The attitude certain tanks have....

[Hoglan]

Wow, as a tank, I feel really bad that people have had such bad experiences.

A couple things I make sure to do:
First, if it is my first time in an instance, I tell the group "Hi! This is my first time, so bare with me." Usually, I find 1 or 2 others that are new.
Second, upon reaching a boss pass gate, I ask "Any tips for this boss?".
Third, mark your targets!
Fourth, keep your eyes open during battle. For peels and adds.

Next, macros. You have to use them as a tank.
My survivability and pulling have improved so much since I have dialed them in.
Here is 1 that I use almost every fight.

Macro 1 - "Pull!"
/micon "Flash"
/ac "Flash" <t>
/wait .25
/ac "Provoke" <t>
/wait .25
/ac "Rampart" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Convalescence" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Awareness" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Sentinel" <me>
/wait .25
/echo Recast Pull!

[AridElf]

If people stood to the side at the start of a dungeon or just before a fight and asked if everyone/anyone knows what to do then a lot of silly ragequits could be avoided. I joined a Darkhold run for the first time the other day, and as always I joined in progress. My party informed me that I was the 3rd tank to join them, the previous 2 ragequit during the first 2 bosses. When I entered we had 40mins to do the remainder of the dungeon and I had no idea what to do (aside from a brief text guide I skimmed over beforehand).
We had one shot at the final boss and we did it with 1:26 left on the clock, the amount of joy we shared was immense.

To any fellow tanks out there, please don't ragequit like those did before I went in to that dungeon. Communication is key to success, and be confident in the face of danger!

To anyone I may party with in the years to come, if I'm doing something wrong or not optimal, please let me know in a kindly manner and I'll be more than happy to change my methods to make it smoother for us all.

[Steeled]

Wow, as a tank, I feel really bad that people have had such bad experiences.

A couple things I make sure to do:
First, if it is my first time in an instance, I tell the group "Hi! This is my first time, so bare with me." Usually, I find 1 or 2 others that are new.
Second, upon reaching a boss pass gate, I ask "Any tips for this boss?".
Third, mark your targets!
Fourth, keep your eyes open during battle. For peels and adds.

Next, macros. You have to use them as a tank.
My survivability and pulling have improved so much since I have dialed them in.
Here is 1 that I use almost every fight.

Macro 1 - "Pull!"
/micon "Flash"
/ac "Flash" <t>
/wait .25
/ac "Provoke" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Rampart" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Convalescence" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Awareness" <me>
/wait .25
/ac "Sentinel" <me>
/wait .25
/echo Recast Pull!

Don't encourage that macro, reacting to the situation is more important than...whatever you think that is doing for you. For instance, if the healer is casting a raise, that's a good time to Sentinel.

Also, there's no reason to be using provoke like that, save provoke for if someone pulls hate and I've never had anyone pull hate off me in a single target fight.

Stacking some abilties is good. A standard thing for tanking is that you want steadier damage taken, so abilties like Rampart and Sentinel are good all on their own, but you want want to stack Awareness and Convalescence simply because Convalescence since neither are your strongest CDs.

[Straiya]

As someone new to tanking I would appreciate it if people offered me advice and helped me out during battles. *snip*

I certainly count myself as no expert, but if I notice that the tank could be doing something different/better that might help with enmity, I usually try to offer up advice in as kind a way as possible. The only difficult thing with this is that no one can read tone in text, so if someone reads it as me being a know-it-all, talking them down, or something derisive/condescending, it's hard to recover from that. So I try to avoid it unless I think it will definitely help, and I also watch the tank to see if he/she is doing something that I could stand to learn from. It's definitely a two-way street, imo.

[Hoglan]

...snip...

First, thanks for the feedback. It's always helpful to hear how other tanks roll.

Second, regarding Sentinel, do you mean once I am raised I should cast Sentinel?
Makes sense, though, usually you get raised at the healers position, I haven't been in a lot of situations where the healer is aggro'd when he's raised me. It's usually the DPS.
But I get where you are coming from.

With provoke I am usually establishing threat and want to hit the top of the list anyway. Otherwise, I am pulling adds or peels to me that are attacking someone with higher threat than me. Which provoke quickly trumps. I get the whole situational aspect of the skill. But I have found that when I need it I need it immediately after I flash.

Not trying to argue, just providing a bit more information as to why I do what I do.
I'll take a closer look at it based on your feedback, thanks again!

Also, sorry for hijacking the thread...

[Steeled]

First, thanks for the feedback. It's always helpful to hear how other tanks roll.

Second, regarding Sentinel, do you mean once I am raised I should cast Sentinel?

Lol, no. I mean that if the healer is raising someone, that's a good time to use a cooldown, like Sentinel, or Rampart, or anything. Or if the healer is kiting something, or you know the healer is moving, like to eat morbol fruit.

But yeah, if you did get raised, it's good to use a cooldown right before you rush back into battle, for the obvious reasons.

With provoke I am usually establishing threat and want to hit the top of the list anyway. Otherwise, I am pulling adds or peels to me that are attacking someone with higher threat than me. Which provoke quickly trumps. I get the whole situational aspect of the skill. But I have found that when I need it I need it immediately after I flash.

Odd, I don't.. I won't argue, maybe your latency is worse. I shield lob on the run, this puts me a full GCD ahead of dps, flash if there's more than one mob, and then start the rage of halone rotation.

Not trying to argue, just providing a bit more information as to why I do what I do.

Not at all, you've been very courteous.

I'll take a closer look at it based on your feedback, thanks again!

I could be wrong, but I don't think provoke generates any special amount of enmity, it merely matches the enmity of the highest target on the list.

[Kaedan]

Second, regarding Sentinel, do you mean once I am raised I should cast Sentinel?
Makes sense, though, usually you get raised at the healers position, I haven't been in a lot of situations where the healer is aggro'd when he's raised me. It's usually the DPS.
But I get where you are coming from.

No, he means that if the healer starts casting Raise on another party member you should Sentinel, because Raise has a long cast time and the healer won't be able to heal you during that period, so you should mitigate as much damage as possible.

With provoke I am usually establishing threat and want to hit the top of the list anyway. Otherwise, I am pulling adds or peels to me that are attacking someone with higher threat than me. Which provoke quickly trumps. I get the whole situational aspect of the skill. But I have found that when I need it I need it immediately after I flash.

Provoke does not establish threat. It's an emergency skill that puts you at the top of the mob's threat list for a VERY short window of time. It's only purpose is to stop a mob from getting to the healer once you've lost aggro on it. It's useless as a way to establish threat. Here's a good protocol for a 3 mob pull:

-Shield Toss main target
-Flash
-Savage blade combo main target
-Flash (the blind debuff will have come off by the time you use Savage blade, allowing you to use it again)
-Blade of Halcyon secondary target
-Savage blade combo tertiary target
-Flash
-Blade of Halcyon main target

Also, and this isn't directed at you, but many tanks think they can spam Flash for group threat. You cannot. While the Blind debuff is up from Flash, another use of Flash will have no effect. You need to wait until the Blind debuff is gone before Flash will apply enmity again. That's why you weave it in with your Enmity combo (it doesn't reset the combo... you can continue to Blade of Halcyon even after using it after Savage Blade).


On Topic:

I never leave instances, no matter how many times people wipe. If people are wiping, that simply means they don't know how the mechanics work or don't know their class well enough. Both problems can be solved by teaching them. A good example is Cutter. A group I did it with wiped on Chimera. I explained that Blue meant to stay back when he roared, and Violet meant to get in close when he roared. After that, we passed no problem.

Some people respond poorly to advice, and some people are harsh when giving advice. If people just take care to be polite to one another, you can usually get through with no problems. Unfortunately, polite is something that's been dying in MMOs in recent years.

[Acyd]

Provoke puts you 1 point above the person with the highest enmity. Using it in a pull, does nothing.

[Hoglan]

Also, and this isn't directed at you, but many tanks think they can spam Flash for group threat. You cannot. While the Blind debuff is up from Flash, another use of Flash will have no effect. You need to wait until the Blind debuff is gone before Flash will apply enmity again. That's why you weave it in with your Enmity combo (it doesn't reset the combo... you can continue to Blade of Halcyon even after using it after Savage Blade).

Mark me as one of those that didn't know that. Thanks for the tip!
I'll be sure to be aware of that in my future adventures.

[Hoglan]

Provoke puts you 1 point above the person with the highest enmity. Using it in a pull, does nothing.

I think you misunderstood what I am doing.
If you look at the macro, Shield Lob is not in it.
Shield Lob is button #1 for me, and I use it to pull, and also cycle mobs and shield lob each of them to establish threat.
WHEN I need provoke is when things are "getting away" from me, and I need the mob off of my party member so I can shield lob it back under my control.

Apologies if I was not clear about that.