How bad do I suck?

[Eide]

Tanks have a dual objective - stay alive, stay a target. The challenge of a tank is that those two goals are opposed. Luckily, staying alive is a burden tanks share with their healers. Like DPS, tanks mostly interact with the game and always benefit from more throughput. The only relevant variable under the control of a tank's allies is aggro gain.

I don't quite agree with this part. The tank has a different type of control as well, as a good tank is also the guy who leads the group. By leading I don't mean marking, but the tank decides the pace and pulls and he positions bosses and mobs which helps toward objectives goal. That leads to a third and fourth objective. The third would be to optimize group performance through his tanking, and the last one would be the same as the healer's objective, keep everyone alive.

Totally agree on what you wrote about healers though. It's always a good idea to ask healers what they think. They usually see a lot more than all the others.

In a perfect world the Tank and the Healer are two sides of the same coin. They should instinctivly know what the other is going to do, and trust each other blindly. That's one reason why PuG's often fail.
Generally speaking a not so good geared tank and not so good geared healer can still do amazing stuff, if they know their stuff, and know each other. This synergy which they build up is (to my mind) more important than any amount of gear.

A last point, also justly touched upon by the OP, is subject knowledge. A good tank is almost always someone who has read most decent guides out there, who often talks to fellow tanks to share experiences and who knows what his abilities do.
A lot of that is true for healers too. There's one major difference. Tanking is about control. Control is gained through threat and positioning. It's pro-active, the tank determines what's happening. Healing is much more reactive. Of course, good healer beat that by anticipating situations, by ultimatly they have to react to changing situations.

That's where the biggest challenge of healing comes in in my opinion. A tank dictates a fight. A healer reacts to it. His biggest challenge is anticipate everything, respond fast and time things right.

So healing is a different experience, a different challenge, but it can be just as fun.

[Lizana]

That's where the biggest challenge of healing comes in in my opinion. A tank dictates a fight. A healer reacts to it. His biggest challenge is anticipate everything, respond fast and time things right.

I agree, tanks dictate the fight. But good healers dont react to them, they should plan ahead. A healer reacting to burst damage = dead tank a healer planing for it and acting accordingly prevents burst damage when possible, or has the heal ready to go off as soon as its taken. The best healers are the ones that know the fight better than anyone and know exactly what is going to happen when.

[Eide]

I agree, tanks dictate the fight. But good healers dont react to them, they should plan ahead. A healer reacting to burst damage = dead tank a healer planing for it and acting accordingly prevents burst damage when possible, or has the heal ready to go off as soon as its taken. The best healers are the ones that know the fight better than anyone and know exactly what is going to happen when.

I did state that healers should anticipate everything, however, they still need to respond to arising situations. They can't "dictate" healage, that would only lead to overhaling. they still need to respond that the numbers. As I also stated, Anticipation is the key to beating the responsive nature of healing.

I dinged 80 yesterday on my Resto Druid, and 5 minutes later I was healing Heroic Gundrak with a tank who dinged 80 the day before. I gotta say I was having fun. It also made me painfully aware that I have a lot to learn on the subject of healing. The last time I did serious healing (WotLK normals aren't a challenge at all) was in AQ20 in vanilla. Before that and after that I was always feral.

I really need to get the timing of abilties down, tune my healing UI a bit, work on my keybindings a little more etc. All that stuff beats the pace at which things are happening. I'm quite pleased with how things went though. I had a bit of trouble when lots of people were taking big hits, like standing in AoE and stuff, but all in all it was pretty ok.

[NewfieDave]

I don't quite agree with this part. The tank has a different type of control as well, as a good tank is also the guy who leads the group. By leading I don't mean marking, but the tank decides the pace and pulls and he positions bosses and mobs which helps toward objectives goal. That leads to a third and fourth objective. The third would be to optimize group performance through his tanking, and the last one would be the same as the healer's objective, keep everyone alive.

While you make some interesting points, I don't think we're approaching the issue the same way. I can't dispute that a good tank makes a good group (most of the time) and vice versa (again, most of the time). I also don't think that tanks, or any role really, are easy to play at a high level. What I'm trying to say is that healing - on a fundamental level - is the hardest job in WoW.

Ever notice that a good WoW player can usually perform well at any role? That's because every class is the same when you break it down to basics: a sum of abilities that you use by pressing buttons in a rhythmic fashion. A good WoW player knows his abilities and when to use them regardless of their class or role, because a good WoW player is analytical. The specific abilities used are a micro level of performance. They are what separates a good Rogue from a bad Rogue. To analyze cross-class on a micro level would be comparing apples and oranges. I'm analyzing on a macro level and thinking in terms of, "what objective(s) do the sum of Role X's abilities directly work towards?"

Leading a group is something that I separate from being a tank. It's often the tanks that lead because they are always on the front line of combat, but it doesn't have to be the tank dictating the pace or marking. It's definitely nice to have a good tank who is also a good leader, but they're mutually exclusive variables. A good tank with no leadership skills, but who follows direction well, is totally fine. Leading is also not the same as pulling, which is something I consider to be on the micro level.

I'd argue that every role has to worry about positioning in some capacity. It's part of reacting to the game variables. Tanks deal with positioning more often than the other roles, but that doesn't necessarily make it harder for them.

Optimizing group performance? You do that by playing your own character to the best of your ability and providing direction and knowledge to the other players in your group. Every group needs a tank and a good tank makes for an easier run, but it's the job of every player to optimize their group's performance.

And tanks definitely do not have the objective to keep everybody alive. They do that indirectly by making themselves a target and staying alive. Only healers are actively working to prevent people other than themselves from dying. If the tank loses aggro to a DPS and the DPS dies, it's not because the tank failed to keep him alive; it's because the tank failed to generate enough threat on that target to hold aggro (or the DPS over-aggro'd, or the healer couldn't get a heal off on them fast enough).

So on a totally fundamental level I feel that DPS are the easiest to play, then tanks, and healers are the toughest because of the types of variables to which they have to respond. Regardless, mastering any class or role takes serious skill.

[Lizana]

I feel it is the tanks job to keep most deaths from happening. If the tank holds threat, has the boss positioned correctly, the tank is doing their job, and that job isnt holding the mob, its mitigating the damage to the the party. Thats the tanks primary job, to mitigate damage. Instead of the clothie taking a 10k hit, the tank takes a 2k hit. that 8k of damage the healer doesnt have to heal. Thats what keeps the clothie alive, not a 10k heal but not takeing the 10k hit.

By your logic, Paramedics are to blame when people die from drunk drivers. They didnt arrive to the scene quick enough and didnt "heal" the person quick enough.

[NewfieDave]

I feel it is the tanks job to keep most deaths from happening.

Yes, but indirectly. If you're into roleplaying a tank, you could certainly think of what you do as fending off the adversary from your allies. I'm coming at it from a different perspective. Ignoring fight specific mechanics (every role has to deal with them), the choices you make when pressing your hotkeys as a tank are between building more threat or decreasing the damage you take.

If the tank holds threat, has the boss positioned correctly, the tank is doing their job, and that job isnt holding the mob, its mitigating the damage to the the party. Thats the tanks primary job, to mitigate damage.

Yes, that is the tank's job in a nutshell. The positioning correctly and the holding threat part is staying a target. The mitigating damage part is staying alive.

Instead of the clothie taking a 10k hit, the tank takes a 2k hit. that 8k of damage the healer doesnt have to heal. Thats what keeps the clothie alive, not a 10k heal but not takeing the 10k hit.

This is more on the micro level. Part of how a tank stays alive is through their gear and talent selections.

By your logic, Paramedics are to blame when people die from drunk drivers. They didnt arrive to the scene quick enough and didnt "heal" the person quick enough.

No. You're presenting a situation where the blame is obvious. Blame isn't so obvious in WoW.

Imagine a scenario where a Hunter pulls aggro from the OT, then uses Feign Death. The OT's taunt is on cooldown, and the mob goes straight for the MT healer. The MT dies because his healer was getting beat on by an add. The raid wipes.

The raid asks, "Why did the MT die?"
The MT blames his healer, "Why didn't I get heals?"
The healer blames the OT, "Why didn't you have aggro?"
The OT blames the Hunter, "He pulled aggro!"

Each of the three roles failed at their objective in this scenario. The DPS did not do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro. The OT did not stay a target, and the MT did not stay alive. The healer did not keep his target alive. Of course the blame could lie almost anywhere along the chain of failures (perhaps somebody could have reacted better to the situation at any point in the chain to prevent things from spiraling out of control). The important thing to look at is what the rest of the group is asking from you. That is your objective. I don't ask a tank to keep me alive. I ask him to take the hits because he's better at it.

[Raiss]

Your mana pool is way to low. I started healing heroics with 22k mana with kings and i didn't had any problens healing it. I would focus on int gear first, with 14k mana you will go OOM really fast, because divine plea won't be enough.

And about "if you can tank you can heal". Jesus, stop saying that, to be a good healer you need to be a good healer, not a tank or dps. If you are a tank and a good healer also, grats, but you will find thousands of great tanks that can't heal too. You can be a healer or not, just like tanks or dps, you can suck on something and be good at something else (personally I do suck at dpsing, always agroing -.-)

For heroics i would use all mana cooldowns and glyphs, divine plea, seal of wisdom, sacred shield on the tank full time and you should be fine.

[Lizana]

Imagine a scenario where a Hunter pulls aggro from the OT, then uses Feign Death. The OT's taunt is on cooldown, and the mob goes straight for the MT healer. The MT dies because his healer was getting beat on by an add. The raid wipes.

The raid asks, "Why did the MT die?"
The MT blames his healer, "Why didn't I get heals?"
The healer blames the OT, "Why didn't you have aggro?"
The OT blames the Hunter, "He pulled aggro!"

Each of the three roles failed at their objective in this scenario. The DPS did not do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro. The OT did not stay a target, and the MT did not stay alive. The healer did not keep his target alive. Of course the blame could lie almost anywhere along the chain of failures (perhaps somebody could have reacted better to the situation at any point in the chain to prevent things from spiraling out of control). The important thing to look at is what the rest of the group is asking from you. That is your objective. I don't ask a tank to keep me alive. I ask him to take the hits because he's better at it.

In that senerio, its first the dps fault, then the tanks fault, and at Very very last a healers fault. its a common misconception that the tanks job is to just hold threat on mobs and stay alive while doing it. Thats not their job. Their job in a group/raid is to mitigate the incoming damage from the group so the group survives. A good tank insures better survivability for the group as a whole than a healer would any day of the week.

Heres a way to think of it. Say you have a Boss in a 5 man. Boss hits for 15k against an unarmored target. Lets say you have 2 healers to make it easier and 3 dps. Boss takes 1 min to kill and attacks every 3 seconds. This means those two healers have to heal out 13k heals every 3 seconds, doable yes but a total of 300k healing has to be done to keep everyone alive. Now take out one healer and add in a tank. Now because the tank is mitigating the dammage from the group, the tank now takes 5k hits for the same time period, If the healer was capable of doing the 13k heals every 3 seconds, now they only have to heal ever 6 seconds or can use more manna efficient heals .

Tanking is not just about threat it is about mitigating the dammage that would otherwise be done against your entire raid/party in an effective manner

[Milric]

A good tank insures better survivability for the group as a whole than a healer would any day of the week.

Heres a way to think of it. Say you have a Boss in a 5 man. Boss hits for 15k against an unarmored target. Lets say you have 2 healers to make it easier and 3 dps. Boss takes 1 min to kill and attacks every 3 seconds. This means those two healers have to heal out 13k heals every 3 seconds, doable yes but a total of 300k healing has to be done to keep everyone alive. Now take out one healer and add in a tank. Now because the tank is mitigating the dammage from the group, the tank now takes 5k hits for the same time period, If the healer was capable of doing the 13k heals every 3 seconds, now they only have to heal ever 6 seconds or can use more manna efficient heals .

Your example in which a group must survive without a tank is likely accurate. However, a group with 2 tanks and no healer would also not survive through any real content either.

Your statement, "A good tank insures better survivability for the group as a whole than a healer would any day of the week" is an oversimplification. While true that a good tank greatly increases a group's survivability, I cannot think of any 'appropriate level' instance where a tank alone can come anywhere close to ensuring it. Only the tank and healer in cooperation can do this.

[NewfieDave]

In that senerio, its first the dps fault, then the tanks fault, and at Very very last a healers fault. its a common misconception that the tanks job is to just hold threat on mobs and stay alive while doing it. Thats not their job. Their job in a group/raid is to mitigate the incoming damage from the group so the group survives. A good tank insures better survivability for the group as a whole than a healer would any day of the week.

Heres a way to think of it. Say you have a Boss in a 5 man. Boss hits for 15k against an unarmored target. Lets say you have 2 healers to make it easier and 3 dps. Boss takes 1 min to kill and attacks every 3 seconds. This means those two healers have to heal out 13k heals every 3 seconds, doable yes but a total of 300k healing has to be done to keep everyone alive. Now take out one healer and add in a tank. Now because the tank is mitigating the dammage from the group, the tank now takes 5k hits for the same time period, If the healer was capable of doing the 13k heals every 3 seconds, now they only have to heal ever 6 seconds or can use more manna efficient heals .

Tanking is not just about threat it is about mitigating the dammage that would otherwise be done against your entire raid/party in an effective manner

It feels like we're debating the two different ways to say tomato. I get what you're trying to say, but it doesn't fit within the structure of how I was breaking things down.

A tank is defined by their personal damage mitigation and threat generation. Those are the things they can do that other roles can't. The buttons that you press in combat mostly have to do with either taking less damage personally or pumping out more threat. Doing those two things well is your primary objective. Stay alive. Stay a target. If you complete those two objectives and the healers and DPS complete their objectives, the group wins the encounter.

I'm not concerned about groups that have no tank. Every role's objective has to assume that the other two roles will also be doing their job, because you can't play everybody's character for them (unless you're a pro multi-boxer, lol). I've healed a bad tank and finished the instance, I've healed a good tank and wiped to enrage timers, and I've played a tank and died because of a terrible healer. Saying, "Their job in a group/raid is to mitigate the incoming damage from the group so the group survives" is the same as saying a healer's job is to "Heal damage so the group survives", or that a DPS's job is to "Beat the enrage timer so the group survives." We're all working towards survival. Tanks do it by staying a target and staying alive.

I've yet to see a tank keep the group alive in the Vortex on Malygos. Why? Because there's nothing for them to target, so they can't work towards their objective.

[Lizana]

Your example in which a group must survive without a tank is likely accurate. However, a group with 2 tanks and no healer would also not survive through any real content either.

Your statement, "A good tank insures better survivability for the group as a whole than a healer would any day of the week" is an oversimplification. While true that a good tank greatly increases a group's survivability, I cannot think of any 'appropriate level' instance where a tank alone can come anywhere close to ensuring it. Only the tank and healer in cooperation can do this.

Actualy in my example 2 tanks would be able to survive. 5k hits, 1 hit every 3 seconds 60 second duration, that means 5kx20 hits = 100000 total dammage in. Now lets factor in Shield wall, Last stand + Enraged Regen + shield block ( not factoring in any dodge or parries) two warrior tanks over the fight would take in a total of 64k damage. Useing a buffed HP value of 35k (Warrior with Comanding shout, Kings and fort easily hits this add in food and flask and you could have upwards of 38k+) So the two warriors combined have 70k hp to mitigate the dammage, not counting the 23100 health they self heal giving them an effective combined hp pool of 93100 hp to soak up 64k dammage, once again not counting any dodges or parries, just block ( with 1k block value)

[Lizana]

I've yet to see a tank keep the group alive in the Vortex on Malygos. Why? Because there's nothing for them to target, so they can't work towards their objective.

So a warror poping a healthstone or a healing pot, so they dont die after the vortex and thereby wipe the group isnt keeping people alive... nice to know.

And your incorrect about what a tank does. A tank in any MMO is to mitigate the damage from the group to himself. You keep talking about how they mitigate "personal damage", they are not doing that, they are mitigating the damage from the group to themselves. A rouge pulling threat and having a boss smack them in the face is "personal damage" that should be mitigated, but the tanks role is to take the damage so the group doesn't. In a nutshell thats what a tank is, taking damage so others dont have to, those others include the healer. Holding agro and pushing my survial buttons allow me to do that, but you just push your healing buttons and allow me to do it better, if you want to try to dumb it down like that. Healers dont do anything but allow others to do their skills for longer.

And tanking isnt always about threat generation. A good example is Occulus, The red drake is the "tank" will never be top on threat. But they are the tank because the mitigate the damage from the rest of the group. Thats the core of being a tank, you take the hit so the rest of the party doesn't, you say thats personal dammage but its not, thats group damage that your chooseing to take to make sure the rest of the group can do their job effectively

[Milric]

Actualy in my example 2 tanks would be able to survive.

I did not say that they could not survive in your example. I said:

However, a group with 2 tanks and no healer would also not survive through any real content either.

Your example is not reflective of any real 'appropriate level' instances that I can think of. If it were, I believe I would see a lot more '2 Tanks looking for 3 DPS' in chat - A chat comment that I do not believe I have ever heard.

[Furi]

Wait, wut?

We're basing all of this off of a single heroic run? Silatan, I could understand your concern if your self-doubt was due to a series of bad runs, but to point at one heroic and come to the conclusion you need to "lrn2heel" is absurd.

You're taking the right steps to learn more about healing and getting feedback. Continue doing that, and consider getting more experience under your belt so that you can provide specific examples of your (percieved) deficiencies. We can address specifics much more easily then vague feelings.

And take some of the advice above - don't look at just healing, look at how the party interacts. Fault rarely lies with a single person.

[Lizana]

Fault rarely lies with a single person.

Unless they are a gnome....

[NewfieDave]

So a warror poping a healthstone or a healing pot, so they dont die after the vortex and thereby wipe the group isnt keeping people alive... nice to know.

That's keeping yourself alive, and it's part of reacting to game variables that everybody does. Only the healers are actively affecting the rest of the group, aside from themselves. You can say that you keep the group alive indirectly by keeping yourself alive, but I'm not interested in indirect. When it's crunch time and you're in combat, your brain ignores the indirect and thinks only about what buttons you need to press in order to respond to what's happening in real time.

And your incorrect about what a tank does. A tank in any MMO is to mitigate the damage from the group to himself. You keep talking about how they mitigate "personal damage", they are not doing that, they are mitigating the damage from the group to themselves. A rouge pulling threat and having a boss smack them in the face is "personal damage" that should be mitigated, but the tanks role is to take the damage so the group doesn't. In a nutshell thats what a tank is, taking damage so others dont have to, those others include the healer. Holding agro and pushing my survial buttons allow me to do that, but you just push your healing buttons and allow me to do it better, if you want to try to dumb it down like that. Healers dont do anything but allow others to do their skills for longer.

You're thinking about things indirectly again. If I'm playing a tank I know that by the definition of being a tank I'm the best available option to be taking hits from the bad guys. I don't wonder, "Do I really want to tank that dragon?" in the middle of an instance. The decisions that a tank has to make in combat revolve around being targeted by the oponent's attacks and increasing the ammount of damage they can take before they die. Other decisions such as movement, timing, positioning, or interacting with doodads are shared by all three roles. My focus is on the differences in decision making during combat.

And tanking isnt always about threat generation. A good example is Occulus, The red drake is the "tank" will never be top on threat. But they are the tank because the mitigate the damage from the rest of the group. Thats the core of being a tank, you take the hit so the rest of the party doesn't, you say thats personal dammage but its not, thats group damage that your chooseing to take to make sure the rest of the group can do their job effectively

Staying a target isn't all about threat generation. Threat's just one way of doing it. It could also mean eating a moving WW so the group doesn't have to.

[Lizana]

You want to view your job as the hardest, you want me to give you a pat onthe back? I play both healers and tanks, As a tank, the success of the raid more more depends on what i do, than what one of my 7 healers does, so i just flat out disagree with your premise

[NewfieDave]

You want to view your job as the hardest, you want me to give you a pat onthe back? I play both healers and tanks, As a tank, the success of the raid more more depends on what i do, than what one of my 7 healers does, so i just flat out disagree with your premise

Yes, fundamentally I believe healing is harder than tanking, because the variables to which we respond are more unpredictable. With a good tank and smart DPS, healing can be very easy. The difficulty scales with the sum of the raid's mistakes. Billy the Mage standing in the fire doesn't put more stress on the tank.

I think you're confusing being important with having a hard job. Having a bad MT is much worse than having a bad 7th healer, because the MT isn't sharing his workload with 6 other people. It's important to have good tanks if you want to make progress, but that does not inherently make tanking hard. The decisions you face while playing the game are what determine the difficulty of playing any role.

I'd also like to restate that all three roles are equally challenging to master in their own unique ways.

[qygibo]

NewfieDave, I think that you are wrong that healing is somehow harder than tanking. I have a healer and a tank myself, and tanks have it much harder than healers.

You are basically saying that all that a tank does is mash buttons and then they get aggro, and that the healer has to work SO HARD in order to make sure everyone is kept up. Ooooh, you have to watch multiple health bars, a tank is also watching those same health bars and the health of the mob and making sure that all mobs are appropriately tanked in the correct spot so that the rest of the group doesn't suffer.

A tank doesn't get to have the workload shared between 6-7 other people, the tank has to make sure that they're doing their job, the healer is the button presser. Sure, there are nuances and extra things that a healer can do that distinguish a good healer from a great healer, but in the end all of us as healers are just button pressers, and if one of us dies in a raid, yeah, that makes it harder on the rest of the group, but the group can go on.

I'd also like to point out that if healing was really supposed to be as difficult as you make it out to be, this site would be HealSpot and there's only be one little forum devoted to tanking. So gee, I wonder why there are a bunch of forums devoted just to TANKING and only one forum devoted to healing?

[NewfieDave]

I didn't mean to imply that any role just has to mash buttons. Every class/spec has their own "rotation". That rotation could be spamming 2, a priority list of what to use when things are off cooldown, or a reflexive RNG based approach. Rotation for a healer is more about knowing which heal fits the situation, but we still have a rough priority list. If you consider yourself a skilled player of any class then you should know your rotation inside and out. When you know your rotation that well it becomes mindless - part of your muscle memory.

Tanks can spam their threat rotation into infinity, which is why I find holding threat particularly mindless on a single target. AoE tanking used to be more challenging, but I found it very easy when I leveled a Warrior post-3.0. DPS have to worry about a threat cap (if there is one), but aside from that can also spam their rotations into infinity (or until they go oom). I played a Lock for a long time in BC and used to change specs all the time just because I was getting sick of doing my old rotations over and over.

I'm not getting into debating who has a harder rotation. The rotation used is going to vary from class to class and spec to spec, so you can't use rotations to differentiate whether tanks or healers are harder to play. Instead, I'm focusing on how the rotations are applied by each role - their objectives.

While I agree that visiting this site will improve your game whether you play a tank or not, it doesn't inherently make tanks harder to play because they have a kickass website.