Is this a common thing for tanks to do?

[Jpec07]

Quoting the Dog of Wisdom (who dispenses wisdom from the Wisdom Tooth): "If your ball is too big for your mouth, it isn't yours."

It's a good wisdom for tanks to remember. Only pull as much as you know you can hold and survive. Some tanks can chain pull every mob from the start to the last boss; and if they can hold the aggro and survive the hits, more power to them. But other tanks may only take it one pack at a time (which is substantially less stressful for healers, especially in AoE-poor groups (DRG-MNK is a horrible combo for big pulls)). Tanks should only pull what they feel comfortable pulling, and should be in really good communication with their healers. If there's a mishap on a pull, then the tank and the healer should both adjust some to prevent it happening again.

That said, I will agree that the tank in question here is a bad tank. They bit off more than they could chew, pulling more mobs than they could hold and survive. And then they blamed you for it, while clearly and demonstrably not knowing how enmity works in this game, and not anticipating the healing aggro you would generate to keep him up (probably a WoW refugee, since tanks there get aggro just for existing). Just remember OP, that you are the healer; you decide who lives or dies.

[ForsakenScholar]

Oh yeah that's pretty important too. If for whatever reason you get the aggro (it can happen even with the best tank in the world), please go hug your tank, it will help immensely.

Many times I try to. Unfortunately the tank usually runs away from me as if they expect me to kite while they hold 2 enemies and I heal them at the same time. And when that happens in Fractal/reap I want to punch the tank in the face.

[bounddreamer]

When I do the AK Hard big pull, I tag every single mob with Tomahawk or Shield Lob just to be sure. Because missing even one mob can result in the healer getting hit which can mean an embarrassing early wipe. It wasn't your fault, it was his fault. And if he thought it was your fault, he wasn't paying attention to his threat meter. :/

[baopee]

Not just tank, healer and dps has to work with tank during the initial pull. healer and dps should never jump the gun on healing or dpsing, that being said, healer should cast damage mitigation spell prior to the pull, tank should cast CDs to mitigating the first run of damage and through out the engagement, that gives healer time to DPS or catch up with healing. as for Aoe, DPS can always switch to single target rotation if tank can not firmly hold the aggro on mobs. It takes a team effort to do a successful speed run, not just tank's responsibility.

[Adire]

snip

So I should have stood there while he was at about a quarter health and about to die from the damage spike of mobs arriving at him? Okay, next time I'll make sure to do that.

I healed him because death without the heal was inevitable, and I assumed he would pick the mobs up since I was right next to him being attacked for a good 4 or more seconds. If he had stopped to tag the mobs, none of this would have happened and the story would have ended nicely. Please don't give out bad advice and pull false blame. A healer tossing out regens mid pulls and heals when they aren't necessary is one thing, healing a near death tank who failed to build any enmity at all on several mobs and spent around 4 seconds not pulling them off when they received a much needed heal is another.

When I tank, I stop for a second if necessary. Never had a problem, never had a complaint, and never had healers pull aggro on me while I was pulling or taken significantly more damage. I say this as a 60 WAR by the way. I'd consider making sure healers don't pull aggro mid-pull isn't a waste of resources and I never have resource problems in the first place, maybe that's just me. As I said though, normally I don't even have to stop, if I do it's for such a short time that makes basically no difference to the damage I take.

On the other hand I don't understand why you would heal a tank running to next mob or in some cases a "smart" healer throwing regen while the tank is mobbing. You will never save him with that single heal but you will direct mobs to you and then getting yourself or the tank killed.

It would have saved him actually. One benefic II would have given enough health to him to survive both the run and the stop in time for me to get more heals off, while he'd still hold aggro if he had tagged the mobs.

When I do the AK Hard big pull, I tag every single mob with Tomahawk or Shield Lob just to be sure. Because missing even one mob can result in the healer getting hit which can mean an embarrassing early wipe. It wasn't your fault, it was his fault. And if he thought it was your fault, he wasn't paying attention to his threat meter. :/

Exactly. He even said he didn't lose aggro and that I had full health the entire pull. Recorded video and 2 others testifying otherwise says it all. It goes to show how lacking his awareness of what was going on was.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[Twilite]

Oh yeah that's pretty important too. If for whatever reason you get the aggro (it can happen even with the best tank in the world), please go hug your tank, it will help immensely.

I may just do that for real. :3

Anyhow, this is why I wait a bit to heal(unless they suddenly drop below my "healer's threshold" sooner than I expect) when they are rounding up.

[Brian_]

This topic pops up every once in a while and the results are always similar.

Like I said before you decided to get overly defensive,

It's hard to say who's more at fault because you never gave specifics. You never said what job the tank was and the original post only mentioned the tank got low. It never said how low. 40% HP upon finishing the full pull is probably fine. Finishing the full pull with 25% is actually still okay if he's a PLD. It's the first pull of the dungeon. If he doesn't have HG, he messed up. If he's at a quarter life and no where near finished pulling, then yea, let him die. What's he going to say? Why didn't you heal me? Your reply would be obvious and he would have no retort. He didn't have aggro and he didn't pop HG. It's as simple as that.

As a PLD main during 2.X, I always pop HG on that first full pull because the timing works out to use HG twice in that dungeon. I don't know how many hundreds of times I ran AK HM on PLD when it was part of EX roulette. I never got that low on the pull so this exact same situation hasn't happened, but has a healer died because they decided to heal me and pull half the mobs back across the hallway? Yea. I tell them the same thing every time. Do not heal me before I gather and Circle of Scorn + Flash. If I die before then, it is my problem, not yours. End of story.

[TouchandFeel]

For big pulls, for the most part it is resource inefficient to tag every mob along the way.

In some instances, it is not really a big resource drain, so it might be better to tag more mobs while running, for example as a PLD I will tag most mobs with Shield Lob since I will have more than enough TP when I stop and start Flash spamming + Riot combo and I will be burning through a separate resource (MP).

On the other hand if I am playing DRK, I am going to tag the minimum I need to to preserve my MP so I don't dip too low and screw myself over when I stop to gather and use Unleashed since all those abilities use MP (and a good chunk of it) along with my MP ticking down as I am running if I have Darkside up during the pull.

However, I consider healers casting during a pull something that should not be done and knowing that should imo be considered healer 101 stuff. If its a big pull, adq or ss them before they start and prepare to heal them up once they stop and establish group agro, but don't cast a heal mid pull and especially not regen or med 2, that is almost a guaranteed way to muck up the pull somehow and make the Tank unhappy.

If the Tank is almost dying during the pull even with shields applied pre-pull, well that is their fault and they either should use a defensive CD or do a smaller pull that they can handle.
If they die and bitch about not getting a heal mid pull, they are being foolish and just tell them that if you did heal them it would take agro and screw up the pull.

As far as stopping during a pull to establish group agro before continuing the rest of the pull, for the most part you should never have to do this unless something goes wrong during the pull. The faster you get from where you start the pull to where you group the mobs to take down: the faster the pull will be and therefore the faster the run, the less damage you take since stopping allows the mobs to catch up to you and hit you and finally the less chance there will be for someone to misinterpret what is happening and to start attacking the mobs/healing you, etc.

[KingOfAbyss]

I don't remember where I read that, but it seems Japanese players use the other way around: smaller pulls, then no one dies for sure, less stress on healers, and.. they get the job done.

I just don't know which one would be faster, since the chance to die are close to non-existent, versus big pulls where you can wipe, having to return and then use shortcut (if it's there), having to run all the way back..

I choose to pull them by group, when they come, be it 2-3 or 6; we blast through them, and move on to Bosses.. so far with the time, it's decent, at least decent for me, a casual that my time is important.

I choose to have fun along the way, less stress, having a good time; I find myself even chatting with some from different servers, imagine that!

Really, they should have made different servers: Hardcore for those that want to parse and kick those who aren't making the optimum damage output; and casual servers, where people enjoy the game, slower pace, no stress.

Both are good btw, to each their own; but I'm not the type that will be forced to feel stressed to pull more than what I feel ok with. On the other hand, we can do, but I would love to see who would dare to put the blame on ^^

So OP, as long as you don't put a HoT on the Tank before he pulls, he should be fine. If he cannot hold hate on the mobs he got, even if the DPS waited a few flash/other, then yeah, the Tank needs to be teached to perform better next time.

and if Healers/DPs gets aggro, as other stated here, you go near the tank, he should see you and flash/other to get them back.

Have fun! ^^

[Meow9000]

One thing I feel people forget to mention is that it helps when tanks pop cool downs while they're actually pulling, especially if you have some distance between mobs. I.E in Fractal, 3rd pull after grabbing the first group as a DRK I'll pop foresight and dark dance, and then shadow skin and convalescence after the second group has been grabbed. Using your less important cool downs to help survive while grabbing mobs will help your healer loads