Stop guarding the healer in Flash Points!

Okay.

Great idea! Now you've reduced the threat generation of the healer, and all the mobs who haven't been attacked by the tank or DPS will attack... oh wait, still the healer.

The healer has no hope of pulling aggro on mobs that are being attacked by other party members. Conversely, even 99% threat reduction won't stop them from picking up mobs that have been ignored. Yes, you can make situational cases for guarding healers (the Dread Guard fight, for example), but in HM FPs just set and forget on MDPS.

I've taken to just clicking off guard in FPs and pug Ops. Eventually the tank just gives up applying it to me.

The only one that can help you is yourself and your groups Tank and DPS. Use your defensive cooldown and whatever temporary stun you have. I use flash grenade constantly on my sawbones in HMFPs. If DPS and the Tank will not help, then I will waste energy I could be using healing to dump Flyby on the mob attacking me. On alts I always attack weaks before strongs and then attack elites to attempt to protect the healer, but when on my main if DPS will not follow this rule, then she will kill them herself. I suggest if groups are not killing them for you that you politely whisper to the tank requesting the tank request DPS do their job correctly and follow the kill order. DPS understands how hard it is to get a group without a tank and will usually do exactly what the tank request.

As to the guard…please don’t guard the healer. The damage reduction is nice, but it is better spent on the lowest HP in the group if the tank does not have problem holding aggro against the highest dps in the group. I am there in campaign gear BiS and have a good understand of my abilities and know what a defensive cooldown is and the tank is guarding me over a 13k hp fresh 50 mDPS that has no clue what a defensive cooldown is. Plus I hate the bubble.

One more thing tanks… Shadows only have force cloak as a semi-type of aggro dump. It has a 120 second cooldown (I think), so if a shadow is constantly pulling aggro, don’t yell at them to dump aggro if they have already used force cloak 30 seconds ago. Take the shield off the healer and put it on them. Sorry just getting yelled at way too often in pugs by tanks when there is nothing I can do about it beyond dpsing less.

In an op, there are only rare instances in which the healer should be guarded.

If FPs, plenty of tanks try to rely on initial "pull" aggro, instead of things like aoe taunts. Without a guard, a well geared healer will overtake that in seconds and get crushed by 5 targets.

Someone who gets it! Thank you, I could hug you right now.

I've been thinking about writing up a guide. I'll have to toy around with MS paint or get some help from friends. My stick people look pretty bad.

I'll gladly share everything I know about tanking, including the fun trick of forcing melee mobs to reverse. So much fun

As someone who has played a healer main since launch, I always just assumed that guard was what the tank was supposed to put on a healer. The reason for this is that in PVP, guarding the healer is just the norm, and in pretty much every single flashpoint or operation I ran as a healer I would automatically be guarded by the vast, vast majority of tanks.

So, imagine my surprise when I finally got a tank to 50, entered my first HM and dutifully slapped a guard up on the healer--only to immediately get screamed at for being "fail tank."

I will be the first to admit I only rarely play my tank and don't really know the class inside out yet, but I constantly struggle as a jugg tank to keep agro off of the healer on pulls with a group of ranged mobs. Sometimes the mobs can be spread over a fairly large area, and I feel pretty spastic trying to run to each one and drag the rest around. At that point, I usually lose agro on the first ones I attacked/taunted to the DPS and have to regain it, all the while keeping the ranged mobs off of the healer.

In those instances, I have guard on the healer. Maybe it's a problem with my gear (half recruit and half columi) not having great threat generation yet? I don't know, I just know that guarding the healer tends to make the healer not die on trash pulls. When I notice a DPS constantly pulling agro, I switch the guard to them. And from the perspective of a healer, there's nothing more annoying than having to stop healing the group to spam heal myself to survive because I have 5 ranged mobs shooting me while the tank tries to get them off.

Maybe I'm crazy, but for pugs, healer guard seems pretty logical. For well-oiled groups that know what they're doing (i.e. DPS that helps get the trash agro off the healer instead of only attacking the elite the tank is tanking) I fully understand and acknowledge that guarding a DPS is the best course of action. But when it's a group of unknowns, I heal guard by default and feel no shame.

While it is true that you should not guard the healer, some very broad generalizations are being made that do not always apply. When we are doing ops, the melee DPS is first choice for guard, and if no melee, then the top ranged DPS. This is the starting assumption I use when tanking a pug FP.

Most problems with healers getting aggro are due to DPS not working correctly. The tanks job is to hold aggro on enemies from strongest to weakest and the DPS go from weakest to strongest to clear up the room. The ability of a tank to hold threat on multiple enemies changes depending on what class. When I am on my Assasin, sure I can grab and hold quite a few enemies. The Assasin (and I assume Shadow) have two "high threat" aoe attacks on a low cd. When I am on my Jugg, it is hard to hold more than two. The Jugg has two single target "high threat" attacks and 1 weak *** non-high threat aoe. I love nothing more than people who have not tanked assuming all tanks work the same.

When DPS are failing by focusing on the boss and leaving the weak mobs (especially ranged weak spread out), then guarding the healer is needed due to all the mobs ganging up on the healer.

Before you just go into auto mode and rage on the tank, look at what the whole party is doing and try and evaluate where the problem actually is.

Because the failure is not yours, it is dps job to kill the mobs further away, you should control the eliets and strongs to the best of your abilities and it is up to dps to kill the weaks first. Healer will keep you upright while the dps does their job. There is no way for you to keep aggro from these unattacked mobs off the healer. So your struggle is in vain.

If you are comfortable putting the guard on the healer then do it. Just think about it for a second when the healer has 20k or above HP. Not saying they know what they are doing either, but if they do they would rather you put it on mDPS.

FYI there is Force Camoflague for marauders, Im sure the sentinels have the same mirror ability. Before you make a guide, eliminate holes in your education.

Jeez there was like a massive thread on this same topic a few weeks ago in the Tanking section.

Its a situational thing, which can be usedul on melee dps, can be useful on healer etc etc. Generally yes, i stick it on the strongest melee dps, or weakest in terms of armour.
However sometimes if I know healer will be taking damage for whatever reason, and I cna ahndle aggro easily, then ill stick it on the healer.

For example, Kephess, both in EC and TfB. I often swithc guards mid fight. Start on the best melee dps, then switch to whoever gets targeted by the laser in TfB or picks up the bomb in EC. Thats just one of many examples where, its a bit of extra work, but if you use your head, Guard can help healers out a lot.