Beginner's Overview to Tanking in FFXIV

[Jpec07]

Stances, Mitigation, and Pacing
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Stances

Starting at level 30, tanks will get abilities that will help them fill their role a little bit better. These persistent buffs are called “tank stances,” and tend to have two effects: increasing enmity generation and increasing passive mitigation. In leveling, you’ll also get something commonly known as a “DPS stance,” which simply increases your damage output.

Each tank has different stances that have different effects:
Paladin (PLD):

• Tank Stance: Shield Oath (acquired level 30) - Reduces damage taken by 20%, while reducing damage dealt by 15% and increasing enmity. Cannot be used with Sword Oath. Effect ends upon reuse.
• DPS Stance: Sword Oath (acquired level 35) - Deals additional damage with a potency of 75 after each auto-attack. Damage affected by weapon delay. Cannot be used with Shield Oath.

Warrior (WAR):

• Tank Stance: Defiance (acquired level 30) - Increases maximum HP by 25%, while reducing damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity. Increases own HP recovery via healing magic by 20%. Effect ends upon reuse. Using certain actions while under the effect of Defiance will increase your Beast Gauge, increasing parry rate to a maximum of 10%. Effect ends upon reuse.
• DPS Stance: Deliverance (acquired level 52) - Increases damage dealt by 5%. Effect ends upon reuse. Using certain actions while under the effect of Deliverance will add to your Beast Gauge, increasing critical hit rate by a maximum of 10%.

Dark Knight (DRK):
NOTE: Dark Knight is strange in that their “DPS stance” is actually not a separate status from their “tank stance.” Tank stance is actually a combination of buffs, both of which should be active when you need the extra mitigation.

Your “Tank Stance” as a Dark Knight is using both Grit and Darkside.

Your “DPS Stance” as a Dark Knight is using just Darkside.

• Grit (acquired level 30) - Reduces damage taken by 20%, while reducing damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity. Effect ends upon reuse.
• Darkside (acquired level 30) - Increases damage dealt by 20%. MP regeneration stops during battle and Refresh statuses granted by others have no effect.

The key to any of these is knowing when to use them and when to not. For most tanks, and especially when you’re learning the role, the rule of thumb is to keep your tank stance on while you’re tanking, and use your DPS stance when you’re off tanking or doing solo content. If you do this and successfully complete the dungeon, chances are that you’ll receive no complaints, and that you’ll even net a few commendations.

As a note, there are a lot of guides out there that talk about when to switch from your tank stance to your DPS stance in the middle of a fight, and how to maximize your DPS. While there is nothing wrong with doing this, I want to reiterate that this isn’t something I recommend while you’re just starting out. Your tank stance is a tool to help you do your job, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with using that tool to its fullest extent, and how you see fit. Still, there are circumstances that might call for more output, and I will explore some general rules for how to find those circumstances, if you want to. While I don’t recommend it for beginners, it is worth knowing how to do.
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Mitigation

Mitigation in Final Fantasy XIV is a strange beast, especially when you compare it to the models employed by other games. Some other games have tanks relying heavily on active mitigation models that require them to jump through hoops to mitigate damage. Other games have tanks build up mitigation on their gear, relying fully on passive mitigation to control the incoming damage and help them survive, maybe relying on a couple of cooldown abilities to help soak big spikes. Final Fantasy XIV on the other hand makes tanks use cooldown abilities, often in conjunction with one another, to soak incoming damage. Passive mitigation plays very little in tank gameplay, and nor do tanks need to perform complex rotational actions to accomplish mitigation.

It’s important in tanking to know how the game processes damage. This is going to get a little bit theoretical, but it’s good to know for when it comes to knowing how some of the other abilities work. Now, let’s talk about the combat table, which we can think about as a series of dice rolls to determine how much damage you take. Each roll has a different effect, and if one effect activates, the game doesn’t do any further checks. This is important, because it informs how different abilities can interact with one another.

When an enemy attacks you, the game checks the following sequence of modifiers:

• Critical Hit - Increases damage. Can be counteracted with Awareness.
• Block (PLD ONLY) - Reduces damage according to your block percent. Percentage cannot be modified by abilities, but block rate can be increased with Bulwark (+60%), Sheltron (100%), and Passage of Arms (100%). Fun fact: prior to 4.0, block didn’t used to work on abilities labeled “magic” (which really basically meant “special” attacks like ultimate abilities in trials - I still think the localization team messed that up, but I digress).
• Parry - Reduces damage by 20%. Damage reduction cannot be affected, but parry rate can be increased through Defiance (0-10% depending on beast gauge), Anticipation (+30%), and Raw Intuition (100% for all attacks from the front).

Once these effects are checked against, the damage is then run through any static modifiers, including plain-percentage mitigation buffs and stat-based mitigation. The total from that is then subtracted from your HP, and you’ve taken damage for the healer to deal with.

Now then, the cooldowns that you have can be broken into three categories. These aren’t official by any means, but they are how I generally determine which one to use.

• ”Rotational” Cooldowns - These are abilities with relatively long duration (usually more than 15 seconds), short cooldown (120 seconds or less), and tend to have a minor effect. These abilities are used to absorb what’s called “white damage” - akin in name and meaning to white noise.
• ”Tankbuster” Cooldowns - These are abilities with relatively short duration (usually less than 10 seconds), long cooldown (150 seconds or more), and tend to have a pretty substantial effect. What’s a tankbuster, by the way? Some bosses have abilities that they can use on a set interval that deal extremely heavy damage, and that are usually predictable (either via boss animation, attack sequence, or with a cast bar). When you’re tanking a boss, you will generally want to save abilities that can help you mitigate a lot of damage for such attacks.
• ”OH SH*T” Buttons - Hallowed Ground (PLD), Living Dead (DRK), Holmgang (WAR). These abilities have incredible mitigative ability, and can literally save your life if nothing else is available. Take note, though, that all of these abilities take a few moments from the time you activate them, so you need to be careful and plan ahead for when you think you might need them.

Now, let’s run down the cooldowns. I’m not going to list what they do, since that information can be found anywhere. Instead, I’ll focus on how to use it, and how well it interacts with other cool downs (I’ll list ones it complements and ones you should avoid stacking):

All Tanks

• Rampart: This the fundamental rotational cooldown. You’ll want to use this one to absorb white damage on trash and bosses.
  - Complements: Everything except Hallowed Ground
  - Note for Paladins: At level 62 and above, this dramatically increases the effectiveness of Intervention
• Convalescence: This is the other really good rotational cooldown. You’ll want to use this one to absorb white damage on trash and bosses, or any time when you can predict that you will need more healing.
  - Complements: Living Dead, but it also stacks well with most other cooldowns.
  - Never Use With: Hallowed Ground
• Anticipation: Not many tanks take this ability because of how low Parry is on the combat table.
  - Complements: Awareness
  - Never Use With: Raw Intuition, Bulwark, Sheltron, Passage of Arms, Hallowed Ground
  - Note for Paladins: Because Parry is below Block on the combat table, your block rate will supersede the increased parry chance from this ability.
• Reprisal: This is a really good ability to help mitigate raid wide damage, because it affects all output by a single enemy. Very useful for boss fights, but not very useful for trash pulls.
  - Complements: Everything except Hallowed Ground
• Awareness: This ability isn’t anything special on its own, but it pairs extremely nicely with abilities that increase block and parry chance, because of how the combat table works. A lot of tanks disagree and won’t take it, but that’s their loss.
  - Complements: Anticipation, Raw Intuition, Sheltron, Bulwark, Passage of Arms

Paladins

• Sentinel: This is one of the quintessential tankbuster cooldowns for Paladins. You’ll want to use this when you know you’re going to take a lot of damage. Note, though, that you should only stack cooldowns on top of Sentinel if you know you’re going to need the extra mitigation.
  - Complements: Everything except Hallowed Ground
• Bulwark: For Paladins, this is the bread of “bread and butter” for white damage mitigation, and is extremely useful for doing huge pulls. Bulwark + Awareness is extremely potent, and makes Paladin an excellent choice for mitigating damage during speed runs.
  - Complements: AWARENESS
  - Never Use With: Hallowed Ground, Sheltron, Passage of Arms
• Hallowed Ground: The PLD “OH SHIT” button. Note again that this ability will take a couple of seconds to take effect, so plan ahead. Anything stacked on top of Hallowed Ground is wasted because Hallowed Ground is JUST that good.
• Sheltron: Sheltron should be used for every tankbuster. It’s not great for trash pulls, but every little bit helps?
  - Complements: Awareness
  - Never Use With: Bulwark, Passage of Arms
• Passage of Arms: The mitigation, duration, and cooldown of this ability is makes it rival Rampart in terms of efficacy for the tank, but it negates your damage output and also has a utility component to consider. You should only typically use this ability to help mitigate ultimate abilities on trial and raid encounters.

Warriors

• Thrill of Battle: This ability is an excellent way to not only give you increased ability to soak damage, but to provide a bit of extra self-healing (the extra HP you gain is added to your current HP).
  - Complements: Convalescence!!!
• Holmgang: The WAR “OH SHIT” button. Note again that this ability will take a couple of seconds to take effect, so plan ahead. Unlike Hallowed Ground, this ability can be effectively used with other abilities.
  - Complements: Thrill of Battle
  - Important Note: Holmgang also has a draw-in effect and binds both you and your opponent in place while the effect is active. As a result, you should try to avoid using Holmgang if you're expecting an avoidable but hard-hitting AoE.
• Vengeance: This makes Warriors thorny. It’s good for white damage, really helpful for trash, and is strong enough to be useful in concert with other abilities for tankbusters.
• Raw Intuition: This is WAR’s best job-specific trash cooldown when used correctly. Due to the increased chance to take critical damage if the enemies manage to surround you, it is highly recommended to pair this with Awareness to guarantee that every hit you take will be mitigated at 20%. In that combination, it matches Rampart in terms of effectiveness.
  - Complements: Awareness
  - Never Use With: Anticipation
• Shake It Off: New to 4.1, WAR gets a shiny new tankbuster cooldown. While trash will chew through the barrier this generates pretty quickly, it can make a big difference in how much damage you take from a tankbuster or ultimate ability.
  - Note: This ability will eat Thrill of Battle, Vengeance, and Raw Intuition, so use with caution. As of this writing, I do not know if Thrill of Battle increases the strength of the barrier created.

Dark Knights

• Dark Mind: Really good for spell-type tankbusters, which cannot be parried. Use with Dark Arts for even better effect! This ability makes The Chrysalis trial silly to tank as a Dark Knight.
• Dark Arts + Dark Passenger: While a lot of guides say not to use this (because it's expensive), you can use it to put a fairly potent (in my experience) blind effect on your opponents. This used to be extremely useful when paired with Dark Arts + Dark Dance, which would increase dodge chance, but was removed in 4.0.
  - Don't Ever Use With: Blood Price
• Shadow Wall: The closest thing DRK has to a tankbuster cooldown. This ability should be used in concert with something else, as it is somewhat lackluster on its own, providing the mitigation of Vengeance with a shorter duration, longer cooldown, and without the thorns.
• Living Dead: DRK’s “OH SHIT” button. As with the other two, remember that this takes a couple of seconds to take effect, so you’ll want to plan ahead.
  - Complements: Convalescence
  - Don’t Use With: basically anything else. Because of how Living Dead works, it has the potential to absorb infinite damage. As such, if there’s a period of time when you know you’re going to take absurd amounts of damage, Living Dead’s mitigation will only be diminished by other cooldowns used. Just make sure to communicate with your healers.
• The Blackest Night: Many guides may recommend saving this ability for tankbuster abilities, but because of its short cooldown, there is absolutely no reason not to spam this on cooldown, even in lieu of Dark Arts. Doing so can make DRK mitigate more damage than either of the other two tanks.

The only other thing to note in terms of mitigation is self healing, which is how WAR and DRK compensate for a lack of shield. The amount of healing received is tied to certain skills and abilities, and you can find out which ones from the ability tooltips.
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Pacing

Pacing can be defined as the rate at which you progress through a dungeon or encounter. At the end of the game, most groups are used to running at a pretty frantic pace, but while you’re leveling, especially if you can group with other people who are also leveling, you’ll tend to find that people are willing to go a little bit more slowly.

Tanks generally control the pace of the dungeon, as it is the tank’s job to pull enemies and hold their focus. Once one group of enemies is done, you go to the next and the next, and use your pulling to control the pace at which the group runs the dungeon.

A lot of guides will say that you should start running and pull as much as possible as far as possible so that the group can burn all of it down as fast as possible. While this can work in some instances, it does make some assumptions of your group - namely of your comfort with such pulls, your group’s ability to burn the enemies down quickly, and of your healer’s capacity to keep up with the damage that such a huge pull will inflict upon you.

1. You should only pull what you’re comfortable pulling. If someone starts pulling for you or if people complain, explain that you’re not comfortable doing larger pulls. You can apologize if you want, but remember that you’re playing this game for your own enjoyment. While your role is one that ultimately supports the group’s success, you are not beholden to the group for how you enjoy the game. Don’t be a jerk, be humble and accommodating and honest, and you’ll be fine.
2. You can never assume your group has good AoE DPS. Some jobs don’t have very good ability to sustain AoE DPS output, and some don’t have very good AoE DPS at all. If you do a huge pull and start taking a ton of damage, you will very soon start to tax your healer’s ability to keep up, and will see their MP bar decay very quickly. Once it’s empty, they can no longer heal you, and if you’re still taking a lot of damage at that point, the group will very likely wind up wiping.
3. You can never assume your healer will know how to keep up. If you start pulling lots of enemies, you’re suddenly going to start taking a LOT of damage very quickly. Most seasoned healers will know how to handle this and even expect it, but every now and then you’ll encounter a healer who doesn’t know how to handle big pulls. In these cases, you should take care to accommodate your healer’s confidence and ability. If you start dying too much? Use a few more cooldowns than usual and pull smaller next time. If you are constantly hovering near the top of your HP bar? Pull more if you’re comfortable with it.

In general, when you start a dungeon run, you have two options for determining how to pace yourself at the beginning: (1) ask the group whether they want you to pull quickly or if they mind a slightly more leisurely pace, or (2) pull the first group of mobs and pay attention.

Regardless of which method, you need to pay attention at the beginning of the dungeon to know how you can pace your run. If in your first pull, all of the enemies die extremely quickly and your healer doesn’t have trouble keeping up, then the group is able to handle that size of pull, and can possibly go faster. If, however, the enemies take a long time to die, or die one at a time at relatively long intervals, or if your healer seems to be having difficulty keeping up with the damage, then you need to slow down. Smaller pulls will end more quickly and will have overall less stress on the group.

In general, you should start small and work your way up.

All in all, though, the most important thing you can do is communicate with your group. Marking your kill priority, using ready checks and countdowns, explaining how you’re going to handle certain rooms or pulls, discussing boss mechanics, and checking in with your healer between pulls are all good practices, and will help to set you apart from other tanks.

ALSO: MAKE SURE THAT YOU ALWAYS THANK YOUR HEALERS AND GIVE THEM YOUR COMMENDATION UNLESS THEY WERE DOWNRIGHT AWFUL. WITHOUT THEM, YOU ARE LITTLE MORE THAN A FLIMSY PIECE OF METALLIC MEAT.