Idk about hardest, any of them can be hard depending on who you’re running with, they can all be fairly easy with a competent group.
Tanks have probably the most responsibility as they set the pace of the dungeon and can easily wipe the group if they lack dungeon specific knowledge.
Healing can be the most stressful because you lack a lot of control over the situation, you’re just a long for the ride trying to save people from their mistakes.
DPS is the most competitive because they are the most numerous.
A tank has to be a leader. That is a rare trait in humans so there aren’t as many of them. I think great tanks should be a little mean too. Don’t politely ask someone to interrupt, tell them to.
Healing is only hard when damage is unpredictable. Like when no one ever interrupts corrosive volley. When your group is good though, you know exactly when damage is coming out and you just heal it.
DPS is the most important role imo. Everyone over 200k dps and interrupting corrosive volley makes any run go smooth.
I have a friend that excels at healing, in all classes/spec. But she cannot tank her way out of a wet paper bag, and is passable at dps. (I think she gets bored)
I on the other hand do well with the dps specs, fairly well at tanking, but I am not the healer you want in a high end M+.
If in a guild group - people you know and can anticipate, healing can be rather easy. Thats one extreme.
In contrast, with PUG People of varying skill levels (hard to anticipate because people get boosts so gear score alone isn’t a solid reflection of experience), and randoms of varying temperament (blame the healer for your standing in fire mentality) healing a pug can be a dumpster fire of agony.
A partial guild/partial pug is usually more of a challenge but okay because your guildies have your back when you initiate a kick (or just laugh off the pugs bad moves)
Its been a long time since I’ve main tanked so can’t speak to that.
DPS seems pretty easy from a social standpoint as there is no spotlight upon you unless you are exceptionally good or bad. Otherwise, if you know the mechanics for healing - you know it for DPS.
I tend to heal when I know the team, and DPS anonymously when I wade into the sewer that can be PUGery.
I agree where PUGs and partials are concerned but tanking a guild run can be pretty easy going.
In PUGs you have to be a dictator, in a guild run you can be a facilitator.
Imagine the difference if you are "boss’ of a construction crew composed of guys you’ve known and trusted for months or years. You can joke around as long as the work gets done. Now ponder what it must be like for the foreman who picks up a new crew of day-laborers from a crowd standing in front of Home Depot every morning.
Night and day difference.
PUGing is herding day laborers.
A bad day in a guild group is better than a good day of PUGing.
Healing, it can either be fine in a good group or torture in a group of tunnelers who don’t cc or use defensives. I would say at the highest levels though with groups that literally lock down entire packs of mobs before they get a single cast off, healing becomes easier and tanking or dps is the hardest.
In order: Healing - Reason, not even Jesus could help some of this player base. DPS - some rotations take a while to get down and having to move nonstop or position yourself in a way that makes the job of the healer/tank easier is something most don’t do (move mobs to tank and move away/protect healer) Tanking- In my opinion this is the easiest role. You are the timekeeper, while yes you do have to pay attention to mob placement and move according to the dps so a nice flow stays going, you’re dps don’t matter nearly as much as the actual dps.
If a tank doesn’t know or properly execute certain mechanics, it’s a wipe. If a dps doesn’t it’s a BR (if they’re even needed lol). If a heals dies, it’s typically a no-brainer BR.
The content is heavily skewed towards tank needing to review the most info outside of the game.
I’m going to grant you that some of the rotations can be complicated to master with a lot of variables, but that’s about the only difficult thing about being a DPS. Positioning isn’t really a consideration besides not standing in front of the mob, which only becomes difficult if the tank makes it difficult, and not standing in the bad stuff, which isn’t difficult if you have eyes.
I will say I’m amazed at how many DPS will pull aggro for whatever reason, and then just sit there 15 yards away from the group trying to solo it, instead of bringing it to the tank. As a DPS main, that frustrates the hell out of me and I wish the healer would just let them die and then ask if they learned anything afterwards. But that’s not difficult, that’s just a stupid DPS player.
It’s my perception that in vanilla, tanking is toughest because you have to know the fights, get and maintain aggro and have a few tricks up your sleeve when the fit hits the shan. In retail, I suspect it’s healing.
Doing your job properly is hard no matter the role, but in terms of overall difficulty, relating exclusively to the role:
Healing >>>> Dps > Tanks.
Tanks are sleep-inducing easy for most content. Use your AoE pretty much on CD to keep threat on the group of enemies and your defensives when the situation calls for them. In raids, it basically boild down to “know when to tank swap”, and “use defensive on the big damage skill of the boss”.
DPS only need some small self-awareness (mind your positioning, use your defensives, CDs, interrupts, snares, roots, CCs etc.) and a decent notion of their rotations.
Healers are expected to do whatever the DPS do, while keeping the whole group alive and correcting the mistakes of all 3 roles. It’s a thankless nightmare. In M+, it gets easier as keys go up simply because mistakes become increasingly more binary (you either get one-shot or not), so the healer becomes somewhat of a “failsafe DPS” to sustain the tank.
The same applies to PvP, where healers are the focus target.
Kitten feeder is the most difficult job, and here’s my explanation:
The tank’s job is to lead people the right direction, aka. to wrangle the kittens into the right direction.
The healer’s job is to make sure all of the kittens stay well and don’t hurt themselves too much.
The DPS’ job is to learn to fight so they one day can fend for themselves and not have to rely on others to pull their weight.
But regardless of whether you are the wrangler (tank), the caretaker (healer), or competitive self-teacher (DPS) … the person who is actually managing all of the kittens is the one with the most difficult job. To know where to go, to know what to do, and to make sure that the kittens don’t fight amongst themselves - that’s the guy with the most difficult job, and they can be any of the trifecta-roles. And I will call them…
druid: roots, cyclone, bash. Feral charge if it is skilled.
A great PvP healer will be something of a reactive tank in that just as in PvE the team pivots off the tank, in PvP the team can pivot off the healers positioning - so they stay in range to receive and stay in range to peel off the heal
I think that dps is actually the hardest job FOR ME. I’m a good healer and a competent tank. But my dps skills are in the trash. Well, they’re better than they were.
PvPers know what peel is, and peeling won’t stop making you the focus on BGs though, meaning healers are still the hardest job as they need to avoid incoming damage, heal, CC and DPS all while being the enemy team’s focus.
Healing on Bolstering + Fortified was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a while. The sheer number of DPS who didn’t know what to priority interrupt and/or chain stun lock was absurd. BRH was either “Do all the mechanics by yourself” or “Watch the party wipe.” Man does it wear you down mentally after a while.
No, it didn’t get easier in the upper ranges. All the good players destroyed it on Tuesday (Or so I’d like to believe) and left the scraps for the rest of the week. Nothing but players who shouldn’t be in said content probably because they don’t realize how BS it all is.
This week is a joke compared to last week. It’s even more so a joke because the good players came out of the woodworks to make it all that much easier. So no doubt healing is the hardest of the three when it comes to pugging M+. Success is in your hands more often than not and you have to put on your S+ game for it to happen.
Most teams I’ve played with will tar the player that looks weakest 1st, expecting that the opponent anticipates initial pressure on the heal. Once they have weak-boi on heavy defensive they pivot to the opposing healer and see how that goes. After the opener it’s a series of CD trades and “Moltke Moments”
Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said: Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus.
“No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy”
Which means no matter how it opens I can expect to run like a scared kitty (a lot!)
Most annoying is when you queue into the same team over and over and over again. Then its just a matter of pressing till someone makes a mistake (and often that’s me)
