New Tank, Frustrated

Hey all,

New guy here... Not new to MMORPG's or FF14, but new to tanking. I wanted to tank because there just don't seem to be enough of them. Right now I am seriously reconsidering this decision. I don't mind a learning curve, but I don't really have a chance to learn anything because of the way dungeon finder works. I seem to always get max level players who face roll the entire dungeon while I pretty much run along and do my best not to be completely useless.

Don't get me wrong, an easy run is great, but how am I going to learn to be a good tank if I don't ever get a chance to be a tank?

Can anyone tell me when I might actually start having to tank? Tips and pointers on tanking also appreciated.

At Level 30 with Tankstance you should be able to properly tank. Before it is mostly just fighting for hate and hoping you win...

Good morning fellow facer-of-foes! So, learning by doing is of course the best route. As you go through the early dungeons, and you start making your way to the story mode primals, you should start to get a feel of how your CDs, your skills, and especially your enmity combos work. You won't get a full glimpse until 50, then 60, then 70, of what your class can do, but you can begin to understand the nuances, even if you're being carried by speed running rouletters.

Now, to learn your class properly as you go, or the fun of learning dungeons, you're going to have to go towards Party Finder, or have the fortune to find a suitable Free Company who can assist with challenges such as a min. ilvl. run, which is always a fun way to do things.

Don't give up! While there's some heated tempers right now, tanking is fun, and you get to see fights from a very different angle to anyone else. Being the meat shield, while pushing your DPS as far as it'll go, learning the timings, and getting that extra hit in, all while preventing your healer from tearing their hair out, and allowing your DPS to push as far as they'll go, is an art form, and most of us are yet to get it right, especially in this new world.

So, FC, or PF, is your best bet, or just ask people in DF for assistance, to slow down, to explain, to help, and to allow you to learn. You'll be surprised how nice the majority of people are!

its a actually a good thing that you have OP party, it means that you are doing great keeping the aggro despite the fact that they have overpowering damage.
as long the dungeon is scaled, you and your party will have similar item value, nothing wrong with it...

the thing that it feel easy because of your party member experience they already know it, how to make it fast, when to hit hard, when to avoid, its not the item or the level, its the experience.

Early dungeons are easy to make sure tanks and healers who are just starting are able to cope with it.

For example, as someone who had only ever played a tank, I always wondered how hard it was to heal. So I made an Astrologian to see. They start at level 30. I went to do some level 30 dungeons with that, and was appalled at how I BARELY EVER had to heal my tank. It seemed to easy. But I know later on how tough things get for healers.

So don't worry. Things will start to get more challenging and you'll feel a lot more useful to your party later on.

Thank you everyone for you responses. I feel a bit better about things. Is there a good tanking resource I can look into? I know when I was big into WoW there were tons of places you could go to refine your skills. I know a lot of stuff is self explanatory but learning the ins and outs is always a thing I look to do.

FYI they basically doubled hate just now so you should find that much easier.

First of all, do the GLD and MRD job quests as they teach many of the basics of tanking in FFXIV.

Second, it's counter-intuitive, but Flash/Overpower is your max hate/GCD until you get Halone/Butcher's Block, not your actual hate combo. Spam it at low levels if you're falling behind on hate. It's ok to mark kill orders if you are running dry and need to switch to single target.

Also, don't panic if a DPS rips hate, just Provoke and move on. They won't die in the low level dungeons even if they get hit a few times.

The main other trick new tanks often miss is that you should bring melee mobs to the ranged mob or the healer will rip the ranged mob off of you. By bringing everything together you can make sure your AoE hate skill hits everything. If you can't do this, you can also run behind a wall or something and the ranged mob will come to you to attack. Later on doing this will let your DPS AoE more efficiently.

you are new tank, so you may feel overhelm abit especially run dungeon with high level player, but keep it up, once you play tank long enough you will find 1 or 2 trick to keep enemy aggro, so even if you go back and play a new tank you will have no problem to keep enemy aggro from other high level player

As a tank you must impose the rhythm. Even if you don't know the dungeon, you must dive and pull first. It's a way to tell other players that you are confident. Many jokers want to test you, use sprint and pull big. Most of the time, the party will calm down and stop the pressure (it backfire on them if you keep speeding up like Flash Gordon) :D

A sign on your first target (even if you don't know wich order is right) is a good way to indicate where your enmity is focused. Mistakes doesn't matter when your objective is clearly visible by all party members. Doubt bring confusion and wipe.

You might also consider asking them to slow down and let you set your own pace to begin with, let them know you're new to it. Most people are surprisingly reasonable if you communicate with them

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VTgamer

Is there a good tanking resource I can look into?

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https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/wiki/enmity
This should give you a general idea on what you should do to keep hold of things. The self buffing thing is one of the bigger offenders on people pulling things early on; You hit one thing with Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend, before you can get in range to Flash/Overpower/Unleash someone popped something and already took threat on the things that just pulled as part of the group. The other being you leaving any sort of Regen on you after the previous pull. Once you've actually had the chance to hit things, it's much harder for them to be taken from you as long as you don't ignore them.
Enmity side of tanking aside, defensively until you outgear the content and/or have a healer you can trust keeping in your tank stance rather than dps stance will go a long way toward your survival. On the cooldown side of things, it's better to spread them out a bit rather than to stack them outside of a few unique situations. You can also try getting your DPS and healers to use Feint, Palisade, Addle, Apocatastasis, Eye for an Eye, and any Job specific utility they've been given.

It is true that up to lvl 30 aggro might be a little problem, especially with synced max lvl player. It is a little boring, but now that you're through those first 30 levels it's going to be lots of fun.
Also dps could use diversion, switch target or hit the right target... it is not always the tank that is failing !
Play the other jobs to learn from them : it'll help you tank better, and also understand who's doing it right and who's doing it wrong.

There's also the fact that people been doing those dungeons over and over, hence the speedrun atmosphere - after you'll get the feel of each of them after a few run, you'll easily run ahead of everybody :)

I'll also link these... they might be a little old, but still relevant overall :
https://i.imgur.com/CKPkwmk.png?1
http://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acci...949226bd54.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/scjYTMr.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RyuujinZERO

You might also consider asking them to slow down and let you set your own pace to begin with, let them know you're new to it. Most people are surprisingly reasonable if you communicate with them

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I'm 100% with this. Just let your party know you're new. You'd be surprised how receptive people are in this community. You're always going to get your random idiot that doesn't care, but most will work with you, and quite possibly give helping advice. I know I've done that plenty of times while leveling my NIN and running into a new tank (PLD).

Don't give up on it, we don't have enough tanks as it is. Believe me, once you get higher up there it's really rewarding. Just stick with it, you'll get there m8! ^^

Pre-30 Tanking can be daunting, especially when you have other people who want you to big-pull leveling dungeons that are even hard on skilled tank/healer duos to big-pull. I definitely recommend going with friends, and even if you can't get a full party, trying to go with a pocket healer ensures that you and your friend set the pace and that the DPS just need to deal, since your healer friend can just leave them on the ground where anyone belongs if they refuse to give new players the chance to learn in leveling dungeons.

Your best bet for pulls right now is take them one at a time and use your flash and overpower until you're comfortable with the enmity. Definitely pull melee mobs to ranged mobs (like sprites, spirits, or archers) because yes, your healer will just naturally rip them off since the ranged wont be hit by your AOE enmity generator. Remember that Overpower has a different position requirement than Flash. Also, keep your back away from enemies, as they do more damage to you when you're turned away.

Probably already know this, but you can easily check hate levels on your current target by glancing at the party list. A = Aggro and the numbers indicate who's next in the list. Also, in your enemy list, red square name means you have top hate, yellow triangle means you have hate but aren't top, and green circle means you're very low on hate list. When I have two melee classes, I try to single target whatever they're hitting (after my AOEs), or I'll cycle my hate combo between their two targets if they're hitting separate things. If I have a melee and a good AOE'er (BLM, RDM, SUM, BRD), I cycle a few AOEs and one or two hate combos on the melees target. If I have both AOE'ers, I lean heavily towards my AOE enmity generators (Flash, Overpower, Unleash).

If it's still too daunting, Palace of the Dead would be a nice solution to level up to 30 (do your job quests) so you can get your tank stance.

@VTGamer: Don't be discouraged!

First thing, is you need to be laying down lots of Flash. I know it's kinda boring, but until you get Defiance (I think that's the name of your tank stance?), it's not going to be easy keeping threat off of people who blow mobs up for a living.

Second thing, is that if a DPS pulls threat, they are doing it wrong. They are either attacking your off-target, or they are simply not respecting the tank whatsoever. If they complain, proceed to tell them that they should attack your main target. If they don't, it's on them. To be honest, tanks just allowing DPS to do this is only making things worse for the entire playerbase as a whole; it is a vile habit that we really need to stamp out. DPS need to be staying with the tank's target when single-target DPS unless it is almost dead and they are in the middle of a combo or something.

Stick with it - it gets better! Some things I have done:

* Go to the "sprout house" and take the lessons!
* go into a lower level dungeon unsynced either alone or with a friend. No one runs past you now :) Good practice.
* POTD : some recommend this. I always forget about it.
* Use Party Find (PF) instead of Duty Finder (DF). Join a party or start one. People are usually more descriptive about who they are looking for and what type of run it will be.
* tell people you're new on the way in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RyuujinZERO

You might also consider asking them to slow down and let you set your own pace to begin with, let them know you're new to it. Most people are surprisingly reasonable if you communicate with them

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This has not been my experience as a tank, but I do hope there are people who do it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VTgamer

Hey all,

New guy here... Not new to MMORPG's or FF14, but new to tanking. I wanted to tank because there just don't seem to be enough of them. Right now I am seriously reconsidering this decision. I don't mind a learning curve, but I don't really have a chance to learn anything because of the way dungeon finder works. I seem to always get max level players who face roll the entire dungeon while I pretty much run along and do my best not to be completely useless.

Don't get me wrong, an easy run is great, but how am I going to learn to be a good tank if I don't ever get a chance to be a tank?

Can anyone tell me when I might actually start having to tank? Tips and pointers on tanking also appreciated.

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Depending on what class you're playing, you're going to want to prioritize AoE attacks, or at the least use them regularly while tanking. Most people don't have the common sense to focus down one target, so you're going to have to do your best to hold aggro on several targets at the same time. If you're a GLA/PLD, you can insert Flash in between weaponskills without breaking combo to not lose group aggro. On WAR you want to open with two Overpowers so that you can get a decent aggro lead, and try to insert it after Butcher's Block or Storm's Path/Eye once you have those.

Once you get Defiance/Shield Oath, it should be easier to generate an aggro lead, at which point it's a matter of keeping an eye on enmity. Always good to see a new brother in arms, and I'd hate to see you get discouraged.