Do new players don't know how Venena 1 is tanked?

Not only the tanks are uninformed, but if there is an actual good tank who knows how to tank Venena, they diss them too?
I've tanked Venena with a TEC tank, with no P.def, and not even Imapct. It's easy, but you need to know how to.
(I was going to post in game guides but decided to post here so that any mistakes would be pointed out)

• Part 1 : The initial Aggro generation
  • Ask your dps to stay away and focus on evading Sharks. Don't even try using buff skills, they will draw unecessary aggro.
  • Go to a pillar, deploy decoy. (for mp management, this action will cause sharks, dps should be vigilant)
  • To prevent sharks from spawning, move 22m(or was it 24?) away from both the pillars, to the centre of the map, just below the stairs in front of Venena.
    • Do not attack Venena as that would cause the blue AOE, the Meteors to start spawning.
  • In this position, spam
    or some other global aggro generator. Sneak in a Guardian.
    • Dps can start their own stuff now. Stronger dps pick the pillar which doesn't have tank decoy.
  • Don't look at Venena, look at the pillars. When both pillars are destroyed, immediately go to Venena and cast decoy.
    • MTL tank need not worry, TEC tank might need to stun before decoy.
• Second part : Before the lazer.
  • Do your normal tanking. Refreshing Sanctuary and decoy when they run out, otherwise cast aggro skills/MP skills/whatever you want.
  • The dangerous skills are the swipe and the Blue meteors. With Sanctuary you don't need to worry yourself, you will survive. But if you have a Finale user in your party, then you must pay attention and try to cancel those attacks by interrupt.
    • Don't look at Venena again, look at the finale users. If the AOE and they overlap, then interrupt. You can only interrupt in blue AOE part, not when the balls manifest in the sky.
    • The Stomp is a full 'stage' AOE, and it only Tumbles. It's not too dangerous and you can ignore those.
    • The Swipe is a player center AOE, so you need to quickly interrupt it. DPS should move out of the way quickly, it's dangerous and can hit well outside the designated red Area.
  • You can do anything you want, like MP healing/healing or whatever, but keep aggro up.
• Third phase : Lazer cannon
  • Always stay mid, and close to Venena. Since most players move away from Venena, you can not focus on interrupt for a moment and focus on regenerating some aggro
    • You don't get hit by Venena's lazer closest to her.
    • Use P.def for the swipe attack.
  • Where both pillars are destroyed, then focus back on interrupting. The swipe is much more dangerous now. Smart dps will keep a 5/5 CF loaded for this exact moment, and this should be short work.

The thing people always get wrong is phase 1. They either directly attack Venena or don't stay 22m away from the Pillars. Or the dps are too eager and don't wait to generate aggro.

The reason to not activate blue AOE meteors immediately is to let dps get in their Buff skills/get comfortable. The tank itself can focus on a simple global aggro combo than trying to interrupt/Pdef Venena.

 

I've tanked there with only guardian (better if you don't do this), and I see some flaw in your post.

I recommend you using OHS if you only has limited skill points. Take astute lv.1 and hard hit lv. 10. They should serve well enough.
- Phase one : Initial aggro generation.
Head straight to Venena, keep your distance 19m from pillar, and 6 meter from Venena. If you really need to cast decoy, cast it on Venena. Evading those meteors is much more easier than evading shark fins. Spam your aggro skill while maintaining distance. Ad-lib -> Fareth (save) -> Guardian (swift) is recommended. Kill the balls with Shield Cannon (ignore if you don't have it) so they won't pose as trouble later. Slip in Protection and Aegis if you have them at lv. 7 or more. Keep an eye on the pillar, once both are destroyed, go straight to Venena. Position yourself at the middle, point blank range from Venena.

- Phase two : Before the pillar re-emerges
Focus on Venena. If she did a motion for the blue AoE (either spike or meteor), interrupt her (use in this order, tumble -> flinch -> stun. Pay attention whether you can inflict these ailments.). Too late interrupting it, well, pray that your mages still have their mirage evasion. Else, say goodbye to your mages. NEVER interrupt other than those blue AoE. You won't know when all your interrupt is on cooldown, especially at NM/Ulti. For the swipe attack, the DPS would be doing fine if they are far enough from you. They also would immune to the smash attack when they have 1 HP. Kill the ball once they entered Shield Cannon range (use Astute if you don't have it). If you have lv 10 P.def, use it to block any attacks to generate more aggro. You wouldn't want Venena to look at your THS and DW that has been spamming Berserk and War Cry for every 20 seconds. Sanctuary is not so useful here, as Venena's attacks are slow and blockable with P.Def, and it generates less aggro than Guardian. So you better keep spamming that guardian combo when you are not interrupting or killing balls. Let the decoy recover your MP instead. Refresh decoy if needed.
Do this until the match ends. Usually all of this will take 2 mins.

 

i don't think venena even needs a tank. everything it does is slow and dodge-able. really annoying when crybaby DPS players insult the tank instead of just playing better (toxicity in general is kinda lame and childish)

 

Nah, you would want someone to tank (not necessarily a tank build, have tanked there with Bow, Katana, THS,and Mage) if you want to end it quickly. Also, bad tank is worse than no tank at all. At ult, shark fins could deal 2-3K damage, which can 1 hit most DPS out there. That's why, it's better for me totank as DPS rather than let some hard headed tank who doesn't want to take advice tanks. I might even goes solo when everyone is leeching.

 

shark fins are dodgeable right?

and i think you're right though, might not be able to use GSW without one

im conflicted about leechers, i get some people are newer or weaker and need help, but it does feel awful being the only real DPS in 8 people (6 other blacksmiths)

 

1. Yes, but not as easy as to dodge Venena's Meteor. Besides, when you are melee DPS, you wouldn't have time to react to dodge it anyway (you would like to standby at your attack range before the battle begin if you want to finish it quicker)

2. I am rather offended when you say blacksmiths are leecher, since I only played as blacksmiths, and blacksmith can deal just as much damage as the usual DPS, just less flexibility to adapt at harder bosses (I mean, CG, Venena, Alto, Finstern, and Tardigrademon are all basically punching bags with a good tank. No flexibility needed). What makes people damage is so low is their equipment. I suggest to have at least +B weapon and full 1s gear (but 2s macihina ring and 2s armor) before you proceed to leveling up at NM. +S at Venena Ult, and 2s weapon/DTE weapon at finstern and tardigrademon.

3. I usually don't mind leecher when there is only one or two of them, but 7? Come on, I am the tank and I get the attacker rank? Your gear must be upgraded imminently.

 

Maybe the problem is that new gen of players are such bad at game (specially dps) that thing game is just pressing buttons nor even think on doing a plan.

 

The range of the pillars is big, but not that big. Staying at 20m is enough so you can make use of Shield Cannon (and combo if any is attached to one) and still prevent the release of wind blades. Pillar range is 18m.
You can actually attack Venena at the start as the tank BUT you need to stay away from her. At least 8 meters so she won't start spawning the blue floor AOEs of death. That said, bowgun tanks have the advantage here. As for the melee DPS coming straight to Venena? They're either completely new or pure idiots.

There are also two kinds of floor AOE here. One that obliterates people by exploding and one that spawn spikes. The differences can be observed because they have different timing. If Venena looks upward before releasing the AOE, that's the bomb. If the AOE appears before Venena looks up, it's the other one. I might've gotten them mixed up, but both can be interrupted because the movement is too big to notice when she's about to look up. It just needs some practice so you can time it right to perfection. However, too many usage of interrupts will bite you back when you do Nightmare and Ultimate modes.

One thing about interrupts is that Nightmare and Ultimate modes have longer resistance to them. If anyone other than the tank interrupts, it's pretty much the same as that guy raising a middle finger to the tank AND the other party members and then watching them die.

Edit: I also found a lot of people blaming the tanks or the DPS themselves, but here's the thing.

If the tank sucks, the DPS will naturally steal aggro. But if the DPS is an idiot, they could also steal the aggro from tank. So which is it? If the tanks are already making an effort to avoid losing aggro, that's good. A sign of improvement, but if they lose aggro to some guy with -90% or up to -100% aggro, then there's no point running with them. You might as well do Venena without tank. Same goes with the DPS. If they spam skills but don't have huge minus aggro stat, just kick them out.

Regarding the blacksmiths, they're actually pretty strong. Best example will be bow blacksmiths. Their stat allocation is pretty similar to the DPS bow builds so they're strong. The only blacksmiths you wouldn't want to play with are TEC blacksmiths but there are always exception to them. For example, a VIT BS can easily tank Venena 1 without losing aggro and still be able to interrupt without fail. It's not just about the builds, it's also about who uses them, what equipments they have, and how they understand the game. Heck, I even have to carry 6 people with my LUK halb and LUK mage before, it's just me and the tank doing our job. I rarely team up with the genuine DPS who can be on par or out-damage me.

 

The pillars do glow momentarily before fins are used so if you have 2h, katana, dw, assassin, dive impact on halberd it is possible to iframe them.
For me Idm if a tank can't be perfect, if they keep aggro middle and the laser is on them it's good enough.
Perhaps going there with 2k hp and using gsw and expecting every random party to have a pro tank is a mistake.
Going there with more hp if you plan on joining random parties and having less expectations would disappoint people less.
Also the pillars are dark element so using light element is more beneficial since venena herself is damage capped.
I do feel bad for mages there though, but stacking m.res and some hp can help one survive the meteors.

Ofcourse I don't dispute someone learning to play a role better and properly and taking advice but most people are casual players, they don't have all the knowledge since toram doesn't give them any tutorial on how to tank venena properly and most casual players aren't googling, checking youtube or surfing forums on how to tank venena so they do with the knowledge they have.
So as a dps it's better to be more prepared yourself in random parties instead of blaming other players. Anyway just my two cents.

 

Dunno if anyone knows about this yet, but while playing bowgun tank, I found out that at the beginning of the battle, instead of heading toward the pillars, if I attack venena first with Moeba Shot > Decoy Shot combo (not using auto attack) while standing outside of my own auto attack range, I will not shukuchi to her to auto attack, and she also doesn't react at all, thus no balls nor meteors, while I can still get all the initial aggro, and no need to set up a new decoy again like when attacking pillars first. I also don't have to "head to venena after pillars die" since I'm already close to venena. Perhaps it's an advantage of using bowgun tank here.

I've been doing it for a while and haven't got any complaint yet. The only problem is that I have to run to the proper position by myself which takes more time since venena is further away than pillars, and the initial aggro is kinda "not high enough" (moeba>decoy then whatever combo I need to use, but maybe everyone is the same here so idk).

Edit: also, my initial "proper position" is not within the middle, but a bit to the right, as the left pillar is closer to venena than the right one, so I have to stay a bit more to the right so the left pillar will be far enough from me to not doing anything, avoid getting the slow attacks and the shark fins.

 

Venena is not hard at all if the players know what to do and when to do.
Hell, even tank isn't needed IF the dps players are good.
In an all dps party; without tank, carry on as usual, except whoever has the aggro takes to sticking to mid, so the laser doesnt wipe out others. If the aggro switches (something players should be aware of/should alert others to) the new 'target' comes to mid. Thats it.
Pillars are no problem if dealt with fast enough~
(Usually takes 5-10 seconds to deal with them at first round, and 10-20 sec at later rounds; a little proration takes a long way~)
In short, its basically experience, vigilance and communication between players.
This is better in cases where tanks are unavailable and quite easy till hard, for nm and ulti; its do-able but players need to be careful otherwise it results in an all-party wipe out xD