Healing imo, none of this one crit heal and you are at full health, it can actually take time to build someones health up and the dps get punished big time for failing on a mechanic (which is of course how it should be).
Healing imo, none of this one crit heal and you are at full health, it can actually take time to build someones health up and the dps get punished big time for failing on a mechanic (which is of course how it should be).
well i think all of them are pretty equal
tanks if you mess up EVERYONE knows you messed up
as for dps if it aint high enough then you can be replaced alot easier than tanks or healers
and healers watching someone die makes you're heart sink when you know its an important member of the raid/party causing a wipe
i personally have played all three and think tanking is the worst
Healing is no doubt the most stressful, and I'd like to add that Tank Healing > Raid Healing, especially on hard hitting bosses.
Brutallus... *shivers*
healing. without a doubt.
If you're looking to recapture nostalgia.. It's not going to happen.
Not sure how anyone could say playing DPS is the most stressful unless they are joking. Even when it comes to dying it is far less of a deal for a DPS to die.
I have never heard a raid leader get angry at a DPS for not doing enough damage, whereas I have heard many healers get berated for letting people die and many tanks have got grief for not moving the boss/mobs appropriately. While I do not really agree that one role is more important than another when you are working as a team I think DPS is only going to be as/more stressful if you are doing the below.
One thing is there are lots of times where gimmick fights will require one person to do something that will make or break the fight like the orb(or kiting) on Razorgore or the gongs on Atramedes - whoever is doing that has the most stressful job
Tank > Healer > DPS.
Yes, I am semi-bias'd, but hear me out.
Healing is very stressful in Cataclysm, yes, you have to watch your mana and maintain the health of your party while avoiding danger (Adds, fire, etc.). Other then that, there isn't a whole lot.
Tanking is equally stressful, with the healing being more difficult, tanks need to be more aware and careful when to do what, IE Cooldowns, etc. But not only this, like healers, tanks need to watch their position near fire, AND they have to watch for other dangers, IE Adds, or an extra trash pack pull.
All in all, I think Tank is just slightly more difficult than healer.
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Anyone who voted DPS has no idea. Healing is brutally unforgiving in the heroic raid encounters, and we are expected to pick up the slack when a DPS or tank messes up.
Let me ask you this. When someone dies in a raid, who generally gets blamed first? That's right, the healers.
Vanilla, I would have said tanking. Because holding aggro was a complete and total pain.
BC, healing.
Wrath, tanking again.
This expansion it's back to healing, especially in raiding where some encounters just do a ton of damage.
Anyone voting DPS is a VERY bad DPS player. DPS has never and will never be hard. Period.
Fenixdown (retail) : level 60 priest. 2005-2015, 2022-???? (returned!)
Fenixdown (classic) : level 70 priest. 2019 - present
You can slack on DPS and (a big maybe) you can slack on tanking, but you can't slack on healing. And definitely after this expansion, slacking is an instant boot if you're not doing your job correctly.
I would have to say that DPS is one of the more stressful roles to play especially on progression. There reaches a point where you hit this wall and there isn't anything that your group can do as far as healers or tanks go. If your group doesn't have the dps to kill a boss then no amount of healing or tanking is going to change any of that and if you're consistently lower than everyone else or your spec just happens to be sub-par (elemental shaman) then you might get benched until the issue resolves itself. Tanking is not what I would consider to be that stressful once you learn the encounter but healing is what I would consider the most stressful out of the choices.
Healing > DPS > Tanking
Healing is the most stressful because Blizzard went ape shit on avoidable damage and mana conservation for healers. Out of all the roles to play healing is what I would consider the hardest role to avoid aoe damage. As a melee dps I have to watch all of my cool downs as well as watch my feet and the area around me. Healers on the other hand have to watch their healing assignment, manage their cool downs and their mana consumption AND watch their own feet, it is easy to zone out while watching the health bars go up and down.
P.S. this is my sad attempt to placate the healers in my raid, I honestly think it is far worse for melee dps than anyone else, just keep healing me!
Doc: I'm a pacifist.
Caboose: You're a thing that babies suck on?
Tucker: No dude that's a pedophile.
Church: Tucker, I think he means a pacifier.
Tucker: Oh right, man I was totally thinking of something else.
Lol really?
As a tank:
Magmaw - stand in the wrong place it's a wipe
Omnotron - stand in the wrong place it's a wipe, fail to pickup the bosses quickly the first time it is also most likely a wipe
Maloriak - Fail to move the boss and it's a wipe, fail to pickup the adds properly and it's a wipe
You can actually list the majority of encounters, that while being easy you will cause a wipe if you are not paying attention as a tank. Also since when did tanks not need to frequently manage cooldowns(as in the tanks that aren't shit) you also need to do as much of a rotation as DPS classes, unless they suck and they you won't have any issues regardless
If you do badly as a DPS you can be carried on almost all encounters unless the other DPS are equally as bad.
Also this should really be stating the obvious but the reason there are a lack of tanks across the majority of content has a lot to do with it being a stressful role to play.
Healing because you have to compensate for people's mistakes and 9/10 times they receive the blame for things
Right now i would have to go with healer, atleast overall, sure some fights puts more pressure on dps / tank, but still seems like healer is the most stressfull right now.
You say that anyone who votes for DPS has to be a bad player because he doesn't take responsibility for himself if he dies on a boss fight? Well I find dps to be quite stressful and I take full responsibility for dying on boss fights and my raid can attest to that fact. Now that my guild has bumped down to 3 10 man raids it is a lot easier but back in the day when there were 6 melee dps and a whole smattering of spell effects going off right under the boss's feet it was damn difficult to find where it was safe to stand and where it wasn't. I started raiding as a healer back in Vanilla and before that I was a tank in the 60 dungeons so I grew to despise anyone who blamed the healer or tank for their deaths, I never blame my tanks or my healers. I know that if I die on a boss then there is a 99% chance that it was my fault. But do you not realize that such a realization in itself causes a great deal of stress? Knowing that you fucked up an attempt because of something that YOU did? At least as a healer or a tank you can have a valid excuse like running out of mana or the dps was too low and the boss enraged, the dps all we get is DERP.
Doc: I'm a pacifist.
Caboose: You're a thing that babies suck on?
Tucker: No dude that's a pedophile.
Church: Tucker, I think he means a pacifier.
Tucker: Oh right, man I was totally thinking of something else.
I'd say it completely depends on the fight and the mechanics. Some mechanics stresses dps more than the other roles while some mechanics stresses the tanks, and some stresses the healers.
While I haven't done all 3 on everything, I have done all 3 in heroics and on one raid encounter (omnitron). While this isn't a very big sample size, imo:
Tank>=Heal.
Dps isn't even on the list. Tank is more stressful because its more punishing imo, but healing is harder. Its a bit of toss up, but exclusively in terms of stress, I freak out when I spike low far more when tanking then when I see a tank spike low as healer, just because I can do something about it. But that's just me of course.
Nightstormer of Azuremyst
Healing>DPS>Tank>
I actually feel less stressful tanking, either in raids or heroics.
In heroics, I have control of the group, so there's less chance of me feeling helpless when we wipe, or when we're going way too slow. Heroics are even easier now with the 15% buff and most PUGs knowing them like the back of their hand. I've been going CCless with no wipes ever since 4.0.6. We're in Wrath mode again. It was pretty stressful tanking heroics before the buffs/nerfs, but now its a cakewalk.
In raids, the only pressure I have is to survive. Threat is fairly easy to hold once you "lock in" and stack up your vengeance. After that, I can focus on watching for boss abilities. As a DPS, I have to watch for abilities AND make sure I am doing optimal DPS at all times. If I fail at either one, I look pretty bad because DPSing is supposed to be "easy". I'm also not getting a healer's full attention, so I am more likely to die to things that wouldn't kill me when I'm tanking. Sure, we might not wipe instantly if I die as a DPS, but that's irrelevant to me. From a personal standpoint, I still failed just as hard if I die as a DPS. The pressure to do good DPS is also pretty high, because there is no such thing as "good enough". Unlike tanking, there's a hard number that determined how well you did.
Healing will always be the most stressful position. If you screw up, someone dies. If someone else screws up, you have to heal through their failure. And you still have to watch out for the same stuff everyone else does, while you're watching your mana.