Dear Paladins

I'm a tank main and recently leveled my SCH to 80. I was shocked how many tanks: 1 - Dont do big pulls, and 2 - Run into PLDs who casted Clemency before my excog would proc (keeping themselves above 50% HP)

I will say that the 10% of times a tank would actually pull wall to wall were somewhat of a shock, because I had so rarely had the opportunity to practice my healing rotation. When playing both roles, I would encourage yourself to allow a wipe once or even twice while attempting wall to wall pulls in order to help your healer learn. Pushing PuGs to the limit and trying to play optimally might cause a wipe and slow the run, but it will improve the skill level of the player base. I believe in giving people a chance to prove themselves before assuming they are bad players. If they aren't making it, try and offer advice where you can.

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Originally Posted by Sabrenn

Just gona leave this here

https://i.imgur.com/ZrvyBVM.png

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Is this the only healing spell astrologian has?

I had sooo many TERRBILE healers who just let me die, because they wanted me to hover under 50% hp all the time. When i meet healer like that i just leave the duty, not bother to murder myself over someone who is risking the wipe all the time.
Tank running around at 30% hp is super easy to be bursted down by mobs, since a lot of them in this expansion has a "stronger attacks" single target skills that does more damage than usual auto attacks, especially during the small downtime im between deffensive cooldowns, a tank at that level of hp without CD just die in an instant. Not to mention that tank in this situation is forced to run around in circles avoiding any kind of aoe damage, one mistake and one AOE eaten by a tank will wipe the party, and these aoe sometimes hit like a truck and could take up to 20% of tanks damage.

Healers who let their tank to run around with 30-40% are bad healers and should immediately stop playing this class.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I too am talking about PUGs, it's the standard healer playstyle to let your tank drop low and use big instant heals to bring them back up safely. Constantly keeping your tank above 50% HP is ineffective and bad healer play in any situation, and shouldn't be encouraged, much less demanded by tanks. Just focus on handling your own role and trust people to handle theirs. :) Then, if it turns out they can't, you can adjust.

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Lettting a tank drop low and using big instant heals is a sign of a bad healer. If i see any healer that keeps letting me drop low for whatever reason, then i get the impression that they don't know what their doing and start using clemency more. And if they start bitching at me for using clemency a lot, i ignore them. Because you know why.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

Lettting a tank drop low and using big instant heals is a sign of a bad healer. If i see any healer that keeps letting me drop low for whatever reason, then i get the impression that they don't know what their doing and start using clemency more. And if they start bitching at me for using clemency a lot, i ignore them. Because you know why.

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So healers should ignore their oGCD kit and spam GCD heals so tanks don't get scared for being a little low on health? That's like saying, oh I'll never use holmgang/superbolide/living dead because we don't want to scare the healers.

It is not my job to help the healer improve when i tank or to help the tank to improve when I heal. In DF my job is to make the run as efficient as possible and letting my tank die, or causing a wipe because I need to help the heal to learn, causing the run take longer than it need then the responsibility fall to me

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Originally Posted by kashi11

So healers should ignore their oGCD kit and spam GCD heals so tanks don't get scared for being a little low on health? That's like saying, oh I'll never use holmgang/superbolide/living dead because we don't want to scare the healers.

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They should not risk party a wipe, these oGCD are made that way for a reason they are emergency just like holmgang/superbolide, not for their casual use every 40-60 seconds.
There 2 more players who are better with tank NOT DYING due to a mistake.
Doing that you give your tank no space for a mistake, you have no control over him, he could get hit by 2 aoes and eat dirt and so is going everyone in the party costing you a ton more time than silly GCD use.

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Originally Posted by kashi11

So healers should ignore their oGCD kit and spam GCD heals so tanks don't get scared for being a little low on health? That's like saying, oh I'll never use holmgang/superbolide/living dead because we don't want to scare the healers.

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Yeah so it seems, healers shouldn't play their jobs well so that some tanks who don't understand how healers work won't get scared. :D

Edit: Of course playing the healer job well includes knowing how low you can safely let the tank drop without risking their death and a party wipe, and following their cooldown use and taking that into consideration while planning your healing. From reading this thread, it seems to me that some tanks are not very familiar with how potent healing abilities are and how they are used effectively, and get scared even when the healer is using them safely and correctly. It is of course a different matter if the healer is indeed letting their tank drop below the safe threshold, but I haven't personally witnessed that kind of a situation while playing a tank (or DPS) in dungeon pugs. From the opposite perspective, this reminds me of the pre-Shadowbringers tank stance discussions, and some healers who were complaining about tanks who were (as they should) doing dungeon boss fights in DPS stance.

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Originally Posted by Taika

Yeah so it seems, healers shouldn't play their jobs well so that some tanks who don't understand how healers work won't get scared. :D


Edit: Of course playing the healer job well includes knowing how low you can safely let the tank drop without risking their death and a party wipe, and following their cooldown use and taking that into consideration while planning your healing. From reading this thread, it seems to me that some tanks are not very familiar with how potent healing abilities are and how they are used effectively, and get scared even when the healer is using them safely and correctly. It is of course a different matter if the healer is indeed letting their tank drop below the safe threshold, but I haven't personally witnessed that kind of a situation while playing a tank (or DPS) in dungeon pugs.

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Yes, people just need to have a little more faith in the community. Better to grow as a community than gimp each other by assuming no one knows what they are doing.

Pretty much all of the bosses in Shadowbringers leveling dungeons has a mini tank buster that argues against letting them hover at low health. The second boss casts "The Tickler" in Holminster Switch as one example. I have used the Dark Knight barrier "The Blackest Night" and it is instantly broken by the busters (which we ironically want to happen so Dark Arts procs for a free mana attack). The Blackest Night Barrier is about 25% of the Dark Knight's Maximum HP to get a reference frame here. Do be mindful of these mechanics if you ride the danger zone to DPS more as a healer. Make sure the tank isn't going to get gibbed at 10% by "The Tickler" 3 seconds before Benediction is used.

As for the Astrologian question if 2 charges of Essential Dignity is their only oGCD heal, not quite. It's their main one, but they also have Horoscope, Collective Unconscious, and Earthly Star. Earthly Star actually does a decent AoE heal as well as a small damage burst if you let it charge for 10s. As for Collective Unconscious, I give you that to say it's not very practical to use all the time. You need people to walk into you for it to work.

when I need to stack 2 big cd in order to not die, that's a bad healer

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Originally Posted by kashi11

Yes, people just need to have a little more faith in the community. Better to grow as a community than gimp each other by assuming no one knows what they are doing.

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You know what happens when a tank assumes healers know what they're doing? Wipes. Should always test the waters first to make sure your healer is up to the task, because a lot of them really will focus exclusively on DPS and let their tank drop down low enough that an auto could take them out. Conversely, you also encounter a lot of healers that won't DPS at all; they just spam healing spells, even when you're full.

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

when I need to stack 2 big cd in order to not die, that's a bad healer

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If you are stacking 2 cooldowns together, you're the bad tank.

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

If you are stacking 2 cooldowns together, you're the bad tank.

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Depends on the situation. Rampart + Sheltron = 40% mitigation. Which gives a lot of leeway if sheltron is not needed further for another 30 seconds or so. Remember that anytime the oath gauge is full, any excess is wasted.

Something tells me you are the bad (or at least uninformed) tank...

I didn't think it was possible to contain this much salt in a single thread.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Depends on the situation. Rampart + Sheltron = 40% mitigation. Which gives a lot of leeway if sheltron is not needed further for another 30 seconds or so. Remember that anytime the oath gauge is full, any excess is wasted.

Something tells me you are the bad (or at least uninformed) tank...

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Something tells me you have problems reading.

He said "BIG COOLDOWNS". If you call Sheltron a big cooldown you have other problems besides the reading one.

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

If you are stacking 2 cooldowns together, you're the bad tank.

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Lol not at all. Especially with the emergence of the almost on-demand CDs all Tanks now have (Shelltron, TBN, Heart of Stone, RI), using 2 bigger cds (ex. Rampart + Sentinel) isn't really that big of a deal, and it definitely doesn't make someone a bad Tank. Your criteria for Tank skill seems like it's rubbish my friend.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Lol not at all. Especially with the emergence of the almost on-demand CDs all Tanks now have (Shelltron, TBN, Heart of Stone, RI), using 2 bigger cds (ex. Rampart + Sentinel) isn't really that big of a deal, and it definitely doesn't make someone a bad Tank. Your criteria for Tank skill seems like it's rubbish my friend.

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Unless you have excellent DPS or you are overgeared, enemies will stay alive more than 10-20 seconds which is the duration of a tank cooldown, if the mitigation falls off the tank and enemies are still alive, it's most likely a wipe. Unless you pull each pack individually then it doesn't matter, but I'm assuming wall to wall pulls.

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Originally Posted by Hezzlocks

It saddens me that things like Benediction is designated as a "dps" tool to be abused to allow more time dpsing, when it's clear that the original intent of the spell is an "oh crap" button when things go sideways and someone is about to die.

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The reason no decent WHM uses Benediction as an "Oh Crap" button is because it's a terrible Oh Crap button.

Due to the long animation and the lag of the spell going off, more often than not your tank is going to be on the floor.

It's much better if you just plan to use it as a regular spell you have and pop it when the tank gets to about 20% or so.

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Originally Posted by Marc-Vigar

Unless you have excellent DPS or you are overgeared, enemies will stay alive more than 10-20 seconds which is the duration of a tank cooldown, if the mitigation falls off the tank and enemies are still alive, it's most likely a wipe. Unless you pull each pack individually then it doesn't matter, but I'm assuming wall to wall pulls.

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I was just about to point out the fact that tanks are now /supposed/ to stack cooldowns to take tankbusters (one short, one long) until I saw this here post talking about what appears to be trash pulls instead. Definitely shouldn't be stacking cooldowns on trash pulls. That /is/ being a bad tank. Best method I've found is to stagger them. GNB, for example, would go Heart of Stone, Camouflage, Heart of Stone, Rampart, Heart of Stone, Nebula, Arm's Length, repeat.

PLD: hp drops to 65%
SCH: Broil
PLD: Clemency, this is why healer dps meta is a cancer on ff14 blah blah
Excog: am I a joke to you?

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Conversely, you also encounter a lot of healers that won't DPS at all; they just spam healing spells, even when you're full.

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I would take them to my party every time if i could.

I am completely feed up with healers, who are letting me run around at under 50% hp all the time. Last time on my PLD i wiped one time and prevented the second one with hollowing grounds. The healer keept throwing deeps skills instead of healing it.
I am not pulling wall to wall with healers who let me simply die, no no no. I never had an issue with only-heal healers, NEVER i could pull everything i want with them, our team dps is still high to melt it down anyway and it goes way faster than with healers who risk it all.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Lol not at all. Especially with the emergence of the almost on-demand CDs all Tanks now have (Shelltron, TBN, Heart of Stone, RI), using 2 bigger cds (ex. Rampart + Sentinel) isn't really that big of a deal, and it definitely doesn't make someone a bad Tank. Your criteria for Tank skill seems like it's rubbish my friend.

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No tank should ever consider stacking up CD's.
If things go wrong, there is our hollowing grounds and etc abilities.
If that is not enough to prevent wipe, then just wipe it.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

No tank should ever consider stacking up CD's.
If things go wrong, there is our hollowing grounds and etc abilities.
If that is not enough to prevent wipe, then just wipe it.

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Eden Savage tank busters... When the tanks take less damage the healers can have more uptime on helping kill the bosses. Almost every cooldown is up by the time each set of busters comes up.

Just. Communicate.

All of these issues are so easily avoided by simply talking to eachother. Do you start audibly crying when your health falls below 50%? Tell your healer that. Does telling everyone on the forums that you, specifically, don't like falling below 50% solve anything at all? No, this whole conversation literally solves nothing. All the talking points ITT revolve around the fact that you guys are just sitting in silence, twiddling your thumbs, rolling the dice and hoping that your healer has the same idea you have (or vice versa).

Just talk to eachother. Or run with a healer friend who already knows what you're comfortable with. It's genuinely that simple.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

No tank should ever consider stacking up CD's.
If things go wrong, there is our hollowing grounds and etc abilities.
If that is not enough to prevent wipe, then just wipe it.

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Uhhhh. We're actually supposed to stack CDs for tankbusters, though?

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

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I'm in favor of this guy taking every single 0 dps healer in all of his parties if it means I get all the good healers for fast runs.

Also Hallowed Ground is not used for emergency, you plan ahead when you'll use it. Dungeon => first big pull then use it again whenever it's up (usually during final boss if you have a good party); raid/trials>either to cheese a mechanic or a tank buster, early enough so that you can use it twice during the fight.

You're supposed to stack shelltron with one of your stronger cooldowns, same with arm's length in trash pulls.

Granted, I do wish they would start taking a design approach where tools like Hallowed Ground are actually meant for emergency use instead of cheesing.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Granted, I do wish they would start taking a design approach where tools like Hallowed Ground are actually meant for emergency use instead of cheesing.

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So using a Defensive Cooldown to take a tankbuster or mitigating damage is cheesing LUL

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Granted, I do wish they would start taking a design approach where tools like Hallowed Ground are actually meant for emergency use instead of cheesing.

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Imagine thinking that Hallowed Ground would even work as an emergency button with it's year long animation.

BTW, if you have a tankbuster coming up, that is going to kill you, is that not an emergency?

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

Lettting a tank drop low and using big instant heals is a sign of a bad healer. If i see any healer that keeps letting me drop low for whatever reason, then i get the impression that they don't know what their doing and start using clemency more. And if they start bitching at me for using clemency a lot, i ignore them. Because you know why.

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It's not a healers job to keep a tanks health at 100%. It's their job to stop it reaching 0%. If a tank doesn't die, there's nothing wrong with letting them drop low then healing.

Bad tank with a toxic attitude blaming healers for their own inadequacies.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

It's not a healers job to keep a tanks health at 100%. It's their job to stop it reaching 0%. If a tank doesn't die, there's nothing wrong with letting them drop low then healing.

Bad tank with a toxic attitude blaming healers for their own inadequacies.

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i dont necessarily agree either, but you might not wanna be the person in the mirror either. Dont be the toxic guy attacking the toxic guy. You think you're the hero, but the rest of us need to clean up all the rubble.

Frankly, being a "bad" or "good" healer based on this is....


This entire scenario is filled with a whole lot of nuance. and frankly, even on paper, you cant just say the healer is good or not based on whatever % hp the tank is at before it goes back up. or even the tank. its too broad, general, and open. a good healer might let a tank drop low momentarily to let their DPS hardcast with a tetra, bene, ED, or lustrate sitting in the back and the tank shouldnt be panicking. or the healer is bad and doesnt grasp the fact that 10k HP is death is the next server tick, because even tanks are just more blood for the blood lily.

both situations the healer is intentionally letting the tank sit low. arguing that point on opposite spectrums doesnt help, though. this "baseline" is far too broad without any other context or specific other guidelines to go off. I know this is the tank forums, but arguing whatever % of hp you keep the tank at is only going to generate more of the latter spectrum of healers if theres any sort of new or impressionable healers reading any of this.

and this is even assuming the tank is great; rotating cooldown, using tools like clemency, equib, or heaven forbid their invulns. a tank without busting any cooldowns is going to make even the best healers in the game look like a terrible one if you were too look purely as the buttons they use in a vacuum.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

So using a Defensive Cooldown to take a tankbuster or mitigating damage is cheesing LUL

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

Imagine thinking that Hallowed Ground would even work as an emergency button with it's year long animation.

BTW, if you have a tankbuster coming up, that is going to kill you, is that not an emergency?

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Care to point out where I made any of the above statements? See, I'm of the opinion that you two took that out of context on purpose so you could have some form of justification for otherwise unprovoked condescension. Either way, that's some gold medal winning mental gymnastics.

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Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

You do not need to spam Clemency every time you go below 95% health. You are probably annoying the crap out of your healer, please stop. :rolleyes:

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Dear healers.
You do not need to tell us what to do, because we usualy silent about you pretending to be DPS. Please stop. Or start be competent enough so we will stop warry about our HP while you spam some Holy (or other "DPS" button).

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Care to point out where I made any of the above statements? See, I'm of the opinion that you two took that out of context on purpose so you could have some form of justification for otherwise unprovoked condescension. Either way, that's some gold medal winning mental gymnastics.

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I understand your point of view.

Some things in this game feel a little backwards sometimes, even if they work well other times.

We definitely have to learn to do things that go against our instincts. That's the crux of this whole issue, in fact.

We get away with a lot of risk-taking in this game, and our instincts tell us this is bad practice for obvious reasons.

This last bit isn't really directed at you. Just thinking aloud. Speedrunning is fine, but we survive by managing resources. Time is a resource we (mostly) have in abundance, and the GCDs people burn on Clemency are naturally seen as a very small price to pay when weighing the risks.

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Originally Posted by Rakshazi

Dear healers.
You do not need to tell us what to do, because we usualy silent about you pretending to be DPS. Please stop. Or start be competent enough so we will stop warry about our HP while you spam some Holy (or other "DPS" button).

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I mean they aren't wrong. Though there are legitimate uses for Clemency depending on the healer and/or pull. But you better not be using it when excog is on you because then you risk it being an overheal. I still remember the paladin from Skalla in stormblood, spammed clemency so much that my earthly star was a 100% overheal. Any restorative spell used too much is bad. Key phrase "too much."

But don't be the kind of person that has to be so petty as to generalize all healers as people wanting to dps and only dps.

Edit: Though some of the posts on the first page kind of made me sad really. We have healers blaming tanks, tanks blaming healers. I mean come on now. That's sad in itself. If you have to automatically assume someone is bad then I think you need to take a step back. I dabble in all roles and have been on the receiving end of both sides. Some people can handle responsibility, others cannot. Tanks and healers need to both be sufficiently geared. Tanks need to rotate cooldowns properly, healers need to make sure you do not die (provided people actually learn to dodge aoes). People really like to over complicate things.

paladin attracts the biggest babies, i swear. you're not gonna die because you scraped your knee.

i play drk which has very little self sustain now and i've seldom died because the healer let me drop to 20%, even 10% to dps more and bring me back up with an ogcd heal. it doesn't matter how much hp you have as long as it doesn't hit zero

no, it's the healers who do nonsense like spam heal with cure 1 in akademia that make me wary

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Care to point out where I made any of the above statements? See, I'm of the opinion that you two took that out of context on purpose so you could have some form of justification for otherwise unprovoked condescension. Either way, that's some gold medal winning mental gymnastics.

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What context is there to misunderstand, you literally said tank invulns should be used for emergencies as opposed to cheesing, there is literally nothing to take out of context mate. So cheesing is, before it was patched, was people stripping naked and re-apply gear then have healers heal people from critical health to generate LB3 before the fight even started. As said, thankfully it has been patched. Making use of invulns and planning out their uses in fights is usually smart plays so it can help take the stress off of healers while actually making use of buttons instead of leaving them gathering dust, just in case something may or may not happen.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

What context is there to misunderstand, you literally said tank invulns should be used for emergencies as opposed to cheesing, there is literally nothing to take out of context mate. So cheesing is, before it was patched, was people stripping naked and re-apply gear then have healers heal people from critical health to generate LB3 before the fight even started. As said, thankfully it has been patched. Making use of invulns and planning out their uses in fights is usually smart plays so it can help take the stress off of healers while actually making use of buttons instead of leaving them gathering dust, just in case something may or may not happen.

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Okay, there is an obvious disconnect going on here. At no point have I insinuated that tanks should only use their invulns for emergencies in the game's current build. I've been one of the people arguing /against/ that mentality. What I was getting at with the single out-of-context comment was that they need to come down hard on tanks by nerfing our invulns into the ground. We can use them too freely. I feel that they should have massively increased cooldowns, drastically reduced durations, and reduction or removal of their start up delays. It is my opinion that forcing players to do each and every mechanic as it comes up would lead to more engaging gameplay. This would have the benefit of increasing the likelihood of errors being made which would in turn increase the probability of someone dying, leading to more interesting encounters.

As for your second point; the community at large typically refers to anything that negates or bypasses an intended mechanic as cheesing. Does this mean it's bad? No. That also doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It's just a word we use to describe doing something like that, and it so happens that tank immunities are usually the most effective means of pulling that sort of thing off. We should all be doing it at every possible opportunity to minimize risk and maximize efficiency, and indeed, most of us do. So, when one of us refers to something as cheesing a mechanic, we don't mean cheating. We mean finding a creative solution that allows us to reduce or in some cases entirely negate the threat posed by that mechanic. I strongly advocate the use of any shortcuts (as long as they don't violate TOS in some way) we find in the game's current build. My position on this will not change until or unless the way tank invulns work is altered in a way that is not conducive to continuing this behavior.

Funny Story. Came back to the game after a long break (stopped after reaching 70 in SB, never did the end game). Been leveling my pally in DF, and don't even really pay attention to my health bar until I die. first time, I was thinking, "should I use a heal? do I even have one?" couldn't find it until I realized that I never even got it on the hotbar :D

I'm pretty chill about the whole thing. I don't worry about the healer until I die, then I keep an eye on things. If they get frustrated by me using my heal, oh well. My goal is the run gets finished and everyone makes it through. Not sure why we'd nitpick outside of that (shrug). Wasted energy.

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Originally Posted by ilione

paladin attracts the biggest babies, i swear. you're not gonna die because you scraped your knee.

i play drk which has very little self sustain now and i've seldom died because the healer let me drop to 20%, even 10% to dps more and bring me back up with an ogcd heal. it doesn't matter how much hp you have as long as it doesn't hit zero

no, it's the healers who do nonsense like spam heal with cure 1 in akademia that make me wary

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So, aside from your gross over-simplification of why most PLDs tend to frequently clemency, I need to address this quote:

"It doesn't matter how much hp you have as long as it doesn't hit zero"

Yeah no. It's not dare as black and white as you're trying to make it seem. I'm a bit concerned that I need to even say this in a discussion that (I'm assuming) end-game players are participating in, but it DOES matter how much HP one has. Why you ask? Because the Tank dying is something that needs to be avoided at all costs; it is a grave failure that carries dire consequences. Tanking (or doing any role in this game for that matter) on a low HP bar allows much less room for error/mistakes from yourself AND party-members and GREATLY increases your risk of dying (again, can't believe I have to say this). You want to minimize this risk as much as you can, because like I said earlier, a Tank's death is something that NEEDS to be avoided. It's not something that a skilled player would toy around with and try to chance.

You bragging about Tanking while being at ~20% HP is nothing to proud of; this isn't a good thing at all, it's the opposite. What you're describing is very reckless behavior, you're unnecessarily increasing your risk of death for what? So adds can die a second or two faster? Give me a break. And you say you've "seldom died" as a result of this so it must be fine, that's just silly. Dying at all from this type of play is a huge problem, because it's a situation that can, and should be avoided.

Then you even go as far as to insult healers that actually try to keep you healed and well off to ensure that death isn't even an option for you. You say they make you "wary", lol. You want to know the difference between being stuck at 20% HP and stuck at 100%? With the latter, there's no possibility of you dying if the Healer looks away for a few seconds, with the former, there is.

As a Tank main (PLD/DRK main too, by the way), I'm disappointed in your reply, DRK.

I will never get those kind of healers.

You are a healer, first and for most, so you are to keep the group alive and going, THAT is your main job. And yes, when everyone is looking good on health and you have the time to DPS, then do it, but only then. If you can't grasp that, you failed at your job. It's that plain and simple.