Kudos for the honesty.

Quote Originally Posted by Soldowner View Post
Hello, Square Enix Forumites! Today I'd like to talk to you all about tanking, or rather, I'd like to ask for help from you all. I've only recently hit level twenty-seven, so I've done a few dungeons already, but something's been nagging at me ever since beating Ifrit, and it's making it hard for me to focus. I'll give several examples so I can expertly convey my point here.

I normally tank by running straight in to the crowd and setting off Flash, blinding the enemy, and targeting each one every now and again to keep all of the hate focused on me.
Shield lob on the way in and put a marking macro in your shield lob. You can then use this to switch as the fight goes on. Once I have more threat than the mob has health (it's something you learn with experience), I change targets and start working on the next. Shield lob puts you a GCD ahead, because it's a ranged attack and your GCD is almost always ready for flash by the time you get to the pack.

When an enemy gets in to an orange range instead of a red one, I'll use Provoke to bring them back over to me until everything is dead.
I think you should save provoke for when it actually switches targets, although once you're doing your job right, things won't usually be switching targets^^

Rinse and repeat, and that's that. Sometimes, I admit, I'll be stupid and be out of the healer's range, but there's only a rare chance of me being so foolish I'd forge ahead alone. So, aside from that stupid mistake of being away from the healer, sometimes I can't hold the enemies off the mages and healer alone, so whoever is the strongest damage dealer comes in and helps me pull the enemy away from the weaker guys. I make a point to force the enemy to look away from my team so they don't get inside of any attack ranges, as well. Either they're looking away, or they aren't near my squishy group of people.
Waay back when I fought Ifrit for the first time since the beta, I tried to follow a similar strategy. I kept Ifrit turned away from everybody else, but circled him after locking-on so I could at least mitigate some damage done to me. There was this one archer who was dealing more damage than I could after I ran out of TP, so he had Ifrit chasing him around the field. I did what I could to try to pull Ifrit back to me, but the archer died anyway. So after the second damage dealer was down it was just me and the healer. I had to tank twice as well to keep Ifrit focused on me, but we lost anyway because it was just the two of us...but hey, we ALMOST won! I wouldn't have a problem since we won after the first defeat, but the archer claimed that I sucked as a tank...that hurt since I thought I was doing pretty well, and I think my fear of not taking ENOUGH damage causes me to die more often or take stupid risks that put my team in danger.

It is for this reason that I seek help from the experts before I reach level thirty and people REALLY start chewing me out for not doing my job! Please, tell me how to be a more effective tank!
Have no fear. At low levels, anything can tank most things. I just healed a THM through tanking the last boss of Toto-Rak. Our tank really was trying but he has a lot of learning to do, and I very politely told him places he could go to learn.

Anyway, anything can tank, and people used to that from other MMOs don't give a poo about your pride or the healer's mana. Around level 30, PLD / WAR starts getting access to much higher defense and your targets start expecting that and so not everything else can tank so easily. I think half the reason so many people hate Brayflox is that it's the dungeon where people learn that they aren't tanks unless they're wearing plate. It's also the first dungeon to strain a healer or a tank.