Newbie wants to be a better tank

[Astrelle_hyperion]

Some of the other things to keep in mind that I didn't see listed above -- especially important for GLA pre 30 and PLD pre-40:

1) Make sure your weapon is alwasy the best you can have -- HQ level appropriate or a pink/green within 2 levels of yours. The weapon damage stat is critical for keeping hate. (The MSQ is often giving you NQ versions of the weapon, and you've normally out leveled it anyways. Buy, craft, have higher level friends craft, whatever it takes. Your weapon is critical)

2) Your typical opener in this level is shield lob, flash x N (where n is the number of mobs, maybe plus/minus 1 depending on your gear and the parties), then start your enmity rotation. Fast Blade, Savage Blade [tab], Rage of Halone, [tab], repeat. Both Savage and RoH have large hate multipliers. This should keep up with a strong BLM (or other AoE) class.

3) Don't use Provoke for a ranged pull, use it to get a mob back if you lose it. All it does is put you to top of the hate list + 1. Ideally follow it up with either shield lob, or have your hate combo pre-prepped (ie fast blade, voke, savage (or fast blase, savage, voke, Rage). Rage gives you a bigger lead, but has a longer animation lock before the hate is actually tacked on.


The hardest thing in this level range is when you have both a strong target DPS (MNK, NIN, DRG) and a strong AoE (BLM, SMN, BRD, MCH). This will test your skills. Instead of the tab targeting around your hate combo, you might need to flash, hate combo on primary target, flash, hate combo on primary target, flash x2, etc. Watch the hate bars closely and learn how much lead you need. How fast the DPS are gaining. (Even if you aren't spreading the hate combo around, get use to tabbing between the mobs to check hate status)

Please let me know if you have more questions -- trying to provide the reasons for different things rather than just flat out advice as that's what helped me learn when I was in your shoes a couple of years ago.