Tanking Venena for range aggro tank

It brings to my surprise that such a popular boss like Venena, there isn't many tank can actually hold off this boss. Blue AoE and pillars always kill DPS and even tank struggle to fight against ball.

Here I'm going to show you few simple trick using group+range aggro to nerf Venena. You do need to use range aggro and manage your own mp, so only mage or access to Dancer tree are possible options so far.

Tanking stage:
Enter battle – Go to one of the pillar and cast guardian, stay far away from them so they cannot cast AoE. Do not touching front boss, it will trigger AoE to team.
First phase (two pillars death) + Second phase – Stay close range boss and generate as much aggro as you can. Interrupt multi blue AoE (when it roars) when possible
Laser phase (two pillars spawn) – Stay away from boss and pillars, so boss can only use laser beam. Stay near spawn point is recommended.
Last phase – Stay close to boss again since it always cast AoE. Just interrupt boss and help proration till it's dead.

Here is the example vid with my mage tank:

 

About the first phase: Is there a way to get less of those sharkwaves? It interrupts the cf charge and kills pt members. Because the only instance where I didn't see them was with a tank who just went straight to ven.

 

A quick fix for venena's waves is to go near the center of attack. The center is where the tank is, so you going near the center allows you to dodge the waves. If the tank doesn't interrupt venena from doing that, it's your only solution.
If you're talking about the waves from pillar, you can ① use the stones near them to block waves, or ② go to these locations


You need to make adjustments your own. If the pillar you're in is attacking, going in ② is not usable because of aoe so move to the other one. I recommend at least 2m away if you go for ②. Going further is fine, because 2m is recommended for melee anyway.

 

I think he means to stop the pillar not giving shark waves at all, not blocking the waves. As long as the pillar unable to reach tank with the slow AoE, then pillar usually stare at you. Like before first phase in vid, as soon as I got guardian and decoy, just run away from pillars. They still cast wave though, but less often when you out of their range.

 

18m would be the minimum range for pillars to not do anything at all.
You can basically use long range combo at the start of battle like this:


Reflex as opener would be better as it doesn't use up the proration. You can switch between the two pillars and throw the shield so the proration would be done in half of each.

Shield cannon has 20m range so it's nice to use from anywhere without needing to initiate battle from close range. Decoy shot gives party buff aggro and recover 1mp bar percast so I basically only use 1mp to cast the long range aggro. If I use reflex as opener then it basically cost me 0 net mp. Elegant poise can be used but it does take a while to get the combo going.

I haven't thought about doing the laser phase from long range, that's a nice tips.

 

The thing is the pillars only attack when the aggro holder is in range. We couldn't really do much when partying up with random people so I only suggested a quick fix.

 

What i did as ohs tank was. I start the fight with protection & aegis from where i was stand when i just teleported inside, with this i will get 400 aggro for the mobs in the room. After that, go to 1 of the pillars put decoy. Then, i move back to the starting point & spam this combo reflex-warcry(save)-impact(cons)-guardian(swift), over & over again until both pillars are dead. Spam provoke on venena when she is hitable. When the pillars are spawning again, i spam the combo above again.

 

That Shield Cannon is actually a nice option for some paladin out there though the initiate battle can be 24m with Shukuchi.

Also forgot that Chakra and WCoS is also long range mp buff. Both somewhat difficult for tank to use.

 

As long as I prepare some mp, before dodging lasers I won't run out of mp. Unless the others took so long to kill the pillars

 

Staying out of the range, that's the thing I didn't know about. Thanks for pointing that out
I think I will do it like Yunan's video: use shield cannon to start the battle and then spamming Reflex > Guardian(save) > Berserk(swift) > Aegis(swift) (kinda slow though) to keep my aggro, while slowly moving towards Ven when one pillar is already broken.