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

[Haruki2014]

Hi,

I have a question about what happens to your armour and weapons if you do a dungeon of a level below you. I have armour and weapons level 36, and I did a dungeon level 32. I kept dying over and over, really easily, even though I usually do dungeons really well. When I checked my gear, there was a strange symbol on it, like a squiggly line, but I didn't get any message, and I was still wearing it, so it seemed fine. Does that mean my gear was practically cancelled out because it was of a higher level?

I already failed at that dungeon twice, and I want to try it again. I can wear level 32 gear this time, but I wanted to check whether it was really a high penalty I was getting on my gear for being level 36, or maybe I actually failed the dungeon because I was really bad at it! I didn't get any message or anything explaining what happened to my gear, so I wanted to check if anyone experienced this before.

Thanks a lot

[RayneBoemir]

That means the your gear is synced to match the max level of the dungeon. You died to something else not because your gear was synced.

[Adrasteia]

By "dungeon level 32," I'm assuming you mean Brayflox's Longstop, right? The damage in there ramps up significantly from Haukke Manor, and it's especially punishing for Gladiators/Paladins without Shield Oath. How frequently were you using your defensive cooldowns (Rampart, Convalescence, etc.)? Assuming you were doing the usual tank things correctly, it's probable you simply had a bad healer.

[Haruki2014]

Yes, it's Brayflox's Longstop. I'm level 36, so only have a couple of paladin abilities. I'll try the ones you mentioned. I tried using cure on myself but my healer acted like I was doing something wrong. The main issue is the boss fight with the pools of poison. If I stand still, even if healer heals constantly, I die in 10 seconds. If I move around, the dragon steps on the pools so it replenishes its HP, or I step on them, and get hit further. Seems like lose-lose. What's the tank strategy for this dungeon, by the way? Just as usual and hope I don't die? If I need shield oath then I'll get that one before going back.

[Haruki2014]

I use rampart constantly. I forgot to use convalescene. I'll try it it next time. What's annoying with level sync for dungeons is I could get 10 more levels but it won't matter, because it will sync. it's the first ever dungeon I have no idea what to do. And all the other players were acting like i was doing something wrong. I just die a lot at the boss fight. I wish the dps would also help by distracting it when I'm low on HP, but they're all like: you're the tank, you need to take all the damage. We don't care if you die, just stay alive! Lol

[Ninster]

This seems to explain things a lot.

First, your own Cure spell heals you very very little, and using it is wasting time you could spend focusing on keeping enmity. Don't use it in dungeons; let the healer take care of you. That's probably what the healer was upset with.

Second, not sure what you mean about "standing still", but if you're standing the poison you WILL take damage as long as you're standing in it. Likewise if you're standing the in the red area when the dragon's breath attack goes off, you'll take a LOT of damage. Stay out of the poison and stay out of the dragon's breath attacks. As far as making sure both you AND the dragon stay out of the poison pools, try to stick to the walls of the room and move around as poison pools get placed. This way you won't get trapped.

Third, you will be level-synced when going into dungeons, meaning you will have ONLY the skills you could have at that level. Shield Oath is learned at lvl 40, so you won't get to use it at all.

Also, your DPS actually CAN'T distract it if you're doing your job correctly; you'll have such a huge gap built in enmity that they can't catch up. Speaking of enmity, in case you're unfamiliar with it (I apologize if you are, just trying to help), it's the amount of "attention" that you have from the enemy. The little white bars by you and your party member's names let you know how much enmity you have compared to everyone else. The ONLY way they can "distract" something is by dealing enough damage themselves to "catch up and pass you" in enmity (that is, when one of their white bars is completely full, they'll end up taking the mob away from you). Your role is for YOUR bar to stay full at all times, so you do NOT want this. It's difficult for the healer to heal more than one person at once.

I hope this helps!

[Haruki2014]

:O ok, it helps. Guess I'll just have to do it lots of times, until it works. Thanks for explaining things!

[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.