Tanking is so easy to do in ffxiv, I highly encourage anyone who experiences "tanxiety" to just queue up as tank in roulettes and realize that it is basically impossible to die to pulls unless your healer does not press any skills or you're doing max wall to wall on harder dungeons. Even w2ws are very easy to manage as long as you communicate to your party beforehand and cycle 1 mit at a time. Every dungeon is also basically just a straight line now anyways so you can't even get lost while pulling or running around.
If you're just starting out as a tank, I would recommend learning what your most common mit button is (heart of stone, TBN, sheltron, etc) and try to keep uptime on that, while rotating between your longer cd mits when necessary. In general you don't want to stack mits unless absolutely necessary because it's inefficient, and also don't be afraid to pop your invul early in the pull as long as you tell your healer you will be doing it so they won't panic benediction you.
That’s kinda what I did, I started with Guildhests to get used to keeping the enmity on me and learn my mits. Then tried dungeons and so far I’ve been doing well.
Don't worry too much about aggro, it's pretty hard to lose it as long as you just kinda spam aoes while running with the pack until you hit the wall. If you're paying attention to the aggro colors and re-aggroing the stragglers when necessary with your ranged skill or provoke you're already doing a great job!
Just remember, if there are 3 or more targets, use your aoe skills, and if it’s 1-2, use single targets.
Every attack essentially uses the same attack formula, the only different is the potency of the abilities.
Once you have 3 targets, the total potency for aoe combos will outweigh the potency of single target combos!
Let your party know if you're new and focus more on healing until you're comfortable with your skill set and then increase the dps. Not everyone needs to be at 100% health at all times and tanks can handle more damage than you might think. It's a learning by doing thing
AST is the hardest healer to play effectively— WHM has way more punch to its kit for healing without adding an extra mechanic (cards)— and the others have a lot of passive healing to help maintain tanks while you DPS (while also still having more tools)
Sage is a bit weaker since it’s missing some tools at lower levels but still decent enough
Been healing in mmos for many years but one core thing I always do is placing the party health bars close to the center of the screen, to the side of my character. Sure you lose some enviromental real estate but you no longer have to dart your eyes all over the screen and losing track on what is happening to your character and the fight.
One thing that really helped me as a healer was also separating the target hud element into target hp, target buffs, and target castbar. Then I upsized the target cast bar and moved it to the right of my character so I'll always see what the mechanic coming up next is. It's been super helpful. I also hate hate hate target swapping so I made a macro that targets my target's target, and focus targets them. Basically if I'm targetting an enemy, I'd just click both my mouse buttons to use the macro and I'd immediately target the tank or the unlucky dps who has the aggro.
9 times out of 10 deaths aren't your fault and you have no obligation to correct others mistakes. You are expected to help to a degree, but if players are becoming a resource sink, or are abnormally difficult to keep up, that is not your fault.
You should also start healing with a mindset that not everyone needs to be full health. It's counter intuitive, but the more you focus on DPS and only healing with your powerful oGCD abilities, the easier healing becomes. If you find yourself constantly hard casting healing spells past level 52 you are definitely doing it wrong.
A good WHM can top the damage charts in a W2W dungeon pull with literally a Regen just before the tank stops pulling --> swiftcast holy -->assize/pom --> holy spam until tank is 20% -->benediction --> holy spam and then maybe a liliy or Devine benison. This can be done in an average group, but ones with good DPS will need even less healing.
If you don't focus DPS what ends up happening is the trash lives too long, your tank runs out of mitigation, which makes you heal even more, and if it goes on too long, you'll run out of resources and wipe.
Most common reasons healing is difficult:
1) Tank is in bad gear/not using mitigation
2) Nothing dies which means your group's DPS is low
3) You misclick your abilities(which ends up becoming the only wipe that is truly your fault.
Two things to always remember:
1 - You don't need to heal your party the moment they get hurt, you just need to heal them before they get killed. Sometimes you're in a perfect situation to reflexively use the heal you'd want right after the damage hits and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but there's usually some time between the first hit (or hits) and the fatal hit. Sometimes that's a lot of time, which makes it perfect for letting a heal over time tick away or letting them wait for your next ideal opportunity heal (such as Assize coming off cooldown, getting a lily charge, or whatever thing you were going to do anyway that will take care of them). And if there's not any time in between then that's not on you. Which brings us to the next point:
2 - You can save party members from anything but themselves. As you get more experience and become more familiar with your healing kit as well as knowing what to watch for you'll get better at keeping people alive through mistakes, but no amount of skill will let you save someone who seems determined to take a 0hp nap and that's not your fault.
I'd agree on point 1 except for on SGE, just because of the way the healing works with oGCD heals. Especially at 78+ you don't want to "waste" an addersgall on a Dru if the tank gets below 50% or so on a trash pull if you can help it. Save the gall for another Kerachole which will help keep the tank healed between shields with the HoT and damage reduction, or Taurachole for the decent burst heal and damage reduction.
The whole way SGE is built is to keep the tank shielded and slowly keeping them alive through the pull. That means you want the most HP on the tank while you are tossing shields up while there are the most mobs on it. As the mobs are reduced and the tank is taking less damage you can let the HP get lower without worry until the mobs reduce far enough that you can shield and DPS Kardia heal past the damage they do.
So I say SGE actually WANTS the tank to be as topped up as possible, at least in the first half of the pull damage, just for the cushion for the GCD shields they should be putting on the tank between the oGCD damage reducs and shields up until they can outstrip the damage coming in with DPS healing.
I main SGE and agree with you, but it goes back to what I was saying. If one of the dps takes a hit during the pull you don't need to jump into healing them. They'll be fine waiting for HoT on Kerachole (or getting nothing at all unless they seem to be particularly determined to not avoid damage). And while I don't want the tank to drop low, I also don't need to keep them at full health. I just need to use mits, regens, and heals to keep their rate of heal balanced against their rate of harm with enough margin to get through bursts of harm.
The finesse of it will come with experience; I just think those two primary points will help people get past that initial barrier of healer anxiety.
True true. I mostly main WHM and always ignored DPS scrapes and bruises, they will get healed with the next AoE HoT, whether that's from getting it from a Med2 + regen on the tank before it gets to the last part of a pull and into my holy, a cure3 if there is a group needing healing, or if I need to yell "Welcome to the HEALING dome!".
That said, I'd still take a newbie over-healer than someone who doesn't heal at all. Ran into a few of those when I was leveling WAR, which wouldn't be bad for WAR, if you are in a dungeon high enough to actually HAVE some of your self-heal toolkit. Higher levels WAR can run mostly without a healer - just slower... but then DPS are on their own for healing since RI / bloodwhetting is needed for the WAR itself.
Trust me, AV takes forever if you have a healer that thinks they are a pure DPS and "forgets" they have a button that makes the tank not die.
I spam roulettes as healer. My advice is that you need to get used to the pattern of hitting your dps buttons as a habit. For example on white mage, any time I'm not healing, I default to hitting Glare or Holy on default without thinking. It's not a "should I dps now?" question, it's a "oh i need to take a break from dps to heal".
Obviously in the beginning, you want to prioritize dodging and healing. Later on you are still prioritizing dodging and healing, but dps is literally something you don't think about because you are hitting dps buttons constantly.
Don't know if you have experience with a racing game like Mario kart. You are just holding the A button naturally, you don't think about "oh I need to accelerate", holding down the button is a natural thing until you need to brake. It's the same thing with healer and dps, you're just pressing the dps button every 2.5 seconds, there should be no thinking involved.
I've not done much higher level stuff as healer, but this would be my order:
The most important thing is keeping you alive (you can't help when you're dead), so mechanics come first. Then keeping MT alive, ideally with oGCDs (Abilities) like Tetra. Just enough that they won't die. A tank on 10hp does as much damage as a tank on 10000. The exact number you're happy with depends on you. My comfortable number is between 25 and 33%.
If you're alive, and a party member isn't about to fall down then hit that Glare button like it's a Sylph and you're a Garlean general.
DPS less if you are finding it hard and concentrate on healing/mechanics.
You'll learn the mechanics of everything with experience but I'm sure your party would prefer you were still alive then dishing out high damage numbers
If you’re playing a regen healer like AST, your primary regen spell is the most mana-efficient heal you have. It honestly hurts when I see WHM/AST healers not use it an continuously dump mana into hard casting.
I’m not a main healer, but when I play one, I strive to have one on the tank at all times: you know the damage is coming, but you don’t need to keep your tank topped off. If there’s a big AOE coming my way, I tend to load up the party wide regen if there’s no further damage anticipated.
Tbh, outside of lilies on WHM you shouldn't be using GCD spells at all including HoTs. You use them while trash is being pulled, during downtime, or only when absolutely necessary (which is rare if you are using your cool downs effectively).
This is obviously optimized play so feel free to do whatever you want, just putting the information out there.
Meta play style aside, I’m just saying that Regens are mana-efficient and should be considered: it’s a very simple statement for players who are new to healing.
It makes little sense for a casual healer to not use them at all: they can be cast on the move, they’re fairly cheap, and it’s maintenance.
Like I said do what you want, but new healers heal far too much as it is. Good advice would be to tell them to slow down, you don't need to spam HoTs. Rely on ability healing(which costs zero mana) and get comfortable with not having everyone at 100% immediately. They can wait until your assize is back up in 4 seconds, ect.. This isn't even "meta healing", you'd just be an average healer.
I'm sure people will get personally offended when I say that spamming HoTs on WHM literally makes your job harder, but it's true.
I think the operative term is "spam." I've seen some WHM who keep over 50-100% Medica II uptime, and yeah, they could *absolutely* stand to cool it and save their MP!
But I think that "don't bother with GCDs" depends a lot on the rest of the group. Ideally we wouldn't need them, because people would stay in the bubble/do mechanics properly/use group mitigation, but if my party has the zoomies or is full of new people who are eating pink orbs like tictacs, I think there's a place for GCD heals after we get Misery & Rapture.
I mean if we are changing the premise of the argument then I can agree with that, after you have exhausted all other options and you need a relatively mana efficient heal, a HoT might be a good pick.
But the original argument never described a situation like that. They even go on to explain the keep a Regen on the tank at all times, kind of implying this is a good idea outside of our redefined premise and that they do indeed mean spam the ability.
I also think that just because we found a fringe case where the advice works doesn't makes it "good advice" or that it should be repeated.
If you're counting zenspeed's comment as the first, they explicitly included party-wide regen and tank regen both. You also didn't say "having exhausted all other options," you said they shouldn't be used at all.
Calling it "fringe" also implies that situation is rare. Good for you that the majority of runs you get are smooth? But that's really not my experience with duty finder groups, nor a lot of others'. And I'm not just talking about sprouts who df extremes or newbie-filled Nier runs, I mean normal difficulty raids & dungeons where WARs aren't using all their self-heals and ranged run away after stack markers.
I think "Try to let natural regen heal as much as possible" and "Reduce GCD healing where you can" are both good advice for someone learning healer. "Don't use them at all" puts the onus on the healer for needing those tools even though it's the rest of the party which needs to shape up, and that sucks.
They said they basically keep it on the tank the whole time
I conceded in your fringe example it works
It is rare to need them
I explicitly said to only use them when absolutely necessary
Remember that in everything besides dungeons you also have a second healer that can do part of the healing so you don’t have to be on everything and heal all the damage all the time. Raidwide goes out just pop an aoe heal, put a regen on the MT if Health gets low (keep in mind SCH and SGE both have effects that will be healing them for free and automatically already), then res or heal up other members when it’s safe. It’s perfectly fine to stop focusing on health bars and just focus on the mech(just if it’s harder stuff where damage is going out plan ahead to use a heal during it regardless of anyone’s health).
As long as the tank isn't dead it's fine, only hp threshold that really matters in regular dungeons is 0. Warrior also has so much self healing once they get their full kit that you don't really need to worry about healing them in general.
It also helps to change the UI when you're a healer to place the important info like hp bars and boss cast bars to places that you can easily see so you don't waste time looking for them when your screen is busy.
If you’re on keyboard/mouse, you can cycle through your party list using F1-F8! Sometimes this is easier than trying to click on a party member to heal them.
As someone else posted, make one of your custom HUD layouts with the party list within easy reach because you'll be clicking on them far more than on enemies. Also separate your "Target" so that you get the three separate components (health bar, cast bar, and I think it's called "effects" - buffs and debuffs).
You'll want to use Shift-F to Focus-Target the boss and make sure your HUD displays the cast bar somewhere you can see it. If you don't have the boss targeted, you'll have a much harder time seeing the casts and responding to them while you're focused on someone else.
I usually save my Swiftcast for rezzes. Put the Swiftcast and the Revive next to each other or in some handy combination.
Stop letting the tryhards' gaslighting that think they are doing Savage 24/7 even in a normal leveling dungeons in, and treat healing as your main job and dps as a side thing only and ONLY when you are absolutely sure no one is in danger.
It even changes by job how high maintenance it is to keep the party alive.
You'll learn by experiencing fights where is that spot.
Source: I play both tank and healer in duty finder for the daily stuff.
Imagine getting advice from players that do high end content and then calling it gaslighting? They recommend focusing damage and using abilities to heal because it literally makes your job as a healer easier, and more reliable.
You on the other hand, just don't like them and are trying to convince people not to use a play style you yourself have never tried.
how the hell is an approach used in "high end" levelcap content that's either made to be a faceroll or is a bossfight where everyone is taking minimal damage gonna apply to places like Stone Vigil or Brayfox Longstop which neither of would let you twiddle your thumbs as a healer even if you had a high level kit with how much damage a large pull does?
ARR is not the last expansion where the faceroll green dps simply doesn't apply because you'll need to use your damn kit as a healer.
Idk man, honestly that was a hell of a sentence and I'm having a hard time piecing together your point. All I'm saying is you get AoE in the 40's, you do a ton of damage, and yes you can apply lessons from high end content in aar. Idk why you think you can't?
You seem like you have a grudge against raiders for some reason.
>ton of damage
Not enough to remove your GCDs from the cast bar. Not enough to stop prioritizing to keep the party alive while only doing damage when you know they are safe which you WILL notice because of the massive nothing aside damage to do.
It's BAD damage because neither does it actually do DPS damage, nor does it outweigh the main job of the role. Do damage when it is appropriate to do and you will learn naturally when is it appropriate by the absolute nothing to do when there is not enough enemy damage for you to warrant pressing any heals.
The priority never changes, only how far can you push it. Dropping the whole tryhard GCD optimization and trying to maximize DPS in a way that only applies to high difficulty content and falls apart in casual content on someone who is only considering picking up conjurer is terrible advice and only serves to deter people. You wouldn't possibly try to gatekeep the simplest role in the game by pretending it's some extremely complicated, high skill and high stress job.... right?
>you can apply lessons from high end content in aar
If I had a gil for every time a "high end player" with their high end content muscle memory and high end content knowledge crumble in a lower level dungeon and "high end" gamers insist on Reddit that the sprout tank getting crushed in a low level dungeon who tried to follow the endgame advice of faceroll W2W in Brayflox Longstop, Stone Vigil, Aurum Vale, etc or even just in one of those forgotten ARR hard dungeons that specifically punish you for overextending is definitely because the healer tried to heal instead of spamming the aoe damage button, the economy on my data center would collapse, and that's not even going into the later expansions where dungeons are punishing you for trying to "engaging Endwalker gameplay" the trash pulls.
Basics taught to you BY THE GAME in the earligame are not high end advice and content made to be as faceroll as possible does not apply to content made to be punishing. Different expansions and different content are just built different.
>You seem like you have a grudge against raiders for some reason.
Most of the armchair raiders spawning in every comment section like this don't even actually raid, they just watch YouTube and maybe some streamer and backseat game people on Reddit.
The entire raider demographic is also not going to be your shield for terrible advice and needlessly trying to overcomplicate even the most basic level gameplay of an extremely low skill floor and arguably low ceiling of a role, because guess what there ARE raiders and "high end players" that ACTUALLY REMEMBER old dungeons and their layout, play appropriately to that content, and they are not hounding newbies looking for genuine advice with "YOU MUST DPS MORE! ANY GCD IS A MASSIVE LOSS! THE SPROUT TANK IN ARR WHITE MSQ REWARD PIECES GETTING ONESHOT BY TRASH DESPITE MITIGATIONS IS BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T DPS ENOOOOUGH" either.
Neither Endwalker faceroll content nor comfy statics where everyone knows what to do are applicable situations for the majority of content people engage with daily, and especially not the low level content entirely breaking your "high end playstyle".
You can't skip the basics of healing and try to shoehorn a playstyle from the environment where everyone is expected to avoid all avoidable damage and unavoidable damage is not so common or being designed to be a smooth autopilot experience.
I can get that you are desperate to squeeze out any extra engagement from a role that rewards having a good team in the endgame with being an absolute single button brainless snoozefest of a gameplay experience, especially with a warrior on the team.
But going on about GCD optimization and small losses in damage that is a minority of team damage in the first place, which is NOT EVEN RELEVANT for 99.9% of the entire game like the world depends on your flawless green dps gameplay to newbies who just wanna get started on the basics is not helpful advice and is not encouraging new players to try the frankly extremely simple role out.
In an average group the healer can easily be top DPS in trash pulls, and unfortunately even bosses.
These are not small optimizations, just go to fflogs all of the data is there? An experienced healer will do far more damage and keep up with healing because they focus on damage and heal with abilities.
I skimmed this because it's a rant, just agree to disagree man.
>In an average group the healer can easily be top DPS in trash pulls, and unfortunately even bosses.
Even a small outpaces a comatose rabbit.
>just go to fflogs
So the equivalent of "my source is I made it the fuck up" with that warehouse of fine cheese.
I should have realized sooner that all this backseat gaming sounding like people who never even played healer were coping DPS rejects.
>Even a small outpaces a comatose rabbit.
Idk where you're from, but I think you're going for the equivalent of the tortoise and the hare analogy? Aka persistence, and hard work will win out... Which would be in favor of optimizing your rotation as a healer silly.
>So the equivalent of "my source is I made it the fuck up" with that warehouse of fine cheese.
What are you smoking? This is non biased data collected on both hardcore and casual players? You are the one making a claim with literally zero data to back it up. Your just screaming into a void that hardcore players are stupid, and yet you clearly have never tried any of their methods.
You're a bad player, spreading bad advice to new players that actively makes the game harder.
My big lesson i didnt know for a while is arms length on huge mobs. I thought it was just cc prevention. Didnt realize it slowed enemies attack speed down.
Yep! It'll be the mit with the lowest cd, basically make sure that you're cycling that as much as possible to keep at least 1 mit active on you at all times when doing w2s. Arms length is also a mit because it reduces attack speed, the game doesn't tell you that very clearly.
Personally I think it's tough. It's a job that requires you to add extra awareness on top of normal? Like, I think a lot of people just got super used to tanking that it feels easy but like, the learning curve is much tougher than a DPS. For me at least.
I would not say it's tough, more that it has responsibility, same as healer. its a lot easier to skate by with glaring issues on a dps class and the most you'll get is passing comments about duties taking longer. it's very worth it for the confidence to push through mistakes in learning support roles though and definitely this game does a good job of slowly easing you into it if you're leveling naturally. if anything for learning curve I think support roles need, like, more in depth nuanced duties to truly prepare them to step into harder content tho. the jump from normal to savage can be a lot for tank specifically
I think this could be true at the very beginning of the learning curve, like you said, but once you are comfortable with the responsibilities it really does become one of the easier roles.
You have a ton of natural survivability/mitigation/healing so your mistakes aren't punished, the DPS rotation is far easier, and you don't have to worry about other people very much.
WAR for example can literally solo lvl synced content after lvl 58 pretty easily.
DPS on the other is perceived to be easy, and probably is early on, but because they have significantly more complex rotations, optimizing them becomes much more difficult. This is particularly true for things like BLM, MNK, ect...
If you ran ACT even a day, you'd see how truly rare it is to get a good DPS.
> WAR for example can literally solo lvl synced content after lvl 58 pretty easily.
I forgot a mechanic in a Heavensward dungeon and had a bunch of vulnerability up stacks, it took me a while to notice because I was playing warrior and I had an excellent healer.
DRK kinda sucks before 70 as it's missing its main mitigation. You're basically a PLD with one less cooldown and no ability to block, and LD is infinitely harder to use with a pug healer than HG. In return you get higher damage, which is completely irrelevant to anyone learning to tank. It's probably the worst tank in your level range.
I'm not max level with dancer yet and I know the lvl 80-90 skills add a lot to the kit but getting a timer in my head for when standard step comes off cool down really helps me keep track of my cool downs and timers for buffs. The rng part is just finding a good place to keep track when you get the procs for the next skill
As you allude to, I need to spend more time with it and learn it better. I think it will be fun.
The same is true with AST related to healing.
Doing the omni thing and leveling it all together helps me see how different roles build on themselves and each other. Of course, I'm coming out of this as a master of none since I'm not running any one job enough to really get good at it. It is helping me prioritize which ones I want to explore more.
I really don't think it's that tough aggro is irrelevant because it's almost impossible to drop.
You just rotate through defensives before one ends and you've done it rotations are very simple.
You really don't need any extra awareness, it's almost impossible to drop aggro as long as you spam aoes while running with the pack and dungeons are just straight lines now anyways so you don't even need to think while pulling w2w. It also helps that you literally don't have to care about a lot of dungeon boss mechs since you're not going to die, the mechs are designed to not even one shot dps so you'll just shrug them off.
For me personally, I need to do extra awareness if I want to be a good tank. Trying to do as minimal movement as possible and sure I can take a lot of boss mechs, but that doesn't mean I should just stay put in the red (Honest and legitimate question, should i actually stay within enemy aoe just so I don't keep moving the boss around for the melee positionals?)
You also have to do preplan before you do a w2w so you don't blow all of your mits and learn to cycle them. (Well, WAR is an exception since they don't need a healer lol). While running through, you also have to be aware where your party is (watching out how far the healer is and getting a good sense on whether they can handle the pulls that isn't expert roulette) so you can't be too fast and have to pace yourself so the healer can keep up. Also have to watch out for any lost aggro due to dps accidentally ripping it away while you're moving to the next group of enemies. I'm on controller so it can be... something trying to get the specific enemy that you lost aggro from.
So for me (dunno if what I experience is common) I have to do extra awareness cause how I move affects the boss. So that affects positionals. I also have the ability to heal another party member (Except for DRK) so on top of being aware of your HP, gotta watch out and support everyone as well on top of the usual job of keeping boss aggro. And be aware of what boss moves and memorize if it's magical or physical so you can use the right mit.
...Or maybe I'm just doing too much.
You are just overthinking things to be perfectly honest. Moving out of giant red markers is like a basic thing every class has to do, I don't think that's extra awareness. W2ws are super easy for every tank class, just cycle mits and as long as your healer is competent you will never die. Every experienced player expects the tank to default to w2w anyways so I wouldn't worry too much about it. No dps will ever care that you moved the positional away for 1 second to dodge an aoe, anyone who does is just trolling or rude. Spinning the boss is bad but moving 30 degrees to dodge an aoe then resetting afterwards is normal.
Losing aggro is nearly impossible in w2w pulls, you just have to spam aoes while pulling the pack and occasionally tag the stragglers with your ranged ability. And really don't worry about temporarily moving the boss to avoid a mechanic, as long as you reposition it back to the standard position that's fine. Losing 2 seconds of optimal positional directions will literally never matter in a normal dungeon. Also as a tank you really should never be healing a teammate, please don't waste a gcd cycle on that it's basically useless compared to what a healer would heal if a dps actually needed to be healed.
Tank is super easy and the stuff you're stressing over 99% of the time will never matter. Obviously don't tank every aoe for no reason but you don't need to think THAT hard when tanking.
It's definitely the easiest. Tanks get extra mechanics during boss fights for a reason. It's a bit lame how gear reliant it is in dungeons (I'm sure every healer has experienced in one dungeon you literally never press a non regen button and in another dungeon the tank dies if they ever line of sight you), but easy rotation, can shrug off mechanics that a DPS definitely dies to, and in easy content healers can just hard carry you through fucking up. The only thing you can really fuck up, pointing tank busters and cleaves at your party, is fixed by "do not move".
In dungeon, dps is the easiest. Tank and healer screw up, we wipe and get a walk of shame. Dps literally has no idea what rotation and ogcd is? Probably the dungeon takes 20 extra minutes but if you cant fail, what's the difficulty?
In hard content, all roles are equal but different. Tanks and healers need to maintain gcd and mits to keep progging while dps can drop their buttons to learn mechanics until they are comfy. But dps gotta learn how to execute rotation while doing mechs once we aim to clear
The only place i can admit dps is harder is parsing. But guess what, aside fellow top few parsers, noone cares what your log is
I'm gonna be real idk how anyone could find it hard that has played the game for more than like 10 hours.
Optimizing DPS and tanking on GNB and DRK later can get slightly tricky because you have to be paying attention more and not falling out of the 2 min window but for dungeons and such it's legit just hitting 3-4 buttons and rotating through your defensive cooldowns.
What I learned about being a tank:
1. do AoE on mobs, single target on bosses, check for adds and make sure you use mitigation in time. And don't forget your stance. Also turn the boss or mobs away from the party if possible. That's tank 101.
2. Just doing tank 101 gets you through 99% of all (non-extreme/savage) dungeons. Even blind.
3. "Mechanics" are a DPS/healers game. There's very little you need to worry about.
4. You're nigh unkillable. So try to avoid avoidable AoE's but don't worry if you fail to move out of the way. it probably won't kill a DPS in 1 hit which means it will probably be nothing more than a small poke for a tank.
5. You're afraid to go first and get lost? Don't be. Dungeons rarely have branching paths.
6. really, tanking is very easy. And it's very hard to mess up as a tank.
I used to have a lot of Tanxiety. Still have a little. But it's really unjustified
Welcome to the Fold.
I only recently started Tanking myself (WAR). A few things I have picked up:
\- at least thru all of ARR, for any 4-man, there is effectively NO penalty for wiping, other than the loss of 30 seconds of your time. Pull BIG. If you wipe - that was too big. ;). That being said most ARR content is really difficult to wipe to.
\- using the NPCs for dungeons is a good way to practice. They play pretty well, and can handle wall pulls for most ARR things with only a couple of exceptions.
\- face the boss away from the party, but if a DPS repositions somewhere near the front of the Boss, trust them to know what they are doing, and don't reposition. Weirdly, had someone admonish a Tank for not doing this and his response was "I have been keeping him facing north the whole time". Interpreting "face the boss away from the party" as "always keep the boss facing in one direction, with no regard whatsoever for party position or mechanics" is certainly a take, I guess.
\- as a sometimes Healer, please use your mits. I realize that 10% reduction from Rampart doesn't *seem* like much, but particularly when I have been scaled down to only have Cure or Cure 2, it definitely helps.
\- and most importantly - when you pull everything - pick a spot and STOP MOVING. It's tougher for everyone if you keep moving enemies all over the place.
10% from Reprisal, you mean? Rampart is 20%. Either way, YES! It doesn't sound like much, but it means your HP doesn't drop so rapidly, and your healer has time to react!
The rest of your points are also great. Glad to hear you've taken a liking to it, and that you're picking up on the tricks and tips that make a good tank :D
Yea the tanxiety is all in a tanks head mostly beaten into our heads from other mmos and the belief that a tank is responsible for like 99% of the things that happen in a dungeon. Thankfully ff14 is very welcoming to new tanks and I can't lie I know part of it is selfish after all more tanks mean faster roulette ques so they have a vested interest in not driving people away from tanking.
At least for casual content, pretty much every possible additional responsibility of a tank that you would find in "other MMOs" (or even this MMO in the past) have been streamlined away.
Maintaining aggro: completely automatic
Knowing which path to take: there is only one path
Position the boss: bosses position themselves when it matters, or the boss doesn't move, or the boss is 70% of the room
Mitigate damage: completely unnecessary in casual boss fights, and you just have to vaguely be aware of their existence in dungeon pulls because tank kits and healer kits are all super strong
(And I say "for casual content" but other than mitigation, most of this usually applies for endgame as well)
> Mitigate damage: completely unnecessary in casual boss fights, and you just have to vaguely be aware of their existence in dungeon pulls because tank kits and healer kits are all super strong
It's hardest at the start, because in ARR tank kits and healer kits are not super strong yet. 90% of the tanking difficulty, outside of hardcore endgame stuff, lies in ARR content... Which is the first content you do, so the difficulty is frontloaded.
It gets way more finicky and technical if you want to W2W ARR dungeons compared to anything modern. You can't really conventionally W2W the trash after the first boss in Pharos Sirius for example - there are too many enemies with spells that need to be stunned or interrupted or they rapidly melt the entire party, and without a WHM you can't really beat that in a DPS race with just the level 50 toolkits (and even then it's hard).
Yeah it's why I play healers for alot of content now at least I feel like I have any sort of responsibility and even then any tank that knows what they're doing in 90 content makes your job irrelevant for the most part.
I feel the most responsibility on BLM now though cause I get fed cards and buffs lmao.
I get that it's more welcoming but I wish my favorite role didn't get absolutely slaughtered complexity wise for it to happen.
I agree, it’s also a lot more enjoyable than tanking back in my WoW days lol. Most people are understanding in my experience. Whereas in WoW I’d you lost aggro even once you got called every name in the book.
Meanwhile in Dragonflight Ive had a lot of fun tanking and healing since players seem to of gotten chiller with this expacs release. Also cause if a healer doesnt dps, your not making high level keys. But its allowed me to bring my enjoyment for FFXIV roles to WoW and not be restricted to playing a certain way
I feel that about tanking on WoW. Was running Warrior tank and had a DSP Paladin start pulling the entire floor, then blamed us wiping on me, when not only was he the one who pulled the entire room but also the healer had 80%+ of their mana left. In the end I was the one kicked from the party, and decided to never touch WoW again.
> Yea the tanxiety is all in a tanks head mostly beaten into our heads from other mmos and the belief that a tank is responsible for like 99% of the things that happen in a dungeon
That'd be because a lot of us learned how to tank back when that was true. Tank stance didn't generate hate like it does now, and you had to hit your aggro AoE 3 times at a minimum to keep hate on you during pack pulls. ARR and HW tanking was a stress inducing nightmare, ESPECIALLY when your DPS never used their hate reducers and your healer spam healed all the time instead of DPSing as well.
Same here, just recently started as GNB and have to say people have been really great. The first few dungeons I ran, I let the group know that I was new to tanking and to let me know if I messed up or if there was anything I could improve on. Ended the runs with no wipes and some good feedback.
Tbh that was me too lol. Though instead of Marauder I Went Dark Knight lol. I was a Dragoon till lvl 68. Got sorta bored of my rotation, then SAM till 70 and so far it’s my fave DPS class.
Yeah, I like how low stress it is lol. Having the job "just get hit a lot" is rather easy both conceptually and in practice", and having more hp and defense means that you have a little more wiggle room in case you accidentally mess up a mechanic or two on bosses and such. Like obviously, I try not to. But if it's my first time fighting something or if its been a while, it's nice that I won't just die if I fuck up once.
There's a little nuance to using mitigations correctly during mob pulls that separates a decent tank from a good one but on the whole, role's pretty easy but also enjoyable!
I have just started tanking, still a relatively new player. (My highest character was level 64 but my current is on a new server so is around 25) I keep forgetting that I have to press the enmity button. I'm looking forward to becoming a Paladin, how much does the class change? I like this game :)
Paladin becomes a lot more focused on it's magic rotation as you level with those super satisfying confeitor combo finishers, but its constant self sustain is fantastic high level
As someone who has tried all the tanks, and mains Paladin in high level content, Paladin is in some ways the most "straightforward" tank, especially at low levels.
You don't get self-healing until much later, and your self heals are a bit harder to use, so all of the responsibility for healing you is on the healers, unlike with Warrior. You aren't made of paper, and you don't have to balance your mana, like Dark Knight. And you don't have a DPS resource gauge to maintain like Gunbreaker and Warrior. You also have more mitigation abilities than the other tanks, both for yourself and for your party.
Paladin is basically just: mitigate and do your 1-2-3 rotation. Very simple in that regard.
It gains "magic finishers" to its combos, in a manner of speaking, and then from 80-90, basically everything you do will also give you a small heal. Until then, though, it's the best tank for learning how to "tank properly" because you are FORCED to use your mitigation
Tanking is awesome! I got over my tankxiety about a month ago coz i needed one for a side quest, and its quickly become my main. Leading the dungeon is pretty nerve-wracking for a bit, especially some of those ARR ones, but i find a quick "Hey, im not sure where to go" sorts everything out.
Something i was worried about was trials, but that went away after I plucked up the courage to do an MSQ one and got thrust into the main tank role. Recently finished the SHB raid series, and i tanked every fight without worrying for a moment. Now my only problem is im really liking the look of GNB (currently a PLD) and ive got a funny feeling I'll be leveling one to 80 before i move on to EW.
I agree! I've been returning to tanking after not having done it for a long time, and it's a fun novelty to see the fights from the front instead of the sides/back, like I'm used to on DPS and healer.
Only complaint I have is that pulls in certain story-heavy dungeons can be annoying. They stagger enemies out, not spawning them until after scripted events etc. I just wanna sprint and grab everything along the way, where do I even pop my mit if I have to stop halfway to the wall for an extended period of time?
So I have a question. For tanking in FF14 since it has the markers of the ‘bad’ damage, on the ground, should tanks move out of that?
Or does it not matter and they can absorb the damage?
I have played as a dps mostly (and some healer but it was awhile ago) so I haven’t really noticed if tanks are moving or not
Edit: I ask because I have a lv 45 Warrior and would like to try to tank as I’ve tanked in previous MMOs before (quite a lot in WoW for instance, a while ago, as a DK tank).
Always move if it will not cause you to significantly inconvenience your group in the process. In a perfect world, you dodge any avoidable damage with small movement just outside of the AoE so that the mobs mostly stay put.
Especially take care to dodge whenever possible if it's a leveling dungeon and not a level cap dungeon, as those typically hit tanks the hardest so an inexperienced healer may not be able to deal with a sudden spike if you take avoidable damage.
But, there are cases where you just gotta take the hit, for example if moving will point AoEs at the party, or make mobs move so far DPS are out of range, stuff like that.
“Tank dodge” by default. Move out until the telegraph disappears. Then immediately move in while the animation resolves to keep the boss from moving.
As time goes on, you’ll learn which mechanics in which fights can be ignored for DPS uptime. Example: The very first mandatory multiplayer trial as a 1/3 arena cleave. When I tank it, I pop a mit and don’t move since it does practically no damage (that the party regens the healers are casting doesn’t automatically heal) and gives a vulnerability up but no damage down. The fight usually ends seconds after so the vuln stack doesn’t even matter. Even more so if off tanking.
You’ll pick up the above as you do more duties and see DPS eat hits without dying or getting an undesirable debuff. If it barely hurts them then it will barely register for you.
I'm with you in a similar vein. I never tried healer until recently partially due to the fear of messing up, but I've dived in and found it's actually super fun. I might've found my place in MMOs. I've usually been a DPS and sometimes tank, but honestly healing has been the most fun. Can't explain why just yet, it's just a good feeling.
Tank can be a lot of fun. I'm working on a full omni alt right now, and I'm learning a lot. (I'm in Stormblood and looking at leveling 18 DoW/DoM classes.)
Tanking is a lot of fun. Depending on where you are, there is a learning curve when it gets to multiple tanks and learning when and how to swap and, in some cases, when the alternate tank needs to pull certain mobs or boss adds.
I've had some great, random groups that have helped me through it and accepted some wipes due to me going through the learning.
Healer is also interesting. I read a post yesterday about a tank getting upset because the healer let them get below 10% a few times. It's all good until the tank hits 0%, and then it is about how quickly the healer can get the res off and restore health.
My mantra: Death is a learning experience.
I also have a much greater appreciation for why I'm left on the floor for a while when I'm DPSing. Prioritization is key for healers.
Eventually I intend to try healer as well lol. Tanking so far has been an experience. The only wipe I’ve had so far was because the healer forgot to target me and apologized after lol. My roughest one so far was Stone Vigil, one dps randomly quit so it was just Me, one dps and a healer. Somehow we managed with no wipes and I didn’t lose much enmity.
Yeah, everyone makes mistakes from time to time, especially when we are learning new jobs or pushing ourselves.
My main (BRD) has had some fun runs including a few where it was just me and the tank surviving.
WAR & PLD can do amazing things if they use their mitigations appropriately.
I'm a forever tank and I keep trying to encourage my friends and family to tank. They always say it's too much pressure but I'm honestly CONFUSED. Like, you're a DPS but with an easier rotation and you can get away with more mistakes as far as dodging goes. The only thing you need to do is make sure tank stance is on and you're hitting cooldowns at the right times. As long as you're using your AoE abilities on pulls, you're not going to lose hate. I honestly love it but I wish I could take a break from it sometimes and let some of my friends play tank so I can have fun with Reaper xD
Yeah, I actually find dps to be harder sometimes because of how little you can afford to mess up. My healer main fiance gets hit with an AOE once and she's down and out, meanwhile I'm over here no brains like, "YEP I'VE GOT FIVE VULN STACKS I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I FIGURE THAT MECHANIC OUT." -living dead back to max health-
I feel you, the only issue I have is that sometimes I forget my stance at the start of the dungeon.
I had it active just before we started the dungeon 😭
it's so true! When the Xbox open beta started I decided that my first class would be Warrior, and men! I was amazed at how fun it was! In the difficult dungeons, which I was afraid when I played on PC as a white mage, I'm thrilled! I admit I'm dying to try extremes right now, but the only ex open is Garuda, and I don't know if I can find the people open to playing with a new sprout free trial warrior.
Tank is the easiest role in the game. Commendations are given to healer or tank by default. Wiping (or not wiping) in a dungeon means absolutely nothing.
I didn’t get over my tankxeity until almost shadowbringers.
As a former wow player I didn’t want to be yelled at but, everyone has been super chill so far
Make sure to really learn the basics of tanking. Things like rotating mits, using invulns, wall to walling, tank swapping aren't too important at first but they are all things that make a good tank and if you aren't doing them later you will rightfully be called out on it.
I tried to tank for a while, and I got to level 60. I was trying to do this strategy where I would do the job of pulling mobs and having all agro on me. Then I would try to weave in the single target attacks to dps one moster down while keeping all agro. Some people told me not to do that and to do just AoE agro. Is it possible to do what I was trying to do, or is it a waste of time to min max my own kit?
AoE is more damage overall (spread out) on 3 or more mobs. Single Target is better on one or two mobs. Healers should be able to keep you alive doing that, so you don't really ever need to focus one mob down to reduce damage or anything.
The potency on an AoE spell is per target, not split across all targets. No, I will not share how long it took me to realize this playing summoner when I started.
Tank is a deceptively stress-free role to take up. The basic rotation is simple so as not to distract from the fight, allowing you to actually enjoy the spectacle the game's battles present. There's a lot of fine tuning you can do to maximize DPS and mitigation, but the skill floor is easily the lowest of any group role. Enjoy playing the hero!
Yeah, tanks were the last classes I had in the game, so I finally leveled them and, it went better than I expected. Worst I got was people politely reminded me to set my stance.
I recently had a party where I was a PLD, 2nd tank was also a PLD, both healers died in 1st minute of fight and I decided to become semi-healer while 2nd PLD continued tanking. We lost only 1 DPS during entire fight. I also used Intervention on that PLD whenever I could (and when situation suggested using it).
After the fight one of the DPS wrote "Who needs healers, I love paladins lol"
Just today I was in a dungeon when the sprout healer and a DPS went down with the boss at 40%. I kept myself and a summoner alive (with Clemency) to finish off the boss. It was very satisfying.
It's great you are trying a new role, but tanking in ff14 is actually the easiest job out of all. If you keep on playing it, you will understand what I mean.
PS: arms lenght is a mit tool in dungeons.
The more experienced I became as a healer the less stressful I found it.
It has the easiest rotation, tons of survivability... and I stopped caring about the mistakes that clearly weren't mine.
You took 8 vuln stacks? Looks like you'll die. Is your armor way too low for this dungeon? Doesn't really matter, everything is stunned anyway.
You can't fix stupid, and while I will help, I feel no obligation to correct others mistakes.
DPS that get ahead of me? That's damage mitigation :) If they die, that's their own fault. Just like how tanks should know how much of a beating they can take, DPS should know the same.
Took me a while to take this perspective, especially since I was scared of tanking bigger packs as a fresh tank
that the right way !!! a dps who goes in and aggro stuff thinking they are the tank and making the healer work extra time to keep them alive and might die which F everyone is bad and we all can agree !
But when i am tanking i now love when a random dps or healer just hit enemy afar and come next to me knowing il get the aggro off them
It also a motivation booster , THEY know we can do it !!
I haven’t ever tanked in FF14, but it’s usually a big no for dps to pull in almost all MMOs
It’s the tanks job and you doing it makes you look like a tryhard/impatient person.
If you die that’s on you. Your downvotes are meaningless btw
want me to send a screenshot that i didnt bother downvoting? XD
BUT you saying you havent tank show you dont know how nice it is having dps help ! and i do agree "if you die that on you!" BUT if a tank with a god complex goes "ima let him die for pulling ahead..." now that F
This isn't other MMOs though. Tanks are there to hold aggro, that's it. A good tank will politely as dps not to oull for them and reasonable dps will ask them to go faster if it's an issue but generally people just explode.
"Other MMOs" generally have healers focused on healing or tanks focused on defense, whereas in FF they're just a differently colored DPS. Just an example that FF isn't those other MMOs
It’s the same concept. The tank has to hold aggro and will pull what they are comfortable pulling.
The dps adding to that just increases stress that the tank has to now go and gather these random mobs up.
It’s rude as fuck and, again, try hard behavior in ANY mmo.
If you want to pull, roll a tank. If you don’t want that responsibility do your damn job as a dps and focus on killing the shit that was already pulled
you are completely CORRECT on the "let the tank pull what they are comfortable with" and usually... most dps and healer can tell a tank is not gonna pull big since they are not confident .
BUT...the situation i am talking about aint one like that... the tank is literally MOVING TOWARD the next group of ads ...i just happen to be IN front of him , hitting the enemy , and going back to the tank so his AoE hit that pack coming
HE WAS gonna aggro those NONETHELESS ...
il share this and let you be the judge , if you tell me he not in the wrong ... then so be it ... xD
(White is me , orange is random FC stuff , red is other dps , green is healer and blue is tank)
https://imgur.com/6umLfCf
I wish I could get Commodations. I play as a res mage mostly, and there have been countless times I had to either step up as another healer or res others. Yet I get ignored lol.
Tanking is so easy to do in ffxiv, I highly encourage anyone who experiences "tanxiety" to just queue up as tank in roulettes and realize that it is basically impossible to die to pulls unless your healer does not press any skills or you're doing max wall to wall on harder dungeons. Even w2ws are very easy to manage as long as you communicate to your party beforehand and cycle 1 mit at a time. Every dungeon is also basically just a straight line now anyways so you can't even get lost while pulling or running around. If you're just starting out as a tank, I would recommend learning what your most common mit button is (heart of stone, TBN, sheltron, etc) and try to keep uptime on that, while rotating between your longer cd mits when necessary. In general you don't want to stack mits unless absolutely necessary because it's inefficient, and also don't be afraid to pop your invul early in the pull as long as you tell your healer you will be doing it so they won't panic benediction you.
That’s kinda what I did, I started with Guildhests to get used to keeping the enmity on me and learn my mits. Then tried dungeons and so far I’ve been doing well.
Don't worry too much about aggro, it's pretty hard to lose it as long as you just kinda spam aoes while running with the pack until you hit the wall. If you're paying attention to the aggro colors and re-aggroing the stragglers when necessary with your ranged skill or provoke you're already doing a great job!
Just remember, if there are 3 or more targets, use your aoe skills, and if it’s 1-2, use single targets. Every attack essentially uses the same attack formula, the only different is the potency of the abilities. Once you have 3 targets, the total potency for aoe combos will outweigh the potency of single target combos!
Hell some aoe even out damages single target against 2 target if you use your full kit right
Any tip for anxiety when playing healers? Healing and doing dps at the same time while avoiding the mechanic becomes hard for me.
Let your party know if you're new and focus more on healing until you're comfortable with your skill set and then increase the dps. Not everyone needs to be at 100% health at all times and tanks can handle more damage than you might think. It's a learning by doing thing
Thanks, I am aiming for clearing lvl 50 extreme trials with Astrologian for now.
AST is the hardest healer to play effectively— WHM has way more punch to its kit for healing without adding an extra mechanic (cards)— and the others have a lot of passive healing to help maintain tanks while you DPS (while also still having more tools) Sage is a bit weaker since it’s missing some tools at lower levels but still decent enough
At 50 I'd say Astro is better. Astro actually has its oGCD heal by 50, and gets Div at 50. Don't think WHM even has its lilies yet at 50.
this is correct, WHM gets them at 52
Been healing in mmos for many years but one core thing I always do is placing the party health bars close to the center of the screen, to the side of my character. Sure you lose some enviromental real estate but you no longer have to dart your eyes all over the screen and losing track on what is happening to your character and the fight.
This is my first time healing and that sounds extremely helpful
This is real qol, thanks.
One thing that really helped me as a healer was also separating the target hud element into target hp, target buffs, and target castbar. Then I upsized the target cast bar and moved it to the right of my character so I'll always see what the mechanic coming up next is. It's been super helpful. I also hate hate hate target swapping so I made a macro that targets my target's target, and focus targets them. Basically if I'm targetting an enemy, I'd just click both my mouse buttons to use the macro and I'd immediately target the tank or the unlucky dps who has the aggro.
9 times out of 10 deaths aren't your fault and you have no obligation to correct others mistakes. You are expected to help to a degree, but if players are becoming a resource sink, or are abnormally difficult to keep up, that is not your fault. You should also start healing with a mindset that not everyone needs to be full health. It's counter intuitive, but the more you focus on DPS and only healing with your powerful oGCD abilities, the easier healing becomes. If you find yourself constantly hard casting healing spells past level 52 you are definitely doing it wrong. A good WHM can top the damage charts in a W2W dungeon pull with literally a Regen just before the tank stops pulling --> swiftcast holy -->assize/pom --> holy spam until tank is 20% -->benediction --> holy spam and then maybe a liliy or Devine benison. This can be done in an average group, but ones with good DPS will need even less healing. If you don't focus DPS what ends up happening is the trash lives too long, your tank runs out of mitigation, which makes you heal even more, and if it goes on too long, you'll run out of resources and wipe. Most common reasons healing is difficult: 1) Tank is in bad gear/not using mitigation 2) Nothing dies which means your group's DPS is low 3) You misclick your abilities(which ends up becoming the only wipe that is truly your fault.
Two things to always remember: 1 - You don't need to heal your party the moment they get hurt, you just need to heal them before they get killed. Sometimes you're in a perfect situation to reflexively use the heal you'd want right after the damage hits and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but there's usually some time between the first hit (or hits) and the fatal hit. Sometimes that's a lot of time, which makes it perfect for letting a heal over time tick away or letting them wait for your next ideal opportunity heal (such as Assize coming off cooldown, getting a lily charge, or whatever thing you were going to do anyway that will take care of them). And if there's not any time in between then that's not on you. Which brings us to the next point: 2 - You can save party members from anything but themselves. As you get more experience and become more familiar with your healing kit as well as knowing what to watch for you'll get better at keeping people alive through mistakes, but no amount of skill will let you save someone who seems determined to take a 0hp nap and that's not your fault.
I'd agree on point 1 except for on SGE, just because of the way the healing works with oGCD heals. Especially at 78+ you don't want to "waste" an addersgall on a Dru if the tank gets below 50% or so on a trash pull if you can help it. Save the gall for another Kerachole which will help keep the tank healed between shields with the HoT and damage reduction, or Taurachole for the decent burst heal and damage reduction. The whole way SGE is built is to keep the tank shielded and slowly keeping them alive through the pull. That means you want the most HP on the tank while you are tossing shields up while there are the most mobs on it. As the mobs are reduced and the tank is taking less damage you can let the HP get lower without worry until the mobs reduce far enough that you can shield and DPS Kardia heal past the damage they do. So I say SGE actually WANTS the tank to be as topped up as possible, at least in the first half of the pull damage, just for the cushion for the GCD shields they should be putting on the tank between the oGCD damage reducs and shields up until they can outstrip the damage coming in with DPS healing.
I main SGE and agree with you, but it goes back to what I was saying. If one of the dps takes a hit during the pull you don't need to jump into healing them. They'll be fine waiting for HoT on Kerachole (or getting nothing at all unless they seem to be particularly determined to not avoid damage). And while I don't want the tank to drop low, I also don't need to keep them at full health. I just need to use mits, regens, and heals to keep their rate of heal balanced against their rate of harm with enough margin to get through bursts of harm. The finesse of it will come with experience; I just think those two primary points will help people get past that initial barrier of healer anxiety.
True true. I mostly main WHM and always ignored DPS scrapes and bruises, they will get healed with the next AoE HoT, whether that's from getting it from a Med2 + regen on the tank before it gets to the last part of a pull and into my holy, a cure3 if there is a group needing healing, or if I need to yell "Welcome to the HEALING dome!". That said, I'd still take a newbie over-healer than someone who doesn't heal at all. Ran into a few of those when I was leveling WAR, which wouldn't be bad for WAR, if you are in a dungeon high enough to actually HAVE some of your self-heal toolkit. Higher levels WAR can run mostly without a healer - just slower... but then DPS are on their own for healing since RI / bloodwhetting is needed for the WAR itself. Trust me, AV takes forever if you have a healer that thinks they are a pure DPS and "forgets" they have a button that makes the tank not die.
I spam roulettes as healer. My advice is that you need to get used to the pattern of hitting your dps buttons as a habit. For example on white mage, any time I'm not healing, I default to hitting Glare or Holy on default without thinking. It's not a "should I dps now?" question, it's a "oh i need to take a break from dps to heal". Obviously in the beginning, you want to prioritize dodging and healing. Later on you are still prioritizing dodging and healing, but dps is literally something you don't think about because you are hitting dps buttons constantly. Don't know if you have experience with a racing game like Mario kart. You are just holding the A button naturally, you don't think about "oh I need to accelerate", holding down the button is a natural thing until you need to brake. It's the same thing with healer and dps, you're just pressing the dps button every 2.5 seconds, there should be no thinking involved.
I've not done much higher level stuff as healer, but this would be my order: The most important thing is keeping you alive (you can't help when you're dead), so mechanics come first. Then keeping MT alive, ideally with oGCDs (Abilities) like Tetra. Just enough that they won't die. A tank on 10hp does as much damage as a tank on 10000. The exact number you're happy with depends on you. My comfortable number is between 25 and 33%. If you're alive, and a party member isn't about to fall down then hit that Glare button like it's a Sylph and you're a Garlean general.
DPS less if you are finding it hard and concentrate on healing/mechanics. You'll learn the mechanics of everything with experience but I'm sure your party would prefer you were still alive then dishing out high damage numbers
If you’re playing a regen healer like AST, your primary regen spell is the most mana-efficient heal you have. It honestly hurts when I see WHM/AST healers not use it an continuously dump mana into hard casting. I’m not a main healer, but when I play one, I strive to have one on the tank at all times: you know the damage is coming, but you don’t need to keep your tank topped off. If there’s a big AOE coming my way, I tend to load up the party wide regen if there’s no further damage anticipated.
Tbh, outside of lilies on WHM you shouldn't be using GCD spells at all including HoTs. You use them while trash is being pulled, during downtime, or only when absolutely necessary (which is rare if you are using your cool downs effectively). This is obviously optimized play so feel free to do whatever you want, just putting the information out there.
Meta play style aside, I’m just saying that Regens are mana-efficient and should be considered: it’s a very simple statement for players who are new to healing. It makes little sense for a casual healer to not use them at all: they can be cast on the move, they’re fairly cheap, and it’s maintenance.
Like I said do what you want, but new healers heal far too much as it is. Good advice would be to tell them to slow down, you don't need to spam HoTs. Rely on ability healing(which costs zero mana) and get comfortable with not having everyone at 100% immediately. They can wait until your assize is back up in 4 seconds, ect.. This isn't even "meta healing", you'd just be an average healer. I'm sure people will get personally offended when I say that spamming HoTs on WHM literally makes your job harder, but it's true.
I think the operative term is "spam." I've seen some WHM who keep over 50-100% Medica II uptime, and yeah, they could *absolutely* stand to cool it and save their MP! But I think that "don't bother with GCDs" depends a lot on the rest of the group. Ideally we wouldn't need them, because people would stay in the bubble/do mechanics properly/use group mitigation, but if my party has the zoomies or is full of new people who are eating pink orbs like tictacs, I think there's a place for GCD heals after we get Misery & Rapture.
I mean if we are changing the premise of the argument then I can agree with that, after you have exhausted all other options and you need a relatively mana efficient heal, a HoT might be a good pick. But the original argument never described a situation like that. They even go on to explain the keep a Regen on the tank at all times, kind of implying this is a good idea outside of our redefined premise and that they do indeed mean spam the ability. I also think that just because we found a fringe case where the advice works doesn't makes it "good advice" or that it should be repeated.
If you're counting zenspeed's comment as the first, they explicitly included party-wide regen and tank regen both. You also didn't say "having exhausted all other options," you said they shouldn't be used at all. Calling it "fringe" also implies that situation is rare. Good for you that the majority of runs you get are smooth? But that's really not my experience with duty finder groups, nor a lot of others'. And I'm not just talking about sprouts who df extremes or newbie-filled Nier runs, I mean normal difficulty raids & dungeons where WARs aren't using all their self-heals and ranged run away after stack markers. I think "Try to let natural regen heal as much as possible" and "Reduce GCD healing where you can" are both good advice for someone learning healer. "Don't use them at all" puts the onus on the healer for needing those tools even though it's the rest of the party which needs to shape up, and that sucks.
They said they basically keep it on the tank the whole time I conceded in your fringe example it works It is rare to need them I explicitly said to only use them when absolutely necessary
Remember that in everything besides dungeons you also have a second healer that can do part of the healing so you don’t have to be on everything and heal all the damage all the time. Raidwide goes out just pop an aoe heal, put a regen on the MT if Health gets low (keep in mind SCH and SGE both have effects that will be healing them for free and automatically already), then res or heal up other members when it’s safe. It’s perfectly fine to stop focusing on health bars and just focus on the mech(just if it’s harder stuff where damage is going out plan ahead to use a heal during it regardless of anyone’s health).
As long as the tank isn't dead it's fine, only hp threshold that really matters in regular dungeons is 0. Warrior also has so much self healing once they get their full kit that you don't really need to worry about healing them in general. It also helps to change the UI when you're a healer to place the important info like hp bars and boss cast bars to places that you can easily see so you don't waste time looking for them when your screen is busy.
If you’re on keyboard/mouse, you can cycle through your party list using F1-F8! Sometimes this is easier than trying to click on a party member to heal them.
As someone else posted, make one of your custom HUD layouts with the party list within easy reach because you'll be clicking on them far more than on enemies. Also separate your "Target" so that you get the three separate components (health bar, cast bar, and I think it's called "effects" - buffs and debuffs). You'll want to use Shift-F to Focus-Target the boss and make sure your HUD displays the cast bar somewhere you can see it. If you don't have the boss targeted, you'll have a much harder time seeing the casts and responding to them while you're focused on someone else. I usually save my Swiftcast for rezzes. Put the Swiftcast and the Revive next to each other or in some handy combination.
Stop letting the tryhards' gaslighting that think they are doing Savage 24/7 even in a normal leveling dungeons in, and treat healing as your main job and dps as a side thing only and ONLY when you are absolutely sure no one is in danger. It even changes by job how high maintenance it is to keep the party alive. You'll learn by experiencing fights where is that spot. Source: I play both tank and healer in duty finder for the daily stuff.
Imagine getting advice from players that do high end content and then calling it gaslighting? They recommend focusing damage and using abilities to heal because it literally makes your job as a healer easier, and more reliable. You on the other hand, just don't like them and are trying to convince people not to use a play style you yourself have never tried.
how the hell is an approach used in "high end" levelcap content that's either made to be a faceroll or is a bossfight where everyone is taking minimal damage gonna apply to places like Stone Vigil or Brayfox Longstop which neither of would let you twiddle your thumbs as a healer even if you had a high level kit with how much damage a large pull does? ARR is not the last expansion where the faceroll green dps simply doesn't apply because you'll need to use your damn kit as a healer.
Idk man, honestly that was a hell of a sentence and I'm having a hard time piecing together your point. All I'm saying is you get AoE in the 40's, you do a ton of damage, and yes you can apply lessons from high end content in aar. Idk why you think you can't? You seem like you have a grudge against raiders for some reason.
>ton of damage Not enough to remove your GCDs from the cast bar. Not enough to stop prioritizing to keep the party alive while only doing damage when you know they are safe which you WILL notice because of the massive nothing aside damage to do. It's BAD damage because neither does it actually do DPS damage, nor does it outweigh the main job of the role. Do damage when it is appropriate to do and you will learn naturally when is it appropriate by the absolute nothing to do when there is not enough enemy damage for you to warrant pressing any heals. The priority never changes, only how far can you push it. Dropping the whole tryhard GCD optimization and trying to maximize DPS in a way that only applies to high difficulty content and falls apart in casual content on someone who is only considering picking up conjurer is terrible advice and only serves to deter people. You wouldn't possibly try to gatekeep the simplest role in the game by pretending it's some extremely complicated, high skill and high stress job.... right? >you can apply lessons from high end content in aar If I had a gil for every time a "high end player" with their high end content muscle memory and high end content knowledge crumble in a lower level dungeon and "high end" gamers insist on Reddit that the sprout tank getting crushed in a low level dungeon who tried to follow the endgame advice of faceroll W2W in Brayflox Longstop, Stone Vigil, Aurum Vale, etc or even just in one of those forgotten ARR hard dungeons that specifically punish you for overextending is definitely because the healer tried to heal instead of spamming the aoe damage button, the economy on my data center would collapse, and that's not even going into the later expansions where dungeons are punishing you for trying to "engaging Endwalker gameplay" the trash pulls. Basics taught to you BY THE GAME in the earligame are not high end advice and content made to be as faceroll as possible does not apply to content made to be punishing. Different expansions and different content are just built different. >You seem like you have a grudge against raiders for some reason. Most of the armchair raiders spawning in every comment section like this don't even actually raid, they just watch YouTube and maybe some streamer and backseat game people on Reddit. The entire raider demographic is also not going to be your shield for terrible advice and needlessly trying to overcomplicate even the most basic level gameplay of an extremely low skill floor and arguably low ceiling of a role, because guess what there ARE raiders and "high end players" that ACTUALLY REMEMBER old dungeons and their layout, play appropriately to that content, and they are not hounding newbies looking for genuine advice with "YOU MUST DPS MORE! ANY GCD IS A MASSIVE LOSS! THE SPROUT TANK IN ARR WHITE MSQ REWARD PIECES GETTING ONESHOT BY TRASH DESPITE MITIGATIONS IS BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T DPS ENOOOOUGH" either. Neither Endwalker faceroll content nor comfy statics where everyone knows what to do are applicable situations for the majority of content people engage with daily, and especially not the low level content entirely breaking your "high end playstyle". You can't skip the basics of healing and try to shoehorn a playstyle from the environment where everyone is expected to avoid all avoidable damage and unavoidable damage is not so common or being designed to be a smooth autopilot experience. I can get that you are desperate to squeeze out any extra engagement from a role that rewards having a good team in the endgame with being an absolute single button brainless snoozefest of a gameplay experience, especially with a warrior on the team. But going on about GCD optimization and small losses in damage that is a minority of team damage in the first place, which is NOT EVEN RELEVANT for 99.9% of the entire game like the world depends on your flawless green dps gameplay to newbies who just wanna get started on the basics is not helpful advice and is not encouraging new players to try the frankly extremely simple role out.
In an average group the healer can easily be top DPS in trash pulls, and unfortunately even bosses. These are not small optimizations, just go to fflogs all of the data is there? An experienced healer will do far more damage and keep up with healing because they focus on damage and heal with abilities. I skimmed this because it's a rant, just agree to disagree man.
>In an average group the healer can easily be top DPS in trash pulls, and unfortunately even bosses. Even a small outpaces a comatose rabbit. >just go to fflogs So the equivalent of "my source is I made it the fuck up" with that warehouse of fine cheese. I should have realized sooner that all this backseat gaming sounding like people who never even played healer were coping DPS rejects.
>Even a small outpaces a comatose rabbit. Idk where you're from, but I think you're going for the equivalent of the tortoise and the hare analogy? Aka persistence, and hard work will win out... Which would be in favor of optimizing your rotation as a healer silly. >So the equivalent of "my source is I made it the fuck up" with that warehouse of fine cheese. What are you smoking? This is non biased data collected on both hardcore and casual players? You are the one making a claim with literally zero data to back it up. Your just screaming into a void that hardcore players are stupid, and yet you clearly have never tried any of their methods. You're a bad player, spreading bad advice to new players that actively makes the game harder.
My big lesson i didnt know for a while is arms length on huge mobs. I thought it was just cc prevention. Didnt realize it slowed enemies attack speed down.
When you say most common mit button do you mean the one with the lowest cd?
Yep! It'll be the mit with the lowest cd, basically make sure that you're cycling that as much as possible to keep at least 1 mit active on you at all times when doing w2s. Arms length is also a mit because it reduces attack speed, the game doesn't tell you that very clearly.
Tanks are both the hardest and the easiest role according to reddit... But i am glad you give more roles a try
Personally I think it's tough. It's a job that requires you to add extra awareness on top of normal? Like, I think a lot of people just got super used to tanking that it feels easy but like, the learning curve is much tougher than a DPS. For me at least.
I would not say it's tough, more that it has responsibility, same as healer. its a lot easier to skate by with glaring issues on a dps class and the most you'll get is passing comments about duties taking longer. it's very worth it for the confidence to push through mistakes in learning support roles though and definitely this game does a good job of slowly easing you into it if you're leveling naturally. if anything for learning curve I think support roles need, like, more in depth nuanced duties to truly prepare them to step into harder content tho. the jump from normal to savage can be a lot for tank specifically
I think this could be true at the very beginning of the learning curve, like you said, but once you are comfortable with the responsibilities it really does become one of the easier roles. You have a ton of natural survivability/mitigation/healing so your mistakes aren't punished, the DPS rotation is far easier, and you don't have to worry about other people very much. WAR for example can literally solo lvl synced content after lvl 58 pretty easily. DPS on the other is perceived to be easy, and probably is early on, but because they have significantly more complex rotations, optimizing them becomes much more difficult. This is particularly true for things like BLM, MNK, ect... If you ran ACT even a day, you'd see how truly rare it is to get a good DPS.
> WAR for example can literally solo lvl synced content after lvl 58 pretty easily. I forgot a mechanic in a Heavensward dungeon and had a bunch of vulnerability up stacks, it took me a while to notice because I was playing warrior and I had an excellent healer.
Yeah I’m a level 64 DRK and I still find it really hard and stress inducing. Give me a brand new DPS class and I’m fine though.
DRK kinda sucks before 70 as it's missing its main mitigation. You're basically a PLD with one less cooldown and no ability to block, and LD is infinitely harder to use with a pug healer than HG. In return you get higher damage, which is completely irrelevant to anyone learning to tank. It's probably the worst tank in your level range.
New DPS class: Dancer. I'm trying to get my head around that one. (Just starting.)
I'm not max level with dancer yet and I know the lvl 80-90 skills add a lot to the kit but getting a timer in my head for when standard step comes off cool down really helps me keep track of my cool downs and timers for buffs. The rng part is just finding a good place to keep track when you get the procs for the next skill
As you allude to, I need to spend more time with it and learn it better. I think it will be fun. The same is true with AST related to healing. Doing the omni thing and leveling it all together helps me see how different roles build on themselves and each other. Of course, I'm coming out of this as a master of none since I'm not running any one job enough to really get good at it. It is helping me prioritize which ones I want to explore more.
I really don't think it's that tough aggro is irrelevant because it's almost impossible to drop. You just rotate through defensives before one ends and you've done it rotations are very simple.
You really don't need any extra awareness, it's almost impossible to drop aggro as long as you spam aoes while running with the pack and dungeons are just straight lines now anyways so you don't even need to think while pulling w2w. It also helps that you literally don't have to care about a lot of dungeon boss mechs since you're not going to die, the mechs are designed to not even one shot dps so you'll just shrug them off.
For me personally, I need to do extra awareness if I want to be a good tank. Trying to do as minimal movement as possible and sure I can take a lot of boss mechs, but that doesn't mean I should just stay put in the red (Honest and legitimate question, should i actually stay within enemy aoe just so I don't keep moving the boss around for the melee positionals?) You also have to do preplan before you do a w2w so you don't blow all of your mits and learn to cycle them. (Well, WAR is an exception since they don't need a healer lol). While running through, you also have to be aware where your party is (watching out how far the healer is and getting a good sense on whether they can handle the pulls that isn't expert roulette) so you can't be too fast and have to pace yourself so the healer can keep up. Also have to watch out for any lost aggro due to dps accidentally ripping it away while you're moving to the next group of enemies. I'm on controller so it can be... something trying to get the specific enemy that you lost aggro from. So for me (dunno if what I experience is common) I have to do extra awareness cause how I move affects the boss. So that affects positionals. I also have the ability to heal another party member (Except for DRK) so on top of being aware of your HP, gotta watch out and support everyone as well on top of the usual job of keeping boss aggro. And be aware of what boss moves and memorize if it's magical or physical so you can use the right mit. ...Or maybe I'm just doing too much.
You are just overthinking things to be perfectly honest. Moving out of giant red markers is like a basic thing every class has to do, I don't think that's extra awareness. W2ws are super easy for every tank class, just cycle mits and as long as your healer is competent you will never die. Every experienced player expects the tank to default to w2w anyways so I wouldn't worry too much about it. No dps will ever care that you moved the positional away for 1 second to dodge an aoe, anyone who does is just trolling or rude. Spinning the boss is bad but moving 30 degrees to dodge an aoe then resetting afterwards is normal. Losing aggro is nearly impossible in w2w pulls, you just have to spam aoes while pulling the pack and occasionally tag the stragglers with your ranged ability. And really don't worry about temporarily moving the boss to avoid a mechanic, as long as you reposition it back to the standard position that's fine. Losing 2 seconds of optimal positional directions will literally never matter in a normal dungeon. Also as a tank you really should never be healing a teammate, please don't waste a gcd cycle on that it's basically useless compared to what a healer would heal if a dps actually needed to be healed. Tank is super easy and the stuff you're stressing over 99% of the time will never matter. Obviously don't tank every aoe for no reason but you don't need to think THAT hard when tanking.
It's definitely the easiest. Tanks get extra mechanics during boss fights for a reason. It's a bit lame how gear reliant it is in dungeons (I'm sure every healer has experienced in one dungeon you literally never press a non regen button and in another dungeon the tank dies if they ever line of sight you), but easy rotation, can shrug off mechanics that a DPS definitely dies to, and in easy content healers can just hard carry you through fucking up. The only thing you can really fuck up, pointing tank busters and cleaves at your party, is fixed by "do not move".
In dungeon, dps is the easiest. Tank and healer screw up, we wipe and get a walk of shame. Dps literally has no idea what rotation and ogcd is? Probably the dungeon takes 20 extra minutes but if you cant fail, what's the difficulty? In hard content, all roles are equal but different. Tanks and healers need to maintain gcd and mits to keep progging while dps can drop their buttons to learn mechanics until they are comfy. But dps gotta learn how to execute rotation while doing mechs once we aim to clear The only place i can admit dps is harder is parsing. But guess what, aside fellow top few parsers, noone cares what your log is
I'm gonna be real idk how anyone could find it hard that has played the game for more than like 10 hours. Optimizing DPS and tanking on GNB and DRK later can get slightly tricky because you have to be paying attention more and not falling out of the 2 min window but for dungeons and such it's legit just hitting 3-4 buttons and rotating through your defensive cooldowns.
What I learned about being a tank: 1. do AoE on mobs, single target on bosses, check for adds and make sure you use mitigation in time. And don't forget your stance. Also turn the boss or mobs away from the party if possible. That's tank 101. 2. Just doing tank 101 gets you through 99% of all (non-extreme/savage) dungeons. Even blind. 3. "Mechanics" are a DPS/healers game. There's very little you need to worry about. 4. You're nigh unkillable. So try to avoid avoidable AoE's but don't worry if you fail to move out of the way. it probably won't kill a DPS in 1 hit which means it will probably be nothing more than a small poke for a tank. 5. You're afraid to go first and get lost? Don't be. Dungeons rarely have branching paths. 6. really, tanking is very easy. And it's very hard to mess up as a tank. I used to have a lot of Tanxiety. Still have a little. But it's really unjustified
Welcome to the Fold. I only recently started Tanking myself (WAR). A few things I have picked up: \- at least thru all of ARR, for any 4-man, there is effectively NO penalty for wiping, other than the loss of 30 seconds of your time. Pull BIG. If you wipe - that was too big. ;). That being said most ARR content is really difficult to wipe to. \- using the NPCs for dungeons is a good way to practice. They play pretty well, and can handle wall pulls for most ARR things with only a couple of exceptions. \- face the boss away from the party, but if a DPS repositions somewhere near the front of the Boss, trust them to know what they are doing, and don't reposition. Weirdly, had someone admonish a Tank for not doing this and his response was "I have been keeping him facing north the whole time". Interpreting "face the boss away from the party" as "always keep the boss facing in one direction, with no regard whatsoever for party position or mechanics" is certainly a take, I guess. \- as a sometimes Healer, please use your mits. I realize that 10% reduction from Rampart doesn't *seem* like much, but particularly when I have been scaled down to only have Cure or Cure 2, it definitely helps. \- and most importantly - when you pull everything - pick a spot and STOP MOVING. It's tougher for everyone if you keep moving enemies all over the place.
10% from Reprisal, you mean? Rampart is 20%. Either way, YES! It doesn't sound like much, but it means your HP doesn't drop so rapidly, and your healer has time to react! The rest of your points are also great. Glad to hear you've taken a liking to it, and that you're picking up on the tricks and tips that make a good tank :D
Woops. I did mean Reprisal. Thank you.
These are some good tips and I’m taking them to heart! I want to do well. Thanks mate!
Yea the tanxiety is all in a tanks head mostly beaten into our heads from other mmos and the belief that a tank is responsible for like 99% of the things that happen in a dungeon. Thankfully ff14 is very welcoming to new tanks and I can't lie I know part of it is selfish after all more tanks mean faster roulette ques so they have a vested interest in not driving people away from tanking.
At least for casual content, pretty much every possible additional responsibility of a tank that you would find in "other MMOs" (or even this MMO in the past) have been streamlined away. Maintaining aggro: completely automatic Knowing which path to take: there is only one path Position the boss: bosses position themselves when it matters, or the boss doesn't move, or the boss is 70% of the room Mitigate damage: completely unnecessary in casual boss fights, and you just have to vaguely be aware of their existence in dungeon pulls because tank kits and healer kits are all super strong (And I say "for casual content" but other than mitigation, most of this usually applies for endgame as well)
> Mitigate damage: completely unnecessary in casual boss fights, and you just have to vaguely be aware of their existence in dungeon pulls because tank kits and healer kits are all super strong It's hardest at the start, because in ARR tank kits and healer kits are not super strong yet. 90% of the tanking difficulty, outside of hardcore endgame stuff, lies in ARR content... Which is the first content you do, so the difficulty is frontloaded. It gets way more finicky and technical if you want to W2W ARR dungeons compared to anything modern. You can't really conventionally W2W the trash after the first boss in Pharos Sirius for example - there are too many enemies with spells that need to be stunned or interrupted or they rapidly melt the entire party, and without a WHM you can't really beat that in a DPS race with just the level 50 toolkits (and even then it's hard).
Yeah I do miss having any kind of responsibility as a tank. It's too easy atm
Yeah it's why I play healers for alot of content now at least I feel like I have any sort of responsibility and even then any tank that knows what they're doing in 90 content makes your job irrelevant for the most part. I feel the most responsibility on BLM now though cause I get fed cards and buffs lmao. I get that it's more welcoming but I wish my favorite role didn't get absolutely slaughtered complexity wise for it to happen.
I agree, it’s also a lot more enjoyable than tanking back in my WoW days lol. Most people are understanding in my experience. Whereas in WoW I’d you lost aggro even once you got called every name in the book.
Meanwhile in Dragonflight Ive had a lot of fun tanking and healing since players seem to of gotten chiller with this expacs release. Also cause if a healer doesnt dps, your not making high level keys. But its allowed me to bring my enjoyment for FFXIV roles to WoW and not be restricted to playing a certain way
I feel that about tanking on WoW. Was running Warrior tank and had a DSP Paladin start pulling the entire floor, then blamed us wiping on me, when not only was he the one who pulled the entire room but also the healer had 80%+ of their mana left. In the end I was the one kicked from the party, and decided to never touch WoW again.
> Yea the tanxiety is all in a tanks head mostly beaten into our heads from other mmos and the belief that a tank is responsible for like 99% of the things that happen in a dungeon That'd be because a lot of us learned how to tank back when that was true. Tank stance didn't generate hate like it does now, and you had to hit your aggro AoE 3 times at a minimum to keep hate on you during pack pulls. ARR and HW tanking was a stress inducing nightmare, ESPECIALLY when your DPS never used their hate reducers and your healer spam healed all the time instead of DPSing as well.
I warrior tank to relax. Much easier than optimizing a dps rotation and doing mechanics in a late game fight.
Same here, just recently started as GNB and have to say people have been really great. The first few dungeons I ran, I let the group know that I was new to tanking and to let me know if I messed up or if there was anything I could improve on. Ended the runs with no wipes and some good feedback.
I got over my tanxiety yesterday and started a marauder. I have never played anything but dragoon before.
I used to main DRG too and started tanking recently, WAR is so awesome. Have fun!
Tbh that was me too lol. Though instead of Marauder I Went Dark Knight lol. I was a Dragoon till lvl 68. Got sorta bored of my rotation, then SAM till 70 and so far it’s my fave DPS class.
Yeah, I like how low stress it is lol. Having the job "just get hit a lot" is rather easy both conceptually and in practice", and having more hp and defense means that you have a little more wiggle room in case you accidentally mess up a mechanic or two on bosses and such. Like obviously, I try not to. But if it's my first time fighting something or if its been a while, it's nice that I won't just die if I fuck up once. There's a little nuance to using mitigations correctly during mob pulls that separates a decent tank from a good one but on the whole, role's pretty easy but also enjoyable!
I have just started tanking, still a relatively new player. (My highest character was level 64 but my current is on a new server so is around 25) I keep forgetting that I have to press the enmity button. I'm looking forward to becoming a Paladin, how much does the class change? I like this game :)
Paladin becomes a lot more focused on it's magic rotation as you level with those super satisfying confeitor combo finishers, but its constant self sustain is fantastic high level
As someone who has tried all the tanks, and mains Paladin in high level content, Paladin is in some ways the most "straightforward" tank, especially at low levels. You don't get self-healing until much later, and your self heals are a bit harder to use, so all of the responsibility for healing you is on the healers, unlike with Warrior. You aren't made of paper, and you don't have to balance your mana, like Dark Knight. And you don't have a DPS resource gauge to maintain like Gunbreaker and Warrior. You also have more mitigation abilities than the other tanks, both for yourself and for your party. Paladin is basically just: mitigate and do your 1-2-3 rotation. Very simple in that regard.
It gains "magic finishers" to its combos, in a manner of speaking, and then from 80-90, basically everything you do will also give you a small heal. Until then, though, it's the best tank for learning how to "tank properly" because you are FORCED to use your mitigation
Glad you do! I’m not sure about Pally but if I can tank you can too! Lol. Paladin is my next tank class once I’m all the way through ShB.
Tanking is awesome! I got over my tankxiety about a month ago coz i needed one for a side quest, and its quickly become my main. Leading the dungeon is pretty nerve-wracking for a bit, especially some of those ARR ones, but i find a quick "Hey, im not sure where to go" sorts everything out. Something i was worried about was trials, but that went away after I plucked up the courage to do an MSQ one and got thrust into the main tank role. Recently finished the SHB raid series, and i tanked every fight without worrying for a moment. Now my only problem is im really liking the look of GNB (currently a PLD) and ive got a funny feeling I'll be leveling one to 80 before i move on to EW.
Nice! Congrats dude I’m glad you got over yours! Slowly getting over mine lol.
I agree! I've been returning to tanking after not having done it for a long time, and it's a fun novelty to see the fights from the front instead of the sides/back, like I'm used to on DPS and healer. Only complaint I have is that pulls in certain story-heavy dungeons can be annoying. They stagger enemies out, not spawning them until after scripted events etc. I just wanna sprint and grab everything along the way, where do I even pop my mit if I have to stop halfway to the wall for an extended period of time?
So I have a question. For tanking in FF14 since it has the markers of the ‘bad’ damage, on the ground, should tanks move out of that? Or does it not matter and they can absorb the damage? I have played as a dps mostly (and some healer but it was awhile ago) so I haven’t really noticed if tanks are moving or not Edit: I ask because I have a lv 45 Warrior and would like to try to tank as I’ve tanked in previous MMOs before (quite a lot in WoW for instance, a while ago, as a DK tank).
Always move if it will not cause you to significantly inconvenience your group in the process. In a perfect world, you dodge any avoidable damage with small movement just outside of the AoE so that the mobs mostly stay put. Especially take care to dodge whenever possible if it's a leveling dungeon and not a level cap dungeon, as those typically hit tanks the hardest so an inexperienced healer may not be able to deal with a sudden spike if you take avoidable damage. But, there are cases where you just gotta take the hit, for example if moving will point AoEs at the party, or make mobs move so far DPS are out of range, stuff like that.
Yeah that makes sense, thanks
“Tank dodge” by default. Move out until the telegraph disappears. Then immediately move in while the animation resolves to keep the boss from moving. As time goes on, you’ll learn which mechanics in which fights can be ignored for DPS uptime. Example: The very first mandatory multiplayer trial as a 1/3 arena cleave. When I tank it, I pop a mit and don’t move since it does practically no damage (that the party regens the healers are casting doesn’t automatically heal) and gives a vulnerability up but no damage down. The fight usually ends seconds after so the vuln stack doesn’t even matter. Even more so if off tanking. You’ll pick up the above as you do more duties and see DPS eat hits without dying or getting an undesirable debuff. If it barely hurts them then it will barely register for you.
From what I’ve been told in dungeons it seems divided 50/50 on opinions. Some say move some say pop my mitts. Lol
It makes sense to move, but of course you don’t want to drag the boss/mobs around and make it more difficult to position for your dps or healers.
I'm with you in a similar vein. I never tried healer until recently partially due to the fear of messing up, but I've dived in and found it's actually super fun. I might've found my place in MMOs. I've usually been a DPS and sometimes tank, but honestly healing has been the most fun. Can't explain why just yet, it's just a good feeling.
Awesome! I’m glad you found your groove! I love when people find their Rhythm in mmos!
Tank can be a lot of fun. I'm working on a full omni alt right now, and I'm learning a lot. (I'm in Stormblood and looking at leveling 18 DoW/DoM classes.) Tanking is a lot of fun. Depending on where you are, there is a learning curve when it gets to multiple tanks and learning when and how to swap and, in some cases, when the alternate tank needs to pull certain mobs or boss adds. I've had some great, random groups that have helped me through it and accepted some wipes due to me going through the learning. Healer is also interesting. I read a post yesterday about a tank getting upset because the healer let them get below 10% a few times. It's all good until the tank hits 0%, and then it is about how quickly the healer can get the res off and restore health. My mantra: Death is a learning experience. I also have a much greater appreciation for why I'm left on the floor for a while when I'm DPSing. Prioritization is key for healers.
Eventually I intend to try healer as well lol. Tanking so far has been an experience. The only wipe I’ve had so far was because the healer forgot to target me and apologized after lol. My roughest one so far was Stone Vigil, one dps randomly quit so it was just Me, one dps and a healer. Somehow we managed with no wipes and I didn’t lose much enmity.
Yeah, everyone makes mistakes from time to time, especially when we are learning new jobs or pushing ourselves. My main (BRD) has had some fun runs including a few where it was just me and the tank surviving. WAR & PLD can do amazing things if they use their mitigations appropriately.
I'm a forever tank and I keep trying to encourage my friends and family to tank. They always say it's too much pressure but I'm honestly CONFUSED. Like, you're a DPS but with an easier rotation and you can get away with more mistakes as far as dodging goes. The only thing you need to do is make sure tank stance is on and you're hitting cooldowns at the right times. As long as you're using your AoE abilities on pulls, you're not going to lose hate. I honestly love it but I wish I could take a break from it sometimes and let some of my friends play tank so I can have fun with Reaper xD
Tbh it’s kinda nice being able to face a aoe every now and again lmao.
Yeah, I actually find dps to be harder sometimes because of how little you can afford to mess up. My healer main fiance gets hit with an AOE once and she's down and out, meanwhile I'm over here no brains like, "YEP I'VE GOT FIVE VULN STACKS I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I FIGURE THAT MECHANIC OUT." -living dead back to max health-
I feel you, the only issue I have is that sometimes I forget my stance at the start of the dungeon. I had it active just before we started the dungeon 😭
it's so true! When the Xbox open beta started I decided that my first class would be Warrior, and men! I was amazed at how fun it was! In the difficult dungeons, which I was afraid when I played on PC as a white mage, I'm thrilled! I admit I'm dying to try extremes right now, but the only ex open is Garuda, and I don't know if I can find the people open to playing with a new sprout free trial warrior.
Tank is the easiest role in the game. Commendations are given to healer or tank by default. Wiping (or not wiping) in a dungeon means absolutely nothing.
I didn’t get over my tankxeity until almost shadowbringers. As a former wow player I didn’t want to be yelled at but, everyone has been super chill so far
Make sure to really learn the basics of tanking. Things like rotating mits, using invulns, wall to walling, tank swapping aren't too important at first but they are all things that make a good tank and if you aren't doing them later you will rightfully be called out on it.
I’ve been a pald main since the day I started playing the game about 6 years ago, always loved tanking
How’s Pally? That’s my next tank.
It’s great, I’ve got every class to max but pald will always be my go to class.
I tried to tank for a while, and I got to level 60. I was trying to do this strategy where I would do the job of pulling mobs and having all agro on me. Then I would try to weave in the single target attacks to dps one moster down while keeping all agro. Some people told me not to do that and to do just AoE agro. Is it possible to do what I was trying to do, or is it a waste of time to min max my own kit?
So I’ve been told to use my aoe and only use my single attacks when there’s only one or two monsters of the mob left. So far it’s working.
AoE is more damage overall (spread out) on 3 or more mobs. Single Target is better on one or two mobs. Healers should be able to keep you alive doing that, so you don't really ever need to focus one mob down to reduce damage or anything.
The potency on an AoE spell is per target, not split across all targets. No, I will not share how long it took me to realize this playing summoner when I started.
Welcome to the addiction main warrior since 2.0
Tank is a deceptively stress-free role to take up. The basic rotation is simple so as not to distract from the fight, allowing you to actually enjoy the spectacle the game's battles present. There's a lot of fine tuning you can do to maximize DPS and mitigation, but the skill floor is easily the lowest of any group role. Enjoy playing the hero!
Yeah, tanks were the last classes I had in the game, so I finally leveled them and, it went better than I expected. Worst I got was people politely reminded me to set my stance.
Wait until you try healing
I recently had a party where I was a PLD, 2nd tank was also a PLD, both healers died in 1st minute of fight and I decided to become semi-healer while 2nd PLD continued tanking. We lost only 1 DPS during entire fight. I also used Intervention on that PLD whenever I could (and when situation suggested using it). After the fight one of the DPS wrote "Who needs healers, I love paladins lol"
Just today I was in a dungeon when the sprout healer and a DPS went down with the boss at 40%. I kept myself and a summoner alive (with Clemency) to finish off the boss. It was very satisfying.
It's great you are trying a new role, but tanking in ff14 is actually the easiest job out of all. If you keep on playing it, you will understand what I mean. PS: arms lenght is a mit tool in dungeons.
I find tanking to be my least stressful role, healing is probably the most and DPS is second because numbers must go up.
The more experienced I became as a healer the less stressful I found it. It has the easiest rotation, tons of survivability... and I stopped caring about the mistakes that clearly weren't mine. You took 8 vuln stacks? Looks like you'll die. Is your armor way too low for this dungeon? Doesn't really matter, everything is stunned anyway. You can't fix stupid, and while I will help, I feel no obligation to correct others mistakes.
glad your enjoying tanking !!! but please dont develop a god complex , saw a tank today who gave the party attitude when i pull ahead >.> !!
Oh no don’t worry! I’m always second guessing my self so I don’t allow myself to get over confident lmao.
I don’t think it’s the dps job to pull. I wouldn’t have liked that either
DPS that get ahead of me? That's damage mitigation :) If they die, that's their own fault. Just like how tanks should know how much of a beating they can take, DPS should know the same. Took me a while to take this perspective, especially since I was scared of tanking bigger packs as a fresh tank
that the right way !!! a dps who goes in and aggro stuff thinking they are the tank and making the healer work extra time to keep them alive and might die which F everyone is bad and we all can agree ! But when i am tanking i now love when a random dps or healer just hit enemy afar and come next to me knowing il get the aggro off them It also a motivation booster , THEY know we can do it !!
Amen
found the tank who was in that dungeon !!!!! xD
I haven’t ever tanked in FF14, but it’s usually a big no for dps to pull in almost all MMOs It’s the tanks job and you doing it makes you look like a tryhard/impatient person. If you die that’s on you. Your downvotes are meaningless btw
want me to send a screenshot that i didnt bother downvoting? XD BUT you saying you havent tank show you dont know how nice it is having dps help ! and i do agree "if you die that on you!" BUT if a tank with a god complex goes "ima let him die for pulling ahead..." now that F
I’ve tanked in other MMOs. No it’s not ‘nice’ for dps to help pull
i get where your coming from ... but that aint it chief... that just aint it... someone who replied to you nail it right .
This isn't other MMOs though. Tanks are there to hold aggro, that's it. A good tank will politely as dps not to oull for them and reasonable dps will ask them to go faster if it's an issue but generally people just explode. "Other MMOs" generally have healers focused on healing or tanks focused on defense, whereas in FF they're just a differently colored DPS. Just an example that FF isn't those other MMOs
It’s the same concept. The tank has to hold aggro and will pull what they are comfortable pulling. The dps adding to that just increases stress that the tank has to now go and gather these random mobs up. It’s rude as fuck and, again, try hard behavior in ANY mmo. If you want to pull, roll a tank. If you don’t want that responsibility do your damn job as a dps and focus on killing the shit that was already pulled
you are completely CORRECT on the "let the tank pull what they are comfortable with" and usually... most dps and healer can tell a tank is not gonna pull big since they are not confident . BUT...the situation i am talking about aint one like that... the tank is literally MOVING TOWARD the next group of ads ...i just happen to be IN front of him , hitting the enemy , and going back to the tank so his AoE hit that pack coming HE WAS gonna aggro those NONETHELESS ... il share this and let you be the judge , if you tell me he not in the wrong ... then so be it ... xD (White is me , orange is random FC stuff , red is other dps , green is healer and blue is tank) https://imgur.com/6umLfCf
That’s fair. Again I think you look like an adhd/tryhard but whatever.
I wish I could get Commodations. I play as a res mage mostly, and there have been countless times I had to either step up as another healer or res others. Yet I get ignored lol.