If you think DPS is easier than Tanking or Healing...

[Lightfist]

People who think tanking is easy think tanking is just holding threat. See: Stupid.

[Powerwurdhug]

makes sense, you pull 10k dps when you should be doing 20k, because yo udont know how to

You assumed that I was referencing a fully raid geared marksman hunter. I was not I was referencing the average player in the average gear....

[ChildeRoland]

If you have the right gear and you go online and look up the max dps rotation you can macro it and button smash 1 button and pull 10k dps.....also roll a healer and tank then repost

No you can't.

[Zinspawn]

All 3 roles are easy as long as all 3 roles are doing they're job correctly. Tanking is easy as long as the healer is healing correctly and DPS are CC'ing and aren't pulling aggro. Same goes for healing, as long as the tank is tanking and DPS are CC'ing, all is OK.

[bindar]

My main is a prot warrior, but I'd have to agree, I think melee dps is one of the harder things to do in this game. Tanking is pretty easy, well actually this game is pretty easy for most things, but then again I've played a tank for years so maybe it just feels more natural to me, and that's why dps seems more difficult to do well to me? *shrug*

[Kewi]

Tanking vs. Healing its a toss up...

But don't tell me a mage or hunter in the back has more conerns then a tank or healer...
1) Attack Skull
2) Don't attack not-skull
3) Don't run off and high-five the next group of mobs

13k dps, or 15kdps, all that means is if the fight lasts X seconds or X +4 seconds....


If a healer is late on a heal, or selects the wrong heal, someone dies
A healer also has the same 'move away/out of' problems dps does
While they do not have to play to optimize some form of healing rotation that provides the best Heals per second, they instead have to respond to situations given to them, promptly, or they fail at their job.


Tanking, same 'avoidance' issues as DPS, same 'use a rotation' like dps... but
1) Hold agro on skull
2) Hold agro on non-skull (Different from DPS)
3) Hold agro on CC Breakers (Different from DPS)
4) Interrupt abilities DPS is too tunnel vision to notice (I.e. CC broke and now casting zomfg-die-healer-die spell)
5) Position mobs in advance with knowledge of how DPS generally will not notice they are walking into a small hellfire on the ground where the boss was (Halfus)
6) Plan and time CD's... Or Die. (Tanking Halfus add during AOE stun)

And there's a good bit more things I could list that are generally tank responsibility because competent DPS is hard to find in PUGs (Not saying they don't exist, just hard to find)


Then again, its all perspective in the end.. As a tank, I only see bad DPS or bad healers.. I can't see bad tanks.. I suppose a DPS'er would have a harder job with a bad tank... But a good tank makes DPS rather easy >.>

[Denaka]

I personally have played all 3 roles in high-end content. I would have to say that dps, is the easiest role to play. Obviously you are still counted on to be able to pull decent enough dps to down a boss. Healers and Tanks have a little bit more important role. Healers are accountable for everyone including themselves. They have to keep tanks topped off and dps healed. They also have to heal themselves from time to time. Tanks have to keep aggro on all the mobs and maintain their own life and cd's.

Though it is a lot easier for tanks and healers to get geared. Dps is not a easier roll to play.

[Reptar]

Another thing that you are overlooking is you can take a raid, and have all of their dps performing at about 50% of their max potential, and you can still kill encounters. If you use that as an example, you can easily assume that healing/tanking is tougher, as they are carrying the weight of the raid. At the same time, you can view that by seeing that most dps are only capable of doing 50% of what they potentially could do.

So again, it comes down to your opinion of what hard/easy really means to you.

[Powerwurdhug]

If you have the right gear and go online and look up max threat/healing rotation you can macro it and button smash 1 button etc etc. That argument doesn't work very well my friend.

You need to be removed from the gene pool you are do dam ignorant. A healer CANT and DOESN'T heal with a rotation. Try it one day and find the group dead.

[Deleted]

The game's "difficulty" depends on the situation. Its much harder to heal a bad 5 man than dps in a good raid. DPS is only "hard" because you can always do better. No one will ever dps 100% perfectly and match their theoretical dps. In that regard its a challenge, but putting out the DPS required to beat enrage timers isn't very hard.

Not standing in the fire as ranged dps isn't very hard. Some fights are tough on melee, but at the end of the day all you "have" to do is beat the enrage and OoM timer (making it harder for healers). If you're good at dps it isn't really hard at all, its just a challenge to push your dps but the priority/rotation is second nature to you.

Tanking isn't very hard now since threat is trivial but in the future tiers of content we might actually have to choose between things like threat and mitigation. Raid tanking has never really been all that tough but 5mans offer a bit of challenge, especially if the group is light on CC or undergeared/bad. Most of the difficulty from tanking comes from learning your class and the fights. Tanks do a lot of their work before hand in planning and gearing. Its not harder so much as its sink or swim. Groups won't carry a bad tank where as bad dps get carried every day.

Healing can be the hardest as you are expected to make up for everyone else failing. It can also be the easiest in 5man with lots of CC. With mana management coming into play now there is more thought that has to go into healing and you really have to know a lot about your class to make quick decisions on the fly. If you want to compare it to DPS you can always heal better in terms of making the most correct decisions concerning efficiency. All they really "have" to do is keep everyone up though, which is harder IMO on average than putting out enough dps to beat the enrage timer.

Me and my mage friend sometimes carries bad groups (I'm playing elemental). It's not that unusual that you end up with a tank that don't know how to pull 1 pack and have no idea about cc. Sometimes it's only me and my friend left with the healer to kill a ½ pack of mobs by kiting/using earth elemental. It usually ends well since we have so many slows and my elemental.

Btw, I don't like LFD tool but me and my friends rather pug with total strangers than finding some decent guys on our server for HCs.

[Agroculture]

Tanks and healers who think that dps is easy are just trying to make themselves feel better for being unable to compete with decent dps,thus having to pick a spec that raises their chances of getting into a raid by virtue of having higher demand.

[BLSTMASTER]

Here's how I see it... usually the difficulty of a dps depends on the skill of the tank, difficulty of the healers depend on the skill of the dpsers, and the difficulty of the tank depends on the boss

[lol]

All roles are pretty easy tbh

This.

I've tanked, healed and DPS'd, they were all about the same difficulty.. DPS is the most exciting while healing is the most boring...

There is just alot more pressure on the tank and healer, you can get away with shitty DPS, well, could.

[Tore]

It's easier to get away with being a bad DPS than a bad Tank or bad Healer because being a bad DPS wont cause a wipe and automatically draw attention to you. However, being a very good DPS is just as challenging as anything else in this game.

Being a very good DPS doesn't just mean pulling l33t numbers. Being a very good DPS means pulling l33t numbers while taking the absolute minimal raid damage to aid healers while hovering 1% below pull aggro the whole fight for maximum efficiency and never pulling and being ready to go Bear Form/Bubble-Taunt/Unleash-Rockbiter, and pop all CDs to give the other DPS about 15 more seconds of burn time after the tank has died to salvage the attempt, be top on interrupts at the end of the fight, have your CCs for Mind Controls ready, and deal with any other gimmick in the fight.

The challenge in DPS is to multitask everything thrown at you without cocking up your rotation/priority/whatever. The sign of a good DPSer is someone who is tops meters as well as maintains awareness, responsibility, and can Super-Man it at the end either by staying alive, off-healing the raid, or off-tanking to get the kill.

[taran111]

Speaking as both a feral tank and cat I can tell you tanking involves significantly less pressure. Your job is pretty much done once you get threat. TBH I think wotlk tanking was harder than cata because pretty much every second an add is loose when it spawns was a dead dps or healer. Normalized hp and higher armor values ended that

[Alican]

I've tanked as a Prot Warrior and a Blood DK, healed as a Resto Shaman, Holy Priest and Discipline Priest and DPS as Arms Warrior, Fury Warrior, Elemental Shaman, Enhancement Shaman Fire Mage, Arcane Mage and Frost Mage. In raids of course. I can honestly say that tanking is easy... Unless you've got good DPS who'll push the damage. Then it's suddenly the hardest because then I suddenly MUST do my top-threat rotation while trying to position myself, watch for interrupts, consider where I'm standing so I won't have to breath the raid when I move, watch my health bar for emergency CDs and what-not. Second to that, I'd say either some Melee DPS or Healing. Most classes have threat dumps, like Enhancement has 'Wind Shear'. Arms and Fury Warriors don't have anything like that, there's no magic button that alleviates the problem so I'm left hoping the tank taunts it or try for an emergency disarm or put on a shield. Finally, ranged DPS. Seriously, it's easy as hell compared to the other things. I don't really have to care where the target is, as long as it's within 30 yards (Or more, depending on specs) I can nuke away. If I do pull aggro, there's plenty of time for the tank to taunt even if I don't have any emergency CDs.

It's all different set of skills between them though.

[Oshavah]

oki this one made me laugh really really hard. I played a Prot war in BC and Wrath and will be most likely playing one again later in Cata, AND i also am currently playing a frost dk dps. now, to say that dps is as hard as tanking or healing... yeah that tells me that YOUR the terrible dps, not us. if you have to concentrate THAT hard on dpsing then either A-your a Feral druid :\ those things is bitches B-your a pornstar WHILE dpsing (its a dream of mine) or C- your bad mmky? as a Frost Dk my rotation is mainly priority based and that does make it harder to macro but yes... it is semi-macroable and if you think spaming 1-4 buttons in random order is hard play a tank or healer then repost about hwo wrong you were. Healers atm are THE hardest spec of any class to play right now i do not care what anyone says, they are also THE most valuable and fuck any tank that thinks he/she makes the grp.

So to conclude, you sir have NO clue what your talking about so ssssshhhh big people are talking, heres a pudding cup. Reroll a healer or tank THEN come back and talk, and if i missed ti somewhere that you already have... then you must be one of the shittyist tanks/healers out there right now.
KBYE!

[Gotnobubble]

Oh come on, healbot. It's just unit frames atm, allows you to click-heal.
And yeah, dps is easier. Yea, you gotta cc and interrupt as dps, but hey, it's just like 2 additional buttons. And every little fail(even low dps) = extra pressure on the healer. Tanking isn't that hard, at least wasn't been hard in wrath. Didnt tank in cata yet.

Tanking in wrath was easy yes, tanking in cata is a lot more involved since we have to tank around cc again and not aoe'ing everything down. there is more to be aware of as a tank in cata then there ever was in wrath.

On topic....
DPS is easier since everything a DPS has to worry about, Tanks do to (aside from pushing our dps and keeping a target cc'd but instead we have to worry about pushing our survivability). Also we have to watch for adds, position of CC'd targets, positioning the boss, ect.

Healing is a completely different beast altogether. They have to worry about mana management, keeping everyone alive, dispelling, and even be called upon to cc or interrupt (especially resto shamans) if possible.

DPS is the easiest to play, but that doesn't mean that a well played dps class is still faceroll. it does take focus to play a damage dealing class to its fullest, including interrupts and CC while pushing maximum dps and trying to take the least amount of damage possible.

[Creotor]

I see what you mean and I agree with you, but only to some extent.
If you mean the amount of "playing" skill required to be a good DPS is the same as the amount required to be a good tank/healer, then yes.
If you mean being a DPS is just as hard as being a tank/healer, you're wrong. Tanks and heals typically have way more to watch and respond to in any fight and that is exactly what makes tanking/healing significantly harder, and for some people - more stressful.

[Kuja]

I think it's easier for DPS. All they have to do is stand still and pewpew. Healer has to switch targets, choose best suitable heals and everyone depends on them to keep everyone alive. If tank dies, its healer's fault.

Tank has to switch targets also and hold aggro while pewpewing. If a DPS gets aggro, it's tank's fault.

But if a DPS fails, it's np. Tank and healer alone can usually kill a boss together.