Beginner Tank Guide - Tips for New Tanks in FFXIV

this video is aimed at eliminating some early mistakes that new tanks make and some bad habits that even experience players keep for years we'll go over everything from how to do the correct pull to the right mindset to get started make sure you have completed the hall of the novice under the duty section in your main menu this will teach you about tanking fundamentals you don't need me to tell you to activate your tank stands or not to stand in aoes now before we move on to practical tips let's make sure we go into this with the right mindset i see new players in two extremes either you're terrified of tanking maybe because you feel like you'll let your party down or because you can practically feel your healers hateful stare on your back or you're on the opposite end of the spectrum and you think you're the most important member of your party far surpassing anyone in responsibility neither is the right mindset as a tank you have the same amount of responsibility as everyone else not more not less if a dps stands in an aoe it's just as bad as when a tank stands in one just because you do the pulse doesn't mean that you cause the wipes you stand and fall as a party sharing equal responsibility and because of that whether you go in as tank dps or healer shouldn't matter accepting that and relaxing a little bit is the first step to being a good tank in my experience let's move on to some more practical tips before you queue for anything you should make sure that your gear is up to date other rolls don't struggle as much as tanks when it comes to lack of gear if a dps has bad gear the beauty will just progress slower if a healer has bad gear then they will just have to spend more time healing rather than dpsing so the duty will go slower but if a tank has bad gear they will more than likely turn into a dragoon sooner rather than later and kiss the floor now you don't need to go above and beyond just make sure your gear pieces aren't more than 10 levels behind if they are you can find level appropriate vendors in all capital cities and you're able to use tombstones of poetics to acquire 50 60 70 and 80 gear in modona italshire raga's reach and in yormore with that out of the way let's get into our first duty when starting off it can be tempting to prove that you have the biggest acts out of everyone in your group and immediately start pulling back or maybe you feel like you need to pull big because others will be disappointed by small pulls however pulling big may not be the smartest idea consider the level of the duty do your party members even have area abilities on their jobs at the level you're at and if yes are they really that strong in most low level duties it's actually better to pull small and allow your healer to help dpsing instead of pulling big and forcing them to spam heals on you while your two dps are busy hitting single target spells during a huge poll consider also the experience level of your group do you have new players with you is your healer inexperienced then for the love of god just start slow ease your party into it slowly start pulling more if you feel like it's beneficial as tank you're kind of the pacesetter you decide how fast to go and always being on turbo mode is not the answer as you play tank more you'll slowly get better at predicting incoming damage and using your abilities at the right time you'll have more experience with different kinds of healers different jobs in your party and you'll know when to start pulling more that's when you want to start testing your limits don't be scared to pull big but don't make it your default speaking of pulling let's talk about that there's a certain art to being good at pulling pulling in this context just means taking the aggro and there are multiple ways of doing it every tank automatically generates enmity through regular attacks whenever the tank stance is on but you also have other abilities that can generate it those two abilities are provoke and your ranged ability provoke is generally used much more rarely than people think for the most part you'll want to use it during tank swaps or to catch runaway enemies that you lost enmity on for all other purposes using your ranged ability is better provoke is never used for pulling for bosses you'll want to use your ranged ability to land the first hit ideally ever so slightly before everyone else in the party just to avoid other party members having aggro even for a short moment because often during that time bosses will already land the first hit when pulling the goal is to get the boss to run towards you this has two benefits first of all it lets you pre-position the boss in the room probably in a central location secondly it closes the distance between the boss and your melee dps party members effectively allowing them to hit the boss faster i would recommend you head to summerford to practice the optimal pull get the start timer ready which you can find under party in the main menu and then try to hit your ranged ability the second the start text appears on screen really try and get the timing just right nailing the poll is an underappreciated aspect of tanking and getting this right will get you bonus points with pretty much anyone you'll play with it's a fundamental that you'll need every single time you start a fight and being as consistent as possible with it is incredibly important pulling packs of enemies in dungeons works a little bit differently ideally you'll want to grab the aggro of multiple enemies at once by using an aoe ability after running right in the middle of them sometimes the spacing between enemies is too big to achieve that in that case run through the pack and let them close in on you before using your ability catch any stragglers with your arranged ability or provoke when pulling big keep running while going through the pack this way you can avoid a lot of auto attacks because the enemies keep having to chase you don't worry about losing a few enemies here and there as long as the majority of them is still following you dungeon mouse will rarely kill your party members quickly and they can easily tank a few hits until the pull is done just do your best to catch as many enemies as possible another reason to not stand still if you plan on pulling more is that your party might start using ground targeted abilities like doton or earthly star if they feel like you've come to a stop to avoid that you can communicate to them through your movement that you're not done yet when doing big pulls like that remember to use sprint a great tip is also to use the ability before entering combat not after that's because sprint will last for 20 seconds when activated out of combat but only for 10 seconds when activated in combat once you've successfully pulled it's time to get the positioning of enemies right the great thing about being a tank is that you have complete control over this being good at positioning bosses or packs of mobs can effectively teach your team mechanics stopping in a bad position conversely can screw everyone by placing your party in the middle of mechanics for starters you should immediately point mobs or the boss away from your teammates that's to avoid cleaves that many enemies will do meaning they will damage in a cone in front of themselves the other reason for it is that some jobs have so-called positionals meaning they have to hit the enemy from a specific side such as the back to get the full effect of their ability that's why you'll also want to keep the enemy standing as still as possible keep them pointing the same direction and only move them if absolutely necessary by default most parties will assume that you point the boss to the north and whenever he's done doing mechanics jumping around the platform it's a good idea to pull him back into position facing north again this also helps players deal with mechanics around them because they'll generally happen in the same locations whereas if you're always pointing a different direction then the orientation of the mechanics happening might be different and they'll have to get used to it when getting targeted by aoes always try to move back to your old position before dodging in order to avoid the enemy from moving at all a lot of the time they'll get locked into position when casting an ability and if you manage to move back in time they'll keep pointing in the same direction they were before which will further make sure that your allies don't screw up their positional by the boss randomly snapping back to you in a different direction if you don't want to move back into position after the aoe at least do that consistently so your melee dps know what to expect from you something else to look out for is making sure that the sides of the boss are accessible by everyone if you stood next to a wall or next to an aerie marker the other players won't be able to hit their positionals losing your team dps through your bad choice of positioning also when pulling big packs your goal is to group packs in as small of a space as possible to allow your allies to hit their aoe abilities without maxing their range to achieve this once you have aggro keep running some distance away from the enemies not too far like a few meters because that will group them up more neatly in a smaller overall space because as they're running they're all targeting the position right in front of you sometimes there will be ranged enemies that you can't pull this way because instead of following you they will start to auto attack you from range in that case use what is called breaking line of sight or loss for short move around a corner or an object that blocks the target's vision to you forcing them to move to that corner this allows you to group them up like you do with all other enemies be really careful though because this might break line of sight to your healer as well if they are in the process of casting an ability on you let them finish make sure you have plenty of hp before pulling the stunt as well because your healer is not going to be able to target you for a few seconds unless they're pre-positioned for it an inexperienced healer might even just lose track of you completely if they lack awareness to see you run around the corner so weigh the benefits against the cost in this case to avoid the disaster run back around the corner once the ranged enemies have grouped up lastly you want to make sure that your enemies are positioned inside your team's ground targeted aoes and that you don't pull anything outside of those examples of ground targeted abilities are ninja's doton astrologian's earthly star or dark knight sorted earth generally if you see a mark on the ground and you don't know what it does you should try and figure it out to become a better player after the pull is done you move on to defeating the enemies and during that you'll use what is called mitigation those are your defensive abilities mitigating incoming damage well is a tank's bread and butter to successfully mitigate you need to know what's worth mitigating and what tools you have available to you to learn both you need experience as a player and you need to test your limits a little bit it's not always as simple as just mitigating heavy hitting abilities for starters you should never use all of your mitigation at once the key to surviving and increasing your party's overall damage is spacing out your mitigation over a longer period of time mitigation abilities have diminishing returns if you stack two abilities that mitigate 10 of damage then the first ability will mitigate the full value but the second ability will only mitigate 10 percent of the new damage value after the previous mitigation was calculated for example if the boss lands a hit for 10 000 damage and you mitigate the first hit for 10 percent the ability mitigates a total of 1 000 damage the second 10 percent mitigation ability will only mitigate 900 damage so ideally you'll want to use the abilities in succession and not lay it of course unless not layering the abilities will just get you killed so take a look at your job's kit and figure out the best scenario for each ability if you're unsure try them in various situations get a feel for how they do how long they take to recharge and so on let's take a look at tanks role actions used for mitigation rampart reprisal and arm's length rampant is a 20 mitigation for 20 seconds making it excellent for mitigating medium hits for a long period of time on a 90 second cooldown this will be up for almost every dungeon pull so make sure you use it during boss fights use it during longer periods of heavy damage taking advantage of its duration reprisal is a little bit different the ability will reduce damage of enemies around you making it a great tool to use whenever the boss will hit your allies with raid wide damage arse length is a great mitigation tool to use during big pulse because it will affect enemies who hit you with slow which will reduce their attack and cast times this is effectively equal to a 20 mitigation for 15 seconds making arn's length an invaluable tool during big dungeon pulls during boss fights it's usually better to hold on to it for the knockback mitigating effect but as the number of enemies increases the value goes up as well other defensive tank abilities are job specific and covering them now would go beyond the scope of this video if there's one big mistake to avoid it's believing that mitigation is somehow a tool for when things have gone bad mitigation is supposed to stop you from taking dangerous damage in the first place and it should be used liberally but effectively don't save it for emergencies now that we have this out of the way let's move on to tanking raids and trials which will require you to work with another tank parties generally assign a main tank and an off tank in practice however a lot of current fights force tanks to swap aggro between them throughout the fight basically reducing the main tank down to who does the first pull as the off tank you're no less important and in fact you probably even have the more difficult of the two jobs while the main tank just has to keep the argo position the bars and deal with mitigation you have to constantly be aware of multiple things first of all you need to keep track of any adds that enter the arena that you have to pull away you're keeping an eye on the main tank making sure that you're ready to grab aggro should they go down to do so you can generate aggro when the main tank has the boss safely under control wait until some way into the fight and then activate your tank stance safe in the knowledge that the other tank is ahead of you an enmity if the main tank dies you're now automatically going to get the boss aggro if you hadn't already generated some enmity the aggro would go to the highest damage dps in your group instead potentially killing them if they were already low which is very likely if the tank went down if your aggro gets too high you can always simply turn the tank stands off again the last thing that you want is the boss spinning around on the spot because you took aggro another way of controlling aggro is the role action shirk which allows you to divert enmity to another party member to use this you have to click on whoever should receive enmity however in practice you're only ever going to shirk the other tank unless there is a ninja that you hate specifically that's why i generally tend to make the usage of shirt easier for me by using a macro here's the macro that i use it feel free to use it as well while we're talking about shirk already let's speak about tank swaps which is one of the uses for the ability a tank swap is forced in some fights usually because a boss will hit the targeted person twice the first hit applying a debuff and the second hit killing them if set debuff is active this is when the offtank should activate their tank stance if they haven't done so already and then use provoke this will immediately place them on top of the boss's enmity list making them the new target for the second hit to get the timing right you need to understand the following when the boss casts an ability the target for that ability is already locked in you casting provo during the cast won't change the fact that the other tank is soaking the first hit however you will receive the second hit immediately afterwards so generally as long as you provoke at any point during the boss cast you'll be fine afterwards you assume the role of main tank until the next forced tank swap or until you decide to give aggro back to the other tank as main tank soaking a tank buster you should first of all deactivate your tank stance secondly you should use shirk to divert the enmity back to the other tank making the swap smoother don't listen to anyone preaching about not using shirk during tank swaps because it's unnecessary somehow technically you won't need it if everything goes right because using provoke will place the person grabbing aggro from you on top of the enmity list but in practice it's a safety net and the other uses for shirk are limited at best so you might as well use it for its obviously intended purpose other than that being a good tank partner also means not fighting for enmity as petty as that sounds some other tanks you'll meet will have main character syndrome meaning they always have to be the main tank they'll generally try and work against you rather than with you and just give you a hard time in those cases i will leave them to it and just play as off-tank which is often the more demanding job anyways fighting over aggro is just petty and after playing tank for such a long time i'm just tired of even getting remotely upset over it well that was quite the video wasn't it i sure hope i was able to help you getting started as a tank it's for me the most fulfilling role and i always love seeing new people try their hand at it so don't be afraid to give it a shot and remember to take things at your own pace don't let anyone pressure you into big poles or things you're not comfortable with yet if you have any more questions feel free to ask them in the comments also i've made a bunch of guides on tanks that go into more detail on specific actions should you need help figuring out your kit some of them will be shown on screen right now if this video helped you out please leave a like so other people can find it too for now thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Jolsn

Views: 110,196

Keywords: FFXIV Tanking Guide for Beginners, FFXIV Tanking Guide, FFXIV Tank Guide, Tank Guide, Final Fantasy 14 Tanking Guide, Final Fantasy XIV Tank Guide, Final Fantasy XIV Tanking Guide, FFXIV tank tips, FFXIV Tank, ffxiv tank comparison, FFXIV Tank Tutorial, FFXIV Tank Beginner Guide, Tank beginner Guide, Tanking Beginner's Guide, Tanking for Beginners, FFXIV Tank Guide Endwalker, FFXIV Tanking for Beginners, how to tank ffxiv, how to tank in ff14, tankxiety, ffxiv how to tank

Id: isM-SK2tSI4

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2021