A complaint from a whiny healer

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Staying in tank stance or not is a matter of player comfort/skill. Mathematically it's better not to be in it. Doing 25% or more DPS is better than taking 20% less damage, specially when our tank cooldowns are stronger than the tank stances. Even on packs of mobs. Specially on DRK where they can absorb a big portion of the damage they deal as health, which being in tank stance reduces. Losing access to Bloodweapon also means you get less MP to use on recovery/damage.

However, a good tank isn't one that never uses stance.. It's a tank that knows when they can leave it and when to go back into it.

It's not a statistically worse or weaker we are talking about, it's more of a feeling you get when you heal. Sometimes tanks seem squishier than they should be even if they are playing similarly properly or similarly improperly to other tanks. Heck you can get 2 of the same tank in relatively the same gear, both use no CDs and sit in tank stance, can almost guarantee one will feel squishier than the other for no apparent reason.

Using "feel squishier" doesn't really mean anything. It is neither a "fact" nor a "measurable" parameter. Damage variance exists, Human error exists on both healer and tank sides, too. But none of these should be used when comparing the tanks. Only facts and measurable (mostly numeric) parameters matter. Savage raids have been done where only 1 or 2 healing spells were cast through the entire fight, this means no matter what the tank, they are fully capable of reducing damage to ridiculous levels.

Examples of facts are that WAR and DRK have:
1- Three or Two more defensive cooldowns than PLD respectively.
2- Said cooldowns are much shorter recast times, so they can be used more often, and in most cases, last longer. So the uptime on those cooldowns is much higher. Examples: Vengeance 120 vs Sentinel 130. Raw Intuition 90 vs Bulwakr 180s. Holmgang 180s vs Hallowed 420s. Dark Mind 60s vs Sentinel 180s. Shadow Wall 120s vs Sentinel 180s.
3- Have more single target DPS and MUCH MUCH MUCH more AoE damage than PLD could ever dream to do AND can convert a huge portion of it into self healing at minimal loss. (Adds die much faster, self sustain that overcomes whatever little mitigation "Block" might edge the PLD out, Read: It barely does).

Examples of Measurable parameters:
- Resources used on healing the tank.
- Kill time. Which is shorter? Shorter fights/phases mean less damage taken, hence less healing used. Even less defensive CDs needed.
- How much punishment can a tank take without help from outside.

PLD's only strength when it comes to mitigation is that it mitigates A LOT of damage when it actually does, but it does it way less often.

DRK can mitigate the same if not more thanks to TBN and stackable CDs... And it does it more often.

WAR may not, at first look, mitigate as much each time (it can but it comes at a DPS loss because of the IB vs FC trade-off), but then it doesn't care because it can just ignore twice half the dangerous mechanics, thanks to Holmgang. And because of Holmgang ignoring half the threat, WAR just throws more defensives at the half they end up not ignoring, ending up mitigating more than the other two tanks over a fight.

"Feeling" that a tank is squishier =/= tank is actually squishier. Healers need to stop panic-heal-bombing and actually understand their own toolkit along with the tanks' toolkits. Once you do, you'll find out what kills a WAR, also kills a PLD and what a PLD can survive, DRk and WAR can as well. And once you analyze FFLogs, you find that the damage taken difference is miniscule (and that's because FFLogs doesn't ignore damage that overflows Holmgang/LD, and it doesn't account for self healing as "damage mitigated" and just adds it to HPS anyway.)

I wouldn't bother giving this wall of text because opinions are just that, opinions, but said opinions might leave the wrong impression or convey wrong information to people that don't know better as "facts".

[Ftail]

Staying in tank stance or not is a matter of player comfort/skill. Mathematically it's better not to be in it. Doing 25% or more DPS is better than taking 20% less damage, specially when our tank cooldowns are stronger than the tank stances. Even on packs of mobs.

If I'm doing a daily expert dungeon on my SCH, I'm actually surprised if I see a DPS class beat me on a large mob trash pull, assuming I have a good tank.

If you want to never use tank stance in an expert dungeon on the boss fight, cool good for you, they barely even tickle at this point. However, you maybe doing 25% more damage, but the healer will be doing a hell of a lot less on huge trash mob pulls. It's an overall net loss for the groups DPS if you don't use tanking stance on huge wall to wall mob pulls.

[Phoenicia]

If I'm doing a daily expert dungeon on my SCH, I'm actually surprised if I see a DPS class beat me on a large mob trash pull, assuming I have a good tank.

If you want to never use tank stance in an expert dungeon on the boss fight, cool good for you, they barely even tickle at this point. However, you maybe doing 25% more damage, but the healer will be doing a hell of a lot less on huge trash mob pulls. It's an overall net loss for the groups DPS if you don't use tanking stance on huge wall to wall mob pulls.

So you want to convince me that your SCH does over 9000 DPS (no, this is not the vegetta meme) on an AoE pack? Because unless you do, you're not even beating the WAR or DRK. I'm sorry, but you're using bad players to generalize a rule.

The majority of SCH heals are oGCD anyway, so a WAR sitting in defiance gives you ZERO benefit and only means more HP for you to heal. WAR in Deliverance Decimates mobs under IR (see what I did thur? Hurrdurr). And if you want to say that you cast your GCD heals and still beat a good tank/DPS then, I'm sorry but I won't believe you.

DRK out of Grit gets MUCH more MP to throw on TBN, which means more quietus (160 or 210 potency + 480 MP/mob), Quietus with Bloodweapon recovers twice the MP, said MP is used for DA+AD which in turn has 100% life steal. A good DRK requires less healing in AoE scenarios than either of the other two even out of Grit.

Heck, even PLD can dish out good numbers while their TP lasts. Under Hallowed, and Sentinel being twice as strong as ShO, you have no excuse not to do your DPS, and you won't beat the PLD. Imo, if the PLD runs out of TP and mobs still live, the group DPS is bad.

Unless you're heal bombing because you have no idea how healing works in the game or you got a paper tank, you should be able to dish out DPS.

In any level 70 dungeon, my in-game wife and healer NEVER spends a GCD healing me and I NEVER go into tank stance. We rarely get good enough DPS to do more than either of us in AoE. But when we bring a DPS friend, even if it's a monk or a ninja (let's not even talk BLM or SMN) and that just changes, neither of us can compete. Over the whole dungeon, I average out 5.5~6k, she does 4.8~5.5, good DPS average out 7~8k.

The argument that healers can deal "more DPS than DPS" in AoE was a meme that died with ARR. WHMs, AST and SCH all have respectable AoE, but no way in hell can they beat a DPS that knows where their AoE button on their hotbar.

Conveniently, in your argument, you assumed a "good tank" and not "good DPS". I'm thinking even biased "good tank" here as it is probably a ShO Paladin that uses Clemency on self.

Sadly in a roulette, what I see is all those wheelchair samurai that spam their ST combo and even Midare when I'm fighting a pack of 13 or so mobs, instead of their 200 potency Oka/Mangetsu, Kyutens and even Tenka Goken.

Even BLMs spam their Fire 4 instead of Flare or even just Fire 2. In a pack of 13, Fire 2 wins over Fire 4 by 3.5 times. And Fire 2 spam alone beats the SCH AoE DPS. Alas, we're stuck with Fire 4 and, even worse, Feeze spammers. And you comparing yourself to said BLM or SAM isn't an something to write home (or these forums) about.

[Kabooa]

Heck, even PLD can dish out good numbers while their TP lasts. Under Hallowed, and Sentinel being twice as strong as ShO, you have no excuse not to do your DPS, and you won't beat the PLD. Imo, if the PLD runs out of TP and mobs still live, the group DPS is bad.

Uh what.

The Scholar's Miasma 2 alone should out do anything the Paladin is doing, as Sword Oath doesn't benefit weaponskills at all. It's just not getting the Shield Oath penalty, and Potency for Casters and Healers means more than Potency for Weaponskills.

Not counting spread DoTs and Shadowflare.

Just to illustrate further

Doing a quick test on my admittedly not BIS but Omega Sword Paladin, TE is around 1800 a GCD per target.

By comparison, Miasma 2 on my -Byakko- tome Scholar is 3100 a GCD + 3100 DoT. Shadow Flare + Spread Dots even on the weakest target is a total of around 64 potency every 3 seconds (or 53 potency per 2.5 "GCD" would mean that the DoTs of everything alone surpass TE/Circle of Scorn), and the Weapon on the Scholar is far inferior.

[Phoenicia]

Uh what.

The Scholar's Miasma 2 alone should out do anything the Paladin is doing, as Sword Oath doesn't benefit weaponskills at all. It's just not getting the Shield Oath penalty, and Potency for Casters and Healers means more than Potency for Weaponskills.

Not counting spread DoTs and Shadowflare.

Eclipse + CoS under the 25% buff of FoF and autos all add to the PLD's DPS. It's not all AoE, but it's DPS. And while the TP lasts, it's pretty high. And again, thanks to Hallowed and Sentinel and Bulwark, it's not stopping your SCH from doing its thing. PLD sitting in ShO as opposed to popping its very potent defensives in SwO won't affect the SCH's DPS.

[Kabooa]

Eclipse + CoS under the 25% buff of FoF and autos all add to the PLD's DPS. It's not all AoE, but it's DPS. And while the TP lasts, it's pretty high. And again, thanks to Hallowed and Sentinel and Bulwark, it's not stopping your SCH from doing its thing. PLD sitting in ShO as opposed to popping its very potent defensives in SwO won't affect the SCH's DPS.

It's too early in the morning for this, as I'm misreading all over the place.

You said Paladins beat Scholar in AoE.

That's not true. You said so yourself you're just trying to clear up misconceptions and misinformation, so don't go around spreading it either.

[Phoenicia]

It's too early in the morning for this, as I'm misreading all over the place.

You said Paladins beat Scholar in AoE.

That's not true. You said so yourself you're just trying to clear up misconceptions and misinformation, so don't go around spreading it either.

I double checked and I stand corrected with that regard. But that doesn't discredit the rest of my post. That's not even what my argument was about so what's happening here is nitpicking.

The argument was: Good tanks can sit out of tank stance at no, or negligible, DPS loss on the healer's side. And their DPS gained is actually worth whatever the healers "lose".