A couple of newbie tank questions

[tocsin]

Thanks everyone for the very useful information. Just hit 40 (shield oath yay) and am now starting to have a lot easier time tanking, now that I have been getting a lot more practice. its definitely something that takes learning.

The information on the cross class skills has been very useful as well. I main a 50 whm, so I at least had the advantage of stoneskin leveling, but I may not be using it quite enough.

-> how do people manage the balance between using mana for stoneskin vs. making sure to keep enough in the tank for flashes? I mainly ask this, because I have found that if I use stoneskin more than three or four times, a lot of times I go oom on my next grouping, and have a bit harder time managing hate on 6 or more enemies.

-> I'm also starting to get into the idea of chain pulls towards speed runs, but am a bit unsure about the rotation. does anyone have a set way that they pull chains? I have been using shield lob, fast blade, flash when they all get close, run to the next set, lob, rinse repeat.

-> also, mainly since I have yet to find an appropriate time to activate it, when can you diagnose a good time to use the cover skill? I mean, I use it on the healer during aoe phases, but it just seems... unnecessary a lot of times.

Again, everyone thank you so much! you have no idea how helpful you have been. 100 comms in the past 2 weeks, just from taking ideas from this thread!

[ItaruKarin]

snip

-> I wouldn't use Stoneskin at all on most trash pulls. As you say, it drains your mp quite a lot, and you need it for flashing anyway. Your healer should be able to handle trash pulls heal without you needing to spam stoneskin. On bosses however, since you'll basically only use flash pour blinding or to catch adds, stoneskin to your heart content when you know that predictable damage are coming in (Like Titan's aoe, this kind of thing.)

-> About speed runs, I am pretty inexperienced, but when I'm asked for it I don't even bother with the aggro combo. I just pull everything, throw my cooldowns in order, and spam flash indefinitely. Once I'm OOM, I alternate a combo Riot Blade with Flash. The only thing that matters then is the healer ability to keep me up

[Synestr]

Use stoneskin on bosses, where yo don't have to worry about threat competition on large groups from DPS AOE's. When using Stoneskin in a boss fight, time the cast with one of their charge abilities. They won't be hitting you so gives you free time to cast.

For SR's once I have every thing I usually flash like 4 times or so, then start Riotblade combo, pop cooldowns accordingly, CoS, etc. Kinda looks like, Flashx#, FoF, Fastblade, CoS, Flash, Riotblade, Fastblade, Flash, Riotblade..etc.

Seems to lock em in on me, also, don't pop all your CD's at once on a pack. If you feel you have to cause it's a large...large group, just HG. Well when you get it that is ^.^ Otherwise, stagger them for longer mitigation as opposed to burst mitigation.

Hope it helps.

Syn

[Mertrodome]

Regarding the chain pulls, I'd say it's always worth mentioning that it's your intention as not everyone will expect it at low levels. Once you're tanking Expert Roulette though you can pretty much just go unless the healer is new or doesn't have brilliant gear.

The key thing is to keep an eye on your healer's mana and make sure you're not pulling if they're running low. You'll probably have a better idea than I do on how much mana is "safe" for a WHM to have in reserve, but I quite often stop and ask if they want a break if I notice they're on the low side. Rotation-wise you're bang on - just round 'em up and Flash! You'll get a feel for when you can stop Flashing and put some damage in (spread your Halone combo around) as you'll likely not need to use all your MP every time.

Also, it will go wrong from time to time! Whenever I die, I usually apologise in chat and say that perhaps I'd been a wee bit ambitious. Most people are chill about it in my experience.

As for Cover, I tend to keep it as an "oh crap" button more than anything. Thing is, due to the lag you'll see on other people's actions, it's not always easy to know who's in trouble. If I notice someone is often kinda bad at running out of Weight of the Land or something I'll pop it on them proactively just in case. It's also useful if your healer draws aggro on two mobs from a pack - obviously you can only provoke one so you can cover your healer until you can get enough enmity on the second one.

[Jican]

As others have said before me, Stoneskin is very situational, and it's about half as effective as a whm's stoneskin, so as a newer tank, hold off on worrying about it now until you get the job down, then you can experiment with it and see what works for you.

Speedrunning gets very complicated, and very situational. If I have a group with massive AoE hitters, blm, then I only flash, then use the MP recharge combo. If I am keeping hate like a boss, then I hold enough mana for a couple extra flashes, and just RoH combo the ones that are getting close to losing aggro by rotation through them all very quickly and checking the hate bar. Knowing which cooldowns to pop and when is essential as well. You wouldn't really want to pop them all at once because, sure, they overlap, but not for long. Nothing sucks more than doing great for about 10 seconds, then wiping when the mobs are at >10% hp and you have to fight them all over again at 100% hp. You also wouldn't really want to speed run without jobs that do at least decent AoE. Monks are not great AoErs, so if you are double monking, you prolly want to not pull so much at once. Also knowing how much damage you can handle is essential. You wouldn't want to go into a HM dungeon with i55 gear as a tank and attempt a speed run. Know your limits, and the limits of your group in order to be successful. Best of luck!

[Nyalia]

When tanking a large group of enemies at endgame when nearly everyone has AoE attacks, as others said, flash until OOM, and then what I do is constantly switch targets while doing the RoH combo. Do not expect to keep aggro on everything! If you lose aggro on an enemy that's near death, don't worry about it, it'll die in a second. Focus on the enemies with a fair amount of health left, and try to cycle your combos such that you keep aggro on those. If there are big enemies and small enemies (ST first pull, for instance), do what you can to get aggro on the small enemies with flash, but when it's time to start comboing, focus on the big enemies, especially if they can cleave.


Cover is situational, but really, it's off GCD and has a relatively short cooldown, so don't be afraid to use it arbitrarily. If you're fighting a boss and know it has a mechanic that will hit a healer, and you have time for it, use Cover by all means. But, really, the healer has to know to stick near you, and once Cover wears off, the healer is very vulnerable if they're too close to the boss. I find I get more milage out of using Cover on melee DPS when fighting enemies that do 180+ degree AoEs. Chimera is a great place to Cover a melee DPS, and so on.

Back when CT1 was a thing, I loved being in the same party as the MT for King Behemoth. I would take a tower next to the MT's tanking spot and, every now and then, run just into Cover range and Cover the MT, and pop my CDs. When my health got low (or my tower activated), I'd run out of Cover range until I was healed up. Usually totally unnecessary, but it spread out the damage some, which was theoretically better on the healers.

Note that Cover does NOT work on major boss attacks, like Titan's groundpound or the AoE Ifrit does after you kill the nails. I believe it also doesn't work on the things that penetrate Hallowed Ground, like Everybody's Grudge and Death Sentence, and certainly not on instakills like Curtain Call or KB's Meteor.

My favorite use of Cover is when Spiritbonding with my wife. She mains WHM, and I main PLD. Where we SB, there are three rooms. I aggro as many enemies and gather them together, and she starts spamming Holy. In the two smaller rooms with 4-6 enemies, we're fine. In the last room with 8-9 enemies, she always draws aggro and gets hit hard. So, the moment I lose aggro on the first enemy in that room, I Cover her and pop my CDs (and, if necessary, she Benedicts me in the middle). By the time we get back to that room, Cover has recharged.

[NorthernLadMSP]

So, I have another question for the knowledgeable tanks out there.

As far as Paladin goes, what are the ideal main and secondary stats to look for in armor and weapons? I'm still only level 36, but have purchased a full set of the Myth gear for when I hit 50.

[Nyalia]

The first thing you need is enough Accuracy to meet the cap for never missing a target when attacking from the front. Because tanks always have targets facing them, accuracy is much more important than for other classes (takes more to hit targets from the front than from the sides, and more to hit from the sides than from the back).

Once you have enough accuracy, well, there are differing opinions. Honestly, the #1 thing you want is ilvl for the extra Vit/Str. For pure tanking, you'll want Parry first, then Det/Crit (equal usefulness). Skill Speed is really not helpful. However, usually, you have plenty of defense. Parry doesn't help THAT much for PLDs because you cannot both Parry and Block the same hit. The fact that you have a shield devalues Parry, and to get the most out of Parry, you want one of those shields that have a low block chance and high block amount. That said, the alternative is to just ignore Parry. Instead, go for pure Crit/Det, and use Str/Vit accessories.

So, I think that, for top tier content (right now, that's second coil) where you need all the survivability you can get, Parry is probably your best secondary stat followed by Crit/Det. For all other content, like Expert Roulette and Extreme Primals where a DPS increase is more important than a survival increase, go for pure Crit/Det.

[Jican]

I have different views on the secondary stats, and there is a lot of theory crafting going on with it. I suggest you look around and make your own choice in the matter. There are caps that increase certain things you need to hit for any secondary skill to be of use, find out what those are, what you can hit, and go with that. That's all I'll say on this topic because otherwise it'll turn into name calling and other toxic things because there is so much opinion about it.

[tocsin]

Riot blade?!? woah, forgot I even had that! I took it off my hotbar when I got rage of halone, and completely forgot I had it. Wow, that makes things easier!

Also, thanks everyone for the suggestions on cover. I have started finding that covering the token melee dps has resulted in a lot more healer dps time, which in turn means less uptime on enemies.

I'm really sorry if it seems like I have a million and one questions. I read through that entire google docs guide from earlier in the thread about 7 times from top to bottom, so hopefully the questions that im asking don't seem too basic and simplistic.

that said...

-> is there a good guide on what classes get AoEs when? The two times that I speedran were both on brayflox, with either 2 blm's, or a blm and a smn. when do melee dps get aoe spells? I have no plans of ever running a dps char (I cant put up with the queue times #impatient) but would find the information quite useful in determining whether I should ask the group if they want to speed run something.

-> so far, I have found that using str accessories makes me a lot easier to hold hate. is there a certain level that doing this will make you a bad tank, to the point of my question being "what lvl do I need to start using only vit accessories on?"