help out this new guy

[Estellios]

Make sure you have done all your class quests up to level 30 (go back to the Gladiator's guild if you haven't done them) and focus on unlocking Paladin like Mcshiggs has said. Unlocking your job will be necessary in order to contribute in group content.

You should also probably upgrade your sword. Your weapon is very important because it determines how much hate/enmity you get from your skills, even the ones that don't do damage like Flash. Try to make a habit of upgrading your weapon every 5 levels or so, just check the market boards for one.

Your armor itself looks fine, make sure to keep it up to date. Also, I believe there are accessories with Vitality on them that will be available to you in a few levels, if they aren't available already. Make sure to grab all the +Vitality accessories as the added HP will be incredibly helpful in group play. You having more of a buffer for HP is much more important than doing a little bit more damage. The DPS in your group are there for that.

[Edward420allday]

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

[Megido]

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

There's a couple of usefull or even mandatory cross class skills. Being a warrior i only levelled paladin for Provoke when i was about to get into coil. Before that it was useful, to tank actual hard stuff Provoke would be mandatory.

Make a lvl1 marauder and check your Actions & traits tab. See what you get from levelling it a little. Stoneskin is a good choice too, but you wont need that pre 50.

Do your job classes asap.

[Vodomir]

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

Make sure to complete all of your gladiator guild's quests and level your Conjurer to Level 15, then you should be able to accept the quest for your Paladin job crystal, further on you will receive another job related quest every five levels. Once you equip your job crystal you can only cross class skills from either Conjurer or Marauder, so there's no need to level other classes outside from those two. You'll also only want to level both classes as far as to get access to all of the cross class skills needed for your Paladin, which means leveling Conjurer up to level 34 for Stoneskin ... guess you can leave Marauder at level 2 for Foresight or maybe level 8 for Bloodbath. If you have your job crystal and up to date weapon, shield and gear, you should be good to go. You can always level Conj to level 34 after your PLD hits the level cap. Stoneskin is not an essential cross class skill for levelling, but you will want to have it for endgame purpose.

Stat wise focus on VIT and always go with tank armour, not LNC/DRG stuff, as the def values are quite important. Allocate all of your stat points into VIT, too.


General advice:

- learn to mark your targets and always pull with shield lob rather than relying on a body pull
- focus your emnity combo on the first target (as all of your DDs should be on that target, too)
- in multi mob situations flash a few times in the beginning so secure an aggro lead over your healer
- when you have a lead on the first target, you should spread your emnity combo around across the other targets, just make sure to return to the main target every now and then to not lose aggro on it
- it's usually advisable to face targets away from your group, so they don't stand in nasty void zones and your DDs can attack from the rear side
- don't tank your targets next to the healers/ranged DDs, as some mobs create 360° void zones, which would then hit your healers/ranged DPS, if they don't move out in time
- learn your combos and go for the ones with increased emnity, only use mana reg combo when your emnity lead is big enough to allow for such a move

[Edward420allday]

Thank you all. This is all good stuff, if there is anything else please keep it coming. Also where can I see this aggro lead. Maybe a little more info about emnity.

[Bixby]

Thank you all. This is all good stuff, if there is anything else please keep it coming. Also where can I see this aggro lead. Maybe a little more info about emnity.

Enmity in general in this game is fairly simple. Every action has an enmity modifier, usually just 1xDamage. Certain skills are higher, like 3xDamage for Savage Blade, 5xDamage for Rage of Halone. Most healing is 0.5 x amount healed. So that's how you keep enmity as a tank; you're doing less damage per hit, but using your high-enmity skills means every point of damage is worth much more. The tables are a few patches out of date, so don't take these numbers as gospel, but this page is good to look at to get a general idea of things. The multipliers (3x, 5x, etc.) on GLA/PLD abilities are still correct.

When you're targeting an enemy, there is a white bar under the class/job symbol for everyone in your party. That white bar represents their enmity on the mob you're targeting. A full bar means the mob is attacking that person, which should always be you. 2nd place will have the next fullest bar, and so on, and how full those bars are compared to yours tells you how far ahead you are in enmity. The top enmity also has an A to the left of their party slot, and the rest of the party has numbers. 2 for 2nd place and so on. Note that this display is only for your current hard-target. It does not update correctly for soft-targets (when you press left or right on the D-Pad and the targeting circle moves to a new mob, but you don't hit Confirm to fully switch to that target). If you want to check your enmity lead on each mob one by one, you'll need to hard-target each of them.

You'll also have a list of all mobs that you have any enmity on whatsoever on your screen. You can click on this list to target them (or L1+up/down on a game pad to scroll through them). They have colored dots next to their names. A small green circle means you are nowhere near to being top enmity. A yellow triangle means you have some notable degree of enmity. An orange dot means you're about to pull top enmity. A red square means you have top enmity. As a tank, you want every enemy to have a red square next to their name. If any of those dots are not red, it means someone else is getting attacked, and you need to fix it NAO.

About Provoke: When used, it gives you the same enmity against that mob as the person with top enmity, +1. That's all it does. That means that if all you do is Provoke, and the person you provoked off of does anything at all, they're going to get enmity again. This includes existing DoTs or HoTs ticking. If you Provoke something, you need to hit it again immediately, preferably with a high-enmity skill like Shield Lob or Rage of Halone. It also means that Provoking something that you already have top enmity on is utterly pointless, as is Provoking something that hasn't been engaged yet (except that Provoke has a longer range that Shield Lob, so there are a few circumstances where you can pull with Provoke more safely than Lob; just be aware you're going to need to Lob and so on once it's in range).

Also, if you can scrounge up a cheap USB keyboard for your PS3, the whole communication thing will be much less maddening.

Oh, and a mistake I see a lot of new GLA/PLDs making is thinking the visual effect of Flash indicates its range. Flash does not have a very large range. Practice with it until you know how close you need to be. If you see floating text come up with Flash for a given enemy, you've got it. If not, it's out of range. If you're practicing solo, it's really easy to tell, since they'll start hitting you. ;P

[Edward420allday]

Thank you this was an awesome explanation and very helpful. Very appreciative.

[Viridiana]

The first thing I read about this game was to still with one class and level that up, now everything that I am hearing completely contradicts that. Outside of paladin is there anything else I need to work towards to be effective tank?

You need to strike a balance. That is, you want to be focusing on one class overall, but. . .everything past level 30 assumes that you're playing on a Job (PLD, in your case). To unlock the job, you have to have done all the GLA quests and leveled Conjurer up to 15. A new quest will open up in the GLA guild leading you to the PLD quest line. There are a few other skills you can access as a PLD that you'd need to level Marauder for or get your CNJ further up to 34, but they're rather low-priority. Basically, treat getting 15 CNJ and unlocking PLD as a side-quest in any other game.