What role do you consider being less gear dependant to perform great at it?

[Deleted]

I guess dps is the less gear dependant, with healers being the most.

Tanks become pretty easy to keep alive once they reach some caps in stats, and they get there pretty quickly. Past that, they just become easier and easier to heal until it gets plain boring. That's assuming a decent gameplay of course, no matter the gear a bad tank will die.

DPS see a very sharp increase moving from blue to purple, but it quickly flattens. For example on my hunter I didn't really gear up since T11, yet I get pretty similar dps than near to full T12 people, only Arcane mages really put a decent slap at my face.

Healers on the other hand are terribly gear dependant. Sure you can get a high HPS quickly, but you'll run out of mana just as fast if your gear isn't on a par with the content. On my full T12 pally FL encounters are plain easy, on the half T11 priest, I gotta keep a close look on what I do to get to the end without going OOM.

Sure tanks/healers/dps do better with better gear, but healers have it way harder if their gear is inferior.

[Sayrah]

So you're saying healers are more gear dependant and not less (which is what the thread and poll is asking).

[Deleted]

So you're saying healers are more gear dependant and not less (which is what the thread and poll is asking).

Oops just realised that first sentence didn't come out right^^

[PHsname]

It really depends on the level of gear you're at. After a certain threshold (around 370 ilvl), healer gear starts to matter a bit less. Tanks tend to scale well until they hit CTC cap, DKs and Bears don't have that, though. DPS gear always matters and they continue to scale very well with added gear.

So in short...Healer gear is the most important until a certain threshold. Block tanks scale well until they hit CTC cap. DPS always scale well with gear.

[Deleted]

Guess the saying goes:

Tanking is skill
Healing is art
DPSing is math

I find that in a raid setting all 3 roles gear work in synergy. If it takes too long to DPS it usually means more healing needed; if tanks take too much damage it usually means more healing needed; if healers oom it usually means a wipe.

no if healers oom dps sucks or the group takes too much unneccesary damage

[sinisterwyvern]

All of them are pretty close to me.

If your dps doesn't have good enough gear but your tanks/healers do, the extended length of time it takes may force the healers out of mana and wipe the raid.
If your tanks don't have good enough gear but dps/healers do, the tank might take damage faster than the healers can keep up, lose a tank, wipe the raid.
If your healers don't have good enough gear but your dps/tanks do, the healers still may not be able to keep up with incoming damage (say something that isn't avoidable like beth's pulses, or when Rhyo's armor breaks and he does that last stomp), which results in deaths and wipes.

[Affectionate]

its kinda subjective, a healer in greens has no problem with a well geared tank, and a well geared healer can keep up the least geared tank lol


dps is dps, you just do more with more gear, but either way you're filling your role. (and skill comes into play here more-so than for gear vs gear of other roles)

[Savvy]

Id's say healing is the least initially, but once you do get gear rollin' you can really see it in the numbers.

[kilometer18]

This is a pretty weird question and frankly doesn't really make sense. I'm having a hard time determining why it doesn't make sense, though. It's waaaaaay too vague a question to give an a, b or c answer to, imo. Here are some of my thoughts:
a. Tanks that don't die and don't require exorbitant amounts of healing are playing correctly.
b. Healers that don't let others die are playing correctly.

idk what else to say about this

[Sansnom]

In my opinion.

DPS scales the most with gear. Better gear, higher DPS, boss dies quicker, less strain on the tank and the healer. In heroics where the enrage timer is very tight, gears becomes even more important.

Tanks needs to reach a certain level to guarantee a certain level of survivability. Beyond, they just become easier to keep alive but does not necessary makes the encounter easier.

Healers is more dependent on the group. If the group can reduce the amount of avoidable damage, then they can still heal undergeared.

[Cirque]

I'm gonna go for tanks. Sure undergeared tanks require a lot more healing, we did some heroics on Firelands on our altrun yesterday, one of or tanks dinged literally 2 days ago and was mostly in blues and even some greens, and he was a DK to boot, so the spike damage was immense, Alys' hc birds really hurt him, but in the end we did 7/7 and 3 heroic bosses. The two healers weren't superiorly geared either, a mix of tier11, ZA/ZG and Firelands stuff. My point being it's perfectly doable if a tank is undergeared as long as healers have the mana (and the skill..) for it, as aggro is a non issue anyway.

What's more, I actually had fun now because there was something to really heal. It felt like hey, this should be how tanks should be taking damage, though a bit less spikey would be nice. Normally I'm really bored out of my mind if I heal Firelands, even most heroics. Only fuckups make it fun (like Rhyo ones), I don't think that's really how it should be.

I've healed as a severely undergeared healer and I'm definitely not willing to repeat the experience. It's horrific. Undergeared dps can press their buttons as skillful as they can, but their max DPS will be capped at some point, so yeah, I'm really gonna go for tank here.

[Neldarie]

Kinda depends on the time and date of people going at content. Pretty sure "undergeared" raids that kill encounters first would prio DPS>Tank/Healer(Firelands). Unless its the first raiding tier where Tanks and Healers would have the prio like tier11 heroics. Anyways that said things constantly change in this game and so do priorities.

[Varabently]

I'm just curious as to what people think is the role which is less gear dependant in order to perform.

All specs are gear dependent, especially with how gear scales up multiplicatively these days.

[Mad_Murdock]

I'm voting healer, but that is subjective to everyone playing smart and not taking silly damage. Obviously if a tank is pimped out it's even easier. If the tank is squishy, then Healing would be a nightmare.

[Sayrah]

no if healers oom dps sucks or the group takes too much unneccesary damage

Which can be implied to what I said...think outside the box Mr. Flexes

[Benaud]

While healer is the obvious choice here because a healer that knows some clutch tricks can usually outshine their gear, tank is probably valid if the tank's gear is beyond the content, its beyond the content.
When you are where you should be its crucial to gear your tanks, when you outgear content it makes little difference if a tank is one tier overgeared or two.

[Deleted]

Tank is least gear dependant. Simply cause his job is avoiding damage and that often requires movement and not gear. DPS can't do damage without gear. Healer can't heal without gear cause he goes oom.

[Snarfysnarf]

As a tank your job is to stay alive and hold aggro on things, and if your gear sucks then it's pretty hard to not die in spikes of damage. As a dps your job is to do as much damage as possible (most of the time anyway) and if your gear is bad no matter how good you are at your class you will only be able to do so much. As a healer all you have to do it keep people alive. You can do that with a bad mana pool and weak heals. So it's healer.

[Sayrah]

Tank is least gear dependant. Simply cause his job is avoiding damage and that often requires movement and not gear. DPS can't do damage without gear. Healer can't heal without gear cause he goes oom.

I'm confused at this one. The way you say it, is that it's the tank's job to avoid avoidable damage, but isn't that the same for every role in a raid setting? Tanks avoid damage boss hits with their avoidance stats which is gear dependant is it not?

---------- Post added 2011-10-31 at 01:34 PM ----------

As a tank your job is to stay alive and hold aggro on things, and if your gear sucks then it's pretty hard to not die in spikes of damage. As a dps your job is to do as much damage as possible (most of the time anyway) and if your gear is bad no matter how good you are at your class you will only be able to do so much. As a healer all you have to do it keep people alive. You can do that with a bad mana pool and weak heals. So it's healer.

What if the amount of unavoidable damage is higher than the output your healers can sustain?

[Deleted]

I'm confused at this one. The way you say it, is that it's the tank's job to avoid avoidable damage, but isn't that the same for every role in a raid setting? Tanks avoid damage boss hits with their avoidance stats which is gear dependant is it not?[COLOR="red"]

I was more thinking of stuff like breath attacks that are directed to you and you sidestep to avoid damage, stuff on the ground, explosions etc.

other roles have to avoid certain mechanics too but thats not their mainjob. Only the tank has the single role of surviving , I played all three roles and generally found doing the best with bad gear as tank. You can do often so much to mitigate damage the average players doesn't do.