Fear of not tanking.Follow

I have been reading about how many duty finder parties encounter bad tanks. I have only tanked in the instances that I have tried. Mainly due to the fear of meeting a tank that people keep talking about.

I doubt I am an excellent tank, but I think I do a decent job. I am able to keep all the mobs on me, most of the time, occasionally I lose one, but with a quick tomahawk, I can bring it back to me. The other class I would be interested in playing is a healer class, since that is what I usually play in MMO's.

I have never wiped on an instance(I have only done up to the lvl,20 instance. DPS always attacked my mob, whether he was marked or not. Healer always kept me alive.

My questions are:

1. Do any players have a fear of not playing their current role, DD, tank or healer, out of some sense of pride or fear of having a player of less skill taking that spot?

2. Are duty finder tanks really that bad where my fears are justified?

and Off topic

3. How can I tell which adds during boss fights that I should tank, or just let the DD burn them down?

Sometimes you have dds that don't watch hate. I had a lancer chuck javelins before I could even shield lob or just start soloing stuff that will eat them alive lol

I also add that as long as you don't set your flag for Duty Finder and then go afk leaving the group with 3 people to scramble to win without a tank, you're golden with me. This has happened to me and a lot of friends during Beta. A tank must accept the invite to proceed, don't think we won't bash you for doing this once the game launches.

Great Tanks don't allow anything stray away, know when they need to use CDs, move out of abilities, Mark targets, position Mobs perfectly when tanking to keep the rest of the group safe. Good tanks do most of the things great tanks do but sometimes a mob gets away but is quickly picked up. Playable tanks you can get through the instance with good DPS or Healers. Bad tanks don't take aggro off from other players, don't watch the group for adds, they pretty much make it look like a mess and the dungeons sometimes don't get finished.

My very last dungeon run I was with a (35)34 tank that did everything perfectly, these are a very small group of people. The 2 DPS were also very good, but the tank was perfect. It was the quickest and most efficient run I had in beta. It reminded me of when you played with people you knew and you play that much better, that's what FC's are for.

BUT just with anything it isn't always the tank so not everyone of those stories can be believed.

1. Yes I take pride in everything I play. I played back in EQ days when dying was a harsh experience. It made you want to play your character better, learn the best possible abilities to use at what times. It made you not want to slack b.c the other people with you are counting on you to perform at your best.

2. Duty finder just puts you together with random people and you will find plenty do not play well not just tanks.

3. Usually Healer always dies first, then caster, and last melee. Or sometimes Healer, biggest spike damage dealer, everything else. Just depends on what the tank feels comfortable, or if you have a mage sleep. Just mark and fight, marking mobs is the easiest thing to do when you want to control the group. Just need to do it fast and not take 10 min to do it.

Edited, Jul 15th 2013 1:16pm by Mopdaddy

From my experience I've only had two or three tanks that were anywhere near as competent as I am with GLA and I ran well over 50 instances. The guildhests were the worst, as I used them to level my CNJ up and ended up heal tanking pretty much every one of them. I've also had to tank three or four bosses as healer, which I don't really understand. If all I'm doing is healing then how can I pull threat away from the tank and DDs? Once I got access to repose things got a bit better, I was able to sleep extra adds, but most of the time they would just come attack me when they woke up.

All a tank needs from a DD is for them to attack their primary target first while they gain threat on the group. after that target goes down I don't care what you attack since I'll basically be able to auto attack the rest of the fight without losing threat anyway. Once the first target is about to die save up an enmity combo move and use it to start the next mob and no one will pull off you.

My girlfriend's brother picked up MAR and when we started doing dungeons with him he didn't even know MAR was a tank class. I told him what abilities to use and he knocked it out of the park. I don't believe he has ever tanked in FFXI or another MMO before. I just don't understand why it is so difficult for some people.. maybe they are running around with broken weapons or something. XD

All things said, I will most likely end up PLD as my first job. I always play Paladin in games and my girlfriend really likes CNJ/WHM, so it works out well. I was a Paladin in FFXI and WoW. I ended up being a holy Paladin in WoW since healers tended to be the weak link in groups. Now it just looks like tanks are the weak link in XIV so I'll just fill that role. It will most likely flip around at end game though, when you can't just spam your heals and you actually have to watch your MP.

Edited, Jul 15th 2013 3:02pm by DamienSScott

Are good tanks on ps3 with a controller? Do you feel that you can tank efficiently without a keyboard? Any macros used?

I honestly only had like 3 bad groups using the duty finder. Two had really bad tanks that weren't even holding threat against the CNJ's first cure, and the third had a CNJ who was too busy casting stone to actually keep the Tank over quarter HP. The majority of them were stellar, with little more talking outside of a hello and good job we proceeded to steam roll the dungeons with little effort.

There's always going to be some bad players in random groups, but most of them will get better if you give them positive feed back and gentle correction. It's the fortunately rarer completely brain dead ones who make you want to smash your screen. But it's not like there's anything that can be done to fix that, no matter how much you dumb down a game, there's still going to be someone who will find it too hard.

1) There will always be someone worse and someone better than you at a certain role letting that determine what you want to play will just leave you frustrated and suck the fun outa the game. Learn from the better players, try to teach the weaker ones.

2) Really most of the tanks in Duty finder have been fine IMO, it's more often that us DD are being brain dead. Either not paying attention to what target they are attacking or not watching the threat bar and knowing when to back off.

3) Tanks should be trying to grab threat on everything that is attacking the party. It's far easier for the Healer to keep one target healed than three.

Edited, Jul 15th 2013 10:33pm by Wyldkat

i wanted to play a lancer however none of my RL buddies elected to play the tank but one did decide to play our white mage, so I decided I'd handle tank. everyone in a party has their job, tanks set the pace, dd's follow the tanks lead, mages sleep off targets, heal and dd. you can't succeed without leadership and im not willing to have to find a good tank in-game and befriend them etc etc.
http://imgur.com/9Vrql3b
http://imgur.com/6nVIXL8

I can kinda get this.

Although I want to tank, just to get in a group a bit faster, but really I've noticed anecdotally that DPS had about the same time finding a group in the DF.

I learned a little more about tanking when I did DPS in dungeons as well.

That is the only problem with these easy dungeons is people think they can pull the mobs and other things will come to surface when they hit harder content.

certain people will reach lvl 50 and have pimp gear, some wont. kind of exciting. even if you never reach lvl 50, there is a lot to do and explore.

I would like to use a keyboard and mouse for PS3. Only problem is on PS3 I couldn't find a way to remap the keys.

Unlike the poster above me I found doing anything but CNJ hard to play with controller. The targeting was all odd for me even after changing it around and using L+circle, triangle..., targeting changes.

As a healer though I thought a controller was the best thing in the world especially when I was in groups. I couldn't believe how great it worked. Thankfully I was going to play healer from start so I don't have to worry much.

If they can give me the ability to remap my keyboard keys on PS3 I would be 100% set with this game. Right now I am 99% :)


Edited, Jul 15th 2013 7:15pm by Mopdaddy

For some reason as default the targets kept being everything but what was in front of me in dungeons. Yea on the PS3 I couldn't find it.