Endeavoring To Awaken --A Guide To Rune Fencer

I inform the leader the character can keep hate and take reduced damage and that's it. The very basics of what a tank is invited to do.

I usually rotate in 3 tenebrae runes and use my viv pulse when it comes off colldown to keep my mana bar in good shape at the start+finish of each omen floor cause I /blu and eat thru mp.
Also having a whm thats cool and uses devotion on you is pretty nice, its not like they need to cure you much.

Yeah, I do this a bit. The biggest issue for me is I play RUN on my main and I can basically DD with Crusade up and keep hate after initial flash, so playing the alt and depending so much on flash/foil/etc. is a very different focus of play. Also divine skill isn't even close to cap, it's moving up though, lol.

Tank JPs are some of, if not most worthless Gifts out of all jobs. Run has the advantage of getting access to Temper which is something that helps their DPS significantly. No tank in this game however needs to be 2100. I recommend it, but that is because I enjoy min/maxing and that comes with it. The bonus meva mdef isn't something that is going to help you survive if you are already using the accurate sets you should be. Especially in situations where you have a dedicated healer anyways. However, it helps to prevent more status like stun or silence, so hopefully you spend less time not doing something and more time doing something, especially when combined with proper runes/gear sets.

Basically, tanking JPs Gifts are in no shape or form needed. Why handicap a job in some stats when you don't need to though? That's how I view them. In best case secnarios for comparison a 2100 JP Run will always be better than a no JP Run. It shouldn't come by surprise though that someone is successfully tanking without these, especially since basically all DPS jobs live just fine in capped DT sets and have no where near the tanking power as a RUN or PLD.

I don't know about worthless. You can absolutely do the job without them. But you can do the job a lot better with them. RUN has very high stat increases on all stats, so they make a big difference. I can still resist and take reduced damage on my JP-less mule, but I can wear a hybrid set and significantly contribute to the parse on my main that's a master. Depending on the content this may or may not matter to you, though.

Worthless in comparison to benefits received by some other jobs. Worthless compared to nothing, not so much.

Oh it's certainly not on the tier of BLU or PUP JP, that's for certain. But RUN JP specifically have highest tier of Accuracy, Magic Evasion and magic defense, all pretty useful stats and better than any other job gets on that front, really.

I feel like Im doing something wrong on Run. Magic dmg is not really a problem but Im eating so much Phys dmg that I feel like Im a constant cure surge for the Whm. Im talking about things like Omen bosses here.
I have somewhere between 150 and 200 JP only so far but a proper -55PDT set with Ambu cape/Empy legs for Inquartata. While Im totally fine when it comes to maigc dmg as I can usualy reduce this a lot with Runes/Val/One for All/... even only the auto-attack of the boss is usually taxing. E.g. while N was usually totally fine I had trouble tanking the Ambu gigas on D. Was taking too much dmg. Im spamming Viv Pulse to help compensate and I usually keep Regen up myself if the Whm is not doing it anyways but still. (btw hate is usually no problem at all unless I get lazy but then at least I know why I lost hate)

Do you guys use /Blu and then spam cure III yourself?

What do your sets look like?

Are you keeping Phalanx, Foil, Battuta up when ever you can?

Are you getting caught in an Enmity/Midcast Set or a Fast Cast Set that may be low in DT/PDT?

When I know I'm tanking physical damage mobs I'm often /BLU with Cocoon for big defence boost

basically what the above user mentioned. A proper timing of rotating blink and stoneskin can also help. Also, run/nin is very powerful since all shadows being stripped by aoe should still do nothing with stoneskin on while basically negating all auto attacks.

If you want to eat into a lot of money Epeolatry will help you a lot also :P.

This sounds like a midcast set issue. If you're low in Inspiration merits and have a midcast set with capped Fast Cast (80%) in it then odds are you've not got much PDT/DT/MDT in it. Can you post it here so we can see?

Thx for the quick reply. Im at work right now and cannot log in. I ll post them tonight when Im back home.
But I have 4/5 Inspiration. Then again I have different midcast sets for almost all spells depending on what I need (like Enmity/FC for Flash/Foil, Enhancing+ etc for things like Phalanx, ...)
but in general even if I build hate without changing out of my max DT set I feel like I take too much dmg...

maybe thats just me though who is used to being Nin so I usually either take fatal or no dmg haha (in either case no cure needed :p)

Ah two replies I didnt even see... sorry for 2nd post:

yea I try to keep Phalanx up all the time and while Battuta is up Im fine. But as soon as it drops Im prone to auto-attacks and they tend to hurt.
I havent experimented with Run/Nin so far... for auto-attacks I liked /Sam a lot actually for Third Eye but the Recast+ is hurting a lot. maybe I should try /Nin instead. I started spaming Blink and Stoneskin more which helped as well. Maybe I need to focus on that more.

Maybe I'm blind but are you talking in general? The issues you're reporting sound strange.

Which targets in particular made you feel like you were receiving too much physical damage?

Giga Ambu for example. On D, as soon as Battuta droped I was quickly going down or losing hate due to cure spam even if I casted Foil in DT set to avoid the midcast thingy.
I know...the boss shouldnt even live through Battuta. But lets ignore that for a sec ^^, Is it me or are they just hitting like tucks?

Also Omen bosses. Here it was less severe though. Tanked Kin and ....I think it was Gin. Wasnt terrible but when I read that comment "its not like they need to cure you much" I was surprised cause without cures there is no way Ill survive long in this kind of high lvl content.

They hit hard. Well until the main boss is dead. Even with Epeolatry the healers I play with can't just twiddle their thumbs.

They don't really hit too hard. Sometimes you can just get *** by a back to back 1111 Mercurial Strike while the WHM is also silenced, then has to use an echo drop, then cure. By then that's a good amount of time that no action is occurring. As long as you're in 50% PDT, they don't hit too hard, even without Epeoletry. To help, you can always Embolden Phalanx for the start, rather than Embolden Temper. Should give a little bit more leeway, but not much.

This plus cocoon and you should be taking next to no damage.

I've played both sides of the RUN/Healer equation... tanking with an Epeo and curing Epeo RUNs. Against anything worth talking about, you will take your licks. Even Aegis/Burt PLDs can get hammered in Omen and VD Vol 1.

Don't let comments like that get you down. They're simply not based in reality.

Haha ok thank you! Ill try not to lose confidence in my Run :p

I suppose if that's the standard you're happy with... then have at it.

Personally, I'd feel pretty terrible if I went into something half-baked and caused other people to waste KI/time because I got hit w/ Charm/Doom/etc that I could have avoided if I had been better prepared.

Again, this is my mule, and it's specifically to farm Gin, which doesn't have those things to worry about.

I did everything with low gifts and aettir, one thing i stay away from is Fu.

Can't speak much for D but on VD they do hit hard. When they proc Hundred Fists and you don't have Battuta up it's gonna be a mess even if you have Epeolatry.
Once the main boss dies it all becomes bearable, but they do hit pretty hard indeed.

Omen bosses I dunno, some have nasty TP moves, FU can be quite dangerous if you let him absorb too many buffs, but all in all they're not that bad?
Or rather, they are bad but it's a single target hitting you at the same time, so it's overall quite bearable.

There are circumstances where your HP will drop fast though. A bad succession of TP moves with a multiattack proc, or something bad hitting you in midcast etc, stuff like that can create big damage spikes.

He's an excellent player and knows what he's doing.
I've seen much worse 2100 RUNs playing on their main, trust me.

No way a GIN run would ever fail because of LOH's mule. If it fails, trust me it's because of someone else, not him.

Cocoon does a big difference, you should try it.
Once i forgot to cast it and pulled VD,
Even with Epeo i was getting hurt enough to notice how good is +50% def

edit: and this makes sense, you're fine with magical damage taken, and defense shines on auto-attack from multiples target, just try it

when /blu , always make sure cocoon stays up, and eat miso ramen.
keep your aquaveil up, then make sure your phalanx and crusade is staying up. for longer fights its easy to forget keeping all your buffs in order.
Ideally you want to abuse stoneskin+blink tanking as much as possible when youve got all your buffs+runes in order and kept up.
most of the time im just doing flash/foil/jettatura/blankgaze and keeping stoneskin+blink going. I like to mix in an occasional healing breeze since theres everyone but the whm in aoe range and I can finish casting it before the whm curaga lands.

As other people mentioned, a solid midcast/fastcast set is something you have to work on because if you mis-time your casts and get rocked hard in that set if its not good quality, youll bleed away your built up enmity and make things harder for yourself and your support.

One more thing, the abyssea campaign with lights built up starts on the 16th, I'd highly encourage having a go at trying to farm a -dt + spell interrupt dark ring or two, theyre quite nice for making you less squishy during mid casting and working towards a 102%SIR set with some more dt.

My very first time playing RUN outside of CPing was ambu VD a few days ago and this is actually refreshing to hear that someone else was getting slightly shitfucked. I went /PLD for Sentinel on pull and was taking decent-ish enough damage that we chose to have one of the lesser-geared BLMs switch to WHMs. With WHM the runs were totally smooth, but there were times of slight butt-clenching on VD.

Granted this was before I did any ambu cape, unlocky empy gear, or anything else really and was tanking in aug'd herc + ayanmo +1 but it was still not really how I expected it to go.

Thx every1 for the feedback.
Cocoon and all this I usually tried to keep up but I have to admit I didnt pay too much attention to stacking DT in my midcast sets. Need to check that.
So far I tried to get Blink/Third eye up and then recast other buffs. But no doubt I ate some hits in midcast. So Ill keep an eye open.
Also I dont have a lot of Spell Interruption gear yet. The Aby campaign hint is a good one! Have PDT/MDT rings but no PDT/SI. As its so easy to cap MDT I guess PDT/BDT would be a priority over MDT on Dark Rings.

So far I tended to use Embolden with status Barspells mostly, which I like a lot actually (feels like it helps). Never though about using it with Phalanx as the duration gets so short.
But Ill try using it more with either Phalanx or Protect from the Whm to boost my Def even more.

So WHM gets far stronger barspells and if you cast your own, you overwrite the WHMs barspell so leave those to WHMs. The same can be said for Regen.

/SAM is a good pure DD sub not so much for any form of real tanking Hasso and Seigan eat up recast timers.

If you are tanking /BLU for Cocoon, enmity spells (Blank gaze, Jettura, Geist Wall, Sheep song) Heals( Wild Carrot, Healing) Breeze and killer traits.

Or /DRK for Stun and Weapon Bash Enmity and still doing good damage due to Smite though it is more advanced and requires greater gear maybe even Epeo to be fully useful.

I would spend more time /BLU if your newer to RUN and tanking get a feel for it and then progress onto /DRK when you are comfortable in the correct fights and have the gear for it.

I generally use embolden on Temper (if I DDing/Hyrbid role), Phalanx if I'm tanking or if I have a RDM and no other support for Haste 2 for 45% Magic Haste.