Tanking: Where's my enmity going?

Okay, so, let's preface this with I took on Tanking this expansion. My experience in tanking prior to this expansion has been scarce, short of dungeon crawling as a Warrior.

So, as a Paladin, I'm hella struggling to keep aggro in dungeons. From where I'm standing, the AoE burst from the mage classes is soooo intense that I'm struggling to maintain the levels of enmity.

I must be doing something wrong or am I missing something? This is how I pull into maintaining enmity:

Shield Lob > Circle of Scorn > Flash > Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone

Then I start flicking through enemies to put out the growing dps enmity bars. If I feel like there's a lot of AoE going on, I'll throw in another 1 or 2 flashes to make sure I'm not about to lose something.

I'm here to learn, I want to get better at tanking. I don't want to hear about how you're holding aggro with 2 hands tied behind your back and playing with your feet, it's not helpful :D

Can anyone advise me what I'm doing wrong and how to improve any of this? I'll answer whatever questions I need to, in order to give a broader picture.

If you are level 64 above spamming flash is good way to hold aggro if not your best bet is to keep an eye on the aggro meter and emity combo whatever be blowing on it

Other then that level 64 above emity is never a problem

I'm currently level 70, running through all dungeons and working through Susano unfortunately. Lol So I just need to spam flash more, is that all?

The dps can put out a lot of damage and aggro. It's crazy when you pull a mob, flash once, and before you can do anything else, the dps are blasting away on the entire group. It becomes flash spam city because you don't have enough time to do anything else to hold aggro until things calm down a little into the pull. I don't believe most dps are using their enmity reduction skills too.

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Originally Posted by KokopokiRirinima

I'm currently level 70, running through all dungeons and working through Susano unfortunately. Lol So I just need to spam flash more, is that all?

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The first thing I notice when I tank right at the start of storm blood I felt like they nerf something to our emity and so spamming flash is the safest way for me to hold a group of mobs unless your dps is corporatly hitting the mob you mark usually 5 flash is enough to hold and you can start spamming your aoe unless it's 2 mobs :p just emity combo

More flashes it is! It also feels like enmity in this doesn't work the same as any other MMOs. Perhaps if I research how enmity works at a base level, I'd have an easier time understanding what I need to do in order to trim the fat.

Spam flash more. Meld strength to all your accessories.

Aggro does work differently here and they just changed our aggro to scale off strength again rather than vit, while locking us out from using 270+ strength accessories.

I just finished leveling PLD myself and for the most part had far less aggro issues than WAR. Spammed flash a few times after circle of scorn and whenever I saw a dps creeping up on hate.

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Originally Posted by Nikolas

The dps can put out a lot of damage and aggro. It's crazy when you pull a mob, flash once, and before you can do anything else, the dps are blasting away on the entire group. It becomes flash spam city because you don't have enough time to do anything else to hold aggro until things calm down a little into the pull. I don't believe most dps are using their enmity reduction skills too.

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I agree with you. There is a problem for aggro on packs. I think tenacity is the key but the key is broken for the moment. I wonder if someone tried a full crit deter meld stuff

General rule when pulling with flash is x3, or with any tank really. If you do that AOE 3 times it should help you keep aggro in any situation.

Follow up question: I'm having a similar problem running dungeons below lvl 30. I keep losing the emnity lead to a red mage or sometimes a samurai. I use a shield lob/tomahawk/unmend to draw in followed by 3 Flash/Overpower/Unleash and then run to emnity generation. Does anyone have suggestions for holding it at lower lvl's from these two classes? All others I seem to be able to handle just fine.

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Originally Posted by KokopokiRirinima

Okay, so, let's preface this with I took on Tanking this expansion. My experience in tanking prior to this expansion has been scarce, short of dungeon crawling as a Warrior.

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I main pali of some sorts and I just flash like twice and spam my aoe till my tp gets low then i goaring some adds works pretty easy , sometimes one add coudl get away just provoke shield lob shouldnt be an issue

Typically if you start a pull with Shield lob into Circle of Scorn and just spam flash you can hold aggro majority of the time on adds. Just be aware of when players arent focusing the same target as you and use Rage of Halone to keep aggro.

Fight or Flight and Spirits Within are also great tools to help you keep aggro.

Also keep in mind that Stormblood saw tank's damage nerfed into the ground, via changing damage scaling from VIT to STR. (Hence, why you see threads about people using i270 accessories for the extra STR) Your damage output directly effects your enmity generation and when the entire right side of your gear isn't contributing to damage... Well, hopefully you can see the problem here?

Just accept that there will be occasions where people steal aggro (although it should only happen on trash pulls), and when they do, it should be fairly easy to take aggro back right away. Also accept that you'll either have to invest a fair amount of time/money into VI STR materia (whereas other roles can save their VI materia for the new gear in the coming weeks), or take the less recommended option of using a couple i270 pieces.

On trash pulls, once everything is grouped together, I normally use circle of scorn then spam flash until I've cemented aggro. After that I use total eclipse and cycle through enemies hitting anything I may be loosing hate on with oGCD abilities as they become available. I'm sure it's not the most efficient way to do things, but it works for me.

Just wear 2-3 of the 270 slaying rings and rotate cds appropriately. It's currently becoming meta since the dps can output tons of damage and none of them are using their quelling role skills. Also Tenacity is either bugged or not working as intended as the gains from it are so minuscule that it borders on parry tier so try to avoid that when possible. Trust me you will see a difference though attack power doesn't affect flash. SE really messed up when they tied enmity to attack power and then moved the scaling to str only.

I know it sounds redundant, but just meld str materia VI down your right side, it makes a huge difference, no need for 270 slaying gear yet at least (maybe after new gear is released it might become mandatory again)

I'll usually body pull into packs, flash as I pull the first one. When I'm done pulling all packs be it just 1 or a whole bunch I'll flash x3-4, circle of scorn then go into total eclipse spam.

I won't use much or any of the single target hate rotation on trash pulls unless my TP looks like won't last, or if one of the dps is also choosing to do single target in an aoe pack.

I can't personally say I've had any major problems holding threat, but it seems to be a common complaint.

dungeon crawling to 70 and i too an experiencing this as a DRK, i apologize and no one seems to mind but unless im spamming unleashed BLM become the new tank.

Just unlocked and ran the current ex dungeons and couldn't hold hate at all. Spamming scorn and flash endlessly.. I could literally flash myself out of mp and still lose hate.

Might be a little behind some players at i291 but holding hate shouldn't be that difficult that even my most potent agro generators can't keep up

To be honest most dps are not even bothering using enmity reducing role actions specially casters that have access to not only 1 but 2 now. I always pop diversion before starting a heavy nuke phase, and lucid dreaming if i get close to pulling aggro. I suspect most do not however and consider it a competition if they can actually pull aggro from the tank and then go and blame said tank when they die from aggro.

That being said use flash in between each combo for the first couple combos is generally sufficient, don't spam it however its not needed and will invalidate the blind debuff pretty quickly which is helping you take less damage. It also help to swap your target so you don't execute all your combos on the same target and none on the others, do a combo on 1 target, swap to another flash once and do a combo on that one and so forth.

hello,

as a dk, my opener for pull mobs

unleash 3 times > GCD skill(kick, C&B, etc) > salted earth > GCD > AD > (mana check) > unleash if needed

basically you probably need to ignore your combo rotation for a while and spam aoe enmity skill, i find it easy to keep mob when i spam 3 unleash

The solution is wear i270 accessories. The changes in SB basically mean you do not scale like the rest of the job roles do anymore, a terrible SE decision that they don't seem to understand. As content progresses and dps/healers get better gear, the issue with emnity will continue to grow more and more.

It certainly has been interesting getting used to the current state of enmity in SB as opposed to HW. hopefully the buffs to some enmity actions this patch makes it a little easier on us. But my experience goes:

-Single Target = Fine
-3 mobs = Burst dps yanks hard (RDM/BLM) mainly cause they all pick separate targets.:(
-5+ mobs = Fine, because your AoE threat can match dps AoE.

4.01 changes
Savage Blade Enmity effect has been increased.
Flash Enmity effect has been increased.

More tuning for all jobs to follow in 2 weeks for 1.05.

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Originally Posted by NosValk

It certainly has been interesting getting used to the current state of enmity in SB as opposed to HW. hopefully the buffs to some enmity actions this patch makes it a little easier on us. But my experience goes:

-Single Target = Fine
-3 mobs = Burst dps yanks hard (RDM/BLM) mainly cause they all pick separate targets.:(
-5+ mobs = Fine, because your AoE threat can match dps AoE.

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They just buffed enmity on most major abilities today in the patch. personally now i think the enmity problem is gone so atleast its a step in the right direction in overall tank balance for the time being.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

They just buffed enmity on most major abilities today in the patch. personally now i think the enmity problem is gone so atleast its a step in the right direction in overall tank balance for the time being.

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For now, but what happens next tier when dps are pulling ahead again from gaining AP from accessories where tanks get none, they gonna buff enmity generation each tier to make tanks keep up? Looks more like a bandaid to me.

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Originally Posted by Thela

For now, but what happens next tier when dps are pulling ahead again from gaining AP from accessories where tanks get none, they gonna buff enmity generation each tier to make tanks keep up? Looks more like a bandaid to me.

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yup, but this isn't really the thread to be discussing that so i just kept it brief.