How to play gladiator efficiently?

Hi, everyone...

I've received a few complaints from other players after dungeons saying I'm a terrible tank. It hurts my feelings, to be honest. I mean, what the heck am I doing wrong?? I'm using flash and shield lob. At least 80% of the time, the monsters are aggroing ME and NOT THEM. Yet despite my efforts, other players get mad.

What am I missing here? Like I said, I'm already using flash. Exactly how many times do I need to spam FLASH in order to COMPLETELY SECURE aggro?

Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

Itd be easier to know what they complain about and when than give random tips

Unless you've become a paladin refused to use shield oath, I don't know why they would complain. You said you were keeping aggro. I assume there's more to the story? Otherwise, they're just being jerks

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Originally Posted by REPROBEAN_CHILD

Unless you've become a paladin refused to use shield oath, I don't know why they would complain. You said you were keeping aggro. I assume there's more to the story? Otherwise, they're just being jerks

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I'm honestly confused. For one, what the heck is shield oath? I swear to you I already checked my actions tab and didn't find anything that's labeled as "shield oath". It's just not there.

I will mention this... There was a player who did tell me to use shield oath. But you said that's only for paladins? I'm a mere gladiator! lol. Why the heck would he/she mention that if we were on a low-level dungeon?

Just spam flash

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Originally Posted by AshlikeSnow

Just spam flash

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That's exactly what I've been doing!

I can't really give specifics without knowing what happened/seeing you play. Outside of keeping aggro, you should also make sure all mobs are grouped - so take them to the ranged mobs that lag behind, amd that you face mobs away from your allies. Outside of that, its just basic avoidance of aoe's and using skills to mitigate big attacks. The big attacks arent really a worry early though. I know that some will complain about tanks if you don't pull all of the mobs at once to speed things up, but you can just ignore those people.

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Originally Posted by Cirgellon

I can't really give specifics without knowing what happened/seeing you play. Outside of keeping aggro, you should also make sure all mobs are grouped - so take them to the ranged mobs that lag behind, amd that you face mobs away from your allies. Outside of that, its just basic avoidance of aoe's and using skills to mitigate big attacks. The big attacks arent really a worry early though. I know that some will complain about tanks if you don't pull all of the mobs at once to speed things up, but you can just ignore those people.

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You mentioned facing monsters away from allies... I did get a comment about this with the Ifrit trial... So there we go. Maybe that's what I've been missing, because prior to that, I never did it.

Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

You mentioned facing monsters away from allies... I did get a comment about this with the Ifrit trial... So there we go. Maybe that's what I've been missing, because prior to that, I never did it.

Thanks.

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A lot of bosses have attacks that cleave and will hit other players. As a general rule turning the boss so it faces away from the group is normally your best option.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

You mentioned facing monsters away from allies... I did get a comment about this with the Ifrit trial... So there we go. Maybe that's what I've been missing, because prior to that, I never did it.

Thanks.

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For Ifrit specifically you want him facing away from the group, with your back to the wall. This way he can't push you out of his range and everyone else is good to use their positionals.
Remember many melee classes need to know where the back and flanks of a target is going to be, and nobody wants the front facing them. Rarely do you see a frontal positional attack and it just avoids front facing cleaves.

The positioning of bosses and generally all mobs is one of the more important tank responsibilities. The others are not dying, and the super advanced tactic of not being slow.

Otherwise, you sound like you're doing dungeons with gladiator appropriately. Shield Lob into a couple flashes and then whatever combos you may have learned unless it's just some Total Eclipse spam because there's so many.
Gladiator is very simple to use until you reach Paladin levels, where it honestly doesn't get much more complicated but at least you have Shield and Sword oath. The guy asking a Gladiator to use an Oath should be chuckled at and taught when tanks learn their skills.

theres more to tanking then just knowing your rotation, a big part is knowing the monsters/bosses and their abilities/mechanics. Mainly boss fights, you need to know positioning, timing, and what cooldowns to use and when. The role requires alot more strategy and knowledge than the others. It sounds like you have yet to reach level 30 and unlock Paladin so you don't have to worry about alot of that yet, but turning the bosses away from group is generally just a good habit to get into, as well as tanking by the edge of the arena most times, not all.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Total Eclipse

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Isn't that a level 41 skill? They should be a PLD about that time already then.

Others covered most of what needs to be said, but what I usually do at the lower levels is Shield Lob, then Flash 2-3 times depending on how big a difference in level and gear there is between you and your party. Combo skills wise, alternate your targets and save your finisher and highest agro generator for the target the dps are focusing down, if such exist. To support AoE agro, and to at least keep from losing things to the healer if you have several enemies, I'd recommend using Flash again every other combo unless you see they're really ripping off of you, then use it more often.

Here, my boy.

If someone tells you you're a bad tank, ask them why. If they refuse to explain, just ignore them and continue with you the dungeon.

Here are some quick guidelines just to help you know you're on the right track:

1. Everything has to be hitting you. If for some reason, something starts attacking someone else, your top priority has to be to get it back. Use Provoke for that. I'd like to point out here that even if the DPS has something attacking them, there's no reason to panic since any single monster does LAUGHABLE damage even to non-tanks, so if they're complaining about this in particular, just tell them to stop whining.

2. Make sure you turn things around, especially during boss fights. Some monsters have cleave attacks. If you have to dodge an attack, go back to the spot you were in after you dodge. This isn't really something that tends to be complained about, but I've seen it go through some people's heads.

3. At later levels (60+), if you are comfortable, you might want to start picking up more than one group of monsters, to speed up the dungeon. If you do this, make sure you use skills that reduce the damage you take.

Reason #3 is often what a lot of people complain about. They've seen other tanks pull 2-3 packs before, and want you to do it too. But just because you don't do it, doesn't mean you're a bad tank. Especially not at dungeons below level 60.

Ultimately though, if you've got 2 and 3 covered, it doesn't really matter what you do. In time, you will learn new things and get better, so just ignore anything that isn't constructive criticism.

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Originally Posted by Lilseph

Here, my boy.

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Very informative, if not a little outdated

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Isn't that a level 41 skill? They should be a PLD about that time already then.

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46 in fact!
But nice catch, my bad.

gladiator and marauder are kind of semi-crippled before they get their job upgrades. It would definitely help to know the nature of the complaints though

Something to help with aggro for aoe is the enemy list will have little green/yellow/red bubbles next to there names showing how securely you have aggro.
The most important things i can think of for just generic tank stuff is
1) try to identify the ranged mobs and pull the melee ones to them, and try to arrange yourself so the monsters are making a fan pattern in front of you instead of a circle around you. It gets easier the more you do it
2) the moves that show a telegraph on the ground generally still hurt tanks pretty badly so strafing out of them and back in once they disappear will minimize damage you take and minimize monsters moving around as well
3) there is not much of it at low level but try to wear as much "gladiator/marauder" gear as you can rather than "disciple of war" it makes a big difference

other than that, try to keep in mind a lot of people have been doing the same low level dungeons almost daily for years and have grown a bit jaded so the ability to ignore people that are being jerks just because they're spoiled will do you well.
You should also have access to the novice training grounds near aleport since that's right next to the first dungeon, get yourself some useful training and pretty great for it's level gear and one of the most useful rings in the entire game from it

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

You mentioned facing monsters away from allies... I did get a comment about this with the Ifrit trial...

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Another thing that many tanks learn for the first time during the Ifrit fight: if there are adds during a boss fight, many times it's not the tank's job to deal with them. In Ifrit in particular, the tank should not attack the nail because the DDs will get caught by Ifrit's fire breath.

Also, if the healer Rescues you to a different position because you're cleaving the party, please don't go back to what you were doing that was cleaving the party.

I agree with many others' comments, though I'll add a few more, since it's unclear what specific problem people have with you.

• Don't stand in the "bad".
Many hard-hitting moves are telegraphed by an orange indicator on the ground. You should try to avoid those. Hopefully that's obvious, but I'll mention it just to be safe.

• Don't move a lot while you're tanking.
Several people mentioned "face things away from the group", but it's equally important to mention "please try to rotate/move the monsters as little as possible". Obviously, you'll still need to dodge the bad stuff mentioned above, but always try to return to your original position. Other jobs have moves that work better when striking monsters from the back or sides, and it's difficult to hit those directions if they monsters are spinning/moving.

• Dungeon speed.
I suspect this may be the actual reason people might complain about you. People hate it when dungeons run slower than needed.
Since you're doing low-level dungeons, people may be bitching if you're pulling small groups of monsters. Once you've leveled past a dungeon and you've gotten used to the dungeon layout, it becomes obvious that certain groups of monsters are so weak that you could easily pull multiple groups at a time (the first two groups of monsters in Sastasha are a good example). So many people have run all these dungeons so much that it seems obvious to them, but for newer players it's definitely not obvious at all.

With that said, there isn't really anything you can do about this until you are comfortable with each dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

At least 80% of the time, the monsters are aggroing ME and NOT THEM. Yet despite my efforts, other players get mad.

What am I missing here? Like I said, I'm already using flash. Exactly how many times do I need to spam FLASH in order to COMPLETELY SECURE aggro?

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"80% of the time" is not NEARLY sufficient to be a tank; you should be aiming for ~99%. Also, this may seem contradictory, but they may be complaining if you're flashing too much. Once you have a decent enmity lead, you should be actually hitting the monsters, not just flashing endlessly. This will be gear dependent, but you should only need to flash 1~3 times to get solid threat.

Also worth mentioning that flash trumps shield lob; you shouldn't be using shield lob if you're in melee range.

I admit I just skimmed through here but I didn't see any mention of your actual level, OP. If you're at or above 30 you should make sure to complete any class quests you have to unlock Paladin. There is literally no reason not to, playing a class above 30 without your upgraded job stone equipped is only hurting you.

I know you mentioned "low level dungeons" but I don't know exactly what that entails. You should be a Paladin before you do Brayflox's Longstop at level 32.

At that point you will get Shield Oath which makes generating enmity to keep everything hitting you much easier.

No level mention but you did say a player told you to use shield oath, that tells em you're high enough to have that as a skill (you'd never be told to use it in sastasha fr example) but you still say you're a gladiator... that would be an issue.could that be he issue? Hard to say :)

Kinda sounds like you'd understand this already, but we've all seen it come up once or twice, so maybe worth saying: Flash isn't a long range spell.

Like I said, I'm going with the assumption that you seem to sorta know pretty well how to catch aggro and all, but, yeah. Eventually we all get stuck with the tank that uses Flash way too early for it to actually hit anything. But if you're holding onto everything, then you're probably not one of those.

As much as any of those knobs complain, guaranteed we've all seen worse.

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Originally Posted by Rhus

No level mention but you did say a player told you to use shield oath, that tells em you're high enough to have that as a skill (you'd never be told to use it in sastasha fr example) but you still say you're a gladiator... that would be an issue.could that be he issue? Hard to say :)

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I have seen tanks bothered to put on a tank stance as early as Halatali. Sometimes players are just misinformed. Think of how often RDMs in level 60 content are asked to raise - some people just don't know anything beyond their own class sadly.

What makes you happy as a DPS or healer? Can you envision how that looks in play?

Okay, now you just have to reverse-engineer it from the tank's set of tools.

Seriously, though, that really is it. You'll generally learn more about proper tanking from healing and DPSing than tanking by itself, and in some cases more about healing from tanking, etc.

Pull as many packs as you can reasonably AoE down; Sprint before you aggro the first mob in a set of packs for double duration on the Sprint; don't scoot mobs out of your ally's AoEs or lines of sight; don't take so much damage upon gather that your SCH can't Bane; keep the mobs as tightly packed as possible; spin them minimally; in a pinch during a gather, feed your Monk a stunned mob for the GL upkeep if you already wasted his Sprint; etc., etc.

In short, avoid the stuff that annoyed you when trying to play well on a DPS or healer. Take advice from others in case you were abnormally hard to annoy so that you can meet more refined or optimized tactical tastes.

Did you actually equip the PLD soul crystal to switch to PLD which you should get at level 30? I'm looking at your main class atm and it's a Pugilist at level 61 when it should be a Monk. Meaning your main class isn't equipped with Monk crystal either.

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Originally Posted by Vurtney

I'm looking at your main class atm

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It's not an indication from the game but just a random option chosen on the forums.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

It's not an indication from the game but just a random option chosen on the forums.

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So it seems. If he understands the advanced job function he should have figured it out by now.

Lv 1 - 30: Spam flash, mark enemies
Lv 30 - 70: Equip your PLD job crystal and use your PLD skills

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Originally Posted by Vurtney

So it seems. If he understands the advanced job function he should have figured it out by now.

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They're also posting with a character that doesn't have any tanks unlocked. So it has to be an alt or a friend who's having trouble.

Break up your hate combo as sometimes the dps will chose different monsters or the few that still have dots will put them on other monsters. Also remember that if you use provoke you need to use another hate tool on top as provoke only puts you at the top of the hate list. It doesn't also generate.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

That's exactly what I've been doing!

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pull literally everything, use rampart, *THEN* spam flash

if they complain then, then you need to pull *more*

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

mark enemies

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A complete waste of time.

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Originally Posted by Rhus

No level mention but you did say a player told you to use shield oath, that tells em you're high enough to have that as a skill (you'd never be told to use it in sastasha fr example) but you still say you're a gladiator... that would be an issue.could that be he issue? Hard to say :)

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He said “low-level”, and since he’s talking about gladiator, I’m assuming that’s probably sub-level 30 content. Shield Oath is PLD only, and can only be used at level 30 or higher. That being said, you would be surprised the amount of people who ask gladiators or marauders or dark knights under level 30 to put a stance on when they cannot.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

Hi, everyone...

I've received a few complaints from other players after dungeons saying I'm a terrible tank. It hurts my feelings, to be honest. I mean, what the heck am I doing wrong?? I'm using flash and shield lob. At least 80% of the time, the monsters are aggroing ME and NOT THEM. Yet despite my efforts, other players get mad.

What am I missing here? Like I said, I'm already using flash. Exactly how many times do I need to spam FLASH in order to COMPLETELY SECURE aggro?

Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

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Go to the beginners hall, they should teach you the basics of every class and even advance classes. Sorry to say but now I'm beginning to think you are just trolling -.-; either that or your being lazy and want everything handed to you. IF you can't even follow simple explanations there I would stick with a non tank role.

Also I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, try reading job actions and cross roles. Here is an ice little link to help you get started. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobgu...gn=na_jobguide

Anything more related to rotations you can read up on line, practice on fates with your choco, or just keep practicing.

No offense just really seems like your trolling, at the very least say what your rotations are or are doing to sound more legit. Flash is only a basic, you need to rotate your targets as you do combos. Your gear plays a role so if your being out DMG that would be why. Use markers if your having control issues.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

I'm honestly confused. For one, what the heck is shield oath? I swear to you I already checked my actions tab and didn't find anything that's labeled as "shield oath". It's just not there.

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You need to be a Paladin for this ability. If you have been continuing your Job Quests you would get the quest for Paladin at lvl 30. You will not have Oath as a gladiator. If you're doing content over 30 as a gladiator you need to stop and do your Job Quests.

Work Flash into your rotation lower than 30. Some classes just will generate more aggro than others. And always, always tank bosses facing away from the party. Other than that, you'll get there. In the end, just take a deep breath and focus on what you are doing. It's hard to start up a tank at low level.

You gotta ask people if they're not entertained