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

[Frizze]

Analysing your performance and seeing how you improve is fine. You got a tank that refused to believe he could make any mistakes ever. As a result, he tried to shift his blame onto you before they could call him out on it, in the hopes they'd try to blame you instead. As you can see, it unfortunately worked here. Just blacklist him and move on.

Emphasis mine. Im seeing more of this lately, and ive been wondering what the cause is. Did we finally drive away most of the good tanks(like we previously did with healers)? Is it an influx of bads buying jump potions and never learning to play properly? Entitled DPS leveling tanks roles just to cut in line on the que? After the last month or so, ive seriously considered advising new players to tank if they have a god complex. And at some point soon im going to become part of the problem, as leveling DRK is getting closer and closer to the top of my to do list. I'll be awful, but ill only be doing it for the panther and ill try to put as few lives in danger as possible.

[KalinOrthos]

snip

DRKs can be good tanks, but they have the largest margin of error, and are actually pretty squishy up until 70. In the end, though, it all depends on the player. If you can pace yourself and rotate cooldown regularly, while not pulling beyond what you can handle (and don't drop grit during group pulls pls) then you should be just fine.

[Mysterysword]

DRK

Any tank can be a good tank, although I much preferred PLD and DRK over WAR in HW. Before 4.0, the biggest problem I had as a tank was PLD getting Shield Oath at 40 instead of 30. Now, though I still favour PLD, I want to keep DRKing, but they took out my favourite Blind + Evasion combo that was the single best cooldown DRK had for me.

[Cenerae]

Any tank can be a good tank, although I much preferred PLD and DRK over WAR in HW. Before 4.0, the biggest problem I had as a tank was PLD getting Shield Oath at 40 instead of 30. Now, though I still favour PLD, I want to keep DRKing, but they took out my favourite Blind + Evasion combo that was the single best cooldown DRK had for me.

I can't speak for WAR, but DRK feels much, much, MUCH less sturdy than PLD was, as I've been levelling it.

And my general experience healing them has borne out. DRKs seem to lack in raw mitigation, with their best tool locked at 70. The little bit of healing from souleater combos/DA abyssal doesn't feel like it makes up for it enough.

Not that they're unhealable or anything, but it's enough difference that I noticed it.

Any suggestions would be great – I do want to be a great healer.

There's really only so much you can do. If your tank insists on pulling a lot of stuff and isn't mitigating with cooldowns (or tank stance) like he should be doing, then you'll have to work a lot harder to keep them alive. If they bite off more than they can chew, you're at best trying to bail out a sinking freighter with a small bucket.

Still, maybe I can offer my own solution for bucket-bailing, and maybe it will help? You did ask for suggestions and all.

My general 4 man healing stance is Diurnal, not Nocturnal. I will flick to Nocturnal and apply a shield while running between pulls, but will switch back before I gain aggro on anything. You get the initial shield, and then you get the greater overall throughput from the Diurnal regen, so the best of both worlds for me. Any situation where spamming Nocturnal aspected benefic is a good idea is one that's going to result in a dead tank anyway, is my working theory. And of course, I always deploy an earthly star for delayed free burst heal (but you already do this, of course so this is not new and exciting).

If the tank gets in over their head, I'll pop Largesse and keep healing. Usually that's enough. If I need a extra snap heal to keep the tank afloat, I'll burn swiftcast on a bene II. It's not much of a time saver, but it can help. If I still need to keep those heals coming in faster, I'll burn Lightspeed as well. It doesn't actually save you any time, but the heals themselves come out frontloaded and not at the rear end of a cast, and that has mattered before.

Also, if they're squishy and it's a pain to heal them, I'll actively fish for Boles and keep one in my spread if I'm able. As well as burning otherwise useful cards fishing for a Lady of Crowns. It harms the group's DPS, but if you can keep Boles on the tank (especially boosted ones) it at least makes up for their failure to cooldown properly somewhat. And having an extra oGCD heal can be really helpful.

Two extra things worth keeping in mind:

Collective Unconsciousness has a 150 potency regen. You have to hold it long enough for the server to tick and apply that buff, but it's a great buffer to add to a tank if you know they're on the squishy side or if you just want extra free throughput for more DPS time. Once the regen is applied, you can then drop Diurnal aspected benefic on them and hit Time Dilation, giving them a good 30 seconds or so of regens that beats out what white mages are able to do (290 potency between them to regen+asylum's 250).

Lastly, one big overlooked fact is that Celestial Opposition is actually a 4 second AoE stun as well as a buff extender. So not only does it match up perfectly with the cooldown timer of Lucid Dreaming for that sweet 10 second extension of mp regen, it can also be used to give you a bit of breathing room on a rough pull.

At the end of the day though, if you're doing literally everything within your power and your power is too weak, then you can't feel bad about it, because the fault does not lie with you. The game's healing paradigm simply doesn't call for healers to have to sustain incredibly high throughput for extended periods of time, and anyone that is forcing you to do that (and dying because of it) needs to remember that they're not playing WoW and that healers aren't designed that way. And that they should probably use their cooldowns.

[KalinOrthos]

DRKs seem to lack in raw mitigation, with their best tool locked at 70. The little bit of healing from souleater combos/DA abyssal doesn't feel like it makes up for it enough.

This is exactly it. Tanking is most certainly not impossible for a DRK, and they don't want for enmity generation, but they simply lack mitigation tools before 70. Warriors get Thrill of Battle, Vengeance, Raw Intuition, and most importantly Inner Beast , their proper regular mitigation tool, before 70. Paladins get Sentinel, Bulwark, Clemency, and most importantly Sheltron before 70. Dark Knights get Shadow Wall and Dark Mind, that's it. Even their Stormblood abilities before 70 are more personal utility and damage (Delirium is buff extension, Quietus is MP generation, Bloodspiller is pure damage). Dark Knight seems to be all about rewarding aggressiveness, and TBN gives them a ridiculous amount of mitigation and great off tanking capabilities, but until 70, you don't really have any way to deal regularly with damage mitigation other than praying you have a decent healer.

[killstein]

had the displeasure of getting stuck with a tank/healer couple for expert, who would occasionally slow down the run (i mean stopping mid pulls, stopping before bosses) just to take their clothes off and i can only assume talk to each other? i figured they were rp'ing, idfk. tank would pull without appropriate gear but i think they got the point they were holding the other half up after the second boss and everything else went pretty smoothly thereafter. :v

[Rhyku]

LeviEx, just as I finished my melee combo, mob dies, I switch target........

..... and merrily Displaced myself off the arena.

Words cannot describe my shame >_>
(but I lived up to my LOLGoon title? D: )

[KalinOrthos]

LeviEx, just as I finished my melee combo, mob dies, I switch target........

..... and merrily Displaced myself off the arena.

Words cannot describe my shame >_>
(but I lived up to my LOLGoon title? D: )

I can't imagine even Titan Hard as a red mage and oopsdisplacing off the arena.

[Ametrine]

..... and merrily Displaced myself off the arena.

First time queuing anything as Red Mage, hit up trials and got Titan hard. Displaced myself right out of the arena within a minute. Weee~


On the subject of the increase of bad tanks, I wonder how much of it is jump potions and how much of it is non-tank mains farming clusters. "Tanking is easy!"

[missybee]

had the displeasure of getting stuck with a tank/healer couple for expert, who would occasionally slow down the run (i mean stopping mid pulls, stopping before bosses) just to take their clothes off and i can only assume talk to each other?

Okay, what the actual eff?

You are a far more patient soul than I...Even as a DPS I might've eaten the penalty for that one.