Jump to content

Guarding the Healers


Recommended Posts

Please stop this nonsense.

 

I play a combat sentinel with BiS gear and I end up tanking 9/10 flashpoints and operations I join via group finder because tanks actively refuse to put their guard on me. I have stopped bothering trying to explain on a daily basis why they should do this and just do my best to "keep aggro" so they realize they are making a mistake.

 

For those who don't know how threat is calculated:

  • An attack has a 1.0x modifier on damage to threat.
  • A heal has a 0.5x modifier on heal to threat.
  • Tanking stance gives a 2.0x modifier on damage to threat.

 

This means a healer has to do 2x more healing than the damage done by a damage dealer (DD) in order to acctualy "pull aggro". If for example a DD is doing 1500DPS, the healer would have to do 3000HPS...

 

Also for those advocating the healer must have a guard because any adds will target him/her, guarding doesn't in any way prevent this from happening When adds spawn their "threat table" is empty and as soon as the healer casts a heal on anybody the threat generated from that heal is split amongs all the enemies currently engaged. Unless the adds are taunted or attacked they will go for the healer, regardless of guard.

 

So, if it makes no sense guarding the healer who is the guard for? Simple, the best damage dealer in the group.

 

Using my previous example of a DD doing 1500DPS, the tank would have to do more than 750DPS in order to "keep aggro" (disregarding "high threat" abilities and taunts).

 

Now ask yourselves what makes more sense:

  • A tank doing less than 750DPS - guard the best damage dealer in the group.
  • A healer doing more than 3000HPS - guard the healer.

 

Amusing fact: I once had a tank tell me to "stop taunting"... on a sentinel... :confused:

 

TL;DR

Learn about how threat is calculated - Tanking: A Primer; stop guarding the healers; guard the best damage dealer in group; AoE taunt adds.

Edited by Qvasar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 123
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

the real problem is more simple than that......they just cant read properly.

 

they think its also a damage reduction, but us people that can read know this is infact only for pvp and not pve.

 

personally i agree with you, it should always be put on the dps, and if one of the dps is a powertech he should get priority as they are the only ones that dont have an aggro dump (juggs also i think) as i play powertech dps i find it so god dam annoying, constantly gimping my dps so i dont pull aggro :(

 

ps. the reason you end up tanking is because u r bad, a good dps will not pull aggro :p control your output, simple as that.

Edited by snowmon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

the reason you end up tanking is because u r bad, a good dps will not pull aggro :p control your output, simple as that.

 

I can do that easily, I do it on guild operations for example. I just refuse to do it when the tank refuses to "listen". If a tank puts his guard on me and I still get aggro I will just dump it and tone down the DPS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mostly agree, however with every "always one answer" scenario it is an over simplification. There are some areas where it is actually better to guard healers, especially in Operations were the DPS are dealing with a completely different target's for large portions of the fights, for example Asation from the second boss to, and including, the third (excluding the final phase).

 

Guard should be used as an aggro reduction, you're right here. But some DPS genuinely pull less aggro than some healers, in which case, guard will go on the healer. If everyone is performing properly however you're right, it should go on the best DPS unless mechanics allow a tank to place it elsewhere.

 

Also if a tank is pulling 1000 dps, a DPS will have to pull over 1500 dps to pull aggro due to "high aggro" moves. However assuming you meant tps (threat per second) it is still slightly off, as you haven't included the range modifier to aggro. I forget the exact modifiers but essentially, assuming an equally good melee and ranged DPS, guard should also go on the melee DPS as they are more likely to pull aggro.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, there are special situations where you don't want guard on a melee DPS. For example:

  • TfB second boss at start where we actually want the best geared melee DPS to "tank" Heirad.
  • EC NiM on Trandoshans where we want the best geared melee DPS to "pull" and kill the Trandoshan Warriors away from the rest of the group.
  • ...

 

My post is however not directed at the crowd running these operations, but the generally less enlighted crowd on LFG.

 

Also if a tank is pulling 1000 dps, a DPS will have to pull over 1500 dps to pull aggro due to "high aggro" moves. However assuming you meant tps (threat per second) it is still slightly off, as you haven't included the range modifier to aggro.

 

Yes you are absolutly correct, I was trying to keep it as simple as possible. All "high threat" abilities have a threat increase of 0.5x. That is, using a tanking stance, a 2.5x modifier on damage to threat. Also the "aggro" doesn't switch targets on a 1:1 threat ratio, but on a 1:1.1 (melee) and 1:1.3 (ranged) threat ratio.

Edited by Qvasar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah it is a hard concept for many to understand. Guard goes on the DPS in most cases. It is pretty much pointless to Guard a healer as in most fights they will be out of range for any benefits. I will pop Guard on a healer and use Guardian Leap if they suddenly take damage, but in general it stays on the Sentinel that is 2m away from me for 95% of the fight.

 

DPS have responsibility too that they often fail to follow through on. They need to use their aggro dump abilities ALL THE TIME. They often fail to even know they have them and what they are for. They also need to quit the Zerg mentality and know when to back off DPS. They need to give the tank a 2-5 sec head start to pop a few threat building abilities at the start of the fight, etc.

 

Back in EQ days if a DPS pulled aggro from the tank it was their fault and healers often wouldn't heal them. We had a little saying like "you gank it, you tank it" or something like that. And that was in a 72-man planar raid where you had to watch the tank whittle it down 5-10% to get enough aggro before you even attacked.

 

But I digress, yes please educate people. Guard is for DPS, melee DPS specifically due to the range limit, unless you are in PvP (or during an emergency) then its applications change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you're queuing up for random HM flashpoints, I would guard the person who is best geared, even if it's a healer. Most HM FP are tuned for around 300-400 hps, which is less than 1/3 of what a healer can heal, and they'll be spending the other 2/3 of the time DPSing.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you're queuing up for random HM flashpoints, I would guard the person who is best geared, even if it's a healer. Most HM FP are tuned for around 300-400 hps, which is less than 1/3 of what a healer can heal, and they'll be spending the other 2/3 of the time DPSing.

 

Unless the gear gap between the healer and the DDs is huge, this strategy may fail (not saying it will).

 

Example: Poorly geared DD goes 1200DPS = 1200TPS. If the healer does 500HPS, that is 250TPS, so he will need to do more than 950DPS to actually be higher in the "threat table". Also if the DPS is melee he will "pull aggro" at 1.1x current target threat, whereas the healer being ranged will only "pull aggro" at 1.3x. Taking this 20% melee-ranged difference into account, the healer would actually have to do 1418 TPS = 500HPS + 1168 DPS, almost the same as the poorly geared DD. Anyway in this example I hardly think anyone would actually "pull aggro" off the tank. ;)

 

Of course this depends on the situations, there are really good healers and really bad DDs out there.

 

Tanking modifier is x2.0 for every point of normal damage. This was buffed before the release of TFB.

 

You are correct. I overlooked that change (I don't have a tank myself so I forgot about it). Edited posts to reflect it.

Edited by Qvasar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are loads of bad tanks out there that guard the healer, very few of them reads the forum thought, better yell on them ingame instead, I do that.

 

To be honest people resent being told what to do and being called out directly. On most cases the tank in question will just ignore you, kick you off the group, or tell you to learn to play when the one at fault is himself. Very rare are the occasions when someone actually says "thank you for the info, i didn't know that". :(

Edited by Qvasar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also I do believe the following is true:

 

 

Ranged DPS Requires 130% of tank threat to pull agro (Healers are considered ranged)

 

Melee DPS Requires 110% of tank threat to pull agro

 

So this means if the tank has 1000 Threat (500dmg), Melee only needs 1100 dmg to pull, Ranged DPS needs 1300 dmg to pull and healers need 2600hp healed to pull agro.

 

OH AND GUARD HAS NO DAMAGE REDIRECTION IN PVE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THE TOOLTIP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a healer, the only time I expect to be guarded is when we have consistently garbage DPS who run around aggroing everything and then dying and I get swarmed by trash. The rest of the time, any competent healer has enough (or should have enough) tools to deal with a single trash pack (aggro wipe, bubble, self heal, or just asking for one of the DPS to get the guy off / burn him down) to avoid needing guard.

 

90% of the time I'm out of guard range anyway, and so it does no good. So why do healers ask for guard?

 

Because, shock, some healers are bads. They fail to drop HoT's and bubbles at the correct time, fail to pre-hot before big hits, and try to half-*** DPS and end up aggroing trash onto themselves, then scream the tank sucks. Yet people put up with it because of queue times. Ugh.

 

Tanks should not be guarding healers except in a handful of specific , limited situations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest people resent being told what to do and being called out directly. On most cases the tank in question will just ignore you, kick you off the group, or tell you to learn to play when the one at fault is himself. Very rare are the occasions when someone actually says "thank you for the info, i didn't know that". :(

 

I'm in ToFN but more or less I know your guild, it's rather surprising to hear people completely flat out deny advice given by the more accomplished players out there. Back in WoW when each server had few of these more hardcore or successful guilds most people would either give team lead to them or ask advice from them. That kind of conscience and logical thinking most of the time doesn't exist in this game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm in ToFN but more or less I know your guild, it's rather surprising to hear people completely flat out deny advice given by the more accomplished players out there.

 

Because the players who need to be told what to do have no idea of what's going on around them. They don't know who are the most accomplished guilds, players, etc...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not condone guarding the healer but it is obvious why it happens. As a healer I gain aggro on everyone not just who the tank is Tanking therefore if the tank can't hold aggro on the adds they run to me before the dps. This can be fixed if dps follows kill order weak to strong but we all know that rarely happens cause they get gold fever to damn often and try to pull off tanks so they can go "you suck tank I just pulled aggro off you" we all know this happens.

 

I really think this is just a combination of the tank not fully understanding his guard and dps not knowing there role. The result is bad tanks think they are doing the right thing cause they have been trained by bad dps to be on alert for damage to the healer. Sad thing is as a healer I will pull adds if dps isn't killing them with if without a guard cause I am the only one gaining aggro if no one is attacking them. Which means the guard is completely wasted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

90% of the time I'm out of guard range anyway, and so it does no good. So why do healers ask for guard?

 

Pretty sure guard's aggro reduction range is 30m and that the more limited range only applies to the PvP benefits. If I'm not mistaken most heals are also limited to 30m, so you are probably within range. The tooltip is somewhat misleading, as is the buff that pops up when you're out of 10m of the tank.

 

OH AND GUARD HAS NO DAMAGE REDIRECTION IN PVE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THE TOOLTIP.

 

Think there is still 5% redirection, however that is negligible.

 

Because the players who need to be told what to do have no idea of what's going on around them. They don't know who are the most accomplished guilds, players, etc...

 

There are players on The Red Eclipse that haven't heard of your guild? You (as a guild) - to your credit - don't exactly run around bragging and shouting about your accomplishments (at least, not that I've seen) but even players from non-"hard core" raiding guilds that do not care about highest/best progression such as myself have heard enough of you to give serious consideration to any advice you offer.

 

But then, everyone should give at least some consideration to almost any (within reason) advice they are given - dismissing such things out of hand is rarely justified.

Edited by MyDarkSunshine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really think this is just a combination of the tank not fully understanding his guard and dps not knowing there role. The result is bad tanks think they are doing the right thing cause they have been trained by bad dps to be on alert for damage to the healer.

As likely as this may be you can't try and cover up the mistakes of the DDs by doing one of your own. If people aren't even aware they are doing something wrong they aren't likely to ever change it. I have a commando aswell and often heal flashpoints (queue pops faster). If the tank puts a guard on me I instantly drop it off. If I die because I get swarmed by adds I do blame the DDs for not reacting to the changes in the combat environment and having tunnel vision towards boss. Eventually they will learn, hopefully, someday...

 

Pretty sure guard's aggro reduction range is 30m and that the more limited range only applies to the PvP benefits. If I'm not mistaken most heals are also limited to 30m, so you are probably within range. The tooltip is somewhat misleading, as is the buff that pops up when you're out of 10m of the tank.

Yes.

 

Think there is still 5% redirection, however that is negligible.

Damage reduction, not redirection. Which is another reason it should be on a melee character which is more likely to be taking damage.

 

There are players on The Red Eclipse that haven't heard of your guild? You (as a guild) - to your credit - don't exactly run around bragging and shouting about your accomplishments (at least, not that I've seen) but even players from non-"hard core" raiding guilds that do not care about highest/best progression such as myself have heard enough of you to give serious consideration to any advice you offer.

It is the only explanation I can come up with. When I say they never heard of us I mean actually they never heard of anyone besides themselves and/or don't speak English. I honestly don't know how it is on other servers but I've seen it all on TRE. Hundreds of level 50 players without a guild, without advanced class, without a stance, using the most flabbergasting (I like this word :p) abilities, needing on gear that is not for their class... For example, this week I must have told a sentinel over 10x on an LFG story mode operation to stop using transcendence constantly, neither did he reply, nor did he stop doing it. Figure that out...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As likely as this may be you can't try and cover up the mistakes of the DDs by doing one of your own. If people aren't even aware they are doing something wrong they aren't likely to ever change it. I have a commando aswell and often heal flashpoints (queue pops faster). If the tank puts a guard on me I instantly drop it off. If I die because I get swarmed by adds I d o blame the DDs for not reacting to the changes in the combat environment and having tunnel vision towards boss. Eventually they will learn, hopefully, someday...

 

 

I agree totally. If a tank puts his guard on me I take it off and tell him who to put it on. If the ask why I explain and let him know if I pull aggro its because the dps is not doing there job not him. Atm I am way to geared for most tanks to hold aggro against adds over me if the dps doesn't slice and dice em.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5% damage reduction for nothing is still 5% damage reduction. Why not give it to the healer if they're squishy? Personally, I use guard primarily for threat management but if gear levels indicate that's unlikely to be a problem (particularly if I'm running with ranged DPS) I put it on whoever looks like they could use it most. It can always be switched on the fly.

 

People who always guard the healer or healers who demand guard are idiots, but guarding the healer is not always wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a healer, the only time I expect to be guarded is when we have consistently garbage DPS who run around aggroing everything and then dying and I get swarmed by trash. The rest of the time, any competent healer has enough (or should have enough) tools to deal with a single trash pack (aggro wipe, bubble, self heal, or just asking for one of the DPS to get the guy off / burn him down) to avoid needing guard.

 

90% of the time I'm out of guard range anyway, and so it does no good. So why do healers ask for guard?

 

Because, shock, some healers are bads. They fail to drop HoT's and bubbles at the correct time, fail to pre-hot before big hits, and try to half-*** DPS and end up aggroing trash onto themselves, then scream the tank sucks. Yet people put up with it because of queue times. Ugh.

 

Tanks should not be guarding healers except in a handful of specific , limited situations.

 

 

This. Absolutely this. As a healer I don't need to be guarded unless I'm getting pounded, which is rare, and I have HoTs, shields, and a threat reduction to play with along with the extra unwritten "kite" ability. to deal with incoming damage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A tank doing less than 750DPS - guard the best damage dealer in the group.

 

Most tanks, unless they're in absolute BiS and know their rotations *exceptionally* well aren't going to be dealing 750 DPS, especially not Guardians. You only arrived at this arbitrarily high number because you actually did most of your math wrong.

 

First off, it should be noted that the high threat multiplier is multiplicative: it generates 50% more threat *before* the tank stance doubling occurs. Ergo, a high threat ability generates 300% threat and all of the other abilities generate 200% threat. In addition, every tank has some form of high threat ability: the Ion Cell DoT for VGs, Guardian Slash for Guardians, and Slow Time and Force Breach for Shadows.

 

Secondly, it's also not required to maintain an exact doubling of threat in order to maintain aggro. For a *vast* majority of cases it requires 130% of given threat to pull threat because the "ranged" range for threat purposes is measured as 4m from the center of the target whereas the attack melee/range range is measured as distance from the outside edge of the target's model. As such, a majority of melee DPS actually end up DPSing within the "ranged" threat radius and require 130% of current target's threat to pull.

 

As such, in order to pull maintain threat going up against a target generating 1800 DPS/TPS, a tank needs only generate 1385 TPS without ever having to taunt (which is ludicrously simple even in bad gear).

 

A healer doing more than 3000HPS - guard the healer.

 

It's been mentioned already, but I think it bears repeating, you're only correct in this sense if and when you're dealing with a single enemy NPC. In all other situations, it would require substantial geometric growth of HPS in order to threaten to pull aggro because healing threat is diluted by the number of targets currently in combat (and this is completely ignoring the fact that all of the healers have and should take the talents that reduce their threat by either 15% for Sages or 10% for Commando Scoundrel, meaning that even more HPS is required): with 2 NPCs in combat and a tank generating 1500 raw TPS (1950 TPS required to pull), a healer would have to generate 8667 HPS (1950 / .9 / .5 * 2), 3 targets would require 13000, etc. Even with a single target, the HPS is so high as to be functionally impossible to reach (4333 HPS).

 

As such, the only times that a healer even stands the *remotest* chance of having aggro are at the very beginning when a target has taken no damage whatsoever and any degree of threat reduction will serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever or at the extreme end of a fight wherein a target that has been lightly brushed by a single attack and has been ignored otherwise for an extended period of time *finally* has enough threat gained via diluted healing threat to pull aggro wherein the threat reduction *will* actually lengthen the period of time before this occurs (keep in mind, a healer generating 1000 HPS would take 9 seconds to pull threat on a target hit for 1500 threat once with 3 other NPCs in combat; more enemies, more damage, or less healing required are all going to push that number even higher; Guard would simply increase that to 12 seconds). In both of these cases, the threat pulling is predicated upon both of the DPS and the tank ignoring a target for an extended period of time, which just really isn't going to happen unless the group is absolutely *terrible*.

 

The only real benefit that a healer gets is the 5% damage reduction, which isn't even additive DR (additive DR is added to your K/E or I/E damage reduction and, as such, is more powerful; multiplicative DR is simply a percent reduction in all damage taken and is factored in post mitigation) and really shouldn't even make a difference since the healer shouldn't be targeted in the first place in order to *need* to benefit from the DR. Unless everyone else in the group is a complete idiot *and* the healer is vastly overgeared, the healer should never be under the risk of having threat and needing the assistance of a Guard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because the players who need to be told what to do have no idea of what's going on around them. They don't know who are the most accomplished guilds, players, etc...

 

Yes, but...........

 

This is 90% of the people that play the game. They don't come to the forums, they don't research playing their class, their role, what speccs work, what don't etc. For good or ill the vast majority of players learn the game by trial and error (sometimes not learning from the errors) and intuition.

 

To me, this is what is at the heart of this entire thread. Our expectation is that tanks should KNOW how threat works, how each of their abilities work including guard. The reality is that just like dps and healers, most tanks fall into the 90% described above which in turn means they will likely remain uninformed and even unresponsive when they are shown the so called 'right way' to do something.

 

So, while I understand the frustration that generated this thread the circumstances that caused that frustration are most likely not going to change. The people that are in here reading this have been mostly supportive of the thought behind the OP.....................but these aren't the people who are causing the problem. Those people don't read the forums (mostly).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

lol! I love playing my low level assassin and doing GF FPs. I have +41 crystals in all my gear and most of the time purple armorings/mods/etc of the same level.

 

The FP will start and guard goes on healer .... first boss/during trash pulles depending on the fp ... I tank it ... guard switches, lol. XD

 

It isn't uncommon, the same goes for me, either I'll pick the DPS with the most gear if both are melee or the melee dps if there is one ranged (When I tank) or if there is none, or no melee dps, I'll guard the healer until I notice a dps constantly pulling aggro off me (target of target ftw! XD)

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...