Establishing Contested Hate

Good evening/morning/afternoon Tank forums, I am a relatively fresh level 50 PLD and I have been struggling on one point in particular and I thought I would drop in and ask someone more experienced. That being, I have been having trouble establishing hate in situations where killing quickly is the primary concern.

To use a specific example, I ran Garuda EX with my FC the other day as the OT - as I had told them I did not know the timings for Wicked Wheel very well. As a relatively new tank I made several embarrassing mistakes I won't go into, but the one thing that seemed to happen most often (and has happened in other, similar, fights), was I had a very hard time grabbing Chirada when she spawned before a DD started waling on her, or a healer started cure bombing me or some other source of hate popped up.

That's a specific example, but I am well aware it is caused by a more general problem with my tanking style, so I'm wondering if there are some hints I can get either to (A) get hate faster, or (B) grab hate securely back if someone takes it early on. For (B), I'm well aware that Provoke is optimal for that, but I can never seem to seal the deal after provoking before someone else pulls the target away, and now I'm sans Provoke.

When grabbing a newly spawned enemy, I try to do this:

Code:

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Stand close to spawn,
Circle of Scorn/Flash > (target if I haven't already) > Fast Blade/Spirits Within > (pull away if it's a situation like Chirada) > continue Harlone combo

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Any help would be very appreciated.

On that fight you want to either have Savage or Halone ready to fire after they spawn.

Garuda says DIE DIE DIE right before they spawn.

You either want to pop a fast blade then hit them with your loaded savage or in best case would be land a full halone on them.


After landing either of these you want to move to where ever you are going to hold them and do a shield lob or 2 as your moving and waiting for them to come into range.


On the parts after your doing the spiney you want to just shield lob as many times as it takes to bring her over to you before starting your normal lead offs.

If a couple of shield lobs is not enough to secure hate you need to tell your group to adjust and allow you to secure hate.

Hit Garuda with a fast blade when she does the add summon animation. Hit the add you're supposed to pick up with savage blade as it spawns. Rage of Halonne as you move to position. If your BLM or whatever is raging strikes into flare or whatever tell him to chill out, because you do zero dps when you're dead.

Thank you both very much. Pre-readying Rage of Halone and pulling while Shield Lobbing are both things I had not thought to do. I was only having trouble once in a while, so I suspect that those two ideas should really help out. Thank you.

Un-combo'd rage of halone is still your highest enmity move. So even if you mess up the prep, just hit it with ROH and spirits within.

Granted, i'm i90 on both so my attacks hit for more, but I have never had an issue just whacking the sister with ROH/BB regardless of combo and pulling them.

That said, it is really easy to have one prepped.

One thing not mentioned.. If you are a fairly fresh 50 it's likely that you're having the problem due to better geared DPS, it's not a bad thing, just keep in mind you will have to try extra hard to maintain aggro.

Having a prepped RoH ready for the add (or after a Provoke) is your best option, if Fight or Flight is available it will help tremendously. It's a healthy habit to get in to given the many adds and tank swapping mechanics you will be dealing with from here on out.

The above are best tips that I've seen so far. To add to it, when you do use provoke in most any case at all, be in range for a shield lob and do both almost simultaneously. And if you are close enough, you could throw in a Spirits (provoke -> SL -> spirits) which should allow in most cases for you to keep that initial aggro. Even a provoke -> fast blade -> spirits -> savage -> [move into position] -> RoH can be done if you are right there and had lost aggro. Spirits thrown in there allows you to keep hitting between GCD.

Start with a shield lob on your way to the mob that you want to catch, by the time that you get there, your cooldowns will be ready. Throw a flash at it, then drop circle of scorn, then flash again, then spirits within, then commence your Halone combo (This is gross overkill for most scenarios, but it's the fastest way to stack your enmity). If you need to recover it from somebody that took it too quickly, use provoke on it to give yourself top-tier hate, then shield lob it to secure your pole position on the enmity gauge and proceed as you normally would.

Thank you. After reading your responses, I think my biggest problem is under-appreciating Shield Lob. I has assumed that since Rage of Halone combo produces more enmity, it was always superior to Shield Lob except for pulling enemies to you. I had failed to take into account the fact that Rage of Halone is back-loaded on enmity, while Shield Lob is front-loaded.

My biggest issue was coming from when I did a few attacks to grab Chirada, then ran to the back of the arena. While I was running, I would loose hate from a DD or a healer. My problem, I suspect, was two fold; I was focusing too much on getting Chirada out of the rock circle, and I was not maintaining my enmity while running with Shield Lob.

Thank you very much, I feel a lot more confident that when I try this again, I can grab hate much more consistently.

Shield Lob is excellent as an "inbetween" move for when you are closing on a target or leading a target back to a certain spot, otherwise a full comboed RoH is by far going to be the largest emnity generator in your arsenal. Yes there is lead-in time to get to a full combo RoH, but as others have suggested if you can prep it before hand and be ready for the spawn, then all should be gravy.

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Originally Posted by MithrasInvictus

Start with a shield lob on your way to the mob that you want to catch, by the time that you get there, your cooldowns will be ready. Throw a flash at it, then drop circle of scorn, then flash again, then spirits within, then commence your Halone combo (This is gross overkill for most scenarios, but it's the fastest way to stack your enmity). If you need to recover it from somebody that took it too quickly, use provoke on it to give yourself top-tier hate, then shield lob it to secure your pole position on the enmity gauge and proceed as you normally would.

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Your suggestion may work for trash packs, although I would personally start my RoH combo and fit in CoS and Spirits between the combo attacks. However that isn't how you should approach establishing aggro in this instance, Chirada in Garuda EX, or in most boss fights or single target fights.

Provoke then shield lob/tomahawk. Since you are still new to tanking there maybe a bit of hesitation on your part. You need to target the add as soon as you see its hp bar on the enemy list. If you're on PS3 this will always appear first before the actual mob appears on screen depending on your connection.

For example: In T4 at the start of the second phase when the soliders/knights drop, I see their hp on the enemy list first so I spam flash and when they appear a second later on my screen they were registered as being flashed and thus I have established aggro.

Being new to tanking the one piece of advice I can give you is to be adaptable and always know when and where the next adds/boss are going to be and where they should be so the rest of the party can do their job. There may be times where you might have to take over when the MT falls (especially in Titan EX) and that's where you're true test of tanking begins. Good Luck.