Enthusiastic Tanks

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Originally Posted by Fortune_Cookie

I much prefer aggressive tanks that push themselves and the group. I'm not going to find the limit of what I can handle unless I go looking for it. Occasionally, that leads to wipes; so what? Fail better next time and all that...

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While I don't like doing an entire run low on Mana and CD's because the tank is an OMG hurry, there is some satisfaction in pulling it off.

Warriors that pull dungeons and don't use cds, DRK that stand in AoE to "regain mana", PLD that eat Susan Ex tankbuster without Sword Oath because muh dps...

Seen it all, healed it all. I am working with the cards I have been dealt. Sometimes things go smooth, sometimes you have to heal. Complaining won't change a thing, neither will throwing a hissy fit and letting people die.

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Originally Posted by winsock

Careful about power trips. Tanks can also play this game, you can either heal what the tank pulls or let him wipe the party until kicked.

Further, you don't actually need a healer to do expert. They can hold you there if they want to. That's what gets me. If I pull 1 group at a time, I don't need the healer at all. Healers are a waste of a slot if the pulls aren't big, esp if they don't dps

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And I'm confidant to heal most dungeons without a tank. That said, I don't mean to imply that there should only ever be single pulls, but please keep them sane, especially in leveling dungeons. Doma Castle for example. Pulling all the way to the first wall, so we have the first pack of 3 soldiers and the second pack of all the spiderbots? Yeah, please do that one. After that though, please do at least the colossus on it's own; it has a tendency to turn and instagib people if you lose track of it's aggro for even a second. So many times I get tanks who pull that entire section (Colossus, soldiers, mechs), and then not only are they losing aggro on everything because DPS AoE > Tank AoE right now, but they're taking more damage than I'm actually capable of healing in a GCD. When I have to Dissipate so I can chain 6 Lustrates on you in a row just to keep you alive on a trash pull, something is wrong.

It's a mentality from the older tanks, and it's what I've come to deal with trying to take up tanking in 4.0 coming from being a healer.

The world hits harder now, and there is a need to slow down if the party can't manage it. We're all one assembly line, each one has something that needs to be done so the other can do their job or more.

I don't wear STR accessories. I've gotten through most of the second phase in Susano and have done the EX trials. I rarely run into TP / Enmity issues, and if I do I have no problem asking for a Goad. Since it's a co-op game it shouldn't be an issue.

As I see more veteran tanks complain I'm realizing that they're stuck to the older ways without trying to figure out how to do things and make them better. Rather they want to go back to being DPS that can take a hit. That's why they praise PLD so much it seems. "I can holy spam! and not be a white mage!" I did a few as PLD b/c I need to level it for my retainer. I have yet to get to the nuking but so far it feels like the same PLD just I can't use my lv.52 ability every 30s.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

When I have to Dissipate so I can chain 6 Lustrates on you in a row just to keep you alive on a trash pull, something is wrong.

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Exactly, there's no reason as a healer you should need to do something like that. I'm guilty of it still time to time. I'll look at my HP and wonder "why is my HP going down so much?" well it's either because the fights dragged on way too long due to DPS / me pulling too much, I'm not using CD's, Healer isn't geared. Either way we aren't helping each other. These are all just general mistakes a person makes, myself included. I go "Rampart is up" ..well put that on, help the healer out. Unchain that Inner Beast and throw Infuriate back out there, go through my absorb combo more.

We are so used to doing things on our own that the most difficult part is now working as a team. I'm going back to healing now to level up SCH and WHM, selfish behavior is destroying the runs. But it's a mentality enforced by the previous patches.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

And I'm confidant to heal most dungeons without a tank. That said, I don't mean to imply that there should only ever be single pulls, but please keep them sane, especially in leveling dungeons. Doma Castle for example. Pulling all the way to the first wall, so we have the first pack of 3 soldiers and the second pack of all the spiderbots? Yeah, please do that one. After that though, please do at least the colossus on it's own; it has a tendency to turn and instagib people if you lose track of it's aggro for even a second. So many times I get tanks who pull that entire section (Colossus, soldiers, mechs), and then not only are they losing aggro on everything because DPS AoE > Tank AoE right now, but they're taking more damage than I'm actually capable of healing in a GCD. When I have to Dissipate so I can chain 6 Lustrates on you in a row just to keep you alive on a trash pull, something is wrong.

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Ultimately, i think we're just going to need to agree to disagree, as we are pretty far apart on premise, but for the sake of posting opinions on a discussion forum:
Firstly, I must say that aggro isnt really relevant to discussion, you can have aggro problems when pulling anything over 1 group. Sometimes its a bad tank, but they wont get better if they dont try. Other times its a bad dps who decides they want to go full burst during the pull instead of after the pull.

Other than that though, i think we just look at it with differing perspectives. I do both pulls you mention above, and usually end up using HG during the second pull along with some requiescat+conva+clemency spam, sometimes potions, etc. To me, I view this like: I got these awesome abilities at my disposal like Hallowed Ground and I might as well make good use of them. If I see a SCH pull out Dissipate to make something happen, I will view that SCH as skilled, say something like "good heals man!" in chat, and comm them at the end, because not every SCH can/will do that. When I am healing, I appreciate the being able to throw down my cooldowns (provided the tank is actually using their cds), it can get pretty boring otherwise. It a great feeling when you queue with a party of strangers, and have a quick+smooth run with strong pulls, heals, and dps.

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Originally Posted by winsock

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Coming from a scholar forcing us to use dissipation is not a good thing. If we have to burn it too fast we are left without a lot for close to 40secs. It's not something I like to have to do and is usually only a last ditch effort to salvage the situation. Especially since fey union and Dissipation are at odds with each other.

I've had an Astro who thought he was a DPS when I pulled a mere 7 mobs in an easy lvl 50 dungeon (resulting a wipe because I received no heals at all for a 10 second period). The Samurai then demanded I use Shield Oath against a 3-mob pull after I plain gave up on that AST, and did mobs 3 at a time with SwO, just because he doesn't know how to attack marked targets in numerical order and kept pulling aggro to himself.

I've also been in dungeons where a tank and healer queued together, and we could AoE down a 28-mob pull without the tank ever going below 80% HP, with the tank trusting my Goad enough to use exclusively AoE tactics.

And healed dungeons where the tank was crap and as the healer, I was the actual one holding all the aggro.

And tanked a dungeon in a NIN. That one was painful. It's not every day I can take aggro off a tank's primary target.

Point is, there are people that can play really well, and people that really shouldn't have access to keyboards. Some of the larger pullers are fine since they oGCD properly, know mechanics, and position well. Some of the smaller pullers are undergeared, and are a pain to keep alive even when dealing with a really small number of mobs. Going 'tanks should never pull large groups' is nonsensical because some tanks really can handle them, and with AoE specced DPS members can clear content more than twice as quickly that way. Going 'tanks should always pull large numbers' leads to far more wipes than necessary. And whoever who thought Sword Oath should never be used in a dungeon really needs to try using it for once, where some content is so easy a tank can solo a boss based on natural regen alone after the rest of the party wipes to a mechanic they've never seen before. I plain don't ever voluntarily ShO if Regen overheals me by itself.

Dungeons are easy enough that it's not just about being in a hurry, some players will try to do stuff that pushes limits for the sake of pushing the limit, because otherwise the content is boringly stale. Can't comment on l70 dungeons yet of course, but the original post was never that specific on what content was being addressed.

Large pull complaints really only apply to pug duty groups imo. However, they can absolutely work there too. They can just as easily be a nightmare. The problem is when the mentality of large pull or bust overrides any kind of common sense. If you want to large pull ask the group. Most don't always care one way or the other. Some prefer small others larger. Gear also plays a part. If you have crap gear do not run roughshod Rambo through the dungeon. Also if the healer or dps is new they too should be allowed at least one run with small pulls so you can easily see what mob does what. Then move on to faster runs. A little communication and education goes a very long way.

I really don't understand those of you who are complaining about being a healbot in big pulls. You do realize what you queued up as, right?

It's more about tanks overpulling and dying rather than about not wanting to heal. Party wipes are a waste of time.

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Originally Posted by Mikazuki_Aura

It's more about tanks overpulling and dying rather than about not wanting to heal. Party wipes are a waste of time.

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That's reasonable, sure. But I don't think that it's fair to complain that healers have less time to DPS now.

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Originally Posted by Mikazuki_Aura

It's more about tanks overpulling and dying rather than about not wanting to heal. Party wipes are a waste of time.

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This mainly.

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Originally Posted by Age_of_Oblivion

That's reasonable, sure. But I don't think that it's fair to complain that healers have less time to DPS now.

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I don't see why they shouldn't complain if the reason they can't dps is because the tank dropped to dps stance during the pull. I mean why is the tank able to do this but the healer told to heal more! It goes both ways. However, having to heal more doesn't bother me in the slightest because with good management you can always get a dot or two off at a minimum even with bad tanks.

Objectively speaking, though, a tank that uses their dps stance is going to be better than a tank that camps in tank stance 24/7. I'm not sure I see what the issue is.

The issue is that while a tank in DPS stance does more damage than a tank in tank stance, large pulls in DPS stance tend to mean that the healer isn't doing any damage.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Objectively speaking, though, a tank that uses their dps stance is going to be better than a tank that camps in tank stance 24/7. I'm not sure I see what the issue is.

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In a large pull situation where AoE is important a tank's damage from DPS stance isn't going to outweigh the DPS lost from the healer having to heal him that much more, it will almost always be a net damage loss unless you're in a specific single target situation. Diffetent jobs can make a bit of difference overall but in general healers just put out much better AoE.

Thunda-
The last few clears I had of Susano were almost ruined by a Warrior who sat in Deliverance the entire time after the Sword Phase, including every single tank buster that came their way. Their DPS was abysmal in a group that was good enough to skip the last set of gaols, and had been doing that since well before they joined, and by the end both my co-healer and myself often found our mana reserves to be pitifully low due to the excessive amounts of babying we had to dole out to that one particular tank. We cleared due to the skill of the other players, but I would argue that the time spent needing to focus entirely on healing that one player meant not only that we healers were no longer contributing to the DPS as well which would have combined topped what the WAR was putting out. Overall it was a net loss. Workable, but way more stress inducing than not.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

In a large pull situation where AoE is important a tank's damage from DPS stance isn't going to outweigh the DPS lost from the healer having to heal him that much more, it will almost always be a net damage loss unless you're in a specific single target situation. Diffetent jobs can make a bit of difference overall but in general healers just put out much better AoE.

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Do you actually have numbers on this or are you just speculating?

Some stuff to consider:
* Tank stance can be dropped at any time, it doesn't have to stay down the entire pull.
* It has little to no impact with certain skills / effects like hallowed ground , AoE stuns, blind, etc
* Damage reduction suffers from diminishing returns. Ex: ShO is only worth about 12% of total dmg if sentinel is active.
* Item level

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Originally Posted by winsock

Some stuff to consider:
* Tank stance can be dropped at any time, it doesn't have to stay down the entire pull.
* Damage reduction suffers from diminishing returns. Ex: ShO is only worth about 12% of total dmg if sentinel is active.
* Item level

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12% is nothing to snuff at. All that damage adds up quickly. And to be honest once a tank switches to dps stance they rarely go back to def stance. They start in tank stance simply to grab hate, then switch and pretty much just expect a healer to deal with it. The question really is how much extra damage is that tank adding being in dps stance and how much extra could the healer add if he wasn't. This is assuming said healer isn't struggling to keep tank up. If the healer is struggling then a tank switching to dps stance is just being a jerk to the healer. Granted once everyone involved over gears this is somewhat a moot point.

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Originally Posted by Feidam

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I don't think it is fair to predict that a tank will not reactivate tank stance when theory crafting. For example, I could predict the healer just isn't going to DPS at all, and it would make the discussion a moot point.

Another example would be HW PLD, it was worth while to drop tank stance briefly for SoC. 12% loss was worth it. SB is new enough to where I don't have a data, so I was asking if he actually had numbers or if it was speculation

Just in case (I'm not saying it's enough), I just wish to add some numbers to the discussion : for warriors, tank stance put their dmg power at 80%, and the dps stance at 105%. Just by looking at those number : 105/80 = 1.3125 --> in tank stance, the tank deal 31.25% more dps than in tank one, without even counting the new skills he has access to (and the more you have dps, the more you generate enmity too, and again I'm not saying it's enough to compensate for a long while).

Now that's said, the warrior's tank stance only make healing effects used on them better of 20%. I am wondering if it really can make a difference for the healer to be from "I could have a lot of dps while tank is in tank stance" to "I can't even land a damage oGCD because the tank is in dps stance".
If a warrior is in dps stance and use defensive CDs, I guess he will be tanky enough for a little while to let healers at least use their best dmg oGCD and maybe some important dmg GCD (but I don't know healers enough to know what deals most of their dmg).

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Originally Posted by winsock

I don't think it is fair to predict that a tank will not reactivate tank stance when theory crafting. For example, I could predict the healer just isn't going to DPS at all, and it would make the discussion a moot point.

Another example would be HW PLD, it was worth while to drop tank stance briefly for SoC. 12% loss was worth it. SB is new enough to where I don't have a data, so I was asking if he actually had numbers or if it was speculation

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I'm not theory crafting with that statement. A large portion of the tanks I've healed once they leave tank stance they are out of it until the start of the next pull. It maybe anecdotal but it is in game experience.

However, if the tank truly stance dances it's a bit different. Not many seem to optimize like that though. Of course so far SB has changed stance dancing for all but the DRK. Both paladin and warrior lose resources if they change stances.

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Originally Posted by Fannah

Now that's said, the warrior's tank stance only make healing effects used on them better of 20%. I am wondering if it really can make a difference for the healer to be from "I could have a lot of dps while tank is in tank stance" to "I can't even land a damage oGCD because the tank is in dps stance".
If a warrior is in dps stance and use defensive CDs, I guess he will be tanky enough for a little while to let healers at least use their best dmg oGCD and maybe some important dmg GCD (but I don't know healers enough to know what deals most of their dmg).

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Healers don't really have ogcd dps skills. So if we are not able to get casts in there is not much dpsing going on. But you do highlight my question some. Is that extra 31ish percent of damage from the tank in dps stance worth more than a healers dps contribution if they are not forced into heal botting. Those are the numbers we need. If healers dps out weighs that of the gains by the tank when. Dps stance then the healer's dps should be given priority. Of course this goes both ways should the opposite be true.

Not picking sides here. Just throwing out some numbers I've seen.

Most tanks seem to hang out between 1200 and 2000, with a heavy average towards the middle of that range. Most healers also seem to hang out in the 600 to 1800, with thier bias depending on if they are only using dots, or if they are getting casts off.

I know I've maintained over 2,600 on an EX dummy, and about 2,000 as White Mage on an easy DREX boss.

None of these numbers take into account AoE differences between healers and tanks.

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Originally Posted by winsock

Do you actually have numbers on this or are you just speculating?

Some stuff to consider:
* Tank stance can be dropped at any time, it doesn't have to stay down the entire pull.
* It has little to no impact with certain skills / effects like hallowed ground , AoE stuns, blind, etc
* Damage reduction suffers from diminishing returns. Ex: ShO is only worth about 12% of total dmg if sentinel is active.
* Item level

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It seems like your counter is based around the idea that tanks will stance dance which I have yet to see apart from one WAR that did it very well in Shisui. It seems like most consider the resource loss prohibitively costly which I can understand. I haven't really healed too many DRK's but I know their setup is a bit different.

That being said you didn't address the core argument here - none of the tanks are out DPSing their healers in AoE, especially if that healer is a WHM. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to drop tank stance, in single target go for it, but if I have Aero3, PoM/ThinAir/Holy and Assize there is not a tank that can keep up with that on 3+ enemies. You don't need a parser to see that.

The other situation I would see swapping being viable is if there are particularly poor DPS who eat lots of damage. If I'm AoE healing anyways you might as well join in the fun and help kill things.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

That being said you didn't address the core argument here - none of the tanks are out DPSing their healers in AoE, especially if that healer is a WHM.

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They don't need to outdps the healer to justify leaving tank stance. They just need to create a net gain in party DPS.

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Originally Posted by winsock

They don't need to outdps the healer to justify leaving tank stance. They just need to create a net gain in party DPS.

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Which will likely not happen in a situation with 3+ enemies because their AoE is not on par with a healer's. The tank in tank stance is hitting one thing at a time and causing the healer to have to heal him keeping them from hitting multiple things at a time. Full circle.

I'm not saying with a strong tank that situationally this isn't viable but for the majority of players who are pugging casual content this does not make sense.

You are wasting what would be damage GCD's and mana healing you to help your personal DPS increase.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

WHM is special in that DPSing helps a lot. Your 7 seconds of stun extend the tank's cooldowns quite a bit (since it's not 7 consecutive seconds, more like 10s of mitigation)

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This for sure. I recently started realizing that starting Holy spamming at the start of a pull is usually inefficient as most (reasonable) tanks will have cooldowns then. This is very inefficient as the defensive cooldown mitigates damage from attacking enemies, not stunned ones. So now I start to spam Holy after their cooldowns are coming off or at most I'll throw out one to stun long enough to throw out an Aero 3 if I haven't already put that out there.

The context of "just before a boss fight" seems irrelevant as most bosses don't start a fight putting on the pain until 20seconds or more into a fight and the first is usually just an AoE you can cast a normal Medica II to mitigate. Throw a Regen on the tank and keep a lily on deck and you should be able to handle any surprise long enough for healing cooldowns to come back.

I apologize as I am totally guilty of this. I generally pull as much as I can and let the chips fall where they may. I have, however, had healers ask me to pull less and I've always respected that request. The last thing I want is for the person keeping me alive. To have a panic attack.

If a tank's health is going down like panties on prom night, then there's not room for me to dps. I'm busy. If the party doesn't like it, then the tank needs to pull less. My first job is to keep everyone alive. Give me windows to dps and I have no issues doing so, and can do it rather effectively. But party health and well-being comes first.

I've told some tanks to stop pulling like insane monkeys before. There are some tanks either from gear or from cooldown usage who just should not pull big.

Can't stop won't stop! The best tanks still pull 10 or more mobs before stopping, so clearly that's the right way to play.

I think its fun when the tank pulls a lot and I'm doing my best to keep up while throwing Aero 3 and Holy in if I have oGCDs available to cover.

The only problem I have is when the DPS is brain dead and can't AoE well (BLMs not knowing their Flare rotation for example) or gets hit by AoE and possibly dies while I need to focus all healing on the tank. Bad dps is the worst.

Am i the only one who pradctically begs the tanks to do big pulls? i love them it makes the game feel fun ! what i hate are those bad Dps who keep getting hit by stuff... im sorry this a big pull and i need all my stuffs to keep the tank alive so use your own stuff to stay alive DPs please.....As others already stated why do i even need my big CDs on a dungeon boss? ...
TL;DR i love big pulls, sorry not sorry.

I'm glad this thread has continued, and has stayed mostly in the realm of healthy conversation.

In the end, we all want to clear our dungeom farm as fast as possible. Each day we have a different tolerance for stress. Ideally, there would be a which conversation at the start of the dungeon, but that doesn't happen too often. Perhaps we could make that more of a norm.

We should also decide on a definition for Big.

If a tank says they are new I am quite happy to let them pick the pace and if all is wel tell them that they can feel free to pull more if they want. Newer tanks haven't had the time to learn how to best judge group ability levels.

I honestly prefer big pulls even as a SCH in the current metagame and quite enjoy the synergy that comes from healing a tank who is smart about weaving in their cooldowns. Only time I despise larger pulls is when the tank arbitrarily decide that cooldowns are for chumps or that standing in DPS stance for the boss is a good idea. Otherwise go for it!

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

You are wasting what would be damage GCD's and mana healing you to help your personal DPS increase.

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If it results in a net gain for the party as a whole, it isn't wasting the healer's GCD.

As a quick napkin-math example, say you have 10 targets. 1 holy would be worth about 1300 potency. On a PLD under FoF, dropping tank stance is a 275 potency increase per gcd of TE, so if a PLD can do 5 TE before costing a WHM an *additional* gcd (meaning on top of the GCDs the would miss out on regardless), dropping tank stance is worth it (and that is before CoS and auto attacks)

That isn't a tight metric to meet, esp given the diminishing returns on damage reduction.

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Originally Posted by winsock

If it results in a net gain for the party as a whole, it isn't wasting the healer's GCD.

As a quick napkin-math example, say you have 10 targets. 1 holy would be worth about 1300 potency. On a PLD under FoF, dropping tank stance is a 275 potency increase per gcd of TE, so if a PLD can do 5 TE before costing a WHM an *additional* gcd (meaning on top of the GCDs the would miss out on regardless), dropping tank stance is worth it (and that is before CoS and auto attacks)

That isn't a tight metric to meet, esp given the diminishing returns on damage reduction.

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That's only if the damage measures up. Just because the potency is equal doesn't mean the attack did the same amount of damage. So if the healer damage for the gcd is naturally higher due to scaling then it would take even more from the tank to make up the deficit during that gcd or vice versa if a tanks is higher.

From his tank stance, the warrior only has +20% from healing spells (except if you have heals according to max HP, then the tank stance of warriors also up their HP by 25%). So it's like every 5 heals, you would gain one. So I don't believe we can see it like "healers could use tons of dmg if the tank were in tank stance". And I believe the tank see himself like "I have to land attacks anyway to keep enmity on", so better having them way stronger with defensive CD once enough enmity has been generated.

I told about the 31.25% more dmg just by the % bonus and malus difference. But there is also the access to more powerful skills (so it's more than just 31.25%), and also a bonus up to +10% crit in dps stance (with the 10 stacks of rage, so I believe it's 1% crit bonus per rage point).

I just mean a huge part of the tankyness of a warrior is not coming only from his tank stance, but a lot from his CD too. Of course both are needed.

I think that the problem is coming from the "I'm the leader' side of the tank, and everytime we queue for roulette, it's written "bonus for playing tank as it's the rarest role played" so they feel even more as rare leader people need. It's not on purpose but I believe the system to kinda make them feel so (as some just ask to be kicked so they will get another party but know that usually dps won't dare to waste time as they wasted enough, and the tank knows it). It's important to communicate, and the problem if there is no communication is that the one who has to initiate fights is the head of the party. Someone may be too slow and he will have to be aware and slow the pace, but he still is the one who take the decision for going for the next step 83% of the time (source statistic provided by the Pr. Barney Stinson).

I also find tanks who chain pull quickly are rare in this game, and many who mass pull do that stop and go BS thats just detrimental. Personally as a tank/healer I prefer to just jump from small pull to small pull quickly. And quite frankly the "speedy way" loses a lot of its speed when you have to wait on healer MP or you wipe, and god help us if they try to mass pull with like MNK/DRG/RDM for DPS, SMN/BLM/SAM/NIN if not garbage players can usually finish off a pull in AOE (no opinion on BRD/MCH yet as I havent seen enough of them AoEing yet). Far rather have time to DPS than be worrying if a tank will survive for 6 sec or not.