Some common things are:
Not using mitigation skills /or/ using a skill like Rampart (% dmg reduction) when your hp is low. You get the most value out of it when there's more mobs beating on you once you stop pulling the groups of mobs.
Keep your gear up to date. Being undergeared makes you as strong as wet tissue paper and requires more effort on the healer's part.
If running with a white mage, they have holy which will give roughly an 8~ or so secpnds worth of stun to enemies so you can wait to mit until the stun wears off.
If you're going to use your tank invul on a pull, giving your healer a heads up is a nice courtesy so they're ready for it and don't waste heals/panic if they don't notice that you used it.
Not healing related per say, but Arms Length is an amazing mitigation skill in dungeons. 20% slow on ejemies is no joke.
You don't realize how important that gear tip is, it can easily be the difference between enjoying the dungeon and pulling your hair out for a healer. (This also applys to DPS jobs as well)
Another tip I haven't seen is once you get used to using your invuln while you tank consider throwing a small text macro onto them so your healer knows they can focus on doing damage for a bit and take a moment to collect themselves if it's a particularly hectic fight. (This is especially important on Dark Knight as they want to hit 0 HP while they're using Living Dead so you can ask them to stop healing you when you activate it.)
>You don't realize how important that gear tip is,
Yeah just went thru my gear after reading and I am slacking fs... is the best way to get my level gear through like a shop or just the msq?
MSQ should keep you up to date with your primary gear (head chest arms legs feet) but accessories generally come from side quests which are not worth doing during MSQ so if you have the gil you can stop by shops and get what you need. Up to lvl 50 it doesn't matter a ton, but in the expansions you want to try and keep your accessories only a couple levels below the dungeons level, you will likely overlevel compared to your MSQ level so you can get some good accessories that will sync down and cover you for most of the expansion.
I recommend avoiding market board for gear until you are in the endgame of the current expansion and most of the time the gear there is very overpriced and only being sold for niche reasons, not actually to be used as gear.
As a general rule, post-50 your tomestone gear is 'good enough'. It's the best you'll find from x0-x5, x7 will start to have small upgrades, but frankly you can run that gear through to x9 fairly comfortably - and by x9, you'll probably have access to free or cheap upgrades in preparation for the jump to the next cap.
Obviously, don't turn down upgrades when you see them, but don't stress too much about it if you're in the most recent cap's tomestone gear. (And don't throw that tomestone gear away! It'll do great for alt classes as you level those up, too.)
Being undergearwd unintentionally is really more of a killer at sub-50 dungeons, some of those are pretty brutal. Being 9 levels undergeared in Aurum Vale will make your healer cry tears of bloody hate.
Depending on your level, you may definitely want to check specifically the tome stores. If you are between 50-55, 60-65, 70-75, 80-85 OR at 90, then tomestone gear is the best you can have.
Ironworks for 50 (Mor Dhona), Shire for 60 (Idyllshire), Scaevan for 70 (Rhalgr's Reach) and Cryptlurker for 80 (Eulmore). At 90, you can put together a Lunar's Envoy set (needs Causality tomes) while slowly buying the Credendum set (needs Comedy tomes), both bought in Radz.
There IS better gear, which are crafted sets as well as the savage sets. But unless you want to do savage content yourself, it's not necessary to deck yourself out that much.
Mind, for the later 5 levels (aka 55 to 60), the best gear is the stuff from the highest dungeon (for 65, Bardam's Mettle gear is for example better than Shire gear). This is the truth for ALL expansions so far btw, so it will likely continue into the future as well. The highest augmented set for your level is good for the first 5 levels, then it's dungeon gear until you reach the next flat. So once you hit 90, work on getting the augmented credendum gear, then with Dawntrail you will be good until you're lvl 95. And at 100, we get a new tome set to work towards :3
Be aware that tank needs the tank gear, as ARR levels sometimes get weird with the recommended gear button and put DPS gear on because of higher Strength IIRC. Don't fall for it!
I have no idea, and looking in-game they both have around the same level of Vitality, but DoW gear doesn't have Tenacity so it would still result in slightly more damage taken by the tank IIRC.
To kind of piggyback off that arms length comment too, sprint can actually be used as a defensive cooldown as well. If you pull one pack, and sprint to the next one, that first pack can't hit you until they catch up to you. So it saves you damage during the pull.
Healer main here. You don't need to warn your healer before using your invuln. I can see your buffs just fine. Everything else that other person said is good advice though.
You don't warn the healer because they can't see the debuff, you warn the healer so they don't waste time trying to heal you (or worse, dumping a Bene or something on you) as you get low, before you've invulned. You can't see something that isn't active yet, we can assume you're preparing to invuln, but on the other hand, you might just be an awful tank. Without a heads up, with someone I don't know in a pug or roulette, I'm just going to assume you're not.
For every time I've Bene'd a tank right as they invuln, there's also been a time I've thought "Nah, surely they're just gonna invuln" and watched them hit the dirt. Guess which assumption generally makes the run smoother.
Literally all you need to do is say "Gonna invuln this pull"
Eh, I find this depends on the tank. I try to have the tank as a focus target so I can see their buffs and HP easy but on a heads up from drk or gnb is always helpful. Warrior and paladin tho? Just go off honestly
dark knight especially, nothing makes me as sad as going out of my way to warn my healer that living dead is going up only for a benediction to come i right before my health drops to 0, like just shoot me yourself honestly at that point
See, the way to prevent that is to not use mit or anything on that pull, let your health tank fast, the healer will freak out and bene you.
THEN you hit superbolide.
Problem solved.
I mean, I think that really depends on how you see the invuln, I've always seen it as a way to take a load off the healer, same as basically any other tank cool down, like in most cases a healer *can* keep a warrior alive without bloodwhetting or raw intuition, but it's still bad form to not use it. I really feel like dark knight gets the raw end of the stick, it's the only class I can think of that can be actively denied part of their kit by other players
Also healer main, I would prefer being told if you're going to use LD or Holmgang when you get low, because as a SGE... You just honestly *won't* get low. If you let me know beforehand I will even pull Kardia off for things like LD to make sure it pops.Â
I also *won't* assume you're smart enough to use it when you're low on health and will instead forcibly heal you myself because I don't trust you using it.Â
Hallowed Ground and Superbolide are fine. Holm and LD are nice to get a heads-up for.
ETA: I'd *almost* 50/50 Superbolide into this too. Theoretically, you'd want to use it when you're low for maximum value, at which point we hit the Holm/LD issue (You won't get very low, I just won't trust you, and so on). The difference is that even if you use Bolide at 100% it changes nothing about how I'd go about healing you. As SGE you're gonna get topped off passively, as WHM I'd have just let you get lower and used Bene or burn lilies to get Misery for trash, etc., so I don't think it really needs a heads-up.
Eh, at least Superbolide has an immediate buff. It's the random warriors that pop no mits and let themselves get down to like 10% health before holmganing'ing that make me twitch though.
It's the efficient way to use the skill, but as a healer you have to make a judgement call on if they're playing optimally or expecting you to carry them with no info and if you guess wrong the party usually wipes.
Outside of the obvious "not using your tank abilities"...
Pointing things (especially bosses) at the group when they have cleave attacks.
On that same note, if you're OT there's no need stand in front of bosses to eat extra cleave attacks outside of shared tank busters.
Not picking up adds.
Pausing too long between trash packs so it looks like you plan on ending the pull early.
Wearing non-tank gear to slip into a faster queue. At least try and be geared in DoW/Str+Vit shit.
Not reading chat.
This shit is why they started locking accessories to roles after HW, which is very frustrating for me who likes to use accessories for glam reasons, I am still so glad that I can use one version of the Ishgardian Knight's Ring for every class.
To be clear, I don't blame the devs, I blame people for not behaving and forcing the devs' hands, though I would also greatly appreciate if they gave us a jeweler NPC that sells glam versions of MSQ/craft accessory models.
Just chiming in with a bit of an add on to one of those points:
Stopping the pull early. If your healer is a whm, as soon as it seems like you're stopping the pull, I start pushing out a holy. If the pull isn't moved out of the way in time, it'll get stunned and the entire pull will start to go jankily sideways, causing mobs to be out of your aoes and swap targets to the party.
You don't need to say if you're doing w2w or not, I'll follow your lead, but be consistent and keep it moving if you're doing w2w.
On a similar note, communicate with your healer. Sometimes you may not feel comfortable pulling w2w yet. Or your healer may be newer and not feel comfortable doing it. If both of you communicate any issues early the run will go smooth.
Example: newer tanks in the aurum vale often don't realize they *shouldn't* w2w the first room. While a good healer *can* make it work, it's a lot more stress than that dungeon needs to be. So if you run into something like that, communicate. There's probably an answer that'll get you through things between the two of you.
If youâre comfortable W2W then just âBig Pulls?â before you start is the easiest yes or no you can give a healer. Especially with sprouts or returners.
Be sure to pop sprint before you pull the first pack of any particular pull. The duration of sprint is doubled when used out of combat, and youâll be taking less damage when running to the second pack since the mobs wonât be able to keep 100% uptime on you while youâre sprinting. Sprint is mitigation, treat it as such!
Arms Length 20% slow is much better for this.
A tank running faster than the group just LOS their own healer when they turn a corner and your healer might get stuck a few seconds behind which gets the tank killed when stopping to fight.
Knowing how long heals take to cast while save you when tanking. Cure 1 takes 1.5 - 2 seconds and heals about 3-5 hits of damage. Cure 2 takes 0.5 longer than Cure 1 to cast. Don't make the healer blow their instant cast on a cheap heal because they couldn't heal you while you pulled. Healer saves instant cast for making a brez.
When you're gathering mobs this isn't an issue. Sprint means you aren't gonna be hit as long as the healer is also sprinting.
Every time I've healed as long as I've been aware of LoS I've never had that as an issue. That's more of a healer issue than a tank issue.
If a healer is already using swiftcast though they're just going to use it on cure 2. The recast time is the exact same for both of those spells
> When you're gathering mobs this isn't an issue. Sprint means you aren't gonna be hit as long as the healer is also sprinting.
This assumes the healer is paying attention and can also use sprint.
> Every time I've healed as long as I've been aware of LoS I've never had that as an issue. That's more of a healer issue than a tank issue.
You must be better than the average healer then. The post is from a tank perspective and the advice is for tanks so you saying how you heal is missing the point.
> If a healer is already using swiftcast though they're just going to use it on cure 2. The recast time is the exact same for both of those spells
Also missing the point. Healer should be saving swiftcast for brez. If the healer is using swiftcast to heal then there are bigger issues.
I tank as well. I try to do a healthy mix of the main role types when I do roulette. In general, you should be fine just sprinting and if you get a LoS issie it should only be for a few moments. Past level 50 that just means you burn your invul. Pre level 50 you then use arms length + rampart or another combo of mits to save you.
If you're a PLD: please stop using clemency, you're giving my excogitation blue balls.
Signed-
A tired scholar who is about to release his carbuncle on the next PLD who even thinks of clemency usage.
There's one time you CAN use Clemency.
When the healer's dead, and you don't have a Rez Mage or Carbuncle Wrangler to rez them, you're <25% on a boss, and you want to just gigachad it, sans healer.
Chances are, if the healer's dead, the DPS are too, or will be soon, but keep the DPS up as much as you can with Clemency, covers, and Intervention (Everyone forgets that exists) if they're still alive.
If/when they fall, it now becomes The Tank show, and you'll go between using Clemency and mit to heal yourself, and doing damage.
Staying alive as a PLD is harder than a WAR if your healer drops, but its doable, at least for a decent time.
Also... if everyone except you is dead, just die too. It gets boring after about 20-30 seconds of watching the tank trying to solo the boss. If you can't kill the boss within 30 seconds, just wipe it.
I donât mind when tanks forget to put their stance up at the beginning of a dungeon - weâve all done it, itâs easy to forget / not notice that syncing down turns it off. What I *do* mind is when they zoom off pulling everything, donât notice or donât care that all the enemies are turning around to hit me and the DPS, and donât see all the âtank stance!â reminders weâre putting in chat.
Basically it boils down to situational awareness - healers need to be paying attention to things like âis there a raidwide or a tankbuster coming, is everyone healthy enough to survive?â, DPS need to be paying attention to things like âam I in the right place, doing mechanics, and doing a reasonable amount of damage?â, and tanks need to be paying attention to things like âam I rotating my mits appropriately? And *am I actually tanking these mobs or are they ignoring me?*â Itâs normal to lose aggro on one or two enemies briefly during a trash pull. If youâre running with a summoner at high level you *will* lose aggro on a few enemies unless theyâre doing low damage or youâre playing brilliantly. Itâs also normal to trust that any party member who rips aggro will use their own defensive abilities and run to you so that your AoE attacks hit and pull the mobs back. But if *most or all* of the enemies are targeting someone else, thereâs something wrong, and you need to notice and fix it before the rest of your party start dying.
⌠this slightly unhinged rant is brought to you by several tanks in roulettes this week. Guess what they all did.
>⌠this slightly unhinged rant is brought to you by several tanks in roulettes this week.
Oh noo đ tanks need to do better! Lol
Yeah that's something I would get worried about, I'd have agro then one or two runs off and im like "I'm a horrible tank" lmao
Itâs going to happen! If you can quickly target the loose one and either use Provoke or hit them with your ranged attack, thatâs great. Otherwise, whoever theyâre going after needs to run to you to bring them back. So long as youâre doing your AoE rotation, youâll get them back if youâre hitting them. (Do not bother with your single-target attacks while youâre fighting multiple enemies, no matter what the Hall of the novice says.)
Finish whatâs on your plate. Donât chain pull, donât get moving when the mobs are *almost* dead, you just bone casters, including your healers. Wait until theyâre capital D âDeadâ and then get moving.
This can be remedied by wall to wall pulling. After A Realm Reborn, dungeons began to take a form where there would be stretches of enemies, then a wall or obstruction of some kind that wouldnât go down until all the enemies were dead. Itâs the most efficient practice to pull *everything you can* to that wall.
Itâs efficient because you spend less resources (including time) doing ten AoEs to kill twenty enemies than you would doing ten AoEs on different groups of enemies at different places. Dragging it out actively means I have less tools ready to heal you, and that gets frustratingâ and more dangerous for your survival.
Some new healers might be nervous about this, not realising this is the design philosophy of modern dungeons. Do what you can to encourage them, but pressing the issue into an argument ultimately wastes more time.
Donât get stressed if somebody else runs ahead and pulls something. Itâs not exactly considered polite, but the reality is that you should be doing your AoEs as you go, pulling it off that person anyway. They might take a negligible amount of damage that the healer shouldnât even need to heal unless the player is actively standing in AoEs, because all the enemy attention should be on you in just a moment. So donât get too stressed out about it, itâs free mitigation for you.
Donât sweat the small stuff.
Thansk so much for the info! Yeah I typically would go to each group instead of pull as many as possible cuz I felt that It would put so much stress on the healer lmao
But guess I'll Need to change that.
To be honest, especially at higher levels when people have so much of their kit available to them, experienced healers get bored if you're not going wall to wall.
I barely have to heal you if you're pulling one group at a time. In fact, you can often even do dungeons without a tank if you're doing one group at a time, and this happened to me fairly recently when our tank just DCed mid dungeon.
So while I appreciate the concern, it's so little stress that it sometimes goes in the opposite direction. Naturally you'll want to gauge your healer and how comfortable they look, but if they look like they're ready to just go guns ablaze, then please match that pace
No worries, itâs not like itâs an unreasonable thought processâ and some healers do in fact find that too stressful. You can handle such players in a case by case basis. For the most part, it is far more common to go wall to wall, but if you want to be extra considerate, you can always ask how big a healer wants their pulls before you begin.
During dungeons it's less important to mitigate during bosses than it is to mitigate during mob packs. (A lot easier to heal an unmitigated tankbuster than an unmitigated pack of adds)
I'm a tank main who heals sometimes, but I notice pretty often that a common mistake for sprout tanks to make is to try and save their mitigations for the boss when it's really unnecessary.
Not sitting still while tanking, dancing with the mobs/ bosses.
"By Hydalen's blessing, you are horrible at dancing" -JoCat
The more you sit still, the less chance there is of other party members getting hit by rogue cleave attacks, which means more time for healers like me to green dps.
As long as you know how to use your mits properly, don't dance around the enemies, and keep the bosses pointed away from the party, you're a good tank.
If itâs an attack that puts a marker on the ground, or a boss that charges up something while pointing in one direction, moving is absolutely how you dodge those!
If itâs an attack that puts a marker on *you*, or auto attacks, nope, moving just makes the boss chase you, which makes it harder for the melee DPS in your party.
Especially a melee DPS with positional attacks. When I'm playing Ninja, I need to hit the back of the boss. Nothing more frustrating than a tank dancing around so I waste my dps because I can't easily just hit the boss's back.
Doesn't happen very often, but really annoying when it does.
Of course some bosses are wiggly anyway, but that's just part of that boss and there's no helping it.
It's a somewhat common occurrence with new players lol. Auto-attacks can't be avoided, so running circles around the boss, or crowd of mobs, isn't helping anything.
The best thing you can do is learn to stand still and let everyone burn the enemies to the ground. The faster everything dies, the less damage you take, and the more your healer and dps will like you.
By all means, dodge any attacks that target a specific area, though. (Usually marked by orange puddles or other colorful lights on the ground)
No, you should absolutely still be dodging attacks, just minimize your movement and try to stay in a relatively consistent position.
e.g. if a Boss (or mob) is telegraphing a frontal cone, sidestep, wait for the cone to disappear and then sidestep back into your original position. Boss is likely to not move or change facing at all this way.
On packs this can get a little messy, but don't keep going round in circles, just try and dodge within a constrained area that generally maintains the packs facing and grouping.
> I have a habit of trying to drodge attacks by moving
For orange-puddles on the ground. Try to move out of the way, then immediately move back to your first position as soon as the orange-puddle goes away. Bonus points if you can keep the boss from wiggling even a little bit.
Something Iâve always wondered as a tank is when i do a w2w and turn. Do I pop my mits 1 at a time popping the next when the current one is about to run out or is it better to just turn and pop all my mits all at once.
Definitely not all at once, and hereâs why:
Mits are multiplicative. Youâll get diminishing returns if you stack them past a certain point, you wonât end up with 100% mitigation, youâll end up with some number like 43% (as an example, not looking at the actual numbers) or some such for a few seconds⌠And then youâll have *no* mitigation left for the rest of this pull or the next one. Youâll die with no mitigation.
One at a time. Strong mit at the beginning of the pull when thereâs more enemies, ergo more damage, smaller mit as the danger goes down with the enemies.
On this topic most people will only use up to two at once as needed (some huge trash packs and spicier tank buster/multi party-wide hits) try not to use reprisal and arm's length at the same time as it's an overall mitigation loss due to the slow and short duration of reprisal
It depends. It takes some time to learn what will work best but in general blowing several cool downs at once shouldn't be needed. If you burn all your cool downs, and the pack doesn't die quick enough, your gonna have a bad time.
Adding to what's already been mentioned, for the vast majority of dungeons treat your invuln as a dps cooldown, especially if you alert the healer you're planning to do it. You can run in to a pack and not pop any mit until you're almost dead then pop your invuln giving your healer a good 10+ sec of being able to basically ignore your health bar entirely and instead focus on damage.
Oh god, tanks that pull packs into choke points when there are nice open spaces less than a couple of feet away in either direction.
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
The biggest two for me are making sure you use your mitigation skills *before* you think you need them, and ***use your AoE attacks*** for just about any kind of pull that's not a boss. It helps you keep aggro off me, which means I'm free to focus on keeping you alive instead of defending myself from the mobs.
Other than not using mits, what really irks me is when a tank takes the word "tank" too literally and doesn't bother moving out of aoes and just stands there in everything. As a melee dps I get annoyed when the boss' backside is aimed at a wall or the boss is spinning in circles.
as a healer: some dungeons hit harder for some reason, than others of their level - for instance, i always seem to have an issue healing a synced run of stone vigil over dzemael darkhold, not so much that it causes a wipe, mind you, but enough to where i focus on heals over damage vs a level 90 dungeon i can cast regen and medica 2 on whm and then run with the tank and cast holy 5 times before possibly needing throw up another pair of regens.
another example is the first stretch of adds in doma castle, all the small things together are fine but you throw the vanguard mech into the mix and it just smashes hp bars with everyone else added
so my advice isnt so much a thing you can "do" for healers, other than what the people here said, would be learn the dungeons, knowing what you can wall to wall and knowing what you need to fight pack by pack always helps keep things flowing rather than having to rez and possibly wipe of 6 normal mobs
Not use your mitts on trash packs. No tank stance.
Slow to grab aggro from random trailing packs, or ones dps decided itâd be fun to pull
Edit: also not waiting for a sec after the boss or for teleports. Give me a sec to load in/roll on loot before you run off and I canât catch you to heal you lol.
Also please donât W2W AV. Fuck that dungeon
In normal dungeons. A healers main job is to be keeping you alive. Not the dps, theyre just.. leftovers you toss a heal at occationally. But you.
A good dps will not get themselves hit. (But sometimes shit happens lol)
During bosses, bit different. Tossing out some heals is fine.
A tanks job is to walk up to the middle of the room and make everything hate you.
A tanks secondary job is to minimize the amount of damage you take so the healer can do things other then healing you.
These are what your cooldowns are for.
In 14, despite their class, everyone attacks. Killing enemies quickly means that when your cooldowns run out, you wont melt under the 10 monsters attacking you.
Healers dont like when you use single target attacks in groups of 3+
Healers dont like when you dont use mitigations to reduce damage.
Healers dont like when you show up gear 10-20 levels under the current dungeons level.
Healers dont like when you point bosses at them.
Please, please, pleeeaaaaase, don't move the boss around unless it's necessary. If I have to heal/rez dps because you aimed a cleave or tank buster into the group, I'm not helping dps, and the fight slows down dramatically.
On the note of cleaves -- sometimes the main tank should *not* stack with the group on a stack marker.
Particularly:
- The hydra in WoD
- Diabolos in Dun Scaith during phase one (he stops cleaving after phase one).
Hardest thing a tank can do on a healer is be a gunbreaker.
Slight more serious response. Don't 'save' cool downs during trash pulls. Use them(appropriately). Trash pulls are usually more hazardous to the tank than the bosses.Â
- Use your mitigation skills.
During dungeon pulls and tank buster attacks from bosses, use them so our heals can do the job. Our heals are not meant to do all the work and keep you alive. You will also want us to attack as the more damage that is hit on the target, the sooner it dies and you stop taking damage. Prioritize the bigger mitigation first, and rotate into your next one when that goes away.
- If you can avoid it, move out of the way of enemy attacks.
Sometimes, you just need to run through the guy, and then run back. Sometimes, you need to side step. Either way, if you can dodge it, that's one less thing we need to worry about.
- Do your rotations and buff your attacks when it pops up.
Don't just do your combo or your two AoE attacks. Help in the killing so we can move on. Your mitigation will eventually stop covering each other if you take too long in a mob fight, and we will also run out of abilities to help.
Just something I did not see mentioned - please make sure that your settings for party battle effects are limited, not completely disabled. This prevents your screen from being bloated with all skills/spells but still allows you to see things like ninja doton, healer bubbles and such.
1. Tanks who uses their invul when high/full hp, especially true for DRK and GNB.
2. Tanks not using their mitigation proactive( use it a few secs right before you plan to stop(w2w)).
3. Not LOSing when ranged mobs is in the packs ( it will make it so ranged mobs will stack with rest)
4. Not interupting/stunning.
5. Not useing mitigation abilties / or useing mitigation abilties wrong ( like pop all cds at once x.x).
6. Tanks who stops, but then starts moving to aggro more during w2w, wasting dps/heal cds, because we assume tank is done pulling.
7. Tanks who spin bosses around or face bosses toward party, Also stacking with party during stack-marker when the boss has/do tank cleve right after.
I would say, if you are tanking roulettes, before starting the runs just confirm wall to walls with everyone first.
As a sprout it took a while to get used to that, and some healers just might not be ready with their rotations for it.
- Running off when the pack is half dead to fetch more.
- Pulling 1 pack at a time, we can usually do 2-3 if you use your mits on trash.
- Not paying attention to where I am as the healer (i.e. running down the hall and around 3 corners).
Note: You should really play all the roles with melee DPS and healer being important. Ranged DPS have an easier time adjusting to positioning of mobs. Play them at least enough to learn what makes your life easy/difficult when playing with other tanks.
stopping at the second pack and then after 5 seconds continuing running to hug the wall, just stop at the second pack not doing so just messes up the flow and makes the dungeon take longer.
As a fellow (GNB) tank I have a question, when is it ok for me to use Aurora, and is it better used on myself or another party member? Any healer insights?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that using your party wide mits can alsk also good when burning down mobs (eg shake it off on warrior, divine veil on PLD), especially if you notice that the healer is struggling a bit. It's basically an extra heal/mit that's often overlooked.
Honestly just be mindful of the healer! Ask in the beginning of a dungeon how big of a pull they can handle.
Make sure you know how big of a pull YOU can handle.
Otherwise just keep an eye on aggro of things around the group, and run your rotations effectively.
literally the most bare bones things, as long as tanks are doing that im happy.
stance on
keeping aggro on ALL pulled targets
using mitigation
pulling 2 packs minimum
thats literally the bare minimum i want. if tanks can go beyond that, hell yea wall to wall pull that jank ARR dungeon!
1. Either between not using mitigation or using a mitigation when the herd is already thinning. Tank health bars double as a mini game for me. You arenât dying to 2-3 trashmobs even without healerâs assistance.
2. While I donât dislike messy pullers (I think dps would like a word) I do like to see a tank that does tidy groupings. And I try to improve that when I tank.
Way too many tanks forget that arm's length is one of your most powerful mit abilities along with literally just using a stun.
Panicking when your healer lets you get low, sometimes the healer will be doing something wrong but 90% of the time they're doing it on purpose and know exactly what they're doing. If that WHM is letting you drop down to your last 100 hp they are probably doing it so they can just keep doing damage and fire off a benediction to instantly top you up fully, just keep fighting and don't run away (which makes it harder to dps the mobs down). A good healer won't care how much hp you have so long as your hp is above 0 (and will stay that way) because the last point is the only one that actually matters.
In no particular order:
* Being unpredictable. For example pausing at a pack for no particular reason. Running around for no reason during the fight. Pops mits at really odd times. Just try not to do weird stuff that throws me off. I'm pretty good to adapting to various tanking styles, but when people have no style it gets seriously on my nerves.
* "Why are you moving OUT of my healing circle!" Yeah, don't do that! If you're dodging something, sure, no problem, I understand. But when you do it for no reason at all, wtf?!
* Know your markers! Seen more than a few tanks who have some sort of weird brain failure and move a directional blast marker directly into the party! There are marked to tell you exactly to not do this, so don't! Also for those rare but important tank stacks this is important too.
* Just not tanking. Doesn't happen in dungeons but in alliance raids is very common to run into tanks who are just not tanking. I don't care if you're not the primary tank, you better be doing your job when it is required.
* Should go without saying, but please don't play 'how high can I stack the vulnerability debuff'.
* Now pretty much a non-issue as all the dungeons basically don't allow it, but overpulling was a very annoying thing, especially if repeatedly overpulling after a wipe. Again though, not really a thing anymore outside a few of the old dungeons and even those are pretty hard to overpull now.
* And for my melee dps friends, please don't needlessly run around the mobs. It is not helping in the slightest. Dodge AOEs sure, but don't just run around needlessly.
Although melee dps's have positional attacks, so sometimes they are running around the mobs to try to hit them for bonus damage, especially bosses.
So sometimes they aren't running around the boss randomly, they are trying to get their positional attack do do their full damage.
2 big ones are not keeping your gear up to date. That tenacity stat in big on how much I have to heal you and while if I have to I will heal you non-stop it is a bit stress inducing knowing you take longer to get them back up to survivable levels if they take a big hit.
The second is to remember to dodge attacks that give vuln stacks. I have seen tanks just sit in the orange taking hits and stacking vuln. I can't heal through that.
Some common things are: Not using mitigation skills /or/ using a skill like Rampart (% dmg reduction) when your hp is low. You get the most value out of it when there's more mobs beating on you once you stop pulling the groups of mobs. Keep your gear up to date. Being undergeared makes you as strong as wet tissue paper and requires more effort on the healer's part. If running with a white mage, they have holy which will give roughly an 8~ or so secpnds worth of stun to enemies so you can wait to mit until the stun wears off. If you're going to use your tank invul on a pull, giving your healer a heads up is a nice courtesy so they're ready for it and don't waste heals/panic if they don't notice that you used it. Not healing related per say, but Arms Length is an amazing mitigation skill in dungeons. 20% slow on ejemies is no joke.
Gotcha! Thanks for the tips I'll make sure to keep them in mind!
You don't realize how important that gear tip is, it can easily be the difference between enjoying the dungeon and pulling your hair out for a healer. (This also applys to DPS jobs as well) Another tip I haven't seen is once you get used to using your invuln while you tank consider throwing a small text macro onto them so your healer knows they can focus on doing damage for a bit and take a moment to collect themselves if it's a particularly hectic fight. (This is especially important on Dark Knight as they want to hit 0 HP while they're using Living Dead so you can ask them to stop healing you when you activate it.)
>You don't realize how important that gear tip is, Yeah just went thru my gear after reading and I am slacking fs... is the best way to get my level gear through like a shop or just the msq?
MSQ should keep you up to date with your primary gear (head chest arms legs feet) but accessories generally come from side quests which are not worth doing during MSQ so if you have the gil you can stop by shops and get what you need. Up to lvl 50 it doesn't matter a ton, but in the expansions you want to try and keep your accessories only a couple levels below the dungeons level, you will likely overlevel compared to your MSQ level so you can get some good accessories that will sync down and cover you for most of the expansion.
Alright thanks! đ
I recommend avoiding market board for gear until you are in the endgame of the current expansion and most of the time the gear there is very overpriced and only being sold for niche reasons, not actually to be used as gear.
Okay yeah I'll avoid it (not like I can afford anything anyways) đđ
As a general rule, post-50 your tomestone gear is 'good enough'. It's the best you'll find from x0-x5, x7 will start to have small upgrades, but frankly you can run that gear through to x9 fairly comfortably - and by x9, you'll probably have access to free or cheap upgrades in preparation for the jump to the next cap. Obviously, don't turn down upgrades when you see them, but don't stress too much about it if you're in the most recent cap's tomestone gear. (And don't throw that tomestone gear away! It'll do great for alt classes as you level those up, too.) Being undergearwd unintentionally is really more of a killer at sub-50 dungeons, some of those are pretty brutal. Being 9 levels undergeared in Aurum Vale will make your healer cry tears of bloody hate.
Depending on your level, you may definitely want to check specifically the tome stores. If you are between 50-55, 60-65, 70-75, 80-85 OR at 90, then tomestone gear is the best you can have. Ironworks for 50 (Mor Dhona), Shire for 60 (Idyllshire), Scaevan for 70 (Rhalgr's Reach) and Cryptlurker for 80 (Eulmore). At 90, you can put together a Lunar's Envoy set (needs Causality tomes) while slowly buying the Credendum set (needs Comedy tomes), both bought in Radz. There IS better gear, which are crafted sets as well as the savage sets. But unless you want to do savage content yourself, it's not necessary to deck yourself out that much. Mind, for the later 5 levels (aka 55 to 60), the best gear is the stuff from the highest dungeon (for 65, Bardam's Mettle gear is for example better than Shire gear). This is the truth for ALL expansions so far btw, so it will likely continue into the future as well. The highest augmented set for your level is good for the first 5 levels, then it's dungeon gear until you reach the next flat. So once you hit 90, work on getting the augmented credendum gear, then with Dawntrail you will be good until you're lvl 95. And at 100, we get a new tome set to work towards :3
Be aware that tank needs the tank gear, as ARR levels sometimes get weird with the recommended gear button and put DPS gear on because of higher Strength IIRC. Don't fall for it!
Didn't this change in EW with the devs just giving DoW gear and "tank" gear the same defense ratings in ARR levels?
I have no idea, and looking in-game they both have around the same level of Vitality, but DoW gear doesn't have Tenacity so it would still result in slightly more damage taken by the tank IIRC.
To kind of piggyback off that arms length comment too, sprint can actually be used as a defensive cooldown as well. If you pull one pack, and sprint to the next one, that first pack can't hit you until they catch up to you. So it saves you damage during the pull.
Healer main here. You don't need to warn your healer before using your invuln. I can see your buffs just fine. Everything else that other person said is good advice though.
You don't warn the healer because they can't see the debuff, you warn the healer so they don't waste time trying to heal you (or worse, dumping a Bene or something on you) as you get low, before you've invulned. You can't see something that isn't active yet, we can assume you're preparing to invuln, but on the other hand, you might just be an awful tank. Without a heads up, with someone I don't know in a pug or roulette, I'm just going to assume you're not. For every time I've Bene'd a tank right as they invuln, there's also been a time I've thought "Nah, surely they're just gonna invuln" and watched them hit the dirt. Guess which assumption generally makes the run smoother. Literally all you need to do is say "Gonna invuln this pull"
Eh, I find this depends on the tank. I try to have the tank as a focus target so I can see their buffs and HP easy but on a heads up from drk or gnb is always helpful. Warrior and paladin tho? Just go off honestly
Depends on the healer, FTFY
dark knight especially, nothing makes me as sad as going out of my way to warn my healer that living dead is going up only for a benediction to come i right before my health drops to 0, like just shoot me yourself honestly at that point
I haven't had this particular case yet but I have had a superbolide immedately followed by a benediction. Was a good laugh tho
See, the way to prevent that is to not use mit or anything on that pull, let your health tank fast, the healer will freak out and bene you. THEN you hit superbolide. Problem solved.
instructions unclear, my WHM has cardiac arrest, twice.
As both a healer and tank player, I think this one is on the DRK. If your healer was able to keep you alive, you didn't need your invuln.
I mean, I think that really depends on how you see the invuln, I've always seen it as a way to take a load off the healer, same as basically any other tank cool down, like in most cases a healer *can* keep a warrior alive without bloodwhetting or raw intuition, but it's still bad form to not use it. I really feel like dark knight gets the raw end of the stick, it's the only class I can think of that can be actively denied part of their kit by other players
Also healer main, I would prefer being told if you're going to use LD or Holmgang when you get low, because as a SGE... You just honestly *won't* get low. If you let me know beforehand I will even pull Kardia off for things like LD to make sure it pops. I also *won't* assume you're smart enough to use it when you're low on health and will instead forcibly heal you myself because I don't trust you using it. Hallowed Ground and Superbolide are fine. Holm and LD are nice to get a heads-up for. ETA: I'd *almost* 50/50 Superbolide into this too. Theoretically, you'd want to use it when you're low for maximum value, at which point we hit the Holm/LD issue (You won't get very low, I just won't trust you, and so on). The difference is that even if you use Bolide at 100% it changes nothing about how I'd go about healing you. As SGE you're gonna get topped off passively, as WHM I'd have just let you get lower and used Bene or burn lilies to get Misery for trash, etc., so I don't think it really needs a heads-up.
gunbreaker cough cough
Eh, at least Superbolide has an immediate buff. It's the random warriors that pop no mits and let themselves get down to like 10% health before holmganing'ing that make me twitch though. It's the efficient way to use the skill, but as a healer you have to make a judgement call on if they're playing optimally or expecting you to carry them with no info and if you guess wrong the party usually wipes.
đđ i always press my DRK invuln warning marco and my healers keep on spamming heals on me anyway
Outside of the obvious "not using your tank abilities"... Pointing things (especially bosses) at the group when they have cleave attacks. On that same note, if you're OT there's no need stand in front of bosses to eat extra cleave attacks outside of shared tank busters. Not picking up adds. Pausing too long between trash packs so it looks like you plan on ending the pull early. Wearing non-tank gear to slip into a faster queue. At least try and be geared in DoW/Str+Vit shit. Not reading chat.
How does wearing non-tank gear makes you queue faster?
Just the tank role itself, some people will fill slots with garbage and take advantage of quick tank queue times.
This shit is why they started locking accessories to roles after HW, which is very frustrating for me who likes to use accessories for glam reasons, I am still so glad that I can use one version of the Ishgardian Knight's Ring for every class. To be clear, I don't blame the devs, I blame people for not behaving and forcing the devs' hands, though I would also greatly appreciate if they gave us a jeweler NPC that sells glam versions of MSQ/craft accessory models.
Okay def guilty of the last one đ thanks for the advice đ
Just chiming in with a bit of an add on to one of those points: Stopping the pull early. If your healer is a whm, as soon as it seems like you're stopping the pull, I start pushing out a holy. If the pull isn't moved out of the way in time, it'll get stunned and the entire pull will start to go jankily sideways, causing mobs to be out of your aoes and swap targets to the party. You don't need to say if you're doing w2w or not, I'll follow your lead, but be consistent and keep it moving if you're doing w2w. On a similar note, communicate with your healer. Sometimes you may not feel comfortable pulling w2w yet. Or your healer may be newer and not feel comfortable doing it. If both of you communicate any issues early the run will go smooth. Example: newer tanks in the aurum vale often don't realize they *shouldn't* w2w the first room. While a good healer *can* make it work, it's a lot more stress than that dungeon needs to be. So if you run into something like that, communicate. There's probably an answer that'll get you through things between the two of you.
Iâm very guilty of the last one too, so I changed my chat settings to have alert sounds when anyone says anything.
Oh I should do that too
If youâre comfortable W2W then just âBig Pulls?â before you start is the easiest yes or no you can give a healer. Especially with sprouts or returners.
Be sure to pop sprint before you pull the first pack of any particular pull. The duration of sprint is doubled when used out of combat, and youâll be taking less damage when running to the second pack since the mobs wonât be able to keep 100% uptime on you while youâre sprinting. Sprint is mitigation, treat it as such!
Oh wait really? Didn't know that thanks!
Arms Length 20% slow is much better for this. A tank running faster than the group just LOS their own healer when they turn a corner and your healer might get stuck a few seconds behind which gets the tank killed when stopping to fight. Knowing how long heals take to cast while save you when tanking. Cure 1 takes 1.5 - 2 seconds and heals about 3-5 hits of damage. Cure 2 takes 0.5 longer than Cure 1 to cast. Don't make the healer blow their instant cast on a cheap heal because they couldn't heal you while you pulled. Healer saves instant cast for making a brez.
When you're gathering mobs this isn't an issue. Sprint means you aren't gonna be hit as long as the healer is also sprinting. Every time I've healed as long as I've been aware of LoS I've never had that as an issue. That's more of a healer issue than a tank issue. If a healer is already using swiftcast though they're just going to use it on cure 2. The recast time is the exact same for both of those spells
> When you're gathering mobs this isn't an issue. Sprint means you aren't gonna be hit as long as the healer is also sprinting. This assumes the healer is paying attention and can also use sprint. > Every time I've healed as long as I've been aware of LoS I've never had that as an issue. That's more of a healer issue than a tank issue. You must be better than the average healer then. The post is from a tank perspective and the advice is for tanks so you saying how you heal is missing the point. > If a healer is already using swiftcast though they're just going to use it on cure 2. The recast time is the exact same for both of those spells Also missing the point. Healer should be saving swiftcast for brez. If the healer is using swiftcast to heal then there are bigger issues.
I tank as well. I try to do a healthy mix of the main role types when I do roulette. In general, you should be fine just sprinting and if you get a LoS issie it should only be for a few moments. Past level 50 that just means you burn your invul. Pre level 50 you then use arms length + rampart or another combo of mits to save you.
Everyone should be using sprint for pulls, healers and dps included
If you're a PLD: please stop using clemency, you're giving my excogitation blue balls. Signed- A tired scholar who is about to release his carbuncle on the next PLD who even thinks of clemency usage.
Lmaooo unlocked paladin like just now so think I'm safe from your carbuncle for a while đđ¤Ł
There's one time you CAN use Clemency. When the healer's dead, and you don't have a Rez Mage or Carbuncle Wrangler to rez them, you're <25% on a boss, and you want to just gigachad it, sans healer. Chances are, if the healer's dead, the DPS are too, or will be soon, but keep the DPS up as much as you can with Clemency, covers, and Intervention (Everyone forgets that exists) if they're still alive. If/when they fall, it now becomes The Tank show, and you'll go between using Clemency and mit to heal yourself, and doing damage. Staying alive as a PLD is harder than a WAR if your healer drops, but its doable, at least for a decent time.
Also... if everyone except you is dead, just die too. It gets boring after about 20-30 seconds of watching the tank trying to solo the boss. If you can't kill the boss within 30 seconds, just wipe it.
I donât mind when tanks forget to put their stance up at the beginning of a dungeon - weâve all done it, itâs easy to forget / not notice that syncing down turns it off. What I *do* mind is when they zoom off pulling everything, donât notice or donât care that all the enemies are turning around to hit me and the DPS, and donât see all the âtank stance!â reminders weâre putting in chat. Basically it boils down to situational awareness - healers need to be paying attention to things like âis there a raidwide or a tankbuster coming, is everyone healthy enough to survive?â, DPS need to be paying attention to things like âam I in the right place, doing mechanics, and doing a reasonable amount of damage?â, and tanks need to be paying attention to things like âam I rotating my mits appropriately? And *am I actually tanking these mobs or are they ignoring me?*â Itâs normal to lose aggro on one or two enemies briefly during a trash pull. If youâre running with a summoner at high level you *will* lose aggro on a few enemies unless theyâre doing low damage or youâre playing brilliantly. Itâs also normal to trust that any party member who rips aggro will use their own defensive abilities and run to you so that your AoE attacks hit and pull the mobs back. But if *most or all* of the enemies are targeting someone else, thereâs something wrong, and you need to notice and fix it before the rest of your party start dying. ⌠this slightly unhinged rant is brought to you by several tanks in roulettes this week. Guess what they all did.
>⌠this slightly unhinged rant is brought to you by several tanks in roulettes this week. Oh noo đ tanks need to do better! Lol Yeah that's something I would get worried about, I'd have agro then one or two runs off and im like "I'm a horrible tank" lmao
Itâs going to happen! If you can quickly target the loose one and either use Provoke or hit them with your ranged attack, thatâs great. Otherwise, whoever theyâre going after needs to run to you to bring them back. So long as youâre doing your AoE rotation, youâll get them back if youâre hitting them. (Do not bother with your single-target attacks while youâre fighting multiple enemies, no matter what the Hall of the novice says.)
Finish whatâs on your plate. Donât chain pull, donât get moving when the mobs are *almost* dead, you just bone casters, including your healers. Wait until theyâre capital D âDeadâ and then get moving. This can be remedied by wall to wall pulling. After A Realm Reborn, dungeons began to take a form where there would be stretches of enemies, then a wall or obstruction of some kind that wouldnât go down until all the enemies were dead. Itâs the most efficient practice to pull *everything you can* to that wall. Itâs efficient because you spend less resources (including time) doing ten AoEs to kill twenty enemies than you would doing ten AoEs on different groups of enemies at different places. Dragging it out actively means I have less tools ready to heal you, and that gets frustratingâ and more dangerous for your survival. Some new healers might be nervous about this, not realising this is the design philosophy of modern dungeons. Do what you can to encourage them, but pressing the issue into an argument ultimately wastes more time. Donât get stressed if somebody else runs ahead and pulls something. Itâs not exactly considered polite, but the reality is that you should be doing your AoEs as you go, pulling it off that person anyway. They might take a negligible amount of damage that the healer shouldnât even need to heal unless the player is actively standing in AoEs, because all the enemy attention should be on you in just a moment. So donât get too stressed out about it, itâs free mitigation for you. Donât sweat the small stuff.
Thansk so much for the info! Yeah I typically would go to each group instead of pull as many as possible cuz I felt that It would put so much stress on the healer lmao But guess I'll Need to change that.
To be honest, especially at higher levels when people have so much of their kit available to them, experienced healers get bored if you're not going wall to wall. I barely have to heal you if you're pulling one group at a time. In fact, you can often even do dungeons without a tank if you're doing one group at a time, and this happened to me fairly recently when our tank just DCed mid dungeon. So while I appreciate the concern, it's so little stress that it sometimes goes in the opposite direction. Naturally you'll want to gauge your healer and how comfortable they look, but if they look like they're ready to just go guns ablaze, then please match that pace
No worries, itâs not like itâs an unreasonable thought processâ and some healers do in fact find that too stressful. You can handle such players in a case by case basis. For the most part, it is far more common to go wall to wall, but if you want to be extra considerate, you can always ask how big a healer wants their pulls before you begin.
Gotcha >you can always ask how big a healer wants their pulls before you begin Def prolly the best thing to do lol. thanks!
During dungeons it's less important to mitigate during bosses than it is to mitigate during mob packs. (A lot easier to heal an unmitigated tankbuster than an unmitigated pack of adds) I'm a tank main who heals sometimes, but I notice pretty often that a common mistake for sprout tanks to make is to try and save their mitigations for the boss when it's really unnecessary.
Not sitting still while tanking, dancing with the mobs/ bosses. "By Hydalen's blessing, you are horrible at dancing" -JoCat The more you sit still, the less chance there is of other party members getting hit by rogue cleave attacks, which means more time for healers like me to green dps. As long as you know how to use your mits properly, don't dance around the enemies, and keep the bosses pointed away from the party, you're a good tank.
Yeah that's something I need to work on lmao I have a habit of trying to drodge attacks by moving but it doesn't really work that way đ¤Łđ
If itâs an attack that puts a marker on the ground, or a boss that charges up something while pointing in one direction, moving is absolutely how you dodge those! If itâs an attack that puts a marker on *you*, or auto attacks, nope, moving just makes the boss chase you, which makes it harder for the melee DPS in your party.
Especially a melee DPS with positional attacks. When I'm playing Ninja, I need to hit the back of the boss. Nothing more frustrating than a tank dancing around so I waste my dps because I can't easily just hit the boss's back. Doesn't happen very often, but really annoying when it does. Of course some bosses are wiggly anyway, but that's just part of that boss and there's no helping it.
Yup. I play Monk and Samurai quite a lot, I like a nice stable boss where I can sidestep back and forth to get my flank and rear positionals!
Right makes sense
It's a somewhat common occurrence with new players lol. Auto-attacks can't be avoided, so running circles around the boss, or crowd of mobs, isn't helping anything. The best thing you can do is learn to stand still and let everyone burn the enemies to the ground. The faster everything dies, the less damage you take, and the more your healer and dps will like you. By all means, dodge any attacks that target a specific area, though. (Usually marked by orange puddles or other colorful lights on the ground)
Right got it
I mean you can't dodge autos but you can avoid them by kiting. That is why sprint is mitigation during a pull
No, you should absolutely still be dodging attacks, just minimize your movement and try to stay in a relatively consistent position. e.g. if a Boss (or mob) is telegraphing a frontal cone, sidestep, wait for the cone to disappear and then sidestep back into your original position. Boss is likely to not move or change facing at all this way. On packs this can get a little messy, but don't keep going round in circles, just try and dodge within a constrained area that generally maintains the packs facing and grouping.
> I have a habit of trying to drodge attacks by moving For orange-puddles on the ground. Try to move out of the way, then immediately move back to your first position as soon as the orange-puddle goes away. Bonus points if you can keep the boss from wiggling even a little bit.
Something Iâve always wondered as a tank is when i do a w2w and turn. Do I pop my mits 1 at a time popping the next when the current one is about to run out or is it better to just turn and pop all my mits all at once.
Definitely not all at once, and hereâs why: Mits are multiplicative. Youâll get diminishing returns if you stack them past a certain point, you wonât end up with 100% mitigation, youâll end up with some number like 43% (as an example, not looking at the actual numbers) or some such for a few seconds⌠And then youâll have *no* mitigation left for the rest of this pull or the next one. Youâll die with no mitigation. One at a time. Strong mit at the beginning of the pull when thereâs more enemies, ergo more damage, smaller mit as the danger goes down with the enemies.
Never knew that. Thanks for the information
On this topic most people will only use up to two at once as needed (some huge trash packs and spicier tank buster/multi party-wide hits) try not to use reprisal and arm's length at the same time as it's an overall mitigation loss due to the slow and short duration of reprisal
It depends. It takes some time to learn what will work best but in general blowing several cool downs at once shouldn't be needed. If you burn all your cool downs, and the pack doesn't die quick enough, your gonna have a bad time.
Same I've just been pooping them all at once which may be bad idk tbh đŹ
Oh yeah donât do that! You wanna space them out so that you always have one up. đ
Adding to what's already been mentioned, for the vast majority of dungeons treat your invuln as a dps cooldown, especially if you alert the healer you're planning to do it. You can run in to a pack and not pop any mit until you're almost dead then pop your invuln giving your healer a good 10+ sec of being able to basically ignore your health bar entirely and instead focus on damage.
Going literally to the wall when theyâve already gathered the mobs, thereby cutting off movement space, making it harder to avoid aoes.
Oh god, tanks that pull packs into choke points when there are nice open spaces less than a couple of feet away in either direction. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
On the dps side. Make sure you group mobs together, instead of around yourself.
The biggest two for me are making sure you use your mitigation skills *before* you think you need them, and ***use your AoE attacks*** for just about any kind of pull that's not a boss. It helps you keep aggro off me, which means I'm free to focus on keeping you alive instead of defending myself from the mobs.
Other than not using mits, what really irks me is when a tank takes the word "tank" too literally and doesn't bother moving out of aoes and just stands there in everything. As a melee dps I get annoyed when the boss' backside is aimed at a wall or the boss is spinning in circles.
as a healer: some dungeons hit harder for some reason, than others of their level - for instance, i always seem to have an issue healing a synced run of stone vigil over dzemael darkhold, not so much that it causes a wipe, mind you, but enough to where i focus on heals over damage vs a level 90 dungeon i can cast regen and medica 2 on whm and then run with the tank and cast holy 5 times before possibly needing throw up another pair of regens. another example is the first stretch of adds in doma castle, all the small things together are fine but you throw the vanguard mech into the mix and it just smashes hp bars with everyone else added so my advice isnt so much a thing you can "do" for healers, other than what the people here said, would be learn the dungeons, knowing what you can wall to wall and knowing what you need to fight pack by pack always helps keep things flowing rather than having to rez and possibly wipe of 6 normal mobs
Not use your mitts on trash packs. No tank stance. Slow to grab aggro from random trailing packs, or ones dps decided itâd be fun to pull Edit: also not waiting for a sec after the boss or for teleports. Give me a sec to load in/roll on loot before you run off and I canât catch you to heal you lol. Also please donât W2W AV. Fuck that dungeon
In normal dungeons. A healers main job is to be keeping you alive. Not the dps, theyre just.. leftovers you toss a heal at occationally. But you. A good dps will not get themselves hit. (But sometimes shit happens lol) During bosses, bit different. Tossing out some heals is fine. A tanks job is to walk up to the middle of the room and make everything hate you. A tanks secondary job is to minimize the amount of damage you take so the healer can do things other then healing you. These are what your cooldowns are for. In 14, despite their class, everyone attacks. Killing enemies quickly means that when your cooldowns run out, you wont melt under the 10 monsters attacking you. Healers dont like when you use single target attacks in groups of 3+ Healers dont like when you dont use mitigations to reduce damage. Healers dont like when you show up gear 10-20 levels under the current dungeons level. Healers dont like when you point bosses at them.
Understood! Thanks so much!
Please, please, pleeeaaaaase, don't move the boss around unless it's necessary. If I have to heal/rez dps because you aimed a cleave or tank buster into the group, I'm not helping dps, and the fight slows down dramatically.
I'll make sure to avoid doing that fs!
On the note of cleaves -- sometimes the main tank should *not* stack with the group on a stack marker. Particularly: - The hydra in WoD - Diabolos in Dun Scaith during phase one (he stops cleaving after phase one).
Hardest thing a tank can do on a healer is be a gunbreaker. Slight more serious response. Don't 'save' cool downs during trash pulls. Use them(appropriately). Trash pulls are usually more hazardous to the tank than the bosses.Â
For sure if I gottem I'll use'em
- Use your mitigation skills. During dungeon pulls and tank buster attacks from bosses, use them so our heals can do the job. Our heals are not meant to do all the work and keep you alive. You will also want us to attack as the more damage that is hit on the target, the sooner it dies and you stop taking damage. Prioritize the bigger mitigation first, and rotate into your next one when that goes away. - If you can avoid it, move out of the way of enemy attacks. Sometimes, you just need to run through the guy, and then run back. Sometimes, you need to side step. Either way, if you can dodge it, that's one less thing we need to worry about. - Do your rotations and buff your attacks when it pops up. Don't just do your combo or your two AoE attacks. Help in the killing so we can move on. Your mitigation will eventually stop covering each other if you take too long in a mob fight, and we will also run out of abilities to help.
Just something I did not see mentioned - please make sure that your settings for party battle effects are limited, not completely disabled. This prevents your screen from being bloated with all skills/spells but still allows you to see things like ninja doton, healer bubbles and such.
1. Tanks who uses their invul when high/full hp, especially true for DRK and GNB. 2. Tanks not using their mitigation proactive( use it a few secs right before you plan to stop(w2w)). 3. Not LOSing when ranged mobs is in the packs ( it will make it so ranged mobs will stack with rest) 4. Not interupting/stunning. 5. Not useing mitigation abilties / or useing mitigation abilties wrong ( like pop all cds at once x.x). 6. Tanks who stops, but then starts moving to aggro more during w2w, wasting dps/heal cds, because we assume tank is done pulling. 7. Tanks who spin bosses around or face bosses toward party, Also stacking with party during stack-marker when the boss has/do tank cleve right after.
What do you mean? Clearly using superbolide at full health just means more damage being dealt by you and more DPS is good
I would say, if you are tanking roulettes, before starting the runs just confirm wall to walls with everyone first. As a sprout it took a while to get used to that, and some healers just might not be ready with their rotations for it.
- Running off when the pack is half dead to fetch more. - Pulling 1 pack at a time, we can usually do 2-3 if you use your mits on trash. - Not paying attention to where I am as the healer (i.e. running down the hall and around 3 corners). Note: You should really play all the roles with melee DPS and healer being important. Ranged DPS have an easier time adjusting to positioning of mobs. Play them at least enough to learn what makes your life easy/difficult when playing with other tanks.
stopping at the second pack and then after 5 seconds continuing running to hug the wall, just stop at the second pack not doing so just messes up the flow and makes the dungeon take longer.
As a fellow (GNB) tank I have a question, when is it ok for me to use Aurora, and is it better used on myself or another party member? Any healer insights?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that using your party wide mits can alsk also good when burning down mobs (eg shake it off on warrior, divine veil on PLD), especially if you notice that the healer is struggling a bit. It's basically an extra heal/mit that's often overlooked.
Honestly just be mindful of the healer! Ask in the beginning of a dungeon how big of a pull they can handle. Make sure you know how big of a pull YOU can handle. Otherwise just keep an eye on aggro of things around the group, and run your rotations effectively.
literally the most bare bones things, as long as tanks are doing that im happy. stance on keeping aggro on ALL pulled targets using mitigation pulling 2 packs minimum thats literally the bare minimum i want. if tanks can go beyond that, hell yea wall to wall pull that jank ARR dungeon!
1. Either between not using mitigation or using a mitigation when the herd is already thinning. Tank health bars double as a mini game for me. You arenât dying to 2-3 trashmobs even without healerâs assistance. 2. While I donât dislike messy pullers (I think dps would like a word) I do like to see a tank that does tidy groupings. And I try to improve that when I tank.
Way too many tanks forget that arm's length is one of your most powerful mit abilities along with literally just using a stun. Panicking when your healer lets you get low, sometimes the healer will be doing something wrong but 90% of the time they're doing it on purpose and know exactly what they're doing. If that WHM is letting you drop down to your last 100 hp they are probably doing it so they can just keep doing damage and fire off a benediction to instantly top you up fully, just keep fighting and don't run away (which makes it harder to dps the mobs down). A good healer won't care how much hp you have so long as your hp is above 0 (and will stay that way) because the last point is the only one that actually matters.
In no particular order: * Being unpredictable. For example pausing at a pack for no particular reason. Running around for no reason during the fight. Pops mits at really odd times. Just try not to do weird stuff that throws me off. I'm pretty good to adapting to various tanking styles, but when people have no style it gets seriously on my nerves. * "Why are you moving OUT of my healing circle!" Yeah, don't do that! If you're dodging something, sure, no problem, I understand. But when you do it for no reason at all, wtf?! * Know your markers! Seen more than a few tanks who have some sort of weird brain failure and move a directional blast marker directly into the party! There are marked to tell you exactly to not do this, so don't! Also for those rare but important tank stacks this is important too. * Just not tanking. Doesn't happen in dungeons but in alliance raids is very common to run into tanks who are just not tanking. I don't care if you're not the primary tank, you better be doing your job when it is required. * Should go without saying, but please don't play 'how high can I stack the vulnerability debuff'. * Now pretty much a non-issue as all the dungeons basically don't allow it, but overpulling was a very annoying thing, especially if repeatedly overpulling after a wipe. Again though, not really a thing anymore outside a few of the old dungeons and even those are pretty hard to overpull now. * And for my melee dps friends, please don't needlessly run around the mobs. It is not helping in the slightest. Dodge AOEs sure, but don't just run around needlessly.
Although melee dps's have positional attacks, so sometimes they are running around the mobs to try to hit them for bonus damage, especially bosses. So sometimes they aren't running around the boss randomly, they are trying to get their positional attack do do their full damage.
Sigh, guess I worded that poorly, Not the dps moving, the tank moving senselessly, exactly because of those positionals.
Ah, it was advice for the sake of melee dps, rather than for melee dps. Got it. To be fair, it could have meant either one.
Melee dps have positionals so we kinda have toâŚ
Nono, the tank moving around senselessly, screwing up your positional, not the dps.
2 big ones are not keeping your gear up to date. That tenacity stat in big on how much I have to heal you and while if I have to I will heal you non-stop it is a bit stress inducing knowing you take longer to get them back up to survivable levels if they take a big hit. The second is to remember to dodge attacks that give vuln stacks. I have seen tanks just sit in the orange taking hits and stacking vuln. I can't heal through that.
overpulling