GLA <25 and keeping enmity

[Bardo]

Want to reiterate just a few things that have been touched on:

1) Weapon damage listed affects all of your hate generation, even flash. Specifically look for HQ crafted options, options you can buy from your Grand Company for seals, or green drops from dungeons to get the highest damage you can find for your level.

2) Use [Fight or Flight] as often as you can. It's a massive help in the early levels for hate generation. Along those same lines, you can also pick up [Internal Release] and [Raging Strikes] as cross class skills to help your hate generation.

3) Use defensive cooldowns like [Rampart] and [Foresight] on big pulls. The less damage you take shortly after a pull, the less likely it is for the healer to pull aggro before you have solidified aggro on multiple enemies.

Outside of that, get used to just tabbing around and looking at the enmity bars to figure out which enemies you need to attack.
It gets MUCH easier at 40 when you get access to Shield Oath.

[Sadana]

2) Use [Fight or Flight] as often as you can. It's a massive help in the early levels for hate generation. Along those same lines, you can also pick up [Internal Release] and [Raging Strikes] as cross class skills to help your hate generation.

Would I pop FoF just after I open or wait a few hits since that is when I start losing aggro?

I have Raging Strikes since I had to level ARC to unlock BLM. (Use it often. <3 ) Internal Release though, I'm unfamiliar with, which class has this?

eta: Actually, to my great embarrassment, I don't think I have Raging Strikes on my crossbar. ^^; I'll have to fix that.

[Bardo]

Some people use it as they're running in to pull so that they get the benefit on Shield Lob and their first few combos for more enmity as early on in the pull as possible. But then you "waste" some of the benefit while you're flashing to pick up the adds.
Others Shield Lob, Flash, Fastblade, then pop FoF so that the first hit you get with it is your highest enmity skill. That can actually result in more total benefit.

Earlier benefit vs total benefit.
Just have to figure out which works better for you.

Internal Release is a 10% critical chance buff that you get from Pugilist at level 12.
The skill tree on xivdb is a great place to see what cross class skills are available to you and what you would have to level to get them:
http://xivdb.com/?skilltree/Gladiator

[Delorean]

Hit flash a lot.

it does threat every GCD, your combos do additional threat every 2 gcds

[Ooshima]

On one of the other multi-page guides to tanking threads, I read that the enmity gained from Flash isn't that much compared to other skills. Is this the case or no?

Yes, but it does help you to hold group head early. I have both GLA and MRD past 25 and holding hate doesn't seem to be a problem for me. Yeah at times one odd mob just goes to the healer, I think it's because it took too long to kill the mob. But even so, one hit of the SB or even a shield lob should get it back. If you need to shield lob or hit a few times to grab it back, it meant that you're holding hate a little too loose.

Mark your targets before you engage, open with FoF if avail. Shield lob, flash 3 times for a start since you had issue. FB=>SB combo it 2 times and see if it's dying (really, low level mobs dies very fast, especially if you have level synced DPS). If the mob is left with say 30% HP, don't bother with it anymore. Move to targert #2, FB=>Riot Blade it to recover MP. Once target 1 is dead and your DPS move over to target 2, throw in a FB=>SB combo if mob is dying or 2 FB=SB if still have significant HP left. Again, once it's on low HP, leave it to your DPS to kill, move on to target #3 (usually the last mob for typical pulls) with FB=>RB if you still need to recover MP.

Typically healers shouldn't even pull aggro off any mobs in this way at all, unless either the pack took too long to kill (something wrong with DPS?) and resulted in healer generating too much aggro with healing you, or your DPS doesn't dodge shit and resulted in healers generating too much aggro again. As a tank, play by ear. Took too long to kill and DPS eating shit dmg? Check the emity bar of your current mob and next mob. If you hold significant aggro (ie #2 aggro holder still far to overtake), you should throw a FB=SB combo on the next mob to hold hate.

[Wadoka]

Y'know, I've heard this before... Has anyone ever held an "Enmity-off" between a GLA/PLD and MRD/WAR? Same level, same gear, same level weapon, maybe no soul stone

MRD wins. WAR wins. No contest.

Anecdotally, this isn't always true. I would offer the example of the FATE "Roc and a Hard Place" in Coerthas. I ran that fate one time as a Paladin, with a Warrior FATE-mate. The WAR established aggro on the ROC but over the next 3 minutes (yes it took that long) we had a "Hate Race" and I caught up and stole the aggro from the WAR, using Flash only when the diminishing-returns reset, and using basic RoH combos (no Provoke).

I don't know if we were equal iLevel at the time. We were equal Level-level

***

As has been said, you'll want to add "Flight or Fight to your opening rotation, before Shield Lob. And pop it every time it comes off cooldown.

***

As far as "Show Some Leg" - you know that only works against heterosexual/bisexual male and homosexual/bisexual female *humanoids*, right? Useless otherwise

[FurryFury]

Actually, 35-40 are harder aggro-wise. Esp. in Cutter's Cry, when all you've got is a Sword Oath (its a 38 lvl dungeon) between large mob packs and trigger-happy synced DPS. Shield Oath at 40 was a real godsend, after that the only aggro problem was with double-flaring BLM w/relic vs me w/GC sword in AK

[Ultimatecalibur]

Popping Fight or Flight right before you use Shield Lob to pull is a waste of at least a few seconds of increased damage/enmity. Especially if you are going to follow things up with Flash spam to anchor the rest of the pull.

Popping Fight or Fight before Fast Blade or before Savage Blade has no difference in enmity generation. You will get 4 Fast > Savage cycles while under the buff either way. Same with the full RoH combo and the 30s version at 28+. Only during levels 26 and 27 is there any real advantage to popping FoF before Savage Blade over any other part of the combo due to 20s only covering 2.66 uses of the full combo.

When spamming Flash at the start of a fight with multiple monster you want to use it until you are down to about 1/2 MP. This should be about 3 or 4 uses and allow you to recover to full MP before you go to the next group without having any reason to stop and rest to recover MP.

[Sadana]

As far as "Show Some Leg" - you know that only works against heterosexual/bisexual male and homosexual/bisexual female *humanoids*, right? Useless otherwise

LOL. It was more to make mobs think "dinner" rather than "sexy fun time". xDDDDD Hey... whatever works.



As far as folks suggesting I use Flash more... I'm using it until I'm oom unless the mobs are killed quickly. As I stated before, I pop Flash a couple times after Shield Lobbing the first target. Then I intersperse Flash every few to 5 hits which I share between the enemies.

A few responses on my blog about this have also mentioned "Oh, if someone in your party is overgeared, you will lose hate to them." What I want to know is why? If the new tank has to struggle so much against 50s in the DF/DR, isn't this one more problem that creates the tank shortage? I love helping new people and thought learning to play a tank role would help lots... but, because of this problem, I'm not about to go into the DF. And that defeats the whole purpose.

[whiskeybravo]

A few responses on my blog about this have also mentioned "Oh, if someone in your party is overgeared, you will lose hate to them." What I want to know is why? If the new tank has to struggle so much against 50s in the DF/DR, isn't this one more problem that creates the tank shortage? I love helping new people and thought learning to play a tank role would help lots... but, because of this problem, I'm not about to go into the DF. And that defeats the whole purpose.

The level sync evens the playing field for the most part. The main reason tanks have trouble early on is the lack of tools, mainly Rage of Halone for Gladiator, and Butcher's Block for Marauder. Think about it like this:

(hypothetical numbers)

Lancer does 200 damage creating 200 enmity
Conjurer cures for 200 HP creating 200 enmity
Gladiator does 90 damage with Savage Blade - which has a 3x Enmity modifier - creating 270 enmity

The tanks do not output the same physical damage as dps which is why their moves have "Enmity modifiers". Healing enmity is just whack so I won't try to explain that, but you see how with only one move - Savage Blade - it won't take long for dps to catch up with the tank on hate.

At lv26 you get Rage of Halone, which has a 5x modifier, and after that it's game over - no reason for dps to ever catch up on enmity unless you guys just aren't on the same page on the kill order (which happens a lot unfortunately, make sure to at least mark the first enemy!)