I understand perfectly how you feel. Fortunately as many pointed out being a Lancer gives you a lot of power in the group. If you're the party leader it's even better. So make sure you use that power to control the group.

Your skills might not be so hard to use, but the challenge starts when you need to control your group and knowing where to go and what to do. Since you are the first in front(or should be) it brings those responsibilities to you. If you do not know the dungeon well enough this could be a bit more difficult to pull off, but you can always tell the group you're new to this dungeon and they can help with direction, but make sure to remind them to always let you aggro first!

I played warrior tank a lot, which isn't as easy as a lancer to get your group's attention and trust (old habits die hard it seems). Most people won't trust you right away, so you need to take the control by force pretty much. As a lancer, they will give you a chance right away, but you really need to be strong about it and show them you're a good tank and a good leader.

Take the lead, go first, aggro everything in the room, don't let that ranger use his volley on monsters before you get to do anything. Leave the drops for them to pickup so you can be faster. Being the first to aggro everything is much easier as you can just group them and then use your aggro skills to hold them onto you. DPS will then finish them. Sorceress are the best for this, but as long as you can keep aggro on you, any combination of DPS is good.

Basically, remember to never let anyone overstep you as the tank. You should be the one to shine.

I have tanked as a Warrior and as a lancer. So far I like warrior more but that's another story.

I too have run into the issue of DPS aggroing before I get a chance to attack. This is not WoW, I cannot pull everything off of the DPS instantly, easily, while trying to make sure I have optimal positioning to block all incoming attacks.

I admit, tanking is harder than I thought it would be as a lancer. You have to be able to attack, defend, and conserve mana, all while positioning yourself and keeping aggro. you can't just stand there with your shield up the whole time. THAT is what I love about it.

If there is anything that does annoy me, it's when melee stand so close to me that they get in my way and make reaching harder. When this happens usually I tell them to not do this and most will adjust, but the one case so far when someone kept doing it and sometimes just running in first before me I just told the healer to stop healing him because I could tell it was stressing the healer. He did and the person left, problem solved...

Quote:

This. I only bothered cheesing that boss when we 3-manned it (Zerk, Lancer, Priest) and the Priest disconnected before we fought the boss. Or when 3-manning it with an underlevel / skilled second player.

Any competent group of 3+ should be fighting the boss in the original room, Lancer or no. Takes more time to drag him and clear the prior room than to just kill him straight up.

imo, dead dps = lesson learned...or ..at least i hope he's learned his lesson...

Quote: EasymodeX on 05/02/2012, 11:20 AM - view

it boils down to " why fight adds if you don't need to" ...using environment is part of the strategy. why create more work for your self? same idea with skipping trash mobs when you can, or tanking a boss against the wall, and other crap like that. any ways it's 15 sec to pull him to next room...

Quote: EasymodeX on 05/02/2012, 11:20 AM - view

...how is it cheese? Don't let the thing make it back to the center and he wont spawn adds. Simple mechanic of the game. If you LET the boss make it back you're a bad tank. Just like the last boss in CR... let him make it to the center he spawns adds. Let him spawn adds you're just bad.

Quote: Synner on 05/02/2012, 10:59 AM - view

lol

Quote: Synner on 05/02/2012, 11:39 AM - view

not always, sometimes you want to let it run back to give your healer some breathing room.... i had to let it run back once so i can res the healer (apparently no one had a res scroll =/ ..boss did his random crap and the healer got caught during a heal that lead to all kinds of crap)....[filtered] happens...no biggy

OK, for starters, no, I wasn't using the Instance matcher. This all happened using the regular LFG tool. After the first bad group using it I now dread to think what sort of hell the Instance Matcher must be.

Anyways, the consistent argument for the people against my opinion here seems to be the following: "TERA is easy, Y U NO RUSH INSTANCES? The game is not hard, there's no need to bother doing instances without plowing through every room. People are bothered by having to to a more detailed job playing their classes than what's perceived to be the necessary to clear the instance."

Well, this translates to me as "You can clear content even being terribad, TERA is ezmode. Why the nitpicking?". Are you sure TERA is so easymode? or are you just overleveling the instance? that dreadful level-difference multiplier seems to be the culprit here. You overlelvel an instance way too soon, and the accelerated leveling curve takes care that you are completely over the content after 2 or 3 runs. So people are becoming used to have at least 2 or 3 ppl on the party who completely overlevel the instance, and as such makes it the "lolez" you mention. Now, it won't be like this forever. I really doubt you can do a hardmode lvl-60 dungeons with this mindset. Shouldn't we be doing instances the "right way" from the start, minimizing damage/healer strain and wipe risk? Why people seem to be so concerned about "fast runs" rather than enjoying the dungeon experience? The real problem seems to be that you're treating the content as more about the loot than about the content itself. I wouldn't want to throw away my game experience by just plowing through instances that way. And also, I wanna reach lvl 60 as a GOOD tank, not a terribad who only do overleveled content while rushing from room to room mindlessly.

Now my fear is that people get so used at only running instances with that kind of mindset that they start pressuring EME to lower the endgame-content difficulty because nobody can clear it (of course, cuz nobody does it like they should). It's the WoW curse hitting us, and it fills my heart with fear...

And about the kicking... well, seems that even when I form the group myself, I can't simply kick people, I can only initiate a vote. /sigh.