New Tank and Crowd Control

So, as a new tank, at what point should I really need to worry about proper crowd control from my team? So far, up till Stone Vigil, I've just been grabbing all aggro and keeping it, including unwanted adds, while being kept alive by healer.

Also, what classes have what kind of crowd control? As someone new to the game, I have no idea what the other classes can do. I hear one of them can put enemies to sleep. But that's about the extent of my knowledge.

I'm not sure if crowd control is ever a factor. I can say that nobody uses it up through expert roulette. In fact, in the level 60 dungeons, people are often chomping at the bit for larger pulls. There is some highest end content I haven't touched, but I suspect CC is ignored there as well for the sake of AoE efficiency.

Mainly CC is used for PVP, soloing, and in chaotic times where things are going to crap. FFXIV is very forgiving with mob damage. Outside of double+ pulls and tank busters, healers can usually spend time DPSing without constant watching your health. It isn't like WoW where pulls often have to be strategic with specific mobs CCed.

Below i mention some cc i can think of:

1) Sleep (Black Mage)
Puts enemies to sleep. However, duration has been reduced and i hardly notice blms use it ever since.
Important note: Dragons are immune to sleep.

2) Tri-Bind (Summoner) - Blizzard II (Black Mage) - Freeze (Black Mage)
Bind (Hold) in target and targets around it. (Freeze lasts a bit longer)

3) Arm of the Destroyer (Monk)
Aoe silence for 1s but monk needs to be in the correct stance to use.


As a tank you should not worry that much of what other classes are capable of. This rests on individual skill and of course to know your class and use your skills to your/party's benefit. As long as you keep aggro, healer keeps you toped up and dps do their job you will have 0 problems.

Most CC skills just don't work as enemies are designed to be auto immune. Only time they work is in PvP.

Before they raised the iLv your gear can be in dungeons, I used to have my BLM friend AoE sleep adds (mainly in dungeons like aurum vale and stone vigil, where the adds used to do a LOT of dmg)
but now we can over gear leveling dungeons, and most people have the gear from the dungeon, or have better, making it easy enough that AoE sleep is useless.

CC isn't really a thing in this game, because mobs are either immune to stuff, or it's just plain easier to group everything together and turn them to ash with AoEs before it becomes a problem. There are some key situations where Sleep can be used for speedruns (Wanderer's Palace, for instance), but for the most part trying to use CC is frowned upon. Sleep is useless in regular pulls because everything wakes up as soon as you attack them, and knockback/bind from jobs like WHM/SMN/MCH are more annoying than useful because it means that the knockbacked mob won't get hit by AoEs and the tank can't generate aggro on it without moving or wasting lots of TP.

Stuns are useful, but that's your own responsibility. Melees do have stun abilities, but they'll almost never use them strategically and just pop them for free damage. As a tank, stunning big AoEs directed at your party members is a good habit to get into.

You may be used to different types of games....

Example: FFXI the mobs individually were so nasty no one could solo them outside very few classes. You didn't use AoEs in that game because nothing did nearly enough damage to kill them before you were dead. So AoEs were useless, unless you were farming very very low level mobs for drops. There CC was extremely important because just ONE add could potentially wreck the entire party... So sleeping a single enemy was critical.



In FFXIV: None of the mobs, even those in dungeons can kill you in 2-4 hits the way they could in FFXI. Making actual AoE damage much more worthwhile. While the average damage percentage is about the same using AoEs in this game... the Tank can take multiple hits from multiple mobs and won't drop like a stone before the healer can heal him. And has better AoE agro control... the only way you could do this in the original FFXI was to Heal yourself, which is what allowed the Paladin in that game to hold agro so well. He had both a Provoke, and an AoE Agro Generator when he Healed himself. Other tanks didn't necessarily have that. Yeah they'd still kill him easy without a WHM there... but it was great for gaining agro in an AoE style fashion.

This game all tanks have pretty good AoE agro control, so instead of sleeping that one stray mob that could wipe the whole party... now entire packs can bang on the Tank while everyone else AoEs them down.

Different tactics as the mechanics in this game are different.

There are only a few encounters that were built to require CC (stun tail screw on the first boss of Sastasha HM, stunlock wavetooth sahagin in levi ex, stunlock death knight on T5, silence on T9's blue golem etc); however because everyone uses their stuns to increase DPS; these guys will usually be stun resist very quickly. tail screw is punishing on the healer if you miss the stun and can end up killing DPS or even the healer if they're not topped off before it hits - most healers know this and will top up everyone before the hit and will quickly get their health back up after the hit. the wavetooth sahagin, while easily becoming stun resist is also usually dead before it can cast it's hysteria and hysteria can be avoided. The T5 stunlock is why you'd bring a PLD, the T9 silence mechanic is always DPS's job unless the color swap happens and you're holding red when that happens; if silence is missed by DPS (or by you after the color swap) it'll nearly always be a wipe. I don't think pacification has ever been needed as a mechanic because for PLD it's mostly RNG based (until you get sheltron).

The uniqueness to fights in the form of CC has been abandoned in favor of simply pumping out more DPS and to prevent requiring that you take a certain class with you in order to complete the duty (PLD silence required for blue golem, ninja silence; monk hand silence; bard silence - since bard silence is ranged they were the preferred class to handle that mechanic and they were pretty much a necessity in T9 both with foe req, mages ballad and ranged silence - ohh and army's paeon if you were doing the JP method for meteors).

I miss the unique CC requirements in those handful of fights from ARR that required it. With the way the fights are now (must have moar raid DPS), instead of locking in specific classes due to their CC skills; you now have classes locked in due to their synergy with other team members: DRK, WAR, AST, SCH, DRG, NIN, BLM (or SMN if you want access to an extra raise), MCH

So for the most part, you'll almost never be using your CC skills (pacification, silence, stun) to handle any mechanics and instead will use them as OGCD DPS boosts (swipe as soon as it procs, spirits within as soon as it's available and preferably when you're health is 90% or better since it's the one unique skill in the game that has it's potency tied directly to your health).

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Originally Posted by Llus

will use them as OGCD DPS boosts

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I've come to dislike that many stuns have damage attached to them. I love having little OGCD moves that add to opening damage bursts and offer a little extra DPS in general, but when it's combined with a stun/silence, it leads to the strong habit of hitting the button without thinking. When I eventually do have reason to save the cooldown for a mechanic (like that tailscrew), it takes constant mental effort not to hit that frackin button! Failing to do so means the cooldown might not back up in time AND the target will build up immunity to it.

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the replies everyone! I'll just keep doing what I'm doing then!

In most PvE instances, specially low level ones, CC isn't really a factor - in fact I'd say the most use CC skills ever see is in PvP :P So my two cents is, don't count on it, don't expect it. This matter is further made obvious by the fact that the best CC skills are usually WHM/BLM sleep skills, and they're rendered useless by most tanks since their aoe enmity generating skills wake up the mobs...

I personally only ever bothered with sleep and other CC skills when the tank/healer were so bad I could foresee numerous wipes incoming if we didn't take one mob at a time.

Some other things to note about Hard CC in ff14- Diminishing returns, and break on damage.

Sleep and Bind, an effective stun and an immobilize, are cleansed on the target that take damage. This renders them nearly useless in AoE situations, I.E the only real situation where CC would be needed. This makes abilities like sleep a waste of MP and time spent not dealing damage. Thus, since the mob is free immediately, they still do the damage.

The only true CC we have that cannot be broken are Stuns and Silences.
Silences, are always 1s interrupt ability for spells (assuming the mob isnt immune, like a boss) that have to be timed to be effective. The true power of silence is that it cannot be resisted from diminishing returns. it will always act as an interrupt if the mob isnt immune.

Stun, on the other hand, is hard CC that only few random mobs will be immune to. it's generally only bosses that cant be stunned. Stun is actually quite powerful, HOWEVER, it's very rare you will ever be able to get a crucial stun off because mobs will resist any and all stuns for... either 30 seconds or 1 minute after being stunned 3 times. Melee DPS like DRG and NIN have stuns they use religiously on cooldown because "free damage". that will make mobs immune fast.

this is the diminishing returns i've mentioned. each application of any CC (aside from silence) will have it's duration cut in half, and after 3 successful application, the target will be immune. This is another slap to sleep, as not only is it cleansed before it does anything, if you do it again, it's half as long...

As you can see, while CC would otherwise be useful, there are too many factors in play for it to well... control anything. It's a sad state of affairs to be sure. An unfortunate case of design working against the system

I remember using Sleep as BLM/WHM early-ish. It can be somewhat sorta useful maybe when you get it, up until you reach a point where AoE takes priority over burning single mobs. I think the last place it had any real use for me was Brayflox.

Personally, it felt good, once tank had aggro, to just sleep anything we weren't hitting. Focus the DPS, tank is taking less hits, healer needs to heal less and can damage more, seemed like a win all around. But the reality is, as soon as AoE attacks are in the picture, Sleep is a wasted effort.

And the same can be said for pretty much anything else. Applying Heavy is useless when you want everything grouped. Bind is pointless if everything is already together (and again, removed when they get hit).

Basically, as the tank, you are the crowd control. You get the crowd under your control so the rest of the party can burn them all down at once.

I leveled whm first at 2.0 release, everything was new so many groups actually used CC then, flash doesnt break sleep so it was a solid answer to paladin threat issues early on. havent see that in years though

Yes I have to admit, vs other mmos i've played, this lack of cc mechanic sorta makes dungeon group dymanic a bit stale. I did enjoy the various responsibilities of many classes having to coordinate cc with tank, tank having to work around not waking up cc'd mobs, and you really only having a few tries or a small dps timer in the form of diminishing returns on the cc to get the pull right.

Also, a small mechanic like mobs running away when they are low to call other mobs was something interesting I've seen in other games, and which I was kinda expecting in FFXIV since war has that one stationary chain move. But due to the mechanics of emnity in this game (enemies don't rowse other enemies around them unless they are already linked to them in a group) and for reasons uknown to me, i have not seen that outside of a single gimmick fight.

Gladiator has shield bash which stuns as well as doing some damage. It is used when an enemy is about to cast an AoE attack, with the orange indicator on the ground. If it's done in time and the enemy is stunnable it will be stunned and won't do that AoE attack. Only some mobs, mostly trash, can be stunned so it's usually used in between bosses in lower level dungeons, as far as I know.

Other classes have abilities that cause sleep, bind, pacify, silence. They are mostly used in PvP or on the occasion where an attack in a boss fight can be avoided with a stun or something (mostly end game).

Unfortunely PVE in this game just doesn't require much thought to be put into CC, other than tank positioning enemies.

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Originally Posted by IntrovertAnt

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This is probably because, unlike other hotbar trinity MMOs, ff14 has a much, much higher focus on positional triggers?

If every mob is just going to spin in a random direction and run, melee become useless. Actually, try being a tank or melee and just try to combo a moving target. FF14 does not do it well if you don't have perfect latency. Most of the time for myself and others, youre chasing the mob, hammering your weaponskill, but it gets cancelled because the mob is "too far away" despite you physically being inside it's hitbox.

I'm quite glad mobs don't run. it's an annoyance, not engaging.

You bring up specifically Holmgang (the chain move). while you can view it as a bind, it actually is used differently. it's also a pull, and it's your ability that (sometimes) prevents your death. your "ult" if you will

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Originally Posted by Fluffernuff

I'm quite glad mobs don't run. it's an annoyance, not engaging.
l

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Mobs don't have to run everytime. Don't assume that. Also, what you view as an annoyance, others view as a challege to be creatively delt with and adds variety to mob encounters.

I guess the point I'm trying to put out there is that so far, group role dynamic in dungeons in FFXI seems static and not dynamic from dungeon to dungeon.

The majority of reaponsubility falling on tanks to position and reposition. With cc, some of that responsibility could get put on dps instead of them just doing dps.

*shrugs*. Having more things happening during a fight that more party members have to be on top of seems more interesting to me.