New Player Questions Regarding Tanking

[ShinraTrooper]

Hey! I am a new player and I had some questions regarding tanking.

1. Should I be sticking with the melee DPS I am guarding no matter what? Even if they dive super far or don't follow the Warband leader?

2. What should I be doing during sieges? I kinda just stand there until they break the door, then either guard a melee dps or attack while trying not to die.

3. Is the crest gain slower for tanks? I played healer for a little bit and felt like I was getting way more crests. I played for about 4 hours today and only got 138 crests, and a lot of that was from the rewards sent in the mail for hitting certain renown levels.

and finally, I wanted to ask for opinions regarding being a low level (23) melee character in general. I struggle with staying alive at the front lines, especially if I am guarding a melee dps. If I just hang back and not attack I feel like I am not getting any crests or really helping out. At my level I have 1 aoe skill on a 15 second cool down, should I just run up and use that real quick, then retreat? It seems I just die so quickly.

[storm]

If your a melee dps, can you do more damage than a regular dps? I have seen some tanks do very well, but if not i suggest you seriously consider taking OR Dps. otherwise you will be just bad at both. Understand your class, sometimes you can be a dps and do a lot of de buffs to enemy and not score high but still bring value with punts and crowd control. For most, learn to tank.. then once you learn class mechanics you can start understanding how dps fits into the mix. Hope this helps.

[DirkDaring]

for an answer to your first question, normally you try and stay within guard range of your mdps, a lot of times they pounce, or charge way ahead of you and the rest of your group, and warband, at times its ok to just leave them to die if they overextend to far, if there`s no way for you, or the rest of the warband to follow. easier to rez them on counter push, or let them respawn, and catch up. Most of the time tanks will die while allowing the rest of the warband to escape, which is fine.

if you haven`t started using it yet Tether addon, is a good addition as is think out loud for announcing skill use like challenges, guard swaps etc. also you can set up guard swap on click cast through enemy addon, that along with tether will show where your guarded target is in relation to you.

As far as what to do during sieges try and cast modify war engine if you have to place an absorb damage on the ram, also try and be somewhat central located with your group so you can swap guard to one if they are taking damage from ranged on walls, pre push, if you are attacking stay to the side after oil is killed, and use throw axe to help build morale's before push is called, when push is called have a coordinated call with tanks in group for morale 4 use, and try and move left right to help bypass collision on push. Also coordinate challenges, and try to angle your challenge to the side so you hit some of their dps classes behind the tanks. occasional use of hold the line if you have a shield

If you are defending if you have champ challenge, slot that in M 1 , and when they finally push , have a tank in front, the one you were throwing axe at for morale, you can try cast it on him as he pushes in perma rooting him in the doorway, killing their push, while the other tank in group uses bellows or m4 . also if you are on dest its ok to stand in the napalm ground fire same as the purple magnus mist , it is low damage per tick, long duration, easy for healers to heal through, and will help you build morale's faster, also use hold the line now and then if you have a shield.

As far as crest go, it used to be really slow years ago getting crests as crests were tied to group that got the kill, and based off damage, now loot rolls on crests are shared with the warband, so it`s a little faster.

For being low lvl, also wear the armor and talisman close to your actual lvl to get the most out of bolster, as a tank, a mix of wounds, toughness, and are good, for renown try and get at least 2 or 3 ranks of futile strikes to lower chance to be crit, then it depends are you using a shield get block, 2h get parry, however even as a shield tank, parry is also useful, as parry help mitigate guard damage . just like armor is nice but was nerfed last patch, but toughness is still good , as it helps mitigate all damage from attackers .

If you havent looked at the forums much, there is a section titles the New player Toolkit, in there are two threads near the top , one is titled the Cheat sheet, lots of really good info in there, and the other is titled gearing up from level 1-40, check out those two, There is another found in the General section titled The Warcamp. great thread for improving ingame play, fps etc.

Hope this helps some. Welcome to the Server