New player question about Astrology

[truemagus]

More like kind of returning since I quit like 2 weeks into ARR launch.

I have been tanking so far it's been no problems. Just did a dungeon though called Brayfox and had an Astrologist as my healer. Most of the dungeon was me kiting/stunning around at around 10% to 20% HP and the healer mostly dpsing maybe throwing out one heal per pull right when I am going to die to put me back to 30%.

The Astro told me that this is a mechanic of the Job in that they need the target low health before they heal.

Is this true? Because I am kind of dreading doing anymore Tank Duty Finders since I was barely able to keep myself up long enough for the Healer to heal.

[cheolsu]

yes, but they don't have to heal like that. Essential Dignity is a free heal that heals more the lower you are on hp. but i think they changed that to max potency if you're under 50%, so they don't have to let you get that low. however, so long as you didn't die, don't worry about it.

a white mage could wait for you to get low too before using benediction

but that's just min maxing. they could use essential dignity with lower potency. it's still free

[AnotherPerson]

More like kind of returning since I quit like 2 weeks into ARR launch.

I have been tanking so far it's been no problems. Just did a dungeon though called Brayfox and had an Astrologist as my healer. Most of the dungeon was me kiting/stunning around at around 10% to 20% HP and the healer mostly dpsing maybe throwing out one heal per pull right when I am going to die to put me back to 30%.

The Astro told me that this is a mechanic of the Job in that they need the target low health before they heal.

Is this true? Because I am kind of dreading doing anymore Tank Duty Finders since I was barely able to keep myself up long enough for the Healer to heal.

This is true. Astrologians in particular have an early low level ability called "Essential Dignity". This ability heals 400 potency, but heals more the lower your HP is, up to 1100 potency. In hindsight, whether you're at 50% HP or 30% HP, it's all the same to the astrologian since the potency will just scale up the lower your HP is. A tank's goal is just to mitigate incoming damage by flattening the damage curve (mitigating tank busters and pointing cleaves away from the party) so it becomes easier for the healer to anticipate the remaining incoming damage and heal it while also contributing more to the party via DPS.

Don't panic so much about your HP, just worry mainly on the mechanics and your own mitigation rotation as a tank. The healer will worry about the HP. Delaying or using up all your mitigations in a panic to help the healer is how a tank screws over the healer because the tank would be taking a lot more damage for a longer period of time after their defensive buffs are gone, and the healer will have to adjust to that by spending more MP to heal more. For the most part, healers aren't designed to be constantly spamming heals because healing is MP expensive.

[Kabooa]

It is technically true.

Essential Dignity gains healing power the lower the target is, on a 45 second cooldown. That said, if you're having to run around to try and stagger enemy auto attacks, they were probably not managing themselves well. Keep on trucking. Most healers probably won't let you drop beneath 50%, and you'll know quickly which ones know how to let you ride 10% safely and which ones don't.

[truemagus]

This is true. Astrologians in particular have an early low level ability called "Essential Dignity". This ability heals 400 potency, but heals more the lower your HP is, up to 1100 potency. In hindsight, whether you're at 50% HP or 30% HP, it's all the same to the astrologian since the potency will just scale up the lower your HP is. A tank's goal is just to mitigate incoming damage by flattening the damage curve (mitigating tank busters and pointing cleaves away from the party) so it becomes easier for the healer to anticipate the remaining incoming damage and heal it while also contributing more to the party via DPS.

Don't panic so much about your HP, just worry mainly on the mechanics and your own mitigation rotation as a tank. The healer will worry about the HP. Delaying or using up all your mitigations in a panic to help the healer is how a tank screws over the healer because the tank would be taking a lot more damage for a longer period of time after their defensive buffs are gone, and the healer will have to adjust to that by spending more MP to heal more. For the most part, healers aren't designed to be constantly spamming heals because healing is MP expensive.

I guess that makes sense. But we ended up wiping on the last boss since I had been at 5% for too long (think like 10 seconds) and the boss dropped an acid pool on me. Had to limit break the second run to keep myself alive. Most of the run I had to use around 20 potions on packs and the Dragoon had to help cc to keep me up as the healer didn't let me get time to regen.

[cheolsu]

yeah, people who play like that in duty finder with random people are annoying. like, who cares about their parse. especially in a dungeon. they should run with a premade if that's their thing

otoh, if they can manage it without you dying, then there's no reason to worry. basically i give them a chance and don't sweat it until i die. so, the maximizing their heal by letting your hp drop is just an excuse. it's true! but unnecessary

[Acece]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Healers learning their limits is part of being a good healer. If you wipe a couple times but they become a better healer then I would say it's worth a couple wipes. Besides those types of healers are not too common to worry about it.

[AnotherPerson]

I guess that makes sense. But we ended up wiping on the last boss since I had been at 5% for too long (think like 10 seconds) and the boss dropped an acid pool on me. Had to limit break the second run to keep myself alive. Most of the run I had to use around 20 potions on packs and the Dragoon had to help cc to keep me up as the healer didn't let me get time to regen.

If you died, then the healer should be take that as a sign to be playing a bit more safe. Healing is a balancing act, really. Some players try to push to see where that lies and that's not so bad since accumulating experience via deaths is pretty much the only way a healer can improve on when they should start healing. If you have to use potions in a sub-lv 50 dungeon after dying a couple of times, then the healer should take that as a wakeup call and heal more though. That, or they might be a bot. I'm generally inclined to give them some doubt if they're a new healer, but if this is a full lv 80 healer causing multiple deaths, unless you're not using mitigations, then they really need to get it together.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I wouldn't say it's AST's 'mechanic'. It's purely how their ability "Essential Dignity" behaves, which is:

Restores target's HP
Cure Potency: 400
Potency increases up to 1,100 as the target's HP decreases

That being said... what you're seeing is probably a healer who tried to be efficient with their healing (or simply being bad, who knows). While this is mostly seen as a sign of decent healer (or a healer trying to improve themselves), by no means it's not all sparkle and rainbows. Get overenthusiastic, they might end up misjudging & killing you in the process. (Which is what happened most likely in your story)

OR they simply didn't use their Essential Dignity for whatever reason, because it rings suspicious to me when you said it heals from 10% to 30% in Brayflox. Essential Dignity is absurdly powerful heal under lv50 that it can heal tanks back to full (or really close) especially when used on that low HP%. Up to 30% looks more like a Benefic I or Benefic II with some broken gears...

I don't think you should stop rolling as a tank in DFs though, but perhaps a nice break or just kidnap one of your healer friends

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Healers learning their limits is part of being a good healer. If you wipe a couple times but they become a better healer then I would say it's worth a couple wipes. Besides those types of healers are not too common to worry about it.

Tank should die so some random healer they'll likely never see again can improve?