New Tank Advice

[Deceptus]

The advanced stuff

- Your awareness level is off the charts. You do not tunnel vision, you know exactly what is going on the entire time with your party, you use Cover and Clemency on party members who are in risk of dying to incoming damage. While I said lines above that you have to learn your best dps rotation (which for Paladins involve the use of Holy Spirit), if you notice that you have a weak healer in your party, then you want to save some of your MP to throw a Clemency here or there.

There have been countless occasions when my healer died mid fight during a boss encounter and I kept the 2 dps and myself alive by saving my mana and using Clemency on them as well as rotating my defensive cooldowns.

100% right with this statement. I've done the exact thing where the healer dies on a dungeon boss and I go into survival mode, Clemency the DPS and heal myself in the process, 1-2 Riot Blade for MP regen (Atonement post 76), repeat.

Although there are people who say you're a bad tank for using Clemency. A good tank does his best not to die and uses every skill available at his disposal. If they notice they have a weak(er) healer and are about to die, they'd be a fool to not use Clemency to keep themselves alive. Because a dead tank is a dead group.

[Melichoir]

....A good tank does his best not to die and uses every skill available at his disposal. If they notice they have a weak(er) healer and are about to die, they'd be a fool to not use Clemency to keep themselves alive. Because a dead tank is a dead group.

I along with a few others have said this, but pretty much this. If youre gonna take any piece of advice, it would be pretty much do what you got to do and use whatever you have in your toolkit to stay alive and keep aggro. Getting good damage or being fancy with your class is secondary to you keeping aggro and the boss pointed in the right direction or placed in the right spot. And you cant do either of those if your dead cause you keep eating Tank Busters or are thinking "Nah, I dont have to do 'x', the healer/dps will handle that cause Ive got more important things to do like get high numbers."

[LineageRazor]

Kewitt already mentioned this, but to go into a bit more detail...

Iron Will is vitally important for tanking. It gives you a steep enmity advantage over other players in your party, and will help you get and keep the attention of enemies in a hurry. The ability has no downsides whatsoever. It USED to be the case that putting on your tanking stance reduced the amount of damage you deal, and some online guides might be out of date and tell you so, but this is no longer the case. Iron Will has no damage penalty.

The only time you should not be using Iron Will is if you're in a party with another tank, and that tank is acting as the main tank for the group (with you as off-tank). Even then, it's not a terrible idea to allow the other tank to get a bit of a lead, and then put up Iron Will (in fact, some fights expect it, and will throw heavy attacks at the number one and two Enmity leaders).

As an early player, the first occasion in which you will be required to be in a party with another tank is Castrum Meridianum, one of two dungeons at the end of the original Main Scenario missions. This dungeon is easy enough that you can experiment with sharing enmity duties with another tank without a lot of danger. (There's one, even earlier optional eight-man instance, as well - the Guildhest "Solemn Trinity", which is totally optional, and the nature of the content expects both tanks to split up and take on separate groups of enemies, so it's not much different from four-man content.)

Also, keep in mind that whenever you enter instanced content that is below your current level, all of your buffs are removed, INCLUDING Iron Will. It's EXTREMELY common for tanks - even very experienced tanks - to forget that their taking stance is down when they begin a dungeon or other instance. To help combat this, I recommend you get into the habit of checking your stance whenever you enter an instance, whether it's below-level or not.

Edit: A bit on Shirk:

When you start doing multi-tank content, get used to using Shirk. It is often the case that part of the fight will require that the Off-tank and the Main tank swap places (with off becoming main, and vice versa). Use Provoke to become Main tank - and if you're becoming Off-tank, use Shirk afterwards to give the Main Tank a solid lead. It's not always necessary, thanks to the enmity bonus they added to Provoke, but better safe than sorry.

It also allows you to keep your tank stance on after a swap, since it transfers enough enmity that odds are very slim that you'll catch up and overtake the main tank.