Are dpses less important than tanks and healers?

[Deleted]

I seriously don't think this analogy could be any more spot on. This is epic :-)

There are some decent analogies around, but that one is actually perfect in this case!

[Lazarusx]

most of the time, healing is always harder than dpsing..

Healing is hard? News to me.

Thanks for that, less of the useless replies. -Azshira

[Deleted]

Healing is hard? News to me.

Ic what u did there. I think people that actually learn to "master" their role into a certain degree will always find what they do pretty simple, even if in some class cases they may be a bit more demanding then others in x patch.

[Mormolyce]

I've raided as melee DPS my entire time playing WoW, and in my mind the order of importance is:

Healers >>>>>>> Tanks >> Ranged DPS >>>>> Melee

Enrages are very rarely an issue, the only time you'd realistically hit an enrage is on Heroic bosses early in progression and if you're pushing Heroic progression then you're obviously a competitive guild with a good enough roster that that's not really an issue. Outside of weird things like the tendons on Spine, which are there pretty much just as a progression block.

Honestly I wonder if tanks should even be above RDPS, the mechanics a tank has to deal with are usually fairly simple (depends on the fight really) and the way they're currently built the actual job of tanking is ridiculously easy (MoP should fix that hopefully).

[Deleted]

I think some are also mixing roll importancy with gear priorities in a guild mind set. Those are 2 totally different things... I agree all rolls are equally important overall, but when it comes to gearing up during guild runs, I do see why at start tank/healers may have a bit of higher prio. After the inital take off of a tier, 2/3 weeks into it, those priorities become less and less important in a gearing guild mind set imo.

[Inactivity]

As so put, tanks and healers initially are far more important. To lesser guilds, they are the "kings" and DPS the "peons/shitbags." You don't have a tank, don't have a healer, you're dead. Initially, tanks and healers should be prioritized for initial loot (T13 4pc for tanks, for instance).

However, at the top end, it's the DPS that's what makes the difference... and they are the most important when it comes to the top-end guilds. For the most part, tanks and healers are "capped" - you have the group topped up, and you yourself stay topped off = can't really be doing much better (of course you can always improve, but gains are minimal).

DPS really has no limits - no matter what, you could always do more DPS, and by doing so save the group from mistakes, enrages, and both tank and raid damage. There are more, but at the high-end game (not low-end) it is designed around the number you bring, meaning everyone must be doing very well.

You see also that after the first few weeks, gear priority actually shifts to DPS.

[kymmico]

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.

This is such a great way to put it!

OP: I agree - all are important.

[Gheld]

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.

Yeah, for example on blood princes the kinetic bombs were just a joke, and wouldn't actually hit the floor if dps ignored them. On Magmaw you could just ignore the chains and heal through the enrage.

On DBS you could just let the blood beasts run rampant, the healers got it, don't worry.

DPS do absolutely nothing but stand around pressing buttons.

Again Like I said. I've tanked, dpsed and healed; and I would have to say that DPS (except melee) has the most to do on any given encounter.

I mean look at the Lich King solo that was done, it works because half the mechanics are broken because they don't apply to whoever has aggro on LK; same with certain other bosses. I'm not saying it wasn't still completely epic, but the fact is that a lot of mechanics are specifically designed to be handled by dps.

The actual fights where tanks or healers have to do something out of the ordinary besides standing around pressing buttons and clicking raid frames are few and far between.

Let's just take Tier 10 as an example boss by boss.

Marrowgar - Tanks stand in front of him threat racing. Healers stand somewhere safe and heal. DPS has to switch to bone spikes on top of avoiding bone storm. So DPS has more to do.

Lady Deathwhisper - Tanks tank multiple adds, so the lions share of the encounter is trash tanking essentially (which I'll give is typically more tricky than boss tanking). Healers - Heal and dispel. DPS kite the big guys that absolutely destroy whoever they touch, help with interrupts, help with dispels, maintain proper kill order etc. DPS has the most to do.

Gunship: Same deal, DPS does more.

DBS: Ranged DPS does more.

Festergut: DPS does more.

Rotface: DPS does more

Putricide: Off tank probably has the most vital and consuming job here.

Blood Princes: Without question DPS has the most to do.

BQL: DPS handles the bite mechanic, and certain other mechanics do not target tanks, so again DPS does more.

Valithria: Has some interesting healer mechanics, tanks tank whatever trash is tankable, ranged dps have to kite the exploders, yada yada. When I healed it, the only thing that made it particularly challenging was never knowing when going in and out of the dream would just bugger up my UI and force me to start target healing valithria.

Sindragosa: The complication would probably be a tie between spell dps and healers because of unchained magic; but the fact that the dps have to break people out of ice blocks is the tie breaker.

Lich King: Probably a tie between DPS and Tanks.

TLDR: Anybody who says DPS has it easy, is probably a slacker when they dps, anybody who says healing is hard deserves lulz, or needs to get a proper ui and proper macros. Tanking all comes down to when to pop certain cooldowns and when to taunt, so it's the easiest to screw up, but by far not rocket science. I mean with the 500% damage to threat thing going on it eliminates the fact that it used to be difficult to maintain maximum threat while handling all of a tanks considerations. Trash is always hardest for tanks because of rowdy dps screwing up very precise pulls.

If you find healing difficult, it's because your DPS isn't properly executing everything I just listed above, and kudos to you for keeping them alive, but when you have proper dps with actual raid sense, then it should be the easiest role save for a few fights.

[youknowmedontyou]

Well considering in a 25 man raid:

- 2/25 are tanks
- 6/25 are healers
- 17/25 are dps

by dividing the total number of people by how many you need to be successful you can see how important they are to the total amount of players.

IN TWENTY-FIVE MAN
tanks - 25/2 = 12.5
healers - 25/6 = ~4.16
dps - 25/17 = ~1.47

IN TEN MAN
tanks - 10/2 = 5
healers - 10/2 = 5
dps - 10/6 = ~1.66

This means for every tank in a 25m raid they cover for 12.5 of the people and a dps would cover about 1.47. This is where many people get their reasoning behind tanks and healers being more important than dps.

Another way to visualize it would be to think of a 25 man raid. If the tank dies during the fight, you are likely going to die. If the healer dies you might be able to kill it still but it will become a lot harder to heal (still manageable). If a DPS dies, the sad truth is that it doesn't matter as much. You will still down a fight without that dps.

[Gorthok]

The only dps roles i have respect for are the ones in the high guilds doing heroic content before nerfs, where damage means the difference between wiping and winning.

[Niyari]

It varies. There are some encounters you won't get by without good dps. Likewise for tank/healer.

[Imposter]

Depends on what you are wiping to imo enrages = dps tank death=tank and people randomly dying=healer...

[ComputerNerd]

As long as nobody dies a healer has done their job.
As long as nobody but a tank is getting their face mauled then a tank has done their job.
DPS have no such obvious metric for success, because damage meters are relative.
What numerical figure of dps defines success or failure, and why is 1 less than that not sufficient ?

[The Madgod]

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

DPS certainly have a ceiling; it's the maximum calculated output in perfect settings with perfect gear, talents, glyphs, enchants, gems, and reforges for that tier, but that's just me being a smartass :P

But to be more to the point I have to both agree and disagree. I feel that tanks and healers are generally more important than DPS from a managerial standpoint. If you're in a shaky guild, like mine can sometimes be, and you're out a DPS, you can go into trade chat and PUG. If you're out a healer or a tank, you're going to be a lot less inclined to do that, since you have less tanks and healers, a bad support class can do a lot more damage to a raid's success than a bad DPS, since the other DPS have an easier time compensating for the bad player simply due to the nature of averages; the larger a subject group, the less one unit of that group will shift the average.

At the same time though, DPS are still very important to the group, and it's definitely true that for the most part, the better your DPS get (whether skill-wise or stat-wise), the more likely you will succeed in downing an encounter. Though at the same time, the better your healers get, the more likely you will succeed in downing an encounter (assuming that the fight has a very manageable enrage timer). Tanks being geared enough for the fight is also important, but I would argue that them being more geared doesn't effect the outcome of the fight as much as heals or DPS, though it still affects the outcome. This isn't even taking into consideration that there are fights which require more from one particular part of the trinity. I think this question really comes down to from what standpoint are you looking at. I really like the cereal bowl analogy.

[Maruka]

the quality of dps pretty much out right determines the quality of your raid team, more so in 25 mans but still in 10s (unless your tanks or healers are clearly idiots)

[Iracor]

Finding a good tank or healer is harder than finding a good dps.

[Prostatus911]

You can work the numbers any way you want to make your argument valid, but in all honesty is seems to me that all roles are equally important. It's a house of cards, if one role fails then the raid will fail.

Tanks fail: don't taunt, the DPS pull aggro or stand in bad stuff, the raid will wipe.
Healers fail: people die, the raid will wipe.
DPS fail: boss hits enrage before health = 0, the raid will wipe.

I'm sure many people have heard the joke, "if the tank dies, it's the healers fault; if the healer dies, it's the tanks fault; and if the DPS die , they were standing in the fire and deserve to be dead."

[Eon Drache]

I'm sorry, but tanking is a complete joke. I went from Ret dps to tanking for the first time last month. Instantly picked it up, easy as hell. Completely gear dependent. If you think tanking is hard AT ALL you are the joke.

[Swishee]

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.

Stealing this for my signature. Thanks! This is really awesome

[Ragedaug]

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.

This is how I've always looked at it. I view each roll as equally important, so as to say the entirety of the DPS players contributes towards 33% of the raid's success. To know how important your individual contribution is compared to the full raid being 100%, divide 33 by the number of players in the role. As progress minded raid comps vary, I'll use the two premade sizes to show you the importance of a DPS player compared to a healer or tank.

5 man dungeon the contribution of each player by role:
DPS = 11%
Healer = 33%
Tank = 33%

LFR the contribution of each player by role:
DPS = 2%
Healer = 5%
Tank = 17%

In each scenario you can see an individual DPS player is less important than either a tank or a healer.