First time tanking Brayflox

I plan on doing it tonight. So I've read the guides and know the mechanics to expect but I keep hearing it's also a bit of a gear check. I'm a 34 WAR. Full steel scale armor, hands and feet are HQ. HQ Steel Bhuj. Toadskin legs. Steel Elmo head. Aetherial bone bracelets. Rest is Sphene, including HQ Sphene earrings. HP is 2168. Both defenses at 321. Do this seem workable?

Sounds good. Shouldn't have any problems related to your gear.

Just dodge Aiatar's breath and keep her out of the pools. Maybe take some antidotes if you don't know/trust the healer to have Esuna.
Hope you have a good party. :)

Just did it. Wiped on the dragon the first time because for whatever reason I could just not dodge that breath attack. Next time I just kept moving in a small arc in front of him in whatever direction I wanted him facing and everything clicked. Went smooth after that. Luckily the healer is a good friend in real life and we were in a voice chat so that helped too. And I got some sweet gauntlets! I want to run it again ASAP.

Congratulations on passing BL! That dungeon is considered a rite of passage for tanks - it's the first real troublesome dungeon in the game, and forces tanks such things as positioning and movement, avoiding conal/AoE attacks, pulling mobs effectively and switching targets. And it looks like you passed, so well done. :D

Congrats! and the rest of what Enkidoh said :)

Thank you very much, guys!

Question. What's the normal course of action in that large water-filled area? We wiped there once due to my careless use of Overpower which drew a second set of mobs in. I died and when I got back to that point the map still showed one party member near the boss so I just ran there with ease avoiding mobs but it turns out it was some kind of delay and that person died too. So I was standing by the boss by myself with everyone else by the start. Then they started getting attacked so ran back and drew a massive mob and we wiped again. Luckily it was cool group if people and they laughed about it. But it seems like you can avoid all but maybe one mob there. Is that what people usually do?

People usually run along the left side of the area and pull carefully. The mobs are very social so may have to be careful.

When you put mouse cursor over the mob you will notice if they are linked with other mobs, if so - engaging one will activate the whole pack. I mark the pack (salamanders first and wyrms second) and flash them few times, then hope people can count between 1 to 4.
Most of dungeons have patrol mobs - they are not linked with packs, but are linked with nearby patrols that move on a certain route. You should kill patrols first (ranged pull and tank away) before engaging the pack. What usually happens in BF is team tries to skip patrols but someone pulls them, so you end up with 5 mobs instead of 3.
Most of teams will want to go the left route for side rooms with treasure boxes, but those boxes usually don't drop anything, so you can go the right route as well. Just beware (if you go the right route) - some people may enrage because you do something they did not expect. I usually slow down a bit and watch where the rest tends to go. Also some people will want to kill more mobs for exp (usually if they are not synced), so you can try clearing the whole area.

I'm on console so I have to select them to see what they're linked to I guess? Can't believe I've tanked this far without noticing that. Thanks for the tip. So far, with one exception, I've had good luck with people following my marks. The white Mage I always run with usually sleeps one of the mobs too and has a macro that puts an ignore mark over them so that was very helpful in BF. Except a couple times when a DPS popped an AOE lol. I'll try the left route today. Also, it occurs to me we missed an entire boss. Where is that couerl?

Patrol mobs always move on a certain route so it should be easy to notice even without the cursor.
Coeurl is before the last boss (to the left/down of it) - it's a mob that guards a box which sometimes drops a pink/green grade accessory.

Yeah, I always hug the left/outside wall. Helps me remember to duck into all the optional treasure rooms along the way, too (if we're going for everything). Pull stuff as soon as it's in range and stand right where you are (don't run toward stuff much). The pugils (the fish) are the patrols with really long patrol paths, so watch out for those. I don't think anything else really patrols very far.

Awesome. Thanks for all the advice, guys. I'm going to run it a few more times tonight. That cavalry gear is great.

Good luck, i remember when i first ran brayflox as a paladin.. lets just say it didn't turn out well lol. Basically make sure your gear is up to date, a little bit of research wouldn;t hurt either. Oh and sometimes you just get fail teams and can;t do a thing about it

Like most dungeons, Brayflox is a team effort. Decent healer can compensate tank gear with sleeps, bad - blame him for undergear.
In practice, ilvl 20+ tank/lancer gear is enough. Most Brayflox horror stories are just that. Horror stories ;)

Talking about gear again. I've run Brayflox quite a few times now. I have Calvakry head, chest, hands and feet. Belt and legs are GC. But I'm level 40 now. I looked at loot drop tables and I'm not seeing any more armor drop upgrades till 50. Am I supposed to roll with Calvalry until then? Or is the GC stuff better till 50? Or even just vendor gear? Just seems like a lot of levels to be wearing i34 gear. Or am I just plain missing something?

There's High Mithril (crafted), Aetherial High Mithril (dunno where that drops), Sentinel's (Dzaemel Darkhold), Cobalt Cuirass set (crafted), Aetherial Cobalt Cuirass set (Aurum Vale).

Really, though, you only need to get to 45. Then you'll do your 45 job quest and get all your AF (artifact armor) except for the chest, which you'll get with the level 50 job quest. If you happen to get drops that are better than Cavalry before 45/50, go for it. If not, what you've got is good enough until 45, and AF+Cavalry is good enough until 50. That's pretty much exactly what I did. I think I got some aetherial chest as a drop, but it wasn't really any better than Cavalry, so I just stuck with that.

Good to know. Thanks for the info.

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Originally Posted by Cap75

Talking about gear again. I've run Brayflox quite a few times now. I have Calvakry head, chest, hands and feet. Belt and legs are GC. But I'm level 40 now. I looked at loot drop tables and I'm not seeing any more armor drop upgrades till 50. Am I supposed to roll with Calvalry until then? Or is the GC stuff better till 50? Or even just vendor gear? Just seems like a lot of levels to be wearing i34 gear. Or am I just plain missing something?

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I looked at the drop tables too some time ago and found out they all were wrong. Every dungeon drops a set of armor and weapon of it's level (lv35, 38, 41, 44 and so on). At lv45 you will get a set of i50 armor from the job quest, but being 10-15 levels undergeared is fine even for a tanker.
Aethereal gear from lv35/38 and so on is better than Cavalry (i recently geared my PLD this way), so feel free to try those dungeons.

I'm definitely going to run those dungeons for story and my GC hunting log. Looks like I'm not going to farm them at this point though. If I get a cool drop that's awesome but if not, well, I only got a few more levels to 45.