Seeking Help From Experts: Tanking

[Laume]

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I'll tell you what I see from a distance as the healer.
1) WS often. A lot of tanks that I see ws hard and often. Damage=hate, obviously. More actions seems to help too. (at least, that's what it looked like to me as a healer)
2) With multiple mobs, the tanks will often cycle through mobs. Not in a "Okay, I've hit this one. Move to next one." fashion. But if the mob is close to death, feel free to change to the next one.
3) Shield lob. Does fairly good enmity and it's ranged. Will often get a mob to hate you again if the hate scale is just tipped.
4) Self heal, if you have a free moment. I think there's a formula somewhere that says 1hp healed is 2x the hate that 1 dmg done on the mob gets. If not, no worries. That's what us healers are for ^^b.
5) Mark mobs? Helps sometimes w/ DPS's that don't look at the hate meter. Having them on the same mob won't force you to split your dmg and focus.

If you're already doing all that, then it sounds like you're already doing a good job as tank. There will be times where the DPS's will do more damage/hate (as they're designed to). If it happens too often, you might want to look into upgrading your gear. If it's just one person in one party, it's probably just him/her. It happens. Just about all melee's have a way to mitigate hate and they should be doing that. If not, not your fault.

Hope this helps. Good luck out there.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Yes, marking enemies helps in small groups of mobs, and as for ifrit, remember to throw in flash here and there, to preserve your TP, so it doesnt drain too fast.

its not as potent as ur Savage blade, or spamming savage blade non stop, but it helps a ton. Provoke only makes u equal to the highest threat, and then adds 1, so if they hit it before u do, they should be higher in threat, even after a provoke. So if you're low on TP, dont provoke right away, unless u know u can spam a few enmity generating abilities right after.

Also mark enemies that are either weak, or going to use range attacks, as they will be out of range of AoEs, unless u start on them 1st.

You want as little dmg on you as possible, so killing weak ones 1st is best. (also kill healers)

Next, start with a ranged attack, and let mobs come to you, this way you're nto taking dmg as u wait on the 2.5 GCD for flash/overpower.

Usually healers love to heal u before u AoE, and so its best to let mobs come to u, and then AoE as they get into range. (There will be no delay in your AoE because the GCD should be over.

[Laume]

It's also the DPS's job to get the adds off, everything is better than my heals being interrupted and causing a wipe. It's not that hard to heal a dps or two at the same time, at least not in the early dungeons.

Agreed. Though, in their defense, sometimes it's hard for dps' to see adds on the healers. If too many adds are on me, I usually either fluid aura then sleep the mob into the crowd of dps' and tank or I'll train them into them. Of course, this has to be used sparingly as any time I take to do this, is time away from curing.

[Ran1880]

In the hectic of a battle everyone should still take the surroundings into considaration.Make sure that the party can control 'surprise adds'if they spawn from nowhere/ and even prevent this situation to happen where mobs cause chaos.No matter how many time one runs a dungeon,observe the battlefield & enemies carefully before you run in.Otherwise you'll open danger the gate.This is important for everyone to know wether you're tank or not.

As a tank one can still make damage.The key is to be flexible and keep the balance between tanking and demeage dealing.But the main job as a tank is still holding aggro ( sometimes it is even pretty hard to Chase after an enemy/players who run around).I wouldn't say that marking your Opponent is only to help out beginners.Just saying there are tanks who mark mobs for their teamates & those who don't.As long as tanks KNOW HOW do their job properly,they'll be fine without Marks.

[Steeled]

Kudos for the honesty.

Hello, Square Enix Forumites! Today I'd like to talk to you all about tanking, or rather, I'd like to ask for help from you all. I've only recently hit level twenty-seven, so I've done a few dungeons already, but something's been nagging at me ever since beating Ifrit, and it's making it hard for me to focus. I'll give several examples so I can expertly convey my point here.

I normally tank by running straight in to the crowd and setting off Flash, blinding the enemy, and targeting each one every now and again to keep all of the hate focused on me.

Shield lob on the way in and put a marking macro in your shield lob. You can then use this to switch as the fight goes on. Once I have more threat than the mob has health (it's something you learn with experience), I change targets and start working on the next. Shield lob puts you a GCD ahead, because it's a ranged attack and your GCD is almost always ready for flash by the time you get to the pack.

When an enemy gets in to an orange range instead of a red one, I'll use Provoke to bring them back over to me until everything is dead.

I think you should save provoke for when it actually switches targets, although once you're doing your job right, things won't usually be switching targets^^

Rinse and repeat, and that's that. Sometimes, I admit, I'll be stupid and be out of the healer's range, but there's only a rare chance of me being so foolish I'd forge ahead alone. So, aside from that stupid mistake of being away from the healer, sometimes I can't hold the enemies off the mages and healer alone, so whoever is the strongest damage dealer comes in and helps me pull the enemy away from the weaker guys. I make a point to force the enemy to look away from my team so they don't get inside of any attack ranges, as well. Either they're looking away, or they aren't near my squishy group of people.

Waay back when I fought Ifrit for the first time since the beta, I tried to follow a similar strategy. I kept Ifrit turned away from everybody else, but circled him after locking-on so I could at least mitigate some damage done to me. There was this one archer who was dealing more damage than I could after I ran out of TP, so he had Ifrit chasing him around the field. I did what I could to try to pull Ifrit back to me, but the archer died anyway. So after the second damage dealer was down it was just me and the healer. I had to tank twice as well to keep Ifrit focused on me, but we lost anyway because it was just the two of us...but hey, we ALMOST won! I wouldn't have a problem since we won after the first defeat, but the archer claimed that I sucked as a tank...that hurt since I thought I was doing pretty well, and I think my fear of not taking ENOUGH damage causes me to die more often or take stupid risks that put my team in danger.

It is for this reason that I seek help from the experts before I reach level thirty and people REALLY start chewing me out for not doing my job! Please, tell me how to be a more effective tank!

Have no fear. At low levels, anything can tank most things. I just healed a THM through tanking the last boss of Toto-Rak. Our tank really was trying but he has a lot of learning to do, and I very politely told him places he could go to learn.

Anyway, anything can tank, and people used to that from other MMOs don't give a poo about your pride or the healer's mana. Around level 30, PLD / WAR starts getting access to much higher defense and your targets start expecting that and so not everything else can tank so easily. I think half the reason so many people hate Brayflox is that it's the dungeon where people learn that they aren't tanks unless they're wearing plate. It's also the first dungeon to strain a healer or a tank.

[Amocoru]

I certainly never took a video of myself, but I can try to give an in-depth look in to how things work if that helps? I just finished a run in Toto-Rak, after all.

I've had issues with BLM/THM lately just spamming their fire like crazy until they have no MP at all and ALL the aggro. I try to explain to them to stop with fire when their aggro bar gets too high and stack up their MP with ice to drop aggro. "Stfu I know what I'm doing." Obviously not :\

[amnie]

I've definitely seen some dps running around like headless chicken, keep on attacking after they've had the aggro forever, and then freak out on the tank for not keeping the aggro. and I'm not making a statement about ARR here, I'm making a statment of every single MMO I've played at release - ever.
more recent examples in this case would be SW:TOR and TSW.
people (read: dps) eventually learn that a dungeon is a team effort. they will eventually realise that when the aggro-indicator is already showing orange they better hold off for a second. there's only one reason a dps should EVER even remotely try to get the aggro, and that's if there's mobs going for the healer and there's no way for the tank to get all of them (there are certainly fights/bossfights where the tank isn't even supposed to get the hate from all spawns)

as a fellow healer, I love tanks such as the OP. don't get discouraged. us healbots need you!

[Brandino]

I tank myself and find it easier to get rid of the fast to die enemies then everyone can focus on the main target. But for this strategy to work DPs have to target the enemy that everyone is targeting to kill them fast. The healer is The King In the game keep him/her safe. If an enemy slip pass me i try to regain hate. when i come up to a boss i like to number the targets. If i cant we try and get something together before we start the fight. Most player will help you out if they just know what to do. So tanks we have to explain what we are trying to do. All the people I have ran with all were willing to learn and get better at there rolls and by the time we got to the boss we have learn how each other played so we had no problems.

[BroSharp]

As a fellow tank, here are some thumb rules for easier tanking.

1. Mark monsters. You can also tell them to focus what YOU are targeting and it usually works better than marking.

2. Tell the healer to not overheal you and never use anything above Cure I unless necessary.

3. If the DPS ignore your focus, are doing more damage than your Enmity generation make sure to tell them what they are doing wrong. If they keep ignoring, let them get enmity and die, this works like a charm with any DPS who thinks they are entitled to see big numbers and ruin the teamwork.

4. Single target WS that generate enmity are more effective than flash for generating enmity. You should be flashing only when there are 3 or more mobs and do so at a rate of 3~4 WS, this will clear Healer aggro and DoT aggro from Arcanists.

5. Put points into strength every so often.

[BroSharp]

6. When fighting bosses, try to interrupt AoEs that can harm your party, if they are only headed to you then just dodge instead of wasting TP/CDs.

7. Never spam flash on bosses, unless you are trying to gather Adds.

8. Get cross class skills for palading in advance and start using them to your advantage.

9. If anyone in your party is in a hurry, aggroes monsters without waiting for you etc. let them die, and ask them why they are doing that. It's usually smart to let the you as the tank gather the inital enmity as it just makes it easier for you to maintain it.

Other than that, you are doing a pretty good job at tanking, I can't stress it enough how important is to communicate with the party and make your intentions clear.