Stacking Stamina

Know Your Healers

Having tanked many a raid, both guild run and PUG, I’ve had each type of healer assigned to keep my little green bar full.  Each one is very different in the way it feels to be healed by them.  It’s sometimes helpful to know how their mechanics work so that you can tell when they’re in trouble and you should use a defensive cooldown.  For some fights it’s more obvious such as Festergut at three stacks of Inhale, or Saurfang when he’s getting close to a full stack of 100 Blood Power, but sometimes a string of unavoided attacks means the healer might fall behind, and that’s when you want to blow a cooldown.

But that’s easy! I have an alert when my HP falls low. I just hit it then.

True, you could do it then. But maybe it’s a temporary dip. Depending on the type of healer keeping you alive this could happen several times during the fight. How do you know that NOW is the right time to use the cooldown? To answer that we’ll start looking at each healer in depth.

Holy Paladin
Ahh… the healer with the best reputation for keeping tanks alive. If your raid has a Holy Paladin, then you’re tank is going to feel their love. It’s pretty much a guarantee. They have the best single target healing throughput of all the healers. They accomplish this with a pile of haste backing a chain of Holy Lights sped up by a talent that encourages casting them often. Good healers will manage their mana and not spam Holy Light constantly, unless it’s during one of those high damage situations like a frenzy or soft enrage.

Paladins have only one reliable type of preventative damage spell in Sacred Shield. They’ll usually beacon the off tank and put Sacred Shield on the main tank, who they’ll be spamming heals at (though some fights include unique tactics that deviate from this). Sacred Shield really feels more like an extra block every 6 seconds. Even with a good amount of SP and a talent that makes it more usable, it only absorbs about 2k-3k damage. This can account for a large amount of absorbed damage over the course of a 5-8 minute boss fight if kept up, but isn’t helpful in a panic situation.
Between a relatively weak pre-heal and lots and lots of direct healing, Holy Paladins tend to feel bursty on your health bar. You’ll find you keep bouncing between 30% and 100% health throughout the battle. I’ve got an add-on that alerts me both graphically and audibly every time my health is below 30%, and it goes off often when there’s a paladin watching health. It’s not their fault, really. When a boss smacks you for 20k a few times in a row, you’re going to drop down low and it might take a few big heals to shoot you back up to full health. Most of the time my little alarm goes off it’s only for a second before I’m at 100% again. So how do you know when to use a cooldown? When are you really in trouble?

Paladins have to keep both beacon and sacred shield up, and usually on different targets. These have cooldowns that will overlap every once in a while which means a global or two that they might not be casting heals on you. If you’re low during one of these periods, it’s probably a good time to hit that cooldown. The best time, however, is when they use Divine Plea to get mana back. They’ll be healing for 50% less, which means it’ll be that much harder for them to keep you up. Many paladins will macro this ability with SP trinkets or wings to compensate, but those usually have 2 minute cooldowns and Divine Plea is usable once a minute. Because most of them will be using it on cooldown, it’s good to know when this is so you can use a strong 2 minute cooldown of your own at the same time. That way the effect can be fairly even during these low healing times for the paladin.

Discipline Priest
These bubble spammers can be a good raid healer in 25man content, especially paired up with a HoT heavy class like the druid. However, they’re also my favorite tank healer! Sadly, Disc Priests get a bad reputation because most dps classes will use an add-on like Recount that tracks healing done, but not absorbs. Since a large part of their “healing” is actually preventing damage with absorb effects like PW:S, mouth breathing players who put far too much investment into meters will consider Disc to be “the worst healing spec in the game.” I quote this from a PUG dps who thought they knew it all and was trashing one of my best dps guild mates because they still had an iLevel 200 Abyssal Rune equipped (which is one of the best and most available dps caster trinkets in the game). These are the same people who softly caress their precious GearScore in the dark of night.

Disc Priests do amazing things almost entirely through pre-healing abilities or absorb effects. The most obvious is PW:S, but they’ll also get a nice bonus absorb effect from Divine Aegis. Prayer of Mending also works well as a pre-heal for tanks, and will probably be cast on you every cooldown. Though it’s more raid-healy, it’s still highly effective. When you start to dip down a bit, expect a nice Flash Heal or Penance.
Because so much of Disc Priest healing is done ahead of time, it’s a pretty smooth ride with them healing you. If you’re dipping down below 30%, then you know something is happening to prevent them from keeping up with the damage. Either they’re not using their abilities wisely, they’ve been prevented from healing you in some way, or you’re taking more damage than they can deal with (check your feet for fire). Its these times that you want to blow your strong defensive cooldowns. Sometimes they’ll throw up Pain Suppression on you to catch up, rather than you having to use a cooldown. As always, communication is the key coordinating cooldowns effectively.

Holy Priest
Though most suited for raid healing, you may get one of these every once in a while. There’s a talent spec that specializes in holy tank healing, but few priests go that way. Holy uses direct heals much more than Disc, though if there is not a Disc Priest in the raid, they’ll still use PW:S every once in a while. Holy priests take advantage of a strong Renew, Flash Heal, and Greater Heal. This makes them rely on direct heals much more than Disc Priests, but less than Paladins.
The overall feeling is a bit less smooth than Disc Priests, but not nearly as choppy as Paladins. If you find yourself going below 30% more than once in a short period, or for more than just a second or two, it’s probably time to hit that cooldown.

Druid
“I’m taking damage, and the only cure is more HoT.” Druids are the HoT masters, they just are. ‘Nough said. The basic healing druid strategy is to keep those HoTs rolling. Most druids will try and keep 3 stacks of Lifebloom up, which ticks every second. Pair that with Rejuv and you’ve got a good steady stream of healing. For heavier damage fights they’ll also through a Regrowth in there. With 3 HoTs constantly ticking away, you should stay up pretty well. When things get spikey they’ll often hit Swiftmend to blast your HP back to full. Other druids really like Nourish, but it’s uses are debatable. In really tight spots they’ll often use a cooldown to make Healing Touch instant
Getting healed by a Druid is a very fast stream of HoTs for some quite even healing with little bursts here and there. In tough times they’ll use that insta-Healing Touch to rocket your health back to a safe level, but that’s only every 3 minutes. If they’ve done this, they’re down one of their major tricks. It’s a huge blast of healing, the biggest you’re likely to see from a druid. If you’ve seen this recently, and are still going below that 30% threshold, then it’s time to pop a cooldown. The key here is watching your incoming heals. There’s going to be a ton of little heals, but if a big blast for 15-25k comes from a druid, you know they’ve probably hit this panic button.

Shaman
These earth-lovers have a pretty simple tank healing style. They’ll keep a Healing Stream Totem down for a constant HoT. Then throw Riptide on you for a bit more HoT-ness. Oh, and they have a self weapon buff that will HoT you even more. With all those HoTs going, they’ll be throwing Earth Shield on you to help counter-act some of the damage you’ll be taking, and then spam Lesser Healing Wave to fill in the gaps.
It actually comes across as a pretty comfortable and well paced amount of healing. They only have one big panic button, however. When in trouble, they’ll use a macro that makes their big heal instant cast and have a huge chance to crit. Like the similar mechanic from a druid, once this is down, you’ll need to watch your health and pop that cooldown if you get dangerously low.

Though perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about what your healers are doing, I believe it’s an important part of being a tank. This will help you understand your survivability and get comfortable with the flow of your health bar in combat. Remember, tanks are unique in the aspect that their health is a resource mechanic. We only get to control half of that mechanic: trying to prevent it from going down too fast. Healers are the other side of that mechanic in trying to fill it back up.

My next post will be about some good habits you can learn to help make a very comfortable and enjoyable LFD experience. Also, I’ll try to go make some screenshots and use them more frequently. Feel free to send in your tanking screenshots, and get featured here! Until next time!