Ouch, that hurt...

So I just tanked Brayflox. I have to say. The difficulty really jumps once you hit your 30s. I went from soaking a decent amount of damage to watching my health drop fast. Even with level appropriate gear it was tough. I like to pride myself in tanking ability, but dang. That was tough.

Don't get me wrong. I love the game and have no major complaints. Nor am.I upset that the difficulty jumped up. Simply just saying that I was surprised.

I love how the game has started challenging me in new ways. I can't get complacent in tanking. I have to keep on my toes.

Indeed I'm also enjoying the game at present I haven't tried that dungeon but will be in the morning :)

Yeah I was going through the beginning of the game thinking it might be a little too easy, then just recently I did my first dungeon. That goes for any mmo. It pretty much blew my mind as my entire party got wiped out not ten minutes in. I have to say this awoke the "Dark Souls" masochist in me, and I'm extremely excited about the rest of the game. Another experience was when my lv 19 thm went up against some bug that was at lv 24. Why not, i'm up to 19, I beat a giant turtle thing. That bug whooped the sh-- out of me! I heard the term "theme park" mmo from a couple people, which I took to mean easy, but that's not the case for me, and from what I'm reading many other people. I like your comment that you can't get complacent. I agree.

Well I was just caught off guard how different dungeons from Manor and below are from Brayflox. It becomes a fight of real strategy. You can't wade into the enemy like lower dungeons. You need your allies CCing anything that is not currently the parties target. A tank can only handle so much damage and a healer can only heal so much.
I know my rotation quite well and have a reaction time that is on par with anyone playing the PC. (Thanks to a recent video a member posted about PS3 UI) and I still was getting my butt kicked. Level appropriate gear and a good rotation only gets you so far. You have to think every fight through carefully.


The final boss of Brayflox is actually a type of boss I have fought in a couple other MMO's. But because the area you are fighting in is so much bigger and the boss is so much bigger that you have to relearn what you know. Also I have found that because fights go on longer, resource management starts to play more into the tank's concerns. Before I could last a fight and only be at most, at half TP. Now I am scraping the bottom and the boss is still at 25% health. In FFXIV RR, that can be an eternity.

But again, I love the challenge. I was physically tired after the fight because I had been so tense from the fight and half the dungeon.

I went for an Amdapor Keep, and it was surely a damn surprise. So many things that splits your concentration, boss placing, gimmicks, adds.. I was playing as a healer, so I guess I was having it easy. The tanks and DPS would have had it hard.

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Originally Posted by Jaminos

Also I have found that because fights go on longer, resource management starts to play more into the tank's concerns.

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Same goes for healers or any other class - MP runs low very quickly in higher dungeons even with a good resources management ... with 33 - 36+ levels you really need to start looking into having those materia slots in you gear filled up or alternativelly to spend some gills on market and get some proper gear there as the normal or even dungeon or higher leve quest drops and merchant stuff is simply not enough. As you're not leveling up that quickly anymore it's a good investment which will be also re-used later on in the game when leveling your secondary classes.

Titan after Brayflox should be a bit of fun for you. Oneshot mechanics and all sorts of good stuff. I had a lot of fun with it, but being a DPS, my first group failed and had to requeue forever. I think requiring these dungeons and bosses for more casual players who want to see the storyline will absolutely give them a wakeup call. These are starting to feel more like end game WoW dungeons / raids now.

I was alternating between scholar/summoner, and I don't think I actually needed any gear prior to Amdapor Keep. Even Ifrit HM I did with mostly story gained AF and some quest rewards. Although I have to admit, it will be much better if you have slightly better gear at AK, I did bring my team down quite a bit(especially because I was new)

DPS checks, however.. I think that's a different story, haha. Pretty sure you can't beat starting from garuda if you don't have decent DPS.

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Originally Posted by Richiealvian

I was alternating between scholar/summoner, and I don't think I actually needed any gear prior to Amdapor Keep. Even Ifrit HM I did with mostly story gained AF and some quest rewards. Although I have to admit, it will be much better if you have slightly better gear at AK, I did bring my team down quite a bit(especially because I was new)

DPS checks, however.. I think that's a different story, haha. Pretty sure you can't beat starting from garuda if you don't have decent DPS.

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In my group, our DPS seemed to be on the lower side. The final boss went down very slowly. I was running out of places to tank the boss because everywhere else was a poison zone. But no, a tank that is not geared correctly will wipe every time. Our flash depends on our main weapon. If it is to low, you won't pick up agro.

i found stone vigil quite the jump up in difficulty, due to the mobs always liked to attack the healer n certain things u gotta do in boss fights lol. since a dps job is to protect the healers while doing damage was a nice change from previous dungeons that didnt require much effort XD