Tanking Healing Stories?

Hey guys,

I was going through the Healing Horror Stories posts. As a SCH main interested in leveling a tank next, I've been using these posts to get an idea of what NOT to do as a tank. I know there's plenty of posts on how to be an efficient tank in this section, but sometimes I feel learning what not to do is just as helpful.

I understand that tanks and healers are essentially partners in any dungeon. With that said, in the event of failure, blames tend to fall on one or the other. So I'm just curious.

Is there something that we (the healers) do that you tanks don't particularly like? Is there such a thing as a Tanking Horror Story?

It's not properly a "tank horror story" but i hate when WHM don't use stoneskin on me(war), especially when i have full/almost full HP. Stoneskin protects you for 18% of your HP, with 8000 HP it's 1440 HP, with 9000 it's 1620 and that's a lot, i think more than a Cure II. Now I don't know how much MP it consumes, but it's very very usefull, and it's almost never used in battle, a shame.

only real horror story is ill placed or timed regen it can really mess everything up if it casted too early

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Originally Posted by Riyos

It's not properly a "tank horror story" but i hate when WHM don't use stoneskin on me(war), especially when i have full/almost full HP. Stoneskin protects you for 18% of your HP, with 8000 HP it's 1440 HP, with 9000 it's 1620 and that's a lot, i think more than a Cure II. Now I don't know how much MP it consumes, but it's very very usefull, and it's almost never used in battle, a shame.

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It costs more and is a longer cast than Cure II. If the healer's gear is equal to yours, they cover about the same HP. If the tank (either PLD or WAR, doesn't matter, because their eHP is the same) overgears the healer by a noticeable margin, SS might be more mana efficient. Otherwise, Cure II is more mana efficient and more time efficient, so SS is only worth it if you're near full HP and there's nothing more important to do, or a big incoming hit is going to mean you need SS.

Edit: I worded this poorly. SS has its uses, and there are times when it's a good idea. I was just trying to point out that SS is not a special sauce for WARs, and it's not necessarily a bad sign if a healer is choosing not to use it during a fight.

There isn't a ton a healer can do to screw things up for the tank outside the obvious: Don't pull threat (overheal, regen right before a pull, etc.), and don't let the tank die. Almost any other mistake you make is going to make things harder for you, not the tank. That might trickle down to a dead tank, but you're in a better position to judge that yourself most of the time.

90K error in the middle of a boss fight at Tonberry King. Gone back in 2 minutes later and my character still keeping aggro and tanking. Man... was that hilarious...

Oh, there is another one. Group agreed to speed run, including the healer, so I went for the pull and the healer immediately said he "g2g" and left. GG...

I think the biggest thing is pulling huge amounts of aggro. Both healing classes have skills that can rip hate off the tank pretty easy and some healers feel the need to spam them. You will have an edge on explaining healing mechanics to other players so that should be fine.

Probably throwing on regen before I grab aggro

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Originally Posted by Asdamine

Oh, there is another one. Group agreed to speed run, including the healer, so I went for the pull and the healer immediately said he "g2g" and left. GG...

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That happened to me before.
I asked "SPeed run?"
they said "SPEED RUUUUN!"

I went all riiiight!

Got to the 3rd pack of mobs when suddenly, Healer and one of the DPS got 90k'ed.

Think all of the worst stories, that don't involve DCs, have a common vein for heals.
Regen, either as I'm pulling, or just before so it lands as I aggro a group of mobs, before I can flash/CoS/etc. so that I only have hate on one mob. This used to happen often in AK. Medica II during anything before a fair bit of hate has been established.

I've never had a sch pull hate, though a few times a fairy caused me headaches during SRs by tossing an embrace my way as I collected mobs. Oh and fairies pulling bosses while a SCH is positioning for the fight, has happened a few times in T1.

Bards cause me more headaches than most healers though, they can front-load sooooo much damage it's obscene, and they have this knack for pushing out all that damage before I land more than a single Shield Lob to start the fight. Overzealous bastards lol

One week, my Coil group pug'd a WHM for turn 2 when our usual member couldn't make it. On ADS, I popped Fight or Flight, Shield Lob, Circle of Scorn on the way in, threw out an uncombo'd Halone for the hell of it... Then ADS turned around and cleaved- nay, devoured our back row. "Bwuh?" I thought, "how did I lose aggro so fast?" Then I glanced at the party list and saw the regen from Medica 2 sitting on everyone's bars. The WHM was so far ahead of me threat-wise my bar was probably 25% of his.

So yes, gonna echo the "don't regen before pull, don't use AoE heals too early or if no one but the tank is hurt" advice. :) The overheal aggro can be really bad, especially in an 8-man.

Aside from that, if the healer is DPSing, I would also request that he/she not wait for the tank's health to get too low before switching to heals. This didn't happen to me, but I was with a tank friend in Copperbell HM where the healer let him drop below 100 HP on trash (he was Holy spamming). That gave both me and my friend enough time to say "Ohshi-" before the healer popped Benediction and walked on like nothing had happened. I'm cool with that if I'm with friends, but if I don't know you and you let me get that low, I'm going to think either you're tunnel visioning or you hate me. ; ;

WHM decided he wanted to do Medica 2 at the start of a fight. . . Words cannot describe my fury.

As someone who mains a SMN/SCH and levels WAR as an alt, here are my views.

As a healer, addressing the tank:

Please stay within my casting range. I know in some fights you've gotta keep moving, but so do I and I have to make sure all the other party members are doing okay in addition to yourself.

Please use your AOE hate moves at the earliest possible moment in every fight. Use them a couple of times, back to back. I promise I'm not trying to pull mobs off of you, but you didn't have hate on those 2 yet and you needed a Cure so....

Please don't get too mad at me if you die once in a great while. I was mid-cast healing the DPS with 5 HP left from that AOE when the boss critical super-move'd you. I switched to you and hit Lustrate with superhuman speed, but you died from the next hit as the animation went off. I can't make the GCD or animations move faster. ;_;


As a tank addressing the healer:

Please keep my HP above 60%. I start to get very nervous around the half HP mark and especially below, because one little thing going wrong might end me and wipe the party. This makes me cranky at healers more than anything else. Keep my HP bar full or very nearly full please. I understand if you have to let me dip a little to heal someone else - I'll watch for these moments and pop a CD or two to help you, but please keep me as your #1 priority.

I like healers who DD. I really do, I do it myself on SCH. But please do it while my HP is >80%. If I'm down to a quarter of my life and I see you casing Bio II, I'm going to be very irate with you because you're putting the whole party in danger. If the DDs are full and I'm above 80% HP, knock em dead - you're a good healer.

Please don't forget, in the midst of all that Curebombing and Succoring and Raising, to keep an eye out for those little status icons by my name. Paralysis is the bane of my existence as a tank, and when a healer just decides to let me sit there for 15 seconds while it wears and half my moves are blocked because he either doesn't notice it or won't bother to squeak a Leeches or Esuna between cures, it makes me cranky. >.@

At this point, most of the personal 'tanking gone wrong' stories are essentially "auto-piloted and forgot to do something" because everything is so ingrained I don't really think about the process of tanking most of the time (and the majority of content is easy enough). Amusingly, it's part of the reason I went healer as my main class in this game: tanking had become too mindless and automatic for me, haha. Usually forgetting to grab an add when it spawns midway through the fight, especially if it doesn't auto add me/everyone to it's aggro table and I actually have to watch for it (second boss of Haukke HM, for example). Either that or forgetting to pop cooldowns at the right time - but that's usually only an issue when pulling multiple groups or when doing non-trivial content.

I did have the worst healer I've ever had in FFXIV the other day from a Roulette into Sastasha. Conj that was in Cleric Stance the entire time (not that bad by itself, he even used Stone fairly often)... except 80% of his healing attempts were Medica. Often when I was out of range. Archer got nervous enough (WHM main he said) that he started tossing 35 hit point cures around when I started chain stunning whatever was still alive. Eventually got the Conjurer to cast a few cures after a couple auto translate messages, but went back to Medica shortly thereafter.

For generic play with randoms as a tank, watch for hots before the pull. You can click them off (on PC at least, not sure how you'd do that on console) before the pull. Regen from WHM and Whispering Dawn from Eos (SCH fairy) are the ones to watch for.

As a tank, things that some healers do that can irk me.

- Healers that wait until the last second to heal. If my health is getting down to the point where one auto-attack could drop me, there is a problem. If you are healing as fast as you can and its because of a heavy hitting boss or lots of mobs, fine. But if it is with simple trash and you are just being lazy, not fine.
- Healers that think they are DPS. If you want to help out with damage, that is cool and I'm all for it, but when you are so focused on trying to do damage that you forget to heal, you are no longer doing your job.
- Trigger happy healers that just spam heals constantly, especially big heals that are wasted due to over-curing.
- Trigger happy healers that start casting heals before I have even engaged the group of mobs.
- Healers that run ahead and think that they should pull mobs by casting sleep before the rest of the party is there.

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Originally Posted by Bixby

It costs more and is a longer cast than Cure II. If the healer's gear is equal to yours, they cover about the same HP. If the tank (either PLD or WAR, doesn't matter, because their eHP is the same) overgears the healer by a noticeable margin, SS might be more mana efficient. Otherwise, Cure II is more mana efficient and more time efficient, so SS is only worth it if you're near full HP and there's nothing more important to do, or a big incoming hit is going to mean you need SS.

There isn't a ton a healer can do to screw things up for the tank outside the obvious: Don't pull threat (overheal, regen right before a pull, etc.), and don't let the tank die. Almost any other mistake you make is going to make things harder for you, not the tank. That might trickle down to a dead tank, but you're in a better position to judge that yourself most of the time.

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Please note that stoneskin is useful in the following ways which contradict your views:

1) It is very threat-friendly. It's a go-to heal for places like Stone Vigil.
2) The protection is based on your MAXIMUM health, not your current health.

EDIT: Someone else said it was based on current health. I misread your sentiments about casting when tank is near full health. For me, SS is a good 50% health heal when paired with regen and followed by cure spam. I also like to use it when I know some big hit is coming. Putting a 1600 preemptive guaranteed heal on a PLD that causes no effective hate is no laughing matter.

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Originally Posted by Bixby

It costs more and is a longer cast than Cure II. If the healer's gear is equal to yours, they cover about the same HP. If the tank (either PLD or WAR, doesn't matter, because their eHP is the same) overgears the healer by a noticeable margin, SS might be more mana efficient. Otherwise, Cure II is more mana efficient and more time efficient, so SS is only worth it if you're near full HP and there's nothing more important to do, or a big incoming hit is going to mean you need SS.

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Except Stoneskin as a buff adds only 70 enmity, regardless of how much HP it actually protects; e.g., a Stoneskin for 1,000HP would give you 70 enmity while a Cure for 1,000HP would give you 500 enmity. That sounds worth it to me.

Edit: Didn't see this second page until I posted...

The things that healers do wrong at times:
-When adds apear they decide to spam medica 2.
-When AOE tanking, running away or knock adds away from the tank instead of stand in the overpower/flash ranges.
-Putting regen on me at the end of a fight, or just before I dive into another pack.
-Pulling more packs into the fight to "help me out" even though I am TP starved as is.

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Originally Posted by Jyoeru

1) It is very threat-friendly. It's a go-to heal for places like Stone Vigil.

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Originally Posted by Nyaanyaa

Except Stoneskin as a buff adds only 70 enmity, regardless of how much HP it actually protects; e.g., a Stoneskin for 1,000HP would give you 70 enmity while a Cure for 1,000HP would give you 500 enmity. That sounds worth it to me.

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Fair point.

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Originally Posted by Jyoeru

I misread your sentiments about casting when tank is near full health.

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Yeah, all I meant was that if the tank is missing enough HP that I can't just let Regen handle it, in most situations, I'll stick with Cures. Because in most situations I've been in, I'm more concerned with efficiency than threat.

My general point was that Stoneskin is not some super secret sauce for WARs; there are reasons to use it (on either tank), but there are reasons not to use it as well (on either tank), and it's not necessarily a bad sign if a healer isn't using it. Probably could've been more clear about that. I'll go edit.