Probably my biggest anxiety with tanking is not being familiar with the dungeons. Not always knowing which path to take but still being responsible for pulls isn't the greatest experience.
I find the new duty support feature very helpful now that I can tank with npc group to learn the dungeon, this is a great tool for learning the routes. Not everything is covered yet, but most are and I believe they are adding more in the upcoming patches.
Some of the older stuff which have unnecessary dead ends still trip me up because I either breezed by them once or twice before I started tanking or haven't done them for a while, but luckily most of them are linear enough not to get lost.
thank you for this actual guide, I have horrible tanking anxiety and I've seen so many guides that are just "turn on tank stance, pull wall to wall, and use your mitigation" and that's it, I didn't even realize arm's length was technically mitigation and my paladin is almost level 80... also you actually covered off tanking which I had just written off as a lost art that I would never be able to uncover
Great video, I've been tanking in this game since ARR and its definitely one of the more complete beginners guides to tanking that I've seen. I just have a couple of minor nitpicks/tips that might be interesting for intermediate/advanced tanks looking to get some minor optimizations out of niche situation. There are some situations where you might pull with provoke due to its 5y greater range than your normal ranged attack and it being an oGCD. For example if you are doing a large pull in a dungeon and there's a mob that is unaggro'd but walking away from you, and you don't want to go as far as to pull the next full group (maybe you or your healer has bad gear/is new) or the area it is running has no mobs until after you defeat the current pack, you can provoke this mob to join you while maintaining your GCDs on the existing pack you have aggro'd. You can also do this to potentially pull a farther unagrro'd group to you sooner to get them in a better spot for grouping (maybe the area where they spawn has a lot of annoying aoes from the environment) rather than running up closer to pull them normally then running back to the better spot. Depending on the job and the situation, its often worthwhile to stack mitigation just to get more uses out of them. This is mostly applicable in dungeon trash pulls since bosses are less flexible in CD timings (you should be using rampart or your 30% on busters, reprisal on aoes, arms on knock backs etc) but in dungeons, once you account for the time spent pulling the packs, you can stack a couple of shorter CD abilities together and not lose anything. Things like reprisal, gauge based mitigation (sheltron, TBN) or even sometimes 90s like rampart, its better to stack together, since even if you use more CDs as they fall so you always have some mitigation you will not run out of mitigation if the dungeon is set up in such a way that it takes a long time to reach the end of the next pull (or you know you are going into a boss that doesn't need CDs for the start). Its better to stack mitigations and get an extra use out of it overall than to not stack and not use an ability for longer than its recast time. This is also a thing in raids, but mostly just based on the time between busters and how often you are tank swapping (very fight specific). If you are about to take a buster and know you don't have to take another for at least 2m, and aren't taking anything but autos/aoes until then, there's no reason to not stack your 30%+rampart+guage mitigation if you have it. Sure it might be overkill sometimes, but you don't really lose anything if you weren't going to use them anyways. I've this to extremes sometimes where between personal mitigation and party mitigation there's so much you actually don't take any damage from a buster. Very minor nitpick, but often in a tank swap voke+shirk is enough to swap aggro, and its not really needed to turn off tank stance (assuming the other tank has theirs on). So long as both tanks are similarly geared and proficient at their respective jobs, you shouldn't take back aggro even if you leave stance on after a swap. It doesn't necessarily hurt anything to take it off, but it does mean you have to remember to turn it back on if you have to grab an add or tank swap again. I often find it easier to just set it and forget it, one less thing to keep track of, and I never have to worry about grabbing an add and not realizing my stance isn't on. Of course if you out gear/do more DPS than the other tank you might have to take it off to avoid taking back aggro (or just shirk if you aren't going to need it soon) so still keep an eye on your aggro regardless of if you have the boss or not. I totally see why these weren't mentioned since realistically no beginner needs to worry about this kind of stuff, but if anyone reading this is comfortable with tanking already and wants to start optimizing a little, these are a few places to start.
@Oligoden yeah you can get by bosses with just your basic cheap mitigation (Sheltron etc), but usually they last long enough that you can have rampart at least back in time for any busters. It depends a bit on how geared you are, but if you arent super undergeared you should be fine. And if you are able to get to max ilvl for the dungeon, you can usually take most busters raw if needed (although I wouldn't recommend this, you should always be able to get something basic up atleast)
This channel is so underrated. You deserve way more. Keep grinding and you will get there. Learned a lot Paladin was my first job in FF14 and I never tanked before so I was so scared of it but the community is so nice and welcoming I beat the anxiety while leveling
I got so disillusioned with bad tanking that I was spending my last few weeks just levelling my crafters. But watching this video has made me take up tanking again. Great content!
You can also put the Focus Assist marker on your healer to keep track of them. It puts a divot over their head. You won't need that marker for anything else during a dungeon, and it's really handy to know how far ahead of your healer you are during a pull, without having to mouse or target characters. Also handy vice versa, marking the tank when you are healing or dpsing.
After trying out AST, I had a habit of focus targeting the Tank, it's very useful! Even as a DPS, being able to see what the Tank is doing helps me gage what to weave between my weaponskills.
You can also put a shape over people's heads with the marks. Pro/downside: Everyone in the duty can see that marc and they're shared between everyone. Ie: If you put a square over your tank's head everyone will see it, but that square will disappear from over their head if someone else uses the square.
Thank you so much for this guide! I’ve been playing healer and dps for ages, and never tank. Recently I’ve dipped my hands on that, and still suffer from severe tanking anxiety 😥
I'm the same about dps n healer I have the 4 tanks at 90 but I don't feel fast enough to heal or to do decent dps... I so want to play monk to punch things... lol great video tho
I was lucky and picked warrior before knowing anything about ff or MMOs so started with tank in sastasha and it was all I knew for a while so didn't suffer tankxiety
a much appreciated post! i love PLD, WAR and DRK and am enjoying lvl’ing them… but it’s been outside of dungeons - you’ve reminded how much fun it could be as a tank in a party. ty
Fantastic guide, especially the specific advice on how to do pulls and positioning the boss, stuff I don't see many other guides go into in as much depth at all. I will recommend this to anyone interested in beginning tanking. Thank you
Ty sir you got a sub from me. I got my tank (drk) to lvl 90 but never confident in my abilities with it till recently. Im now on my way to get War to 90 as well. I genuinely hate the backlash from other people about big pulls, small pulls and such but i figured there are people like that. But yeah this is kind of a pick me up so ty
Thanks for this guide! As a new player there are a lot of things, especially in the Raid section that I do not understand and will probably not understand until I experience myself, but this video is a nice guide to come back to whenever I need to refresh. You are helping us sprout tanks out there
Maybe I missed it, but one thing I needed a long time to realize, is that the bars under the class symbols in the party list is your aggro meter. It is indirectly shown in the video with a great example but I believe it isn't specially mentioned. So if you aren't sure how much aggro you have compared to the current MT, just look there. All others should never even be seen there. Also not sure if it is already done. But marking the terrain and the enemy is really useful and something most beginners don't realise how to do, since it is a bit hidden in the menus. You can even preset some dungeons with marks. For example on Theodan the arena crossing dash of the Paladins is often a wipe for an inexperienced team. So I have marks for the spear and the dash.
Such a great video! I tanked for the first time last night as a sprout and definitely tried rushing it and doing big pulls cause I was anxious about what the rest of the party would think. Definitely not doing that again!
Much like a lot of the other comments up here, you’ve really helped with some of the Tank anxiety I’ve suffered in recent months of playing. You earned this subscription mate!
Brilliant video; I started tanking at the start of last month on PLD and have just about got comfortable with regular dungeons and duties, and Crystal Tower raids, but not dared to dip my toes into Normal raids or Trials yet where MT/OT is a thing. As I am now approaching 90, I need to pluck up the courage to give those a go; I think my problem is having to memorise so many boss mechanics which I struggle with, so I'm constantly nervous that I'll be in the wrong place or screw up - so many players just try to dash through as quickly as possible that it feels like a failure to work at their speed.
Such a great intro to tanking! It gives context for what tank party members are doing and makes me feel more confident starting WAR. I'd seen some horror stories about enmity wars too, so quite glad that you can just off-tank to minimize disruptions for the party.
Great tips, will definitely use this to recommend for some newer players in my FC. But let's be honest... Step 1 = Pull EVERYTHING. You DO have the biggest axe in the room Step 2 = Healers Adjust Step 3 = Healers Adjust Step 4 = Healers Adjust Step 5 = Healers Adjust Step 6 = Profit
Outdated (i.e. not current level-cap) tomestone gear are also sold at the "starting hubs" of each expansion by a vendor near the big aetherite (they show up ad a blue bag icon on mini map), for player convenience: starting cities/Ishgard/Kugane/Crystarium.
Totally agree about the secondary tanks. When going into raids. I purposely watch the cutscene so the other tank has enmity, problem solved. I don’t mind being the off tank 😅 also love when I don’t tank, and see the boss dancing in circles as tanks fight over who is the main one 😂
You definitely can and should use provoke when pulling - it all depends on the number of mobs you're about to engage. For instance, when there're only two enemies ahead, you can use your ranged attack on the first one and then quickly provoke the other. Provoke has a rather short cooldown (and it's an oGCD), so it's a waste to let such an amazing enmity generation tool go to waste. With bigger groups of enemies, it's better to use at least two aoe attacks to ensure you have enough aggro before trying to run ahead because the dps in your party (who will most likely attack the mobs while you're running) might attract too much enmity (and quickly die). It's also a decent idea to keep using ranged attacks on the mobs you've pulled, while you're still running to the next group, to maintain uptime (and aggro). With bigger groups using provoke is usually unneccessary unless you get a straggler or something. Pulling is not a race or anything so I do not see why you should not care about grabbing every enemy before continuing. Make sure to grab every enemy, so that the dps and the healer have nothing to worry about and so that they can use their aoe attacks in peace.
As a new tank, the thing I'm trying to learn mostly is big group pulls with 3+ mob packs. This is to shorten dungeon times, and also so I can get used to knowing how to cycle my defensive cooldowns as well as being comfortable using my invuln. When it comes to bosses, staying on top of adds, as well as remembering to always bring the boss back to the center and facing them as conveniently for the DPS as possible is a good thing. And in general, my opener/rotations. Also when in ARR lower level dungeons or Aurum Vale, best to pull small.
Talks about “learning other player’s abilities” right as he zooms out of the healer’s bubble and refuses to move back into it xD (to be fair he is playing WAR which can basically solo dungeons as far as I can tell, haha)
Thank you for this video. I've played for a long time but at first I wanted to DPS since there were so many to choose from but now, since most dungeon parties seem only interested in making "speed records" , it doesn't seem like tanking would be any fun for me. I do appreciate those who like this role.
Speaking for me, as someone who plays all three roles, taking a lot of groups on at a time isn't because of trying to set any speed records or any concern for time at all really other than general efficiency. But more importantly it is just more fun. The game is balanced for pulling everything in most cases, if you don't it just draws it out, it's less fun for every role. It's fine if party is undergeared or people are learning but once you have done a dungeon 5+ times you just wanna do it efficiently, doing things more efficiently and optimizing is the point of the game.
An important thing that I did not see mentioned. For higher level content, especially level 80 and beyond where you have 2 tanks, all tanks have a mitigation/heal/shield they can target onto another party member. As an off tank, if you know there is not a dual tankbuster/tank swap/personal damage mechanic coming (and if you are warrior even if there is you can apply the effect anyway to mitigate and heal both tanks at same time), I find it is immensely helpful to your parties overall DPS and stress level to be mitigating/healing your main tank, which allows your healers to not have to stress as much, your main tank doesnt have to stress as much, and you are getting practice using your full toolkit. This is best achieved with a macro similar to the shirk macro displayed in this video, but using the skill you want to use instead. You can also setup a party macro bar to allow you to on demand apply your effect to any party member without needing to select them, in case your healer needs a mitigation to help them survive something, etc. (Nascent flash for warrior, Aurora/corundum for gunbreaker, oblation/the blackest night for dark knight... cover for paladin? Paladin is the only one I dont have leveled all the way yet hahaha.) Warriors skill will allow you to very effectively heal your main tank as well as apply a small shield and 10% damage mitigation, gunbreaker can both heal and mitigate damage by using both skills on one target ( and if done well can also apply the gunbreakers 2nd combo shield to the target), and dark knight can mitigate damage both with a big shield and a magic damage resistance. I am not familiar enough with paladin to know what it offers, although you could clemency your main tank if your healers are struggling. Seriously, this comes in so handy and for high end content like extreme and savage, this becomes almost mandatory to spread resource usage across your party instead of constantly consuming your healers resources. Great video!
Exactly what I needed! All other guides only speak Greek for us new players. Like, “use romba to slunk your frid before you konga under their sting line-lock”. Thanks for helping us, help you :))
If someone in a Raid complains about your tanking, politely suggest that they bring their own next time. Then during a Boss pull, turn off your Aura and Shirk enmity to them, and complain about what a bad job they did tanking the boss.
I came back to the game after a 4 year break, I ended the Stormblood MSQ and haven't done the new content after that. I decided to rejoin..and I feel so lost as a DRK. I use to be pretty damn good at it, but I forgot everything, I don't even know how to properly setup up my hotbars and what to actually click. Trying my best to get back into it. Very nice video, thanks.
Ive tanked lots in other mmos but havent in FF14. From seeing how dungeons go Im not a big fan of how the AOE pulls generally go. Ive healed mostly and almost never see anything other than wall to wall tank pulls. Glad you brought up lower dungeons. When healing tanks the hardest ones are the sub-50 ones. esp 30-47 range where some of them are just nasty with the scaling and lack of options in both cooldowns, "oh crap" heals, and groups AOE abilities.
Thanks for the vid! I'm a more veteran Tank, but I always think there's something new to learn or refresh! Plus it can help tankxiety when you know you're not alone! :D I will say however, while I agree with not stopping -- I cannot get on board with sprinting. While it may slow damage, the damage you receive is incredibly minimal as long as you stay in the lead. I can also continue to do DPS with my ranged moves when at least a few enemies stay in range, helping to end the mob quicker. You obviously touched on the importance of understanding and knowing your party, as well as setting the pace -- yet sprinting can completely nullify that. If not everyone in your party wants to sprint, you run the risk of doing less damage right out of the gate, or quickly leaving your healer's range. And as new tanks are still learning how to properly mitigate, leaving your party behind is a good way to get yourself in trouble and panic spam. Plus, it can come off like you're rushing and have no desire to be there, setting what I see as a bad precedent and mood for the entire runtime of the dungeon. All players should benefit from having time to enjoy the dungeon and take in the sights (to a reasonable degree), especially if they're new. If they have a tank who wants nothing more than to sprint from location to location, they'll feel the pressure to skip content or miss it entirely. I would rather be the tank that showed good leadership (not pulling bosses early, setting a steady pace) and kept my party from rushing through an experience than one who mitigated a single small heals worth of damage. My feelings are obviously 'take it or leave it', but I do wish we would teach new tanks exactly what you said -- that they're not the MVP of the duty -- and teaching this "Sprint is Mit" approach feels like a pathway directly to that due to its further ramifications.
Thanks for this, I’ve been embarrassed a few times when someone in my chat asked if I was a new tank and felt like I was doing bad. I’m trying my best and leading bosses towards walls so my healer is safe, I’ve been a tank for 3 days and am a lvl 54 Dark Knight
When I started tanking. I wrote before beginning I was new (and still today if I’m not super familiar) it takes all the pressure off and everyone was always chill. Let them know and it’s all good
i don't see a patreon link anywhere in the video description. pls consider providing one so that we may be able to support you for these invaluable videos! i've sent many new sprouts to your videos to help explain the game's quirks and significantly improve their gameplay/awareness. Thank you for your time in producing these guides.
Awesome! This was really helpful. I'm new to both the game and the genre. Rolled a paladin and so far I'm really loving it. I'm reaching the mid 50's levelwise and so dungeons and trials have been mainly button spamming but I'm noticing I need to pay attention to mechanics more. But there are so many things to learn with every single boss and I'm a bit daunted by the sheer data load! Is there a shortcut to learn effective tanking without having to read up on every single boss mechanic?
What I did to learn mechanics, going through the MSQ as a WHM, was simple: “/s yo, it’s my first time here, anything to know?” This sets expectations and means it’s generally everyone else’s job to teach u what to do, because looking up dungeons is prime spoiler territory.
I've been playing Paladin since 2013 but I've had a lot of anxiety about the role, to the point where I had trouble advancing through Heavensward and didn't really do any duty roulette until Stormblood. Also still haven't played a lot of the level-sync'd raid content. This was a good video for me, since I've pretty much gone from under-utilizing few damage mitigation abilities to unnecessarily stacking them on the other end of the spectrum. Really, I still have a few buttons on my hotbar that I'm frankly not sure what to do with them, but I've started trying them out in Trust duties, so... yeah.
In my experience, tank and healer are most important as if one or the other die, the chances of success drop drastically. If a DPS dies, the chance of success is lower yet still likely.
Great guide! I had no idea about the enmity gauges next to player names, or that arms length had a slowing effect. Question, is there a reason for spamming the shirk ability in your macro? I’m guessing it has something to do with the lack of action queueing in macros?
10:30 Immediately after saying to stand in friendly AOEs you ignore the white mage AOE :') This actually bring up an earnest question - would it be worth walking back to regroup under the bubble in that instance? Or would all the mobs moving be too disruptful? I ask this as a WHM player trying to get into tanking, and never knowing where to place the bubble lmao
I was about to comment on that lol but at that point it's pointless to go back because all dps are going all out and the whm was spamming holy so going back will be a dps loss from moving mobs and some moves might miss from dps. The healer also needs to know when to use those ground helpful skills.
@@linkpwnsevery1 "The healer also needs to know when to use those skills" I mean, if the tank stands still inside a mob group and I know there is a wall up ahead I'm gonna assume that's where they'll tank it. I get endlessly frustrated by tanks who later on decide to move again, 4 GCDs later, only to draw the mobs to the wall that they can't cross anyways and then ofc no longer be inside whatever kind of healing I put down. Ultimately it doesn't matter because as WHM, I just stun everything until it dies so the tank needs no healing, and as an AST, my new star covers the entire area from one miniboss arena to the next 🙃 But it's still frustrating.
Provoke being off the gcd is useful when pulling a pack of non-boss mobs since the 2.5 second gcd is so painfully long…ranged, tab, provoke, tab, ranged again to establish enmity on three mobs as they move into range for your aoe.
I really enjoy all your contents, they are well thought out and well explained, thank you for your time in making these amazing contents. I usually main healer in any mmo I play, but I don't mind tanking occasionally so I'm in the process of levelling a Paladin and this tank guide definitely helps me understand more particularly dungeon pulls. I look forward to more contents from you - especially the UI tweaks and tricks.
I'm new to FFXIV, but not to MMO's. For all my life, I have been scared shitless to try Tanks; refused to play them in Aion even though I really liked the Templar aesthetic, and had no interest in playing them in ESO (Magblade main). Biggest turn-off was tanxiety: aka, the " responsibility " tanks carry by leading the group, doing pulls, having to know mechanics etc. Recently, started WAR for the heck of it and let me tell you holy shit, if I'd known tanking could be so fun, I'd have started earlier. Maybe it's just FFXIV but I feel like tanking in this game is incredibly beginner-friendly if you put a little effort into doing Hall of the Novice and Googling the dungeon mechanics so that you come prepared. The first dungeon, we hilariously wiped because in the last room, a random DPS rushed in and started to pull all the trash and I panicked so I tried to get all of that DPS' argo. I've now learned that when my DPS are being silly and overtake my pace, I should just let their impatience and sillyness kill them LMAO.
Having played tank for I can't even remember how many years now, I can honestly say that I know why people say "having to know mechanics" as being a reason that they are anxious of tanking, but I totally disagree with it. In reality, the only thing that you need to know any different to, say, a DPS is a tank buster/tank swap (and maybe adds, but there really aren't all that many boss fights in FFXIV, particularly in dungeons, that have adds). There is no more or less reason for a DPS or healer to look up mechanics before a dungeon than a tank. Also, to maybe help put you at ease slightly, tank privilege is real xD. If you get clipped by an AOE in a boss fight in a dungeon, unless it has something else tied to it, it probably isn't the end of the world. If you're a DPS, those AOEs are a lot scarier. I am not promoting bad play, but more just really saying that as a tank you arguably have a higher margin for error on a lot of stuff that you just don't in the other roles, so don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them and don't go into it fearing that every mistake means a wipe.
My guide to tanking. Make a list of dungeons. Then I went class by class to find out the aoe of each class for each dungeon level. Then can they spam it on the run. Then I base my pulls of thrash mobs off that. BIG TIP. If you see the someone is new to the dungeon come up. Ask who it is. If it's the healer, then pull a couple packs and then ask if they want to try to pull more or is that pace good.
Tank horror story: Once ran a dungeon where one of my DPS was demanding I pull more. They would grab additional mobs so we were facing 3 or 4 at a time. My healer could not keep up, we kept wiping, but every time we reset they would aggro big groups. When we wiped, they blamed us. Our poor healer quit first. Then with some unkind words, that DPS left. When I re queued, I got the same dungeon with a new group. Cleared it in the same amount of time the last group spent wiping.
Honestly your mitigation should have been better. As a healer I can tell experienced tanks vs inexperienced. The inexperienced tanks take 100% more damage
@@HyouVizer Past lvl50, every tank class can easily handle reducing dungeons to 2-pulls-then-boss (except for forced you-cant-pull-more like Hyperborea area 3 or Anamnesis area 1), and every experienced tank does this as their default. If someone cant handle this, you should immediately say so, else they expect you to be able to if it's unspoken. Else, they see it as "man this tank is taking too long, I'll help pull and get this over with."
As a tank main I always pull 2 mobs at a time. If my healer is kicking ass, I'll do more, but especially for low communication GF parties, I've found it's a good way to judge your team's cooperation.
I always pull wall to wall unless the healer says otherwise upfront. If we wipe during a pull, then I take it slower. As a healer main, it gets boring when the tank pulls small so I don't want to bore the healer when I tank
This video is good, in theory. In reality groups will abuse the kick player to boot and Square appears fine with that behavior (no flags/marks on accounts, and some forum posts from SE suggesting that kicking for 'different playstyle' is acceptable). It is unfortunate, but you'll need to marry up with big pulls and mitigating in most cases (lvl sync permitting) as Duty Roulette and grind will be a lot of the tanking experience.
In years of playing the game I've seen only 2-3 players being kicked out of a party, and only for legitimate reasons. There are certainly players that will try to pull for you if you don't pull enough, but usually that doesn't happen. Of course your experience could be different, especially in another region.
Thanks for the video ! What is the music btw ? Glad I'm not the only "anxious" tank. Some fights mechanics are quite hard (at least on first try/tries or after coming back after years away of the game) : getting them right + handling rotations + positionning + mitigations can feel a bit too much.
Hello sir, thanks for all the tips , i'm kinda new and i wanted to try out tank but i don't get the macro thingy , does that mean that whenever u press that u can give to the second caracter on the list that should be the other tank ? I try to understand. Otherwise thanks so much and i recognize myself in the beginning as the one that thinks he is gonna make the party fail so thanks a lot mate
I was a DPS since early days of wow. But I got to tanking in BFA, for me it is an acquired role. I am still leveling my Reaper but when I max out and done end game content, I may level a GNB
I don't like melee jobs in general (hate positionals!) so tanking is a bit of a challenge for me. This is the reason that I will only limit myself to tanking dungeons and not raid. The only reason I will level up tanks is for the role quests - for lore and the fact it will give you more options during MSQ dialogue if you finished those... Now if I can get over the tankxiety first...
Positionals are easy to play around once you get used to them. Most of the time you won't even have to move because of the rile action True North, and the rest of the time it's just a tiny sidestep. It's basically just two or three abilities in each melee's kit that are positionals, with plenty of time to preposition too! So don't let that stop you, honestly
I'm trying to get my head round what you said, but you said to face the boss north while your tanking the boss facing south, did you mean YOU face north while the boss is facing south?
I know this guide is a few months old but I find using Provoke is superior than using your ranged ability during mobs in dungeons because it has a longer range and means that mobs will rush to you and gather more quickly, allowing 1 aoe to hit them all. It is also an ogcd unlike the ranged attack.
Please use your mitigations, even on small stuff and specially in bos fights, if you arent sure when, on every ability the boss casts. Don't be that tank "I didn't need mitigations at all in that fight! wow!"
I'm a new Tank (and new player) and I've been following these guides really closely to not make my party hate me, they've been super helpful! I have a question, though - can you explain how the macro you provided works? I know what macros do, but I like to know what each line is doing when using one. I understand that targets the second player on the party list, is that always going to be the main tank in this case (in the case of me being an off tank specifically)? And why the multiple lines of it, how does that work? Thanks!
Hey, the reason there are multiple lines is because it actually makes it more responsive. Because you are locked out of pressing buttons by the game sometimes (when you spam something and it doesn't immediately go off) having more instances increases the chance that the macros still fires at a later line.
Ehm... 16:05 I really don't think that turning the tank stance off during the tank swap is really necessary unless your damage is much higher than the other tank's. Usually shirking is quite enough, unless the off-tank forgot to turn his tank stance off. That really is only relevant when Shirk is on CD for some reason.
I've been hit over the head pretty bad by people who thought I was a vet. It's my first time playing the game literally. But I understand now. I'm level 54, with great armor from the player market and still learning more. Your vids help a lot.
What about tanking bosses, do I need to always mitigate an incoming tank buster and thus save my mitigation abilities for these? Normal pulls in dungeons were well explained but I wished there was more info on what to do with bosses.
The tanks are very different in the way they mitigate, but in general you'll want to have mitigation up for heavy hitting abilities and anything you don't need can be used in between to lower the overall amount of damage from auto attacks. However, Warrior for example doesn't have to mitigate auto attacks that much at all because of all the healing available to the job. If you look at GNB or DRK however, they definitely need to use more mitigation between boss abilities. PLD on the other hand generally mitigates a lot of damage through Sheltron already, meaning they automatically handle auto attacks fairly well.
Seven months late but this vid has really helped me with tanking, started as a sprout recently and haven't finished ARR yet but I can already tell these tips are gonna be invaluable once I make my way further into the game
Confused about why you say “provoke is never used for pulling”? Its off the GCD so you dont have to wait for GCD to hit a followup ability, and it has a longer range
That's because of how provoke works. Rather than giving you a flat amount of enmity, it will put you on top of the enmity list. So if you pull with the ability, you get 0 enmity + a small fixed amount. Pulling with your ranged ability generates more enmity overall and there's no risk of losing aggro until reaching the boss. Also the cooldown is usually available again when you reach the boss, so there's really no reason to use provoke. Rather save it to snipe the enmity of far-away adds early on
@@Jolsn it is used to group enemies up that are spread out so you can AoE them all without stopping. The amount of enmity it gives doesn't matter if you're hitting them with a GCD anyway. This is especially important for warriors with their conal AoE. And any stragglers will aggro to you the moment you heal yourself at all.
@@Yairgr123 we‘re talking about boss pulls specifically here, which is what I am talking about in the video. Of course you can use provoke to pull random dungeon mobs from far away
@@Jolsn okay, i totally thought you were talking about ALL pulls in the video. I was confused about trash pulls in my comment. I always have to wait around for GCD when im forced to use ranged attack, so i can aoe and grab everything, otherwise, somebody in the party is going to aggro as i run to the next group. Whereas, if i provoke, by the time i get to the them, most often they are all within range of an AoE and im not waiting on GCD. side note: wasnt there a patch where they added a flat amount of enmity to provoke? so it puts you at top and then some? I remember reading about that, but never persued answers, since i use ranged attack to pull bosses.
Based on reading through these comments people make it seem like this is a common occurrence. In hundreds of dungeon groups I have only ever once seen someone be remotely toxic or even complain about anyone other than their own performance.
Thanks for this brother will take note of the good inputs you've provided. I'm still wondering sometimes why my stance suddenly goes off how long does usually the stance activated?
@@Jolsn might be and cause me to ruin the final boss lol luckily we manage to survive. I'm still having hard time for those flying mobs do i need to stay w/ them if i dont plan to pull to much?
I used to have healer anxiety but now I'm pretty cocky healer (still main DPS in serious contents though) ... but I cant get rid of Tank anxiety .. ;c I have WAR and PLD at lv.50 but that's it xD good guide btw .. wont cure my anxiety but things to keep in mind as a healer!
I main DRK....I had a dps get upset because I pulled small on Smileton which was my first run....he went and pulled an extra mob without me and I got smacked. Also it was the first mob so I couldn't even asses the party's capabilities. He ended up leaving....some people are just so impatient with tanks. Lol
@@Jolsn crazy thing is I always say I'm new to the duty if it's my first time or I tell them that I don't remember it. He still was a asshole. Luckily I very rarely come across people like that
Hey, this video was super informative, but as someone who wants to start leveling WAR after breaking through ARR into HW, I actually want to ask, what's the best way to cycle through a pack of enemies as a tank? Currently I play WHM, and for the most part, I just use T to switch between my tank and whatever they're targeting. This gets more complicated when other party members need healing or if I'm in an 8 man, so I'm dreading the prospect of managing a bunch of enemies as the tank. Do you literally just tab through all the enemies on screen and bop them with an enmity skill, alongside aoe combos? I've had moderate success doing this as ranged casters, but sometimes I just wind up targeting enemies that are way off in the distance, and feeling like a jackass.
Hello Im a tank in ESO with every class even the sorcerer, Mythic raider in wow. But this is basically the most comprehensive thanking guide I've see in my life. Gj mate thank you.
Mindset: Well, neither really. I've seen so many terrible tanks that it's impossible for me to feel anxiety for tanking because I literally can't do it as badly as some of the people I've seen. But I don't see tanks as the most important bestest party member either, because playing all 3 roles frequently has taught me that tanking is usually the easiest and lowest pressure role in the whole group, sorry x) I'm just here because of self-respect, because I know I still have tons of things to improve on~ I completely forgot about the extra effect on Arm's Length, for example. Oof.
Yeah tanking is the lowest stress role to queue as. In higher end content it might not be but in random queues, it for sure is, you have all your cds and all the healer's cds to cover up your mistakes, you don't have to move as much, you have a cd spefically to skip mechanics and less mechanics involve you to begin with, plus you have bigger health bar and tons of mitigation so all mechanics are a lot harder to die to. And if you die you can just be resed. Healer is the most important and most stressful role.
The real question on a tank. If your healer or dps pulls the next group because they wanted you to pull more(without just asking you to), do you let them die?
I would really like to know when is the best time to use CD for each tank :( I'm always holding on to them and not sure when is the best time to use them because I wonder about the timer of CD
ABC. Always be casting. If it's a trash pull, cool down. If it's one monster, cool down. Somebody sneeze? Cooldown. Somebody look at you funny? Cool down. Your cooldowns are so low and recovery time that you should always be using them in a pool. If you're absolutely worried about them being up, start with the longest one first. Read your tooltips. Use the longest recovery first, then the next one, and then the next one. By the time you're done, all them should be back up. Also, always use arm's length, because it is a mitigation. Save retribution for raid wide damage, because that does matter a lot. As a matter of fact, it will be the difference between a wipe and everyone being alive, Pepsi man Savage being a perfect example of this, because popping retribution while he does his raid smacks is about 3000 health, and anybody not up to full can potentially survive it. In general though, it doesn't really matter. The only thing that really matters is saving your ass saver for when you'll really need it, because you generally only get one. The only difference is Dark Knight, because they basically don't have one without a benediction on hand.
Do note I typed that up with back-to-back polls in mind. In a raid scenario, you want to be popping those cooldowns longest cooldown the shortest cooldown in sequence according to the tank Buster that is coming. Save arms-length for when there's a knock-back that you can't afford to be moved from. Save retribution for nasty shit everyone can't Dodge. Just general stuff like this.
When dealing with trash you wanna use your cds on rotation from the very beginning of the pull if done right you'll always have a chance available so don't worry during boss fights you'll use your personal cd ( sentenal, raw intuition, heart of stone, blackest night etc) for tankbusters and your party cd (divine veil, shake it off, heart of light etc) for raid/party wide damage.
That's a terrible habit as a tank. Just use them. You will get a feel for more optimal use over time but as a tank you have a ton of cds, nigh on enough to have one up all the time, and it is absolutely wasteful not to use them.
Shirk is used to give enmity to another tank. Usually you have to click on them and them use the ability to get the effect. Using the macro allows you to just press the ability because it will always target the tank.
The specific way that macro is setup is line 1: use the Shirk Icon for this macro line 2: Turns off error messages resulting from this macro line 3+: Cast Shirk on the 2nd player on the party. if you're a tank, 2nd player on the list is ALWAYS the other tank because players are ordered by role (Tanks, Healers, DPS, in that order. So unless you lack a tank, player 2 is always either the other tank or tank #1, and so on.) Line 4+: SPAM SHIRK JUST TO BE SURE (This is why the errors are turned off)
There's one piece of advice that bothered me a lot, the tank swap, both tanks should always have their tank stance on, ALWAYS you don't take that off, ever. It's the first thing you put on when entering a dungeon or trial, second, the swap, again no need to take off your stance since provoke puts you both on top of the enmity list and add a % of the enmity gained on top, making it impossible for the other tank to take back aggro even if they tried, unless they use provoke as well. As for the actual tank swap, you let the off tank provoke the boss off of you then you as the previous main tank shirk the new main tank (To be sure of the transfer so there's no silly take off tank stance stuff going on), and when you need to take back aggro, you provoke and the other tank shirks you, that simple. You can tell that shirk is a mechanic related skill by it's 2 minute cooldown window, which is the window in which the bosses rotate their skills and players rotate their 2minute big damage buffs.
It‘s actually a good habit to get into because you can‘t rely on the other tanks damage output. I‘ve had lots of runs where I just shirk and often the DPS afterwards just gives me aggro back. There is no reason not to turn off the stance when swapping and just turning it back on 15 seconds later
@@Jolsn Thing is, you can rely on your own, the boss doesn't do it's tankbuster/cleave till after it's first cast, so you can just stand next to the other tank and ramp up aggro, then Shirk to the other tank and move into position(It's usually enough for them to grab main aggro after your Shirk) or they can provoke it off you during the boss's first cast, the more aggro you generate the more you pass on with Shirk since it gives a % of your aggro to the person you cast it on. But knowing how the new tank buffs work yeah i can understand that turning it on and off works all the same, but it's annoying that sprout/returning tanks are telling people to turn off tank stance just because they seen a guide and think it's the only right way.
@@AiMeiZing It's a dying habit at least now. But it used to be a thing where tank stance shaved about 10% off of your DPS, and there are still some holdovers from that time that haven't read their tool tips since.
Probably my biggest anxiety with tanking is not being familiar with the dungeons. Not always knowing which path to take but still being responsible for pulls isn't the greatest experience.
same when I tanked mid to higher keys back in wow, at least in FF14, dungeon halways are straightforward
Most later dungeons are very linear. I wouldn’t worry about it.
I find the new duty support feature very helpful now that I can tank with npc group to learn the dungeon, this is a great tool for learning the routes. Not everything is covered yet, but most are and I believe they are adding more in the upcoming patches.
I just ask lol
Some of the older stuff which have unnecessary dead ends still trip me up because I either breezed by them once or twice before I started tanking or haven't done them for a while, but luckily most of them are linear enough not to get lost.
thank you for this actual guide, I have horrible tanking anxiety and I've seen so many guides that are just "turn on tank stance, pull wall to wall, and use your mitigation" and that's it, I didn't even realize arm's length was technically mitigation and my paladin is almost level 80... also you actually covered off tanking which I had just written off as a lost art that I would never be able to uncover
Great video, I've been tanking in this game since ARR and its definitely one of the more complete beginners guides to tanking that I've seen. I just have a couple of minor nitpicks/tips that might be interesting for intermediate/advanced tanks looking to get some minor optimizations out of niche situation.
There are some situations where you might pull with provoke due to its 5y greater range than your normal ranged attack and it being an oGCD. For example if you are doing a large pull in a dungeon and there's a mob that is unaggro'd but walking away from you, and you don't want to go as far as to pull the next full group (maybe you or your healer has bad gear/is new) or the area it is running has no mobs until after you defeat the current pack, you can provoke this mob to join you while maintaining your GCDs on the existing pack you have aggro'd. You can also do this to potentially pull a farther unagrro'd group to you sooner to get them in a better spot for grouping (maybe the area where they spawn has a lot of annoying aoes from the environment) rather than running up closer to pull them normally then running back to the better spot.
Depending on the job and the situation, its often worthwhile to stack mitigation just to get more uses out of them. This is mostly applicable in dungeon trash pulls since bosses are less flexible in CD timings (you should be using rampart or your 30% on busters, reprisal on aoes, arms on knock backs etc) but in dungeons, once you account for the time spent pulling the packs, you can stack a couple of shorter CD abilities together and not lose anything. Things like reprisal, gauge based mitigation (sheltron, TBN) or even sometimes 90s like rampart, its better to stack together, since even if you use more CDs as they fall so you always have some mitigation you will not run out of mitigation if the dungeon is set up in such a way that it takes a long time to reach the end of the next pull (or you know you are going into a boss that doesn't need CDs for the start). Its better to stack mitigations and get an extra use out of it overall than to not stack and not use an ability for longer than its recast time.
This is also a thing in raids, but mostly just based on the time between busters and how often you are tank swapping (very fight specific). If you are about to take a buster and know you don't have to take another for at least 2m, and aren't taking anything but autos/aoes until then, there's no reason to not stack your 30%+rampart+guage mitigation if you have it. Sure it might be overkill sometimes, but you don't really lose anything if you weren't going to use them anyways. I've this to extremes sometimes where between personal mitigation and party mitigation there's so much you actually don't take any damage from a buster.
Very minor nitpick, but often in a tank swap voke+shirk is enough to swap aggro, and its not really needed to turn off tank stance (assuming the other tank has theirs on). So long as both tanks are similarly geared and proficient at their respective jobs, you shouldn't take back aggro even if you leave stance on after a swap. It doesn't necessarily hurt anything to take it off, but it does mean you have to remember to turn it back on if you have to grab an add or tank swap again. I often find it easier to just set it and forget it, one less thing to keep track of, and I never have to worry about grabbing an add and not realizing my stance isn't on. Of course if you out gear/do more DPS than the other tank you might have to take it off to avoid taking back aggro (or just shirk if you aren't going to need it soon) so still keep an eye on your aggro regardless of if you have the boss or not.
I totally see why these weren't mentioned since realistically no beginner needs to worry about this kind of stuff, but if anyone reading this is comfortable with tanking already and wants to start optimizing a little, these are a few places to start.
@Oligoden yeah you can get by bosses with just your basic cheap mitigation (Sheltron etc), but usually they last long enough that you can have rampart at least back in time for any busters. It depends a bit on how geared you are, but if you arent super undergeared you should be fine. And if you are able to get to max ilvl for the dungeon, you can usually take most busters raw if needed (although I wouldn't recommend this, you should always be able to get something basic up atleast)
Thanks a lot, really appreciate your indepth advise
This channel is so underrated. You deserve way more. Keep grinding and you will get there. Learned a lot
Paladin was my first job in FF14 and I never tanked before so I was so scared of it but the community is so nice and welcoming I beat the anxiety while leveling
I got so disillusioned with bad tanking that I was spending my last few weeks just levelling my crafters. But watching this video has made me take up tanking again. Great content!
You can also put the Focus Assist marker on your healer to keep track of them. It puts a divot over their head.
You won't need that marker for anything else during a dungeon, and it's really handy to know how far ahead of your healer you are during a pull, without having to mouse or target characters. Also handy vice versa, marking the tank when you are healing or dpsing.
Ok new tank. How do I mark healer I'm lazy dps usually lol
@@stozov2 right click > focus target. I've bound mine to shift+f so i can do it midpull easier if need be.
@aquapuppy9838 that's ingeniously simple, thanks.
After trying out AST, I had a habit of focus targeting the Tank, it's very useful! Even as a DPS, being able to see what the Tank is doing helps me gage what to weave between my weaponskills.
You can also put a shape over people's heads with the marks. Pro/downside: Everyone in the duty can see that marc and they're shared between everyone.
Ie: If you put a square over your tank's head everyone will see it, but that square will disappear from over their head if someone else uses the square.
Thank you so much for this guide! I’ve been playing healer and dps for ages, and never tank. Recently I’ve dipped my hands on that, and still suffer from severe tanking anxiety 😥
I know a lot of people who feel like that myself and they always do fine in dungeons when they go tank. You'll be fine too, I believe in you!
@@Jolsn thanks mate ☺️
I'm the same about dps n healer I have the 4 tanks at 90 but I don't feel fast enough to heal or to do decent dps... I so want to play monk to punch things... lol great video tho
I was lucky and picked warrior before knowing anything about ff or MMOs so started with tank in sastasha and it was all I knew for a while so didn't suffer tankxiety
Remember, if you didn't wipe, you did a good job. If no one died because of you, you did a great job.
a much appreciated post! i love PLD, WAR and DRK and am enjoying lvl’ing them… but it’s been outside of dungeons - you’ve reminded how much fun it could be as a tank in a party. ty
Fantastic guide, especially the specific advice on how to do pulls and positioning the boss, stuff I don't see many other guides go into in as much depth at all. I will recommend this to anyone interested in beginning tanking. Thank you
Ty sir you got a sub from me. I got my tank (drk) to lvl 90 but never confident in my abilities with it till recently. Im now on my way to get War to 90 as well. I genuinely hate the backlash from other people about big pulls, small pulls and such but i figured there are people like that. But yeah this is kind of a pick me up so ty
I'm new to ff14 and your videos have helped me greatly with understanding what's going on and how to optimise play. Thank you so much!
Thanks for this guide! As a new player there are a lot of things, especially in the Raid section that I do not understand and will probably not understand until I experience myself, but this video is a nice guide to come back to whenever I need to refresh. You are helping us sprout tanks out there
Maybe I missed it, but one thing I needed a long time to realize, is that the bars under the class symbols in the party list is your aggro meter. It is indirectly shown in the video with a great example but I believe it isn't specially mentioned. So if you aren't sure how much aggro you have compared to the current MT, just look there. All others should never even be seen there.
Also not sure if it is already done. But marking the terrain and the enemy is really useful and something most beginners don't realise how to do, since it is a bit hidden in the menus. You can even preset some dungeons with marks. For example on Theodan the arena crossing dash of the Paladins is often a wipe for an inexperienced team. So I have marks for the spear and the dash.
Such a great video! I tanked for the first time last night as a sprout and definitely tried rushing it and doing big pulls cause I was anxious about what the rest of the party would think. Definitely not doing that again!
You got this!
Amazing guide! I’m new to FFXIV and learning how to tank. There’s a lot I’ve learned the hard way, so this is super helpful.
Much like a lot of the other comments up here, you’ve really helped with some of the Tank anxiety I’ve suffered in recent months of playing. You earned this subscription mate!
Brilliant video; I started tanking at the start of last month on PLD and have just about got comfortable with regular dungeons and duties, and Crystal Tower raids, but not dared to dip my toes into Normal raids or Trials yet where MT/OT is a thing. As I am now approaching 90, I need to pluck up the courage to give those a go; I think my problem is having to memorise so many boss mechanics which I struggle with, so I'm constantly nervous that I'll be in the wrong place or screw up - so many players just try to dash through as quickly as possible that it feels like a failure to work at their speed.
Such a great intro to tanking! It gives context for what tank party members are doing and makes me feel more confident starting WAR. I'd seen some horror stories about enmity wars too, so quite glad that you can just off-tank to minimize disruptions for the party.
Great tip about line-of-sight, I didn't know about that trick.
Great tips, will definitely use this to recommend for some newer players in my FC.
But let's be honest...
Step 1 = Pull EVERYTHING. You DO have the biggest axe in the room
Step 2 = Healers Adjust
Step 3 = Healers Adjust
Step 4 = Healers Adjust
Step 5 = Healers Adjust
Step 6 = Profit
unless someone has those giant scythes that looks like a humongous axe, in that case you might not have the biggest axe lol
Plus you can easily find another healer if they don’t adjust
BTW, healer adjust = I'M THE HEALER NOT YOU DEAL WITH IT
edit jk healers I love you 🥰 don't rescue me to bad pls
Amazing video your description on pulls was exactly what I was looking for
great vid! was looking for info on properly tank swapping before I bring my WAR into the extreme trials so this is really convenient!
ranged ability is fine for stragglers who peel off of you too because it has enhanced enmity generation compared to other skills.
This is one the best “how to tank” videos I’ve seen. Thanks.
Outdated (i.e. not current level-cap) tomestone gear are also sold at the "starting hubs" of each expansion by a vendor near the big aetherite (they show up ad a blue bag icon on mini map), for player convenience: starting cities/Ishgard/Kugane/Crystarium.
Totally agree about the secondary tanks. When going into raids. I purposely watch the cutscene so the other tank has enmity, problem solved. I don’t mind being the off tank 😅 also love when I don’t tank, and see the boss dancing in circles as tanks fight over who is the main one 😂
Thanks for the video. Helped a bunch getting back into it after a long pause.
You definitely can and should use provoke when pulling - it all depends on the number of mobs you're about to engage. For instance, when there're only two enemies ahead, you can use your ranged attack on the first one and then quickly provoke the other. Provoke has a rather short cooldown (and it's an oGCD), so it's a waste to let such an amazing enmity generation tool go to waste.
With bigger groups of enemies, it's better to use at least two aoe attacks to ensure you have enough aggro before trying to run ahead because the dps in your party (who will most likely attack the mobs while you're running) might attract too much enmity (and quickly die). It's also a decent idea to keep using ranged attacks on the mobs you've pulled, while you're still running to the next group, to maintain uptime (and aggro). With bigger groups using provoke is usually unneccessary unless you get a straggler or something.
Pulling is not a race or anything so I do not see why you should not care about grabbing every enemy before continuing. Make sure to grab every enemy, so that the dps and the healer have nothing to worry about and so that they can use their aoe attacks in peace.
Just went through a nervewracking Haukke Manor run so a bit or resaaurance (and remapping my keys) in this guide is kind of what i needed
As a new tank, the thing I'm trying to learn mostly is big group pulls with 3+ mob packs. This is to shorten dungeon times, and also so I can get used to knowing how to cycle my defensive cooldowns as well as being comfortable using my invuln.
When it comes to bosses, staying on top of adds, as well as remembering to always bring the boss back to the center and facing them as conveniently for the DPS as possible is a good thing.
And in general, my opener/rotations.
Also when in ARR lower level dungeons or Aurum Vale, best to pull small.
Talks about “learning other player’s abilities” right as he zooms out of the healer’s bubble and refuses to move back into it xD (to be fair he is playing WAR which can basically solo dungeons as far as I can tell, haha)
Thank you for this video. I've played for a long time but at first I wanted to DPS since there were so many to choose from but now, since most dungeon parties seem only interested in making "speed records" , it doesn't seem like tanking would be any fun for me. I do appreciate those who like this role.
Speaking for me, as someone who plays all three roles, taking a lot of groups on at a time isn't because of trying to set any speed records or any concern for time at all really other than general efficiency. But more importantly it is just more fun. The game is balanced for pulling everything in most cases, if you don't it just draws it out, it's less fun for every role. It's fine if party is undergeared or people are learning but once you have done a dungeon 5+ times you just wanna do it efficiently, doing things more efficiently and optimizing is the point of the game.
An important thing that I did not see mentioned. For higher level content, especially level 80 and beyond where you have 2 tanks, all tanks have a mitigation/heal/shield they can target onto another party member. As an off tank, if you know there is not a dual tankbuster/tank swap/personal damage mechanic coming (and if you are warrior even if there is you can apply the effect anyway to mitigate and heal both tanks at same time), I find it is immensely helpful to your parties overall DPS and stress level to be mitigating/healing your main tank, which allows your healers to not have to stress as much, your main tank doesnt have to stress as much, and you are getting practice using your full toolkit.
This is best achieved with a macro similar to the shirk macro displayed in this video, but using the skill you want to use instead. You can also setup a party macro bar to allow you to on demand apply your effect to any party member without needing to select them, in case your healer needs a mitigation to help them survive something, etc. (Nascent flash for warrior, Aurora/corundum for gunbreaker, oblation/the blackest night for dark knight... cover for paladin? Paladin is the only one I dont have leveled all the way yet hahaha.) Warriors skill will allow you to very effectively heal your main tank as well as apply a small shield and 10% damage mitigation, gunbreaker can both heal and mitigate damage by using both skills on one target ( and if done well can also apply the gunbreakers 2nd combo shield to the target), and dark knight can mitigate damage both with a big shield and a magic damage resistance. I am not familiar enough with paladin to know what it offers, although you could clemency your main tank if your healers are struggling.
Seriously, this comes in so handy and for high end content like extreme and savage, this becomes almost mandatory to spread resource usage across your party instead of constantly consuming your healers resources.
Great video!
Exactly what I needed! All other guides only speak Greek for us new players.
Like, “use romba to slunk your frid before you konga under their sting line-lock”.
Thanks for helping us, help you :))
Don't come to Greece, rude child.
Provoke is great for pulling mobs because it is a oGCD. You can pull with it then grab the extras with aoe.
I'm here because I was told how bad of a Tank I was in a raid with randos 😭😭😭
Thank you for saying this cause so am I 😅😅😅
If someone in a Raid complains about your tanking, politely suggest that they bring their own next time. Then during a Boss pull, turn off your Aura and Shirk enmity to them, and complain about what a bad job they did tanking the boss.
I came back to the game after a 4 year break, I ended the Stormblood MSQ and haven't done the new content after that. I decided to rejoin..and I feel so lost as a DRK. I use to be pretty damn good at it, but I forgot everything, I don't even know how to properly setup up my hotbars and what to actually click. Trying my best to get back into it. Very nice video, thanks.
Welcome back, glad I could help a little
Thank you for. Gonna try tanking was searching for some hints
This guide was very helpful.
I didn't kow all this stuff about mitigation.
Ive tanked lots in other mmos but havent in FF14. From seeing how dungeons go Im not a big fan of how the AOE pulls generally go. Ive healed mostly and almost never see anything other than wall to wall tank pulls. Glad you brought up lower dungeons. When healing tanks the hardest ones are the sub-50 ones. esp 30-47 range where some of them are just nasty with the scaling and lack of options in both cooldowns, "oh crap" heals, and groups AOE abilities.
Thanks for the vid! I'm a more veteran Tank, but I always think there's something new to learn or refresh! Plus it can help tankxiety when you know you're not alone! :D
I will say however, while I agree with not stopping -- I cannot get on board with sprinting. While it may slow damage, the damage you receive is incredibly minimal as long as you stay in the lead. I can also continue to do DPS with my ranged moves when at least a few enemies stay in range, helping to end the mob quicker.
You obviously touched on the importance of understanding and knowing your party, as well as setting the pace -- yet sprinting can completely nullify that. If not everyone in your party wants to sprint, you run the risk of doing less damage right out of the gate, or quickly leaving your healer's range. And as new tanks are still learning how to properly mitigate, leaving your party behind is a good way to get yourself in trouble and panic spam.
Plus, it can come off like you're rushing and have no desire to be there, setting what I see as a bad precedent and mood for the entire runtime of the dungeon. All players should benefit from having time to enjoy the dungeon and take in the sights (to a reasonable degree), especially if they're new. If they have a tank who wants nothing more than to sprint from location to location, they'll feel the pressure to skip content or miss it entirely. I would rather be the tank that showed good leadership (not pulling bosses early, setting a steady pace) and kept my party from rushing through an experience than one who mitigated a single small heals worth of damage.
My feelings are obviously 'take it or leave it', but I do wish we would teach new tanks exactly what you said -- that they're not the MVP of the duty -- and teaching this "Sprint is Mit" approach feels like a pathway directly to that due to its further ramifications.
PC broke a while ago, so when I finally get a new one I'm going to return to this as a refresher.
Thanks for this, I’ve been embarrassed a few times when someone in my chat asked if I was a new tank and felt like I was doing bad. I’m trying my best and leading bosses towards walls so my healer is safe, I’ve been a tank for 3 days and am a lvl 54 Dark Knight
When I started tanking. I wrote before beginning I was new (and still today if I’m not super familiar) it takes all the pressure off and everyone was always chill. Let them know and it’s all good
i don't see a patreon link anywhere in the video description. pls consider providing one so that we may be able to support you for these invaluable videos!
i've sent many new sprouts to your videos to help explain the game's quirks and significantly improve their gameplay/awareness. Thank you for your time in producing these guides.
Awesome! This was really helpful. I'm new to both the game and the genre. Rolled a paladin and so far I'm really loving it. I'm reaching the mid 50's levelwise and so dungeons and trials have been mainly button spamming but I'm noticing I need to pay attention to mechanics more. But there are so many things to learn with every single boss and I'm a bit daunted by the sheer data load! Is there a shortcut to learn effective tanking without having to read up on every single boss mechanic?
What I did to learn mechanics, going through the MSQ as a WHM, was simple:
“/s yo, it’s my first time here, anything to know?”
This sets expectations and means it’s generally everyone else’s job to teach u what to do, because looking up dungeons is prime spoiler territory.
I've been playing Paladin since 2013 but I've had a lot of anxiety about the role, to the point where I had trouble advancing through Heavensward and didn't really do any duty roulette until Stormblood. Also still haven't played a lot of the level-sync'd raid content.
This was a good video for me, since I've pretty much gone from under-utilizing few damage mitigation abilities to unnecessarily stacking them on the other end of the spectrum.
Really, I still have a few buttons on my hotbar that I'm frankly not sure what to do with them, but I've started trying them out in Trust duties, so... yeah.
In my experience, tank and healer are most important as if one or the other die, the chances of success drop drastically. If a DPS dies, the chance of success is lower yet still likely.
This was great, you really covered things that beginners need to know.
Great guide! I had no idea about the enmity gauges next to player names, or that arms length had a slowing effect.
Question, is there a reason for spamming the shirk ability in your macro? I’m guessing it has something to do with the lack of action queueing in macros?
10:30 Immediately after saying to stand in friendly AOEs you ignore the white mage AOE :')
This actually bring up an earnest question - would it be worth walking back to regroup under the bubble in that instance? Or would all the mobs moving be too disruptful? I ask this as a WHM player trying to get into tanking, and never knowing where to place the bubble lmao
I was about to comment on that lol but at that point it's pointless to go back because all dps are going all out and the whm was spamming holy so going back will be a dps loss from moving mobs and some moves might miss from dps. The healer also needs to know when to use those ground helpful skills.
@@linkpwnsevery1 "The healer also needs to know when to use those skills"
I mean, if the tank stands still inside a mob group and I know there is a wall up ahead I'm gonna assume that's where they'll tank it. I get endlessly frustrated by tanks who later on decide to move again, 4 GCDs later, only to draw the mobs to the wall that they can't cross anyways and then ofc no longer be inside whatever kind of healing I put down.
Ultimately it doesn't matter because as WHM, I just stun everything until it dies so the tank needs no healing, and as an AST, my new star covers the entire area from one miniboss arena to the next 🙃 But it's still frustrating.
Provoke being off the gcd is useful when pulling a pack of non-boss mobs since the 2.5 second gcd is so painfully long…ranged, tab, provoke, tab, ranged again to establish enmity on three mobs as they move into range for your aoe.
I really enjoy all your contents, they are well thought out and well explained, thank you for your time in making these amazing contents.
I usually main healer in any mmo I play, but I don't mind tanking occasionally so I'm in the process of levelling a Paladin and this tank guide definitely helps me understand more particularly dungeon pulls.
I look forward to more contents from you - especially the UI tweaks and tricks.
I'm new to FFXIV, but not to MMO's. For all my life, I have been scared shitless to try Tanks; refused to play them in Aion even though I really liked the Templar aesthetic, and had no interest in playing them in ESO (Magblade main).
Biggest turn-off was tanxiety: aka, the " responsibility " tanks carry by leading the group, doing pulls, having to know mechanics etc.
Recently, started WAR for the heck of it and let me tell you holy shit, if I'd known tanking could be so fun, I'd have started earlier. Maybe it's just FFXIV but I feel like tanking in this game is incredibly beginner-friendly if you put a little effort into doing Hall of the Novice and Googling the dungeon mechanics so that you come prepared.
The first dungeon, we hilariously wiped because in the last room, a random DPS rushed in and started to pull all the trash and I panicked so I tried to get all of that DPS' argo. I've now learned that when my DPS are being silly and overtake my pace, I should just let their impatience and sillyness kill them LMAO.
Having played tank for I can't even remember how many years now, I can honestly say that I know why people say "having to know mechanics" as being a reason that they are anxious of tanking, but I totally disagree with it. In reality, the only thing that you need to know any different to, say, a DPS is a tank buster/tank swap (and maybe adds, but there really aren't all that many boss fights in FFXIV, particularly in dungeons, that have adds). There is no more or less reason for a DPS or healer to look up mechanics before a dungeon than a tank.
Also, to maybe help put you at ease slightly, tank privilege is real xD. If you get clipped by an AOE in a boss fight in a dungeon, unless it has something else tied to it, it probably isn't the end of the world. If you're a DPS, those AOEs are a lot scarier. I am not promoting bad play, but more just really saying that as a tank you arguably have a higher margin for error on a lot of stuff that you just don't in the other roles, so don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them and don't go into it fearing that every mistake means a wipe.
Thanks very helpful as a newbie Tank!
My guide to tanking. Make a list of dungeons. Then I went class by class to find out the aoe of each class for each dungeon level. Then can they spam it on the run. Then I base my pulls of thrash mobs off that.
BIG TIP. If you see the someone is new to the dungeon come up. Ask who it is. If it's the healer, then pull a couple packs and then ask if they want to try to pull more or is that pace good.
14:00 there's an enmity bar?!! I've been playing the game for many months now and i have three 80± tanks. WTF
Summoner green circle!!! I have tanks pulling out of it all the time, I think because they think its a bad circle
How to become a better tank in EW:
Step 1: Play WAR
Step 2: Tell your healer to remove all healing skills from their toolbar
Step 3: PROFIT
Bloodwhetting is the new healer job in Endwalker
this is what i call a good tanking guide even if i don't need one
Tank horror story:
Once ran a dungeon where one of my DPS was demanding I pull more. They would grab additional mobs so we were facing 3 or 4 at a time. My healer could not keep up, we kept wiping, but every time we reset they would aggro big groups. When we wiped, they blamed us. Our poor healer quit first. Then with some unkind words, that DPS left.
When I re queued, I got the same dungeon with a new group. Cleared it in the same amount of time the last group spent wiping.
sounds like a wow player. I saw this alot in wow none in ff.
@@yazan80 I've seen it in FF. Rarer though.
sadly this is becoming more and more common in this game, if the dps dont run ahead aggro-ing everything then the healer does instead.
Honestly your mitigation should have been better. As a healer I can tell experienced tanks vs inexperienced. The inexperienced tanks take 100% more damage
@@HyouVizer Past lvl50, every tank class can easily handle reducing dungeons to 2-pulls-then-boss (except for forced you-cant-pull-more like Hyperborea area 3 or Anamnesis area 1), and every experienced tank does this as their default. If someone cant handle this, you should immediately say so, else they expect you to be able to if it's unspoken. Else, they see it as "man this tank is taking too long, I'll help pull and get this over with."
As a tank main I always pull 2 mobs at a time. If my healer is kicking ass, I'll do more, but especially for low communication GF parties, I've found it's a good way to judge your team's cooperation.
I always pull wall to wall unless the healer says otherwise upfront. If we wipe during a pull, then I take it slower. As a healer main, it gets boring when the tank pulls small so I don't want to bore the healer when I tank
This video is good, in theory. In reality groups will abuse the kick player to boot and Square appears fine with that behavior (no flags/marks on accounts, and some forum posts from SE suggesting that kicking for 'different playstyle' is acceptable). It is unfortunate, but you'll need to marry up with big pulls and mitigating in most cases (lvl sync permitting) as Duty Roulette and grind will be a lot of the tanking experience.
In years of playing the game I've seen only 2-3 players being kicked out of a party, and only for legitimate reasons. There are certainly players that will try to pull for you if you don't pull enough, but usually that doesn't happen. Of course your experience could be different, especially in another region.
That was fantastic!
Thanks for the video ! What is the music btw ?
Glad I'm not the only "anxious" tank. Some fights mechanics are quite hard (at least on first try/tries or after coming back after years away of the game) : getting them right + handling rotations + positionning + mitigations can feel a bit too much.
The music is from the new raid, the song is called "Hic Svnt Leones"
Hello sir, thanks for all the tips , i'm kinda new and i wanted to try out tank but i don't get the macro thingy , does that mean that whenever u press that u can give to the second caracter on the list that should be the other tank ? I try to understand. Otherwise thanks so much and i recognize myself in the beginning as the one that thinks he is gonna make the party fail so thanks a lot mate
im learning how to tank properly but i’m soooo anxious omg
I was a DPS since early days of wow. But I got to tanking in BFA, for me it is an acquired role. I am still leveling my Reaper but when I max out and done end game content, I may level a GNB
I don't like melee jobs in general (hate positionals!) so tanking is a bit of a challenge for me. This is the reason that I will only limit myself to tanking dungeons and not raid. The only reason I will level up tanks is for the role quests - for lore and the fact it will give you more options during MSQ dialogue if you finished those... Now if I can get over the tankxiety first...
Positionals are easy to play around once you get used to them. Most of the time you won't even have to move because of the rile action True North, and the rest of the time it's just a tiny sidestep. It's basically just two or three abilities in each melee's kit that are positionals, with plenty of time to preposition too! So don't let that stop you, honestly
I'm trying to get my head round what you said, but you said to face the boss north while your tanking the boss facing south, did you mean YOU face north while the boss is facing south?
This made playing tank a lot less intimidating, Thanks!!
I know this guide is a few months old but I find using Provoke is superior than using your ranged ability during mobs in dungeons because it has a longer range and means that mobs will rush to you and gather more quickly, allowing 1 aoe to hit them all. It is also an ogcd unlike the ranged attack.
Any Metaria recommendations for Paladin?
Crit>SKS>DH>DET>TEN.
Please use your mitigations, even on small stuff and specially in bos fights, if you arent sure when, on every ability the boss casts.
Don't be that tank "I didn't need mitigations at all in that fight! wow!"
I'm a new Tank (and new player) and I've been following these guides really closely to not make my party hate me, they've been super helpful! I have a question, though - can you explain how the macro you provided works? I know what macros do, but I like to know what each line is doing when using one. I understand that targets the second player on the party list, is that always going to be the main tank in this case (in the case of me being an off tank specifically)? And why the multiple lines of it, how does that work?
Thanks!
Hey, the reason there are multiple lines is because it actually makes it more responsive. Because you are locked out of pressing buttons by the game sometimes (when you spam something and it doesn't immediately go off) having more instances increases the chance that the macros still fires at a later line.
@@Jolsn Ah okay, that makes sense! Thank you!
I love the demonstration of a tank swap on a level 1 ladybug
Ehm... 16:05 I really don't think that turning the tank stance off during the tank swap is really necessary unless your damage is much higher than the other tank's. Usually shirking is quite enough, unless the off-tank forgot to turn his tank stance off. That really is only relevant when Shirk is on CD for some reason.
I've been hit over the head pretty bad by people who thought I was a vet. It's my first time playing the game literally. But I understand now. I'm level 54, with great armor from the player market and still learning more. Your vids help a lot.
What about tanking bosses, do I need to always mitigate an incoming tank buster and thus save my mitigation abilities for these? Normal pulls in dungeons were well explained but I wished there was more info on what to do with bosses.
The tanks are very different in the way they mitigate, but in general you'll want to have mitigation up for heavy hitting abilities and anything you don't need can be used in between to lower the overall amount of damage from auto attacks. However, Warrior for example doesn't have to mitigate auto attacks that much at all because of all the healing available to the job. If you look at GNB or DRK however, they definitely need to use more mitigation between boss abilities. PLD on the other hand generally mitigates a lot of damage through Sheltron already, meaning they automatically handle auto attacks fairly well.
Seven months late but this vid has really helped me with tanking, started as a sprout recently and haven't finished ARR yet but I can already tell these tips are gonna be invaluable once I make my way further into the game
Good luck!
Good video! Thanks!
im terrified of tanking, thanks WoW
Thanks a ton!
Confused about why you say “provoke is never used for pulling”? Its off the GCD so you dont have to wait for GCD to hit a followup ability, and it has a longer range
That's because of how provoke works. Rather than giving you a flat amount of enmity, it will put you on top of the enmity list. So if you pull with the ability, you get 0 enmity + a small fixed amount. Pulling with your ranged ability generates more enmity overall and there's no risk of losing aggro until reaching the boss. Also the cooldown is usually available again when you reach the boss, so there's really no reason to use provoke. Rather save it to snipe the enmity of far-away adds early on
@@Jolsn it is used to group enemies up that are spread out so you can AoE them all without stopping. The amount of enmity it gives doesn't matter if you're hitting them with a GCD anyway. This is especially important for warriors with their conal AoE.
And any stragglers will aggro to you the moment you heal yourself at all.
@@Yairgr123 we‘re talking about boss pulls specifically here, which is what I am talking about in the video. Of course you can use provoke to pull random dungeon mobs from far away
@@Jolsn okay, i totally thought you were talking about ALL pulls in the video. I was confused about trash pulls in my comment. I always have to wait around for GCD when im forced to use ranged attack, so i can aoe and grab everything, otherwise, somebody in the party is going to aggro as i run to the next group. Whereas, if i provoke, by the time i get to the them, most often they are all within range of an AoE and im not waiting on GCD.
side note: wasnt there a patch where they added a flat amount of enmity to provoke? so it puts you at top and then some? I remember reading about that, but never persued answers, since i use ranged attack to pull bosses.
@@fallynnknivez Yeah it does do that, but the enmity you get from the ranged attack is still bigger. It used to be top of enmity list +1
I think the most important rule for tank is not to take the hate of others personally when they pull what they actually shouldnt and try to blame you.
Based on reading through these comments people make it seem like this is a common occurrence. In hundreds of dungeon groups I have only ever once seen someone be remotely toxic or even complain about anyone other than their own performance.
Thanks for this brother will take note of the good inputs you've provided.
I'm still wondering sometimes why my stance suddenly goes off how long does usually the stance activated?
It should stay activated. Maybe you are accidentally using the ability by pressing a wrong key? Thanks for watching, appreciate it
@@Jolsn might be and cause me to ruin the final boss lol luckily we manage to survive. I'm still having hard time for those flying mobs do i need to stay w/ them if i dont plan to pull to much?
As a healer main trying to get into Tanking again- ya had me until 10:28 not respecting the healer bubble lmao
I used to have healer anxiety but now I'm pretty cocky healer (still main DPS in serious contents though) ... but I cant get rid of Tank anxiety .. ;c
I have WAR and PLD at lv.50 but that's it xD
good guide btw .. wont cure my anxiety but things to keep in mind as a healer!
After i become a lvl 90 reaper that is fairly good, i will start Tanking, even tho i am scared as hell to do it, i will try
I main DRK....I had a dps get upset because I pulled small on Smileton which was my first run....he went and pulled an extra mob without me and I got smacked. Also it was the first mob so I couldn't even asses the party's capabilities. He ended up leaving....some people are just so impatient with tanks. Lol
Yeah...some people are just grinding a lot and can forget that some tanks might just be new to a duty or not comfortable on the role
@@Jolsn crazy thing is I always say I'm new to the duty if it's my first time or I tell them that I don't remember it. He still was a asshole. Luckily I very rarely come across people like that
Hey, this video was super informative, but as someone who wants to start leveling WAR after breaking through ARR into HW, I actually want to ask, what's the best way to cycle through a pack of enemies as a tank? Currently I play WHM, and for the most part, I just use T to switch between my tank and whatever they're targeting. This gets more complicated when other party members need healing or if I'm in an 8 man, so I'm dreading the prospect of managing a bunch of enemies as the tank.
Do you literally just tab through all the enemies on screen and bop them with an enmity skill, alongside aoe combos? I've had moderate success doing this as ranged casters, but sometimes I just wind up targeting enemies that are way off in the distance, and feeling like a jackass.
Try cone targeting in the settings, rather than ignore depth
Hello Im a tank in ESO with every class even the sorcerer, Mythic raider in wow. But this is basically the most comprehensive thanking guide I've see in my life. Gj mate thank you.
Mindset:
Well, neither really. I've seen so many terrible tanks that it's impossible for me to feel anxiety for tanking because I literally can't do it as badly as some of the people I've seen. But I don't see tanks as the most important bestest party member either, because playing all 3 roles frequently has taught me that tanking is usually the easiest and lowest pressure role in the whole group, sorry x)
I'm just here because of self-respect, because I know I still have tons of things to improve on~
I completely forgot about the extra effect on Arm's Length, for example. Oof.
nah your right tanking is easy unless you play gnb or pld and actually optimize dps but for war and drk yeh just press buttons
Yeah tanking is the lowest stress role to queue as. In higher end content it might not be but in random queues, it for sure is, you have all your cds and all the healer's cds to cover up your mistakes, you don't have to move as much, you have a cd spefically to skip mechanics and less mechanics involve you to begin with, plus you have bigger health bar and tons of mitigation so all mechanics are a lot harder to die to. And if you die you can just be resed.
Healer is the most important and most stressful role.
The real question on a tank. If your healer or dps pulls the next group because they wanted you to pull more(without just asking you to), do you let them die?
if you wanna be a petty player and never get commendations, sure go ahead be a terrible teamplayer
The real questions is how many times do they deserve to die?
Let it slide once. If they keep doing it let them die. It's rude.
In other words let them die
I would really like to know when is the best time to use CD for each tank :( I'm always holding on to them and not sure when is the best time to use them because I wonder about the timer of CD
ABC. Always be casting. If it's a trash pull, cool down. If it's one monster, cool down. Somebody sneeze? Cooldown. Somebody look at you funny? Cool down. Your cooldowns are so low and recovery time that you should always be using them in a pool. If you're absolutely worried about them being up, start with the longest one first. Read your tooltips. Use the longest recovery first, then the next one, and then the next one. By the time you're done, all them should be back up. Also, always use arm's length, because it is a mitigation. Save retribution for raid wide damage, because that does matter a lot. As a matter of fact, it will be the difference between a wipe and everyone being alive, Pepsi man Savage being a perfect example of this, because popping retribution while he does his raid smacks is about 3000 health, and anybody not up to full can potentially survive it. In general though, it doesn't really matter. The only thing that really matters is saving your ass saver for when you'll really need it, because you generally only get one. The only difference is Dark Knight, because they basically don't have one without a benediction on hand.
Do note I typed that up with back-to-back polls in mind. In a raid scenario, you want to be popping those cooldowns longest cooldown the shortest cooldown in sequence according to the tank Buster that is coming. Save arms-length for when there's a knock-back that you can't afford to be moved from. Save retribution for nasty shit everyone can't Dodge. Just general stuff like this.
When dealing with trash you wanna use your cds on rotation from the very beginning of the pull if done right you'll always have a chance available so don't worry during boss fights you'll use your personal cd ( sentenal, raw intuition, heart of stone, blackest night etc) for tankbusters and your party cd (divine veil, shake it off, heart of light etc) for raid/party wide damage.
That's a terrible habit as a tank. Just use them. You will get a feel for more optimal use over time but as a tank you have a ton of cds, nigh on enough to have one up all the time, and it is absolutely wasteful not to use them.
Funny how there are so many good guides for years...but I still queue up with tanks that don't even use cooldowns xD
As a tank I shirk black mages I see standing in attacks because they can live through it
Im sorry I didnt get how the shirk macro worked or what it does. Care to explain plz.
Shirk is used to give enmity to another tank. Usually you have to click on them and them use the ability to get the effect. Using the macro allows you to just press the ability because it will always target the tank.
The specific way that macro is setup is
line 1: use the Shirk Icon for this macro
line 2: Turns off error messages resulting from this macro
line 3+: Cast Shirk on the 2nd player on the party. if you're a tank, 2nd player on the list is ALWAYS the other tank because players are ordered by role (Tanks, Healers, DPS, in that order. So unless you lack a tank, player 2 is always either the other tank or tank #1, and so on.)
Line 4+: SPAM SHIRK JUST TO BE SURE (This is why the errors are turned off)
There's one piece of advice that bothered me a lot, the tank swap, both tanks should always have their tank stance on, ALWAYS you don't take that off, ever. It's the first thing you put on when entering a dungeon or trial, second, the swap, again no need to take off your stance since provoke puts you both on top of the enmity list and add a % of the enmity gained on top, making it impossible for the other tank to take back aggro even if they tried, unless they use provoke as well. As for the actual tank swap, you let the off tank provoke the boss off of you then you as the previous main tank shirk the new main tank (To be sure of the transfer so there's no silly take off tank stance stuff going on), and when you need to take back aggro, you provoke and the other tank shirks you, that simple. You can tell that shirk is a mechanic related skill by it's 2 minute cooldown window, which is the window in which the bosses rotate their skills and players rotate their 2minute big damage buffs.
It‘s actually a good habit to get into because you can‘t rely on the other tanks damage output. I‘ve had lots of runs where I just shirk and often the DPS afterwards just gives me aggro back. There is no reason not to turn off the stance when swapping and just turning it back on 15 seconds later
@@Jolsn Thing is, you can rely on your own, the boss doesn't do it's tankbuster/cleave till after it's first cast, so you can just stand next to the other tank and ramp up aggro, then Shirk to the other tank and move into position(It's usually enough for them to grab main aggro after your Shirk) or they can provoke it off you during the boss's first cast, the more aggro you generate the more you pass on with Shirk since it gives a % of your aggro to the person you cast it on. But knowing how the new tank buffs work yeah i can understand that turning it on and off works all the same, but it's annoying that sprout/returning tanks are telling people to turn off tank stance just because they seen a guide and think it's the only right way.
@@AiMeiZing It's a dying habit at least now. But it used to be a thing where tank stance shaved about 10% off of your DPS, and there are still some holdovers from that time that haven't read their tool tips since.
" you stand and fall as a party"
Warriors: i didnt agree to that
Regaridng Mindset: What if one suffers from anxiety over *feeling* like there is a lot of responsibility on ones shoulders to do everything right? :(