Has anyone said "know what? I'm not a tank!"

[Cabalabob]

I'm only level 39 RUN but thus far I've felt like the job is a very poor tank. I feel more like some kind of burst damage dealer.

So was wondering if anyone has tried just being a DD RUN? Like RUN/DRK or something? Use last resort for the haste and lunges for damage and just save your wards for AoE spells?

I mean RUN could turn out to be an awesome DD that can just cover itself from magic damage. Like how NIN was supposed to be a ranged DD but ended up being a tank.

[Peepiopi]

No. Rune Fencer is a tank, so I play it as a tank.... by myself..

[Damane]

I'm only level 39 RUN but thus far I've felt like the job is a very poor tank. I feel more like some kind of burst damage dealer.

So was wondering if anyone has tried just being a DD RUN? Like RUN/DRK or something? Use last resort for the haste and lunges for damage and just save your wards for AoE spells?

I mean RUN could turn out to be an awesome DD that can just cover itself from magic damage. Like how NIN was supposed to be a ranged DD but ended up being a tank.

no offense, but RUN makes a very weak DD compared to other DDs like WAR MNK SAM DRK DRG

[Kimjongil]

I think you are a noob. ou are lvl 39. Not even hgh enough to sub the job, or get the majority of the JT, JA or spells. Low lvl jobs before lvl 60 don't do much thn melee. A prime example could been dark knight. From lvl 20 to 50 or so it would use a great axe due to Stumwind double hit weapon skill. But 60+ it get spinning slash and guitone. You need to lvl up more.

[Cabalabob]

I think you are a noob. ou are lvl 39. Not even hgh enough to sub the job, or get the majority of the JT, JA or spells. Low lvl jobs before lvl 60 don't do much thn melee. A prime example could been dark knight. From lvl 20 to 50 or so it would use a great axe due to Stumwind double hit weapon skill. But 60+ it get spinning slash and guitone. You need to lvl up more.

Doesn't matter what level I am, I don't feel like a tank, it's like saying "WHM shouldn't feel like a healer til lvl 60". I've not experienced this with any other job I've levelled up except RUN, the closest thing would be WAR up to qufim where you'd occasionally be asked to tank. A job shouldn't have to wait til level 60 to feel like the role it's supposed to fill.


no offense, but RUN makes a very weak DD compared to other DDs like WAR MNK SAM DRK DRG

Again I'm not very high level so maybe it doesn't scale well, but thus far with a weaponskill, lunge and swipe I can pull off some big burst numbers.

[Damane]

Doesn't matter what level I am, I don't feel like a tank, it's like saying "WHM shouldn't feel like a healer til lvl 60". I've not experienced this with any other job I've levelled up except RUN, the closest thing would be WAR up to qufim where you'd occasionally be asked to tank. A job shouldn't have to wait til level 60 to feel like the role it's supposed to fill.



Again I'm not very high level so maybe it doesn't scale well, but thus far with a weaponskill, lunge and swipe I can pull off some big burst numbers.

I am talking from a llvl 99 perspectiv. RUN can NOT compete with other serious DDs, not in any way. it lacks the job traits for it. If it subs WAR it lacks hasso from SAM, if it subs SAM it lacks Berserk and Double attack from WAR, if it subs DRK it is has "berserk" and "hasso" for 3 min. If you want to use double axes to make use of awesome ruinator it has to sub /nin... again no berserk or DA.

Its a tank job, and atm its not very good at that either compared to pld :/

low lvls are a very bad indication to say if a job is good as a Damage dealer, Jobs start to drift out at lvl 60~ then again drasticly at lvl 75-80

it cant even compete against the lower DDs.

[Brightshadow]

Hey Cabalabob :D, I can see why you would want it to be a Damage Dealer, but in reality we do need more tanks in this game than just Paladin and Ninja.

[Blah]

All right here's a question...erm statement then question: it appears the way they started it out it was to be a "magic tank" (people I know that played it right off noted that) if it does that extremely well then...why try...to...make...it...a "physical damage" tank? I mean I thought they wanted it to be the magic tank not tank tank and unless there's absolutely no end game scenario that needs a magic tank then I guess I can see why people are maybe complaining and in that case they could, I don't know, give it a job ability to....maybe...switch...to.physical runes or something like that?

[saevel]

RUN isn't really a tank due to how damage and enmity works in FFXI. There are very few situations that a RUN would ever be better then a PLD, and those involved a very specific enfeeble effect that prevents the PLD from shield blocking. Otherwise no, you won't be a "tank" in the traditional sense, you have paper thin defense and thus lose CE far to fast. You will get an ability that makes you a parry god, for 90s with a 5min recast.

Now for what RUN is really good at, support melee. RUN is in the same category that BLU and DNC are, they support other melee's while also providing some damage. You'll never be as good as the heavy guys but you'll provide enough damage to justify your slot because your also keeping them alive longer via two abilities. First is Valiance which allows you to give everyone in your party a 60% reduction in magic damage from a specific element. That 60% is outside the regular MDT reduction term, the only thing comparable to Aegis which is 40%. So yes you can make your entire party stronger then an Aegis PLD to a specific magic element, while yourself is pretty much immune to that element. It lasts 3:15 min with a 5min recast, so there is a cool down period involved. You will be ok as vallation lasts 2min but your party is going to be extra careful. That is when your other ability comes into play, One For All. OFA generates a magic stoneskin effect that's pretty strong. It only lasts 30s and has a 5m recast, but that's usually long enough to absorb a few smaller attacks or one big one. You can also lower the enemies magic resistance or vulnerability to a specific magic type, the effect doesn't last long but it's pretty potent.

After that the rest of your abilities of focused on making you really hard to kill with a specific magic type. Of note is your two SP abilities. Elemental Sforzo is just magic version of invincible compete with super hate generation, you become immune to all forms of magic damage, of course your still made of paper. The second one (can't remember name) is interesting, it's a 30s severe reduction in the enemies magic accuracy. Pop it on an NM and nothing it does will land for full effect if it even lands at all, kind of a reverse elemental seal. Only 30s but really useful if you know something nasty is coming.

Unfortunately RUN is too situational to bring to most group events. It's typically a drag on the party, but when it's useful it's VERY useful to have. New Skirmish and Shark Delve runs are perfect examples of when RUN is useful.


All right here's a question...erm statement then question: it appears the way they started it out it was to be a "magic tank" (people I know that played it right off noted that) if it does that extremely well then...why try...to...make...it...a "physical damage" tank? I mean I thought they wanted it to be the magic tank not tank tank and unless there's absolutely no end game scenario that needs a magic tank then I guess I can see why people are maybe complaining and in that case they could, I don't know, give it a job ability to....maybe...switch...to.physical runes or something like that?

Because there are very few boss's in this game that only have magic attacks. They often have high damage physical ones too. To make it worse RUN can only defense against a single type of magic at once, and there are nine with one being non-elemental that RUN can't do sh!t about. So if your target is highly elemental specific, then your golden, but if it's got access to a few physical moves along with two or more elemental attacks with enfeebling effects, well now your f*cked.

[Brightshadow]

I don't understand why people want them to be damage dealers would you prefer to compete against the 18 damage dealers in the game, or would you prefer to compete against 2 tanks lol.

[Cabalabob]

I don't understand why people want them to be damage dealers would you prefer to compete against the 18 damage dealers in the game, or would you prefer to compete against 2 tanks lol.

I don't want it to be a DD, same way I didn't want SMN to be a healer when I was levelling it up, but fact is I don't think it works as a tank so I wanted to see how people thought it would fair as a DD.

[Blah]

Well if that's the case saevel then the way they can maybe "fix" it is give it, erm physical runes (for lack of a better name) they would have to be quicker on their toes but like they could have them put up magic runes when the enemy is trying to nuke and enfeeble and then when they try to whale (yes I said whale) on them switch to physical runes...let me guess they have not even one physical rune right now right?

[Lithera]

The have no physical blocking runes. SE while snorting pixie sticks or w/e said hey let's make another tank that can tank the crap out of magic flinging mobs and then not put in any nms that stick to only magic and maybe physical auto attacks. So unless the end baddy to the SoA story line is like this it seems many a RUN get told to stand in the corner and look purdy while the mnks go all crazy on the mob's butt.

[Cljader1]

Hey Cab, once you get run to lvl 75 it'll turn into a tank. At early lvl's it is a burst DD kinda like a drk but once you get your merit JA's "Inspiration and Battuta" and your full compliment of spells it will tank.

[Raging_Oracle]

Well DD-wise you lose to any natural dual-wielder, you swing to slow -even with haste, you have no double attack traits, you cant counter -which when I google or youtube "fencer" it sure looks like they parry -> counter a whole lot, you don't hit nearly as hard as a drk, you don't tp like a sam.

Get to much mob attention and you will see that you have almost the same parry proc ceiling as any other job with a high score in parrying - which when I google or youtube "fencer" it sure looks like they parry a whole lot -> counter a whole lot, functionally mnk blocks more than you parry - they numbers can say what se wants them to say but playing the job next to a mnk will show ya., a pld procs block way more than you proc parry against the monsters that count and thats even without ochain.

I have tanked alot with the job, but people are so used to seeing plds 100% block rate or NIN 100% shadowtank that anything reasonably below those standards is considered a fail. That is SE fault. Now they are dragging there backsides the improve the job with garbage additions. VP -- gimme a break that what whm is for. Swipe - gimmie a break that's what ele magic is for. let me stop.. don't get me started on this in your post OP. Im so disappointed in SE for releasing this job and not fixing it to handle mobs in the expansion for which it was released.

DD: average - drg, war, drk, mnk , dnc, good nin, thf with range, any ranger with a pulse, smn, blu, blm, sam, will destroy you parse-wise if they have any sort of skill.

Tank: average 10 years ago, below average today - but I will say this- it works very well in then new skirmish area, they purposefully placed single element mobs in there and that is its niche. Your still not gonna solo imps that matter since they were ridiculous and failed to provide at least the same mdb traits that whm enjoy.. go figure that .. magic tank with subpar mdb traits.:confused:

[Reaper]

Well Your still not gonna solo imps that matter since they were ridiculous and failed to provide at least the same mdb traits that whm enjoy.. go figure that .. magic tank with subpar mdb traits.:confused:

rune gets 22 mdb whm get 20 mdb >.> atleast last I checked it did
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115399-Rune-Fencer-Findings?p=5657419&viewfull=1#post5657419
did this change?

[Babekeke]

Quite frankly, at 39 the only way that you can tank is by subbing WAR for voke, but your def is terrible, your eva isn't brilliant and you have no shadows, so there's not much point in you taking hate. After 45, you get flash, so you can make a fair tank by subbing NIN. Your eva is much higher than PLDs and you have a good parry rate, so with shadows, you won't take much damage. As levels get higher, you'll also find yourself on plenty of fast cast gear, making shadows easier to maintain. But the core of the matter is, as Sevael said, that RUN is designed for a certain niche of mobs, and you just don't encounter them whilst levelling. Maybe goblins, you're useful for AOE fire defence, or vs crabs/pugs AOE water def, but it's not game-changing.
At 70 you can try seigan tanking as /SAM, but it can be unreliable. Rampage probably offers better Damage than any GS WS as well, though my axe skill was fairly terrible when I levelled RUN so I don't know what weapons are available.


DD: average - drg, war, drk, mnk , dnc, good nin, thf with range, any ranger with a pulse, smn, blu, blm, sam, will destroy you parse-wise if they have any sort of skill.

Am I missing something? I just got back from a 4 month break. I've been a THF main for about 8 years now, and apart from when the merit WS first came out and I messed about with Last Stand for a bit before deciding that there are far few reasons to use /ra on THF except for status bolts, I've never used ranged on THF for DD purposes.

[Kaiichi]

I read through this form, as well as taken RUN to 99 and have acquired 4/5 of my AF. I don't think anyone really knows how RUN is actually supposed to work just yet, even after a year. I personally feel that t should have healing magic, or a few more levels of there chakra type rune thingy to heal HP. I also would Like to see those Physical Rune come to light. SE had come foreword to say that thy had hoped we would adopt NIN or SAM as a sub, But w/o provoke, I really don't see it happening. I personally like the whole perry god thing, but even that is a bit lack luster compared to using a shield. As fr enmity, maybe a good fix would be having Runes actually generate more, that way we could use /SAM and ride segin. Again this is just my view on the matter, respond accordingly.

[Kanryu]

I can tell you for sure I just tanked a 6 man Marjami and Kamihr delve RUN/BLU. It is not only doable but easily possible. Phalanx + Cocoon + Minne5 + Scherzo provide a fairly significant amount of damage mitigation to physical if you would be hit at all with Battuta, Swordplay, and Foil.

Actual threat management is not even a little bit of an issue with the ability to reach the 80% fast cast cap. You can easily spam high threat spells, Flash, Foil, Blank Gaze, Jettatura. Not to mention Gambit/Rayke/Lunge/Swipe/OneforAll have ridiculous spike emnity. We may well have the best AoE threat generation in the entire game between Poison Breath, Soporific, and Sheep Song. If you really felt the need you could even toss on a Great Axe and Fell Cleave.

Even /DRK is viable the same way it once was with NIN/DRK so long ago. Granted your spell choices are different now, but you will still be able to spam Foil, Flash, Stun and Drain/Aspir. Not to mention it gives you some Absorbs including TP.

/SAM is the DD sub. You CAN tank on it for sure with Decoy Shot setup. Seigan will give you a decent bit of mitigation and Foil/Phalanx will have to cover the rest.

As for the healing aspect... you don't need it. That is what you have mages for. If you ever feel like you need to heal yourself because you are going to die... get better mages. Sorry but thats all I got. Embolden Regen4 can go a long way to mitigate what little regular melee hits you take but if you end up taking big TP moves to the face... the healer has gotta be on that. PLD does not solo heal itself in any event so why should RUN.

This job is not meant to be PLD/DNC go solo all the things. It is what it is, and its quite good at the role they originally defined it as with the sole exception of things that use multiple elements of magic at a time... which none of the new delves do. You can even tank some of the AAs on RUN without too much issue. I know for a fact Cloudsplitter is mitigated very heavily be Tellus, and that you can Pflug + Tenebrae to prevent the charm on the AA MR. I haven't gotten the chance to test on any of the others but I'd bet the overall effect is similar with the exception of TT changing elements at random.

[Cabalabob]

About the physical runes ideas flying around, I had an idea a while back that would keep RUN a magic tank while also making them able to deal with physical auto attacks competently. Cause let's face it, this game is not designed for a magic tank, even the elementals use physical attacks! In ffxiv if a mob is a Mage it's a Mage, it spams magic and nothing else, RUN would be right at home in ffxiv. But this isn't the case in ffxi.

So I had a thought, instead of physical runes. How about a low level effusion maybe level 30? that does no damage, but adds the element of your first harboured rune to the enemy to replace their auto attack.

So for example. You could have 1 earth rune and 1 wind rune harboured then use this ability, the earth rune would be used and make the enemies auto attacks earth based elemental damage instead of physical. So your harboured wind rune would then lower the damage received from the enemy auto attacks.

It wouldn't effect special attacks so foil would still be useful on that front. And maybe make it generate enmity or something.. RUN needs a low level hate tool.

[Babekeke]

While a nice idea, if it's lvl 30 then noone plays RUN anymore, and you just use MNK/RUN as default. People are already doing this anyway but this would just increase it.

[Blah]

I was actually thinking...if they made Rune Sentinel-esque (like in ffxiii) for magic and made one of the other tanks Sentinel-esque for physical damage then other jobs would easily be more invited, as long as they weren't too gimped. Ah but more than Likely SE would ruin it somehow, like make it only block 25% for the party or something dumb like that.

[Babekeke]

So, RUN is supposed to tank, yet when you look at the 10 pieces of 119 JSE (AF + Relic) only 1 of them gives any enmity +.... WTF gives SE?????

[Lithera]

They want RuNs to use those JAs that's what. Lol though seriously idk if they know what exactly they are trying to do with the newest two jobs.

[Babekeke]

If they want us to use the new JAs to keep hate then they need to learn what everyone is doing with a BRD in every party all of the time.

(Hint SE: Every other job is capping delay reduction. Using JAs under these circumstances leaves you with less enmity than those that keep swinging and WSing)

[Urthdigger]

Old thread, I know, but I'm having similar issues leveling RUN. It's ostensibly a tank, but my best armor is stuff BST or DRG can use, no native tools for enmity, and no defensive skills to speak of except elemental resistance. I know if I dared to try and tank as this in an old-school pre-abyssea xp party I'd get ripped to shreds, and currently my trusts steal hate constantly unless I'm /war for provoke.

I'm only level 40 at the moment, but it seems silly that a supposed tank is no more defensive than any other DD/WAR.

[dasva]

Um Run has the best native hate tools in the game outside of maybe blu.... especially now that dmg enmity has taken such a hit if trusts are easily taking hate away from it then they would have an even easier time against a pld if you played them the same

[Glamdring]

the problem with run tanks is they made a tank for a limited pool of prey, basically magic users who concentrate on 1-2 elements. in those instances they are very effective, elsewhere not so much. it's difficult to effectively tank anything else on rune. Strangely however, Amchuchu trust IS an effective tank, and would be even better if he ever used his WS. But pld can be almost as effective against magic and is easier to run as a tank. Rune tanking is akin workwise to tanking on dancer in the current hate system, it can be done but expect to mash ALOT of buttons.

at your level concentrate on worms, elementals and certain prey whose TP moves stick to 1 or 2 elements for damage. subbing whm or rdm allows you to cure for holding hate, but you need to be fast on the draw, trusts will otherwise beat you to the cure. if you are playing with other PLAYERS they will need to modify their play if they expect you to try to hold hate. old school SATA with a thf is not out of the question either but note the nerf to enmity from damage done. one thing, you will need a refresher if you plan to tank at all levels, rune can't keep pace with the casting they need to do, even after they get refresh if trying to hold hate.

[Darthmaull]

the problem with run tanks is they made a tank for a limited pool of prey, basically magic users who concentrate on 1-2 elements. in those instances they are very effective, elsewhere not so much. it's difficult to effectively tank anything else on rune. Strangely however, Amchuchu trust IS an effective tank, and would be even better if he ever used his WS. But pld can be almost as effective against magic and is easier to run as a tank. Rune tanking is akin workwise to tanking on dancer in the current hate system, it can be done but expect to mash ALOT of buttons.

at your level concentrate on worms, elementals and certain prey whose TP moves stick to 1 or 2 elements for damage. subbing whm or rdm allows you to cure for holding hate, but you need to be fast on the draw, trusts will otherwise beat you to the cure. if you are playing with other PLAYERS they will need to modify their play if they expect you to try to hold hate. old school SATA with a thf is not out of the question either but note the nerf to enmity from damage done. one thing, you will need a refresher if you plan to tank at all levels, rune can't keep pace with the casting they need to do, even after they get refresh if trying to hold hate.

No. Just no. Rune if played to tank and not like a job with a 2 handed weapon using /Sam it can hold hate quite fine. /Nin for anything that is not aoe crazy and for other NM's you should be /blu. Turtle up. You can hold hate fine. And use the abilities and spells you were given. Rune is a tank job. Period

[Urthdigger]

Um Run has the best native hate tools in the game outside of maybe blu.... especially now that dmg enmity has taken such a hit if trusts are easily taking hate away from it then they would have an even easier time against a pld if you played them the same

What native hate tools? Only one I know of is my move that gives elemental resist based on runes, and that's got a hefty cooldown.

[dasva]

What native hate tools? Only one I know of is my move that gives elemental resist based on runes, and that's got a hefty cooldown.

Flash, foil, swordplay, One For All, Battuta, Liement, One For All, Rayke, Gambit, Valiance, Pflug, and Vallation are all some of the better enmity abilities/spells in the game. My pld wishes it had enmity gain anywhere near what run or blu can do