How can you tell a bad tank?

[Forever_Learning]

i would say a good tank plays to the team, so they should adapt to thier mitigation, groups dps, and healer's heals

What's your feeling on the following:

I tried telling the tank to pull less in a somewhat cheeky way.

I said: If you keep pulling like that, I will have to spend the entire time spamming heals and have no room for DPS.

Tank said: Keep spamming heals, we already have two DPS.

So, I did, but then he needed as much healing during the boss fights as during the large pulls, so it was a wipe fest till a DPS left.

I keep looking back on it thinking I should have said something like 'That's not really how pulls are supposed to go' or 'do something more than just grit!'

[Gemina]

Oh man. There are so many ways a tank can work against the party: A tank holding aggro can deliberately face the boss towards the party so everyone gets cleaved; they can shirk a DPS player or healer for giggles; they used to be able to stay in DPS stance and get one-shotted by an unmitigated tank buster; they can see their MT sitting on 5 stacks of vuln^ and not provoke. Tanks that don't protect anything other than their inflated egos.

Yup. I'll take a squishy tank any day over the aforementioned. Squishy =/= bad tank. Squishy simply means the tank needs better gear, to pull less, and/or use mitigative CDs better. On the other end of the token, I've had tanks who are nigh invincible think they are gods, treating everyone like crap, and just abusing their tank privileges by doing things like not avoiding AoEs, not using cooldowns, initiating vote kicks for no good reason, or pulling wall to wall without considering the safety of it.

[PonifiedBeast]

Not using a CD or only saving the cd for bosses.
The size of their pulls
Not keeping the boss positioned properly (pulling out of dps aoes or keeping the boss’s positional unreachable)

[Physic]

What's your feeling on the following:

I tried telling the tank to pull less in a somewhat cheeky way.

I said: If you keep pulling like that, I will have to spend the entire time spamming heals and have no room for DPS.

Tank said: Keep spamming heals, we already have two DPS.

So, I did, but then he needed as much healing during the boss fights as during the large pulls, so it was a wipe fest till a DPS left.

I keep looking back on it thinking I should have said something like 'That's not really how pulls are supposed to go' or 'do something more than just grit!'

nah, there isn't much you can do, he didn't seem that interested in adapting his gameplay to the current team, you tried, that's all you can do.

[Tharnor]

There are two types of tanks in this game.

One kind needs a big heal every 10 seconds or so, while the other tank, it's like they arent wearing any armour! I watch their health bar and I swear, it's just constantly dropping so fast! Is the second type an indication you have a bad tank on your hands?

Rng does play a role here. While crits are not that scary in boss fights since only some enemies guarantee a big skill will be a crit. In trash pulls this can cause big chunks of random damage. Better the tanks gear, less this is a problem. Gear is the biggest factor in 4man content. Skill levels always vary but once your sync or ilvl capped you have a significant advantage no matter how badly a tank is played.

Now when they have terrible gear and skill. Best start praying to the mother crystal because that is going to be a stressful run at times.

[Kuurei]

I can forgive a tank pulling 3-4 mobs at a time, rather than 7-8-12 depending on how many packs are between them and the next wall. If you don't know me, you don't know how attentive my healing is or if I tunnel vision too often with my holy spam, so pulling slow is preferential as long as you're ready for the next pack immediately after.

I can forgive forgetting CDs once or twice a run, because sometimes you just don't necessarily remember parts of your kit. That, or a run is going so smoothly you don't even think about it.

But holy fuck, does it annoy me when a Tank doesn't realize they're undergeared, or their healer is undergeared, and starts running like a loon from the getgo.

[Deceptus]

These are totally minor complaints compared to the above, but mine is pull uncertainty.

Skittish tanks are the bane of my existence. aka stutter stepping.

Wait until AFTER my adlo wears off to charge in.

[Maeka]

Things tanks SHOULDN'T do:

1). Stack ALL of the defensive cooldowns before even pulling the first enemy (while running up to an enemy). This means the tank is clearly using a macro that fires everything on cooldown.
2). Balls-to-the-Wall on Pull #1 without even trying to gauge how good the healer is.
3). Not caring about which enemy is the most dangerous/should be killed first. For example, the Lv73 dungeon features 1 enemy in the middle of the first few packs that buffs the enemies around it. Its buff spell can be stopped but it needs to be done QUICK. Most tanks don't care and so these groups take absolutely forever to kill because the mobs got buffed.
4). A tank should have at least 50% more health than the DPS. If the DPS has 50k, the tank should have at least 75k. If they don't, they probably have terrible gear. Of course, if the DPS is level sync'd and the tank ain't, then it might be more like 30%. If the tank has about the same max health as the DPS/heals... something is very very wrong. Broken gear, bad gear, etc. I have actually seen this a few times. It's a nightmare to heal such tanks.
5). A tank who throws their weapon and just mashes sprint and keeps running. Should use at least one AoE to make sure you have the mobs.
6). Not using Mitigation on Tank Busters. I don't know about WAR, DRK, or GNB, but I know PLD has Shelltron. I've also seen lots of PLDs who don't care to save it for tankbusters and end up eating the full tankbuster with no mitigation.
7). Multipull after wiping on the very same Multipull (I've had tanks do this, we wipe because someone decided they should be pulling 2+ groups in some <Lv40 dungeon when I have zero instant casts, we wipe, and they.......do it again and we wipe again)

A Tank SHOULD:

1). Instead of dumping all of their cooldowns at once, space them out. If they have multiple defensives, use the best one once you're done moving and all of the mobs come to them. Then when that one wears off, pop the second one.
2). Know the fights, and know when to pop mitigation abilities (esp for Tank Busters).
3). Use Group Defense abilities (Path of Arms, Divine Veil, Clemency, etc)
4). Pull the first group, single to gauge the healer's experience and talent before going crazy on multipulls (or better yet, ask).
5). Know what healers can do what at what levels. For example, a <Lv50 WHM has no Instant-Cast Heals. Lv50 WHMs only have Benediction as their only Instant Heal. They don't get Solace until.... 52? 54? something like that? Keep this in mind when doing these huge pulls.

[althenawhm]

You know one thing that shouts that a tank is good?
SPRINT, its the best defensive cooldown during large pulls.
The damage a tank takes while sprinting to the second mob pack is way less that one that merely runs there.

[Vid]

Staying on topic others have already given their two cents, and you have a better understanding of how tanks should work. Key thing is looking for buffs/cooldowns.

The biggest and most common one is Rampart - 90s cooldown reduces damage taken by 20% for 20 seconds, can typically use it every pull or every other pull depending. EVERY tank has this ability, it's a role ability, you can't miss it, one of the most useful and fairly short cooldowns a tank can have. Looks like a Blue brick wall buff with a red background (mostly blue on the bottom, red on the top).

Next we have Arm's Length, and while this does prevent knockback it also slows any enemy that hits you by 20%. 2 minute cooldown, lasts 15 seconds, typically won't work on bosses, but it's perfect for big trash pulls. Icon looks like a guy standing doing a falcon punch to the top left side of the buff. Another role ability, there isn't a tank who won't have this, plenty of tanks who won't have it on their bar though, or forget it's an actually useful cooldown.

Every other cooldown is tank based, but typically every tank will have a very short cooldown mitigation ability they can use, such as The Blackest Night for DRKs, or Raw Intuition for WARs. Typically short duration, but very fast cooldowns that can be popped multiple times during big pulls and bosses.

Then you have the beefier damage reduction cooldown, 30% damage reduction for 10s with a 2 minute cooldown. All tanks have one they're just called different things, Warriors is a little more fancy because it deals damage back for every hit they take while under the effect.

Honorable mentions will be the odd things some tanks get, examples would be Camouflage for Gunbreakers, increases parry rate and reduces damage, Dark Mind for DRKs which reduces magic damage taken by 20%, etc. All tanks get variants of useful cooldowns such as these that you may or may not see a version of on other tanks. Thrill of Battle is a good example for Warriors as it increases their max HP but also increases any healing done to them by 20%, sadly Convalescence used to do the healing buff and it was useable by all tanks but they took it out and only gave it to the warrior instead.

Finally you have the O-Sh*t button that grants invulnerability for a period of time, typically has a longer cooldown, and each tanks is different in how they work.

Back to the main topic, if you see a tank using any of these before a pull, not at all, or all at once, they're a bad tank. The more cooldowns you use at any given time is typically a bad thing due to diminishing returns on abilities that reduce damage, and once they're over, you've got nothing else to use. Much like most healers don't typically pop everything at once, we can, but it's not efficient, same goes for tanks.

Good tanks will typically use a single cooldown first, Rampart being the most common, and then cycle through their other cooldowns as necessary.

Great tanks will by vocal about their cooldowns, and I don't mean typical things like popping a damage reduction cooldown and having a macro for it (although it can be useful to some healers), but I'm talking about the ones who talk to their healers, ask questions. "Are you comfortable with big pulls?" "I plan to use my invuln for the next pull, just a heads up" "First tank buster I can heal myself through it". It's the little things of communication that help.

I go through both sides daily as a healer and as a tank. As a healer I typically let the tank know I can handle big pulls as long as they use cooldowns, if I'm having issues keeping up, or my mana is low and I have no cooldowns to help I will say something. As a tank, I will ask the healer first and foremost if they're ok with big pulls, why I'm only pulling a small pack of mobs due to having no cooldowns up for a big pull, etc. I always look at their mana before a pull and if I see them down 25% without a Lucid currently going I'll either wait a few moments or just ask if they're ok to keep going. I would rather go through a dungeon/raid/whatever a little slower if it means we can do it successfully without any wipes.