Dear Gilgamesh Party via Sirensong Sea... (aka "I don't know my Job/Role!")

[YitharV2]

I dodge attacks as a tank. o.o

Like when I used to do Sohm Al (Hard) on Warrior I would 100% dodge AoEs on trash pulls. I play Monk and I know about positionals but they need to dodge too anyways.

And yes, as someone who plays White Mage now, I absolutely hate when people stand in the bad because it lowers my DPS uptime. I leveled through PoTD and the amount of people who think "oh a healer I don't need to dodge anything!" is astounding.

[Seryne]

Snip!

Please do not speak for all us healers because what you're saying isn't true for all of us. Perhaps for you Scholars your damage was taken but for us Astrologians and for the White Mages it was not. I can put out a fair amount of damage, heal, and still have MP thanks to my cards and Lucid Dreaming. On top of that Earthly Star does damage and one of my Minor Arcana cards is for damage. So, yeah, Astros aren't suffering in the DPS department haha.

Anyway! On topic! If my tanks are purposely not avoiding AoEs because "I can take the hit because I'm a tank!" I get majorly agitated. Please, for the love of the twelve, do not do that! You're making my job harder which isn't fun at all and you're going to potentially cause a wipe. A few hits here and there is fine because it's expected. But eating all of them? No, that isn't right at all. I'm sorry but you're a mentor and you should know this by now. Also, flaunting mentor status while doing something almost the entire player base knows is wrong doesn't help the stigma against us mentors.

[Claymore65]

As a Tank, please do not think you have an excuse to "Stand in the Bad." Yes, tanks are technically more well-equipped to handle avoidable damage then DPS, but that is not an excuse to take avoidable damage. Each cooldown spent on avoidable damage is one not spent on a tank-buster, large pull, or even just giving your healer some breathing room. You are literally wasting both your own cooldowns as well as your healer's limited mana pool/cooldowns. Plus, it's just rude toward your healer. Do not make your healer's life harder than it needs to be.

While positioning is of course important, minimizing damage taken is even more. Keep in mind, when you dodge an AOE, the melee DPS performing the positional is probably going to have to dodge that AOE as well. They'll have to re-position at the end of the AOE either way, so you won't really be helping them much. It's better to dodge the AOE and give your healer some time to DPS. While mistakes certainly happen, you shouldn't purposely stand in avoidable AOEs.

[Venjenz]

Let me explain WHY >I< stand in the bad:
...
...
So yes, I was doing my job.

The job of tanking has three main parts:

1) have the biggest pool of Effective HP in the party.
2) keep that pool of EHP between BadGuy_01 and the rest of the party.
3) control aggro and your own defenses to make the loss of EHP (yours primarily) to be as smooth, predictable and EASY for your healer(s) as possible.

Standing in the fire on purpose violates job req 3 quite glaringly.

If you doubt me, play a healer and have any of your tank friends tank properly, according to the very few and simple rules for the job, and then have that same tank stand in fires on purpose because they'd rather not sacrifice position for a second, maybe two. You'll see the difference in no time, as in first couple trash pulls. Managing the consistency with which you lose your EHP as a tank is a HUGE thing for letting healers find a good heal + utility groove. It also let's them heal more efficiently. Consistent tanks don't get overhealed out of panic. Healers can more readily predict when/how much to heal and can manage the whole thing easier. It's why people gripe about tank CDs. You smooth out incoming dmg spikes with them, and that leads to more predictability. If they know they are good for 12-15 seconds between heals, then they can use cycles to add DPS, cleanse debuffs, etc. And all that efficiency STARTS WITH YOU NOT STANDING IN THE BAD.

Standing in the fire is NOT DOING YOUR JOB. Overgeared, WGAF content? Fine. Not DF light/full though, no way. Either raid tank or a play a healer in DF to find out more on this point.

[Kallera]

Um, I think you all can stop now, the point has been belabored enough witbout going into caps and doling out righteous fury about the sacred tenets of tanking.

[SenorPatty]

Um, I think you all can stop now, the point has been belabored enough witbout going into caps and doling out righteous fury about the sacred tenets of tanking.

Never forget stand in the bad!

But seriously though, all I got from TC is that she's not willing to adapt and seriously underestimates the dps for "proper" positionals

[Smol]

Um, I think you all can stop now, the point has been belabored enough witbout going into caps and doling out righteous fury about the sacred tenets of tanking.

The OP seems to feel strongly that they were wronged by the rest of the party. It has nothing to do with "sacred tenets of tanking," rather, I think people are trying to steer OP in the correct direction.

There aren't always right and wrong ways to play, but I would gather that "standing in bad" is pretty universally regarded as incorrect.

[DevilsDontFly]

As a tank I only feel like "standing on the bad" when the DPS composition is mostly melee. If by dodging AoEs during a pull I might lead to melee dps messing up their rotations or positionals I'd rather just suck it up, pop some defensive cooldowns and deal with it while trying not to make it too stressful for the healer. However if the composition is split or if both dps are ranged there's no excuse to not be a slippery butter tank.

[otarolgam]

As a healer, my pet peeve is when a tank "stands in the bad on purpose."

Don't do that.

Just don't.

I'm sure they didn't just kick you for standing in the bad....I am curious how the conversation went when the healer asked you dodge some things. As a mentor, you should know better

The healer actually didn't say anything, or at least I don't recall anything. I assumed they were fine with my tanking style... however bad I seem to be right now...

It was mostly just the DPS talking to me...

[otarolgam]

Okay, I don't understand.

I specifically said that I trusted the healer at the time, they were keeping me up...

And as I said, I may have worded my intent wrong when trying to explain why I was in "the bad". They could have thought I was attacking then when I was just trying to explain.

I dunno, it's just when I play healer, I like to heal and attack, but I like to heal just a little bit more. So if a Tank that rotates debuffs and sits in bad so that the DPS can properly attack, I mean... we have a large mana pool for a reason as healers.

And it's not like I stand in the bad all time, only when I know I can take it, as some other tanks have stated.