Why do tanks no use coold downs?

[Taika]

You seem to be misunderstanding what a bad healer is. A bad healer is a healer that does not take advantage of their tools properly, but it's also a healer that burns their limited resources when it's not necessary. A bad healer is a healer that does not take into consideration the random aspect of peoples mistakes (even if the mobs themselves may work on a script) or even their own or others gear being sub-par. Basically, a bad healer, like every bad "someone", is a person that does not adapt to the situation but only follows a "script". How and when cooldowns are used is such a script. Sure, in a good party, they can be used more liberally (though as I said in Scholars case, not necessarily on healing). But you cannot say to every healer that pops up to do that, because there are times when it cannot be done like that. Same with tank cooldowns. Some healers or DPS are more prone to forcing a tank to keep the cooldowns for more edgy situations. You can say all you want that those situations could be avoided by using them preemptively or whatever, but that's wrong. Things that go wrong usually go wrong due to random things (well, players mistakes), and throwing a cooldown preemptively is just gambling.

I have actually been playing healer in this game's endgame content since forever, maining it from 2012 until early Stormblood (SCH throughout Alexander Savage). I'm so happy to finally have someone to explain to me how I'm misunderstanding what a good or bad healer are, though! :P

Of course a good player can adapt to different situations and strategies, that's a given. However, it makes absolutely no sense to spend your time sitting on your resources waiting for something bad that may or may not happen. That's simply not effective use of your abilities - on any job! And I'm not talking about aiming for maximum optimal performance in Duty Finder expert roulette, but instead just using your abilities in a reasonable manner. For a healer that means primarily healing with regens and ocd heals, and rotating your other cooldowns (such as Largesse, other stuff depending on the job) in turns whenever they're available. When we start thinking optimisation, the aim is to spend as few gcds on casting healing spells as possible (to be able to use those on DPS instead). Absolutely no one should sit on Tetra or Essential Dignity - those are available for pretty much every single pull!

Similarly with tank cooldowns, if we're talking about casual content such as expert dungeons, you are primarily expected to rotate them for those big pulls you're doing, so that the more enemies you have on you (or the more damage incoming), the better you are shielded against it. Your job is to mitigate the damage and try to get your HP to drop as slowly as possible, so that the healer can more easily keep up with the damage with passive and ocd heals, instead of letting it drop quickly, forcing both yourself and the healer to move to emergency mode (seeing your HP drop low and then hitting as many defensive cooldowns as possible while your healer is using their gcds on heal spam).

Resources for healers or tanks aren't very limited in DF content - especially when you have planned how to rotate them beforehand. By saying a healer should use all their instant heals in their normal healing I don't mean a WHM burning Tetra, Asylum, Largesse, Assize and Benediction on the first pull, but instead planning how to use them in that specific content in specific pulls. Sometimes mistakes happen, but they are rarely serious in the content we're discussing about, and many difficult situations can be avoided by planning your healing and tanking well in the first place (since it's also easier adapt and adjust your pattern a bit if you have the basics safely covered in the first place!). And of course I'm not saying that you should burn those abilities when there's no need for them either: if you've been planning to use that Benediction on first pull but the tank never drops below 50%, there's of course no reason to use it. You should know the content and plan your ability use accordingly, but you should also be open for adjusting your plan based on the situation and your party.