Tanking Class for a First Time Tank

[Breidr]

New tank and new FFXIV player. I understand the very basics from videos and guides, but have yet to really put the concepts into practice. I have limited experience with both Marauder and Gladiator. I feel like Overpower is the easier of the AoE enmity abilities, even with the need to position yourself. Flash just seems "slow" if I had to describe it.

Every post I read from here to Reddit says that the Paladin in easy and boring, but as I got some of my defensive cooldowns I started getting overwhelmed. I've taken the Gladiator to 50 something in Palace of the Dead [no job stone] and I almost never use them, and have no idea when. The Warrior seems to have a similar problem. I have so few, it's easy to waste one by using it at the wrong time.

I'm just trying to figure out which to progress further on right now, seeing as I am a new tank. I'm pretty sure I will eventually level all three tank jobs, but that will come much later.

[Sarcatica]

Use the job stones. You lose more than you gain and it doesn't hurt to get used to the job because especially when you reach lvl50++, you basically unlock a lot of skills for you to use. It's also beneficial for you to get a job to lvl60 first for exp bonus, it will help with leveling your other classes/jobs.

Don't get confused by "PLD is easy and boring", Reddit has a lot of veterans so it's very skewed. Most PLDs in game don't even know their simple rotation which is nuts. While Flash sucks, it still does its job just okay. The learning process will take some time for new players. My advice is to keep doing dungeons as a tank because you are taught more about how to be a proper tank than running around for quests.

The general idea as a tank is to take hits and mitigate them effectively. That's your first part to see where to use your defensive CDs, the next few parts will involve intricacies of the tanking role itself because once you are at the top of the chain, the game "allows" you to also dish out huge DPS and help other roles to go off. This DPS issue as tanks has been a controversy time to time due to disagreements and different opinions.

[Claire_Pendragon]

For clarification, PLD is "easier" to "learn" not that it will function the way a new player wants, when they ask for the easy tank to learn.
For example, WAR and DRK generate more threat (less so now, but they still do) so you get a slightly less clear understanding of where the line is in threat. (Where PLD has to fight for it more and longer)

PLD uses a circle AoE, which is easier to aim than Overpower.
PLD can maintain MP easier than a WAR can maintain TP.
PLD can tank stance dungeons and not use CDs to survive leveling content easier than a WAR in defiance only. (Not that its really that hard to keep them alive if they are geared up)
PLD doesnt have as many pre-requisites to activaite mitigation. Such as WAR needing to have a target to hit, to pop inner beast, or its blood baths self healing. (Including building Wrath)
PLD has a very straight forward Rotation till 50, all effects are very direct.

This doesnt mean PLD is better as a class in any way.

Once you have the basics of a Lv50 PLD, the class gets a tad bit closer to the others, with minor intricacies by Lv60.
And with what you learned from PLD, you'll be able to apply it to WAR/DRK, and then do theirt extra mechanics on top of the basic PLD playstyle.
(WAR has Wrath, debuffs, and fell cleave outside of tank stance. DRK has Dark Arts to buff certain attacks, while using abilities to maintain MP for it.)

You have your AoE threat, your ranged threat, your single target threat combo, and your highest DPS combo.
Along with mitigation to help the healer heal less.
WAR and DRK just have stuff thrown on top of that.

That is all.

EDIT: to touch on something said prior, you're 1st goal as a new tank is to get "decent" gear. 1st is your weapon, then your armor.
Once inside a dungeon;
(1) Practice trying to hold hate, and see what all you can do to improve it. (Simplest solution is to always get to mobs 1st, and use your AoE often.)
(2) Once you can establish near perfect hate every fight, practice trying to conserve resources, such as MP, so you dont need to wait on it the start of the next fight. (Most of the time this wont be an issue that you even need to practice.)
(3) Practice trying to start every pull and boss fight with some sort of Cool Down, or mitigation. (If you really want to save your good ones, fine, just so long as you use SOMETHING!)
(4) Practice rotating your CDs, so you almost always have something up during a fight. (excluding situations where only 1 mob is left or similar.)
(5) Once all that is done, practice turning off your tank stance in boss fights when you over gear it, and you landed a few threat combos in tank stance. (This is to maximize your DPS, while keeping your CDs up for endgame.)

After all that, there's only a few small things left to do. Just take it one step at a time.

[KikodeYusaku]

You'll definitely be struggling with gladiator and marauder without the job stones, since that will prevent you from getting the stances granting increased emnity generation, as well as missing out on all of the other job abilities (mostly cooldowns).
For leveling content, you really don't need too much planning with your defensive cooldowns - balance them out so you've got at least one available when it looks like you'll be taking large amounts of damage. Paladin is only really easiest in its main combo, which is basically 1-2-3 until level 54.

As I mentioned earlier, try to get your job stone, especially for marauder, since that will give you the emnity stance at level 30. Unfortunately paladin doesn't get its emnity stance until level 40, which makes things harder. Once you get said emnity stances, you'll be able to look more at your cooldowns rather than seeing how much you can spam to maintain aggro.

[UshiMushi]

A lot of that is solid advice. However, idk if 3 and 4 in Claire's post are good advice in general.

It doesn't matter much in dungeons, since they tend to be really easy anyway, but you don't usually want to pop a CD at the start of a fight. It's also not really intuitive at first when you should use one; this is mostly a learning process and you pick up certain cues from common enemy themes, group dynamics, and situational aspects.

I personally, as a warrior, use CDs for either mid big pull, an attack I know will hurt, or (and this is WAR specific) for DPS. I do understand this wasn't really addressing more 'advanced' aspects, but I want to clarify the tanks defensive rotation is fairly dynamic. This rotation is probably the most vital component to becoming a good tank.

Just takes experience to learn when to use the defense buffs; no silver bullet. Also, healing a little bit will help you understand tanking a little better imo.

Happy tanking, friend

[Claire_Pendragon]

A lot of that is solid advice. However, idk if 3 and 4 in Claire's post are good advice in general.

It doesn't matter much in dungeons, since they tend to be really easy anyway, but you don't usually want to pop a CD at the start of a fight. It's also not really intuitive at first when you should use one; this is mostly a learning process and you pick up certain cues from common enemy themes, group dynamics, and situational aspects.

I personally, as a warrior, use CDs for either mid big pull, an attack I know will hurt

For clarification, I dont mean before the pull, but after they are all beating on you at the start, as there will be more enemies alive at the start, than near the end. (plus a lot of healers tend to try and get AoE/DPS off at the start, and then ease up mid way, then go back to DPS near the end)(And if you're PLD, the blindness is a technical mitigation at the start, so its ok to wait till blindness wears off, depending on pull size)

And secondly, the 4th isnt really possible at lower levels, and by the time the average person technically masters threat and feels comfortable in content, they usually have enough CDs to either do this, or come close to it. (No point in having the CD if its never used after all.)
Once you're used to how many CDs u can keep up and for how long, you'll be ready for the last step of taking off the tank stance.

[TallonOverworld]

You definitely need to get the job stones as all the people above have suggested. Other than that, don't be influenced by old players that might say paladin sucks or warrior op. All tanks are capable in tanking effectively and have 3 major similarities.
Mitigation,Heal or damage converted to hp and tank/dps stance. The only thing that is different is how you play them and how you use your skills to your advantage.
I main warrior since i have started playing and after 3 years i am neither bored nor i feel my class is underpowered in any case.
If you plan on doing savage (late-game) content where the difficulty skyrockets, i recommend that you stick to 1 tank class or if you prefer to level all of them then pick the one that you feel most comfortable to play with.
Good luck and welcome!!

[Zadocfish]

If you're more used to playing DPS, then Marauder might be the easier transition (it focuses more on DPS than Gladiator does, you see). I guess you came to the same conclusion, looking at your profile now!