[Valdo]

I went from being a healer in WoW to a tank in TBC so I'll throw my 2 copper in here. There seems to be a number of people who don't 'get it' as well as a goodly number of people who do. I suppose that's to be expected as on a dedicated tanking forum it's not likely that everyone has played a healer in hardcore progression setting.

For those who have not progression level healed one of the things to understand is that healing is a team effort. Single points of failure often are not the norm. Re:

I've honestly never seen Healers step up and take the blame the way other classes do.

This goes back to the nature of the healing in an MMO. Tanks and DPS often can easily identify if something went wrong. For the healing team it's not always that apparent. Examples:

-- Tank stands in the fire and dies. Obvious tank failure point.
-- Healer stands in the fire and dies. Obvious healer failure point.
--> But! What if healer had to move out of the fire not allowing them to cast but instants and the tank dies. Healer failure point?

So in that last example we run into the whole 'what if' line of questions. What if the tank had used something to stabilize the situation until heals were coming again? What if the healer had some powerful instants to use while moving? What if the other healers had just covered the slack by healing outside of their assignments to do so?

And I could go on. Really the whole nature of having a whole team means that it's hard sometimes for a single person to 'step up' and take the whole amount of blame. When there is an obvious point of failure on a healers part I've seen them step up just like the rest of the classes. But many times it's not nearly that clear.

[Krashtork]

Maybe if healers don't wanna get yelled at they should land heals more than once every 15 seconds :P

Naw, I very rarely get on the healers about their healing. Partly because my guild has fantastic freaking healers. Seriously, they kick ass. But every now and again I'll go a good 8-15 seconds without getting more than a couple HoT ticks and that's when I get vocal about things. Generally a "I didn't get a heal in ~8 seconds, what's up?" is sufficient.

[bludwork]

Grow up and learn to take some criticism. It is better, no matter how painful it may seem to communicate why and how something needs to be done a certain way. If a healer has to move out of the AOE or there's a component to the fight that makes healing harder then he should speak up and let the raid leader know, so the strategy can be adjusted to compensate for it. The worst thing you can do is get mad and feel like you're being picked on and not say anything.

[orcstar]

Source: bludwork Grow up and learn to take some criticism. It is better, no matter how painful it may seem to communicate why and how something needs to be done a certain way. If a healer has to move out of the AOE or there's a component to the fight that makes healing harder then he should speak up and let the raid leader know, so the strategy can be adjusted to compensate for it. The worst thing you can do is get mad and feel like you're being picked on and not say anything.

I don't like your post.
You make it look like healers can't take criticism or don't want to improve. My post wasn't about that. If you would have read the entire thread you will see that healing is a bit more complex then people generally think and that it's often not a clear cut case why things go wrong.
So in the next raid, when things go wrong, please keep your mouth shut until you exactly know what went wrong. And if a healer made a mistake, don't address all the healers.
You don't wanne get blamed for mistakes other people make, neither do I.

[Todyn]

My 2 cents:

Healers and tanks, I think should ideally work together and develop close relationships, because the 2 roles are so intimately tied together.

I've seen many instances where healers weren't healing responsibly:

aka: one of my healers just could not follow her tanks during the infernal drops in hyjal trash, and continously let her tanks die.

I've also seen instances where it was clearly the tanks fault:

aka: my druid tank on azgalor decided to move without communicating to the healers and decided out ranged us all.

I think what I'm trying to say is: having both tanked and healed through Felmyst, I can certainly understand both sides of the story.

Stuff happens, there's no need to play the blame game. We have many information tools that allows us to pinpoint exactly who the "culprit" might be.

Ideally, we would like everyone to just admit their own fault "my bad guys, wont happen again" but we all know that is not going to happen anyways.

But I do have to say: I think the healing corps of any raid group is possibly the most important aspect. A good healing team can overcome the mistakes made by any of the other 2 roles.

With that said: I always tell my DPSer's and tanks: Please be mindful of your healers, do your best to avoid making our lives a pain, and we'll do our best to ensure your survival.

Having healed Brutallus the other day with 2 tanks with ZERO avoidance trinkets, was just absolute hell. Afterwards, I wanted to scream at them: LEARN TO PLAY YOUR CLASS!!! All i can say is: I wouldn't ever want to heal the same tank again, unless he changes his attitude.

As far as healing your assignments is concerned: a lot of the time, healers are only watching health bars/environment.

I myself, if I am assigned to heal the MT, will sometimes always panic a little if I see other raid members with their health dangerously low, and I will admit, on times, have stopped queuing up heals on the MT, and have let him die again.

Great example of this: first time I heal on Felmyst on my paladin, I was assigned MT healing duties.

One second the tank is full at around 21k HP, I see an encapsulated person and queue up FoL, next second I glance over at MT, he's down to about 5k health, next hit, BAM dead tank.

To tanks I want to say:
Please do your best to gear appropriately for the encounter.

To healers:
Please heal your assigned targets and only worry about them, trust your other healers.

to DPSers:
Please for the love of god, GET OUT OF THE FIRE And if you're low on HP, please bandage/health pot/heal yourself. I can't say how many times I've seen hybrid DPSers just stand there and continue to DPS when they are at 10% health.

There's no point in really yelling at your healers.
A) You piss them off that they dont want to heal for you.
B) You discourge them further from performing

Both options end poorly for everyone, a lose-lose situation.
Wouldn't it easier for both sides for the raid lead to ask: okay, what happened? Talk it out, and make suggestions.

Sorry for the long winded post

[Wao]

As the Guildmaster and current main tank of my guild, I am lucky enough to have raided throughout Naxx as a Holy Paladin.

About 3 months into TBC, all of our tanks quit (due to burnout, we were pretty demanding of them). I rerolled a warrior to fufill the roll of MT, due to a few factors: Not really trusting anyone else to do that important of a job, or to have the kind of schedule a MT needs to keep to maintain progressive raid schedules.

Having had the experience of raiding as a healer for all of Vanilla WoW, and all the early TBC content, I had the unique insight of a healer as a tank.

I understood the healers concerns more than what I assume most tanks do.

I've always been compromising as a tank with my healers. I've always been willing to take the blame for my actions if I did something they didn't like.

I think the best things a tank can do is to ingratiate himself to his healers. Join healer chat if there is one. You're as much a part of the healing team as they are. Many times healers are so focused on keeping people alive, that they don't realize the challenges you face as a tank, or the tools you have at their disposal to help them do their jobs better.

[Rek]

Source: Krashtork But every now and again I'll go a good 8-15 seconds without getting more than a couple HoT ticks and that's when I get vocal about things. Generally a "I didn't get a heal in ~8 seconds, what's up?" is sufficient.

70 Raiding Holy Priest and 70 Raiding Prot Warrior speaking here:

Krashtork, research the FSR (Five second rule) regarding Mana Regen.
Having mana when it's needed > Not having mana when it's needed.

That's one of innumberable explanations for not getting a direct heal in an 8 second period.

[Rek]

...which brings me to a larger point.

Success in raiding is like a three-legged stool. If one role fails, the stool falls.

Critiquing out of ignorance is a waste of time. Unless you've played a tank and a healer, there's no way you can possibly understand the complexities of the relationship.

Mature, calm, constructive communication is the the only way to progress. There are alot of posts in this thread that, in their tone, emphasize the absolutely fundamental importance of locating skilled, mature personalities with which to raid.

[Valdo]

Join healer chat if there is one.

While this can be a good idea it also can bring about problems. I get into it more below but I'd just say that you want to make sure your welcome there and not stepping on any toes.

You're as much a part of the healing team as they are.

And here I think is going too far. It's one thing to make sure you are understanding of the healers but to think that as a tank your one of them is just not the case. And I say this as a Feral Druid who regularly sat in the healing channel during my progression raiding. I was there for a goodly number of reasons including such things as establishing Innervate targets, Brezs (Even thou these were often handled in our Druid channel but same idea.), and even when I would flip over into a healer/decurser and such.

However I was not about to act as if I was a part of the healing team. Saying that would be akin to saying the healers are a part of the tanking team. Yes there is very much a direct relationship between the two groups but they are definitely separate entities. I was careful to craft anything I said in that channel in such a way as to let them know that I was just giving a 2nd, or outside if you will, opinion. Never did I want to feel like I was forcing my views on them as someone who most of the time was acting like a Tank or DPS.

Because even for me, who as I said has a lot of healing experience, it would be easy for one of the full time healers to ask themselves why the hell some tank was telling them how to do their job. Let alone some of the tanks that I've seen post in this thread, for example:

hard to make constructive comments to healers honestly.

Grow up and learn to take some criticism.

And quite frankly that's pretty tame stuff compared to what I've heard during progression raiding. Tanks, and MTs in particular, often get a huge sense of entitlement about their positions and the weight of their words.

[Wao]

Valdo, I suppose our disagreement is rooter in that fact that when I simplify class roles, it looks like this:

DPS: Kill the bad guys
Healers: Keep the Raid alive
Tank: Keep the Raid alive

Let's take an example fight like Gurtogg Bloodboil.

The fight (in theory, pre-nerf to a learning guild) involves a more intricate healing strategy and tanking strategy than most previous bosses.

The tank and healers need to have open lines of communication here.

When a player in the raids get fel rage, they become a primary healing concern, in addition to keeping tanks with high stacks of Acidic Wounds alive.

Tanks communicating with healers here is critical.

Here's an example of how me being active in our guilds healing channel helped us to kill this boss:

We ran into a situation where we had mages dying a lot on this phase of the fight when fel raged... not an atypical problem. Healers were having trouble managing an NS rotation on the fel rage mage, while keeping tanks with stacks of the Acidic Wounds alive.

Our solution that we ended up using was to have warriors use intervene as a sort of emergency heal. The intervening warriors would hit shield block first, to try and minimize incoming damage, and if they had a high stack of acidic wounds, also shield wall if they felt the hit could possibly kill them. In this way, the tanks learned to use intervene to give healers time to top off a low fel-raged mage. We had never really used intervene in this "Great Power Word Shield" manner, but it turned out to be a useful tactic and even our dps warriors are aware of it and will save dps on occasion. Without the tank presence in the healer channel we may never have thought to work with the healers to solve a healing problem.

My shield wall, last stand, and avoidance use trinkets also send a begin message and end warning to healer chat, so they know to throttle heals accordingly.

Tanks have as a big a part to play in keeping themselves alive as the healers do, whether it's through communicating ability use, or even asking the healers for their input on whether you need more EH or avoidance. I suppose I have the added luxury of having raided with these healers as the healing healer, so they still respect my opinion (somewhat) as someone informed enough into their mystical healing ways to speak about the issues.

[bludwork]

Source: orcstar I don't like your post. You make it look like healers can't take criticism or don't want to improve. My post wasn't about that. If you would have read the entire thread you will see that healing is a bit more complex then people generally think and that it's often not a clear cut case why things go wrong. So in the next raid, when things go wrong, please keep your mouth shut until you exactly know what went wrong. And if a healer made a mistake, don't address all the healers. You don't wanne get blamed for mistakes other people make, neither do I.

See? pointing out a problem != blame, you'll never be a good raider if you have the mindset "I don't want to get blamed" because you will screw up, you will do something that isn't efficient, you will do something you are not aware is a problem unless someone points it out to you.

When you raid you're essentially problem solving, but not on your own rather with 24 other people. To solve a problem first identify the problem, get feedback as to why it is happening and retackle it with a new strategy. It could be moving healers to other roles or adding an extra healer here and reducing an extra healer there.

Back when BT was not a borefest, I noticed our warlocks were sucking on dps for RoS. During all those wipes nobody said a thing so I finally did some WWS analysis and posted it and implied warlocks should pick up their dps. They got all in a huff, one even quit; but it turns out their dots were causing spellpush backs on their shadow bolts. We put a paladin with concentration aura in the caster grp and problem solved.

Communication is the key, getting upset over it does not help one bit. Asking why a tank is dying, it just as valid as asking why a tank is taking too much damage to be reasonably healed.

[orcstar]

Source: bludwork See? pointing out a problem != blame, you'll never be a good raider if you have the mindset "I don't want to get blamed" because you will screw up, you will do something that isn't efficient, you will do something you are not aware is a problem unless someone points it out to you. When you raid you're essentially problem solving, but not on your own rather with 24 other people. To solve a problem first identify the problem, get feedback as to why it is happening and retackle it with a new strategy. It could be moving healers to other roles or adding an extra healer here and reducing an extra healer there. Back when BT was not a borefest, I noticed our warlocks were sucking on dps for RoS. During all those wipes nobody said a thing so I finally did some WWS analysis and posted it and implied warlocks should pick up their dps. They got all in a huff, one even quit; but it turns out their dots were causing spellpush backs on their shadow bolts. We put a paladin with concentration aura in the caster grp and problem solved. Communication is the key, getting upset over it does not help one bit. Asking why a tank is dying, it just as valid as asking why a tank is taking too much damage to be reasonably healed.

A blanket blame on "healers" in general what you're proposing doesn't help. You annoy a lot of players who did their job perfectly well. Pointing out a problem != yelling: "Healers why did you let the tank die?" The reason why this sentence is so provocative is that it implies a choice the entire group of healers made to"not" heal the tank.
Like on bloodboil: "Why did people die? FFS learn to heal." And as a healer you were coping with people not stepping back well, not spreading out and getting loads of unneeded aoe and tanks taking way too many debuffs. And all but 4 people using a healthstone on that fight.
If things like that happen, you got bigger problems but all too often eyes are on the healers when in fact a whole lot of people are making mistakes.

Think before you criticise. People who don't think won't get anywhere. You are implying problems with healing. My grudge is about problems which are not healing related but where the healers get the blame stick. And that happens all too often. Read the thread before you reply.

[Omnifunk]

Source: Rek ...which brings me to a larger point. Success in raiding is like a three-legged stool. If one role fails, the stool falls. Critiquing out of ignorance is a waste of time. Unless you've played a tank and a healer, there's no way you can possibly understand the complexities of the relationship. Mature, calm, constructive communication is the the only way to progress. There are alot of posts in this thread that, in their tone, emphasize the absolutely fundamental importance of locating skilled, mature personalities with which to raid.

This. ^

Good communication and breakdown is essential to correct any problems. Blame can sometimes be narrowed down but most of the time its a conglomerate of things that leads to the wipe. Take the time to figure out what exactly went wrong and figure out a way to change it. You will have better sucess than just pointing fingers and flying off the handle at people.

[Valdo]

Wao, please understand I'm not against communication. I just think your going a step too far in saying that any tank is 'part of the healing team'.

IMO it might be a forest/trees thing for the two of us. Your zooming out and looking at a huge picture to the point that I almost say all the class roles blur and become: Defeat the encounter. But when you zoom in and try to say that a tank is the same as the healer it just does not work for me. (And vice versa.) Because to me at a close level it breaks down like this:

Tanks: Keep things off the rest of the raid while staying alive.
DPS: Make things dead while staying alive.
Healers: Keep everyone else alive while staying alive.

And while BB is a good example that I could speak to as I've tanked and healed it I've got a better one: Archimonde.

In this encounter as everyone knows staying alive is really the main thing. If your DPS are not wearing helmets the guy will eventually die but the question is can everyone stay alive while doing it? And as the tank while there are things that you can do to make it easier to keep the raid alive. The actual job of keeping the raid alive is the healers. If someone screws up and runs though a Doomfire they hopefully will use whatever tools they had available to stay alive but it can often come down to getting some heals. The tank is not doing anything 'healing' related to help that person.

And to me that holds true though out the game. There is a definite difference between 'keeping the raid alive' as a tank vs as a healer. And again there of course should be communication between tanks and healers, and yes there is synergy between them as well when both tanks and healers use their tools. But lumping them both into one group just does not fly imo.

[bludwork]

Sorry I don't see your PoV. A healer can point to a dpser taking multiple bloodboil stacks, not moving with his group or standing in the fire/not bandaging etc. In fact a good healer will point that out and not just try to heal through the impossible.

Looking back at this thread I realize it comes down to the culture in ones raid environment, when everyone tiptoes around each other trying not to offend the entire raid suffers. If I learned anything while raiding it's that no matter how nicely you say it someone is always going to take offense. The best way is to be frank but friendly.

[Petninja]

Source: Rek ...which brings me to a larger point. Success in raiding is like a three-legged stool. If one role fails, the stool falls.

I had that happen once. I just leaned it against a wall. Sometimes it pays to be creative.

[Shadevarr]

In my time as a raid leader I've chastised the healing core twice.

1st time was on anatheron when the infernal tanks were dying in 20 seconds after pickup. Reason: Was raid healing and thought you would be ok for a bit.

2nd time was on kael, telonicus tank dying every time at start of phase 3. Reason: I was trying to loot cosmic infuser.


The DPS polices itself, the tanks police themselves and same with the healers. We sometimes spend 30 minutes between boss attempts identifying the cause and working on a solution. Granted this does reduce the amount of attempts on a boss we can have but when you 3 shot vashj on your 1st night of working on her it makes it all worth it.

[orcstar]

Source: bludwork Sorry I don't see your PoV......The best way is to be frank but friendly.

I agree totally on the frank and friendly.
My point of view and concern is about when it is not clear who did mess up to throw a blame at "the" healers. While it might have been 1 healer or even also some dps or tank or a combination of undergearedness and bad luck which caused the wipe.
And in these kinds of situations where for instance a wipe was caused by lack of experience or badly executed tactics by a group of people I have experienced too often a finger pointed at the healers as a group. When it wasn't even clear yet what happened and what went wrong.

I'm all for improving and I do my thing there, making tactics, changing them, getting people to get the best out of their game and trying to give the best I can.

[qygibo]

I'd actually agree that tanks and healers should ideally have a sort of synergy when it comes to healing. From what I've read in here that sort of relationship is somewhat rare; and indeed, there can be the sense of tank entitlement because oftentimes a guild necessarily will gear around a main tank--after all, you can't really progress if your tanks aren't 100% up to spec.

But a healer knowing how much damage a tank can take and a tank knowing their healers well enough to know what they can get away with can make things all the easier. I'm basically the main healer in my guild, since I'm on the most; and usually I am tasked with main healing our main tank, Lizana. Why? Because he trusts me enough to expect that I can heal him no matter, and he can see exactly what I'm doing (helps that he and I sit near each other, husband and wife and all).

I've kept him up when he decided to go zerker stance in DPS gear for fights like Prince, Gruul, and Magtheridon; and he knows that I'm capable of keeping him up when he's not entirely in his proper gear for that particular boss. He's looked at my mana pool to judge approximately what sort of healing spell I'm about to cast so that he knows when to use a cooldown if necessary. Something like that is just intuitive; and it's something I don't see very often with other healer/tank combos.

[Rek]

Tanks = Engine

Healers = Gas Tank

DPS = Chrome and Upholstery