Is it wrong to play a game with your tank's life?

[Espritduo]

I wouldn't like it any more than I would like a stranger coming up behind me and screaming BOO! while I am concentrating on a task. They didn't kill me, but I certainly don't appreciate the "thrill" of being unduly put on guard so that a stranger can get some funsies. This would be like a tank turning the boss around to make things more "interesting" for the DPS. Or a DPS purposely trying to take aggro or pull enemies to make things more "interesting" for the tank. Good players will adapt and manage anyways, but that doesn't mean they trust you or like what you're doing, even if you say ahead of time you're going to do it. Plenty of people say they're good healers/tanks/dpsers, but if you think that's enough to make a pug whole-heartedly trust you to play games with their HP, you don't understand pugs. Friends do that to friends, strangers don't do that to strangers. And if you asked me "hey can I randomly surprise you while you're working?" I would give a big fat no, and possibly growl at you.

Not everyone wants a roller coaster ride of a dungeon, most people just want bumper car runs.

[Greven]

It's not good for sure but as long as the tank doesn't die it's okay, especcially if you are using the downtime to DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

Lately because of how comfortable I am being a healer in dungeons (only dungeons, raids not so much cause succor doesn't cut it for heavy aoe healing without ET), I've taken to being a little silly and playing what I call the "Tank Game" or the "HP Game" with my tanks where I basically just dps while doing as little healing as possible before I feel I need to step in to prevent his/her death and out of control aggro.

If I can get them as low as possible without them hitting LD/Holm/HG and bring them up back up for the sake of doing so, I count "points" for how low I could get them (current lowest score was around 83 iirc before throwing a magic card his way to put him back to half again).

But I do this in my "technical" downtime because I know the dungeons well enough and after gauging their defense after the first pull, but is it wrong that I do this despite never failing it yet just to spice up my time in the run or is it a habit I need to cut short?

(Also, I let them know beforehand that I may or may not play it with them rather than surprise them with only Eos keeping them from bleeding too much while contributing dots to the pulls.)

Although I do end up genuinely surprised when some of them actually make do the majority of the dungeon with only Eos (sans Fey Union) keeping them afloat and give them the proper respects for doing so.

As long as it's as a result of being extra efficient AND you're tracking my CDs AND you can accurate approximate by the position of the moon and stars and/or previous pulls TTK how long the given pull will take to kill, as a tank I have no problems with this "game" of yours. In fact, so long as the goal remains efficiency, I strongly encourage it.

If you're not tracking CDs or know the pulls' damage output and thus do not actually know what my likely TTD will be, though... I'd prefer you to keep an HP margin commensurate with your knowledge.

Also, I'd recommend letting me die to bosses at 5% or less boss HP remaining for free cooldown resets; a faintly enlarged repair bill is worth another HG after every boss. If anyone else gets critically wounded or worse after you let me die, you messed up. Not letting me die is also a failure, but is generally a little more acceptable. If you try to rez after it, I swear I'll have my character slap your character, and that half-second it takes to type it will slow our run.

[Kanehana]

Personally, if it's with a friend, I don't mind playing that kind of HP game. We make fun of each other knowingly and do that kind of jab all the time!

But in roulette or anything involving people from all over, I'd rather not play that kind of game. If I know a dungeon really well and if I see that the tank can take a couple hits without too much of a dent from a group of four or five, I'll focus more on DPS and less on healing; Eos can sufficiently heal tanks like those, and I'd only step in if it's getting around 30% of their health. If it's a dungeon I don't know well at all or if I'm playing with a new tank, I'd rather be safe than sorry and make sure they're always above the half-mark. In all runs with roulette or party finder, every other player is usually a stranger and I don't want them to panic if their health starts getting a little too low.

I've played at least one of each role and in the time I've spent as a tank, I understand that healers shouldn't be afraid of the tank's HP going instantly zero if they so much as tap on Broil II. However, I'd like to not be given a reason to panic when my HP goes low - it's mentally uncomfortable. As a healer main, I try my best to make sure my tank is sufficiently comfortable in combat for that reason, LOL

[RubixCube]

I think it is important to consider the tank you are healing and how they feel about playing limbo. It is fun to play the ‘how low can we go’ game, but not if it causes the other player stress. For example, I was in a dungeon where the tank would start spamming clemency once his health got to 70%. I politely informed him that I had excog up so don’t think I’m ignoring his health dropping, and he chilled a little, but it was obvious he wasn’t comfortable with trusting me to heal him at low levels. Probably burnt by healers before. For the rest of the dungeon, if excog wasn’t up, I made sure to keep his health at 60% or higher. It led to a slight dps loss, but I felt mutual enjoyment was more important.

[Feidam]

When I heal I never let the tank sit at near death hp. I’ve witnessed too many tanks talk about how uncomfortable and not fun the run becomes for them. I’ve also witnessed a fair few tanks die because of the healer misjudging when they needed to bring them back from the brink. So I understand why they feel this way. I think a little common courtesy goes a long way.

[Alfric]

When I do tank, which isn’t all the time, I do tend to be a nervous tank ^^’ though, I am working on trusting my healers more and more. This isn’t something I’m opposed to though! It shows off both healer skill and dps skill

[Sanctify]

If you let me die once, the trust is gone, and it's single pulls until the end, making the dungeon take twice as long.

I thought I was petty lol

[Kanehana]

I thought I was petty lol

I don't feel as if she's being petty. I believe calling that petty at all misses the entire point of what Kabooa is trying to say;;;

If a healer doesn't keep an eye on my hp being above three-to-five auto attacks from death, and let me die when they're entirely capable of healing decently (being decked in gear from the latest patch or partially geared, having a mentor crown,) I wouldn't exactly trust them either. If it's because they haven't updated their gear, it's more understandable, but playing the how-low-can-you-go game with complete strangers, is just really uncalled for and can make others uncomfortable with going along that sort of high-risk play style they might not play with.

As much as the running gag of healers being the life line of the party is great and relateable, every single roulette or raid you do is a team effort. Not an opportunity for someone to play god;; Reading some of the comments make me feel assured that healing when I can in-between DPS rotations make me feel relieved that some tanks are thankful for it, tbh, and that it's not just me that's had their share of bad healers on a pedestal.

[Lynesse]

Healers in DF are not torturing their tanks by scaring them to death. This thread is very tongue-in-cheek, and so are many of the responses to it.

Healers go through phases. They start out wanting to save their oGCDs for emergencies and using Cure II a lot.

Over time, healers learn to rely less on Cure II and more on spells like Tetra and Essential Dignity. This isn't playing games with the tank's health. This is learning to trust and use your toolkit.

The reason we move away from the Cure II spam is because we develop a sense for the rhythm of the incoming damage. This is calculated.

Healers who know what's coming will heal the tank at around 50% HP. This is plenty of HP, and combined with the power of these oGCD heals, it leaves a lot of room for error.

The reason this thread exists, ultimately, is because abilities like Tetra are incredibly strong. Our instincts tell us to save them for emergencies when we're new healers.

But with such short cooldowns and so much redundancy in our kits (Tetra and Benediction, Assize, Lightspeed, Synastry, etc.), combined with how staggered incoming damage typically is, those emergency situations are rarely a thing, and when they do happen, we have other tools to do the job just as well.

Excog is especially important in this. In order to get its effect at all, you have to let the tank's health drop. It was designed this way on purpose.