There has been FFXIV Tank Drama recently, on twitter someone got very upset about having new tanks in their dungeons and it got a bunch of backlash with a 2 to 1 quote tweet to like ratio. People were rightfully upset that new players were being called out for being bad, and I wanted to talk about this in today’s video.
Then again, everyone makes mistakes and everyone has their bad moments, so please don’t use this as a reason to find or harass the person who posted the tweet. I just wanted to make this video since I already wanted to talk about tanking, and this gave me more of a current reason to!
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As with most things, I think there has to be a balance and a proper way to communicate things.
I have come across groups where the tank is doing things like not having stance on or using single target attacks on groups and losing aggro, and i've also come across healers who didn't quite get their rotation or using only weaker heals, causing us to wipe (when I tried healing when I first started, I was one of those).
In both cases, I have seen both good and bad approaches to addressing the problem. I've seen people be passive aggressive and bossy, and sometimes outright rude, and I don't think venting or lashing out at these players is constructive, especially if they are sprouts.
On the other hand, I think neutral reminders can go a long way. "Hey tank, remember to turn on your stance in a dungeon! Hey healer, remember to focus on the tank and use your OGCD's." I think being overly harsh can scare people off a class (like with me) or cause them to not be interested in the game at all. Conversely, being too nice and overly helpful can also come across as bossy and passive aggressive, so again, one should find a balance.
But also, bruh, it was leveling roulette. These players are either new, or learning/grinding a new job. Of course they're gonna mess up sometimes.
I feel like most of the tanxiety thing is still bleeding over back from SB times, where tanking actually was difficult. Now it is a walk in the park. Turn tank stance on, sprint through the enemies and use AoE, stop at a wall, cycle through your mitigations and your AoE rotation, done.
Would I expect this behaviour from a sprout starting ARR? No. Would I expect this from a tank in HW onwards? Absolutly yes.. Maybe not perfectly, but the willingness to pull more should definitly be there and yet I still see tanks even in EW dungeons single pulling. And that is frustrating af. Because when that happens I do wonder why that tank does not simply use the Trust function.
It is scummy to force a new player into a big pull on their first few dungeons, BUT it is equally scummy to force 3 other players to slow down to the point a dungeon takes double the time, just because you refuse to ever go over your threshold.
Communication is key. You need to find a middle ground. You can't shut the other party out and do your own way, no matter where you stand in that conversation What I hate the most is, when someone asks for a bigger pull or smaller pull and they get flat out ignored. No answer, the person just keeps on doing their own thing. They are not like you, who, when a healer asked them to pull more, does it, they just ignore you and THAT is the majority of what I experience in roulette.
You also have to take into consideration, that players keep the sprout status till they reach EW. The person in question did not necessarily talked about a tank in an ARR dungeon. When I am doing a ShB dungeon with a sprout tank who single pulls, I ask if they could please pull more and they ignore me? I leave. If I have a sprout tank in Sastasha doing single pulls, I see how it goes, ask them if they could pull a bit more and if they don't, I shrug my shoulders and continue the dungeon. The context kinda matters.
Very well done. This mind set that if your not good right off the bat than your trash is what deters people from trying different classes. You can't expect new tanks to play on the level of a savage player or some one that's been playing more than a year. Keep doing your thing and keep improving at your own pace 🙂.
Watching sprout tanks die is funny, i like patting them and using the cheer emote, It feels like watching a kid doing something wrong in a cute way.
Also if u manage to tank the pull as a melee dps or clutch kill the boss It feels awesome. Everything Is part of the experience. Love you lil baby sprouts
I love your videos and editing style. Keep going my guy
If you want to prove you're a good player, do so by lifting up others around you, not yourself so you can look down upon them.
I'm new to the game, but I first saw the drama on reddit. I immediately switched to tank and am enjoying learning how to tank in the midst of the drama.
Edit: and it's not to be spiteful or anything, but seeing all the support for sprout tanks online I knew now was the time to switch and learn. It's like everyone is over compensating to try and help me as a new tank.
I think the only time I've disliked a tank is when I queued up for MSQR, got Prae, and the tank just bailed. Like, immediately.
That was funny.
Frustrating, because it made the dungeon a few minutes longer while we got another tank.
But funny. Because it's pathetic.
Note: The tank wasn't a sprout.
As a healer main I usually let my tank know they can do bigger pulls if they are comfortable doing so. If they don't reply or just keep doing small pulls then thats fine, we will still clear regardless.
Me on a normal day: "Ooh, a sprout! I'm exited to see how this goes!"
Me on a bad day: "…Why did I do leveling roulette? Let's hope for the best…"
my problem isnt people being new is people taking 0 advices and making attitude i play this game since beta now i refuse to help now because of it oh and yeah tank god complex exist from bad players
In my humble opinion, as a tank main, patience and encouragement is the key to have new tanks to end up reaching these ranting older player’s ideal way of progressing through content.
That being said, it’s a whole different subject imo, if you’re patient and respectful and giving advice on how to be able to improve as a tank, but they ignore it or even get offended, I think that draws the line between when you can complain or just not enjoy the content because of that particular tank who’s “learning”
I’m feeling a lot of this may come from people used to other (unnamed) MMO’s, where the culture is to kick new players out of dungeons, bosses, raids, et al; instead of encouraging them and helping them be and do better. We have a lot of people coming over from other MMO’s and trying to bring their culture with them. An example would be the mod used in the Omega Protocol world first, in another MMO would not just be acceptable, it would be encouraged. Frankly, I’m glad sprout abuse isn’t the norm in 14, and anytime I feel anxiety about a class, I can practice it in trusts, duty support, and with my Grand Company squadron (plus that’s a great way to farm minions for the market board 😉
I'm an experienced player to some extent (started 2020) but I mained DPS most of it and only started tanking a lot like last year. I will still take things slow or be conservative with pulls unless a healer directly asks me to for two reasons: I don't have all dungeons/trials/raids etc committed to memory and I would rather add a little time being careful than be dead and have to start over, which takes far MORE time. If you're confident as a healer and think you have me – tell me! If you see me going the wrong way or not doing a puzzle you know, walk the right way or do the puzzle and I'll follow (though PLEASE don't pull stuff for me – that's one of my biggest panic issues, when someone runs ahead and I have to catch up and pull your pulls as well as what I'm already doing.
It's not just a sprout thing, very few people are perfect, and very few people (especially doing roulettes where something is randomized) will have the ability to be "I know this like the back of my hand." In fact, there's only a couple dungeons where I'm that confident.
In short, I wish people would not assume tanks to be both leaders and have everything memorized in a way that we can instantly recall, especially if it's a roulette or random PUG because some of us spend more of our gameplay time doing crafting or gathering or PVP or things other than committing every single fight to memory. That doesn't mean we suck, it just means we're not necessarily focused on that one thing and we'll need a little time to get familiar/confident.
It is true, once it is normalized in one place it will spread back. It also reminds me of my early days. Flash back to me doing my first raid as a tank waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 3.3. I had leveled Dark Knight was feeling cocky that I got to 60, had good gear and thought hey lets try that there Alexander stuff! So get in an all 7 people are throwing terms around like off tank, dots and hots and I was just nodding. Then asked again am I off or main again no idea so I just said off. We died three times cause I didn't know about the old cross class system and have 0 levels in Gladiator so didn't have provoke. After I finally admitted I was clueless to their terms they talked me into main tanking so the other tank could take Oppressor 0.5 when it spawns. I left with all the player coms afterwards and was told to look into cross class. Side note even to this date the terms off tank and hot don't click in my head. Terms should be Sub Tank [cause of the Megaman X sub health tanks] and rots or regen over time so even as a player with everything max leveled I'm still a bit confused when asked main or off.
This was posted days ago on reddit…do you jsut take content from reddit and make a video of it?
Kinda peeved to see people with takes like this. It's what stopped me from tankin' after Stone Vigil (I'm a Healer main n' I only just back into tankin' again since I just finished Endwalker) after I was gettin' mocked by the DPS in-dungeon on my first time there. If people get mad at the pace the tank is pullin', then they can run ahead n' pull mobs instead ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Also that person totally sounds like a DPS main n' I'd gladly pull 'em into an AoE without thinkin' twice. /hj
I love your content homie Keep up the good work
To get over my own Tanking anxiety I had my Legend friend pick whm and pull me through dungeons to just used to wiping and that it wasn't anything to be scared of doing. Is wiping irritating? Yes. But it's good to get over wiping being a bad thing quickly while learning healing/tanking. Mistakes happen, new players need to learn from mistakes just like every other aspect of life. Nobody is perfect starting out.
The saddest thing to me is people don’t realize how utterly selfish they’re being by forcing other players to play the game THEIR (the complainer’s) way. There are no rules that say a tank MUST do anything outside of mit and hold aggro. Don’t force people to do things just because YOU think you’re the end-all-be-all MC.
I desperately want to normalize the idea that when you go into an instance, you’re devoting X Amount of time to being there. There’s no reason for the party to sprint and wall to wall if they don’t want to. You’re adding an extra minute or two usually at most on a clean run. You’re playing a GAME, learn to enjoy where you’re at and you’ll never get pissed.
Heck, a new dungeon I like to pace myself tanking it the first few runs just to see how rough it is. After that if I'm cozy pulling wall to wall I might or if the healer says go for it. This past expansion I went DPS so I'm working on getting my tank on again. XD
If I'm not tanking I just let everyone else set the pace, so long as the tank keeps the mobs occupied I'm good.
I love the fact youre a Hrothgar! Not many youtubers are Elezen Hroths or Highlanders so its really refreshing! Also your voice and commentary is a nice blend of chill so i think you really do have the potential here. Good luck!
I only cut sprouts slack for ARR content.
But if we are doing 51+ content HW I expect the bare minimum for the tank to know what aggro stance is and when to use AoE in 2+mobs unlike single 1 23 combo for a pack of 3 monsters loosing the aggro for the other 2. I mean thats what the AoE is for.
If we are in 61+ content SB, a this point you better be pulling 2 mobs not one by one and using your CDs like a pro.
I think another issue for sprouts is fighting over tanking for Raid boss and pulling aggro with provoke. Its just dumb really.
I get majority of things in life are taught by experience and thats what im getting at going by expansions. Once people reach HW, at least show productivity that you have learned something throughout the what 10 quests youve been playing for the last 50 levels?
You've got to understand the man – it's whole 8-10 mins per leveling roullete! And he might not have much time left with amounts of sodium in his body. Weird that he spends his precious time whining in Twitter.
But really, remember the motto: "If you don't like how people tank – tank yourself"
We need to make sure that FF14 community doesn't devolve into what WoW's community has been lately.
the same thing can be said for sprout healers panicking when a pro tank puls too much it's a sprout you pul wall to wall and you are dead and it's not the sprout's fault when I see a sprout I take it slow and in dungeons below 30 doesn't even matter because the healers and DPS don't have AOI's so you take the enemies one by one and let the healer do dps as well or pull wall to wall and have the healer heal and the DPS do dps to one enemy at a time, especially for the lower dungeons you can cultivate the healer with a mentality to dps if he doesn't have to panic as a sprout oh no he is going to die and then complain if some healers don't dps they have been traumatized by the tank's taking more then they can handle in early gaim
On the flipside, if people cannot take criticism there wouldn't be room for improvement. So my advice would be is to just take the insults, apologize, move on and do better next time. It's an online video game managing smack is an integral core to the experience
I still get tanxiety some times if its a rando healing me. I know that I need to hit my mitigation buttons and I try to ask the healer how comfortable they are with big pulls, but every now and then I'll forget an old mechanic and get that ugly vuln stack of shame.
If you notice at the beginning of your dungeon or raid run that it says you're getting a first time bonus, ask if peeps want some mechanics explain or do they wanna yolo. A few nights ago I did normal raid roulette and landed in Alexander- Gordias, the one that's basically trash mobs the fight, and knew that we needed people to operate the mechs to carry away bombs. So I asked if someone wanted to join me on pulling away bombs while the other tank held aggro for the group. RDM joined me and we kept the party safe while they happily DPS'd away.
All in all, just remember that you were new to the game too once and it was someone else offering words of encouragement and advice on how to clear.
It's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to feel like that. Sometimes i feel like that as a tank when healers tell me "pull bigger, trust" and then we wipe. If you tell people to "suck it up buttercup", then you have to do absolutely the same. You CAN stomach through a run with an inexperienced player. You CAN just do it.
It's funny to me that these are the kind of people that expect w2w from everyone because they "want to be done with it" and then take abandon penalty to then wait another half an hour, to then play for what? Ten to fifteen minutes? That is an hour you just wasted instead of, at most, half. You don't want to be "efficient and quick" with your rolos, you just want for other people to feel miserable because they're not playing like you would (ahem. Ego trip.).
They just don't make sense. As much as people want to say tanks don't set the tempo of the fight, they do. Healers are the harmony that accompanies it.
I'm tired of this tank slander and I want it to end. Sprout or not. You can not have a sprout and be new to tanking, and leveling roulette are the best place to learn. Not trusts, not playing with AIs. No. You don't learn how to drive a car with simulators.
Honestly… I never understood why people are like this.
What brings up the urge in people, to bash your fellow players for
learning and improving at their role in the game? Why make such a
huge Shakespeare drama about the use of even Limit Breaks?
I never got it… and because of that, I played alone long time.
Yes, I felt disgusted, ill and torn about likely being matched with
some very, very crazy and perfectionist people again.
Just started playing ffvix a week ago as a warrior, what helps for me as a tank is agro first, keep the agro, trust the healer, always go to fast and look back so u can slow down.
wait what? people are leaving queues? that happens in wow, when i played in FF XIV free trial i didnt have any those problems
I remember being new and was a level 50 gladiator because I didn't know how job stones worked.
I've been PLD main since I started the game. I had some previous tank experience from the past playing SWTOR, and it helped, but at first I still took it with my own pace, until I was comfortable with my tanking. I hardly received any negative responses for that or pleads to pull more while learning. But when I play some other than role than tank, at times I do get sprout tanks, who are still learning, but that's fine with me. As a tank main, I'll be glad to give advice, and often the sprouts thank me for it. I never do dungeons with the intent to beat them quickly.
There's one thing I need to confess though. I'm more upset about healers, who only heal and hardly at all do any DPS. I never make a number out of it really, but to me it's annoying to see a member who just stands around healing only when needed, while there's plenty of time to do damage. Of course, it may be a healer learning curve, but still. In short, remember ABC: Always Be Casting.
As a healer, I'll just let the dps players die if they refuse to move out of bad things or pull without the tank… Some people just got to learn things the hard way. Play a tank if you want to pull things.
I always look into their profile to see if they are real sprout and see if it's their really first time tanking or not. If it's sprout or newbie tanks then I'm ok with that, they have to start somewhere. But if it's someone that level multiple jobs and and tanks before (with or without sprout icon). They should know the basic of the game by now. I'm gonna be silently annoyed.
Tank main here. Calling out a tank for taking things slow does not help at all. Some tanks are just getting started, don't have decent enough gear to survive big pulls, or the healer is having trouble keeping up. Just because you want to make things go faster doesn't mean they do, and being a dick about it will only discourage them. Don't be a jerk, and be patient with sprouts.