Healing a Paladin Tank, in my experience

[Niko_Kishiko]

UPDATE: After being away from the game for a few days and finally being able to play today, I was eager to see some kind of action so I jumped into an Ifrit pug. At first I didn't notice the tank because it was a cute little Lala named Lilly Grace. Barely taller than Ifrit's knuckle. I had to squint my eyes to get a closer look at this tiny tank from my safe spot. They were wearing a shield and it appeared to be a paladin! Further inspection confirmed it was a paladin!

I nearly fainted. I could buff, throw out cures, and regens to some of the DD while also healing this tank. Running from cracks the tank stayed up like a boss! Things got a little hairy at some points when it looked like the server was lagging a bit but we recovered nicely.

So paladin isn't as broken as I thought? This paladin was only wearing 1 piece of AF if I recall correctly. A couple pieces of sentinel gear and some HP materia but nothing too crazy. Their HP was around 4k and they definitely weren't squishy.

Maybe it really is just play style and dropping most of the AF for something better? Other classes seem to have decent AF for the most part. I know White Mage af is really decent. Paladin AF must be pretty bad?

Thanks for the wins tonight! Best pug Ifrit evah! I even picked up an Ifrit's Cane ^_^ Very good mojo. Lilly Grace, Talen Oberin, and co. Great DPS too. You run a good show. Lilly if you need a healer for AV, CC, Iffy, or Mog send me a /t. Healing you and Talen's crew was a lot of fun.


~Original post below~
I don't have a paladin leveled so I don't know what things are like from a PLD perspective. I do know that for me healing paladin tanks is headache inducing most of the time. I usually feel like I am healing a black mage who took all the aggro.

Yesterday, on Ifrit, I was healing a paladin who was keeping hate fantastically but when taking hits half his hp would disappear quickly. I noticed I was taking more risks myself and not getting out of cracks fast enough, being afraid to stop heals, because when I let up healing the tank would plummet to red health too fast.

On one attempt, I ran back to stoneskin the ranged DD and pop bene after hellfire and the tank died while I was away because the other white mage couldn't keep them up. Another attempt the tank also died while I was running from cracks. Protect and Regen was up and I know it's not the greatest but I am at around 550 healing potency (could be better I know but I have healed Ifrit before with no problems with less healing potency) and the other white mage was still healing and I feel like that should have been enough heals for me to run away from cracks safely.

Maybe I am spoiled from healing wars, idk. They just don't seem to plummet to red as fast and I can run from cracks safely and throw more cures out to DD with a war tank.

After the group I was with wiped, the other healer and I were pretty depressed because we were getting criticized pretty harshly. "WTF No heals?!" "You healers should be able to keep the tank up at least!" "WOW, heals. really?"

In talking in /t with the other healer we both agreed it felt like we were healing a black mage tanking.

I don't want to be a jerk and refuse to heal paladin tanks. I hear paladin tanks have to work really hard to keep hate with managing cool-downs and things. I have a lot of respect for players up to that kind of challenge.

I am not a number crunching elitist pro decked out in darklight armor but I do AV and CC runs pretty okay most of the time and feel I have a decent amount of Mog and Ifrit wins as a healer with war tanks. Healing paladin tanks is always a challenge I seem to fail frequently though. Like I said before, maybe I'm spoiled from healing wars but many other healers are having the same type of problem I am having.

I hope things get better for paladins very soon. For your sake and mine lol. I hate being yelled at when the paladin tank dies.

For the few paladins still tanking out there I have respect for ya and I don't think the paladin hp issue is the fault of the player but please respect the heals trying their best to keep you up (^_^)b

I know captain obvious is obvious and I am sure I need to L2P but I am throwing this out there in hope that maybe some of the people making adjustments to pld might take note of what it feels like healing paladin tanks.

I apologize for my grammar and spelling. It is 7 am and I haven't slept yet. FFXIV won't let me log in and this was one of the things on my mind so I thought I would attempt to throw this out there from my insomnia ridden mind. First world problems right? x]

kay I need to go to sleep now. ~.~

[Niko_Kishiko]

Oh wow that's like the Great Wall of the wall of texts. x.X sorry lol

[HiirNoivl]

Yeah but it was a good story so I read it.

You're right, healing PLD is harder because 1) they don't have enough DEF skills 2) they don't have enough self heals 3) They don't have enough HP.

So to make up for it, what I usually do as WHM for any tank is take turns casting Stoneskin and Regen.

Also after HF, As well as most of the rest of the fight, DD should be able to take care of themselves. WHM should be only curing tank.

TLDL; I think you just got a bum party.

[Niko_Kishiko]

You're right, healing PLD is harder because 1) they don't have enough DEF skills 2) they don't have enough self heals 3) They don't have enough HP.

Thanks for replying Hiir Noivl.

I think you are right. ^_^ I will remember to try and trade Stoneskins with the other healer and see if this helps. I don't know why I haven't thought of it before with a paladin tanking. I throw up SS when I can but trading ss casts is more efficient I am sure.

[Enfarious]

It is a fine point you make, and throughout the "fix pld" and "war > pld as tank" threads the same is being said. Plds got somehow gimped to the point of being nearly useless by not having any real dmg reduction traits. Your one of many healers out there that has felt the pain of that, and you got a party that got pissy and wanted someone to blame. Sadly in most cases it's the healers that take the hit when things go south since what people see is

From a DD's perspective:
I'm not getting healed, damn I'm @10% why have I not got a heal yet. I'm dead wtf. Now I'll watch other HP bars since I'm not super focused on my DPS. By now it's pretty much over anyway.

From a tank's:
Wow I'm soaking all the heals right now and the DDs are suffering as are the healers. I need to find some way to slow down the dmg I'm taking so the healers can share the love. Oh yeah I've got nothing. Shit people are dying.

And then of course the healer's:
Like you said, or at least my interpretation of it, I'm so focused on the tank that the DDs are not getting heals. If I slow down on the tank to toss a cure or 3 to the DDs chances are the tanks going down, but the tanks gotta live or we all die. I'm sorry mr. drg I couldn't keep heals on the tank and you.

After the fact it does appear that your not healing some people, cause well your not, it's not your fault though, your doing your job, sadly because of the fail design on pld it simply can't sustain the onslaught that plds the world over are built to take. It sucks that them being broken makes you appear to be doing a bad job.

When I say you, I mean all healers that try to keep a pld upright and are forced to watch DDs get their dicks knocked in the dirt.

End of the day, I hope there's enough of these posts to get the Devs attention and they get on top of making pld a job worth having, mostly cause I like tanking and I don't want to have to do it solely on War to keep my healers from having nervous breakdowns.

[Niko_Kishiko]

@Enfarious What you posted. Exactly.

[Alerith]

While I'm sure some of what you experienced is valid as you explained it, it also sounds like you had a bad PLD who didn't bother trying to keep himself alive.

I admit we take more damage than we should, but if he isn't spacing out his abilities or even curing himself, then you'll run into problems.

Other than Hellfire, the biggest damage your tank will probably take is when he does a physical auto-attack followed by a magical attack. This is the point where the healers are needed most. For other things like his Flame breath, it does some moderate magic damage, but a PLD should be able to cure himself through this. With Crimson Cyclone, you have multiple chances to use Cover on somebody so you can restore a fair bit of your MP, considering it's a percentage based restore and Ifrit deals some heavy damage.

I admit it can be a pain in the ass, but I wouldn't go so far as to say PLD is taking damage like a BLM.

[SwordCoheir]

Yeah but it was a good story so I read it.

You're right, healing PLD is harder because 1) they don't have enough DEF skills 2) they don't have enough self heals 3) They don't have enough HP.

So to make up for it, what I usually do as WHM for any tank is take turns casting Stoneskin and Regen.

Also after HF, As well as most of the rest of the fight, DD should be able to take care of themselves. WHM should be only curing tank.

TLDL; I think you just got a bum party.

Aye, I admit WHM is probably my weakest job skill wise, but I caught on quick to abuse the hell out of Regen and Stoneskin every opportunity I got.

Problem defense wise is the D-level factoring floors how much defense actually helps against his attacks and swipes (I can knock his attacks down to about 500 damage fully buffed w/o sentinel with around 1k defense), and his more devastating moves are magical which there isn't much in terms of magical defense almost guaranteeing full damage on PLD or WAR, meaning WAR's higher HP comes out on top in this aspect.

PLD has a hard time healing himself half the time too, due to interruption rates while taking damage (Alot of people are for making Holy Succor Instant Cast because of this even if they up the mp cost.) WAR can just keep on doing what he keeps on doing to heal himself popping second wind and blood bath every opportunity they get, and occasionally getting healed from Rampage's effect when they crit. Let's face it the game mechanics work against PLD in the healing department.

[Niko_Kishiko]

Thanks for the input guys.

I have healed a couple Paladins where it wasn't as rough and it felt challenging but doable. Maybe a wipe here or there but things could be adjusted to get the job done. This is rarely the case for me though. Very rare. Next time I encounter one of these I will ask them what exactly they are doing differently. Maybe they are managing cooldowns better or their point allocation and/or gear could be much different than the pld af. Or just getting lucky and not having their self heal interrupted? I will have to look into it.

I will probably get a reply like "IDK this is just how I play" though >.< It's like the special sauce recipe secret or something.

Yeah, it probably isn't quite as bad as healing a black mage tanking but after healing most wars then jumping to most plds the difference is pretty dramatic. I pug a lot so I heal all kinds. Maybe there is a pld secret recipe out there involving some quadruple melded gear stacking or some other insanity.

[Frein]

I rarely get to heal PLDs but in my experience the survivability difference hasn't been as significant as you make it out to be. WAR usually has significantly more HP unless the PLD has strong non-AF gear, which helps a lot, but the PLD should be able to help with healing to even it out, especially when there are gaps in healing.

I wish I had PLD leveled so I could actually try it out myself to see how it differs from WAR tanking.