tanks not using cooldowns?

[Shurrikhan]

You can still compensate for many things.

The other day in EX roulette (Antitower) I ran into a WHM who felt the need to alert me in party chat before I'd even loaded into the instance, that he/she was only going to heal.

I did the first little 3-mob pull and watched as my HP sat neatly at 23K or whatever it was at the time, while Cures were slung at my very much topped-off HP pool, repeatedly, until everything was dead.

What'd I do? I dropped Grit for the entire dungeon (I do it all the time on bosses but not usually for trash pulls). I didn't change my game either, I pulled everything I could at every opportunity and only popped one cooldown at a time. I wasn't about to let that Cure spam to waste in the void of overhealing.

This works too. My only issue is when people let the opportunities go to waste, in the short-term as much as long term. And since the STR-nerf, these shorter-term opportunites even more healer-centric.

For instance, I had a near opposite experience with a "I'm only going to DPS" SCH. I kept myself up with Clemency, and tried to CD as best I could to make sure he got all his Banes (and because the raid dps was low, second Banes) off easily. The only issue was that his refusal to Aloquiem or Physic would often lead to him wasting an AF stack on Lustrate as I was literally out of all possible options to keep myself up (had all of HG to heal me), when he needed it to Bane. On the first boss, he thought I was squishy because he had to heal me 5 times when I was in Sword Oath (I was outdpsing the two dps), and said I was reducing his dps (I noted that he could adlo before I hit 25% and actually maintain his DoTs instead). I did the 2nd boss mostly in Shield, and then went back to Sword for the last, where I did more single-target healing and combined HPS/DPS than he did, while still being top dps.

Issue: he was too hung up on using my being able to heal myself to keep track of when and how it might be limited, in the end costing himself dps by being overly aggressive.

[Galgarion]

snip.

I am not a big enough person to let it slide when someone calls me squishy just because they suck at their role. You're a better human than me.

[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.

[Jpec07]

I've seen this frustratingly often in DF. I suspect a lot of it is because of tanks who come to FFXIV from games like WoW, where your mitigation is handed to you just for doing your rotation, and your cooldowns are to be saved for times when you're taking more damage, like a boss fight. This also matches the attitude wherein such tanks are my open to correction (which was a huge thing in WoW).

Unless it's the end of a pull, a tank should always be using their cooldowns. The big ones are generally spaced out enough to where you can usually use them at the head of every trash pull to great effect. More of our mitigation comes from our cooldowns than any other source, so tanks in this game need to get in the habit of using them more, and more frequently.

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.

Wrong! This isn't WoW; the majority of your cooldowns aren't "OH SHIT" buttons. Your cooldowns are there to help you mitigate damage, so you take less and require less healing, so the healers can spend more time on the rest of the party and/or DPSing, because a healer in cleric stance is going to severely outclass a tank's DPS. If you're not cycling your cooldowns and using them effectively, you have no one to blame but yourself for slow runs, high damage, complaining healers, deaths, and wipes.

[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.

[rockint]

Wrong! This isn't WoW; the majority of your cooldowns aren't "OH SHIT" buttons. Your cooldowns are there to help you mitigate damage, so you take less and require less healing, so the healers can spend more time on the rest of the party and/or DPSing, because a healer in cleric stance is going to severely outclass a tank's DPS. If you're not cycling your cooldowns and using them effectively, you have no one to blame but yourself for slow runs, high damage, complaining healers, deaths, and wipes.

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.

[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.