Original Video:
“A Crap Guide to FFXIV – Tanks” by Jocat
Future WoW Refugee reacts to another FFXIV Video.
This video is a hilarious summary of how FFXIV Tanks play.
twitch.tv/chitor
Will be streaming my first adventures in Final Fantasy XIV in the coming days.
source
I think the only universal advice you should take is that if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask people. Other than that, enjoy the game however you like and at whatever pace you like.
Who told you invulnerability skills are for bad parties? Invulnerability skills like hallowed ground and holmgang are used all the time. In high end raids they are used to mitigate damage, sometimes to cheese mechanics, and in casual content/dungeons they are usedoften by good tanks during huge trash pulls.
So that small blue piece of the pie for the tank's fault is a couple of things (as a person who mains a healer, but has all their tanks leveled, too). As a tank, you need to know your limitations. If you are at or near minimum ilvl for a dungeon, don't pull 3 packs of mobs and expect the healer to be able to keep you up (especially if they are also at or near min ilvl). Also, even in good gear, don't expect to go pull several packs and not use a single mitigation skill. Making the healer blow all their cooldowns on a single fight is not exactly ideal… especially when you do the same thing in the very next pull and those cooldowns the healer had that first pull haven't come back up yet. Also, as a tank, you have to do your part to avoid standing in the bad, too. There are instant kill mechanics in some places… or close enough to instant kill mechanics. If you're taking a bunch of avoidable damage, then the boss uses a tank buster that you're not mitigating, that's not the healer's fault you died.
Just yesterday in the lvl 80 dungeon roulette, I had a tank not use a single mitigation skill… throughout the entire dungeon (that one right before the ending to 5.0). Did he end up dying? No, but it was a frustrating experience keeping him up especially when there was a first timer DPS. Don't be that guy if you're rolling a tank.
Tanks dying due to not using their CDs properly is definitely a thing in XIV, especially when they do larger pulls or fail to mitigate tankbusters.
Everything in XIV is about DPS, **EVEN** Tanking AND Healing!
If the Tank uses their defensive CDs properly, then the Healer is healing less.
If the Healer is healing less, then the Healer is DPSing more.
If *EVERYONE* in the party is DPSing more, then everything dies faster.
Yeah it seems kinda self-apparent when typed out like that, but there are maaaaaaaaaaany ppl who play Tanks and Healers who do not try to maximize their damage (by tanking and healing more effectively).
I actually started leveling Monk recently since it's the one alt job that I haven't touched. If you didn't know, Monk has the most positionals out of all the melee DPS.
And so far I've had to teach a new lovely WoW refugee Sprout almost every other dungeon what positionals are.
It goes about as well as you'd expect. I politely explain what I'm trying to do, and they reply with something like, "Oh, wow. That's good to know. Thanks." And they take that information and improve as a player. Everyone's happy.
But every now and then I meet a Sprout tank, to no fault of their own, completely ignoring my messages. Because if years of dungeoneering in World of Warcraft has taught me anything: it's that no one communicates in dungeons. So of course they're not reading chat.
It's okay though. They're learning a new game and they'll figure it out sooner or later.
JoCat: Believe it or not when you die it's not entirely the healer's fault
Chitor: wait… what?
JoCat: Believe it or not when you die it's not entirely the healer's fault
Chitor: …. it's like he's speaking to me but not saying anything
Currently only had one bad tank that would not use defensive cooldowns…lucky am a good healer so made problems disappear but fortunately as the game goes on around Stormblood onwards is when if you can't do the basics the game will stop you and make you learn. This is even a boss that is just dodge or die.
Ya not using mitigations will definately be on you aka your fault since your taking unnessacary damage or taking a shit done of dmg to where the next hit could kill you. Ect ect ect. Things like that
If you want your party to be REALLY impressed with how good of a tank you are, don’t just face the boss away from them; make sure its ass is accessible too. If the boss is facing away from your group but right behind him is a ground effect, make sure to turn the boss so that the ground effect doesn’t restrict ass access.
I recommend you watch the video " Final fantasy XIV 1.0 in a nutshell " and watch a video of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 Shutdown " Final Fantasy XIV : Last Moments " last minutes in the game during the Calamity event.
In terms of timeline you start the game after the Shutdown of FF14 1.0 which was completely deleted and destroyed. to remake the game into a much better game which is now FF14 2.0 A Realm Reborn.
Yes the Calamity from the trailer is literally the original version Final Fantasy 14 getting completely destroyed they made the complete destruction of everything they worked on in FF14 1.0 part of the Lore.
As a former WoW tank and current part time FFXIV tank, I can confirm nearly EVERYTHING in FFXIV cleaves. Face mobs away from the party and DO NOT MOVE EXCEPT TO GET OUT OF AOE! And then IMMEDIATELY GET BACK INTO PLACE! Your dps will love you for it.
For 8-man groups where you have 2 tanks a good rule of thumb is offtank starts with stance off and after a few seconds turn it on so you're 2nd on the aggro list. If you look at the party in 2:42 each player has a bar on their name with a number except the tank who has an A and a full bar. The full bar means he's the current main target of the enemy, the dragoon is number 2 with a bit of a bar so second in aggro, healer 3rd, black mage 4th. As offtank you don't want to get your bar bigger than the main tank or you will steal aggro but you want to keep it close to him so it is easy to switch tanks when the mechanics require it. A lot of end game mechanics target the first 2 on the aggro list, so if you're a tank keep it up . Or if the main tank dies, the boss targets you next instead of the poor healer because you never turned your stance on.
To elaborate on Limit Breaks. Tank LB3 rarely exists outside of really specific situations where an insane raid wide nuke is coming. Healer LB3 is very common in prog fights because its a full party revive. Melee DPS LB3 is the most common cause its a single target damage nuke, caster LB3 is less common but still situationally useful as its an aoe damage nuke for some add phases for boss. Ranged LB3 doesn't exist and you can't convince me otherwise.
The main difference tanking in FFXIV vs other mmo is the need to perfectly time your invulnerable skills. It’s like a mini game for tank besides using mitigations. So watch out for boss spells meter. Keeping agro is non issue here as long you are in tank stance, any aoe you do will keep mobs on you all the time.
As someone who played WoW up until WoD myself, the way tanks and healers are being played in FFXIV is truly "flipped over". Tanks really do need to use their defensives while allowing the healer to contribute in killing the mobs/boss. A good example is the white mage with his spell "Holy". It stuns enemies in a radius and dealing generous amounts of damage in the process, and therefore healing is mostly a matter of using oGCDs unless, as Jo-cat said, the tank forgets about his defensives after just one use. I mainly play dps classes such as monk, machinist and currently training some muscle memory for black mage. BUT I also enjoy tanking on dark knight and healing on white mage. One time my static decided to go for a quick expert run (endgame, high-end dungeons) composed of warrior, ninja, red mage and me on white mage. I basically only used oGCDs to keep both the tank and the group alive while keeping dps uptime throughout the run. Oh, a tank buster. Quick shield on tank and him using one of his abilities: 10k damage on a 210k HP pool. Noice.
The main rule as a healer in FFXIV is simple and pretty much the same as in their single player games: everything above 1 HP is luxury. The tank will come equipped with tools to not only mitigate damage done to himself but also to the party. And that's why it isn't always the healer's fault. The tank is INDEED the protector of the party, not just by keeping aggro away from them. 😀
I would suggest watching his healing guide. It gives a LOT of context on why tanking works the way it does in XIV and why the tank living does not fall on the responsibility of the healer alone. There are slight nuances BOTH healer and tank roles have in FF as compared to WoW
When are you gonna upload your first time in-game?
That small slice of "your fault" is when you don't press your invulnerability button
Invulnerabalities are used all the time, dunno who tried to troll you 😅.
In dungeons for example, you play a paladin, there is no reason for you not to use it.
In raids, double or shared tank busters are 90% solved with that. In some fights its jut straight up mandatory.
Also welcome to ff14 o/
There is nothing quite more infuriating than playing a Monk and having the tank move the boss constantly.
I dunno what people have been saying, but in endgame raids tank invulnerabilities are very important, depending on the fight, and often in other fights they still get used to allow the party to ignore mechanics for uptime.
As a main tank with 3K hours in the game, I can say that invulns are sparsely used, and are more or less your "OH SHIT" button for when the healers are down, you're low health, and a tank buster is coming.
Otherwise, Tank busters are VERY easily mitigated by one of your other cooldowns, and each tank classes unique damage mitigation that they get (usually) from building up points until they're able to use it (i.e. Paladin's have "Shelltron", which costs 50 points from their job gauge.). I say usually because, for another example, Warriors version of this is just simple a cooldown.