About co-tanking

[Noldornir]

For lvl 50 and below content you will be the main tank as your only combo as a PLD is your aggro combo.

That's the point. For what i can see and understand i'll want to use a LOT my later combos further on (goring blade/royal authority) but at LvL 50 dungeons it's Rage of Halone or Riot Blade.

[Neela]

For lvl 50 and below content you will be the main tank as your only combo as a PLD is your aggro combo.

because War rage in his dps stance and shouldn't take advantage of inner beast and unleash here!!11 oh wait.....

tbh in lvl 50 content the player who pulls first is the main tank - cls doesn't matter at all here : /

[Nedkel]

Thanks a lot, that starts to make some sense.

The healer was not spamming tho (I had no issues at all mantaining aggro and the DPS was close to healer in enmity).

Would you also be so kind to explain me these differences in tanking (WAR-DRK-PAL)? At lvl 50 i dont have access to royal authority/Goring blade combos and that makes my DMG rotation to be almost doin nothing/lil damage;

wouldn't it just better for 2 handers (WAR-DRK) to off-tank since they can't block but can dish out more DPS (for the time being at least i believe)?

Its because warrior in offensive stance could dish out much higher damage than other two tanks, which equals to more enmity being generated by such tank, and enmity is really important for a tank that is tanking the boss.
While he is tanking it, other tank uses the offensive stance as well and use combination of abilities provoke > shrink to the second tank, using provoke to get ahead with enmity and then pass half of it to the MT with the shrink ability, this way he is increasing his enmity level and everyone is happy because MT doesnt lose boss aggro while dealing as much dps as he could in offensive stance. Also healers and DPS in team has to use their enmity dumping skills to prevent themselves from getting ahead MT in enmity.

That way you could have 2 tanks in offensive stance dealing more dps overall in comparison to the team in which MT is using tank stance.

Why people decided to make it meta game? Because they have to in order to meet the DPS requirements on raids with savage and ultimate level of difficulty, there is a time limit you have to kill the boss there, if you dont kill it within the given time then you will get killed and fail the run thats why it is so important to get as high dps as possible.
Tanks stance at this point doesnt really matter, healers in this game has really OP healing bursts skills and so it is enough if MT will use deffensive cooldown for tank busters and other high damage moves, so he will just survive and get burst healed to full, you can only survive once so it doesnt matter if you will survive with 20% hp or 50%.
Also PLD or DRK isnt played as a MT when there is a warrior in their team, but if there no WAR then i guess it depends on who could dish out more dmg.

As i said, this tactic is being used primary on the high end content, you dont have to follow it in normal raids or anything below, it requires a good team coordination and knowledge about certain raid you are running, even more if two tanks decide to do swapping the boss aggro in order to utilize their best CD's but thats even more complicated than it already is without swapping. Usually, MT in normal raids is using tank stance and the other uses offensive, and its all fine.

[Phoenicia]

wouldn't it just better for 2 handers (WAR-DRK) to off-tank since they can't block but can dish out more DPS (for the time being at least i believe)?

It is not really about the weapon they're holding. It is about the abilities they can use. In terms of DPS, the 3 tanks are roughly around the same DPS. WAR has slightly better burst when not all meta-raid buffs are present, while PLD and DRK can dish out slightly more maximum DPS with optimal raid buffst. Those difference are within the 100 DPS margin, when we're talking 5~6000s DPS, it's barely 2%. Not even worth mentioning tbh. It only matters when you want to optimize for damage.

As a matter of fact, the first 4 patches of Stormblood, PLD did too much DPS (Read: Highest tank DPS) for what it brings to the raid that we took 3 nerfs in 3 patches in a row to put it back in line... that I remember. (WAR got reworked completely and DRK got numerous buffs to catch up as well).

Defensively, for paladin, shield is too unreliable until you learn Sheltron and can build gauge fast enough to use it (Sword Oath). And even then, Sheltron is a block by the shield, blocks 1 hit, you can't parry while you block and finally, shield Block is preceded by Critical damage (the way the game checks for damage is: hit/miss > critical > block > parry > normal). So you may very well use Sheltron (100% chance to block) and still get full damage from a critical hit (some bosses do guaranteed criticals as well). The critical is mitigated with Awareness but that has a cooldown. Outside of Sheltron, your defensive buffs don't last long enough and have very long cool down times for them to amount to great mitigation. So it's not all up-side. Sheltron is still a very dang good move mind you, one of the best, just has the aforementioned drawbacks.

The main reason WAR or DRK pull instead of the PLD is the initial enmity burst vs DPS lost. For PLD to sit in Shield Oath (-15%), throw a Shield Lob (1GCD), do a whole of Rage of Halone combo (3GCDs), then use Sword Oath (1 GCD with 0 actual damage that needs 3~4 GCDs to make up for it) you lose too much DPS and misalign your buffs from raid buffs by that many GCDs for the rest of the phase/fight. Meanwhile WAR hits with Tomahawk (1GCD), uses Equilibrium (off-GCD) and he's already in DPS stance doing its DPS rotation that is optimized with raid buffs. Because of the burst enmity and an opener that does more damage than everyone else except 2 or 3 DPS classes, the rest of the DPS will have a very hard time to catch up to them in enmity. Assuming everyone is using aggro control, WAR sets the enmity for the rest of the fight without ever touching an enmity combo or needs the second tank to do so.

As for the idea of Main Tank / Off Tank, you should forget this concept, it is bad to limit yourself to it. Think Main Tank is simply the tank that is "tanking right now" or "pulling the boss". It is much better to think of the tank pairs as a 1 entity of tanks, so instead of 1 HP bar, you have 2, instead of just having 1 set of defensives, you have 2, and instead of 1 provoke, you have 2, etc.

Most nasty things either stretch your CDs too hard for 1 tank to keep it, or apply debuffs that would kill you outright if you try to keep the boss. Some other cases both tanks need to split damage (Akh Morns), tank same boss simultaneously (T11), or tank 2 different things the whole fight (O6S, O12S M&F). Heck, most of Deltascape and Sigmascape Savage had the "off-tank" take more damage than the "main tank" that's actually tanking the boss.

[Bright-Flower]

Oh so that explains why sometimes I could have sworn I had shelltron up and didn't get s shield swipe proc.

Kind of odd that shield oath has no reliable way to build oath gauge until we get holy spirit...I mean in an aoe pull you can hit bulwark sure and get lots of procs but on a boss its usefulness for that is limited.

[Noldornir]

Thanks for the in-depth explanations Nedkel and Phoenicia!

As for the idea of Main Tank / Off Tank, you should forget this concept, it is bad to limit yourself to it. Think Main Tank is simply the tank that is "tanking right now" or "pulling the boss". It is much better to think of the tank pairs as a 1 entity of tanks, so instead of 1 HP bar, you have 2, instead of just having 1 set of defensives, you have 2, and instead of 1 provoke, you have 2, etc.

Even tho i do like this idea and think it's actually the best available route... but is it doable in a duty finder with another random tank?

My problem is (for the time being at last) when i'm with a random tank; I won't know how he plays, what he's about to do, if he's going to shirk on me etc.

Is there any "unwritten rule" which is generally used by good players in a random dungeon?

To be more clear, ler's say I go in a trial (hard). I'll get another random tank. Let's say he's a very good player. How would he behave? What would he expect of me (in terms of role OC).

Should I just beat the boss as hard as i can without caring of how much enmity i generate (and if i get aggroed who cares as long as i'm not standing with/in front of DPSs)?
Should I just focus on generating damage WHILE helping him to keep the aggro? (Like before but i could use shirk in case i get aggro or provoke->shirk before it happens)?
Should I just do something else?

Of course i expect this might change depending on content (in a fight with many adds the OT probably stack em while the MT keep boss at bay, in a super-strong boss the MT could use skills like cover etc. or OC) but as a GENERAL rule how do the two tanks (should) behave when they do not know each other?

[Neela]

There are not much unwritten rules how so ever...

u can make a checklist...

- always enter on dps stance proactiv
- see if War or Drk are going to pull/set timer in tankstance
- Never use enmity just to raise your score it doesnt matter if burst monster like Sam/Blm are higher than u while beeing Off-Tank. But be sure how to use provok/ultimate just in case.
- Sticking to your dps/dot rota should prevent you to run into enmity-battles with the MT
- If u claim enmity by accident slow down and hand the mob over again / with or without shirk

Nothing more to do actually ^^

edit: on higher lvl u also can assist with shieldskills, debuffs or emergency heals - if u like to ;3

[Megguido]

Even tho i do like this idea and think it's actually the best available route... but is it doable in a duty finder with another random tank?

My problem is (for the time being at last) when i'm with a random tank; I won't know how he plays, what he's about to do, if he's going to shirk on me etc.

Is there any "unwritten rule" which is generally used by good players in a random dungeon?

To be more clear, ler's say I go in a trial (hard). I'll get another random tank. Let's say he's a very good player. How would he behave? What would he expect of me (in terms of role OC).

If the other tank is MT, then you're just a blue DPS. If you know that there are no tank swaps in the next 2 minutes, you can provoke + shirk (or just shirk if you're getting close to their aggro). The "unwritten rule" in 8-man (non-savage) duties is : first tank with tank stance on pulls. Other than that, just do mechanics and keep DPSing.

[Phoenicia]

Neela and Megguido pretty much summed it up.

Don't entertain the thought of aggro battlers, it's bad for the over-all team DPS, mitigation and healing (not only do healers hate not knowing which tank is actually taking damage, but a tank taking a tank buster move unexpectedly most likely will cause a tank death. Oh how I hate eating a tank buster because my co-tank died or slacked and my aggro caught up to his just before it started casting and I didn't have enough time to react fully... even if I survive it lol).

The most important thing to note is: Anything that people are willing to do in random duty finder is easy enough for it not to matter who does what. In high end content (Savage, latest extreme primal and Ultimate) people will set rules beforehand that you will know exactly what to do and when. Just enjoy all features of tanking until then.

[jadan2000]

i feel you on this. especially in the 24 man raids in Sb. i dont feel like there is much reason for more then one tank in any boss fight. Im just sitting there in DPS stance 90% of the time, but its not like that any major DPS. I dont feel like im really contributing to the fight.