Where are the tanks?

I am always asking myself this.

The tank shoud tank the mob so they can't reach the caster.

In PVE how come whenever I group with a warrior, he/she always runs to the enemy caster leaving the melee mob to get the rest of the team??


Edited to be readable English.

Casters are the nasty enemies that do the most harm to friendly casters. Ever tried healing your team with diversion on you? What about chopping down the enemy with clumsiness? What's worse...having a warrior hack on you or having phantasm drain you faster than a healing breeze?

Well, there is some mystery magic involved here.
I have seen countless tanks get scared on a little damage, even when a monk is backing them up and a heal is coming 2 secs away tops. the run towards the casters with lower armor.
The reason they go for casters because Sir Pwnalot knows they go down faster. So you don't have a tank in your team, but warrior with a taste for blood. Understandable from their perpsective, since that is more fun then tanking. Not really from teamperspective.

edit: I made the ministery of spam. woohoo...

true, but i guess that depends on the mobs you are facing. as for phantasm drain over healing breeze: eh...must be me, but not really?

on FoW when melee mob come to caster even with all ward and all aegis they begin to die.

Because the casters are within range of the melee mob. Which they shouldn't be.

Let the warrior catch the aggro, then engage. This applies especially in FoW/UW where the AI will check to see if casters are in range before settling on the warrior. There are quite a few capable tanks out there, but unfortunately they're often on a team with casters who don't understand how monster aggro works.


ManaCraft

Because the average tank in this game is an idiot. To be fair, the average player in this game is an idiot, and many average players choose to play tanks - the idiots are however a constant, and it's probably that since the warriors actually need to be close to their opponents it's most obvious when you have a stupid warrior.

I'll be playing a domination mesmer, and say "I'll handle the caster" so the idiot warriors and pretty much everyone focus fires the caster. The mob gets by, begins thumping on folks and I sit with a pile of interrupts and think "but why?"

People play without considering their environemt - with henchies you have to target the casters first, so they do it. All of them. Despite the fact that they'd be better off allowing the expert at shutdown actually do some shutdown.

It is also true that people don't stay far enough back, and that people don't understand what a "pull" is, or how traps work. Try it - say "I'll lay a line of traps and pull the enemy into them - once they are blind, burning, crippled and bleeding hit them." Then lay yyour line, announcing each while your group waits patiently. Mark on the minimap for them to stand back. Pull the group, and go running back with them on your heels only to pass the warriors and the rest all running towards the enemies. Conflict happens about 10 feet away from your beautiful doubled up line of traps, with you posioning folks and yelling "fall back 10 feet!".

People are stupid.

Go, go pick up Rambo! To be honest, there is no ingame tutorial to teach players the basics of teamplay. There are plenty of spellcasters who stay in aggro range and get stomped in 3s, plenty of monks who keep attacking with their ubber wand, not to mention monks without resurrection skills.

Not necessarily.

It's mostly true in high level missions where mobs can be dangerous. Then you only need *one* tank to suck the aggro while spellcasters are pounding these tightly grouped monsters (which have been debuffed by a couple of curses). As mentioned by Epinephrine, if there is a mesmer (or disrupt ranger) in the group, spellcasters are not a high priority.

However when your healers are able to deal with the mobs' damage, rushing to enemy spellcasters works fine as long as you don't aggro the next group. It can be stressful for the targetted spellcasters but killing enemy monks is the best way to speed up the killing process. Of course, you need to trust your healer. Probably not the best way to play in PuGs, but assuredly efficient with guildies.

Most people mimicry hencheman, and they just dont get as good as them.
Than they mimicry other overused builds, but still act like hencheman.

most dont get to "own builds" and "own strategies and tactics".
even worse, good players force me to play like everyone else, i bring arguments why necrotic reaversal is better than putrid explusion for the build we had then, and they just ignore it, so i ignore them and use my build!

I tell everyone that you do not need "more monks" or "2 healers" and you would be better with just one, they ignore, they die.

This thread cracks me up because I have pretty much given up on my warrior doing a decent amount of damage, so I play him more like a offensive lineman now. I usually stay near the front, but then I strafe back and forth trying to stop the things running towards the back. Sometimes it works ok, but alot of times things that stopped in front of me rubber band behind me and get through anyway...

I have to disagree on this. Monks are safety nets. If the group makes a mistake, your healer can keep you alive to complete the mission.

Good groups don't need more monks because they have *good* monks, and because the group as a whole hardly makes any mistake. However in a PvE PuG, I'd better take one more average monk, than an average player of any other profession. The worst your PuG is, the more monks are needed 'not to lose'. Winning then becomes a war of attrition. PvE monsters hardly have any healers, so with enough monks you win by default. Slowly but you win.

A healing monk is strictly better because in a way, he increases everyones damage output - the longer you stay alive, the more damage you deal, The more damage you deal, the deadder the enemies get.

Yeah, sorry to any warriors out there that took offense - trying to make the point that overall, players aren't very good. A good tank is as rare as a good healer or a good mesmer or a good necro.... and worst of all, his play is horribly compromised if he has lousy players in his group, as he won't get to tank properly. The reverse is also true - without a good tank the casters can't play to avoid harm, so in many situations you get at least one of the 8 players messing things up, and you end up with a bad job of clustering and tanking. Add the fact that there are often more than one warrior in a grou p and you get the additional problem of splitting the enemies into multiple groups and so on.

Basically - tanking is a tactical maneuver, as are things like focus fire, trapping, pulling, staying in the wells/wards, not attacking the guys with amity/pacifism.... To accomplish any form of tactical maeuver requires teamwork, which is remarkably rare in a PuG, and requires that players not be stupid. Even if only 5% of the players are dumb enough to threaten a strategy it means that (presuming you aren't dumb) when you gather with 7 other random people there's a 30% chance (1-.95^7) that one of them is dumb enough to mess it up for the party. If you bring the figure up to 10% you find that over half the parties you form are too dumb to follow simple instructions.

Apologies if it seemed overly harsh, but the fact is that it only takes one bad player to ruin most tactics, and the players out there aren't all genii.

Frog Devourer's point about the Monk being a safety net is spot on - as is the comment that healing = damage output, in the majority of PvE. It is somewhat tautological, but you win a mission simply by surviving longer than your foes.

People don't know how to play this game. In PvE, Warriors are never going to be the best damage dealers. A warrior will never do as much damage as a nuking elementalist (obviously). A warrior will never do as much damage as a mesmer (think about how much damage a mesmer does indirectly through backfire, empathy, and various hexes along with shutting down the enemy healer). When a necro casts one putrid explosion, that is probably equivalent to the damage that the warrior does over the entire battle. Rangers can safely select the targets with less armor, so they can usually do pretty high damage, especially the rangers who use something like Conjure Fire. There are ways to make high damaging warriors, which many PvP players do, but it simply isn't safe to do so in PvE. In PvP, it's acceptable that a player dies, as long as the rest of his team beats the opposing team. In PvE, it is not ok to have one death against every single mob because everybody will have severe DP before you are halfway through the mission. Yet most warriors still focus on builds that primarily deal damage. Absorbing damage is simply more suited for the warrior, just like how dealing damage is more suited for an elementalist (an elementalist with all defensive spells can tank very well, but nobody wants that type of character on the party simply because elementalist can deal damage better, and nobody should want damage dealing warriors simply because they can tank so well).

Many warriors also do not have much experience in making monsters attack them. When monsters start charging for the casters, if a warrior steps in front of it, blocking off the path of the monster, most of the time it will attack the warrior, because he cannot run through the warrior. Warriors should know this and sidestep in front of monsters if they are not currently tanking something, kinda like defending someone in basketball. Also, casters who have drawn aggro should not run away from the warrior, as it does nothing. Turning the back and running will just split the party apart and expose the caster to critical hits in the back, and you are probably running away from the monk that can heal you. Running around the warrior is the correct thing to do (making sure you don't aggro more). Sometimes it's even more effective to get within touching distance to the warrior and make sharp turns around him, making the enemy that is pursuing you collide into the warrior, because they cannot go through the warrior, they usually will start hitting the warrior.

Also, many warriors think they are playing tanks, but they are not. These are the guys who die and say "why didn't you heal me?" A tanking warrior will only die if somehow way too many enemies are aggro'ed or if there are enemy casters around (necro and mesmer hexes really trash any type of warrior). Only in those cases should a warrior require healing to hold the line. But in general, casters have low armor and the other party members should be able to take them out quickly, and if you have a good mesmer or ranger, casters are easy targets for them. Heres a simple example of a tanking warrior: a warrior with shielding hands, bonetti's defense, shield of regeneration, smite hex, mend ailment. Shielding hands, bonettis, and shield of regen (which also heals) makes the warrior virtually invincible to any physical attack and they can be alternated so at least one will be on when you are getting hit hard. Smite hex and mend ailment will help when those annoying monsters use poison, blind, or hexes. This is just a general build and is far from optimal (it can be made better if you know what kind of monsters you will face), but it served me and my PuGs well through the shiverpeaks and ring of fire (I actually found I cast shielding hands and shield of regeneration on other casters who run in first and don't let me tank). I do half the damage of other warriors, but I tank much longer. People should try out actually playing tanks and maybe they will be convinced how much better they actually are. (I'm not trying to offend people by generalizing, there are many people who play very wisely, but there are way too many who do not)

Rule of thumb for PvE:

1) Kill the Monk
2) Kill the Mesmer
3) Kill the Warriors
4) Kill Everyone Else

NOTE: Casters need to quit playing Tank and learn how to stay alive.

Another note: Just because a player is a Warrior does not make them a TANK, even if they think they are. Most warriors in this game aren't even equipped properly because they want to "LOOK COOL" as opposed to being effective in battle.

I follow that with my warrior in PvE. I really don't see what all the fuss is about. There's no way for me to guage the effectiveness or experience of the people I pick up in a PUG, so I attack in the order that I know things need to be shut down. If someone says they can handle the casters, I'll let them. If everyone wants me to tank so bad, do me a favor, and stay out of my aggro range (until everything is on me). I'm not going to dance around and chase aggro off of you, because I'm just going to lose the aggro I already have. Realize how the enemy AI works, and use it to your benefit.

Well said!! about the aggro that is, I hate when an over eager spellcaster runs up trying to get off a spell while I'm still luring the monsters on to me.. grr!

I don't see where you get off saying elementalists do more damage than warriors in PvE. I bet you my warrior can kill a caster faster than your elementalist can. And I bet you that your elementalist can kill that armored warrior faster than my warrior can. Maybe you have it backwards and it's the elementalists/mesmers/necros who should be using armor avoiding spells to kill the melee and the warriors who should be pounding on the casters ?

Hrmmm... who doesn't know how to play this game ? I find that whenever I go to protect a elementalist who is casting a spell by attempting to hit the mob and step in between then, the elementalist will just continue to cast spells instead of moving away so the mob turns on me instead of continuing to beat on the caster. They have proximity agro most of the times and casters don't understand this. You see, warriors are sick of casters who don't understand agro so they just go kill stuff as fast as they can before the group dies

It's YOUR fault!!

I hate when I'm trying to aggro a group and players don't seem to understand what get out of my white circle means. I've had groups in the FoW where 5 members leave and we're just as effective because the remaining other two know what they're doing. All it took was me rounding up the enemies, me saying "AoE now", and the monk's healing seed for safe measure. Had the group been full, the other warrior would've gone with me, followed by at least one monk to heal the stupid warrior not prepared to tank. Which in the end results in spread out enemies not being hit by the AoEs, monks dying and me shaking my head.

It doesn't take much to be a good tank, but it also doesn't take much for someone to 'think' they're a tank.