Career tanks, how do you do it?

IMO the biggest problem with tanking is that there's a lot of stuff about tanking that you are not taught by the game and people still expect you to be able to do it or understand it. I think a lot of people think tanks are "magic" and they should just be able to hold hate and otherwise that's a "bad tank". Realising that tanking was literally just maths was the day it all became so much easier for me and I kind of wish there'd been a thing in the game that said, hey, IT'S JUST MATHS!

Here are the things I wish people knew:

  1. Everyone (inc. pets) generate(s) aggro on the boss through the damage they deal. Healers and their pets also generate aggro with their heals. I believe that things like Internal Release etc also generate a very small amount of action enmity.
  2. Tanks have modifiers on their stances and some of their moves that make it as if you had done more damage than you really did in terms of the enmity on the boss. For example Defiance doubles the enmity you do, but reduces your damage output by 25%, so that's in the end as if you were doing 75% more damage that you really are to the boss. Combo finishers like Butcher's Block and Rage of Whatever have further increased enmity on them, meaning you generate hate as if you had done about 5x the damage you did with that move. (I forgot the actual amount and I believe it's slightly different for both.) In this way you are able to hold aggro from DPS and healers.

  3. If two DPS go all out on two different targets, esp in low level dungeons where you are missing your combo finishers, it becomes very difficult to hold hate. You need to focus the same thing if you want your tank to keep up. Your tank should number targets.

  4. Tanking becomes SO MUCH easier when you have a better weapon. Holding hate is all based on your damage, if you have a DPS that is doing way, way more damage than you can ever do, you cannot hold that hate no matter how hard you try. Dreadwyrm spear vs. i70 crafted sword = it's not happening. New tanks probably get to 50 and think they suck because they can't hold hate against people, but it's because their gear is so bad compared to their DPS.

  5. If your tank is trying to do a "big" pull (ie. they are getting more than one group and gathering them together) Don't put regen on the tank or start hitting the mobs early. You will pull the enemies off the tank when he is running in the other direction to you.

Two more things...
1. Don't use your tanking stances when you're not tanking. Using Defiance all the time is a really bad idea because you needlessly do less damage. If you want to quickly have aggro on something, you use Provoke.
2. Keep up Maim as a WAR!!! 20% less damage because you forgot to put up Maim is a big deal and I feel like crying when I see a WAR without Maim.

So yeah, OP, I know you asked how to deal with tank-hate, and this isn't exactly the answer, but IMO, more people actually understanding how tanking works is the answer to more people playing tanks and not expecting their tanks to be magical, too.

/r/ffxiv Thread