New to Tanking

[Korbash]

I'm a newbie tank myself, I'm leveling a Warrior right now, but I wanted to level up gladiator first for the cross-skills (Flash and Provoke are good, especially Provoke) and you need gladiator LV 15 for warrior job anyway. Leveling gladiator was slow and painful, they use mana for their aggro kills (like Flash) and their mana is quite limited and regen slowly. In the dungeons, they had to sleep the mobs because I could only hold aggro on one mob at once. In other words, Paladin can only handle one mob at once, which is why you become later the main tank, the main tank is the one handling the boss, one boss = one mob, which is all you can handle.

When I got to gladiator LV 22, finally, I switched to marauder, which is entirely different, and way more fun. Warrior uses TP for their aggro skills and you have plenty of TP, so that means in a dungeon that when your group has 3-4 mobs ahead (or more), handling them is easy and doable, and no one needs to sleep mobs for you. I use Flash when my TP is low. I find Warrior more fun and flexible since you can handle one mob, many mobs, a boss, etc. without much issues. So that means that in the endgame, as the off-tank, you're the one taking care of the adds because the Paladin cannot, but you can be the main tank too.

This is what I get so far about both. My Warrior is LV 42.

[BlueThunder]

snip

While WAR is more fun to play and can gain more enmity than a PLD, you approached the later in a bad way.

Flash is your main source of AoE enmity, and it generates enough for you to keep aggro on all mobs if you use it efficiently. WHM or BLMs shouldnt need to sleep the mobs for you because you cant get the enmity. In fact Flash is good to gain enmity on CCd mobs by sleep because you dont even wake em up.

Also, a PLD at all lvls has enough MP to Flash at least 7 to 8 times in a row before running out of MP. Then you have your Riot Blade combo to gain more than half of MP that you need to use another Flash.

While very late, Circle of Scorn only boosts your aoe enmity when you reach lvl 50. As said, a PLD shouldnt have trouble with AoE enmity unless chainpulling and having wasted half of MP when getting a new batch without regenerating MP, but warriors can face the same issue, and even slightly worse because they depend solely on TP and have no skill to gain some back (they can still x-class Flash, but you only get 3 uses with full MP).

As for the OP regarding MT/OT question: the main tank is usually the tank that keeps the Boss while the off tank takes the adds that might spawn during the boss fight. An example would be the current endgame boss, in where the MT keeps the boss for 99,9% of the fight while the OT deals damage and takes the lesser adds. That fight has an add phase only were you end up dealing with certain adds and 1 in particular is assigned to the MT too for certain reasons.

There are still certain fights were tank rotation is a must, so Mt/OT in those fights is sort of irrelevant. That is also a reason that if you go WAR, you need to get the Provoke skill from Gladiator to perform the tank swaps.

[Dualblade]

Note that regardless of which one you end up liking more you WILL be wanting to get Gladiator up enough for Provoke. Even if you end up only leveling WAR and leaving GLD before it hits PLD that is a skill you really will want.

Outside of that, PLD is the more reliable choice for newbies, but both are fun and thats the important bit! Well WAR a little more fun.