Tanks, please use buffs

[Altena]

You guys ready for this wall of text? Get excited.

Relevant Video is Relevant
IDK how to post a direct video on the forum

You sir, get an A+

This guide is great. Going to edit my OP with it.

You seem to be getting to the wrong conclusion from the right arguments.

First I want you to remember that you're asking tanks to do something that is not a necessity to improve the comfort of the healers. Keep that in mind.

Haha you're kidding right?

Popping mitigation skills as a tank is considered "not necessary" by your standards?
I hope I never have the pleasure of healing you in any content.

I disagree when you say that healers have it hardest of all roles but that's my personal opinion, I find that being the tank requires more attention to the mobs, my position, my teammates, their position, the mechanics of a fight, whatever.

"Paying attention to mobs" ? That's a very broad statement. What do you mean? Making sure you have hate? Yeah a couple of AoE enmity skills will do that for you.
"Positioning" ..... ie - don't cleave the party. Job done.
"My teammates" - that's their job. If they are where they shouldn't be, it's not your fault.
"The mechanics of the fight" ? Tanks (specifically MTs) historically have the least amount of mechanics to deal with out of all roles.

You talking about dungeons like the rest of us?
Even raids, Tanks generally don't have to worry about 90% of the stuff that goes on.

I can't trust people I don't know straight away.

All the more reason you should take preventative measures and use cooldowns.

I'm not going to start immediately with large pulls in a dungeon,

Then you are a minority. Don't know if your group can handle something unless you give it a shot.

I need to see who I'm playing with. How much damage can the DPS dish out, does the healer contribute or not (there are still many dps-shy healers), does he still heal beyond that, etc.

Not sure if you're playing the same expansion as I am, however I can count on one hand the number of healers that I have run into, that don't contribute to damage at least to a basic level in level 70 dungeons.

I judge people. I have to, I'm the shield of the group, the one going first, and I'm the one supposed to get hit and stay alive. You might think that it's the healer's job to keep me alive, and it is, yes, but ultimately the tank is the one to decide how much they can get hit and survive. This is a tanking reflex from playing years of MMORPG that most dedicated tanks have: "If I die, we wipe." Not necessarily true but that's not the point.

Don't really understand what you're trying to get at here but ok. Everyone judges everyone. Human nature.

So I don't know whether I can trust my healer, and life can go down very fast.

Your HP is dropping fast because you're not running a buff.

I see my life draining away, I pop a cd, but maybe that was panicking for the healer, maybe he's good and concentrating on DPS and only making sure I get healed when I hit 10%. Couting on me not to die by using those CDs. I don't want to be forced to resort to a CD for something that I judge not necessary.

I repeat, and I will even bold it this time.

Cooldowns are not solutions to a problem. They are part of the method for preventing those problems.

If you pop a CD "because your HP is dropping too fast", it's too late.
You should have popped it 3 seconds ago before you took all that damage.
This goes for any content, not just dungeons..
Do you pop a cooldown after a Tankbuster hits you, or before it?
Same principles apply for dungeons.

This is possibly the point I disagree with you most: my defensive cooldown abilities are not comfort abilities, this isn't a healer quality of life improvement. They have a point and need to be used to an end.

They absolutely are.
What the hell is Sentinel going to do for you if you've had it off cooldown for 10 minutes? You could have popped it 3 times in that time frame, and still have it ready.
Please, inform me wise one.

Never would a situation get messy because I withhold a cooldown. That can't happen. That's the entire point of these abilities, to prevent disaster when error strikes, you can't say that it's an error in itself to withhold them for that.

What?
Ok let me inform you how mitigation works.
You have a lot of mobs on you, and they are hitting you.
Using a cooldown reduces the damage they hit you for.
If you use these cooldowns, it means the healer doesn't have to heal you as much.

If there is some kind of "disaster" (eg. you take a tonne of damage and the healer is caught off guard), you would have mitigated a large portion of that damage in the first place if you have a cooldown running.
If you pop a cooldown after that disaster strikes, you have not prevented anything, and you're sitting there in single digit HP while trying to recover.

Situations never get hairy because I do what I do as a tank and pop my CD when they're neededs, not just because they're available and unused and we might gain 10 seconds on a fight.

You sit on your cool downs and you pop them "when you need them".
Here's a fun fact -
if you're taking damage you need them..
Again, mitigation skills are a prevention not a cure.
Leave the cures to healers, and be a good tank and prevent the healer from needing to cure a bad situation.

If you want to rush something you're over-geared for, sure, let's use CD because it doesn't really matter and the healer will be able to deal damage. Real content ? Not happening.

Eh? If you're over-geared for content, you have even more freedom to do whatever the hell you want.
It's when you are actually less geared than the duty is when you need to be more intelligent about your cooldown usage.

Define "real content"...

Look let's be frank. We are talking about dungeons here.
If you're talking about primals and raids? You should be using cooldowns for tank busters, and rotating weaker buffs in as you have the freedom to.. That's just the way it works.
Either way, tanks get hit like a wet noodle in trials aside from tank busters and add phases.
Hell, as a WAR in HW raids, it was pretty standard to burn Vengence and Raw Intuition just to gain extra Wrath (I know it's not possible now...) but my point here is that cooldowns in trials and raids can be mapped out and planned down to the second with how scripted they are. You can learn what buffs you need and when - and any extra time for that is free time to reduce the damage you take and allow your healers to put their feet up a little bit longer.

I have a hunch that you haven't done much in the way of raiding, which is fine - not judging you for it.
However the mentality you're pressing here is really concerning if that's what a portion of the tanking community believe.

Again I will stress a very major point here.
Cooldowns are a prevention tool. They are not there to solve problems, but are there to prevent problems in the first place.
Leave the solution to the problems to the healers - because they are the ones that are going to have to drag you and the party out of a ditch if you mess up.

Finally, healers aren't innocent. Yes, people are people and they mess up. However if you have the view that popping a cooldown after you've already taken the brunt of the damage is a good idea, then you are just not playing well.
Cooldowns are there to reduce the damage you take.
If you've taken most of the damage there is to take - then pop a cooldown, then your cooldown was not effective.
The hint is in the name - mitigation skills are there to mitigate damage taken. Not to heal damage that has already been taken (again, the hint is in the name - that's what a healer is for).

It's all well and good to call out bad tanks, but yesterday I had some truly terrible healers, so perhaps there's some kind of universal balance at play? I ran Castrum Arum for five hours yesterday to get the axe drop for glamour, and the majority of the healers I got for those runs were utter garbage that took the healer dps meta too, too far. By which I mean this spate of morons were focused on their dps to my detriment. Trash pulls can be tricky, but there's no excuse for letting a tank die during boss fights with so much avoidable damage and only one target to focus on. Did I dps too? Hell yes, I did. But I always had a cooldown running for my burst damage, and I never dropped defiance for group pulls. If I'm dead and you have 80% of your mana left, then you're a crap healer.

Look, I am in total agreeance. There is definitely a give/take situation going on. There have also been countless threads about your very point here. Healer DPS should be encouraged but the core role of the job shouldn't be ignored.

I don't think anyone here is disregarding poor healing. I mean there are certainly times where the healer is to blame.

What this thread is all about however is an attempt to at least try to change an extremely small handful of the tanking community to use the half of the toolkit they seem to neglect (their mitigation).

The healer-dps argument is pretty damn tired, and I am sure the community is sick of it. While it may have encouraged many healers to begin tossing out nukes, it may have also encouraged some to go balls-to-walls and ignore healing entirely. Again, this thread isn't about the healer-DPS debate. It's about trying to teach some tanks to use the skills they have accumulated over the 70 levels.

I am one of those people that advocate healer DPS (which is likely evident) however the survival of the tank and party is still the priority. The thing about it is if a tank is being lazy about their CD usage, it forces even the best healers to forego some levels of DPS that could have been solved by a tank pressing 1 button.

Honestly, you're not the target of this thread. Just by the very basic stuff you said, it's evident that you know where it's at and I would happily heal you in a dungeon and toss you a commend afterwards. The focus here is those that are either uneducated or lazy about using their skills.

I use them as and when needed.

I personally hate tanks that use them when not needed or at the wrong times

for example if you're down to 25k hp losing roughly 1k a second and the current pull will be dead in 15 seconds It's not worth using a cooldown at all. the pack will be dead before you are.. and the passive regen between pulls mean you wont even need much healing. especially if im on scholar my cos you won't even stress my fairy.. if the dps is a bit naff and the pull gonna take 35-40 seconds then sure use a cool down..

I also hate tanks that use them in the wrong order. the tank that makes a big ass pull pops rampart, wears off then pops sentinel when half the pack is dead and the incoming damage is much lower.... or convalaescance / hallowed ground when there only 2 mobs left.... WTF????

If I don't use a cooldown it's because I don't think I need one. or I have none available due to the previous encounter being stretched out for whatever reason.

if you need cooldowns on baby pulls there's something wrong cos those pulls should be dead long before they get your hp down to a remotely dangerous level

Sure, I am all for better CD managment. However I am one to promote baby steps.
Going from no buffs at any time, to using buffs and some being poorly managed? I will take that.

Some buffs are better than no buffs, even if they aren't optimal. The point here is that tanks aren't popping anything, or minimal. In a 20 minute dungeon I spotted Anticipation 4 times, and no other buffs. That means that there are 16 minutes of that dungeon where the tank had every buff at their disposal off cooldown..

I agree with your first paragraph, however if you're not using rampart in the next 90 secs and you're doing baby pulls - why not use it? Might as well give that healer a bit more peace of mind. Especially considering some healers tend to prefer the tank to be sitting on 75% or more HP at all times.

Finally, I totally understand if you have run out of CDs because DPS was slow. No worries at all, I have already judged you as a decent tank that rotates your CDs and the problem therein lies the DPS (likely not using AoE).

Every tank should tank the exact same way. Letter for letter, click for click.
Every healer should heal in the exact same way, letter for litter, click for click
Every dps should play in the exact same way, letter for letter, click for click.

That will make the game... less boring?

This post made me chuckle. Good job.

Look, Spiroglyph already covered this, but I am not asking for you to play exactly like me, down to the second, because I am the best player in the world. (lawl).
All I am asking for is for tanks to use their skills. I don't care what order you pop your mitigation buffs in, if I am being honest. You do you. But don't drag me down with you because you decide to be lazy and not use your skills.

That's my point.
Use your skills. It's like playing DPS and deciding to not use any of their buffs.

You're a SAM? Yeah nah you don't need to use Meikyo Shisui, or Kaiten, or Hagakure.. Hell don't even use Shinten because that's an off-global too.
You're a DRG? Yeah no need for Blood for Blood, just take that off your bar. And Blood of the Dragon? Who cares about that right? I don't like covering myself with dragon blood.

and if i want to use

Low Blow, Interject, Provoke, Ultimatum and Shirk on my DRK?

defensive cooldowns are optional v.v/

I know you're trolling here but...

Shirk in a 4-man? Lol? Who are you trying to MPK?

---

Slightly off topic - I have found Ultimatum to be useful when you die on a big pull for whatever reason, and the healer manages to swift>raise you..
Ultimatum can be a handy tool in that situation, but taking it basically means you're planning to fail.