Learning to Tank

[kukurumei]

I finally made it up to level 30 on my GLA, but haven't unlocked the PLD yet. But I was running Haukke, and I don't know what I am doing wrong. There was this level 31 arcanist (not level synced, in fact no one was) that was constantly get more aggro. It was happening so much that I asked him to use his topaz carby so whatever peels off at least stays on the carby.

I was doing shield lob, flash, flash, fast, savage, and rage of halone, and rotate to the next mob, and repeat. This all I got, and I do this as much as I can but still some mob always peels off and goes after the arcanist. I can provoke it back and shield lob, but the next one will peel off and then I can't do much about that. We cleared haukke without wiping, but it was a real hairball when the adds showed up in the final boss. I can't aggro all of them together for any amount of time. At least the topaz carby was there to help, and it seemed to help.

That's just the way it is. acn get bane which is stupidly threat induced panic, and their own fault. You won't be able to compensate for extreme threat production on multiple monsters until you get shield oath at 40.

But nothing hit very hard till around then anyway.

But the best way is to shield bash, and move back to getting hate. Never use lob except pulls or range, It's threat is too low. Almost all threat is based on damage X threat modifier. The more damage you do the better.

One advance trick if you want to learn is know that flast blade does not have a threat modifier, but savage and halone does. So you can use fast blade on your main, highest threat target, and spread you combo follow ups on other monsters to produce better and more even hate faster for those annoying AoE people.

Again once you get shield oath it is a much easier process.

[Foo01]

I just made it to level 40 and unlocked shield oath but I haven't been able to test it. Assuming shield oath helps more with aggro, why would anyone use sword oath?

Having started this process of figuring out how to do the tank role, it originally started with me player healer having figure out how to keep the undergeared tanks alive, it seems now on the flip side and I am running into the problem of the heals coming late from the healer.

What do you do when the heals feels like they are coming in late? It is not like I am losing 70% of my hp in the first 3 hit, but more like I am taking a beating for like 8 seconds from all the mobs and boss and I am at less than 40% and I don't get heals until like I am at 20%. What should I do? Run? Heal myself? Or let it wipe and maybe that will call the healers attention?

I know as a healer doing DPS, I've sometimes made some tanks feel very uncomfortable because I have let their HP drop, so I suppose that might explain what I am encountering. So should I ask the healer to focus more on heals? Or is the healer worried about aggro from healing and holding off on the heals?

[Dreufo]

I was going to toss in that using Provoke right before Savage Blade and after Fast Blade works really well to retain enmity.

Also if you think of maintaining Blind through Flash that help others even if they pull aggro.

[Arakatos]

I was going to toss in that using Provoke right before Savage Blade and after Fast Blade works really well to retain enmity.

Also if you think of maintaining Blind through Flash that help others even if they pull aggro. .

The purpose of provoke is not to retain enmity. This is one of the key things to learn as a tank as you level and tank more content. All provoke does is give you +1 enmity relative to the player with the highest enmity which includes yourself. So shield lobbing a mob before anyone aggros has the same effect as provoking. Provoking inbetween combos actually decreases your aggro because when you do so, you are actually resetting the enmity table back to +1 from the highest enmity player, who is yourself. Therefore provoke should be reserved for the mob who got away and is b-lining your healer or when tank swapping for harder content.

I just made it to level 40 and unlocked shield oath but I haven't been able to test it. Assuming shield oath helps more with aggro, why would anyone use sword oath?

-snip-

I know as a healer doing DPS, I've sometimes made some tanks feel very uncomfortable because I have let their HP drop, so I suppose that might explain what I am encountering. So should I ask the healer to focus more on heals? Or is the healer worried about aggro from healing and holding off on the heals?

Some contents require tank swapping so using Sword Oath does more DPS and draws less aggro until you need to swap again.

Trust your healer, pop a CD and fight on regardless of your HP. Review only if wipe, most likely the healer will learn to top you off better since whatever he/she was doing was not working. Bad healers will of course blame you, for varying reasons but I assume you aren't over pulling, DPS isn't taking dmg for no reason and you are dodging then it's the healer who needs to wake up.

[Dreufo]

The purpose of provoke is not to retain enmity. This is one of the key things to learn as a tank as you level and tank more content. All provoke does is give you +1 enmity relative to the player with the highest enmity which includes yourself. So shield lobbing a mob before anyone aggros has the same effect as provoking. Provoking inbetween combos actually decreases your aggro because when you do so, you are actually resetting the enmity table back to +1 from the highest enmity player, who is yourself. Therefore provoke should be reserved for the mob who got away and is b-lining your healer or when tank swapping for harder content.

Hm, ok I guess I'm getting mixed advice. As you already noted I'm a newer tank and although I do most things right I'm trying to improve my holding ability. The last guy suggested that Provoke increases the Enmity of the next attack that increases enmity so naturally a Savage Combo with Provoke made sense.

[kukurumei]

Hm, ok I guess I'm getting mixed advice. As you already noted I'm a newer tank and although I do most things right I'm trying to improve my holding ability. The last guy suggested that Provoke increases the Enmity of the next attack that increases enmity so naturally a Savage Combo with Provoke made sense.

There is basic use of provoke and advance use of provoke. Do not do advance stuff if you don't know advance uses.

Basic use provoke is strictly to get +1 hate. Meaning, from dying, swapping, or never use it at all.

Advance uses of provoke is something much more content heavy. For this case. Yes and no

Fast blade -> provoke -> savage -> rage of halone is what we call a dead start. This is used if you need to peel a monster off someone else really fast, and stable.

Say a monster is attacking a melee for hitting the wrong thing, and he was on it for a while. In this situation
->Provoke bumps you to the top of that monsters hate list
->savage adds a 1 threat +damage on it
->halone adds a 2 threat + damage on it

This makes it impossible for that melee to get back hate even if he is blowing everything on it.

You will probably never need to do this until you get to big full party stuff when you have 2 tanks that need to pass it back and forth.

[Dreufo]

There is basic use of provoke and advance use of provoke. Do not do advance stuff if you don't know advance uses.

*BUMP* Sorry, I was going to reply sooner but I hit my limit lolz

Provoke must be the most misunderstood skill in the game, so thank you for clarifying. Provoke cannot prevent a Yank(pull) but allows you to respond to one effectively. I'm going to get this enmity thing down to a science before my next run with RPs(pugs).