We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[AwesomeJr44]

So I have to ask some questions here. What level of "tryhard" did you have to expend to keep the tank alive? Are you used to just popping a regen or a shield and not having to do anymore than that? How do you usually heal other tanks? That's some important context here because it establishes what your personal opinion of correct play should be. And it helps measure if you have realistic expectations of others or unrealistic expectations of others.

I had to use every cooldown I had, I had almost no MP by the time we reached the boss, (and I was using Lucid dreaming and everything I could to conserve mana) and I was lucky if I could get a damage spell in. I literally had to spam heal to keep the tank alive because he double pulled with zero mitigation (not even the short cooldowns), and his gear was not great but not horrible either.\

I normally never have trouble healing tanks, even average skilled tanks, but it honestly doesn't matter how much healing I normally give other tanks, I should not have to be a heal bot because my tank is too lazy to use literally ANY mitigation even after I told him how. It's boring and unnecessary when the tank could just do what they are meant to do and use even one of the skills they have. I even told him exactly how to do it as I play all of the tanks and know how to properly mitigate in dungeons with all of them.

After this, if he took my advice to heart, he should have had at least ONE mitigation. I normally do two per mob pull but even one would have been enough. That is the baseline. One mitigation per mob pull. That at least is somewhat helpful. He had zero for the entire dungeon outside of the boss 'tankbusters' that do nothing. I don't see it as unreasonable to expect a tank to press the buttons that they have access to. If the tank doesn't want to mitigate, why don't we just have one healer and three DPS? That would a) kill the dungeon mobs faster and b) be just as hard on the healer as a tank that doesn't mitigate at all.

I can count on one hand in all that time the number of times I've run into a tank that was just impossible to keep alive.

He wasn't impossible to keep him alive. I kept him alive the entire time and he never died. The issue was that I had to put far more effort than is fair to ask for. The tank refused to put in effort and I was forced to pick up the slack and essentially put in two people's worth of effort. That is incredibly unfair to ask of someone to do. I should not be forced to put in effort for two people because my tank refuses to use their skills when they are level 87.

At least one of those was because they were way undergeared.

I've healed tanks with worse gear than this one with far less effort so it was more of a skill issue than his gear.

Those where we're struggling, I don't finger point at them. I explain I'm having some trouble keeping them alive and ask if we can adjust things a little.

That's fine if you want to do it that way but I find it very obnoxious to have to drop hints to the mistakes someone is making. It's convoluted for no reason and only makes things messier in an attempt to spare someone's feelings. All I did was politely give the advice to the tank and didn't call him trash or anything. I just asked if he could use the mitigation on the mobs as it was hard to keep him alive with the way we was doing it. I even promised that if I failed to keep him alive through unmitigated boss tankbusters that he could go back to mitigating them and I wouldn't complain. He ignored me the first time and when I asked again politely, I got told to shut up and that I don't pay his sub.

I suspect your words were not as polite as you're trying to imply they were.

I should have mentioned this in my OP but after we beat Hermes I actually asked both DPS if I was rude when I asked the tank to do proper mitigation, and they both said I was polite, and that the tank overreacted and was the rude one. I would think that if I was the one being rude, they would have told me and probably reported me as they would have the GMs on their side. No offense but I'll be taking their word for it rather than someone who wasn't there. I know it's hard to believe when I can't copy paste the chat logs as this happened yesterday, but I'd ask that you take my word for it, and if not then /shrug.

I specialize in the role you're referring to, and I just don't have the same experiences.

This might be why you have different experiences than me with it. I am not a healer main and thus not a gamer god tier healer. I do not have the skill level to absolutely carry a garbage tier tank with ease. Seeing as you are looking at my character, you can probably see that I am a tank main, not a healer main. As a tank main, when a tank doesn't use mitigation, that sticks out to me like a sore thumb so I notice it more than a healer main would.

However, it doesn't matter if I am a healer main or a tank main, if I was doing that much healing on a tank with proper cooldown usage, I'd be doing so much overhealing that I'd be considered a bad healer and a heal bot. This is a dungeon. I should not have to be using literally every cooldown and then spamming my heal button just to prevent the tank from dying. I should be able to cast a damage spell one time without the tank just dying instantly because I wasn't spamming my healing.

I don't have dungeons that take forever either. And I very rarely feel that I'm having to completely carry everyone else. I may have a time where I use my skills more than others, but I consider that par for the course when the game matches me with people with varying skill and experience levels.

It didn't take forever as I kept the tank alive the entire time. I never said I failed to keep him up, it just wasn't fun whatsoever because I was forced to be a heal bot the entire time. The only time I got to have fun was during the bosses because their damage is so low that I could actually do damage spells. This was also not just a case of 'well he's not perfect'. This tank had no idea what he was doing. He did not know the basics of the job and I'm honestly suprised that he used AOE spells. I know this because I queued up for it again (I was farming glamour gear) and got another tank of the same job and I EASILY kept him alive the whole time. Why? Because this Gunbreaker used his mitigation.