Common mistakes new tanks make

[Aaramis]

Perhaps a better replacement for this situational thing is an actual tip; Tanks, did you know that most of those big AoE cones and circles can be interrupted? It's true! Your stuns can save you damage and your healer some precious mana by interrupting some of the more pernicious moves, such as Aiatar's poison breath. Rather than trying to run out of them, save your stuns for these moments. Every single precious stun counts!

Plus if you're interrupting, then you don't have to move. Hey, it's a win-win!

Stuns can miss. It's rare, but it's happened to me. And I died horrifically!

Don't rely 100% on stuns, or leave it so late that you can't run out of the AoE if you need to.

[Kenka]

Stuns can miss. It's rare, but it's happened to me. And I died horrifically!

Don't rely 100% on stuns, or leave it so late that you can't run out of the AoE if you need to.

Only trouble I've had with this is after ABUSING Shield Bash on a certain boss fight (can't remember which). Stun won't miss, but eventually will get fully resisted.

EDIT: I was wrong. Shield Bash missed twice during a Stone Vigil run. My apologies ><

[Murdok]

It seems to me like tanks take the brunt of criticism above all other classes. But the whole point is to work effectively as a team. As a newly inducted tank player myself. I've learned a lot in the few weeks I've been playing. How you utilize your skills is something completely up to the tank. So long as it is effective, and it keeps mobs off my party members I'm happy. I mark my mobs, I cast flash 3 or 4 times in the beginning to makes sure I've got aggro on me, shift+F for my focus target and switch between the one's I prioritized. If an add pulls away, I use provoke or shield lob to bring it back in, then cast another flash. Of course, I'm always adapting, you never know what dungeons have knew spins lying in wait. But a tank won't get better with snob or snide remarks. So it's good that you elected to put in some constructive criticism.

[Daudr]

I mark my mobs, I cast flash 3 or 4 times in the beginning to makes sure I've got aggro on me, shift+F for my focus target and switch between the one's I prioritized.

Shift-F is a new one for me. What does that do?

[kargion]

Its not hard. Mark targets, attack them in order. If your going to sleep a target you have to TELL everyone. People just seem for the whole team to expect what they are doing because they are OP person in the group lol. Best teams I have been in while tanking have been the ones where we talked.

[Veillette]

The dragon in Brayflox's uses its breath every 20 or so, anyway I found out that drifting left or right was a good way to deal with it instead of running away.

I don't always drift, but when I do, it's my name.

That aside, I just went to stone vigil and the first trash mobs wiped us (we cleared it first time, tho, so lesson learned). I guess you can put overeager pulls there. Also, when tanking a boss and another objective appears (that you have to kill, like ifrit's spike), some tanks went and tried to deal with the object, with the AoE-laden boss tagging along. That didn't work well with the melee DPSes.

[Rufio]

7. Tunnel vision

Many tanks will only look forward, disregarding the possibility of enemies coming from behind.

[Viridiana]

Things I've seen from tanks over the last two days:

1) Spamming nothing but Rage of Halone. You have to do the full Fast->Savage->Rage combo in order to get aggro, not just spam Rage. It won't work, and your Ifrit group will hate you.

2) Spamming everything but the Fast->Savage->Rage combo. Your single-target rotation should not be Shield Lob->Shield Lob->Flash->Shield Swipe->Savage->Rage->Provoke (while having aggro)->Shield Lob.

I really wish I were making these two up, but I'm not

[Zfz]

Tanks! Please don't let this happen to your healer!



Nothing pisses off a healer more than seeing you focused on the boss and ignoring adds, forcing the healer to tank all the adds while still having to heal you.

And nothing pisses off a healer even more, when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

If any new tanks can't find the problem in this screenshot, please reply and I'll happily go into a long explanation for you.

--

I'm up to my daily limit so here are the replies to posts below:

@Reinheart: After asking him to tank the adds, twice, he replies "hello, so you think you can do it?" or something close to those lines. That reply was the last straw so I told him my main Lv.44 PLD's name and left group

@RhazeCain: yes, there's always exceptions to the rule.

@sybase: no, not in this game because we don't have the 10%/30% aggro threshold, and healing enmity seems a lot higher than other MMOs. You can see from the picture that one of the adds is down to a sliver of health yet is still chewing on me. Something like that more often than not will not work in this game unless the healer stops healing. And in a situation like this, the healer can do nothing but spam self heals. Remember it's not 1 add on the healer. This is 6 adds, and you can see the string of red numbers there. That's the kind of damage and frequency of damage I was taking.

And look at the screenshot, it's a small enclosure, so the tank should have been picking them up.

Now for some background. In this fight, sets of three adds spawn at regular intervals. These adds spawn behind the boss, and they would have to make their way through the tank, to even get to me. Note "set of 3", but the picture has 6 adds. That's because the DPS could only manage to bring 2 adds down to low health before the next set spawned. So the DPS was at fault, too. In fact, they used Sleep on the adds. So lack of knowledge on the encounter is also one cause.

But all that is not the point. The point is there are adds that spawned. As a tank, you should always pick them up. Especially when you don't know the mechanics. Adds are more often meant to be picked up by the tank than not. Some adds are weak and don't need to be picked up, and then there are some that should not be picked up, but these are rare.

[RhazeCain]

when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

Zfz is mostly correct, and for that particular fight (Brayflox 1st boss iirc) 100% correct, but I would like to point out that there are fights where really the tank can't mess with adds and DPS has to do it. Last boss Amdapor Keep comes to mind. However, the reason is not usually because tank would lose agro -- it's because there's some mechanic (AE's usually) that follow the boss or tank around and you DON'T want them going that other place.

If a tank really would lose agro to healer after having a good while on the boss, that tank just sucks badly.