Tanks don't want to rely on healers

Community General Discussion
563

I think throughout this thread no one has listed how much healing they think the healer should be responsible for when it comes to the tank. Because of this people are arguing extremes when I think its more likely that most of us agree more than we might think. For example:

I personally think the healer break down should be

  • 80% tank 20% healer normally.
  • 50% tank 50% healer in high damage scenarios.

This would mean that tanks can’t survive on their own, but mostly have agency over their own health pool. In any case that it drops below 50% on the tank side I feel there is no longer a reason for me to be playing a tank as I’m just a target dummy to pump healing into and have to pay a larger repair bill for the honor of doing so.

Several of the tanks now need massive talent tree reworks because talents in the top rows are doing more effective mitigation than healing talents in the bottom rows. Additionally with the massive 50% nerfs many of these talents are dead and yet are blocking paths to talents we do want or even need for hero talents to work correctly.

Nope if anything we do far less. Several groups I watched yesterday the tank was doing around 1/4 of what a dps was doing.

I saw several people changing builds to try to pick up more defensives and their dps dropped to the point where they were starting to have issues with threat.

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564

I’d prefer to see more fights like it than just the one. Khajin is hands down the most enjoyable fight for a healer in the entire expansion. It’s actually a shame that it is unique.

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565

Well of course but I think there’s also worries about the dungeon design and people from beta are telling us it’s not good. If the tanks health is gradually going down it would be one thing but if their health bars are going up and down like a yo-yo that’s not what any tank wants to deal with in a pug being reliant on a healer in that way

566

I think a good way to look at this, is to take an example from FFXIV.

The best, most well designed tank in terms of mitigation and self-healing, has to be the Warrior.

I hate saying that, because Paladin has more tank abilities, like Cover and Passage of Arms, as well as Clemency… but when it comes to just the mix of DPS, Self-healing, and mitigation, Warrior is better designed.

Now, how Warrior in XIV works, is that there is a move that you can do every… I forget, I think it’s something like 45 seconds or something, that gives you HP anytime you hit an enemy.

So, when pulling trash, the warrior can heal himself from almost dead to full if he’s fighting 5-8 targets and he also gets one other heal that he can use that’s decently powerful, that’s like 20-30% of his total life.

This means that he can keep himself alive in trash pulls (mostly) with just a few heals during his self-heal downtime, but on bosses… the self-heal ability does not do anywhere near as much because you’re only fighting 1 enemy.

Most bosses spam unavoidable damage every 10-15 seconds, which means the healer is very necessary for bosses, and some bosses have stack mechanics which will one-shot a tank if he’s the only one left alive (so the tank can’t solo the boss) and most bosses also have tankbusters which make it difficult for a tank to solo a boss.

This means that healers are still needed for the group’s success in most dungeons, even if the players perfectly do all the mechanics.

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567

I through numbers out to see what other peoples ideas are. Are some of the people here advocating for 90% healer 10% tank or are they more on the 50/50…

I spent a lot of time talking about real numbers (and they don’t look good.) This post was more about what people want to see in theory. If I’m 80/20 tank and someone is saying they want 70/30 I’m not going to spend a great deal of time arguing as we mostly agree.

I just don’t think anyone has come out and stated what they want. But perhaps that would be better in another thread or even making a poll.

568

I think the numbers would depend on which tank is being healed. I think blood dk shouldn’t require a healer at all

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569

That’s certainly not going to be fair to the other tanks.

Why does one tank get to be godmode and not need a healer, but the other tanks can’t?

Why should Blood DK to get to be invincible, but a Prot Paladin not?

No tank should be invincible. Everybody should need healers. Otherwise, why bring any other tank to a dungeon?

570

So 6 hits and the tank can mitigate about 1.5 each minute? or 75% healer 25% tank.

As a tank that seems boring. That would take almost an entire facet of tank play away from the game. Its being reduced to a glorified dps that mitigates a couple of times a min with no other thought to mitigation or healing. This would be shifting what we see as the current healer problem of not being able to do their role and shifting it onto the tank instead.

571

If you don’t want to rely on healers, I don’t want to rely on tanks. Get rid of roles entirely.

You either have the three-role dynamic or you don’t. If you don’t like the idea of a healer being necessary, then why should a tank be necessary? Personally, I like healing.

I want to be a healer, and I think tanks should need us if we’re going to continue enforcing roles.

572

So for BDK vs other tanks I was thinking mitigation and healing rolled into a single concept. Essentially how much control the tank has over their own health bar. I’m not sure if I agree with 100% for any tank, but BDK’s are weird in that its nearly impossible to heal without over healing and I don’t know much about the changes.

573

I didn’t mention that there are also mitigation abilities that are used too…

But in XIV, they realize that trash is just that, trash. Nobody cares about trash. Trash is just there for fluff.

The real meat and potatoes is the bosses, and most bosses cannot be solo’d by tanks. They must be healed. And the healer needs to heal everybody and not JUST the tank, and healers should also be weaving in some DPS spells when it’s safe to do so (most bosses also have 5 or so seconds of avoidable damage spurts, and if people actually do the mechanics right, this allows a healer to DPS for a few between bursts of damage).

574

Ah thats a different dynamic than. Personally I play M+ for the trash. If I wanted boss fights I’d just raid. As a tank the most fun is to be had when you try off the wall bonker pull you couldn’t do before and survive. A boss fight never changes or with gear gets easier (although thats negated by going up a key level.)

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575

This is not fun for the rest of the team that doesn’t have enough stops to prevent every mechanic.

Im glad they nerfed you guys. It’s gonna be easier to tell who is a good tank and bad tank now that they have to actually think about pulls/mitigation instead of zerging

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576

IMO, trash is only fun if you’re a DPS, and you just see lots of numbers go boom.

Maybe slightly fun if you’re a tank, but after awhile it gets boring IMO.

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577

I loved healing in FFXIV when I had the time to play both games. It was probably the most active I’ve felt in a MMO since before WoD. But I only get so much time these days and WoW is the superior game IMO, so I’ll play this.

M+ always felt weird as a healer, because it’s like either you’re not necessary at all, or you’re not able to keep up. It’s been so hard to find a sweet spot for a while, so I just kinda quit bothering with it.

I hope they at least buff healing to compensate with these changes. Maybe they already did, I don’t follow the news that closely.

578

Healing in XIV is always a blast… you get awesome moments like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_M1JMR8Wc

(for some stupid reason it won’t let me embed even though I’ve been around the forums, for a long period of time)

579

As a frame challenge, I don’t personally care if I’m completely able to heal myself, but my time to live should be enormous if I’m reliant on outside healing. Legion was probably closest to what I wanted to see in druid tanking, I wasn’t immortal, I needed outside healing, but I was still a raid boss in terms of effective hp.

None of those yo-yo healthbar garbage, where it’s not always possible to save myself, even with the strong self healing bears had in this expansion.

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580

Nothing stops you to go tank and go as slow as you want in random dungeon finder.

The person I replied to has absolutely zero idea how the game is played the moment.

If they are so inclined to go slow, they are free to queue as tank for RDF, or make their own group in LFG, and go as slow as they want (I bet you no one will be happy about it)

581

Yeah I don’t like yo-yo health healing either. But I don’t want to feel useless, at the same time.

Until you get kicked, lol. Or DPS run out ahead and pull for you and if you don’t pick up the mobs then they kick you, or what-not.

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582

Honestly if it wasn’t for M+ trash pulls I would have left the game a long time ago. Its one of the few areas where you get to decide how big or small, what mobs or paths to take, and it tests the limits of your knowledge regarding what spell overlaps you think your group is capable of handling.

If tyrannical keys were not required I would sit them out. Not because they are harder but because a 3 min boss fight with limited mechanics is pretty boring. Which is funny because I also hate the end of raid bosses that take more time to explain the fight than to just kill it. I guess I’m just not a fan of bosses at all.