Why don't tanks want to tank, or healers want to heal?

[RobertMugabe]

In DF is you were basically glorified DPS. As a tank, you were effectively immortal and you completely geared towards doing as much DPS as possible. As a healer, you spent more time DPS than healing. With most the healing being done passively or via Cooldowns.

They changed this in TWW and now as a healer, you very rarely DPS and have to actively heal and as a tank you have to spec/gear towards tank and play an active role in your mitigation to not die. So you know, actually play your roles and this has had a surprising amount of backlash.

Which leads me to the question, if you want to DPS why not just play a DPS? Why are so many tank/healers complaining that they have to actually play the role they chose?

I'm personally playing both a tank and a healer and I love that I feel like I'm playing my role again.

Srsly who is complaining?

Also that's just not how things were in DF. It all played very similarly to how it is in TWW rn and only later on with increased stats did those situations occur for certain roles where they just scale too well, such as BDK. This basically happens in every expansion.

It's actually not that hard. In M+ you can if you want just fullfill your role and that's that, but with gear increasing and this whole thing being about speedrunning, you will, when possible, obviously try to contribute as much as possible to DPS as you can. For tanks it happens mostly naturally (although later you can swap for example tanking enchants and trinkets for DPS ones) and for healers, it's just better to do DPS when you can instead of standing around AFK.

Like it's really simple and I don't see who is complaining...

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Presumably a certain level of "I just want to see the big numbers" which I can sympathize with, though my reason has always been "I guess I'll learn it to get faster queue times in casual content." I have some enjoyment of tanking just for the fact I have drastically more control over the pace of the dungeons so if I feel like the group needs to slow down I'm not just ignored and have all my emergency CC's broken (usually). (yes, dps, if I used paralysis on that faraway mob that means leave it alone, we get there when we get there!)

I have more trouble with healer, which out of the three roles by far has the most difficult learning curve since low end content can be some of the most challenging as people are most apt to simply ignore mechanics and expect the healer to pick up the slack. I do appreciate follower dungeons helping a bit with that though.

I wouldn't really call it a "learning curve" or at least not in a skill-related way. The only thing that you really learn as a healer and to a lesser degree as a tank is to just getting used to the fact that a lot of people are bad at the game and toxic at the same time.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

In DF is you were basically glorified DPS. As a tank, you were effectively immortal and you completely geared towards doing as much DPS as possible. As a healer, you spent more time DPS than healing. With most the healing being done passively or via Cooldowns.

They changed this in TWW and now as a healer, you very rarely DPS and have to actively heal and as a tank you have to spec/gear towards tank and play an active role in your mitigation to not die. So you know, actually play your roles and this has had a surprising amount of backlash.

Which leads me to the question, if you want to DPS why not just play a DPS? Why are so many tank/healers complaining that they have to actually play the role they chose?

I'm personally playing both a tank and a healer and I love that I feel like I'm playing my role again.

Why are you stuck on the idea that tanks and healers shouldn't dps? Do you also believe paladins should not use their Lay-on-Hands to off-heal? (they're not healers, why are they healing people?) In group content, every member of the team should be contributing whatever they can. Stop saying "not my job" and start saying "how can I help?"

[Thirtyrock]

Why are you stuck on the idea that tanks and healers shouldn't dps? Do you also believe paladins should not use their Lay-on-Hands to off-heal? (they're not healers, why are they healing people?) In group content, every member of the team should be contributing whatever they can. Stop saying "not my job" and start saying "how can I help?"

Man, great way to cut to the bone of the issue!

You're on a team, you should be using every ability you can to help that team succeed. If that means you're a healer who spends every global on healing, because that's what it takes, great. If that means you're a healer who spends some of their time dpsing, because the healing requirements are met, great.

You absolutely CAN just do your primary job of healing and then sit on your hands when healing isn't needed, sure. But that's a deliberate choice that will, eventually, limit your progression. That's fine, just make the choice and live with it.

Tuning in such a way that there's never downtime with healing means that the slightest mistake causes deaths. That's not going to be fun for anyone.

With Tanking, it's a bit less clear cut. Our primary role is to stay alive and keep control over the baddies. We can stay alive better if we're using our abilities effectively, both offensive and defensive. Using your abilities effectively LOOKS like trying to increase your dps. Increasing your DPS is actually a side effect of trying to be efficient with mitigation and defensives, not the other way around. So tanks should absolutely be trying to increase their DPS because, in MOST cases, this will result in them increasing their survivability at the same time, not to mention the additional bonus of things dying faster so there's less total damage.

[Ereb]

Why are you stuck on the idea that tanks and healers shouldn't dps? Do you also believe paladins should not use their Lay-on-Hands to off-heal? (they're not healers, why are they healing people?) In group content, every member of the team should be contributing whatever they can. Stop saying "not my job" and start saying "how can I help?"

I cannot agree more with this! If more people thought this way I daresay we would see a helluva lot less QQ threads on MMO-C about how hard M+ is now lol

[Heathy]

Honestly I have disliked the spiky nature of healing specifically m+ I try to avoid doing it, raiding isn't so bad I find, to heal, its still challenging but when you are the only healer it sucks the level of overlap, the twitchy level its reached, you move at the wrong time people die its become so tense. I guess with raiding you're not the only healer most of the time so at least when you move the healing doesn't completely stop. its the only issue with endlessly increasing difficulty is that eventually it becomes bullshit to heal. even the crappy abilities that hit for nothing in lower difficulties start to one tap people. I dunno if I would say that it becomes more fun vs frustrating there is a fine like between challenge and rng.

[Hitei]

Why are you stuck on the idea that tanks and healers shouldn't dps?

Because people pick a specific role because they want to do that thing, not spend half their time doing something else at reduced effectiveness.

Do you also believe paladins should not use their Lay-on-Hands to off-heal?

This is a poor comparison. No one is complaining about healers having to hit a DPS ability twice or three times per dungeon. Imagine if it were actually comparable. If you queued as Ret, but Ret's rotation had no damage or auto-attacks 30% of the time, so for optimality, you constantly stopped DPSing and instead just sat there casting flash heals on your party for tiny amounts of healing. Does that seem like good design? That the best way to play a DPS spec is to spend a significant amount of your time doing another role?

There is no reason the game needs to be balanced the way it currently is. If they slowed damage and healing, they could return to how healing used to be where you were more constantly putting out healing and spending all your time doing the thing you signed up to do. Then people who want to do a mix can play the two hybrid specs specifically designed around damaging/healing and people who want to DPS can DPS.

[Thirtyrock]

Because people pick a specific role because they want to do that thing, not spend half their time doing something else at reduced effectiveness.


This is a poor comparison. No one is complaining about healers having to hit a DPS ability twice or three times per dungeon. Imagine if it were actually comparable. If you queued as Ret, but Ret's rotation had no damage or auto-attacks 30% of the time, so for optimality, you constantly stopped DPSing and instead just sat there casting flash heals on your party for tiny amounts of healing. Does that seem like good design? That the best way to play a DPS spec is to spend a significant amount of your time doing another role?

There is no reason the game needs to be balanced the way it currently is. If they slowed damage and healing, they could return to how healing used to be where you were more constantly putting out healing and spending all your time doing the thing you signed up to do. Then people who want to do a mix can play the two hybrid specs specifically designed around damaging/healing and people who want to DPS can DPS.

This sounds good, but the reality is it almost always leads to MORE time spent DPSing by healers, rather than less.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Because people pick a specific role because they want to do that thing, not spend half their time doing something else at reduced effectiveness.

• First of all, which people? Because most of us enjoy doing more than one thing all the time.
• Secondly, you're thinking of it all wrong. Tanks specialize in being tanky, but that does not mean they can't also do damage. Same with healers. In good groups (the kind that time high keys), tank + healer combine to become a 4th dps. And everyone is off-healing and giving each other externals and using all their other buttons. Good groups don't have slackers saying "not my job".

As for how often the tank and healer should dps? That question is silly too. Tank is always DPSing to maintain threat. Only question there is whether he's doing it the best way or whether he could contribute more by improving his rotation. The more threat tank can generate, the more the DPS can cut loose. Healer dps is mostly affected by how many GCDs they can spare for that. The better the group, the less damage DPS will be taken (most damage is avoidable), and more time the healer will have to DPS. That's why healer dps is often so much higher in high keys. Not only are the healer-players better, but the DPS are also avoiding unnecessary damage so there's less to heal, leaving healers with more time to do other things.

[Mevaya]

Does not compute.

My taskbars on Evoker are completely full, while ive got breathing room on shaman.

[Rageonit]

My taskbars on Evoker are completely full, while ive got breathing room on shaman.

I play both and I'm not really sure how that's possible. I cba to count all the abilities of both specs, but resto shaman (and shaman in general) is likely the most bloated class of all in terms of all the possible utility spells you can have on your bars. Evoker doesn't even come close. As to number of strictly healing spells, they're I think quite comparable.

[Nymrohd]

I think the idea for healers at least is, if you want healers to occasionally dps, make it interesting. It obviously would never be as involved as a dps rotation, but it should be separate enough and not reliant on a very small number of abilities. Ideally letting healers have an effective dps CD that is separate from their healing cooldowns so they can actually be effective as dps during downtime without a significant opportunity cost would make it more interesting for them.

Tanks naturally dps while playing so I don't think it is the same. Tanks often have spare GCDs anyway to use utility and healing (not as much as we had in e.g. Legion but still). With dps it can be a bit different since some specs have minimal downtime so using utility does feel like a sacrifice of your main role (and getting mobs down faster is almost always the best way to protect the group).