Having trouble keeping Warriors alive.

I have been struggling the past few days in dungeons where my party has a Warrior as a tank. I will do everything in my power by spamming the tank with cures/buffs/regens/, but somehow their health will continue to drop until they hit the floor. I never have this problem with Paladins though, for some reason.

On top of this, sometimes I will have BLMs that like for the tank to gather large pulls of enemies so they can AoE all of the enemies and destroy them all at once. I understand this concept, (and it may have worked for the mana burn parties in FFXI) but I cannot even begin to fathom how they expect me to keep the Warrior alive through all the chaos.

I have done everything in my power, and it doesn't seem like its enough. If I can't keep a level 42 Warrior alive through The Stone Vigil, then i probably can't do it through the end game dungeons.

If someone can provide some insight on how to heal warriors when they are tanking, that would be very appreciated.

its worth remembering that the mid-level dungeons are probably harder than the 50 dungeons due to level-syncs, very rarely can you do a decent speedrun if you are level-sync'd (gathering and aoeing everything only really works if you overgear the content)

so don't think "if i can't do stone vigil i can't do other dungeons"
instead you should think "if i can do stone vigil i can do any of them"

Exchanging a Paladin tank for a Warrior tank should not really put more stress on you as a healer.

From the sound of it, could it be you were playing with a Marauder (two axes symbol) who did not unlock his Warrior job, or maybe forgot to turn on Defiance (25% more HP, 25% more Heals)?

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Originally Posted by AyaneKitsune

I have done everything in my power, and it doesn't seem like its enough. If I can't keep a level 42 Warrior alive through The Stone Vigil, then i probably can't do it through the end game dungeons.

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It sounds to me like you're just running with bad WARs. WAR is a much more active tank than PLD is, where you're encouraged to use your CDs much more often and rely upon active effects, like Storm's Path (10% damage debuff) and Inner Beast (20% DR for 6 seconds). There are a lot of people that have been swapping from PLD to WAR now that WAR is actually a viable tank and end up playing them like PLD, which means that they end up performing like a really bad PLD.

If you're having problems keeping a WAR alive but not having problems keeping PLDs alive, it's not you; it's the WAR.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

If you're having problems keeping a WAR alive but not having problems keeping PLDs alive, it's not you; it's the WAR.

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This is what I'm lead to believe. They care more about swinging their axe and dealing huge damage instead of preventing the damage from happening.

It's the Warrior not you. I have an i93 WAR as my main class. I just took a Monk up to 50 for the sake of some variety and a different role when my FC needs it. This means I recently pugged quite a few dungeons and, holy crap, I don't think I ran into one Marauder or Warrior that wasn't awful. Warriors take near constant maintenance of their damage debuffs and healing buffs to be successful unless they're wildly overgeared for the dungeon. If the Warrior doesn't know how to do this, they will die. A lot. I doubt it's your fault from what I've seen recently.

Yup. I90 war here. Its in the buffs. Ive noticed a lot of newer tanks forgetting to use cds.

I actually had a tank ask me what cds were in cutters cry the other day

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

Defiance (25% more HP, 20% more Heals)?

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Ftfy. Like others have said, there are plenty of bad warriors and when they try to play warrior like paladin, they suck.

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Originally Posted by Zaero

Yup. I90 war here. Its in the buffs. Ive noticed a lot of newer tanks forgetting to use cds.

I actually had a tank ask me what cds were in cutters cry the other day

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To be fair not everyone plays a ton of online games and knows what Cooldowns or CDs are despite knowing what their skills do.

I never call them cooldowns myself.

Sounds like you had a similar experience to what I had back when I did Stone Vigil for the first time. Can't remember if it was a PLD or WAR, but they just ran ahead and pulled a bunch of stuff and promptly died. Did it again and again until we finally were able to kill that group and move on to the next. Repeat the overpulling, dying, overpulling, dying, etc. I was about to give up healing because I thought it was all my fault. Then I realized the tank was undergeared and was simply pulling way more than we could handle. Went again with a friend tank who marked properly, pulled pathing mobs properly, and everything went smoothly. Stone Vigil is definitely a good test for tanks.

New tanks still learning... Warriors as a Job are plenty capable and not really more difficult to heal. Probably just had a few that are still learning the ropes. Mitigation wise new/still learning pallys are easier to heal than warriors typically.

For him: Did he have the warrior job equipped or was it just a marauder? Did he have defiance on? Was he using his cooldowns while taking loads of damage? Stone vigil is a place where if you're not careful, tanks, especially the newer ones, pulls mobs by accident, make sure you're helping out by warning them.

For you: Did you have protect on? Were you making good use of stoneskin? What about sleeping mobs? Remember as a healer, sleeping mobs is a huge help especially on the newer tanks. I understand if your blm wants to burn enemies down, but instead ask him to sleep the mobs to make it easier on you so the tank doesn't die and a wipe occurs

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Originally Posted by Estellios

To be fair not everyone plays a ton of online games and knows what Cooldowns or CDs are despite knowing what their skills do.

I never call them cooldowns myself.

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I cut the story short. Mentioned he had mitigate abilities and all. He continued to spam maim combo

A few weeks back I saw a WAR who consistently pulled single enemies (this was Titan HM) with Infuriate>Steel Cyclone.

WAR is a class you gotta actively work on, which means it ends up being too hard for a lot of people.

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Originally Posted by AyaneKitsune

I have been struggling the past few days in dungeons where my party has a Warrior as a tank. I will do everything in my power by spamming the tank with cures/buffs/regens/, but somehow their health will continue to drop until they hit the floor. I never have this problem with Paladins though, for some reason.

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When I lvling my whm at The Stone Vigil, if the tank is hard to heal, i will use the spell repose to sleep adds.
And you will know that some mobs resist sleep, for example the last pack of mobs before last boss.

Btw recently I have been grouped with some PLD and WAR in good or best gears,
For some reasons, they like to take all the clone and aoe dmg from multiple trash mobs simultaneously and make the healing as hard as hell^^;
So I am quite sure it is not the job issue but the player issue. Take it easy.^^

Stone vigil is a hard hitting dungeon, both the tank and healer need need to be on their toes or the run can turn into chaos. Even with a good tank the healer will be under presure at certain key points but a tank that can't dodge avoidable AoE will go down, even with the best healer in the game as you can't just stand there and take it to the face in SV. The tank also has to know how to pull properly there or you'll probably wipe as well due to unlseepable, hard hitting patrolling mobs.

That's all before you take into account whether or not the tank is using defensive cooldowns efficiently, which if he's not is probaly going to lead to a big headache.

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Originally Posted by Artemiz

Stone vigil is a hard hitting dungeon, both the tank and healer need need to be on their toes or the run can turn into chaos. Even with a good tank the healer will be under presure at certain key points but a tank that can't dodge avoidable AoE will go down, even with the best healer in the game as you can't just stand there and take it to the face in SV. The tank also has to know how to pull properly there or you'll probably wipe as well due to unlseepable, hard hitting patrolling mobs.

That's all before you take into account whether or not the tank is using defensive cooldowns efficiently, which if he's not is probaly going to lead to a big headache.

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DPS also needs to be on their toes using cds. Healer + tank can only do so much before they run out of cds/mp. Things need to die fast.

Half and half faults

War tanks simply take more damage that's a fact. There's no working around the war tool set and pld tool set. Even perfectly played they will still take damage simply because the warrior is designed to take quick low burst hits but lack any sort of defense against sustained or super bursts.

That's the pld's specialty. With their massive reductions and stoneskins and hollow ground.

The healer is also at fault for not dividing the difference between tanks. It's a good idea to spam cure/phys1 on war tanks more the pld tanks simply because they are so easy to top off. Wars will always have jumpy HP. SE designed it that way.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

War tanks simply take more damage that's a fact.

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While this is technically true, what's more important is how much external healing is required. When you look at the healing required, WAR and PLD take almost identical amounts of external healing such that, if they're both played properly, the advantage of one or the other is entirely situational (WAR is better at short burst damage whereas PLD is better at extended periods of intense damage; over time, neither has an advantage).

Furthermore, WAR is not somehow spikier than a PLD as you suggest. In fact, if the WAR is using Inner Beast, they will have a more predictable incoming damage profile because they're not relying upon RNG mechanisms in order to survive. The idea that WARs have jumpy hp and PLDs have stable hp is an artifact of 2.0 when WARs were absolutely horrible and had way too much of their survivability tied up in non-scaling self-healing. Right now, unless you simply heal WARs and PLDs differently because you expect them to have those incoming damage profiles, a WAR and a PLD will be equally easy/difficult to heal.

This is all predicated, however, on the WAR knowing what they're doing, as I said at the start. A WAR that is being played like a PLD (re: a bad WAR) is going to be noticeably worse than a PLD. A WAR that is played properly is going to either be easier to heal (barring HG situations) or, at the very least, equivalent to a PLD. PLD is almost impossible to screw up; WAR is pretty easily screwed up unless you recognize that it's not the same as PLD.

OP situation basically comes down to 1) It's Stone Vigil. Easier than a lot of places, but tougher than the earlier dungeons. Players there are just beginning to get really tested on their skill. And 2) Warrior has an image of "tank that does damage" (as opposed to the "tank with best defense" image of Paladin). So new players are more likely, as Warrior, to concentrate on that to the detriment of their defense.

A well played Warrior can do just about everything, defensively, that a Paladin can.
- Higher HP + Healing bonus from Defiance roughly same as damage reduction from Shield Oath. (ie, same heals keep both tanks alive)
- Burst damage reduction? Warrior: Vengeance+Inner Beast+Storm's Path=30%+20%+10%. Paladin: Sentinel+Rampart+Bulwark=40%+20%+variable % with chance of none. If you mean Hallowed Ground, Paladin has the big advantage there, but only in situations where you won't need it again soon.

I play both PLD and WAR personally. WAR preferred. PLD just comes trotting out when going into a fight that specifically needs Hallowed Ground. WAR/WAR t6, PLD/WAR t7, single WAR tank t8, etc.

It's probably worth noting that if you've been leveling up and your reference point is other dungeons, that Stone Vigil specifically sits in a level range that is pretty favourable to Paladin over Warrior. Paladin gets Sentinel at level 38, and both Enhanced Rage of Halone (additional 5% enemy STR reduction) and Shield Oath (flat 20% permanent damage reduction) at level 40. Warriors get Storm's Path at 38, but the rest of their 'defensive growth spurt' doesn't happen until they get Enhanced Thrill of Battle at level 44, and Vengeance at level 46. The level range for Stone Vigil is 41 to 43.

Which is not to say that a well-played Warrior can't be easy to heal through Stone Vigil, but rather that Paladins come into Stone Vigil with a pretty big boost to their overall survivability relative to earlier dungeons, while Warriors have to make do with the same tools that they had in Cutter's Cry and Temple of Qarn, even though Stone Vigil enemies hit significantly harder than those in previous dungeons.

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Originally Posted by AyaneKitsune

This is what I'm lead to believe. They care more about swinging their axe and dealing huge damage instead of preventing the damage from happening.

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I get good feedback as a WAR considering people know me for my WHM. For every 1 Butcher's Block combo, I use 2 Storm's Path combo. Not only does it help me, but it helps the party (damage reduction on Titan's stomps? Yep, that's me).

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Originally Posted by Kitru

This is all predicated, however, on the WAR knowing what they're doing, as I said at the start. A WAR that is being played like a PLD (re: a bad WAR) is going to be noticeably worse than a PLD. A WAR that is played properly is going to either be easier to heal (barring HG situations) or, at the very least, equivalent to a PLD. PLD is almost impossible to screw up; WAR is pretty easily screwed up unless you recognize that it's not the same as PLD.

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Not true. They are played differently and healed differently, but they are not equal. PLD by their tool set have more to pull out of their bag of tricks then wars.

Wars have nothing. you can say inner beast is faster but so what, it's still 6 seconds, and nothing replaces hollow ground or stoneskin. Wars have low reductions but consistent, while PLD have big bad reductions that can be inconsistent.

Wars will always need to be healed. PLDs you can rely on them to stay alive.

Stoneskin itself is a almost cheat if they need to "survive" above all else.

Wars do very little to mitigate on the long haul, but in return they are massively easy to to keep top off, take hate, and put out burst damage (adds etc).

No healers will ever say wars and plds are the same. It's just the tanks themselves that don't understand the other end of the spectrum.

I'm a healer and I say they're pretty much 100% identical.

Get off your high horse. Your only posts I've seen are all bellyaching about how WAR so bad QQ when it isn't and your only argument amounts to "it's not PLD!"

You're right, it isn't. It's almost entirely different, and almost equally as effective. I'd day it depends on the content. For some content WAR is actually superior. Like T5 as a common example.

You've made it pretty clear you have nothing to actually offer on this subject of any worth.

Leave.

Just sounds like you've been unlucky with WARs.

Also, check their gear aswell. Defence makes a lot more of a difference at lower levels than it does at 50 and lots of tanks like to throw on gear designed for DPS with no regard of how much damage they're taking.

Nah that is not your fault, just a bunch of bad WARs, when I started my white mage I thought that the tank warriors were totally useless but now at lvl 50 I know that I was wrong they are really good its only at the beginning they probably don't know too much about tanking and their skills.

As a whm main, I actually typically prefer WAR tanks. It may just be luck of the draw or whatever, but despite them being the 'spikier' of the two, I've actually found that the extra health and higher heals allow me to achieve an easier balance between spending my gcds on heals, cleanses, buffs, and dps. I highly doubt the difficulties you were facing reflected poorly on your abilities as healer, but rather maybe their experience as a war.

Stoneskin works best the more HP the target has - Warriors usually have plenty of HP thus stoneskin lasts longer. Stoneskin and regen are your best friends in Stone Vigil - also try to virus some of the mobs, this also helps. Just remember - You gottta keeeeep your friends STONED! ***** (And yes, a well self-buffing Warrior will be sooo much easier to heal. If all else fails - use food! It's delicious and nutritious. )

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Originally Posted by Byonka

Stoneskin works best the more HP the target has - Warriors usually have plenty of HP thus stoneskin lasts longer.

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The wrongness of your statement brings shame upon your ancestors.

Defiance increases a WAR's max hp by 25%. Shield Oath decreases the damage a PLD takes by 20%. They provide the exact same benefits to Stoneskin (1.25 / 1 = 1 / .8). If a PLD gets a 1k Stoneskin, a WAR will get a 1.25k Stoneskin, but they'll both require 1.25k damage (before factoring in Shield Oath) to break those Stoneskins.