How do higher lvl Ninja's Keep hate?

[Burzum]

Ok as my PLD's lvl's have climbed I've found that I have to work much harder now to maintain hate and single tank mobs. My gear is up to date and ws's caped.. I've made some hard swallow +mp gear purchases to get a respectable MP pool... so I think I've eliminated most of the drawbacks to being a Galka... At this point I hold hate well enough that unfortnately in most cases when Mp runs out due to an top lvl IT and MP=0 on the whm ppl can't save me with a simple provoke.. Now from most PLD's in there mid to higher 40's have told me it's quite an effort to maintain hate due to Damage Dealers maturity in their roles... So in the abscence of a thief to do Trick Attack and no Cures to generate hate... How does the (Blink Tank) Ninja Tank maintain enough hate to equal out the damage abilities of Damage Dealing Jobs? Or does a blink tanking Ninja use a tank tag team... with a second melee tanking for small amounts of time for thief to use SA+TA ? For atm I've not partied with a Ninja who had Blink 1+2 that could chain blink.. So I have not as of yet had the opertunity to witness a blink tank in action So if someone could outline the Hate for the Blink Tank stratagy is handled I would be very greatful...

[igor4life]

I'm lvl 45 thf and i witness like 3 ninja tanking with blink and the trick is to get the ninja to sub as a warrior and a THF. the THF does fuidama (sneak + trick) on the ninja and trick the monster into thinking that the ninja did the 200-300 dmg and then the ninja will voke it. TADA there you get a tanking blink.

[qweezy]

A few things Ninjas can do.

0) Provoke.
1) Get a thief.
2) Any melee with Provoke, preperably a Warrior. They provoke everytime you loose aggro, whenever your provoke refreshes you get back to tanking.
3) Hate gear. The Arhat's armor generates alot of hate(about +10 total Hate), I can't wear them yet so can't really tell how effective they are.
4) Casting spells generate some hate.

[Burzum]

Ok so basically to it boils down to that Ninja's need theives to tank..

[Deodorant]

Well, they don't need thieves; in many cases they're fine - because of blink tanking the whm isn't healing (much), and doesn't draw too much hate. I like nin tanks, but then I'm a thf, I can imagine that as a whm at higher levels I wouldn't feel quite as safe using a nin tank with no thf as using a 'regular' pld tank.

[Kirk]

I'm a lvl 47 nin/war and I can say that keeping hate is not really that big of a problem so long as you train your party before hand. Wtm's usually dont have much to fear as they are not healing you often as was stated earlier in this post. What can be the problem though are high instantaneuous damage dealers like drks and blms and even thieves if they insist on doing SA+TA off another tank. Basically tell them not to dish out that kind of damage untill you get your second provoke. During that time, accent your melee damage with a couple elemtal attacks and you should keep agro pretty well.

The elemental attacks do indeed help. I experiemented, not using the elemetal attacks and i lost agro far easier than without.

So anyway, I think the key is getting your pt to help you keep hate and doing your part in keeping it as well.

[tonka]

Ok so basically to it boils down to that Ninja's need theives to tank..

More accurately, ALL tanks need thieves to tank. Paladins included.

[Xerb]

More accurately, ALL tanks need thieves to tank. Paladins included.

What? Im an Elvaan lvl 44 Paladin/War, and have never used a thief for tanking. Keeping hate at this lvl is not a problem. Burzum i think your having problem keeping hate because at that lvl i notice a lot of ppl dont give a damn who is the tank. Everybody in the group goes all out and tries to do as much dmg as they can. I remember people still tryin to provoke mobs off of me at that lvl. At around lvl 30 you will notice ppl start seeing how hard they are gettin hit, i think this is when groups start to manage hate better, and will actually let you tank. Pretty sad how u have to wait that long to do your job.

I will tell you this though, if i am low mp i will have trouble keeping hate. In one fight i will use flash and 2 cureII's , so thats around 75mp. My mana pool at 44 is 153mp with my holy phial. Having a redmage or bard in your group solves that problem. You will also get a chance to heal since ur whtmage will be low mana if you are chaining IT HD mobs.

[Maxim]

You keep hate by capping throwing skill, then you constantly chuck expensive stuff at the monster in-between Blinks and Provokes.

[Navia]

The ninja I had tanking in my PT yesterday held hate fine even with 2 DRK in the party. As long as they werent doing last restort +bersek+souleater to steal aggro off the ninja and waste my WHM mp :p.
Cycling between blink1 and 2 seems to do a good job at keeping the monster pissed off. He also provoked everytime it refreshed instead of waiting for it to turn to someone.

Well played ninja >>>> paladin. You really only need to heal them when they lose their blink rhythm and start getting their butts kicked for a few rounds

[imac2much]

I agree at that level a good NIN is definitely better than a PLD. But I think we're talking high level here... when RNG are spamming sidewinders, DRK are spamming Guillotines/CrossReapers, etc... I'm sure GOOD Ninjas can still keep hate, but suffice to say neither I nor any of my LS mates have seen one. Even with a THF to fuidama the NIN we've seen just can't keep hate from all those damaging WS and therefore everyone has to hold back. But, most likely, they weren't using all those throwing skills and such to keep the hate either.

And PLD needs THF to keep hate? Please. I 95% of the time don't PT with THF, and I keep hate fine, maybe losing hate once every hour or two (when BLM decides to spam nukes at beginning or something... grr :sweat: But that's when cover is useful). With the addition of Flash, PLD don't need THF to keep hate at all.

[Ljarin]

tbh at higher lvls you 'should' see less people spamming ws as people learn to compliment others in the pt...instead of everyone spamming ws to try and do as much damage as quickly as possible.
You 'should' see people use their WS at the right time (shouldn't really have anyone doing WS solo anyway) and when that is the case you will see your main tank not needing to do everything possible to try and keep hate because the party as a whole controls it a lot better.

[tonka]

Sidewinder comes at 55, Guillotine at 60. If you can keep hate on you with well equipped rangers and dark knights playing at 100% at these levels then i stand corrected.

As many people point out, good damage dealers hold back depending on the aggro capability of the PT. A THF increases how much a damage dealer can unload, which in turn equals more DPS which nets out more XP per hour.

[Aldo]

Important thing to remember is taking damage removes hate, so not getting hit does not remove the hate given from taunting. Complimenting this are the ninjutsus, which add a small amount of hate. It is easier to keep hate when you have a Theif, and harder when you do not. Sidewinder....well....it misses alot, but when it doesn't its almost impossible to get the monsters face, usually it dies by then. Crazy ancient casting Black mages piss me off more than the lot of 'em.

[Sanhime]

Despite some issues some people here have mention whether NIN would make a bette tank than PLD, or vice versa. The main problem with using NIN as tanks, unlike or less likely with PLD, NIN requires a GREAT more deal of communication and understanding with your group, as some of you people already mentioned...where as, PLDs are punching bags.

Players using WAR/NIN or NIN/WAR absolutely MUST know and understand what to do, as well as the other members in the PT, I fall back on communicate. Problem with such setup is fights tend to last longer, and when you have longer fights, the chances of screw-ups increase. And if there is a screw-up, that spells disaster for a PT when NIN tanks, whether fighting a powerful IT w/ high def or very strong NM.

Personally, I usually play with only the same 5 or 6 people and we understand each other very well,l so I luckily and fortunate of being able to fight ITs and still xp-chain often. From my experience, yes WAR/NIN or NIN/WAR makes decent "tanks". The reason why I say "decent" has nothing to do whether or not they can take dmg, it is whether or not they can maintain hate and therefore take dmg for long periods of times. That way, mages heal less often not just on one member but others as well.

Side note: A mistake many PLDs and other "tanks" do is, they only provoke or use other means of inducing hate when the mob starts moving or faces another direction, rather than maintaining hate at a continual basis (ie: every 30 secs). My advice is provoke every cycle, and do it non-stop, use Flash also from thr start, then during the fight keep provoke every cycle, use flash and holy for other measures. There is a reason for doing this which I will explain next paragraph.

IMO...The bottom line is keeping and maintaining hate; preferably keeping hate on just one member of your PT. I STRONGLY recommend against flip flopping hate between 2 "tanks", because that = weak hate, and weak hate = vunerable mages.

P.S.: this is not a on-size-fits-all strategy, you obviously need to adapt and communicate depending on the makeup of the PT. The other bottomline is: Communication and understanding. That also include "know your place".