Whats your opinion on what the easiest role is?

[terminaltrip421]

dps. no brainer. I'm not saying it's easy to be a great dps, just like it's not easy to be a great healer or tank. I'm saying in a game like this where dealing with other players can be the most difficult part, a role where you have the least affect on other players would have to be the easiest role to have. also dps is just pretty easy if you function like you should.

[Deleted]

Totally depends on the fight, but all in all dps tends to be the easiest to perform at the levels of merely downing a boss. That being said, there is no role more blatantly competitive than dps and mastering dps is in my honest opinion harder than mastering tanking and healing, especially because defining master tanking and healing is far more subjective and difficult than "LAWL DAMAGE METERS" for dps.

That's the thing about tanking though. While it isn't hard to tank (generally speaking), there's a huge difference between a bad, a mediocre and a good tank. A good tank can be the difference between a wipe or a kill. Managing your CD's so that your healers can focus on the raid during heavy raid damage for instance. Being able to think outside the box or react swiftly to a fuck-up before the boss hits a dps or healer in the face. Then there's the pressure of knowing, that if you fuck up, it may very well cost a wipe. That's not the case for dps/healers most of the time but then again, tanks do have CD's to survive much longer.

I don't think it's fair to speak about an easier role, cause it really depends on the fight and on what duties you're being given. That said, I did vote dps and I'm thinking ranged dps in particular. I enjoy doing an alt raid on my Ele Shaman, while being semi afk without causing any issues. You can't really do that as a tank imo or at least not to the same extend. I mean, there's almost always some debuff you have to watch out for, which makes it hard to be semi afk. But as a dps nobody will notice if you're semi afk during a fight. As long as you don't stand in shit and die ofc.

I've often thought that healing is the harder role, since they have to do more with less. Meaning they're the ones to get geared last, yet you'd always cut a healer if you can't make the enrage timer. During progress I believe they have the hardest job.

[Deja Thoris]

To be fair none of the roles are rocket science. I tank and its certainly not the hardest role out there. We're trailling new tanks atm and its astonishingly easy to see the difference between good and bad.

I'd go with dps being the easiest. Don't stand in bad and execute your rotation to the best of your ability. If you aren't amazing the boss dies 12 seconds later instead. Tanks and healers while not being harder carry more responsibility.

[Sildor]

I voted tanking.

Sure, it comes with high responsibility, and if you do make a mistake it can be very noticeable and devastating for your raid. But overall you generally don't need worry about a lot of the mechanics that the rest of the raid does, it's not competitive at all and the skill cap is quite low.

[Deleted]

I voted tanking.

Sure, it comes with high responsibility, and if you do make a mistake it can be very noticeable and devastating for your raid. But overall you generally don't need worry about a lot of the mechanics that the rest of the raid does, it's not competitive at all and the skill cap is quite low.

lolwut? Tanking isn't competitive? Have you been living under a rock? Of course tanking is competitive, you wanna do as much dps as possible, while still staying alive of course. But just as a dps needs to keep track of certain abilities, up times and trinket procs, so will good tanks. I've seen tanks with plenty of gear who still don't know how to push the right buttons and the difference between a bad tank and a good tank's dps is fairly big.

About the skill cap being low, are you actually telling me that Arcane Mage, Ele Shaman, Hunter and Frost DK are that much harder? The skill cap is low for all roles, if you're just doing LFR/Flex/Normals but for those who progress during Heroic, it does take a lot more effort to stay alive while also doing as much dps as possible.

[Haywire5714]

As far as the easiest to play to it's maximum potential?

Easiest -> Hardest

Tank > Healing > Dps

Amazing healing is the hardest role; things like solo healing Ultraxion 25 heroic or Garrosh 10 man HC first kill (that was solo healed, right) simply because of the changing nature of the role compared to DPS where you can practice to a point where RNG is making more of an effect on your numbers than performance.

I don't think Ultraxion was a great boss to show healer skill, because eventually you're just down to spamming 1 spell; there's no skill in that. You're 2nd point isn't correct; once you've got the timers memorized the damage becomes extremely predictable, so essentially you end up casting the same spells at the same times every attempt.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Depends on the fight.

As a DPS, I feel plenty challenged to perform at a rate that means I won't be carried by the rest. DPS checks = tiniest bit of DPS can mean the difference between a wipe and a kill.

It also depends on the team and the gear of each player.

[Spotnick]

Healing can be very easy if you bring too many obviously.

But obviously, DPS is easier except if you have to perform at max level for cutting edge content, then pretty much all roles are equal.

[Deleted]

Healing can be very easy if you bring too many obviously.

But obviously, DPS is easier except if you have to perform at max level for cutting edge content, then pretty much all roles are equal.

Have to agree with you here. Healing a normal raid isnt to bad, its often quite easy. Its when you cut healers to start pushing up the dps things get a bit tricky.

To be fair i've never done heroic raiding as a dps and it was many years ago as a tank so i couldnt say how hard it is. I'll pass on my vote.

[Deleted]

As a tank, definitely tanking when it comes to gameplay and tactics. The difficulty with tanking is not what you do while playing

Pretty much this.

[Deleted]

I think it has to be dps.. sure tanking isn't especially engaging, but you have a lot more responsibility than a dps I think, same goes for healing really, except it also is engaging imo.

[Possimpible]

DPS by far even if you're the one who does belt, tower and engineer.

[Orcbert]

It varies a lot fight to fight, but in general DPS have the least to worry about. I will say I think the skill level between a good dps and a great dps is huge. I have 3 'heavies' who are always above everyone else in the raid. God bless those dps who take the time to master their class and know their abilities inside and out.

Tank difficulty is probably the most varied in the game. It alters a lot between both class and encounter. There are some fights that are complete write off's like Sha of Pride and others that they need every trick in the book like Garrosh.

Healers is constantly high difficulty. Blizzard has done a very nice job of balancing the fact that even when the fight is easy mechanically for healers it's often difficult throughput wise and still keeps you on your toes. Healers also fix it when everyone screws up. In a perfect world all dps and tanks do exactly what they are supposed to but that never happens. People stand in fire, the tank switch goes awry, and it's up to the healer to identify this and quickly fix it. They also need full awareness of mechanics and the ebb and flo of damage. Mana is also unique that they are the only roll that has a long term, fight long resource to manage.

[adynn]

I have to say that DPS generally has the highest skill cap and the lowest skill floor in my experience, even in heroic raiding.

Tanking is often very static and boring when progressing as it's generally easier to learn however the downside usually is that it's still easier to wipe the raid as a tank on most fights in my experience.

Healing is pretty much always dynamic even once you learn the damage patterns as members are going to screw up and you want to try to keep them up if possible. On the other hand it's pretty binary in terms of healers either doing their job and no one dies to lack of healing or they don't, so I think the ceiling for them is probably lower than the other roles now that tanks contribute large amounts of damage (especially in 10s).

So I guess in terms of baseline difficulty I think: Healing>Tanking>DPS.
But skill ceiling probably reverses that order imo (so DPS>Tanking>Healing).

[icecoldsir]

Based off this xpac I would honestly say tanking is the easiest role, with the exception maybe being Ra-Den and that just being because he hit so damn hard on warrs. Their really was no fight this xpac that challenged tanks mechanically, all their really was this xpac was taunt x at this time and reforge into dmg to kill y mob in certain amount of time.

[Lanesia]

I think it depends really. I'd say tanking is the easiest just because threat management is so easy and most fights its just swapping tanks or picking up adds and knowing when to use cooldowns. Nothing terribly challenging there. I think Healers are probably the hardest to pick up and learn in raids but once you know how to raid heal and know when to be aware of big damage spikes and what during specific fights it's not as bad but maybe a bit stressful. DPS I think can be anywhere from easy to the hardest. A poorly played DPS is very easy to play. A solid damage dealer is probably medium, and being able to maintain the highest level of DPS is probably the hardest thing in this game. Honestly anyone that says otherwise probably hasn't ever DPS'd at an extremely high level.

[Cheekun]

Honestly, Tanking has to be the easiest role. I've been doing it since wrath, so this isn't a dps or healer blowing it out their nose.

You learn a fight one time, you learn the best times to use your defensives, when to call for healer cooldowns, and when to taunt swap. Fundamentally every boss goes exactly the same in that regard. Even cheesing mechanics and single tanking things that should be two tanked boils down to those three elementary steps. You can often times garner the best times to do all three of those things simply by reading a guide and using a bit of your ole noggin. Additonally, you literally have the entire raid's healers healing you as a priority. If you make small mistakes, they frequently go unnoticed.

DPS and Healers both have much more to learn. DPS literally loose thousands of dps from a simple mistake, healer mistakes generally result in deaths. Additionally, the fight is always unique in the sense that a DPS can make a critical mistake one night, but not the next so on and so forth.

[nightfalls]

For learning, I'd say Healing is the hardest role to learn, followed by Tanking, followed by DPS being, of course, the easiest to learn. In particular a lot of UI and mechanics changes (threat aura at 600% additional rather than 200% additional in Cataclysm and even lower prior is huge) have done a lot to make tanking easier.

For mastering, I would say DPS is the hardest easily. They have by far the most amount of personal auras (buffs, debuffs on enemies, etc.) to micromanage when it comes to direct performance. For the most part, they also have the greatest difficulty surviving, and many raid abilities now only target DPS. Like how the other roles have to also do "some" type of DPS work, often DPS will have to do support work as well (CC, kiting, and even healing and tanking).

When it comes to Heal versus Tank, part of me wants to just say the role you're more comfortable with is the easiest. But overall I'd give Tanks the harder one because I feel there's more pressure, even if surviving is easy in the present day, if you DO die, it's generally a raid wipe. Also, in many progression guilds near the end of MOP especially, Vengeance gaming has gone from being seen as "cheesing/ranking" to basically being seen as expected and even required.

Healers have a little more room for error in that regard.


Edited: I'll give my own role some credit though. In my view, part of a healer's role is not simply keeping the group alive in ideal conditions, but also anticipating and knowing when to cover for other raiders' mistakes, and being at least partially able to do so. While it's a common gripe/complaint about the role (such as, "I shouldn't have to do this," "people should suck less," etc.) to an extent during progress people are going to make mistakes, and if you want to get decent attempts in to learn the boss, you're going to have to be able to help keep the attempt going longer despite that.

It's one thing to get frustrated and rant every now and then of course, but if literally all you say after each try are the gripes above, then you don't belong in a healer role for progression.

[badaku]

Tanking without raid leading

[LurkerOnly]

It depends on the fight. I've tanked and healed, and sometimes I'm snoring (depending on the encounter) and sometimes I'm juggling 10 things.

I'd have to say that tanking is often no problem, but every once in awhile there is a fight with movement, fires, something like blood power to mitigate, places to make the boss stand for mechanics, all rolled into one, and I'm struggling way harder than I ever did as a healer.

Most of the time tanking is basic, but at the raid level, at least 1/3 times I'm having to do more work than when I heal or DPS.

Dps have to avoid fires and do maximum damage, and occasional specific mechanics.
Healers have to avoid fires and do maximum healing, and occasional specific mechanics.
Tanks have to avoid fires and do maximum damage/threat/healing (depends on the tank, whichever it is they do), common basic mechanics (taunt adds, tank switch), occasional moderate mechanics (get in the abomination, point ony's tail away from big adds, clear whatever that thing on DW's big tentacles was), and rarely complex mechanics (drag slimes, etc.)

My experience is that I've had to do more weird stuff while still doing my normal job, as a tank, than as a healer or DPS.

Tanking is also harder the first week than it is 20 weeks in. I suppose healers still have to do the most work at week 20, since you still have to change targets. By week 20, dps can usually just focus the boss/adds/mechanics at 60% of what they had to do on week one because of gear, and tanks get gear to make their survival less in their hands and generate more threat. Healers at least still have to switch targets and stuff on week 20.

So, I'd say "early in the raid cycle, Tanks working real hard, healers working hard, dps working hard. late in the raid cycle, Healers working some, dps and tanks just kind of zoning out most of the time."

That's been my experience maining tank or healer for several expansions.