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

[paxen]

I started playing group content again in SL, and during that period I've gone from fumbling around with my casual guild doing +5s, then clearing Nathria normal, getting KSM in s2, joining a new guild and getting Curve in Sepulcher and now poking around 20-21s in S4 (although not sure if that's actually harder than KSM in s2).

I've done this as both dps and tank, and my takeaway is a) raid tank is booooring b) the impact of dps in dungeons (and raids) is vastly underrated by a lot of people and c) people mix up difficulty of playing your role with how hellish the pug experience is.

I don't like pugging much, and mostly do it if I get at least a friend or two on discord for running keys. It seems mostly fine but occasionally hellish in different ways depending on role.

In the first degree, tanks have a huge impact on keys, because they set the pace. That's intrinsic to the role, the one that pulls sets the pace, so unless you get a hunter with MD to pull *everything* (or backseat drive your friend via discord), the tank sets the pace, and the pace is crucial to a smooth dungeon run; fast enough that you make the timer, not so fast that things fall apart.

But once you've found the pace, DPS has a very large, and often unnoticed impact. Mediocre dps can hide, sure. Deal their damage, refuse to interrupt, get healed through mistakes. You won't get very far with that. Good dps, though, the ones that carry 15-20 keystone and are actually capable of pushing past 20, will hit their interrupts, do every mechanic, take far, far less damage than the guys blaming the healer in 15s, and do up to double the average dps while doing it. Doing all of this at the same time, while maintaining high dps, is difficult.

Nah, it's because as a tank if you lose aggro or pull wrong you wipe. As a healer if you miss a global or get hit by a CC someone dies. As a DPS if you miss a global the dungeon takes 1 second longer, if you get hit by something you just blame the healer. People pick DPS because it's the more relaxed role, all you do is follower the leader and push your buttons.

DPS is more relaxed insofar as that less is expected at around 15s. You'll muddle through in time, the healer will cover their mistakes etc etc. But playing DPS properly has a huge impact, which is usually not noticed in lower keys.

- - - Updated - - -

If you try tanking: start at the launch of an expansion. Everyone is clueless about routes so you learn together. If you start in the middle of an expansion people suck against new tanks because they'll be whining you don't know the routes perfectly like they do.

DF M+ changes address this directly in a sense, with new M+ pools each season. I picked up tanking this expac at the end of S3, and even though I knew every dungeon as DPS I still felt the pressure having to learn all the routes and stuff. That part was made easier when S4 hit and everything was new.

Also, most people are content to let the tank set the route *anyway*. It's the flip side of the tank being responsible for the route: you run whatever route the tank wants, because you've asked them to set it. Used to skip the big guys in Stormheim? If the tank pulls them you shrug and kill them, no biggie. You lose a bit of time from a 'perfect' route, but most routes are perfectly viable*.

*big exception being the bridge in upper kara. Fuck those mobs.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You misunderstand what a character is in the game. It's not a person. The 4th alt of someone with a god-like character will be there and their alt will suck.

- - - Updated - - -


Their dps is a 'toy' rotation of a couple of buttons most of the time. Try to be consistently on the 99th percentile of dpses and report how easy it was. Many tanks are carried.

- - - Updated - - -

I would never argue that being 99th percentile in any role was easy. At that point you are outperforming almost everyone. That said, I disagree that tank buttons are less complicated than DPS. I say that as someone who also plays rogue, hunter, and ele shammy. Tanks may have fewer buttons related to dps, but all the tanks still have interactions to track (well, except bear, but not all tanks are bears). I would argue it's more challenging to have some buttons for dps, some for managing damage intake (when you're the one taking it all), and some for shielding/healing your team mates. Same number of abilities, but three different roles you're playing. Add in that (good) Tanks have to track five people's CDs so they know how to pull, while DPS only care about their own, and I still say tanking is harder to excel at.

NOW... Part of your comment seems to be that mediocre tanks can find groups easier than mediocre DPS. I won't argue with that. I'm just saying that excelling at tanking is more challenging than excelling as DPS.

[Toppy]

One thing that willl ever bother me about this issue is that blizzard has never, and likely will never take any steps to remedy the problem despite there being many, obvious, answers to said problem.

But why would they when people will happily blame the players even though they're just being as efficient as possible with the games awful design.

[NineSpine]

No one here is saying that tanking should be so easy a monkey can do it. But the difficulty in tanking should be in holding aggro and proper use of cooldown and damage reduction/mitigation (class mechanics and buttons). Not in meticulously planned routes and pull strategies to get the optimal correct amount of mob %.

This really nails it. The main problem is that tanking has been larded up with all these extra responsibilities beyond simply playing the class well.

[WowIsDead64]

This really nails it. The main problem is that tanking has been larded up with all these extra responsibilities beyond simply playing the class well.

Yeah, I agree. Proper pulling strategy of one single pack - is ok. For example it would be dumb, if tank wouldn't need to care about casters and would just do 3-button faceroll. But I stopped tanking mostly because I was required to know maze-like dungeon, perfect M+ pulling route, including lots of inch-precise skipping, and keep proper pulling pace. For example attempting to play safely was resulting in immediate vote-kicking. At some point I just decided, that somebody more experienced should have done it. My tanking experience comes from old times, when it was considered, that it was quicker and safer to just pull pack after pack and just AOE-nuke them, than trying to skip them.

[epigramx]

DF M+ changes address this directly in a sense, with new M+ pools each season. I picked up tanking this expac at the end of S3, and even though I knew every dungeon as DPS I still felt the pressure having to learn all the routes and stuff. That part was made easier when S4 hit and everything was new.

Also, most people are content to let the tank set the route *anyway*. It's the flip side of the tank being responsible for the route: you run whatever route the tank wants, because you've asked them to set it. Used to skip the big guys in Stormheim? If the tank pulls them you shrug and kill them, no biggie. You lose a bit of time from a 'perfect' route, but most routes are perfectly viable*.

That shuffling of maps system isn't gonna last because it reeks of lack of content and devs' laziness. If some people like it now: it's most probably an end-of-expansion symptom because they may be fed up even more by the current expansion (they wouldn't pull it off successfully at the launch of an expansion).

It doesn't matter if a new route of a new tank is theoretically doable; the old players are going to personally attack that tank anyway because "they know better"; there is the exception of a "God-Like" tank doing novel routes but that's a conscious alternative choice of them and their skill usually shows.

- - - Updated - - -

The thing with rankings is most people have very similar gear and the rotation is known - so to me, “god like” dps isn’t really a thing. People put up huge numbers because of circumstances they’re in - in mythic+, you put up god like numbers when the group is coordinated enough that you can pull huge packs. The trick isn’t doing the dps, the trick is surviving the big pull.

Similarly - as you note, 99th percentile dps is not an individual achieve, it’s often a result of the kill time. I was in a group once where a player was trying to rank and everyone else was told to slow dps so that he would get an extra cycle of cds and the timing works out perfectly.

So ranking high is a side game. It’s not what the game is about.

Ranking in the only thing most people care about even if they think they don't care. E.g. people grind for gear; they obviously wouldn't give a shit to do that in a single-player game because they suffer in the process (especially when it takes months!); their true purpose is obviously to show off their 'stuff' against other real life people.
That's why I say in other threads (more specific to this issue) that it makes no sense for the devs to admit grinding for gear sucks for PvP but miracoulsely it doesn't for PvE (because at the end of the day PvE is also a competition against other humans (even if it's comparisons of performance inside the same guild)).

[epigramx]

I would never argue that being 99th percentile in any role was easy. At that point you are outperforming almost everyone. That said, I disagree that tank buttons are less complicated than DPS. I say that as someone who also plays rogue, hunter, and ele shammy. Tanks may have fewer buttons related to dps, but all the tanks still have interactions to track (well, except bear, but not all tanks are bears). I would argue it's more challenging to have some buttons for dps, some for managing damage intake (when you're the one taking it all), and some for shielding/healing your team mates. Same number of abilities, but three different roles you're playing. Add in that (good) Tanks have to track five people's CDs so they know how to pull, while DPS only care about their own, and I still say tanking is harder to excel at.

NOW... Part of your comment seems to be that mediocre tanks can find groups easier than mediocre DPS. I won't argue with that. I'm just saying that excelling at tanking is more challenging than excelling as DPS.

I was answering there to people casually throwing the phrase "they also do the job of the dps on top!". No they don't; they do an extremely simpler DPS rotation; they absolutely do not "do the same job as DPSes" on top. I agree they do A DIFFERENT job in TOTAL; e.g. they do that simplistic dps rotation AND their defense 'rotations'(often only selective clicks) AND their routing-related movements to guide the rest of the team; and: what is a more difficult role is a very different question and the devs obviously try to keep the "total difficulty" of each role in line with the other roles and: if it's a question of "who ranks easier" it's most probably tanks because most people are scared to tank (without that being necessarily related to difficulty) so they are in higher demand so they are carried more easily and what I say in the OP (it's harder for them to show off skill VS other tanks) adds to that.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing that willl ever bother me about this issue is that blizzard has never, and likely will never take any steps to remedy the problem despite there being many, obvious, answers to said problem.

But why would they when people will happily blame the players even though they're just being as efficient as possible with the games awful design.

What's the answer? It's mostly a "people being people" issue to me. E.g. it's obviously 'technically' not harder to tank in most situations; it's often easier because they are carried because they are in higher demand; but people will still avoid tanking because they can't show off their numbers as easily or because they have an external psychological fear towards leading or because they don't get learning routes is extremely easy if you do it once or twice max.

- - - Updated - - -

This really nails it. The main problem is that tanking has been larded up with all these extra responsibilities beyond simply playing the class well.

Yeah, I agree. Proper pulling strategy of one single pack - is ok. For example it would be dumb, if tank wouldn't need to care about casters and would just do 3-button faceroll. But I stopped tanking mostly because I was required to know maze-like dungeon, perfect M+ pulling route, including lots of inch-precise skipping, and keep proper pulling pace. For example attempting to play safely was resulting in immediate vote-kicking. At some point I just decided, that somebody more experienced should have done it. My tanking experience comes from old times, when it was considered, that it was quicker and safer to just pull pack after pack and just AOE-nuke them, than trying to skip them.

You haven't seen difficult tanking if you didn't do hard-mode raiding when we had to ACTUALLY hold agro (it got an extreme buff somewhere around Cata if I recall correctly or MoP not sure).
E.g. I remember hard-mode Hodir in Ulduar. It often helped to go get special frost resistance gear but that would wreck your threat so it was a big dilemma.

[Peacemoon]

yes, totally agree. but how to reach one without the other? in a game designed like wow is designed?

as long as the tank is the one for being in control of the agro, as long the the tank has to pull. and as long as the tank has to pull, as long the tank decides the route. and as long as the tank decides the route, as long the tank leads the group.

the problem with your argument (to what i totally agree) is: „holding agro“ (after following the rational impacts), in the end means „leading the group“. sad but true.

With the finding routes and taking the lead as a tank, I think the answer to this is to not have such large and necessary skips, which will throw off new players to the dungeon. Nothing wrong with skipping trash to fight easier trash, but you should be able to get from A to Z in a M+ dungeon and not be 30-40% over 100% trash. Looking at you Karazhan.

Look at Mechagon Workshop; this is an easy dungeon to lead because it’s so linear and you only have the optional skip of the last trash pack.

Compare that to Mechagon Junkyard which is really hard for new tanks to know what to pull.

Or Upper Karazhan which requires at least one skip, and usually works best with 2 or 3.
Or lower Karazhan where the easiest play tends to be to die after 1st Boss and take an alt route altogether.

What I’m saying is, how the dungeons are designed in this regard significant impacts how easy it is for tanks to just join and give it a go.

Can’t complain about no tanks, when the only acceptable tanks are ones who’ve mastered some bespoke, unintuitive path through the dungeon!

[lllll]

You haven't seen difficult tanking if you didn't do hard-mode raiding when we had to ACTUALLY hold agro (it got an extreme buff somewhere around Cata if I recall correctly or MoP not sure).
E.g. I remember hard-mode Hodir in Ulduar. It often helped to go get special frost resistance gear but that would wreck your threat so it was a big dilemma.

I raided Ulduar as a feral druid tank and I never had any issues with threat. Not on hardmode either. You also didn't need any resistance gear.

[paxen]

To me the most important people on the kill are the ones who handle mechanics, and it drives me nuts when people use high dps as an excuse not to do mechanics. Again, I get that in certain cutting edge situations that makes sense, but when a pug is wiping over and over on mechanics and the raid leader asks the highest dps person to handle the mechanic because in theory they should be experienced, and they say “but mah dps” it’s freaking annoying.

It is, but they're scrubs too.

To be a good dps you have to do mechanics AND maintain high dps. Yes, sometimes you need to sacrifice significant dps to do a particular mechanic, but that's the exception. Mostly you just have to do both at the same time. If you can only do one or the other, there's tons of room for improvement.

[Niwes]

With the finding routes and taking the lead as a tank, I think the answer to this is to not have such large and necessary skips, which will throw off new players to the dungeon. Nothing wrong with skipping trash to fight easier trash, but you should be able to get from A to Z in a M+ dungeon and not be 30-40% over 100% trash. Looking at you Karazhan.

Look at Mechagon Workshop; this is an easy dungeon to lead because it’s so linear and you only have the optional skip of the last trash pack.

Compare that to Mechagon Junkyard which is really hard for new tanks to know what to pull.

Or Upper Karazhan which requires at least one skip, and usually works best with 2 or 3.
Or lower Karazhan where the easiest play tends to be to die after 1st Boss and take an alt route altogether.

What I’m saying is, how the dungeons are designed in this regard significant impacts how easy it is for tanks to just join and give it a go.

Can’t complain about no tanks, when the only acceptable tanks are ones who’ve mastered some bespoke, unintuitive path through the dungeon!

yeah, what brings us directly to the next problem the „easier tanking“ has:

tanking depends on routes and knowing routes.
we got that.

knowing about routes needs experience/knowledge. and therefore is harder for new tanks and makes tanking less accessible.
we got that too.

this leads us to a simple formula (as you said):
simpler and less difficult routes = easier tanking and better accessibility.

and here is, where the next problem starts:
Blizz does not invest much into dungeons. especially old ones. this means they have either horrible routes or easy routes. exactly what your examples show. but Blizz will not invest much to improve this.

so now we can come to the bottom line of all of this:
the fact, Blizz not wanna invest much into the game (in such corners), is one of the things, that leads to inaccessible tanking. and therefore to a worse situation/quality of non-tanks and also players, that like tanking gameplay, but not tanking meta stuff.

in short: less investment = worse game.

the tanking accessibility problem is just another (little bit hidden) brick, showing this simple truth. sad but true.

[Celista]

Playing DPS is fun and relatively low stress. I've played a lot of healing specs. You're either bored healing because your DPS and tanks are so good, or you get tired of having to constantly heal through bad players standing in things (or worse, "bad heals" being blamed for DPS's deaths or lackluster performance--usually sentiments only uttered by the very worst raid leads/players, however). Healing meters are only fun if you play certain specs--absorbs taking precedent over direct healing in the healing meters, for example, and direct heals accounting for more healing than a HoT--although good healing teams will work synergystically rather than try to meter hog.

Tanking is similar I think, but I've done a lot more healing than tanking.

If I want to relax during a weekend raid, DPS is definitely the least stressful role to play.

[Niwes]

I disagree. The tanking problem in m+ has gotten worse as they've invested more resources into that game mode, not less. In Legion, they just made dungeons as they used to and added m+ as something of an afterthought. When it was successful, they attempted to refine it a lot in BFA - they removed abilities from classes, they capped AOE, and they also added more complex mobs that needed more interrupts and things. They also added in dungeons with more complex route options. So things have gotten worse not because of lack of attention, but because of the attention they put into it. My belief is that they saw dollar signs with the MDI and ESPORTS OMG so they focused on designing m+ for that audience, and it screwed it up for everyone else.

yeah, you are right. but your final results are wrong, imo.

if they would have invested much into it, it would have more improved it. but what they did was: invest „a bit“ into it. but not much or much enough. and THAT made it worse.

so, you are right. older, lesser investment resulted in better game. but just because they invested only „a bit more“, but not much enough, into it, later. that’s the result and problem of highly cost effective development.

[Dejiko]

I can only speak for myself of course, but i wouldn`t touch tanking with a five mile pole unless i was in a guild.
Healing and DPS i can do all day by myself, but i`ve tried tanking before, and you get flamed so viciously for even the smallest mistakes.
I actually prefer tanking to DPSing, it`s a lot of fun creating deathballs, ligning mobs up properly so folks can AoE/Cleave them down.
It`s great knowing the routes and optimising each run, but people make it really unenjoyable.

[Catscratch]

I stopped tanking/healing during/after Cata. Mechanics got too complicated, taking DBM into account during design. As with age, i don't like to study a game encounter like a highschool homework.

[xenogear3]

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

This.

In more detail, for 5-man dungeons, the ratio is 1 tank in 5 players.
In 25-man raid, the ratio is 2 or 3 tanks in 25 players.
The tank can be out of job in a 25-man raid.
In fact, when LFR was first introduced, tank has an hour plus queue time.

The healer is not bad, but it is boring to play.
There is no shortage on healers in a good guild.

[Lordofbelbol]

Yeah, I agree. Proper pulling strategy of one single pack - is ok. For example it would be dumb, if tank wouldn't need to care about casters and would just do 3-button faceroll. But I stopped tanking mostly because I was required to know maze-like dungeon, perfect M+ pulling route, including lots of inch-precise skipping, and keep proper pulling pace. For example attempting to play safely was resulting in immediate vote-kicking. At some point I just decided, that somebody more experienced should have done it. My tanking experience comes from old times, when it was considered, that it was quicker and safer to just pull pack after pack and just AOE-nuke them, than trying to skip them.

looks like you are confusing how people actually react if tank didn't do perfect route with few bad pugs

[WowIsDead64]

You haven't seen difficult tanking if you didn't do hard-mode raiding when we had to ACTUALLY hold agro (it got an extreme buff somewhere around Cata if I recall correctly or MoP not sure).
E.g. I remember hard-mode Hodir in Ulduar. It often helped to go get special frost resistance gear but that would wreck your threat so it was a big dilemma.

Threat was nerfed in 4.0. Buffed back in 4.1, I guess. So, it didn't last long. By MOP they had completely switched to "Tank should care about dmg reduction - not threat".

[LCDArcade]

Chiming in here a little late, but speaking as an ex hardcore 25m raider now casual, I don’t tank not because I don’t like it, but simply because I can’t be bothered to learn all the fights for the entire game.

As a DPS, I can just login and faceroll mythic+ and not give a shit about mechanics other than move out of stuff.

I thought about tanking more in DF, but again, I’d have to have the added pressure of having to know every single fight, dungeon and raid and unfortunately I just don’t play the game like that anymore. Even in LFR if the raid wipes that’s on me because I didn’t know when to tank swap

[Peacemoon]

yeah, what brings us directly to the next problem the „easier tanking“ has:

tanking depends on routes and knowing routes.
we got that.

knowing about routes needs experience/knowledge. and therefore is harder for new tanks and makes tanking less accessible.
we got that too.

this leads us to a simple formula (as you said):
simpler and less difficult routes = easier tanking and better accessibility.

and here is, where the next problem starts:
Blizz does not invest much into dungeons. especially old ones. this means they have either horrible routes or easy routes. exactly what your examples show. but Blizz will not invest much to improve this.

so now we can come to the bottom line of all of this:
the fact, Blizz not wanna invest much into the game (in such corners), is one of the things, that leads to inaccessible tanking. and therefore to a worse situation/quality of non-tanks and also players, that like tanking gameplay, but not tanking meta stuff.

in short: less investment = worse game.

the tanking accessibility problem is just another (little bit hidden) brick, showing this simple truth. sad but true.

Yes this really is the answer. Hopefully with the changes to Halls of Valour the dungeon will be a lot more straightforward.

Also I take issue with people saying DPS don’t have to know tactics. There are always lots of stuff for the DPS to know too. Yeah you can run a dungeon and just dodge fire and be okay, and that’s fine if you just want to be mediocre. But there’s a lot more you can do as DPS to make the run easy, like soothing, cleansing, prioritising targets etc.
Plenty of times I’ve seen DPS flames for being idiotic. The only difference is you tend to just drag crap DPS through the dungeon and fail the timer.

I did do Upper Karazhan last week and legit felt bad for the tank.