tanks not using cooldowns?

[Jpec07]

I'm not completely self-sufficient without a healer, that's the reason we have them. With a known healer, yeah, I'll cycle cooldowns, because I know he's not going to let me die. But I've had way too many deaths where I didn't watch a single heal get cast at all. I need my cooldowns for those idiotic periods, with a healer like that, my cooldowns are wasted during the time they actually know where their heal buttons are.

There's really two classes of mitigation cooldowns that all tanks have access to: rotational cooldowns (decent effect, >10s duration, shorter cooldown, like Rampart, Foresight, Bulwark/Awareness, etc.), and tankbuster cooldowns (powerful effect, 10s or less duration, longer cooldown, like Hallowed Ground, Sentinel, DA-DM, Living Dead, Holmgang, etc.). The tankbuster cooldowns are the ones you should be saving, if anything, because they are the ones that can actually save you if the shit hits the fan. The rotational cooldowns are substantially less effective, and are more designed for smoothing out incoming white damage; they cannot and will not save you in a pinch. You absolutely need to break the mentality of "cooldowns are for saving my ass" and realize that that's not how tanking works in this game. The amount of damage you mitigate passive through your tank stance and through the gear you wear is a pittance compared to what you can provide by keeping up at least one rotational cooldown at a time. Especially when there are so many of them that last for so long, there is absolutely no good reason why you should not be rotating them.

[Ragnorak]

This just in bad tank didnt use cooldowns blames healer then proceedes to punish group with long run. News at 11

[Geula]

This just in bad tank didnt use cooldowns blames healer then proceedes to punish group with long run. News at 11

M'lady where do I subscribe?

[Awful]

I need my cooldowns for those idiotic periods, with a healer like that, my cooldowns are wasted during the time they actually know where their heal buttons are.

Theres your first mistake right there you don't need to blow all your cds at once a good tank cycles them to continue to mitigate when the circumstance calls for it. That means you're a bad tank saving ALL your CDs for one moment when you could have been chain pulling with constant CDs. You should rethink how mitigation works in this game or practice more.

[Reinha]

Or... You can just heal... My cooldowns are for when you go stupid and I'm getting dangerously low on HP and you're still DPSing the mob instead of doing your job and healing me.

No no no no.... Don't sit on your cooldowns. A tanks job is to direct all the damage to themselves and then mitigate that damage. You are doing only half of your job and slowing down the run. An example of how proper use of cooldowns helps you during emergencies:

You have 25k health and you take 1k damage per second from a pack of mobs. After 20 seconds you have 5k HP left and assume you're in trouble, so you pop a 20 second cooldown which reduces damage by 20%. At this point (5k HP) it can only prevent 1k HP before you hit the dirt and you only get 6 seconds use from the cooldown. You die in 26 seconds and waste 14 seconds of a cd. If you had popped that same cooldown on pull, you would have had 9k HP left after 20 seconds as opposed to 5k HP, and it would take you 29 seconds to go from full health to dead. A noticeable difference and it's only with one cooldown. You could use more in one pull because most only take 1.5-3 minutes until they're back up.

So even in emergencies it's more useful to have popped a cd or two close to the beginning of the pull instead of saving them. Outside emergencies you are making the healer's job easier with good cd use and giving them time to dps more, which in turn makes the fight last a shorter time and prevents damage that way. And you get to finish faster! No matter the situation, you should always be using your cooldowns from the start except the ones that provide immunity to damage.

[HoodRat]

Doing as much damage as you can is perfectly fine, as long as I'm not dying because you're DPSing instead of healing. Your PRIMARY job is to heal the group. If I die because I had no heals from you in 20 seconds, you failed as a healer. If I died because you suck at healing in cleric stance, you failed as a healer. THAT is why so many of us SAVE our cooldowns, because so many of you let us drop in HP and die, while you're still tunneling on trying to win the DPS meters. HEAL US, do damage in between, but healing is your #1 priority.

Try popping a CD, your hp won't go down as quickly and you'll live long enough for healers to do their openers then heal you.

Btw, your whole response was pretty funny considering I'm not a healer. :3

[Kazumac]

Or... You can just heal... My cooldowns are for when you go stupid and I'm getting dangerously low on HP and you're still DPSing the mob instead of doing your job and healing me. If this game wasn't so obsessed with the DPS that tanks and healers do, then we'd be more willing to cycle our cooldowns to make your job easier. But the problem is that half the healers don't heal. My cooldowns are for emergencies / HUGE hits from bosses, not so that you can dps an add. Sorry, bad healers ruined it for everyone.

Not using damage reduction cooldowns regularly is probably why shit hits the fan when you tank. They are not reactive skills, they are proactive. Hallowed, holmgang, living dead are your, I'm about to die and need to buy time CDs and even those can be used proactively. There are no tank busters in our current 4 man dungeons you need to save cooldowns for. Popping sentinel or vengeance when you are at 20% health isn't as useful as using it when starting a large multi mob pull.

[Instrumentality]

But I might need them later !

[Yuni_Queen]

True tank is turning delieverence on to do dps. "convalesnce was up why you didnt heal me"

Jokes on side, you either sit in Grit all day long, popping cooldowns to mitigate some heavy dmg, Or you drop Frit and start predicting and play the class. Thats where tanking starts. "i can drop shield oath after Boost, boss will be voked soon, i can deal some additional dmg". "i will drop Grit after Hypercompressed plasma and pop awerness + bloodbath just in case of shit, now i can make up those dmg i lost on keeping myself alive".

And stuff like that. Until you do current worse trial/savage. Then you pop all buffs at once praying to RNG to make tank-buster attack dmg lower than your undergeared HP. \[T]/

[Dzian]

There's really two classes of mitigation cooldowns that all tanks have access to: rotational cooldowns (decent effect, >10s duration, shorter cooldown, like Rampart, Foresight, Bulwark/Awareness, etc.), and tankbuster cooldowns (powerful effect, 10s or less duration, longer cooldown, like Hallowed Ground, Sentinel, DA-DM, Living Dead, Holmgang, etc.). The tankbuster cooldowns are the ones you should be saving, if anything, because they are the ones that can actually save you if the shit hits the fan. The rotational cooldowns are substantially less effective, and are more designed for smoothing out incoming white damage; they cannot and will not save you in a pinch. You absolutely need to break the mentality of "cooldowns are for saving my ass" and realize that that's not how tanking works in this game. The amount of damage you mitigate passive through your tank stance and through the gear you wear is a pittance compared to what you can provide by keeping up at least one rotational cooldown at a time. Especially when there are so many of them that last for so long, there is absolutely no good reason why you should not be rotating them.

From a tanking point of view I do not cycle cooldowns on general trash and even various phases in boss fights. I use them on an as needed basis.
From a healers point of view I hate tanks that cycle there cool downs Would much prefer tanks that tank similar to the way I tank.

As a scholar in a dungeon, it annoys the hell out of me seeing a tank use defensive buffs on pulls where even my fairy falls asleep from lack of damage to heal. it's a total waste of cooldowns. made even worse by that tank then making a big pull and not popping any defensive buffs because there on all cooldown. this includes convalescence. not technically a defensive buff but seeing tanks use it on small assed pulls that need next to no healing is really annoying. even more annoying are the tanks that pop convalescence half way through a big pull when 2/3 of the mobs are already dead and healing the rest is a cake walk...

On my Paladin I use them as needed. I won't use convalescence on a pull if I know the next pull in a minutes time is going to be a bigger one. it makes more sense to use it at a time where incoming damage is going to be at a peak. I won't use it and then run into that big pull without it. because it's in that big pull where it would provide the most help to the healer. I won't use rampart if a scholars fairy or whms regen is pretty much keeping me up.

Intelligent use on an as needed basis is much better than cycling or rotating them.