Is there a Tank Pullboook?

[AngelCheese77]

I am in no way an amazing tank. I try to follow a few simple rules of asking if they want certain pulls, watch the pacing, and keep my eyes open for any trouble.

Well, I did Temple of Qarn today. I was tanking (Lvl 47 DRK) and I was synced down and had a DPS (SAM) start to run ahead and pull mobs when I wasn't around. There was no answer when I asked if they wanted big or small pulls .... so I was confused. Their answer was that I wasn't pulling mobs correctly.

Uh ... what? No other explination, just that ....

So my honest question, what are they talking about?

All names have been redacted, even my own.

[Raldo]

That's a strange comment. You can't pull wrong, because the all the mobs in a group will link together when you pull any one of them. It's certainly not outright wrong to not pull something that doesn't link.

Qarn-specific notes:

In Qarn, I suppose there are a handful of pulls that have just 1 or 2 monsters in them, and they might assume those are supposed to be combined into another pull, but it's entirely up to you whether you pull them together or not.

In one room early on, there's a couple of bees and the Qarn Facer. I suspect this was the room your party member complained about. You can group them all up or not, it's not wrong one way or the other. On one hand, if they're grouped up, it's probably faster. These days, I always group that room all together in one pull unless my party had somehow shown themselves to be woefully incompetent already. Power creep over the various expansions have made old dungeons laughably easy. On the other hand, if you don't group them up, you don't have to keep your eye on two sources of Final Sting, and watch for the Qarn Facer to run off if it gets low. Any of those situations are worthy of a stun, and you only have one stun (unless you're a PLD). Again, you do you, it's not wrong one way or the other.

Later on in the dungeon, there's a room with 3 spiders and a ghost. The ghost is in a pull group all by itself, but it's probably easiest to just combine it with the spiders, but again, it's not wrong to do it one way or the other.



Bonus Round: I see that DPS said "its Fruit-Flame," referring to the slabs you place in the thing before the final boss. It's actually Flame on the left, and Fruit on the right, so they were wrong about that too.

[Palibun]

Theres no real way to 'pull wrong', pulls are dependent on both yours and the healers skill and comfort. Obiviously you can and should avoid/pick up certain mobs, such as avoiding the adult dragons in Sohm Al, but Quarn is fairly simple.

I've healed and had tanks pull from boss room to boss room, and some do like 6 or so max. Same with tanking, sometimes healers can heal better than others.
If they were pulling for you and offered zero explanation then those are just rude dps. You can look up guides if you want, but thats more of a raid thing, not a dungeon thing.
You cant please everyone, so long as you do your job dont let it get to you.

[Rivinhal]

This is off topic, but I swear you must've ran into the same SAM player I did.
I was healing, and the dungeon was different, but aside from that literally the same thing happened. Same actions, reactions, etc.
Weird.

[Iscah]

watch for the Qarn Facer to run off if it gets low.

That's actually nothing to worry about! You don't see it happen much, presumably because everyone's DPS is high enough that it dies there - but if you fail to kill it, it comes back twice later.

Bonus Round: I see that DPS said "its Fruit-Flame," referring to the slabs you place in the thing before the final boss. It's actually Flame on the left, and Fruit on the right, so they were wrong about that too.[/hb]

I remember it as fLame on the Left and fRuit on the Right.

And I wish people would stop skipping past that puzzle because the treasure vault is the only place to get Belah'dian glass and it's valuable.

[Naoki34]

I am in no way an amazing tank. I try to follow a few simple rules of asking if they want certain pulls, watch the pacing, and keep my eyes open for any trouble.

Well, I did Temple of Qarn today. I was tanking (Lvl 47 DRK) and I was synced down and had a DPS (SAM) start to run ahead and pull mobs when I wasn't around. There was no answer when I asked if they wanted big or small pulls .... so I was confused. Their answer was that I wasn't pulling mobs correctly.

Uh ... what? No other explination, just that ....

So my honest question, what are they talking about?

All names have been redacted, even my own.

Don't worry about that, if the Dps like pull before the tank, let him tank. After 2 or 3 time... He will become wise or so, you will be kick.

And if you are kick, it's a good favor (think to BL him by contact UI), you can re-register for an another dungeon withouth penality.
You can't negotiate with people selfish and like to tell you "Do you pay my subs ?"

After 2 years of MMO, you learn how to manage this type of player. Be kind with kind people... And selfish with selfish people.

When I'm tanking my philosophy is make run dps and they can't pull before you.

[Hasrat]

Later on in the dungeon, there's a room with 3 spiders and a ghost. The ghost is in a pull group all by itself, but it's probably easiest to just combine it with the spiders, but again, it's not wrong to do it one way or the other.

If you want to be really bold (and assuming you can get a group that understands/cooperates), you can actually skip pulling anything in the entire caves section just by walking. The ghosts and spiders are all sound aggro. Can't really say whether walking past saves any time over stopping to kill, tho.

[Shurrikhan]

It's actually Flame on the left, and Fruit on the right, so they were wrong about that too.[/hb]

Maybe they read right-left in their native language, or just found fruity flames far more compelling than flaming fruit?

@Main Topic
Most tanks pull bees alone or mark them for focusing if they don't trust the dps to kill within a Final Sting's time (or a Low Blow's duration thereafter). As long as you are chaining what pulls can conveniently be chained without taking on unnecessary risk (see: bees), you're doing fine. To be honest, Qarn thereby probably has more idiosyncrasies than any other dungeon you're likely to encounter save perhaps that one Arbitorium or w/e dungeon from HW.

[Doozer]

I did Baelsar's Wall today while leveling my DRK and farming tomes for the anima, and also had a SAM run ahead at least once and then come sprinting back with a bunch of mobs. They always seemed to want to be ahead of me, so I stopped at the bottom of the big set of stairs and they just kept running up. I knew a group would aggro them at the bend and they did. I said "don't do that", waited a second for them to get pretty hurt (the healer was my partner), and then saved them. They ran ahead again after that, but didn't go too far this time.

If DPS want to pull without an agreement from you, the tank, they need to learn from their mistakes. They do it because they assume you'll save them. Don't. There's no wrong way to pull anything outside of extreme/savage/ultimate content. Do whatever you want. If they want the tank to do something different, they can queue as one.

[VenKitsune]

How new are you to tanking?
Honestly, this kind of sixth sense is something you build over time, you get a feel for how much of a threat each mob is to you and pull accordingly - Usually in endgame dungeons its made a little simpler by there always being a consistent 2-3 groups of mobs between bosses, so you can pretty much pull everything with proper cooldown management.

Usually if i end up in a lower level dungeon, and the tank is pretty new and pulling as small as they possibly can i will go and stand a bit further down and just...stare at the next pack of mobs, and i stand there for several moments...If the tank shows no signs of budging, i'll sigh and just buckle in to spend the extra 5 mins or so doing smaller pulls.

You'll get a better idea of what you can pull and where - But i always say, its better to go big or go home. I think its best to pull as much as you THINK you can, and if you wipe? Oh well, you wiped a single time, so just cut down on the mobs slightly until you can do it comfortably, instead of just being a scaredycat and pulling as small as possible in every single dungeon. Sometimes you just gotta take risks and play agressively to get better at your job :P