Early punishment

After days of fighting against 1017 fantasy and fail client, I finally start pting as tank role on my 20ish level Gladiator this weekend.

I admit I'm completely noob when it comes to tanking aspect in MMO. I'm a DD or support/DD hybrid at heart, and pretty much always pick DD job in other MMOs. Recently I started to fall in love with healer role and start to play as a healer in other MMOs.

I never pick tank class in other MMOs, so I never get to play tank. In XI tank job's kinda dead atm, so I also don't get to play as tank in FFXI, barring lving NIN as SJ before Abyssea. Then again, tanking on NIN is more about staying alive and counting shadows, less about real tanking such as enmity generation.

I also didn't play tank in XIV, I couldn't stand gladiator's kill speed in 1.0 so I ditched it early, and I leveled MRD when it was a DD but not a tank(or more like 1.0 at that time has no distinctive job role). So when ARR was out, and I wanted to experience the new story/content on a low lv job, Gladiator happened to be few job choice. The fact that in ARR players can lv up by doing group content or quest, means it's more enjoyable to lv up Gladiator.

So, I did a couple of low lv dungeon, pretty much followed standard tanking procedure that I'd do in XI.

1. Use target marker on my current target, marked it No.1.

2. Pop defensive JAs

2. Pull/run in aggro.

3. Use flash to get adds.

4. If enmity bar not capped, use enmity combo. If I need enmity immediately, use that 120 TP enmity move.

5. If my enmity's capped, use stun when appropriate. Mobs seems to resist stun after 2 stuns, so I try not to spam them ;x

6. If my MP runs low due to flash spam, use MP recovery combo.

I'm not sure if that's doing right or wrong, maybe doing wrong, because I often still see adds on DD and healers. Sometimes DD tend to attack adds before I can grab them, despite I already tried my best to grab them.

Most ridiculous thing is, Archers tend to cap enmity, running in circle kiting NMs, AND still DD while kiting the NM.

Because the NM's chasing after Archer and often run out of range, it's nearly impossible to get hate back with 2.5 sec global cool down(little to no skill speed+ gears on that lv to lower the GCD, mind you). And archer's enmity never drop below cap because they can just keep doing dmg while kiting the NM.

From what I've seen, it's either I'm doing wrong during this situation, or it's completely broken at that lv. Especially when early lv DD/healer won't die if they get hate.

Even if DD/healers get hate, they won't die, cuz healers can just cure spam them and still won't run out of MP.

What's the result? The result is every DD happily get hate, healer happily spam cures, until higher lv everyone cried about duty finder group wiping in higher lv content on forum.

In XI, first pt experience start at lv 12 in dunes, and it was a punishing experience. Link gobs when you pull? Sorry that's a wipe. Mages don't conserve MP? Sorry another wipe. Tanks don't voke every 30 sec and DD/healer got hate? Sorry that's another wipe.....even if you don't wipe it's still much lower pt efficiency due to more cures needed and more time to rest MP.

Every wipe in dunes, noobs had to /shout for raise, or just HP. And sometimes noobs didn't set HP in Selbina, so you'd have to walk all the way back lol. Not to mention painful 10% EXP lose.

So there, after noobs got face slapped in dunes, noobs learned not to make mistakes, remember to set HP, remember to pop enmity moves ASAP, remember to conserve MP and no happy cure spam.

So when noobs finally reach endgame, they'd be more careful and less likely to suck.

In XIV they started easy, made me wonder whether I just suck at tanking, or everyone else in pt been doing wrong. And I can already see inc wipe if the endgame/higher lv dungeon gets harder and start dealing more severe dmg to DD/healers.

In that sense, I think XIV's early lv dungeon should really have dunes lv of challenge. Not just because new MMO player won't just quit cuz early lv dungeon way too easy and bland, but also because it's a good practice for higher lv content.

Also so that I won't fall asleep on early lv....I mean, XI was exciting as early as lv12 :X