How bad do I suck?

[Lizana]

I can think of 1 fight in the naxx that tanks and dps get to just stand there and dps/tank and thats patch. now lets count the fights where healer stand somewhere and heal... hmm i can think of a lot more of those...

[hvidgaard]

I can think of 1 fight in the naxx that tanks and dps get to just stand there and dps/tank and thats patch. now lets count the fights where healer stand somewhere and heal... hmm i can think of a lot more of those...

To compare, how many fights in Naxx do the tanks and dps continuesly have to monitor a huge amount of variables (1-4 tanks with a continues high amount of incoming damage, 10-25 healthbars, 10-25 raiders susceptible to unpredictable damage, 10-25 raiders who can make mistakes) and react within a fraction of a second? And at times they cannot make a mistake, or someone will die from their own mistakes (i.e. not avoiding damage they could have)

If you really think a healer "just stand there healing" you are very very wrong. Any fight with "fire" the healer have to move as well, but contrarily to dps and a certain extend tanks they can't just move, yet you still have to. I know the amounts of variables are a bit exaggerated as you devide the healing assignments, but I hope you get the point.

[qygibo]

Lizana knows very well what healing is like, as he's trained me in all that I know about healing and has forgotten more about healing than I have learned. He also has healers of his own.

And compared to tanking, healing is far more of the "stand there and do your job" deal. You're trying to make it sound like one healer has to monitor ALL THOSE BARS and such, but you don't. You get to SHARE your responsibilities with up to 6 other healers in a 25 man raid. A tank doesn't necessarily get to share their responsibilities, and they also have to keep an eye out on those health bars, on the mob's health bar, on the position of the mob so that those other health bars don't go down, and on maintaining threat so that they mitigate the damage that would potentially one shot a dps. A healer makes sure that the target(s) that they are supposed to heal stays healed.

[Lizana]

To compare, how many fights in Naxx do the tanks and dps continuesly have to monitor a huge amount of variables (1-4 tanks with a continues high amount of incoming damage, 10-25 healthbars, 10-25 raiders susceptible to unpredictable damage, 10-25 raiders who can make mistakes) and react within a fraction of a second? And at times they cannot make a mistake, or someone will die from their own mistakes (i.e. not avoiding damage they could have)

If you really think a healer "just stand there healing" you are very very wrong. Any fight with "fire" the healer have to move as well, but contrarily to dps and a certain extend tanks they can't just move, yet you still have to. I know the amounts of variables are a bit exaggerated as you devide the healing assignments, but I hope you get the point.

Your raids must suck if your the only healer healing 25 people.... We run with 7 healers... that means healers have at most 18 other people to keep track of ( i expect healers to be able to heal themselves) 18 people divided by 7 healers = 2.5 bars you effectively have to watch. I have more than 2.5 bars just watching my own health, my rage, and the bosses health and cast bar.

[hvidgaard]

Lizana, I don't get why the first thing you do is a personal attack? Did you or qygibo even read the last sentence? I don't raid 25mans, and no we don't suck. Personally I find tanking stressful, but healing can be much more hectic and even more stressful.

Healers are usually going by yourself > others, but if you're a tank healer and have to heal yourself or the tank (the other ones die) it's a wipe going by your expectations. A tank healer should keep the tank alive at all cost, raid healers should keep everyone else alive including all healers. And even tho you have 6-8 healers it doesn't mean you only have to watch 3-4 bars, well if you're a bad healer it does.

I it just a personal meaning, but I don't find posistioning or moving hard at all. I don't find it hard to generate more than enough threat. As a OT I don't find it hard to pickup mobs.

If you find tanking harder than healing I suspect that you've only healed with a surplus of healers - try with less.

[qygibo]

I've healed all sorts of ways.. I've healed where everyone was undergeared in a 5 man, I've healed when we've had only 3-4 healers in a 25 man. I've duo healed in the 10 man raids, so don't sit there and say "Oh, you don't KNOW what it's really like to struggle!"

I've also TANKED those same things, and you know what? Tanking is harder. Sure, in the above scenarios a healer has to work a bit harder, but a healer can come underprepared, undergeared, and unknowing of the fight and they can still manage to do the job with few issues. A tank has to be geared to the nines, they have to know the fights, they have to know what the mob does and how to make sure the mob's blows are dealt with so that the damage is mitigated towards the tank instead of at the dps or the healer. If a tank is not doing all of those things, more likely than not the group is going to fail.

[hvidgaard]

If a healer come unprepared and undergeared then (s)he will be booted from my raids. A healer that don't know the critical phases of a fight will cause a wipe. If a healer don't know what kind of damage to expect it will be a wipe. If you have an undergeared healer you need to have an equally overgeared tank, but it also works the other way around.

Duo heal 10man is for the most part 1 healer too much (save a few bosses in Naxx). If you've run with 3-4 healers in a 25man, I'm 100% positive it was a BC raid after 3.0 which it really doesn't say anything about healing.

Anyway, this is my last word on this otherwise very offtopic subject. You want tanking to be the hardest - I don't agree, alot of people don't - so peace be with it.

[qygibo]

Actually, no, a healer undergeared and unprepared won't necessarily cause a wipe in a raid, again, because they can fall back upon other people to heal after them. It's not adviseable, sure, but it's doable. One healer messing up will not wipe a raid.

You want your job to be hardest because it somehow makes you feel more special. I'm sorry, you and one other person don't make healing magically harder just because you feel that it is. Again, I would like to point out that this is a small subforum in a website dedicated to the very difficult job of tanking and all that a tank needs to know and do. If healing was really meant to be so difficult then I'm pretty sure this place would be called Healspot, and despite what was said prior about it, the fact that there was a solid need to have all sorts of theorycrafting just on tanking, yet there not be so much on healing, shows that lots of other people don't view healing as harder than tanking. People don't heal more because healing is BORING, people don't tank more because tanking is HARD.

[orcstar]

Lol, a thread about whether healing is harder or tanking :P
Tanking isn't *that* hard: get boss into position do your rotation. Push your special buttons when the boss does a quirk and try to stay ahead in threat of your dps.
Well, that's tanking most of the time.
Tanking is hard because of other things then purely fight mechanics. As a tank there's always the pressure that you're not allowed to die and it's also often the tanks that lead the raid into battle. And if the raid fails you feel it as a personal failure.

Healing: well, most of the time you or some other assigned healers spam the tank and some spam the raid. Not that hard either. When the boss does a quirk you push your special buttons. You have always keep an eye open for others, if they make mistake or get unexpected damage you have got to make a quick decision, in a split second you need to decide: will I heal that person or will the healing of that person interfere with my current job (ie. tank healing) and let him die.
Pure fight mechanics don't make healing hard. Unexpected mistakes other people make is what makes healing hard. And keeping up your attention for 10 minutes is also hard.

Healing gets progressively easier once your raid gears up, makes less mistakes and dps-es harder so fight are shorter. (From BC)As a tank, a better geared raid, tailing you for tps can be very stressing. Once the raid gears up, some encounters which were easy can as a tank can become hard again because your dps pressure very much.

In my experience: when you outgear and outskill an encounter, tanking can still be hard.
Healing is hardest on progression encounters. I would argue even harder then tanking. Because you have to learn where to stand and where not, but also make up for everyone else who also needs to learn where to stand and where not and what to do and what not. As a tank, on a lot of progression encounters it was just like a normal one: pick up boss, face him away from the raid, keep him debuffed while holding threat. Use cooldown abilities at the best moment."

.....People don't heal more because healing is BORING, people don't tank more because tanking is HARD.

Your entire post is at fault but tanking isn't hard because of the actual tanking and the fight mechanics and the buttons you have to press but because of the things around it, the leading the group you have.
Healing is about pressing the right buttons at the right moment, the reason why healers can come in undergeared is because some of them are very good at pressing the right button at the right moment, they outperform their gear. When fights are critical it's not about how big a heal is but will it land or not on the right target at the right time, that's why healing is so relatively gear independant.
Tanking is about gear.

[qygibo]

Healing: well, most of the time you or some other assigned healers spam the tank and some spam the raid. Not that hard either. When the boss does a quirk you push your special buttons. You have always keep an eye open for others, if they make mistake or get unexpected damage you have got to make a quick decision, in a split second you need to decide: will I heal that person or will the healing of that person interfere with my current job (ie. tank healing) and let him die.

Again, you're putting all of the focus on what one healer has to do, and in a raid environment that is not the case. A healer is always going to have at least one other person to fall back on in case a mistake is made, thus the pressure isn't all on one person. For tanks, they do not have someone to fall back on, because more often than not the tanks have their own separate roles in a fight that they have to partake, and on, say, the Grobbulus fight, the main tank can't tell the off tank to take over if the main tank makes a mistake, because the off tank has their own role in that fight. As just an example.

Pure fight mechanics don't make healing hard. Unexpected mistakes other people make is what makes healing hard. And keeping up your attention for 10 minutes is also hard.

Unexpected mistakes aren't necessarily the healer's fault. You know what I do when a dps or somebody dies because they make a mistake such as not do the dance correctly on Heigan, or not break out the person stuck in the web on Maexxna? I'm certainly not going to freak out so much that I have to rush over to heal them, because some mistakes just can't be fixed. And keeping up your attention for 10 minutes as a healer is hard? Like that isn't hard for a dps or a tank to do either?

Healing is hardest on progression encounters. I would argue even harder then tanking. Because you have to learn where to stand and where not, but also make up for everyone else who also needs to learn where to stand and where not and what to do and what not. As a tank, on a lot of progression encounters it was just like a normal one: pick up boss, face him away from the raid, keep him debuffed while holding threat. Use cooldown abilities at the best moment."

I give you this. Last night our guild brought along 10 core raiders, 2 of who were guild healers, myself and a shaman. We pugged 15 other slots, with 5 other healers, 2 paladins, a priest, and 2 druids, being pugged, only one of which we had ran with before. In addition to 9 dps and 1 off tank being pugged. We went that night and cleared 2 wings of Naxx, with a group where most of the people had never even set foot in Naxx 10 man so didn't know the strategy.

The healers, what did they do? They got to sit there in a spot and heal, maybe moving on occasion depending on the fight, like Loetheb. The tanks, on the other hand, had to work with 9 other dpsers that they had never ran with before, which affects a lot when it comes to thing such as knowing the other people's tps, what abilities they had so that they could compensate in terms of strategy and where to stand the mob, and generally relying on people they didn't know to be able to take down the bosses before the enrage timers.

And you know what? There was only one wipe during that entire run. Every healer felt that it was one of the easiest raids that they had ever done, and that's notable because for some of those healers it was their very first time raiding, and that was with some of them being undergeared. The healers were able to perform their jobs and keep alive the people who needed to be alive, with nary a complaint about how hard their job was. Healing isn't hard, people just for some reason seem to want to make it hard, why, I don't know.