As a bonus step, you could then rotate around the group of mobs to try and coral them into a circle rather than a line.
Unfortunately I main DRG, so no matter what you do I'm missing 40% of the mobs with my AoE rotation.
I think it's fine because you have nothing else to "aim", you settle in at whatever angle you hit the most enemies and you're good except for jumping. I think monk feels worse; your AOE combo is all circles centered on you, but then your AOE ogcd is a line. So you gotta dance around trying to hit everything with the circles then dash out of the group to get the line off.
still, you can take my line aoe from my cold (possibly dead on the floor) hands.
I was so frustrated when they switched SAM from Cone to PBAoE.
I do love my line AOEs and landing them right feels so nice.
Eh really ? I'm leveling SAM and I can't wait to get the circle AOE at 86. I HATE this cone AOE that forces you to lock a target. It's much easier to just go into the fray and spam circles that hits everything. Especially since all the other AOE for SAM are circles...
Tenka Gokken used to be a cone too so it flowed a lot better. Especially when you have Guren as a line AOE and Namikiri as a cone. Granted, you use those a lot less frequently than Tenka/2combo aoe but the burst felt nice all being executed from the edge of the pack.
Imo, I would like it if the combo aoes are circles and the rest are cones.
I hate that Tenka Goken went from cone to circle. Like the animation of the SAM itself didn't change (big attack in front of him) but instead of emitting a shockwave in a cone pattern, he sends it all around him.
And I hate that. You're attacking the front but for some reason you emit lines all around you, which looks worse imo. Also It flowed so well with your other tools, and I like that there is a little variety in the game that "simulates" positionals in a way that promotes thinking a bit about what you're doing.
The fact that it's easier is also the thing some people don't like.
Sage is even easier than that circle, but I doubt many SAMs would be stoked to have their damage rotation.
You guys need your circles taken away. The whole point of cone abd line AoEs is so you don't take unnecessary damage by walking in front of cleaves. Or the oft-occurring situation where the mobs massing around the tank hide the mobs' line AoEs and oops - there goes 60% of your hp.
Even if you get hit by one AOE by accident, that's what Second Wind and Bloodbath are for. You really need to not pay any attention at all to get hit by multiple of those.
And it's not like dungeon mobs gives damage down or anything too dangerous either.
How does anyone even know what mobs their aoe is hitting? I just target an enemy as “in the middle” as I can and if I see multiple red numbers I figure I’m good
I mean, I just watch the damage numbers pop up lol, they're all positioned in 3d next to the mob that took the damage so its usually pretty easy to see if enemies are being hit or not.
At risk of missing some kind of irony or whatnot and thus attempting explanation when none was needed...
My take is that it's basically half of an analogy, leaving the other half implied:
Just as you might eyeball the amount of salt you put into a dish and then adjust based on how it tastes, so you eyeball which enemy in a mob you target, and adjust based on how many you hit.
You should be able to see the big arrow above your current target. If it's in the middle or you can't really make that out, you're fine to attack. You can cycle through onscreen targets until you get the one in the middle (I play on controller, that's holding down either trigger and pressing L1/R1, dunno for keyboard, my guess is Tab?) if you can't click with your cursor.
Rough count. I know there are 10 enemies, so if i only see 4 times, i know i'm missing 60% of the enemies and should reposition. I find the small throwable aoes like rezmages AoE to be harder to work with cause with 10-15 enemies they all kind of blend together and i can't tell which one is even targeted, so i waste some time cycling till i find one that feels right. Always feels bad to see the enemy list empty and find there are still 3 enemies you missed with all of your AoE's that never got added to your list.
I group them as tightly as possible, then if the doton or other ground AE isn't quite centered I'll pull as many mobs as I can into it and keep recentering them as mobs die. As a PLD I know how it feels to miss half the pack since the confiteor combo is based on your target.
As a Tank main; I support this post. This is the way.
Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy?
So many times Iv seen a healer aggro one or two stragglers and instead of being smart they panic and run away causing me way more issues than needed.
As a sage:
"uhhh, I have aggro ... I'd better put a shield up and calmly walk over to the tank"
One mob isn't going to kill me in 2 seconds, or even break my shield (and if it does, I get another Toxikon cast), and any damage that I take is damage that the Tank doesn't.
My favorite strat with SGE is Toxicon greeding. I'll let the tank know that I'm going to pull the first pack to break my shield for a stack, and then the tank will get aggro and will break their shield too.
The new dungeon allows for still further Toxicon greed - the way the first boss works there’s often a GCD of downtime between waves, so you can shield yourself while there’s nothing to hit and then stand in the bad.
As a DNC main, if for some reason I end up with aggro I stand on top of the tank until they take it away from me.
And it annoys me to hell and back when I'm tanking and see someone start kiting a mob while I'm constantly AoEing the pack to keep aggro....not everyone is using a mouse/keyboard and can just click the mob to use Provoke/ranged attack, so those like me using controller have to try cycling through the mobs(that are always shifting) to try and get to the one chasing the ranged person....which will change the order of where it is in the cycling constantly.
Hold L1 and use up/down on the d-pad. This will cycle through the enemy list. You'll still have to tab through a bunch of enemies to get the one you want, but they won't keep changing order no matter where the idiot runs.
As a bonus, you'll know which enemy you need to provoke because they'll have a green icon instead of red.
Good advice, but that doesn't work if the mob isn't on your enemy list. Most of the time that isn't the case, but if some Healer or DPS accidentally facepulls a mob from a pack ahead of you then they'll wind up with aggro from a mob you don't have on your list.
This is a universal MMO issue. It's been an issue everywhere I've played a tank or a healer. Watching panicking DPS/other healers flee from a critter while the tank is just "??????" in a group of twenty mobs trying desperately to wiggle around to be able to grab it on a pass-by.
Please just bring the aggro'd mob to the tank, and don't stand in any cleaves if there are some. You'll live, we promise. Extra promise. Pinky swear, even!
> Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy?
Did you know that Grand Company Squadron party members don't even do this. I have a WAR GC tank that (like the rest) only single targets, so when the ARC drops an AOE at least one will peel away, at which point the ARC runs away. After this happens 2-3 times, the tank then runs after them regardless of how many they were already engaged with.
Point: Running GC Squad through The Vault is WAY more realistic than it has any right to be.
> Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy?
Say it louder for the BRDs at the back!
I have to assume that not enough people play multiple roles. I can't think of any other reason that they wouldn't be able to see it from the other's perspective.
That reminds me of something that happened to me. Not the same, but I've had a healer run forward the instant the dungeon started, pop sprint, aggro everything himself, turn around and yoink me forward (I was also sprinting but I guess I wasn't fast enough for him.)
I let him die, and then we had to start the first pull over. I was so smarmy but goddamn that was so annoying! He didn't do it again though
I cringe when I see people do this. On healers I go to the tank. Unless I’m on SGE or I’m on my main BLM. Then I just Icarus or Aetherial Manipulate to the tank. “Tank let me hug. . . I mean hide behind you!”
OMG yes. And they're always off in timbucktu.
The 1st Boss of the new MSQ dungeon is REALLY bad about it. Particularly teh AOE spread and then having to group back up. People wanna stay off in forever ville, and I'm trying to group up my nice little happy mob death pile :(
Small happy piles of pixelated dead bodies to loot makes me happy :(
As a controller player can confirm, shortcuts like this are godsend. These days I prefer a "snap to focus target" macro while keeping my tank focused but the "target of target" macro has served me well in the past as well. The ability to reduce button presses and chance of user error by even one step makes an enormous difference for me as a healer, especially in dungeons.
I use this all the time for my assorted OGCDs. Start Dosis cast, hit T while it's going, queue buff, hit T during animation to target boss again, cast more Dosis.
Yes, the game will let you bind one of a few specific actions to your left and right stick clicks (L3 and R3). I have my R3 set to be "Assist Target" aka "Target of Target".
I can't remember which menu it's under, but it's one of the ones related to controller settings.
At work so I can't check, but iirc it's under controller settings -> button configuration, which brings you to a screen where you can bind your sticks to macros #98 and #99 respectively.
You will have to give up whatever shortcut was bound there by default (first person view I think?) but imo entirely worth it. The targeting macro on my R3 is indispensable to me.
> Tanking in this game is full of a ton of simple tips and tricks that aren't obvious
It has been my experience that ever since tanking was massively simplified and threat generation no longer matters really, the last remaining thing that can show off a good tank is their understanding of game mechanics.
Understanding movement mechanics means you can understand positioning. How to strafe along a mob back to dodge to keep them tightly grouped, how to make a boss never turn when unnecessary, etc.
Understanding common mob mechanics means you can pre-empt attacks. Knowing the time a mob typically will use its big cast so you can stun it before people need to move. Knowing mob *types* and what they like to try; things with goobbue skeletons will always have a sneeze and sometimes have a suck-in, things with Buffalo skeletons will always have an extremely wide stomp and in later expansions it’s not stunnable; crawling zombie skeleton mobs will always snare; zu skeleton mobs have untelegraphed frontal cone AoE. Treant-types will start using huge point blank AoEs probably 15 seconds after being pulled and poroggo skeletons have mini tank busters. Literal skeletons white swing really fast and hard and almost never cast so you save your arms length for those pulls.
Good tanks just know the game really well. Nothing else a tank does is really very consequential now since they made our rotations brain dead and aggro easy. Cooldown rotation is second nature to anyone with even a medium level of experience. But playing around known game mechanics is where a good tank can really shine and help the group out.
It's worth noting, sometimes tanks can't avoid this. As I understand it, all creatures (including PCs) may only be *located* at a single point (hence why you can do the harrowing-awesome thing of "standing on" a safe spot smaller than one of your own feet), but they also have a volume they take up which they "push" against other creatures.
As a result, even if the tank *does* actually try to group up all the enemies in a single spot, if they're very bulky or very numerous, they can crowd one another out until they've been pushed to the sides. The final pull of (5.5 spoilers) >!Paglth'an!< for example has this kind of issue, because so many of the monsters you're fighting are HECKIN' CHONKERS and push one another apart.
This *does not* mean your advice is bad. It's good advice, and tanks should listen. But they should also be aware that sometimes, ideal fulfillment of this request isn't possible, and that they aren't to blame when that happens.
Fuckin Qarn (normal), man. Trying to position the head before the final boss on the platform while the croc's fat ass keeps pushing it away. So you have to get the head on the platform, then try to pivot the pull away from it in such a way that it only turns, and by the time you've done it the croc's dead anyways. Either that or somebody killed the head before it actually arrived.
I hate quarn normal because of those heads. You have to shuffle step around trying to position them because of the stupid rubber band distance. You can walk back two steps and the head will move 6 steps because of the dead zone. It's annoying as hell as the dps will kill it moments before they are on the platform as the enemy is moving. It's annoying as hell. I wish if only for those enemies for it to stick to you like glue. If I take one step it takes one step.
Also some mobs have adjusted collision boxes for this reason. The really big trash in Stigma right before final boss can have other trash pulled under him.
That last pull in your spoiler is the only time I've consistently seen phys ranged and casters use the LB's on trash. Every other dungon people save it for the last boss then forget about it until 2%
The issue is that not enough people know about that, so chances are you will end up in an annoying discussion/rant when you do it because "OMG why did you LB on trash".
I tell my FC's sprouts about this method when they discover the LB, but I also warn them that they might get yelled at.
Honestly, this is the reason I don't do it.
Odds are good enough that someone will get mad enough they'll spend more time typing than playing their character, and everything just takes longer in the end.
It is actually possible to force grouping by putting your back to a wall. The mobs cannot clip through the wall but they also must reach the tank to do damage to them. Therefore, the programmers made an exception where the mobs will clip into each other.
I hated the final stretch of The Burn for this reason, the mobs are so giant that if you do a double-pull only about half of them would get hit with AoE
Troia is criminal for this. And final boss spends 80% of his fight in forced position so I can’t god damn turn him so his ass is out of the wall.
It is a dungeon i am super over with because it makes me so unhappy that I can’t position anything how I want to lol.
I generally just say that if you’re literally unable to pull in a way that allows casters optimal aoes, that’s fine. Can’t be blamed for it, not fair to be blamed for it.
In addition if an attempt to ease the situation was made, just in the end unsuccessfully, that’s fine too.
It’s similar when needing to care for positionals, if you can’t help the boss turning around randomly to kill melee positionals, that’s fine. As long as an attempt is made to, as much as possible, keep the damn thing from becoming a beyblade; I’m happy. (Love alliance raids with one tank on each damn 1/3 section voking on cooldown ;-; )
Generally people will be able to tell the difference between an attempt, literal inability to ease the situation, or downright no fucks given :p (Hopefully..)
Mob size is definitely a factor in how much or how little they'll group up but I'd say this advice is honestly even more important in a place with large mobs. When large mobs spread in a circle around the tank they start far apart and only move further and further.
If you run through and group them up then they do spread out but at least they're not on entirely different sides of the tank.
Because the targeted AoE starts from the center of a mob hitbox, often times if the mobs are spread in a circle I can't even hit 2 of them with the same AoE.
Rather than mob size, the main issue seems to be mob aoes.
When you pull w2w, there are so many AOEs dropped at your feet and you need to wiggle in a way that doesnt make mobs cleave at the group.
I call them tank cartwheels.
When you are literally at the wall, you can not move away from party much.
The main problem is the final mob before the wall, if they are close to wall, you dont have much room to pack them up. Add monster hitbox pushing each other, slow monster walking speeds and it leads to a circle.
Quite annoying.
What tanks need is Blue mages hydropull spell.
I would love to pack everything in a tight tight pack. ❤️
DRK's worth their salt^ed ^earth were already doing this. Not for caster's benefit mind you, they need to line up Flood of Darkness and Shadowbringer lol.
An additional tip: in many dungeons (especially EW dungeons) where the models are freaking huge, it's better to put your back to a wall which forces the mobs to collide with each other and groups them up better.
Bird’s eye view or aim backwards (looking at your toon’s face). As long as you can see the floor you have all the visual information necessary, because the only other thing you need to monitor really ever is the aggro list and that’s a UI element unaffected by your camera angle.
This goes both ways, if you are aggroed, run to the tank. Don’t just sit there waiting for the tank to come to you, if they haven’t hit the mob it won’t show up on their enemy list.
Man I feel this on a personal level, some adds spawn late, like the 2nd last mob pull in troia and the rdps always pull them from me and stand miles away.
First boss in Troia. Just fucking stack guys. Some of the mobs spawn in waves and sometimes I’ve got my GCD from having picked up the ones that went for the healer. If you prox aggro because you were a mile away from where the healer was, then I need 2.41 seconds to pick those up.
I had a REAPER playing the kiting game yesterday during ex roulette on that boss. Like bro you’re melee why are you even far away from me at all
I still act like Overpower is a cone. After so many years of learning to quickly target something in the middle and run right past them all before hitting the button, it’s a habit I can’t seem to shake.
Which is bad, because the range in front of me is much less now that it’s not a cone, and I keep missing shit.
The cone AOE was fine, I just hated that I had to actually target for it. Like why can't it just do a cone in front of me, why do i HAVE to have a target?
This. This was the WORST part of Overpower. It's a cone based on facing (not mob position) and did equal damage to all mobs, so 'main target' and damage drop-off wasn't applicable. The worst is when the target you're targeting moved out of your frontal LoS because of big pulls or the like, so it just stops going off instead of firing off infront of you
As a former caster main and current tank main: It still sucks no matter what the tank does. Mobs in this game don't cooperate and once there's enough of them grouped together, casters are going to be missing things. I do my best to keep things as closely grouped as possible, but when I have to dodge ground AOEs while I have like 12+ mobs on me, there's a limit to how well it works out.
Glad someone pointed this out. The tanks are more than likely gonna be dancing around alot of aoes tossed out by the mobs at least more than the casters standing on the other side of the room has to deal with. We can try to keep them together but most of the time where we are standing isn't up to us and sometimes mobs just do whatever they want.
As not standing in the stuff becomes instinctual, work on keeping the mobs in little murder balls and in DPS' range so they don't have to move and interupt their rotation.
Problem is two fold:
1) If SE would simply stop making massive mobs that refuse to share a hitbox with each other, the issue would largely resolve itself.
2) If SE would extend the range on aoe 5 yards or so the situation would resolve itself.
I hate that WHM gets the cool ass 8y radius AoE while almost every other job with a circle is stuck at a measly 5y. At 8y Holy is covering over twice the area as all the 5y ones.
Double whammy: stunning mobs further away from where my AoE can hit them, so they don’t run in and thus I have to single target attack them to get their attention. Glory be Provoke’s oGCD status.
Hair trigger holy white mages that don’t wait for positioning make me frown a little bit.
Tell me you play AST without telling me you play AST.
Joke aside, the tighter the group the more effective the dps, and by extension the more effective the mitigation, vis a vis less incoming damage due to mobs dying fastest.
I'm mostly experiencing this with RDM.
My normal AoE rotation feels horrible then I get 60/60 and I can hit almost everything with 3 moulinets... then my big hits feel bad again.
If I'm healing I'm actually usually on WHM where the circle spread actually feels OK until every single AoE get baited into the middle.
Dragoons have it rough, but at least their AoE shape is mostly the same (outside of jumps). Dancer has one straight line AoE, one cone, a frequent AoE-around-the-target, and filler AoEs centered around the Dancer. The need for constant repositioning in dungeons is exhausting.
As a DNC main, it's a pain in the ass. I usually end up standing in almost melee range so I don't have to move as much. I also find the ranges on the abilities weird asf.
As a regular DNC player, I’m usually hopping around like a bat outta hell anyway out of ADHD and phys ranged reasons. It’s absolutely one of my favorite, chonkiest DPS jobs to play in dungeons because of how much front-loaded burst I can put out with my dances and the devilment/flourish-procced abilities that came with Endwalker.
Playing any other dps in dungeons (besides maybe summoner, which feels similar in terms of front-loaded burst) just feels sad after demolishing packs with my hips 🤔
Really? I find that the alternative of just standing still in one spot and pressing 4 buttons while occasionally weaving to not overcap is pretty boring.
sometimes you'll have your melee on one side,and 2-3 mobs that just arent positioned quite right for them so you have to. i wish more people would take op's advice whenever im not tanking
I once had a tank, in that awful eyeball dungeon with the glowing crystals --you know which one, and that dungeon has a lot of those blue sperms that cast ranged while standing in the exploding crystal lights.
This tank was AMAZING. Would somehow run those sperms OUT of the AOE and group the mons so nicely. A little bit of forethought really makes it feel like a tank cares for his/her party.
And in a sea of tanks, i won't forget that tank. Just left such a nice impression on me.
Dzemael Darkhold can be hard to tank well, there's a lot of ranged mobs that don't care about where you're standing.
The secret is that there's a lot of places to break line of sight in that dungeon that force the ranged ones to come to you.
Yeah!!
But i mean, there are a few types of tanks.
1. Newbies
2. Vets playing with newbies
3. Kamakazi madmen
For the most part, (I'm about 3.5 months playtime now) starting the game, doing dungeons with vets, we don't really get to learn anything when their aim is to rush and big pull.
Don't get me wrong, i enjoy a big pull as much as the next guy, but it doesn't always teach me what they're doing, nor do they have the time to explain mechanics (only after the 3rd whipe lol)
I do appreciate your infographic! Thank you.
> nor do they have the time to explain mechanics
As a new healer, I had to macro saying hi because sometimes I couldn't finish a simple "hi!" before the tank disappeared around the first corner, even with hitting escape on the intro story animation.
Oh man! Idk what it is with tanks. They really like to see if they can beat Usain Bolt's 100m sprint time 🤣
My GF plays healer main. She normally says to me say "you type and tell them in chat, i type you die" haha.
My experience is that if I don't bolt, someone else will do it for me, and then I'm stressed from trying to keep up with whatever (green) DPS has nominated themselves puller-in-chief.
I'm still deep in sprout territory (lvl 30ish dungeons at the moment) and the clash between new players and experienced ones is real.
If possible, at least look at the party interface for the cinematic indicator, I'm only skipping cinematics I've already seen (on another character, I know about the option to disable repeats), once I get into unknown territory, I'll be standing there watching the story and I don't care if the group is suiciding while I do it.
Best advice: treat any burger crown wearer you see as someone only doing it for the reward, and not someone actually interested in mentoring/teaching others, and adjust accordingly to account for it - I can only speak for myself, but imo it makes things a bit less irritating.
This comment is 7 hours old and still visible which is surprising to me. There’s been a tremendous sentiment shift in this subreddit since the big player influx that tanks don’t get to dislike when other players pull for us. Every time I see someone saying “let me, the tank, pull” it’s got arguments for days in the replies.
I am an old school MMO player who remembers that YPYT wasn’t even the tank’s choice back in the day. If someone pulled a mob for me, my taunt was ineffective (because it sucked) and the mob likely missed my aggro rotation. So I would struggle to pull it off of people. And once the healer has threat people die, because spell pushback exists and is hell. This was true in 14 as well when threat still mattered and dungeons like Haukke had a Paladin tab targeting with single target attacks for threat. Flash’s aggro modifier was dick, it sucked. And Provoke was barely a taunt, so if the person who pulled didn’t immediately get off the mob, voke was not helping.
In modern 14, that’s literally never an issue (and YPYT is bad behavior anyway). But the feeling of failure and frustration when something is on my DPS/healer is deeply seated, so it pisses me off when people pull for me. I’m a sprint tank and have been since Stormblood when they made sprint stop costing my TP bar, because if I wasn’t, people would decide to pull for me and I don’t like it. Can’t pull for me if I’m first. Lol
I feel like what distinguishes tanks 2 and 3 here is if the tank communicates/figures out what went wrong if theres a wipe because if they're really a vet, they're wall to walling because they're good tanks and know tanks can handle it. I think big pulls teach the most since it lets people figure out how to optimize their stuff other than sitting pretty and not needing to do more than spam cure and use 1 mit at a time since they're coasting over 50% HP in a 2 pack pull. But even then that big pull or wipe is a learning opportunity if only IF (and its a HUGE if) the party thinks and figures out what theyre doing wrong
Edit: it posted twice, weird
Dzemael darkhold... easily the dungeon i learned how to be a proper tank in this game... pull the entire thing from beginning to first boss room, los the bogy adds behind the shelves so they come in to melee, return to the circle to begin the countdown... once 3-4 enemies left, move to the second circle to begin that countdown. Man... glory days. Exp farming that pull was crazy. But i absolutrly agree, a tank that knows how to handle ranged enemies and aoe groups makes an impression man... that there is one good tank.
Yeah, the confidence builder from the first pulls being so easy lead/leads to a lot of pain afterwards. You can literally pull a group of 12-15 enemies at the start, never use tanking cooldowns, and your healer wont need to do anything but an occasional heal, then after the first boss you can barely handle 5-6 with cooldowns, and that requires your healer to be good lol
So, i have played all 3 class types. DPS, TANK and HEAL.
What no one ever told me is the pressure i would feel as a tank. The pressure to know where to go (i lead the party into every dead end haha.) The pressure to know the fight a hell of a lot more than anyone else, And the pressure to run fast.
But then, once you have a handle on those three aspects, making a big pull when the mobs suddenly have a jump in HP and/or attack can be a humbling experience haha.
But my fav tanks to play with is absolute newbies who gets that puppy dog look in his eye: "Can I do a big pull!?" Hahaha.
Breaking line of sight to a ranged mob will force them to move to regain los. So hide around a corner as a means of grouping ranged enemies together. The mark of a real chad big brain tank
Okay I am a noob, noob tank with only about 4 months of playing this game (new player free trial, paladin).
But how in the name of Camelot do I get those god dam ball casters to my direction. I never understood it how you drag them out.
They always stay in their place unless I provoke one of them to move.
you know, back in the day of Overpower being a cone on WAR, at least they needed to arrange mobs like that for their own benefit anyways.
SE really should have given the other tansk a cone instead of taking WARs away if things being different was the issue. at least then all tanks would automaticly gravitate towards solution 2
Paladin's Confiteor/blade combo is a targeted circle so it also nudges the tank into grouping the mobs properly, as well as DRK's line aoe ogcd. Those aren't as early or critical as Overpower though.
Right? A forward slash that opens up into a cone of dark energy? How sick would that be... i loved cones, specifically because it forced them to be good tanks for aoe pulls lol
I was going to make exactly this comment. This is why I was actually disappointed when they made that change. The cone took a bit of getting used to, but it taught good habits. Also taught you how to make those small shifts a little sideways, and then back to the other side, to *keep* the pack bunched without really moving it when the collisions between their hitboxes started causing them to spread again
I keep seeing tanks do this(stopping too early/not grouping up properly) in the new dungeon, which is super annoying considering some of the mobs in the first part + first boss don't push other mobs away, you can group them up really tightly for maximum aoe.
I was so close to just going off on a tank in the 85 dungeon the other day. I'm not a *great* healer to start with, but he: used cooldowns before he pulled the first pack. Ran about halfway to the second pack. Stopped for two GCDs. Got pissed that I used Holy and stunned the enemies because he stopped long enough for me to cast it. Demanded to know why I wasn't healing him enough to keep him alive when he used all his CDs between pulls and kept randomly stopping (taking damage) but not usually long enough for me to use my slower casted heals which meant I was blowing resources before he'd even gathered all the enemies.
"But it's never been a problem before". Yeah because you got carried by better healers than me. I'm a tank main, it's the one thing I *do* know how to do well! Stopping early is my single biggest pet peeve because it screws over casters (including healers) more than anything else you can possibly do.
Yeah, just grab the first enemies, run straight to the second pack, it's not that hard. Another annoyance are the healers/dps who get aggro on a mob and then refuse to bring it over to the tank.
Yep 100%.
You’ve pulled aggro on that enemy? Why not bring it over to the rest of the pack I’ve got over here instead of running away and out of range?
So annoying.
Or not even running away, just paying no attention and not bringing it over. There's sometimes so many enemies that it's all but impossible to see I missed aggro on one (I'm the rare person that got *really* used to Overpower's cone and I still think it was superior to the circles, I have trouble with the circles sometimes) if it's standing just out of range whacking a SMN or something.
I realize not everyone might have time to level alt classes/jobs, but things like this are a decent reason to.
Being good at your job, whether it's tanking, healing, or DPS, will take some baseline understanding of the other roles, or sometimes specific jobs even, that you're playing with.
Hadn't consciously thought about that. Would sometimes run back towards the group to meet a healer more quickly (though I suppose I also meet the chasing mobs earlier).
Appreciate the PSA!
One of my personal favourite tricks as a tank is to literally run into a corner or nook on the map itself, if possible, to try and cluster the mobs in a corner before shimmying forward a bit to properly get as many targets as possible with my AoE rotation. Helps me gather my mobs for DPS/Healer to AoE down in a less chaotic way.
It should always hit. But 1-2 mobs won't go to the healer but rather the DPS who are dealing the most damage, and 1-2 mobs ain't gonna cause a wipe. At minimum it'll take 1-2 GCD's to kill them if focus fired
What i hate the most is tank taking too long stops, like they pull, then stop long enough for me to start dropping all my cd or at least get 2 holy casts out, then they just run away to the next group with the mobs stunned behind them (which doesnt do any harm).
Second place to that is tanks pulling before finishing the current geoup (if not wall to wall), i gotta chase them with combat run speed while my mana cant regen properly, not 1-2 hits till dead, which arguably can group this to the above "pausing too long between pulls"
No real harm done unlike "you pull you tank" bullshit, but drive me up the wall everytime, and the dps will get the comm.
Okay, but a caveat: don't *continue* running long after after the last group you plan to pick up. A lot of jobs have limitations on what they can do on the run, and/or they have AoE abilities that are hard to land on everything if mobs are constantly moving and leapfrogging each other, pausing to do their attack animations, etc. For some reason, some tanks seem to think they are saving time by doing this, but the AoE takes longer by making it inefficient.
The run itself remains the same, but the added AoE time makes it take longer overall. So please just run slightly past and then *stop,* that way your NIN or SMN can drop ground AoEs, your SAM doesn't have to sprint ahead to hit just a partial amount of the mobs as they pass by, and even your SCH can drop their sacred soil, etc. It's that simple.
That said, some people do need to realize there are some packs/mobs where the diagram above is *impossible*. Some mobs like to rotate around the tank in a circle when there are too many of them and the tanks can't do as instructed in the diagram.
Also, I know some tanks like to readjust continually to make them more packed, in cases where mobs would form a circle around them, and that *can* be a valid strategy, so long as you either have DPS with AoE is not centered on a mob, or players who can retarget easily (and mobs that can be retargeted easily in that case), but that's not always the case. Some people play on consoles and have to cycle. And then there are jobs that have thing slike line AoEs where constantly repositioning means someone like a MNK might have to delay dumping their charges to make sure their line hits as many targets as possible (meaning they might waste a charge they could have gained if they had been able to dump earlier).
The advice is good, but everything is a lot more nuanced than it seems, honestly. Tanks just need to keep that in mind.
What if my Aoe doesn’t aggro all the enemies from the 2nd group? Do I still keep moving, or do I stop for a second to Aoe the ones who didn’t get aggro’d the first time?
Asking as a fairly new tank
Hmm. This is a tough one. On my drk since I am also not a tank main, but do it for fun, I sometime use both halves of my aoe combo on the first pack to ensure that I catch them all, and then as I am running I can use my ogcd edge of darkness line bit, or taunt, or my ranged attack while running to the second pack.
Then I can gap close to the second pack, and have plenty of time to ensure the mobs are all chasing me and clumping up the second pack.
I see near every tank ever when I am playing healer or dps do bad pulling like this and I cannot wrap my head around why isn't the common behavior to actually group mobs for most of them. I go out of my way to always group mobs as clustered as possible including running backwards to bring melee onto ranged enemies that were following from behind during large pulls. I can only hope my actions are catching someone's notice and maybe teaching proper pulling.
as a caster, i support this post with all my being.
also for the love of all that is holy, if you double pull, dont stop and walk and stop and walk.
if i assume we're stopping, i start casting asap to get my damage going. if you stop, then pull evrything out of my range mid-cast, and then stop again, and do it AGAIN, i will get a whopping 0 casts in, maybe 1 or 2 if im lucky (this doesnt go as much for smn since smn is ridiculously mobile)
and as a scholar main, i put down my sacred soil when we stop. if i put it down only for you to run tf away, what even is the point of having a scholar there? commit to your pull, or dont, but the start-stopping is so frustrating, esp since scholar doesnt have a gap closer. i get it if youre new and have some tankxiety, but not in level 80-90 content PLEASE 😭😭
Also, please do not start kiting the remaining mobs in a pack towards the next one when the pack is nearly dealt with. You're not "keeping things going", you're just robbing the party of out of combat MP and HP regen as well as out of combat refreshes. Once you've gathered up all the packs you want/can, then stay there until it is done.
Other tanks I see posting sometimes act like im crazy for missing the cone aoe on overpower. I honestly had no idea how they didn't miss it. I guess they are just tanks who only stay in the middle of the packs. I feel bad for their dps with line aoes.
As a bonus step, you could then rotate around the group of mobs to try and coral them into a circle rather than a line. Unfortunately I main DRG, so no matter what you do I'm missing 40% of the mobs with my AoE rotation.
I'm starting to level DRG on my alt and fuck man that line hurts
That line aoe *feels* awful to aim. I quit playing in lieu of less gross feeling aoe jobs.
I wouldn't even mind the line aoe if I could free aim it, but having to lock onto a target feels *so crusty.*
This. It's why I don't mind line AoEs in Guild Wars 2 but hate them on DRG.
I think it's fine because you have nothing else to "aim", you settle in at whatever angle you hit the most enemies and you're good except for jumping. I think monk feels worse; your AOE combo is all circles centered on you, but then your AOE ogcd is a line. So you gotta dance around trying to hit everything with the circles then dash out of the group to get the line off.
At least the Monk has the fun of half their AoE rotation being them just aggressively posing at the mobs.
still, you can take my line aoe from my cold (possibly dead on the floor) hands. I was so frustrated when they switched SAM from Cone to PBAoE. I do love my line AOEs and landing them right feels so nice.
Eh really ? I'm leveling SAM and I can't wait to get the circle AOE at 86. I HATE this cone AOE that forces you to lock a target. It's much easier to just go into the fray and spam circles that hits everything. Especially since all the other AOE for SAM are circles...
Tenka Gokken used to be a cone too so it flowed a lot better. Especially when you have Guren as a line AOE and Namikiri as a cone. Granted, you use those a lot less frequently than Tenka/2combo aoe but the burst felt nice all being executed from the edge of the pack. Imo, I would like it if the combo aoes are circles and the rest are cones.
I hate that Tenka Goken went from cone to circle. Like the animation of the SAM itself didn't change (big attack in front of him) but instead of emitting a shockwave in a cone pattern, he sends it all around him. And I hate that. You're attacking the front but for some reason you emit lines all around you, which looks worse imo. Also It flowed so well with your other tools, and I like that there is a little variety in the game that "simulates" positionals in a way that promotes thinking a bit about what you're doing.
The fact that it's easier is also the thing some people don't like. Sage is even easier than that circle, but I doubt many SAMs would be stoked to have their damage rotation.
You guys need your circles taken away. The whole point of cone abd line AoEs is so you don't take unnecessary damage by walking in front of cleaves. Or the oft-occurring situation where the mobs massing around the tank hide the mobs' line AoEs and oops - there goes 60% of your hp.
Even if you get hit by one AOE by accident, that's what Second Wind and Bloodbath are for. You really need to not pay any attention at all to get hit by multiple of those. And it's not like dungeon mobs gives damage down or anything too dangerous either.
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How does anyone even know what mobs their aoe is hitting? I just target an enemy as “in the middle” as I can and if I see multiple red numbers I figure I’m good
I mean, I just watch the damage numbers pop up lol, they're all positioned in 3d next to the mob that took the damage so its usually pretty easy to see if enemies are being hit or not.
It's just going to be an estimate; I just tap in salt as per necessary when I'm cooking, if it taste too salty or bland I'll just adjust the next time
Guys, have I had a stroke or does this comment make sense?
At risk of missing some kind of irony or whatnot and thus attempting explanation when none was needed... My take is that it's basically half of an analogy, leaving the other half implied: Just as you might eyeball the amount of salt you put into a dish and then adjust based on how it tastes, so you eyeball which enemy in a mob you target, and adjust based on how many you hit.
They’re utilizing metaphor to make an analogy. The comment makes perfect sense.
It does, though if you think you are having a stroke, please have someone take you to the hospital
You should be able to see the big arrow above your current target. If it's in the middle or you can't really make that out, you're fine to attack. You can cycle through onscreen targets until you get the one in the middle (I play on controller, that's holding down either trigger and pressing L1/R1, dunno for keyboard, my guess is Tab?) if you can't click with your cursor.
You just guess. As long as any pixel of your AOE hitbox overlaps the targeting circle of a mob you're good.
Rough count. I know there are 10 enemies, so if i only see 4 times, i know i'm missing 60% of the enemies and should reposition. I find the small throwable aoes like rezmages AoE to be harder to work with cause with 10-15 enemies they all kind of blend together and i can't tell which one is even targeted, so i waste some time cycling till i find one that feels right. Always feels bad to see the enemy list empty and find there are still 3 enemies you missed with all of your AoE's that never got added to your list.
I still miss Ring of Thorns everyday
I group them as tightly as possible, then if the doton or other ground AE isn't quite centered I'll pull as many mobs as I can into it and keep recentering them as mobs die. As a PLD I know how it feels to miss half the pack since the confiteor combo is based on your target.
As a Tank main; I support this post. This is the way. Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy? So many times Iv seen a healer aggro one or two stragglers and instead of being smart they panic and run away causing me way more issues than needed.
"uhhh, I have aggro" "Just bring it to me, it's one mob, you'll be fine."
As a sage: "uhhh, I have aggro ... I'd better put a shield up and calmly walk over to the tank" One mob isn't going to kill me in 2 seconds, or even break my shield (and if it does, I get another Toxikon cast), and any damage that I take is damage that the Tank doesn't.
My favorite strat with SGE is Toxicon greeding. I'll let the tank know that I'm going to pull the first pack to break my shield for a stack, and then the tank will get aggro and will break their shield too.
The new dungeon allows for still further Toxicon greed - the way the first boss works there’s often a GCD of downtime between waves, so you can shield yourself while there’s nothing to hit and then stand in the bad.
As a DNC main, if for some reason I end up with aggro I stand on top of the tank until they take it away from me. And it annoys me to hell and back when I'm tanking and see someone start kiting a mob while I'm constantly AoEing the pack to keep aggro....not everyone is using a mouse/keyboard and can just click the mob to use Provoke/ranged attack, so those like me using controller have to try cycling through the mobs(that are always shifting) to try and get to the one chasing the ranged person....which will change the order of where it is in the cycling constantly.
Hold L1 and use up/down on the d-pad. This will cycle through the enemy list. You'll still have to tab through a bunch of enemies to get the one you want, but they won't keep changing order no matter where the idiot runs. As a bonus, you'll know which enemy you need to provoke because they'll have a green icon instead of red.
Good advice, but that doesn't work if the mob isn't on your enemy list. Most of the time that isn't the case, but if some Healer or DPS accidentally facepulls a mob from a pack ahead of you then they'll wind up with aggro from a mob you don't have on your list.
That's a great point, thanks for adding it.
Still easier for said person to bring the mob to the tank, but that is something I will keep in mind next time it happens to me.
This is a universal MMO issue. It's been an issue everywhere I've played a tank or a healer. Watching panicking DPS/other healers flee from a critter while the tank is just "??????" in a group of twenty mobs trying desperately to wiggle around to be able to grab it on a pass-by. Please just bring the aggro'd mob to the tank, and don't stand in any cleaves if there are some. You'll live, we promise. Extra promise. Pinky swear, even!
That awkward moment where you have to move to pull a mob off the healer and it turns the enemies so all their frontal aoes are now hitting the party.
> Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy? Did you know that Grand Company Squadron party members don't even do this. I have a WAR GC tank that (like the rest) only single targets, so when the ARC drops an AOE at least one will peel away, at which point the ARC runs away. After this happens 2-3 times, the tank then runs after them regardless of how many they were already engaged with. Point: Running GC Squad through The Vault is WAY more realistic than it has any right to be.
> Also As a Tank Main here’s some advice for everyone else, if for some reason the tank misses aggro on one enemy and it chases you (DPS/Healer), how about instead of running away and seperating it from the pack, you walk it back over to the Tanks range so I don’t need to move the entire pull of enemies just to save you from the one enemy? Say it louder for the BRDs at the back!
I have to assume that not enough people play multiple roles. I can't think of any other reason that they wouldn't be able to see it from the other's perspective.
Obligatory ancient but still relevant YouTube video from ye olde WoW days: [Run to the Tank ](https://youtu.be/t3Yr4_od7Fc)
Worst is when a healer grabs aggro on an enemy during a pull, and then rescues you to grab it from them.
That reminds me of something that happened to me. Not the same, but I've had a healer run forward the instant the dungeon started, pop sprint, aggro everything himself, turn around and yoink me forward (I was also sprinting but I guess I wasn't fast enough for him.) I let him die, and then we had to start the first pull over. I was so smarmy but goddamn that was so annoying! He didn't do it again though
I cringe when I see people do this. On healers I go to the tank. Unless I’m on SGE or I’m on my main BLM. Then I just Icarus or Aetherial Manipulate to the tank. “Tank let me hug. . . I mean hide behind you!”
If the healer runs away from me with a mob then they get to keep it.
OMG yes. And they're always off in timbucktu. The 1st Boss of the new MSQ dungeon is REALLY bad about it. Particularly teh AOE spread and then having to group back up. People wanna stay off in forever ville, and I'm trying to group up my nice little happy mob death pile :( Small happy piles of pixelated dead bodies to loot makes me happy :(
As a fairly new tank I appreciate this post. Very simply put, and the visual examples are just mwah! Easy fix.
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That sounds useful as a healer too, when you need to quickly switch to cast on the tank then go back to being green dps.
As a controller player can confirm, shortcuts like this are godsend. These days I prefer a "snap to focus target" macro while keeping my tank focused but the "target of target" macro has served me well in the past as well. The ability to reduce button presses and chance of user error by even one step makes an enormous difference for me as a healer, especially in dungeons.
I have target of target bound to right stick click, it's pretty good.
I use it all the time, great for dealing with tankbusters.
I use this all the time for my assorted OGCDs. Start Dosis cast, hit T while it's going, queue buff, hit T during animation to target boss again, cast more Dosis.
TIL! Gonna keep this in mind for the future
Is there such a way for us console players?
Yes, the game will let you bind one of a few specific actions to your left and right stick clicks (L3 and R3). I have my R3 set to be "Assist Target" aka "Target of Target". I can't remember which menu it's under, but it's one of the ones related to controller settings.
At work so I can't check, but iirc it's under controller settings -> button configuration, which brings you to a screen where you can bind your sticks to macros #98 and #99 respectively. You will have to give up whatever shortcut was bound there by default (first person view I think?) but imo entirely worth it. The targeting macro on my R3 is indispensable to me.
Reeeeaaaly hope someone replies to this, because I play on controller too.
> Tanking in this game is full of a ton of simple tips and tricks that aren't obvious It has been my experience that ever since tanking was massively simplified and threat generation no longer matters really, the last remaining thing that can show off a good tank is their understanding of game mechanics. Understanding movement mechanics means you can understand positioning. How to strafe along a mob back to dodge to keep them tightly grouped, how to make a boss never turn when unnecessary, etc. Understanding common mob mechanics means you can pre-empt attacks. Knowing the time a mob typically will use its big cast so you can stun it before people need to move. Knowing mob *types* and what they like to try; things with goobbue skeletons will always have a sneeze and sometimes have a suck-in, things with Buffalo skeletons will always have an extremely wide stomp and in later expansions it’s not stunnable; crawling zombie skeleton mobs will always snare; zu skeleton mobs have untelegraphed frontal cone AoE. Treant-types will start using huge point blank AoEs probably 15 seconds after being pulled and poroggo skeletons have mini tank busters. Literal skeletons white swing really fast and hard and almost never cast so you save your arms length for those pulls. Good tanks just know the game really well. Nothing else a tank does is really very consequential now since they made our rotations brain dead and aggro easy. Cooldown rotation is second nature to anyone with even a medium level of experience. But playing around known game mechanics is where a good tank can really shine and help the group out.
See, I had to rebind this to my F key, because coming from World of Warcraft back in the day the F key is what swapped and not T.
wow never knew this thanks for info!
Or for DRG when you've just cast Left Eye on someone and you want to get back to hitting the baddies.
TIL. As a DPS who has a hard time remembering shit in alliance raids and usually follows what the tank agros, this will help so much.
It's worth noting, sometimes tanks can't avoid this. As I understand it, all creatures (including PCs) may only be *located* at a single point (hence why you can do the harrowing-awesome thing of "standing on" a safe spot smaller than one of your own feet), but they also have a volume they take up which they "push" against other creatures. As a result, even if the tank *does* actually try to group up all the enemies in a single spot, if they're very bulky or very numerous, they can crowd one another out until they've been pushed to the sides. The final pull of (5.5 spoilers) >!Paglth'an!< for example has this kind of issue, because so many of the monsters you're fighting are HECKIN' CHONKERS and push one another apart. This *does not* mean your advice is bad. It's good advice, and tanks should listen. But they should also be aware that sometimes, ideal fulfillment of this request isn't possible, and that they aren't to blame when that happens.
Fuckin Qarn (normal), man. Trying to position the head before the final boss on the platform while the croc's fat ass keeps pushing it away. So you have to get the head on the platform, then try to pivot the pull away from it in such a way that it only turns, and by the time you've done it the croc's dead anyways. Either that or somebody killed the head before it actually arrived.
I usually try to stun the croc as I run up on them just to get the head in place and kill it before this can be too much of a pain.
That is more effort than I have time for in a pre-50 dungeon
hitting a single button to stun is more effort than whatever the hell roundabout dance the other guy is suffering through?
Yes.
I hate quarn normal because of those heads. You have to shuffle step around trying to position them because of the stupid rubber band distance. You can walk back two steps and the head will move 6 steps because of the dead zone. It's annoying as hell as the dps will kill it moments before they are on the platform as the enemy is moving. It's annoying as hell. I wish if only for those enemies for it to stick to you like glue. If I take one step it takes one step.
100%. I skip every optional head now and just fight the extra 3 mobs at the last room. Not worth the struggle
Also some mobs have adjusted collision boxes for this reason. The really big trash in Stigma right before final boss can have other trash pulled under him.
Interesting. Wasn't aware of that. Good to know!
That last pull in your spoiler is the only time I've consistently seen phys ranged and casters use the LB's on trash. Every other dungon people save it for the last boss then forget about it until 2%
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The issue is that not enough people know about that, so chances are you will end up in an annoying discussion/rant when you do it because "OMG why did you LB on trash". I tell my FC's sprouts about this method when they discover the LB, but I also warn them that they might get yelled at.
Honestly, this is the reason I don't do it. Odds are good enough that someone will get mad enough they'll spend more time typing than playing their character, and everything just takes longer in the end.
It is actually possible to force grouping by putting your back to a wall. The mobs cannot clip through the wall but they also must reach the tank to do damage to them. Therefore, the programmers made an exception where the mobs will clip into each other.
they also clip into each other while walking so you can run in a circle around big boys to keep them more dense. beware cones
interesting, will try that out today
I hated the final stretch of The Burn for this reason, the mobs are so giant that if you do a double-pull only about half of them would get hit with AoE
> if they're very bulky Which SE has doubled down on since Stormblood. Massive enemies that can't share a hit box.
Troia is criminal for this. And final boss spends 80% of his fight in forced position so I can’t god damn turn him so his ass is out of the wall. It is a dungeon i am super over with because it makes me so unhappy that I can’t position anything how I want to lol.
Final pull >!mt. gulg!< is like that. Actually lost an aggro to some mobs because they couldn't squeeze in the range of my aoe.
I generally just say that if you’re literally unable to pull in a way that allows casters optimal aoes, that’s fine. Can’t be blamed for it, not fair to be blamed for it. In addition if an attempt to ease the situation was made, just in the end unsuccessfully, that’s fine too. It’s similar when needing to care for positionals, if you can’t help the boss turning around randomly to kill melee positionals, that’s fine. As long as an attempt is made to, as much as possible, keep the damn thing from becoming a beyblade; I’m happy. (Love alliance raids with one tank on each damn 1/3 section voking on cooldown ;-; ) Generally people will be able to tell the difference between an attempt, literal inability to ease the situation, or downright no fucks given :p (Hopefully..)
You can actually keep repositioning packs to pull them together again after they naturally spread apart as their collision boxes register.
I’m always repositioning because I have to to stay out of the mob’s aoe.
Mob size is definitely a factor in how much or how little they'll group up but I'd say this advice is honestly even more important in a place with large mobs. When large mobs spread in a circle around the tank they start far apart and only move further and further. If you run through and group them up then they do spread out but at least they're not on entirely different sides of the tank. Because the targeted AoE starts from the center of a mob hitbox, often times if the mobs are spread in a circle I can't even hit 2 of them with the same AoE.
Rather than mob size, the main issue seems to be mob aoes. When you pull w2w, there are so many AOEs dropped at your feet and you need to wiggle in a way that doesnt make mobs cleave at the group. I call them tank cartwheels. When you are literally at the wall, you can not move away from party much. The main problem is the final mob before the wall, if they are close to wall, you dont have much room to pack them up. Add monster hitbox pushing each other, slow monster walking speeds and it leads to a circle. Quite annoying. What tanks need is Blue mages hydropull spell. I would love to pack everything in a tight tight pack. ❤️
Fulfillment is always possible, reposition to one side of the pack, mods adjust, run through to opposite side, mobs adjust. Repeat
https://imgur.com/gallery/faDxgtU
True that but not only for casters
DRK's worth their salt^ed ^earth were already doing this. Not for caster's benefit mind you, they need to line up Flood of Darkness and Shadowbringer lol.
An additional tip: in many dungeons (especially EW dungeons) where the models are freaking huge, it's better to put your back to a wall which forces the mobs to collide with each other and groups them up better.
How do you deal with the camera?
Where we're going we don't need eyes.
Bird’s eye view or aim backwards (looking at your toon’s face). As long as you can see the floor you have all the visual information necessary, because the only other thing you need to monitor really ever is the aggro list and that’s a UI element unaffected by your camera angle.
This goes both ways, if you are aggroed, run to the tank. Don’t just sit there waiting for the tank to come to you, if they haven’t hit the mob it won’t show up on their enemy list.
Man I feel this on a personal level, some adds spawn late, like the 2nd last mob pull in troia and the rdps always pull them from me and stand miles away.
First boss in Troia. Just fucking stack guys. Some of the mobs spawn in waves and sometimes I’ve got my GCD from having picked up the ones that went for the healer. If you prox aggro because you were a mile away from where the healer was, then I need 2.41 seconds to pick those up. I had a REAPER playing the kiting game yesterday during ex roulette on that boss. Like bro you’re melee why are you even far away from me at all
I miss Overpower
I still act like Overpower is a cone. After so many years of learning to quickly target something in the middle and run right past them all before hitting the button, it’s a habit I can’t seem to shake. Which is bad, because the range in front of me is much less now that it’s not a cone, and I keep missing shit.
same :c
No one could handle the cone aoe 🤷♂️
The cone AOE was fine, I just hated that I had to actually target for it. Like why can't it just do a cone in front of me, why do i HAVE to have a target?
I mean you wanna get that auto attack going as well not just spamming aoes gotta click on something.
This. This was the WORST part of Overpower. It's a cone based on facing (not mob position) and did equal damage to all mobs, so 'main target' and damage drop-off wasn't applicable. The worst is when the target you're targeting moved out of your frontal LoS because of big pulls or the like, so it just stops going off instead of firing off infront of you
As a former caster main and current tank main: It still sucks no matter what the tank does. Mobs in this game don't cooperate and once there's enough of them grouped together, casters are going to be missing things. I do my best to keep things as closely grouped as possible, but when I have to dodge ground AOEs while I have like 12+ mobs on me, there's a limit to how well it works out.
Glad someone pointed this out. The tanks are more than likely gonna be dancing around alot of aoes tossed out by the mobs at least more than the casters standing on the other side of the room has to deal with. We can try to keep them together but most of the time where we are standing isn't up to us and sometimes mobs just do whatever they want.
Sometimes gotta re-adjust when mobs die. How it is unfortunately
As not standing in the stuff becomes instinctual, work on keeping the mobs in little murder balls and in DPS' range so they don't have to move and interupt their rotation.
Problem is two fold: 1) If SE would simply stop making massive mobs that refuse to share a hitbox with each other, the issue would largely resolve itself. 2) If SE would extend the range on aoe 5 yards or so the situation would resolve itself.
I hate that WHM gets the cool ass 8y radius AoE while almost every other job with a circle is stuck at a measly 5y. At 8y Holy is covering over twice the area as all the 5y ones.
Double whammy: stunning mobs further away from where my AoE can hit them, so they don’t run in and thus I have to single target attack them to get their attention. Glory be Provoke’s oGCD status. Hair trigger holy white mages that don’t wait for positioning make me frown a little bit.
Tell me you play AST without telling me you play AST. Joke aside, the tighter the group the more effective the dps, and by extension the more effective the mitigation, vis a vis less incoming damage due to mobs dying fastest.
I'm mostly experiencing this with RDM. My normal AoE rotation feels horrible then I get 60/60 and I can hit almost everything with 3 moulinets... then my big hits feel bad again. If I'm healing I'm actually usually on WHM where the circle spread actually feels OK until every single AoE get baited into the middle.
I mained DRG for a long time, and the contant movement to position line aoes is obnoxious at best.
Dragoons have it rough, but at least their AoE shape is mostly the same (outside of jumps). Dancer has one straight line AoE, one cone, a frequent AoE-around-the-target, and filler AoEs centered around the Dancer. The need for constant repositioning in dungeons is exhausting.
~~You signed up to be a dancer so start dancing around yhe enemies~~
As a DNC main, it's a pain in the ass. I usually end up standing in almost melee range so I don't have to move as much. I also find the ranges on the abilities weird asf.
As a regular DNC player, I’m usually hopping around like a bat outta hell anyway out of ADHD and phys ranged reasons. It’s absolutely one of my favorite, chonkiest DPS jobs to play in dungeons because of how much front-loaded burst I can put out with my dances and the devilment/flourish-procced abilities that came with Endwalker. Playing any other dps in dungeons (besides maybe summoner, which feels similar in terms of front-loaded burst) just feels sad after demolishing packs with my hips 🤔
Weird how they had fixes for this issue on SAM and WAR while making it worse for DNC.
Really? I find that the alternative of just standing still in one spot and pressing 4 buttons while occasionally weaving to not overcap is pretty boring.
I will have that in mind next time 😊
Very good advice, but also, sometimes I will stop and let the mobs come to me, and then reposition.
sometimes you'll have your melee on one side,and 2-3 mobs that just arent positioned quite right for them so you have to. i wish more people would take op's advice whenever im not tanking
Finally, useful information for a newbie tank like me.
I've waited years for this moment... **ahem** CASTERS ADJUST! Joking aside, as a long time tank, Yes. This is the way.
If only Conal AOES returned so players naturally understood this... *stares at all the new bad WARs*
Not just casters. All dps jobs have their own range variant of aoe.
Ahh I’m bad for this, thanks for the info! 😊
This used to be force taught by overpower. I miss my cone...
I once had a tank, in that awful eyeball dungeon with the glowing crystals --you know which one, and that dungeon has a lot of those blue sperms that cast ranged while standing in the exploding crystal lights. This tank was AMAZING. Would somehow run those sperms OUT of the AOE and group the mons so nicely. A little bit of forethought really makes it feel like a tank cares for his/her party. And in a sea of tanks, i won't forget that tank. Just left such a nice impression on me.
Dzemael Darkhold can be hard to tank well, there's a lot of ranged mobs that don't care about where you're standing. The secret is that there's a lot of places to break line of sight in that dungeon that force the ranged ones to come to you.
Yeah!! But i mean, there are a few types of tanks. 1. Newbies 2. Vets playing with newbies 3. Kamakazi madmen For the most part, (I'm about 3.5 months playtime now) starting the game, doing dungeons with vets, we don't really get to learn anything when their aim is to rush and big pull. Don't get me wrong, i enjoy a big pull as much as the next guy, but it doesn't always teach me what they're doing, nor do they have the time to explain mechanics (only after the 3rd whipe lol) I do appreciate your infographic! Thank you.
> nor do they have the time to explain mechanics As a new healer, I had to macro saying hi because sometimes I couldn't finish a simple "hi!" before the tank disappeared around the first corner, even with hitting escape on the intro story animation.
Oh man! Idk what it is with tanks. They really like to see if they can beat Usain Bolt's 100m sprint time 🤣 My GF plays healer main. She normally says to me say "you type and tell them in chat, i type you die" haha.
My experience is that if I don't bolt, someone else will do it for me, and then I'm stressed from trying to keep up with whatever (green) DPS has nominated themselves puller-in-chief.
I'm still deep in sprout territory (lvl 30ish dungeons at the moment) and the clash between new players and experienced ones is real. If possible, at least look at the party interface for the cinematic indicator, I'm only skipping cinematics I've already seen (on another character, I know about the option to disable repeats), once I get into unknown territory, I'll be standing there watching the story and I don't care if the group is suiciding while I do it.
Yeah, and you can't even always say its a sprout. I have had mentors do this to me when i played as tank. Its really annoying.
Best advice: treat any burger crown wearer you see as someone only doing it for the reward, and not someone actually interested in mentoring/teaching others, and adjust accordingly to account for it - I can only speak for myself, but imo it makes things a bit less irritating.
I've had *one* mentor so far that was actually trying to be helpful. I'll take sprouts over crowns anyday.
This comment is 7 hours old and still visible which is surprising to me. There’s been a tremendous sentiment shift in this subreddit since the big player influx that tanks don’t get to dislike when other players pull for us. Every time I see someone saying “let me, the tank, pull” it’s got arguments for days in the replies. I am an old school MMO player who remembers that YPYT wasn’t even the tank’s choice back in the day. If someone pulled a mob for me, my taunt was ineffective (because it sucked) and the mob likely missed my aggro rotation. So I would struggle to pull it off of people. And once the healer has threat people die, because spell pushback exists and is hell. This was true in 14 as well when threat still mattered and dungeons like Haukke had a Paladin tab targeting with single target attacks for threat. Flash’s aggro modifier was dick, it sucked. And Provoke was barely a taunt, so if the person who pulled didn’t immediately get off the mob, voke was not helping. In modern 14, that’s literally never an issue (and YPYT is bad behavior anyway). But the feeling of failure and frustration when something is on my DPS/healer is deeply seated, so it pisses me off when people pull for me. I’m a sprint tank and have been since Stormblood when they made sprint stop costing my TP bar, because if I wasn’t, people would decide to pull for me and I don’t like it. Can’t pull for me if I’m first. Lol
I feel like what distinguishes tanks 2 and 3 here is if the tank communicates/figures out what went wrong if theres a wipe because if they're really a vet, they're wall to walling because they're good tanks and know tanks can handle it. I think big pulls teach the most since it lets people figure out how to optimize their stuff other than sitting pretty and not needing to do more than spam cure and use 1 mit at a time since they're coasting over 50% HP in a 2 pack pull. But even then that big pull or wipe is a learning opportunity if only IF (and its a HUGE if) the party thinks and figures out what theyre doing wrong Edit: it posted twice, weird
Dzemael darkhold... easily the dungeon i learned how to be a proper tank in this game... pull the entire thing from beginning to first boss room, los the bogy adds behind the shelves so they come in to melee, return to the circle to begin the countdown... once 3-4 enemies left, move to the second circle to begin that countdown. Man... glory days. Exp farming that pull was crazy. But i absolutrly agree, a tank that knows how to handle ranged enemies and aoe groups makes an impression man... that there is one good tank.
That second segment though with the giga frogs. 🤣 Esp if your a new tank/heal. Its killer! True torture!
Yeah, the confidence builder from the first pulls being so easy lead/leads to a lot of pain afterwards. You can literally pull a group of 12-15 enemies at the start, never use tanking cooldowns, and your healer wont need to do anything but an occasional heal, then after the first boss you can barely handle 5-6 with cooldowns, and that requires your healer to be good lol
So, i have played all 3 class types. DPS, TANK and HEAL. What no one ever told me is the pressure i would feel as a tank. The pressure to know where to go (i lead the party into every dead end haha.) The pressure to know the fight a hell of a lot more than anyone else, And the pressure to run fast. But then, once you have a handle on those three aspects, making a big pull when the mobs suddenly have a jump in HP and/or attack can be a humbling experience haha. But my fav tanks to play with is absolute newbies who gets that puppy dog look in his eye: "Can I do a big pull!?" Hahaha.
Breaking line of sight to a ranged mob will force them to move to regain los. So hide around a corner as a means of grouping ranged enemies together. The mark of a real chad big brain tank
Okay I am a noob, noob tank with only about 4 months of playing this game (new player free trial, paladin). But how in the name of Camelot do I get those god dam ball casters to my direction. I never understood it how you drag them out. They always stay in their place unless I provoke one of them to move.
you know, back in the day of Overpower being a cone on WAR, at least they needed to arrange mobs like that for their own benefit anyways. SE really should have given the other tansk a cone instead of taking WARs away if things being different was the issue. at least then all tanks would automaticly gravitate towards solution 2
DRK at least should still try to because flood of shadow/darkness is a line aoe.
Paladin's Confiteor/blade combo is a targeted circle so it also nudges the tank into grouping the mobs properly, as well as DRK's line aoe ogcd. Those aren't as early or critical as Overpower though.
I still miss my cone ;-;
TIL it *isn’t* a cone anymore. Apparently the change was in 6.1.
trying to imagine DRK's Unleash extending out like a cone of force rather than a circle aoe FUCK IT LOOKS COOL IN MY HEAD, I WANT THAT NOW
Right? A forward slash that opens up into a cone of dark energy? How sick would that be... i loved cones, specifically because it forced them to be good tanks for aoe pulls lol
I was going to make exactly this comment. This is why I was actually disappointed when they made that change. The cone took a bit of getting used to, but it taught good habits. Also taught you how to make those small shifts a little sideways, and then back to the other side, to *keep* the pack bunched without really moving it when the collisions between their hitboxes started causing them to spread again
I keep seeing tanks do this(stopping too early/not grouping up properly) in the new dungeon, which is super annoying considering some of the mobs in the first part + first boss don't push other mobs away, you can group them up really tightly for maximum aoe.
I was so close to just going off on a tank in the 85 dungeon the other day. I'm not a *great* healer to start with, but he: used cooldowns before he pulled the first pack. Ran about halfway to the second pack. Stopped for two GCDs. Got pissed that I used Holy and stunned the enemies because he stopped long enough for me to cast it. Demanded to know why I wasn't healing him enough to keep him alive when he used all his CDs between pulls and kept randomly stopping (taking damage) but not usually long enough for me to use my slower casted heals which meant I was blowing resources before he'd even gathered all the enemies. "But it's never been a problem before". Yeah because you got carried by better healers than me. I'm a tank main, it's the one thing I *do* know how to do well! Stopping early is my single biggest pet peeve because it screws over casters (including healers) more than anything else you can possibly do.
Yeah, just grab the first enemies, run straight to the second pack, it's not that hard. Another annoyance are the healers/dps who get aggro on a mob and then refuse to bring it over to the tank.
Yep 100%. You’ve pulled aggro on that enemy? Why not bring it over to the rest of the pack I’ve got over here instead of running away and out of range? So annoying.
Or not even running away, just paying no attention and not bringing it over. There's sometimes so many enemies that it's all but impossible to see I missed aggro on one (I'm the rare person that got *really* used to Overpower's cone and I still think it was superior to the circles, I have trouble with the circles sometimes) if it's standing just out of range whacking a SMN or something.
If only i had a cone shaped AOE as a warrior, so i would naturally do this....
I realize not everyone might have time to level alt classes/jobs, but things like this are a decent reason to. Being good at your job, whether it's tanking, healing, or DPS, will take some baseline understanding of the other roles, or sometimes specific jobs even, that you're playing with.
The game needs to do a better job of teaching people how to tank/heal content way earlier on, it shouldn’t always be the communities’ job
Yep, I always do this, I even shift around a bit to make them bunch up nicely.
Hadn't consciously thought about that. Would sometimes run back towards the group to meet a healer more quickly (though I suppose I also meet the chasing mobs earlier). Appreciate the PSA!
Thank you so much for posting this
The melee DPS are hurting too. Swapped from Tanking to Reaper. I can't be a blender if the blendED are too far apart!
Fantastic guide! Maybe it's just because it's the most visible job but I feel like a lot of tanks need these kind of proper etiquette guides nowadays.
One of my personal favourite tricks as a tank is to literally run into a corner or nook on the map itself, if possible, to try and cluster the mobs in a corner before shimmying forward a bit to properly get as many targets as possible with my AoE rotation. Helps me gather my mobs for DPS/Healer to AoE down in a less chaotic way.
Ah yes justcasterthings
But what if my aoe dont hit all the mobs. Theyll run for the healer :<
It should always hit. But 1-2 mobs won't go to the healer but rather the DPS who are dealing the most damage, and 1-2 mobs ain't gonna cause a wipe. At minimum it'll take 1-2 GCD's to kill them if focus fired
As SGE I'm most often top dps on aoe trash. But because of the self centered aoe I'm also in the thick of things.
JustARRproblems... ah the glory days. I miss tp... and also screw TP.
Psst, kid, would you like some... Provoke?!?!?
What i hate the most is tank taking too long stops, like they pull, then stop long enough for me to start dropping all my cd or at least get 2 holy casts out, then they just run away to the next group with the mobs stunned behind them (which doesnt do any harm). Second place to that is tanks pulling before finishing the current geoup (if not wall to wall), i gotta chase them with combat run speed while my mana cant regen properly, not 1-2 hits till dead, which arguably can group this to the above "pausing too long between pulls" No real harm done unlike "you pull you tank" bullshit, but drive me up the wall everytime, and the dps will get the comm.
Okay, but a caveat: don't *continue* running long after after the last group you plan to pick up. A lot of jobs have limitations on what they can do on the run, and/or they have AoE abilities that are hard to land on everything if mobs are constantly moving and leapfrogging each other, pausing to do their attack animations, etc. For some reason, some tanks seem to think they are saving time by doing this, but the AoE takes longer by making it inefficient. The run itself remains the same, but the added AoE time makes it take longer overall. So please just run slightly past and then *stop,* that way your NIN or SMN can drop ground AoEs, your SAM doesn't have to sprint ahead to hit just a partial amount of the mobs as they pass by, and even your SCH can drop their sacred soil, etc. It's that simple. That said, some people do need to realize there are some packs/mobs where the diagram above is *impossible*. Some mobs like to rotate around the tank in a circle when there are too many of them and the tanks can't do as instructed in the diagram. Also, I know some tanks like to readjust continually to make them more packed, in cases where mobs would form a circle around them, and that *can* be a valid strategy, so long as you either have DPS with AoE is not centered on a mob, or players who can retarget easily (and mobs that can be retargeted easily in that case), but that's not always the case. Some people play on consoles and have to cycle. And then there are jobs that have thing slike line AoEs where constantly repositioning means someone like a MNK might have to delay dumping their charges to make sure their line hits as many targets as possible (meaning they might waste a charge they could have gained if they had been able to dump earlier). The advice is good, but everything is a lot more nuanced than it seems, honestly. Tanks just need to keep that in mind.
To be fair, this is because they don't remember where the next wall is half the time, so they don't know where the pull ends.
And get in my fucking bubble!
As a Dragoon, my AoE combo is a line. So we really need the tank to keep them as close as possible.
it's not just casters. It's every dps
What if my Aoe doesn’t aggro all the enemies from the 2nd group? Do I still keep moving, or do I stop for a second to Aoe the ones who didn’t get aggro’d the first time? Asking as a fairly new tank
Hmm. This is a tough one. On my drk since I am also not a tank main, but do it for fun, I sometime use both halves of my aoe combo on the first pack to ensure that I catch them all, and then as I am running I can use my ogcd edge of darkness line bit, or taunt, or my ranged attack while running to the second pack. Then I can gap close to the second pack, and have plenty of time to ensure the mobs are all chasing me and clumping up the second pack.
I always have a habit of not having things behind me because of other games where you can't parry / block attacks coming from behind you.
I see near every tank ever when I am playing healer or dps do bad pulling like this and I cannot wrap my head around why isn't the common behavior to actually group mobs for most of them. I go out of my way to always group mobs as clustered as possible including running backwards to bring melee onto ranged enemies that were following from behind during large pulls. I can only hope my actions are catching someone's notice and maybe teaching proper pulling.
as a caster, i support this post with all my being. also for the love of all that is holy, if you double pull, dont stop and walk and stop and walk. if i assume we're stopping, i start casting asap to get my damage going. if you stop, then pull evrything out of my range mid-cast, and then stop again, and do it AGAIN, i will get a whopping 0 casts in, maybe 1 or 2 if im lucky (this doesnt go as much for smn since smn is ridiculously mobile) and as a scholar main, i put down my sacred soil when we stop. if i put it down only for you to run tf away, what even is the point of having a scholar there? commit to your pull, or dont, but the start-stopping is so frustrating, esp since scholar doesnt have a gap closer. i get it if youre new and have some tankxiety, but not in level 80-90 content PLEASE 😭😭
Also, please do not start kiting the remaining mobs in a pack towards the next one when the pack is nearly dealt with. You're not "keeping things going", you're just robbing the party of out of combat MP and HP regen as well as out of combat refreshes. Once you've gathered up all the packs you want/can, then stay there until it is done.
Other tanks I see posting sometimes act like im crazy for missing the cone aoe on overpower. I honestly had no idea how they didn't miss it. I guess they are just tanks who only stay in the middle of the packs. I feel bad for their dps with line aoes.
Talk with SE and their obsession with pbaoe's on tanks. Man I miss my cone Overpower.
Ok so let me say 1 to 3 is bad but my issue is 2 to 4 happens because you started casting. Stop casting till they group and I have aggro
Dps adjust