Tank anxiety/new tank thread

[Arkenne]

One thing that I've found useful is having a Waymark in the hotbar.
This way while doing big pulls I place the Waymark to announce "this is where I will stop".
Its specially useful for SCH, since their Shadow Flare is a pain to missplace, also WHM and AST gets a chance to time up their holy spam or card deployment.

About swapping to DPS stance, its not really necessary on trash pulls (or at all), but if you want to, have Rampart at hand and use it as a sub-tank-stance. So you swap to DPS, pop Rampart, and return to Tank stance once Rampart runs out.

Personally the easiest Tank to test waters for swapping is the WAR. PLD is a tad more annoying so I usually only do that at bosses.

[Wyndam]

I'm getting the hang of it.

Surprisingly losing aggro hasn't been a big issue, I'm more woried about proper positioning for the melee than anything. The enemies in general don't move as fast as I expected so I can't just back up to where I want unless I am okay with not hitting things for a few sexonds which I'm not.

A lot of people don't realize the sluggishness with which mobs respond until they start tanking. Try, if you can, to pick a point on the floor and always return there as your "center" when you dodge AoE. As long as you keep returning to center melee can figure themselves out.

[Mirateski]

Dunno if anyone's mentioned this yet, but a lot of PLDs will hold circle of scorn until they've gathered all the mobs, to get the most dot uptime, so most dps/healers see "pld using circle of scorn" as the end of the pull. Try to get into the habit of holding it until you've gathered everything and aren't gonna go anywhere.

Find a healer friend (or even a dps friend, but healer is better for obvious reasons) and run some dungeons. If you want to pull small and the dps complain they can sod off. (I myself am often a little disappointed when tanks pull small, but also realise that it's about comfort level/gear level/whatever than my personal desire to triplecast flare on twelve mobs at once)

Stance dancing on large pulls generally isn't necessary. Staying in tank stance can give the healer more time to dps, and helps to smooth out a chunk of successive crits/DHs. On bosses, I'll do one halone then sword, or two if the dps are either a) overgeared for me or b) not using any aggro mitigation. I'll ask them to fix b, but a is a fact of tanking life unless you decide to main it and throw all your gear at it.

Lastly, Hallowed is best used right at the start of a big pull (you probably already knew this) to let healers dot/holy/whatever, fight or flight on total eclipse is the best and it's almost always back up for the boss.

Harass melee dps for goad. Ranged should be using tactician anyway but if not, harrass them for that, too.

Play it safe until you've got good at gauging how geared/skilled/competent a healer is, and dps too. Don't be afraid to pull the first pull as large as is sensible, but be ready to scale back if necessary. (Some people do it the other way around, but I prefer to flirt with death).

I was tanking savage in heavensward and still had the mad tanxiety. It's a good thing! It means you care about doing well, which means you're already a lot better than most DF tanks.

Oh, and lastly: dodging an aoe is more important than maintaining positionals for dps, but you should try to move back in to your old position once they're done. Honestly so long as you're not doing go-go disco around the room with the mobs most dps won't complain.

If you say at the start that you're new, either to tanking an instance or tanking in general, and ask for advice either throughout or at the end, a lot of people will give you role-specific insights that you might've missed. If they're a jerk, they probably don't know what they're talking about and aren't worth listening to anyway.

[MoroMurasaki]

Thanks guys!


I have definitely gotten the hang of returning to one spot after dodging AoE (though I imagine this is a bit more hectic in something higher leveled) and I even had a NIN comment that that was good so I feel better about it.

I 100% agree that you don't understand the speed at which enemies move until tanking them. Even as a healer if I found myslef "tanking" I was ranged so I could move further away from enemies while still hitting them. Also I didn't worry so much about posotioning for melee.

Tanks definitely have a lot to deal with. At the very least I think this foray into tanking is making me a better healer. It doesn't come as natural but it makes any old content feel new and sort of exciting again.

I haven't gotten into the large pull thing yet, I want to but a lot of my healers have been sprouts who don't do much so I think giving them more to worry about would be mean. I had an AST get stuck with me in leveling roulette, she was 70 and I guess annoyed I was going slow (with a MNK and Rogue) and pulled for me but I managed to get the things back off of her which I was proud of since she was 70.

All in all it's coming together but the advice and encouragement here has been a big help in terms of trying to have the confidence to keep going.

[Anienai]

You are on Zalera!!!

huge thumbs up.

Don't be afraid to let healer/dps eat dirt if they pull more than your group can handle.

[SuperNoob]

Any tip about stepping in tank on extreme, omega normal?

[Arkenne]

Omega normal is quite simple, there are no tank swaps on the first 3 encounters so you can either MT the whole fight or OT the whole fight.

Actually, even V4 can be solo tanked so long you time your CDs for the Thunders

[Mirateski]

Any tip about stepping in tank on extreme, omega normal?

4n's debuff only goes up to two max. Not worth swapping for unless you'd personally prefer to.

Start out OTing and learn the fight from a tank's perspective (note that ot still has to grab the dragon in 3), then switch to mt once you feel confident. If you know a healer it will help you get comfortable to go in with someone you know is reliable, too.

EX is... Lakshmi is boring AF regardless of role. Vril for the chanchala tb (pull of light? pall of light? I can never remember), vril for the blue circle marker when she has chanchala up. voke then shirk the mt on cooldown to ensure you have 2nd threat. As mt you basically just stand there apart from for divine denial/doubt.

Susano on the other hand is GREAT. Find a learning party, even if you've cleared before, explain that you've cleared but wanna learn how to tank it, and make SURE YOU SLOT SHIRK.

Also, using hallowed ground after the first orb during the sword phase will make your healer happy.

[rjspencer4]

I had awful anxiety when I first started playing, it eventually got better with practice. (though I'm still never comfortable dropping tank stance as MT in any content)

[Xikaz]

I don't deal with savages so I can't speak for that, but for everything else I've always found tanking to be the easiest role to play in the game, by a sizable margin.

Don't tell anyone though, I like my insta-queues.