New tank looking for some tips to be a better tank!!

[Anienai]

For MRD CC skills:

1. Bloodbath with fight or flight since they share a 90 sec cd.
2. Foresight with convalescence since they share a 120 sec cd.

You can macro them together or not.

[Jpec07]

Thank you all so much for your advice !! I took my time to read every single thing posted and It really helped me get comfortable with tanking and better understand the paladin job! I finally got my paladin job stone last night! Yay me! And successfully ran Haukke Manor the second go. The first time went terrible because I was heavily under geared , as I have learned through you all it is a big no no for tanks! I kept having the hate ripped off of me D: ! They spoil you when your a healer or dps and can get away with havin gear 10 lvl under you! And I'm really seeing the importance of spreading out my Rage of Halone combo to help keep the aggro with multiple mobs!! I'm very excited to go further with paladin!

This is really awesome to hear! So glad we were able to help!

I have a question on cross class abilities, which would be best to take? At first I took CNJ skills such as protect and cure then I decided to take some MRD skills like Fracture , Forseight and Bloodbath to help with Cooldowns and DPS. Which are the most optimal choices for Cross Class skills??

Really, only Foresight and Bloodbath are considered essential. The others people take have their strengths and weaknesses:

• Protect (CNJ 8) - PLD's version of this skill isn't quite as good as the healers' version, as it only affects physical defense. But if someone needs to be raised mid-fight, and you have a few moments where you know you won't take heavy damage or be interrupted, you can hit it to give someone as a stop-gap until the healers can do you one better.
• Stoneskin (CNJ 34) - For a PLD, at endgame, this can become 2,000-2,500 HP mitigation that you might not have otherwise had. Downside is that you can't block or parry while you're casting, and it takes two GCDs to do, but it can provide a fair amount of additional mitigation. Depending on the fight, this can conceivably make it so that a healer's Regen can keep you topped off, outside of tankbusters. If you're offtanking, you can also throw it on the MT to help with tankbusters, or anyone who you know is about to hit with something.
• Mercy Stroke (MRD 26) - As a PLD, you're not generally going to do enough damage for it to give you the healing effect inside a dungeon, but when your soloing, it's pretty nice. It also provides an additional bit of DPS, as (I believe, but I'm not sure) it is off the global cooldown. NOTE: if I'm wrong and it is ON the global cooldown, it is a DPS loss for PLD.
• Fracture (MRD 6) - The main drawback of this ability is the fact that it's very expensive, costing 80 TP. However, until you get into Heavensward content, it does provide a bit of additional damage for PLD. Most PLDs don't take it, though, because in order for it to be fully effective, you can't clip the last DoT tick, and because we don't have any means to recover our own TP (and until the most recent patch, we were encountering issues where we were running out of TP).

The rest either don't have combat ability (Raise), or aren't effective enough to be meaningful (Skull Sunder, Cure).

Also, is Shield Bash the only stun that a paladin has? I've had multiple situations where I was mid combo on a monster and they start casting and my Shield Bash timer isn't up yet and I'm panicking hoping I can shield bash before they finish casting.

Eventually you'll get Spirits Within, which will interrupt most spells, and is off the global cooldown. However, if it is something you know you can interrupt, and which you know you can't escape, it is my experience that it's always better to interrupt your own combo to use Shield Bash than it is to not. However, it is often better to dodge an AoE cast than it is to use your interrupt. It really depends on what skill/spell you're trying to interrupt, which is something you'll develop as you get more experience with the content.

EDIT: Also, Shield Swipe's Pacify effect can work wonders against mobs channeling big physical attacks. It's a bit trickier to time, though, so generally isn't as reliable as Spirits Within or Shield Bash.

For MRD CC skills:

1. Bloodbath with fight or flight since they share a 90 sec cd.
2. Foresight with convalescence since they share a 120 sec cd.

You can macro them together or not.

These two should never, ever, ever--a thousand times, never--be macro'd together.

Bloodbath and Fight of Flight, yes, but not these two.

[Galgarion]

I'm also in process of levelling paladin and as mentioned earlier, shield oath makes a world of difference. The incread hate generation and damage reduction is just that great. It was pretty hellish to maintain hate before I got it but now that I got it's really smooth sailing.

The devs really need to consider flipping around the order in which paladins receive shield oath and sword oath. Ten whole levels of frustration is just plain silly.

[Tyrial]

Macros? A lot of players will tell you that macros are terrible, but I find them useful to stack similar buffs onto (like Rampart, Foresight, etc) and whenever you need some mitigation you hit the button once and it will pop the first buff that's ready.

That's because macroing abilities is terrible. It interferes with how skills naturally queue up with the system. Also, macroing things the way you suggested gives you no control over what you're hitting as it uses them in order of whichever one is off CD first. This is terrible as a tank given some incoming damage doesn't require the strongest CD you have which is what you may end up hitting doing it this way.

You need to be constantly adjusting to your situation as a tank which means gauging incoming damage and using the appropriate CD (which you'll learn as you go, OP) for the situation.

[Iagainsti]

Hi! So I decided to take up tanking...

Didn't read through, just having coffee, so disregard if it's mentioned.

I play on ps4 also, keep in mind when you target lock, you can't move through the mob sprites like you can if you just target them, very important for movement intense fight mechanics. Just focus on the ground target circle while moving to stay in range. Also, this makes pulling packs easier, run through with your aoe aggro, then 180 and voila.

For macros, that's purely a player preference, if anything, macro your aggro combo to your first attack in said combo while still having the actions on your bar to manually input it. The macro wait time is 3 sec minimum, while the gcd is 2.5, but for knee jerk movements( ex dps drops a Titan plume under your feet) this allows you to move and still execute the combo if you keep the enemy targeted.

[Rongway]

Really, only Foresight and Bloodbath are considered essential. The others people take have their strengths and weaknesses:

• Protect (CNJ 8) - PLD's version of this skill isn't quite as good as the healers' version, as it only affects physical defense. But if someone needs to be raised mid-fight, and you have a few moments where you know you won't take heavy damage or be interrupted, you can hit it to give someone as a stop-gap until the healers can do you one better.
• Stoneskin (CNJ 34) - For a PLD, at endgame, this can become 2,000-2,500 HP mitigation that you might not have otherwise had. Downside is that you can't block or parry while you're casting, and it takes two GCDs to do, but it can provide a fair amount of additional mitigation. Depending on the fight, this can conceivably make it so that a healer's Regen can keep you topped off, outside of tankbusters. If you're offtanking, you can also throw it on the MT to help with tankbusters, or anyone who you know is about to hit with something.
• Mercy Stroke (MRD 26) - As a PLD, you're not generally going to do enough damage for it to give you the healing effect inside a dungeon, but when your soloing, it's pretty nice. It also provides an additional bit of DPS, as (I believe, but I'm not sure) it is off the global cooldown. NOTE: if I'm wrong and it is ON the global cooldown, it is a DPS loss for PLD.
• Fracture (MRD 6) - The main drawback of this ability is the fact that it's very expensive, costing 80 TP. However, until you get into Heavensward content, it does provide a bit of additional damage for PLD. Most PLDs don't take it, though, because in order for it to be fully effective, you can't clip the last DoT tick, and because we don't have any means to recover our own TP (and until the most recent patch, we were encountering issues where we were running out of TP).

Protect: Everyone's protect is the same as of 3.0. Take it and use it on un-dead party members to save the healers some MP/heal time.

Stoneskin: Use it as an extra cooldown, or better yet a cooldown-by-proxy when offtanking.

Fracture's total potency is 220.
Rage of Halone combo is 150 + 200 + 260 = 610 over three GCDs, mean potency 203.
Royal Authority is 150 + 200 + 350 = 700 over three GCDs, mean potency 233.
Goring Blade combo is 150 + 230 + 640 = 1020 over three GCDs, mean potency 340.
Skip fracture. It's overpriced in general and becomes even worse comparatively if you off tank.

Mercy Stroke is an oGCD 200 potency attack. Don't bank on its healing effect. You can't fire it often, and when you do, you'll almost never get the killshot with it because the timing is so strict, but it's extra damage with nothing to lose. Mostly take it because there's no reason to take Cure, Raise, Fracture, and Skull Sunder outside of raising people you run across on the overworld..

[fm_fenrir]

PLD is more planned than WAR/DRK in the stun department. You only get Shield Bash on GCD,which is the price you pay for being able to do it more than once every 20/30/20 seconds like WAR/DRK/DRG.

As far as cross-class skills go, you want Mercy Stroke, Bloodbath, Foresight from MRD, and Protect/Stoneskin from CNJ. You won't really use Fracture all that much after you hit 60, because it eats a lot of TP, and TP isn't something PLD has a large supply of.

[Jpec07]

Fracture's total potency is 220.
Rage of Halone combo is 150 + 200 + 260 = 610 over three GCDs, mean potency 203.
Royal Authority is 150 + 200 + 350 = 700 over three GCDs, mean potency 233.
Goring Blade combo is 150 + 230 + 640 = 1020 over three GCDs, mean potency 340.
Skip fracture. It's overpriced in general and becomes even worse comparatively if you off tank.

Until you get Goring Blade (54), it still represents a DPS gain, as the potency per GCD is higher than your highest-potency combo (220 > 203).

The math is a little skewed when you get Goring Blade, because it becomes your highest potency combo even without the DoT in 3.2. The DoT's efficacy only counts if it runs at or near its full course, so if you're going for full DPS (which, OP, should only be done if you have a comfortable enmity lead in most content), the potency-per-GCD translates to roughly 150 (FB) + 230 (RB) + 240 (GB) + 150 (GB DoT - one tick per GCD) = 770/3 = 256.67 potency per GCD. So once you get Goring Blade, it becomes a DPS loss, but until that point, it still-potency's both Rage of Halone combo and Riot Blade combo.

I also need to confirm what you're saying about Protect. I could have sworn that the PLD version only buffed Physical Defense, but I may be wrong.

[winsock]

I also need to confirm what you're saying about Protect. I could have sworn that the PLD version only buffed Physical Defense, but I may be wrong.

As of 3.0 PLD buffs both.

The change had more to do with healer balance. Originally the skill did only physical while WHM had a trait (proshell) that made it cover magic as well. With the introduction of AST, SE was concerned protect might lock a WHM spot into party comps, so the WHM trait was merged into the skill itself.

[giantslayer]

Here is my favorite tank guide:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ide-to-Tanking