Quote Originally Posted by Angellos View Post
They have the most health, the most defensive CD's, just as much healing as anyone else (Even more healing if they're a warrior) they can become completely immune (PLD) or heal for the amount you smack them for instead of taking damage and dying (DRK.)

So what makes you think it's a good idea to target the nearly unkillable thing first?

No. Kill the squishies first and turn a 5v5 into a 5v2. THEN kill the tanks, when you can just burst them all down.

Eugh I am so sick of not being able to communicate in CC. Give us teams already!!!
Tanks are often very viable focus targets. They do not have that much more HP than melee and melee very often have *better* defensive cooldowns and more mobility than tanks. This is because tanks typically have buddy skills or CC that melee don't bring in, and often have life leech at the end of their filler combo (or in PLD's case, they get to use Atonement.)

As a general rule of thumb, you should target enemies based on how much mana they have left, and whether they have guard/purify available. If an enemy has low mana, it will be extremely easy to force them to guard or purify. Or if they have already used guard or purify, you can easily force them to burn through their mana (guard used) or kill them inside a CC chain (purify used.) A player with neither guard nor mana is effectively a free kill, so intelligent players will have to back off and potion back to full (meaning they're out of combat for several seconds), and they'll *still* have to wait for Guard to come back anyway.

Tanks don't have any kind of inherent damage reduction or whatever, and their HP pools are usually only a few thousand higher than melee. Tank durability is largely tied up in their frequent bits of self healing or shielding from filler combos, Quietus, Atonement, etc. But you can't do that stuff while CC'd...