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I inadvertently dived into my first experience with RDM tanking over the weekend, and I have to say it's pretty fun! This is actually something I've been wanting to try for a while now, I'm currently working towards getting proper gear for it, but emnity+ and haste stuff is somewhat expensive/hard to get. However, I did get kind of thrown into it before I could get my gear together...
We did 2 Kirin runs this past Friday, and while I don't generally consider kiting as real 'tanking' I did make several attempts at straight tanking when I could. I was actually only supposed to be the person who kites Kirin while the minis popped, as we were short on tanks and our main tank was needed in the minis alliance. So I grouped up with a lone WHM and went to kiting.
I got Crimson Cuisses recently, I know that the kiting end is still very possible without them, but they certainly made things much easier. I actually had -5 emnity in gear for this, so it took a little to build proper hate, but once I had it I had it good.
After popping I opened with a couple of Dispels to try and establish a bit of CE, then made use of Blind, Sleep, and Sleep II to hold hate off of the WHM(at first just her casting Haste/Barspells could have pulled it). The kiting part was very easy, the only TP moves that can really hit you when you are kiting are Great Whirlwind and Great Sandstorm, both can do a decent chunk of damage, but neither will take away your shadows, so you're still pretty safe. Everytime he stopped to cast I would rebuff and cast Blind for more hate.
When the minis were done, the alliance filtered back in, and the PLD started doing Flash/Sent for hate...except it didn't come off of me, lol. At first I nearly died b/c I stopped running/casting expecting hate to come right off of me, and I was ready to go into normal alliance RDM mode. After a few big damage chunks still left me with hate, I decided to just go with it, and spam my hate rotation again. Blind is an amazing hate spell, it casts so quickly, has almost no recast, is very easy on MP, and makes a solid chunk of hate.
Eventually I miscounted shadows and stopped to build hate during Stone V, his spell took my 3rd and he hit me with a 1600+ TP move. This is where things get a little difficult. As I said before, once you have hate as a RDM you have it solid, but building hate from scratch in the middle of the battle can take a fair amount of time. After unweakening it took me a solid 2-3 minutes of spell spamming to get back on the level of hate with the PLD, he caught an unlucky Stonega and I was left tanking again.
Basically for the rest of the fight I kited until both Utsu timers were up, then straight tanked for a few seconds until both timers were down, trying to give the DDs time to do their thing. So long as you toss out 1-2 spells often(I used Blind/Sleep pretty much every time he stopped to cast a spell, and squeezed a cast off when I could when he would stop for TP moves), even without emnity gear you really shouldn't have a ton of trouble holding hate, although I'm assuming it will be much easier once I get a proper tanking set put together. Anyways, near the end of the second fight I got spunky and tried to straight tank the last few %, and Great Whirlwind killed me right as he dropped. For Kirin specifically I highly advise putting up Baraero if you try to straight tank for a few, Great Whirlwind is killer compared to his other TP moves.
I did have a couple of bloopers. At one point I did accidentally MPK an alliance member, I cast Bind in my Terra's Staff as a hate spell, but the Bind actually stuck and Kirin turned and 1-shotted the closest DD.
Also, I didn't realize that Astral Flow wiped shadows, I survived the blast and went to pull hate again, didn't realize I had no shadows up and got pounded.
The really good news for me is I've been trying to push the idea of me tanking things as RDM on my LS for awhile, and although the leader trusts me with alot of crap, he usually brushed that idea off thinking it wasn't as feasible. This showed that even without a tanking set holding hate isn't much of an issue, so once I get my set together I should be a pretty capable tank.
Here's what I actually wore for the fights, nowhere near ideal:
I really wasn't planning on tanking, if I had I could have set up some macros to swap out the -emnity gear at the least, but couldn't really do it while on the run. I spent some time after making a few tanking macros in preperation for when I get the gear I need(I also had to make a macro for Blind I lol, I haven't used it in ages, I had to cast it from the menu during the fights).
Anyways I'm currently taking a few weeks off of LS events so that I can get some stuff done for myself, including finishing up some subjobs and making gil for emnity/haste gear. Ideally my tanking set will look like this in a few weeks:
If you guys try this out too good luck to you, it really is a ton of fun, hopefully I can assemble my set soon and give it a real earnest try instead of just being tossed into it unprepared!
We did 2 Kirin runs this past Friday, and while I don't generally consider kiting as real 'tanking' I did make several attempts at straight tanking when I could. I was actually only supposed to be the person who kites Kirin while the minis popped, as we were short on tanks and our main tank was needed in the minis alliance. So I grouped up with a lone WHM and went to kiting.
I got Crimson Cuisses recently, I know that the kiting end is still very possible without them, but they certainly made things much easier. I actually had -5 emnity in gear for this, so it took a little to build proper hate, but once I had it I had it good.
After popping I opened with a couple of Dispels to try and establish a bit of CE, then made use of Blind, Sleep, and Sleep II to hold hate off of the WHM(at first just her casting Haste/Barspells could have pulled it). The kiting part was very easy, the only TP moves that can really hit you when you are kiting are Great Whirlwind and Great Sandstorm, both can do a decent chunk of damage, but neither will take away your shadows, so you're still pretty safe. Everytime he stopped to cast I would rebuff and cast Blind for more hate.
When the minis were done, the alliance filtered back in, and the PLD started doing Flash/Sent for hate...except it didn't come off of me, lol. At first I nearly died b/c I stopped running/casting expecting hate to come right off of me, and I was ready to go into normal alliance RDM mode. After a few big damage chunks still left me with hate, I decided to just go with it, and spam my hate rotation again. Blind is an amazing hate spell, it casts so quickly, has almost no recast, is very easy on MP, and makes a solid chunk of hate.
Eventually I miscounted shadows and stopped to build hate during Stone V, his spell took my 3rd and he hit me with a 1600+ TP move. This is where things get a little difficult. As I said before, once you have hate as a RDM you have it solid, but building hate from scratch in the middle of the battle can take a fair amount of time. After unweakening it took me a solid 2-3 minutes of spell spamming to get back on the level of hate with the PLD, he caught an unlucky Stonega and I was left tanking again.
Basically for the rest of the fight I kited until both Utsu timers were up, then straight tanked for a few seconds until both timers were down, trying to give the DDs time to do their thing. So long as you toss out 1-2 spells often(I used Blind/Sleep pretty much every time he stopped to cast a spell, and squeezed a cast off when I could when he would stop for TP moves), even without emnity gear you really shouldn't have a ton of trouble holding hate, although I'm assuming it will be much easier once I get a proper tanking set put together. Anyways, near the end of the second fight I got spunky and tried to straight tank the last few %, and Great Whirlwind killed me right as he dropped. For Kirin specifically I highly advise putting up Baraero if you try to straight tank for a few, Great Whirlwind is killer compared to his other TP moves.
I did have a couple of bloopers. At one point I did accidentally MPK an alliance member, I cast Bind in my Terra's Staff as a hate spell, but the Bind actually stuck and Kirin turned and 1-shotted the closest DD.
Also, I didn't realize that Astral Flow wiped shadows, I survived the blast and went to pull hate again, didn't realize I had no shadows up and got pounded.The really good news for me is I've been trying to push the idea of me tanking things as RDM on my LS for awhile, and although the leader trusts me with alot of crap, he usually brushed that idea off thinking it wasn't as feasible. This showed that even without a tanking set holding hate isn't much of an issue, so once I get my set together I should be a pretty capable tank.
Here's what I actually wore for the fights, nowhere near ideal:
Crappy Tanking Set
I really wasn't planning on tanking, if I had I could have set up some macros to swap out the -emnity gear at the least, but couldn't really do it while on the run. I spent some time after making a few tanking macros in preperation for when I get the gear I need(I also had to make a macro for Blind I lol, I haven't used it in ages, I had to cast it from the menu during the fights).
Anyways I'm currently taking a few weeks off of LS events so that I can get some stuff done for myself, including finishing up some subjobs and making gil for emnity/haste gear. Ideally my tanking set will look like this in a few weeks:
Not-so-crappy Tanking Set
If you guys try this out too good luck to you, it really is a ton of fun, hopefully I can assemble my set soon and give it a real earnest try instead of just being tossed into it unprepared!
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