About co-tanking

Hi everyone,

I've begun tanking with a Paladin last month (first playtrough so i'm kinda green in this game).

I just recently finished the ARR main storyline with the 3 available 8 man contents (1 trial and the two main story dungeons).

I usually spend a lot of time in dungeons and duties and as long as the content is 4 man made I clearly have in mind what's expected from my job (keep aggro, pack enemies, face them wisely, play with OGC rotations to mitigate etc. while doing the most DPS the possible) and is really better than most other tank roles in general MMORPG.

The only thing i dont understand is this: how should i behave in a 8 man party? Who tanks? Who offtanks?

For those 3 activities i've checked on the other tank Stance, if they were in Tank Stance i swapped to DPS (an playing offtank) and the opposite but here what's happened while doing this:

First Time (Garuda): the WAR charged boss in tank stance, i swapped to sword oath, after a while garuda was hitting healer, I checked again and the WAR was in DPS stance with a poor enmity (his bar was yellow while I was targetting boss and almost depleted). So i swapped to tank stance-Provoked Boss-Started MT it 'till the fight ended.

What I dont get here is why this happened.

Second Time went cool in the first 8man dungeon, the DK I met there literaly did all the job while I was barely able to follow the group (probably most were farmers)

Third time (last ARR main scenario dungeon) another WAR MT all the place BUT Ultima Weapon, he didn't even tried that. As soon as i realized he was NOT going to i did that and tanked it (with no problems since they melt it down). As before i fail to see the reason.


While i'm not sure about the first WAR in garuda's fight (he looked greener than me) i'm pretty sure the other two were not noobs and it's rather me that didnt do what was expected of me.

Is there some general rule one follows in this kind of contents? If the same thing that happened with Garuda should happen on a hard trial it won't probably end THAT well :D

Thanks in advance for any advice

the problem nowadays is u can't tell who's mt just looking at the stance - since war mostly tank in dps stance for cleaves even if they take the MT position. since they "balanced" the tanks its mostly War>Drk>Pala for MTs in casual grp content so - until 5.0 u shouldn't maintank that often in 8 grp content. aside of that no matter which tank you get paired with u will often face bad enmity control on mt-side (to greedy for dps) or heal aggro from spammed hots (brain dead healer). so being a pala knowing you are generally the offtank didn't prevent you to keep your eyes open and train reflexes for an emergency provoke/ultimate to save the day if needed - else focus on your dmg rota and shield/def-support. ^^

Playing Pala as Offtank is kinda fun tho... you got massiv CDs and a Skillgauge which make u nearly unbreakable on the fly, u can cheat mechanics and aoes easily - and those who don't want to freak out can optimize dmg mig and support with shield/block-skills.

nvm hope u will enjoy HW and SB like u did with ARR - all the best :3

edit: oh and about ultima weapon in msq dng... it will always aggro a healer until its guard is broken by hydelyn. there are several bosses who comes with auto-enmity or enmity-reset later in the game - u will get used to those as well, tho he actually was aware of it - its not worth to atk the big boy for the first 10+ seconds ;3

Right so tanking in this game, you only ever start the fight in tank stance, after you have established aggro (usually only takes a few gcds) , you switch to dps stance, at level 50 WARs dps stance is just not being in tank stance. So if a WAR pulls then turns off tank stance, they arn't asking someone else to take over. Other than that, just try to communicate as to who is pulling the boss, thats the best way to figure it out instead of bumbling.

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the problem nowadays is u can't tell who's mt just looking at the stance - since war mostly tank in dps stance for cleaves even if they take the MT position. since they "balanced" the tanks its mostly War>Drk>Pala for MTs in casual grp content so - until 5.0 u shouldn't maintank that often in 8 grp content. aside of that no matter which tank you get paired with u will often face bad enmity control on mt-side (to greedy for dps) or heal aggro from spammed hots (brain dead healer). so being a pala knowing you are generally the offtank didn't prevent you to keep your eyes open and train reflexes for an emergency provoke/ultimate to save the day if needed - else focus on your dmg rota ^^

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Thanks a lot, that starts to make some sense.

The healer was not spamming tho (I had no issues at all mantaining aggro and the DPS was close to healer in enmity).

Would you also be so kind to explain me these differences in tanking (WAR-DRK-PAL)? At lvl 50 i dont have access to royal authority/Goring blade combos and that makes my DMG rotation to be almost doin nothing/lil damage;

wouldn't it just better for 2 handers (WAR-DRK) to off-tank since they can't block but can dish out more DPS (for the time being at least i believe)?

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Right so tanking in this game, you only ever start the fight in tank stance, after you have established aggro (usually only takes a few gcds) , you switch to dps stance, at level 50 WARs dps stance is just not being in tank stance. So if a WAR pulls then turns off tank stance, they arn't asking someone else to take over. Other than that, just try to communicate as to who is pulling the boss, thats the best way to figure it out instead of bumbling.

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That's what I usually do when alone (Light parties) depending on content (most times i just stay in sword stance when I'm confident with the content).

I agree with you, if one swap stance he's not asking for me to take over but if he loose the aggro...

actually yeah thats where Palas came from they were meant to be maintanks for a long period cause of their extra-def cooldowns, selfheal and low dmg etc. - But balance patch after balance patch actually made Warrior superior as maintank cause of his high burst dps - and in endgame... sadly everything is built around max dps... - thats why I said all these former def-cd from Paladins maintank era are just over-selfdef material nowadays which make Pala incredible resistent to most of the casual content mechanics.

never the less all tanks share the same roleskills so they got the same base of def cds + every tank offered some unique def skills. Palas Holyground is badass and negates nearly every dmg ingame (except limits and ultimates), while Drk f.e is the only tank with a magic-def cd. they have there niche skills, but overall the base of def cds are the shared role skills.

and don't worry about a lvl 50 dmg rotation, your damage will increase expo if u reach 60 and later 70 toolkit. ^^

As PLD you never pull - DRK and especially WAR have much better snap aggro and lose far less DPS by starting in tank stance. There are exceptions: other tank has much worse gear, can't tank, fell asleep or just refuses to pull. In pre-70 content it doesn't matter that much.
Another important thing is OT/MT misconception: in savage content tanks should swap all the time to fully utilize their cooldowns. There is no main and offtank, unless you just use those names to describe which tanks has aggro at the moment. Again, doesn't matter pre-70. Nobody is going to bother with swapping during normal trials.

So yeah, as PLD you should just be blue icon DPS most of the time :P

One more note: around lvl 50 is really weird for tanks because of their DPS rotation. WAR doesn't have his stance and PLD doesn't have combo. So even if you don't tank you will get a lot of enmity - Shirk helps a little.

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Originally Posted by Terkhev

Again, doesn't matter pre-70.

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I'd argue it doesn't really matter at 70 either in casual content. It's not really a big deal in normal mode raids/trials/alliance raids if the PLD pulling isn't optimal. Only really in EX/Savage when there's a strict enrage timer to beat.

For lvl 50 and below content you will be the main tank as your only combo as a PLD is your aggro combo.

Realistically it doesnt matter for anthing outside of Ex/Savage content. Welcome and I hope you enjoy Heavensward and Stormblood

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Originally Posted by Neela

edit: oh and about ultima weapon in msq dng... it will always aggro a healer until its guard is broken by hydelyn. there are several bosses who comes with auto-enmity or enmity-reset later in the game - u will get used to those as well, tho he actually was aware of it - its not worth to atk the big boy for the first 10+ seconds ;3

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It’s not automatic to a healer. It’s just that you can’t deal much damage at the start, but healers can heal for full.
He has normal aggro tables for the fight. Back before everyone was overpowered in gear it was normal to have people just /sit and wait while he waits on the tank for a moment. One cure generated a lot more enmity than a tank could generate until the shields were down.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Right so tanking in this game, you only ever start the fight in tank stance, after you have established aggro (usually only takes a few gcds) , you switch to dps stance, at level 50 WARs dps stance is just not being in tank stance. So if a WAR pulls then turns off tank stance, they arn't asking someone else to take over.

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Well...

You switch to DPS stance if you and healers are both up to it. Which in a lot of casual content is not the case. Especially if somebody in that setup is still leveling.

On this same toon, in the same content, I find one run I can go in DPS stance most of the way, and in the next I can barely stay alive when in tank stance...

Things get a lot more predictable once you hit max level and are in content that has a minimum iLevel... but before that I stick to tank stance until I have an idea of how strong my group is...

If the WAR has dropped to yellow on threat, they've not only asked somebody else to take over, they've already finished handing off the ball. ESPECIALLY if no one else there was in tank stance.

If I'm on PLD or DRK, and the other tank is a WAR, unless they hit tank stance starting out, I'm going to and then I'm going to MT it... That might not be a popular opinion - but the way I see it is that if they don't want to be a tank I won't make them be a tank. Then again I tend to avoid using PLD or DRK just to not have to worry about this...