Ranking the roles from hardest to easiest

Community General Discussion
1

I saw a 3 year old discussion on reddit about which role is hardest to play in current WOW (at the time). I wanted to see what people think now about the same topic.

My opinion is that it’s very different depending on the content you’re doing. For me it goes:

Raid

ranged dps > healer (often doesn’t get included in all mechanics) > melee > tank

M+

tank > healer > melee > ranged

My justification for M+ is that learning the route/percentage is a huge burden that all tanks have to look up on the internet and get tools for (like MDT). Other players will eventually pick all of this info up from playing with tanks, but they don’t need to learn this at the start of an expansion - while all tanks do.

This might be anecdotal, but I also see more tanks start to get into things like focus-kick macros compared to DPS. Tanks can often have aggro issues, and need to taunt a target that is not the one they’d like to kick - so I see a lot more tanks who use focus-kick than I do dps. Obviously the only healers who would focus-kick are shaman, so I’m not sure how many of them are using things like that.

I’d also argue that tanks have the most affixes that affect them directly. Necrotic, raging, and bolstering are really tank affixes. Healers obviously have bursting and grievous. The dps affixes also affect tanks and healers.

I am playing healer mostly this patch. The difficulty seems to vary wildly on whether you’re in a coordinated group or a pug with ppl who don’t care about mechanics, so I could see healer being lower on this ranking for M+ (depending on your group).

1 Like
2

Im sorry, but are you saying ranged has it hardest in raid?

12 Likes
3

Yeah. In my experience ranged has the most mechanics that are dedicated to them in fights. I think it’s harder for melee to do damage (most fights aren’t really designed for melee), but I don’t really consider that a “difficulty” of their role per se.

Almost all fights have the ranged DPS doing some mechanic that they have to be concentrated on.

4

I haven’t done any serious raiding since the dinosaur age, but I’m sure healer is the hardest role in mythic raids.

1 Like
5

For the most part its melee thats been affected mechanics wise more than ranged overall, can’t speak to all raids this expac as I missed Nath, but ranged tends to have a significantly easier time with them then melee.

6

When I watch streams of ranged dps I almost fall asleep. So little going in out there its so easy.

7

Raid difficulty is really fight dependent some fights just don’t need healing, some fights are really boring and easy to tank, some fights aren’t complicated for a certain type of dps its hard to just box it all into some generalization.

M+ though is a bit easier: Healer in a bad group>tank>melee dps>=ranged dps>>>healer in a good group

1 Like
8

Ranged is the easiest role in the game in all content

That is all that matters

2 Likes
9

I have played all 3 roles in mythic prog and farm this tier, plus I’ve done all 3 roles in >=20 keys this season.

Which role is hardest largely depends on the fight and/or the dungeon. But, since difficulty is relative, let’s put some metrics on it.

Frequency and Impact.

So, we just killed Xymox, so I’ll use that as an example. Obviously a tank flex fight. Everything is about tank positioning, reactions happen every 30 seconds, and a misstep means a raid wipe.

Ranged have to bait traps out, stay spread, and provide dps pressure to boss and adds. A misstep could cost them dps, or at worst, make the tank reposition to avoid a badly baited trap. This also Cycles about every 30 seconds.

The tank mechanics often look easier because it’s the same 2 people getting them over and over and over again. They get good at it. Meanwhile, the kinda shifty range guy you hope doesn’t show up in your weak aura might only see a mechanic or two once a night.

I think because of the inherent pressure of the tank role (mistake = wipe) they rank higher than dps.

Healers, though, often have to deal with all the same things the dps does, in addition to watching health bars and coordinating cooldown usage. Blizzard loves these high damage phases this season for some reason. They also have a pretty severe impact of they make a mistake, depending on the fight. However, that role is spread over 4-5 people instead of 2, so it’s possible to overcome. So, more frequency, but less impact.

For these reasons, I’d say healing is the hardest (assuming your 4 healing most bosses), followed very closely by tanks, with dps being a solid third for raid content.

For keys, tank > healer=dos. Tank knowledge literally makes or breaks keys, especially in the early season, and a good tank can make up for bad healing or bad dps.

1 Like
10

… I don’t even know how to respond to this.

1 Like
11

You must not PvP lol.

PvP always favors melee. Always.

Mainly because pillar humping and LoS in arena.

12

I mean, this season some ranged are so strong they can’t be pressured for diving, so maybe not “always”.

13

True, you just have to respect those pulls a little more. Leapers are usually conjoined with low hit points, so everyone just stands in a group and blows their AOEs, they usually die fast.

14

Yeah I think early in the expansion/season it’s not even close. Tanks have to know 10x more than the other roles.

15

It’s hard to do raid in one ordering, because melee and ranged will swap based on what boss you’re doing.

1 Like
16

It’s subjective. Some people thrive when it comes to healing and suck when it comes to melee. Some people love nothing more then tanking and can’t help but to stand in puddles of death at range.

17

Sorry but the fact you have ranged as you “most challenging” in terms of raid content is hilarious. Just absolutely out of touch lmfao

18

It depends what you’re doing and who you’re playing with. If you’re healing great players who are steamrolling and taking virtually no damage, healing is definitely the easiest role. If you have four headless chickens in your run, healing becomes the hardest.

2 Likes
19

If you are pushing progressing healing is always hardest as everyone is learning fights.

Once people learn fights, it gets a lot easier but then you usually sub out a healer for a dps (or have your healer change to a dps spec

1 Like
20

Very true! And I think healing is probably the hardest role in the world highest keys like 27+, even if your team is perfect, just because abilities do so much damage at that point and you need to coordinate cds to keep your gooses alive while simultaneously dealing insane damage.

(Note that I am not a healer! Well this character is but I don’t play her) I just play a bunch of hunters and even with feign death and hunters mark conduits, some things bring me down to 10% hp from full at level 23 (Kul in theater of pain oof) and my healers are angels.

1 Like