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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast 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 7 of 7)
RetPallyJil Jan 22nd 2010 3:28PM
I recently gave tanking a shot for the very first time. I hate it. Stupid tanking ... where's my hammer? I need to hit things.
wdm+hall Jan 22nd 2010 3:50PM
Heroic 5-Mans are as far as I've been besides being the weak link in a 10-man here and there.
Ranged DPS - Started with this, seems kind of boring in retrospect.
Healing - My new found love, just hit 80 last night! Manages to not be boring while also not being too hard.
Melee DPS - Been flirting with this on an offspec, still not used to being in the thick of it but seems like more fun than pew pew.
Tanking - Haven't tried, too skeered, though Dungeon Finder will eventually convince me to level one up from the beginning.
jasonkidd1234 Jan 22nd 2010 4:28PM
Well, I'd like to think that while leveling you'd get a basic grasp of healing or tanking, at least enough to know how to do it at 80.
I'm not saying go buy a warrior and tank heroics with him, I'm just saying that at the VERY least, use one of your dual specs to try out healing or tanking, just for a bit, to get the hang of it.
As a hunter I wouldn't step out of the fire, or dodge lazor beems unless they killed me. I thought it was the healers JOB to heal me through that stuff.
After leveling a priest, and gearing him up for healing, I know now that as a DPS you're not supposed to take damage.
Period. Sometimes it's unavoidable, and that's fine, but if you're a good DPS, you avoid all avoidable damage.
And with tanking like everybody else said, it helps you understand aggro mechanics, and if that stray mob does come over and kill you, you won't be QUITE as angry. After tanking a heroic, you'll realize, even if you didn't let any mobs past you, that it's not as simple as targeting one mob, using x rotation and hoping you don't draw aggro, and hopefully you'll come out of it the kind of dpser that healers and tanks love, the king that understand.
Note: It might seem somewhat hypocritical, but I've not tanked a heroic. I haven't leveled a class capable of tanking past 20 or so. As such, I try to at least listen to tanks carefully until I'm high enough on my warrior to understand tanking mechanics better. The number of DPS that think tanking is as simple as taunt, aoe, melee astounds me, as even at lower levels, where pretty much ALL you have is taunt, aoe, and melee you are constantly tab targeting to keep aggro as good as possible.
Brouck Jan 22nd 2010 5:23PM
Jack of all trades, Master of one.
Paladin - Tank and Heal (my main, main, main spec)
Warlock - Range DPS (so fun)
Death Knight - Melee DPS, smashing things is fun too
Quidamtyra Jan 22nd 2010 5:36PM
I started playing this game as a rogue. It's been my main since day one. I love it, I love the close combat style. The fact that melee sometimes has the disadvantage of having to move out of melee range, while still staying top of the charts and doing my job, it's just great.
My second character was a hunter, I raided a little on alt runs in TBC, but quickly got bored of it.
My third character was a holy paladin, healed in MH in TBC, which was really easy with FoL spam =] but got bored of that, too. Lots of respect for being able to watch those health bars and not stand in shit that kills.
My final alt is a DK tank. She doesn't even have a dps spec or gear, all I want to do when I log on with this toon is tank. This gave me a lot more respect for what tanks have to do to position a mob and keep aggro. I used to complain when the tank would be spazzy and move the mob around, but now I see it's the mob's fault, and it's even more annoying to a tank than it is to a dps. As a tank, a mob behind you could kill you, not so bad as dps.
Happy Hunting
JJ Jan 22nd 2010 5:50PM
I played dps on my Warlock for the first two years I played WoW. I poured my heart into rotations, stats, and not standing in fire. After my loyal lock hit 80, my guild was short tanks and heals for regular raiding, so I decided to finish leveling my pally and priest. I leveled as a prot pally, which was fine except for when I had to do instances. It took quite a while to learn how to generate threat, regain mobs that got pulled off me, make smart pulls, and keep my targets from doing as little damage to anyone else as possible. Now my tanking skills are decent enough that I can go into any situation short of ICC with confidence that I will not be the weak link. As for healing, that was a total brain rewire for me. I failed healing through my 70s over and over. Right when I was going to toss in the towel though, I changed to disc and the mechanics of it just clicked. My healer is my best geared toon and one of three healers in our guild that they will take anywhere, anytime. I feel like I'm much more important to our success as healz which is more rewarding, but more stressful. Lately, I have had the opportunity to play around with my dps spec, and at first it was embarrassing, but now I am putting out over 5k dps and loving the feeling of melting faces. However, sometimes when I'm blowing things up and things start to take a nosedive, I feel helpless as I watch player after player go down. Anyone who wants to be great at the endgame be it PVP or PVE, should strive to be good at each role. It will make you a better player, and a better person IMO.
NecDW4 Jan 22nd 2010 6:39PM
I mainly play as a Warrior tank, though lately i've been pugging as fury.
I DO notice that while my DPS might not be quight as high as lolroguexbladezz, but i PLAY better.
I get in several more interrupts on critical abilities, i'm better at not standing in the bad stuff, and i'm fairly good at skirting the lines on Omen, and VERY good at stopping EVERYTHING if i do accidentally pull threat.
icepyro Jan 22nd 2010 8:46PM
For the full experience of WoW I have at least one of every class (except druid) and one of every race (Horde) just to experiment. I've learned that I tend to be utility/off(role).
For the longest time, my only rule about my retadin is watch where Im standing. The spec is a mix of pvp/pve because I like WG and world pvp, but not to arena levels and I love heroics. I've not tried raiding yet. As such, my dps kinda sucks compared to hardcore raid or pvp, but I tend to live long enough and do enough damage that with someone on either side of the line it's pretty dominating without having to respec all the time.
Now I have an ele/resto shammy that I wanted to make my primary healer (cows casting are even funnier than cows with guns for me). I tried healing on pally and I just can't do it. It doesn't make sense that I can't keep 5 people alive (or any number more than 2). Back on my shammy though, I've learned a lot more about the instances healing. While I play whack-a-mole, I notice when I or someone else stands in fire, I notice curses, diseases, and poisons a lot more. Since LFD seems to think that 2T9 helms and 2T9 gloves (for both specs) and the rest blues (or even greens) is good enough to heal FoS, I've been playing ele until I can get my heal set and get geared to actually heal the newer instances.
This shift from healer back to dps has made me drop cleansing/tremor totem more often and I find wind shear being cast way more than it probably need be, so my dps still sucks. I've also noticed that I now play my retadin as an offtank pulling the mobs off the casters or at least stunning them and slowly leading them back to the tank. My dps sucks for this and the bosses take a little long since I'm not focused on the boss, but the lack of death and oom from having to heal/cleanse hasn't really been mentioned.
On a side note, since I don't have a tank, I've learned the fights now because I finally downloaded dbm/omen and so I still am not sure what the bosses are trying to do aside from telling you not to stand still. That's probably my next goal.
Juujube Jan 23rd 2010 5:23PM
I started out playing a hunter because I was told they were easy to level and therefore that should be my first character, and got most thoroughly bored with him once I started raiding. Standing there rotating shots was boring to me, and all the pro stuff that hunters are asked to do managed to hit all my weaknesses as a player. As it turns out? I hate trapping.
I've tried all the roles in the game at at least running basic instances, and it turns out I'm happiest as a tank; my main is now a tankadin. Tick off the monster, move the monster as needed, shield the raid, throw out hands... I love it. Healing is my second favorite role, and melee DPS probably the least; I hate scrambling around trying to get to the rear of the mob. They should be facing me and following me, darnit!
Juzelle Jan 24th 2010 9:42PM
I've been playing a hunter since launch. I've seen the class go through every change, and raided in every level of content from vanilla to now. I'm of the opinion that it's, for me, the most wildly entertaining class to play. The most 'replay value' if you will.
However during all this time, I've leveled many alts. I've played a shaman (both resto and dps), rogue, warrior tank, priest, & mage within a raiding scenario. My experiences playing each of these classes gave me more insight as to how overall raid functionality worked, and in alot of ways has made me a better hunter.
From a straight dps standpoint, one does not often appreciate the hoops other classes have to jump through to make things work properly. If you're familiar with the playstyle of other classes, you can adjust your playstyle around the strengths or inherrant weaknesses of the other classes to make yourself more group viable.
It's also, you know, really good to learn the weaknesses of other classes by playing them, and then exploit the hell out of them in PVP. Know thy enemy and all that jazz :3
Brendan Jan 24th 2010 10:19PM
I play tank/heals druid, hunter and destro lock. Prefer tanking by far. More control over any situation, I trust myself a lot more than people around me in general. Tanks are the pivot in any group, and I can't stand when they fail and I have to suffer >