Who do you think should be getting gear first? DPSes, Healers or Tanks?

[Deleted]

The OP post does not promote any position. It's only a starting point. I have heard some decent arguments:

1. DPSes, because most of what is going on is chasing behind enrage timers or phasing faster.

2. It depends on the actual benefit. If a tank will become 20% more effective, why not?

3. It might not be worth caring if the benefit is lower than the drama caused.

[Lilija]

In most guilds I don't think it really matters. It relatively easy to gear up in general. Tho if tanks tend to drop too much it might a be a good idea too look for a moment at their gear.

[Dundebuns]

Depends if set bonuses are really awesome. Otherwise I don't think it matters too much, although I can see gearing DPS first to be the most logical course of action.

[Deleted]

The normal action is Dps > Tanks > Healers. Then you figure out wich tier sets and trinkets give most bonus to wich class/spec and make a prio list of your members depending on activity, skills, rank and things like that

Healers can manage well without much gear and dps most of the times just makes fights easier. Alot of raids got early "dps checks", one of them in Legion is Ursoc from what i know.

[Surfd]

I'm going to say DPS who don't share gear with tanks / your good DPS first, then tanks, then DPS who share gear with tanks / your mediocre dps, then healers, then your shitty DPS most likely.

As someone in another thread said, you very rarely fail raid fights because you are unable to heal through them. IF you are unable to heal through them, it is usually not because your healers are under geared, but because the fight is taking too long, and bosses are being allowed to get off their really hard hitting shit with long timers too many times.

The solution to this is usually more DPS. More DPS helps push phases faster, sometimes allowing you to skip dangerous mechanics all together. So gearing up your good DPS first is usually a no brainer. Tanks are a high second, as getting tanks to that sweet spot where they are meaty enough to tank shit without a healer tunneling them constantly also frees up healer resources. Never let a tank start gearing for more DPS over an actual DPS tho, that can come when you have shit on farm.

[Arcrin]

this depends on the tier and only for hardcore players really pushing it. so you cant just say which is more important. but recently dps has been important cause enrage timers.

[Deleted]

My group will be going Personal Loot for the first few weeks at least and we will feel it out. Gearing will then be focused more towards what the next progression boss needs.

[Deleted]

I'm going to say DPS who don't share gear with tanks / your good DPS first, then tanks, then DPS who share gear with tanks / your mediocre dps, then healers, then your shitty DPS most likely.

As someone in another thread said, you very rarely fail raid fights because you are unable to heal through them. IF you are unable to heal through them, it is usually not because your healers are under geared, but because the fight is taking too long, and bosses are being allowed to get off their really hard hitting shit with long timers too many times.

The solution to this is usually more DPS. More DPS helps push phases faster, sometimes allowing you to skip dangerous mechanics all together. So gearing up your good DPS first is usually a no brainer. Tanks are a high second, as getting tanks to that sweet spot where they are meaty enough to tank shit without a healer tunneling them constantly also frees up healer resources. Never let a tank start gearing for more DPS over an actual DPS tho, that can come when you have shit on farm.

A contested area about that argument is that this might depend on the major factor of how many healers you have. To say it practically you may have 4 or 5 and you now dropped them to 3 or 4. By the very fact you did that, you de facto created a major DPS boost that wasn't there before which is equivalent to gearing the DPSes, but at the same time, you might have a situation that by dropping healers to say 3 or 4 you are struggling for optimal healing as it is (assuming good healing skill) so in that situation not giving gear to the healers might not be as clear-cut.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

DPS > Healers > Tanks last for the simple reason that gear no longer has avoidance, so it has a bigger impact on the other 2 roles.

[Ichifails]

A contested area about that argument is that this might depend on the major factor of how many healers you have. To say it practically you may have 4 or 5 and you now dropped them to 3 or 4. By the very fact you did that, you de facto created a major DPS boost that wasn't there before which is equivalent to gearing the DPSes, but at the same time, you might have a situation that by dropping healers to say 3 or 4 you are struggling for optimal healing as it is (assuming good healing skill) so in that situation not giving gear to the healers might not be as clear-cut.

At the same time, more dps means you bypass or trivialize certain mechanics thus less healing is needed for the encounter. Shorter time means more spam heals because mana won't have to last so long.

[Deleted]

At the same time, more dps means you bypass or trivialize certain mechanics thus less healing is needed for the encounter. Shorter time means more spam heals because mana won't have to last so long.

That would depend on the case. You might phase faster but by dropping healers to 3 or 4 you might be already in a case that healing is hard (assuming good healing skill) and the dpses have no problem because now they are more. Phasing faster is an excellent point but it has to be balanced with the factor that healers might not be having it easy if they are already the fewest possible.

[AvCloudy]

I'm going to say DPS who don't share gear with tanks / your good DPS first, then tanks, then DPS who share gear with tanks / your mediocre dps, then healers, then your shitty DPS most likely.

That's just prioritising your tanks with extra steps.

I'd like to see how this pans out in Legion with the way they're trying to change tank and healer dynamics. It might be with the way they're tuning down tank survivability we'll go back to gearing tanks first. It might even be healers with the removal of spirit entirely.

[Raiju]

That would depend on the case. You might phase faster but by dropping healers to 3 or 4 you might be already in a case that healing is hard (assuming good healing skill) and the dpses have no problem because now they are more. Phasing faster is an excellent point but it has to be balanced with the factor that healers might not be having it easy if they are already the fewest possible.

More often than not more dps is the answer not less, since by adding another healer you are just adding more damage to be healed by roundabouts of longer fights = more execution requirements. Likewise gearing your healers means you can't drop them since the dps aren't getting gear.

OP: DPS > Tanks > Healers, very few tiers/bosses require otherwise.

Generally your healers are never running the fewest possible - they're running the fewest that is practical with current raid performance. Better execution, cooldown use, personal use, more dps all drastically lower healing requirements.

[Tojara]

DPS > Tank > Healers

Almost all problems associated with healer mana or tanks dying, are typically a result of DPS not being high enough. For the most part you gear your tanks second simply because they usually contribute damage, where most healers don't.

If they actually managed to make the game somehow require you to gear tanks or healers first, I'd be pretty surprised. Overall if you're having problems with tanks dying, it's usually the tanks fault. If somehow healing is an issue, I suppose you could always add another healer.

In my experience though healing is never an issue and it's usually a product of people playing badly and taking too much damage. Some bosses that seem to have an incredible amount of damage going out can be easily overcome by either being more efficient with your heals, or your raiders just being good with defensive CDs. Too often if you look at logs you see DPS with 1 minute CDs using them maybe twice over a 6 minute encounter, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it can be the difference between feeling like your group might need 5 healers or 4 (depending on how many people in your group exhibit this kind of CD behavior).

The only exception is if it's just a fucking huge upgrade for a tank or healer over a DPS who would only get a small upgrade, this however should be pretty fairly obvious.

Gearing tanks or healers hasn't been a priority in forever, and in the times that you did care about gearing either one of those, it likely wasn't an item that DPS would want anyway so it didn't really matter.

[Surfd]

Gearing tanks or healers hasn't been a priority in forever, and in the times that you did care about gearing either one of those, it likely wasn't an item that DPS would want anyway so it didn't really matter.

This is sadly kind of true. Ever since the removal of Hit and Defense, there has never been a real reason to gear anything other then DPS first. In Vanilla or TBC, where defense caps mattered, and missed taunts could wipe a raid, giving Tanks priority on specific gear made sense. However, that was also offset by the existence of actual "tank gear". There haven't been any Tank specific stats for several expansions, and they have finally removed healer specific stats as well now that spirit is gone, so pretty much all gearing decisions should slot pretty uniformly into DPS > Tank > healer with emphasis on "this piece has secondary stat X and Y, which are Vastly superior stats for Class+Spec A over Class+Spec B" to help determine who might need an upgrade.

[Deleted]

Better execution [..] drastically lower healing requirements.

it's usually a product of people playing badly

Yes, incoming damage being high can be in most cases blamed on bad performance, but if that is true, outgoing damage being low can be blamed on bad performance too in a few cases. Of course I do agree that it's more common in this game to have the DPSes fail to defend themselves than to have them care about their outgoing damage, which might imply in various cases that one could fix that and then drop one further healer and in theory have situations that you could even go 2 healers on progress. It remains that if you drop healers to the minimum, and you become optimal on personal defenses, you might find a situation that you already have the DPS you need to phase fast enough but the healers could use some help because that's the current balance in that particular case.

[corebit]

DPS > Healers > Tanks last for the simple reason that gear no longer has avoidance, so it has a bigger impact on the other 2 roles.

I'll give another vote for DPS > Healers > Tanks since Tank survivability and self-sustain is nerfed across the board and they depend a lot more upon healers now. Plus healers are now more encouraged to DPS like Disc priests.

[Soisoisoi]

There was a thread like last week on this. It's been DPS > tanks/healers for a long time.

[jamisawesome]

Set Bonuses > Main Tank > Everyone else

A geared MT will live longer and take less damage which gives the healers the space that they might need to do other things like keep other DDs up or throw in some DPS of their own.

[Nitros14]

If healers getting big upgrades lets you drop from 5 to 4 or 4 to 3 healers it's probably a good thing. If it's just leading to overhealing probably not.