Tips for a new tank?

Hey all. so I decided to take up tanking but I feel like I'm struggling to grasp the basics. I take agro and hold it but it feels like I'm doing something wrong. I'm a healer main and can dps fairly well but tanking seems to be my weakness.

Any tips would be most helpful

Can you be more specific? You say you feel like you're doing something wrong, but what? And which tank job are you playing?

I'm running dark and I try to do pulls like I've seen other tanks do but I feel more comfortable with smaller pulls.

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

I'm running dark and I try to do pulls like I've seen other tanks do but I feel more comfortable with smaller pulls.

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Then do smaller pulls. You're the tank and you get to decide the pace. It's fine dude.

Yea, pull what you're comfortable with. It'll make the run more smoother. You can make bigger pulls when you're ready.

For DRKs try weaving Dark Arts into your attacks and when you do big pulls, DA with Abyssial Drain will help with restore HP.

Since you're still relatively new to tanking, don't try to do supermassive pulls like the other "pro tanks" do. It's perfectly okay for you to stick with smaller pulls until you get more comfortable doing mass-pulls. Kindly let your parties know "Hey, I'm new to tanking, and not quite comfortable doing large pulls yet" and many are perfectly okay with that.

Checking your Lodestone, I see that your DRK is level 51, so here's some advice I can give you for now. DRK was my go-to tank back in Heavensward, but I haven't played it much since Stormblood dropped, and I'm not too familiar with all the changes that was made to it, but I feel like the basic concepts of level 50 DRK are probably still the same.

As you know, always keep both Grit and Darkside up. Until you get more comfortable with tanking, it's perfectly fine for you to stay in Grit if it will help ease your tankxiety. Darkside no longer drains MP while active, so there's no reason not to have it up 100% of the time now.

When pulling, pull with Unmend, and once the mobs all gather around you, Unleash. You can activate Blood Price for a little bit of MP regen while everything's beating on you (though they nerfed the amount regenerated with Stormblood) to aid in your Unleash spamming. After Unleash, rotate though the mobs with your Souleater combo, making sure to Dark Arts + Souleater as often as your MP allows. Rinse and repeat for any and all trash packs while also properly rotating your cool downs to ease up on your incoming damage, and so that your healer can also contribute to DPS. Bosses are generally the same.

Once you get more comfortable, you can start dropping Grit and using Blood Weapon, which still has amazing MP regen, in combination with your Syphon Strike to get back even more MP, weaving in Unleashes for AOE damage on multiple mobs between rotating combos, but for now, just focus on staying in Grit and making things a bit easier for yourself. DRKs generally don't have any problem with aggro-generation.

Again, I haven't touched DRK much with this expansion, so I'm just repeating the tactics I used while leveling it up in Heavensward. I don't think much was changed pre-60 minus some nerfs here and there to skills, and the fact that Blood Price can no longer be used outside of Grit, so I feel like this basic explanation can help you at least a little bit. By all means, if more experienced DRKs have any corrections or insight, feel free to correct me/share! (I do plan to level DRK after I finish MNK so, I could use any additional advice on the changes as well!)

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tankxiety

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I'm a new tank and have absolutely nothing to contribute, but I wanted to say I love this. Thanks for the tips :) I tanked my first dungeon yesterday and deff felt tankxiety before I queued, but I told them I was new and they were really friendly and patient. I love this community!

I found this guide pretty handy for tank basics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...blood_edition/

There is one question I've been wondering out regarding tanking. Is there a way to tell if you're about to lose hate on a mob via the monster list? I know that if the square stops being red I've lost it, but is there a way to tell you're about to lose it before it actually happens via the monster list? I know that the party list has that gauge that shows hate values, but honestly I tend to tab target too fast cause I'm trying to hit everything with bits of the enmity combo and it doesn't update the list fast enough, heh. A way to tell from the monster list would be useful. I've mostly just been guessing based on how I've divided hate so far.

- keep grit and darkside up (if you feel comfortable drop grit during boss fights)
- spam unleash when you have 5 or more mobs on you, use dark passanger
- if you pull less than 5 mobs use you souleater combo once hate on you is solid
- make sure to position the mobs well (as tight as possible and facing away from the group)
- if you evade a move try to move back to your previous position; don't make the mobs spin around
- once you hit 56 spam abyssal drain. never use dark passanger again unless your group does really good aoe damage
- use salted earth on cd (except the pack is about to die)
- use def. cooldowns to ease the life of your healer
- at 62 and 64 you get even more mp regen tools, so make sure to dump that mp when ever you can
- at 70 abuse the blackest night during big pulls

- dye your gear black

Unfortunately, there is no indicator in the monster list itself that you might lose hate. Only solution is to tab through all monsters.

You can observe which monsters HP get depleted faster and focus on this one. If you happen to pull two big monsters and both are going down rather quickly, your DPS mates aren't focusing on one alone and make it harder for you to hold hate... (I hate this and those are mostly DPS who even ignore priority numbers, i.e. 1, 2 etc.)

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Originally Posted by Spiriel_Basanda

There is one question I've been wondering out regarding tanking. Is there a way to tell if you're about to lose hate on a mob via the monster list? I know that if the square stops being red I've lost it, but is there a way to tell you're about to lose it before it actually happens via the monster list? I know that the party list has that gauge that shows hate values, but honestly I tend to tab target too fast cause I'm trying to hit everything with bits of the enmity combo and it doesn't update the list fast enough, heh. A way to tell from the monster list would be useful. I've mostly just been guessing based on how I've divided hate so far.

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the enemy list is your friend for this, you can click enemy list to check your enemy instead of tabbing through if you like it to shows the hate/enmity bar gauge if you want to call it in the party list, that pretty much shows how far your enmity is to other people, along with the enmity rank list as well.

just to edit, there is a picture from reddit that shows the icons in enemy list, big square means you have strong enmity, the more smaller the square is the lower your enmity lead is towards the target, and the icon that looks like a guitar pick means you lost the enmity for that target.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

- dye your gear black

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I think we can all agree that this is the most important part

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

- dye your gear black

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Increases your DRK DPS by 5%! Jet black even more!

Lie often. If you don't feel like making huge pulls, you'll occasionally be challenged over it by someone. Rather than get into a pissing contest over pulling what you feel like, just say your computer sucks and if you pull too much the game turns into a slide-show. People will be annoyed, but they'll back off.

On the opposite side, if you want to get through something quickly, but the party is reluctant, tell them you have to leave for work in 20 minutes. Lies are like cooldowns, a good tank always has them ready for when he needs them.

do some arr dungeon pre lv 30 and see how much you struggle. If you can keep aggro with less tools, then you can also hold it at high level.

OP I love your signature... *looks down*

Establishing hate:
Ranged Attack
3x AoE Threats

On Bosses: Ranged skill, Gapcloser, hate combo. Hate combo again if your DPS heavily outgear you.

Doing the Deeps: Turn to the DPS stance / Turn Tank Stance off.

Specifics
Paladin: Flash twice to establish hate while not putting Blind on quickened DR. Flash once more when Blind falls. It's practically a CD all its own. Pair Awareness with Bulwark, Convalesence with Rampart, and Sentinel / Hallowed Ground can be used on their own.

Warrior: Onslaught does stupid hate, as well as Defiance Equilibrium / Thrill of Battle. Both can be used while gathering enemies to put a heavy amount of hate without having to aim overpower.

Dark Knight: PThe very last enemy in a pack should be your MP restore. Siphon Combo!

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

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Well, that is somewhat reassuring as that is what I've been doing with a Gladiator. I was going to make my own post here if this wasn't here already. I started FF14 as a DPS and have done some time as a healer. I can do some very good heal runs, but tanking is a different beast for me.

I've only done a handful of runs, but I find tanking to be the hardest role of the three. DPS: do what you do already. Healer: concentrate on keeping HP up, and do damage on the down time. I tend to burn through MP, but it's been fine so far. Tanking gives me added pressure. One is that I am considered the leader and have some anxiety doing it in general, whatever. Keeping hate isn't too hard, but I want to work on getting hate from the start. My last dungeon's party realized why they were doing a low level run pretty quick, but I managed to improve. I was told I did better than 6/10 tankers.

12 years of playing World of Warcraft taught me it is "Always" the tank and healers fault when something bad happens. :-) Tanking is a thankless/ stressful job on the player. You need to know how to lead other players, you need to know the dungeons/raids like the back of your hand. The number of hours I would put in studying videos or reading up on boss mechanics was like having a second job.

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Originally Posted by ArianeEwah

Increases your DRK DPS by 5%! Jet black even more!

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Now with extra 5% DRK FFXI Bonus for wearing Scythe.^^

Two things. First your agro list. At the end is colored lights. Red means you have agro, yellow is your losing it, green means some one took it.

Secondly, to the left of your name in the party list is a white bar. It fills up with whoever has the most agro in your party. So if you see a rdm getting to high on the list. Target his target with your agro skills and the bottom of the the list he goes.