Tips for starting tanking?

[exarion]

After having spent quite a while as a healer main, I've decided to give tanking an attempt. I've leveled MRD to 15 and completed my class quest in addition to getting a nice set of tank gear, so I think I'm mostly ready to handle Sastasha. I'm just wondering if there are any common mistakes I should avoid, any cross class abilities I really should have (for MRD or GLD, I'll be leveling both), or just anything to keep in mind leveling as a tank.

[anubis1820]

Hey there exarion if your starting to tank now its probably safe to say get ready for a high ilvl dps to keep stealing hate from you lol. Other then that I say take your time understand how your combos and skills work 4 you also I had dragoon lvl up 1st but the tp recover move they have is great for mrd at start

[Sanguisio]

Having been a healer really helps as you will know the damage patterns.

I would suggest learning what CD to use and when
e.g. dont use foresight on its own if a v hard hit is coming.

Keep an eye on emnity of all the enemies if possible as a dps might be pulling hard on one and if they get it, it can be awkward at low lvls to get it back

[Everdark]

Try to run with some helpful friends at first to find your feet... nothing like getting actual experience to find what you need to work on.
Don't be afraid to use flash, even as a MRD
Overpower is king
Try to be confident. Can really tell when the Tank is hesitating and it seems to make the other players impatient

besides that, turn chat off or leave personal feelings at the door cos some people really unforgiving.

[Waeksyn]

At low level it can be tough to hold hate. Don't pull more than you can handle and use markers (1, 2, 3) so the dps will all go on the same enemy, allowing you to focus enmity there.

[Carvaka]

Internal release, provoke, flash, convalesence and second wind for cross class. For early dungeons, make sure you mark targets. I just use 1 for the current target. You may find yourself low on tp in the section just before the boss of you don't wait between pulls, if you find this happens, just rotate attacks through mobs (unless mobs are slept). Satasha is a lot of fun as tank, relax and enjoy it. If others don't know mechanics, enjoy kiting the boss and adds at the end

[PetiteMalFleur]

Wow, I'm surprised at the negative responses. Tanking is really easy and fun. Holding hate is not an issue if you are properly geared and know what you are doing, especially as a MRD. (Read all your skill tooltips.) Well geared players are level synced and you actually have an advantage over them if you have non level synced hq gear. The biggest issue I see with new tanks is just pulling really slow and taking extra time to mark every mob, which can slow the run to a crawl. This is unnecessary since you'll be using overpower anyway on everything. Just keep in mind these dungeons should not take more than 20 minutes to finish so slow pulls may cause the party to get impatient. Going at a reasonable pace is fine for most groups.

If you really want to mark mobs use a macro to quickly mark everything at once.

/mk Triangle
/focustarget
/ac "Target Forward"
/mk attack2 <t>
/ac "Target Forward"
/mk attack3 <t>
/target <f>
/mk attack1 <f>

[Seryl199]

Wow, I'm surprised at the negative responses. Tanking is really easy and fun...

Agreed! I was my own worst enemy when it came to learning tanking, I over thought things and stressed over hate too much. Just get in there like you own it, and take into consideration some tips offered here. Confidence matters when you're tanking, experienced players will notice a fidgety, slow paced tank, and appreciate a tank that gets into the thick of battle. Just do your best and learn the flow of battle. If a mob slips away, I tend to apologize just to let people know I'm paying attention, but it's rarely a big deal, particularly in lower levels when you're still learning.

[Dement]

Keep an eye on the enmity symbols next to all mobs. If you don't see all red squares, you got a problem that needs to be corrected.

Overpower all the things.

Flash is very useful to a WAR in early levels. I think when I was learning I'd open with flash until my MP was gone and then do a few overpowers. Now I know it was overkill on enmity generation but I never really lost hate on anything while leveling.

Try to keep the Maim buff up on WAR when possible, it becomes a lot easier in higher levels when you get storms eye/storms path but it's still useful to increase damage and thus increase enmity at lower levels.

Don't aimlessly run around the mobs. Get them grouped together so that you're on one side of the mobs, they're all facing you and grouped together, and your party is in the other side and then stop moving except for dodging attacks. You can make a MNKs life a living hell trying to hit positionals if you're intent on spinning all the mobs like a top. Also when you dodge an attack, run out of attacks range, then as soon as the range indicators disappear, run right back to where you were previously standing. This keeps things nice and tidy and predictable.

Use the mark target macro posted above if you're going to mark targets. No one wants to sit and wait while you individually mark targets.

Realize that the first attack of the combo doesn't generate as much enmity as the 2nd and 3rd attacks due to enmity multipliers when combo'd. As you get up a bit higher and have access to the full combos, spread the higher enmity attacks around. For example, hit your primary target with heavy swing and skull sunder but hit a different target with Butcher's Block. Keep doing that, making sure a different target gets hit with Butcher's Block each time. This will keep hate on the primary target cause of skull sunder but also keep you leaps and bounds ahead of AoEers and healers on the other targets. You could do this in low level too, land a heavy swing >skull sunder on your primary target and then next rotation do heavy swing primary target > skull sunder on 2nd target. The mobs should die before you ever have problems with your initial target.

Provoke doesn't do what a lot of people think it does and should rarely be used for pulling mobs. Provoke puts you ahead of the person with the most enmity by 1 point. It needs to be followed up with something to secure aggro and if you're opening with it, it only gives you 1 point of aggro. The only time it's acceptable to pull with provoke is in rare situations where you need to pull something from farther away. AK comes to mind with the succubus' in the final area, you can pull one from across the gaps using provoke so that it's running around the gaps to you while your party fights the smaller groups. (not really a viable strategy anymore due to increased ilvl faceroll status of AK but that's how it used to be done a lot.)

As a Warrior, don't let Berserk sit idle. Yeah the 5 second pacification sucks but never using it sucks even more (I was guilty of this for a long time when leveling cause I was always afraid that the pacification would hit at a really inconvenient moment)

If you are playing on PS3/PS4, you can choose the mob that you're targeting from the list of mobs by holding L1 and using the up/down arrows instead of tab targeting. Very useful if you lose aggro on something and need to target it for a quick provoke/tomahawk/shield lob or if you need to pick up an add really fast and you can't be sure exactly where it will spawn (spiny plume, I'm looking at you.)

Getting higher up in content, remember that you can sit on a 'primed' Skull Sunder or Butcher's Block. This is incredibly useful for when an add is going to pop or if you need to tank swap. For example if an add is going to pop, you know exactly where it will pop and you're approaching the moment that it does, use Heavy Swing then sit for a moment, the second the add spawns you can hit it with a Skull Sunder that's been primed to include the extra enmity multiplier. As a tank swap mechanic, when you need to swap it's usually good to hit a Heavy Swing, Skull Sunder, move into position, Provoke (remember only puts you 1 point ahead of current tank), immediately Butcher's Block (aggro is now secured unless the old MT isn't doing their job, tank swapping is a 2 way street - one has to get the aggro, one has to give the aggro.)

Speaking of tank swapping, if you're the MT and you're swapping out to OT, you can't just hammer away on your butcher's block combo while trying to switch. You'll need to switch to your lesser enmity combos (storms path/storms eye) before the other tank provokes so that you're not just yanking aggro right back immediately.

I've only used WAR skills in here cause I'm more familiar with them but most of this applies to PLD as well with their 1,2,3 combo.