Armour and weapons in dungeons of a lower level than the gear

[Haruki2014]

I am so glad you helped. This is the first time I actually failed in a dungeon in FFXIV and was really confused. before, I tried being a healer in WoW and everyone said I was really bad. So I tried DPS first here, and I wasted around 10 hours during a week to try to get into duty finder. So I made this tank and I've done dungeons like 10-15 times (some repeatedly) and never failed once. And now I failed twice. I have to do this dungeon cause it's in the main quest story. I'll try it again today. Thanks for your help!

[Adrasteia]

With regards to Paladin tanking: what you want to get into the habit of is using your defensive cooldowns as part of a "rotation." By level 34 (which Brayflox will sync you to), you should have:

-Rampart.
-Convalescence.
-Awareness.
-Foresight (Marauder cross-class skill, obtained at level 2).

Whenever you're fighting more than two mobs at a time, or a boss, you should try to use one of these defensive abilities. For the most part, you shouldn't be saving them up, especially at lower levels. At higher levels, certain defensive abilities are better saved for periods where you expect to take a lot of damage and need to reduce that damage. Generally speaking, though, it's better to just use them whenever you happen to be fighting.

I'll give a brief example. Let's say that each fight in a dungeon lasts about a minute (60s), including the time it takes to get to the next pack of mobs. When you first engage a pack, you use Foresight, which, for Paladins, has a two minute (120s) cooldown. By the time you're finished that first pack, the cooldown for Foresight is at 60s. On the next pack, you use Rampart (90s cooldown). By the time that pack is done (another 60s), Foresight is off cooldown. By the time the next pack is done, Rampart is back off cooldown. These abilities will last a good chunk of the fight, and help to reduce the overall damage that you're taking, which makes your healer's life a lot easier.

The same thing applies for boss fights. While it's not really possible at level 34 to always have a defensive cooldown up, you can get pretty close, and it becomes easier to do as you get to level 50. Still, using them as soon as possible is generally better (barring periods where you know you'll be experiencing high damage) than trying to hold on to them. The less damage you take (or the easier it is to heal you in the case of Convalescence), the longer a healer can last during a fight, and the more time they have to do their own DPS, which helps to shorten fights (which can be thought of as effectively "reducing" the amount of damage you take - shorter fights, less damage).

My recommendation is to not use Cure, if at all possible. It starts out being merely "okay" as a crossclass skill for Gladiators, and by about the 30s quickly slips into irrelevance. It's better than nothing, but it's usually better to focus on dealing damage to shorten the fight and letting your healer keep your alive. The only crossclass skill I'd really recommend getting at this point is Foresight, if you haven't already. Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, and Stoneskin are all good options eventually, but aren't necessary for leveling by any stretch of the imagination.

The general strategy for Aiatar (the dragon) is to try and spread the poison pools out in such a way that you have space where you can both stand outside of the pools and ensure that Aiatar isn't standing in them. His (her?) hitbox is kind of finnicky as far as where he (she?) actually counts as being inside a pool (roughly the size of the inner targeting circle), so don't be afraid to keep moving back little by little until you no longer see the healing buff (greenish-bluish icon with no duration) on them. My usual positioning strategy is something like this:



Green is me (the tank), blue is the other members of my party, and red is Aiatar. I pull him (her?) as close to the fight boundary (the purple ground line) as possible with a Shield Lob or two while still being inside the arena, while everyone else spreads out around the boss. You don't need to tell people this explicitly, as they tend to do it on their own. The trick here is that, if you get lucky, Aiatar will target the ranged members of your party first, and you won't have to drag them much around the arena, since the poison pools will land safely outside of Aiatar's hitbox. When it does hit someone close to Aiatar (melee DPS, you, etc.), drag the boss along the northern wall of the arena until they're out of the pool. Then, move yourself around Aiatar until they're turned facing the wall. This helps to keep the pools relatively close together if they end up being targeted on you. Just keep moving Aiatar around the arena in a clockwise way whenever a pool spawns underneath them, and you should be good. It can get a bit tight if your DPS isn't up to par, but I've yet had a fight with Aiatar where there simply wasn't any place to keep them out of the poison pools.

Hope this helps a little. Feel free to ask if you have any other questions.

[Chihaya]

Hmmm, as mentioned by others, you might want to level marauder just a little bit for some of the cross class skills from it.
Focus on tanking and keeping enmity - leave the healing to healers.
May also want to consider going full vitality accessories and your stat allocation to be all vitality for higher survivability.

[Coldheart]

Against Aiatar, bring the boss to the corners of arena at the start of fight (never tank him in the middle). Doing this you will have more space to move and avoid the poison pools (and will be easier to avoid the dragon's healing too).

And avoid at all cost to get hit by the dragon's breath. If you got 4 stacks of poison, inexperienced healers will have difficulty to keep you alive.

[Haruki2014]

Great news! I've now completed the dungeon! Thanks for all your great advice. It took another try where I failed (Aitar's health was like 1/3 and then we all died, and another team member - not me - was voted out), so I thought, I won't use Duty Finder, since it matches me with the wrong team. So I used Party Finder instead and I explained to everyone that I failed the dungeon 3 times, and that it was difficult to keep Aitar from the pools of poison (I'm on Japan server so I used Google Translate), and everyone helped - and even though we all died once - we managed to finish it! It was certainly satisfying. Thanks for explaining the tank tactics and the tactics for this dungeon. It was very good info!
Also, I got 4 new gear from doing this dungeon, so I'm thrilled. Here it is:

the helmet, shirt, gloves and shoes. Yay! Thanks all.

[Iagainsti]

Have you ever played FFXI, Haruki? Just saying I know Paladin tanking for that game was about healing yourself bc the Enmity was greater than your attacks, plus it was considered Mitigation. In this game, it's all about your rotation. Adrasteia probably said it best, so go with hetr advice. Tanking in this game is all about holding attention, knowing what to interrupt and what to let play out( dodging that cone attack is easy peezy, plus the mob doesn't do damage during cast) and fitting your defensive cooldowns into your rotation. Glad you chose to play as a tank, welcome to the club!

[Haruki2014]

I didn't play FFXI. The last 2 times I went to the dungeon I didn't wear my Heavy Steel Armour and Heavy Steel Flanchard, because they were both level 35, and they'd get synced. And my concern was that since you can't wear any headgear or feetgear when you wear those, and they got synced to a level 34 body-gear and trouser-gear, then was I practically without a head-gear and shoes-gear when I went in the first 2 times? I don't know, but I used Rampart too whenever I could back then - the only difference I started using Foresight too. And my hits were for a lot less when I switched to level 32 gear overall. Either way, I wouldn't recommend wearing steel armour to a lower level dungeon.

[aisustrong]

I'm gonna just say, avoid 2 slot armor
the stats are always inferior to the comparable gear
plus it looks hideous

since you're level 38 go unlock cutters cry http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wi...r_Before_Death
and run it a couple times for gear
be sure to get all of the chests, most of them you have to go a little bit out of the way for
also the drop rates for good gear, especially non jewelry, is not that great in cutters

also, pay attention to item levels
if its equip level is higher than its item level, don't even bother rolling for it, it's garbage

also since you're pld, you won't have shield oath yet, and you're already under geared, so I'd recommend letting the pay know to hold back some so that you can actually hold aggro

[Ninster]

Glad you're getting the hang of it! I apologize for replying late, but the others most likely have more tanking experience than I do (in fact I'm still leveling both my tank roles myself) so consider their opinions too.

That being said, I'm not entirely sure how level-sync works with two-slot gear, but I myself have tried to avoid it like the plague considering the headache it makes for comparing with other gear. Again, the others may have a better insight on this.

Regarding Cutter's Cry gear, the "grey" or "white" class gear that comes from chests in that dungeon (and the others past it) are garbage as is, but crafting classes can use those pieces to upgrade them into useable gear, just in case you're curious as to why people lot on them.

I'm going to warn you that the next dungeon after Cutter's Cry (the lvl 41 story-unlocked dungeon) is pretty rough on tanks from what I've seen, so I would recommend bringing a friend or two with you so that you won't have to deal with other people being hard on you. Of course, if you feel confident enough at that point to go in to Duty Finder solo you can.

[Haruki2014]

@aisustrong thanks for the tip on where to find 38 lvl gear, but I have to do main story quest and hunting log too - both at lvl 34 and Im level 39. Ive been doing Duty Roulette once every day since I realised how good it is for Company seals. Today I even got Braflox's on it, but was easy peasy 20-mins, and I got one level up, 400 company seals and 2 new better gear from it. Since I got expert delivery I exchanged the old gear that replaced for seals (700) so I got around 1,200 seals in total, from 20 mins gameplay. That's not bad - not worth slaving over FATEs or Company leves anymore. But I gotta do main quest too. @ninster I'll try to watch out for that dungeon you mentioned. I think if I fail on duty Finder, then it's better using party finder, since the dungeons seem to be getting harder, so you need to strategize a bit. I'll avoid two-slot gear too. It seemed garbage to me too, but I wanted to try it. Never again!