Paladin Add Tanking 6+ Mobs Help

Last night, I did Castrum for the first time. The other 7 players were all speed runners and knew what they were doing. On the first attempt of the first boss, I was on add duty. I only kept enmity on 3 mobs because I didn't know there would be 6 adds. The group fell apart within half a minute of the adds spawning and wiped. The wipe was obviously my fault and I felt bad. There were no more wipes for the rest of the run but I could only get enmity on 4 or 5 adds at a time after spamming flashes and shield lobs. I tried the best I could and the team basically carried me through whether I like it or not because most of them were over geared and they knew how to beat the dungeon. Shield lob takes 2.5 seconds to perform so if you purely shield lob and have perfect timing, it will be 15 seconds before you have lobbed 6 adds. Flash is very limited in range and is very situational on gathering adds fast. Paladin seems very difficult to quickly get and then maintain enmity on packs of 6 or more adds.

Does anyone have advice on how I or others that are new to full-party dungeons can quickly get enmity on packs of 6 or more adds and then maintain it?

In a CM speed run, ideally all you'll be doing if you're on add duty is grabbing them with flash, grouping them together and either having the BLM (if you have one) sleep them or drop a Circle of Scorn and just kite them while the rest of the group burns down the boss.

In most speed runs I've done it's usually a single tank and healer and the rest DD. This comes down to either how quick your support reacts to the adds (sleeping or killing them) or how your healer positions them self in relation to where you're tanking. My whm usually stands diagonally behind me so as to make the adds path through me giving me time to pick them up without having to move the boss around.

There are two main tools at your disposal for AoE hate get, Circle of Scorn and Flash. So you need to use those when they are up.

Watch your enmity meters and look at which mobs are getting hit by the DPS (you'll see their health dropping) first of all and use your main enmity combo to get greater hate on those mobs.

After that, you're just making sure that your hate stays above the healers with Flash and Circle of Scorn.

Thanks for the replies. I was in duty finder in the run I did so there were 2 tanks 2 healers 4 DPS. It looks like I need to really be alert to where my healer(s) are and use flash to get adds initially, then I like to pop fight or flight if it's up, then use circle of scorn, then rage of halone combo on the DPS targets and flash when needed to keep hate above healers.

Its just a practice thing, really - the first time you do CM or the other pre-end-game dungeons its going to be a little shaky as you learn where things spawn, etc.

It will depend on your group too..if you cannot get the mobs wrangled before they murder a WHM healing the tank, that's your problem and you just need some more practice : D. If you can't keep the mobs off 5 dps dpsing 5 different mobs, you can't do much about it - just try to focus on getting the attention of anything going after healers, really squishy dps, or the other tank.

Obviously if you can perfectly execute, take aggro from all 6 mobs and keep them the whole time, you are awesome - but its not always possible. Flash>CoS>Flash>SW>Flash>Flash>Flash>Flash will NOT keep aggro over a bard going full bore on a single one of those targets if they are at least as geared as you, its just the way of the world.

PS I would not use the main enmity combo while you have at least 80% of mobs in range of flash and you still have MP. If a mob gets loose go Provoke+Shield Lob then go back to flashing. Specifically on this fight, use Riot Blade combo to get your MP back between add spawns.