Questions from a newish tank

Hey guys, I have a few questions:

1. Should I use my defensive skills on trash pulls? So far, there hasn't been a trash pull where I needed to use them but I was wandering if I should've been using them this entire time.

2. Awareness. I don't know if I'm using this skill right. I use it when I know I'm going to get hit by a skill but I'm wondering if there is a better time to use it.

3.Should I use Shield Swipe every time it's up?

Thanks in advance. Also, any tips that you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

1. I wouldn't use them all at once. Save them for when you're taking noticeably higher damage, or just before a hard pull when you know you're going to get rocked.

2. Awareness seems to exist to take up space on a quickbar. I haven't noticed any detrimental effects from ignoring its existence.

3. YES. It locks enemy weapon skills and hits hella hard. I noticed today while running chain running Brayflox that it also gave me nasty single target threat. Get a shield that grants you high block rating, and go nuts.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Which stat is better: block strength or block rate?

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Originally Posted by Agumonz1001

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Which stat is better: block strength or block rate?

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Block strength = damage absorbed.

Block rating = frequency of blocking.

If you have to choose between a shield that offers strength or rating, always pick rating. Higher frequency of blocking means predictable/smoother incoming damage (Not to mention it helps a lot with a proc on block ability like shield slam, thus increasing your single target damage/threat.) A shield with high strength but low BR will just make you spikier. No one likes a spikey tank. Kite shields are a nice balance between the two.

Defensive cds like rampart and foresight are good on trash pulls to reduce pressure on your healer / let them dps. Time your cds so they are ready for the boss battles. (It's also ok to use big cds like hallowed ground on huge trash packs for speedrunning.)

Awareness is bad. Use it when you have lots of mobs. Even then you'll barely notice it. You can macro it with foresight, which is also bad.

Shield swipe is mediocre. It helps recover tp but pacification may not reduce incoming damage. Often enemies telegraph large abilities that you can dodge for no damage. If you pacify, the enemy will use autoattacks you can't dodge. Shield swipe generates low aggro so it's not good on trash mobs in aggro race with dps. It's better to use on bosses. Lastly, tanks do little damage compared to dps so the damage boost doesn't matter much. Shield swipe is ok but not a priority.

Equal block strength and rate is good.

most cd's can be saved in low level for bosses only but even then you don't really need them. that being said its good to get in the practice of activating them and rotating them to have some up at all times during boss battles.

awareness just use it whenever, or replace it with something more useful.. your call.

shield swipe, well I've been playing pld quite awhile and have used it all of two times, seems pointless to me, yeah its extra dps but id rather stay with keeping the hate away from the actual dps, although I'm usually pretty far ahead I could spare the turn. I prefer to not think about its existence, feel free to call me a bad pld....

I see. Thanks for the answers guys.

The strength of Awareness is that it guarantees that you won't take any critical hit damage for its duration. This means that your healers aren't having to suddenly throw out a bigger heal than they may have anticipated, or they can rely on Regen/Cure being enough to heal and not having to drop Cure IIs (which cost more MP). That's where a good part of the value can be found.

The problem that the skill has, is that many of the attacks in end-game content can't deal critical damage (but they do deal high damage instead) and the value of the skill is thus diminished. But in the cases where the enemy has auto attacks which can crit, having this up can help prevent being unlucky if a crit hit quickly follows a high damage attack. But critical hits are a random chance occurrence so it's not a skill you can rely on actually saving you. There's no way to know if Awareness actually prevented a critical hit, either.

As for Shield Swipe, the benefit of it comes from the fact that it only costs 40TP. Each regeneration tick of TP is 60, so you're actually gaining TP by using it. In a long fight, using it can help you maintain a good pool of TP.

It is a strong attack, but doesn't have the increase enmity bonus on it so you should only use it when you have a lead on enmity. On enemies which can be pacified (learn which ones it works on), it can also help save a lot of unnecessary damage being taken and negate some nasty attacks. Tends to be more useful in dungeons, as end-game raid bosses are usually immune to it. It's still worth using, though, if and when you can (enmity lead, need to keep TP up).


Bottom line; they are tools. Use them when you feel they may be beneficial to success. Knowing when that is comes from experience. There may be times when some aren't as useful as others but they have a purpose and they can be used effectively.

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Originally Posted by Themis

The strength of Awareness is that it guarantees that you won't take any critical hit damage for its duration. This means that your healers aren't having to suddenly throw out a bigger heal than they may have anticipated, or they can rely on Regen/Cure being enough to heal and not having to drop Cure IIs (which cost more MP). That's where a good part of the value can be found.

The problem that the skill has, is that many of the attacks in end-game content can't deal critical damage (but they do deal high damage instead) and the value of the skill is thus diminished. But in the cases where the enemy has auto attacks which can crit, having this up can help prevent being unlucky if a crit hit quickly follows a high damage attack. But critical hits are a random chance occurrence so it's not a skill you can rely on actually saving you. There's no way to know if Awareness actually prevented a critical hit, either.

As for Shield Swipe, the benefit of it comes from the fact that it only costs 40TP. Each regeneration tick of TP is 60, so you're actually gaining TP by using it. In a long fight, using it can help you maintain a good pool of TP.

It is a strong attack, but doesn't have the increase enmity bonus on it so you should only use it when you have a lead on enmity. On enemies which can be pacified (learn which ones it works on), it can also help save a lot of unnecessary damage being taken and negate some nasty attacks. Tends to be more useful in dungeons, as end-game raid bosses are usually immune to it. It's still worth using, though, if and when you can (enmity lead, need to keep TP up).


Bottom line; they are tools. Use them when you feel they may be beneficial to success. Knowing when that is comes from experience. There may be times when some aren't as useful as others but they have a purpose and they can be used effectively.

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Thanks for the answer. Guess I'll keep them in my hotbar after all.

I think the chance for a trash mob to make a critical strike is about... 8%, maybe more? At any rate, that would be giving you at least a nominal 4% mitigation from Awareness that nullifies any per-unit damage spikes you'd otherwise receive.

Shield Swipe is generally a mitigation loss against enemies whose only special attacks are revealed (red-zone) moves (unless you use it as the move is charging), but is a decent mitigation aid against mixed-specials (between revealed moves) and non-reveal-specials. These specials will often hit for anywhere from 2 to 4 times an auto-attack (usually towards the lower end), but their frequency is rarely enough to get two cancellations into the same 6-second pacify. To be honest though, I only really notice it when I have melee in party who don't necessarily start with the reveal-specials enemy first (i.e. Dullahans, Marauders), so that I would be forced to move and/or turn their target in order to dodge. This usually hits me mid-combo and I have no intention of wasting 130 TP for Shield Bash on their dislike of temporarily target swapping, so... Shield Swipe it is. (It also looks funny when the full charge-up occurs but the move never goes off--'stand in it' and take no damage.)

As far as the rate of CD-usage goes, especially for trash... I usually use things approximately 'on-CD' after my first usage, but each pull is sized to fit the CDs and of course convention for the particular instance.

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Originally Posted by Sergy

Awareness is absolutely useless skill for both PLD and WAR since most attacks CANNOT crit you in endgame content (only auto-attacks can crit). I'm not sure about low level content though so I can't really help you with this.

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You might reconsider that when Nael Deus Darnus crits you for 4k with an auto-attack.

On topic:
Def cds on trash is not really needed unless you pull more than 1 trash pack.
Awareness is useful for big multi-pack pulls and bosses which deal high auto-attack damage, otherwise its meh.
Use shield swipe when you are sure you secured aggro on the target(s), otherwise continue with flash/enmity combos.

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Originally Posted by Wizhard

You might reconsider that when Nael Deus Darnus crits you for 4k with an auto-attack.

On topic:
Def cds on trash is not really needed unless you pull more than 1 trash pack.
Awareness is useful for big multi-pack pulls and bosses which deal high auto-attack damage, otherwise its meh.
Use shield swipe when you are sure you secured aggro on the target(s), otherwise continue with flash/enmity combos.

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I see. Since I'm still kinda new to tanking, I try not to pull more than 1 pack per pull. The only times I had to deal with more than one pack was when it's my first time in that dungeon.

Agree with Wizhard.

Sometimes I still do use defensive cooldowns on trash to lighten the load off healers.. just make sure they'll be up when you're at bosses
Awareness is definitely useful for multi pulls and bosses, especially in coil, since they CAN crit you pretty hard which can at times be the difference between a wipe or not
and like what Wizard mentioned, use shield swipe only when you have secured aggro

Oh! and fyi, using defensive cooldowns once engaged with monsters help generate a little bit of aggro too :)

as you get more comfortable you will pull more mobs, using defensive cd's on the trash and not on the bosses in the dungeons. doing so (provided you have aoe classes in party) will speed up the dungeon significantly.