Protect? Really important? Low level content

[Leiloni]

Agreed... providing that your group is willing to wait for the CD on ability-swapping. If they aren't, and you're limited to using one or the other, CS is clearly the superior choice for damage reduction in low-level duties, assuming that the healer is pulling enough weight.

You don't really need to wait. I've had groups in low level dungeons where I buff, swap it out, and as they're running to the first pack of mobs I'm waiting for my CD. Sure they might be killing stuff as you stand there waiting for the CD, but they shouldn't need many heals that early anyway. And at that level your heal does a lot so one heal gets them back to full. You don't need your group to wait for you at all.

And this is literally only a problem in the first two dungeons when you have just one cross class slot (if you're leveled down in DF). By the time you hit Copperbell it's a non issue since you can equip both. Unless you really are afraid someone's going to somehow die in a low level dungeon and you need Swiftcast slotted, then you have a couple more easy dungeons to worry about before level 30 at which point there's no excuse not to have all three.

I see your point, but a new tank should not be trying to comment on how a healer does their job. There are bad healers. There are also bad tanks. I've done runs where the tank forgets to put up shield oath but you don't see me rage quitting. I heal them. I don't see the point in assuming that all players are bad and thus their play style should be homogenized or else you quit. Respect your fellow players, and if then things go wrong, try and help. If you honestly believe that a group wouldn't have wiped with the extra 1-4% mitigation that protect offers, then your healer isn't the only bad player. For something like that to cause wipes it must be progression content or an ill-equipped tank AND a very bad healer. A healer so bad as to have NEVER healed before and not even know that they should be HEALING... Again, that is if you think protect would have saved a group. That isn't even considering the fact that dps is another form of mitigation and if a healer doesn't heal at all then they must be putting out plenty of mitigation, in which case they should have been healing but protect wouldn't have saved you as it is less mitigation than the damage that they were doing.

In other words, in cases where one physick fully heals a player, protect isn't important, imho, and that is the case for most healers in low level dungeons.

Right but that Cleric Stance isn't going to have a huge impact, either at low levels with easy content. But if your first job is as a healer and you can make things easier, then why not do it? Are you trying to say if something isn't absolutely game breaking that healers should just slack off and only do what's absolutely required? People should be giving it their all and making the run as smooth as they can. I mean you can go in with no cross class skills and be fine and do only the bare minimum by throwing occasional heals and no dps and no buffs, that doesn't mean you should.