Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWhy does everyone want to DPS?
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Apr 23rd 2007 at 10:45AM
You see them in the arenas and in the battlegrounds, looking for groups in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, and complaining on the forums and their blogs. They are ret paladins, balance druids, enhancement shamans, and shadow priests who would like to see their class be able to DPS in raids. But why does everyone want to DPS? Tanks and healers are precious commodities, and DPS are a dime a dozen.
I talked to a couple people in-game who had switched from one role to another during their time in WoW. Most of them agreed that DPS was more attractive than healing or tanking and gave a number of reasons:
-
DPSers don't have as much responsibility. Unless you pull aggro, you're probably not going to directly kill anyone as a DPSer. Healers get blamed a lot for wipes.
-
All classes are pretty much forced to learn how to DPS just to level, but may not learn tanking and healing until they get in instances (if ever.)
-
DPSers get to be right in front of the boss and directly contribute to the death of the enemy. (Note: not true for dagger rogues, who get to spent every boss fight staring at the boss's backside.)
-
The DPS role is seen as the more masculine and aggressive role, instead of protecting and healing, which are seen as more feminine roles. Or, as a female elemental shammy friend of mine said, "Guys just like to punch things." Oh, now I'm all gender-confused, because I also like to punch things.
-
DPSers can show off their individual skill and power by comparing crits and DPS meters. What are healers and tanks going to say? "Wow, look at how much aggro I held on the mob?"
-
There are simply more DPS classes than tanks or healers.
To be fair, there are also some unique challenges for DPSers:'
-
Do you know how many of us there ARE? Try getting a guild invite as a rogue or hunter.
-
Because there are so many DPSers, we're rarely praised and often mocked, since we're seen as easily replaceable. "Don't complain -- do you know how many mages would kill to get into this guild?"
-
Some healers see DPSers as big, dumb brutes who push buttons mindlesssly. This hurts our fragile self-esteem.
So I'm turning the question to you guys. Why is DPSing more popular than tanking or healing? Which role do you like the best? What could be done to even out the balance a little more?
Census above courtesy of warcraftrealms.com, level 70s on all servers.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Raiding, Leveling, Classes
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
Drakar24 Apr 23rd 2007 11:30AM
I'm a 70 rogue, and I love being a rogue. But the truth is that being a tank or healer requires a lot more skill imo. As a rogue I just do single target DPS. Easy. But when i go with a group on my warrior, I have to worry about where all the mobs are, if my healer is being attacked, staying ahead on the threat meters. You need to be a lot more aware of what's going on. I'm leveling a warrior now cause my guild is short. And it sure has given me an appreciation of how tough it is for other classes.
stany212 Apr 23rd 2007 11:37AM
I am a healer for a raiding guild on WoW. My brain feels like its gone through the blending machine after a night of hardcore raiding. You have to be glued to the screen the moment anyone does anything otherwise you get blamed for the wipe! The eyes are hurting, the fingers are trembling, the healing button youve been mashing all night has been ground down to a stub...its time to go to bed.
Karl Apr 23rd 2007 11:43AM
I am a Ret Paladin. I love DPS. I do it well, and the people I group with enjoy having me along. But, I don't play the Pally just for the DPS. I can also offer a lot to a group that others cannot. I would like to start off by stating that I do out-DPS most other classes out there. People who are exceptionally good at playing a mage, hunter or rogue can manage to out-DPS me, but I don't mind...in fact, I am happy to group with those people, because I know they are doing their job. I can justify the need for me in the group by also off-tanking, backup healing (although I suck at that) and the wide variety of other things that a Pally can do. Buffs, Rezzing and the ULTIMATE tank saver/Healer OOM - Lay on Hands. In a humanoid/demon instance, I can even CC a little bit for those nasty mob fights with my Hammer of Justice and Repentance (undead can be turned as well).
With these things combined with the amount of DPS I can dish out, people would be crazy not to take me into an instance with them. Fortunately, I have proven myself enough that I don't have to make empty statements in a forum and when I log on and start my LFG, I get invited.
I can put out a ton of high burst damage and have the armor to survive should I pull aggro. I have the ability to use Righteous Defense to pull mobs off a healer without even needing to be anywhere near the person...believe me that is a great ability and healers will love you for it.
Dr00d Apr 23rd 2007 11:46AM
"But I had found it so aggravating that while playing the healing role I was not able to solo in areas that would benefit the advancement of my character."
That pretty much sums it up - outside of a raid environment, DPS have much more utility. BC has fixed this somewhat by linking rep to instances (where tanking and healing are at a premium), but it can still be painful when grinding for mats or rare recipes.
(@18: I disagree. I started my shaman as enhancement, switched to elemental a couple of weeks after hitting 70, and have since switched to resto. Sure, I almost never die now, but with the other two specs, I could still blow through mobs faster, even if I was corpse-running every five minutes. So maybe it's just as effective, but having fights take so long is just plain boring. Doable, but boring.)
Kaziel Apr 23rd 2007 11:44AM
Personally, I don't think anything can be done to "fix" it, without completely retooling the way healing is done. There are some interesting ideas being thrown around in other games coming out as to how healing can be done, but in WoW it's your pretty standard "stare at life bars all day long" setup.
Also... tanking is seen as a feminine role? O.o Maybe I'm being sexist here but the idea of a job that's goal is to make sure you get punched in the face isn't exactly your lady-like job, IMO.
As for me, I'm a guy, and while my main (currently) is a 70 Mage, the only reason I still consider him my main is because he was my first to 70, and my guild had a sever lack of mages. I'm leveling up my Paladin again, (not to mention that I'm dipping my toe into the Shaman field) and I'm sorely tempted to spec Protection for my Paladin and make him my main. Tanking's fun!
Dyermaker Apr 23rd 2007 11:46AM
As a Paladin I like to joke that I have two alts, it just costs me 50g each time I want to play one of them. I probably re-spec three to four times a week to have different interactions with the game. Raids need the healer, weekends there are not many tanks around so I spec to fill that need, and when I just want to farm or entertain myself I go Retribution to have fun.
Healing in WoW is nothing more than whack-a-mole. The things that made healing easier and took away the monotony have been removed. Instead, more whacking at the same moles. You see so little of the actual encounter because you must focus on the same health bars. The encounters are rich and lively, and as a healer, you see none of it.
DPS allows you to experience the encounters. Standing up close with boss allows you to see their abilities and do something actively.
Hybrid DPS is even more desired because we have so much to offer, but as healers, you're stuck doing so little. Paladins have two heals, pick fast or slow. But there are dozens of other abilities we theoretically have which never get used, it feels as if the potential is wasted.
Paladin tanking is pretty engaging and rather entertaining. I have been asked to OT a few times and enjoy the role. But, the fact remains, if your raid needs the healer right now you need to be healer spec in order to be viable.
Doing damage is fun. Running around, using all of your abilities, you get to do more. You are more a part of the game itself. Healing is not fun. At all. Especially in WoW. Who wants to stand back and allow everyone else to have fun? People want to be engaged. Healing is the most distancing thing in WoW.
It is a shame that as a Paladin you level up and experience the game one way and then hit a brick wall and are expected to play an entirely different way when you hit 70. Paladins have big two handers and want to whack things with them. Its what we expected, its why we played.
And, lastly, its rough gathering gear for three different roles. Those who DPS can do anything with it. When that task is made even harder by drastic changes in game dynamics, it really takes the wind out of the sails. We did not ask for all the spell-crit, Blizzard force it on us. Then they suddenly realized that their decision threw things out of balance, and rather than change the gear that caused the problem, they kill the class abilities and force you to run through a rat maze to re-gear again. It feels like just as bad a time sink as adding in more required reputation grinds for little reward.
John Apr 23rd 2007 11:51AM
I'm a rogue, and someday, for my second character, i'm going to roll a shaman. it would be fun to heal - i think the question shouldn't be "why does everyone dps?" - it should be why don't people tank or heal - DPS seems like the whole point of soloing, which most people do when they start out.
CaptainGoatse Apr 23rd 2007 2:05PM
The main problem with bieng a tank or healer, expecially a fully committed one (built purely for pve maximization), is that you completely lose your ability to solo. Because of this, you can barely afford the ridiculous amount of mana/health potions you need for raiding, so you are probably going to have to select herb/alch for professions unless you have a high level grinding alt. The change to elixirs may help this out a bit, but not too much considering my main money sink as a former shaman raider was chain chugging super mana potions anyway...
It is ridiculous that the class that needs the most potions (healers) have the least ability to make money.
How to fix this? have a repeatable quest where you heal some guy for a minute (or tank some guy for a minute) and get a mana or healing potion. Have a 'healer island' where if you have x points in a healing tree you can go to in order to grind mobs that have half strength but drop the same stuff as regular mobs.
Will this ever happen? no. Better have another character if you want to play a healer or tank.
Stephan Mercatoris Apr 23rd 2007 11:55AM
I have a 70 fury warrior and a 70 resto shaman and i appreciate healing/tanking/DPS all the same. The only thing i feel that i'm good enough at in raids is healing on my shaman, however i find DPSing an tanking to be rather easy to do aswell. DPSing is prolly the most rewarding because you see "big numbers" fly up on the screen often. I'd prolly rather get a 2.5k bloodthrist crit than a 6-7k healing wave crit (although both are nice to see).
Another thing is, i feel that DPS are better "rounded out" when in comparison to healers and tanks. It's harder for healers and tanks to solo PvP or to farm efficiently, whereas for a DPS class, it's alot easier to do both of these.
Ryan Apr 23rd 2007 12:24PM
@18 I'll have to disagree. I have a 70 resto shammy as well as a 70 affliction lock. While I rarely die with the shaman, I kill things so slowly in comparison to the lock I could die 8 times in an half-hour on the lock and still beat out my shammy in terms of number of mobs killed.
Dan B. Apr 23rd 2007 11:58AM
It's funny, I actually like healing or tanking (I've bounced between feral and resto on my druid many, many times) - I prefer either role to straight up DPS.
Then again, I don't generally do PUGs (hooray for an active guild), so noone gets too mad if something blows up.
Stephan Mercatoris Apr 23rd 2007 12:00PM
It is important to note that while DPS, it is probably harder to find a group. When i tell people on my warrior that i would like to DPS, i often get snubbed and given the ultimatum to tank or gtfo.
When i was elemental on my shaman(60-70 grind and a little time post 70 ding), i had an extremely hard time finding groups, and when i did find them, i was 9/10 asked/forced to heal. Granted this was 2 weeks after BC started so, there may not have been as many healers around to give proper group makeup as there is now.
Derbeste Apr 23rd 2007 12:00PM
Healing Pros:
-The feeling of indespensibility. You are the least disposable.
-Very few deaths.
-Very little durability loss = cheaper role.
-Very little competition if your gear specialization drops. (who else would roll on a +healing piece?)
Healing Cons:
-You interact very little with the actual game. I only look at HP meters all day. I don't actually get to see much of the action that goes on. There is a real feeling of dissociation with the actual battle. Hence it can get boring.
-You (or the tank) get blamed if anything goes wrong.
-You, more often than not, have to be the one to compensate for idiots that pull aggro, pull to soon, don't focus fire, etc. You are basically a "fix my mistakes" bot.
-You have no real role solo.
-Like it or not, destruction of your opponents is the whole POINT of the game. Healers don't do that. We must give that glory to those we keep alive. Therefore, we have no direct way to accomplish the point of the game.
-You have MANY responsibilities even outside of battle. (healing the party to full health and keeping your own mana up)
Tanking pros.
-EXTREMELY sought after and indesposable.
-Very little competition for most tanking drops.
-You always get to be up in the front wrastling with mobs or with the boss.
-You get a lot of attention....lots of heals can make you feel quite important.
-Hardest to gank.
Tanking cons.
-More deaths than probably anyone else.
-EXTREMELY high durability loss.
-1 Tank per 5 man equates to more competition to get into GOOD groups. Whereas you can have up to 3 DPSers per 5 man
-Soloing is excruciating.
-You and the healer get blamed for anything that goes wrong.
-Once again, the purpose of the game is to kill your enemy.....You don't do that. You must let others do that.
-You must trust your team more than any other role. You can't kill like DPSers...and you can't Keep yourself alive either. So you must trust your healer and DPSers implicitely.
-Must must be aware of mobs AND your team's actions at the same time. No other role has to be so aware. DPSers only pay attention to mobs. Healers...only the team (for the MOST part).
-Totally thankless job. Even healers get more kudos than tanks.
DPS pros:
-Offense is always more fun than Defense. Think of Basketball...what will get more cheers? An allyoop slam dunk...or taking a charge?
-You can solo quickly as well as raid in the same spec.
-Your focus isn't so divided. You needn't care about your teams hp.
-You get to gank. :)
-After all is said and done, the tank and healer's job is to help YOU get the real job done. You can't win until the enemies HP bar goes to 0. You do that. It's very fulfilling.
DPS cons:
-Harder to get in a party.
-You are dispensible. So you'd better be good. If you're not, you'll probably be the first one to go.
-Your ability to do your job is directly limited by the tanks ability to hold aggro. That can be frustrating if your tank sux.
-You're easy to gank by another DPSer.
rocketscientist Apr 23rd 2007 12:00PM
This game is a grindfest. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just a statement.
Look at Aldor rep (kill demons, over and over) or Scryer rep (kill elves, over and over). Crafting (kill elementals for primals, over and over). Gear upgrades via rep (Sporeggar, Cenarion Enclave, Sha'tar).
Just look at your reputation page if you want proof.
Blizzard decided to make it that way. It's fine. They aren't horrible grindfests. They're relatively easy.
Unless you're in a class and spec that's designed to be low DPS and high utility. In which case your grinds will be very very long. Crazily long.
My warlock can kite and kill 3 level 68's, every 25 seconds. That's how long it takes all the DoT's to tick down. No downtime. Just DoTs and death. Mages, similarly, can AOE kill at a faster rate with more downtime, so it nets out about even. Any DPS spec can do similar things.
Protection warriors and heal spec healers just can't. It takes my warrior 30 seconds to kill a single mob. I can kill 4-5 between having to bandage/eat. So my warrior is about 6 times slower at killing stuff than my warlock. The warlock was also way faster to level, fast to gear up (skilling tailoring is simple compared to skilling up blacksmithing), and is extremely fun, because things go fast.
The protection warrior is fun in instances, but it's not fun in the rest of the game.
Wanna fix it? How about increasing protection warrior DPS when they're not doing protection stuff. Something like, oh, increase their DPS if they're dual wielding or if they have a 2H weapon out. They did that on the PTR's and decided they didn't like warriors able to kill stuff and reverted it. Not "toned it down", they simply turned it off. Here's an idea: Blizzard should give warriors free/reduced price respecs into or out of the protection tree until they figure out how to fix them. The other specs are balanced out for DPS, so it's not a balance-breaking decision.
And priest DPS has been nerfed in EVERY SINGLE PATCH EVER. Don't try to deny it. It's true. Priests get hosed on DPS, and therefore reputation every single patch. Same deal as for warriors: until they figure out how to fix it allow respecs at a reduced/removed cost.
So now we roll alts to be able to farm materials. And lots of folks decide they like the alt better. Can you blame them? Every other class/spec in the game is self-sufficient, except for the absolutely critically necessary specs for healers and tanks.
Maybe I just start charging 200G per person to the DPS types every time I tank to cover my respec cost so I can enjoy the rest of the game.
Madjack Apr 23rd 2007 12:01PM
I'll add to the grind/farm argument. I loved healing while raiding, but outside the dungeon, the spec is terrible. It took me forever to kill anything.
As a comparison, while I was leveling my hunter, I came across a Healidin in STV. We were both going for the same animals. He managed to grab a panther before me, so I went to a different one. I killed 5 panthers in the time it took for him to kill one. For those Nesingwary quests, you can imagine how long it took him to complete them.
If Blizzard can address that issue, there would be a lot more Resto and Holy spec folks in the game.
crsh Apr 23rd 2007 12:04PM
I went from a straight-up DPS class (rogue) to a healing class (priest); both are lv70 and geared up, I've raided with both (more with my rogue, up to Patch in Naxx, but dumped him afterwards), both present totally different gameplay.
Rogues are fun as they can only DPS, so yeah your raid spec is DPS where ever you point your talent points in; my priest is healbot spec though (leveled as shadow DPS, like 90% of priests).
Raiding on my priest is all about healing and nothing else; something went wrong and we need to turn around real fast to finish up a boss? Don`t look at me, smiting in healing gear is for laughs only.
And yes, I would absolutely love to raid as a shadow priest to DPS as well (well, DPS and a support role for health & mana regen); we don`t have enough priests as it is in the guild though, so I`d be making it hard for our second Kara group to even get off the ground.
So yes, my responsability is much bigger than when I played a rogue, I can make or break a 10-man run if I`m the only priest on. That`d never happen on a rogue, unless there`s a specific fight going on that night (Shade of Aran for example).
Grinding on my healbot priest is doable, but it sucks (drinking every 3-4 pulls, having to carry so much water just for farming, etc); I farm for mats on my rogue instead, it`s faster and aside from one or two bandages and a stack of cheap food, he just gets going and going.
danklife Apr 23rd 2007 12:06PM
17 and 21 pretty much have it nailed.
Leveled a holy pally to 60 2 years ago and realized the healing was not as good as I would like it to be. Then leveled a holy priest to 60 and ran MC and BWL with my guild. When BC came out I wanted to go shadow to level faster and I'll never go back to holy / disc.
The mechanics of healing is horrible. You spam two heals mostly. There is no strat to healing now. You are playing "Tapper" with health bars all night long. I would look back at screen shots after a raid and be like, "Oh, thats what Naxx looks like? Who knew?" You can't look away from the health bars for a second to take in the view. It's just G heal, renew, G heal, renew. Ohh, shield the mage! Sweet. G heal, renew.
As shadow I have to plan attacks, throw up my vamps, manage my mana and aggro. Over all it is way more engaging and exciting. Plus, if the pull really goes badly I can always pop out of shadow and heal like mad. So I have all these different options of play style as a shadow besides just wearing out my 2 and 3 button.
Seraya Apr 23rd 2007 12:10PM
Tanking and healing are much more complicated roles in a party situation, while DPS... well, go kill that.
Meanwhile, despite being a hunter, I hate damage meters. It doesn't matter, did the enemy die? Yes? Good, that's all we need to know.
rickrick Apr 23rd 2007 12:14PM
you want to talk about easy try a raiding mage. I play a healer and a tank but My wife has a level 70 mage. one day while raiding she need to step away and ask me to play her toon. it was a joke,
1. sheep the mark
2. spam frostbolt
3. conjure water
I'm sure a DPS class in PvP but in PvE raiding it's a joke.
Astros Apr 23rd 2007 12:12PM
not much fun to contantly watch health bars the entire time....