[eticket109]

The cool thing about FFXI or MMOs in general, is how much the players shape the game. I'm pretty sure that SE looked at PLD and WAR as the two primary tanking jobs initially. Even once NIN was introduced it seemed to be described as more of a DD job then anything else. Heck, now we even have BRDs tanking at endgame. I bet SE never saw that one coming. lol

[Akashimo]

Oh speaking of war and mnk tanks.
Last night, TP burn, brdx2, war/nin x2(with haubys @.@), whm and mnk(me ^^)
So wars got their songs of choice, margril and minuet i believe. Party was ok considering most of the times, wars shadows were pretty much non existant Even while duo tanking. So being the hate stealing monk (normally unintentional) I am, Voke, counterstance (removed it after use from 30 mins of doing this since I forgot my counter-eva gear after noticing counters where normal amounts). Hate stayed steady even with Cure IV and curaga II bombs @.@; Even starting off with 6-8 boost chi blast in mnd gear (yum 280 chi blast) Sets hate So long story short, by the time I had to log, (15 mins getting party members, 30 to get to camp while waiting on 5th and 6th, 60 mins of exp and 10 mins of waiting for a bard that d/c to repop befor continuing) about 6k total gain, with some steady chain 4 or 5 before letting the whm heal to full mp. Though funniest moment, 24/1378 hp @.@ before wars could barely get hate off xD (with any/all JA they can use + voke). Fun yes, trust wars for DD, not really. Different, totally @.@ moar!

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Originally Posted by Akashimo

Oh speaking of war and mnk tanks.
Last night, TP burn, brdx2, war/nin x2(with haubys @.@), whm and mnk(me ^^)
.... wars shadows were pretty much non existant Even while duo tanking...

WAR evasion is crap to begin with, so those shadows probably would have been just as "non-existant" had the WARs not been wearing Haubys. It's quite common for WARs who are dual tanking to wear all out assault gear, rather than tanking gear.

Fun yes, trust wars for DD, not really.

Not quite sure what that last comment is supposed to mean.

[Akashimo]

Originally Posted by LyonheartLakshmi

Not quite sure what that last comment is supposed to mean.

Well, wars in general that I've exped with get less and less impressive for me to like having the class in general for parties, much less lines of tanking. Espically the ones that are most likely leveling the job for the merrit parties. No offense to anyone who serious about the job and want to level it right.

[Karinya]

Sadly, I have to agree. WAR looks like a job with great potential (and I had quite a bit of fun taking it up to 37 - mostly tanking or GA DD, since /nin is weak at those levels), but there are so many half-assed flavor-of-the-month WARs lately, I'm reluctant to invite a WAR I don't know for anything - and definitely not to tank unless they have a /seacom indicating that they are prepared to tank. If that means nobody gets a party because all the wars are lazy slobs, well, I'll just go solo birds.

It's not pretty, but it's the state of the job right now.

P.S. Please don't tank in DD gear, I don't care if you do have Utsusemi. The moment shadows go down you get smacked for 200, if not WS'd for 1000+. And lose hate accordingly. Shadows are a nice addition to good defense, not a substitute for it (especially for jobs with bad evasion!). If you're going to tank, TANK. Conversely, if you're not going to tank, watch your hate unless it's close enough to the end of the fight for your shadows to last until the mob dies. People who aren't going to wear armor have a responsibility to not pull hate they can't deal with.

[Celeal]

I think level 45+ mnk/war has better tanking potential than war/mnk. Holding hate with Counterstance swaping evasion/agi+ gear is very interesting.

Recently I am leveling MNK (as DD), and I use Counterstance all the time in PT. I have macro to swap evasion/agi+ gear whenever pull hate from mob. It works very well for me, I even swap in Crow Jupon (Evasion+8 Enmity-8) with other evasion/agi+ gear while keeping Counterstance up, in order to DD more freely without being a MP-sink.

From my observation, it seems that accuracy and evasion have some impact of how often counter-attack triggers (just my observation, I don't have data to prove it).

In terms of JA for Hate/Tanking, both war/mnk and mnk/war has very similiar tools (the classic Provoke -> Boost -> Boost -> Provoke...). The only difference is war has Aggressor, mnk has Counterstance. In other words, both war/mnk and mnk/war have similiar hate-routine.

For exping VT ~ low IT mob, if the mob is being Slowed/Paralyzed/Blinded, I think it is safe for mnk/war to tank with Counterstance with sushi + evasion set (just gear like a NIN tank in evasion build).

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Originally Posted by Karinya

P.S. Please don't tank in DD gear, I don't care if you do have Utsusemi. The moment shadows go down you get smacked for 200, if not WS'd for 1000+.

That's what gear swap macros are for. Hauby while shadows are up / other WAR has mob's attention. When shadows go down and you still have hate, swap in tank gear.

If a WAR is solo tanking before/without Ni... well, yeah, trying to tank in DD gear is assisted suicide (and exp mobs are very capable assitants). DD gear should only get swapped in for WS, and swapped right back out.

[Lmnop]

I did a pretty decent job @60 before I got my AF body - meaning Haub was the only body piece I had. I remember the DDs sucked in that party though; i'd rather not go into the actual performance of that party. But for my (Bard assisted) part, I think it went smoothly.

Problem with the tank swaps is the "blinking." It's really not that difficult for a mage to press F3 again, but complications can and do arrise.

Somewhere in the 60s I decided the ticket was to double my macros. Basically, I have a macro that puts on all attack/acc accessories and another for defense accessories (these 2 macros won't cause blinking). Then I have 2 more macros for all the slots that do blink. my Defense "blinking" pieces are also my enmity heavy AF, so it doubles as my Enmity set. The idea for this outfit was to be able to wear defense accessories when shadows dropped while tanking and not have to swap out of the pure DD stuff. I've ended up doing it backwards - often tanking with shadows up in my full AF for the enmity+ and dedicating all accessories to DD. It's nice to have this flexibility, but after long periods of not leveling WAR (going on month #4 now), I forget which is which and just mash them all.