An End-Game Guide To Tanking

DRK is a terrible sub for pure tanking. It's only even remotely useful if you intend to DPS while tanking. And let's face it, most of the RUNs out there who think they're DPSing while tanking, are really just DPSing. They're more like a WAR in DT gear than a PLD.

These are the RUNs who spent a lot of time watching folks like Rua do their thing on Youtube and thought "that looks awesome, I'm going to DD RUN tank like that!" but they don't realize all the little things players like that do to be able to do those things without making the battle harder for everyone else. So they just end up being glorified DDs who can't tank worth a damn.

I'm not saying /DRK is a bad tank sub for all content, but that a RUN should learn to walk before they learn to run. If you aren't experienced, you will miss sooooo much while trying to DD. DDs get tunnel vision, you probably won't even realize how badly you're performing. Focus on tanking until you're good at tanking. Once it's second nature and you more or less cannot be killed, THEN you can start thinking about /DRK and DPS.

After playing around with RUN I have to admit it's not a great DD. It can do some damage but not going to compete with the big 5 DD.

My RUN just recently mastered so I am in the process of of building it's arsenal. If it's anything like Pld then it will need l: A Fast Cast set, an emnity set, and a tanking set with hopefully a resist set since it's RUN. Also a SIRD set.

I don't know if Drk or Blu would be any good if the Run doesn't have at least emnity, fast cast and tanking set.

hey so i'm thinking of trying RUN some time but why woould you use /drk besides stun what generates a lot of hate?

Poisonga is the main thing.. get AOE hate then foil and self JA a bunch, those mobs arent coming off you. I like /drk because, like in dyna, it allows you to flip the switch. DD mode for trash mobs, tank mode for NMs n such. Great thing about poisonga is with your weak skill from sub plus a ton of emnity gear, you'll never actually land it so they can all be slept while you gain all that hate on them. Pretty good for any NM statues that pops 2 NMs. By the time the first one is dead, second one isnt coming off you. RUN is a pretty capable DD if given support. It's a bit like having 2 jobs in one slot if you can pull off tank duty and contribute some dmg. The LS I do dyna with is usually somewhat low man, 6-8 ppl on the low end, 12-13 on the high end. There are times where you sorta need someone to fill both roles.

O.o???

/DRK comes with it's own batch of enmity tools that are different then /BLU's, namely it has a few high enmity JA based tools.

Stun is just Flash 2.0
Last Resort and Soul Eater both have really high enmity generation and can be used on yourself, meaning it's hate on everything else similar to how foil works.

Weapon Bash is also high enmity, it's just like shield bash and a decent ST hate spike generator.

Flash -> Foil -> Stun is the general rotation with the JA's being tossed in as necessary.

Then you have poisonga, which is a very interesting way to gain enmity on everything in a very large AoE. Poisonga -> Foil -> LR / SE -> Foil and by then it's pretty much locked on you.

The absorb spells are all 640 VE 1 CE with the exception of absorb-TP which is 320-320. While you wanna be quick to cancel them, Last Resort and Souleater are both 1300 VE spikes if you need them while Burst/Chain affinity are both 300 VE.

Mostly, you use it because you do more damage than /blu ignoring spellcasts thanks to Smite(and Attack Bonus) and you'll generally spend less time casting spells since everything is .5s base vs Blank Gaze 3s base. So you can cast everything in full enmity on single targets while you still probably want SIR for Blank Gaze.

???????

RUN with Lionheart is incredibly powerful

To add to this, due to RUN's ability to get disgusting levels of fast cast, this spell rotation is almost never down.

/DRK is not for the newer RUN; I suggest you practice some first.

No, no you, Saevel, the general you. :P

Also you aren't playing RUN to be a super top tier DD. You're playing RUN to be a tank that also does pretty damn good damage. You aren't supposed to compete with stuff like REMA SAMs otherwise you'd see parties that consist entirely of Lionheart RUNs.

Skimmed thru the guide.. gonna give it a detailed read later as I'm still pretty new to RUN. Seems like an excellent resource though so kudos.

Isn't this sort of a thing anyway? Or people threaten to.

and yeah, RUN can absolutely be a strong DD. When I did Tumult several months ago, our entire DD crew consisted on 3 lionheart RUNs and a fomol COR (me).

DD RUN doesn't directly compete with WAR/SAM/DRK/DRG, the job simply lacks the offensive JA/JT to do so. What it does have is the ability to naturally get insane levels of MEVD, which allow it to resist many status ailments that would cripple other DD's. The TC fight is a prime example, I've done it on both WAR and DD RUN and DD RUN just works better because it can resist many of the status ailments that could bury other DD's.

What garbage are you spewing here???? Super wrong on so many levels.

People confuse "a buff starved RUN" with "full buff dps RUN". You cannot compare the two. If you are experimenting with RUN in a buff-deficient environment, then yes, its garbage for dps and won't compete with WAR DRK SAM. All three of those jobs can flourish with or without max buffs; RUN cannot. However, that same RUN with exceptional gear and Lionheart with capped buffs completely obliterates nearly every other DD, tying (or beating) SAM + DRK in most fights. Saying it isn't a great dd is a big lie and likely an omission of circumstances. Hell, even a well geared RUN with Montante+1 competes very well in high buff scenarios.

lol

/DRK is the bee's knees. The biggest (and only) sacrifice is not having Cocoon, so its probably better for new RUNs to stick with /BLU (or WAR, vomit) until they finish Epeo and/or build that ballin Phalanx set.

99% of RUN DDs are garbage.

That 1% that knows what they're doing tho... are unstoppable.

agreed with all who post that LH RUN is incredibly powerful and a more than viable DD. I've found one of my favorite uses of it is a situation like WoC where you can put a well-geared LH RUN in your DD party, and all of a sudden the entire DD party gets the benefit of Valiance.

If you've only DD'ed on RUN without a Lionheart...you haven't really DD'ed on RUN. It completely changes the job in terms of capability. If you have, and still feel its a lackluster DD, then your sets need some attention. Because I will almost always default to bringing my DD RUN over other melee-style DDs if the need arises, knowing I'll parse solid and also bring a little bit of defense to my party in the alliance.

A RUN/SAM with capped attack, accuracy, embolden temper and max gear is certainly competitive to WAR(none SP) DRK (none sp)SAM(none sp) and beats blu drg etc. Both real parse, spreadsheet and sim supported it as well. I was playing with spreadsheet the other day and highest dps I've observed with max buffs, DM augment and max gear is over 9k, which is far above what I can get on drg blu etc, only beaten by jobs with zerg SP like war and when those SP can be used.

The thing is that there's a huge difference between RUN getting max buffs and without. There's a JP test DD hierarchy in one of FFXI blog that shows RUN being top 4 DD with max buffs but near the bottom without max buffs. By comparsion other strong DDs are far less buff dependant and you won't see such huge dps drop in low buffs.

Also since DRK WAR sam has sp designed for DPS vomit but not RUN, RUN parse the best in situations that other DD can not SP, such as repeated fights.

Like every other DD, RUN has it's own set of advantage and disadvantages. And how good it is completely depends on how and where you use it.

another problem that many heavy DDs have when developing a DD RUN is that RUN is a light armor job. A HQ THF, BLU, RNG, or COR actually has an easier time gearing up RUN than a HQ DRK, SAM, or WAR. Your hard-fought Valorous augments and HQ argosy don't mean a damn for a RUN. But your hard-fought Herculean augments and HQ Adhemar gear...those you'll find a ton of use for.

This. The most logical explanation of run dd and it will ***on jobs w/o warning due to Lionheart/Resolution.

We didn't intend to derail the thread. Can't have people who are cherry picking details with zero experience with the actual job at a high level making completely false claims, though. We can get back to the tanking discussion, which on anything end game related, you seriously cannot dps and tank at the same time without any fear of dying. And no, ambuscade v1vd is not considered "endgame".

So maybe add a tag line to RUN as: only good under max buffs. Which h usually means nearly half of the DD JA or traits aren't that useful like Berserk or Smite or Sekkanoki...etc. Because a lot of people just assume RUN is a decent DD but it turns out they can only work it with a lot of support.

Even Pld can pull out wicked damage with good enough buffs. Can probably 3-step.double light.

No, paladin isn't in the same class as rune fencer. Rune fencer skips past nearly every other DD in zergs on the tier list when max buffed, as Afania pointed out. Paladin doesn't even come close to Monk in the same set of circumstances.

We're talking about tanking here so I don't want to get lost in the RUN DD talk, but just making sure we didn't speed past that point you made which was completely false. Rune is an amazing dps, you've just not hit that part of the job yet and that's fine. It's primarily a tank anyways.

Not using Utu Grip because need that -3 dt?