So You Want To Be A Tank?

- A beginner tank guide by Aletin Ves’ser

Special Thanks to The BalanceTM for inspiring this guide

Note: This is beginner level tips and tricks, as you become more experienced, not all of this information is optimal, use the guides linked at the end for optimal play for each job.

What is Tanking:

Tanking in Final Fantasy 14, in the most basic of ideas, is controlling the Enmity of the enemies and reducing the damage you take from said enemies. The ultimate goal for a tank is to provide the most comfortable experience for both healers and DPS to do their jobs. Comfortable DPS will be able to output more damage, while comfortable healers will be able to heal less, and in turn output more damage.

Summary - Your TL;DR Of This Document

Enmity

• Your Tank Stance (Iron WIll, Defiance, Grit, Royal Guard) is the most effective means of generating enmity, providing a significant multiplier to everything you do.
• Enmity Combos have been removed.
• Your standard AoE enmity abilities no longer generate additional enmity.

Mitigation

• Trial and Error is an effective method of learning what you do and don’t need to use to survive, especially in early progression when you aren’t quite sure how hard things will hit.

• Using Immunities as early and as efficiently as possible allows it to come off cooldown at a sooner time, allowing more uses during a fight. Unless they are necessary for certain attacks or mechanics.
• Try to always use Sheltron, Raw Intuition, The Blackest Night or Heart of Stone with another cooldown, as these are timing dependent and have next to no cooldown time. This adds the extra mitigation that may be necessary without using your more valuable cooldowns.
• When all tank busters are planned to be sufficiently mitigated, use remaining cooldowns on other bits of damage, such as auto attacks and raid AoEs. As your total percentage of damage taken is mostly from these miscellaneous attacks.

• If you have no further cooldowns for an upcoming tank buster, allowing the other tank to take the hit instead is an efficient way to increase the amount of available mitigation. Don’t forget the other tank has cooldowns too.
• Each tank has their own mitigation for other people that comes at no cost! Intervention, Nascent Flash, The Blackest Night and Heart of Stone. You should frequently use these to help out your tank buddy.

Positioning and Tank Swaps

• Where you stand is important, stay away from your party to protect them from cleaves and allow your melee to hit their positionals.
• Keep movement to a minimum, if movement is required, be quick and direct, your party should know where you will be at any specific moment. The faster and more directly you go, the sooner they can be there.
• Make sure you have shirk ready for an upcoming tank swap, if it is unavailable, avoid increased enmity generation as it will make the swap harder. If your partner is still struggling, you can drop your tank stance.
• Using shirk to bolster enmity is extremely effective if a tank swap is not required within 2 minutes of using shirk, as shirk will be on cooldown until that time.
• Provoke now provides some additional enmity upon use which will assist in both tank swaps and taking enemies off of DPS or Healers

More important than anything is practise! The more you practise the better you get and the more comfortable you become in tanking new content.

Skip to P4 for Dungeon/Raid tips and P5 for some very basic DPS tips

And now onto this stuff in more detail

P1 - Enmity Control

What is Enmity

Enmity, Aggro or Hate; is the level of attention an enemy pays towards a certain player or npc, generated by almost anything you do while in combat with that enemy, damage, healing or providing buffs, all give some level of enmity.

How does Enmity Work

Enmity itself is simple; 1 point of damage equals 1 point of enmity, certain skills and abilities contain or provide enmity multipliers to provide more or less enmity generation.

Healing always applies a ½ multiplier to enmity so 2 points of healing = 1 point of enmity. Certain skills like assize, which provide both healing and damage, only provides enmity from the damage portion while the healing generates nothing. When there are multiple enemies the enmity is divided between them equally. 100 enmity of healing would go 50 to Enemy A and 50 to Enemy B

All buffs and debuffs generate 455 enmity towards whomever provided the buff (at level 70). This enmity is divided between all enemies in combat, just as with healing

How to control Enmity

Enmity control is fairly simple across the tanks. If you’re tanking, you have your tank stance on. It significantly increases your generated enmity at no loss.

The only other enmity control that exists is; Provoke, Shirk and each tank’s ranged attack.

These skills exist as your initial generation of enmity and you will use them to engage most enemies.

Shirk, a tank role skill takes 25% of your total enmity and gives it to a target party member. Example: Tank A has 100 enmity while Tank B has 80 enmity, Tank A uses shirk on Tank B, Tank A loses 25% of their total 100 enmity, being 25, now has 75 enmity while Tank B gains 25 enmity on to their 80, now has 105 enmity. Using this same example, instead Tank B uses Shirk on Tank A, Tank B loses 25% of 80 enmity, being 20, this is then given to Tank A’s 100 enmity giving a total of 120 enmity.

Provoke, when used they place the user higher on the enmity list than the current highest by (Additional Enmity Amount).

Monitoring Enmity

Enmity is easy to monitor in a few places. Within the party list, under each party member’s job icon exists a bar which fills up as a person approaches the top enmity of the targeted enemy, marked with an A. This also counts from 2-8 showing which party members are higher in enmity than others. Within the enemy list, on the left of each enemy’s name is an icon, a blue/green circle, indicating that you are less than 50% of the enemy’s target’s aggro. A yellow triangle, indicating that you are between 50 and 75%, an upside down orange triangle indicating you are between 75% and 99%, and a red square indicating you are the highest in enmity. As a tank, in most cases, you will want to be the A and the red square.

P2 - Using Cooldowns and Not Dying

How Damage Reduction Works

Damage reduction works multiplicatively, so additional cooldowns will always be less effective than if used individually. For example, given the 2 abilities, Rampart, which gives a 20% damage reduction and Sentinel, which gives a 30% reduction. When simultaneously active, instead of providing a 50% reduction for a total of 50% damage, as they would if additive, you instead are given

100 - 20% = 80% and then sentinel subtracts another 40% from this 80%

80 - 30% = 56% because they work multiplicatively. And this works with either being activated first

100 - 30% = 70% - 20% = 56%.

It is equivalent. And this is the reason that it is better to only use as many cooldowns as you need to survive and using the others at other points, Because the more you add together the less effective each of them individually become.

What there is to mitigate

Most simply, everything. Every ounce of mitigation helps in some way, however there are some attacks that require mitigation to survive, these are called tank busters. They are the primary attack you will use mitigation on as they generally are powerful enough to kill you instantly, and come often enough to require the use of all cooldowns over the period of a fight.

What Damage Reduction Exists

Role Skills

The tank roll skills is half made up of skills that provide mitigation in some way or another.

Rampart, the undisputed king of tank role skills, providing 20% damage reduction for 20 seconds on a cooldown of 90 seconds.

Arm’s Length is primarily used for nullifying knockbacks that would take you out of range of a boss. However, during dungeons the secondary effect will apply to the trash mobs between bosses. During this short 6 second window it provides a 20% slow to all enemies who attack you. While the slow does not reduce damage in of itself, it will make the enemies use their auto attacks and casted abilities 20% slower, essentially removing 1 in every 5, for approximately 20% mitigation.

Reprisal, is 10% over 10s with a 60s cooldown, while less powerful than other mitigation sources, it reduces the damage dealt by the enemy rather than reduce the damage you take, this makes it very effective for mitigating AoE damage or use on tank busters. This skill is also aoe, affecting every enemy in a 5y circle around you

Paladin

Sentinel, the most basic of the Paladin’s abilities. It provides 30% mitigation, for 15 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. This ability is very powerful and should be used to mitigate as large a hit as possible, where other cooldowns may fall short.

Sheltron, this provides a single guaranteed block on all attacks for 6 seconds, with only a 5s cooldown it is extremely effective, only catch is, it costs 50 Oath Gauge to activate, which takes approximately 25 seconds to generate. I cannot stress enough how important it is to use sheltron as part of your mitigation. Paladin is carried by sheltron, without it they severely lack guaranteed mitigation on most attacks.

This upgrades into Holy Sheltron at 82.

There are two major differences between these skills.

Firstly a short duration mitigation, providing 15% on a 4 second duration, to incentivise use right on the cast of whatever you wish to mitigate.

And secondly a 1000 potency regen, which is some extra passive health generation

Oath Gauge is also used on intervention, costing 50 oath gauge, a 6s duration and 10s cooldown, this decreases the damage a party member takes by 10% plus another 10% if either rampart or sentinel are active. You do not receive additional mitigation if both are active.

At level 82, Intervention gets upgraded similarly to Sheltron, gaining an extra short timed mit and a 1000 potency regen

Cover, is another cooldown that targets another player, however you take the damage instead of the target. This costs 50 Oath Gauge to execute and this reduces its viability for tank busters as spending 100 Oath gauge on something that you could easily just tank swap for is pointless. This means that cover exists for use on DPS and Healers, preventing them from taking damage and diverting it to you instead, it is very useful for mechanics. Notify your healers when using cover, it can be a shock to expect to heal one tank just for the other to take large amounts of damage.

Passage of Arms is a lot like Bulwark in functionality, it increases your block rate to 100% for 18s on a 2 minute cooldown, it also provides a mitigation area behind the Paladin in a cone shape that reduces the damage taken by 15% of all inside the area, excluding the user, however the user blocks the attack for ~30%. The catch is, it prevents the user from doing anything other than channel the ability, so it is recommended to use this ability for as long as needed only and stop the moment it is no longer required. With patch 4.4, the party AoE now applies instantly and will last ~5 seconds after you stop channeling it, the block portion however, is only active while you channel. This has vastly improved the usability of Passage of Arms.

Divine Veil, when activated provides a buff to the Paladin for 30 seconds, if at any point during that 30 seconds the Paladin is healed by a spell, all other party members (not the Paladin) within 15 yalms of them receive a shield equal to 10% of the paladin’s health for 30 seconds or until broken. With a cooldown of 90 seconds this ability is very powerful. It should be used to prevent deaths more than anything. You need to understand which AoE abilities hurt the most, or where the healers are most stressed, that is where you should use Divine Veil.

At level 88, Divine Veil receives a 400 potency heal effect. This heal applies to everyone that the shield applies to. Meaning the paladin does not receive this heal

Hallowed Ground, Paladin’s ultimate ability has a 10 second duration and a 7 minute cooldown, Hallowed Ground renders you impervious to most attacks, notable exceptions being boss enrages after failing your dps check, it will also not prevent damage dealt to you through the use of cover. The downside of Hallowed Ground is the cooldown, 7 minutes is a lot and often limits you to 1 or 2 uses in a fight, rarely a third if the fight goes long enough. This means you should try and find the earliest and most effective use of Hallowed Ground to get another use later on that may or may not be as effective as the first. Two uses are better than one.

Warrior

Raw intuition, reduces the damage you take by 10%. Along with the mitigation, you receive a 400 potency heal with every single weaponskill you land, on each enemy. Meaning if you hit 3 enemies, you receive 600 potency of healing. With such a short duration and cooldown, use should be frequent while hitting any tank buster that you will take.

At level 82, Raw Intuition upgrades into Bloodwhetting.

Bloodwhetting provides two additional effects over Raw Intuition

First, a short duration mitigation for 10% and lasting 4 seconds. Incentivising use at the cast of the hit you wish to mitigate

Secondly, a 400 potency shield, lasting for 20 seconds.

Nascent Flash reduces the damage dealt to a party member by 10% while also healing them for 400 potency with every weaponskill you landl. This effect lasts for 6 seconds and it shares a cooldown with Raw Intuition. As with raw intuition you will use it as much as possible while hitting as many tank busters as possible.

At 82 this ability also upgrades similarly to Bloodwhetting, receiving the extra 10% mitigation and the 400 potency shield.

Thrill of Battle, increases your maximum HP by 20% and heals you for that same amount, for 20s with a 90 second cooldown. This just provides you with more health so you don’t die from whatever attacks you are taking. Thrill of Battle also increases the healing you receive by 20% to help recovery after a hit.

Vengeance is 30% mitigation, plus a 55 potency counterattack for 15 seconds on a cooldown of 2 minutes. One of Warrior’s more powerful cooldowns, the primary use is similar to Sentinel on Paladin, use it to mitigate stronger attacks, but because of the relative weakness of Warrior cooldowns the threshold of “stronger attacks” is lower and requires you to use Vengeance more liberally.

Shake it Off provides the entire party within 15 yalms, including the warrior, a shield for 12% of the recipient's HP, on a cooldown of 90 seconds. Upon usage, Shake it Off will remove the effects of; Thrill of Battle, Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting and Vengeance, granting an extra 2% to the shield for every buff that was removed. So, shake it off can apply a 12, 14, 16, or 18% shield depending on how many cooldowns are used. As both Raw Intuition has such a low cooldown, it is extremely easy to provide a 12% shield. At level 76, Shake it off receives a heal effect for 300 potency on all targets it would apply the shield to.

Holmgang, only a 8 second duration but a 4 minute cooldown, your HP cannot be reduced below 1 while Holmgang is active, with the same exceptions as Hallowed Ground. The downside of Holmgang, is that it only 8 seconds in duration. This should be used to shore up the gap in the rest of your mitigation. When you are out of other cooldowns, holmgang fits right in to make sure they’re back for the next tank buster.

Equilibrium is a healing effect on a 60 second cooldown, providing a large 1200 potency. This should be used frequently to make use of the heal.

At level 84, Equilibrium receives an additional 1000 potency heal in the form of a regen over 15 seconds.

Dark Knight

Dark Mind for example, Magic Resistance is increased by 20% for 10s on a 60s cooldown making it very powerful. But that’s also the down side, it only works on magic damage. As this is Dark Knight’s most powerful cooldown, it should be used and abused, find anywhere and everywhere that you can use this ability. This is the strength of Dark Knight.

Shadow Wall is Dark Knight’s version of Sentinel, but at 30% mitigation on a 2 minute cooldown. It should be used in a similar respect to Sentinel also, on the more powerful attacks, when they are physical this works very similarly. But when the attacks are magic, much of them are covered by Dark Mind, allowing Shadow Wall to be used on less powerful attacks or to further bolster mitigation on the stronger ones.

The Blackest Night, probably the most interesting cooldown to exist on a tank. For the cost of 3000MP you receive a shield equivalent to 25% of your maximum HP for 7 seconds. That is extremely powerful, especially with only a 15 second cooldown and should always be used on tank busters along with your other cooldowns. When the shield is broken you are rewarded with Dark Arts to “refund” you the MP cost by allowing access to a free Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow, which are powerful abilities.

At level 82, Dark Knight receives Oblation. Oblation provides 10% mitigation to any party member for 10 seconds.

Oblation is unique in that you can stack up to 2 charges of it, allowing for multiple different applications. For example, 20 seconds of 10% mitigation, or 10% mitigation on two different targets. This flexibility is what makes oblation powerful

Dark Missionary is Dark Knight’s raid mitigation cooldown that also has applications as a personal cooldown and mitigation for your co-tank. It provides every person in 15 yalms a 10% reduction to magic damage for 15 seconds. The raid mitigation applications are obvious. But you can also see the application for solo mitigation, especially if you can hit both raid damage and a tank buster with this cooldown.

Living Dead, provides you with a 10 second buff on a cooldown of 5 minutes, when you are reduced to 1hp while this buff is active, you gain the buff Walking Dead for 10 seconds. Walking Dead prevents you from being reduced below 1hp, same exceptions as Hallowed Ground and Holmgang. However the downside is, you must be healed for equal to your total HP over that 10 second duration of Walking Dead, otherwise you will die.

Much of the strength of Living Dead is your ability to precast this by up to 10 seconds without losing any of the effect. This allows for a much more lenient cooldown timer.

Gunbreaker

Heart of Stone is Gunbreaker’s version of  on demand mitigation AND solo mitigation on another person. Basically a combined version of Sheltron and Intervention or Raw Intuition and Nascent Flash. Reducing damage by 15% on yourself or target for 7 seconds. And when used on another person, you give them your Brutal Shell buff, which is a small shield.

At level 82, Heart of Stone upgrades into Heart of Corundum. This provides it with two additional effects

First, an extra 15% mitigation on a 4 second duration, incentivising use on the cast of what you wish to mitigate

Secondly, a 900 potency heal that applies once you fall below 50% of your max HP, or upon expiration of the effect after 20 seconds.
This healing cannot save you from death. If you go instantly from above 50% to 0% you will die.

Camouflage is a relatively weak cooldown, being only 10% mitigation and having an RNG component of mitigation that may reduce damage by a further 15%. While it is fairly weak for tank buster mitigation, with a high duration and low cooldown it excels at auto-attack mitigation and should be used in a way that highlights this.

Nebula is Gunbreakers version of Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall, mitigating 30% damage for 15 seconds, and should be used in the same ways. Hitting tank busters primarily while also trying to extract value through hitting additional attacks along with it.

Heart of Light is the raid mitigation for Gunbreaker, and similar to Dark Missionary it has applications for solo use on yourself or another tank. It reduces magic damage by 10% for 15s and will often be able to hit multiple attacks, and potentially hitting both raid damage and tank damage.

Superbolide is the immunity for Gunbreaker, for 8 seconds it renders you invulnerable in the same way that Hallowed Ground does. However, it reduces your HP to 1 upon use, requiring you to be healed up some amount before the invulnerability expires. Superbolide is almost a strictly worse Hallowed Ground, but it has a slightly lower cooldown being at 360 seconds instead of 420 seconds, potentially granting it extra uses over Hallowed Ground.

Aurora is a healing tool for Gunbreaker, providing a 1200 potency heal to any party member as a regen over 18 seconds. This should be used as often as possible to keep the heal in effect, and is best used when healing is needed over time instead of large bursts.

At level 84, Aurora receives a second stack, allowing for further flexibility in its usage

How to Design a Cooldown Plan

Now that you know what you have to mitigate attacks with. You need to know how to apply them to a fight. You have two options for this; First, find a cooldown plan that someone else has already made. This is the best choice for people that are doing content without another tank that you can easily communicate with and trust. Second, you can design your own cooldown plan, which may or may not be better than a plan someone else has made. To do this, you need to go through a few steps

1. Figure out what each attack is, Tank Busters, Raid AoEs, Miscellaneous Mechanics, you need to know which is which and how much damage they do.
2. Figure out the damage type of each attack (this only applies to Warrior and Dark Knight as they have specific mitigation against Physical and Magical attacks). There is no simple way to tell this, you either need to check from an outside source, or test it for yourself. If you can parry it, it is physical. If Dark Mind reduces the damage, it is magical.
3. Learn the time between each attack you need to mitigate, this part is crucial as you can reliably tell when your cooldown will be active again and if it will be present for the next attack you need it for.
4. Place your strongest abilities (Hallowed Ground, Holmgang, Living Dead) first, finding the place where they can extract the most value by mitigating the most damage. This allows you to have them available again later on for another use.
5. Place your longer cooldown abilities (Sentinel, Vengeance, Shadow Wall), the sooner these are placed, the sooner they can be used again later on.
6. Place the rest of your cooldowns, these should fill in any tank busters left over, while also placing them in spots where they may gain use between tank busters
7. Make sure the other tank is using their cooldowns too! Use tank swaps to your advantage, this provides more cooldowns to the same number of tank busters, freeing weaker cooldowns to be used on weaker attacks.

And if you follow those steps, you should have a functioning cooldown plan that not only allows you to live, but also reduces burden from healers.

P3 - Positioning and Tank Swapping

Where do I stand

Generally, you and your party want to form a sandwich around the enemies, with you in front and the rest of your party on the sides or behind. This occurs because while you have the highest enmity, the enemy will face you, in most cases.

There are a few reasons you want the enemy facing away from the rest of the party. First and foremost, a large majority of enemies have a frontal aoe that does medium to high damage. These are called cleaves, and in most cases a DPS or Healer will either be put to critical HP or will die from being hit with a cleave. So by turning the enemy away, you prevent the cleave from hitting your party members and instead only hitting yourself.

The second reason is, all melee dps have positional requirements on their skills that will either add an effect or increase the potency of that attack. So by keeping the enemy facing away, you give your melee a better opportunity to hit these positionals. If tanking an enemy next to a wall or hazard, the best positioning would be to face the enemy so that one side is facing towards the wall or hazard while the front, back and other side are free to be accessed.

What effects, should you as a tank, be standing in?

Outside of effects provided by fight mechanics, there are 5 that you should stand in. These will either heal you, or provide damage reduction. Asylum, Collective Unconscious, Earthly Star, Sacred Soil and Passage of Arms. Try to stand in these effects while they are active, as long as doing so does not compromise postionals, allow the cleaves to hit the party or compromise any fight mechanics.

What effects should the enemy be in?

Outside of effects provided by fight mechanics, there exists 6 that you should place the enemy in, these will damage the enemy. Salted Earth, Doton, Earthen Fury and Earthly Star. You should always aim to have all enemies inside these effects, unless doing so causes major movement of the enemy, compromises positionals or compromises fight mechanics. The provider of these effects should be the one that puts them on the enemy, however mistakes occur and it is possible to fix these mistakes with slight movement.

THESE ALL DEAL DAMAGE

Enemy Movement

Enemy movement is a factor I see not a lot of people talking about when discussing how to tank better. It works like this, the less an enemy moves, be it turning or traveling a distance, the better. A turning target is simply difficult to hit positionals on, because while turning the time between server and client connection may turn your rear attack into a side attack, or a side attack into a frontal attack, even though on client side it was correct, the server has identified the enemy as having turned more than the client has. Unless you have an extremely low ping, a traveling target will cause attacks to not register as the enemy will be in range on client side, but out of range on server side. While mainly a problem for melee, it is not only an annoying problem but one that is easily fixed.

So it is your job as a tank, to keep the boss as still as possible while still completing mechanics and dodging any aoes. Try to make any necessary movements swift and direct, the sooner the enemy stops, the better.

Tank Swaps

As you get to higher level content, tank swaps become increasingly more necessary, but what is a tank swap? It’s right there in the same, the swapping of tanks, you change the tank the enemy is targeting from yourself to your partner or vice versa.

So how do we do tank swaps?

Back in section 1 we covered an ability that is key to tank swaps. Provoke, this ability puts you on the top of the enemy’s enmity list, no matter where you were on it before, and this is how we tank swap. With the introduction of stormblood, came shirk, which trivialized much of tank swapping, however, shirk may not always be available if tank swaps are more frequent than one per minute.

Why do we need to tank swap

There are a few reasons why one would tank swap.

The first and most important is that a fight requires it, giving a tank a debuff that causes increased damage or death, when this occurs, generally after a tank buster, you tank swap, allowing the debuff to safely fall off. Eventually swapping back once the other tank obtains the same debuff, and going back and forth until the fight has concluded.

The second reason comes similarly to the first, for cooldowns. In some cases, cooldowns like awareness are necessary more often than it is available on a single tank, and tank swapping allows you a second use of awareness in the same cooldown timer. Likewise, one might just simply require more cooldowns if tank busters are strong and frequent enough and swapping allows more cooldowns to be used in the same time frame.

P4 - Tanking Dungeons and Trials/Raids

4 Man Content: Dungeons (Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium count)

First of all, most enemies in dungeons are separated into groups of generally 3 or 4, these are called packs, each of these packs have a line drawn between each individual enemy, this dictates that upon the generation of enmity on one enemy, all the others will attack the player who generated the enmity. This does not copy the enmity from 1 enemy to another, this only serves as an activation of those enemies and need to have their own enmity generated.

If it is your first time inside a specific dungeon, go at your own pace, get a gauge for how hard specific enemies or groups of enemies hit you. This gives you insight on what cooldowns would be effective to use on these pulls.

Learn where the enemies are within the dungeon, knowing what objects spawn enemies or what is around a specific corner can help you in optimizing your speed within a dungeon. This also counts for environmental events that may help or hinder your ability to defeat the enemies around you.

Learn the size and shape of your aoe abilities, this helps immensely when running through a group of enemies you intend to pull. This will allow you to spend a single GCD and hit all the enemies inside a group, if they stand too far apart, beginning with a ranged attack to draw the group towards you, followed with an aoe attack to generate enmity on the others that you didn’t hit with the ranged attack, and generally more on the one you did hit.

When pulling one or more packs of enemies, keep in mind the possibility of regen abilities that may be affecting you, as each tick of healing generates enmity towards the healer and unless you have actively hit all enemies with some enmity generation, the enemies will attack the healer.

All of these lead us into the crux of dungeons, the mass pulling and chain pulling.

These are the most efficient ways of moving through a dungeon, A Mass Pull is when you pull all available enemies up to whatever barrier prevents you from moving forward in the dungeon and then proceeding to use AoE attacks until they are dead, generally the most efficient method but a few things need to be kept in mind.

Mass pulls generally hold 3 or more packs of enemies, and as you imagine, are 3 or more times the damage of a normal pack, so cooldown usage is important, for both you and your healer. As a tank though, it is generally best to use your more powerful cooldowns first, when the most damage is provided, and move into weaker cooldowns as enemies begin to die and the stronger ones run out of active time. Keeping in mind your available cooldowns and how long they have before they can be active again is important so you don’t just die to the overwhelming amount of damage going out. If you don’t have the cooldowns to sustain yourself, don’t do the mass pull, do a chain pull instead.

You also need to consider the potential DPS of your party, if you notice the party is doing low dps during an aoe pull because they were using single target skills instead of aoe skills, then it may be faster and safer to move to a chain pull instead. The lower the DPS, the longer it takes for enemies to die, your cooldowns run out sooner and the damage becomes unbearable, causing more healing from the healer, slowing dps further etc etc.

The last thing to consider, is your healer’s mp pool, this is a consideration that will generally after a first mass pull into a second one. Your healer’s mp might be low, and low mp means that the healing they can output is low. While this is their responsibility to manage their mp, as a tank you have the responsibility to act accordingly to the mp whether it was managed well or not. More mp? Be more ambitious. Less mp? Be more cautious.

Chain pulling, as we mentioned a couple of times previously, is the act of pulling a single pack, killing them and moving, just as they die, to the next pack, continuing this until the end. Chain pulling, while slower than mass pulling in most cases, is also safer. In low leveling dungeons, 15-49, 51-59 61-69 etc, chain pulling is generally better, as most enemies deal more relative damage in these dungeons making the mass pulls extremely dangerous as the damage output is much higher. The exceptions being extremely low level dungeons, 15-35, at these levels most classes simply do not have an available aoe ability, making mass pulls extremely ineffective unless you have the classes which do.

All level 50, 60, 70 etc, dungeons are quite capable for mass pulling, all classes have aoe abilities by now, and when geared in the most recent gear for each level, damage is relatively low.

8 Man Content, Trials and Raids.

Most of everything I have addressed within this guide concerns trials and raids. So here are some more tips.

Learn the specific boss’ rotation. This is probably the most important aspect of any boss. You don’t have to know the specific timings of all the abilities, but knowing what order things come in, this helps mechanic execution, mitigation, even movement. Next ability is a tank buster? Use a cooldown. Etc

Learn how much damage an attack will do to you, along with the following auto attack, as even if you can survive that attack, if you have low enough health to not even survive the following auto attack before you’re healed, you will likely need more mitigation. While it is sometimes the healer’s fault here, it is also sometimes not possible for them to heal in that window, it is essentially random if the auto attack is instant or not.

By knowing where and when additional enemies will spawn, you are able to preposition yourself near to the location of spawn, this allows for you to immediately generate enmity on that target instead of needing to run there while your dps are constantly generating enmity. This just helps stop the enemy from running rampant throughout your party while you pick it up.

For a closer look at each of the tanks there are several guides that are very well written and that I personally recommend;

Paladin;

Vigilamus Pro Te by Me; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JY2t2GvNaNnQhZ5Isp-HIso2JgGMY6WXk5IGAY2v8AU/edit?usp=sharing

Warrior;

Quick and Dirty 5.0 by Mox Xinmagar: https://bit.ly/2IS86by

Dark Knight;
Guide is down, this link will take you to the Dark Knight Resource Channel on The Balance

https://discord.com/channels/277897135515762698/580300270916075520/811861913721634896

Gunbreaker;

Guide is down, this link will take you to the Gunbreaker Resource Channel on The Balance

https://discord.com/channels/277897135515762698/593562900539637760/744167086691057736