… Now I have to go read this other guy’s post.

To address your comment, by no means am I implying that all tanks will turn to their healers to explain their deaths before analyzing their own actions but you are the exception, not the norm. I’m not saying healers should sit there and take any kind of berating but I do think it’s fair that they be prepared if it happens because it happens pretty often.

By being prepared, they can address the tank or raid leader’s question calmly and productively drive home the fact that the relationship between the tank and healer is all about synergy rather than the blind-single-mole-whacking game that a lot of people seem to perceive it as.

At the same time, a healer assigned to heal a tank who couldn’t keep the tank up did not make the right decisions and more often than not – the blame for the tank dying should be shared between the tank and healer. Nothing is more common than bad decision-making on both sides when it comes to tank deaths. I do disagree that the dynamic between tanks and healers during a raid is as black and white as you’re making it out to be.

I always look to myself as the result of my death before the healers. There is a point at which I will ask the question, but it would have to result in a VERY long amount of time with out a heal. Now that time may vary based on the healing assignments and encounter, but there is always something a tank can do to prevent a death (minus the one shots from encounter specials or mistakes), and I will always look to the tank before the healer.

A great Main Tank, as I have defined it, will ask: are my damage reductions on cooldown, do i still have a health stone, do i have my “last stand” ability on cool down, did I use a pot, did I use everything at my disposal to prevent my death?

If these questions shed light on the fact that the tank did not do his best, then it is his fault. Healers have gcds, they have decisions to make, they have a lot more to watch than a tank, and the best tanks help their healers by prolonging their survival and chance for a heal.