[Barukh]

Source: 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.... 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.... 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!

*******

Hmmm.

Well, you obviously know the problem; the tank's a noob.

I've tanked my prot warrior since level 20; tanking takes a long time to learn; ie lengthy learning curve. Tanks frequently make the mistakes you mention (losing los of healer, etc). It takes time to learn *subconsciously* to avoid mistakes and what to do right. Your tank hasn't had this time apparently.


That's one.

Two, your tank is plain rude. I've encountered toons like you're describing; I've had a dps toon fault me for "targeting dead NPCs" apparently not realizing that tabbing through them caused that. I've been told "tank spam aggro moves" by another dps toon; apparently that dps toon has no clue what tanks really do - that same dps toon btw running *away* from the tank when he picked up aggro by ignoring the kill order. Moral: toons who tell other toons how to play their class are noobs. If that ugly word has any meaning that is it: a presumptuous ignorant player, and what is more (and worse) an ungracious player who will eventually find himself surrounded by people as petty and hostile as himself.

Three, leave your group/guild unless the tank shapes up. Someone once said and wisely was it said, that an unskilled player can improve; an ungracious one rarely does. If you're in the right, draw your line in the sand.

[Sysmon]

But advice is appreciated, if given properly and nicely (and if it is useful).

For example: When I was learning the ropes of heroic DTK, I tended to run up and down the staircase while fighting Trollgore, to get out of the Corpse Explosions. A healer pointed out that every time I ran back up, to be able to keep healing they were getting 'kited' into the exploding corpses. I adjusted my tactics.

Or: One of our priests would ignore Ingvar's silencing shout in Heroic UK, taking the 6 seconds silence as a job hazard and just bad luck if the silence happened at the wrong time. It was politely pointed out that just breaking off the cast meant 2 seconds with no heals, which is better than 6. The problem went away.

Of course, I have seen similar situations in PUGs that just escalated into finger pointing. Especially when things get hairy, people's nerves may be a bit frayed. And in PUGs, you never know if the person behind the unknown toon handles stress well.

We now got a fairly smooth running group for Heroics now. I've told the DKs in the group to push aggro as much as they can, to keep me on my toes and get rid of sloppy tanking practices. However, if the envelope is being pushed, lag and latency may mess things up as much as the occassional hitting of a wrong button. They then know that runners WILL occur and that I will pick the mobs back off them if they DG them back to me and face aggro for a little while.

S

[Roana]

Source: dyls 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.

Recount and Acheron can both provide you with playbacks for death events, showing you exactly what happened before somebody died.

[Rootkitworm]

Source: Sysmon Of course, I have seen similar situations in PUGs that just escalated into finger pointing. Especially when things get hairy, people's nerves may be a bit frayed. And in PUGs, you never know if the person behind the unknown toon handles stress well. S

Yea I keep a pretty fresh list of player on Ignore for this reason.

[Aldenorai]

Back when I started as a healer, my guild master (who is a mega raid healer herself) once told me:

The tank is more important than anyone else, even you. If you have to die to keep the tank healed, so be it. However, keep in mind that sometimes wipes occur because the tank is bad, sometimes because DPS is bad, and sometimes your group or instance is just cursed.

Meanwhile, another quote I heard was:

If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault. If a DPS dies, it's their own damn fault.

Now, I make mistakes. Every healer/tank/DPS does. I've had the MT die on me before because I was channeling Penance on a dying OT and as it was channeling, the MT got burned down. Hell, I've even had a tank die because I was casting PoH to try and get everyone's health back up and the MT got burned down.

Mistakes happen. Shit happens. And when it happens, you learn what not to do.

[Durandro]

Source: Aldenorai If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault. If a DPS dies, it's their own damn fault.

Widely held view, yes.

Course, it's not always the case. Just the general rule. Sometimes the tank dies because he's a plank and ran out of LOS, or didn't use a cooldown while the healer was silenced, etc. Sometimes the healer dies because they don't move out of the void zones. Sometimes the DPS die due to raid damage, and the raid healers were busy watching TV.

But generally, in a situation where everyone is doing their jobs, the rule is true.

[Gordiggan]

I MT about 50% of our guilds raids, and I always blame the healer when I die, it makes me feel better and takes the focus off of the mistakes that I may have made! :P

Just joking, I think it is absolutely imeprative that tanks and healers talk constructively about what happened that caused a wipe, it's probably the most important thing you can do to continue raid progression. By talking openly and not getting pissed, people are more likely to admit they made a mistake, and thus isolate the problem for the wipe.

As a tank, I see no reason to get mad at the healers no matter what. They're the ones trying to keep my ass up and if they don't like me very much, I'm probably dead meat

Besides, raids are alot more fun when tanks and healers get along. Our battle cry for charging into boss fights is "Heal Gord!"

Now yelling at the DPS for not paying attention to aggro meters is perfectly acceptable!

[Undeathguy]

I'm an off tank, but I usually tank all of the trash when the main tank, who is the master looter, is sorting out loot, from experience, if your shouting out when you loose an add, you usually do allright, unless you pull an extra 2 groups of trash like I've done before

[Aldenorai]

I don't get pissy in heroics and raids, because it generally isn't constructive.

There are only two reasons I ever would get highly annoyed:

1) People get pissy with me
2) The group wipes because someone did something unusually stupid (i.e. a bad pull due to pet set on aggressive; walking into mobs, pulling aggro off the tank due to poor aggro management, etc) and then that person responsible is the first to say "Wut happened?" (the first part are general mistakes that people do make; it's the second part that rides my nerves)

[Barukh]

Source: 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).

Jus,

Thanks for your comment. I'm unaware of suggesting a healer should manage his threat: indeed my understanding is that unlike dps, healers' threat is dependent on what mobs are doing, which is one of the reasons I will put vigilance on a healer: perhaps not ideal, but if dps is behaving irresponsibly by opening up too soon and the healer has to instantly spam heal before the tank has aggro, in those cases Vigilance can save the healer.

[Durandro]

Personally I put Vigilance on the healer in 5 mans simply so that if he/she gets attacked by adds I can taunt them off quickly (and 3% damage reduction for them is quite nice as well, though very minor).

Plus it's some extra front-loaded aggro for me for the second or two before the DPS join the fight. Not alot, but I still feel safer with it. And I think it makes the healer feel safer as well, even if it's a relatively minor thing.

And I also keep a focus window on the healer at all times, just so I can quickly monitor their health, mana and castbars. It's nice to know if the healer is about to go OOM, or if a big heal is on the way when it's needed.

[Martie]

I've been tanking for the most part, though recently, I've been trying my hand at healing as well.

It made me have a lot more respect for healers - they have a tough job in some fights.
Sure, I'll ask what happened if they let me die, but I never assume they screwed up - if they did so, they'll tell me.

What I also realized since I started healing more is the importance of good healing assignments. Where I used to run around throwing heals where I thought they were needed, I saw my effective healing increase about tenfold by following our healing officers direction.
(Which was to keep mana untill Vezax was at 30% and then throw all I have at the tank.)

Vigilance on a healer isn't a bad idea, though if you want to do it for threat, there are better people to throw it on - if the threat the healer gives you makes the difference, there are other things going wrong.

On the other hand, one of the worst thing I ever heard was "He died because I was jerking about." after Freya killed me in phase 1.

[Karyiin]

Source: Kayella This is why I run Recount with the nice Death replays. To be honest, I think the right approach is to talk to healers and see what they think went wrong too - I mean, particularly on new content, healer allocations and assignments can need a fair bit of tweaking to get comfortable.

I agree!, I have pugged with alot of guilds, me being the only non guild member! i see how they bash each other. so I am always being respectable to the group since I am just happy to be in a group.LOL but i never beat on the healer! i ask why couldnt the dps grab any mob that was running loose? I was actually kicked from a group once and they told me i sucked! I was #3 in DPS!! problem there? i told some of my other friends, cause i was actually hurt.... They all laughed and said i was a great tank, just met a fail group! i knew that, but still... you put yourselfon the line to help a group and get the soup in the face!

[Auntflo]

Source: Roana Casting Prayer of Mending gives zero threat. However, once Prayer of Mending procs (and assuming you are in combat) and the actual heal occurs, you DO get threat. The way it's currently looking is that it gives about 10% of the threat of a normal healing spell (e.g., 150 threat for a 3k heal), which is little, but still non-zero. You can easily verify this if you have Omen installed. Let a mob beat you down by a few thousand health, put Prayer of Mending on yourself, and watch how the threat goes up when it procs.

Your verification is flawed. The threat goes to the person that receives the heal not the original caster. If I cast it on my self, then of course since I'm receiving the heal, I'm also receiving the threat. If I cast it on the tank then he receives the threat, and I do use omen and have verified this.

[KnThrak]

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

I'd let him die every single time, but keep healing the other tank.
It'll get the message along. Plus if he's not been tanking that long there's a fair chance the other tank has ~equal gear.

If the RL gets pissy, tell him you just can't focus on healing people who constantly think they heal better than you do.

If he then gets even more pissy, tell him he's free to come as a healer if he thinks he's that stellar at it even if the tank plays really bad.


Then he'll probably try to remove you, but if you have chronic healer shortage there is no chance he can keep that up.

[Durandro]

That's a sure fire way of destroying a guild. Better to talk it out like adults, in my opinion.

Though if they doesn't work, the guild is doomed anyway.

[Mordran]

Source: orcstar The main reasons I'm hesitant to raid as a healerbesides that tanking is just very fun is the verbal abuse healers in general get. Unless it's a clear case of people making stupid mistakes, the blame game is played on the healers. Not trying to find out who made a mistake but pointing at a group is really frustrating for the people who were doing their assigned job. While it often was not even a healer mistake at all.

Although you will never be able to satisfy all of the people all of the time, you can satisfy yourself in the way I do. I installed GameCam and record every single instance I play. When I am actually playing I do not get to really enjoy all of the action as an outsider might enjoy watching because I'm so involved in the game play. When in the instances I am watching the raid frames and my cool downs more than anything. When I record the instances I can watch the videos later for enjoyment and if something went wrong I can determine what went wrong and why. Believe me I've made a lot of mistakes and caused wipes, but I don't like to make the same mistakes twice. When I watch the videos later I can see what I did right and wrong and also if wipes were caused by someone else. Recording the instances has been an incredible help to my ingame skill as both a and duel-spec'd Paladin healer and tank.

[Fledern]

When this topic first appeared, i had replied confidently that we would sort out problems by pinpointing & not spreading unnecessary blame.

A recent wave of healer problems is about to pop all my safeties & make me start bashing healers :P

I say on vent & /ra clearly that i will "charge" the boss. That means i'll be covering the last 30 yards really fast. So, if i'm standing in front of the deconstructor saying i'm going to charge, you dont stay 20yards behind me and then yell me i was out of range when i die... He's got small enough an aggro range for you to stay on my ass till i start my charge. (Yes i know i can also not charge but it's easier to organize 7 healers to run with me than to tell 15 triggerhappy dps that they need to WAIT a sec for me to build aggro. healers are also better focused anyway :P)

Ignis, i'm tanking the adds, announcing the countdown to molten status on vent. It turns molten, resets aggro, i shield slam & start kiting it to the water, only to see it run away for the healer :S How? Because she just landed a crit Prayer of Healing on the whole group for 40K healing.... There's only one cast ingis does that requires group healing and it's timed well enough that you dont really need to be madly healing it asap.

And the most common error: Boss starts hitting me for some really hard damage (think vezax or mimiron plasma), i pop a cooldown to help the healers, healers start thinking, oh he's not taking too much damage & scale back, only to see me drop really low when the oh-shit runs out.

Normally all these should be easily correctable but even after going over them after every fight, every raid, i still see these happening again and again and again and again...

[hvidgaard]

Source: Auntflo Your verification is flawed. The threat goes to the person that receives the heal not the original caster. If I cast it on my self, then of course since I'm receiving the heal, I'm also receiving the threat. If I cast it on the tank then he receives the threat, and I do use omen and have verified this.

You're wrong. Pre-WotLK it was true, but 3.0 changed so the caster recieves the threat. I can't count the number of times the tank missed the first aggro move and my ES pulled aggro onto me >< I'm 100% sure it's the same case for PoM.

[Subpar]

To verify what hvidgaard said: Check patch notes for patch 3.0.2 Pom and ES threat are given to caster not the target.