The reason most play DPS (it is not because they like DPS or because they hate tanks)

[Gorsameth]

Vengeance would like to know your location.

This is the final encounter of SoO and you have to scroll to rank 96 before you see something that isn't a tank.

Vengeance was fun if you were a MT but from a design standpoint is was a fundamentally broken mechanic that rewarded the tank for taking as much damage as possible, the opposite of what its role should be.

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I regularly beat dps as tank in every given content I do. Like, every time I play I outplay dps on the meters. Not sure what you're talking about.

Then your playing with shit players, stop hanging around in kindergarten boosting about how much better you are at something then a literal toddler.

[Relapses]

Vengeance was fun if you were a MT but from a design standpoint is was a fundamentally broken mechanic that rewarded the tank for taking as much damage as possible, the opposite of what its role should be.

If you can take that damage and not die I don't see the issue. /shrug

[tomten]

Then your playing with shit players, stop hanging around in kindergarten boosting about how much better you are at something then a literal toddler.

On the highest levels of difficulty: if you beat the DPSes: they are bad DPSes.
That includes AOE by the way. Most DPSes don't know how to do good AOE.

Except I'm not and you are beyond a clueless dps that knows fuck all about the game lol...
You haven't bothered to look at warcraftlogs top rankings... If you had... You would see tanks dominating some fights....
And often placing top 100 for overall ranks.... has absolutely nothing to do with beating shit players....if you still don't get it, overall ranks are the best of the best for every single class and spec in the entire fucking game........ Imagine being THIS clueless, it's sad lol...
Now go cry in the corner some more, nobody cares...

[Steelangel]

It's rare blizzard ever has a mechanic that wipes a group of one dps is awful but a awful tank or healer can kill a group.

This whole expac has had mechanics (at least on Heroic/Mythic) where one DPS who is paying more attention to parses than swirlies will wipe everyone.

[ClassicPeon]

If you can take that damage and not die I don't see the issue. /shrug

In harder content that would mean you are pulling a healer away from the rest of the raid/group.

[Relapses]

In harder content that would mean you are pulling a healer away from the rest of the raid/group.

Considering we were actively underhealing every encounter by the end of SoO when Vengeance started to scale into the stratosphere I think this is a L2P issue on part of the tank than anything else.

[ClassicPeon]

Considering we were actively underhealing every encounter by the end of SoO when Vengeance started to scale into the stratosphere I think this is a L2P issue on part of the tank than anything else.

Tanks arent supposed to be self sustainable. And they arent supposed to be 1 man armies either.

[Peacemoon]

At higher levels you might be right. At lower I assume its because dps are the free carried role. It's rare blizzard ever has a mechanic that wipes a group of one dps is awful but a awful tank or healer can kill a group.

Dps wipe the group unknowingly all the time. You just don’t have some announcement which says “YOU WIPED BECAUSE YOUR DPS SUCKS” - instead it’s just “what do you mean you can’t tank and heal indefinitely??”

To be honest I would say DPS is probably the most undervalued role. If you have good dps+++, you barely need to tank or heal anything.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Tanks arent supposed to be self sustainable. And they arent supposed to be 1 man armies either.

Yet we were for a good part of ToT and SoO...I miss MoP prot paladin, being able to solo tank nearly half of H-ToT was rather fun (Horridon, Tortos, Durumu, Iron Qon, Twin Consorts, our warrior tank handled Ji-Kun solo). This was all 10man mind you, so having another dps was actually a considerable increase to the total damage output of the raid as well as the solo tank dps being boosted from tanking the whole time.

[Relapses]

Tanks arent supposed to be self sustainable.

Blood DKs would disagree.

And they arent supposed to be 1 man armies either.

I agree and I wager Blizzard agrees because I'm pretty sure that's why they got rid of it; but God damn was it fun to put an entire raid on your back as a tank.

[epigramx]

This whole expac has had mechanics (at least on Heroic/Mythic) where one DPS who is paying more attention to parses than swirlies will wipe everyone.

It was always the case.

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Dps wipe the group unknowingly all the time. You just don’t have some announcement which says “YOU WIPED BECAUSE YOUR DPS SUCKS” - instead it’s just “what do you mean you can’t tank and heal indefinitely??”

To be honest I would say DPS is probably the most undervalued role. If you have good dps+++, you barely need to tank or heal anything.

And the harder a fight is the clearer that becomes. E.g. try to do mythic 22 (or something very high (I don't know the scaling currently) as a bad DPS. You will most like fail the timer unless your other 2 DPSes are practically god-like and they are willing to carry you.

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Yet we were

Blood DKs would disagree.

None of that works in any challenging fight or dungeon. In general this thread seems to have a lot of arguments that seem to come from extremely low levels of difficulty (e.g. normal mode raiding or soloing old raids).
Try to do even a single very high level mythic+ and you'll see a single DPS will wipe you if they are bad and no tank can solo it.

[Nymrohd]

None of that works in any challenging fight or dungeon. In general this thread seems to have a lot of arguments that seem to come from extremely low levels of difficulty (e.g. normal mode raiding or soloing old raids).
Try to do even a single very high level mythic+ and you'll see a single DPS will wipe you if they are bad and no tank can solo it.

Legion would like to have a word with you. Tanks used to be almost fully self reliant. And that is at a time when they did not have a broken mechanic proping them up like Vengeance.

[Segus1992]

It's a multiplayer game and people instinctively want to beat others in multiplayer games; they want an objective mean of being able to say to others "see? I beat you"; if that is missing they lose interest very easily.
Tanking and healing heavily lack that; DPSes can be considered bad if they only look at meters but they are the only ones who CAN use meters in some fights ("Patchwerk" ones); tanks almost never have that.

No, the reason most people play DPS is because DPS is easy and if you fuck up nothing happens. It's about responsibility.

[VinceVega]

This whole expac has had mechanics (at least on Heroic/Mythic) where one DPS who is paying more attention to parses than swirlies will wipe everyone.

But those are also there for the healers and tanks

[Segus1992]

None of that works in any challenging fight or dungeon. In general this thread seems to have a lot of arguments that seem to come from extremely low levels of difficulty (e.g. normal mode raiding or soloing old raids).
Try to do even a single very high level mythic+ and you'll see a single DPS will wipe you if they are bad and no tank can solo it.

You either have no idea what you're talking about or you intentionally invited exactly this kind of response with your title "the reason most play DPS" since the subset of people you're talking about is at most 5% of the playerbase.

[epigramx]

Legion would like to have a word with you. Tanks used to be almost fully self reliant. And that is at a time when they did not have a broken mechanic proping them up like Vengeance.

They weren't soloing the hardest dungeons there either, which was the topic of what you're were replying.

[Arganis]

I mainly play dps because I find healing, and especially tanking too much responsibility. That simple. : |

I agree with this also.

If you suck at dps you don't get singled out quite as much as when you suck at tanking and healing. At least at lower levels.

Some people love feeling important others simply don't want their performance monitored.

[epigramx]

At least at lower levels.

It's the common theme in most replies that disagree with my premise. In higher difficulties no DPS is being carried.

Sometimes they reek more than the healer because you can tell if a 5man trash pack doesn't die for example.

[Arganis]

It's the common theme in most replies that disagree with my premise. In higher difficulties no DPS is being carried.

Sometimes they reek more than the healer because you can tell if a 5man trash pack doesn't die for example.

Right, well I guess you should reframe your topic as "at higher levels" because from a general perspective I think the answer you're seeing repeated here is why dps is most people's first choice.

I actually think a lot of the people who prefer to play tanks and healers have different personalities than regular players because it's often a totally different experience.

[sponge5307]

DPS is more relax. People play games to relax and have fun. Tanking and healing in m+ isn't fun, is work and is not easy. As a tank you decided on the pull and if you pull too much the group wipes then is on you. You pull to little and miss the timer well that's on you too. You die that's on you. Healer not only have to dps but keep everyone alive even if that dps keep taking unavodiable damage. Is on you, ran out of mana well that's on you.

DPS well I am just chilling something goes wrong, not my fault. One way to fix this dps have very short interupt CD and make it it so most mobs have something that needs to be interupted if not the cast goes off and wipe the group. Tank and heal have a long CD on their interupt so they can't be blame.