So you want to be a tank?Follow

So you decided you want to give tank a shot. Marauder or gladiator, they're both fun. You do some quests, then some fates, and before you know it, you're 15. Lets join sastasha!

You get in, monster attacks healer on first pull, you wipe, everyone screams at you and asks if you are mentally handicapped in not such a nice manner.

I've seen it a hundred times playing as a non-tank in those dungeons.

It's not your fault.

Ok maybe it is.

But you didn't know, because SE gave you fate's so hate management is a completely foreign concept to you! Unfortunately, it's super important, and you had better get it down before long or you're gonna have a bad time in those dungeons.

The first thing you need to know, is if the monster doesn't hate you, you're doing something wrong. But how do you know? Typically by whether or not it's looking at you. Plus SE added that little hate meter cheat sheet, so you can check that too. If it's not flashing red, you're going to have a problem.

"Great, I shall start by insulting their mother."

Close.

Great hate management starts with a great pull. Level 15 job quest should give marauder tomahawk and gladiator shield lob. These are CRITICAL skills, because they're ranged attacks, and all part getting the best initial pull you can.

Next is positioning. Monsters face you and away from the rest of the party. That means the order should be you, monsters, DD's, then mages. There's 2 big reasons for that. First, monsters often do aoe moves in a cone in front of them. If the monster is facing you, there's no way the cone can hit the DPS on the other side. Second, many melee jobs gain a benefit or have a skill that requires being either behind or to the side of the monsters. Having them face you and away from them makes it easier for them to do the most damage.

A party is like a single warrior, and as a tank, damage is not your priority. Hate is. You are the armor so the sword can cut. The armor does not do the damage, the sword does. If there's no armor, or crappy armor, the sword can't do it's job. It's a crappy analogy but it's all I could come up with.

Hate moves. Each job has 3. First is your ranged attack, either tomahawk or shield lob. Then there is your aoe attack, overpower or flash. Last there is your 2 hit combo, which requires you to use it in combination to get the added effect: Increase Hate.

Overpower vs Flash. Lets say overpower generates 100 hate. Then flash would generate 80 hate. Overpower generates more hate than flash, but flash is a true AoE 360 degree ability. Overpower is a cone in front of you, so you MUST be facing the monsters for it to work. Flash is MP based, vs overpower being TP based. Gladiator's have a combo that restores MP, so if you run out you can't use flash until you get some MP back. In my experience TP regenerates faster than MP, especially in combat, so marauders only have to wait a couple seconds.

"I'll just spam aoe hate and the monsters will hate me all day long!"

Great idea! Except it won't work, you'll be completely out of MP/TP because these moves consume a LOT of MP/TP. Overpower and flash are designed to only hold hate over the healers cures. If something else attacks it, they'll generate more hate and you will be ignored almost instantly.

Lets put some numbers on things. These numbers don't represent actual hate, but give you an idea.
Ranged attack: 100 hate
AoE Hate Move: 100 hate
Combo Move: 180 hate
Cure: 70 hate

So you get cured twice, the mob is going to forget you because now the healer has 140 hate and you only did your ranged for 100, or only did your AoE for 100. Your combo move doesn't take much TP or MP, but generates a ton of hate. But you can't do only that, because the other monsters will forget about you, you need to alternate.

Ok, that's a bit about how hate works, lets talk about the actual pull and tanking!

I could type it all out but this fancy picture I made explains it better.

http://i.imgur.com/feEi6ul.jpg

Naturally, not everything is the same every time, but this should be good enough to get you started. Good luck and happy tanking.

Sorry but it would seem you are still a tank in training if you haven't mastered this by now: not qualified to give advice to new tanks. You mark mobs from 15 to 50 in dungeons. There is a preset macro in your macro section that is specifically designed for marking the target you're currently attacking. This is all that is needed, honestly. Any other mobs, the DPS should be CCing them if possible.

Don't just assume they can read your mind and that makes it easy to find your target. When I'm sitting in the back row with the healer and you're fighting 5~6 mobs stacked on top of each other, it isn't easy to find even given assist. If you are a good tank, you're probably tab targeting to build threat on multiple targets (that aren't slept) making assist rather useless.

More often than not, the tank is smacking the mob that actually isn't immune to sleep while the other mobs attacking him are immune to sleep and should be prioritized first.

After getting PLD to 42 or so, I've never run a dungeon without marking what I'm currently focusing on. Takes less than a second since it's bound into one of my macros.

On PS3 I hit square on a target and select "Mark" then I can assign that mark to hotkey. I put 1, 2, and 3 up there. Thats all I need. I've got my gld to 22 now so it is a work in progress, but marking targets is important in any party setting.

Edited, Oct 4th 2013 10:57am by Valkayree

Edited, Oct 4th 2013 10:57am by Valkayree

I mark targets. But explaining how to mark targets will be very different for controller vs keyboard, and even controller vs controller. It's something that people need to figure out a good way that works for them. My goal was to focus on hate management.

If I may, your system may work good, but a better way that I have found is to set all of the possible markings to one of your cross bar sets. Mine is set in the third set, so before a pull, I hit R1 twice to get to it, then just hit the corresponding buttons to mark highlighted targets. I used the same system you did too, until impatient Bards made me speed up my game a bit, and once you get used to it, it works pretty slick. Just trying to help. =)

On another note, I hate sleep. For me, there is not one dungeon in the game I have come across that requires any of the mobs in the pull to be sleeped. As a WAR tank, it's annoying if a BLM tries to lay down a mass sleep before I can even fire off 1 OP, leading me to not care if I break your sleep spell you felt so inclined to cast before I can group everything up, in favor instead of getting full hate on everything. I do not mind sleep if it's timed correctly. I do use flash, but as a WAR, my MP pool is lacking to say the least. The way I look at premature sleeps, is that if you fire it off before I have a chance to get full hate on the whole pull, when the mobs wake, they are going to zerg for the rest of the party, and then all hell breaks loose. My job is to protect the party first and foremost. If at any time an enemy is asleep and not under my control, I have no problem hitting them with a tomahawk or OP to swing it my way. Obviously, if it's a fubar pull from the start, and the rest of the party feels in danger cause I'm having a hard time picking mobs up, feel free to sleep to save your own skin.


Edited, Oct 4th 2013 1:02pm by supermegazeke

Your hate management section was excellent

The groups of preists in AK should be slept and the sleepers can be slept to make it easier.

And I do throw the markings onto my main crossbar set for now. I dont even have to hit R1. Im sure that will change as I level the gld higher and have access to more abilities.

Could you explain a little bit in to what you mean? I am not understanding why you would need 5 different macros, like 1-5 for each marked mob? Like, if you make the macro /target <attack3>, will your charc switch to whatever target has a 3 over there head? The reason I ask is that I haven't really ever run into targeting problems in a dungeon enough to macro for targeting.

This is why I sleep every time you pull LOL, Cause I know you hate it!

For me tho, I feel like using CC is important even if it doesn't really matter, just cause it takes stress off the healer.

And I know when your tanking its not necessary, but in pugs where the tank/heals are not so great it becomes necessary and its helpful to me to just stay in the habit of doing it.

On a side note, I ran brayflox with a tank who just kept spinning the last boss in a circle cause it made it easier for him to dodge his breath attack leading to me and the healer getting one shotted a couple times....

I thought about being a tank, but I'll settle with the occasional offtanking here and there on my MNK.

At least you're good at it, and at least give me a little bit of time to get everything lined up before you put mobs down. Most of the time, BLM's are casting sleep as I'm chucking tomahawk across the screen. I can understand that to certain to certain degree, if they have had bad tanks, they are only trying to protect themselves from bad play. One thing to keep in mind with sleep though as well, is that every party does not have access to sleep, in that not every party has the right classes to wield it. With that said, all the time I have played is spent learning how to work without it being the norm, and the time spent having people sleep mobs being the abnormal.



The summoners can also be stunned, which is usually the route I take. =)

When I first started marking, I had just the 1 mark set on my main crossbar, but as the game progresses, you are right in assuming you get way to many skills to take up any of your crucial crossbar spaces with marks. I have most of the main skills in the 1st set, and some CD's and other less important skills in set 2, with the marks filling set 3. I have the game set to change to the 1st set when in combat, so once I'm done marking, I hit X twice to unsheathe my weapon, switching back to the combat set. One problem I had once I had to start using multiple sets, is that I would be on the wrong set when i would go to tomahawk, and would instead pop my sprint ability which is lame in the middle of a dungeon to have to tell your group "Hold on I'm out of TP." 1 thing to keep in mind also, is that macros are your best friend in saving some space on your crossbar with your instant cast defense CD's. Instead of having 6 buttons taken up with just them alone, I split them into 2 macro sets, each with 3 skills in each, and only taking up 2 buttons on my main crossbar set.


Edited, Oct 4th 2013 2:26pm by supermegazeke

My number one problem with marking (and I do find it interesting I down voted on that), is that marking serves 2 purposes, it appears people may only be aware of 1.

Marking is a visual sign as to key targets (e.g. a lot of mages I pt with mark sleep targets).

The second purpose (and the reason you should have 5 macros) is that it also serves as an auto-target.
/target <attack1> will allow you to immediately switch to/target the mob with the Attack 1 mark.
/target <attack2> will allow you to immediately switch to/target the mob with the Attack 2 mark.

There are 5 attack markings, therefore 5 macros. DDs should be using this if marking is used to verify they are attacking the correct mobs (and tanks can do the same to switch up mobs as they are chewing through the mobs).

As for the /assist. If you tanking, and targeting more than one mob in the first 3 seconds of combat, you will not maintain hate. Considering at low levels you can only do 2-3 moves in the first 3 seconds of combat, and if everyone is fighting the same mob, you don't need to spread the love. At high levels (I can speak for Pld, not War), a Pld can only use 5 abilities in the first 3 seconds(Two weaponskills, Provoke... Why I have no idea, Sword of scorn, and Spirits Within). However, doing that, you blow all of your timers in 3 seconds, have have nothing left incase something does actually go wrong...

I have yet to find a single situation where I needed to divert my attention to another mob unless a DD was attacking a mob other than the primary target.

Though, I have, in parties where my mp drains, or I am fighting more than one tough mob, I will do my first two weaponskills on one mob, then target and use the last on another. But, in doing so, I never switch my primary target, so /assist would be unaffected, if someone for some strange reason decided to do a /assist on me at that exact moment in time.