How to maintain aggro off Grit in savages?

Hi folks, just wondering if i should off grit in o7s-o8s?
If i should, how do i maintain enmity during the fight? there are times when the healer suddenly took the aggro.
Do you think its good idea to on grit again on incoming tank buster?

Tbh diff people got diff opinion on this and got chastised alot.
stay grit = blamed for dps
off grit = blamed for occasional off aggro.

Help!

First foremost, managing aggro is a party job and not just main tank's.

When opening a fight you opt to do a DA-powerslash combo, then drop grit right before syphon and focus dpsing mostly and managing your cooldowns and the boss. If your gear is considerably lower compared to your DPS, fill in another powerslash combo, but without dark arts.

From there your party is supposed to regulate the aggro by using tools like diversion, lucid, tactician and your off tank is supposed to vokeshirk you (or you tankswap at given intervals, same result regarding #1 aggro).

If a healer outaggroes you despite those conditions, he either overheals massively (overheal does double enmity) or your white mage is doing a bit too much work at god kefka.

Make sure to look up some rotations and guides for DRK to optimize your own damage output to save yourself from needing to use grit or powerslash more than necessary.

Regarding grit for tankbusters, if you do that under bloodweapon you lose the remaining time of bloodweapon and you spend a whole gcd just to use it. You have enough in your kit for busters, so using grit means something went terribly wrong.

Everything said is more or less correct and you should do fine, with the tips. It is a party job and everyone should do their best to manage it. Further can a Ninja help alot with aggro managment. Thay can shadewalk you, which transfers their aggro to yours and they can smokescreen party member to reduce their aggro generation.
I just want to point one thing out:

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

If a healer outaggroes you despite those conditions, he either overheals massively (overheal does double enmity) or your white mage is doing a bit too much work at god kefka.

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This is not true. Overhealing generates exactly the same amount of enmity as regular healing, not double, but it needlessly generates it...
We tried this out and further the same is stated in several guides.

Lucid dreaming cuts your healers enmity in half so if they’re using that regularly (which they should be for mp anyway) they shouldn’t take aggro, if they do they’re cure bombing like crazy.

Melee dps have diversion to reduce their enmity generation by 90%, using that during their burst window will really help keep their aggro in check.

DRG also has elusive jump which cuts enmity in half and has a 30 sec recast, if they can find places to weave that in (gap closer) they’ll never take hate.

NIN has shadewalker which gives 80% of their enmity to the target (you) which helps you hold the lead. And smokescreen which prevents a target party member from catching up.

Ranged have refresh and tactician which also cut enmity in half so if used at the right times should be enough to keep their aggro in check.

Casters have access to both lucid and diversion.

Tanks have shirk which gives 25% of their enmity to you, they should be using this in combination with provoke to give you a large enmity boost while keeping theirs down.

Basically everyone has enmity control, and unlike grit, all of these options are oGCD and don’t reduce their damage dealt by 20%. Your job is to take the enmity lead, their job is to make sure you keep it.

You are now armed with the knowledge of every enmity tool at your party’s disposal, go tell them to step it up.

Okay so I was testing out WAR in o8s. I have full 370 gear except a Byakko wep on my WAR and my friends 350 alt AST(even with innate aggro reduction) ripped aggro off me during first forsaken, and didnt have Lucid due to using it early to maintain mp. Specifically o8s it can be extremely difficult to maintain aggro before the first swap. The best solution is just have the OT take the boss there, or shirk you. If you can't do either than you have to throw out extra power slashes somewhere. On WAR I just unchained aggro combo in the opener, but for DRK that can be p bad for dps.

Yea my WHM rips aggro in the first forsaken too so we just do our tank swap there, usually fixes it.

Also @OP, if you don't have a NIN in the party you will likely just have to bite the bullet and do more aggro combos.

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Originally Posted by YenNox

I just want to point one thing out:

This is not true. Overhealing generates exactly the same amount of enmity as regular healing, not double, but it needlessly generates it...
We tried this out and further the same is stated in several guides.

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I got told otherwise, but if there is multiple proof of stating the opposite then I guess I learned something wrong.

Hey guys, thanks for multiple responses.
Yes i realize other classes have enmity transfer skill but im not really sure if they use it, most likely they use it though. But sometimes some SAM also took my aggro in uncanny situation.
I can't really explain to them sometimes because im PUGing, some understand english some are barely. In this case i mostly tank the blame.
One time also because they keep stealing my aggro, i put on my Grit all the time and blamed for dps. I explain to them why i put it on but they cant understand me and keep blabbering about DPS number parser.
This situation im in really makes me uncomfortable.

So based on this, if i lose the aggro, its not my mistake is it?

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Originally Posted by Musicazzz

So based on this, if i lose the aggro, its not my mistake is it?

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As long as everyone's using their tools and if you still lose aggro, it means you're not dpsing hard enough. But if your dps is good, and hate is being lost, then not your fault.

If you do nothing else, get your OT to voke shirk you. That is the largest source of enmity you can get. The rest is very much all or nothing. If the Drg uses elusive but the Sam doesn't use diversion, it doesn't matter that half the party cut their enmity if 1-2 didn't, you still have to stay ahead of the people that didn't. So in a PUG you cant 'make' the entire party work together, but if you can only get 1, get the OT to voke>shirk you throughout the fight. You cant make everyone cut their enmity down, but you can massively increase your own via circle shirks and it only requires 1 person, and that person should have more appreciation for enmity.

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Originally Posted by Musicazzz

Hey guys, thanks for multiple responses.
Yes i realize other classes have enmity transfer skill but im not really sure if they use it, most likely they use it though. But sometimes some SAM also took my aggro in uncanny situation.
I can't really explain to them sometimes because im PUGing, some understand english some are barely. In this case i mostly tank the blame.
One time also because they keep stealing my aggro, i put on my Grit all the time and blamed for dps. I explain to them why i put it on but they cant understand me and keep blabbering about DPS number parser.
This situation im in really makes me uncomfortable.

So based on this, if i lose the aggro, its not my mistake is it?

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Since you mention it, yea - if you aren't doing enough DPS it will be harder to maintain aggro regardless of whether you have Grit on or off. Enmity scales with damage so it's important in this regard. If you are going to turn off Grit then you need to have higher damage to compensate for lack of extra enmity generation - on top of help from your party. Keep an eye on threat meters and call out when it gets too close, people need to use their aggro dumps and/or have your co-tank provoke/shirk.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

circle shirks

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Sorry, I don't tank often. What is a circle shirk? =)

Circle shirk: Current OT provokes, current MT shirks. Now the prior MT provokes, and prior OT shirks. At the end you still have the original MT but with 56% more enmity.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Circle shirk: Current OT provokes, current MT shirks. Now the prior MT provokes, and prior OT shirks. At the end you still have the original MT but with 56% more enmity.

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They should really come up with a less innuendo-y name for it.

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Originally Posted by Rinion

Sorry, I don't tank often. What is a circle shirk? =)

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Circle shirk: Current OT provokes, current MT shirks. Now the prior MT provokes, and prior OT shirks. At the end you still have the original MT but with 56% more enmity.

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^ Beat me to it. Just leveraging both tanks shirks to jack up enmity to really obscene levels.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Tanks have shirk which gives 25% of their enmity to you, they should be using this in combination with provoke to give you a large enmity boost while keeping theirs down.

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I really love Shirk. However, I hate it when the other tank either ignores it or refuses to use it at all. Came back in the game a month ago or something and still find tanks in high end content that have no idea how to Shirk.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Circle shirk: Current OT provokes, current MT shirks. Now the prior MT provokes, and prior OT shirks. At the end you still have the original MT but with 56% more enmity.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

^ Beat me to it. Just leveraging both tanks shirks to jack up enmity to really obscene levels.

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Thanks for the info guys ^.^

If you want to rely only on yourself, stay in grit.

Tanking in DPS stance depends less on your skill as a tank and much much more on everyone else's ability to manage their enmity. When there's some degree of coordination, it's really easy since most DPS and all healers have access to really good and straightforward enmity management, but the problem comes when you're dealing with PUGS who have never heard of things like Manashift, Goad, Shirk, Diversion, or Lucid Dreaming.

So to answer your question: How to tank in DPS stance? Tell everyone to stop being stupid and use their enmity management, otherwise it's really not possible.

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Originally Posted by 347SPECTRE

They should really come up with a less innuendo-y name for it.

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The MT in my raid group calls it a Super Shirk.

I feel like I should mention that a healer taking aggro in a fight like God Kefka doesn't mean they're bad or anything that posts before me imply.
The healing requirements are insane, and unfortunately we can't just not heal the massive outgoing damage because enmity is growing.
As a tank, and especially a DRK, you may have to just go tank stance for a bit longer. Right before Forsaken healer aggro is going to spike massively. Even with Lucid Dreaming, it's pretty common for a WHM to get very close to ripping aggro off the tank if you're not on top of things.

so....how about stay in grit....that makes other 7 ppl FOCUS on hitting the boss MAINLY

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

so....how about stay in grit....that makes other 7 ppl FOCUS on hitting the boss MAINLY

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If I pay for the name change, would you change your name to Respecting Content?

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

so....how about stay in grit....that makes other 7 ppl FOCUS on hitting the boss MAINLY

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Except having to press one or two buttons at given times (Diversion on bursts, Lucid to prevent overaggroing, smoke screen NIN when diversion is not enough, Shade Walker as a 2nd Diversion + boosting enmity for the tank, provoke -> shirk by offtank) is actually far more efficient than forcing your main tank into tank stance mid fight. Like come on, do you really try to tell us that hitting a button makes it harder for them to focus on a boss?

Staying in Grit in particular is possibly the most brainless thing to do. It would mean you have no access to Blood Weapon, Delirium has no good extension target and basically is a loss on Blood Price on bosses, your speed is not getting increased and your total MP gain is far lower despite the double MP on syphon strike. If you mean to weave stances you constantly have to pay 1800MP and a GCD timer to enable Grit when required. If you think the tank stance hurts PLD or WAR the most, you gotta consider that the main engine that keeps a DRK going is outside of Grit.

That being said, even a mere provoke + shirk by your co-tank already does so much wonders if you open with a DAPS under Grit to supplement the aggro boost of the tech.

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

so....how about stay in grit....that makes other 7 ppl FOCUS on hitting the boss MAINLY

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How about not sneaking in thread to post useless and ridiculous comment ?

Besides.
'Focus"

Reducing aggro can be dealt my pressing one single button.
If you need to "focus" to do that, something's extremely wrong.

TIL pressing Diversion 2 minutes after the fight started is hard.

I think if is the healer ripping aggro because he/she is healing the dmg + doing dmg is the tank fault for not staying in tank stance. We dont use Lucid for enmity reduction mainly, we use it to get our mp back primary, the enmity down is just a bonus.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

I think if is the healer ripping aggro because he/she is healing the dmg + doing dmg is the tank fault for not staying in tank stance. We dont use Lucid for enmity reduction mainly, we use it to get our mp back primary, the enmity down is just a bonus.

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In a fight like O8s you use Lucid near the start. And as a healer you basically always use lucid close to the beginning of a fight regardless(esp if no ranged) or you're not optimizing it at all and either have low APM for it to not matter or end up with no mp and forced to do nothing. And it only takes one use to make your aggro low enough to matter in 95% of fights. O8s & O4s are the exceptions where you could potentially still rip aggro due to crazy heal requirements, which then it's up to tanks to do something.

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Originally Posted by RLofOBFL

In a fight like O8s you use Lucid near the start. And as a healer you basically always use lucid close to the beginning of a fight regardless(esp if no ranged) or you're not optimizing it at all and either have low APM for it to not matter or end up with no mp and forced to do nothing. And it only takes one use to make your aggro low enough to matter in 95% of fights. O8s & O4s are the exceptions where you could potentially still rip aggro due to crazy heal requirements, which then it's up to tanks to do something.

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In the case of O8S, the only window healers can actually rip aggro is from first Heartless Angel until healing resolving post Light of Judgement #1. Past that enough shirks / tankswaps have happened and Lucid is about to come around (about 30-40s more), aggro should be more than stable by then.

In the case of O4S Exdeath, it is fairly bearable - OT using Provoke-Shirk before the tentacles start showing up and using Ultimatum to grab him before he jumps away so the MT can shirk the OT (tankswap) will do the trick just fine. White hole, while nasty, is not the biggest healcheck required.

In the case of O4S Neo-Exdeath, the plenty enmity resets from the grand cross attacks make occasional heal requirements a nasty lot to deal with, at worst the first Almagest could let a WHM overtake in enmity lead. In that fight it is fairly normal for tanks to do a provoke into some enmity boost (be it through NIN shadewalker or one solid enmity combo) to grab the boss before tank mechanics (tankbusters mainly) come around.