Tank, Heals, or DPS?

[Saturo]

Yeah, he was a douche. But a SKILLED douche. I'm pretty sure he wrote half the guides at EJ back in TBC. Besides, no one was stupid enough to try to argue. xD

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Eh, it tends to come with the elitist attiude.

[Saturo]

We top-officers never let him progress above raidleader for that reason, as we feared that he would just kick people that did something wrong, instead of solving it like the rest of us, by letting the player know what was wrong, why it wasn't cool to just spam AM because you feel lazy and so forth.

[cowmuflage]

I was in a group with some uber raid tank who was YELLING at the heals for not DPSing! O.o Whne the heals said he was doing his job(healing) the tank tryed to kick him like 3 times we kicked the tank instead

[Anansi]

Yea, healing isn't a competition. It isn't about who can heal the most. It's about whose targets stay alive for the longest amount of time. At the end of the day, if my tank or my group stayed alive, I've done my job right. If we've wiped because I wasn't healing well, I've done it wrong.

There is SOME argument about healing more effectively and how the meters show that, but I get heal sniped so badly on my druid in 25s that I just shrug it all off.

And yet, I can do a good amount of sniping myself as a disc priest. (And it happens to be the thing that I *should* be doing to be effective too.) It goes around!

The only healing class that seems boring as hell to me atm is pallies. Seriously, three types of heals, plus beacon? Sacred Shield and judgements are dull. To each their own, but I refuse to touch pally healing until Cata, if then.

Palla, that's generally my take on healing as well. If people live, I've done my job, if they die from non-stupid things, I have not.

As for the meters as Kalliope points out, the thing with that is it's so easy to pad the meters as a healer. Nobody ever looks at Overhealing to see who's wasted their mana, I always check Overhealing. If I'm top heals and lowest on Overheals amongs the healers, I'm very happy.

The last guild I was in with my healer was led by a Prot/Holy Paladin. He was obsessed with the healing meters, utterly obsessed. If he topped the charts he crowed about it, if he did not he unloaded with one excuse after the other, it was awful.
And we had one guildie switch mains from a DK to a Resto Shaman, and this guy too was obsessed. Funny thing is, he'd always run out of mana and beg for Innervates. Guess who was always topping Overhealing?

Healing is not a competition, and I find it also is not so dependent on gear like DPS tends to be. You can be a great healer in sub-par gear, and it's a field where skill really does trump gear. In DPS, skill is of course very important but gear is ridiculously important (still, skill over gear wins out). And in a game like WoW where so much hinges on randomness and luck, I find I have more control over my performance as a healer than as a DPS. If I lose a roll on gear (continually even - tonight marked my I've-lost-count how many times I've lost a roll on the 264 gloves in VOA25 for my Hunter) with my Shaman it's not so bad, but with my Hunter, that can really hold me back. I can top heals in ICC10 on my Shaman that's still got a handful of 232 pieces for example. Is not a big deal, but with DPS every piece of gear matters. So in that respect it's a bit less stressful to be a healer.

[Kalliope]

*nods to Anansi* Why just this past week, I healed Dreamwalker on my priest, who had gone shadow for most of the run. As a disc priest, there was NO WAY I was topping meters. All I was there to do was help shove the healing on the boss a bit ahead of where it was, then drop out of the portals to help the other disc priest outside. Didn't matter what the numbers were; all that mattered was that there was an extra boost of healing on the tanks/raid at the right time.

Yes, it is far easier for a lesser geared healer to progress than it would be a dps. But it really all comes down to raid synergy. A crappily geared healer in a raid with stellar dps is going to have an easier time of it than a healer in the same gear with equally crappily geared dps. Etc.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

God yes. I HATE having bad DPS when I am on my healer.

[Dulanie]

I have played every class and almost every spec in the 4 years I've played WoW. I have found that it's not so much class as play style. Take me for example....I can't heal my way out of a wet paper bag as a pally priest or druid, but as a shaman it's cake for me. As for tanking I suck as druid and pally. Warrior I am good at, but I fed him gear from my main so he was over geared. >.> My favorite class to tank with is DK. My Dk is a blood/frost/unholy hybrid for armor heals and aoe agro. My dps is barely 2k but boy do I piss mobs off. Dps....That is something that is a personal thing. I love all the dps classes (except for pally I can't play a pally to save my life lol) My favorite dps class is rogue. I say this because I have pulled off insane things with him that I shouldn't have, but I attribute that to spending the time understanding not just my class but the spec as well. My rogue is combat spec. As such with the psychotic things I do on him I have actually been asked by my guild's raidleaders to off tank some raid bosses cause I did a better job then some of the tanks lol. One example of this was during BC days when my guild was still trying to get Mag on farm. Me, the guild leader, and some other guilds were heroic farming to gear up one of the guild's healers. We were doing the instance with Quagmirran, and didn't get the NR buff. By the time he was down to 15% health the healer and a dps were dead. By 11% the tank was dead, and it was me and a frost mage left. I went OMFG!! @#$%^&*( might as well go with a bang. I unloaded on him with everything I had, and popped evasion. All things considered we should have been all dead by the time he hit 5% health but with my rogue tanking skills and the frost mage as back up we managed to down him. The guild leader said "Son of a B*****. I should have recorded that. That was awesome. oh and btw you do realize that you're no the official Kara OT right?"
I thought he was joking at the time...I was wrong.

I guess basicly what I am trying to say is that class/spec/role/wtfever all depends on your personal likes/dislike/playstyle.

[Anansi]

*nods to Anansi* Why just this past week, I healed Dreamwalker on my priest, who had gone shadow for most of the run. As a disc priest, there was NO WAY I was topping meters. All I was there to do was help shove the healing on the boss a bit ahead of where it was, then drop out of the portals to help the other disc priest outside. Didn't matter what the numbers were; all that mattered was that there was an extra boost of healing on the tanks/raid at the right time.

Right, healing feels more like you're contributing. Of course DPS is contributing as well, but as a DPS I feel like I'm in my own world competing against the rest of the DPS in the raid. On a fight like Dreamwalker, every bit of healing is a beneficial contribution, and I know the DPS and tank(s) certainly appreciate the boss going up quicker than not.

Yes, it is far easier for a lesser geared healer to progress than it would be a dps. But it really all comes down to raid synergy. A crappily geared healer in a raid with stellar dps is going to have an easier time of it than a healer in the same gear with equally crappily geared dps. Etc.

Oh for sure. If my mana consumption is accompanied by the sound of a flushing toilet, I know my raid isn't geared very well. On the other hand, if the fight is half over and I'm at 70% mana I'm looking at my mp5 and thinking I need to get rid of some of it.

Of course in the former situation the raid ends up getting angry because the healers didn't keep them alive and the healers are looking for the first opportunity to get out of the raid!

[Sonata]

I have played every role in a group (tank the least) and every class to some point.
Tanking ain't for me atleast, back in BC I was a pseudo bear tank...who was forced to tank...the thing was too stressful for me and I am scared of being on the front.

I went healer since my mentor kinda said that DPS have the worst attitude towards people sometimes (back in BC), and I felt wanted as a healer...even if it has it's ups and downs now and then. I'm always told that I needed to stop stressing it is a game. I can't always save everyone and I need to make a decision between who I battle ress.
Sometimes I think the game isn't for me if I stress over peoples opinions and if failure decides it's my turn for a ride in the failtrain....yeah I'm weird! But I have gotten positive feedback often with my healing which makes me a happy puppy.

Took up the DPS mantle as my second with some encouragement from a certain someone. So far I have done DPS in a dungeon with a mage (once sadly), hunter (duh) and shammy, oh and almost forgot warlock. In the DPS chair I am more relaxed maybe because there normally is more than one DPS.

[VelkynKarma]

Took up the DPS mantle as my second with some encouragement from a certain someone. So far I have done DPS in a dungeon with a mage (once sadly), hunter (duh) and shammy, oh and almost forgot warlock. In the DPS chair I am more relaxed maybe because there normally is more than one DPS.

I know exactly what you mean. It's not like DPS is responsibility-free, as all DPS classes still have plenty of things they need to do in a dungeon/raid setting. But it's nice to know that the rest of the group's survival isn't resting solely on your shoulders, since you're not responsible for getting hit while others aren't, or making sure those life bars are full.

On my hunter I can mostly focus on damaging the mobs in the order I'm supposed to. Now that I'm much better at that, as well as micro-managing my pet, I've started to improve on being able to keep an eye on other things going on in an instance run (I'm learning how to keep an eye on the healer, just to keep mobs off of them; I'll usually sic my pet on healer-attacking mobs until the tank can get it back). Maybe eventually I'll get better at keeping an eye out on the rest of the group, too.

~VelkynKarma