New Tank in Need of Help

i just recently hit lvl 15 on gladiator and i just want to make sure i have hate management down. so, from past experiences, i tag targets with #1 and#2 respectivly. then shield toss #1 when both mobs arrive i use flash. is that it? maybe an extra flash? is that it? cause i have never played a tank class before. im currently a Drg doing WP speed runs, and honestly nvr pay attention to what the tank is doing. i just really need some help to understand what i should be doing. thanks for any ifo you guys can provide.

Normal runs and wp speed runs differ alot with regards to tank strategy. Normal runs, ask if your party is ok with aoeing mobs of 3 or more if they are able to. If they aren't, standard single target killing cycle applies. You might need to flash more often if the mobs hit u hard or the healer is overhealing to prevebt threat on other targets going off to the healer. For wp speedruns, its pretty much just a flash spamming bonanza. Details of how to execute the whole run is available on youtube.

Kinda short but maybe helpful.

15-25: mark targets, (Fight or Flight if it's up)shield log the 1st target. Flash x2 > Fast Blade > Savage blade spam your focused target. Tell people to fight targets marked in order. If people fight different things your not gonna be tanking them this lv.


Provoke is used for 2 things 1:Long distance pull.(not needed early on) 2:To grab hate off someone, that's it. Shield lob is to pull not voke..

26-50: welcome Rage of Halone. Now you can hold hate on multiple targets, by cycling you rotation between mobs.
Fast Blade > Savage blade > Rage of Halone.
You will still want to add what you learned from 15-25. Now flash x1 is only really needed assuming 1:Your healer is not over healing or 2:Whm has more hate, maybe still be better to open with lob>flash x2.
I'm not going to go into details about cycling your 3skill rotation. But as a example 1Rage of Halone will hold hate off a healer, for pretty much the rest of a fight(trash mobs). 2-3 will hold hate off dps(again, trash mobs)

Key lv skills between/@ 27-50:
Sword Oath: Use this all the time till 40, if your off tanking it's used also but watch hate if your off tanking as it generates more single target hate the Shield Oath.

Shield Oath: Welcome to Pld, should be using this pretty much all the time unless off tanking or soloing.

Spirits Within: Yes it's silence but also very useful for hate, should be spamming this when it's up unless your avoiding silencing a boss or trying to use it to interrupt.

Circle of Scorn: Spam it.


AoE Tanking(more then 4mobs):
Flash Spam(+Circle of Scorn spam if 50) > Fast Blade > Riot Blade to recover MP.

general, what you need to know:

Flash is for aoe aggro and the purpose for flash at the begin is for your healer can heal you w/o mobs run to him after 1 cure, after that is the aggro combo on single target to build the aggro need for your DD to do dmg w/o mobs aggro.

After that is the managerment of aggro by use 2nd and 3rd in the aggro combo in the 2 other target (assume we are talking 3 atm). And keep doing the aggro manager while build aggro on the next target

Speaking as a new tank myself (I have been playing other games so I'm only level 16 Glad and have tanked Sastasha only once thus far), I think you'll need at least 2x Flash at the start and likely will need to throw it in a couple of times. When I tanked Sastasha I would often have mobs pulled off of me before I could even get off a combo on more than the first target; coming from other games where it's easier to manage threat this was a shock to me :) To be fair though I didn't use marks, so that might have been why, although nobody died so that's a bonus.

I did find it a lot harder to regain aggro than I'm used to from other games; I would end up spamming shield lob as it is high enmity and the mob would still pretty much ignore me, but I could not run to it sometimes for fear of losing aggro on the other mobs.

I think moving forward my opening at low levels would be to use Fight or Flight, shield lob, flash x2 once mobs close in and then do a combo on one, and then do the Fast Blade on one, Savage Blade on another, perhaps with another Flash after a couple of combos (once I know I have aggro I tend to use Fast Blade -> Riot Blade to recover the MP that I use for Flash)

If you loose aggro due to aoe flash more.
If you loose aggro to the healer use more CD´s and flash moderate.
If you loose aggro on the mainmob combo it more.
If you loose aggro on the second mob due to dotting split your combos.

Each group will differ. You have to adapt and if they outgear you hard they may have to adapt.
Endgame differs again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stalkster

Kinda short but maybe helpful.

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^ This

/10char

Right off the bat pull with shield lob and flash 2x to grab aggro, then I typically just rotate my aggro combo on the mobs in front of me. Flash every once in a while for good measure to build aggro effectively. Not the case for all pulls, I.E. there is nasty pull at the end of stone vigil where you get 3 dragons at once.. this is a good example of managing CDs while rotating combos and flashing. Like anything else it takes practice, no one can just tank well the first time they try it. GLHF

Flash does not break you combos. Later on you may want to weave it into your combos to keep up blind as long as possible which results in less healer aggro. You can flash twice w/o loosing the combo-progress.

Assuming 2 or more targets, the common opener is Shield Lob -> Flash -> Flash. That should keep everything off healer for a while. Moves beyond that varies quite a bit.

DPS is using all AoE effects? Flash more.
DPS going hard on the 1st single target? Go enmity combo.
DPS splitting a bit between main target and others? (summoner dots is a good example) Enmity combo & work in an occasional Flash or target 2nd with part of your enmity combo.

The party window has threat bars for your current target next to each person's name. As you tab through, you can check where everyone's threat is at in relation to you. A common issue new tanks have is not ensuring they have enough threat on the third or fourth target (tunnel vision on the first one because they're still thinking like a dps player) to prevent it from running over to the healer. Some extra flashes will often fix this until you're more comfortable with the other options available to maintain threat. Spamming Flash more is kind of a catch all, especially in the leveling dungeons where you don't have to worry about dps going balls to the wall while they're 20-40 item levels of gear above you.

Get in the habit of tabbing around to check threat. When you're confident that you have enough threat on the current target to not lose it before it dies (or at least enough to not hit it for several globals), start building some threat on the next one (one of the reasons why marking is useful).

When it comes to threat (and tanking in general), your primary job is to protect the healer. Holding threat over dps is a very distant second (they can just keep it in their pants a couple extra seconds) so long as healers can still pull off you with just healing threat.