As a tank, what should I know/do to make it easier on Healer?

[PinnyAerani]

Use Convalescence when your health is low! not when you walk into a fight with full health! (had this happen so many times now... >< ) If you have Convalescence of course.

Convalescence won't help you if you die before the WHM/SCH can heal you. DO use Convalescence if you're expecting to take a lot of damage during a pull, because you're basically giving your healer a free divine seal that only works on you. In fact, I dislike tanks that wait until they're at 20% or w/e to pop convalescence because if they've gotten that low in the first place, I'm probably going to pop benediction as I may not have the time to cast cure II/swiftcast cure II. If you use it at the beginning of a fight then for those 30-45 seconds (I don't have the game open to check) I'm healing you for much more than I normally would, meaning I can DPS more and heal less.

[gehrtalert]

I started as White Mage healer before moving to Paladin tanking. It helped alot in getting familiar with dungeons and trials and whatnot. My advice is to get familiar with all the different duties before you try to go balls out on them. Alot of the content is the same thing over and over each time you play it. Get proper gear before moving up in difficulty. Dont do bug pulls unless you have enough confidence in your cooldown rotations and personal playing ability. Most of all tho... dont get discouraged. I think tanking relies more on the other classes than dps or healing. One mistake can cause a wipe on your part more so than the other classes. Just have fun and pay attention to your surroundings. Itll come to you if you let it.

[KisaiTenshi]

Thank you all very much! Looks like the thing to watch out most for is my CDs and keeping an eye of WHM MP(beyond what I've already been aware of). Do healers always cast stoneskin before? I've had a few that never cast that(later dungeons) so I wasn't sure if that was something that is only necessary sometimes, maybe they felt I didn't wait long enough for it so I will make sure to wait a good amount of time.

Having not done any other content besides light party, how do you not steal aggro from main tank? Should I just not use my rotation?

My biggest problem so far on my CDs is I get a bit panicky still so I kind of get tunnel vision just making sure I have all the aggro(I'll admit that at this time I am not the best tank. I have some great runs and some horrible runs and I'm hoping to have less of the horrible ones). I've been practicing by repetitively doing low lvl dungeons to get used to working with others so I'm hoping it will be easier to stay calm use them properly.

A WHM should cast Stoneskin before any monster engagement, but sometimes doesn't happen due to:
1) Stoneskin II can not be cast while there are engaged targets. So the MSQ dungeons like Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium have "skippable" monster sections that will prevent it from being cast unless the monsters reset from the boss room being sealed off. So you don't get to cast it again until after the first boss.
2) The WHM has to stand still to cast, so it can't be cast while moving. If you want SS, wait for the healer to cast it, then move. If they seem to be hesitating, they might be waiting for a cooldown to finish. SSII without Swiftcast takes 6 seconds.
3) When using SS manually, usually it goes: Healer -> Ranged DPS -> Melee DPS -> Tank, because the tank and melee's will lose SS first, so if you SS the ones that will not lose SS first, you never have to worry about casting it a second time during the fight. Casting SS on the tank during a fight is usually not done except to prepare for incoming massive damage.

AFAIK, preventing stealing aggro, just watch the enmity lights beside the monster names. If it turns yellow, stop what you're doing. For healers this is problematic because healing generates enmity from ALL monsters, while tanks only generate enmity on the monster they are actively engaged with short of AOE enmity boosters. The Off-Tank is supposed to pick up the adds. So as a healer, if any lights turn yellow, I move towards the tank so that the tank can pick it up if it goes red.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

Best would be to play as healer as well to get perspective insight.
Experience is best.

I can't agree with this statement enough. I'm no pro healer. I play WAR. However, since your main seems to be PLD, it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up Stoneskin on CNJ. Use that time to learn from a healer's perspective.

[Nadirah]

Spin2Win, aka: Spin the Dragon... Good way to piss off healers *and* DPS alike. :/

[416to305]

Biggest tip from me is just ask them if you are unsure, especially if it's something like a HM dungeon where you want to speed run it. The first time I did Brayflox HM (as WHM with my avg ilvl at 111), the tank literally pulled everything just rushing through, until he no joke had at least 20 mobs on him. When he finally stopped to start attacking, his HP went from 100% to 0 in not even kidding like 3 seconds. I didn't even have time to get a single Cure II in because he wiped so fast. Everyone died of course and then they voted me out! I was blown away because I couldn't see how I could possibly do that any differently, like there literally was no time to get a single spell in his HP dropped so fast. When I did it again this time the tank asked what size pulls I prefer and he went with "medium" which was still a large amount but was fine to heal through. That's my biggest annoyance, pulling that much on the first time without even talking to the rest of the group and then getting mad and voting someone out is just lame. I had watched the Mizztec video on it, and she does it like a normal dungeon with normal pulls, so I wasn't even expecting this dungeon to be one that you speed through like that or I'd maybe have been a bit more prepared if that is even possible.

[416to305]

I can't agree with this statement enough. I'm no pro healer. I play WAR. However, since your main seems to be PLD, it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up Stoneskin on CNJ. Use that time to learn from a healer's perspective.

Personally I don't think this would help unless you plan on bringing the healer to 50 and playing it there. It's significantly different from 1-50 than it is from 50+, even a 4 person dungeon is much different than 8. In an 8 you have that other healer to help out, so it's easier to pop CS and do some DPS or Holy on groups of weaker adds, where as doing that with a 4 person one is much harder, since if you push it too much or try to get one more cast in, there's the potential for the tank to die, or yourself with no one else to raise you meaning everyone has to wipe due to your actions. You also get most of your main spells at 50 like Medica II or Benediction so when you're playing your tank it will mostly be in the 50+ dungeons or trials. I didn't even start to get comfortable with healing until probably 50 if not higher so I don't know if playing it for a few levels would do all that much. Most of the dungeons up to 40 or mid 40s are all pretty straightforward as well, you can practically pop Regen on the tank and they are good to go with the DPS's hardly needing to be healed.

[416to305]

2) The WHM has to stand still to cast, so it can't be cast while moving. If you want SS, wait for the healer to cast it, then move. If they seem to be hesitating, they might be waiting for a cooldown to finish. SSII without Swiftcast takes 6 seconds.

If you Swiftcast first then you can Stoneskin II while moving, I do it all the time since 90% of tanks finish a pull and just run off before you can cast SS again.

[KisaiTenshi]

If you Swiftcast first then you can Stoneskin II while moving, I do it all the time since 90% of tanks finish a pull and just run off before you can cast SS again.

I didn't go into details because I didn't want to write a 3 page novel of a post that would just get skipped over. >50% of the time swift+SSII fails to fire, if by that time the tank has moved out of your range, you end up SS'ing yourself and maybe the DPS. Hence, the tank should WAIT for SS if they want it, or they will not be getting it.

I've had enough runs in export roulette where the tank runs off the second they get the chance to, including the ones that chain-pull which makes SSII unable to be cast.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

I didn't go into details because I didn't want to write a 3 page novel of a post that would just get skipped over. >50% of the time swift+SSII fails to fire, if by that time the tank has moved out of your range, you end up SS'ing yourself and maybe the DPS. Hence, the tank should WAIT for SS if they want it, or they will not be getting it.

I've had enough runs in export roulette where the tank runs off the second they get the chance to, including the ones that chain-pull which makes SSII unable to be cast.

Well, you're just making up random excuses now. Tank running out of range? Stoneskin II has 15y range, the same as Medica. With Swiftcast you can move along with the tank too. If not Stoneskin II, use Stoneskin instead as that has 30 yalm range towards the target. If you'd want to re-stoneskin the entire party pre-position yourself or walk along/sprint while Swiftcast is still on. Any more excuses?