No. Healers being able to throw out some damage when healing isn’t needed is a good thing and fun
He’s referring to healers having their healing revolved around them doing DPS in some fashion.
I know lots of people that are turned off by this, and I don’t blame them. It’s not only awkward, but causes players to be discouraged from even trying to heal. Not only because they don’t want to DPS, but because it creates a strong learning curve of judging when they should be healing or DPSing, or if their dps-to-heal rotation in the moment is good enough, or do they need to switch to full CDs/heals. It’s an awkward system that some do like, but most find stressful and would rather just focus on doing one(easier) thing at a time - DPS. So they stay put on their ret pally.
Don’t get me wrong, I love tanking. Maybe I’m just burnt out from too many expansions of doing nothing but tanking, but I do see and feel a lot of issues with the role at the moment.
It’s not bad enough that I think most people should quit tanking, but I can definitely understand why so many, including myself, have stepped back and switched to DPS. Despite what I said above, I find it much easier to simply follow a tank, focus on my DPS rotation, and occasionally hit one of the few defensives I have for really big damage spikes. So far, this approach has worked just fine up to +11 keys. Now, I’m focusing on improving my use of utility.
I’ll admit, part of this is the excitement of picking up a new spec for the first time in a long while. Figuring out the best times to use things like Blessing of Sacrifice has been a fresh challenge. Unlike the pressure of tanking, where mistakes can feel like group-ending failures, using it correctly has only positive consequences, like saving someone in a tight spot.
And maybe thats the biggest issue I have for tanking, it never feels like you can save the group with great play but your mistakes will wipe the group.
As ret it feels good to end a +10 at 1.8M DPS over all, have the highest amount of interrupts, the third highest amount of heals (behind healer and tank abut double or tripling other DPS,) have the least amount of damage taken (despite using BoS nearly on CD) and be able to point to several spots where a BoS or LoH saved a party member or even wipe.
I don’t get that feeling as a bear. Some of it perhaps is that I can’t compare myself to other tanks and another part is that I’m so used to their utility that I no longer feel a challenge in using it correctly or even give myself credit for decursing say the heal absorbs in GB.
Not going to lie. You’re response seems to suggest context that have nothing to do with the OPs post. It reads like you quite literally responded to someone else entirely.
I think the OPs point of view is valid. There is an unnaturally high burden placed on tanks compared to the rest of the party at this point and it just seems to grow as time goes on. Tanks are expected to lead the group, route the dungeon, hold agro, deal sufficient dps, and sometimes have to get the majority of the interrupts in the dungeon all while trying to not die. It’s actually kind of absurd.
Personally, I love that extra responsibility when I tank but I can definitely agree it’s something that will naturally push other players away from it.
I was being sarcastic. The clip I linked shows Yoda doing everything under the sun and still gets aggro taken from him from an enhance shaman. It was just one of many examples of the awful state of tanks atm.
Sorry I didn’t recognize the link and being on the net since before the late 80’s its ingrained not to use links I don’t know…
I wouldn’t personally say awful, as its not as bad as say SL season 1 which is maybe the worst I can remember. But its definitely not what I consider fun. I kind of used my post as a stream of thought post and realized its the amount of responsibility, the price for any type of failure is massive, and just a general familiarity has made it no longer as fresh/fun.
I can see why some people still like it though and hope they continue as I’m now in the need of tanks since joining the ranks of DPS>
The only one I’d say has healing “revolve around DPS” is Disc. Others like Holy Pal and Mistweaver do have damage-to-heal builds, sure, but they also have other builds that aren’t that and focus more on traditional healing.
As for the learning curve, there are more ways to practice DPSing as a healer than ever before. There’s Proving Grounds, Follower Dungeons, LFR, even Timewalking - all very fast, low difficulty and spammable/highly repeatable content.
I just started paladin tanking vs druid and I agree so much. Paladin tanking has been a joke. I finished a 8 and timed a 7 at 575 item level. The druid is 620 and I did not feel comfortable in 9s. It’s insane how different it is.
You’re referencing a line where I’m literally referring to content that isn’t high-end. That is the point. DPS are still expected to perform within their ilvl range even in a farm key. If I’m running a 7 on my druid no one will say boo if I’m /dancing in the corner, so long as everyone is alive and the key is timed. They would not be similarly chill with my warlock spamming Shadowbolt, even if we’re chugging along fine otherwise.
The rest of your post seems to kind of veer off into a tangled mess due to this misunderstanding.
This makes no sense. Routing is an emergent property. It’s the difference between having an adventure guide that describes what boss abilities do, and having it lay out the common strategy for fighting the boss. The whole point of the fight, or the dungeon, is to solve the puzzle.
Routing is an entirely overblown issue in any case, like so many tanking and healing related issues on these forums. All a new tank has to do to learn routing is go into a +2 and run through the dungeon. At the end if you’re missing % then add a pack or three, depending on what you think you need. If you overshot it, drop one. It’s not a big deal.
I’m not trolling. Tanking is the easiest role in the game by a significant margin. The rotations have a much lower execution floor (on average) than DPS, and the only thing they replace it with is like one rotational mechanic and a couple extra defensive CDs where they have to actively manage their defense.
The success condition for tanking is simply easier to achieve than it is for DPS and healers. Like healers there are runs where you can mostly zone out and vibe, but unlike healers there is no opposite end where the mental load peaks. The tanking mental workload caps out a pretty low level.
The real problem is tanking and healing is just not fun anymore and I am a lifetime tank. My blood dk is a husk of what it was during shadowlands/dragonflight. It is so bad to the point where I am very likely going to try rolling dps or take a long break from the game until they fix it. People can agree and disagree all they want, tanks and healers were always in demand, but the reason it got worse is because of this. Also not to mention, with challengers peril, if you die as a tank or healer you just bricked an entire key. At some point they have to make tanking and healing better, outside of MDI there was never anything wrong with tanking or healing.
I used to heal and tank only, but stopped when the dungeons became more of a chore and less of a game. I don’t mind if healing/tanking is more difficult, I just want the run to be bug free and not a total pain in the rear to go through.
I intentionally am only doing TW dungeons and lfg raids on this char because I just enjoy easy dungeon runs and TW badges… sometimes I get a satchel which is nice. I also like to feel as if I am helping out the queue. When the queue pop is instant, I feel bad and if I have time, I’ll try to do at least 2/3 dungeons to give those people waiting a break.
To be fair enhance shaman prob are the main problem there, while I dont disagree that tanks should do around 10% more damage than what they do right now.
Having played both bear and ret pally I tend to disagree.
Bears have issues with ramp time on thrash and several globals to spread moonfire.
Ret has issues where procs on pull can easily tear threat even before you pop wings. Also if I have wings going as the tank chain pulls I know I’m going to be eating quite a few melee hits regardless of what spec the tank is. Tanks simply don’t generate enough damage to overcome 6M aoe burst damage and I’ve seen others pull even higher numbers.
I mean even the fact that I’m implying here that I don’t use wings on pull implies its the norm to wait because you will pull threat.
there’s very little meta pathing required this season. other than DB you can basically just pull in a straight line through +10s.
healers do not “have to” DPS. if they don’t want to do more than the bare minimum, that’s their choice.
but that mindset is exactly what led us to where we are now. lazy healers were mad they had time to press damage buttons. blizzard tuned so they would have to heal more. they can’t keep up, so they quit.
It’s not laziness. That’s just not what they want to do. Global-filling, spazoid gameplay is dps world, not healers. Trying to make healers play like dps was a shortsighted and ultimately self defeating shift.
Make healing more about decision making and less about reactionary play, and people will come back. Dps players will never pick up extra jobs, because they’re just not equipped to think about anything else, so no need to be making healing more like dpsing.
it is absolutely laziness if you have the ability to help your group succeed and you choose not to. it’s no different than a dps player who chooses not to hit an interrupt because it doesn’t deal damage and their role is “damage dealer”