New player question about Astrology

More like kind of returning since I quit like 2 weeks into ARR launch.

I have been tanking so far it's been no problems. Just did a dungeon though called Brayfox and had an Astrologist as my healer. Most of the dungeon was me kiting/stunning around at around 10% to 20% HP and the healer mostly dpsing maybe throwing out one heal per pull right when I am going to die to put me back to 30%.

The Astro told me that this is a mechanic of the Job in that they need the target low health before they heal.

Is this true? Because I am kind of dreading doing anymore Tank Duty Finders since I was barely able to keep myself up long enough for the Healer to heal.

yes, but they don't have to heal like that. Essential Dignity is a free heal that heals more the lower you are on hp. but i think they changed that to max potency if you're under 50%, so they don't have to let you get that low. however, so long as you didn't die, don't worry about it.

a white mage could wait for you to get low too before using benediction

but that's just min maxing. they could use essential dignity with lower potency. it's still free

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Originally Posted by truemagus

More like kind of returning since I quit like 2 weeks into ARR launch.

I have been tanking so far it's been no problems. Just did a dungeon though called Brayfox and had an Astrologist as my healer. Most of the dungeon was me kiting/stunning around at around 10% to 20% HP and the healer mostly dpsing maybe throwing out one heal per pull right when I am going to die to put me back to 30%.

The Astro told me that this is a mechanic of the Job in that they need the target low health before they heal.

Is this true? Because I am kind of dreading doing anymore Tank Duty Finders since I was barely able to keep myself up long enough for the Healer to heal.

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This is true. Astrologians in particular have an early low level ability called "Essential Dignity". This ability heals 400 potency, but heals more the lower your HP is, up to 1100 potency. In hindsight, whether you're at 50% HP or 30% HP, it's all the same to the astrologian since the potency will just scale up the lower your HP is. A tank's goal is just to mitigate incoming damage by flattening the damage curve (mitigating tank busters and pointing cleaves away from the party) so it becomes easier for the healer to anticipate the remaining incoming damage and heal it while also contributing more to the party via DPS.

Don't panic so much about your HP, just worry mainly on the mechanics and your own mitigation rotation as a tank. The healer will worry about the HP. Delaying or using up all your mitigations in a panic to help the healer is how a tank screws over the healer because the tank would be taking a lot more damage for a longer period of time after their defensive buffs are gone, and the healer will have to adjust to that by spending more MP to heal more. For the most part, healers aren't designed to be constantly spamming heals because healing is MP expensive.

It is technically true.

Essential Dignity gains healing power the lower the target is, on a 45 second cooldown. That said, if you're having to run around to try and stagger enemy auto attacks, they were probably not managing themselves well. Keep on trucking. Most healers probably won't let you drop beneath 50%, and you'll know quickly which ones know how to let you ride 10% safely and which ones don't.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

This is true. Astrologians in particular have an early low level ability called "Essential Dignity". This ability heals 400 potency, but heals more the lower your HP is, up to 1100 potency. In hindsight, whether you're at 50% HP or 30% HP, it's all the same to the astrologian since the potency will just scale up the lower your HP is. A tank's goal is just to mitigate incoming damage by flattening the damage curve (mitigating tank busters and pointing cleaves away from the party) so it becomes easier for the healer to anticipate the remaining incoming damage and heal it while also contributing more to the party via DPS.

Don't panic so much about your HP, just worry mainly on the mechanics and your own mitigation rotation as a tank. The healer will worry about the HP. Delaying or using up all your mitigations in a panic to help the healer is how a tank screws over the healer because the tank would be taking a lot more damage for a longer period of time after their defensive buffs are gone, and the healer will have to adjust to that by spending more MP to heal more. For the most part, healers aren't designed to be constantly spamming heals because healing is MP expensive.

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I guess that makes sense. But we ended up wiping on the last boss since I had been at 5% for too long (think like 10 seconds) and the boss dropped an acid pool on me. Had to limit break the second run to keep myself alive. Most of the run I had to use around 20 potions on packs and the Dragoon had to help cc to keep me up as the healer didn't let me get time to regen.

yeah, people who play like that in duty finder with random people are annoying. like, who cares about their parse. especially in a dungeon. they should run with a premade if that's their thing

otoh, if they can manage it without you dying, then there's no reason to worry. basically i give them a chance and don't sweat it until i die. so, the maximizing their heal by letting your hp drop is just an excuse. it's true! but unnecessary

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Healers learning their limits is part of being a good healer. If you wipe a couple times but they become a better healer then I would say it's worth a couple wipes. Besides those types of healers are not too common to worry about it.

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Originally Posted by truemagus

I guess that makes sense. But we ended up wiping on the last boss since I had been at 5% for too long (think like 10 seconds) and the boss dropped an acid pool on me. Had to limit break the second run to keep myself alive. Most of the run I had to use around 20 potions on packs and the Dragoon had to help cc to keep me up as the healer didn't let me get time to regen.

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If you died, then the healer should be take that as a sign to be playing a bit more safe. Healing is a balancing act, really. Some players try to push to see where that lies and that's not so bad since accumulating experience via deaths is pretty much the only way a healer can improve on when they should start healing. If you have to use potions in a sub-lv 50 dungeon after dying a couple of times, then the healer should take that as a wakeup call and heal more though. That, or they might be a bot. I'm generally inclined to give them some doubt if they're a new healer, but if this is a full lv 80 healer causing multiple deaths, unless you're not using mitigations, then they really need to get it together.

I wouldn't say it's AST's 'mechanic'. It's purely how their ability "Essential Dignity" behaves, which is:

Restores target's HP
Cure Potency: 400
Potency increases up to 1,100 as the target's HP decreases

That being said... what you're seeing is probably a healer who tried to be efficient with their healing (or simply being bad, who knows). While this is mostly seen as a sign of decent healer (or a healer trying to improve themselves), by no means it's not all sparkle and rainbows. Get overenthusiastic, they might end up misjudging & killing you in the process. (Which is what happened most likely in your story)

OR they simply didn't use their Essential Dignity for whatever reason, because it rings suspicious to me when you said it heals from 10% to 30% in Brayflox. Essential Dignity is absurdly powerful heal under lv50 that it can heal tanks back to full (or really close) especially when used on that low HP%. Up to 30% looks more like a Benefic I or Benefic II with some broken gears...

I don't think you should stop rolling as a tank in DFs though, but perhaps a nice break or just kidnap one of your healer friends ;)

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Originally Posted by Acece

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Healers learning their limits is part of being a good healer. If you wipe a couple times but they become a better healer then I would say it's worth a couple wipes. Besides those types of healers are not too common to worry about it.

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Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?

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Counterpoint: Death in this game is that much of a setback? Your durability loss results in adding something like 20 gil to your repair bill. If the healer isn't that great, that's one thing. If it's a skilled healer on top of their health chicken game, "oops, sorry about that" and everyone's fine.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?

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Healers carry bad tanks all the time, good tanks carry bad healers it's nothing new. Having a healer improve rather then play safe is overall better health of the game Imo because if they learn early they don't developed bad habits which will wipe their party in raid and such. I really would rather have a healer get better at the early levels so I don't have to deal with them at max lol.
It's not like any of the dungeons are really hard or anything (besides a few but nothing so early) so its better to learn there then at endgame.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

I wouldn't say it's AST's 'mechanic'. It's purely how their ability "Essential Dignity" behaves, which is:

Restores target's HP
Cure Potency: 400
Potency increases up to 1,100 as the target's HP decreases

That being said... what you're seeing is probably a healer who tried to be efficient with their healing (or simply being bad, who knows). While this is mostly seen as a sign of decent healer (or a healer trying to improve themselves), by no means it's not all sparkle and rainbows. Get overenthusiastic, they might end up misjudging & killing you in the process. (Which is what happened most likely in your story)

OR they simply didn't use their Essential Dignity for whatever reason, because it rings suspicious to me when you said it heals from 10% to 30% in Brayflox. Essential Dignity is absurdly powerful heal under lv50 that it can heal tanks back to full (or really close) especially when used on that low HP%. Up to 30% looks more like a Benefic I or Benefic II with some broken gears...

I don't think you should stop rolling as a tank in DFs though, but perhaps a nice break or just kidnap one of your healer friends ;)

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Kind of late here sorry. The Dragoon was actually on my server and was talking to them yesterday. They had been watching more so and knew what was going on more. The healer sometimes casted Benefic on me and some Esunas, never healed the dps and was mostly just spamming something called malefic to the point of almost ooming on the second boss. They weren't a sprout like the rest of us.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?

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I mean, it's not like they die in real life. There are so many heal-bot healers in this game who don't seem to realise that it's completely safe to let HP fall below 100% for more than a few seconds. To learn this, you have to test the limits. Mistakes happen. It's no big deal.

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Originally Posted by truemagus

Kind of late here sorry. The Dragoon was actually on my server and was talking to them yesterday. They had been watching more so and knew what was going on more. The healer sometimes casted Benefic on me and some Esunas, never healed the dps and was mostly just spamming something called malefic to the point of almost ooming on the second boss. They weren't a sprout like the rest of us.

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It would be harder for the Dragoon to see whether the Astrologian was using Essential Dignity, which is instant-cast and therefore has no cast bar in the party list. Malefic has a short recast time, so it's possible to "weave" ED while maintaining a constant stream of Malefic casts.

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Originally Posted by truemagus

Kind of late here sorry. The Dragoon was actually on my server and was talking to them yesterday. They had been watching more so and knew what was going on more. The healer sometimes casted Benefic on me and some Esunas, never healed the dps and was mostly just spamming something called malefic to the point of almost ooming on the second boss. They weren't a sprout like the rest of us.

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Astros are not the only one guilty of sometimes letting tanks topple over because of parsing, sch and whm are guilty as well heck actually to me whm tops it on guilty ever since they gave em afflaus misery, yeah I know its scary the mind set of healers in 14 is more dps more than healing , you can only hope you get a healer who is a balance one does both heal+dps when necessary not the ones that just heal and do nothing or the ones who dps 90% of the time and do 10% healing, its kinda why I dont play tank or dps role, if am to do dps role though it be a rdm because there is vercure so heck if I have to drop dps and heal myself at 40% cause said healer is dpsing still am going to do it, now I understand how plds feel and they clem themselves in this state lol , if your a pld at least you can clem, if healer get mad that you clem oh well, they should do their jobs more.

The one time i did a qitana ravel as a gunbreaker, yes i did my cool downs and avoid oranges that is avoidable but ofc things only last so long , this ast ofc had me got killed and plainly admit oh sorry I got so busy dpsing, me being a ast main ofc replied I am an ast main too heal+dsps is not hard. It goes back to why healers are 1 button dps and hot, just imagine how worst it will be if we did got more dps spells like old stormblood SCH. Best thing to do is find a friend that main a healer and keeps you up the way you like it to be, only time I do dps or tank is when ofc I have friends who will plays healer balance like I do with both heals+dps as necessary. Random queue I will always go healer cause of that one awful qitana ravel experience or if to say I was to go random in queue as tank it be as pld(though my personal fav tank is gunbreaker) or rdm as dps to self heal when I see am 40 and below and no heal from healer happening.

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Originally Posted by IceBlueNinja

Astros are not the only one guilty of sometimes letting tanks topple over because of parsing, sch and whm are guilty as well heck actually to me whm tops it on guilty ever since they gave em afflaus misery, yeah I know its scary the mind set of healers in 14 is more dps more than healing , you can only hope you get a healer who is a balance one does both heal+dps when necessary not the ones that just heal and do nothing or the ones who dps 90% of the time and do 10% healing, its kinda why I dont play tank or dps role, if am to do dps role though it be a rdm because there is vercure so heck if I have to drop dps and heal myself at 40% cause said healer is dpsing still am going to do it, now I understand how plds feel and they clem themselves in this state lol , if your a pld at least you can clem, if healer get mad that you clem oh well, they should do their jobs more.

The one time i did a qitana ravel as a gunbreaker, yes i did my cool downs and avoid oranges that is avoidable but ofc things only last so long , this ast ofc had me got killed and plainly admit oh sorry I got so busy dpsing, me being a ast main ofc replied I am an ast main too heal+dsps is not hard. It goes back to why healers are 1 button dps and hot, just imagine how worst it will be if we did got more dps spells like old stormblood SCH. Best thing to do is find a friend that main a healer and keeps you up the way you like it to be, only time I do dps or tank is when ofc I have friends who will plays healer balance like I do with both heals+dps as necessary. Random queue I will always go healer cause of that one awful qitana ravel experience or if to say I was to go random in queue as tank it be as pld(though my personal fav tank is gunbreaker) or rdm as dps to self heal when I see am 40 and below and no heal from healer happening.

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1- Seriously, what are you complaining about " old stormblood SCH" ? There were many competent SCH who were able to balance both healing AND DPS during that time. You don't need to believe me- there are .ahhh..additional shall we say blogs to verify that....
2- We don't know that this specific healer was chasing a parse, As pointed out previously, you cannot see an instant cast heal on a cast bar. So someone seeing an AST spamming maleific and then some benefics could well miss some EDs which should be used at low HP. If someone does not understand how ED works (i.e. a tank) they could panic.
3. For AST - it can happen that a learning (or even level 80) misjudges ED in a leveling dungeon in DF. If with randoms, they are trying to be efficient, it's not being malicious, maybe it's lag, maybe it"s a CD coordination issue, whatever- all of that to say- in future- that should not prevent the possible addition of a DPS button or changes to the currently simplistic DPS options that healers have.

Sounds like they were just trying to maximize dps and probably were too greedy. Other possibility is they were lazy or bad but those types don't usually bother with Esuna. If everyone plays perfectly healers hardly need to heal at all - I've gone through entire dungeons with little more than an occasional hot on the tank and an aoe or two on some bosses. There's a lot of passive healing between pulls.

I would try to avoid kiting as a tank though, just use your stuns and cds and keep everything still for the dps, also your hp will go down at a more consistent rate so the healer can better judge what they need to do. I've only been in a couple situations where I couldn't keep a tank alive no matter what I did - one was an undergeared tank pulling too much while I was also undergeared, one was dps being so low and the tank taking so much damage from so many mobs I went oom.

I've definitely gotten too greedy a couple times and have had people die after casting Essential Dignity but before the animation completed. Animation delay is a ***** in this game. I've also seen other healers (usually WHMs) spam dps spells while an entire 8-man group slowly died over 30s or so, only to cast Medica when a couple players were left and then we wiped.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?

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Absolutely. ������

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

1- Seriously, what are you complaining about " old stormblood SCH" ? There were many competent SCH who were able to balance both healing AND DPS during that time. You don't need to believe me- there are .ahhh..additional shall we say blogs to verify that....
2- We don't know that this specific healer was chasing a parse, As pointed out previously, you cannot see an instant cast heal on a cast bar. So someone seeing an AST spamming maleific and then some benefics could well miss some EDs which should be used at low HP. If someone does not understand how ED works (i.e. a tank) they could panic.
3. For AST - it can happen that a learning (or even level 80) misjudges ED in a leveling dungeon in DF. If with randoms, they are trying to be efficient, it's not being malicious, maybe it's lag, maybe it"s a CD coordination issue, whatever- all of that to say- in future- that should not prevent the possible addition of a DPS button or changes to the currently simplistic DPS options that healers have.

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It is not complaining about old sch stormblood to say, its just saying all healers play a way that can cause a tank to panic about their hp whether its a ast to use ed, a whm to use a lil/bene or sch with a lustrate, sometimes misjudgements and server tick behaviors can sometimes happen like lags or so as you state. your tank can be at 100% and in a lil second blink of a eye they just whoa to 20 10% out of no where. I had a interesting hero's today with a warrior as a tank, we are doing fine killing him but during that phase with 4 rock the tank went from 90% hp to a mere single digit 1 hp, how this happen idk but I was able to double ED but it just didnt make no sense how that happen lol. I felt like that was a gunbreaker using their super boile there. The dps too was wondering what happen, it must have been one heck of a extremely bad lag. As the 3 of us thought it was.

People to this day and time are use to games where keeping up hp at 80% or 100 as much as possible will ofc feel abit unsafe if they are new to 14 how healers play in this game. There are alot of old fashion mmos that punishes healers who even try to dps at crucial times so people who play those kind of games you cant be suprise they want their hp 80% to full all the time. This probably is the 2nd tank post about a tank dying as they feel the healer was not doing what they are to do, Post like these should be taken into consideration really. Again why do you think a pld is gonna use clem in trash pulls at times or boss fight, Plds panic the most out of all tanks when their hp is to them too low and no heals seem to be coming.

Agreed, I see your point, all of the above can weigh into how comfortable people are with their HP and how their healers should keep them up.