FFXIV: ABC - A Beginner's Guide to Tanks

a b c always b casting a mantra you may have heard many a player repeat over your time in the game whether or not you realized it this is one of the most important pieces of information you could ever be given and so we come to this guide welcome to abc a beginner's guide to tanks [Music] don't let that length scare you if you've seen any of my other content you know i take a thorough approach attempting to explain in ways a newbie will understand so i will be covering a wide array of topics that will get you into the tank role and performing better than you ever thought possible for yourself i'll be covering topics a beginner should deal with while also going in depth later on to more intermediate and advanced topics that you would benefit from thinking ahead about just because you're a beginner doesn't mean you can't make use of these topics either and if you want to learn beyond just a surface level the more information you would benefit from take learning slow learn a concept at a time instead of all at once it might all be info you want to know by the time you hit level cap but you don't need to learn it all right now immediately level one you are a pro everyone starts somewhere you may know some info already due to osmosis or you may have none but you should take time to practice everything a little at a time there's a lot you can do better and learn as you progress there's a lot of levels before you hit level cap and multiple tanks you can take through the leveling process practice first also when you queue for dungeons as a newbie nobody knows your experience level if you're not confident in yourself tell your group hey i'm a newbie advice is appreciated there's an unfortunate fear in people that causes them to typically not give advice unless asked for it first so i recommend asking for advice even if you think you're doing well you never know what things you might be able to do better make heavy use of the chapter select for traversing through subtopics you already understand and such but you never know if you might learn something new let's get started on the wide world of tanking before we get into any specific topics let's dispel some rumors and misconceptions first off and most importantly tanks do not have more responsibility than dps or healers they have different responsibilities the trinity system is called as such not just because there are three roles but because the three roles synergize with each other all three roles have many shared responsibilities such as learning boss patterns or dealing with mechanics all roles can be performing at bare minimum or high contribution levels all roles affect how much effort the other roles need to put in good dps slows how much tanking you must do and good healing widens your margin for error and margin for how many enemies you can pull at once your job is to protect the group but if people put themselves into aoes or pull enemies on their own without you the responsibility for their mistakes falls on them and despite the responsibility tanks do have i would argue that they are the easiest role to play in the game across all levels of content most times you need to do the fancy tank stuff you have a lot of warning ahead of time you have the easiest rotations if we include defensives and heels as part of rotations you move the least of any role and multiple other things that compile to generally make the role way easier than most people think but also anxiety is real i had it for a little bit when i was first starting out myself even and that was long ago back when tanking was way harder even but after the initial learning curve i realized how easy the tanking part of tanking was you just need to get past the anxiety and then everything becomes way better you will be the one leading the group in a physical sense the first one to run into enemies before anyone else at the same time as a tank you're not the leader or the arbiter of who lives and dies you are an equal member of the team you alone can be responsible for the success of an entire run but just because someone is being an idiot doesn't mean you're allowed to just make them tank two wrongs don't make a right you pull you tank makes you just as bad as someone who is purposefully pulling ahead of you double so if you shirk or turn off your stance the biggest pitfall of tanking is ego a lot of tanks do get an over-inflated ego because of their position again you do lead the group in a physical sense you are the most in charge of pull size but you should also make sure your healer is able to handle it even if you could theoretically do the pull without the dps you likely can't do it without the healer and you are still an equal member of the team and of course learn your tank toolkit the tanks all have differences and their own respective toolkits if you need to learn how to use a specific tank's toolkit there are plenty of videos out there about each including my own and be warned you will be seeing a lot of big polling in this video you do not need to start big pulling immediately take time to learn how to do small pools first you don't need to rush into big pooling you can easily see for yourself what single pools look like but i do want to show you what good big pulling is like you don't have to rush into it immediately take your time and anyone who tries to force you to start doing more before you are ready is making a mistake you should eventually try to start doing bigger pools two sets of enemies at a time learn how to improve and such but don't rush into it even though most of what you're going to see is the aforementioned big polling that seems like a good baseline to get into specifics so let's get into it the first three topics about tanking we will go over are the three main things about tanking that people seem to get wrong get scared of or just don't realize they're far from the only things you need to be a successful tank but they're the most important when you were just starting out at level 1 or even level 15 with your first dungeon so consider these major topics all part of a single package these are the points where you will fail most as a tank but are basic enough to get over very quickly and easily and when these are the most important things the things that you will feel most you'll be pretty quickly convinced how much easier it is to be a tank than you thought it really is as simple as this gear is one of the biggest failings tanks make gear is important for every roll don't get me wrong the gear is way more important for tanks than anyone else for a couple of reasons there is of course the same reason as everyone else and it ups your power level you have to keep your base power level on par with the content you are doing but consider what tanks excel at hp and defense if your gear is lacking not only are you the usual kind of lacking you're no longer what you need to be there have been many a time where i as a healer or dps have had more hp than the tank granted this is with max eye level sink down gear but if you right click and examine the gear of the tank you will see the gear is way below the level of the dungeon not just around the minimum expected level the worst of it is in a realm reborn where you're just starting to learn this could be why people have made tanks into this super scary thing the gear curve is brutal and will see the most effects while numbers are all low to begin with but there still remains a sticking point through the entire curve of the game your gear is extremely important the extra hp and extra defense will make your and your healers lives easier aromaborn is especially bad about it because of this button here the recommended gear button this is the worst button to ever consider using nobody seems to ever know exactly how it works doesn't seem to follow main stat but doesn't seem to follow item level either does not stick within your own role either so as a tank you can end up wearing dps gear that's a paddling really though this happens a lot make sure the gear you are wearing even if you aren't using the recommended gear button is tank gear if your defenses are going up it is tankier or you're so far behind in the gear curve that even non-tank gear is an upgrade if your defenses are going down it's no longer tank gear or is gear you've already outgrown this weird issue is entirely unique to a realmerborn once you get to level 50 the most you could do is use melee dps accessories instead of the tank ones and those are so comparable that it was actually meta for a while to use dps accessories for the better stats in some areas as long as your gear is kept up to date and you're not trying to use like mage accessories it'll be good which also on that note keep up on your accessories they're the least important of all the gear pieces but they're still important they aren't giving you a defensive boost but they are giving you plenty of offensive power and health and if you get tenacity you actually are getting a defensive boost you don't need to have perfect gear at all times but make an effort to have better gear than you would let your dps or healer jobs have every tank at level 10 gets a new skill shield oath defiance etc this is your enmity stands or called aggro stands turning this on makes all of your enemy generation have something like a 10 times multiplier a 1000 enmity generation is 10 000 enmity after enmity stands which enmity is how much an enemy wants to kill you and thus only attacks you the reason this section is called stance and not enmity is because your stance is basically all you need genuinely unless they do something to entirely retune aggro in future this button alone guarantees you will keep argo on stuff you attack upon any sort of level sinking being reduced in level to match the fate or dungeons level will automatically remove all buffs on you this includes enmity stands when entering into a duty make sure your stance is turned on every single time you can leave it somewhere out of the way but you need to be able to access it every single duty you do ever luckily outside of eight player or more content all you ever have to do is turn it on and then ignore it for the rest of the duty it's that simple for all dungeons of course you still need to actually earn your enemy but you essentially only ever need one attack per enemy to guarantee you enmity for a little bit we'll get more into that in a bit but seriously this is the hardest part remembering to turn on your stance the final rule for being a good tank when starting out is maximizing your dps output to start tanks put out a lot of damage around 60 of a dps depending on level range gear and specific job it's not some tiny amount of damage doing damage as a tank is genuinely a huge help to the team for one dead enemies can't damage you the sooner you kill enemies the less the healer has to keep you alive the less you have to actually tank the better if you want an in-depth mathing of why your dps matters for the dps alone go watch the healer beginner guide healers do even less damage than you and you should still do dps as a healer don't yell at your healer for doing dps they're helping you and i show off why in that guide but more important than that is that your damage is equal to your enmity output remember when i said that your stance multiplies the enmity by 10 enmity is something like one damage is one enmity which means every point of damage you do is multiplied by 10 and turned into enmity your dps is directly analogous to your ability to keep the enemies on you if you are fighting a group of enemies and suddenly you lose aggro you're not doing enough damage to keep them on you you can't just stop fighting mid-battle and expect the enemies to stay on you you will lose them and they will go murder your allies well not instantly they could take a few hits but you do need to maintain your enmity lead and doing damage is the ideal way to do it you keep enmity and you kill the enemies a lot faster the next major bit of being a good tank is making proper use of your wide variety of cooldowns cooldowns being those abilities with long cooldown timers for example rampart at level 8. if you need a dictionary of common terms click the card in the top right your attack cooldowns you should be using constantly for damage the defensive ones well have you ever seen a tank do this this is bad it's awful it's wasteful it's not how you want to be using your defensive cooldowns or even your offensive ones you almost never want to be using cooldowns pre-pool this is both offensive and defensive again if you use them pre-pool you lose a couple seconds on them not entirely terrible on its own but still not great the using every ability at once genuinely terrible with rare exceptions you should only ever use two cooldowns at once at most this is because cooldowns are not additive buffs they are multiplicative let's do a quick math example just to prove the point an attack does 10 thousand damage you used a twenty percent mitigation defensive cooldown this reduces the damage to eight thousand now let's take that same attack you used a twenty percent mitigation and a ten percent mitigation so take the twenty percent eight thousand damage remains then apply the ten percent damage reduction ten percent of eight thousand is eight hundred so our final damage taken is seventy two hundred if twenty and 10 added together it would be a 7 000 damage hit and the more cooldowns you use the less effective the added ones get the commutative property of multiplication says no matter which order we do it as the result is always the same twenty percent then ten percent or ten percent than twenty percent does it matter same result so the proper way to use your cooldowns is to grab the enemies establish aggro then start using them low levels we only have one or two cooldowns only ever use one at a time later on we could start using two at once when the cooldowns run out put up new ones if the enemies aren't about to die if they are about to die hold your cooldowns to the next battle this is called cycling your cooldowns you cycle through them one or two at a time and by the time you run out of cooldowns one or more will be coming back off of the cooldown depends on the job of course but that's the general rule and let me emphasize use your cooldowns you'll notice the name of this section is that you don't have emergency buttons there are exceptions to this rule such as clemency on paladin is only for emergencies but your cooldowns they won't even stop an emergency cooldowns prevent damage if an emergency is happening the damage has already been done not only should your buttons be constantly used to prevent emergencies when an emergency does happen your buttons won't fix it when you're low on health because of standing in a puddle or something a stiff breeze can kill you if you use the cooldown and still stood in the same puddle you'd have a lot more hp remaining 20 percent more if you used say rampart and this also applies to your ultimate cooldown each tank has one each has their own upsides and downsides some of them can be used in emergencies to save yourself for a short time but some of them also could have entirely prevented an emergency to begin with these are useful buttons and they should not be ignored plan ahead for them especially because hollowed ground and super blide have a short animation time before the buff activates if you're reacting on the fly to being about to die you'll hit the button hit zero hp and die before the buff applies so even your emergency buttons that can save emergencies suck in emergencies you may have heard the term spinning the enemies something that tanks do not want to do spinning is exactly as it sounds like making the enemies spin in circles this is not something you should do for a couple of reasons for one enemy attacks you want the enemies to be facing away from your party at all times with rare exception this points attacks called cleaves away from the group if they have them just like you have an auto attack so do enemies some enemies have an auto attack that will hit everyone in front of them typically this only applies to bosses but there's a rare normal trash mob that can cleave further separate from cleaves or the aoe attacks enemies can cast also known as area of effect those are usually the ones that place orange markers on the ground not very safe to be pointing those at your allies some of these casted attacks can even toe the line there will be attacks with a cast bar but no aoe marker but they can still cleave every ally in the attacks range as a tank all of these just congeal into a single action of keep enemies facing away so it doesn't make things any more complicated but it just goes to show how many possible reasons you have for never facing enemies toward your party for the fear of killing them secondly is avoiding aoes that will put allies in danger no matter what some bosses have attacks that will hit an entire area to their left or to their right if you are randomly spinning the boss around these can be hard for allies to avoid these attacks and some other attack types thirdly is positionals and this is where some exceptions can come in melee dps have attacked with buffed power when attacking an enemy from behind or to the sides if you spin the boss around randomly you make their lives harder you want to keep as absolutely still as possible for this reason but also there is a giant asterisk both in this section and in the next one sometimes you do want to spin the boss a little there are some random bosses here or there that will place aoes in bad positions they will leave behind puddles and make hitting the back of the boss impossible to hit you will purposefully spin the boss a little bit to make sure the dps can hit the rear and sides of the boss so while there is rare times you do want to spin the boss minimize it as much as possible if you need to practice take one of the markers you can place and place it in the arena and never leave that spot just make sure you're following the rules of how to place bosses too that will be a later section but for now note the importance of never leaving that spot where possible but also remember that never has an asterisk you are a tank not a god you still have to dodge avoidable damage those orange markers on the floor they mean everyone get out not everyone but the tank you still have to dodge you need to avoid the extra damage your health and defense are higher but you are not invincible you can still die from these they still give you vulnerability stacks that increase future damage this isn't up for debate it's a weird trend i've seen a very small subset of players insist on over the years tanks who insist that being a tank means they're supposed to take all the damage they can they should make no effort to dodge if you can avoid damage avoid the damage this includes any time you need to spin enemies or move them into awkward positions you can fix the boss's positioning after you avoid the aoes dying is not worth keeping it still making a mistake and failing to avoid an aoe is one thing purposefully standing in them is another make an effort to dodge even if it means the boss is not placed properly which again we'll get more into that in a bit stick to the marker you place as much as you can but avoid it when it is a danger zone the things i want to give to learn here are how to best avoid aoes and what to do if you fail to avoid an aoe first is avoiding aoe this is basically another math problem what is the least amount of distance you need to travel to avoid the aoe without running away from the boss a lot of players try and run away from the boss when this is not at all required strafing is the superior strategy when relevant this way you avoid the aoe without leaving the range of the boss you can keep hitting it at worst this spins the boss which is still preferable to moving it around the arena randomly further when you do have to run away from the enemy you don't have to run far away or anything like that you can stick close there's the max melee range this is about 3 yarms or so a lot of aoes scented around bosses are just small enough that you can still be in range of the enemy you avoid the attack and still keep attacking the times where you can't stay in range step out for one moment when the attack is about to go off then run right back in you won't even miss a beat further when the aoe indicators disappear you can move back in you almost never have to wait for the animation to finish the moment the market disappears move back in before the boss moves too if you need any more indication of what good movement looks like well i've had it playing this entire section just be ready to deal with exceptions when they come up if ever where you have to run further away drag the boss around or etc finally let's talk about what happens when you fail if you live well that's good hope the healer heals you before you die if you die meanwhile be your fault or even the healer's fault for letting you die the battle isn't over yet you can still continue and finish the fight get ready for your healer to revive you when they do hit that button as soon as you can and accept the raise when you get up i know it will be tempting to grab aggro back don't just stop and wait when a player revives they have five seconds of near total immunity to all damage including most raid wide damage the exceptions are mostly in high-end content so just stand there and wait for the healer to throw you another heel then you can use provoke to instantly get the boss back from whoever was tanking it while you were dead in 8 player content trials and raids just let the other tank keep aggro swap to off tank we'll get into that later too if you try and provoke the boss or aoe spam on enemies if it was a trash pull you will just wind up dead again you need to have an hp buffer to survive even just a little bit to survive when you start taking damage again if you jump right back into the fray you will die with the general rules for tanking gone over let's take a moment to talk something you might experience a lot hitting low hp healers typically will play limbo with your hp and i mean genuinely how low can you go kind of limbo you could see your health dip as low as 10 percent or maybe even lower trust your healer until they give you a reason to no longer trust them until they let you die just trust them a good healer will have complete control of the situation your job is to make their life easier use cooldowns properly to reduce incoming damage avoid enemy aoe so you don't take a sudden spike of damage out of nowhere if you are doing your job right they can do theirs this is so extremely important to emphasize be absolutely sure you did everything you were supposed to before you start panicking trust them until they let you die death isn't the end of the world to begin with so you can just let them do what they do if you are 100 certain you did everything you were supposed to and still died then you can start distrusting them but also communicate about it suggest they don't dps as much as they have but don't finger point they might be learning too this might be the first time they tried letting a tank fall low everyone is learning along with you and you won't be able to tell the difference between a healer who is extremely practiced or completely new to healer limbo until they fail and even then the more experienced players can still mess up sometimes let me preface this with saying this is the longest section of the video there is so much that you can put into properly pulling trash mobs a lot of it becomes second nature once you get into it but it all bears mentioning so strap in for a lot of info but again you can take it all in a little at a time and most of it becomes subconscious very quickly when in a dungeon you typically fight enemies in groups rarely you will fight a single enemy by itself but almost exclusively trash mobs will be two or more enemies at once there is no avoiding this as the enemies are chained together so to speak when running up to a group of enemies use your ranged attack skill to start the fight this will cause all enemies within the pack to aggro to you as the first person to interact with them they will quickly group themselves around you start using your aoe move to hit all the enemies around you problem one to solve here enemies should not be around you even if your aoe is circular you should never be surrounded the exception is if you are doing wall to walls or such which we'll go into later when pulling you should run slightly in keyword slightly past the enemies so that they group together next to each other when you start to aoe this groups them all together this places them optimally so that they are a not throwing aoes towards the team b groups them as close as possible for your allies to aoe and you can shuffle around slightly to closer group smaller enemies together beyond this initial positioning even in sastasia some dps have aoe too it isn't just you a bunch of dps don't have it until their 40s but that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice good habits as early as then especially because as early as stacia normal trash mobs already have aoes to point away from here you just spam your aoe until most of the enemies are dead pace breaker here pretty easy to start right so before getting back into the intricacies let's take a break to note arm's length as a cooldown slow is not movement speed slow is attack speed that means if you use arm's length all enemies who hit you now attack slower this really only works on trash mobs early game around reborn bosses can be slowed but by level 50 you stop using it in bosses for the slow but in trash mobs this is always a useful cooldown extremely underutilized by most tanks alright back to the grind let me emphasize here that trash is more dangerous than bosses with very little exception even up into expansion content and such even a single small group of enemies will be more dangerous than bosses the exceptions are of course the attacks known as tank busters we'll go into that in a bit but with that name isn't that kind of huge that should tell you without me saying more use your best stuff for trash mobs saving your tools for bosses is wasting a lot of uses of the skills and putting the cart before the chocobo who cares if the boss is well prepared for if the journey there has been hell in a hand basket this gets way worse once you try doing multiple groups of enemies one group of enemies is worse than a single boss two groups of enemies is more dangerous than two bosses three groups use your tools this especially applies to your aoe tools as well we already established as a tank you want to keep enemy attention on you and that higher dps means higher aggro aoe moves by their nature are the most effective attacks when you have a group of enemies two birds for one stone three birds if you also count the mitigation aspect i mentioned dead enemies cannot hurt you wow three birds at once that's some good aoe time on that note get used to using your aoe i mean this as in making sure it hits the enemies warrior has a cone aoe one i much prefer cone is much easier to use personally while the other tanks are only circular aoes you only need a single striking dummy to practice the range you have to work with many newbie tanks fall into the issue of completely missing the aoes mostly the non-warriors keep in mind the moment you press the button before the animation is finished damage has already been tallied make sure when you press the button you are at the enemies or you will miss entirely then comes with dealing with ranged mobs you have two potential options for how to adjust to ranged enemies the first is to run further or backtrack until arranged enemies are all grouped together then pull all other mobs up to this group of ranged enemies the second option is to hide around a corner depending on the dungeon this is a very useful tool enemies can't attack you through walls so they will round the corner too but when employing this specific strategy you have another problem to take into account your healer cannot heal through wolves either and many newbie healers make the mistake of not following you like a lost puppy the lost puppy problem as i call it if the healer is purposefully standing close to you at all times unless it is a boss this is a good thing don't worry about it and they will make sure to keep themselves alive which let's talk more on healers while we are here the big reason these healers may be following you so close is due to regens regen is a skill that heals you slowly over a duration also called a heal over time gunbreaker has one of these every heal from these abilities generates enmity if this triggers before you get aggro on the enemies they may go attack the healer them following you extremely close is their way to make this not an issue if they're standing on you while you pull the enemies all still come to you for you to just aoe them and establish enmity if they go after the healer first hp is a resource but it is not yours to use you need to be avoiding damage where you can just because avoidable aoes are meant to be avoidable and can kill you easily especially in later content but on top of that the heli will almost never be spamming heals on you they may even purposefully let you get low as we established earlier at the same time while health isn't your resource to use if the healer isn't making use of it either it could be because they can't if you're not seeing a need for cooldowns or the healer isn't ever really needing to heal you you can probably afford to pull more enemies while the healers are playing limbo you can be playing limbo too pull more enemies to actually make use of your cooldowns give the healer a reason to be able to use their cooldowns too you don't need to pull big but pull more we'll get a lot more into this idea in the next major topic let's go back to your dps allies the healer is standing with you to prevent enemies from straggling behind in an ideal world your dps allies will do the same and i don't just mean the melee players ranged dps have melee-based aoes and even mages would do well to follow you albeit not as closely because they'll need to stop moving sooner than the other roles to be able to start casting excluding end walker summoner at least these are the people you need to worry about most but sometimes ranged or even melee dps can cause issue when multi-pulling but even when single pulling dps can sometimes grab enemies by accident they might pull before you do because they accidentally walked ahead of you they might steal aggro before you get your aoe out or there could be an enemy that randomly wanders around the battlefield that saw the dps first or the healer if they're not following close to sum it up you need to watch for stragglers be ready to throw a ranged attack or provoke to get enemies off your allies and into the big group some of them will even panic and start running away the moment they have aggro the sooner you grab the enemies the better your goal is to have aggro on all current enemies be wary of anyone taking enemies away to sum this all up in the easiest to implement way grab enemies with ranged attack use aoe to establish enmity make sure they are all grouped together in one big ball of angry and pointed away from the group again this was all a lot but most of it just becomes subconscious action i don't even realize i point trash away from the group anymore it just happens without me realizing it i've internalized those small movements to the point i don't even realize i'm doing it in the process of recording this video i caught myself being surprised at some of my actions at one point i kept tapping the s key over and over to slowly move towards the white mage whose holy spam was too far away to hit all the enemies i consider myself to have been a really bad tank when i started out in a realm reborn and yet even i am at the level of doing things by accident that's just how tanking ends up going take it a bit at a time and eventually you will have it down pat pulling is a lot like a relationship you have to commit to it you pull small pull multiple or pull big commit don't take half measures because that means you will be dragging enemies around needlessly people need near stationary mobs to properly fight a proper pull goes like this you run up to a group of enemies group them and get enmity on them and kill all of them you do not move until they are all dead this extends further in multiples you run up do one to two aoe attacks to make sure you have enmity on every enemy on the group then run off repeat until you have every group you intend to pull just watch how i am doing it stop only long enough to get aggro then keep moving any other variety of this you're almost guaranteed doing it wrong study stepping and study pulling are more likely to get you killed than it will ever help this also goes to the dreaded chain pool there's a lot of reasons for this chain pulling is the idea of pulling more enemies before the first group is dead because of how cooldowns work you may be turning a small pool into a big pole without the tools available big pools almost require you to have cooldowns to have a good chance of surviving this includes sprint sprint is useful for multiple because of the idea of kiting that is to say the idea of running around so the enemies can't hurt you you normally can't kite in this game but sprinting away from the enemies trying to attack you works as a pseudo kite this reduces the damage enemies do to you between groups and if you're running into a group of enemies with half your hp already missing this is a recipe for disaster another issue is that you're running off when the team isn't expecting it sure they should be following you but they're not expecting you to just run off in the middle of combat healers might have pre-pool prep like regens or shields to help get you started they will have to react to you just randomly running off to nowhere as will the dps who cannot probably fight mid-run this doesn't entirely apply to ranged dps but mages in melee really can't attack mid-run he here's me even as a healer just trying to use arrow on the move the game freaks out when running too close to an enemy melee dps do have a tactic where they try to get it to work but it's so finicky it doesn't always and nobody can aoe mid-run if you have six enemies chasing behind you an aoe attack would be lucky to hit three of them enemies chasing after you tend to end up in a near single file line between the weirdness with casting when next to moving enemies and the shape of your aoes your allies just can't fight while running even when they can it's not well it's purely the setup phase for when you stop moving which speaking of stopping moving if you keep stopping and starting your allies are going to waste their abilities they see you're not running anymore they're going to pop their big 20 second long cooldowns all at once and go crazy on the enemies you have grouped up in the middle of this big burst of fighting you run off again oh well there goes all those buffs they used all the prep they tried to do is now wasted so let's go over a general multi or wall to wall pull now you stop short of the first pull wait for your allies to catch up you pop sprint here so that you get the full 20 seconds of time and get moving all your allies should also be popping sprint here too come up on the first group of enemies and use your aoe to establish aggro make sure you hit every enemy when you've hit every enemy get moving on do not try to use more than two attacks so you've gotten the enemies keep running when you reach the next group of enemies use one to two aoes to establish enemy then move on again repeat this pattern until you have grabbed every enemy you intend to grab if you have any regens or small defensive cooldowns use them to reduce the damage at each group of enemies a little to help keep your hp up once you find your stopping point this is where you start using your big cooldowns using the big cooldown's mid-run doesn't do much to help because of this pseudo kiting i mentioned enemies won't be hurting you because you're sprinting out of range until you reach the next group when you're finally done running you will still want to be cycling cooldowns absolutely be sure to have one running at all times if possible in bigger pools in higher level content when you have more an expansive toolkit you can use two cooldowns at once for bigger defensive boost cycle two at a time if needed when one runs out put up another and do not forget arm's length is a good cooldown too it won't be as strong as some others but a cooldown is a cool down but how about deciding how big you can safely pull communication and looking at gear make sure your gear is good make sure the healer is good and if you're still not sure ask if they are ready for it and as i established earlier if you and the healer aren't needing to use your toolkits like they are meant to be used you have room to pull more enemies every dungeon has a different level of requirements for you to meet and a different level of base damage per enemies i always point toward stone vigil for the first test of tanking bartom's metal over in stormblood meanwhile is the hardest hitting dungeon in the game others you can basically wall to wall without ever using a single cooldown and be completely safe you'll have to learn by experience and watching anyone who is tanking for you keep that in mind as well not every dungeon is a wall to wall dungeon basically every dungeon after hitting level 50 is a dungeon you can do wall to wall in with different levels of success but there's still the exceptions to the rule the others are only barely achievable with a skilled party also be sure to check the healer's mp before you start pulling if you're going too fast in low-level dungeons the gila can actually run out of mp it is rare but it can happen make sure the healer has a high amount of mana before you start running for more enemies this also applies if your group wipes your healer will revive with almost no mana even if all the healer does is heal you they don't have mana you won't survive then comes the easy stuff bosses at least dungeon bosses there will always be exceptions to the rule but there is a general pattern you can take but the majority of bosses in the game run up towards the boss and use your ranged attack do not use your gap closer if you have one this makes the lives of your melee dps harder and makes the next step of pulling a boss harder the next step being pull the boss to the middle of the arena this brings the boss closer to your party and to your melee players sooner it also places the boss in the most ideal position for dealing with most mechanics you might see step 3 and final step run straight through the enemy the shortest path to turning a boss away from your party is to run through them running a circle around the boss is slow and inefficient again exceptions exist but following this pattern should take care of how you need to handle most of the bosses in the game remember these exceptions where you can always face bosses north north being relative to the entrance of the arena being south run directly south to north and keep the boss facing north at all times if the boss spins around to face an ally and attack stay north and have it turn back from here it's a matter of following a set of rules to keep it smooth for your dps if the melee cannot hit the positionals spin the boss just enough to make the rear and one of the sides of the boss available if the boss is up against a wall because it did a mechanic like in this clip don't leave it on the wall move the boss back to the middle of the arena i wouldn't normally be including this boss but this boss proves the rule pretty well and the tanks who don't pull it mid anger me as a melee dps when mechanics are happening be sure to react quickly especially when moving the boss is required sometimes even just a little bit of movement is needed other times a lot more movement is needed in this latter case moving quickly and as soon as possible is ideal if you react slowly the dps will have no time to react to where you are going if there are two safe spots in the arena you will run to the dps doesn't know which one you will run to they're both equally far away from you and if the dps guess is wrong they have to leave the boss if your tanking forces dps to stop being dps you could be improving your movement you may also have to grab adds mid-fight in most cases you and your ally should push to kill these enemies asap positioning these enemies are usually not at all important though keeping the boss in a good position for after the adds are dead is more important make proper use of provoke and ranged attack to make this happen finally we have tank busters when normal attacks of bosses are typically extremely weak tank busters will bust you good you definitely want to be using cooldowns for these skills the issue comes in with knowing which attacks are tank busters and will do a lot of damage uh get hit by it i mean usually the boss will do some sort of wind-up animation that looks like they're going to do a very slow falcon punch other times the attack sounds like a really painful thing you do to a single person but sometimes still you may just have to guess or be hit by it first to know what the tank buster is you won't use your strong stuff on bosses except on these big attacks auto attacks only warrant your weak defensives if any but your weak defensives are still good for tank busters you always want to be reducing damage of tank busters where you can also try and reduce raid wide damage where you can as well attacks you know do damage to the entire party use the defensive that affect your entire party this will help reduce the damage it does to you and help your healer keep them alive to finish off i do want to talk about some of the exceptions there is one boss in the game i know doesn't have any tank busters in expansion content and not all bosses you want to be even attempting to re-center mostly bosses from the around reborn era where they can be doing mini tank busters as essentially auto attacks stone vigil is the dungeon that breaks the rules for every boss essentially you'll drag the first boss back to mid but won't always be trying to face it north second boss you drag all the way to the entrance to try and cause the tornadoes it summons to end up stuck on the walls and not on the cannons in the north of the room and in this case north actually means east remember north is relative to the arena entrance and final boss you never want to attempt to recenter at all as long as the rear of the boss is available where the boss stands is unimportant there's plenty more to learn bossed boss but follow the basic rules and you'll be able to handle all dungeon bosses just fine a lot shorter than trash mobs took huh yep bosses aren't non-threatening especially in later dungeons but they are far more simple to deal with than your average trash pool especially once you get into big bowls you can't big pull multiple bosses meanwhile the complexities come in when you get into the harder fights 8-man content while eight bands go anywhere from easy as dungeons to high-end fights you can typically follow the same rules we established and a few more keep the bosses mid react quickly move bosses only if required cool down tank busters the real thing to learn is how to deal with two tanks there's a silent rule within the game that whoever turns the tank stance on first is the main tank whoever does not is the off tank off tank being a blue dps essentially i'll get into off tank rules in a moment a better alternative to this is to use the chat box some people don't know this rule others do not care and fighting for the enemy lead with two tanks can lead to a disaster let's just say a lot more trial and raid bosses have cleaves than dungeon bosses if you try the silent rule and your co-tank tries to fight for aggro do what i do and just give up use shirk to give you aggro to the main tank and relegate yourself to off tank this also does apply to 24 man instances but without the shirk don't bother fighting for the aggro lead you can also go based on gear if the other tank is in a much weaker gear set you're automatically the main tank a more defensive tank is easier to heal but honestly even with that being the right thing to do go to communication while main tanking is the same as in instances with one tank multiple tanks introduces off tanks generally you're a pretty dps but there are some responsibilities that you have that you might or might not have had before first off is tank stance you have to learn to stand stands you should never fight for the aggro lead but you should act like you are up to a point you want to keep an aggro lead over your healers and dps without overtaking the main tank after the first 20 to 30 seconds of a fight turn on your tank stance too if you start to encroach on the aggro lead shirk your main tank if it happens again turn off your stance be ready to turn it back on if your dps start overtaking your second place aggro position keep an eye on the aggro list in the party list for if they're going to the reason you do this is for if the main tank dies if the main tank dies you become the main tank if you are not already second and aggro you end up with a dps becoming the main tank which is not good even if the dps can survive for a while it is very much not ideal get aggro as soon as possible and being second in aggro before the main tank dies will cut out the middle dps i've had enough time tanking as a dragoon thank you also some rare bosses target both tanks at the same time based on aggro lead and i mean auto attacks though some boss tank busters do attack the first two players in aggro also keep in mind you have abilities that help the party or your coat tank pallet has intervention for example or gun breakers part of stone you can place this on the main tank for tank busters without trying to take the tank buster for yourself in 24 man's make sure you are the first in aggro for your party you will have a one instead of an a for aggro if you aren't trying to be a main tank make sure you have the one some 24 mans also have bosses that will attack all three tanks at the same time autos and tank busters just like the boss is hitting both main tanks in eight mans off tanks tend to be 100 in charge of adds as well which rarely can also mean a second boss appearing any additional enemies beyond the main boss tend to be entirely on the off tank if you didn't have a tank stance on already you will need it for these adds as you get into harder content though the tank swap gets introduced both tanks will trade the main tank slot back and forth tank busters or other mechanics will force the tanks to go back and forth most often it is due to the boss using a tank buster that puts a vulnerability up on the main tank if the main tank gets hit by a second part of the tank buster or sometimes just auto attacks they will drop dead all but instantly when a tank swap is taking place the off tank should use provoke after the buster hits then the main tank should shirk the off tank this should then establish a decent aggro lead for the off tank to then now become the main tank the moment you step into any extreme level or harder fights expect some kind of tank swapping finally we have tank lb3 there are very rare fights in the game like three or four total maybe five or six with end walker that require the use of tank limit break 3 to survive what the boss does the game will give you a notice on screen that you must prepare to time a limit break limit break 3 has an 8 second timer so there is a good amount of leeway tank limit break is usually not what you rely on otherwise but i'll go into that is a mini topic in a bit you may also see some use in learning every tank's toolkit but it isn't quite as useful as healers learning each other's kits on that note though you may want to play other roles if you feel like your cooldown game is strong you may want to try out healer and have your ego taken down a few pegs godly tanks will have such smooth cooldown usage you'll rarely need to heal tank with similar cooldown usage to you may actually end up being tanks you hate to heal it's a good way to realize oh no i need to do better if you feel like your positioning is amazing you're always putting trash mobs and bosses in perfect positions get playing a melee job might be a good time to try out that new reaper job or such the moment you miss a positional to the tank spinning the boss wrong not moving it quickly or moving the boss into a bad position you can't attack from you'll notice your own problems fairly quick tanks really are the role that benefit the most from playing both other roles will dps and healers have a good synergy of things to learn from crossing between the roles it is nowhere as much learning as you can learn from crossing between tanks and dps it may also be the hardest to learn across rules though this could be the reason people have learned to fear tanks people learn to fear it before getting any cross roll laning done if you know how to properly position and such before you hear about how hard tanking is you don't learn that fear on top of that some bosses are pretty big it can be very hard to see what dps are doing mid-fight if the dps are having a bad time it could be impossible to tell you will have to swap back and forth between the roles to know for sure this is a short topic but there's a lot of little things you could notice here or there but generally all you need to know is play the other two roles you may come out with some new tank strategies or no smart dps strategies thanks to your tanking for some extra topics that are short specific or otherwise not worth their own section we got a bunch of stuff we can go over like reminding you not to have fear as a tank that anxiety is real but the goal is to get over it you think this video is long just wait for the dps video i can almost guarantee that one is going to be the longest just because i am most experienced as one to continue on the initial theme of stuff we already talked about check the gear of your team start of every run at least check the healer you may already be ready for a huge pull and the healer has no gear to handle it you'll need to try a smaller pool first to test the waters which also still communicate make use of your ui and the focus target pressing square when highlighting a target or right clicking them with the mouse you open a menu with focus took it in the list there's also keybinds in the keybinds menu under targeting but more important is your main ui keep your party list big enough so you can see the aggro list numbers and the bars for balancing off tanking you can also take the target bar split it into multiple pieces and put the cast bar in a good place when you see the bigger cast bar appear you know to use cooldowns especially when it is a tank buster also enemy list if you have trouble noticing you missed an enemy in trash make it bigger stand in the healer bubbles in trash pulls wall-to-wall especially healers are banking on the buffs you get inside of their healer bubbles it helps heal you or may even come with a defensive boost and for bosses you don't need to stand outside of the boss's hitbox you can get into the bubble get in the boss won't turn around unless you pass the middle of the boss's hitbox a helium making an attempt to get you and the dps in the bubble on boss is small enough for this do it but if you have to turn the boss around to get in it's not worth it dark knight has a bubble too salted earth practice keeping enemies in this because other jobs have attacking bubbles too for example ninja they have a sand puddle called doton get enemies on the doton some ninjas also make the mistake of trying to use it in bosses try and at least keep the boss in those puddles too where you can let's take a moment to talk about legacy versus standard controls the biggest and quickest difference between the two can be boiled down to hold s that's what this clip is me holding s down personally legacy and strafing is the best choice for all non-magic jobs everyone has their own personal control scheme preferences though but it's worth playing around with just because well i'm sure you've seen some weird movements in this video in terms of my movement you wish you could do and it's why i say legacy is best and also realize legacy versus standard for control is is still also a different discussion my comments are for keyboard and mouse users pulling with provoke is not a bad idea inherently it has a longer reach for pulling trash mobs it can also act as a second ranged attack when there are only two enemies in a pack of enemies ranged attack 1 provoke the other and if you're pulling more you don't even need to stop for an aoe it also works great for adds and bosses interrupt and stun roll actions are very useful any attack with a cast bar like this that pulses is an attack that can be interrupted this completely negates the attack from ever coming out and harder levels of content missing an interrupt could be lethal but even trash mobs can have attacks worth interrupting bosses you really can't stun only ones up to about level 40 but almost all trash mobs in the game can be stunned all the tanks can use low blow and using it on the one enemy casting a big aoe means no need to avoid said big aoe you can stay still and keep attacking also you will want to use low blow as some mini mitigation still even one enemy being stunned is less damage though maybe let the white mage handle it if they're using holy when it comes to dungeon difficulty leveling dungeons hurt a lot more level cap dungeons can be pretty tough but bardem's metal hardest hitting dungeon in the game as i said is a leveling dungeon level cap dungeons is where it is easiest to big or wall to wall pool especially because you can massively over gear them boss arenas look at them they're works of art like really look at them look at this pattern notice it is well designed to show you the middle of the arena the exact middle or how about this one with all these weird lines oh the boss will use an attack the exact same shape as those lines on the ground this is an extremely common thing they do with arenas trials especially all these intricate designs often are because they're using subtle clues to show you how to do mechanics long before they show up this is key for boss positioning speaking of trials countdowns are a thing people will argue oh you don't need openers and countdowns in casual content but where else are you going to practice those ideas before going into the high-end content give at least a 10 second countdown before pulling a boss 15 or even 20 would be better for some jobs but people can be very impatient good dps will appreciate it though extreme trials or harder it isn't an optional thing anymore please use countdowns special note to paladins dark knights and gun breakers use your ultimates as cooldowns warn your healers ahead of time before you do it too say you have a white mage one of the most famous memes around the final fantasy 14 community is using benediction right before a gun breaker uses super bellied this can be avoided if you outright tell the healer hey i'm going to use super bollide then when you use super polide they will benediction you and you'll be instantly healed watch how i'm using it i use super bullet just fine and the healer instantly heals me up and then still doesn't have to heal and they can know ahead of time i don't need to heal or i should wait to use my holy because they're gonna be under hollowed ground and hollowed ground reduces all damage to zero so you can get 10 seconds from hollowed ground of no damage and the six seconds from holies meaning that's a lot of damage you're getting rid of communication really is useful especially for these three abilities warrior with their home gang as useful as homegang is in a raid environment i would say home gang is kinda terrible in dungeons like legitimately terrible you can't use it as well as the other ones but you could theoretically get use out of it it's just not as useful as any of the other three but seriously make use of your ultimate cooldowns and communicating about them makes them even better just because a healer can know what your skills do doesn't mean they know at all when you're going to actually use them and if they know you're going to use one of your best abilities they can adjust their plan the moment they know that you're going to do it it is genuinely a useful tool that i appreciate of any of my tanks and instantly makes me want to commendation them it is that useful to me tank limit break isn't extremely useful as lb one or two but it can rarely see use for a strategy or two or in dungeons if the dps seem to be ignoring the existence of the limit break for half the dungeon it now belongs to you only one person can use limit break before draining the entire bar but if nobody else is using it it will be a waste and no saving it for a finisher for the final boss is not a legitimate use of limit break also hope to see your ranged or mage allies use it in dungeons aoe is better than single target making ranged and mage limit break way better than melee limit break and finally stop with the clemency spam please paladins just stop let the healers do their job if they are struggling go crazy they let you die you have no reason to trust them anymore but let them get their heels in they have time to heal and dps without you using clemency but even worse is your dps is stronger than a healer's unless you have absolutely zero cooldowns left clemency is the only defensive ability you have left let the healers handle it until they fail and maybe even then doing their job for them the moment they get into hearted content they're gonna have needed the practice all right that's enough miscellaneous topics let's get into the final part a b c always be casting you may have come into this guide not understanding what abc actually means always be casting the explanation for abc is abc that really is all there is to it what it says is exactly what it means always be casting this is the most important tip that will take the most practice to get right i went over a few examples of abc earlier in the video but let's put it all here the biggest major factor of abc is making sure you stay within enemy range at all times you should be able to hit the enemies no matter what if you have to move out of range make sure it's for as little time as you can manage step outside of the aoe range as it is about to go off then run right back in this keeps your aggro and damage up but also keeps the enemy in place this helps your melee dps allies keep abc2 that may be the most important part of abc as a tank if you are failing to abc you may be making it harder on the dps and given their entire purpose is to do damage well maybe keeping your abc up is a good thing to do you may be tempted to use your ranged attack but even with end walker making it no longer break combos hold on to that idea a ranged attack is better than no attack but a melee attack is better still and you probably can get in a melee attack instead the game works on a three-fourths rule mostly that is to say cast bars don't begin to calculate damage done until the cast bar is past the three-fourths mark if a boss is using a very slow to cast ability that lasts say 10 seconds you don't need to even consider moving out of range until the second half of the bar or like 7 seconds in you don't need to be so good as to get out of range at the absolute last moment every single time but you don't need to run out of range the moment you see the attack start casting much like with everything else there's a balance to be struck give yourself time to avoid but don't avoid just because the ground turned orange a little cast bar timings matter and don't forget about your sprint button not only is it useful for big pulling and such you can use it mid pole to dodge stuff it makes it much easier to dodge big aoes or such when you just sprint out of the way it makes it much easier to get in and out of range of the boss as needed and then again there's dodging aoes without getting out of range you should dodge in the direction that minimizes how much you need to move but without running away from the enemy strafing is a godsend in this aspect you can just circle around the enemy when an aoe appears on you this way you dodge the aoe and still keep in range of the boss if the aoe is centered on the boss try and use max melee range sit at max melee and dodge when it is time but a lot of the time max melee range can still be far enough to dodge the attack to begin with practice at a training dummy find the max melee range and see how much leeway there is between being up in the face of a boss or away from the boss but still in range to attack moving back into position is also key to abc mostly for your dps allies the moment the orange circle disappears it is almost always safe to walk back in the damage has already been calculated the moment the circle vanished move back into place when you see you can follow the rules we established keep bosses still don't spin them or move them around unless the boss needs you to you may also have seen players hitting their buttons like i do like this you don't need to be mashing the keys like this it might be better for your hands to not do this even but you should still aim to try and hit the buttons before the cooldown fully cycles through this is called ability cueing about half a second or so before a skill can be used if you press the button it will still go off it will wait for the cooldown to finish but the moment the cooldown finishes it will execute this is faster than pressing the button only after you see them light up get used to queuing and you can get attacks off faster than before there's also the idea of weaving global cooldowns all share a 2.5 second cooldown before skill speed is introduced cooldown abilities offensive or defensive are off global cooldowns they do not cycle when using a gcd if you use an off global between globals this is called weaving and you can weave up to two times between gcds consider there to be two weaving windows between every gcd each window can contain one skill however consider that the win of the button push matters a lot for weaving due to animations so let's do a mini exercise take your global cooldowns recast timer the base cooldown is 2.5 seconds cut this in half to get two weaving windows of 1.25 seconds however let's split this in half again so we have four pieces each one is 0.62 seconds we'll ignore the extra millisecond that we're ignoring now consider every weave to take up one and a half windows if you cue your skills as soon as you can hitting the keys the moment your gcd goes off your two weaves will line up like this you still have that half a second of leeway at the end however if you say wait a window and then some before you use an ability but still weave two skills back to back the weaves extend beyond the window this is why ability cueing is so important despite seeming like some super advanced topic the earlier you get practiced on pressing buttons sooner rather than later the better your rotations will come out it adds up very quickly to making you perform better also offensive buffs like in a release you always want to keep these within the second weaving window where you can mostly when you are only doing a single weave not to at once if you use these within the first half of the weaving window that's an entire second of the timer you have wasted again you don't need to be mashing like i tend to do but do try and learn from my footage it isn't just to be fancy or such it's to make my damage come out stronger than ever and the comfy you are with keeping up your rotation the easy it becomes to fit in defensive abilities as well you're not just making your offensive game go up but you're secretly training yourself to be a better tank defensively as well this is something you'll be slowly learning over your entire time as a tank so don't rush it but be ready for how much it will truly help you thank you for watching abc a beginner's guide to tanks we went over many many many topics that will be implemented as you progress but the more you implement the more you improve take it a step at a time and follow the evolution of topics i attempted to lay out for you the more you play the more you learn and the more you see how something can be used and hopefully see how much easier tanking is than you ever thought it was feel free to leave feedback or further advice for newbie tanks to know as they train themselves or even ask questions on something you didn't understand within the video this is here to help after all be sure to check the description for any added information as well maybe end walker changes more than we expect or such perhaps at one point i will also create a video on intermediate level tanking keep an eye out for that but the future holds many possibilities otherwise take care and may the power of an and mid hogsley waste to your enemies and extra special thanks to all my patrons over on patreon an extra extra special thanks to ayman alcateb benjamin han kroicky might dmitry shibanov ethan ethan olson james kevin lowe kyle steinhauser mizella scott stanley t rogue and valor llc thank you all for watching links down below to all the different things and have a good night

Channel: WeskAlber

Views: 269,056

Keywords: ff14, shadowbringers, beginner, learning, guide, endwalker, role, always be casting, basics, tank, tanking

Id: Sk3hZtTFvzk

Length: 80min 52sec (4852 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021