RDM Tanks?

[Amok]

'Pretty good damage' is a bit of an understatement. I've yet to take more damage than any Paladin on a hit-for-hit basis, obviously discounting shield blocks, which depend on a coin-flip.

As long as your server isn't at a shortage of Darksteel Ingots, any Red Mage should be able to easily hit -44% during the day, -50% at night.

-50%, how?
I get the 44%, which I wouldn't call "easily" attainable, but "realistic", yes.

[Isolyn]

Umbra Cape has a hidden effect at night that doubles the damage reduction, giving you the extra -6%.

[Caerloc]

A RDM can tank pretty much anything pretty well, it doesnt do as good on really fast-hitting mobs with low dmg, simply because they have a harder time getting spells of then a PLD while taking dmg.

They excell on mobs that deals alot of magic DMG.

As far as practice goes, just offer to tank w/e silly thing your friends are doing. Practicing solo is fone, but it doesnt really tell you what kind of Enmity you are maintaining and it doesnt really show what kind of tweaks you need to do on gear-sets.

[Drex]

I "practiced" on Ultima and Aspid lol, soloing random T mobs isn't gonna prepare you for tanking HNMs. Just go RDM/NIN when you already have 1-2 other tanks, start out with you and one cotank on it. If you die, other tank takes your spot. You'll get the hang of it pretty quick and won't need the extra tank, and eventually if you really get good at it you can solo tank most things just fine.

For fast attacking mobs, rdm/blu.

[Hogie]

As far as practicing goes, i could only say try tanking things that are IT+. Dont try and kill it, but just see how long you can stay alive by yourself while still spaming dispel and blind on it. Try a IT Wyvern at mamool ja staging point. If you can stay alive longer then say... 10 min... your doing good

[ninjafox]

There's a taru rdm, forgot his name that co-tanks cerb with a pld as /pld and he often takes less damage both from melee and magic damage.

[Tsuko_Asura]

There's a taru rdm, forgot his name that co-tanks cerb with a pld as /pld and he often takes less damage both from melee and magic damage.

Cerberus or Sarameya? I can't think of a reason to do Cerberus as /PLD, as long as you have someone sticking Elegy and Slow on it, which you should. Though /PLD rocks for Sarameya, no questions asked.

Caerloc, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Once you learn spell timing, its pretty easy to even get things like Sleep II off between hits, with or without AF2 body(I don't have Q_Q). And like I said, you can make physical damage pretty abysmal against the things that do hit extremely fast.

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...211_041707.jpg

[Caerloc]

Cerberus or Sarameya? I can't think of a reason to do Cerberus as /PLD, as long as you have someone sticking Elegy and Slow on it, which you should. Though /PLD rocks for Sarameya, no questions asked.

Caerloc, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Once you learn spell timing, its pretty easy to even get things like Sleep II off between hits, with or without AF2 body(I don't have Q_Q). And like I said, you can make physical damage pretty abysmal against the things that do hit extremely fast.

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...211_041707.jpg

No offense taken. But if you read, i didnt even mention the actual damage taken on fast hitting mobs as i didnt see survivability as an issue. The amount of damage you take however, has no bearing on wether you are gonna get interrupted. So it's keeping hate is gonna be an issue. I havent done alot of Sarameya, but isnt he much slower then the real deal?

Either way, i never said it wasn't doable. I've tanked un-slowed, non-elegy cerberus on rdm. All i said is that's where rdm is at their most disadvantage. They dont have any un-interruptable hate-tools, they dont have shield mastery to let them get off spells while being beaten on. They can parry, but with no real skill in it. They have spell interruption gear, which you wouldnt wanna wear cause you need survivability. You also have to sacrifice enmity and other stuff for more survivability.

So what i'm saying is, you can do it, but it certanly isnt rdm's strong suit. Mobs that mainly deal magic dmg is where rdm is at its strongest. JoL, Sarameya, Ouryu etc.

[Tsuko_Asura]

No offense taken. But if you read, i didnt even mention the actual damage taken on fast hitting mobs as i didnt see survivability as an issue. The amount of damage you take however, has no bearing on wether you are gonna get interrupted. So it's keeping hate is gonna be an issue. I havent done alot of Sarameya, but isnt he much slower then the real deal?

Either way, i never said it wasn't doable. I've tanked un-slowed, non-elegy cerberus on rdm. All i said is that's where rdm is at their most disadvantage. They dont have any un-interruptable hate-tools, they dont have shield mastery to let them get off spells while being beaten on. They can parry, but with no real skill in it. They have spell interruption gear, which you wouldnt wanna wear cause you need survivability. You also have to sacrifice enmity and other stuff for more survivability.

So what i'm saying is, you can do it, but it certanly isnt rdm's strong suit. Mobs that mainly deal magic dmg is where rdm is at its strongest. JoL, Sarameya, Ouryu etc.

Sarameya most certainly hits fast as hell >_>; And is immune to Slow and Elegy. I went as /NIN my first time.. Dear god, what an awful experience.

The only mob I can possibly think of where RDM is at a true disadvantage is that stupid wolf trigger in La Vaule. Its pretty impossible to keep hate off anyone when you rely on chaining spells on a mob that intimidates you 9/10 times. God I hate that thing >:

[Drex]

Do you prefer PLD sub for bloodtanking on RDM over /BLU? I've never tried it, wondering if it'd be worth it or not.

Also that Sarameya damage is pretty nice, is that with DS gear on or just normal tanking stuff?

[Tsuko_Asura]

I've never tried /BLU, but I already have ~450 DEF with food, so I can't imagine it would do all that much for damage reduction. Sentinel, Shield Bash, Flash, and Auto-Refresh are too bomb diggity to give up, for me ;3

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...216_030324.jpg

Everything is what it looks like.

[Syntex]

I've never tried /BLU, but I already have ~450 DEF with food, so I can't imagine it would do all that much for damage reduction. Sentinel, Shield Bash, Flash, and Auto-Refresh are too bomb diggity to give up, for me ;3

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...216_030324.jpg

Everything is what it looks like.

Isn't flash just another form of snap threat like provoke?

Also if your using earthstaff full time shield bash is useless isn't it?

Auto-refresh is nice tho can't argue that and sentinel too.


But now that you mention shield bash would a capped parry/shield skill redmage using a sword+genbu shield be better then the earth/terra staff in regard to mitigation?

Seems like it might be worth looking into.

[Drex]

RDM shield skill is god awful (lowest possible) and parrying sucks too. Pretty sure the extra -10% on terra's will always win.

I'll have to finish up my /pld and get some darksteel synthed, that looks pretty nice.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Isn't flash just another form of snap threat like provoke?

Also if your using earthstaff full time shield bash is useless isn't it?

Auto-refresh is nice tho can't argue that and sentinel too.


But now that you mention shield bash would a capped parry/shield skill redmage using a sword+genbu shield be better then the earth/terra staff in regard to mitigation?

Seems like it might be worth looking into.

Ick, definitely not. I've tried using sword and shield, and its absolutely awful. I macro in my Sentinel's Shield(only one I bother to carry around, for Ni Recasts) for Shield Bash, and go right back to Terra's. And yeah, Flash is basically just a Provoke with some CE attached, but its a wonderful compliment to my enmity arsenal. Its really the whole package deal that makes me like /PLD more than /BLU, not one particular bonus.

[Valyana]

/PLD gives you shield mastery, however, so using Genbu's would give you the opportunity to avoid interruptions more than with staff, and Genbu's is a size 1 so i'd expect a decent block rate even with lower skill.

On that wolf mob, I'd think you could just switch to rotating barspells for hate if you get intimidated trying to cast on it.

[Tsuko_Asura]

/PLD gives you shield mastery, however, so using Genbu's would give you the opportunity to avoid interruptions more than with staff, and Genbu's is a size 1 so i'd expect a decent block rate even with lower skill.

On that wolf mob, I'd think you could just switch to rotating barspells for hate if you get intimidated trying to cast on it.

I dunno, I just didn't like giving up 10% (which if I'm not mistaken, PDT% has increasing returns) to utilize Shield Mastery.

And uhh.. Wow. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't think of that >:

[Syntex]

I dunno, I just didn't like giving up 10% (which if I'm not mistaken, PDT% has increasing returns) to utilize Shield Mastery.

And uhh.. Wow. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't think of that >:

http://icanhascheezburger.files.word...e_you_know.jpg

[Syntex]

Okay so I showed my friend the RDM post and we argued about several things on RDM tanking vs the traditional roles. Maybe I am just overhyping the ability for a RDM to tank that makes it seems like a god tank or maybe he is putting too much faith in his old friend provoke, either way we can't seem to come to an agreement so I asked him what questions he had and said I would post them here so that someone who has had experience tanking these vs the other classes espically ones with things like Aegis could let him know how it really goes down.

He wanted me to ask these questions mainly.

"Can RDM/NIN outparse a PLD/WAR or NIN/WAR within the first minute of a fight?"
His logic is that PLD and NIN have so much more enmity on stuff like their AF and their tank specific gear that RDM would have to give up too much defensive gear to match their enmity and puts them into a worse situation.

"How much gear would you need as a RDM to beat a paladin in mitigation while still being superior in threat?"

"If RDM is so good at tanking, why would anyone use anything but RDM and why do shells still use PLD and NIN?"

I could answer all these but I may be biased because I love RDM so much and maybe be putting too much faith in the class as a whole and not taking into account what other classes offer but I am hoping that a neutral party will answer them for me.

[Tsuko_Asura]

I top a Paladin's enmity in ~eight seconds, unless they dump every ability they have at the beginning of a fight, in which case, give me a minute or two. Flash is a nice ability, but its exactly like Provoke. As soon as Sleep II and Sleep go off, the thing is on me, and generally not leaving. And your friend really needs to understand that with how different the mechanics of the two jobs' enmity building are, Red Mage requires significantly less enmity in equipment to bypass a Paladin.

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose the best Paladin would be equal to the best Red Mage in damage mitigation. This is assuming your Paladin knows how to equip themselves, though. Give me the average Asuran Paladin, and I'll make them look like a Black Mage getting pummeled by Fafnir.

Last but not least, I'd say its a mix of ignorance and Paladin's lack of anything else to offer, really. Red Mage is one of the best enhancing jobs, 'the' best enfeebler, and a pretty good healer when required to be so. Paladin can.. Tank. Couple that with the fact that most people don't understand how effective Red Mages really are at tanking, and you have a massive phalanx(pun intended) of difficulty in getting anyone to let you do so.

[Ambir]

1. Probably not, but RDM will have better long term hate. You're not looking at RDM tanks for fights won in 1 min.
2. You probably can't beat a PLD in mitigation, but the aim is to either not get hit, or to reduce the damage to a point where your support can handle it without it being an issue.
3. Some mobs do hit, and do hit hard.