[Sysmon]

"Common sense". I like common sense. Most good healers I have run with would let my fairly solid tank's health bar drop to about half before throwing the first heal. By then, I was usually well ahead on the aggro table and not too worried about the healer pulling aggro.

OF course, as in the post above, there would be the times when the DPS opened fire as soon as they see a marked target. The healer started bashing Healbot bars and everybody ran in all directions with the trash after them rather than try to smear it off on the tank.

Maybe too many dps and healers get carried through the game by tanks with DoT AoEs, then panics when they are faced with a warrior or druid tank and suddenly have to think for themselves?

I think Ulduar is teaching some peeps that parts of the game cannot just be out-dps'ed, but that positioning, aggro management and so on still has a place.

If this would just seep down to the rest of the game...

S

[juspugit]

@Barukh - My comment was about a tank saying that a *healer* should learn to control his aggro. DPS and aggro, yea, it is their job to manage it. Healers? never! They keep us (and dps) alive and in return we keep them alive and deliver them safely to the end. Thoughts of aggro should never cross their mind - nor prevent them landing heals...

Sysmon - i know i tank on a class that has DoT AoEs as you put it, but healers never take aggro. DPS has to work very hard and be very reckless to manage it. And my aoe aggro is *sustained* not burst like a warriors. Truthfully speaking there is not a tank class in the game that should loose aggro to a healer, ever.

I also play a holy priest - i will renew and pom the tank pre-pull, since 3.1 i will get 3 flash heals on him early so i can have a full serendipity stack ready in case i need it. There is not a tank yet that has been remotely in danger of loosing aggro to me. There really are no excuses to loose aggro to a healer in wotlk (and in a failpug....a good tank should never loose aggro to the loldps either...but nvm).

[Sysmon]

To Juspugit and others:

Please go read Druid Guide, Part 4: Healing - Druid - Wowhead Forums (skip down to the How Does Threat Work for Healers?part). There are several other similar guides, this is just the one I found recently as I dual specced my druid to have a secondary tree build. The guide got a few pointers for healers, such as that overhealing does not increase threat, and that the low threat healing puts out is evenly distributed amongst the mobs at hand, regardless of whether they are being tanked or not.

The take home message is: Healers aggro too! Surprise!! IF you think otherwise, that somehow it is the other party members job to out-aggro the healer (and that if they don't it is THEIR fault by default), you fail as a team player. You can probably only play in a team with an OP tank, and where is the fun in that? It should not be a requirement of other classes to overpower whatever situation they are in to suit the needs of the healer to feel immune to threat mechanics. Please get your heads out of that particular cloud; level/gear appropriate encounters require ALL three party roles, not one of them is by default solely essential and responsible for the outcome in the end.

PoM and Renew are great openers for healing with priests. 3 flash heals to get the Serendipity stack up quick is good too, as long as the tank is not taking damage. If the tank IS taking damage, those heals are adding aggro to all enemies in range for no good reason. Maybe a Great Heal or a second or two pause time to let the tank get aggro established is better then? If you think not, perhaps the mobs running for you then are not the ones the tank failed to hold, they are the ones you failed not to aggro. Oh, are you complaining that the tank didn't have a DoT AoE threat applier handy? Well, you don't have to adjust your play style to fit the group you are in, so it must be everybody elses fault, right?

Of course, if the tank run ahead constantly and aggro everything in sight without letting the casters regain mana, by all means let a few deaths be life lessons for them .

S

[Priestneff]

I actually have warriors who will vigilance me during trash pulls. i use my fade every time it is up to make sure if a DPS pulls and they say ice block I am not the next target.

[Sysmon]

On my priest, I tend to use Fade a lot too. Very helpful in the first few moments or when things get a bit heated after a bout of hard hits to the tank or party in general.

Vigilance, I usually apply to the heaviest dps, but often to the healer for LoS pulls and such where the mobs get some running time with only me active.

S

[Roana]

Source: Sysmon The take home message is: Healers aggro too! Surprise!! IF you think otherwise, that somehow it is the other party members job to out-aggro the healer (and that if they don't it is THEIR fault by default), you fail as a team player. You can probably only play in a team with an OP tank, and where is the fun in that? It should not be a requirement of other classes to overpower whatever situation they are in to suit the needs of the healer to feel immune to threat mechanics. Please get your heads out of that particular cloud; level/gear appropriate encounters require ALL three party roles, not one of them is by default solely essential and responsible for the outcome in the end.

There is precisely one situation where a healer gets aggro through her own fault: Casting a spell (which doesn't even have to be a heal) after the mobs have become aware of the tank and before they have moved into melee range of the tank.

If a healer gets aggro from a mob in melee range of the tank, it's either an aggro wipe or a tank error (prior to 3.1 I would have excepted druids from that, but not anymore -- and definitely not for warriors, paladins, or death knights).

PoM and Renew are great openers for healing with priests. 3 flash heals to get the Serendipity stack up quick is good too, as long as the tank is not taking damage. If the tank IS taking damage, those heals are adding aggro to all enemies in range for no good reason. Maybe a Great Heal or a second or two pause time to let the tank get aggro established is better then? If you think not, perhaps the mobs running for you then are not the ones the tank failed to hold, they are the ones you failed not to aggro. Oh, are you complaining that the tank didn't have a DoT AoE threat applier handy? Well, you don't have to adjust your play style to fit the group you are in, so it must be everybody elses fault, right?

This is absolute nonsense. If you do heroics in content-appropriate gear, your healer may not have the time to fuss around much with Prayer of Mending or Renew (not to mention that both can cause problems on their own if the tank is slow with establishing aggro). You may not have one second or two to wait with a Greater Heal -- I've seen tanks go from full health to dead in four seconds in heroics. The aggro a healer causes is directly proportional to the damage intake of the tank and outside of the control of the healer. If damage intake is so low that you can actually wait with heals, there shouldn't be any aggro problems to begin with, because failure to hold aggro over so little healing threat is not an issue for a conscientious tank.

And the AE DoT aggro comment makes no sense at all: Warriors are exceptionally good at frontloading AE aggro precisely because they do NOT rely on AE DoT abilities.

[Durandro]

I tend to cast Vigilance on the healer as well when I play my Warrior, because I mostly run 5 mans. A friend of mine would heal everyone perfectly, and I'd get a nice share of all that aggro. Can't really complain, and it's helped out the few times she took unavoidable damage as well.

But frankly, all that is mostly due to me not trusting pugged DPS to do their jobs properly. Me and my friend have been known to practically do heroic runs all by ourselves when DPS was especially poor.

[Sysmon]

Source: Durandro But frankly, all that is mostly due to me not trusting pugged DPS to do their jobs properly.

And I think that is a great part of my point for intruding into this thread: There are all kinds of good advice about how to improve after the fact, but when you stand there in a fresh pug, either as tank or healer, the only way to succeed (besides being overpowered) is to assess and adjust to the strength and weaknesses of the other party members.

The tank should be aware of his/her limitations, especially in the first few seconds of a fight, be ready to pop defensive abilities early to lower incoming damage when the healer will still have opportunity of pulling aggro. And be ready to Taunt or Challenging Shout depending on the degree of chaos.

The DPS should perhaps look up from whatever sports event they are watching and pace their frequency of kill-button strokes to the threat output of the tank. They can even look at the screen and see when the tank has done the opening aggro-establishing cycle before opening up. That is easy with pallies and DKs: There will be a colorful puddle on the floor. For warriors, they may have to watch out for the TC blink or the even harder too see Shockwave.

The healer should remember the 10/30 rule, be ready to fade on LoS pulls and such, and not be afraid to run a mob back to the tank if necessary. SOme healers can even bubble up! Imagine trying that...

Expecting similar level of awesomeness in all pug team members, spouting immunity-to-threat-mechanics nonsense, or take the who-can-pee-the-longest approach to all dps application = fail in all classes and roles.

I spend most of my play time tanking heroics to gear up new 80s. They are fellow guildies and friends met in good pugs, so we learn each others styles. It usually goes well, with low or high dps (low just takes longer). They also know I will go out of my way to keep the healer alive, also on expense of a dps occassionally.

So why did I let the healer die? Because I got tired of the constant whining about my aggro-holding abilities. If I can hold Patch, but lose aggro to a random pugged healer in a heroic instance before I even get started on establishing threat, guess where I place the blame. On the healer? Nope, it is probably more complex than that, some unfortunate combination of events and group getup and abilities. But none are immune to blame by default.

S

[Reichsadler]

Why did you let the tank die?

Hate when I see that comment. The better question is "Why did the tank die?".

Analyse what happened and figure out what needs to be done to avoid it in future attempts. could be any number of problems ranging from the tank, healer(s), DPS or the strat being used. Sometimes it is just bad luck.

Pointing blame really does not help just creates discord in the group from my experience.

[orcstar]

Source: Reichsadler Hate when I see that comment. The better question is "Why did the tank die?". Analyse what happened and figure out what needs to be done to avoid it in future attempts. could be any number of problems ranging from the tank, healer(s), DPS or the strat being used. Sometimes it is just bad luck. Pointing blame really does not help just creates discord in the group from my experience.

This.

[Jogre]

This seems like a good thread for my question, please advise if I am wrong. In 10man Ulduar on the Furnace Master our tank has been roflstomped several times, so much so that I feel there is no way I can do this fight with 2 healers. I am wondering if this by design, or if our MT needs more HP. Currently he sits at 27k unbuffed, about 35k raid buffed. This seems low to me, but I know he has a good bit of Naxx25 gear, and he survives the other fights we've done in Ulduar fine so far. Any thoughts will be appreciated. Me no like let tank die.

[Hit Me]

Source: Roana This is absolute nonsense. If you do heroics in content-appropriate gear, your healer may not have the time to fuss around much with Prayer of Mending or Renew (not to mention that both can cause problems on their own if the tank is slow with establishing aggro). You may not have one second or two to wait with a Greater Heal -- I've seen tanks go from full health to dead in four seconds in heroics. The aggro a healer causes is directly proportional to the damage intake of the tank and outside of the control of the healer. If damage intake is so low that you can actually wait with heals, there shouldn't be any aggro problems to begin with, because failure to hold aggro over so little healing threat is not an issue for a conscientious tank.

PoM is an awesome heal. When I'm healing with my priest, I have it on the tank before every pull. It's efficient, an instant cast, and it helps with aoe damage taken by other members.

I'm not sure what the threat problems are that PoM can cause on it's own either. If anything, it would help a slow tank establish aggro.

[mafioso5789]

Source: orcstar And this is the attitude I'm talking about and don't like. If a dps makes a mistake, it's quickly found out who it was and most everyone knows what went wrong. Same for tanking mistakes. If however a healer makes a fault people all too often you are not trying to find out what went wrong and who made the mistakes but just generally blame it on the group of healers. In a raid environment every healer has his/her own job and you really need to find out where thingsw went wrong. It's never "healers" that were at fault but one or a few people at their assigned job. Find out who were at fault and correct "that" instead of just pointing at an entire group of players. But the biggest bug is that also when things just go wrong, the first who are looked at are healers while problems are bigger: like people taking damage they don't need or line of sight issues.

My guild Is a hardcore progression guild. And I know that the reason we blame the "group" of healers, is because the healing assignments are usually called out in a different channel where the raid doesnt see. The criticism starts off as constructive, but after multiple attempts and healers blaming tanks, it becomes a bitch fest until we get in our own vent channel to discuss whats going on.
An example was last night against kologarn. I was in the rotation with the main tank, when it became my turn to taunt the boss on me, it seemed as if the healers forgot about me, for the first 5 attempts. They were saying I was getting 1 shotted and its impossible to heal me. Also keep in mind that we call out each taunt rotation clearly in vent.

I am geared enough for the fight, and when combat logs were compared, I was taking less hits and smaller hits than the main tank.

The World of Warcraft Armory

So healers, if your slacking dont qq. If you cant step it up, re-roll dps or /quit.

[Sysmon]

Latency is an important issue as well. When I as a tank have found myself standing around taking massive amounts of damage over extended periods of time, with nobody else having aggro but no heals arriving, I question the healer's situational awareness.

Often the answer is lag. That's fine, can't be helped and suggests that we should proceed very cautiously from there on. However, if there are big latency difference between the players, it could be what seems to me to be a long time of taking damage with no heals is "just" a high latency issues and the healer don't see the damage until long after it is done.

Latency and lag can really mess up things for the two party roles that really depend on getting timely and correct abilities applied. If a tank or a healer screw up their rotations just slightly, it can be devastating. Add lag and latency issues to that, and there is a constant element of chaos to keep things interesting.

S

[Roana]

Source: Hit Me I'm not sure what the threat problems are that PoM can cause on it's own either. If anything, it would help a slow tank establish aggro.

When Prayer of Mending fires, it creates a small amount of threat (1/10th of a normal heal). This threat is attributed to the healer (unlike in TBC, when it was attributed to the target of the heal). If the healer is in combat (happens with certain mobs that scan the area for targets for random secondary attacks, for example), then any mob that the tank hasn't built aggro on will go for the healer. This can happen if not all mobs arrive at the same time in melee range, and the tank takes the first hit (firing Prayer of Mending) before he or she can establish aggro on the entire crowd.

It is rare for that to happen (and more often than not indicates that the tank is slow about laying down AE threat), but there are a select few situations where it can make a pull messier than need be.

[jere]

I am not sure what to make of PoM. After our raid a couple weeks ago, I went down below Dalaran with a priest, and aggroed a wolf (but didn't attack it at all...just stood there). I had him cast PoM on me multiple times during that and the wolf never left me once. Threat API showed his threat on the wolf as 0 the whole time. Did they change it to cause 0 threat?

[Roana]

Source: jere I am not sure what to make of PoM. After our raid a couple weeks ago, I went down below Dalaran with a priest, and aggroed a wolf (but didn't attack it at all...just stood there). I had him cast PoM on me multiple times during that and the wolf never left me once. Threat API showed his threat on the wolf as 0 the whole time. Did they change it to cause 0 threat?

Okay, now I feel silly. After some retesting prompted by your comment, Prayer of Mending itself does not generate the threat -- what can generate threat, however, are mana regeneration procs (Darkglow Embroidery, Insightful Earthsiege Diamond) that get triggered by the heal. That means that if you have items that proc based on spell casting (particularly Darkglow Embroidery, which has a high proc chance with a fairly long internal cooldown), then you can still have issues.

[Draket]

I play a priest healer and in every hc or raid ive ever done i have only pulled aggro of a tank once and it was because i had to spam heal him cus he was undergeared and didnt know how to make threat...

In our guild our warrior tank that i always do HC with and is our MT i can never ever even if i try my best pull aggro from him....

I use PoM and renew at the start of a pull.. tank pulls get aggro on all in 1 TC PoM and renew heals him now i can spam heal him and can never pull aggro of him..

Ofc if i spam heal him when he is starting the pull and havnt got a TC down yet i could pull aggro but after 1 TC im never close to pulling aggro..
Ofc now he has great gear but even when we started on lv 80 HCs i still couldnt pull aggro of him...

Ontopic.. the reason i "let" the tank die is well never...
On bosses if the tank dies its because of me going oom cus the dps is just to low for the fight...
YES its not just the tank and healers fault if the group wipes

[dyls]

Our raid leader (and tank) for Ulduar 10 is grinding my gears something chronic.

I am currently taking my resto druid through there instead of my prot warr, because we have a lack of healers.

Every single time he dies it's:

- *SIGH*, dead AGAIN
- GAIS YOU HAVE TO KEEP ME HEALED, I KEEP TELLING YOU
- healers what's happening tonight? same problem as last night, not paying attention?

All of this would be bad enough if it was actually our fault, but in 90%+ of cases it's not, it's either bad luck, or something retarded he's done (for example, he blamed us when he got stomped while tanking XT-002, I mean really gave us shit, and only after repeated insistence from me did he look at his combat log and found that he got crit...because he hadn't runed his weapon properly).

He also has a penchant for spontaneously running up or down stairs, and then complaining when the 2 / 3 / 4 pack of trash wipes him off the planet in a matter of seconds while all 3 healers are desperately running after him to get a heal off.

I think I am going to have to insist on WWS reports from now on, just so I can go back and retroactively defend myself and my fellow healers where necessary.

To make it all the more frustrating, he has only been tanking a matter of weeks, and I know I could do a better job, and avoid making people feel like shit while I was at it!

[orcstar]

Source: dyls ...and only after repeated insistence from me did he look at his combat log and found that he got crit...because he hadn't runed his weapon properly)....

I he dies, be sure to beat him: ah darn, have you been crit again?