Post Your Healing Horror Stories.

[technole]

I don't know exactly how this trend got so widespread, but I hate it, and I'm afraid my FC will kick me out since I won't stop complaining about it when I meet tanks like this. One or 2 strength accessories is fine, but tanks (especially Warriors) who like to play pretend they're all DPS sicken me to no end and make me wanna quit healing altogether.

Maybe I can help, because there is misconception from a healer standpoint about STR build and warrior.

You have to remember that VIT only equals more HP, and STR in the hands of a good warrior is beneficial to party damage and their self-healing. I only run all STR as warrior as once HP and accuracy thresholds are met, the rest of the stats should go into STR. Skills like Inner beast cooldown and Equilibrium (Self-heal skill) scale to STR, combine with berserk and internal release combos we can crit and i've healed myself for over 9k.

I doubt the warrior wasn't in Defiance at-all though, they were probably stance dancing. You have to be in Defiance and Provoke to get 0.5 off the MT since it copies the other's HP and aggro table. Going from Defiance to Deliverance shaves off -25% HP so that is probably part of what you saw. It may not have been damage being taken, just the Defiance max HP buff going on/off by dancing. Now they still have access to good cooldowns like Vengenece, if they don't needlessly burn them trying to get more Abandon stacks. It really comes down to warrior game play, and how much they can trust healers. STR alone isn't the issue.

[Seryl199]

I get a few tanks in Neverreap who think it's a good idea to tank all the bees at the same time...

I had a tank give me guff over being AST ("oh, AST, guess I'll pull small"), told him to pull how he wants. When we reached the bees, it looked like he was going to pull small, but ended up with both sets. Our SMN was great, dropping an LB and going to work. The pack was pretty low on HP, and then I saw it: Final Sting, chunking the tank down to critical HP. I whipped up some oGCD magic with Essential Dignity, Celestial Opposition, Swiftcast, and a bit of Gravity to clean up the pack. Probably the most gratifying use I've ever gotten from Celestial Opposition, watching the animation fade away and leaving us just enough time to mop things up. Not a horror story necessarily, but yeah. Those bees sure are stressful.

[cgbspender]

I think you are under the misconception that we healers have the wrong idea about that matter. We all perfectly know that strength accesorries "improve" your self-healing, your enmity, and even your oh-fabulous DPS.
And that would be perfectly fine if you were fighting the oh-fabulous-super-high-level raids.


What we see nowadays are tanks at level 60, wearing an average i145 gearset, of course with all STR jewels, and with an average of 8k HP instead of the 11K they should be having.
Or, as I encountered this morning, a tank in the Vault wearing all i115 gear all with - of course - STR jewels, for an amount of 7k HP when I had 8k myself as a healer. Needless to say, we didn't go far into the dungeon.

"Sicken me", as Aldebaran said, is quite an euphemism when you come to think of it.

Now let's talk about your "points".

An STR-tank gain self-healing ? That would mean healers have to heal you less, right ? Understand me right, it's the very opposite. I don't even need to have a look at a tank's gear anymore to be able to tell whether he is wearing VIT or STR, when I'm forced to spam cures on a tank just to keep him alive aganst trash, where a single regen would normally suffice for an average VIT tank. In case you didn't know anyway, healers heal you. You don't need an improved self-healing when you have an average healer behind you, except maybe if you're fighting A1S, but that's what ? 1% of the players ?

Same goes for enmity. STR jewels are supposed to help. I say it doesn't. When a healer is forced to spam cures for the sake of keeping a tank alive, excuse me but what's the point ? The enmity we generate by having to spam is twice - if not triple - as big as it should be, and all the VIT gear a tank's wearing doesn't compensate that.

DPS ? Same as said earlier, unless you are fighting to down A1S and above, it's completely irrelevant. And probably doesn't quite compensate the possible stance-dancing a healer, or even a tank - yes a TANK - could be adding to the table. ( yes, you tanks, can also stance-dance, only a few realize that).

It's become an extremely bad habit to promote VIT jewels as the default gearing. All it did was to make the exceptionnal tanks greater, and the average ones (the large majority) become absolutely terrible.

[Selli]

So I've been running at less than 5MBps upload since SCoB. Since HW it's been running between 0.71 MBps and 0.30 MBps, causing a lot of grief for my poor static while we were clearing A1 Savage, lol. It finally got to the point where it was hitting flat 0.00 MBps and caused the router to constantly shut off and reboot so we called my ISP (they charge for home visits so we were trying to avoid it).

He fixed a lot of stuff, so now I'm running at a solid 10 MBps.

I have no idea how to play healer without lag, LOL.

[Seryl199]

I think you are under the misconception that we healers have the wrong idea about that matter. We all perfectly know that strength accesorries "improve" your self-healing, your enmity, and even your oh-fabulous DPS.
And that would be perfectly fine if you were fighting the oh-fabulous-super-high-level raids.


What we see nowadays are tanks at level 60, wearing an average i145 gearset, of course with all STR jewels, and with an average of 8k HP instead of the 11K they should be having.
Or, as I encountered this morning, a tank in the Vault wearing all i115 gear all with - of course - STR jewels, for an amount of 7k HP when I had 8k myself as a healer. Needless to say, we didn't go far into the dungeon.

You have to remember that VIT only equals more HP, and STR in the hands of a good warrior is beneficial to party damage and their self-healing. I only run all STR as warrior as once HP and accuracy thresholds are met, the rest of the stats should go into STR... STR alone isn't the issue.

What you're describing are tanks that gear for STR without meeting the HP threshold. That's simply poor gearing on the tank's side. They will be putting a lot of faith in the healer's hands and have a minimal margin for error that can easily lead to wipes. That's no good.

What Technole is vouching for is gearing STR after the HP threshold is reached. You say you're comfortable with an 11k HP tank, what if the tank has 15k or more? If they don't dip below 4k HP, they function identically to a tank with 11k. Only a precious few skills work based on the percent of total HP, like Thrill of Battle, Stoneskin, or Benediction. Most other abilities are based on the amount of healing or damage coming in. This means that, as stated before, an 11k HP tank will use these abilities to the same effectiveness as a 15k HP tank. If those abilities are sufficient for an 11k HP tank to survive, any excess HP is just fluff for the tank. It provides no meaningful value if that HP is never used.

Likewise, the failure to use self healing or mitigative abilities will be equally difficult to handle regardless of whether one tank has higher HP. If the incoming damage is higher than your HPS, there's little you can do about it regardless of the tank's HP, except hope the DPS can clean things up before the tank goes under. If you're dealing with a big pull, chances are that's unlikely. Higher HP may provide a few seconds of cushion, but it's not going to save a bad tank from making bad decisions. That's just poor tanking. Typically, if you're having a bad time healing a STR tank, you'd have a bad time healing them VIT spec'd. There are good tanks that gear STR and good tanks that gear VIT, there are even great tanks that swap accessories between pulls and and stance dance too. These are tanks that have developed an intuition during battle much like how we healers have. They know the flow of battle, when they will be taking heavy damage, and when it will be less severe. Pay attention to these tanks, how they use their abilities to not only make life easier for their healers, but simultaneously have the ability to output decent DPS as well. One does not have to come without the other.

[technole]

What we see nowadays are tanks at level 60, wearing an average i145 gearset, of course with all STR jewels, and with an average of 8k HP instead of the 11K they should be having.
Or, as I encountered this morning, a tank in the Vault wearing all i115 gear all with - of course - STR jewels, for an amount of 7k HP when I had 8k myself as a healer. Needless to say, we didn't go far into the dungeon.

Both of them are undergeared, there is no getting around that. The Vault most should be at i130 and higher at that point, considering that place drops i142. Probably a fate grinder that allowed their gear to take a backseat. Not shocking.

Notice I didn't advocate STR unless an HP threshold was met, and that includes being appropriately geared on the left since that provides the most VIT for any job. Being undergeared means also possibly being too low in HP so going all STR right side then is just asking for trouble. So being appropriately geared first and foremost is important, and in DF well I don't have to say much about how many undergeared people are out there. If a healer has more HP than a tank, there is no excuse.

I don't even have to mention i145 in expert content stings for both tanks and healers even if it's the minimum. Although the bosses in Neverreap hit like a wet noodle, it's the trash that hurts the most and the bad tanks overpull even the first island.

As for the self-healing skills of WAR and DRKs with STR it does require them to be used appropriately, not overpulling based on party gear level, etc. I've had duty finder healers have no problem putting on a regen, asylum, and still going to town on DPS.

[Aldebaran92]

Maybe I can help, because there is misconception from a healer standpoint about STR build and warrior.
You have to remember that VIT only equals more HP, and STR in the hands of a good warrior is beneficial to party damage and their self-healing. I only run all STR as warrior as once HP and accuracy thresholds are met, the rest of the stats should go into STR. Skills like Inner beast cooldown and Equilibrium (Self-heal skill) scale to STR, combine with berserk and internal release combos we can crit and i've healed myself for over 9k.

I doubt the warrior wasn't in Defiance at-all though, they were probably stance dancing. You have to be in Defiance and Provoke to get 0.5 off the MT since it copies the other's HP and aggro table. Going from Defiance to Deliverance shaves off -25% HP so that is probably part of what you saw. It may not have been damage being taken, just the Defiance max HP buff going on/off by dancing. Now they still have access to good cooldowns like Vengenece, if they don't needlessly burn them trying to get more Abandon stacks. It really comes down to warrior game play, and how much they can trust healers. STR alone isn't the issue.

If you actually read my post, you would have seen that both the tanks in question barely met the ilevel requirements, yet they both ran full strength builds, losing out on a few thousand HP, especially the warrior who never used Defiance. No, he wasn't stance-dancing, as you are suggesting. I know stance-dancing, and being in Deliverance all the time does not qualify as stance-dancing, just like never using Cleric Stance is not stance-dancing. I wish he had been stance-dancing properly, but that is a rare occurrence. Last time I got a tank who stance-danced in A1, she was in Deliverance 85% of the time (starting with it, changed when she lost aggro to a Machinist, then switched back, rinse, repeat). Luckily, this one could keep aggro, but both he and the Dark Knight often dropped to around 3k while the rest of the party was also taking "heavy" damage (add phases), causing a few minor heart attacks.

This was a DF run. I queued alone, and it seemed like everyone else did as well, meaning that I didn't know the tanks or the other healer and vice versa. If you join a duty through the DF, you should take into consideration that the party you get is random. You might get an awesome healer, a mediocre one or a bad one. What would have happened if the tanks in question had met healers who couldn't keep them alive without going oom? Most likely, they would have rage-quit while placing all the blame on the healers, I've seen that a lot lately from tanks who pull everything, not using cooldowns, standing in stupid etc. Somehow, it's always the healer's fault. If you join as a party, by all means, go with whatever build you want or act how stupid you want if you know the party can handle it, but if you're using the DF, you should first and foremost do the job you queued as as good as possible, not pretend you're something else and thereby put the rest of the party in danger.

[Aldebaran92]

Typically, if you're having a bad time healing a STR tank, you'd have a bad time healing them VIT spec'd.

I'd have to disagree. Even if the strength tank is using cooldowns, there's a far greater risk involved, at least if they're barely meeting the ilevel and HP requirements for the duty. Gearing with full strength means you lose out on a few thousand HP, making the chances of dropping to critical HP levels greater when the damage spikes. If you're meeting the HP requirements and full vitality would technically be wasted, use a few strength accessories. However, that is not the issue being discussed here. I know I could have been clearer in my first post, but the tanks I met were not immensely over-geared for the dungeon (i175 maybe?), and their low HP meant that sudden damage spikes could potentially have put the whole party at risk, as they got down to very low HP levels, offering us less leeway when healing them. Like I said, there were no wipes because we couldn't keep the tanks alive, only because of poor placement of the adds, but completely ignoring vitality when you as a tank are so close to the minimum ilevel requirements puts a lot more stress on the healers, especially if they are new or inexperienced with this type of tanking.

[Aomine1992]

As i started to lvl my WHM past 53 I panicked a lot in the HS dungeons cause I was having a hard time keeping some of the tanks alive, DRKs mostly but it seemed way easier with other tanks, I didnt know why this was until a friend explained to me the whole STR or VIT tank thing.

Honestly (just my opinion lol nobody get offended and kill me) but if you wanna be full STR then they should go DPS not tank, its a killer on the healers especially when there's unavoidable dmg and DPS just flailing into aoe zones and not dodging, now dont get me wrong i can still keep them alive for a bit but when they pull too much or get hit hard its a wrap.

So my hat is off to these veteran healers, you da MVP lol cause once I hit 60 I am not doing post 60 content as a healer cause I wouldnt be able to keep up with some of these tanks haha I will stick to DPS.

[Arkenne]

Guys guys, don't worry!!

Soon enough there will be alt Tanks filling the DF with their i170~180 weapons while most DPS will have i200 and will still go full STR Accesory and never get out of their DPS stance >=D!