Help me build a tanking setup :DFollow

Yeah you read that right! Having completed Yagrush, I can't help but entertain the thought of tanking on WHM. I'm not taking it terribly seriously, but I would like to explore the idea for kicks. The enmity-generating potential of Yagrush is off the charts, far greater than anything else in the game. Poisona costs 8 MP, 1 sec cast time, 3 sec recast if your haste is over 20%, and if it hits 6 people will generate the same VE (volatile enmity) as a Provoke. I could potentially cap VE in less than 30 seconds. I should be able to cover CE (cumulative enmity) using Cures. So hate shouldn't be a problem, it's more staying alive that will be the problem.

That being said, I need your help building a good tanking equipment set. I don't know a lot about tanking, so I'll probably start out slow on something really easy like Jailer of Love. Then as I get more comfortable, I'd like to move toward more difficult fights. Proto-Omega is a great example, I think a WHM should be able to tank him just fine.

Here are my current thoughts. I'm thinking WHM/NIN is probably best, since WHM is so squishy. It'd be hard to blood tank. Capped VE will only go so far in longer fights, if I'm losing all my CE every time the mob attacks me. However, even so, I think Yagrush + Genbu's Shield is probably better than using dual wield.

Weapon/Sub out of the way... the rest I'm not really sure on. At first I figured I should just pile damage reduction gear and HP gear... but a friend once pointed out to me that WHM has access to a lot of spell interruption down stuff which would help with Utsusemi. So I decided to try to work some of that in as well. Here's what I'm currently looking at:

Head: Walahra Turban (Nashira Turban has Interruption-10% and Haste+2%, but also Enmity-4 so I think Walahra is better)

Neck: Peacock Charm (swap to Willpower Torque for -5% interruption on casting)

Ear1: Brutal Earring (swap to Magnetic Earring for -8% interruption on casting)
Ear2: Merman's Earring (Magic Dmg-2%)

Body: Reverend Mail (Mainly for the DEF/Acc/Eva... but I'm thinking maybe Goliard Saio would be better for the Haste even though it has Enmity-5? This is a tough call... may not know for sure until I try both. Might also be that Goliard is better to cast in, Rev better to melee in.)

Hands: Blessed Mitts +1 (For the haste)

Ring1: Patronus Ring (Phys Dmg-2%)
Ring2: Bomb Queen Ring (HP+75, gotta get HP somewhere)

Back: Cheviot Cape (Phys Dmg-5/10% based on day/night... I considered Gigant too but there aren't many ways for WHM to reduce damage taken... could also swap in Solitaire Cape on casting for -8% interruption)

Waist: Swift Belt (Went for the haste here... but there's also Druid's Rope which is interruption -10%... however I think Swift is probably better even for casting)

Legs: Blessed Trousers +1 (For the haste again)

Feet: Blessed Pumps (swap to Healer's Duckbills +1 for -25% interruption on casting)

This puts me hovering at around -15 enmity including merits, which shouldn't be hard to overcome. It gives me 21% haste while meleeing as well as 23 accuracy, hopefully enough to build a little TP for dropping the occasional Boon. It would also land me at about -20% physical damage in melee gear.

It also gives me 19% haste and nearly 50% interruption down (70% with Aquaveil) while casting spells, which should let me keep Utsusemi up most of the time even though I suck at Ichi.

I think it's getting pretty close, but anyone have any thoughts on my choice of equipment? I'm sure there are a few obscure pieces that I don't know about which would be useful, since most people tend not to be thinking of tanking when evaluating WHM gear. Willpower Torque was a great example of one I just stumbled onto while searching for interruption down gear, and it seems great for casting Utsu.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts :)

I will be spamming Poisona. Constantly.


What for? Unless you think dual wielding would be a better option than Genbu's Shield? I see survival as the biggest issue, moreso than holding hate or keeping MP high.


Sad but true :( Main reason I'm even considering Goliard fulltime. Then again, if I'm tanking anything remotely difficult, odds are the accuracy will help more than anything. So yeah I guess Rev Mail for melee & Goliard for spells is best. Thanks for the tips :) Anyone else? I just know there's going to be an item or two that I totally overlooked that will be awesome for this...

I wouldn't bother with trying to DD and TP won't really be important to you so just use Terra's when idle. Macro in fast cast/haste for Utsusemi; Spell Interrupt is only useful if you can -cap- it.

Swap into Yagrush/enmity stuff for generating enmity and have some physical damage reduction gear on hand (I don't think WHM can wear Darksteel? Leaves a bit of a gap... Jelly Ring/Patronus Ring, Goliard Legs, Umbra Cape, Terra's Staff is a decent chunk of -PDT; probably some more I've forgotten too...) and I agree with the idea of using Tav Tacos; DEF does actually work to an extent. It's a stat that you only really notice if you don't have much of it, or you have too much of it though!

Proto-Omega is a big girl, as far as tanking is concerned. Anyone with /NIN can tank him pretty effectively, and WHM has natural MDB to mitigate the annoying magic damage.

The problem you're going to run into is that WHM's magic damage options kind of suck. I'd look at something like this.

Kebbie/Whatever/Whatever/Whatever
Storm Turban/Whatever/Merman's/Merman's
Dalmatica or Shadow Coat/Whatever/Merman's/Merman's
Hexerei Cape (So rare.) or Gramary Cape/Lieutenant's Sash/Whatever/Mahant Sandals

The problem is, a lot of that gear is rare or expensive or insane to give to a WHM.

Your physical set will be easier, because at least all the gear you need is common.

The important thing, obviously, is to have different sets of gear. Don't try to make one set of gear to do everything with tanking, because, like every other tank, you will suck.

Cast Utsusemi and Flash in full haste gear, a little -ENM is fine for Flash, but try not to go crazy with it. Swap to your physical kit when you know you're going to be hit, because it WILL help, quite a bit. Swap to your magic kit when there's incoming magic damage, or you're idling with Utsusemi up. Of course, since you'll be tanking like a RDM/NIN, you won't have much idle time.

Oh, and, I'm fairly certain that Spell Interruption caps out at 50%, and that even if it's capped, you're almost certain to be interrupted anyway.

Yeah pretty much. The idea behind the Nashira is that those pieces don't mess with your enmity at all. I would rather have the assurance that I would be able to put my shadows back up at a slightly slower rate than worry about my enmity. Maybe once you hit the cap, swap into blessed?

I would skip the Tor. Cape too- takes too much work to get for a minimal boost at too high of a risk.

I don't know the exact maths to this but I just want to put this out here...

I think you might be a bit too quick to write off the genbu shield, even though it has half the physical dmg taken of the terra/earth staves, if you have capped shield and +shield skill, this could possibly better the terra? As it tends to proc often and can reduce a fair chunk of damage, had faf hitting me for low 100's with standard healing gear + genbu shield.

How do other subs fair? /rdm for phalanx? /pld has a few JAs and shield mastery would help with spell interrupts? /war for defender (i think that is a lol idea)? Obviously some mobs really don't lend themselves to being tanked as anything but /nin anyhow.


From when i was milling through the idea of tanking JOL i was thinking of actually using /pld, purely because of sentinal for the spawns when they go to AF you. Cycling through staves for max effect on the -elements not to mention with solace now + barspells they are better too. /NIN seemed like too much of a gamble if you AFd by a set of mobs, didn't it go through shadows?

It's been a while since I explored this anyway, so I could quite possibly be off point here anyway.

I did not see anybody mention this yet: what ACP body did you get? Depending on your current ACP body you could toss it and redo the fight. Then agument it with tanking stats like fast cast and Enmity+.

Grats on an actually worthwhile mythic

By the way, wouldn't throwing in Erase whenever possible be better than simply using Poisona? In my past experiences of using Divine Veil, I've always noticed Erasega ripping quite a lot of hate if I hit the whole party with it.

A while ago I saw this hate guide in somebody's LJ. It had exact CE and VE numbers for every action/spell/JA in the game. Would be interesting to see for a whm tank.
I can't find it now but I think the guy's name was Kirshy? Not sure.

Maybe somebody here knows what I mean and can link it for Pergatory

Edited, Oct 11th 2009 2:48am by Breaze

Grats on yagrush, and cool beans you're going to give tanking a go, but...

You have aoe -nas, why are you bothering gearing at all for melee? You have B club on a single hand weapon. What are you fighting that is serious enough for you to spam poisona that you could also deal damage to?

You mention starting off with JoL then list DD gear...you guys melee him while tanking?

You want to survive. If yagrush can allow you that much hate, you prolly don't even need to worry much about enmity gear. You just want to survive and spam poisona and whatever other spells.

Magic down gear sets are useful, often times spells have a sufficient cast time you can swap into them.

Interruption down is an interesting idea, coupling it with your haste and aquaveil you should be able to avoid a lot of hits/interrupts.

Whm has a lot of physical damage reduction gear that is good when your shadows are down. They don't help you while shadows are up (unless mobs DA/TA a ton), so you could just have them in your casting macro or shadow down macro.

I really don't see the need to waste any slots on whm melee. If you want to tank on whm because of awesome new enmity potential all the more power to you, but you're not a paladin with atonement, so hitting for 1+ means squat when you have no real weaponskills for that tough of mobs.

Actually, hitting for 1+ is useful (Mystic Boon may not be Atonement's guaranteed 750 damage, but it's more MP), so skimping on melee gear isn't necessarily a good idea.

Really, you'd have to try both on the same mob and see which one works better for you.

It seems like people are a bit confused on casting spells for enmity. There are two types of spells

Cumulative Enmity (CE) are spells whose enmity sticks around (flash, repose sleep, dispel, etc).

Volatile Enmity (VE) are spells whose enmity decreases over time (poisona, erase, blind, etc).

Now ideally you would endlessly spam CE spells, right? Well, it just so happens that those spells generally have longer recast times and cost more mp. Flash would also be great for a whm, repose is more on the fence due to cast time, IMO. While CE spells are rather rare, everything else generates VE. It just so happens certain spell types generate the same amount despite level or mp spent. So you have fast spells like -nas, and lower debuffs that generate usually around 300 VE. Slower debuffs are 480. Buffs are often 80. You can look up each spell and JA's CE/VE on the link to Kanican's LJ.

Now if you have spells that generate the same amount of VE, despite level or mp, you'll want to use the best ratio of cast time, VE, and MP spent. I could spam silena or blindna, which are just as fast as poisona and have the same VE, but they cost more MP so that is silly.

Similarly, you could cast erase, but considering that casting time is 2.5 as long as poisona and is only 1.6 as much VE and costs 2.25 as much MP as poisona. The alternative I suggested was paralyna, which is 12mp, 1 sec casting, and 300 VE, so you could cast Poisona/Paralnya for 600 VE and 20 mp or you suggest erase for 480 18 mp.

Edited, Oct 11th 2009 12:21pm by Requim

DISCLAIMER: I read through in kind of a hurry because I was excited about this topic, and in between events -- I really hope I didn't miss anything, and make a stupid repeat of advice! (very sorry if I do)

Spell Interruption Uncapped

I've personally cast Ichi through IT++ mob swings many, many, many times. I've rather thoroughly tested this, I'm sure you can find some of my publicly posted results on BG if you look a little.

Definitely go for it on /NIN, it's just too easy. Even on /PLD or whatever, I thought for sure you had a Muse, if so you can come very close. Merits of course help too!

(please swap TP for these wands, I really don't think your TP will matter much; see below)

Shield Mastery

I'm about 99% sure that this works... you get the trait at PLD25, and I coulda sworn I'd felt evidence of its assistance when playing around on /PLD. However, PLDs stack shield skill sky high for a reason, even if you get up to ~240 or something kinda impressive for WHM, that's prolly not gonna be reliable for big stuff.

Weapon Swaps and TP

I really think you'll have trouble with attack as well as acc, PLDs have trouble just breaking zero sometimes, because all they want is Atonement (not worried about melee dot damage) -- we will have an even tougher time, not to mention accuracy. So then, when we hit 100% TP on the big stuff, those boons are gonna be pretty awful I bet. Even with optimal sets, you need some melee songs to get more than 2 digits. I just don't think it's worth it to give up Terra + 2xEremite(or equiv) + Yagrush all available.

I think it'd be more beneficial to try to make your enmity generation as MP-efficient as possible, rather than trying to provide yourself extra MP for the less-efficient actions (regularly).

(granted, I'm not 100% what the answer to the MP-efficiency question is, as far as CE is concerned; whether Repose is worth it compared to cures, for example)

STAGING!!!

EDIT: Added this! Almost forgot!

This is still a huge concern I have -- the benefit of yagrush comes from hitting lots of people - so you do need to make sure you have lots of targets in the back line, all standing together -- ideally 6, but realistically I could see you only getting 4 at a time. If there's a BLM party, that'd work perfectly, since Yagrush works out of PT (or is it just alliancePT's?) (EDIT: found evidence confirming)

BLM, BLM, BLM, BLM, RDM, BRD (or whatever, cor, blah blah)

should all be standing together -IF- you have that kinda setup for the hugemob.

But there may be cases where it's

DD, DD, DD, DD,RDM, BRD
or
DD, DD, DD, COR, BRD, RDM

...in which case, you may only get 2/4 or 3/3 targets max. Or, I dunno...but you get my meaning, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on staging, whether or not having a BLM party for example, seems a concern to you as well.

----

That's all I can really contribute for now, but I was always very interested in a Yagrush tank, so I can't wait to hear how it goes! :D GOOD LUCK!

EDIT: more colors

Edited, Oct 13th 2009 10:24am by RyaWHM

I misread the JoL/gear setup, but the point was meleeing JoL is as absurd as ever wasting a slot on PCC for whm endgame tanking. Does anyone know how mystic boon does on end game mobs? I really have no clue how it scales, but have pretty low expectations of any whm weaponskill. Maybe I've ignored some endgame mobs where a whm could effectively melee.



I was agreeing with you on poisona being optimal (which is why I compared the numbers of it and erase). Also, has it already been established that the VE is multiplied by the number of people hit by it when using Yagrush? I'm not familiar with any testing about it so not sure if I am missing any key info.

Mentioning spell casting interruption you could also make two macros for casting, one including full haste for the times where you're recasting while you still have shadows. The second gear set could try to max interruption down with dual wands and fill the rest of the slots with damage reduction gear.

As far as the actual VE being generated, if poisona generates 300 per cast per person that can give you max 1800, the same base as voke. A pld after enmity will get 2400-2700 while even with -15 enmity you'ld be getting 1530 with 6 people hit (although under a tenth the recast!).

The biggest issue is that you need to be hitting multiple people to get a substantial amount of VE. What's the cast range on the DV effect, 10'? It seems like in most events the only party that would have 6 people that close together would be the blm party, otherwise you'll only be consistently hitting 3-5 people with it, which while still sizable enmity considering the effort. And for most JoL setups don't you have the tanks in a 12'-10'-12' "V"? Not sure how easy it would be to hit more than 3 people.

Thanks Rya :D

I think that if you can consistently hit minimum 2 people it will work out fine, 600 VE per cast is still better than a pld/rdm enfeeb spam (even after enmity). Initially I had forgot you could -na-ga other parties, though your use of the bard seems quite clever.

CE still sounds a bit iffy. If you're confident in your ability to not die, or if have compliant mages you can create cure kits like a fiend with zenith and other mp gear (zenith x 5 + mp/hp rings is a free cure IV alone). If you had refresh, ballad, and/or evoker's that should give you solid enough refresh to use higher hate spells.

In the end you're still limited to significantly less enmity for your few CE spells so I think the biggest concern would be duration of fight. Not sure what would happen in a sustained fight since you could still maintain crazy levels of VE, anyone know?

Just to clarify, that's a quality of Divine Veil (and Accession -nas from SCHs), not Yagrush specifically. All Yagrush is doing is making Divine Veil active all of the time.

Somewhat relevant, but I saw a Noble's Tunic in Sandy with enmity+2 augmented.

I wish I took a SS :(