Basic Tank Etiquette

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Nice!

An addendum to the 'face enemies away from everyone else' rule, once you've pulled a group and you've positioned yourself appropriately, try not to move unless you have to. Dodge AoEs when you need to of course, but try to stand right back to where you were afterward. If you move around the enemies follow you, making it harder for melee DPS to hit positionals.

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Yep, I did figure that piece on my own. ;)

I think the boss battles will take a bit of learning too. Like how to manage adds. I left my spot next to the big boss pretty quick in my one run so far to gather the adds because they spawned next to and immediately swarmed the healer... but what if it's like 1 or 2 that don't really move (ie. the things making the boss invincible in Tam-Tara Deepcroft) on the other side of the arena? Do I drag the boss/other adds with me or let the DPS go dispose of them quickly and take a few hits? Probably one of those "follow your gut" things.

It depends on the boss, and a lot of it is intuition and/or familiarity with a fight. A lot of times the adds on bosses don't need to be tanked at all though. Often you can keep focusing on the boss and just let the DPS burn down the adds.

If it's your first time tanking, I highly recommend running dungeons like Halatali specificially. That dungeon has a ton of wandering mobs that can get caught in your tanking and it lets you get a better handle on it especially with facing the mobs away from the party. A big reason I also say Halatali over Satasha/Copperbell Mines is the the dungeon is also much shorter then either of those. So if you're leveling a tank it gives you a quick run through of how to tank and what you need to look out for. If you feel daring you can also pull more then just one set of mob there, but I would only do that when you properly manage aggro/use your cooldowns, and let your healer know you will.

But the absolute most important thing to do when tanking is let people know that you're still learning. Cannot stress that enough and most people will adjust to you if you're having trouble and offer you advice.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

But the absolute most important thing to do when tanking is let people know that you're still learning. Cannot stress that enough and most people will adjust to you if you're having trouble and offer you advice.

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I only had time to sneak in one dungeon run yesterday after leveling Gladiator to 15+ ... but I did mention I was learning at the start, and I'll continue to til I have a better handle on everything. I like to think that's why the Lancer started running ahead though, trying to take matters into his own hands. :D "I'm not dealing with some new, crappy tank that's still learning... I'll just do it!"

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Originally Posted by TheForce

4. Always face enemies away from your party.

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This. And keep them facing that way. Was leveling monk over the weekend and I had plenty of low level tanks who would keep rotating mobs around when I was trying to flank, as if they were desperately trying to always face their back towards me. Don't do that ^^

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Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

This. And keep them facing that way. Was leveling monk over the weekend and I had plenty of low level tanks who would keep rotating mobs around when I was trying to flank, as if they were desperately trying to always face their back towards me. Don't do that ^^

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It can be a little tricky between trying to get aggro on a bunch of scattered enemies, recognizing where your teammates are, and where you need to pull enemies to in order to get things situated properly. Especially if teammates are impatient and all over the place themselves. Now I'm still new to this (haven't played much in the last week) and I'm still only tanking low level dungeons but sometimes the mobs are dead/near dead by the time I finally get the positioning right. :D