War/Mnk Tanking: A GuideFollow

I've been seeing more and more threads pop up lately about how to tank on War/Mnk and I figured it needed an in depth look at how to really excel at it.

WAR/MNK
Chances are if you are leveling Warrior for the first time as a sub or main job for your first 37 levels, more or less, you will be asked to tank. Ok what job combo do you come as? WAR/MNK is the ideal tank for low levels if not arguably the best at that level range. Ok so I've leveled up my Monk sub and I'm ready to tank now what?

The Concept

The concept is simple. Do as much damage as you can while keeping the mob's attention (hereon referred to as hate) within your control. Notice I didn't say you had to keep the mob's attention 100% locked on you at all times. That's unreasonable to ask for and the mark of a true tank is knowing when to have hate and when to lose hate.

Step One - Get a Great Axe

Of course you should always keep your 1h Axe skill capped or near cap at all times but the whole purpose of WAR/MNK tanking is to have a Great Axe as it gives you the most damage potential for your level.

Step Two - Provoke

Firstly, for God's sake please do not put Provoke timers in party chat. If you need them use the /echo command or even better just use /recast Provoke and save yourself the macro line space.

Sample Provoke Macro 1:
/ja Provoke
/recast Provoke

Sample Provoke Macro 2:
/ja Provoke
/wait 15
/echo Provoke in 15
/wait 15
/echo Provoke Ready!

Both macros accomplish the same task but as you can see the first macro only takes two macro lines up. The advantage to both of these though is you won't be spamming the party chat with redundant information every 15 seconds.

Secondly, generally speaking it's a good idea to Provoke whenever it is up. Provoke by it's nature gives you a certain amount of hate but, it decays over time to zero after 30 seconds so you'll want to keep a steady flow of hate on the mob.

Also, later on around level 30 is when THF gets Trick Attack but I'll come back to this later on as it's not specific to Provoke.

Step Three - Boost

As with Provoke you'll want to use Boost with Provoke and at times when you think you'll need a bit of extra hate.

Boost only grants a small amount of hate by itself (1/6th of Voke) but add that on top of Voke and the damage from your GA and you'll be a hate machine.



Mojo's pretty much summed it up in two sentences here the whole point to Boost. Back when I was leveling up it was just easier to remember Boost every 15 and Voke every 30 but the whole goal of this guide is to point out there's more finesse and intricacy to it than just that.

Macro Help

Here's some of macros MojoVIII mentioned if you need help setting them up. Also I cannot mention enough, please do not spam waits or your Provoke/Boost/WS in party chat. I'm watching...I know who you are and will hunt you down....

Boost/Provoke - This one just combines Boost and Provoke in the same macro so you won't have to seperate them and push macros all day long.

/ja Provoke <t>
/wait 1
/ja Boost <me>

Boost/Weapon Skill - Same as above but with Boost and Weapon Skill instead. Shield Break since it's two words must be in quotation marks or the macro will not work.

/ja Boost <me>
/wait 1
/ws "Shield Break" <t>

Step Four - Shield Break!!!

Shield Break is so special that it gets its own color and must be bolded at all times. That's how awesome it is. It grants -40 evasion on the mob and ideally you'll want to use it at the beginning of the fight DON'T use it at the end of the mob's life ever.

You might be thinking -40 eva? So what!
So what?! You'll be essentially giving yourself and your party members that much more accuracy to kill the mob faster and giving your party that much more xp. So use Shield Break. No questions asked.

On a related note Sturmwind is also fun and can do a good amount of damage. For purely tanking purposes it's ok to use Sturmwind to spike your hate if you have lost it and need it back. Otherwise use Shield Break.

Step Five - Job Abilities
For the basis of this guide we'll only be talking about the four job abilities you get up to 37 which would be Dodge, Berserk, Defender and at 35 Warcry.

Dodge and Warcry should be mainly used to spike your hate. Spiking your hate means what it sounds like. Now while Dodge isn't going to spike your hate too high more often than not it will be enough for you to get hate back when you need it.

Warcry spikes your hate for each party member it hits. So say you hit 4 people then you get more hate than if it hit 3 people. Use these abilities only when you lose hate because more often than not there will be sticky times when voke is not up and Boost won't do anything for you at all.

Berserk and Defender are very useful in that you either have a lot of attack or defense. For tanking though since you'll be taking hits and the idea of War/Mnk tanking is to deal the most damage the way we'll be using these Abilities is to add a bit more umph to your Shield Break or Sturmwind like so:

1.Hit Berserk
2.Weapon Skill
3.Hit Defender while Berserk is still up
4.You're now at Neutral
5.TP to 100 again
6.Click off Defender
7.Weapon Skill
8.Click off Berserk

Trust me it's easier than it sounds. Also again these two abilities do grant a small amount of hate similar to Boost so can use them that way if you deem necessary.

Step Six - Job Traits

This is the last thing I will mention. One of the main reasons War/Mnk works so well is Counter and also you get a small HP boost. Counter will negate the enemy's attack with one of your own. Now imagine you have a giant axe. Starting to see where I'm going with this?

SATA Setup

SATA? What does that mean? SATA is the combination of Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. SA is a level 15 THF ability, and TA is a level 30 THF ability. Well wait a minute why I should I care about a Thief's abilities?

You should care because around level 33 THF's will be planting massive hate on you with a SATA Viper Bite and you'll want to know what's going on so you don't look like a noob.

Now that I have your attention setting up for this is pretty simple if you're the main tank. Usually a DD will get the mob's attention first then the thief will get behind you SATA and most likely Weapon Skill on top of that if he has TP and that looks something like this:
The arrows indicate which way everyone is facing.

THF-> Tank-> Mob-> <-DD

That's the basic setup. All you really need to remember is when a thief gets behind you is to stay still. If you move around too much sometimes the SATA will miss and the thief or someone else will get hate and that can get messy.

Also if you need help with War/Nin blink tanking there's some excellent guides in the stickies section but for the lazy I'll go ahead and provide them here.

Guide to Blink Tanking and Utsusemi by Jahava
Yes it's in the Ninja forum but honestly who better to ask about blink tanking?

Edit:
-Boost section changed per lolgaxe's and mojo's suggestions.
-Minor gramar errors
-Added SATA section.
-Added Macro Help.
-Added Blink Tanking Links
-Now with more color!

Edited, Mar 17th 2009 2:40pm by Dynas

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 2:01am by Dynas

In b4 Ron Clark Academy.

I don't think anyone I ever remember advocated using axe over great axe before 50. I have smote personal friends over this issue.

Yeah but Dual Wield I is lol. It was always best to wait until 50 for DW II.

Anyway nice guide.

Beautiful! Too bad it can't be rated up past excellent ._. And the best thing about the 2h update was it finally made most of the idiots who DW'd from 20-50 pick up something worth swinging :)


Most.



~Cwell


PS. Warrior JA Enmity values here Monk JA Enmity values here


PPS Damage dealt enmity formula here, because I'm having fun with this URL button thingy.

You forgot to mention using Boost with Provoke, and not when it's up because you'll end up losing swings, which is kind of counter-productive to what you're trying to do.

I've edited it now to add a bit more clarification on using boost with voke.

Also your attack will just get delayed a second or so when you use boost. Sometimes your attack animation won't register but the attack will still show up in the log.

I suppose though you could argue that small delay would add up over time and you'd end up losing a few more attacks than if you hadn't boosted every 15 seconds.

Yeah you're right and as such you have been duly quoted in the guide for it. At first when I wrote it I went by the old rule to boost every 15 and voke every 30 since it's easy to remember and pass on.

However after reading your post I had to think about it some more and I figure since it is so mentally exhausting to keep it up after 3 hours ever spamming abilities every 15 seconds it takes the fun out of the job and might be a reason why people dread tanking on warrior.

So as I said above I've edited the guide as such and hopefully I'll have it all done.

Edited, Mar 9th 2009 5:29pm by Dynas

I like the jealous cat in the background.