tanks not using cooldowns?

[rockint]

I even got yelled at for asking while trying to do Holy spam. He told me to heal better and proceeded to slow the run down by stopping and waiting awhile before each pull. Is there something i'm missing or? I've nonstop have been getting this on expert and lower level'd dungeons. I get that expert is a joke when it comes to damage, but if you aren't stance dancing then thats somewhat lazy.

they are going through whole dungeons not using them.

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.

[Alistaire]

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.

And here we have it folks. Previous bad healers make tanks bad.

[HoodRat]

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.

I can't understand why so many people are against tanks and healers doing as much dps as they can while still doing their role. I have never played an mmo in which non dps classes didn't try to pump out as much dps as they could. Ironically, it's been the dps classes who don't seem to want to dps. I guess some people just want to get their money's worth and spend the full allotted time in dungeons.

[rockint]

I can't understand why so many people are against tanks and healers doing as much dps as they can while still doing their role. I have never played an mmo in which non dps classes didn't try to pump out as much dps as they could. Ironically, it's been the dps classes who don't seem to want to dps. I guess some people just want to get their money's worth and spend the full allotted time in dungeons.

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.

[Tanathya]

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.

Then you're doing your job terribly bad. Better said, you're not doing your job. A tank's job is not just holding hate, but also mitigating as well as possible. So you, fellow player, are a bad tank.

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.

Please, explain to me how you cycle CDs only with someone you feel safe, but not with someone you don't know, when you should be doing it in both cases anyway.

[Ashkendor]

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.

This is so wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to start with it. So... first off, if your healer is just healing, what's the point of even using cooldowns? Healing is a snoozefest in 90% of this game's content. I'd probably fall asleep if I didn't DPS in dungeons, not to mention it can really help if you land in a group that has awful DPS but a healer that knows how to kick ass and keep everyone alive as well. Even if you're at the minimum item level for the content, you don't need to mitigate anything if you're being cure-bombed into oblivion. Each tank class has exactly one 'Oh shit' button. The rest should ideally be used liberally to mitigate damage during trash pulls so that your healer can DPS as well because they do more DPS than you do.

Boss tankbusters are usually very predictable, which makes them manageable with only a couple of your skills. So what, the rest of the time you just leave your cooldowns sitting unused on your hotbar? Part of tanking in this game is trusting in your healer. Sometimes you get a shit healer just like sometimes good healers get shit tanks. Most of the time though, you get someone that's decent and you need to be able to trust them. Try tanking some raid content sometime. It'll get you used to seeing that HP bar drop below 75%, get you acclimated to last second clutch healing, and hopefully knock some of the fear out of you.

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.

If you get a healer that repeatedly lets you die despite cooldown use, then kick them because they're bad.

Don't engage in bad play because of them.

[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.

[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.

[rockint]

Not using damage reduction cooldowns regularly is probably why shit hits the fan when you tank.

No, it's typically because "Sorry, I was in cleric stance."

Or literally not a single heal being cast because the healer is trying to win the DPS meters.

Your job as a healer is to keep everyone's HP high enough that they're not going to die. When your tank dies because you were DPSing, you're filling the wrong role, period. End of story.

In 4 mans, using vengeance at 98% HP while I'm getting healed and using vengeance at 10% HP while the healer is casting stone are WORLDS different. If you can't see why, you're a bad tank. Keeping cooldowns up with my usual healer, though, is different. Parry cooldowns can also stack with avoidance. At 10% HP, any self heals are WAY more important than they are at 90%.

Cooldowns aren't something you use "just because" they're for survival with bad healers, not so bad healers can win on dps.

[Kazumac]

No, it's typically because "Sorry, I was in cleric stance."

No it just means there were two people playing poorly, you and the healer. Just because they failed at their job doesn't mean you have to as well. Also popping vengeance at 10% is a stupid idea, why wouldn't you pop it earlier? If you have 2k left it's likely 1-2 trash mob hits to kill you with or without vengeance. Maybe the 30% slower damage intake going from 90-10% will give the healer time to react. Or maybe it won't but just because the healer failed at their job, doesn't mean you should too. Seriously.