me for turning off her pre-pull Regens (which she would re-apply as soon as I dropped them) because I was "wasting her Mp." I would have laughed if it wasn't so awful. Again, not unmanageable, but as far as annoyances go this one can get near the level of Trolling.

[Artemiz]

Well as long as everyone understands that aggro isn't just the tanks job, it's everyones responsibility then I'm sure we're all on the same page. If a healer is pulling hate due to hate creep (and the tank isn't terrible) then they're either over healing like it's going out of fashion or the pull was messy and one mob is outside AoE enmity range, which isn't always the tanks fault. I had a healer in Dusk Vigil yesterday who was still using Fluid Aura and with some mobs having ranged attacks it was a pain in the ass. Sometimes a DPS just cannot wait for the tank to LoS pull so they pull a mob away from the pack mid pull, defeating the whole purpose of LoS pulling in the first place.

Work with the tank, not against him and you'll have an easier time but as a healer if you're pulling hate before the DPS then not only could enmity be better managed but your DPS are poor as well, healers don't get anywhere near DPS hate levels normally. Well, not unless you're one of those super DPS healers but I've heard that's not possible, which is odd because I see them all the time, even in DF.

[Kerwin]

It depends on what content you are having problems with tanks in. But in leveling dungeons it's common to see some tanks struggle from time to time. Many reasons could lead to this. Inexperience with the dungeon mechanics and monsters, under geared, etc. etc.