How do I tank and how do I heal?

[REPROBEAN_CHILD]

I have a some experience as a tank, but I'm not sure if I've got it right. Often times, it's like I'm still DPSing. I know that I approach enemies first and gain their aggro so they can focus on me. A few times, I could lose the aggro (especially as marauder) and they go after the other members. Then it becomes something like a free for all; everyone just kill anything. The times I've died as a tank feels out of my control.

I have very little experience as a healer. I have an idea of how it works, but I have questions: How do I use "protect" on everyone at once (it seems like it'll go to everyone in the party)? How can I specifically (quickly) target party members to use "cure," instead of targeting enemies? As a healer, I know I should focus on healing the tank, but how do I manage healing everyone, while also avoiding over-healing. How can I gain experience killing enemies, while I'm off healing everyone. It almost seems like healers will gain the least amount of experience.

[Carvaka]

Do a search for 'visual ranking guide'. This is a good place to start for tanking info.

[Carvaka]

*tanking guide, not tanking. Can't edit post on phone.

[Failia]

I have a some experience as a tank, but I'm not sure if I've got it right. Often times, it's like I'm still DPSing. I know that I approach enemies first and gain their aggro so they can focus on me. A few times, I could lose the aggro (especially as marauder) and they go after the other members. Then it becomes something like a free for all; everyone just kill anything. The times I've died as a tank feels out of my control.

I have very little experience as a healer. I have an idea of how it works, but I have questions: How do I use "protect" on everyone at once (it seems like it'll go to everyone in the party)? How can I specifically (quickly) target party members to use "cure," instead of targeting enemies? As a healer, I know I should focus on healing the tank, but how do I manage healing everyone, while also avoiding over-healing. How can I gain experience killing enemies, while I'm off healing everyone. It almost seems like healers will gain the least amount of experience.

When you first start out tanking, it can be pretty easy to lose aggro, especially during the lower levels as it's not uncommon for a lot of the people to be with you to be on higher level classes that are doing the run for a roulette. As a marauder, you may end up having TP issues starting out but you should be spamming Overpower as often as you can, sometimes 3 times right athte start of a fight. as you go on, use it ever now and then to keep aggro on you as you likely won't have everyone attacking the same target.

As for target healing, you can use the function keys on your keyboard (if playing on PC) to target party members quickly. F1-4 are for light groups and F1-8 are for full parties of 8. Also, starting out, you may not have the the time to DPS much as a healer until you know your role well. Your primary focus should be on healing so don't worry too much if you can't DPS on the side. Also, protect is a group spell that is cast on everyone. There is a range to it though so if you target it on someone farther away, only they would get it and no one else would. It's best to cast when everyone is together.

[Conradus]

I have a some experience as a tank, but I'm not sure if I've got it right. Often times, it's like I'm still DPSing. I know that I approach enemies first and gain their aggro so they can focus on me. A few times, I could lose the aggro (especially as marauder) and they go after the other members. Then it becomes something like a free for all; everyone just kill anything. The times I've died as a tank feels out of my control.

I have very little experience as a healer. I have an idea of how it works, but I have questions: How do I use "protect" on everyone at once (it seems like it'll go to everyone in the party)? How can I specifically (quickly) target party members to use "cure," instead of targeting enemies? As a healer, I know I should focus on healing the tank, but how do I manage healing everyone, while also avoiding over-healing. How can I gain experience killing enemies, while I'm off healing everyone. It almost seems like healers will gain the least amount of experience.

I see that you're MRD 15 and GLA 15. Use Flash to grab hate. early and often; it's what it's designed to do, create hate in everything in your vincinity. It doesn't even put Blind on them until level 20. Riot Blade in combo can replenish your MP to keep casting it if it becomes necessary, but it'll rarely get to that point. Get it as a cross-skill if you're playing MRD as a tank. You can continue to grab skills from GLA even after you move into WAR, so it's not something you'll have to give up. Use Shield Lob/Tomahawk to pull--you'll have to do your level 15 job quests to get these if you haven't already. Do so. Once you get GLA to 22, you'll have Provoke (which can also be shared with MRD), which you should use on a mob that's attacking someone else--it'll reset your hate to the hate of the person it's attacking, plus one. And, of course, attacking stuff helps hold hate on it. You'll also have damage mitigation tools, which you should use to make life easier on your healer.

Protect automatically goes to the whole party. As far as selecting party members to heal, you have buttons that allow you to select from your party list. If you're using a controller, it's the up and down buttons on the D-Pad. If you're using the mouse, you can just click on your party list. If you're using a keyboard, it is the function keys; F1 is yourself, F2 and after are your party members. (By default; both the controller and keyboard are completely reconfigurable) Experience in a party is shared; you'll get EXP from the mobs the other players kill. The real EXP is from completing quests/duties/FATEs anyways, not random kill EXP.

[Seryl199]

When you have an enemy selected, you can see how much enmity, or aggro, each party member has by the small bar next to their name in the party list. Each player is also listed numerically by hate. "A" shows what player is being attacked, 2 is second in aggro, and so on. Try cycling through enemies so you can see where everyone stands as far as threat.

Some basics are to pull with your ranged attack, tomahawk or shield lob, then start with your AoE threat generators, overpower as marauder, flash as gladiator, use them a couple times to establish an aggro lead over the healer, then begin using maim combos to buff yourself and then use your hate combo. Use cooldowns if there are 3 or more mobs in the trash pack, or if your healer is struggling to keep you alive.

For healing, scroll through the party list using up and down rather than tab targeting. Protect will hit the targeted player, and will buff everyone in a small radius around them. In a party, you'll gain exp for anything killed by anyone in the party, so no worries there. Healing is mostly about learning your toolkit and learning what spell to use when, in different scenarios. It's something you'll pick up over time, and there's no set way to heal, as every experience will be different depending on the party's performance. There are wrong ways to heal, however, so avoid overhealing by estimating how much you heal for and not healing until the tank is below that amount, and avoid AoE healing if it's not needed or very early in the fight when the tank may not have established threat. MP management will become more relevant at higher levels, and threat management should always be considered.

Hopefully that can get you started, if you have any other specific inquiries feel free to ask

[synesthetic]

First off, make sure you understand how initial aggro and enmity work.
If a monster's name is in yellow, it's not attacking anyone.
If a monster's name is in orange, it's attacking someone, but it's not "claimed" yet.
If a monster's name is in red, then it's claimed by someone in your party. (Purple would be when it's claimed by someone outside of your party, but that's not relevant to what I'm going to say.)
The first person to get that monster's name in red also gets some bonus chunk of initial enmity, and it's important that it be the tank who gets this, especially when you're low level or have a small weapon. If someone else gets it, it can make the tank's job a lot harder.

There are two ways to get claim on a monster.
1) Do damage to it. An exception to this is GLD's Flash, which does no damage, but can still claim.
2) Buff/Heal someone on the monster's enemy list.

In dungeons, if the tank runs up to a mob, the mob will only have the tank on their enemy list at that point. If the healer casts on the tank before the tank can hit everything, then the healer will get claim. The same will happen if a tick of Regen goes off before the tank can act, so WHMs learn to not apply Regen before pulls.
So as a tank, your first priority is to hit everything as soon as possible with either Flash or Overpower, as both of them are AoE moves with bonus enmity. If you're after a single target, or you need to pull from a range, Shield Lob or Tomahawk is your go-to, followed by Flash/Overpower if a mob came with it.

After that, against one target, your main damage combo is also your best way to generate enmity against a single target.
Against two targets, you can alternate which one you hit to keep aggro on both.
Against three or more, Flash/Overpower at least once in a while to make sure the healer doesn't pull aggro just from healing. If you have DPS that AoE though, then use Flash/Overpower more, and if your weapon is good enough against theirs, you should be able to keep everything off of them. When I AoE and pull aggro, and I see that the PLD still has over half of their MP bar, I know they didn't try.


For Protect, it hits everyone in a wide AoE around your target (or yourself if you're targeting nothing or a monster).
On PC, you can target party members more quickly by either hitting F1-8, or clicking on their name in the party member list. I don't use a controller, but I believe for them it has something to do with the left analog stick? Left/right or up/down, one of them goes through the party list, the other goes through the enemy list?
Once you get a good feel for how much you can heal, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep everyone in your party alive. And if your MP can support it, over-healing isn't too bad really.

For getting xp outside of a dungeon as a healer, you need to actually do something to monsters to get xp from them. Tag everything with Aero or Bio. It's unfortunate that you can't just focus on only healing in FATEs for xp, but that's how it is. If you at least tag a boss though (and make sure it hit), then you can heal as much as you want after that.