Teamwork is important!

Yet another rant post. :'(

I got bold (or more like desperate for Tomes of Esoterics) and joined an Expert Roulette alone. And of course, unfortunate event befell. I got into a party where the tank neglected minor details and made the run very rough for me.

Once again it emphasizes to me that gear and stats aren’t helping much if the wearer doesn’t  work hard enough to bring out its best potential.

As you see, this tank has at least a body piece of iLV 240, while other gear are at least 200, 210, or 230, as I didn’t look at every piece and I can’t tell from just the picture. Maximum HP was over 24k. When I see tank with above-average HP, of course I feel a little bit at ease.

But you know what? I could hardly switch to Cleric Stance to help nuke during this run.

I know I’m finicky and I’m a spoiled healer, but I don’t just randomly complain or get ticked at other people’s play style or player skill. But this one just….made me grunt so many times. I don’t know precisely what went wrong that made the tank less efficient than average. All I could notice were minor details where this tank failed or neglected to exercise.

A few examples:

– Not rounding up the mobs properly, sometimes letting one or two stray mobs hit tank from behind (this makes your shield blocks and weapon parries become useless, because you can’t block or parry attacks coming from behind you)

– In Hullbreaker Hard, not bringing the enemy (or enemies) away from the ground buffs (ATK up and Haste, if I remember correctly) making the enemies hit very fast and hard as a truck. I switched to cast Aero III just for 3 seconds and the tank was dying, making me use Benediction near the start of the dungeon.

– Not bringing melee enemies towards ranged attack enemy, so the mobs aren’t grouped properly and sometimes an enemy would try to kill me, because tank’s Flash couldn’t reach it and I kept gaining enmity from Cure and Medica II and Regen.

– Not watching the healer, letting an enemy beat on the healer without protecting (Provoke or Cover) the healer. I don’t expect a tank to move from battle spot to grab a mob off me, because that WILL ruin the battle flow and mobs placement, which can cause trouble or hassle to the DPS and the tank. I usually run to the tank when something attacks me and I know that the tank is too busy. But this one just made no attempt to provoke or cover at all. Made me frown so much.

Tanking isn’t just wielding the sword and the shield (or the axe) into the battle and being the meat shield. It requires A LOT. You need player skills, teamwork, adjustment to the party, quick reaction to the circumstances, and sound judgment of the situation. You have to support and protect your party. You have to cooperate with your team members and work with them, execute decent strategy. You don’t need to be precise and be perfect in every move and every action. You just have to read the whole situation and adapt or improvise when things go wrong.

Enemies not following you to the spot you want because they are ranged attackers? Move yourself and melee enemies to the ranged enemies, or go out of their range (or hide from their sight) to force them to move to where you want. An enemy is hitting a DPS or a healer and you can’t take back enmity and already spent your Provoke? Cover that person (if you are PLD) or change target to that enemy and do enmity combo on it. Or if you are a PLD, you can Clemency that party member to keep them from dying.

Too many enemies at once and the healer seems to struggle in topping you off? Use stun on one or a few of them, or pop your defensive buff(s), or you can also spend your offensive buff and rush one enemy so that it dies fast, relieving the damage load. You can also put a mark on an enemy or request your party to defeat that one first. Usually people aim to kill the weakest one first, or the one that hits the hardest, or the one with very bad AoE move, or the one that can cause bad debuff on tank or the party. It depends on party setting and the situation.

DPS choosing wrong enemy or different enemy from you, causing a trouble in mob control or enmity control? Put a number(s) on the enemies so they know which one to focus first. DPS using AoE attack and stealing enemies from you because you didn’t focus or combo on them? Use Flash a lot. You can also try to switch target to gain enmity on the 2nd or 3rd enemies, if you have already secured enmity on the 1st one.

There are myriad of things to do as a tank, and it’s overwhelming. I am not a very good tank and I’m just a learner. I don’t main on any tank job. All of the comments above were what I observed through DPSing and healing. But I can say tank is a tough job to learn, especially if tanking isn’t in your blood. I know I can’t play a good tank in high-end content. I think I am fine as a PLD in level 34 dungeon, but that’s it. If you throw me in a level 50 or 60 dungeon, I will probably kill my whole party and fail the run. I only know the basics, and I say these from a healer’s perspective.

HP and stats aren’t the only thing you need to be a good tank. I’ve seen so many lousy tanks who are terrible despite uber gear. I’ve seen lowbies tanks who still struggled to learn the job, and yet had wonderful performance. I’ve seen averagely geared tanks in high-end content who tanked like a pro and were surprisingly easy to heal for me. I’ve seen overgeared tanks who were overly confident and overestimated themselves who splatted under my care, or took bigger bite than they could chew.

I’ve even met tanks who thought their through-the-roof iLV could save them from everything and anything. So they don’t dodge shit and just ate AoE and/or debuff, thinking the healer can always carry the additional weight of responsibility. That puts extra, unnecessary workload on the healer. I despite that kind of tank. I would forgive if it’s inevitable or the tank has a reason to fail in dodging (like, lag, or if they lost focus for just a second, or you were dealing with other enemy and didn’t see the AoE, or your Stun happened to fail you), but if you CAN dodge it, yet selected to stand in the AoE, then you’re a burden. If there’s a strategy or a tactic what can be executed to mitigate the damage, like dodging, interacting with the mechanics, or tank swapping, then please do it. Don’t just go “Oh the healers can heal through, so I’ll be lazy and don’t deal with mechanics.” No, please just no. Because that, in my eyes, makes you a lousy tank who doesn’t do the job role correctly.

Also, sometimes very high-geared tanks thought they were gods or were invincible, and pull big or play through the dungeon as they please without taking the strength of the whole party into consideration. You can’t cycle your buffs forever, and the healer cannot keep curing forever, if the DPS is too weak or lack the jobs/skills/tools to quickly kill a large horde of enemies, then it is perhaps a bad idea to pull big.

The other day I met a WAR tank who kept pulling 2-3 groups of mobs in Tam-Tara (level 16 dungeon) when the 2 DPS persons were LNG and DRG, without any AoE attack due to level cap. The only person who could AoE was the tank…. And what? After a pull, the tank ran out of TP, yet continued on to pull 2 or 3 next groups. The tank could only use Overpower like once or twice before running out of TP again. Then what? Tank just stood there with the axe drawn, relying on auto-attack and the slow regeneration of TP. I was like *roll eyes and face palm*. It’s just so useless. The mobs enmity was everywhere because the tank ran out of TP and couldn’t attack. And the kills were so damn slow because I and the LNC could only stab one enemy at a time.

That, also, was not a good way to play tank. Of course we won and the healer didn’t have trouble keeping us alive. But while having no TP, the tank lost the efficiency and couldn’t inflict as much damage on the enemies. So I feel it was so useless thing to do (pulling big groups without having TP). The tank wasn’t exactly a dead weight  to the party, but did not maximize the job skills and abilities as he should. To me it felt like, by neglecting the basic strategy/mechanic, the tank was leeching on my hard labour.

Tanking is difficult. There are so many things you have to consider. You have to adjust your strategy to suit the situation and party setting. It’s not that a very very strong tank can do everything by himself. You still need a teamwork. So, support your team. You’re not playing solo, do not use brute force. Don’t ignore mechanics.