The Art of Tanking and Grouping on bosses

Saitada - Sanctuary · January 2009

When your in a party with a Tank, be that tank a Barbarian, a Blademaster or a Venomancer with a nice pet there are some things you should do.

The Tank should inform the party of what damage he/she is doing. I.E. (blademaster) My stream strike is doing 800 damage and my normal attacks are doing 500 damage. (veno) My pet is hitting for 600 damage per tick. Etc.

The party members should ALWAYS wait to attack the mob until it is at LEAST 1/4 of the way down (3/4 life remaining) UNLESS they are support damage like second barbs/blades in which case they wait till the mob has ticked off 1/5 of it's life and then attack with NON AGRO gaining attacks such as a base attack w/o magic. Their job is not to tank but to add DPS.

Casters & Archers... The tank has informed you of their damage, you now have a reference to watch. You nuke and do 4000 damage. Don't nuke again until you have ticked off the Tanks damage EXCEEDING yours in your mind. I.E....

Nuke 4k damage. barb tanking... tick (one thousand one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one thousand six one thousand seven etc..) until you have ticked off approx the damage you did -vs- the damage the tanks doing... error on the side of caution.. it's better to wait a second or five longer before firing again, than to pull agro from the tank and get yourself and your party wiped.

ALWAYS Call out adds. If the cleric gets attacked... turn your attack from the boss to whatever is attacking the cleric. Keep your cleric alive.. they can rez you, you can't rez them and if they die, unless you have another cleric, that is a whipe.

Critical Hits... These REALLY **** off a mob. You get a Crit I strongly suggest that you add 1/2 again to the damage countdown to clear hate. I.E. A normal attack means waiting 7 seconds.. a crit means waiting 11 seconds etc.....

Finally.... Squad positioning...

DO NOT EVER run ahead of the tank. His/Her job is to take the agro of the mobs ahead of your squad, if you run ahead of your tank... you just became the tank. If you die, the fault is your own, not the tanks, not the clerics.. all yours.

Caster positions should be along side the cleric.. this includes Wizards, Archers, Venos and support clerics. Casters should stay near one another so if someone grabs agro.. you will ALL see whats happening.

support Barb/Blade... your job isn't to tank.... it's to add dps to the fight and to WATCH FOR ADDS and take them on, especially if they are going after the casters (i.e. your cleric).

Don't focus your view on the boss.. click your attack and then start rotating your view to keep all the other mobs (if any) in your view.

Tanks.... Your job is simple.. **** the mob off. use all your agro gaining/Hate gaining attacks, constantly. If you need spark and a veno is around.. hopefully they will have the skill to share a spark with you ( Lending Hand ). don't hesitate to ask for a spark if they do. Keep the mob pissed at you. Spam your agro attacks constantly. Also.. keep an eye out for adds.. If your the only tank.. your gonna have to grab them while the others switch off to kill them. If you can keep agro on adds for a few seconds, that is often enough for the casters and support dps to grab them and take them out.

Finally... Venos.... If your the tank.. heal your pet, watch for adds same as a "normal-traditional" tank... if your NOT the tank watch your pets damage.. if it starts to out tick the tanks damage, pull your pet back for a few seconds. Watch your casting as well. If you have foxform skills like amplify damage etc (your curses) USE THEM. If not then use Ironwood Scarab to debuff the mob.

I commonly go to foxform and hit the mob with Amplify damage, then after it's almost ticked off I use Soul Degeneration, switch to normal form and hit with ironwood Scarab.. tick off till foxform is available again and go back to foxform and wait for Soul degeneration to tick off, then hit with Amplify again and rinse and repeat.

For non AOE bosses this works real well. For AOE bosses not so well.. i'll skip foxform and just use ironwood Scarab and maybe a DoT attack every now and then like Parasitic Nova etc... Again.. keep a VERY close eye on your damage.

*edit* Tanks that have a hp recovery skill. Save this skill. If a party member gets killed (hopefully not the cleric) inform the cleric your skill is avialable for use so they can stop healing you long enough to rez the party member that has died (if there is only one cleric in your party, if there are two, the support cleric should rez and allow the primary cleric to continue healing the tank.).. Also tanks.. you have HP charms available, Potions, Powders etc... you should be using these as well to help save the clerics mana.

Clerics... Ya'll know your jobs, even the FAC clerics. If your a FSC (full support cleric), heal don't do dps. If your a FAC (full attack cleric) INFORM your party of this so they know that your skilling is more for dps than healing so things can be adjusted accordingly. FAC's... if your a second cleric (and you often are) don't turn your nose up at healing or rezzing. Granted your heal and rez may not be on par with the main clerics.. but ANY heal and ANY rez is better than a full squad wipe.

FSC's... As an FSC you know your job is to heal, rez, and buff. Save your charms where you can by using pots dropped from mobs, powders you make or buy etc... You heal the tank. Keep them alive. If a party member other than the tank pulls agro or an add somehow... If and ONLY if switching a heal to them won't kill your tank, toss a heal their way if possible. If not.. let them die or survive as they can... your tank should be heading towards that add anyway to grab it so chances are they will survive if the tank is doing HIS/HER job right. besides... You can always rez them when the tank pops their HP recovery skill, pots and powders to give you those few seconds you'll need to rez them. Better one party member die than all of you die because your tank dropped while you were healing someone who grabbed agro or an add.

ALL party members... Charms, Powders and Potions are your friends. Use them. Often. learn NOT to depend on a cleric to keep you alive, even when your the tank and you need them to do just that. Remember this: Lag. Disconnects. REAL LIFE emergencies that have to be dealt with NOW and no time to type about it (example... your small child injures themselves.. sorry guys, my kid comes first.).

Finally.. if you grab agro or an add finds you... DO NOT go screaming off and away.. run in a close circle near the party (but not near other mobs) so the tank can grab the agro (hopefully) before you die or the cleric can toss a heal your way (use your pots, charms, powders here). If you run off... chances are the cleric is NOT going to be able to heal you, and you can bet the tank isn't gonna be able to chase you down and grab agro from you either. More squads have been wiped because someone grabbed agro and tore off through a mess of mobs or their squad (aoe bosses suck here) and dragged the mob/mobs through them or agro'd far more mobs than several squads can handle. If your a barb/blade that has grabbed agro and you run...... you should hang up your weapons.

Hope this mini guide helps you.

Saitada DeGrief - Contagion Leader

Pwntmasta - Heavens Tear · January 2009

this game just fail @not having addons such as a dps meter

Mosz - Heavens Tear · January 2009

if i followed your damage/crit tanking guide id attack once per minute b:thanks
flesh ream mmm mm
rest sounds pretty good
also good clerics know when to BB, although this should rarely be an issue

xarfox · January 2009

Great guide Saitada. I hope some of our newer MMO players find this guide useful.

Stickygreen - Heavens Tear · January 2009

first half is wrong, if the tank is decent you can wallop on a mob/boss.

Mosz - Heavens Tear · January 2009

Stickygreen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

first half is wrong, if the tank is decent you can wallop on a mob/boss.

but they have to be decent and uhh..pat attention and not TROLL

Stickygreen - Heavens Tear · January 2009

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

but they have to be decent and uhh..pat attention and not TROLL

b:shutup lol you know you love me ^_^

Iceian - Lost City · January 2009

Thats a great guide! Saitada, I vote for a sticky on this one.

Oishasan - Sanctuary · January 2009

one thing I would add from boxing barbs and venos is bleeds...

If the barb is tanking, no one should be using bleeds including pets. A barb's flesh ream is his bread and butter for aggro..
Granted player bleeds do stack, but you really don't want to get into an aggro competition with the barb's main tool. Also, if he has to use his AoE to grab aggro, it resets his bleed aggro, not yours..so guess who is going to own #1 'hate' then?

Visa versa, if the pet is the tank, do not use any bleed styles at all on the target. Pet bleeds do not stack with anyone or any other pet. If it's their aggro tool, they have very few, so you wouldn't want to deny it.

Saitada - Sanctuary · January 2009

xarfox wrote: »

Great guide Saitada. I hope some of our newer MMO players find this guide useful.

Thanks. I hope newer player will find this helpful and older players will help newer players learn this as well. See ya all in game!

~S

I added a small bit for tanks and clerics to the original post.

Torsay - Sanctuary · January 2009

You know Saitada, some of these tanks out there will only keep on saying "heal me" "heal me" and won't listen to anything.

Only dying over and over will teach them. Not this so long post you wrote here.

It actually stands and falls on the main cleric of the party. If they should hold back and let the whole party die so they realize or if is there a possibility to let the tank that is being dumb lie on the ground if they got other one in the party.

Cleric is the one who tells barb to go in tiger mode and try to hold the aggro as much as possible. Cleric is the one who says "I am not healing you, let the veno tank and the other veno heal his/her pet".

People usually don't mind if the whole party gets wiped and just the cleric survives to rez them. So cleric has got to deal with it.

I guess you should have been a cleric. That would fit much better to you. Teasing these tanks you know. It's a nasty job. :P

Fleuri - Sanctuary · January 2009

I am having trouble understanding this guide.

Its rules do not seem to account for any of the times where I have pulled hate, and seems to suggest that I should have pulled hate when I did not.

Here is how I currently think things work, for archers:

I think that 25% damage rule might be too conservative, but I would follow that rule if I outleveled the tank badly enough (10 levels would be bad enough that I would want to be that conservative). When you outlevel everyone else, you need to be very careful and maybe not use skills or you might wind up tanking (or using your speed boosting remedies).

On the other hand, when I am way lower level than the tank, I can almost always spark and bleed and whatever else with impunity. Archer damage over time skills do not seem to be much of a problem, in my experience (unless they confuse your tank into not using their own bleed skills, and you might be right about pet bleed, I do not have any experience there).

However, archers should avoid skills that will put the boss in a state where it needs to pick a new target. Do not stun, or use knockback, except in emergencies (and do not expect knockback to work against creatures in instances, some can be but others can not). Stun can be great when something came in and started attacking your cleric but I if you use stun against a boss i think this requires your tank pull hate again.

fuzzles · January 2009

The whole tanky part is wrong. You don't even mention flesh ream. Barb tanking has very little to do with damage, and everything to do with flesh ream. Do your homework, m'dear.

I didn't read the rest of it. I don't like to let facts get in the way of a healthy dislike for a person and their guide.

DeOso - Lost City · February 2009

Oishasan - Sanctuary wrote: »

one thing I would add from boxing barbs and venos is bleeds...

If the barb is tanking, no one should be using bleeds including pets. A barb's flesh ream is his bread and butter for aggro..
Granted player bleeds do stack, but you really don't want to get into an aggro competition with the barb's main tool. Also, if he has to use his AoE to grab aggro, it resets his bleed aggro, not yours..so guess who is going to own #1 'hate' then?

Visa versa, if the pet is the tank, do not use any bleed styles at all on the target. Pet bleeds do not stack with anyone or any other pet. If it's their aggro tool, they have very few, so you wouldn't want to deny it.

I'm pretty sure the bleed from Flesh Ream has nothing to do with the aggro.

Oishasan - Sanctuary · February 2009

DeOso - Lost City wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the bleed from Flesh Ream has nothing to do with the aggro.

b:shocked
I'm hoping you're being sarcastic.

fuzzles · February 2009

Oishasan - Sanctuary wrote: »

b:shocked
I'm hoping you're being sarcastic.

No. He's spot on.

Barb flesh ream causes bleeding, but the bleeding itself has nothing to do with the aggro.

The skill does two things:
1) It causes bleeding.
2) It holds aggro.

Each one is separate. So other classes can feel free to use bleed all they want.

Canceling the barb flesh ream bleed won't cause it to lose aggro at all.

DeOso - Lost City · February 2009

Oishasan - Sanctuary wrote: »

b:shocked
I'm hoping you're being sarcastic.

I'm not. Although the bleeding can help you keep aggro,the bleed isn't the main source of aggro.

Think of it as the "Talk is cheap" aggro skill (You know, the AoE aggro skill) but with damage added.

EDIT: Damnit, Fuzzles beat me, lol. By the way, did you play PW-MY-EN Fuzz?

Oishasan - Sanctuary · February 2009

Flesh Ream from a Barb stacks, like a counter, the bleed itself adds to that aggro. The higher level of Bleed, the more damage he does, the aggro he gains in addition to his counter.
If someone competes with that aggro/bleed it becomes a dangerous situation because IF a barb has to use Roar (Talk is Cheap) the AoE aggro tool, it resets his aggro to the level skill of Roar. Thus if you have been bleeding over him, you'll gain his aggro.
Simple solution..don't bleed.

As far as a pet goes, if flesh ream is their tool, then it's their aggro. Most use bash, but Flesh Ream is a secondary, and very common aggro holding tool for pets. Once again, stayng on topic, why would you consciously choose to compete with a tanks aggro?

Saitada - Sanctuary · February 2009

fuzzles wrote: »

The whole tanky part is wrong. You don't even mention flesh ream. Barb tanking has very little to do with damage, and everything to do with flesh ream. Do your homework, m'dear.

I didn't read the rest of it. I don't like to let facts get in the way of a healthy dislike for a person and their guide.

If you had read it, you wouldn't be talking out your ****. The tanking part isn't wrong, I specifically tell people NOT to compete with the tanks ability to hold agro unless they want to find themselves tanking. Your inability to think above your neck just means I get to laugh at you some.

I also don't specifically mention barb tanking. I mention TANKING, be it barb, blade or veno.

Also you seem to have some issue with me. Good. I'm glad i've managed to anger or upset you to the point you can't even read something constructive and attempt to be constructive within it and instead have to make an inane idiotic comment instead. It means I once again prove the point my signature states clearly. Now.. read it, and apply it's wisdom.

~S

Fleuri - Sanctuary · February 2009

I do not want to participate in any personal criticisms here. I do not enjoy that kind of thing and I think that personal criticisms detract from an otherwise useful discussion.

However, if archer damage over time skills have any significant ability to cause hatred, then they or their descriptions are buggy. And if their descriptions were buggy and archer damage over time creates special hatred in NPCs, then archers should be given some abilities to deal with this hatred usefully. Archers pull hatred with spike damage and can sometimes make NPCs reconsider their targets -- if anything, Archer damage over time should be less likely to pull hatred than some of their other attacks, because their spike damage will be low with damage over time.

However, I believe that blademaster damage over time skills also have special hatred attracting qualities. So that original post had to have been correct for some classes.

Finally, if you are willing to die you can sometimes learn things that go beyond other some players' knowledge.

Hari - Heavens Tear · February 2009

I don't really agree to most of this thread... I can spam skills as much as I want and I won't pull agro if there's a half-decent tank. If tank does lose agro, my pet will take it, not me. If I'm in a TT run I just turn bash off - and even though my pet is clearly out-DPSing the entire party, it doesn't pull agro. Funny how that works, isn't it?

If I'm tanking with my pet, I can hold agro unless a BM is spamming skills, an archer pulls off 3 crits in a row, or a mage does a 2-spark AoE skill and crits. If I do lose agro... I simply push the Roar button. And get it back. b:chuckle

Solandri - Heavens Tear · February 2009

Oishasan - Sanctuary wrote: »

As far as a pet goes, if flesh ream is their tool, then it's their aggro. Most use bash, but Flesh Ream is a secondary, and very common aggro holding tool for pets. Once again, stayng on topic, why would you consciously choose to compete with a tanks aggro?

So if the tank should happen to die, the mob goes after the mini-tank pet instead of the squishy casters or cleric? I recently did an FB with 3 venos. While fighting the boss, we got a wandering add and the tank died. In the time it took the boss to kill two of the three pets (one of which was tanking the add long enough for us to kill it), the cleric had revived and healed the tank so he could get back to work.

Pets are disposable tanks, and should act as an aggro buffer between the tank and the squishies in case something goes wrong. So completely turning off the pet's aggro skill is a big mistake IMHO. Aggro is not a binary yes/no thing. You want the levels of aggro to cascade as follows:

Barb > pet | BM > archer > veno/wiz > cleric

Anyhow, the pet flesh ream skill has a 15 second cooldown time. The cooldown on the barb's flesh ream is 3 seconds. It's highly unlikely the pet is going to pull aggro off the barb from just flesh ream, especially if the veno is tossing the barb a spark every minute.

DeOso - Lost City · February 2009

Oishasan - Sanctuary wrote: »

Flesh Ream from a Barb stacks, like a counter, the bleed itself adds to that aggro. The higher level of Bleed, the more damage he does, the aggro he gains in addition to his counter.
If someone competes with that aggro/bleed it becomes a dangerous situation because IF a barb has to use Roar (Talk is Cheap) the AoE aggro tool, it resets his aggro to the level skill of Roar. Thus if you have been bleeding over him, you'll gain his aggro.
Simple solution..don't bleed.

I understand what your saying, but the problem is that the bleed from Flesh Ream is so insignificant that it doesn't really matter whether or not someone bleeds over you.

The brunt of the aggro is already built in the skill itself.

thanduril · February 2009

you fail to mention ANYTHING about ranged tankers, ie light armoured archers and light armour/robe`d wizards and clerics.

if you do not know, 98% of the bosses out there got Both melee type attack and a ranged type attack , which bassically means if you attack them from anywhere outside a close radius they switch to ranged attacks, be it magic type or ranged physical.
Few bosses in and out of a instance area(FBs/TT/etc) dont have a ranged alternate attack but a ranged compulsory AOE attack, but the alternate attack is by far weaker than the bosses' melee attack(with the only exception being FB bosses who have the same magic and physical attack, and TT bosses who have a stronger magic attack and weaker physical attack) and with a the exception of a few bosses, the AOE is mid ranged so the squishies wont get hit while they are doing their thing, so infact you dont need a barb with 9k hp tanking a boss and taking a heavy pounding, but a 3.5k hp archer will do the work twice as fast and not shout "HEAL ME HEAL ME" like someone mentioned...atleast not that often

if you have killed mantavip..yet, you will know by now that all this talk about ranged tanker is not BS. robes take lesser damage than light armour from magic attacks, but light armoured clerics,wizards and archers usually have around 1k more hp than their robe'd counterpart(and robed archer is the biggest fail ever, dont consider that) to suffer a mishap and still walk out alive, unless the player has dramatically goofed up his stat point distribution and ended up with some kind of a hybrid-failure buildup(ok now consider a robed archer) b:chuckle
and in the case of a light armoured archer tanker, its harder for anyone else to steal the aggro...even if they tried, afterall the crits make the aggro stick.

as for the damage a barb/BM's bleed deals, even if it is that insignificant it Still does make the bosses look at him while a DD pounds down 3-4times the DPS the barb is dealing. if only dealing damage held the aggro, then in this game the barbarian class is the biggest fail since even a full int veno might do more damage than a barb in tiger form. but this is not the case and you still do need a barbarian to tank most of the fugglies in the TT dungeon so [your(DeOso) theory of barb bleed = BS] is very fail.
might wanna team up with a few decent barbs and try to steal aggro off them before being so confident.

and that Barb>pet>[BM>Archer(lol)]>etc doesnt make the bit of sense at late game. when you have a lvl 9x pure dex archer with around 23-25% crit, with -attack interval(optional

) competing against a BM of the same lvl in trying to hold aggro, only a barb might be able to hold aggro agisnt a pure dex archer and that also might be impossible if the archer scores consecutive crits on a lvled up barrage array.

as for venos holdig aggro its a whole new ball game, and its not just a DPS factor here but probably a whole new trigger for a veno pet stealing the aggro. ive seen a small bunny steal the aggro off a lvl 8x barb lol. so something isnt right if you say the bunny caused more threat and damage than the barb/DDs/BB aggro(yes a healer's threat range is very high, hence the runner mobs jump the healers after a heal spell is cast)

Smexxyfox - Heavens Tear · February 2009

You can add a discalimer somewhere, "dmg does not equal agro"

Agro is tied to certain skills, especially barb skills(even doing low dmg) has a high aggro rating.

The only time you are working on the basis of pure damage is when a robe user is tanking a magic mob, then you just need to sit back and let them work it some before you attack.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary · February 2009

sai if i may be informal with you your guid is very very good. thank you for making it and i hope truly it get stickied some where. it will no has now become required reading for my guild

.

and to the detracters yes there are a few flubbs in it but on a whole it is still an excelent guid to set some of these ppl right and the noobs on the right path.

Oishasan - Sanctuary · February 2009

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Anyhow, the pet flesh ream skill has a 15 second cooldown time. The cooldown on the barb's flesh ream is 3 seconds. It's highly unlikely the pet is going to pull aggro off the barb from just flesh ream, especially if the veno is tossing the barb a spark every minute.

Solandri, the two situations I was speaking of are completely separate.
One is given for barb tanking, the other for a pet tanking.

All good though, thanks to all for a good discussion, and Sai for the thread in the first place.

ZadirZex - Lost City · February 2009

Is there any consensus on what does and does not break aggro? It's very confusing to me sometimes. I am a full support cleric, but vs weaker bosses, I have time to debuff/attack in between heals and I occasionally steal aggro.

Any FB boss up through 69 except the last 2 in 69, and Chin, Serpent in HH 1-3 and below I can mix healing/attacking. I just stack Ironheart on tank, switch to boss, use my phys/ele debuff, then attack a few times (usually cyclone, plume, cyclone or cyclone, wield, then back to healing). I've actually stolen aggro from blademasters and barbs within 5-7 levels of me and even a lvl 80 Hercules pet (vs a wood mob). I couldn't possibly be outDPSing the tank given the skill chain listed above, so what gives? In none of the situations did I hit a critical or series of criticals. Any ideas?

Solandri - Heavens Tear · February 2009

ZadirZex - Lost City wrote: »

Is there any consensus on what does and does not break aggro? It's very confusing to me sometimes. I am a full support cleric, but vs weaker bosses, I have time to debuff/attack in between heals and I occasionally steal aggro.

I think debuffs adds a considerable amount of aggro. If my pet loses aggro I tap its debuff skills and usually it can get it back.

fuzzles · February 2009

DeOso - Lost City wrote: »

By the way, did you play PW-MY-EN Fuzz?

Sure did.

Post is too short, so I'll just throw in that the OP is a bit slow.

thanduril · February 2009

ZadirZex - Lost City wrote: »

Is there any consensus on what does and does not break aggro? It's very confusing to me sometimes. I am a full support cleric, but vs weaker bosses, I have time to debuff/attack in between heals and I occasionally steal aggro.

Any FB boss up through 69 except the last 2 in 69, and Chin, Serpent in HH 1-3 and below I can mix healing/attacking. I just stack Ironheart on tank, switch to boss, use my phys/ele debuff, then attack a few times (usually cyclone, plume, cyclone or cyclone, wield, then back to healing). I've actually stolen aggro from blademasters and barbs within 5-7 levels of me and even a lvl 80 Hercules pet (vs a wood mob). I couldn't possibly be outDPSing the tank given the skill chain listed above, so what gives? In none of the situations did I hit a critical or series of criticals. Any ideas?

when you say full support cleric you mean full int aye. that means more damage per spell and stronger heals pet cast.
you need to understand that every heal you castor even casting BB causes threat to the surrounding mobs. even if you dont directly damage the mobs, the fact that you casted a heal on a character around them is more than enough to pull their aggro onto you. same reason why mobs first jump the BB healer in a zhen group if they dont get hit by the DD AOEs asap.
now when you are spamming ironhearts on the tank, you are building up a threath range on the boss which is being worked upon by your team. the barb/BM tank holds the aggro cause they got skills which give a direct boost to threat range, but you on the otherhand are involuntarily drawing aggro even by casting heals.
like you said when you finish stacking a few ironhearts and start focusing on debuffing the boss and casting damage spells on it, you are adding to the threath range that your ironhearts have already build up on the boss, and the moment your threat outsources the tank's threat you pull the aggro onto yourself.

the easiest solution is to just stop multi tasking on DPS and heals at the same time and keep your threat in check, so just cast your ironhearts without the cyclones/etc and that alone might not be able to outsource the tank's threath range and it wont lead to any mishaps.

as for the issue with the hercules pet...well the venos themselves steal aggro from a hercules(and shadou) more often than a damage based pet, so you cant really do anything there other than pause in between casts and control your DPS or the other alternative would be to mess up the herc's skills by adding bash/flesh ream and causing a mess of its tanking build.

The Art of Tanking and Grouping on bosses

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