Your spec and general raid awareness : spec hardest for general raid awareness

[Nasser]

From my experience, healing is hard, but you gotta have some great awareness anyways as a healer, so it's still possible to be aware of what bosses do whilst saving lives.

As a tank, there is some difficulty but overall I'd say it's the least difficult (in terms of awareness of other people, environment etc - since the main focus of tanking is to pay attention to buffs/debuffs/timers).

Ranged dps... to be honest it's quite faceroll (and I'm talking about fights with ranged at a disadvantage), no offense to any of you guys - but switching targets, trapping/kiting beasts on Saurfang, juggling bombs on Blood Princes etc. were quite easy (at least for me), mainly because you already have a great deal of awareness due to the ranged part of your class.

So the hardest of them all, is melee DPS - but only durring progression fights.

I remember my first tries on Putridice almost a year ago - Tank (as dk, warr, paladin): 2 wipes and I mastered what I had to do. Healer(priest, paladin): Always learning, but was never "impossible". Ranged DPS(mage, hunter, warlock): Clever use of class abilities, absolute faceroll to switch targets and kite and whatever. Melee DPS (rogue,DK, paladin, warr): Unbelievable pressure to time your cooldowns or save them for vital moments, massive dps/time loss to get in the proper positioning, and keeping the dps up or else fail to kill the boss (yes, we wiped for 2 weeks at 1-5%, only because the 2 melee in our group were doing 2k less dps than the ranged). The classes in the brackets are the classes I've personally played to see it from their point of view.

Again I repeat myself (because I know there will be trolls later) - melee DPS is difficult only on progression fights, especially on fights that favour ranged. On farm fights (Putricide 4 months later, as an example) it's no more difficult than ranged, leaving Healing as the second most difficult in terms of raid awareness. Then again, this is how I played the game - others may think Tanking is hardest, and they are probably right in their case.

[Drekor]

I would say healer probably has it worst followed by melee DPS. Healers are typically not looking at the fight, as they are staring at health bars and seeing the raid announces and other addons like DBM giving them the cliff notes of what is going on behind the health bars. When I'm playing as my holy paladin I find that vent is a extremely important and having someone announcing key things is important as I don't always have the time to focus on the boss mechanics and if I miss something it could end in a wipe. Melee DPS are often in a similar position because they can't see the field as well being right in the bosses ass so they'll often miss things.

[Equilis]

From my experience, healing is hard, but you gotta have some great awareness anyways as a healer, so it's still possible to be aware of what bosses do whilst saving lives.

As a tank, there is some difficulty but overall I'd say it's the least difficult (in terms of awareness of other people, environment etc - since the main focus of tanking is to pay attention to buffs/debuffs/timers).

Ranged dps... to be honest it's quite faceroll (and I'm talking about fights with ranged at a disadvantage), no offense to any of you guys - but switching targets, trapping/kiting beasts on Saurfang, juggling bombs on Blood Princes etc. were quite easy (at least for me), mainly because you already have a great deal of awareness due to the ranged part of your class.

So the hardest of them all, is melee DPS - but only durring progression fights.

I remember my first tries on Putridice almost a year ago - Tank (as dk, warr, paladin): 2 wipes and I mastered what I had to do. Healer(priest, paladin): Always learning, but was never "impossible". Ranged DPS(mage, hunter, warlock): Clever use of class abilities, absolute faceroll to switch targets and kite and whatever. Melee DPS (rogue,DK, paladin, warr): Unbelievable pressure to time your cooldowns or save them for vital moments, massive dps/time loss to get in the proper positioning, and keeping the dps up or else fail to kill the boss (yes, we wiped for 2 weeks at 1-5%, only because the 2 melee in our group were doing 2k less dps than the ranged). The classes in the brackets are the classes I've personally played to see it from their point of view.

Again I repeat myself (because I know there will be trolls later) - melee DPS is difficult only on progression fights, especially on fights that favour ranged. On farm fights (Putricide 4 months later, as an example) it's no more difficult than ranged, leaving Healing as the second most difficult in terms of raid awareness. Then again, this is how I played the game - others may think Tanking is hardest, and they are probably right in their case.

I just wanted to add to this post that healing is a whole lot different from WOTLK now. There wasn't really a big point at watching your mana there.
Now I really need to constantly remind myself of not going oom, but still heal everyone. I like this version way more .

Then again I never played a melee dps, so no experience there. I do understand your reasons tho.

[muto]

Who actually voted for tank :S

I did. I'm a Healer. I have tried tanking before and I just can't get into it.

I would say Healing is easiest, but then again I'm a Healer so of course I'm going to say my role is easy,

[Revelations]

Ranged have the hands down easiest time when it comes to awareness...

Healers have it the worst, and I would dare to say that melee dps are in a close second on many fights..

[Deleted]

Overall i would say the healer, but it does depend on the fight.
lets say magmaw: the tank just stand there (one abilty to cd for), while the dps have a bit harder job (not OMG hard but still).
and on another fight (the over 10% hp boss): dps just watch out for one thing (+ the end bit), while the tank and healers have a harder job.

[Deleted]

My main is a protection warrior and I basically am raid leader since I seem to be the only one who was ready to organize and lead raids in the first place. I am also dps in single tank fights like Magmaw, Atramedes and Valiona & Theralion etc since the other tank doesn't really want to dps and I'm completely fine with doing something else for a change.

While tanking it's fairly easy to be aware and shout stuff since tank is argueably the easiest role in current raids, but while doing melee dps it ranges from hard to nigh impossible. Gladly of the 9 people I play with most aren't afraid to speak to a microphone so if people are failing to notice something at range and I can't see there, there's always someone else to step up and yell whatever needs to be yelled.

[Deleted]

Healer, any day. Healing effectively while watching the firez and shit is by far harder than doing the same as DPS'ing, or tanking for that matter. Actually tanking might actually be the easiest part, par some fights where tank actually has to do something else than stand spamming his threat abilities.

---------- Post added 2011-01-21 at 01:53 PM ----------

I did. I'm a Healer. I have tried tanking before and I just can't get into it.

I would say Healing is easiest, but then again I'm a Healer so of course I'm going to say my role is easy,

I don't get your logic. Why would you say healer is easiest because you play a healer? Oo

[Deleted]

I don't see why everyone says it's so hard for shadow. You need to keep track of dots on the boss, time left on empowering shadow and amount of orbs. That's pretty much it and can be handled with addons. (I don't consider archangel and dark evangelism something to worry about. If Archangel is off cooldown, I will usually have 5 stacks of dark evangelism ready).

Healer is hardest, if there's a lot of damage going on and it's unstable, you simply don't have time to look at the boss. Keeping track of a castbar or movement, such as the binding spell from last boss in Grim Batol, definitely makes healer quite a lot harder.

[Deleted]

Ranged (DPS > Heal) > Melee (DPS > Tanks)

1. Having a rotation or a set priority system is easier than dynamically reacting to your tasks.
2. Being at range gives you a better overview of the whole combat area.

[fangless]

Melee generally have to deal with a lot of splash damage, since there are more of them in one small area. Then have to position to be behind the boss, while avoiding said damage, and continue to follow rotations. Now, of course, there are some classes that the rotations are harder to follow than others, but usually it's still not always easy. Throw in having to interrupt as well, and it becomes a tall order.

As a tank, I can say you have a lot less to worry about, since a lot of boss mechanics don't target the tank, and you just usually have to worry about either moving a boss, or just staying alive... which you do anyhow :P

[Deleted]

Healers can have problems with raid-awareness, but that mostly comes down to practice and experience.

A good tip is to use a HUD to track your personal mana and HP and keeping your raid-interface close to the centre of the screen.

Melee DPS on the other hand will have raid-awareness problems simply because they can't see much besides the boss and are often stacked. Experience doesn't really help to alleviate the problem and I always considered Melee DPS to be the worst position for raid-leading.

[Deleted]

Personally I'm much more aware of my surroundings when healing than as dps. The only time I have trouble when healing is if there is heavy incoming raid damage that I hadn't anticipated which is fairly rare and usually due to me losing all concentration. As dps (or even as healer but dpsing during periods I don't have to heal) I really struggle to find the right balance between awareness of surroundings, anticipation of future events and maintaining damage rotations/priorities etc. I'm sure during Vanilla/TBC when I played a mage I was much better at it but having played a healer for so long I seem to have lost the knack for dps.

[Deleted]

I think tank has it the hardest - in addition to all boss mechanics everyone has to follow they get a whole new sets of abilities to watch out for - tank switched and damage spikes which need to be smoothened with cooldowns, adds that need to be picked up, that nasty crit-happy fire mage who unloads all his biggests nukes right after pull etc. Another thing is consequences of fail - if dps gets blown up by not moving out of fire there are still many others so you can still kill boss. If tank dies it's usually a wipe.
Then we have healers - with eyes focused on grid it's easy to miss some important things like aoe interupt. You need to also comunicate with tanks to use your cooldowns to help them stay alive, and healers in order to not waste precious mana and make full use of mana regen cooldowns.
DPS has it the easiest - just watch your aggro and run your rotation. Ranged dps have it even easier than mele - they dont have to worry about certain mechanics like cleaves, dragon breath or tail swipe.

[Marxman]

I'd say Melee DPS, if only because half your screen is generally filled with a boss's ass, and the other half is a giant clusterf@%k of melee classes and spell effects.

Healers generally have lower awareness too, but I have less sympathy for them. If you find yourself falling victim to 'Grid Tunnel Vision', then move Grid to a spot where that Tunnel Vision also allows you to see your character.

[Deleted]

Healer, because as said many times already, they require a lot of concentration already on keeping everyone alive (no, doing your dps rotation doesn't require the same level of rotation unless you're a feral) and they often don't have a safety net.

I think it's human nature to ease up a bit on your concentration (even if it's just a bit) if you know someone is going to catch you every time, whereas with a healer you generally have to fix your mistakes yourself, which unfortunately can sometimes result in a feedback loop because you go into survival mode which then means you're not healing anyone else and they start dying etc etc.

[The Pwii]

I may be biased as a healer, but I have to go with healer. You have to have all the awareness that ranged has, plus watch 5-25 health bars. Also, in emergency heal situations (I get this on Valiona & Theralion too much), you may not even be facing the boss or see their cast bar, or whatever. And even if you have the field vision, sometimes you still have to eat a bad mechanic for that must-have emergency heal.

Tank and melee are next, as while mobile, they often have a screen full of monster crotch or ass, even at long camera angle.

Ranged definitely has it best, though I wouldn't say it is ever easy. Everyone is watching rotations, and DPS gets tunnel vision, but ranged does have the best field of vision to be aware of things.

[Furby]

The only reason why healers have a harder time: raid frames. Once healers get used to looking out past the bars of health it becomes pretty decent.

The fights make it harder for certain melee or ranged classes. I would say melee have a harder time on al'akir, but would suggest they have it easier on magmaw. Things like that kinda make it subjective.

Tanks just gotta know when to use cooldowns which is "self" awareness.

You shoulda said that Hybrid Classes have the hardest time. They have the most options when it comes to utility and raid support. If a good hybrid pays attention and pops out to heal that is hot stuff!

[Bombkirby]

Shouldn't healing be the MOST raid aware. When ever I heal I'm looking at the health bars most of the time and if I see one dropping I always ask...

"Wait what the??? Why is their health dropping???"

Then I glance over to the player and see whats going on. No other role has you constantly checking out every raid member to see what they are doing and how they're holding up.

Melee DPS would prolly be the least aware. They have a smaller range of view than ranged DPS and arguably less responsibilities than the tank. Like when an add spawns in the room it'll usually happen behind their PoV or behind the boss that is obscuring their vision, while the ranged will see it in their very large field of vision.

[Deleted]

range ussualy is easier than meelee though its really fight dependant , example Valiona for melee it almost piss easy fight while for ranged ,