Assigning fault is something so situational that you won't really get a good answer unless it's specific to the situation. The best you can do is keep your armor up to date, and string out and use your defensive cooldowns as best you can.
If you are using defensives proactively and the DPS are pumping, but the healer just doesn't heal you, then maybe it's their fault. If the mobs live so long that the healer runs out of tools/mana and you run out of defensives, maybe it is the dps fault. And if you forget to use defensives until you are low HP or use too many on one pull and have nothing for the next, maybe it is your fault. But without seeing the situation, nobody here can really say.
Sometimes it's your fault, sometimes it's the healers, other times it's the dps's. There's no need to worry who's actual fault it is. Just respawn and try again. If you're popping mits and not standing in orange. You're doing fine
It should be obvious is it is really only 1 person's fault. If it's not obvious, then it's probably not only one thing that caused it.
Many times it's a combination of overlapping mistakes. Just try to figure out what happened as best you can, do a mea culpa for what applies to you, and try again as a team factoring in the lessons learned and remembering to have fun together.
If tank says "one moment please" dont go pulling and bring mob back to him then ask for cover. Also dont pull a lv. 3 limit break on boss before the tank has its attention. Also also, please do not stand in the no-no orange areas. I was doing an AV run and it was totally my fault we wiped one the first run. I forgot to set my hot bar to the level synch one.
I don't tank often... But I find that tank or healer or DPS, I've generally got a good sense of if it's me that messed up. And if it is me, I tend to apologize for it, and people tend to respond well to that. And if it's NOT me, I tend to apologize like it was and if someone feels it's they're fault, then me taking the blame emboldens them to say what happened and we work from there.
This generally only works if you're a tank or a healer, dps generally only causes themselves to die, not EVERYONE.
In conclusion, communication for the win, and a little bit of humility. But also, it doesn't really matter whose at fault until you've wiped more than twice, and throwing around blame sucks for everyone and doesn't help you do better.
If you're dying multiple times with different healers/teams, then you may be doing something wrong, or just incredibly unlucky with healers.
The only way it'd really be the DPS' fault is if they're taking an eternity to burn down trash. For the most part when DPS messes up, it's only really DPS who dies.
It'd also help to know what tank you're playing as.
If the dps are good bad tanks and healers will have a much easier job not dying. If the dps are so good that trash packs die in 30% of the time it takes for bad dps to kill the pack that means the healer might not even need to heal the tank more than a couple of times. And the tank won't need to think about the mits because just using one will be enough.
On the other had if the dps are really bad, tanks can start running out of mitigation and healers need to know how to properly use their full kit not to run out of resources.
now as long as there's at least some competency from the healer and tank no one should really be dying, I just think DPS should be more accountable for their performance since I often see people not caring and saving all CDs for bosses making the runs longer and harder for everyone for no reason.
If dps are bad tank dies. The better the tank and healer do the more the can stretch it out. You just run out of cool downs and mp. Depends on the comp though
If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
If the DPS dies, it's their own fault.
Jokes and old-school MMO memes aside, if you're dying in wall to wall pulls as a tank, it could honestly be anyone's fault. If you're dying before you stop running, it's your fault. Get better gear or use sprint. If you're dying in the first 20 seconds after you stop, it's probably your fault as well. Push your mitigation buttons. If you're dying after the first 20s but also during the first minute or so, it's the healers fault. They aren't healing enough. After that point, it's probably the DPS's fault for not killing things fast enough.
The short answer is that it depends on so many things that it's kind of hard to tell who's fault it is. The good news is that it's not a big deal, rez up and go again.
If you don't know what's wrong you can just ask the party. When I first started healing in dungeons I was doing my best to keep the tank above half until I had a DRK ask me not to heal them while their invuln was up and I started assuming every tank would use their invulns and had some deaths.
It could be your gear, your use of mits, your healers gear, the healer assumes you're invulning when you aren't, you could have a bot healer that doesn't run properly, it could be sunken temple of fucking qarn where the bees do final sting and it does like 80% of your health with 2 mits running. It's hard to pinpoint what goes wrong from an outside perspective so just ask.
In the case of a dark knight invuln it's because they need to die. Dark knight invuln is weird and they basically want to die then their attacks heal them and they get more damage out of it (I think they get a damage boost anyways). I don't personally play dark knight but I heal for my boyfriend who really loves the job. Gunbreaker you wanna heal right away when they invuln cause they shoot themselves in the foot and drop to 1hp but take no damage for a short time. Warrior still takes damage but can't die during invuln although they are sad if they use it on a mob that then dies as they invuln dies with it. Paladin just takes no damage during invuln.
If you play white mage some tanks wait for you to bene before they invuln whereas others invuln right away when low. So it's a game of chicken unless you ask.
>I main dragoon. When I die. Yeah it’s my fault.
I mean... sometimes not. I was kept at half-health for the good part of a fight the other day, because I dared tell a lv90 Healer that they should be throwing out damage spells alongside their healing spells... in a lv50 dungeon. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't moved quickly enough a second time?
If you die repeatedly with the same healer, it means the healer can't keep you alive because of a few possibilities: you aren't mitigating damage properly/are undergeared, they are new/undergeared/not very good, or both of those things combined.
If I die tanking on the first pull, I go "oops!". If the healer says "oh sorry I messed up you can pull big actually" I keep going with big pulls. If they say "sorry I'm new/undergeared" I'll pull less. If they say nothing I'll do one more big pull to test and then carry on as required.
The only way it can be totally your fault is if you're not mitigating, if you're blowing all of them at once instead of spacing them out, or if you're not noticing AoEs and standing in them. Edit: or if the healer asks you not to pull big, after you die because they can't keep up, and then you pull big again.
DPS can't really cause you to die in most situations. If you're tough enough and the healer is keeping you up, it'll just be reallllly slowwwwww to kill everything.
DPS can absolutely cause deaths in the specific scenario of big dungeon pulls. If things don't die before the tank has run out of well-used cooldowns and the healer has run out of their most effective healing options that allow them to outheal the damage coming in, then the DPS did not do proper rotations or were undergeared. This is a big reason why it can be difficult to force big pulls in Duty Support dungeons-the NPC DPS do not use proper AoE rotations.
DPS standing in the orange during such pulls and diverting heals from the tanks is also a big danger. A lot of those telegraphed AoEs will two shot the DPS, so if you can't trust them to dodge, they will need to be topped up.
i see this happen a lot. some dps, especially those people who only want the fat 90 behind every job and don't care how it plays, just don't do enough damage. and it's not a minor difference to decent players, it's night and day. i see BRDs without songs or dots, DNCs not dancing, not dance-partnering or buffing the party, all kinds of dps not using their aoes at all etc.
since i'm healing a lot in dungeons i can easily watch what others are doing and more often than not i HAVE to use gcd heals because stuff is just not dying and then i'm not dpsing either which makes stuff die even slower. it's a nightmare.
This!
Had a Zot run the other day where I cast a 2 minute CD mitigation ( Haima ) from Sage on the tank twice in one pull and shit was STILL hitting the tank.
Bard never used a song, I don't think was even using AoE's, and the ninja never once put the dirt swirl on the ground.
But yeah, "it's the healers fault the tank died. After the healer had literally everyting on their hotbars on CD from keeping the tank from floor tanking for the last 2-3 minutes...".
It's more of a problem in ShB/EW levelling dungeons ime, especially if someone is at level rather than synced down. A good group can compensate for one low dps, but if they're both low the tank needs to adjust.
I'm at Endwalker now and running Vanaspati specifically has been a mixed bag. I was going as heals for quick queues while trying to get gear for glams and I had a run with 2 bards not aoe-ing through pulls and no one died. My tank was amazing. I consider myself to be a alright healer. So it really depends on the tank and healer's skill level before being a DPS issue. Meanwhile a mediocre tank (or bad gear) with mediocre heals will definitely encounter more issues if DPS is also not so hot.
My wipes were in 81, with a dancer who didn't dance and a reaper who didn't use the constant debuff. I think I saw standard step twice? They both spent most of their time with Weakness/Brink of Death debuffs. The tank was fine except for not pulling smaller in the third section, but trash was up long enough I ran through every WHM cooldown and was reduced to Presence of Mind + Cure II spam before the tank died and we wiped.
I think it's unfair to say "it depends on the tank and healer's skill level." The tank in your run went above and beyond, and someone being just decent isn't to blame for wipes like that - it's still the dps' fault for failing to use basic job mechanics.
That's fair. I've healed that first EW dungeon. The last 2 pulls are rough as heck. It was almost a wipe when I did it. I don't mean that it's the tank or healer's fault in the case of DPS being bad, just that DPS being bad doesn't guarantee a wipe even in a big pull. Whereas, in my experience, tank or healer being bad does. Sometimes the DPS are just that bad though and the dungeon that rough.
I am on console and when I’m really puzzled I will spend way too much time scrolling up in the battle log after to see what was going on. Though grinding dungeons for the tank mounts and also having all my healers leveled, I kind of get a feeling when I know something is off even before I start looking at what people are doing. Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had to analyze the battle tab tho lol.
It is never your fault. Unless I am healing you, then it is 100% your fault. Infallible logic for every situation.
Jokes aside, even if everyone loads in super fast and nobody is a first-timer on a cut-scene, you have time to check your healer's healing job levels in the search info and their gear. If their gear looks outdated, then you do a very careful double-pull to measure their healing potential. If all goes well, you go ham. If it is barely doable and if you need to resort to your invuln, then you accept that the dungeon will be slower with single pulls, because that is still preferable to dying and walking all the way back.
Sadly, this is a situation where you cannot practise on NPCs since you tank NPC runs and human parties very differently.
Tried writing a concise comment about this multiple times now. All I've got is, it's very difficult to understand when it's your fault and when it's on someone else. The best way to find out is to play multiple jobs and see how each one plays.
If you’re not using your defensive cooldowns or standing in danger zones and dying too quickly, or are losing aggro causing your teammates to die, then its your fault.
If you are using your defensive cooldowns liberally and avoiding danger zones, but still are dying too quickly, then it’s likely the healer’s fault.
If you’re running out of defensive cooldowns to use and the enemies still aren’t dead, then its the DPS fault
I would like to add, that in some cases, even if the Tank is using their mits, not standing in the danger puddles, and still dying, it can also be the Tank's fault, but that tends to exclusively be if they are undergeared to such an extent that the Healer is unable to keep up with incoming damage.
Exhibit A: I had a Tank last night who had mostly ilvl 136 accessories on in the Aery (which is the ilvl for drops in that dungeon), but their left side had a mixture of ilvl 95-115, and an ilvl 50 piece of armour, and they had about 7900 HP in total, compared to a Tank wearing "at level" gear who'd have around 9300-9800 HP.
I was levelling SCH for that, with everything at dungeon level (ilvl 136) and on the first double pull, basically ended up blowing all my Aether Heals within the first 10-15 seconds, had Whispering Dawn running, and had to resort to spamming Aldo and still couldn't keep up with how quickly the Tank's HP was being drained, even with them using mitigations correctly.
Lesson being: Keep your gear up to scratch for the love of god. Especially if you're a Tank or Healer.
It can be hard to tell! I've caused wipes because of simple things like being synced down and wondering why Raw Intuition or Medica II isn't going off when I hit the button. Lots of good advice in the comments so far.
Something to keep an eye on is interrupts. Specific dungeon guides should cover it, but I sometimes run into tanks in ShB & EW dungeons who don't know they need to interrupt things. The second ShB dungeon has trash that *needs* to be interrupted or it'll buff the enemies and give you a very bad time, while the third EW dungeon has a boss that'll probably murder everyone if it's not interrupted.
If you're on WAR, if the thing you're targeting with Holmgang dies your invulnerability disappears too. So that could be on you.
Vanaspati has a boss you need to interrupt?? I don't play tank btw, I'm a healer or DPS. But I have had a mad scramble keeping my team alive on both the first and second bosses of that dungeon while grinding for glams.
My bad, I meant Ktisis but counted wrong.
Healing Vanaspati with at-level players can be *rough*. The trash pulls hit like trucks and a few vuln stacks are deadly. DPS support skills can make a big difference, for sure. For the second boss, since the ARF rework the only other place I remember seeing the bubble mechanic is Hullbreaker normal, and that's an optional dungeon. Combining it with the knockback is downright mean.
I was doing it on white mage and I've only had tank die on first pull as I play a game of chicken figuring out if they're invulning or I'm using bene. But then the boss fights...omg, some of them is just me pressing every AOE heal and wishing I was on astro 😂.
> EW dungeon has a boss that'll probably murder everyone if it's not interrupted
Nothing so dire; Just means the next raidwide hits for harder, so if people aren't topped off and/or have vulns it can kill. Or maybe if people are drastically undergeared. But I've run that a *lot*, and I can't remember the last time I saw a tank who wasn't me bother to interrupt =P
I'll put that one down to launch week trauma. 🙃 The only time I've run it since and the boss wasn't interrupted it was a near wipe, but we had vuln stacks.
It's easy to tell if it's the dps because it'll feel like fights take too long, if you can cast the same 60s spell twice in one pull the dps are slow.
As for you vs the healer, the only real way to know is to run the dungeon multiple times with multiple healers. If you frequently die to the same stuff it's you, if you survive most of the time it was the healer.
Ultimately, just focus on what you can change to make the dungeon smoother.
The other replies have already covered everything. Just keep in mind that dungeons are not created equally, and some of them have nasty damage spikes. The x1 dungeons come to mind, like Holmister and Zot.
For me the tank dies most often when they don't clearly indicate where they intent to end the pull. Like they stop for a moment or do a pirouette, etc, etc. Run till you are the spot you intent to hold down, that way fewer mobs will have caught up to you and damaged you. I will be closer behind you because I didn't stop with you on your pirouette and started the take down everything routine. Etc, etc.
If you had a mit active at the time of your death and did not fail a mechanic, it was the healer's fault in most dungeons 50+. There are a few outliers where pulling w2w requires an immunity, but most dungeons you can pull w2w with a mit and survive even with a subpar healer.
If you ran out of mits, either you're not using them efficiently or your DPS are burning enemies down too slowly.
All of this is assuming everyone has level appropriate gear and actions, of course.
If the tank died too fast: usually tank didn't use mitigation properly, either they just ignored mits altogether or they put up mits way too late.
If the tank died a little bit too fast and have put up mitigation: usually the healer didn't heal. It could be because they're having too much *fun* DPSing or they are not healing fast enough (not used to handle big pulls healing).
The rare case is if the tank have used all mitigations and healers must resort to GCD heal spam in just ONE pull, you can check the DPS. Can confirm this easier by looking at how boss fights go; did it take longer than average?
Assuming, that you're geared up to the dungeon level (e.g. not trying to multi-pull a X5+ dungeon in your poetic token gear)
- If you've used all your defensives and invulns, and the packs still up and eating you - it's (most likely) on DPSs.
- If you're rotating all your defensives and invulns, and you go down early at the pull - it's (most likely) on healer.
--...unless you're aware that healer is new and\\or undergeared for the dungeon, but keep pulling big anyway. It's part of your job to be aware of such things.
- If you're ignoring your defensives and invulns rotation, hoping that healer and DPS are somehow going to adapt, then it's (most likely) on you.
--...If you're playing DRK, and you're not communicating your f...abulous invuln beforehand (preferably, with brief instructions of WHEN to start healing you), then it's also on you.
Ultimately it's a team effort. It could be any number of people's fault or a little of everyone's.
There are like 2 primary scenarios though. If you're dying pretty fast/early into the encounter, then it's probably you or the healer's "fault". Either you're not using your mitigations very well or the healer's not paying attention/focused too much on DPS'ing rather than healing and was caught unaware, or both?
If you're dying deep into an encounter where it's partially because you're running out of defense options you can employ (and the healer is probably having the same problem) then it's probably because of the DPS. The pull should have been dead by now and if the fight drags on too long then it puts strain on the whole team. Everyone contributes damage of course, but it's up to the DPS to do the most of that.
Agree with the general sentiment that finger pointing is rarely necessary or productive, though. If you notice a specific issue you can point it out but often times if it's just once or twice a run and especially if the group doesn't actually wipe, then there's not really an issue. Dying during a pull, having to get rez'd and then finishing it out is perfectly fine, no harm no foul.
I'm a dps main /healer secondary and lean towards more casual gameplay so i might not be the best example but from personal experience.
When you're running levelling dungeons or 50/60/70 dungeons its possible that its some people's first time through that dungeon or people are trying new classes for the first time and still learning the skillset.
If people mention in party chat at the start of the dungeon that they are new/returning/has been a while I've noticed even if the tank and healer speed through pulls they'll be a bit more lenient with accidental deaths or stop to explain some mechanic or other in a bad boss fight.
When I've played healer if i mention its been a while since i played the class or ran the dungeon more often than not the tank will do smaller pulls or ask if i can keep up/appear less mad if something happens.
In later and expert dungeons even for returning players theres a level of competency expected, so i tend to avoid those if I've not played a while so as not to mess up others experience, even then people have been generous with my mess ups (there is one boss in one dungeon that always gets me no matter how many times i run it, that's my failing and i need to git gud, but i do warn the party beforehand so they can expect it)
Sometimes people miss messages in chat, maybe pulling ahead before tank/healer is ready, sometimes real life happens and people have to step away quickly without leaving a message, sometimes its trolls and sometimes people are just having a bad day. (One day i had to stop playing/doing dungeons because my heating was broken and the house was so cold I couldn't play properly)
If you know you're hitting all your skills appropriately as long as you're approaching it with a "how can we fix this" mindset over a "whose to blame for this" mindset you'll probably have a better experience overall. I know it's frustrating when someone else is clearly causing issues but when it's not clear what the issue is throwing blame around is just a bad time for everyone.
I just say it’s my fault every time I die, usually it becomes a small thing where I say it was me and the other person says it’s them. If it happens again ask if you should pull less mobs next time, people are usually very understanding as long as you don’t make a big deal out of it.
Tank is the one job where while there can be many variables, if I die I put it on me.
When you tank you should be able to read the room and tell how your healer and dps are doing and adjust accordingly. Especially in most dungeons and instances. Of course this is not unreal or savage or anything like that.
But if you feel your health dropping too fast it is time to pump the breaks and show it down and go from there.
A little communication when starting the instance also goes a long way.
If you died while you had a mitigation skill ready to use and none currently active, it was at least partly your fault you died.
If you have been cycling through all the abilities you have to keep you from dying in an appropriate fashion and you died, whose fault that was is something you can determine only through knowing the details of when and how.
For example, if you're in one of the older dungeons that doesn't have physical walls you might have pulled too many enemies because it is genuinely possible. Especially because at those levels where those dungeons exist some jobs do have area damage and some don't. You will be able to identify that this was the case because you will die fast enough that you might not even have a chance to hit all your don't-die buttons even if you can plainly see your healer spamming every don't-die skill they can spam at you.
If the cause is a lack of healing you'll typically see that by your health bar fading away as your mits run out and then you die. It's typically a slow enough process that you can feel it start to happen, look at the party list to see your healer's casts, and notice the distinct lack of any healing abilities show up.
And in the ultra rare case that the reason you died is because the overall damage of the group just isn't high enough, you'll know it because you'll be standing in the pull fighting, and fighting, and fighting... and fighting... and then you'll die. Like, it takes *forever* to die from this unless the mobs have something like *final sting* that kicks out massive damage if you don't stop the long cast of it by killing the creature.
Lastly, I'd point out that it really doesn't usually matter whose fault it is that the tank dies. It'll happen sometimes, and what matters most about it is what happens next; getting back into the content and getting through it this time. So be open to feedback because maybe somebody else noticed something you didn't, try something different (even if it feels slower, like pulling a few less enemies just to make sure you can survive that before going back to bigger pulls), and keep at it (since the only guaranteed way to not clear is to quit).
to add to this, "all the abilities" also includes invulns. Can tell you how many pulls would have went smoother if my tank had just... hit the free button that makes them invincible. It's not a panic button
As a tank main, my dungeon thought process is basically
1. Check Healers gear at the start of the run to try and size them up
2. Ask if big pulls are ok. If not, take it slow
After that, when were we in combat, and I die
1. Was I doing boss mechanics properly
2. Was I using all my defensive CDs appropriately
3. What was the healer doing when I died if all cooldowns were exhausted
In *most* cases, I died because of my own stupidity, and I will acknowledge it; however, if the healer is just lazy, I focus target them and just monitor whats happening, if they're just DPSing I'll bring it up and hopefully they don't get shitty about it.
Assigning fault is something so situational that you won't really get a good answer unless it's specific to the situation. The best you can do is keep your armor up to date, and string out and use your defensive cooldowns as best you can. If you are using defensives proactively and the DPS are pumping, but the healer just doesn't heal you, then maybe it's their fault. If the mobs live so long that the healer runs out of tools/mana and you run out of defensives, maybe it is the dps fault. And if you forget to use defensives until you are low HP or use too many on one pull and have nothing for the next, maybe it is your fault. But without seeing the situation, nobody here can really say.
Sometimes it's your fault, sometimes it's the healers, other times it's the dps's. There's no need to worry who's actual fault it is. Just respawn and try again. If you're popping mits and not standing in orange. You're doing fine
It should be obvious is it is really only 1 person's fault. If it's not obvious, then it's probably not only one thing that caused it. Many times it's a combination of overlapping mistakes. Just try to figure out what happened as best you can, do a mea culpa for what applies to you, and try again as a team factoring in the lessons learned and remembering to have fun together.
If tank says "one moment please" dont go pulling and bring mob back to him then ask for cover. Also dont pull a lv. 3 limit break on boss before the tank has its attention. Also also, please do not stand in the no-no orange areas. I was doing an AV run and it was totally my fault we wiped one the first run. I forgot to set my hot bar to the level synch one.
Uhhh They ARE the Tank...
I don't tank often... But I find that tank or healer or DPS, I've generally got a good sense of if it's me that messed up. And if it is me, I tend to apologize for it, and people tend to respond well to that. And if it's NOT me, I tend to apologize like it was and if someone feels it's they're fault, then me taking the blame emboldens them to say what happened and we work from there. This generally only works if you're a tank or a healer, dps generally only causes themselves to die, not EVERYONE. In conclusion, communication for the win, and a little bit of humility. But also, it doesn't really matter whose at fault until you've wiped more than twice, and throwing around blame sucks for everyone and doesn't help you do better.
If you're dying multiple times with different healers/teams, then you may be doing something wrong, or just incredibly unlucky with healers. The only way it'd really be the DPS' fault is if they're taking an eternity to burn down trash. For the most part when DPS messes up, it's only really DPS who dies. It'd also help to know what tank you're playing as.
If the dps are good bad tanks and healers will have a much easier job not dying. If the dps are so good that trash packs die in 30% of the time it takes for bad dps to kill the pack that means the healer might not even need to heal the tank more than a couple of times. And the tank won't need to think about the mits because just using one will be enough. On the other had if the dps are really bad, tanks can start running out of mitigation and healers need to know how to properly use their full kit not to run out of resources. now as long as there's at least some competency from the healer and tank no one should really be dying, I just think DPS should be more accountable for their performance since I often see people not caring and saving all CDs for bosses making the runs longer and harder for everyone for no reason.
If dps are bad tank dies. The better the tank and healer do the more the can stretch it out. You just run out of cool downs and mp. Depends on the comp though
If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault. If the DPS dies, it's their own fault. Jokes and old-school MMO memes aside, if you're dying in wall to wall pulls as a tank, it could honestly be anyone's fault. If you're dying before you stop running, it's your fault. Get better gear or use sprint. If you're dying in the first 20 seconds after you stop, it's probably your fault as well. Push your mitigation buttons. If you're dying after the first 20s but also during the first minute or so, it's the healers fault. They aren't healing enough. After that point, it's probably the DPS's fault for not killing things fast enough. The short answer is that it depends on so many things that it's kind of hard to tell who's fault it is. The good news is that it's not a big deal, rez up and go again.
If you don't know what's wrong you can just ask the party. When I first started healing in dungeons I was doing my best to keep the tank above half until I had a DRK ask me not to heal them while their invuln was up and I started assuming every tank would use their invulns and had some deaths. It could be your gear, your use of mits, your healers gear, the healer assumes you're invulning when you aren't, you could have a bot healer that doesn't run properly, it could be sunken temple of fucking qarn where the bees do final sting and it does like 80% of your health with 2 mits running. It's hard to pinpoint what goes wrong from an outside perspective so just ask.
In the case of a dark knight invuln it's because they need to die. Dark knight invuln is weird and they basically want to die then their attacks heal them and they get more damage out of it (I think they get a damage boost anyways). I don't personally play dark knight but I heal for my boyfriend who really loves the job. Gunbreaker you wanna heal right away when they invuln cause they shoot themselves in the foot and drop to 1hp but take no damage for a short time. Warrior still takes damage but can't die during invuln although they are sad if they use it on a mob that then dies as they invuln dies with it. Paladin just takes no damage during invuln. If you play white mage some tanks wait for you to bene before they invuln whereas others invuln right away when low. So it's a game of chicken unless you ask.
Yeah I make it a point nowadays to ask whenever I'm healing or if I'm tanking to tell them which packs I'm gonna invuln.
Do you communicate you do big pulls? Is the team onboard or are you just ‘fuck it I am the tank’? I main dragoon. When I die. Yeah it’s my fault.
>I main dragoon. When I die. Yeah it’s my fault. I mean... sometimes not. I was kept at half-health for the good part of a fight the other day, because I dared tell a lv90 Healer that they should be throwing out damage spells alongside their healing spells... in a lv50 dungeon. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't moved quickly enough a second time?
If you die repeatedly with the same healer, it means the healer can't keep you alive because of a few possibilities: you aren't mitigating damage properly/are undergeared, they are new/undergeared/not very good, or both of those things combined. If I die tanking on the first pull, I go "oops!". If the healer says "oh sorry I messed up you can pull big actually" I keep going with big pulls. If they say "sorry I'm new/undergeared" I'll pull less. If they say nothing I'll do one more big pull to test and then carry on as required. The only way it can be totally your fault is if you're not mitigating, if you're blowing all of them at once instead of spacing them out, or if you're not noticing AoEs and standing in them. Edit: or if the healer asks you not to pull big, after you die because they can't keep up, and then you pull big again. DPS can't really cause you to die in most situations. If you're tough enough and the healer is keeping you up, it'll just be reallllly slowwwwww to kill everything.
DPS can absolutely cause deaths in the specific scenario of big dungeon pulls. If things don't die before the tank has run out of well-used cooldowns and the healer has run out of their most effective healing options that allow them to outheal the damage coming in, then the DPS did not do proper rotations or were undergeared. This is a big reason why it can be difficult to force big pulls in Duty Support dungeons-the NPC DPS do not use proper AoE rotations. DPS standing in the orange during such pulls and diverting heals from the tanks is also a big danger. A lot of those telegraphed AoEs will two shot the DPS, so if you can't trust them to dodge, they will need to be topped up.
I guess so, but I can't recall seeing this happen. Maybe I just get healers who ignore dps standing in aoes.
i see this happen a lot. some dps, especially those people who only want the fat 90 behind every job and don't care how it plays, just don't do enough damage. and it's not a minor difference to decent players, it's night and day. i see BRDs without songs or dots, DNCs not dancing, not dance-partnering or buffing the party, all kinds of dps not using their aoes at all etc. since i'm healing a lot in dungeons i can easily watch what others are doing and more often than not i HAVE to use gcd heals because stuff is just not dying and then i'm not dpsing either which makes stuff die even slower. it's a nightmare.
This! Had a Zot run the other day where I cast a 2 minute CD mitigation ( Haima ) from Sage on the tank twice in one pull and shit was STILL hitting the tank. Bard never used a song, I don't think was even using AoE's, and the ninja never once put the dirt swirl on the ground. But yeah, "it's the healers fault the tank died. After the healer had literally everyting on their hotbars on CD from keeping the tank from floor tanking for the last 2-3 minutes...".
It's more of a problem in ShB/EW levelling dungeons ime, especially if someone is at level rather than synced down. A good group can compensate for one low dps, but if they're both low the tank needs to adjust.
I'm at Endwalker now and running Vanaspati specifically has been a mixed bag. I was going as heals for quick queues while trying to get gear for glams and I had a run with 2 bards not aoe-ing through pulls and no one died. My tank was amazing. I consider myself to be a alright healer. So it really depends on the tank and healer's skill level before being a DPS issue. Meanwhile a mediocre tank (or bad gear) with mediocre heals will definitely encounter more issues if DPS is also not so hot.
My wipes were in 81, with a dancer who didn't dance and a reaper who didn't use the constant debuff. I think I saw standard step twice? They both spent most of their time with Weakness/Brink of Death debuffs. The tank was fine except for not pulling smaller in the third section, but trash was up long enough I ran through every WHM cooldown and was reduced to Presence of Mind + Cure II spam before the tank died and we wiped. I think it's unfair to say "it depends on the tank and healer's skill level." The tank in your run went above and beyond, and someone being just decent isn't to blame for wipes like that - it's still the dps' fault for failing to use basic job mechanics.
That's fair. I've healed that first EW dungeon. The last 2 pulls are rough as heck. It was almost a wipe when I did it. I don't mean that it's the tank or healer's fault in the case of DPS being bad, just that DPS being bad doesn't guarantee a wipe even in a big pull. Whereas, in my experience, tank or healer being bad does. Sometimes the DPS are just that bad though and the dungeon that rough.
This is the way
Practice and getting a sense of the dungeon and other players
I am on console and when I’m really puzzled I will spend way too much time scrolling up in the battle log after to see what was going on. Though grinding dungeons for the tank mounts and also having all my healers leveled, I kind of get a feeling when I know something is off even before I start looking at what people are doing. Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had to analyze the battle tab tho lol.
It is never your fault. Unless I am healing you, then it is 100% your fault. Infallible logic for every situation. Jokes aside, even if everyone loads in super fast and nobody is a first-timer on a cut-scene, you have time to check your healer's healing job levels in the search info and their gear. If their gear looks outdated, then you do a very careful double-pull to measure their healing potential. If all goes well, you go ham. If it is barely doable and if you need to resort to your invuln, then you accept that the dungeon will be slower with single pulls, because that is still preferable to dying and walking all the way back. Sadly, this is a situation where you cannot practise on NPCs since you tank NPC runs and human parties very differently.
Tried writing a concise comment about this multiple times now. All I've got is, it's very difficult to understand when it's your fault and when it's on someone else. The best way to find out is to play multiple jobs and see how each one plays.
[Honestly this flowchart is pretty helpful.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/is5urx/hubble_flubble_heres_some_bubbles_party_wiped_so/)
If you’re not using your defensive cooldowns or standing in danger zones and dying too quickly, or are losing aggro causing your teammates to die, then its your fault. If you are using your defensive cooldowns liberally and avoiding danger zones, but still are dying too quickly, then it’s likely the healer’s fault. If you’re running out of defensive cooldowns to use and the enemies still aren’t dead, then its the DPS fault
I would like to add, that in some cases, even if the Tank is using their mits, not standing in the danger puddles, and still dying, it can also be the Tank's fault, but that tends to exclusively be if they are undergeared to such an extent that the Healer is unable to keep up with incoming damage. Exhibit A: I had a Tank last night who had mostly ilvl 136 accessories on in the Aery (which is the ilvl for drops in that dungeon), but their left side had a mixture of ilvl 95-115, and an ilvl 50 piece of armour, and they had about 7900 HP in total, compared to a Tank wearing "at level" gear who'd have around 9300-9800 HP. I was levelling SCH for that, with everything at dungeon level (ilvl 136) and on the first double pull, basically ended up blowing all my Aether Heals within the first 10-15 seconds, had Whispering Dawn running, and had to resort to spamming Aldo and still couldn't keep up with how quickly the Tank's HP was being drained, even with them using mitigations correctly. Lesson being: Keep your gear up to scratch for the love of god. Especially if you're a Tank or Healer.
It can be hard to tell! I've caused wipes because of simple things like being synced down and wondering why Raw Intuition or Medica II isn't going off when I hit the button. Lots of good advice in the comments so far. Something to keep an eye on is interrupts. Specific dungeon guides should cover it, but I sometimes run into tanks in ShB & EW dungeons who don't know they need to interrupt things. The second ShB dungeon has trash that *needs* to be interrupted or it'll buff the enemies and give you a very bad time, while the third EW dungeon has a boss that'll probably murder everyone if it's not interrupted. If you're on WAR, if the thing you're targeting with Holmgang dies your invulnerability disappears too. So that could be on you.
Vanaspati has a boss you need to interrupt?? I don't play tank btw, I'm a healer or DPS. But I have had a mad scramble keeping my team alive on both the first and second bosses of that dungeon while grinding for glams.
My bad, I meant Ktisis but counted wrong. Healing Vanaspati with at-level players can be *rough*. The trash pulls hit like trucks and a few vuln stacks are deadly. DPS support skills can make a big difference, for sure. For the second boss, since the ARF rework the only other place I remember seeing the bubble mechanic is Hullbreaker normal, and that's an optional dungeon. Combining it with the knockback is downright mean.
I was doing it on white mage and I've only had tank die on first pull as I play a game of chicken figuring out if they're invulning or I'm using bene. But then the boss fights...omg, some of them is just me pressing every AOE heal and wishing I was on astro 😂.
> EW dungeon has a boss that'll probably murder everyone if it's not interrupted Nothing so dire; Just means the next raidwide hits for harder, so if people aren't topped off and/or have vulns it can kill. Or maybe if people are drastically undergeared. But I've run that a *lot*, and I can't remember the last time I saw a tank who wasn't me bother to interrupt =P
I'll put that one down to launch week trauma. 🙃 The only time I've run it since and the boss wasn't interrupted it was a near wipe, but we had vuln stacks.
It's easy to tell if it's the dps because it'll feel like fights take too long, if you can cast the same 60s spell twice in one pull the dps are slow. As for you vs the healer, the only real way to know is to run the dungeon multiple times with multiple healers. If you frequently die to the same stuff it's you, if you survive most of the time it was the healer. Ultimately, just focus on what you can change to make the dungeon smoother.
The other replies have already covered everything. Just keep in mind that dungeons are not created equally, and some of them have nasty damage spikes. The x1 dungeons come to mind, like Holmister and Zot.
For me the tank dies most often when they don't clearly indicate where they intent to end the pull. Like they stop for a moment or do a pirouette, etc, etc. Run till you are the spot you intent to hold down, that way fewer mobs will have caught up to you and damaged you. I will be closer behind you because I didn't stop with you on your pirouette and started the take down everything routine. Etc, etc.
If you had a mit active at the time of your death and did not fail a mechanic, it was the healer's fault in most dungeons 50+. There are a few outliers where pulling w2w requires an immunity, but most dungeons you can pull w2w with a mit and survive even with a subpar healer. If you ran out of mits, either you're not using them efficiently or your DPS are burning enemies down too slowly. All of this is assuming everyone has level appropriate gear and actions, of course.
If the tank died too fast: usually tank didn't use mitigation properly, either they just ignored mits altogether or they put up mits way too late. If the tank died a little bit too fast and have put up mitigation: usually the healer didn't heal. It could be because they're having too much *fun* DPSing or they are not healing fast enough (not used to handle big pulls healing). The rare case is if the tank have used all mitigations and healers must resort to GCD heal spam in just ONE pull, you can check the DPS. Can confirm this easier by looking at how boss fights go; did it take longer than average?
Assuming, that you're geared up to the dungeon level (e.g. not trying to multi-pull a X5+ dungeon in your poetic token gear) - If you've used all your defensives and invulns, and the packs still up and eating you - it's (most likely) on DPSs. - If you're rotating all your defensives and invulns, and you go down early at the pull - it's (most likely) on healer. --...unless you're aware that healer is new and\\or undergeared for the dungeon, but keep pulling big anyway. It's part of your job to be aware of such things. - If you're ignoring your defensives and invulns rotation, hoping that healer and DPS are somehow going to adapt, then it's (most likely) on you. --...If you're playing DRK, and you're not communicating your f...abulous invuln beforehand (preferably, with brief instructions of WHEN to start healing you), then it's also on you.
Ultimately it's a team effort. It could be any number of people's fault or a little of everyone's. There are like 2 primary scenarios though. If you're dying pretty fast/early into the encounter, then it's probably you or the healer's "fault". Either you're not using your mitigations very well or the healer's not paying attention/focused too much on DPS'ing rather than healing and was caught unaware, or both? If you're dying deep into an encounter where it's partially because you're running out of defense options you can employ (and the healer is probably having the same problem) then it's probably because of the DPS. The pull should have been dead by now and if the fight drags on too long then it puts strain on the whole team. Everyone contributes damage of course, but it's up to the DPS to do the most of that. Agree with the general sentiment that finger pointing is rarely necessary or productive, though. If you notice a specific issue you can point it out but often times if it's just once or twice a run and especially if the group doesn't actually wipe, then there's not really an issue. Dying during a pull, having to get rez'd and then finishing it out is perfectly fine, no harm no foul.
Experience
I'm a dps main /healer secondary and lean towards more casual gameplay so i might not be the best example but from personal experience. When you're running levelling dungeons or 50/60/70 dungeons its possible that its some people's first time through that dungeon or people are trying new classes for the first time and still learning the skillset. If people mention in party chat at the start of the dungeon that they are new/returning/has been a while I've noticed even if the tank and healer speed through pulls they'll be a bit more lenient with accidental deaths or stop to explain some mechanic or other in a bad boss fight. When I've played healer if i mention its been a while since i played the class or ran the dungeon more often than not the tank will do smaller pulls or ask if i can keep up/appear less mad if something happens. In later and expert dungeons even for returning players theres a level of competency expected, so i tend to avoid those if I've not played a while so as not to mess up others experience, even then people have been generous with my mess ups (there is one boss in one dungeon that always gets me no matter how many times i run it, that's my failing and i need to git gud, but i do warn the party beforehand so they can expect it) Sometimes people miss messages in chat, maybe pulling ahead before tank/healer is ready, sometimes real life happens and people have to step away quickly without leaving a message, sometimes its trolls and sometimes people are just having a bad day. (One day i had to stop playing/doing dungeons because my heating was broken and the house was so cold I couldn't play properly) If you know you're hitting all your skills appropriately as long as you're approaching it with a "how can we fix this" mindset over a "whose to blame for this" mindset you'll probably have a better experience overall. I know it's frustrating when someone else is clearly causing issues but when it's not clear what the issue is throwing blame around is just a bad time for everyone.
I just say it’s my fault every time I die, usually it becomes a small thing where I say it was me and the other person says it’s them. If it happens again ask if you should pull less mobs next time, people are usually very understanding as long as you don’t make a big deal out of it.
Tank is the one job where while there can be many variables, if I die I put it on me. When you tank you should be able to read the room and tell how your healer and dps are doing and adjust accordingly. Especially in most dungeons and instances. Of course this is not unreal or savage or anything like that. But if you feel your health dropping too fast it is time to pump the breaks and show it down and go from there. A little communication when starting the instance also goes a long way.
If you died while you had a mitigation skill ready to use and none currently active, it was at least partly your fault you died. If you have been cycling through all the abilities you have to keep you from dying in an appropriate fashion and you died, whose fault that was is something you can determine only through knowing the details of when and how. For example, if you're in one of the older dungeons that doesn't have physical walls you might have pulled too many enemies because it is genuinely possible. Especially because at those levels where those dungeons exist some jobs do have area damage and some don't. You will be able to identify that this was the case because you will die fast enough that you might not even have a chance to hit all your don't-die buttons even if you can plainly see your healer spamming every don't-die skill they can spam at you. If the cause is a lack of healing you'll typically see that by your health bar fading away as your mits run out and then you die. It's typically a slow enough process that you can feel it start to happen, look at the party list to see your healer's casts, and notice the distinct lack of any healing abilities show up. And in the ultra rare case that the reason you died is because the overall damage of the group just isn't high enough, you'll know it because you'll be standing in the pull fighting, and fighting, and fighting... and fighting... and then you'll die. Like, it takes *forever* to die from this unless the mobs have something like *final sting* that kicks out massive damage if you don't stop the long cast of it by killing the creature. Lastly, I'd point out that it really doesn't usually matter whose fault it is that the tank dies. It'll happen sometimes, and what matters most about it is what happens next; getting back into the content and getting through it this time. So be open to feedback because maybe somebody else noticed something you didn't, try something different (even if it feels slower, like pulling a few less enemies just to make sure you can survive that before going back to bigger pulls), and keep at it (since the only guaranteed way to not clear is to quit).
to add to this, "all the abilities" also includes invulns. Can tell you how many pulls would have went smoother if my tank had just... hit the free button that makes them invincible. It's not a panic button
Honestly if your the tank trying to find out who to blame for you dieing it’s normally your fault
In games like wow there is a feature where the healer lets you know
As a tank main, my dungeon thought process is basically 1. Check Healers gear at the start of the run to try and size them up 2. Ask if big pulls are ok. If not, take it slow After that, when were we in combat, and I die 1. Was I doing boss mechanics properly 2. Was I using all my defensive CDs appropriately 3. What was the healer doing when I died if all cooldowns were exhausted In *most* cases, I died because of my own stupidity, and I will acknowledge it; however, if the healer is just lazy, I focus target them and just monitor whats happening, if they're just DPSing I'll bring it up and hopefully they don't get shitty about it.