The more I play a Feral Druid, the more I realize how much is different from the DPS role I’m used to. One of the things that really struck me last night when we were cleaning up Kara was the synergies between a Tank and people in other roles.
As a Mage in a DPS role, it was almost all about the charts. I’m not going to lie, but I considered myself an above average mage. I could not only bring the numbers in a raid, but I was also aware of the situation and reacting to what was going on (as well as doing my job). However, most of the time I was staring at the DPS meters and perfecting my timing of hitting my “3″ key. Every so often hitting another hotkey to start a cooldown. I loved healers who would heal me and keep me up when I took a random hit, and got slightly annoyed when I died and no healers were targeting me. In a few 5-mans, I admit, I even looked at the healer in the eye and said that I was watching their spellcasts and they weren’t even trying to heal me (which I really feel bad about now).
However, I now know what it’s like from the other side (DPS vs Tank/Heals). There is some sort of special connection that occurs between Tanks and healers that can’t quite be explained. And one that DPS classes can’t even come close to understanding. I’ve been leading Kara runs for a few lower geared people in our guild who are trying to work their way up to T5 (where my guild’s officially at) by organizing and running Karazhan raids. One of the people I help run through is a holy paladin, who often gets the assignment of healing me (the main tank).
When we’re all in the middle of the action and I’m hitting all my hotkeys and worrying about my positioning and what’s going on and just trying greatly to keep the boss pissed at me, and pissed enough that my DPS can unleash just that little bit more without worrying, I’m also constantly watching my health bear to make sure I hit that “oh shit” buttons when I need to. Being a tank means you’re a constant magnet for heals (obviously), but it’s still sends a tingle down your spine when you see your health bar topping off and noticing that one healer giving it their all just to keep YOU alive. It’s almost an instant friendship, and it’s hard to describe.
Since then this one holy paladin and I have become great friends, and I almost cheer to myself quietly whenever he’s assigned to be my personal healer in raids. I know I can trust him with keeping me alive, and I trust him to do his absolute best at each and every raid when he’s assigned to me. He makes sure my blessings stay up, and will put me before himself. Similarly, I offer him many liberties, giving him first priorities with Innervates (though as a Paladin he rarely has mana issues), and feeling a slight excitement when I’m the lucky one chosen to throw a battle rez his way. I also happily recommend him when we need another spot to fill a raid or a group. Additionally, when the shit hits the fan, I loyally run between him and oncoming mobs, and pick up whatever I can (at one time tanking 5 elite mobs in TK since our tanks dropped and they were running for the pally keeping me up).
So I must ask you readers out there; Tanks, do you notice yourself forming this kind of unique connections with healers? Healers, is there a similar synergy that you form with tanks? What about you, DPS, do you find yourself in a similar position as I was when I played my mage, or do you find yourself forming your own connections?
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As a resto druid I find myself having to keep an eye on the whole raid and make sure to top off who I can when I am not putting HoT’s on the tanks. I guess I can’t say I have a certain connection with anyone in the raid as I try to keep up whoever I can.
Then again being the GM might be a factor in this as well. :)
Excellent insight!
As a healer just starting Kara, but with experience in 5-mans, there’s no question my primary focus is my tank. I think I’ve gotten to where I can look at others in the party/raid (and tossed out a few extra heals across the raid last night when my mana and circumstances allowed), but my first priority is my tank.
For healers, there are only two rules: 1. Keep the tank alive; 2. Keep yourself alive. Everything I do is aimed at making sure those two objectives are met.
If you focus on rule 1, your tank will know, because your overall group/raid will improve when the tank no longer worries about if or when a heal is coming: She KNOWS it’s coming. Obviously “shit happens” but for the vast majority of time, that healer-tank synergy can make or break any encounter.
I am a Tree who has done 5mans from pre-BC through ZA in BC. I absolutely form a bond with my tanks, and the guild actively encourages this. And when I was levelling a Warrior Tank pre-BC, the guild essentially assigned me a up and coming priest and said “Become a team.”
As a resto Druid, I would have to say you nailed this on the head. We ran Kara with 2 tanks, (pally and warrior) and 2 healers (Druids) and we both of us Druids had our favorite to heal, so much so that when we looked at the charts at the end of a run we would see that we had thrown extra heals at “our” tank even if it wasn’t our assignment. And to be effective the tank healer combo needs to be a team, with the warrior I know how damage is typically going to affect him and when he is going to use abilities that might require a little extra heals and I can be proactive to it.
Excellent point Bumwaller, I completely forgot to mention that. Once a healer and a tank work together a lot, they really do get to know how the other plays. This not only enhances the connection that exists between the two, but can also lead to improved performance in raid! Thanks for pointing that out, =)
Hey there,
I have been running with a Resto Shammy in 25 mans. Personally as I am on raid healing the majority of the time I don’t feel I have a ‘connection’ with the tanks but more with my fellow healers. We have an in game channel where we set healing. If a healer goes down someone else will pick up their designation which helps create a strong bond for the Healers and teamwork. (Different healing types, different rolls)
For me personally tho I have noticed I have a strong bond with a Shadow Preist, we always make sure we are in the same group. Totems for him/mana for me. This is great fun in raids, he is high on the DPS and I can spam heal knowing that my mana is hard to drain, benefits all round.
I completly agree tho, that the tanks in our Guild hardly ever look to the healers if there is a wipe as they know we have most things covered.
I completly agree with ‘For healers, there are only two rules: 1. Keep the tank alive; 2. Keep yourself alive. Everything I do is aimed at making sure those two objectives are met.’ having a mage as my first raider and now my healer. I understand why I was not a priority to heal.
Mossop
But
I’m a shadow priest, so can’t really speak of that tank/healer ’special relationship’. But as dps with threat-management issues and a lack of cc, I am in awe of good pala tanks. I’d like to think they are grateful for the mana love too, but it’s hard to tell, me being too shy to talk to them as equals. It comes close to hero-worship.
My relationship with locks is more healthy. We are buddies. Evil, malicious, shadow-worshipers, but buddies nonetheless. The synergies between the two classes are very sweet - particularly with demono and destro locks. (Affliction locks are far too self-sufficient.) I get curse of shadows and improved shadow bolt, she gets shadow weaving, misery, mana, and health to top up those life taps. It’s a beautiful thing.
@ Kestrel - Amen!
The tank/healer relationship happens because you always like the ones that got your back. In our Kara raids, whenever I’ve been assigned to the main tank, the off-tank always whispers me with a groan. She knows I’ll keep her alive and we have that trust, but the main tank knows it too. Usually our second healer has been someone else we’ve known that has a hard time staying alive or isn’t the most experienced healer.
DPS need to understand that although they get the job done, without the tank it’s a guaranteed wipe. Without the DPS, it just takes longer to take down the mob/boss and becomes an all out endurance test. Since that’s not a guaranteed wipe they will always be last on the heal list.
DPS also need to understand that we have them prioritized as well. The low DPS guy is probably going to be allowed to die over the guy dealing out the hurt. Although I do try to watch casters and their mana. If the guy is out of mana, I’ll probably let him die over the guy who still has some.
I played a raiding healer (holy priest) first to 60 then to 70. Now I’ve switched to raid tanking. Having seen this from both sides, I have to agree that there is a very strong bond between a healer and a tank that have run together often. My healer was my first toon so I wasn’t aware that that bond wasn’t there for other roles.
Now that I’m on the tanking side of things there’s nothing that I hate more than having my healer die to someone else’s mob. (Except when my healer dies to my mob - then I’ve epically failed.) Even if someone else picks up the heals and we keep rolling along, it’s nervewracking not to have MY healer there.
As the best-geared tank in our alliance, I get to be the heal target for undergeared healers on farm nights. It’s the most rational setup, but again, it’s not MY healer and it just doesn’t feel right.
[...] writing this in direct response to the article "Synergies between Tanks and Healers" by SaladFork of Omen of Clarity in which he describes a special bond that he’s formed with a [...]
I’d have to say absolutely. As the on-again-off-again defacto healing class lead, I’m juggling a lot of different things — especially as a 23/38/0 priest who fills in various shoes in the course of a single fight — however I always have an eye out for my chosen tank.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the bond between a good tank and a good healer provides special insight into the other’s respective class. The wonderful thing about being paired together so often is that I get to know what the other person may be thinking or what he might do in certain situations; even though I’ve never played a class capable of tanking beyond perhaps 40, I know enough about the role from interacting with numerous tanks and doing independent research to be a better healer/tank-healer that I can adapt readily to various situations on the fly without prompting. Though the versatility of the priest class does help with that a lot.
The wonderful thing is that this synergy often exists outside of the raid and sometimes years down the road. Old tanks from various instances and raids pre-TBC still remember me and we’ll talk amicably when we come across each other.
DPS need to understand that although they get the job done, without the tank it?s a guaranteed wipe. Without the DPS, it just takes longer to take down the mob/boss and becomes an all out endurance test. Since that?s not a guaranteed wipe they will always be last on the heal list.
Kyrilean, I’m going to have to disagree with you. Pre-expansion you could make a statement like that but it’s an entirely different environment in The Burning Crusade. The emergence of enrage timers on most of the bosses (specially in raids, mind you) make your DPSers almost as valuable as your core tanks and healers, but only in the extent that you want to maintain a minimum total raid damage per second through an encounter. If you fail to do that, you’re likely to hit the enrage timer and wipe, irregardless of the fact that you managed to keep the tank alive.
In raiding, it’s a balance. And you’re very correct in stating that good healers do prioritize different classes/roles as they heal. Those who provide the greatest benefit to the raid — either through role, the amount of damage or healing they contribute, or even utility - will find themselves ranked higher than others. The First Aid quest Triage best describes this phenomena in a way that every World of Warcraft player has probably experienced and understands.
Absolutely. Even pre-BC as a priest healer I saw myself forming bonds with tanks, and now as a resto shaman, I have very strong bonds not just with our tanks (who are not often my top priority) but with the melee DPS that I”m usually in charge of keeping alive. There’s just some part of me that’s become very protective of them, to the point where on some fights I can almost tell who is going to be in which place, and what kind of damage each of them is going to take.
Also, in terms of smaller group content, it doesn’t hurt anything that I’m the healer, and my husband is the tank! We make a pretty good pair that way.
As a tank (who played a healer for 2 years) I do form bonds with DPS as well, but never as much as I have with my favorite healer.
I think that as people we love those who love us back. That being said when my fav healer makes it obvious that he prefers me as a tank for 5 mans or raids, and I make it perfectly obvious that I prefer him as a healer; there’s a natural friendship/love/bond/thingy that grows there.
If you’re unfortunate enough to not have the ability to favor your tank or healer (whether in whispers or in the open ie: GM or raid leader) I could see that bond being less prominent or unnoticable. Pretty sad for them I’d say though, it’s one of the best parts of the game.
[...] healer had really bonded with him in terms of keeping each other up and running, and it really made them both better players — the tank was more willing to step up when aggro got lost, and the healer had more reason to [...]
[...] healer had really bonded with him in terms of keeping each other up and running, and it really made them both better players — the tank was more willing to step up when aggro got lost, and the healer had more reason to [...]
As a tank, I do have a good friend who is a healer, but instead of the intimate connection where he tries to keep me up with all his might, he likes to play games and see how low my HP can go before hes gotta heal and he does things to try and get me killed.
Likewise for me, ill let him take a few hits before I bother to save him (hes a pally so he can take a few). Its fun, but I do wish I had a true healer that will actually try to save my ass.
I guess I’m gonna be the one who’s different from all the healer replies and say that I, as DPS, also feel a unique connection to the tank… perhaps because of that tanky adage “My comrades are my weapons and I am their shield”– I absolutely adore and appreciate good tanks and am fully aware of the fact that they, probably more than the healer, are keeping me alive (hopefully the healer isn’t focused on me afterall!)
So I, too, have noticed a connection even though I might not be a healer. Is the connection different? I dunno. But it’s there.
I guess I also want to add here, that it might be a CC thing as well… I feel somewhat privileged in that I have had more than one tank tell me they trust my CC above all others. I have had tanks actually refuse to run stuff unless I am the main form of CC. They trust that I can do it and trust that if I do have a problem, I can “make do” until they are ready to handle the loose mob. It’s that trust that they put into me which is similar to the trust that they put into the healers, perhaps it isn’t the same and perhaps it isn’t as dramatic as “keeping you alive”… but that connection and mutual trust is there nonetheless.
Pike, you raise an excellent point. I definitely wasn’t discounting the fact that DPS can also have a similar connection in my post, but I didn’t notice it when I played my mage.
Now that you mentioned the CC aspect, I can’t help but agree and say you are 100% correct. There is definitely some bond that forms between tanks and DPS, where tanks keep the mobs away from those killing them (ie: shield and weapon), and the tank trusts the CC. It’s an intimate level of trust that occurs.
Thanks for pointing it out!
With the tanks specifically, no. As the guy doing healing assignments, I like to rotate people around weekly as much as I can. I understand that certain people like to maintain connections with their tanks but under my raids I like to change it up and get a bit of variety going. There’s going to be some days where a certain healer isn’t going to be around and I have to compensate with someone else. Flexibility is a nice thing to have so that healers can sort of pick up on the tendencies of their tanks:
* Does he overextend himself by going out of range?
* Where does he typically stand when tanking stuff?
* How geared is he and how much damage will he take on average?
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I have my own special tank, his name is Agremos, and although I haven’t partied with him in some time due to scheduling issues, but everytime we do there’s always this special connection. He knows how to get mobs off me, and I trust him enough so that if i do get aggro (Which is rare enough) I’ll run towards him for him to pick it off me. He knows my capabilities and I know his. And significantly, he is as, if not more, sitautionally aware than i am (which is quite rare i must say). If there’s anyone i was closer to, it would be him. You’re right, it’s hard to quantify this experience and friendship, but it’s also made my standards for other tanks that much higher, which leads to much more disappointment as well. :) nice post!