What's the most skill-critical role in a group?

What is the most skill-critical role in a group? (public poll)

  • Total voters
    33
I still vote tank because I have ran black morass on Laraptor and on the rift lords keeping renew on the MT and maybe one flash heal was all that was needed to keep him alive because he was a good tank. Ive also healed with a bad tank and pulled aggro on every other add he wasnt worried about. good healer can not keep a group up with a bad tank in the 70 instas. I ran shattered halls on Laraptor with a group of friends that never ran anything higher than ramparts and we spent all night to not make it to the second boss hehe. I was able to keep everyone alive until I would gain so much healing aggro that I would get pounded by 3 mobs at once when I couldnt fade anymore hehe. Some of these instas really tax the tank to their limits and it takes a lot more than button smashing to keep enough aggro on the mobs and keep everything contained in one group instead of rampaging through the group. ive grouped on Where with plenty of so-so healers in the 70 instas and been able to get through it with good dps and a good tank
 
It is incredibly fight dependent. For things like grandmaster vorpil where you have to be on top of killing voidwalkers, and doing enough dps to the boss before the voidwalkers overwhelm you, the skill lies with the dps.

The tank has the ability to turn around botched trash pulls by picking up loose mobs.

Healers, on fights like terestian illhoof where there are people other than the tank that /need/ to be healed immediately are where the skill lies on that fight.

All in all you can't have a group of 1 stellar tank and 4 zombies and clear any instance, I've seen clutch moves from every class. Dragon's Breathing mobs that are on the healers, frost novas to snare things heading for healers. Clutch fears, seduces, psychic screams, kicks, gouges, intervenes, blessing of protection and so on.
 
I am proud to say we have some of the best tanks around, Sazul, Fj, Meli, and a few new ones I dont know the names of. It takes a special mentallity to be a quality tank and a high level of commitment, I know, as I was one. A true Tank knows his/her job is to try to die before a rezzer always. Save a wipe if possible, or die trying. Stance dance and time their special moves to achieve max efficiency and finally fund expensive repair bills time and time again when they often dont have time to farm, because they tanking for groups. I know when blizzard switched some things around, true tanks were not to pleased and I was one of them. But for damage mitigation alone, a prot tank is the way to go. Some outdoor bosses in Outland do 8k of damage with earthquakes over time and can 1 shot prot tanks with shield wall up. So show your tanks some love, as their job in my opinion can be taken for granted, hard to hold aggro with a 80-150 dps per sec 1 hand weapon when a mage can throw a 1.5 crit fireball that does 5k. You do the math. Steal the aggro and crowd control from the tank just makes the raid harder...and riskier...its fine for a druid or pally to tank, but in the end I am partial to a true prot tank for instances.

My 2 cents
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SamJ thats a pretty offensive statement you made there. Pally tanks are "true tanks" and are also "prot tanks" as we spec in protection. Blizz has made it clear that they want Bears and Pallys as main tanks in the end game.

Just wanted to say that your 2 cents is gonna hurt some feelings of some excellent main tanks, Tebran, Mirakle and Sandric to name a few.
 
To be honest... I don't run 5 mans with warriors anymore. Pallys can keep group aggro better than a warrior will ever be able to. All the pulls between Attumen and morose are a prime examples of a pally out performing a warrior.
 
Fine.. point taken...Samuraij will no longer be looking to tank for the guild

I will just focus on my mage. Thought we needed more tanks and healers, but i guess i was wrong.
 
treebranch said:
To be honest... I don't run 5 mans with warriors anymore. Pallys can keep group aggro better than a warrior will ever be able to. All the pulls between Attumen and morose are a prime examples of a pally out performing a warrior.
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A sad outcome of poor choices made by Blizzard. Prot warriors are not needed, so all warriors go arms fury for dps and then rogues wonder why they aren't wanted any more. So they remove sweeping strikes and limit cleave radius so rogues have a chance where DPS in plate is better.

Prot warriors have become situational at best and pally tanks the preference. The pendulum has swung like so many wanted but, IMO, it has swung to far.
 
Egad! SamJ, you are one of the best tanks around. I honestly feel that my "coming of age" in raiding was learning how to keep you alive during the initial fire packs pulls in MC ... you did your part, but I had to work to do mine.

I meant this thread to talk about "team roles" that supercede classes, because in some cases is it more about the skill than gear, spec, or class. In some cases, gear, spec or class can compensate for inexperience or overpower a skilled player, but on balance, you need to know what you're doing with certain classes. And my hypothesis is that for a tank (be they prot warrior, fury warrior, pally, bear, or oomkin) ... "knowing what you're doing" and doing it well it hard and can make a huge difference!

I guess that one could take a "Basic Dungeons and Dragons" approach to groups ... have a warrior tank, a priest healer, a mage range dps, and a rogue melee dps. You'd have the bases covered then. But then you'd miss out on cool things like watching trees do the twist. Overall, I like how Blizz has structured the game such that most of the time, there is not a unique solution to a problem. You need a balanced group mix ... but there can be different mixes that get you there. So I'd argue that with roles as basic as DPS vs Heal vs Tank that there is no single class that owns a role. Maybe that's a discussion for a different thread...
 
Our group a few weeks back had no problems with the pulls between moroes and the attunemen with sazul tanking:) Never had a problem with sazul tanking any 5 man instas, think treebranch will miss out on fun times if he never groups with sazul, meli, lothain, etc:)
 
The solution Blizzard was after, they didn't achieve. To think they did would be foolish. When most people would rather have a pally tank over a warriror tank, you don't have more options, you have as many as you did before. When people prefer to roll pallies to heal over priests and druids, you don't have more options, you have less. When people would rather take dps warrior or ranged dps over rogues, again, less options.

Blizzards tweaking has missed the mark. Now they are tweaking it back a little by little, maybe they'll find a better balance that does indeed provide more options. But the way it is now is not right.
 
think treebranch will miss out on fun times if he never groups with sazul, meli, lothain, etc
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Hehe... I still group with warriors! In fact, I grouped with one last night for furnace! :D I think the point is that each type of tank has an application that it is good at! Pallys are great for large groups, but warriors tend to hold the aggro of a single target better.

There are a lot of things I don't like about kara, but one thing I do like is they give opportunities for each type of tank to be needed, unlike the days of MC.
 
I think one piece of common ground we could all agree on is that treebranch could be the worst bear tank on the server.
 
Not now that I gave that Heavy Clefthoof Gear, TB ... now you're 1337!

Unless ... you didn't put healing gems in the slots, did you??
 
I think that maybe we should look at what appears to be the case: Most people seem to have a particular class that they are exceptional at playing. It just comes naturally to them. For example, I've been in an instance where we had a pick-up tank, and he had alot of hit points and armor. It took all I had to keep him alive, even though he kept losing agro. He decided to call it quits, and we got Fj to take his place. Less hp and less armor, and for me it was a breeze. Fj is just a great tank, and a pleasure to watch because he's a natural at it. Same thing with Tebran; a different class and yet he will hold agro all day long. If you get a group of 5 together that have found their "Class that comes naturally", then any instance is a breeze.
 
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