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I understand the need for heal pots, and especially on bosses where streak crits can kill you. I always spam heal pots on bosses, but this should not be the case. Spending 200 health pots on a zone run as a tank while some newb runs around in his pally mage setup with full mana the whole time refusing to cast any spells, kinda sucks. If I tank for a group I make no money unless an awesome pink drops for me, if I stay back and dps I can make a little cash. Mages can get high m/s cutting down on the need for mana pots, or just use less spells if needed. Self heals and mage heals should keep a tank alive durring battles, not the tanks ability to spam click health pots.
This is a major flaw in the game that should be looked at.
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Heal is essential. My bear notices immediately whether a mage is any good. Unfortunately, most of them still need to be told to heal as often as possible and use other skills. But then I have to tell birds how to use their skills, bears how to use their skills, so I don't think mages are that different. It IS immediately noticeable from the tank perspective when a mage or mages actually do work though. The fight is MUCH shorter and furry bear uses MUCH fewer pots and groups likely won't fail because the bear is dead and the rest of the group is getting pounded.
My mage has generally not been told to leave, even by a group of bears. Generally they are happy to have the mage. Of course, it's obvious when they're buffed, healed, rez'd and the enemies are debuffed. That doesn't mean accidents can't happy and magee has walk back, but it's also obvious when bears know what they're doing: Magee almost never has to watch out about getting pounded. Now if the tank is an idiot, dies a lot, yells a lot, gets the mage killed a lot, well, that also is obvious. It's also obvious when the level 50 STR bear and the level 49 STR bear are waiting for the level 46 INT mage to lead the way ...
I think all this means that a good group is wonderful to play with, the same as it was in AO2 and Swamps and Nightmares and really, anywhere.
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I think I'll write an article about palys and tanks.