Gilga
New Member
As a healer who sometimes tanks, and as someone who is mystified by the sometimes radical differences in group performance between similarly mixed, similarly geared people, I've been pondering what the real "clutch class" is in groups.
My feeling is that it's The Tank. Here's my argument:
Healer duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Keep everyone else alive
3) Be mana-efficient
While it's not necessarily easy to be a "great" healer because the balance between the three really does require skill to achieve, in most cases you don't need to be fantastic at #3, and if you do decently at #2 you'll end up doing #1, too. Healers can, for the most part, just watch health bars and/or grid without needing too much situational awareness besides making sure you're not standing in fire. If you have a great tank who holds aggro well ... in most encounters the group can be successful even if the healer does marginally well. If the tank doesn't do their job, however, then #1 becomes much harder and thus #2 ... and #3 becomes irrelevant. In theory, a healer should never have to watch KTM ... it only happens when other roles are having trouble.
DPS duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Stay off the top of the KTM ranking
3) Lay on the DPS
4) Manage "side duties" (e.g. crowd control, pets, debuffs, etc)
5) Be mana-efficient
Again, with DPS, there is a big gap between a "good" DPSer and a "great" DPSer. If you're only good, your performance at #3 takes a big hit if you're having to do #4 ... and #5 really is an advanced skill. But so long as you don't do "wipe-seeking" type things like aggro adds with your pet or absolutely neglect sheeping or something, your performace won't wipe a group. And this is another role, if the tank is doing a great job and holding aggro, all 5 things become much easier to do. However, even a Quantamastimic DPSer will be inhibited if the tank isn't keeping threat up because they'll have to avoid pulling aggro. I would say that DPSing is a little bit more skill-dependent than healing, too, because you have to keep track of the active target. So you actually have to be watching the screen and making sure the right mob is targeted as opposed to a healer watching grid while the toon pointed away from the action (I guess, in theory, if you have a great targeter, you can just /assist without actually watching the screen, b ut that is again dependent on someone else..)
Tank Duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Keep aggro of main (if not all) mobs
3) Keep aggro off of healer
4) Keep aggro off of clothies, etc
On one hand, this is the simplest of jobs: all you have to is make sure that the mob(s) are attacking you. BUT to pull that off, it's more than just staying at the top of KTM. It's also having situational awareness of what mobs are where, that no mobs are on the healers or running loose, that no adds are incoming, etc. -- which is something you can't use a mod or have great gear to compensate for. So you really have to aware of the environment around while WHILE ALSO popping a pot if you need to , or holding rage/mana in reserve for "taunt-equivalents", etc. Also, if you're a great tank, you can carry "good" healers and DPS because you doing your job right makes their jobs much simpler.
So that, to me, makes tanks the role where "great skill" makes the biggest difference to a group.
<3 tanks
Now, someone shoot down my arguments and tell me why I'm all wrong...
My feeling is that it's The Tank. Here's my argument:
Healer duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Keep everyone else alive
3) Be mana-efficient
While it's not necessarily easy to be a "great" healer because the balance between the three really does require skill to achieve, in most cases you don't need to be fantastic at #3, and if you do decently at #2 you'll end up doing #1, too. Healers can, for the most part, just watch health bars and/or grid without needing too much situational awareness besides making sure you're not standing in fire. If you have a great tank who holds aggro well ... in most encounters the group can be successful even if the healer does marginally well. If the tank doesn't do their job, however, then #1 becomes much harder and thus #2 ... and #3 becomes irrelevant. In theory, a healer should never have to watch KTM ... it only happens when other roles are having trouble.
DPS duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Stay off the top of the KTM ranking
3) Lay on the DPS
4) Manage "side duties" (e.g. crowd control, pets, debuffs, etc)
5) Be mana-efficient
Again, with DPS, there is a big gap between a "good" DPSer and a "great" DPSer. If you're only good, your performance at #3 takes a big hit if you're having to do #4 ... and #5 really is an advanced skill. But so long as you don't do "wipe-seeking" type things like aggro adds with your pet or absolutely neglect sheeping or something, your performace won't wipe a group. And this is another role, if the tank is doing a great job and holding aggro, all 5 things become much easier to do. However, even a Quantamastimic DPSer will be inhibited if the tank isn't keeping threat up because they'll have to avoid pulling aggro. I would say that DPSing is a little bit more skill-dependent than healing, too, because you have to keep track of the active target. So you actually have to be watching the screen and making sure the right mob is targeted as opposed to a healer watching grid while the toon pointed away from the action (I guess, in theory, if you have a great targeter, you can just /assist without actually watching the screen, b ut that is again dependent on someone else..)
Tank Duties:
1) Keep yourself alive
2) Keep aggro of main (if not all) mobs
3) Keep aggro off of healer
4) Keep aggro off of clothies, etc
On one hand, this is the simplest of jobs: all you have to is make sure that the mob(s) are attacking you. BUT to pull that off, it's more than just staying at the top of KTM. It's also having situational awareness of what mobs are where, that no mobs are on the healers or running loose, that no adds are incoming, etc. -- which is something you can't use a mod or have great gear to compensate for. So you really have to aware of the environment around while WHILE ALSO popping a pot if you need to , or holding rage/mana in reserve for "taunt-equivalents", etc. Also, if you're a great tank, you can carry "good" healers and DPS because you doing your job right makes their jobs much simpler.
So that, to me, makes tanks the role where "great skill" makes the biggest difference to a group.
<3 tanks
Now, someone shoot down my arguments and tell me why I'm all wrong...
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I have played Lara more and more, even being the only healer in BM and shattered halls and even way back when I did some MT healing in MC with her
