A question for tanks~

[Tyrial]

Hello, I play whitemage as a main and I've always thought I've done a pretty good job at it. I've done plenty of Ak's and the such. I've never had any problems with a tank before. I try to help out when I can when they are new and such, but this happened to me earlier.

You did absolutely nothing wrong in this situation. I'd much rather have a WHM (assuming they actually know how to play and react to changing situations) maximize their output. Most times if I know the WHM is good I just ask them to keep stoneskin and/or regen on me during the actual fighting. As long as I don't dip too low I don't worry about it, that's what we have our cool downs for.

Don't worry about what happened, he was just an elitist baby. If you ever feel you need a new server you're more than welcome to come play WHM for me on Leviathan when they open transfers.

[Kelberos]

Personally I would prefer if you top me up to the fullest or 75% most of the time. Mostly because of personal reasons - not being at full health kinda gives me a feeling of impending doom because you usually see that when the healer is OOM and/or dead or running around from aggro.

Its like wearing an ill fitting pants - its not going to kill me but just uncomfortable to be in. I attribute this to me being a fairly-green tank as well - if i dont see myself getting topped off within 5-8 seconds - i tend to panic.

Though i do agree that his reaction is uncalled for. If you told me you can dps while healing me - and youre actually confident enough at it then go for it. Id say youre a badass for juggling two things at ones - something i dont see very often and most tanks would probably think does not exist. I would suggest telling the tank ahead of time that you'll be helping out on the DPS ahead of time before they make unnecessary assumptions.

[Cairn]

I can't really blame that tank since you're much more advance than him.

[reaver_angels]

You're a whitemage - just heal. That's it!

[Tyrial]

You're a whitemage - just heal. That's it!

And you're obviously touched and need to think outside the box. What she was doing was exactly what she should have been doing. That would be like somebody telling you not to maximize your damage output because you're a tank - just tank. Utterly ridiculous.

[Arkine]

I can't be assed to keep an eye on how a WHM plays their job.

"Don't let me die" Is all I'm expecting from you.

[Maelwys]

I don't know if other tanks have felt this way or not because no one has ever said anything to me. But then again they could just talk badly about me behind my back. I'd really like to know what you would prefer me doing. I don't want someone going around saying "yeah that ishiene phye. Thats a ????ing noob whm."

I helped finish the wall. Said "Thank you for the party. I'll be leaving now." and exited. I won't play with people who insult you behind your back. If you have a problem with me then I'd prefer you say it to my face.

I've played both Healers/Support and Tanks. They both want pretty much the same thing: to keep the party from dying. The Tank does this by trying to keep the main sources of danger pointed at themselves all the time. The Healers/Support do this by trying to keep everyone's healthbars above zero for as long as possible.

Speaking as a Tank, if my health bar constantly drops below 50% then I'll start getting a little edgy. Because there's now less of a buffer available between me and potential bedlam (As a tank, I'm conditioned into believing that if I die, aggro control will go haywire). This even applies on trash mobs: I could get hit by a lucky stream of criticals and/or the Healer could get hit by a bit of untimely lag. So I can understand why the Tank would be getting a little uncomfortable: yes, nobody's currently dying, but my healthbar is orange and orange healthbars are bad.

That said, the Tank privately b*tching about the Healer being pants is not the way to solve this issue.

Assuming that both the Tank and the Healer are competent (sometimes a big "if"!!) then what's happening is that the Healer is keeping the Tank's HP at a level where they (the Healer) feel that the party is "safe" - but the Tank doesn't quite feel that the party is "safe". It'd take all of ten seconds for the Tank to type out a quick message in party chat, asking the Healer if they could throw you a top up whenever your HP bar drops below [whatever % threshold you feel is safe] "Just in case".

(As an aside, when I'm playing Healer, I'll generally throw the Tank a cure any time I'm sure it won't overcure (so, at about 80% or so) regardless of what we're fighting. Trash mobs shouldn't be draining the healthbar that quickly anyway. It usually doesn't take any extra cures to keep a Tank at 80% instead of at 50%, because the level of incoming damage is still the same. You just leave a little extra buffer in the HP bar...)

But you certainly do have a point about fight difficulty. On trash mobs there's nothing to stop a WHM running in Cleric Stance and nuking to keep things moving quickly... If the Tank starts complaining about you throwing out Nukes whenever their HP bar isn't moving, then the fault lies entirely with them. On easy content, the focus shifts from survivability to speed. Healer/Buffers should feel free to attack stuff, and the Tank should feel free to start trading some mitigation abilities/gear for extra DPS. (I believe the appropriate gibe here is "Learn to play!")

[Vydos]

I always keep an eye on how the whm likes to play. I tend to do content with random people 90% of the time. So I basically learned to adapt.

I have noticed that there are healers who like to wait till I'm at half health to heal. And others that will patch the tiniest of scratches that land on me. For me it's simple. 'Don't let me die or get me in dangerous low hp situations." Otherwise, I don't care how someone plays their whm as long as it leads to certain victory.

[Cessna]

As a tank, I don't mind as long as I'm around 50% or more on most battles. I also like poping inner beast and self healing a bit. Now you let me drop below that to a dangerous extent like 1k health remaining or 90% of my health is gone, and I begin to wonder what's wrong with you, but as long as you keep me alive, I don't care what you do.

Most tanks only care about staying alive and keep aggro off everyone and I'm one of them.

[Koltik]

Well that PLD sounds like a dick, but what do you expect; those types of players exist.

As a WAR I am going to say that how you should heal is very dependent on the attitude/playstyle of your tank.

If you have a very aggressive/unpredictable tank, you need to keep them topped off as much as possible so that they can keep moving and not be worried about waiting on that heal before moving to pull the next group of mobs.

If you have a laid back/predictable tank, then what you are doing is fine.

Personally I am very aggressive as a warrior. I usually pull 2-3 groups and have DPS AoE them down on my AK runs. If I had a healer who didn't keep me topped off to the best of their ability, I wouldn't be confident moving ahead and keeping a steady flow of mobs coming for our DPS to AoE down.