PLD vs WAR: testing

[Duelle]

You, as the tank, shouldn't be relied on for cures, but it should be an augmenting force to your tanking skills and the survival of your party.

That's not the impression I'm getting, especially when I'm seeing people suggest that having a PLD in group allows the group to bypass inviting a second healer. That's largely where my concern comes from. If I'm on PLD, I'm there to tank, not to do part of the healer's job.

Honestly, it's literally no different from curing yourself, except for hitting a function key to target someone else. You wouldn't say being responsible for your own HP is too stressful, so how would adding one keystroke add so much stress that it would be undesirable for restoring an allies HP (in addition to your own, in addition to enmity)?

You'll probably tell me I suck and that I have no skill for this but whatever. I don't use F-keys. I used sub-targetting in FFXI while using a controller. In WoW I relied on mouse-over macros to do my off-healing/dispelling. So yes, as an individual it is quite troublesome and largely distracting.

Again, the difference is that in the two previous games I was also DPS, which meant that I didn't have to watch out for much aside from environmental hazards and the few abilities my paladin could actually help interrupt/avoid. I could easily dance around Sindragosa and toss instant-cast Flash of Lights on low health party members, or heal any stray raid members hit by Kologarn's eye-beams (while kiting said eye-beams, too). I've even saved healers with low health more times than I can count. I also keep in mind I was able to do that because the responsibility of tanking and all that came with it was not on me.

You say that it's a distraction because you should be focusing on your own survival.

This is false. Tanking it about the survival of your entire group. It doesn't matter how well you stay alive on your own. If the rest of your team is dead for any given reason, then you've failed and you likely aren't going to finish the fight you're in.

The tank is there to take hits and hold the mob's attention. If the tank dies, the group dies. If the tank's death is facilitated by things like expected off-healing (because the group decided to forego bringing a second healer, expecting the PLD to help pick up that slack), it's a pretty bad place to be in.