Tank in Training Questions

Hello all,

I was hoping that any tanks or knowledgable people within the FC could give me some pointers and advice on improving my tanking, and tanking questions in general. I am currently a level 49 warrior and am a bit anxious of reaching level 50 and being thrust into the world of end game content.

Here are my questions:

1.) How much of a difficulty increase are hard dungeons from normal ones? Does tanking playstyle change at all?

2.) What gear should I get before I start tackling some of the end game dungeons?

3.) What do you think is the best way to deal with patrolling enemies?

4.) In Stone Vigil, how do you deal with the last optional side room? I'm talking about the room with 2 Aevis' and Ice Sprites at the very end before the final boss of the dungeon. It's difficult for me to clear without wiping due to the sprites being too spread out, and I can't bunch them all together due to the sprites being ranged.

5.) What's the difference in terms of roles does the Main Tank (MT) and Off Tank (OT) have?

6.) When is the best time to use Holmgang?

7.) Is there anything wrong with my pull rotation?

Mark Mobs -> Tomahawk -> Flash -> Face away mobs -> Overpower x2-3


That's pretty much all the questions I have for now. If anyone could answer or give some insight into my questions, or give tips overall, I would appreciate it!   

Thanks!

~Lily Raine~

Difficulty wise, end game dungeons are pretty much the same difficulty as the level 40-49 dungeons. This is due the numerous nerf that SE implemented through patch updates. The most difficult dungeon out of all the end game dungeons are Pharos Sirius and Binding of Coil.

You should start with farming the easier end game dungeons such as Wandering Palace and Amdapor Keep. Once you reach high enough ilvl for Brayflox Longstop HM, then you should just farm Brayflox HM for myths, soldiery and darklight gears.

In FFXIV, enemies can't attack you if you're not within their line of sight. So for stone vigil last room, I would suggest pulling one of the mobs, run back to the hallway just out of sight of the mobs to gather them up and overpower till have enough to hold threat.

Main tanks within a raid is not expected to do lots of damage. Their sole job is to make sure the mobs are hitting him so that the the dps can do damage without dying. Off Tank usually dps when they can, and to take any aggro off any adds so that the main tank can deal with the main target. The off tank also takes over for the main tank if/when the main tank dies giving the healers enough time to get the main tank back up and rebuff.

The best time to use Holmgang is when you think the healer is too late to cure you before you die.

Infuriate > mark target > cyclone > overpower

or if you don't have infuriate up just run in and overpower x 5, then just use your butcher block combo on each target.

well my major is in barding, while my minor is in tanking so ill try to break it down as best as i can. though tanking as a pally( which is the tank class i use) and tanking as a warrior have a few different things to them the basic principal of tanking is the same.

The dungeons do get harder once you hit 50 but thats only because the gear you have wont match up with the gear needed for the dungeon. so ill divide the end game light dungeons into 3 sections  early end game (which is Wanderers palace, and Amapador keep) Mid end game ( Copperbell Mines hm, Hakkue manor Hm, Pharos sirius)
and new end game (Brayflox Hm, Halatali Hm, Lost city of amapador)Early end game dungeons will drop ilvl 55 gear mind end game will drop i60 and the new content will drop i70 gear

the biggest thing you will need to remember though is that once you hit 50 you will see a great deal of difference between player gears. this becomes extremely difficult issue for a tank because players with better gear than you will be able to pull aggro off you much faster than you can firmly hold the mobs. it also doesnt help that 60% of those players are complete duche monkey's that will get angry at you for not holding the mobs well enough, so dont pay attension to them.

the main rotations you have been using should work well enough to hold the standard enemies in all the dungeons you should encounter so in that cause you shouldnt have to many problems

for patrolling enemies I generally tend to pull them with the group of enemies I already have. Even though it may make it hard on me and the healer to tank the damage, reason being because the last thing you want is an enemy to ambush the party and kill off your healer or even you, cause they came at the wrong time

for gear id suggest using your myth/soldier tomes on gear you recieve from t5 since it generally tends to be the dungeon everyone needs to get through (for tanks that would be the head gear so buy yourself the mytho/soldier head peice) each peice of body equipment is as important as the next but remember that body and legs generally tend to give the biggest stat boost and rings will always be hard to come by in end game gearing so focus on those as well. remember there is also an  accuracy cap for tanks in t5 so you will want to gear towards higher accuracy as well.

for that section of stone vigil I'm pretty sure that both of those groups are not connected so when handling that try to pull one of the group kill of the ice or dragons then hit the other. Though i could be having a brain fart so ill also explain how to handle them if you have to fight them all. the best way to beat that will be depending on what type of healer and the type of dps you have. there isnt much else you can do since they need to handle the amount of monster there ill put down what each of those classes should be doing.

for monks they need to always be doing their rotation that ends up with arm of the destroyer with the added silence effect which will mitigate the ice damage being done to you, Black mages will be your best bet for clear cause they can wide sleep all the ice sprites which in this case you need to be carefull of the groups AoE skills cause you do not want to wake them up while your handling the dragons. constant sleep will buy you about 52 seconds to kill at least one dragon and bring down the other one as much as you can. dragoons need to stun as much as possible ( worst class to go in with) Summoners need to use dots to weaken the dragons as best as possible and or assist the healer with heals, bards need to mana song since healers will run out of mp extremely fast at this point.  scholars need to use sacred soil as much as possible and whm's need to sleep and stone skin regen the tank to make the fight easier to tank.

MT generally holds the boss while OT steps in if the main tank dies and occupies all adds ( general 6 out of ten off tanking is harder since if you dont pull right you could screw up the entire fight)

the last 2 i cannot answer cause i dont know too much about warriors myself ( im a pally by trade) but keep at it and eventually you will succeed in your ventures with the end game content. you will have as many successes as failures but dont let those failures hold you down just pick yourself back up and keep fighting because all tanks have had to go through it at one point or another

dammit cable you beat me to it

Your post is pretty hilarious.

The other day in FC chat I saw one of the higher ups discussing their Pally strat for pulling a group back after losing agro (at least that's what I think they were referring to). They said something like Scorn, Flash, Flash? Is this the combo I should use for that?

My only concern with end-game content being a Pally is keeping aggro while maintaining a good angle on the boss, if I'm MT. Also I can't remember all these damn boss fights. I make sure to give myself a run-down from a fight guide online before I hop in but there's still a lot of em'. Maybe I just need some more exposure over time as most of the dungeons I've ran only once or twice.

Since Scorn is not part of the global cooldown, I would suggest flash, scorn, flash. For group pulls, I would suggest using shield lob > flash > scorn > flash > spirits within > flash > flash. The use your rage of halone combo on the mob with the most threat on your party members.

Most of the boss fight does not require any movement from the main tank. Once you start doing Hard/Extreme mode primals and coil, I would suggest looking up a video online because most of these fights require specific position for MT and OT.

Thank you all for the replies! That was very informative!

I will definitely put this information to good use when running current and new content I unlock in the future. Off to practice for me!

@Poo

I've only played Pally up to 22 (for Provoke), so I can't really provide my insight into Pally stuff.  

Also for dungeon strats, I also find that reading a guide online, watching a video, and even playing another class within that dungeon can help give you the gist the general strategy and mechanics of that dungeon. Of course, the best way in my opinion to remember a dungeon or fight is to keep rerunning it, making up for mistakes you did the previous runs and before you know it, it becomes second nature. Sometimes, I too forget and I tell my party members, and most of them are kind of enough to explain!

~Lily Raine~

i love posting while im half asleep so many run on sentences and grammatical errors