help out this new guy

I have been playing this game for about 6 weeks and almost every dungeon I go into someone is criticizing my game play for not doing something right or not being equipped enough or not having certain actions and traits learned. I would love some help here this is my first online RPG. Any advice is welcome. Thank you in advance.

In all Honesty Google is your friend, but to help start you off check out this Paladin Tanking link.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/118...=1#post5878186

Enjoy ;)

Ps. Granted this thread has not been updated in a while, it is still a useful tool to gain a basic understanding of how to tank on a Glad/Pld.

First your name, you are free to name you character anything you want as long as it is in guidelines, but I see Tokealot, and I just think, yay another 10 year old that talked his parents into paying for him to play. Second you are a level 34 gladiator, at 30 you can start your job quests and unlock paladin, so level your conjurer up to 15, 34 preferably so you can get stoneskin, and your marauder up to pull a few skills there too. Until you get circle of scorn, flash like there is no tomorrow to get aoe hate, learn your combos and if someone tells you something listen.

Im 30 years old with a job and family I was trying to pick everything up on the fly but playing on PlayStation without a keyboard I just don't have the ability to ask all the necessary question in the heat of the battle. Also don't really have a lot of time to sit on forums all day every day to research everything. With the exception of taking a shot at my name thank you for your help. If there is anything else I could really use it. I really enjoy this game so far and would like to continue that without pissing people off.

It wasn't taking a shot at your name, when you group with people you don't know, their first impression comes from your gear and your name, not everyone, but quite a few people will see your name, and pre judge you, that's how people are. If I'm looking for a tank, and I see two with the exact same everything, the only difference is in the name, I would pick the one that didn't have a name like yours, you say this is your first online rpg, I'm just letting you know how people are.

Make sure you have done all your class quests up to level 30 (go back to the Gladiator's guild if you haven't done them) and focus on unlocking Paladin like Mcshiggs has said. Unlocking your job will be necessary in order to contribute in group content.

You should also probably upgrade your sword. Your weapon is very important because it determines how much hate/enmity you get from your skills, even the ones that don't do damage like Flash. Try to make a habit of upgrading your weapon every 5 levels or so, just check the market boards for one.

Your armor itself looks fine, make sure to keep it up to date. Also, I believe there are accessories with Vitality on them that will be available to you in a few levels, if they aren't available already. Make sure to grab all the +Vitality accessories as the added HP will be incredibly helpful in group play. You having more of a buffer for HP is much more important than doing a little bit more damage. The DPS in your group are there for that.

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

Since the others already posted details about gear and what not...

Be confident in what you do.
Lead and defend your party.
Hold fast and survive.
Your efforts show through your actions without words.

It's really hard to say anything bad to a hard working tank showing his/her best effort!

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

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There's a couple of usefull or even mandatory cross class skills. Being a warrior i only levelled paladin for Provoke when i was about to get into coil. Before that it was useful, to tank actual hard stuff Provoke would be mandatory.

Make a lvl1 marauder and check your Actions & traits tab. See what you get from levelling it a little. Stoneskin is a good choice too, but you wont need that pre 50.

Do your job classes asap.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

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Make sure to complete all of your gladiator guild's quests and level your Conjurer to Level 15, then you should be able to accept the quest for your Paladin job crystal, further on you will receive another job related quest every five levels. Once you equip your job crystal you can only cross class skills from either Conjurer or Marauder, so there's no need to level other classes outside from those two. You'll also only want to level both classes as far as to get access to all of the cross class skills needed for your Paladin, which means leveling Conjurer up to level 34 for Stoneskin ... guess you can leave Marauder at level 2 for Foresight or maybe level 8 for Bloodbath. If you have your job crystal and up to date weapon, shield and gear, you should be good to go. You can always level Conj to level 34 after your PLD hits the level cap. Stoneskin is not an essential cross class skill for levelling, but you will want to have it for endgame purpose.

Stat wise focus on VIT and always go with tank armour, not LNC/DRG stuff, as the def values are quite important. Allocate all of your stat points into VIT, too.


General advice:

- learn to mark your targets and always pull with shield lob rather than relying on a body pull
- focus your emnity combo on the first target (as all of your DDs should be on that target, too)
- in multi mob situations flash a few times in the beginning so secure an aggro lead over your healer
- when you have a lead on the first target, you should spread your emnity combo around across the other targets, just make sure to return to the main target every now and then to not lose aggro on it
- it's usually advisable to face targets away from your group, so they don't stand in nasty void zones and your DDs can attack from the rear side
- don't tank your targets next to the healers/ranged DDs, as some mobs create 360° void zones, which would then hit your healers/ranged DPS, if they don't move out in time
- learn your combos and go for the ones with increased emnity, only use mana reg combo when your emnity lead is big enough to allow for such a move

Thank you all. This is all good stuff, if there is anything else please keep it coming. Also where can I see this aggro lead. Maybe a little more info about emnity.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

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You need to strike a balance. That is, you want to be focusing on one class overall, but. . .everything past level 30 assumes that you're playing on a Job (PLD, in your case). To unlock the job, you have to have done all the GLA quests and leveled Conjurer up to 15. A new quest will open up in the GLA guild leading you to the PLD quest line. There are a few other skills you can access as a PLD that you'd need to level Marauder for or get your CNJ further up to 34, but they're rather low-priority. Basically, treat getting 15 CNJ and unlocking PLD as a side-quest in any other game.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

Thank you all. This is all good stuff, if there is anything else please keep it coming. Also where can I see this aggro lead. Maybe a little more info about emnity.

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Enmity in general in this game is fairly simple. Every action has an enmity modifier, usually just 1xDamage. Certain skills are higher, like 3xDamage for Savage Blade, 5xDamage for Rage of Halone. Most healing is 0.5 x amount healed. So that's how you keep enmity as a tank; you're doing less damage per hit, but using your high-enmity skills means every point of damage is worth much more. The tables are a few patches out of date, so don't take these numbers as gospel, but this page is good to look at to get a general idea of things. The multipliers (3x, 5x, etc.) on GLA/PLD abilities are still correct.

When you're targeting an enemy, there is a white bar under the class/job symbol for everyone in your party. That white bar represents their enmity on the mob you're targeting. A full bar means the mob is attacking that person, which should always be you. 2nd place will have the next fullest bar, and so on, and how full those bars are compared to yours tells you how far ahead you are in enmity. The top enmity also has an A to the left of their party slot, and the rest of the party has numbers. 2 for 2nd place and so on. Note that this display is only for your current hard-target. It does not update correctly for soft-targets (when you press left or right on the D-Pad and the targeting circle moves to a new mob, but you don't hit Confirm to fully switch to that target). If you want to check your enmity lead on each mob one by one, you'll need to hard-target each of them.

You'll also have a list of all mobs that you have any enmity on whatsoever on your screen. You can click on this list to target them (or L1+up/down on a game pad to scroll through them). They have colored dots next to their names. A small green circle means you are nowhere near to being top enmity. A yellow triangle means you have some notable degree of enmity. An orange dot means you're about to pull top enmity. A red square means you have top enmity. As a tank, you want every enemy to have a red square next to their name. If any of those dots are not red, it means someone else is getting attacked, and you need to fix it NAO.

About Provoke: When used, it gives you the same enmity against that mob as the person with top enmity, +1. That's all it does. That means that if all you do is Provoke, and the person you provoked off of does anything at all, they're going to get enmity again. This includes existing DoTs or HoTs ticking. If you Provoke something, you need to hit it again immediately, preferably with a high-enmity skill like Shield Lob or Rage of Halone. It also means that Provoking something that you already have top enmity on is utterly pointless, as is Provoking something that hasn't been engaged yet (except that Provoke has a longer range that Shield Lob, so there are a few circumstances where you can pull with Provoke more safely than Lob; just be aware you're going to need to Lob and so on once it's in range).

Also, if you can scrounge up a cheap USB keyboard for your PS3, the whole communication thing will be much less maddening.

Oh, and a mistake I see a lot of new GLA/PLDs making is thinking the visual effect of Flash indicates its range. Flash does not have a very large range. Practice with it until you know how close you need to be. If you see floating text come up with Flash for a given enemy, you've got it. If not, it's out of range. If you're practicing solo, it's really easy to tell, since they'll start hitting you. ;P

Hey man I feel for you. Your advice here seems to generally be to research your class so you don't piss off other players. Sound advice but...

If players can't accommodate, support and adapt to imperfect players it reflects badly on their own skill / diversity and personality in general (in my opinion). In an MMO I personally am always grateful to each player for sharing their time to play with me, despite their skill level, so long as they can show me mutual respect. If someone is impatient or intolerant to the mistakes of others, why should they use the duty finder where they may meet those players and then be ungrateful, rude and disrespectful to them. This is very ignorant in my opinion, but it seems to be considered justified by most people.

It gets my goat! Here's my own rant posted yesterday on basically the same topic: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...EDRUNS-SO-MUCH!

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The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that

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Not necessarily. What they are trying to say is pick one class as your main first. While leveling your main you will find it beneficial and sometimes imperative to dip into other classes to acquire certain skills that you can then use on your main to make it better.

Thank you this was an awesome explanation and very helpful. Very appreciative.

Tank is a harsh class to play sub-par/without decent understanding. DPS never seem to get picked on when they mess up, but ppl have almost zero tolerance for tanks, its unfair.

I say stick with your paladin man, learn it as well as u can and overcome this challenge. you can do it!

...Edward420allday... wow, clever name >_> not

Sorry for your troubles friend, best thing to do is make some friends in game who can really show you the ropes. Guides are good and all, but raw experience is best. And yes, it's important to go and level those other classes to get some cross class abilities. For instance, Bloodbath from Marauder is a good one.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

Tank is a harsh class to play sub-par/without decent understanding. DPS never seem to get picked on when they mess up, but ppl have almost zero tolerance for tanks, its unfair.

I say stick with your paladin man, learn it as well as u can and overcome this challenge. you can do it!

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^^ that.
I think everything else has been mentioned. Maybe check out the tank section of the forum too.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

Tank is a harsh class to play sub-par/without decent understanding. DPS never seem to get picked on when they mess up, but ppl have almost zero tolerance for tanks, its unfair.

I say stick with your paladin man, learn it as well as u can and overcome this challenge. you can do it!

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Not exactly, was in Ifrit HM and was kicked because the monk shot off the LB incorrectly but everyone thought it was me. Dps gets hate but in later lvls
(Played as Dragoon)

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

I would love some help here this is my first online RPG. Any advice is welcome. Thank you in advance.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

...but playing on PlayStation without a keyboard I just don't have the ability to ask all the necessary question in the heat of the battle.

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First rule of MMOs: you're gonna need a keyboard since communication is important. Trust me, it'll make your life a whole lot easier.

I second that. You'll want a keyboard. You'll need to ask questions or respond to questions. While in any MMO, you'll find people that are not helpful, you will also find an equal (or hopefully more) people that are willing to offer advice. Read up some content online, like that guy mentioned on page 1. Learn what your skills do. Learn what is expected of you.

Get a keyboard for your ps3. Good gods man.

Thanks to everyones advice I just got my first 2 commendations, granted I went through the first dungeon but no one was criticizing me and overall I think I did what I was supposed to. Also having a keyboard plugged in doesn't mess with controller right I'm just getting the hang of this and don't want to learn controls on keyboard.

Keyboard does not mess with controls at all. It allows you to chat with people without some big ps3 keyboard covering half your screen. Get one and love it. Absolutely mandatory for an mmo.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

Thanks to everyones advice I just got my first 2 commendations, granted I went through the first dungeon but no one was criticizing me and overall I think I did what I was supposed to. Also having a keyboard plugged in doesn't mess with controller right I'm just getting the hang of this and don't want to learn controls on keyboard.

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Keyboard/mouse UI is not supported on PS3, it's for chatting. It should have no effect on your gamepad controls.

I feel you man...i myself a ps3 user too, its going to take awhile before getting used to typing with the virtual keyboard.

My advice is to watch videos online to learn how other tanks are pulling or maintaining aggro. Once you reached end game raid, you probably need some sort of voice communication like ts3.

Also try to read some guide on setting up macros as it will be useful especially for ps3 users.

As a white mage main and a warrior alt, here is my advice. When in dungeons mark your targets, believe it or not, it helps with aggro. Use flash 2 or 3 times initially then work on your enmity combo. If you can't get a keyboard you can get a mini keyboard that fits on your controller. Lastly, as a tank you must have thicker skin then most classes because every mistake you make is noticed more because you are in the lead. Know the maps and the fights.

I'm a fairly new tank as well so yes know the difficulties it entails lol. I will say make sure once you have your keyboard actually talk to your PARTY ask advice if you don't know a dungeon. If you do know the dungeon let them know what your plans are in adv. most complaints i see bout tanks are they are rude or don't talk to the other players and just expect them to know everything in adv. and the marking yeah you can add it to your hot bar. ihave it on my main hot hot bar on the left trigger side d pad. you should be able to run the lower lvl stuff with just 1 2 and 3. makes it way easier to mark your targets on the ps3. and when people say mark it means tell them your attack order or what to ignore. for now focus on marking attack order that way your dps isn't attacking what your not attacking.

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

Im 30 years old with a job and family I was trying to pick everything up on the fly but playing on PlayStation without a keyboard

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Seriously there is no excuse when you have options like this available.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/usb-keyb...oard&cp=1&lp=1

Buy one.. it works like a charm on PS3

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Originally Posted by Edward420allday

Thanks to everyones advice I just got my first 2 commendations, granted I went through the first dungeon but no one was criticizing me and overall I think I did what I was supposed to. Also having a keyboard plugged in doesn't mess with controller right I'm just getting the hang of this and don't want to learn controls on keyboard.

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There is a setting under character configuration called auto-chat or something simliar that will automatically put anything you type into the chat window, so you don't have to worry about selecting it before typing.

1: You need to focus on accessories with vitality, drop all that dex.
2: Like someone else said, mark the targets.
3: After the pull use a few flash.
4: Enmity combo.
5: Now you can start to learn when to use cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

First rule of MMOs: you're gonna need a keyboard since communication is important. Trust me, it'll make your life a whole lot easier.

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I second that. You'll want a keyboard. You'll need to ask questions or respond to questions. While in any MMO, you'll find people that are not helpful, you will also find an equal (or hopefully more) people that are willing to offer advice. Read up some content online, like that guy mentioned on page 1. Learn what your skills do. Learn what is expected of you.

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I third that...I am so quick at typing because of how reliant I was on my keyboard and how important it was to type fast in FFXI :p

Even more so in XIV! But XI basically taught me how to type super fast.