Brand New Gladiator here, tips....go!

[erkhardt]

Greetings Squeenix forums!

So......I just tanked my first party two nights ago, and the first run was horrible. I expected it to be, I told my party this was D-day, and they were very gracious and patient. Subsequent runs I always inform that this is my first run as tank in dungeons where I have not tanked before. I have done every dungeon as healer and dps, so I know mechanics, but....as a tank it is much different ^^.

Being nice and accommodating is something I take pride in when I play, as I do enjoy the randomness of the parties. I believe it makes me a stronger player as a whole when I can right the mistakes that occur in random duties. Now, I can pretty much hold hate, I'm getting the hang of my rotations and I am one level away from Rage of Halone. Thick skin, check. Combos X2 Flash after opening with shield lob? Check.

How do you guys as tanks deal with the players that pull hate from you intentionally? Should I just ignore and keep on trucking? I had a bard last night that kept fighting me for hate.......he would even initiate the pulls and I'm running all over the place while the WHM is using fluid aura on EVERYTHING. I asked the WHM to stop using FA please, he did. I asked the Bard to stop pulling everything, he did not. I asked him if he wanted to tank, he said fine by me. It was a low level dungeon, Halitali, so my toolkit is still quite sparse, mind you. Is it my fault that I can't pull everything back to me instantly, I can't help but feel a bit offended haha. Tips for dealing with these types of people please?

[Commanderkeen]

I open up with Shield lob then Flash X2. After that I do emitey combo and another Flash. After I establish enough ago on my main target I cycle through the mob and see which enemy has the most threat and I do another emitey combo on that target, then another flash and so on till the mob is dead.

It gets a lot easier once you get Shield Oath.

[GeekMatt]

So first off, there are three tiers where enmity will get more comfortable; first is Rage of Halone; I was helping an FCmate who was getting frustrated with the aggro struggle in toto rok then got RoH and never lost another mob. Around Cutters Cry you'll start to have aggro issues again, but then you unlock Shield Oath and life gets so much easier! Lastly at 50 you'll be able to pull off a big burst of AoE AND single target aggro at start, which is very helpful (though keep in mind, gear is vital for tanks, esp. PLD, you'll likely have issues with an i90 sword when your DPS is ilvl 115.)

So now about that ARC; they're the GLA's nemesis at low levels because they have a few off the GCD skills and admittedly it's tempting as an ARC to use them all right off the bat. If the bard is an ass, I'd just let him die/vote kick. Keep in mind the party does not want to lose his tank, though on the otherhand he may be hoping for a vote kick...

If you want to fight him for enmity though, here's a trick I learned in Titan EX; I was in there with my Zenith Sword and reached the phase with the two adds. I'd grab add 1, then switch to add 2, but couldn't get aggro off the BRD who went crazy on it and heavily out geared me, and when I did manage to get it, I'd lose the other add to WHM spam healing through the damage. Wipe. Obviously the BRD should be smart enough to use Quelling strikes before DPSing a freshly spawned mob, but he wasn't. So next try, what I did was mark the add the BRD went for previously as "1", built some solid enmity on the other Titan, then I moved to mark 1 with Fast blade > Savage Blade > Provoke > Rage of Halone and moved them into position where the two adds died. The thing about BRDs is that when doing burst damage, they unload their aggro up front and then settle into easily managed aggro and at that point I coulda held both with just flash, spirits within and CoS because he'd done most of his burst prior to my provoke + RoH and I already had a solid lead on the first mob. It was also quick enough that the BRD didn't take much damage.

In your case what I might've done is grabbed the other mobs, then fast blade > provoke > savage blade on his mob.

[Donjo]

Rage of Halone is a tipping point where tanking will become easier, and you'll get your second big one at Level 40 with Shield Oath.

As for how to deal with the intentional hate stealer, I usually just let the person tank on the second occurrence onwards unless the hate steal was explicitly because of a mistake I made. However, that depends on how much you wish to stretch your nice and accommodating nature. In the following situations, however, you might not be able to keep up with certain DPS no matter what you do:

-Toto-Rak before Rage of Halone
-Cutter's Cry before Shield Oath

And don't think that MRDs have it good all the time either. Just try to enter Hawkke Manor before Level 30 and see how well that goes :P

[PWilson]

GeekMatt had a pretty conclusive answer.

Remember that you as tank and the healer are the core of the team, and with the exceptions of some DPS-gating bosses, all you really have to do is out-survive dungeon monsters. A Scholar can solo a lot of the 4-man dungeon content - and even bosses. The only reason you're a tank is because the healer can heal you the easiest. You know this, you've been a healer. When one of those DPS thinks they're so cool that they can steal hate and tank... Just ask your healer if that's what they want to deal with. And if the healer says "no", then you say, "let him die then pls". If he says "I can do it", you kind of have to let it go.
It happens, from time to time, and it's rage-inducing.

[erkhardt]

Excellent tips here guys! Yeah, @PWilson, it is rage inducing! RoH here I come, just one more level. Aside from the couple of DPS that don't pay attention to the aggro meter, things go pretty smoothly with Shield Lob and Flash times 2. Then I just rotate targets and use muh combo that I have. Riot when mp runs low, throw a flash every now and again. Having done the dungeons before, I know mechanics, but jeez, it's pretty different from the tank's perspective!

[Rbstr]

I'm finally getting around to leveling my Gladiator and it's certainly a different beast compared to warrior. There's a lot more feeling helpless with paladin. Largely because you can Overpower until you turn blue and then throw a few flashes for good measure. Rage of Halone will make it somewhat easier for a while. But someplace in the 30s it'll get harder again. I expect that once I get shield oath it'll be just fine.

The #1 thing is to mark a primary target if you need to. Most people will follow that. There's not much you can do if people decide to single-target different mobs. Just keep up on the primary one and maybe the rebel will get the hint eventually.

Another option is to tell people to AOE when you've got the composition for it. Then you flash and riot-blade (on a mob that's getting autoattack damage!) and it's usually pretty safe agro when all are AOEing. This is risky because, before shield oath, if you have one DPS doing aoe and one doing single target there's little chance to keep everything, somethings going to give.

One last thing is to put bonus points into strength for now. If you're keeping up on gear you don't need the extra HP while you're leveling but 15 strength around level 30 is a boatload. You'll probably need to swap back at 50 if you're not geared yet. If you step into i100+ gear at 50 you could even keep it depending on what content you're doing. If you're tanking for insta-queue roulette ect.: all strength all the time.

At the end of the day the tank is the rate limiter most of the time. If DPS won't cooperate they've got to deal with it. There's a long queue to wait.

[Saseal]

Hmm, new to tanking also, so I also have a question -

I was under the impression (maybe I'm working with very old knowledge) that VIT was the main stat for Glad/Pali - was I wrong about this?
I'm suddenly not sure what kind of stat build I should be aiming at by lvl 50 Pali D:

[Commanderkeen]

I would do Vit till you hit around 7500 health (7500 health you can withstand just about any hit in the game) and then work on STR.

[GeekMatt]

While figuring out how YOU want to build it, focus on enmity building stats because you'll need it until you're a solid ilvl. You have plenty of natural mitigation with your tank gear, but if you can't hold aggro it'll cause problems. When you get higher up, make sure you're meeting accuracy caps for whatever content you're working on without over-stacking accuracy, and otherwise keep reading up on various opinions of PLD builds.

I myself recommend having both a more DPS-oriented gearset and a mitigation-focused gearset.