Low level tanking

I'm fairly new to this game but I have played other MMOs so I know the basics of tanking (how to position, use line of sight, etc.) I rolled a gladiator because I love paladins in other games, but in dungeons I have difficulty keeping monsters off of people. I do shield lob to pull, flash, and the enmity combo, but still there will be a mob that will go after someone else. With provoke being on cooldown this is a bit of a pain.

Everyone has been very nice and understanding so far, and one piece of advice I got was to get better gear, but that's why I am running dungeons, heh. I do as many quests as I can for better gear (as well as the class quest I get every five levels, which helps quite a bit) but I still feel like I am not good enough.

Should I buy gear off of the auction house? Am I doing something wrong? I love paladins and I have already put a lot of effort into both gladiator and conjurer, but I'm half tempted to give up and go dragoon.

Paladin has enmity issues even going into endgame at times. Best advice I can give is to flash 2-3 times on each pull and rotate your enmity combo between each target as you get close to losing them. It's tough and frustrating, but it's doable.

Gladiator have dificulty holding agroo from ppl on early levels, there is not much you can do until you get shieldOat, then it becomes better.
For now try to mix vit/str gear like 3vit an 2 str on accesories an that can help a bit, another thing you can do is mark the mobs so the dps focus on the mob you attacking, so far I think thats about it until you become PLD.
also flash as much as you can, like most of the time.
good luck

Thanks guys. I'll just be patient and see how it goes when I unlock paladin.

More or less what people said above. Flash twice on pull, and rotate your enmity combo on the various mobs , ensuring that your initial target takes the first enmity increasing hit. If you get a black mage aoeing, spam Flash.

as you level up, I would make gear priority: Weapon -> Left side gear (armor) -> accessories. Your weapon should never be more than 4 or 5 levels lower than your character level. (not weapon ilvl, i mean the lv required to equip it). This improves the amount of enmity with every ability you use, including flash.


If you're in Limsa and shout for an armorsmith, you can usually get a full set of HQ gear made much cheaper than what the market board lists them for, at least on my server anyhow. Use the crafted gear to fill in whatever hasn't been upgraded recently through dungeons.

Paladin emnity is pure crap until lvl 40, you aren't doing it wrong, SE did. As you dont get shield oath until 10 levels after the other tanks get thier tank stance, it is just a matter of doing what you can.

Many people in low lvl dungeons are understanding of this. But there are a few things that can help

If you are dealing with aoe. Flash your whole mp bar away. Riot blade had its damage buffed a bit in 3.0 and it gives back a lot of mp. I tend to blow my whole mp bar, then build it back up to full in time for the next pull. I still do this at 60, and rotating goring blade on multiple targets helps pump some good numbers.

If you are wanting to only flash some and have a primary focus, bind kill order markers. Later on people will complain and ignore them, but typically they see a low lvl paladin and understand. *this can be done by making a bar with the assign buttons on them, adding a keybind to the bar, then hiding the bar.* when you get shield oath you can stop

Most of the gear up to level 40 costs peanuts to make and is trivial to HQ for level 60 crafter. 40-50 costs a bit more as it requires non vendor sold ingredients but is still tivial to HQ. If you were on my server I'd do the parts to you purely on material costs or even free if the materials are not hard to come by, hope your server has similar folks.

Despite what people will say about GLA losing aggro when leveling, it really shouldn't happen unless you're messing up. Flash generates 600 potency's worth of enmity which is more than any DPS can do in a GCD before you get Halone or Shield Oath. At worst you could spam Flash on any target. After 26, the entire Halone combo generates over 2000 enmity, meaning that you shouldn't have any trouble at all from 26-40. If you find that you can't hold aggro then either you're not using your enmity abilities correctly or you need to upgrade your gear, especially your weapon. PLD's damage pre-40 isn't low enough that the enmity modifiers are useless.

A well geared synced down dmg who has perfect ted their rotation can easily tear stuff away from gladiator or early paladin tanks who are towards the end of their gear cycle (tank on such a level that new gear is only available on next level). Even if the tank is doing right things. Easy solution is for the dmg to go a bit easy and let the tank get at least the Flash in before they go all out, but many don't pay attention to that. At that point it's playing tag with the monsters which is highly unoptimal for any enmity combos. If the flash wouldn't have such silly delay it would be a bit more bearable.