Healers advice for tanks

I found it interesting from another discussion that dragging a mob along to the next pack can disrupt the healer role, I think it was mp regeneration.

But as someone who has yet to level a healer, I was curious as to what else I may do that makes life for my healers difficult. I was wondering what the most common tank faux pas are? Or even some of the not so common? What do we do to make you close your eyes, slap your forehead and shake your head?

Chain pulling in that fashion is frustrating as a whm that likes to holy, I'm counting on the out of battle ticks to replenish my mp. Plus, I like to buff with stoneskin or adloquium just before the last mob in a pack dies, which is more difficult when the tank takes off before the last mob is dead. It's not usually a huge deal, but killing everything allows for a more streamlined process, where everyone starts every pull with near full HP/MP/TP, which is always nice when dealing with bigger pulls.

The only other thing that tans my hide is when a tank pulls a train for a speed run, and fails to tag each mob as they are picked up. Grabbing everything lets me re-stoneskin/galvanize mid pull if necessary, and let's me start cure bombing right away with much less risk of pulling hate.

Otherwise, a tank that follows the basics, holds hate, mitigates, and positions mobs tightly and keeping cleaves off the party, is doing fine by me.

"Things that make healing difficult" that Tanks do include:

1) Dragging mobs doesn't reset aggro so
- Natural MP/HP regen doesn't return to 3X rate
- Skills that can't be used during combat can't be used (eg StoneSkin II), The Praetorium is super-bad for this when skipping groups of monsters, because they never release their aggro-lock.

2) OverPulling/Speedpulling without saying where you're going to stop.
- In some other dungeons it's possible for the geography of the dungeon to get in the way, so avoid taking corners (usually at the end of stairs), otherwise the heals will miss if the healer isn't directly behind you.

3) Standing in avoidable AOE's on purpose, this is something newbies do. If you're still doing this by level 30, stop tanking.

4) Not using the Tank stance (Defiance/Shield Oath.) So if you're not using them in dungeons, the healer is probably pulling enmity away from you every second heal.

5) Not waiting for stoneskin (WHM/CNJ) before overpulling/boss-pulling.

6) Not waiting for MP/TP to regenerate on all players before pulling the boss.

7) Not calling MT in CT. I think I end up in the party with the main tank more than half the time, but I don't really know this until the boss has a target. At least twice I've been in parties with the MT, and the MT gets 1-hit-stomped several seconds in. If you're not geared enough, don't call MT.

Shield Oath is level 40

Those that love doing big pulls will hate you for pulling small groups in a never ending battle train.
Those that love doing small pulls in a never ending battle train will hate you for pulliing big groups :/

There is just no way to make everyone happy...

But everyone loves a Tank that keeps the mobs on them and needs as little heals as possible.

I find it pretty rare that tanks drag half dead mobs to the next pack, thankfully. It's generally impractical due to the fact that your out of combat regeneration doesn't kick in when dragging mobs like that, which can lead to MP/TP issues, especially when AoEing.

One common sin is that the majority of the tanks I encounter through the Duty Finder are really bad at using defensive abilities. They virtually go unused the entire dungeon run unless I let them drop to 20% remaining HP or something (usually planned, I tend to Holy spam and Benediction the tank to continue Holy spamming whenever Benediction's off cooldown, pretty much), which is amazingly annoying on really large pulls (3+ packs). And tank busters will more or less never be mitigated, even with a 5 second cast time and blinking neon sign telegraphs.

Edit: I was also just reminded of the other extreme of this issue. Tanks (or heck, even DPS) who pop every single cooldown they have before the pull, wait like five-ten seconds, wasting between all of the cooldown or half of it once the boss is actually engaged. I've had some especially dumb Warriors start off with Berserk, activate everything, and then get Pacified as they bodypull the boss. You can imagine how smooth the pull is in that scenario, even with a quick Esuna. :p

Paladins are usually good enough at switching to Sword Oath when not tanking, but Warriors will more often than not continue off-tanking/DPSing in Defiance. -_-

The worst things that I'm annoyed with everytime it happens :

- The tank pulls when I'm still in the middle of casting shield/stoneskin.
- The tank starts running, pulls a few mobs, stops, flash flash flash, then keeps running to the next pack for a "bigger" pack. Well, as soon as you stopped, I assumed we were gonna fight, and I burst my cd such as Divine Seal, Presence of Mind... All that for nothing.

- The tank pulls a huge pack, then thinks it's enough, stops, and "stands" without doing anything else than a mere flash combo. When it's a large pack, it may occur that the tank is already below 30% hp when he stops running. To top you off, we need something else than "Cure". So we may need "Cure 2" or even a "benediction" and when we are in such situation, we cannot wait until you're finished settling all the mobs. To prevent that, I really like when the tank can cast "Invincible" on himself (even better when announced in chat) just before he finishes pulling, so that we can tell "Ok, he casted it, I can afford to wait a bit to cast my cures and give him time to settle aggro well".
- A tank is usually our primary target, we don't need a tank to call for "Berserk ends, debuff me please". We already know. (at least if the healer is good enough)
- Anything that involves "healing improvement" should be annouced in the chatbox. You cast "Convalescence" ? Let us know ! Our healing may vary depending on it.
- About "Cover". Not many healers are aware of that skill. They see themselves being "buffed", and don't have a clue about what that icon means. I've seen some even trying to dispell it...Very often, they'll even run away and get out of range. A macro will help . "I cover you, <t>, please stay close"
- Provocation deserves an announcement (same as switching MT/OT). As an example, I was running WoD yesterday, and MT wasn't in my party. I thought "Fine then, I'll go fill a meteor, as I can sprint". By the time I went back to the boss, tanks had switched and I found my tank dead.

I want to echo what some other people have said: poor cooldown use, dragging mobs to new packs so I cant get out of combat regen, popping 3-5 cooldowns right before pulling, cutting corners while multipulling, and failing to tag targets while multipulling are big ones for me.

The three biggest though are pulling before everyone is ready, ignorance of mobs attacking the healer, and improper use of provoke.

1) Pulling before everyone is ready: Alright, I get it. A lot of people are in a hurry and want to get things done. But if your healer currently has 200 mana or half your party is watching the mid trial cutscene in Battle in the Big Keep, it may be a good idea to wait for just a little bit longer. That's all I ask. Really.

2) Ignorance of mobs attacking the healer: Not noticing, or failing to get something off of me when I'm not even using holy or aoe healing. This has been cropping up a lot when I've been helping with King Mog HM, where people keep letting me tank Ruffletuft in the first phase. There are two tanks, that shouldn't ever happen. Sometimes, people even make me tank both of the "tanky" moogles after the second phase starts, indefinitely. I can do this somewhat if I run out at the appropriate times, but this ties me up in self healing and basically forces the second healer to do everything else. If I get a charm + ruffletuft whirlwind? Bye bye. Basically, all I'm asking here is that I don't have to do ridiculous amounts of tanking for the entire fight. Oh, and just provoking isn't going to work. I probably have regen going just to survive, and that's just going to bring it right back, which brings me to...

3) Improper use of provoke: I would call this the worst offense but for one simple reason: the tooltip on provoke is very unclear about what it actually does. So for any inexperienced tank who might be reading this, here you go: provoke puts you one threat point above the next highest person on that target. That means anything, a cure, a regen or medica II tick, a single attack ability, is going to take that back. How do you solve this? By establishing dominance after provoking, of course. Always follow up with a tomohawk/shield toss at a distance or a skull sunder / savage blade / rage of halone / butcher's block at close range. I heard the second piece of the combo (skull / savage) can be pretty effective because it hits faster, but someone can correct me if that's wrong. Anyway, this is very important. I see so many tanks who try to use provoke as a stand alone threat ability, and then I get sad when the mob goes right back to the other target. Sometimes, they even do it when they're well into the lead, and then a dps catches up to them because they threw themselves backward in threat. Don't do this.

I hate most, when I've yet to identify if the tank intends to pull big mobs (as I -rarely ever- get a notification of 'big pulls' beforehand) - they stop at a mob and mull around a few moments at the mob..... so I assume they're not collecting more. So, I cure to top off and add Regen... and they take off again to go collect more for a bigger pull. >_>
If for what ever reason was needed to stop (checking aggro is tagged on all, etc)... if you see the regen, either click it off or don't continue running x.x

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Echoloc

Shield Oath is level 40

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I had to mention this because yesterday I had a tank in Cutters Cry who was level 38 using Sword Oath (which is 30) and not Shield Oath (which is 40) and every heal would change the Enmity from green to yellow, and a second heal would turn it red. So I have no idea if the tank knew that was happening, but he was losing HP rather fast so I figured either he was doing something wrong or was poorly geared. But he had all those other level 50's so I was like ????