Post Your Healing Horror Stories.

[JenniLeFur]

I wanted to get some levels in on my almost forgotten AST. Every Trial Roulette has dumped my AST in Ravana. It's some sort of curse.

Leveling Roulette gives me Sohm Al. The WAR pulls the first two mobs, the MNK & SMN start to dps and so, after waiting a few seconds I dump a regen on his head and switch to cleric's. That is the exact moment that the WAR runs to the next group of mobs.

So before I get to cast anything, I start running after him, turn off cleric's and...get aggro since the regen was still going. No big deal, he's got aggro now and he's facetanking a load of mobs. Dps kill the mobs and I start wondering if it's normal to use Benefic II on CD.

Next room, same story. I doublecheck, yeah, he's got Defiance on. Odd. Oh well.

I decided to check his lodestone after the run, thinking he might've been so hard to heal because of a low ilvl. That'd make way more sense than him not using any cooldowns, right?

Wrong.

He's level 60 in full Void Ark gear.

[Tianera]

Next room, same story. I doublecheck, yeah, he's got Defiance on. Odd. Oh well.
60 in full Void Ark gear.

I could swear I got a similar tank in the level 52 dungeon, which name I forgot. Though, I have no clue if it's normal, how fast a WAR should drop at a single pack (3 mobs).. it felt just weird.

[Morningstar1337]

I could swear I got a similar tank in the level 52 dungeon, which name I forgot. Though, I have no clue if it's normal, how fast a WAR should drop at a single pack (3 mobs).. it felt just weird.

Dusk Vigil and since Defiance is supposed to be the Warrior's defensive stance, it would be something of an abnormality.

[Februs]

I could swear I got a similar tank in the level 52 dungeon, which name I forgot. Though, I have no clue if it's normal, how fast a WAR should drop at a single pack (3 mobs).. it felt just weird.

Dusk Vigil and since Defiance is supposed to be the Warrior's defensive stance, it would be something of an abnormality.

It is normal. A lot of people don't realize that Defiance doesn't actually do anything to a War's Defense.

Pld's and Drk's gain a 20% reduction in dmg when in Shield Oath / Grit, respectively. War's do not. They gain 25% increase to their maximum Hp, and a 20% increase in healing (which does not equal the same eHp as a Pld or Drk). The only direct increase they receive to their defense is a slight increase in their Parry rate (2% per stack of Wrath, adding up to 10% at Infuriated status). That's it.

The strength of a War's defense is tied to how efficiently they use their buffs. Being in Defiance is not enough. They have to cycle inner beast, and use proper synergy with their defensive / offensive cooldowns to take full advantage of their self-healing. Because of this, a War's Hp is more susceptible to sudden drops and increases. If the War is not using their CD's efficiently (which, sadly, is common these days now that they all seem to think that they're a Dps class and not Tanks) their Hp will bottom out very quickly.

That being said, War's defensive CD's have ridiculously good synergy and are very easy to use. You can pop practically any 2 buffs in the Warrior kit and they will pair well, so even lack luster War's can put on a decent showing of having "good" defense. It's for this reason that you don't typically see War's dropping like flies in dungeons. Taking full advantage of their kit and maximizing their potential is hard, but keeping up a baseline defense with the CD's they have available is not difficult.

[JenniLeFur]

It is normal. A lot of people don't realize that Defiance doesn't actually do anything to a War's Defense.

I didn't actually know that! Thanks
I just use stances as an indication of style. Usually, between the tank's stance and the first pull, you can tell if it's safe to spend time in Cleric's. That does explain why my first Fractal run had a WAR tank who did the entire run with massive pulls in Deliverance though, if Defiance doesn't give access to special cds or something. Run went fine too, I mean, it was hard work keeping up and I certainly dealt 0 damage, but it was fun and fast

[Sinaloa]

Pld's and Drk's gain a 20% reduction in dmg when in Shield Oath / Grit, respectively. War's do not. They gain 25% increase to their maximum Hp, and a 20% increase in healing (which does not equal the same eHp as a Pld or Drk). The only direct increase they receive to their defense is a slight increase in their Parry rate (2% per stack of Wrath, adding up to 10% at Infuriated status). That's it.

True but the cooldowns of the warrior are stronger by default.
1*0,8*0,3=0,24 effective DR. While the Warrior got 1*0,3=0,3 effective DR.
The Warrior got 3,2% less "mitigation" under no effect. But 2,8% more mitigation under an similar effect in def. (eg. 30% DR CD)
Thats the reason good warriors are tougher and bad warriors a squishier. The usefullness of the warriors CD´s are just a bonus.

Please correct me if there have been changes made since I last checked tanks.

[technole]

Some cooldowns require Defiance to use, but we can stance dance to Deliverance once triggered to still get their full effects, and the amount of ways we have to mitigate as Warrior is unbelievable. It's not as cut-and-dry like with Paladin.

Then we have strong cooldowns that don't require a stance like Thrill of Battle which can actually mean having "Defiance" -5% HP while in Deliverance. Pairing that up with Inner Beast 20% mitigation/damage/self-heal for-example before stance dancing, and with proper skill play a healer likely won't notice much of a difference. Warrior could then next infuriate/build more stacks then fell cleave/decimate the living crap out of the mobs, burning things faster.

Plus three of our cooldowns give a wrath/abandon stack, so the job skill set is promoting cooldown use if you want to do some serious damage and mitigation.

I will say though a Warrior has no one to blame but themselves if they die in Deliverance without a cooldown to compensate for the lack of Defiance. The healer is likely trying to heal you but without the Defiance healing buff, one should mitigate their HP levels.

[Februs]

I didn't actually know that! Thanks ... That does explain why my first Fractal run had a WAR tank who did the entire run with massive pulls in Deliverance though, if Defiance doesn't give access to special cds or something.

No problem. The more healers know about the differences between Tanks the better. As for War's, they do get a benefit from being in Defiance. Basically :

Some cooldowns require Defiance to use, but we can stance dance to Deliverance once triggered to still get their full effects, and the amount of ways we have to mitigate as Warrior is unbelievable.

This ^

Defiance does not provide a passive defense the same way Shield Oath or Grit does to a Pld/Drk, but it does grant them access to their Infuriated oGCD's. Inner Beast, in particular, is a big one. They basically get +20% defense every 20s if they Tank while in Defiance.

That being said, there really is not much of a penalty for swapping to Deliverance once they gain that effect. Further, some of their defensive moves actually see better synergy when used in Deliverance. Blood Bath, for example, scales self-healing from the War's dmg output. Deliverance increases their Dps significantly, so the returns they see from Blood Bath go up when they use it in their Dps stance. If they pop Berserk with it they can essentially go without direct healing for the duration of the timer. So it's not uncommon to see a War cycle into Deliverance whenever Blood Bath and Berserk are up, to increase their self-healing. It's all about knowing when and where it is a good idea to switch stances.

Please correct me if there have been changes made since I last checked tanks.

As far as I know, this is still accurate, but I haven't looked into the War numbers since the patch. War's do, however, have a lower eHp while in their Tank stance than Pld's. Someone handed me my own ignorance on this one in the tank forums once before and ran the numbers to clear things up. In terms of flat eHp, War's come up short by roughly 5%. That being said, their Self-healing more than makes up that difference, so learning how to use those CD's efficiently is a good idea.

[Ghishlain]

I wanted to get some levels in on my almost forgotten AST. Every Trial Roulette has dumped my AST in Ravana. It's some sort of curse.

Leveling Roulette gives me Sohm Al. The WAR pulls the first two mobs, the MNK & SMN start to dps and so, after waiting a few seconds I dump a regen on his head and switch to cleric's. That is the exact moment that the WAR runs to the next group of mobs.

So before I get to cast anything, I start running after him, turn off cleric's and...get aggro since the regen was still going. No big deal, he's got aggro now and he's facetanking a load of mobs. Dps kill the mobs and I start wondering if it's normal to use Benefic II on CD.

Next room, same story. I doublecheck, yeah, he's got Defiance on. Odd. Oh well.

I decided to check his lodestone after the run, thinking he might've been so hard to heal because of a low ilvl. That'd make way more sense than him not using any cooldowns, right?

Wrong.

He's level 60 in full Void Ark gear.

Out of the five new leveling dungeons released between 51-60 (DV, Sohm Al, Aery, Vault, Library), I found Sohm Al seemed to have the highest spike in damage from trash. I more or less did the all those dungeons with a good FC tank who kept their gear fairly up to date at the time and felt a notable spike in damage received from Trash in Sohm Al compared to the other 4. I doubt it's me as a healer because I've ran into similar healer thoughts when doing that dungeon with PuG and FC tanks alike.

It's not a dungeon I recommend mass pulling on for that reason.

[JenniLeFur]

It's not a dungeon I recommend mass pulling on for that reason.

I know, though usually, I'd say you'd have the time to heal the entire party. During one trash pull (with the cryodragon), aggro was all over the place and even Essential Dignity could barely buy me enough time to spend one GCD on anyone else!