Am I a bad Tank?

I have been running the 45 dungeon since it was added and I love it. I have this strange addiction which can only be quenched by a dungeon run. I have run it many times and learned along the way what to do at certain part and what have you.

What has been really killing me (quite literally) is the fact that I take so much damage. I ran it with a buddy of mine who seems to be lord of all tanks and he barely takes any damage. While I fight the Ogre and Batraal, I'm constantly spamming every def skill I have along with emnity skills. For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to tank these mobs I say go try it out cause man... there isn't a dull moment.

So As I was saying my buddy is phenomenal. I set up all my stats like his, and I'm wearing the armor he is. The only difference is that he has MRD to 50 and I have a pathetic 20 MRD. If this is the reason why hes taking less damage, maybe through skills or what have you, it makes me sad that MRD is absolutely necessary to tank this mob.

Now I have beaten Batraal but my mages need to be "johnny on the spot" with cures on me. I was wondering maybe someone had some ideas for me. Maybe you could shed some light on my situation. Or maybe like me you would just like to know that you're not alone.

Do you and your MRD buddy have the same people healing you?

Are you self-healing when you can?

Do you ever lose hate?

If the answers are No, Yes, and Yes respectively, the problem is your healers, not you.

What Gear are you using and what are ur stats ? (Maybe the thread will be move to the Glad section soon)

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Originally Posted by Darkscorpion

What Gear are you using and what are ur stats ? (Maybe the thread will be move to the Glad section soon)

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If it stays here much longer, you will definitely be told you are a bad tank. That's how things work 'round these parts.

There are only two things I can think of, HP and Parry.

Marauders, if I'm not mistaken, get the most HP per Vitality. This means they can have obnoxious HP so it may seem like they're not taking as much damage comparatively.

Parry can be partial or full, meaning you take no or only some damage. This is pretty awesome if you can get a high parry rate going. It's like Marauder's block, except potentially better. You also still have the option of evade with parry so that could be part of it.

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Originally Posted by Arcell

There are only two things I can think of, HP and Parry.

Marauders, if I'm not mistaken, get the most HP per Vitality. This means they can have obnoxious HP so it may seem like they're not taking as much damage comparatively.

Parry can be partial or full, meaning you take no or only some damage. This is pretty awesome if you can get a high parry rate going. It's like Marauder's block, except potentially better. You also still have the option of evade with parry so that could be part of it.

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His reference is to the MRD 50 as in his friend has Defender II while the OP only has Defender I.

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Originally Posted by Seikninkuru

His reference is to the MRD 50 as in his friend has Defender II while the OP only has Defender I.

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His friend is an R50 Marauder, he's an R50 Gladiator. I was stating why I thought he was taking more damage and whatnot. Defender II can't make THAT much of a difference. Unless I'm mistaken and his friend is also using Gladiator R50.

It's all about timing your skills correctly, isn't just go out there and do the skills whenever you can. ^^; Ask your friend for some tips on when to use certain skills, if he tells you, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quite fast. =)

The main reason I think is because your friend has defender II, and you don't. Thats the biggest factor in the amount of damage you two take. Its seriously insane how much it helps.

Other things would be him popping certain skills at certain times, for example popping sentinel when hes about to WS. Sadly on this fight your shield is close to useless, that isn't to say it doesn't help some what but more or less its useless on this fight. Since as you know the ogre swings crazy slow and spams TP moves more.

Which parry and the likes have nothing to do with either since you cant parry TP moves. Many people say MRD makes the fight easier since he has steadfast, higher HP pool, and defender II.

So my guess is the dmg cut you're seeing from your friend has a lot to do with defender II.

edit: people said defender II before i finished typing, you guys are fast :D

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Originally Posted by Arcell

His friend is an R50 Marauder, he's an R50 Gladiator. I was stating why I thought he was taking more damage and whatnot. Defender II can't make THAT much of a difference. Unless I'm mistaken and his friend is also using Gladiator R50.

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I think the OP means, When they both tank on Gla, the OP has a more difficult time tanking than is buddy. The only difference between their two Gla builds is, his buddies Mur is R50. So what skills does a R50 Mur get to use that mitigates damage significantly if any.

I will say, as a Glad, when tanking, I use abilities from EVERY SINGLE CLASS....
at least one 30+ (And in most cases 40+) ability from each of them....
Glad is very very involved...
To be a good damage dealer you can get by with just your class abilities... I wouldn't even use attack buffs on the ogre or Batraal...
To be the best healer you need Conj to 50, thaum to 48, and Out of sight from Archer....

But to be the best tank....
Glad 50, shield 50, obviously.... (Shield is given to you now, but when I came up, shield ranks were hard earned)
I'm not gonna list Glad and Shield abilities... Just know that Ambidexterity is now awesome
Mrd - Defender II, possibly bloodbath II, Foresight II, Disorient II, barbaric Yawp
Pug - Second Wind II, featherfoot II, accomplice
Lancer - Diversion, Invigorate II + twisting Vice used to be a monster combo for a tank until they nerfed twisting vice....
Archer - Decoy, barrage (its a weaponskill that increases enmity)
Conj and Thaum heals....

Shield Bash all Inferno Drops.

As mentioned in a post above, timing is a big thing with tanking. Half of your abilities as a Gladiator (Well, sentinel abilities) are fairly pointless when it comes to dungeons. Actual blocks only occur on physical attacks, so your Aegis Boon, Deflection, etc won't do any good against TP moves - which are really the main threat during the boss fights. Same goes for ranged attacks and magic attacks.

Sentinel and Rampart II are really your bread and butter as far as defensive buffs go,(Outside of obsess/defender, which I'd consider to be passive buffs due to their length) and the latter has an incredibly long recast rate. While you can never completely predict when a boss will use a TP move, it's fairly easy to "sync in" with the rate at which they use them - and you can plan your buffs accordingly.

A lot of it can be positioning, too. On Batraal, for example. It's possible to dodge every single one of his TP moves by being behind him before he's able to execute it. You can accomplish this by "dancing" back and forth between his legs, as he has a rather slow auto-attack. I can go through all of phase one without needing a single heal from a healer that way. You can also dodge the laser he spams in phase 3, so being mobile really eases up on the stress on your healers. Though not the perfect example since it was kind of a messy clear and I tend to grow less concerned with dodging everything in phase 2 and 3, there's some examples in here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJU27GaaG8g

Sitting in place like a rock trying to soak up all the damage works, but chances are your healers will have to pick their game up to compensate.

Having Second Wind II and cures available are also very important. It isn't worth it to blow them if you're sitting at a decent amount of HP, or if you aren't in a healing intensive phase.

TL;DR..
You're a bad tank because I said so.

My friend is also using Glad 50 but I assume he uses MRD skills to better handle the situation.

Defender 2 is pretty darned potent even when off classed.

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Originally Posted by Endemerrin

As mentioned in a post above, timing is a big thing with tanking. Half of your abilities as a Gladiator (Well, sentinel abilities) are fairly pointless when it comes to dungeons. Actual blocks only occur on physical attacks, so your Aegis Boon, Deflection, etc won't do any good against TP moves - which are really the main threat during the boss fights. Same goes for ranged attacks and magic attacks.

Sentinel and Rampart II are really your bread and butter as far as defensive buffs go,(Outside of obsess/defender, which I'd consider to be passive buffs due to their length) and the latter has an incredibly long recast rate. While you can never completely predict when a boss will use a TP move, it's fairly easy to "sync in" with the rate at which they use them - and you can plan your buffs accordingly.

A lot of it can be positioning, too. On Batraal, for example. It's possible to dodge every single one of his TP moves by being behind him before he's able to execute it. You can accomplish this by "dancing" back and forth between his legs, as he has a rather slow auto-attack. I can go through all of phase one without needing a single heal from a healer that way. You can also dodge the laser he spams in phase 3, so being mobile really eases up on the stress on your healers. Though not the perfect example since it was kind of a messy clear and I tend to grow less concerned with dodging everything in phase 2 and 3, there's some examples in here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJU27GaaG8g

Sitting in place like a rock trying to soak up all the damage works, but chances are your healers will have to pick their game up to compensate.

Having Second Wind II and cures available are also very important. It isn't worth it to blow them if you're sitting at a decent amount of HP, or if you aren't in a healing intensive phase.

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Thanks man, this was really helpful

IMO just asking for advice to improve makes you a good tank already.

I'm ok, not great, but I notice people use the wrong skills to defend against the wrong attacks a lot. Know what blocks what (shield won't help on most TP moves, Sentinel trumps everything but the eye), spam accomplice, don't spam sentinel (but time it and use it very often) and time your moves properly like the above all say. And, have a pre-made list of excuses for when you mess up, because it happens.

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Originally Posted by Raze

IMO just asking for advice to improve makes you a good tank already.

I'm ok, not great, but I notice people use the wrong skills to defend against the wrong attacks a lot. Know what blocks what (shield won't help on most TP moves, Sentinel trumps everything but the eye), spam accomplice, don't spam sentinel (but time it and use it very often) and time your moves properly like the above all say. And, have a pre-made list of excuses for when you mess up, because it happens.

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lol yeah I should work on my list XD

Defender II makes a big difference. I accidentally turned it off and the ogre was hitting me for about 50% more damage per hit

this is a great thread to explain why we need the advanced jobs, PLD included, to be released and for all jobs to be unable to cross class everything like we can now. You should not even have access to defender 2 on gladiator imo. It is not realistic to require your playerbase to lvl every class to 50 in order to be very efficient. We have 3 main tanks in our ls and for betraal/ogre when the 1 guy who has 50 MRD/CON/THM/PUG subs he is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above the other 2. He can solo batraal w/o any heals for the first 3 skelly's and pretty much w/o the atk buff up he can take him to 30% with minimal heals. Being able to pop featherfoot2/decoy/healing wind 2 makes him a near god. I hope PLD fixes some of this.

And when he tanks on mrd pumping out the dmg while tanking with over 3k hp >.> feels unfair to poor batraal.

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Originally Posted by tachikoma

this is a great thread to explain why we need the advanced jobs, PLD included, to be released and for all jobs to be unable to cross class everything like we can now. You should not even have access to defender 2 on gladiator imo. It is not realistic to require your playerbase to lvl every class to 50 in order to be very efficient. We have 3 main tanks in our ls and for betraal/ogre when the 1 guy who has 50 MRD/CON/THM/PUG subs he is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above the other 2. He can solo batraal w/o any heals for the first 3 skelly's and pretty much w/o the atk buff up he can take him to 30% with minimal heals. Being able to pop featherfoot2/decoy/healing wind 2 makes him a near god. I hope PLD fixes some of this.

And when he tanks on mrd pumping out the dmg while tanking with over 3k hp >.> feels unfair to poor batraal.

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I've been saying that all along... And agree wholeheartedly
We've been told Jobs wont be AS CROSS-CLASSABLE but not to what extent
So taking the extreme (not that this is going to be the case, but it's just a "what if")...
If paladin can't cross class any abilities at all, then it will have to be INCREDIBLE to be better than a Glad who can use Defender II, Accomplice, Decoy, Diversion, Featherfoot II, Foresight II

If they make it so Paladin either gets even cooler tank abilities OR doesn't even need those abilities to really hold hate then all is well... But what are the chances the best tanks will still be Glads with super cross classed action bars?

Hey man your not a bad tank, you don't have hate issues, you just get hit too much that's it.

I die to quickly..

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Originally Posted by Zeno-Ira

I die to quickly..

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In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath
sense of the word, we're all dying.

Try putting more stat emphasis on Ice. When our tank increased his ice, his damage went way down from the ogre