Stop casting regen on your party/tank before pulls.

[Shuon]

sometimes it is a spill-over from the previous fight. but the tank should cancel it before pulling if it bothers him that much. besides, nothing a few flashes/overpower cant deal with :/

[rogersj9878]

That whole, "good tanks cancel it" nonsense is really another way of saying, "you should correct our mistakes, and by the way, we never make mistakes" and you all know it. That's no different than a DPS blaming the tank for attacking the wrong target by saying, "Well you could just provoke it!" or, "You have cover, so why is it I'm not allowed to attack everything at random to my heart's content?" or crying because he died to the healer, "because MEDICA!" so stop making excuses for why you screwed the pooch and cast regen before pulls. You know it's wrong, and the tank shouldn't have to be on vigilant watch for canceling unnecessary buffs that you KNOW you shouldn't be casting. Are you TRYING to test the tank? Just making sure he's on the up-and-up? "Haha, test failed, group wiped - you were supposed to CANCEL my regen before you pulled!"

Stop doing it and it becomes a non-issue entirely. If you find yourself so bored you have to cast unnecessary spells at inappropriate times just for the hell of it and/or cannot stop yourself from doing it, pick a different job. Healers aren't getting a free pass for doing stupid things any other class would be immediately chastised for doing.

[Sapphidia]

I was thinking good tanks should not have a problem grabbing stuff even with regen ticking. Maybe I'm too low level to know the real fights...is it a serious problem, that regen at level 50?

It's not a problem to out-aggro regen, not at all. The issue is more that it can make pulls unnecessarily fiddly. Aggro in FF is a little clunky at times. Sometimes mobs have aggro on a target, run over to attack, and despite the tank getting aggro back will still do the attack beforehand.

The problem with regen is mostly on multi-target pulls. A single boss is no issue - one shield lob/tomahawk to pull and regen doesnt matter. The issue is pulling a pack of, say, 3 linked mobs. You shield lob one and in most cases all 3 run to you nicely and you can flash all 3 when they get in range. If you have regen ticking, depending on when the heal ticks, the 2 you DONT throw shield lob at will run to the healer. Now sometimes they run right past you and you can flash-grab them anyway and there's no issue, but sometimes they're further apart and the healer moves and they end up in a weird position.

Again, it's not a major issue, any good tank can account for that, but in a world where 2.5 second global cooldowns exist, having to maybe throw an extra shield lob or having a flash be out of range for one target can mean all the difference in establishing stable aggro on a pull. It's easy to grab the mobs that run for the healer with the regen tick, yes, but if it takes 1-2 more global cooldowns to do so then you risk possibly losing the main target to over-eager dps.

It's a minor thing really but it can be a little annoying. Clicking it off helps, as does the healer not casting it. If the healer forgets not to cast or the tank doesnt notice it ticking then it can make some multi-mob trash pulls a little fiddly to get under control at first.

[Simaril]

I don't think this is as simple as: healers shouldn't cast regen before pulls, OR tanks should click it off before they... It's a little of BOTH.

Healers may cast a regen after a mob dies to top off the tank before the next pull... If the tank is rushing through he might not notice that he has a regen ticing anway, and should either wait for regen to finish or click it off.
Healers may cast regen on an already topped off tank just before he pulls... they shouldn't do this unless the tank knows they're doing it and is okay with threat.

It's very situational, and the real problem is when Healers assume tanks will wait or click off, or manage the extra threat. Everyone needs to understand the mechanic.



If the tank is pulling before he's even close to topped off with a regen ticing, then he better be able to deal with the extra aggro. If the tank is close to topped off, the healer shouldn't be putting another regen on him... In a run where you're pushing it by pulling as fast as possible, or being undergeared, and no one is super experienced - these ARE challanges to learn about, understand, and overcome.




Use your words - decide on a strategy - profit!

[Blazn]

Flash a skill all tanks need solve this issue. Use your skills properly and no problem with Regen at the start

[rogersj9878]

Use your skills properly and no problem with Regen at the start

Well, I guess the same could be said about casting Regen on a fresh pull, eh? So again, what was said was, "Use your skills properly" and what was meant was, "It's your fault for not covering my lack of common sense and doing things I'm fully aware I shouldn't be doing."

People saying a "good" tank cancels it. A competent healer doesn't do it from the start. You know why that is? Because they're aware that the only thing accomplished by casting Regen, even if to, "top off" a few measly HP that the tank's natural regen would probably cover by the time of next initiation, is:

* Increased, unnecessary threat to them.
* A harder fight/pull if threat becomes distributed.
* What could be considered insignificant but still lost MP with little to show for it.

And while we're on the topic of insignificant, yes, that little bit of HP you were using as an excuse to, "top off" the tank also falls under that category, except in this case it might become significant when a mob is smacking on you instead of him.

I'm starting to think it might be necessary to write a Wiki on this topic, but I don't know how many ways one can say:

JUST DON'T DO IT AND IT'S NEVER A PROBLEM. IT ISN'T NECESSARY, THE RISKS OUTWEIGH ANY POSSIBLE BENEFITS, AND YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WIN ANY FRIENDS IF YOU DO IT, SO JUST DON'T

It's one less thing a healer has to do, it's one thing healers (should) generally accept they SHOULDN'T do, but yet here we have healers making excuses and saying, "Well I guess if someone did do that, the tank should have just canceled the effect or busted an early flash..." Mind-blowing, really, because the argument revolves around a person doing something they should know better than doing in the first place, and yet somehow it is almost the general consensus (here anyway) that despite the fact the healer is breaking a cardinal rule of healing, it's still the fault of the tank.

[Deathcharge]

Ok level 50 now. Outside areas that I had to spam Cure 2 for Tanks and DPS casting Regen b4 pulls has NEVER been an issue. What is an issue thou is Tank and DPS not having their act together and going in without proper buffs. The problem with threads of this type is you get one person that wants to rush thru places and wont form an attack plan then they are not properly equipped to hold hate without dying and the mages have to over heal. I was once in a party were the freaking THM was doing melee damage with his wand to the mobs. Who is t he person that has to heal actions like that?... WHM. The fact that the healer is spamming a healing spell means... And don't get me wrong we all make mistakes and get agro when we dont want it but being able to manage how much agro you get and when you get it is each individual player responsibility.

[Bufkus]

I've played a lot of MMOs and this is the first one I've played where a heal over time generates so much hate. Usually it's the party all heals that do it (and they do in this game as well).

Of course, it's something that you learn to deal with very quickly.

[Hulan]

I confess to having a similar issue when casting Adloquium to prebuff tanks before a pull. 90% of the time, it works without a hitch, but sometimes I misjudge and end up with a face full of the other two+ mobs (when I start casting just before he or she pulls, then end up with hate on the rest of the group). It's my fault, and I run over to the tank to let him flash them back to him.

I suppose I am rambling, but a point I guess I can make out of it is that: everyone makes mistakes, even the best players; what separates good players from bad is knowing what to do when they make a mistake.

[Valiant]

Not even shroud would help when casting regen at start... with full hp it does nothing but draw hate... With a good enough tank and high enough vit and def there should be no need to heal the first few seconds of a fight.. regen included. Only an idiot starts a fight with regen on party members.