FFXIV Endwalker: Beginners & Veterans Tanking Guide, Mitigation, Damage & More (FFXIV University)

hello my friends and welcome to my first tanking guide in this guide i want to aim towards beginners but also veterans alike i've been tanking on the final fantasy 14 since around reborn so my tanking knowledge is pretty vast i'm going to be covering everything that i can think of and i've put down into a word document that i feel is essential to know as a tank for getting started and also if you've been thank you for a while maybe some things you've missed i might not be able to cover every single little thing there is to do with tanking which means there might be future short videos going over some of these things if there's anything you guys can point out as well then please do leave in the comments without further ado let's just dive right into the video so let's go over the role of tanking your main responsibilities as a tank is first and foremost having aggro enmity of an enemy or enemies your next responsibility is mitigation making sure you are mitigating damage to make your healers life easier they don't have to heal you as much they can do dps and also prevent you from dying dying prevention is a huge responsibility on your part no less than the healers and your final responsibility as a tank is damage output considering your combos do high damage and you won't have anything better to do when you're in a boss fight or dungeons then delivering a high output of damage is also one of our responsibilities you should never think just because you're a tank you are not responsible to deal high damage of course you're not going to deal as much as a dps but you will be dealing a respectable amount of damage and being a huge contributor to your party and the speed of which you can clear dungeons or the speed of which you can clear raids and trial instances so that'll cover the basics of tanking let's go over the mentality of being a tank a lot of tanks seem to think that they are special and they have a higher purpose than everyone else this is not the case as a tank you have an equal responsibility to everyone else tanks are simply there to just take the brunts of the damage healers are simply there to heal and dps are simply there to dps when i say it like this it sounds awfully basic and simple but there's so much more to each and every single one of those roles and because of that you need to think as a tank there's more to your role but there's also more to the healer role and there's also more to the dps role so you must know not to think you are better than anyone else be aware that you have equal responsibility to everyone else in the party this should also help you with tank anxiety don't just think because you wiped or you died it's all your fault but also do take into consideration what you could have done better don't throw the blame on someone instantly so that covers the mentality i just want to really drill that into your head before we get into the nitty-gritty parts of the video i really do feel that is an important thing as a tank just please don't think you're better than anyone else i've been tanking for years and i've never had this forever but some tanks do for some reason have this random thought that they think they are better and it just really isn't the case let's talk about your comfort level as a tank i feel like this is the next important part before we get on to the more interesting parts of this video this is pretty simple really just understand your own comfort level and also know the default now the default in most dungeons before level 50 and we'll get into that in a moment is water wall pulls so you'll be pulling one pack and then you'll be pulling another pack all the way to the wall and then you're going to mitigate accordingly and make sure you're grouping up all these mobs appropriately that is the default and that is something you need to understand as a tank even when it is your first time but if you're not comfortable doing that then just let your group know let your party know be like guys i'm new to tanking uh you know i might have anxiety from tanking it's new to me please let me pace myself and most players will understand now some players might pull for you they might go ahead and pull because they're like ah whatever those players are impatient but just be the better person and take the aggro off that person who pulled and then make sure we're popping cooldowns and maybe after the pool tell them please you know avoid doing that i've told you that i'm not comfortable doing big pulls and if they ignore you after that then unfortunately it is what it is you might just have to deal with a bad apple for our whole dungeon run moving on to roll actions i want to use this part of the video to quickly go over all the role actions tanks have access to all tanks have access to rampart this is 20 mitigation for 20 seconds every 90 seconds this is especially good on pretty much everything it's good as a filler cooldown it's good for tank busters it's good for large pulls on dungeons it's just an all-around good ability make sure we're using this and we're not just leaving it on cd for too long this has so much value we want to get all the value out we can get from this next we have low blow and interject low blow is our stun this can be used in some raid instances when a mob can be stunned and add a mob sometimes this happens but usually not but alternatively you can use this in dungeon packs maybe use low blow on the biggest target in the dungeon pack and you'll mitigate the damage that that mob is doing to you you can also use it to interrupt some casts so maybe an aoe that's going out that a mob is doing you can low blow the mob and that'll interrupt the aoe and then yourself and the melee can stay on the trash pack and not risk getting hit by an aoe interject interrupts spells but not all spells there will be a sort of red in hue hopefully i'll have an example here showing you the exact spells that we can interrupt and you should see what the cast bar sort looks like these can be used in raids and dungeon instances so just be wary for that gas bar and make sure you're interrupting it with interject next we have reprisal this is a small aoe around us that it's going to make everything it hits deal ten percent less damage this is great for raid wide great for tank busters and great for like big dungeon mob packs in trash it's on a 60 second cooldown and it lasts 10 seconds on every single mobby effect so this is extremely versatile and extremely good make sure you're taking full advantage of this ability we then have arm's length this is our anti-knock-back ability say for instance in a raid or trial the boss is casting a knockback then we can use arm's length and this is going to completely nullify that knockback so we can keep up time on the boss and not lose any damage or gcds this is also an excellent cooldown in dungeons as it's going to create a barrier around ourselves that when any enemy strikes us it's going to give them a 20 slow this slow is going to reduce all their auto attacks by 20 and all their cast bars by 20 so this is just incredibly good mitigation and you should be taking advantage of this we then have provoke and shirk provoke is essentially a tank swap ability but it's also ability to peel a mob off someone who has an enemy and they shouldn't have it say if you're doing a big dungeon pull and someone has a straight enemy on them then you can provoke and use your range of attack and you'll be able to peel that mob off that person it's also used in tank swaps along with shirk if there's a tank swap in a boss fight in a raid instance then you'll use provoke during the tank buster cast which means after the cast the boss will be straight away on you as long as the other tank cash shirk and shirk is going to give 25 of your enmity to the target in this instance we're hoping it's the other tank that way we can have a seamless tank swap so to summarize that we use provoke on an enemy that is casting a tank buster on our main tank that main tank is then going to cash shirk on us and then as soon as the tank bus has gone out the boss is going to be on us instead because we casted provoke and they cast a shirk creating a seamless tank swap also while we're here remember your tank stances every tank has a different stance warrior defines paladin iron will dark knight grip and gun breaker royal guards they all work exactly the same to have these on when you're actively tanking and have it turned off when you're not actively tanking that said the whole point of this shirk thing is for its seamless tank swap of course but also so you don't have to worry too much about turning your tank stance off when you're actively off tanking just be wary of the aggro the enmity and if you're getting close getting high on the enmity then maybe turn your tank stance off if you're the off tank so you don't overtake the main tank let's now move on to dungeons now my first point in dungeons which perfectly ties in with one of the previous points is be wary of pulling water when it comes to sub 50 content especially and the reason for this is because when we're not doing level 50 plus content there's actually a few reasons not everyone has access to aoe in sub 50 content so just evaluate who has access to aoe who doesn't is it worth pulling all of this and potentially sacrificing your healer's dps does your group have aoe like there's a few things to think about and then there's also of course the density of marble packs in sub 50 content is huge there's so many mobs in sub 50 content as opposed to plus 50 content so really there's not too much more to talk about just be wary of this you know evaluate is it worth pulling wall-to-wall maybe pull a few packs and then stop rather than pulling all the way to the next boss fight because you can do that sub 50 content so yeah just be aware of that so let's move on to the aoe as a tank i'm going to have some pictures up on the screen as we're talking through it and if you follow the pictures it's going to have either times 2 which means aoe on two or more targets with this aoe or times free which means aoe on three or more targets of this aoe i'll try and cover every single tank aoe in the game so you can easily watch throughout this part of the video and evaluate which aoe is good on two or more targets and which one is good on three or more targets hopefully that helps and makes this part of the video a bit easier to digest my next point is figuring out your mitigation cooldowns so knowing what your mitigation cooldowns do their timers and sort of fix a cooldown rotation when we're doing dungeons especially we don't want to be savings cooldowns mitigation cooldowns for boss fights a lot of tanks seem to do this and a lot of tanks also seem to press cooldowns in a panic response two damage we don't want to do this we want to when we pull a mob pack for example if we pull a big mob at water wall then we want to use some cooldowns if we don't take into account our invulnerabilities then the first cooldown we probably want to pop is rampart and then after that if the pack is still alive maybe follow that with a filler cd a reprisal on an arm's length until it's dead and then on the next mob pack make sure we're using our big cd so this is vengeance sentinel nebula and shadow wall and then once that's over we can go back to round part and we'll be rotating our cooldowns in a pretty good manner that's just an example you can follow but do try and figure this stuff out for yourself know what the cooldowns do figure out cd rotation this will become more of a big deal when it comes to raiding content if you do run out of cooldowns or you have cooldowns up but your heater's really struggling to keep you alive then what you actually want to do is run circles around the mobs now this is going to kite them and delay their auto attacks and abilities this is going to keep you alive it's not such a huge thing on ff to kite bosses and avoid auto attacks but it can work on trash balls and the likes as it's gonna delay auto attacks on you and delay the mobs i don't recommend doing kiting all the time because it's going to misposition the enemies and it's going to be a little bit of a mess but it can save your life so do to keep this in mind you're getting really low it's getting really sketchy your healer doesn't have any more cooldowns you don't have any more cooldowns there's still trash alive then do consider giving it a little kite throwing out your stuns as well that's another good thing and just doing that to keep yourself alive and make damage trust me this is a little bit of a maybe an advanced technique that not every tank would think of but i feel like it's really important to add to this guide because this can save your life it might save you a dungeon trash wipe and avoiding wipes is just great because it's going to save you time and it's going to make your experience overall better in these trash pools as well it's very important and this can also apply to raids by the way is when you see a damaging puddle so ninja's doton or dark knight's salted earth or summoners garuda little puddle thing then you want to move your enemies or the boss into this puddle and make sure you're not losing damage on this puddle you'll make the relevant person who owns the puddle very happy because you'll keep the boss or enemies in the puddle and that will increase the damage and kill the enemies or boss sooner so that is great and they'll be thankful for that they might not show it but they will be thankful you also have healing ones so the ones that come to mind is sacred soil asylum and astro's earthly star all of these are really gonna help you out as well because as soon as you're in them they're gonna be healing you with the exception of earthly star which will explode and then heal you and you do want to catch that heal so it's very important to stay in these and catch the heels that they are providing or mitigation that they are providing for you so just be wary of these hopefully i would have shown some footage of what they look like as we're talking about them just give you example of what they look like and how you can identify all of these healing beneficial and damaging puddles to benefit from for your teammates damage and the healing and mitigation output now that we've gone over like how we should be doing the dungeon mob packs and stuff let's go into bosses so first and foremost when we pull a boss make sure we're using our range attack and not our gap closer i see a lot of tanks use a gap closer to pull a boss and this is horrible for literally everyone involved other than the tank it's horrible for casters and range because it's so unexpected and it's just out of nowhere and you you can't even mentally prep let alone be prepared for that with cast times or whatever at least when you're going to pull with your ranged attack you're moving towards the boss and you're showing an intent to pull and then you do your range attack and even then the range attack has an animation so if you're not walking over to the boss at least when you use your range attack there's an animation there everyone can see that and everyone will be ready also pulling with a gap closer really sucks for a melee dps as well if you're playing melee and your tank gap closes you probably know the pain of this because the boss will just stay where it is rather than when you pull with your range attack it's going to move a little bit forward closing that distance between you and the boss which is just ideal as a melee dps and that is what you want now that we've pulled the boss what we want to focus on is boss positioning defaultly we're gonna face the boss north or at least away from the pie we do this because a lot of bosses cleave so it's just good practice to keep the boss away from the pie now defaultly we can continue to face the boss north even when it does a cast turns around and then if we turn it again back to north this is okay but if you want to be a bit more advanced and you have a melee dps you don't need to do this if you don't have a melee dps because it won't make a difference and it could be easier to face a boss north without a melee dps because it'll make people be able to relate and orientate themselves around the boss a lot easier if it's always facing norfolk mechanic but if you do have a melee dps then everyone actually should be aware that it's actually beneficial when a boss turns to cast at someone else and it does that for quite some time then maybe consider as a tank going in front of the cast after it's finished so if it's like a cleave aimed at someone obviously don't go into that but after the cast is finished maybe go into the cleave once it's gone out obviously which will avoid the boss from spinning and this will make the melee dps life a lot easier because the boss won't turn cast and then turn again to the north instead it's going to stay in a static location once it's turned once to do the cast this is super beneficial for melees and as a tank it's good practice to practice this casters healers and range do have to be wary of this because it can mess with orientation but honestly if you have a melee i would do this because it's just going to make their life a lot easier slightly tying into raid slow if your group agrees upon always having a boss face north because it's going to be easier to orientate yourselves on mechanics then you can pretty much move this point off but i would practice it in dungeons and raid instances if there isn't a mechanic that you have to orientate yourself for another thing to note when you are positioning bosses and such is stutter stepping now hopefully i'm providing some footage of an example of what stutter stepping is but basically what this is is when you want to reposition a boss or drag a boss to a certain position then what you'll do is you'll move a bit go in when your gcd resets are like a little bit halfway through it roughly get the gcd and move back out so you continue to drag the boss move back in hit that gcd it's very essential to keep the gcd rolling unless absolutely necessary where you cannot keep it rolling anymore so when we are positioning as a tank this is called star stepping so go in for your gcd when your gcd's on the roller go out make sure you're positioning as soon as that comes back up make sure you get that hit in and then go back again and continue your positioning now i think we've gone over more or less everything that i could cover when it comes to dungeons let's move on to the real meat of this video how are we going to be raiding as a tank because we've already talked about shirk and provoke in the role action part of the video we'll skip that and if you want to know more about tank swap then go back to that and watch that which leads me on to my first point of raiding and i feel like this is pretty central thing to know but also just a lot of people aren't aware of this its defensives aren't just there exclusively for tank busters they're there for autos and filler damage as well you want to be rotating your cds just like how i explained in my dungeon part of the video you want to be rotating your cds learning what the cds do and figuring out a cool down rotation here of course this can be slightly different to how we do things in dungeons so just to keep this in mind we always want a cd for tank busters but say if a tank buster doesn't come out for the next 100 seconds into a fight and we have a rampart and rampart is on our 90 second cooldown we can get away over rampart usage pretty much like at the beginning of the fight there for example and then we won't have to worry about not having up for the tank buster also don't think that you'll need rampart for a tank buster either you can opt in for another cd perhaps your utility cd so dark knight tbn oblation paladin sheltron gun breaker heart of corundum and warrior blood wedding the list goes on you also have your big defensive cds we've been over these but you know vengeance sentinel nebula shadow wall you can use these on tank busters too but you can also use these on filler damage again say if you use nebula on a tank buster and then nebula comes back up this is just an example this applies to all the big tank cds then you might be able to get away with using nebula again and then another 120 seconds pass and then our tank buster comes out and then you can use your nebula for that for example this is just an example and hopefully a very easy one to understand just make sure we're using cds for autos when we can and we can get away with it and why do we do this to help the healers obviously right to prevent them from having to cast a gcd heal ass which gives them an extra cast of damage which is gonna make the raid instance die quicker help us meet in rage timers maybe push a phase into the next phase and that's going to prevent damage altogether the list goes on of why you want to do this also it's just good for progression when you're procking a fight and everything's a bit sketch and all over the place it's just going to be good overall so you know make sure you're taking advantage of your cooldowns and not just leaving there to sit for too long that's the last thing you want another thing to know is using your raid utility as a tank so our big big raid utility is probably reprisal we want to make sure we're using these on raid wides on tank busters and even auto attacks if we get the chance now all attacks isn't so important because there's usually a raid wide or a tank buster at least in raid instances every 60 seconds or so so as the two tanks we can rotate these between ourselves and making sure we're getting them on every raid wide at the very least and maybe some tank busters as a little bonus we don't need them on tank buses as much but if we can get away with putting them on tank buses than we should that's another thing if you're properly raiding with another tank then you need to talk about your usage of reprisals so you're not overlapping each other's reprisals this is the last thing you want to do because that's just a massive waste of such a valuable cooldown the effect isn't gonna stack so it's just detrimental to do this so make sure you're communicating with your tank when you're gonna do your appraisal and when they're gonna deter a price we'll talk about it as two tanks and if you're in a voice chat maybe just communicate it in the fight say for example you're a tank that wants to take a bit of charge say this is your reprisal next one is mine just remind them be a helpful team player that will really go to lengths as a tank i know this as i've been thinking for years and just saying that it's gonna remind yourself and it's gonna also remind you of a tank so it's super helpful on top of this you have your aoe utility i'm gonna cover all of these real quick but they all essentially do the same thing you have shake it off you have the vine veil you have heart of light and you have dark missionary all of these are your aoe utility and you want to take advantage of these these all can stack as tanks but ideally we don't want to stack them unless the damage is going to hit us really hard we want to sort of rotate them slightly like reprisal although it's not so much of a waste if we use them together say if there's a really really hard hitting fight a few ultimate fights are like this so if you're keen on going into ultimate raids then this is good knowledge to know if an aoe is going out and it's going to hit you super hard one tank reprisal one tank use their aoe and then maybe there's another aoe straight after the other tank use their reprisal and then one tank use that aoe so you'll basically be rotating your appraisals and your aoes as two tanks and this is really gonna just help out your whole group as a whole keep them alive keep them healthy remember as a tank mitigating damage is a big part of your responsibility and keeping your body alive is also a big part of it i have a few more points another point is making use of invulnerabilities these are super important as a tank and they have so much value to us unless you're a dark knight and you have living dead i'm kidding but please square next please rework this seriously though making use of these invulnerabilities is vital we can use invulnerabilities to cheese tank swaps cheese big tank busters completely negate the healer having to use heals on us or shields or cooldowns or anything in that matter and just increasing their dps overall or making their lives just generally easier which is just healthy for the group as a whole so make sure we're taking advantage of our invulnerabilities as a tank as these are super duper important to us another really important thing is taking advantage of our utility this can also be applied to dungeons by the way but every tank has a another pie member utility this includes tbn and oblation for dark knight nice and flash warrior intervention and cover for paladin and heart of corundum as a gun breaker we can really clutch up with these abilities really save someone's life for example as a warrior we can heal someone pretty much to max as a dark knight we can give someone a big shield as a paladin we can give someone a regen and a big amount of mitigation and as a gun breaker we can give someone an insta heal and on top of that some mitigation there's more to it than that but of course when it comes to clutching up and saving someone this can really help out say if there's an aoe going out and a dps or a healer took a vulnerability snack or even your other tank you can pop your util on them help them out a bit and maybe even make them survive the follow-up aoe that's going to come out when they're low on health and they have a vulnerability stack to keep this in mind if your utility ability is off cd and you see this situation happening then take full advantage of this and try your best to save someone this is gonna be super helpful for progression super helpful for just killing a fight and getting out of the way because you're gonna just make it go faster and more smooth and it's just good in general it's good practice clutch up as a tank tank is a big clutching roll which leads me into my last point as a tank you must know that clutching is a big part of your kit of course i don't want to convince you that you should be popping your cts when you panic everything should be in such a way that you know when to pop them because you want to prevent damage but if you see a situation like this arising then you can save a thing or two and save someone with a cooldown as i said this is a big responsibility on you no one's actually gonna blame you if you don't manage to do it but clutching as a tank is gonna make you from a good tank to a really good tank and people will really appreciate that some people might not notice it but hell if you notice it and you just save someone's life then give yourself a pat on the back because who cares what other people think you know you did it on top of that we have limit break a lot of people seem to just ignore limit break as a tank and this is honestly a mistake but it's not a bad mistake as i said this kind of leads into the utility part this separates a good tank to a really good tank let's think of a good example for this so say if there's a stack aoe or an aoe in general we have a few people dead for a stack for example and not everyone's there for the stack so what are we gonna do maybe only one healers are live we only have a handful of people for the stack but we have lb2 or three or even one then pop that lb and help out you might just save the group and honestly people notice a good tank i'll be more than they know it's a individual lifesaver they'll probably be thankful if you manage to lb and there's nothing better than people saying good tank i'll be in chat honestly you get so much serotonin from from just people saying that so just make sure you are aware of this same goes for when an aoe is going out not just stack markers so an aoe goes out maybe a healer's dead everyone is low on health and you're not really sure what to do what what's going to happen you have tank i'll be one two or three use it you might just save the brunt you might just save the party if everything is going to hell anyway and you're like oh god but what if i tanker we free this and the healer but the healer could a healer be freed honestly don't worry about it if the healer doesn't survive the spread or the stack what's that gonna matter anyway if it's only tank's gonna be surviving in the end then it won't matter so just use that lb okay guys i think that'll probably do it for the video i know i feel like i've dragged on a lot of these points more than they should be but hopefully in the editing process it can all it'll all work out and make sense if i've missed anything that you find is super important then please do let me know in the comments below if i deem it like even more important than you might deem it or on an equal level then maybe i'll make a follow-up video and cover a few more points when it comes to tanking because i can't guarantee that i've remembered or fought to cover everything important and how you might even teach me a thing or two probably not but you might i don't say that to be egotistical i've just been thinking for so long but you might so you know what surprise me if you enjoyed the video then please do give it a thumbs up that would really help me a bunch i've been growing pretty damn well from doing ff content and i really do enjoy covering ff content so that is the focus of this channel now i'd really appreciate you liking this video a bunch and if you do enjoy this content you enjoy guides then please do consider subscribing as well instance related content and job related content that you can expect guides on pretty much everything there is to do with instance based content so if that is something you're interested in then please do consider hitting that subscribe button it would really help me a bunch and that'll do it for the video i really appreciate it if you've made it all the way to the end but to not drag this video and on any longer i will see you guys in the next one my next guide will probably be a guide on one of the savage fights or it might be a guide on sage i am working on the sage guide i've practiced sage a lot i'm quite comfortable with sage now so do expect that sometime this week anyway i look forward to seeing you guys again take it easy stay safe we out peace

Channel: Azurite FFXIV

Views: 48,695

Keywords: ffxiv, endwalker, guide

Id: _9DsnMAYSHA

Length: 28min 22sec (1702 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 05 2022