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  1. #1
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    Are dpses less important than tanks and healers?

    I often hear that tanks or healers are more "important" in raiding. But I disagree. I think it's an illusion. And it works like this: A healer can wipe a raid almost instantaneously. A tank can similarly do the same. But a dps can in the long-term do it by being low in damage and eventually reaching an enrage. Sure they are more but collectively they will do it. A team with high dpses will make it easier for healers and tanks. There are encounters that the healers have it easy when the dpses are good since the encounter never reaches certain soft enrages. Also a healer can be helped by other healers. Tanks and also healers are often "alone" and that's a good argument (a dps can be compensated by other dpses) but that is not true when one goes to more complex encounters. The hardest the content the more important the roles of dpses. In fact there are encounters that the dpses might have more important jobs that the healers and the tanks. This is often seen in complex end-bosses of heroic mode, for at least some of their phases. Additionally certain particular dpses might have special important jobs that overcome the importance of a tank or a healer. In practice, certain tanking encounters are very easy, just a tunnel vision and a rare DBM-assisted hit of a cooldown. Also some healing jobs are easy, e.g. tunnel visioning the healing of a tank in a rotation one just does automatically.

    tl;dr: In most introductory encounters dpses do seem less important but when one advances into harder content the whole raid becomes important. In certain special jobs, some particular chosen dpses have more important jobs than anyone in the raid, in others tanks or healers might have it easier. It is unfair to call any of the 3 roles 'easy' or not. (and we could separate dpses into ranged and melee but it wouldn't make much of a difference since they are often put together in this fallacy)
    Last edited by Azshira; 2012-03-26 at 11:14 AM.

  2. #2
    most of the time, healing is always harder than dpsing.. tanking is generally easier but not as easy as dpsing.. still can be relativly difficult in some cases but not always.

    tanking is the strategy involved in keeping yourself alive, then the group
    healing is keeping everyone alive - plus planning for emergencys
    and dpsing is just - doing a specific job and maybe more plus a minimum performance

    some encounters are easier for tanks/heals than dps.. but not always..

    some people jus lack the skill needed to heal or use cds effectivly.. making healers higher on the chain... same with tanks.

  3. #3
    Tanks are bowls. Healers are milk. DPS is the cereal. If you don't have a bowl, nothing's going anywhere but where you don't want it. If your milk's bad, the whole meal is instantly ruined. If there is not enough cereal, the whole meal is a failure and you aren't satisfied.

    In short, everybody's equally important, but there's a certain order of importance.

  4. #4
    well you need about 17 of them, I wouldn't call them less useful, but you can usually spare 3 or so dps and still kill the boss with ease, but if a healer/tank dies then the boss will be much harder

  5. #5
    Titan vindicatorx's Avatar
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    I'm guessing your guild prioritizes tanks and healers on gear and you are looking for reasons to persuade them not to do so. For the majority of progression your tanks and healers gear is more important yes, Blizzard has been tossing in some DPS checks along the way and I think they are fewer and farther between than the need to have well geared tanks/healers most DPS I see don't maximize their current potential as is I don't see why they would if they got decked out first.

  6. #6
    less important? not at all.

    tanks and heals are both vital to any raid composition. but without good dps your raid will fail as well. the difference is: its easy to see if a heals/tank is failing. people die due to lack of heals or bad threat gen. when a dps fails there is a much larger margin of error. which is why theyre are sometimes considered less important. a dps pulling 75-90% of what they should be pulling is usually still considered a solid/decent dps. if a heals lets 10-25% of their raid die every time people stop bringing them. if a tank loses threat 10-25% of the time people stop bringing them. hence why dps can slack and still be dps.

  7. #7
    As somebody who has dabbled in all 3 roles in a raid environment I would like to say that low dps makes both the tank and healers jobs more difficult. Try healing madness when noobs aren't switching to tentacles.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Caiada View Post
    Tanks are bowls. Healers are milk. DPS is the cereal. If you don't have a bowl, nothing's going anywhere but where you don't want it. If your milk's bad, the whole meal is instantly ruined. If there is not enough cereal, the whole meal is a failure and you aren't satisfied.

    In short, everybody's equally important, but there's a certain order of importance.
    Rofl. hope you don't mind if I sig this.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Caiada View Post
    Tanks are bowls. Healers are milk. DPS is the cereal. If you don't have a bowl, nothing's going anywhere but where you don't want it. If your milk's bad, the whole meal is instantly ruined. If there is not enough cereal, the whole meal is a failure and you aren't satisfied.

    In short, everybody's equally important, but there's a certain order of importance.
    If the cereal sits too long and soaks up too much milk, you may not even finish eating it. Nobody likes soggy cereal.


    I love the comparison!

  10. #10
    The job of a DPS is pretty much the same every fight. Outside of perhaps a single target rotation and an aoe rotation, there isn't much else a dps can do on a typical fight.

    The job of a tank or a healer generally varies fight to fight. Bosses are different, debuffs are different, damage is different. While tanking can be generalized as "tank the boss and/or adds, face them away from the raid, use cds for big damage," it still varies some. Healers have a general rotation (in the sense that some spells you use more than others, and you play a healing class long enough, it becomes pretty standard) as well, but it is much more dynamic than a dps's, because it changes with every fight, and it potentially changes a little bit every time you pull a boss (due to RNG with damage).

    As it has been said, you typically have many more DPS, so often their contribution isn't looked upon to be as great as a tank or healers, but bad dps make a fight a lot harder for a tank/healer, as good DPS make the fight much easier.

    As far as PvP goes, I have played both a dps and a healer, and it is very much a toss up imo. It is often hard to find a truly good healer for arena, but the same could be said about DPS.

  11. #11
    Individually, DPS are less important than the healers or tanks.

    Lets say you have 6 DPS, 2 healers, 2 tanks. The difference is subtracting 1/2 and subtracting 1/6. Combined, however, all roles are equally as important and necessary.
    Last edited by Larynx; 2012-03-26 at 04:20 AM.

  12. #12
    you have not seen the enrage on some heroic bosses....Dps overall is probably the most important job in the raid. However, there is often 3-4x as many dps as heals, let alone tanks.....Simple numbers is why heals and tanks matter more. If you use 2 tanks, 4 heals, and 19 dps, 1 out of those 19 wont matter as much, even if their job is more important.

  13. #13
    If your healers suck, progression will be painful if not impossible
    If your tanks suck, progression will be painful if not impossible
    If your dps suck, progression will be painful if not impossible

    To answer your question, no.

  14. #14
    Here's what it comes down to. There are less healers and less tanks than dps in 25 man raids, 10 man raids and 5 man dungeons. Which means, it is easier to go without one dps than one tank/healer. Therefore, tanks/healers > dps when discussing importance.

  15. #15
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    Finding a good DPS is harder than finding a good tank, and slightly harder than finding a good healer, but unfortunately, you only need a certain amount of "average" DPS to get by, and unless you are one of those amazing DPS, you wont really stand out unless your blowing past everyone by a large margin.
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  16. #16
    Absolutely not. People just tend to think so because there are so many of them that they are easy to replace. A good DPS is worth holding onto however. <(Tanks PoV.)

  17. #17
    Depends on your attitude to DPSing.

    Performing a simple role of doing damage often suffices. But some people play dps always thinking how to reduce incoming damage, help your raid group, heal yourself while doing absolute maximum dps. Combined with how Blizzard designs raids nowdays DPS are rarely just sitting around in raids doing nothing but dps.

    Often they deal with complicated positioning mechanics, off duties and other specific tasks. Think of recent bosses like Bethilac, Baleroc, Alyzasor, Ragnaros, The Drive the Lava Guy boss (where literaly you need the entire dps group to steer a boss) Morchok Heroic, the Ooz Guy, etc there are an increasing number of bosses where dps have quite alot on their hands especialy in Heroic.

    Then you have the various utility tricks many dps specs bring to heroic raiding, everything from Lay on Hands, Combat rezzez, or in my case my raid tanks use my Arms warriors Rallying Cry as an extra tanking cooldown.

    Actualy nowdays from my experience tanking seems to be one of the less micro management tasks in a raid. If you are your raids top 1-5 dps alot of extra will be expected from you whenever IFFY mechanics come up. Also it depends what tank class you play, some are more pro-active and need large dosis of foresight while others are more simple to play etc etc.

    I been healing around abit on my shaman recently and to be frank...I found it lot less competitive and challenging then doing dps, altought alot less boring than tanking.

    My 2 cents.

    But all in all. Every role is important. What matters is how well do you fullfill that. Altought as a matter of fact gearing tanks and healers does take general priority over dps.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mammoon View Post
    The job of a DPS is pretty much the same every fight. Outside of perhaps a single target rotation and an aoe rotation, there isn't much else a dps can do on a typical fight.

    The job of a tank or a healer generally varies fight to fight. Bosses are different, debuffs are different, damage is different. While tanking can be generalized as "tank the boss and/or adds, face them away from the raid, use cds for big damage," it still varies some. Healers have a general rotation (in the sense that some spells you use more than others, and you play a healing class long enough, it becomes pretty standard) as well, but it is much more dynamic than a dps's, because it changes with every fight, and it potentially changes a little bit every time you pull a boss (due to RNG with damage).

    As it has been said, you typically have many more DPS, so often their contribution isn't looked upon to be as great as a tank or healers, but bad dps make a fight a lot harder for a tank/healer, as good DPS make the fight much easier.

    As far as PvP goes, I have played both a dps and a healer, and it is very much a toss up imo. It is often hard to find a truly good healer for arena, but the same could be said about DPS.
    I have to disagree on the first part. If u say the dps do the same job on each boss pretty much, then u can't say that isn't what happens to tank/healers... the dps job is to dps priority targets, while avoiding as much damage as possible; Tank, get aggro from mobs he needs to tank and keeps himself up as much as possible; healers heal what they were assign to heal the best way possible, while also avoiding unecessary damage; Therefore everyone does the same job on each boss if u generalize, if u go specific every roll may end up twinking what they need to do according to boss.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Caiada View Post
    Tanks are bowls. Healers are milk. DPS is the cereal. If you don't have a bowl, nothing's going anywhere but where you don't want it. If your milk's bad, the whole meal is instantly ruined. If there is not enough cereal, the whole meal is a failure and you aren't satisfied.

    In short, everybody's equally important, but there's a certain order of importance.
    I seriously don't think this analogy could be any more spot on. This is epic :-)
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  20. #20
    in my experience dps is more important

    I've never noticed better improvement in progression and completion of encounters than when the dps is improved. tanks and healers hit a ceiling where u cant be any more helpful, but dps has no ceiling

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