does kiting work?

[Aghis]

Hello

I am lvling my 2. Tank and usaly when i pull several groups, and i feel my healer can't keep up with healing me, despite my def CDs, i run in a big circle around him, to lower the dmg i get.

I feel like that saved me from several wipes untill now because not all the mobs where hitting me and thus the healer was able to heal me up.
Edit. Yes i do stop running around when he stabilizes me ;-)

A Mentor and healer just told me, that kiting does not work. That this game does not work this way - after he pulled me into all the mobs and killied us all.

Well i stoped arguing with him to not make myself ragequit for the first time.

So dear experienced Tanks - is the Mentor right and i was fooling myself, or is my kiting something that actualy works?

ty

[aveyond-dreams]

Never, and I cannot stress this enough, *never* kite things as a tank.

It will cause your melee dps party members to be unable to land their positionals or their straight line aoe attacks in the case of Dragoon. If your healer had to pull for you or rescue you into the next pack of mobs it was likely because you did not pull enough for there to be enough damage to warrant healing as opposed to letting your HP regenerate on its own.

Pull anywhere between 2-3 packs and then stay put. The only reason to move around during trash pulls is when multiple aoes start stacking up on the ground-only then do you need to move.

[Commander_Justitia]

Hello
i run in a big circle around him, to lower the dmg i get.

Usually it is not necessary, you can use mitigation buffs, healer can heal more earlier etc. But if all resources are used or you see healer spamming heals, you can do it.

It is just very rare that you have to kite. Don't panic too early.

Kiting works on most normal mobs, not so well when they are range mobs like sprites casting magic on you. It also doesn't work so well on many trial/raid bosses.
But yes, you reduce mob uptime on you if you run circles, therefore reduce the damage you receive. In higher level duties mobs run faster so you really want to use sprint if you do this, in some really lower level dungeons you can already outwalk mobs by doing that, so sprint isn't needed as much.

Be aware that mobs probably will take longer to die this way, as your own aoe won't hit all of them, and might be the same for melee. Staying within buff areas like the bubble from scholar or whm, while running in a circle, is also good.

Think of arms length as a mitigation skill too for mobs, their gcd intervall will get slowed.

[Jeeqbit]

I've mained tanks for 6 years and in my experience, kiting works but should only be used if absolutely necessary (you've exhausted all other methods of saving yourself and still your healer can't keep up, is undergeared or disconnected). You should trust your healer in most cases.

It works because most mobs are melee (they have to be in melee range to auto-attack you). So by simply taking a few steps back they all get "cannot execute action" errors and that saves you a ton of damage for 2.5 seconds, giving the healer an extra 2.5 seconds to cast their heal on you.

In most cases, all that is really needed is a few steps back, not a full kite, because that is all the extra time your healer needs to cast a heal. In my experience this scenario is very rare but is most common in dungeons with level ranges 51-59, 61-69 and 71-79. These are leveling dungeons which sync your gear so much that all of the mitigation you have does not change that your health falls fast and your healer sometimes needs an extra few seconds to cast a heal. There are also a lot of level 50 dungeons with no walls, so if you pull wall-to-wall and the healer is really new, kiting can be the difference between living and dying. In some cases that kiting may give you chance to apply lots of mitigation because it takes the game some time to register it, especially invulns.

2.5 seconds is enough time for them to cast cure, so if you need more than a few steps back to give your healer the extra 2.5 seconds, then something is probably wrong such as the healer being undergeared (lower health than the DPS), not caught up to you (shaded name in party list) or disconnected (red disconnect icon).

Only taking a few steps back or kiting in a circle with sprint is the best way you can prevent it from affecting melee DPS, because they can position themselves either in the middle of or at the outside of the circle and DPS, but you should have in mind how kiting is going to impact the DPS and annoy them and it is another reason to only use it when absolutely necessary.

I recommend using item level 510 (high-quality) food. This gives you an extra 10% health which makes dungeons that were once hard on tanks a lot easier to handle, because food used to gives us smaller amounts such as 4%.

[Commander_Justitia]

If you pull everything in the lvl 79 dungeon from start to 1st boss, or the adds between 2nd and 3rd boss, I ended up doing this. But those are very satisfying clutch pulls, even tank lb1 was used at one point. Can recommend to try it, the dps will love it, not so much the new sprout healer.

[ItMe]

Kiting is great and super useful and you should do it ever possible chance you get in Deep Dungeons.
Outside of this, don't do it.

[Anhra]

Hello

I am lvling my 2. Tank and usaly when i pull several groups, and i feel my healer can't keep up with healing me, despite my def CDs, i run in a big circle around him, to lower the dmg i get.

I feel like that saved me from several wipes untill now because not all the mobs where hitting me and thus the healer was able to heal me up.
Edit. Yes i do stop running around when he stabilizes me ;-)

A Mentor and healer just told me, that kiting does not work. That this game does not work this way - after he pulled me into all the mobs and killied us all.

Well i stoped arguing with him to not make myself ragequit for the first time.

So dear experienced Tanks - is the Mentor right and i was fooling myself, or is my kiting something that actualy works?

ty

Personal opinions aside of most people, i say kiting in both Deep Dungeon as well as regular Dungeon content, works really well, for the sake of mitigating damage. It has a specific rythm to it instead of purely running in circles in order to be effective. Only be mindful about the Healers position if you do decide to do so.

People ONLY complain about kiting, because the those who play Dps and have positionals, have to put in more effort than usual (which isnt much in the first place, you even have skills that bypass positional requirements and on a low cooldown as well).

Also, a Tanks main responsibility, is staying alive and keeping aggro. If kiting on his part is required to stay alive because the situation demands it, then it is what it is. Dps issues are the Dps' problem and how YOU manage that is up to you, not what a Tank needs to concern about.

[Jeeqbit]

DPS also do not really have positionals for aoe beside column or conal aoe. It's unlikely you'd need to be kiting on just 2 enemies or on a boss.

[Naria]

I will say as someone who plays healers and dps and rarely tanks, having a tank who insists on on kiting in any situation that isn't an emergency that's about to become a wipe might and has a few times in the past caused me to rage quit. There have been situations in the past when I've been healing where the tank starts to panic and takes a risky situation that, as the healer, I could have saved and ends up causing a wipe because they ran out of range or line-of-sighted me. I don't play tanks much, but imo kiting isn't something I'd be attempting until you have a better handle on other aspects of tanking in FFXIV.

[Anhra]

I will say as someone who plays healers and dps and rarely tanks, having a tank who insists on on kiting in any situation that isn't an emergency that's about to become a wipe might and has a few times in the past caused me to rage quit. There have been situations in the past when I've been healing where the tank starts to panic and takes a risky situation that, as the healer, I could have saved and ends up causing a wipe because they ran out of range or line-of-sighted me. I don't play tanks much, but imo kiting isn't something I'd be attempting until you have a better handle on other aspects of tanking in FFXIV.

To be fair, positioning yourself correctly as Healer is what seperates a good Healer from a bad one, so depending on the situation, it also could have been your own fault, since you also have rescue for situations like these (which also helps in kiting btw, especially if you want to buy time with a dps having to tank because tank died for some reason).

As for the matter how "good" kiting looks like, its a bit hard to explain for me, so please bear with it,

When you aggro one Monster, lets say the average melee auto attack type, you will notice that evertime it tries to attack you, it will move towards you and suddenly pause and then execute the attack.
In order to attack, it has a window of roughly 1sec for having to stand still to trigger the initial auto attack (there is a "cast" window of arround half a second or even less for the execution, by the way this game is designed) and it needs most of the time a full GCD in order to attack again. If your character now moves a small distance, of arround 2-3 character model circles (the one which you see on the ground, usually in blue when you target yourself), the "cast" of the execution will be interrupted and the monster is forced to move towards your chararacter again.

It is a bit difficult to pull off, but it does work and can even be repeated. Keep in mind however, that this DOES NOT WORK on Monsters which attack at range or cast spells.

For Ranged Monsters, you have to abuse LoS (line of sight) in a similar fashion as i described the melee part. That means using corners and walls to your advantage to nullify both casts and attacks, which forces the Monster to run towards you the shortest amount of distance towards the aggro'd target, even if it means going into melee range. If you run into another wall or corner, you can repeat the process.

Thats the gist on how kiting works in this game, as mentioned before, it is mainly used on 1vs1 scenarios aganist strong normal monsters usually found in deep dungeons, but you CAN use it on multiple targets as well, you have to kite for this a bit further a distance as mentioned earlier, and it wont interrupt every AA, but a number of them usually do get prevented which can give Healers some breathing room, especially during Living Dead from DRK.