Tanking Guide (not basics not for raiding savage)

[VictoriaLuv]

this guide isn't for high end raiding. any mention of savage really doesn't belong here. this guide is for pulling mechanics and understanding how each tank functions how you should try pull in 4 man party

-> one before you start your dungeon check your healers gear. and ask them is it ok if i pull big. but in for gun bringer. you ask can i pull fast. fast/big are two different starts. we get to that later.

-> doing a ready check. and count down before pulling a boss is night cause some people sometimes forget say im afk before you pull

-> using cooldowns when fighting bosses means - right before tank buster. or when things go south. and or healer gets clipped and only things toping a wipe is you and 2 dps. and its time to carry

-> check your own gear. if your underweared less confident with your tanking. its ok to fast pull. instead of big pulling.

-> for love god make a /focustarget macro. so you can see attacks each monster/boss makes you got no time in a fight. pull up a menu in mid fight and focus target. and your not doing yourself no favors for not /focustarget


Art of Fast Pulling - What is it. well basically pulling single group. go nuts with your dps. until there about 50 or below and immediately pull the next group. constantly pulling with no moment deprive using your fact that enimity is broken. this strat is very good when you have maybe bard. ninjas. any healer with a dot. can put dots on monsters. mostly likely before get to next pull current pull is completely dead. Darkwars and gunbreakers are very good at this. whole kit is based on it shreding damage killing backs of monsters or using fact they deal insanes about of damage can kill monsters in blink. having abilities such darkness abyss drain. or flood of darkness watch is a line aoe when have monsters chasing they are all lined up. gunbreaker is different. pulling big puts you in disadvantage not saying it unable to do. alots gun breakers can pull off big pulling however. your rotation is big and fat. alots of ogcds weaving tools. when you pull big most likely wont be able to do your full rotation at first. even if you pop all your cooldowns. rest is healers adjusting but cant count on that 100% of time when your pugging with strangers. so always easy take safe road before rushing in blindy cause wipe cause your healer is new. cant adjust with number your pulling


Art of Big Pulling - Wall to Wall Pulling. this is judgement call you do this wrong even the silence you wipe the party. using cool-downs at right time. learning enimity control making sure everything hitting you.

Between Paladin and Warrior no one does it better. dark knight get the blackest night really nice to use. gun breakers case its more complex method is added to this please remember as gun breaker your aoe is shortiest of all tanks. and frankly your cool-downs if your not having good Buttons per second. this can go south but every tank has this.

so wall to wall pulling this depends on your cooldowns when use how you use them doing math in your head. if i pull this many monsters by the time reach point a to point b will my cooldowns go off timer for next time I pull big. currently that thats big question. however you can do it if you have really awesome healer. by basically pulling 2-3 groups maybe 4 if have real good healer. stopping at the boss from start to finish

some dungeons wont allow this do to fact walls that block you from doing so. what monsters do what attacks . boss mechanics. keeping bosses facing away from party so don't feel the cleave. using your abilities on other players. all tanks have abilities place othters when can you should try using them feel comfortable using then. you be amazed how many times you can save someone using Intervention+ cover. or blackiest night or thing other ppl. like um when doing trails for few friends of mine. i was off tanking as a dark and using the blackiest night on my team. really help out even saved the healer from dieing

What are good cool-downs?
Arm's Lenght - believe it or not this is actually very strong cooldown
Rampart+Reprisal - I normally try use these two together. but reprisal has its only unique placements of its own. rampart is my go to cooldown. when i pull fast pull. or big pull. however if my dps or healing is lacking and im pulling big there this be a problem. specially when have take into account the amount of damage and healing your party vs about of monsters you can pull

Everyone job has 1-3 different job cooldowns. sometimes more. everyone has big cooldown. and very big cooldown. using them effectively differs for each job


Paladins Pulling - If am a paladin i normally do big pulls my aoes are large and effective they do decent amount of damage. and endwalker my magic phase will heal me with same potency and effectnessness as scholars physic. while having the strongest and simplest big cooldown in the game hallowed ground. wall to wall pulling is what paladins built to do.

Warrior - Love this job by the way. has large amounts of self healing with large amounts of aoe added to class. its cooldowns evolve around boosting there health via healing with iron barking shit to death. with one best defensive cooldowns in game. allowing them to do both fast and big pulls at same time

Dark Knight - Dark Knight is ideal fast puller. by pulling one group already weaken that can swiftly do 180 while running to deck group hit targets already flood of darkness. damaging the train while hitting it with abyss drain like bowling ball hitting strikes. while using the blackiest night. over all darknight can do both but better at fast pulling them big pulling

Gunbreaker - is squishiest of all the tank. mostly this is because alot reasons. alot people do know know how to play them dont really understand how parry works. or dont know how give but however i give my opinion. pulling small and fast is just as fast as pulling big., gun breaker shreds trash like knife through butter. your aoe range is short however you have alot weaving tools two different combos. while your moving to group to group you can pop aurora. also you have superbowlie but using this ability poorly will make any healer say i give up and leave. try not use superbowlie to troll there proper ways to use this ability cant really use it same way as paladin uses hallowed ground. some instances you can but lot instances you shouldn't . take adventage of gunbreakers massive damage. and pull quickly now not saying they cant pull big. but if your new to your job. try remeber gunbreaker is its own job its not a paladin. until you understand inner workings best pull fast. instead of big

[IcySnow]

Ready check and countdown are overkill in 4 people dungeons to be honest. Most of the time no one care if they can do their full 15 seconds prepull opener, they just want to get it done quicker

[Claire_Pendragon]

Reprisal is good to combo with different mitigations, but i tend not to mix it with rampart and the -30%.
Arms Length would be an example of a better combo. some enemies might have missed you during its short window, or started a ground AoE/self buff, right as u pressed it.
so imo, comboing the -20 from arms length with reprisal is better than comboing it with rampart. (not that it makes a huge difference or anything. Plus reprisal will be up far more often than arms length)

[phantomr23]

Oh lord. Okay, so this is obviously bait but might as well use it to address the points anyway in case, god forbid, someone new sees this and actually takes it as gospel.

1) Wall-pulling vs Fast-pulling is absolutely not a thing. Wall-pulling is your ideal, this "fast-pulling" you're suggesting where you whittle a pack down then move when it's half dead to the next pack is awful. Many jobs have damage skills they leave on the ground that they want to gain full value from, so no matter how much you're pulling you need to pull it quickly and commit to it. Two packs is pretty much the ideal minimum, you can decide to ramp it up from there if things feel good and the dungeon allows it. Should you have to pull single packs, pull the single pack and then sit there.

2) The tank you're playing does not matter that much. GNB's AOE is the same as anyone else's, and your survivability order is nonsensical. Every tank is more than capable of surviving large pulls, but PLD is the squishiest and WAR is the bulkiest. The only major differences are how much AOE DPS you put out, and both PLD and DRK come out ahead of GNB on that front.

3) Invuln use is not that weird for GNB compared to the other tanks. It's pretty simple - Hallowed Ground you use on cooldown (preferably 4 GCDs in if you have a White Mage), the other 3 you just want to give your healer a warning about as you're running between pulls. Try and use them whenever you can, though, since they're incredibly strong. For Superbolide in particular by communicating with your healer when you'll use it you can pop it as you drop very low so the HP loss doesn't even matter, then they have 10 seconds to get you back up for free.

4) Chain pulling smaller groups (this mythical "fast pulling") is objectively not as fast as larger groups. You're just flatly doing more damage on larger groups, and your abilities get more and more value with each additional enemy. The only exception to this rule is if someone in your party isn't pulling their weight - slow DPS, undergeared/not so great tank or healer, etc. - and you wipe, but even then one wipe if you full pull the whole dungeon is still faster than single pulling and never wiping.

[VictoriaLuv]

Oh lord. Okay, so this is obviously bait but might as well use it to address the points anyway in case, god forbid, someone new sees this and actually takes it as gospel.

4) Chain pulling smaller groups (this mythical "fast pulling") is objectively not as fast as larger groups. You're just flatly doing more damage on larger groups, and your abilities get more and more value with each additional enemy. The only exception to this rule is if someone in your party isn't pulling their weight - slow DPS, undergeared/not so great tank or healer, etc. - and you wipe, but even then one wipe if you full pull the whole dungeon is still faster than single pulling and never wiping.

I play on crystal data center this happens pretty much 90% of the time. when pugging. if we live in perfect world. everyone we manage climb into duty finder with. is playing top game. then your method is correct however. not everyone who randomly team with knows what there doing or flat out just memeing and trolling i had healers pull. just meme on the tank

[MellowMink]

Most content in the game can currently be done with the tanks pulling as many enemies as currently accessible, which is usually not even that high of a number; I'm not sure why you'd want to significantly slow down things (like frequent roulettes and farmed dungeon content) as a norm rather than the rare exception. Higher pulls also make healing for me more exciting and less boring.

[Cyroth]

Art of Fast Pulling - What is it. well basically pulling single group. go nuts with your dps. until there about 50 or below and immediately pull the next group. constantly pulling with no moment deprive using your fact that enimity is broken. this strat is very good when you have maybe bard. ninjas. any healer with a dot. can put dots on monsters. mostly likely before get to next pull current pull is completely dead. Darkwars and gunbreakers are very good at this. whole kit is based on it shreding damage killing backs of monsters or using fact they deal insanes about of damage can kill monsters in blink. having abilities such darkness abyss drain. or flood of darkness watch is a line aoe when have monsters chasing they are all lined up. gunbreaker is different. pulling big puts you in disadvantage not saying it unable to do. alots gun breakers can pull off big pulling however. your rotation is big and fat. alots of ogcds weaving tools. when you pull big most likely wont be able to do your full rotation at first. even if you pop all your cooldowns. rest is healers adjusting but cant count on that 100% of time when your pugging with strangers. so always easy take safe road before rushing in blindy cause wipe cause your healer is new. cant adjust with number your pulling

Please, For the love of all that is holy, don't do this. Ever.

Everyone will hate you for this. Especially ninjas and healers.
For NIN that will just leave a half used doton behind and they won't even get to reset their mudras with a quick hide in between pulls, since you won't get out of combat between mob groups. Since mobs tend to spead for various reason you can't even AoE them down properly while moving.
Healers will end up with with a half wasted bubble or earthly star.

Even if you tell your group that you'll pull this way, it is still horrible.
They can either waste cooldowns on the first pull to get you to move faster, leaving them burned out when you finally gather up group 2 or 3; or they put in the least amount of cooldowns possible to save everything for the big group and thus make the first 50% take forever.

Do single pulls or do big pulls, but please do never do that.

[Halfgeeek]

Most content in the game can currently be done with the tanks pulling as many enemies as currently accessible, which is usually not even that high of a number; I'm not sure why you'd want to significantly slow down things (like frequent roulettes and farmed dungeon content) as a norm rather than the rare exception. Higher pulls also make healing for me more exciting and less boring.

Most content? Does that include the lower leveling dungeons or you refer to the 70+ stuff?

Cos it's my experience that low lvl dungeons if u wall to wall pull, you're gonna wipe in most DF parties more than not.

[Cyroth]

The only exceptions I could think of would be the dungeons before Haukke Manor because some jobs still lack AoE at that point (which also renders big pulls moot anyways, since thats the whole point) and tanks/heals lack cooldowns and the first room in Aurum Vale (the rest of the dungeon is fair game, though).