How does Tanking work in this game, compared to FFXIV?

So…

I’m a Tank Main in FFXIV, I play all 4 tank jobs almost exclusively. I almost always end up as a Tank Main in most MMOs I play, but I have not even touched a Tank role in WoW, and I’m curious as to how Tanking works in WoW compared to how it works in FFXIV.

In FFXIV it is largely a matter of keeping your Tank Stance on so that you generate exponentially more threat than everyone else, doing your damage rotations, and properly stacking/timing your mitigations for Tankbusters on Bosses and damage from large groups between bosses.

Similar principles apply here?

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Pretty much. It’s all reactionary and knowing when to pop your defensive cooldowns.

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Similar principles, however, you can lose threat easily if you’re not rotating threat on mobs as DPS can rip threat from you if you don’t prepare properly.

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Similar ideas of doing your rotation and popping CDs at the right time.

However, tanking in WoW requires significantly more movement on some bosses, assuming you plan to do anything higher than LFR.

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Markers in WoW aren’t as clear as they are in FFXIV, nor are the dungeons quite as linear. Tanking in WoW definitely requires more thought and on-the-fly decision making.

I came from nearly 9 years of maining a tank in FFXIV but I barely tank in WoW because it’s a lot more involved and I’m old and tired now lol

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Kind of a side note but what’s your fav tank in XIV? My tanking experience is super duper limited in XIV outside of doing solo stuff, but kinda wanna try it sometime, usually mess with ranged dps on there these days

Just being a tank spec will grant passives for hp/armour/threat in wow. Warrior has stances, but they’re just +dps/+Def type things and aren’t always a hard requirement.

Still a thing here, though some specs are more involved than others. There are generally interactions between dps rotational abilities and defensive abilities or resources for abilities.

Yep, timing, stacking or rotating cds is big here too.

One major difference I have heard is that while FF will block further progression in an instance until the enemies are dealt with, wow will let you keep pulling until you get yourself killed.

Gunbreaker and Dark Knight are usually my go to tanks in XIV. But some of my friends say Pally is the easiest tank job to pick up

Gunbreaker → Paladin → Warrior → Dark Knight.

yeah, if it is your first tank, I’d say Paladin is the easiest to start with.

HOWEVER.

in the long run, Warrior is easier to play, once you wrap your head around its mitigation being largely focused on self-healing.

WoW tanks don’t have a rotation. You hit whatever the heck you want really. I guess they just try to max their baby damage any way they can just for the sake of it really, tank damage has never mattered in raid, never ever ever ever never, unless it was some niche fight or something.

Tanking is like being the Rodeo clown, ensuring the Bull isn’t targeting others.

I wonder if Rodeo Clowns are effective on Taurens? :thinking:

I liked Warrior, but in the long run Dark Knight and Gunbreaker appealed to me more. Mostly due to Aesthetic and class fantasy.

Pretty much, but I feel that in FFXIV aggro is not even a thing.

Meanwhile, here if you’re doing big damage you can mess up the aggro of the other tank. But if you don’t do lots of damage your logs gonna be green lmao.

So there is that.

at this point, only if you don’t use your Tank Stance, which is not something a Tank would ever do. It used to be more of a thing, but they simplified how threat works a lot in Shadowbringers.

and then if you are in 8-man content and there are two tanks, you still gotta make sure that there is a Tank 2nd on the aggro table for double tankbusters and such.

say, are there Tankbusters in WoW? as a concept?

More-or-less the same, tbh.

You’ll have your regular defensives in addition to your damage rotation, just abilities you need to keep up, like keeping up 10 stacks of bones from Marrowrend on a Death Knight, or making sure your Stagger level is low on a Brewmaster Monk, it differs based on the tank.

And then your more advanced cooldowns for when there’s predictable but huge incoming damage, like tank-busters in FF14.

They aren’t really as obvious as in FF14, in fact, you can probably just ignore them unless on the higher difficulties of raids and stuff, just by doing your normal rotation.

Most of the time, there’s a stacking debuff and you just swap tanks until they fall off, then swap back.

Long cooldown defensives are more of a mechanics cheese than anything else, like you got caught standing in the fire, so you use your magic immunity/absorb or something.

Just use them when you predict incoming damage, and you can ignore said damage/mechanic usually. Sometimes it’s needed for certain endgame content.

They have a rotation in the same way some dps specs have a “rotation”, more of a priority list.

They do like 50% of the damage a dps does, so idk I’d consider that a little important. Overall though yeah, unless it’s the world’s tightest dps race probably not that important.

Off topic but one of the big reasons I like Arcane mage. The rotation actually feels like a rotation. People say it’s bloated because it has 37 steps or whatever. But when you look at it, those steps go through a roughly 1:30 rotation, compared to a priority list. We do still have a priority when we’re burning mana though. A pretty small one at that.

Worse. People pull for you, kick you if your too slow, insult you, dont give you a chance to learn dungeons, and are all round horrible. I tank roulettes on FFXIV and its SO MUCH NICER. Its a world of difference. I refuse to tank anything but TW on wow because people are abusive here.

But if you really wanna give it a go - no tank stances, you auto generate aggro but you also have a low CD taunt unlike the high CD on FFXIV. Defensives are way less CD too here. You also cannot pull wall to wall in wow in a lot of cases or you die easily.

One thing I will note, is that unlike XIV, WoW does not or if it does doesn’t make it obvious, what mob has threat on you or not.

In XIV there’s that little window that makes it painfully clear who is attacking you, and who’s about to eat your dps. WoW does not have this, so if you’re not paying attention to the mobs running off to Narnia, someone’s going to be in for a bad time.

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Yeah, but at least in H difficult they aren’t as “black and white” as XIV.

Like, you can kinda “cheese” in lots of ways, stacking CD’s for instance, deppending on your ilvl and skill.
It is fun af tbh.

I guess the closest in XIV would be something like using an invu? Idk, it is werid to compare the two actually. In mythic difficult it is a lot more like in FF.

And thank god for that. Imo aggro management is not fun at all.
I think that WoW could use a tank stance too. And a shirk :stuck_out_tongue:

Damn, now I’m starting to want to play XIV again.