12Oct/0916
To my fellow paladin tanks …
To my fellow paladin tanks,
Just because we can tank and heal doesn't mean we should tank and heal at the same time.
There are a whole host of reasons that this is a bad idea:
- It's rude. If you want to solo the instance, solo the instance! Otherwise, trust your healer to do her job before you end up on her blacklist, which I guarantee she shares with other healers of her acquaintance. Every server has an underground chapter of the Angry Healers' Club, and woe to you if you become known in AHC circles as That Tank®.
- It's counter-productive. You see, when we're casting, we're not blocking. And when we're not blocking, we're taking huge amounts of unnecessary damage — so while you may think you're "helping" your healer with those Flash of Lights, what you're actually doing is making her life much harder than it needs to be.
- Two words: Divine Plea. In addition to wasting your healer's mana (which is a precious, precious commodity), you're also wasting yours, first by expending it unnecessarily, and then again by failing to keep Divine Plea active. (You do have Divine Plea glyphed, don't you? If so, you're losing the 3% damage reduction, too. See #2 above.)
- Did I mention its rude? Because it is. If you don't have faith in a healer — especially for some asinine reason, like "she's not a druid" — then don't group with her. Chances are, you'll be doing both of you a favor.
If you have ever tapped into your holy side, then you may be aware of the healer's mantra:
WE CAN'T HEAL STUPID.
Healers are fond of saying can't, but won't is often closer to the truth. Either way, you're still dead. And stupid.
Please, don't be stupid.
Love,
Larissyn
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October 12th, 2009 - 14:12
Here here!
I told a pally tank just yesterday to quit healing himself, or I’d quit healing him. Course it was my boyfriend, so as a threat he knew it wouldn’t carry much weight… but still I wish he’d let me do my job, I don’t try to do his (thankfully!)
October 12th, 2009 - 15:14
Good for you!
I’ve done that to my boyfriend, too. “Bear, I love you, but if I’m drinking between pulls, you’re sitting your big bear butt down and eating a mage-cookie.” (Come to think about it, that’s probably why he’s looking extra roly poly these days.)
October 12th, 2009 - 14:32
Casting makes you crittable. Period.
October 12th, 2009 - 15:16
Plus, the blood elf casting animation is /so/ not scary.
If I were a big bad boss, I think I’d die laughing the first time a tank stopped insulting my mother and bashing his shield against my ankles to throw sparklies around.
… on second thought, maybe that’s a part of the strat?
October 13th, 2009 - 17:28
You’re confusing casting with sitting. Outside of sitting, and fight mechanics that reduce defense, such as Thorim’s unbalancing strike or Prince Kaelseth’s abnormal crit chance, there’s no way for a player who’s at 689+ defense rating to be critically hit.
What casting does cause is a complete inability to Dodge, Block, or Parry. You have to rely on the boss to miss you, which has the harshest DR of all forms of avoidance.
tl;dr: Casting while tanking is amazingly stupid, just not for the reason you listed.
October 12th, 2009 - 15:05
Hah. Man I wish I actually had the gall to: a) Say something, and then b) Follow up by /actually/ not healing if the behaviour in question continued.
I usually just try to get through the run as smoothly as possible, and never ever, ever, go with the person in question again.
Naithin´s last blog ..The 5-Year Old Post
October 12th, 2009 - 15:13
Oh, I’d do the same.
… and then I’d write a snarky blog about it after the fact, because I am a passive-aggressive bitch.
Actually, that might not be entirely true. I did get into a rather heated debate this weekend with a PuG warrior who thought it was “ass” that I refused to heal him when he pulled aggro off of our Death Knight tank (mostly by DPSing the second or third kill target instead of the first). The fourth or fifth time may have been a mistake, but when it /kept/ happening? “Sorry, dude. I’m only healing one tank, and it’s not you.” By the way, feel free to start runnin’, ’cause I ain’t rezzin’.
October 13th, 2009 - 15:49
I would have thought that you would be used to healing over aggressive warriors by now, something tells me that you have done it before =P
-Bob2
October 13th, 2009 - 16:01
But I /like/ you!
October 13th, 2009 - 16:14
Ya, you know you have healer love when you consistently pull aggro on trash and no-ones complains. There is a secret to it which I will divulge now….The trick is that you really need to understand that if you do die while pulling aggro on trash then IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT SO YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN! But if you are willing to pay the repair bill incase the heals don’t come I personally don’t see TOO much wrong with occasionally pulling alittle melee aggro to make sure that your healers didn’t fall asleep at the keyboard.
But then again I’m a trouble maker so you probably shouldn’t listen to me.
P.S. Whirlwind rocks
-Bob2
October 12th, 2009 - 17:11
So, now that I’ve read the link at the top… Wow. I really like the whole “don’t run heroics in greens” thing. That sort of made it for me. I think everyone’s had experiences like that in hToC, but some of the other heroics are laughable. I mean, really, my Shaman walked into Naxx 25 the night he dinged 80 and did ok. I didn’t crack the meters or anything, but how could I? I was surprised I made it through the Safety Dance, but most of those fights are mechanics based anyway.
lordofthefries´s last blog ..lordofthefries: played Gears of War yesterday http://gamerdna.com/r/2Ezh
October 12th, 2009 - 22:24
After reading the blog you linked to, I think you really took it the wrong way. He was saying that in a 5 man, not a 10 or a 25 man raid, that he overgears and has a fail healer, it threw out some heals.
If a healer can not keep everyone alive in a heroic 5 man, then of course you do not have faith in that healer and of course you are going to do everything that you can possible do to come out victorious. Yes, that means that if you are a Pally tank, then you need to throw out some heals. It’s not like he said he was just throwing out heals just to be doing it…he stated that he was throwing out heals because the healer couldn’t keep anyone alive lol. Remember, he is very overgeared for the instance.
Hell, the last 10% of the boss fight was only him…the pally tank…and a dps. Guess who was tanking and healing? The paladin that you say that you shouldn’t ever heal? Then you call him stupid?
October 12th, 2009 - 23:30
To be fair, I didn’t.
Although Potts’ post certainly inspired this one, I wasn’t addressing him directly, but rather responding to the idea that it’s somehow appropriate for a protection paladin to attempt to raid heal when his focus should be on tanking. There are all sorts of reasons that this is a stupid move, but Forrest sums it up nicely: “Casting makes you crittable. Period.”
But, since you brought it up … I’m not sure how you got “fail healer” out of his post. The worst thing he said about the healer was that she was a paladin! He actually admitted that she did a pretty good job, “considering.” Considering what? That the DPS weren’t just standing in the Bad; they were/rolling around in it like a cat in clean laundry? Or that her tank was attempting to help by rendering all of that lovely mitigation worthless?
I don’t know a prot paladin who hasn’t solo’d the last few percent of a dungeon or raid boss, using the entire arsenal of tools at her disposal — including heals. But that’s emphatically not the part of the post that inspired this one. Potts described building a lead on threat and then flat-out /healing/. Either he was exaggerating to tell a better story or he simply didn’t realize that threat wasn’t the only thing he would be sacrificing. (There was also the “small” matter of mitigation.)
Either way, he’s not the first hybrid tank I’ve seen attempt to multitask like this. He’s just the first I’ve encountered who bragged about it in a “wtfn00b?!” themed post. That kind of irony begs a response.
/shrug
Elleiras´s last blog ..To my fellow paladin tanks …
October 13th, 2009 - 11:20
I caught that too Elleiras… Implying that the healer “can’t keep everyone up” when the DPS is standing in The Bad is NOT fair! It isn’t the healer’s problem when the group is taking excessively more damage than they should. Being able to keep everyone up through something like that requires superhuman reflexes or tons of experience or significant overgearing, if not a combination of all three. It isn’t fair to expect every healer to have those attributes, and you certainly don’t need any of them to be competent. You can do a perfectly competent job as healer and still wipe if everyone else is stupid enough.
Rhii´s last blog ..Brushing up your Raiding Resume
October 13th, 2009 - 01:16
“We can’t heal stupid”
Too. True.
Carazzle´s last blog ..Good thing I’m not (too) scared of spiders!I met this…
October 14th, 2009 - 06:23
Thank god this has hasn’t just happened to me. We were pulling some trash before Auriaya during an unofficial Ulduar 10 when our second pally tank (me being the first) started casting flash of light. At first, I thought….okay, he’s confused about the HoT from Sacred Shield. He thinks it’s his responsibility to always keep it up. But just because you have something in your toolbag, doesn’t mean you need to use it!
One of our healing priests spoke up about it. Nobody backed her up. Not a single person! The argument was basically, “Okay it’s not ideal, but let him do what he wants.” Ugh. UGH. RAWRRRRRR! As someone who usually tank heals, that just made me insane.
So many people lost credibility that night. My comment to one of our typical 25 man tanks was that he’s either incredibly cutting edge, able to intuitively predict boss swings, and also has no need to carry out the basic threat rotation OR he’s insane.
After spending ludicrous amounts of time convincing him that even with the 10% stamina bonus to Sanc, other classes might prefer the additional stats offered by Kings (You know, the useful ones!) I decided on the latter opinion.
Ashellia´s last blog ..Average