Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[Goji1639]

I've never really seen healer only mock runs to begin with, but from an on-paper perspective, i could see something like trying to fish for crit-lo from a scholar or 3 to be "effective". but thats more me """"theorycrafting"""" than anything I can talk about in confidence. In general, so long as the primary healer isnt the one eating the buster, I would trend towards thinking the healer is the most essential part of a group. But that's why I tried to highlight that all roles can be ignored to one extent or another.

Tanking as a role loses alot of value when outgoing damage is low, such as in dungeons, palace, normal raids, and the like. For a sizable chunk of the playerbase, that is the extent of the content they access. Combine that with the general "tank ego" stereotype, I can kinda get that perspective. I dont agree with it, but I can kinda understand it.

Well, if outgoing damage is super low the healer role loses a lot of value as well. For trash pulls I'd say healer is more valuable, but in boss fights the tank is far more crucial.

With no tank the healer will be at the top of the aggro list; it's not really avoidable. In many cases when the tank goes down the healer doesn't even survive long enough for the tank to get through his res animation and provoke; whereas when the healer goes down I've seen tanks hold their ground and keep both DPS alive for literal minutes.

I get the point, though; no one in the group is a 1 man show and people who behave like they are will be poison to any run. However, I don't see how healers are more vital than tanks in normal content; that really hasn't been my experience as someone who has done plenty of both in normal content.

[Fluffernuff]

At the risk of derailing the point of the thread, i'll try to explain my view on healer and leave things as they are.

When outgoing damage is low, this frees up the healer to focus on damage. and while that may stir a particular crowd... the unfortunate thing with ShB right now is healers actually out-DPS tanks and thats still with access to tools like raise, oGCD healing, and the like. tanks, on the other hand.... dont exactly get any benefit for getting hit less hard. If anyone can take the beating, they simply offer less than literally anyone else, even an AST.
Thats why I err towards healing being a tad more important than a tank in dungeon content. Its not that im saying tanking is completely optional or should be removed. I simply think we offer less to the success of a group than a healer. Still more than a DPS though.


In terms of a boss fight going sour, Tanks and Healers are opposite sides of the same coin. Healers have very little self-preservation/mitigation tools. they are limited to shields, if they even have those. Tanks, on the other hand can reduce and smooth out damage for days, but if your name isnt PLD, you have precious few tools to recover. Thats really the main reason why a healer explodes and a tank persists. if a healer could mitigate, well.... we would have the equivalent of a ranged PLD with permanent req up for clemency. it's bad design.


different toolkits over the patches have skewed my the specifics on things, but my general mentality can boil down to;
A great tank will DRAG a run to the end.
A great healer will CARRY a run to the end.

A terrible tank will slow down a run.
A terrible healer will prevent a run.

Not that I put any great importance or reverence to healers. I just think their general role contributes more- all things being equal. Once you get out of roulettes though, every role is rather vital. if anything, I would actually say it reverses. Healing is still ever as important, but savage content is much more scripted. so in more optimized play, less healing is required.

But yeah. HOPEFULLY that clears up the maze that is my mind. I'm rather wordy, but still terrible at conveyance. Either way, back to horror stories

[Goji1639]

The problem is that healers can't tank, but tanks can heal (at least Paladins can). The lower the outgoing damage is, the more sufficiently a Paladin can replace an actual healer while still doing his own job.

It doesn't really matter how many tools a healer has if he can't eat a tank buster or some crits. Healers have no aggro dumps and DPS have no provokes; if there's no tank then the healer is tanking, and healers can't tank boss fights. Trash is a different story, though; a WHM can tank those pretty easily with regen and Holy spam.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I get the sentiment with this, but

Tanks are needed.
Bad tanks are not.

The context was limited to just 2 trash mobs. nothing else, not EX/savage.
"Can a healer or group survive 2 trash mobs w/o a tank?"
The prior person said "BS".

Of course tanks can be needed under the right circumstances, which the person quoted even brought up indirectly.

[AnotherPerson]

Tank doesn't use tank stance. I remind him. He turns it on after the first couple of large trash pulls. Tank doesn't use mitigations for the whole run up to the last boss, so before we went into it, I remind him cause the boss has a couple of tankbusters.
"no"

Me: *hotbars rescue*
You can make my job harder and intentionally troll, but I'm the one who decides whether you end up being forced to draw the floor's aggro.

Edit: For the record, no DPS or healer was dead and we cleared the boss just fine. :3

[Averax]

*Me watching the discourse i started unfold*

[SannaR]

Been playing Ast because it still functions better than whm imo at lower levels while grinding tomes daily. So, today I go do alliance raid and get a 2nd ast who had one of those annoying macros that everyone just goes that's going to become old quick. It was attached to their cards so every time they played one it'd popped. After that was pointed out to them they removed it but only after saying that they didn't play to get criticized. I also pointed out that they also weren't playing them properly as they had given an arrow to a melee and that it wouldn't gain any seals. To which they showed some displeasure in chat. I let it drop at that point because I knew it wasn't worth it. Seriously though who knew trying to help the team perform better by trying to help out a fellow ast was bad.

[Raltar]

Been playing Ast because it still functions better than whm imo at lower levels while grinding tomes daily. So, today I go do alliance raid and get a 2nd ast who had one of those annoying macros that everyone just goes that's going to become old quick. It was attached to their cards so every time they played one it'd popped. After that was pointed out to them they removed it but only after saying that they didn't play to get criticized. I also pointed out that they also weren't playing them properly as they had given an arrow to a melee and that it wouldn't gain any seals. To which they showed some displeasure in chat. I let it drop at that point because I knew it wasn't worth it. Seriously though who knew trying to help the team perform better by trying to help out a fellow ast was bad.

But...the Arrow is a melee card.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I also pointed out that they also weren't playing them properly as they had given an arrow to a melee and that it wouldn't gain any seals.

As long as you're in combat, u always get a seal, regardless of who gets the card.
If the card has the blue cross icon on the sides, its for melee. If its a magenta crosshair icon on the sides, its for ranged. (In this case, Arrow is for Melee)

[Frizze]

Shocking. A bunch of tanks disagree with me.

Fluffernuff - I wasnt trying to imply that DPS are any less optional then any other role. Not everyone may have my experience with tanks dropping, but we've all played with a DPS that was putting out auto-attack level damage(if they could even stay standing). If a fight doesnt have a hard or soft enrage, you eventually clear it DPS be damned(thinking back to a week 1 math boss from ridoranna that took more then 20 minutes to kill). And you arent wrong about healers not being required for all content. Ive had the same experience with healers dropping, just with some fights that werent clearable if we didnt get a replacement. Ive yet to find a sub-ex level fight that 100% required a tank. Have one in mind? Suggest it and ill try to make it happen. And no, nothing i said was meant to be harassment. Ive never called someone names in game. Ive never belittled someones play. If i can deal with whatever someones problem is, i do. If i cant, i leave. I dont even try to initiate a kick, because id rather not deal with the drama. I can go craft for 30 minutes(45 if we count the next que), its fine.

Goji - You can actually test a tank-less fight yourself if you feel like it(if you were on my data center id say we group up). Get a couple friends together, pick the DPS class you feel most comfortable with(or you be the heals if thats better), and form a group without a tank(3 DPS 1 healer). Pick a dungeon that sounds fun(or one you want a specific reward from), and go in. If you go slow you will have 0 issues with trash(either everyone stand together and aoe, or everyone pick their own enemy and single target). We no longer have the old aggro skills, so whoever does the most damage is going to be tank for boss fights. With the extra DPS, the first boss in whatever dungeon you picked will likely die very easily. If you remain skeptical(is an extra DPS cheating?), have the weakest DPS(or strongest if you like a challenge) sit out the next boss. They dont do any attacks, the healer doesnt use any resources on them. Bring a BLU and have them detonate outside of the arena. Point is, they dont contribute. Now pull boss two. You will have a harder time(unless you cheated and this is bardems) - i said even a normal tank makes things easier. But a healer healing a dragoon or samurai isnt significantly different then a healer healing a tank that doesnt use their cooldowns - and this thread is full of healers telling stories about doing just that(and being upset - this time the healer will know in advance so its just a challenge to overcome). After you win(if i can do it, i dont see why you cant), finish up the dungeon for your reward.

Lets end this post with a slight change in perspective. I imagine most(or all) of you taking issue with me are good tanks. That means your groups will usually have a good tank in them. As a result, youre more likely to notice bad play from a healer or dps. On those days that you choose to play something else, you may occasionally be shocked by how poorly others in your own profession do(i want to send a card every time i read a bad BLM story on here). But for you its very much the exception rather then the rule. Well the same is true for the other roles.