Provoke does no damage

[Kolaina]

Whenever I’m in alliance based content, as tank, or not, doesn’t matter, I can sit back and see provokes going off seemingly whenever they are off cool down. I used to think it was just tanks flexing on each other constantly.

But when I see it in 4 person roulettes, mid combo, I think tanks believe it to be an off the CD ability to weave in to their rotation for whatever reason.
Am I missing something? As it just seems like hitting whatever’s off cool down because its just that; off cool down.

Provoke is an enmity skill that simply points your threat level exactly 1 point above whoever has the highest threat. It does no damage. Has no other purpose, but to take over as tank.

So why is it nearly every tank I run into uses it every 30 seconds

[Limecat]

Probably because in most games, the equivalent skill gives a huge hate spike so people assume it does the same here.

[Vyrerus]

Since they changed it, it actually does give more than 1 point of enmity beyond top enmity.

But yeah, it's likely due to Provoke/Taunt in other MMOs only giving a swift spike of volatile enmity that decays quickly over time, such that you want to spam it. Old MMO tanks probably don't realize that there is no enmity decay in FFXIV (at least as far as I can tell).

[Rowde]

Yah I think a lot new ppl are misunderstanding how it works

Also suspicious that quite a few ppl are trying to be clever and include it in a macro

[Rongway]

Provoke is an enmity skill that simply points your threat level exactly 1 point above whoever has the highest threat. It does no damage. Has no other purpose, but to take over as tank.

It was changed in Shadowbringers. It now brings you up to top enmity and then generates additional enmity equivalent to a 2,000 potency attack.

It still shouldn't be used on cooldown, though. There's no way anyone is going to do 10x as much damage as the tank, so using it outside of an initial pull, a tank swap, or a raise recovery has no effect on the course of battle, and pressing it outside of those three contexts is pointless.

[SenorPatty]

I've asked myself the same question for a long time and I speculate it's due to two things:

- Embedded bad habit that those type of tanks never quit.

- Failing to understand how tank dps plays into keeping aggro.

The first one is self-explanatory so let me get into the second point. Some tanks, I believe, do not realize that in a situation where all tanks have their aggro stance on, the tank that outputs the most dps wins the aggro. Problem is that when at least 2 tanks output similar dps numbers, even excluding provoke, the aggro will ping pong. Provoke worsens this. It generally takes at least one tank that can leave the other tank dps way behind to maintain aggro at nearly all times. You can see this when one tank provoke and the other gets it back within mere seconds and without having to use provoke.

This is why when I'm in an alliance raid as a tank, I immediately check my co tanks gear and stances. If I see one with their stance on and their gear outmatches mine (typically just needs savage gear in my case), I let them have at it in peace. I have absolutely zero interest in any aggro war and if I find myself tanking, it's usually because the two others don't look like they're up for it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

It's either people who don't realize how trivial maintaining a threat lead is now, or people deliberately trying to yank the boss away in trial/alliance fights because they gotta be the star (or want to spin the boss around and cleave the raid just to be jerks). Just be glad bosses don't gradually become immune to taunts in this game.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Well, better for them to use it too much than not at all.

In the somewhat rare occasion that something goes wrong and the tank goes down, it'll target the other tanks and not a DPS.

[Jin-]

Maybe they want animation variety or something. It doesn't impact the run anyway if they spam it to dungeon bosses

[Tint]

It is sooo annoying in 24 man raids. Plus that all these tanks run around in tank stance 24/7. When I enter a trial or a raid I usually wait for the other tank to activate his stance. But when he does not activate it I will do it and start pulling. And suddenly the other tank decides to activate his stance now too and mess up aggro in the opener.

I understand that tanks should stay on aggro second and that you use the stance for that. But please only after the opener and watch the aggro list and turn the stance off when you are building more aggro than the MT. Or use Shirk. But usually these problems are worse in 24 man raids where you can't Shirk the other tanks.


My most memorable moment was at Hänsel and Gretel in the Paradigmen Tower. I was tanking Gretel and suddenly the tank who was tanking Hänsel used Provoke on Gretel. And right after he provoked Gretel got the shield buff and I was unable to get the boss back because my Provoke got reflected.
And I got the blame of course >.>