New at mmo's

[Maddog37854]

Need to know how to be a good tank. I just took a quick rerun through Copperbell because I didnt have any gil and my healer wouldnt heal me or revive me , first time Ive died in a while and I dont wanna be like that mage.

[KinnisonArc]

> Have you progressed on the class quest? You will gain some skills from there necessary for certain tanking situation.

> For GLD/PLD user flash and MRD/WAR Overpower for crowd control whenever you have to tank several enemies at once. Also utilize the skill combos for more damage and enmity gain.

> On gearing, best equip gears that specifically says only for GLD/PLD/MRD/WAR as those are tank armor that provide good defense. Any other or gears that include LNC/DRG are not suitable.

> If you need gil, you can try to unlock the Challenge Log at Limsa (can start at level 15, talk to I'tolwann in Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks (x11,y10) and get "Let the challenge begin" quest), performing certain conditions listed there weekly will yield gil for reward. You can also do leves or fate for some gil. It's a bit hard to earn money at first but once you hit level 50 you can start getting more for endgame dungeons.

> On healer's issue, it's either they aren't fast enough to heal you due to certain situation or that they are just plain bad. It depends but it's ok since you're still starting, with enough practice you can get better at tanking.

Hopefully this helps.

[ruskie]

Also they can't revive in combat until like lvl 22 or so iirc.

[Maddog37854]

Doin all of the above so I guess Im doin alright, did'nt know about the challenges though.

[Yumi_umi]

Also be nice to ur healer as they probs won't heal u if they held a grudge against u lol
And if they don't have a decent reaction time to simply press cure on you then you have the rights to question them as its the most basic task of the healer.
Learn how to heal lol

[Yumi_umi]

Doin all of the above so I guess Im doin alright, did'nt know about the challenges though.

The really easy ones are like
Give commendations to ppl
Run dungeons a few times
Kill enemies on par to your level with chocobo companion
Etc.

[ruskie]

Yeah but the companion ones are just for companion EXP not your own.

Your own EXP you can get from the challange logs for:
Dungeons: 3x roulette(and needs to be a dungeon), 5x dungeon
Guildhests: 3x and 10x
FATES: 5 fates in 5 different regions at max gold rank and 10 fates in total
Commendation: iirc 5 commendations given
Leves: do N levels with different face plates and do iirc 20 level

Think that about is for the exp for combat.

[Sagittarian]

Other than what has been mentioned, you are going to want to start leveling gladiator soon.
You will need gladiator at 15 to unlock the warrior job, which is the advanced job for marauders. It becomes available after you complete the level 30 marauder class quest but you also need gladiator at 15 to accept it.
Gladiator also has 2 useful skills you can cross-class. Those are flash (level 8) and provoke (level 22). The usefulness of flash can be debated since you have overpower and not much mana but provoke is a necessity for later things.

There are some tanking guides in the tank section of the forum if you want a more detailed discussion.
Basically if fighting multiple things at once make sure you hit them with overpower at least a couple of times to start with and then, to maintain aggro on everything, either swap targets between attacks or throw in another overpower after every few normal attacks.
If you haven't actually hit everything (generally called face-pulling) then they will switch to attack the first person who actually does something to generate aggro (usually the healer healing you). The mob name on the screen will actually change color depending on how they are aggroed - white (no aggro), purple (aggroed on someone in a different party), orange-ish (face-pull, essentially 1 point of aggro), red (aggroed on someone in your party). As a healer I won't cast cure/physick until I see all the names are red.
While you are attacking a particular target there are little bars next to the party member names that show the relative aggro levels on that target. So if you are swapping targets try taking a quick look at those bars to see which mobs you might be close to losing.
And if you are having trouble with the dps pulling aggro from you, mark the mobs in the order you want them attacked. It often isn't necessary as marauder/warrior but it is nice. Note that sometimes people may have different ideas about which mobs are actually the biggest threat - like killing the blasting caps before they explode. You can put the marking on a hot key or controller key for easier access. I use shift+z/x/c for marking 1/2/3.

[Niwashi]

Watch the enmity indicators on the mob list. As a tank, you want to make sure they all stay red, indicating you have primary enmity (while other classes will want to see them green, indicating they don't). If any of the mobs' indicators turn green (or even orange or yellow, meaning you're on the verge of losing enmity), use an enmity-generating attack on that mob. This is especially important if it's your healer they turned their attention to instead.
1st priority: Keep the mobs off of your healer.
2nd priority: Keep the mobs off other casters.
3rd priority: Keep the mobs off DoW damage dealers.

Once you have the mobs' attention, you want to keep them facing away from your party, where a frontal AoE won't hit the squishier members of your group. You should also keep them as stationary as possible and facing in a consistent direction, particularly if your damage dealers include LNC/DRG and/or PUG/MNK, because the effectiveness of their attacks relies on being able to control the direction from which they attack, which they can't do very well if the mob keeps spinning around to follow a moving tank.

To keep the fight easier on the healer, you also want to manage all this while taking as little damage yourself as possible. So when a mob is readying an AoE attack, get out of the marked area to avoid getting hit by it. Just be sure that as soon as it lands, you quickly get back to the same position you had been before it, so the mob doesn't turn to face your new position.

Those are pretty much all the basics. Well, that and don't aggro more mobs than your group can tackle. With most parties, you'll want to aggro one group of mobs, then stay there 'til they're dead before heading to the next group. If everyone is over-leveled and over-geared for the content and your damage dealers are Black Mages, then you can get away with aggroing lots of mobs and bringing them together where your BLM can AoE them all. (This is popular with speedruns, but if your damage dealers only have single-target attacks, it's actually slower than taking one group at a time (because it forces your healer to stay constantly in healing stance, preventing them from throwing out some damage of their own), and it causes wipes if your healer isn't geared well enough to keep up with the damage from everything at once.)