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As a warrior or even sub warrior your “provoke” job ability is your meal ticket.
If your gear is up to snuff and you know when to use provoke you know 75% of what you need to know to be a great tank. The other 25% is knowing what the rest of your team can do and then the fun stuff, weapon skill chains.

The most important thing to do is learn how to provoke. A player with primary job of warrior gets provoke at 5. A player with their secondary job as warrior won’t have access to provoke until at least level 10 for their main. Since many people don’t group at all until around 10 this isn’t much of a concern.

Since you will be doing so very often a macro for the ability will be your first priority. There are a few options when doing so. One method is to just have the macro activate the ability. The other is to have it do this and report to the party what you are doing. Both have their good points and bad.

Doing so silently does not create as much clutter in the chat channel for your party. In a battle, especially in crowded areas, it can be hard to see important messages as they scroll by. If you are saying “I shall not let you harm my friends you evil (enemyname)!” every 30 or so seconds when you provoke it just fills up the chat window that much more and has the very probable possibility of ticking off your party once they read it for the 100th time. Most people will recognize the visual and sound effects accompanied by the use of provoke anyway.

Prov
Line1: /ja “Provoke” <t>

The above macro simply uses the provoke ability on your current target.

On the other hand there will be those who don’t know you are provoking. For no other reason than to avoid someone in your party accusing you of not provoking when you should it can be a good reason to let the party know what you are doing. While I trust people to do their job you will find there are a lot of people who think they could do a better job than you and aren’t afraid to tell the party so. Because of this I can’t suggest you don’t have any chat lines in your macro. That’s up to you. In general the higher in levels you get the fewer clueless people you should find. If you are in a solid group of people who know what they are doing then they don’t need to be informed when you are provoking. The choice is up to you. If you do decide to do a chat line I highly suggest you keep it simple and short. Flavorful little catch phrases are nice and all until you do them so many times even your party who thinks you do an awesome job are ready to put you on ignore.

Prov
Line1: /ja “Provoke” <t>
Line2: /p Provoke > <t>!

If for instance you were targeting a snipper, the above macro would use the provoke ability on the snipper, then it would tell the party, “Provoke > snipper!” This keeps it short and simple. If you use the auto-translate feature for “provoke” then even a Japanese player would be clued in on what you are doing.

The second component of your provoke macro is a timer. Provoke has a refresh time of 30 seconds. Unless you go into the menu and select provoke you have no way of knowing if it’s ready to activate. With a little work in your macro you can know when it’s ready. This is where /wait comes into play. Much like the above section some people like to let the party know when it’s ready and some don’t. It’s up to you. If someone keeps accusing you of not provoking off them, and you know it’s only because the skill wasn’t ready to use, then maybe broadcasting to the party, the time remaining till provoke is ready, is a good idea. We’ll use the above examples and just add onto it.

Prov
Line1: /ja “Provoke” <t>
Line2: /wait 20
Line3: /echo Provoke in 10 sec
Line4: /wait 10
Line5: /echo Provoke ready

The above macro will use the provoke ability on your target, wait 20 seconds then will echo (a message only you see) “Provoke in 10 sec”. It then waits another 10 seconds then echoes “Provoke ready”.

Prov
Line1: /ja “Provoke” <t>
Line2: /p Provoke > <t>!
Line3: /wait 20
Line4: /p Provoke ready in 10 sec.
Line5: /wait 10
Line6: /p Provoke ready.

This is just like the previous macro accept it keeps your party informed at every step.

Now you have your macro ready the next trick is learning when to use it. I play as a WHM so better tactics by actual warriors may benefit you more but I’ll take a shot. There are many variables in play here so there is not simple formula for success. The first thing to remember is it is your job to keep the attention of the enemy. The second thing to remember is if you can’t manage to do so it’s not necessarily your fault. If a BLM is casting attack spells non stop and you can’t keep the enemies off of him let him know. Explain to him that there are limitations to what provoke can do and let him know he needs to hold back some. If they don’t listen well they are probably going to get themselves killed off. If they yell at you too much for your tastes find another group. If you did everything you could then don’t let others make you feel bad about it. Now if it’s a WHM who keeps drawing agro by healing I’ll leave it up to you if you want to suggest they cast fewer or less powerful spells. If both the provoker and the WHM are doing as best they can and you can’t keep the enemies off the WHM odds are you need to fight something else or get more provokers.

There are a few questions you need to go thru when acting as a provoker in a group. Are you the one bringing the enemies to the party? If so is there another provoker in the party with you? If there are multiple provokers then setting up a provoke order can help a lot.

If you are not the one bringing the enemies then you will stay with the part and wait for that person to bring an enemy. If possible they should be someone using a ranged weapon. Unless this is a ranger, ranged attacks typically generate very little agro. I haven’t dealt with high level rangers but I would assume that a provoke when the enemy arrives would still draw the attention of the enemy after an attack by them. When it arrives you use provoke and begin attacking. Any additional provokers should not use their ability unless they need to pull the enemy off of you because you are in danger or if the enemy attacks someone else in the group before your provoke is ready again.

If you are the main provoker and the person bringing the enemies to the party you have 2 options. I’m not sure which tends to work better so you may want to ask other warriors. You can attack with a ranged weapon, bring it back and begin fighting, or you can draw them in with provoke from a distance and begin fighting.

If you draw them in with an attack and your party doesn’t immediately pull it off of you then you have your provoke ready as soon as it turns to attack someone else. If you draw them in with a provoke then there will be 30 seconds when you can’t do anything if it turns against someone else. If you are far enough away from the group that provoke will almost be ready by the time you get to them then by all means save the cost of your ranged weapon and just use it. Also I think the range on provoke tends to be shorter than most ranged weapons though I’m not certain. If this is the case then by using a ranged weapon there is less chance you will be hurt when you get to the party. From a WHM stand point it’s always better if you don’t have to use a cure spell the second the puller gets back to the party. That tends to get the WHM smacked by the enemy.

A provoke order is very handy when there is more than one person in the party with the ability. This prevents one party member drawing agro, having both warriors provoking at the same time, then immediately having someone else (or the same person) get agro and have nobody to get it off them for 30 seconds. If you alternate who provokes then you can keep things off the more fragile party members easier. Party members are often classified as primary and secondary tanks. The primary tank is ideally the person best suited for taking constant attacks from the enemy. They may have the most HP and or the best defenses. The secondary tank is someone with provoke better suited to take hits than any but the primary tank. If the primary tank can’t provoke something off someone then it is the job of the secondary to do so. Then when able the primary will provoke the enemy off the secondary. This method can also be used with more than just 2 provokers.

Over time you will learn what tends to draw agro onto other party members. Hopefully they will as well and learn to avoid this as much as possible. Big heals, big damage spells and special attacks are the main things to look out for. If you can try to have the rest of the party stand on the opposite side as the primary tank. A rogue in the group may need a different setup but as a general rule it’s easier to see the enemy turn and hit someone else than it is to realize it is attacking the person standing along side you. It makes realizing when you need to hit the provoke key that much faster.

Right before your party begins a skill chain I would suggest at least one of the tanks provokes. It can be very frustrating to be mid skill chain and have the monster run out of range to attack the WHM who needed to heal or the BLM who was adding magic bursts. If you can hold him in place long enough to finish the chain it is well worth it.

As the primary tank your gear is very important. It does no good to be able to hold the enemies attention if you have too few HP or too low of a defense for the party to keep you alive. It can be very expensive but if your gear is not of high enough quality it could easily cost you a spot in a party.

That’s about all the input I can offer on provoke and a warrior’s role. I’ll have to let you track down info on weapon skills somewhere else. I’ve already churned out a novel on provoke. Good luck.

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