Taunt

[Icemage]

There are two schools of thought regarding Provoke among players in FFXI: Chain Provoke, and Provoke on Aggro.

Being a WHM, I am a big supporter of the latter, and here's why:

Hate fades over time. It fades slightly for people on the "enemy list" for a monster who it isn't currently attacking, and it fades more against whoever it is currently targetting.

If you chain provoke, then you get a "spike" of hate, then it slowly fades away till you provoke again.

If you provoke only when an enemy aggros another player, you get that "spike" at that moment. Since your accumulated hate isn't going to be as high, your "spike" in this case is going to probably be a bit less powerful than using a chain provoke, BUT you get to pick when it spikes.

I am a big fan of provoking only on aggro. Chain provokers get their parties killed because they don't have provoke available to "spike" their hate when their WHM casts Cure III and draws aggro because the spell put them "over the top."

Your mileage may vary.


Icemage

[Nemes]

Wow, I thought I was completely clueless thinking chain provoking wasn't the way to go, but I guess I wasn't that clueless

I'll try both though now and see for myself... Thx alot Ice Mage

But, you also said that once the monster hits us, hate disappears. Is it exactly true? Or more or less?

Please explain that if you can! I'd be very grateful!

[Otto]

Hmmm....this makes an occurance the other night very difficult to explain. My WHM friend was PLing me in Tahrongi a bit to help me catch up to him, and while we were fighting, I got aggro from a wadering goblin that quickly switched to him as soon as he healed me. He proceeded to fight the mob while I finished off the first one. Eventually I just sat and watched the fight as I was unable to help since we were not grouped. He blew through his whole spell bar healing and enfeebling, then used beneditction. Then when he got low health, he called for help, at which time I hit provoke and instantly pulled aggro, and was able to finish the mob with about 20hps left.

And idea why I was able to pull aggro with provoke after that much hate buildup?

[Rekiem]

I've been chain provoking since I started and Im very satisfied by the result. Aggro stick like glue and monsters rarely ever go after the mage when Im tanking. I also tried to only use provoke when I lost the aggro, it was very bad because the aggro would almost never stick on me. I could only keep it for a few seconds before the monster would go back to attack the mages. To me it seems like chain taunting is the best, like in all the other MMORPG I've played with. Thanks for the advice and info.

[Izual]

I've tried both ways, and chain provoking seems to work better, as long as I'm also doing a decent amount of damage. If it's a mob I can barely hit, chain provoking doesn't keep my hate level high enough on it's own. And in that case, like icemage said, provoking on aggro seems to work better because you can chose when to "spike" your hate level.

[Baradak]

Chain provoking works MUCH better in my experience.

Just 2 days ago, i was the only voker in a group for 8 hours. Not once did anyone die to anything other than freak occurances (fighting giant, wight adds. fighting wight, giant adds. We would have been fine otherwise.)

I successfully and continuously kept the whm from taking much if any damage better than any 2+ tank group i've ever had.

[Bright Noah]

I've tried both methods of provoking and both have thier advantages.

By chain provoking the mosnter will stay on you much longer, but if for some reason a mage does manage to get it off of you, provoke will probably be down.

By provoking only when the mob changes targets, you will be able to provoke it off the mages if it hapens to target them, but it will be harder to keep it on you.

From my experience so far it doens't matter too much when the warrior provokes, just as along as he does provoke.