Breakfast Topic: What roles do you play?
by Allison Robert 
Jan 22nd 2010 at 8:00AM
Right now my main spends her time tanking and healing at an even 50/50 split. Healing's made me a more observant tank; I have a better appreciation of what a heal team goes through to keep my furry rump alive. Tanking hasn't exactly made me a better healer -- the two roles are so different that I even wind up redoing a portion of my UI while jumping between them -- but it's made me more forgiving of tank mistakes, and also left me in a better position to gauge whether a problem is the result of the tank or another group member. Damage-wise? Oddly enough, playing as a tank/healer for so long has made me into a hesitant DPS at best. I hate losing aggro to anyone as a tank, and hate healing oblivious DPS who pull it, and that's made me incredibly paranoid about my threat as a DPS. I watch Omen way more than I worry about my rotation.
So what role do you normally play in the game? If you change roles at all, do you notice experience from one role having an effect on how you play others?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
ROB13 Jan 22nd 2010 8:04AM
I throw out MOAR DOTS! MOAR DOTS!
Rakah Jan 22nd 2010 9:16AM
There are really 5 roles in the game
Tanking
Healing
Melee dps
Caster dps
Hunters(special case of ranged physical dps)
Hunters have the luxery of ignoring most of the mechanics that affect casters, interrupts? not for us, mana problems? no thank you.
The only thing that really drives a hunter mad is fights where your forced to stack, because we can't damn you blizzard for making us the primary target during crazy cat lady if we didn't stand on the boss dropping a trap every so often and pressing one of two weak melee attacks. For making it such a pain to jump up on flame leviathon and most of all for giving marrowgar and huge hit box.
scraggerly Jan 22nd 2010 9:54AM
Yea, hunters sure are "special"
Tamednan Jan 22nd 2010 12:10PM
@Rakah
You should never be stacking in melee range. It is perfectly acceptable to get your 8 yards from the boss even when you're "stacking." Especially on the crazy cat lady. You only need to be in front of the boss, so get in with the melee, then back out 8 yards, shoot as normal. If you ever do melee on a fight I will take all your weapons from you and remove your hunting license. If nothing else do volley.
Also, if your raid group is firing a hunter onto FL, you've got bigger problems than being in melee range.
Draelan Jan 22nd 2010 1:24PM
@Tamednan
If it's an achievement run, and it's the hunter's turn for "Take Out Those Turrets", then it becomes a problem... Any other class can go to a DPS spec for this achievement and have no issues. Hunters.... can put on Aspect of the Beast and hope for the best. =P
dwarfish Jan 22nd 2010 1:41PM
Well even if it was an achievement run its easy enough to put another caster in and just shoot at each others turret...
Undra Jan 22nd 2010 4:49PM
Tanking - like it, it's a good break from dps and different enough that I don't get bored.
Healing - So contradicts my playstyle that I've vowed never to heal again. It's jsut not for me.
Melee dps - feels weird after being a hunter for so long, but tends to be easy to play/hard to master, lots of chasing stuff down.
Caster dps - hard to play/hard to master, a demo warlock is about the only thing i'm decent at and my opinion of that class drifts from hatred to tolerant. Can't even imagine playing as something without a mana back button. Though i guess evocate and dispersion are jsut that...
Hunters(special case of ranged physical dps) - My favorite playstyle of all. The simplicity of physical dps combined with the advantage of range.
Maybe someday if i well and truly burn out but must play I'll give healing another try. Maybe.
My hat is off to the healers, you do what I won't.
Isurina Jan 22nd 2010 8:06AM
My main was prot/holy ever since TBC, but a few days ago I changed my holy spec into RET.
I am a firm fan of playing different classes/roles seeing you get a whole new perspective of things. So I'm playing prot/ret, arcane/frost, enhancement, Unholy/Blood and combat at lvl80-raids..
Pyromelter Jan 22nd 2010 8:05AM
As a dyed-in-the-wool mage, I'm 100% dps all the time. Can't heal, just don't have it in me to fill the bars rather than drain them (although I appreciate my healers very much). Even on my hybrid characters, I stick with damage dealing (arms/fury, feral/balance, elemental enhance). At some point I might want to tank a bit, but I just love blowing up things (bosses, meters, the opposite faction in a battleground) to ever really do anything else.
jealouspirate Jan 22nd 2010 8:09AM
I dps'd for a looong time, then switched to healing back in the summer. I swear, I learned more about the game after a few weeks of healing than I did after two years of dps. Now, a lot of that is my fault, but still. The responsibility of healing forced me to really focus and learn my class in and out.
Now, for reasons similar to you Allison, I have reservations about playing dps.
Tanking? Well, I tried that recently. As Christian Belt recently observed, rather astutely: "Tanking is an interesting thing. It makes you hate everyone else in the party." So I decided to leave that behind.
Tushar Bharadia Jan 22nd 2010 10:29AM
I'm ok with hate. So I've got my warrior main (Prot since 70), my failadin (levelling Prot in the new LFD), my DK (building a tank set as we speak) and soon I shall be turning to my mini bear o' yelling at retards who like fire a little too much
GiveBite Jan 22nd 2010 8:10AM
I play both a healer and a tank. I have to agree that playing both makes you tend to want stupid DPS to just die and give up and leave you.
Sprinte Jan 22nd 2010 10:40AM
The thing I like to do in low level dungeons, since some people area a little ridiculous in how much they pull aggro, is watch them die. I understand the difference between accidents and habitual aggro stealers.
To reply to the main topic as well:
I mostly tank at 80. I have a DPS who's gathering cobwebs. I'm in the middle of making a healing set for my pally. Just to see what healing is like at end game. I think it'll be fun. I do a little bit of healing and DPS at lower levels though
pwherman Jan 22nd 2010 3:32PM
Even if you want to play smart as DPS, unfortunately it's not "rewarded," as many people judge DPS based on the numbers from addOns like Recount. Thus you don't get points for holding back so the tank can grab or regain aggro; you don't get points for interrupting your damage dealing to turn around and help rescue a healer that's drawn aggro; and unless I'm misunderstanding, you just don't get points for having a play-style that varies from pure damage dealing.
At least in battlegrounds, honor is calculated to include how close you fought on a flag, in addition to your kills, damage, and healing. It would be interesting to see if a more nuanced calculation other than pure DPS would affect how people play their DPS.
Btw, I play hybrid, since I solo-leveled to 70 before getting involved in PvP or instances, and that playstyle has "stuck" for me on my main, even though I'm technically DPS. That means when I got into a PvP skirmish with a priest and a warrior on my side, and the priest wasn't throwing heals, I was fine stepping back from the fight to throw the warrior heals to keep them in the fight. My alt however is pure DPS, and that difference is making me appreciate the versatility and survivability of a hybrid. I'm planning to dual-spec as a healer on my main, so I'll get to walk in those shoes soon and see how I feel about that.
pwherman Jan 22nd 2010 3:39PM
I should clarify that I meant you don't "maximize" points, not that you don't get any DPS credit at all.
STARF Jan 22nd 2010 8:10AM
Tank=keep people from getting hit
DPS=don't die from what can't be tanked
Heals=keep people alive
That pretty much my experience with the three roles i have played, and actually I know it sounds strange, but my favorite thing to do while tanking is picking up the loose mobs.
DPS and Healing, i like to go balls to the wall on dps but i have learned its better to not try to get a finishing move off while standing in fire, and healing well lets just say that you cant go balls to the wall when blood lust is on, you go oom very quick.
evestraw Jan 22nd 2010 9:06AM
dont die from things that can't be tanked because you overagro'd
vocenoctum Jan 22nd 2010 10:11AM
I think the main thing with playing a healer that I forget (and this happens across all my characters) is to watch my OWN health. As a tank, it's not my job (it is though, I've got cooldowns, but as a non-raid tank, it rarely matters), and as dps I'm situationally aware (don't stand in fire!) but otherwise barely watch my health. (Even as warlock, I lifetap sparringly now, I rarely run out of mana anyway.)
But seriously, as a healer in dungeons, it's easy to get focused on healing the tank, and throwing heals at the other little bars, and forget that you take random damage also. Many times I've suddenly noticed being real low.
(Not like the one beetle guy in OK, where the fucking worthless tank didn't get agro on anything but the boss and all teh adds were chewing on my little priest. I went oom healing myself in that fight, the tank barely taking any damage, and I was the only one that died. Quit group after loot with the comment "sorry, I didn't bring my tank set" but the asshat DK probably didn't notice or care.)
Theiswyn Jan 22nd 2010 11:27AM
Wow what a wonderful example of the advantages of playing multiple classes. Elder Nadox has a feature that you would know about had you tanked the fight. When a guardian spawns she makes the boss and all the adds immune to damage and taunts. So the tank can do nothing about the adds until the guardian is dead. What you blamed on the tank was actually a dps problem. I always wondered why I got zerged on this fight as healer; rolled a tank alt and now I know.
Euphande Jan 22nd 2010 12:43PM
Depending when they spawn, though, the tank can pick them up (if they are not immune when they spawn). They stay with who they have aggro on when they're immune.
(I always stand on heals and spam Arcane Explosion when immunity is down if I see a tank miss this).