Good tanking in Final Fantasy XIV requires some tricks. In our guide for newcomers, we explain what you need to pay attention to in dungeons and against bosses.
This is what it’s about: In FFXIV, like in many MMORPGs, the principle of “Holy Trinity” applies. This means that the jobs are divided into healers, tanks, and damage dealers. While the DPS deal a lot of damage and healers need to keep the group alive, it is the tanks’ job to maintain the attention of the enemies.
This is a task that comes with certain responsibilities and requires basic knowledge about the tank’s role in a group. Therefore, it can be difficult for MMO newcomers to step into this role.
With our guide and tips for tanking in Final Fantasy XIV, we want to alleviate your fear of tanking. You can find an overview of the tank jobs and their specifics in FFXIV in our detailed job guide:
Hate, Aggro, Enmity – What is that?
These are the basics: The main task of a tank in MMORPGs is to keep the attention of the monsters on themselves and ensure that they do not tear the rest of the group apart. Accordingly, the tank must ensure in battle that they maintain the hate of the enemies.
Hate is referred to by different players as aggro, hostility, or enmity. If you should read these terms in a group chat, it refers to the same gameplay mechanic.
In FFXIV, holding hate is fundamentally very easy. If you activate your tanking stance before the fight (for example, Defender for Warrior or Tankiness for Dark Knight), almost all your actions will automatically generate massive amounts of hate. Therefore, there is no reason to turn off the tanking stance in dungeons.
If you continue to attack the enemies in battle, your hate will grow automatically and other players can hardly take it away from you. Against single enemies or bosses, you can simply use your combos; against larger groups, spam area attacks to hit all monsters and maintain hate.
I lost hate, why? In rare cases, it can happen that you lose hate while tanking despite being in tanking stance:
- Your equipment is too weak: If you enter a dungeon with too weak weapons and armor, it may happen that players who are much better equipped steal the monsters from you. Therefore, always try to keep your equipment at the most current level.
- Not enough AoEs: Most pulls in dungeons consist of multiple enemies. They must all be constantly attacked in order to maintain their hate on you. Most players will use their area attacks when there are 3 or more enemies, and as a tank, you should do that too if you want to keep hate.
However, maintaining hate is not the only task of a tank in FFXIV. To ensure that your dungeon runs and boss fights go smoothly, we have some basic tips for you.
Tip 1: Gather everything together
When you are in dungeons, you will repeatedly tank larger groups of enemies consisting of multiple monsters. These enemies are usually taken down by area attacks (AoEs) from your group members.
However, to ensure that the area attacks hit all enemies, the mobs need to be grouped properly beforehand. This simply happens by running ahead of the monster group and pulling them together behind you into a pack.
Keep in mind that not all area attacks from your group members are circular. For example, monks or dragoon have AoEs that hit enemies in a straight line in front of them. Try to consider this when grouping the enemies. This will make your dungeon run more pleasant for you and your group.
Tip 2: Avoid Cleaves
One of the basic rules when tanking in FFXIV is that the enemies must always be turned away from the other players in the group. This is especially important with bosses because they use special abilities known as “cleaves”.
Cleaves are often particularly strong area attacks aimed at the tank. They deal high damage and can take out some group members in one hit.
The tricky thing about cleaves is that they often come without warning. While most attacks in FFXIV are preceded by red circles, markers, or other visual signals, cleaves are often invisible. Only through short animations of the enemies can one recognize when such an attack is executed. The first primal in FFXIV, Ifrit, has such an attack, for example.
Most of the time, it’s bosses that execute cleaves, but there are also normal trash mobs that do it. Therefore, always try to turn the monsters you are tanking away from the group to avoid collateral damage.
In general, you should try not to stand too close to your teammates. Some of the so-called tank-busters, which are particularly strong attacks against tanks in FFXIV, deal area damage. If such a tank-buster hits a healer or DPS in the group because that person is standing next to the tank, they will be going down immediately.
Tip 3: Stand still
A good tank in FFXIV does not simply hold aggro and stay alive. As a tank, you have direct influence on the way the dungeon run goes. On one hand through the pull tempo or the enemy positioning, but also through your own movements.
The melee jobs in FFXIV all have positional requirements for some of their abilities. This means that skills deal more damage when they are executed from behind or the side.
Therefore, try to move as little as possible during fights and not to turn the enemies, unless necessary to avoid an area attack or to better position them. Just stand still and spam your abilities. The melee players in your group will thank you for it.
Tip 4: Get out of the puddles
During battles in instances, it is common for enemies to leave permanent puddles on the ground. They deal damage or inflict debuffs on players who step into them. As a tank, you should of course avoid these floor AoEs yourself.
On the other hand, you should also pull the enemies out of the puddles. This especially helps the melee players in your group. As mentioned above, their abilities have positional requirements. If the enemies spend the whole time standing in the floor AoE, the melee players will either take damage themselves or deal less damage because they cannot use positionals.
However, it can also happen that enemies are strengthened by such puddles. Therefore, it is always a good idea to pull monster groups and bosses out of their ground AoEs.
Tip 5: Watch for the good AoEs
While you should pull enemies out of damaging AoEs, there are good AoEs where you should stand still. These include all types of healer or ground AoEs. For example: Sanctified Ground of the Scholar, Refuge of the White Mage or Earthly Star of the Astrologian.
These AoEs heal you or reduce the damage you take. Therefore, you should stand in them as much as possible and position the enemies so that your group members can stand in the good ground AoEs while attacking.
There are also damage AoEs where you want to stay. The DPS job Ninja can place a puddle called Doton on the ground that deals continuous damage to enemies. When positioning the enemies, try to ensure that as many of them as possible stand in Doton.
Tip 6: Use your defensive cooldowns
It may sound obvious, but using defensive cooldowns requires more than just firing them off. Generally, you do not want to activate all your CDs at once and charge into the enemy group. That would be pure waste.
It is also not a good idea to not use CDs at all, or only when you’re at 10% of your HP and barely hanging on. The defensive skills are meant to provide continuous aid for the healer. You should activate them in larger enemy groups sequentially to keep the damage consistently lower.
Of course, there are always exceptions. In the case of heavy tankbusters in raids, it makes sense to activate several defensive cooldowns. However, in dungeons at normal pull speed, it will not be necessary.
Note: large pulls
During your tanking adventures, you will be grouped with experienced players in instances. Many of them have done these contents thousands of times and know them by heart. Accordingly, they are also used to a faster pace when pulling enemies.
It may happen that some group members run ahead and pull the enemies for you. This is not fun and can lead to annoyances, especially for newcomers. So if you are new and tanking for the first time, let your group know.
Try to coordinate with the healer to see if you are comfortable with larger pulls. If the healer agrees, you can attempt to pull more than just one group of enemies. It is definitely possible to survive more than one group if you use your defensive cooldowns and the healer is attentive.
Bonus: Small Tanking Lexicon
- Hate, Aggro, Enmity, Hostility: Common terms for the enemies’ attention. As a tank, you must “hold hate” so that enemies do not attack other players.
- Pull: The act of gathering enemies on the way through the dungeon or attacking bosses. A pull can also refer to a group of enemies (for example: Big Pull = several groups of enemies).
- (Trash)-Mob: Common term for enemies in dungeons
- Tank Stance: Tank stance. An ability that gives you a permanent buff with which you generate much more hate.
- Voke / Provoke: Tank ability that immediately pulls the hate of an enemy onto you. Useful when one of the group members accidentally pulls hate.
- CD / Cooldown: Abilities that have their own cooldown, apart from the global cooldown. For tanks, this refers to defensive skills that reduce damage taken.
- AoE (Area of Effect): Area attacks of any kind
- Tank-Buster: Heavy attack executed by bosses against tanks. Tankbusters are extremely strong and often need to be mitigated with cooldowns. Otherwise, the tank faces instant death.
- Cleave: A heavy area attack directed at the tank. Cleaves are often not signaled by red markers and can hit players standing near the tank. Tankbusters can be cleaves but do not have to be.
What tips would you give to new tanks? Let us know in the comments, and particularly useful tips will be added to the guide with mention of your name.
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