A Quick Tanking Question

Hello.

I started tanking recently. I've more or less got the hang of it now, but there are minute things that are bothering me, including:

1. Do tanks naturally build more enmity than any other role, even when they are not using enmity-building attacks? I'm just curious, since I seem to be holding my own, aggro-wise, with the DPS players, even when I'm not using enmity attacks. In non-trial/raid situations, I often turn off tank stance after establishing aggro and use my defensives to offset the loss of the stance's damage reduction in exchange for higher DPS; in the case of DRK, this means I'm only using my Syphon combos, so I build no extra enmity). For example, for leveling dungeon bosses I will start out in Grit with two Power Slash combos, enhanced by Dark Arts. After that, I'll turn off Grit and go full DPS while covering damage reduction with my defensive cooldowns, since there are typically no critical mechanics to save them for otherwise. By the end of the fight, the DPS have often caught up to my aggro, but it takes them the entire fight to do so. If the DPS are good, I sometimes need an extra Power Slash combo at the start to make it until the end without switching back to Grit.

If anyone could answer this, that would be awesome.

Thanks.

Tanks don't naturally build increased emnity without tank stance or emnity abilities. At lower levels DPS generally don't do enough to threaten taking aggro as long as you use one or two aggro abilities per pull/every so often during a boss fight, the initial ones can generate a lot, like a tank stance'd butcher's block from a warrior can hold hate for a while if you just plain dps after it.

Gets riskier the higher you get though and at 60, mobs live longer, DPS gets higher, you'll generally have to use some form of emnity gain whether emnity abilities or just tank stance

Once you get your tank stance, everything about enmity becomes cookie cutter.

I'm actually a Lv58 DRK at the moment. Only 35 PLD and 32 WAR though. So the examples I'm giving are from dungeons like Dusk Vigil up to Vault.

Even at 58, if you open up with a few enmity generators and consistently dps after that you should be fine. From my experience about 80% of DPS at that level are really bad/low ( May just be my luck ), so with your opening emnity generators+your normal dps aggro you should hold for a while

All damage and healing builds enmity, but there are some tank skills that add extra enmity.

Here is an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/wiki/enmity. This is more than likely out of date, but it should give a general basis of how to think of aggro in this game.

You don't naturally get more enmity outside of tank stance. The thing with enmity in FFXIV is that it's permanent, unlike in some other MMOs, in which you lose enmity as you take damage, etc.

The amount of enmity you generate by using your enmity combo in tank stance is pretty massive, as both the enmity modifiers in both the stances and the attacks are pretty big. I believe DRK's Spninning Slash is x3.5, while Power Slash is x5.5 enmity, x6.5 when using Dark Arts (not much of a gain, tbh). This is then multiplied by Grit's enmity modifier, which iirc is x2.7. Also, everything you do inside Grit (any oGCD ability) also gets the x2.7 modifier, so Scourge (rip as of SB), Dark Passenger, Low Blow, Reprisal, etc, generate almost thrice as much enmity as they normally would.

Meanwhile, enmity generated normally by any attack is only half of the actual action's effect, both for attacks and healing spells. So a WHM casting Cure II and healing you for 7000 generates 3500 points of enmity. If you hit an enemy with Power Slash in Grit and you deal 2000 damage, you're generating 35100 points of enmity if you used Dark Arts on it. Literally ten times as much as that one Cure II.

That's the main reason why it takes the DPS and healers a while to catch up: the enmity cushion you build with your enmity opener is pretty massive due to the multipliers.

Once you take Grit off, though, your attacks will only generate half the amount of damage in enmity, so that's why the DPS catch up to you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

The thing with enmity in FFXIV is that it's permanent, unlike in some other MMOs, in which you lose enmity as you take damage, etc.

The amount of enmity you generate by using your enmity combo in tank stance is pretty massive, as both the enmity modifiers in both the stances and the attacks are pretty big. I believe DRK's Spninning Slash is x3.5, while Power Slash is x5.5 enmity, x6.5 when using Dark Arts (not much of a gain, tbh). This is then multiplied by Grit's enmity modifier, which iirc is x2.7. Also, everything you do inside Grit (any oGCD ability) also gets the x2.7 modifier, so Scourge (rip as of SB), Dark Passenger, Low Blow, Reprisal, etc, generate almost thrice as much enmity as they normally would.

Meanwhile, enmity generated normally by any attack is only half of the actual action's effect, both for attacks and healing spells. So a WHM casting Cure II and healing you for 7000 generates 3500 points of enmity. If you hit an enemy with Power Slash in Grit and you deal 2000 damage, you're generating 35100 points of enmity if you used Dark Arts on it. Literally ten times as much as that one Cure II.

That's the main reason why it takes the DPS and healers a while to catch up: the enmity cushion you build with your enmity opener is pretty massive due to the multipliers.

Once you take Grit off, though, your attacks will only generate half the amount of damage in enmity, so that's why the DPS catch up to you.

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Awesome information, thanks! By the sounds of it I should ditch enhancing Power Slash then, since it's a waste of MP at the start. I guess if I'm going in with full MP I could do it once just to get myself off full MP.

I do wish that the enmity meter was easier to read. The fact that it stays a constant size and the value of increments just changes over the course of the fight makes it hard to judge exactly how far ahead I am on enmity, especially when handling multiple opponents.

I recently encountered another question too, if I may:

Awhile back (before I started tanking), I ran a 4-man synced TitanEX with no echo (we cheesed the system to do undersized sync by having 4 players join then drop out). In order to deal with the tank debuff, our tank (PLD) used Hallowed Ground to block one of the tank busters and supposedly timeout the debuff - or that's what I seem to recall the tank saying. However, I've had several people now tell me that Hallowed Ground cannot be used in that way because taking 0 damage will still give you a debuff. That being said, as the healer in that fight, I had a prime vantage point for seeing the tank timeout the debuff (if he hadn't done so, the stacks would have become unmanageable due to the lack of DPS from being undersized.

Who's right here? Can Hallowed Ground actually be used that way?

I have tried tanking TitanEX myself recently and I did notice that the debuffs naturally timeout before the post-ultimate phase begins, so maybe I had just assumed the tank had been using Hallowed Ground to avoid it due to not having the tank's point of view back then.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

Who's right here? Can Hallowed Ground actually be used that way?

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Depends on the specific encounter. For example, Rafflesia will apply her debuff even if you take 0 damage, but ADS will not (even if the 0 damage comes from Stoneskin). I'm not 100% sure about Titan, but I seem to recall him applying his debuff through HG. I think that Phoenix doesn't apply the Revelation debuff through HG, but I don't exactly remember. Basically though, it's a tossup. I think in HW debuffs tend to apply through invincibility though. I expect the same for SB.

Indeed. Some additional effects are nulled if you take 0 damage, some others go through. The same happens with knockbacks: Twintania's divebombs will cause no knockback if you take no damage (either through HG or a buffed shield like Adloquium), but the first and second bosses in the Vault will deal knockback even if you reduce the damage to zero. There's really no way to tell until you try it, so don't be afraid to experiment, etc.

Also, yes, for the most part, you're better off not using Dark Arts on Power Slash. HOWEVER, I don't think we have numbers about the enmity modifiers for Stormblood. The new Job Guides state that the enmity effect on Power Slash has been increased, but it doesn't specify if only the base effect has increased, or if the Dark Arts bonus has also increased. We'll have to wait for the math wizards to dig that info up :).