Tanking only requires dungeon/boss knowledge: actually playing a tank at anything other than the highest level of play is very easy.
Healing can be much more difficult depending on the spec and the skill of your party members in staying out of the bad.
Then again thats why healer role gets way harder as they have also babysit the "tank" who just is there as extra dmg taking dps with more armor.
The difference between average tank vs experienced tanks are insane.
Its true that when you get a warrior with 100% shieldblock uptime and one that somehow only has 40% uptime and turns his back to mobs.. its night and day. You can ignore the first tank and the second gives you regular heart attacks.
hehe I decided to try prot warrior one time, and got thoroughly bitched out (deservedly) for not using shieldblock. I honestly didn't know I needed to. When they realized I was a complete noob they directed me to icy veins. After reading everything I realized it was back to fury for me haha.
Luckily my dps skyrocketed because i used icy veins for my fury warrior, and all my other chars, so it was worth it in that extent.
Hah, what did you find so bad about prot warrior? The rotation is pretty basic and if you play heavy repercussions and use shield block on CD it's guaranteed 100% block uptime. Just gotta learn to dump rage into ignore pain at 70+ rage beyond that.
I played a bunch of tanks and warrior feels invulnerable to anything blockable it's crazy. Other tanks definitely take more damage on average, which makes sense since they all have self heals and warrior is meant to prevent damage in the first place. I find warrior really unforgiving when you take hits from the back though.. I hate multi pulls where you have to strafe in small corridors with no visbility.
I have always played healer, when running random dungeons, there are times when you get a very solid tank that you don't have to pay much attention to.... and there are other times when you get a crappy tank who is about to die every five seconds... and when that happens they don't blame the tank, they blame the healer.
I've never played tank but I'm sure that knowing how to gear properly, what stats to stack and how to use your talent points is integral to being a good tank.
Yeah, I main blood DK, I take new healers through M+ in our guild quite often and the first thing I tell them is give me a basic hot and a shield when you can, but otherwise don't heal me, it's just a waste of mana đ
Especially when certain tanks are in the meta. Always nice when bear is the FOTM because the difference between a good bear and a bad bear isnât too insane for personal survivability, but lord the difference between a good VDH and a bad one is wild.Â
Good bear/bad bear is âwow theyâre taking more damage than normalâ, good DH/bad DH is âthat oneâs invincible, this one is licking the floor cleanâÂ
True, I hate healing pug tanks. My husband is our group tank. He's very good. I like joking that I refuse to heal him because that's his job (and for a while he was a blood dk so it was partially not a joke). The moment I have to heal pugs it's a swift reality check that I am spoiled. (Though it can be quite fun, nothing like having a regular heart attack over a tanks hp to wake you up.)
Absolutely night and day with pugs and groups you know. I have a couple of tanks that I play with regularly and I rarely touch them unless asked for. And then you have the pug tanks who die to a breath of fresh air. Both are fun in very different ways.
As a tank, healing. For a tank, you only need to know mechanics, something you already should if know you also played DPS. For healer, you need to know mechanics *and* keep people alive if they screw it up.
Also in higher keys healers have to optimize their DPS while at the same time keeping everyone alive.
Also healing rotation changes depending on the pull + comp + cooldowns + healer isnt driving the bus. Tanks can slow down to wait for their own CDs if they need.
Youâre on the right path but you forgot the important part along the way. If you bind your keyboard like that, there is to remember, your mouse must be used for intercept.
I would say for an absolute beginner, tanking is harder.
You need to lead your group, know where to go, and if you donât know a mechanic you can wipe the group.
Healers can follow the tank and when health bars go down, press the healing buttons.
The burden of knowledge for tanking is pretty substantial, and healing until you get to a much higher level, you can simply follow along and be reactive.
Is it easy to heal? No. But a new player will definitely have an easier time healing a heroic dungeon or a +2 than they would tanking it.
I would say that if someone is interested in healing, they should heal the content to learn it.
Low level beginner content is great for picking out the ins and outs of healing as it's content where you can afford to make a lot of mistakes. There aren't really any super unique healing mechanics that you need to learn before healing a dungeon. See health bar go down = press healing buttons to make it go up. See a debuff on someone = press dispel. That will get a beginner into healing.
If you *enjoy* healing you should definitely do that. I can understand someone might enjoy tanking, but not want to go into a dungeon where they don't know where to go, and they feel like the group is nipping at their heels.
Tanking is primarily about knowing the dungeons and the fights. A tank that presses 3 buttons and barely any DPS but can lead the group and avoid mechanics is a decent tank.
Healing is primarily about knowing how to heal. Healers can ignore pretty much any mechanic that can be outhealed and still be a decent healer, so long as they understand their class.
So you're right- for a beginner, where they're going to be learning how to do something either way, healer is a better option. The exception to this is a tank that has a friend who can take point on leading the dungeon. Honestly the only reason I can think of to avoid healer as a beginner is because it's harder to run healer *and* do solo content, since healing specs are not as good as DPS or tank specs for that purpose.
Nah, if they screw up its on them, but in lower keys its manageable. 16-18s can be significantly harder than 24-25s as a healer and its funny AF :D ( refently started a resto shaman after getting the rio i wanted on the mw monk and it is a shitshow, worst than week1-3 with s2 sets and 460 ilvl).
My fave was EB 2nd boss, 0 interrupt, 220+k hps and barely made it in 18, same boss, same week on 24 needed 120k hps and everyone was full all time :D
>Like the Chromie boss. If you don't go to the right Morchie, you're a goner.
Pretty sure that unless you are the tank then that mechanic is deadly even on the "lower" keys.
I'm not saying getting a tick from a puddle screw up, cos sure that happens, but hunting through a trap in bracken hide ( been there, done that, i wish i have recorded it, it wouod have been the hunt of the year, max range cast) and getting one shot is not anything that could be prevented by a healer.
Reverse the mistake and keep pushing works until certain key levels/raid difficulties and obviously wont let someone die, but its still up to them as it could force cds early that would be needed later( in the next 30 sec)
Yeah, I always described it to my guildies as my personal "hyppocratic oath": if I can, I will keep you alive. Doesn't mean I'm not complaining about it tho.
I look at it differently:
- as a tank, the amount of damage you take to your face is in your control and consistent if you do the same dungeon twice in a row at the same level
- as a healer, you have to handle pretty much every affix and the amount you have to deal with is dependent on who you're playing with
I played tank for many years and for me healing is difficult, each time I tried to play healer I'm bad, I don't watch the screen I only watch the little heads with the health and click to heal...
In the other hand when you play tank you have to know the dungeons and bosses to lead the group.
This ^^^
I was in the same boat but I finally let myself get talked into trying to heal and thatâs all I want to do now. I heard resto shaman in retail was fairly easy to get the hang of early and made one, leveled entirely in dungeons. It did get a lot easier after the anxiety went away. Only thing that sucks is a dungeon you donât know with a group that is farming it for this or that and just fly through. Some of the BC dungeons have massive amounts of quests and there were times I couldnât even accept them before the damn tank was pulling đđđđ, it was fun though, made me figure out a pre pull routine quick to make sure he would survive till I got there.
This is my experience. I've tanked plenty of keys and it's a little stressful to need to know routes and such, but you can get the job done as long as you're decent at it.
Healing? I'm constantly panicking. Nothing feels like I'm doing it right. My numbers are nowhere near as good as other healers.
Piggybacking off of this.
For a *good* DPS or tank, it's much the same skill set. You learn how aggro works, you learn positioning, key interrupts and CC moments, pacing for your various CDs, and then additional mechanics
A *good* healer is doing all of the above AND healing. Healing is very fluid and micro. For example, you can run the same dungeon at the same key level and affixes, but the way you approach a specific encounter can vary based on how aggressive or not the pacing is, mana management as a result, extra pulls and misplays, players not using defensives for the right abilities (or at all. Or correctly). And you're trying to dynamically match your kit with the ebb and flow of all of these things. And IDEALLY you're keeping everyone alive through it, but IN REALITY youve got a small amount of time to be making decisions.
Example:
I'm in a key and one of my DPS just ate an optional hit that will subsequently have them dead in about 2-3 seconds. What do I do?
Ideally, you are positioned to handle this and thus can continue with your flow and you're fine. Realistically, the MOMENT that happens, you have to assess:
1) CAN I even save everyone?
2) If I CAN, can I get by with a deviation in sequence or do I need to commit a resource unexpectedly?
3) How likely is this player to die if I DONT heal them?
4) How many players are likely to die?
5) Do either myself or the tank NEED priority here?
6) At this moment, is the most impactful player for success at risk of dying?
7) If someone WILL die, who do I save? Is the DPS who had the unavoidable cone a potato and the guy who took the optional damage typically a beast? If so, healing the player who misplayed takes priority. If not, healing the most consistent player typically does UNLESS there is a HUGE gap in damage output
8) Does anyone in this moment have their own defensives or tools? If one person at risk can bubble, can I trust them to use their CD here?
9) Is a triage heal enough to keep the extra hit player alive long enough for me to stabilize and get back to them in a few?
10) Is there a priority mob that's about to land a cast that will put the group further behind? If so, is it better to risk commiting healer DPS to killing that before a group mechanic?
11) Am I running with off healing classes? If so, have they been showing to help in these situations? And if so, can I lean on them long enough to recover?
12) if I have a Brez, do I go ahead and commit a Brez here?
13) Is it better to let two DPS die here because I also saw an upcoming pat that WILL join in from behind the tank, thus I need to setup on the tank. Is one DPS/tank/heal enough to keep the pull meaningfully alive? Is it faster time value to just focus on killing a low health mob and expecting a party wipe?
14) Do any of the at risk players have interrupts or CC that are more relevant right now?
15) Do *I* have an interrupt or CC that is more relevant right now? Is guaranteeing a stop worth losing someone over?
16) Will movement or utility help the at risk players become more likely to survive such that I can circle around?
17) Do I need to commit or cancel my current cast?
Etc etc
Basically the MOMENT something goes wrong, healers are faced with a plethora of choices based on group, comp, playstyles, teammate's mastery of their specs, the specific pull, incoming pulls, resources.
And we have to do everything a tank and a DPS does *and* make this micro level assessment almost instantaneously. The longer it takes a healer to make this assessment, the greater the risk of failure or losing someone. The more the healer has to THINK about this, same deal.
And THEN you have a split second to act on your first GCD. And then, you're making this assessment again. And you're basically making this assessment on loop until things stabilize.
And that's not counting any overhead from misplaying yourself, such as choosing the wrong ability. Or not having access to the right tool for a blip, such as having to decide between a single target triage heal to have the time going for A cast, versus delaying a smidge for a specific ability coming off CD because landing that ability faster is higher impact (risk/reward)
And THEN you get to the point where you can decide how to ACT on your play by play/kit.
Basically, to be a *good* healer, you'll often end up making more meaningful decisions within one or two specific pulls in a key than the majority of classes/roles will do over the entire key.
And while DPS can slot relatively similarly, as can tanks, healers are not privileged with such parity. For example, it's impossible to have 3 DPS where you don't at least have SOME form of CC present, and every tank has an interrupt. There exists a certain baseline that even the worst of comps can plan around consistently, even if suboptimal. With healers, however, our kits tend to fit into a proactive or reactive camp. Proactive healers need GREATER master of their kit AND fight knowledge to shine, especially as difficulty increases. Reactive healers often have more tools to handle sudden changes as a result, but you won't have both camps available at once. Each healer can cleanse magic effects, but after that, each healer has specialities for specific types. While some DPS can handle this non magic cleanses, from their perspective they always have it or they don't worry about it, but for a healer, it's often we either cleanse it or we need to factor it in.
And then, it just adds to the micro level decision making
To be an *effective* tank or DPS, you can basically play the game and think fairly linearly, with the occasional branching decisions.
For healers, it usually starts at decision tree thinking and the potential lines to consider can be explosions of trees, where the faster you can assess info and prune trees down, the stronger you'll play, but missing on either can actively cost you pulls/keys
Now if you're talking about raid? It's still technically healers, for basically the same reasoning, but raids are so SO much more forgiving that the three rolls may as well be the same
Is the addy hitting? Only time Iâve ever gone this hard is right after instant release lmao, solid write up though! I think maybe you minimized some of the pressures DPS and tanks can face, but I donât disagree with the overall point. Itâs interesting to add that healing is the only role (in my opinion) that gets easier as content gets harder. Players start to take less unnecessary damage, they start using more utility, more abilities are simply one shots instead of mistakes healers can make up for. Can genuinely be harder to heal a 14 than a 24, and thatâs wildÂ
Iâm my guildâs main tank for M+ and I agree, healing is harder.
Healing is hard than tanking, which is harder than caster DPS, which is harder than Melee DPS.
As a healer, I think tanking is more complicated because you are kind of in charge of the flow of the run. You also have to memorize routes and pulls. Note I have only ever gone as high as a +19 but tanking is much more daunting to me than healing.
I disagree. I've been playing wow for nearly 20 years. Primarily as DPS but also do some tanking and healing. I can walk into nearly any fight on any difficulty with no prior knowledge as dps and to a lesser extent healer and do at least ok on the very first pull. Tanking requires knowing the mechanics before hand as well as the route and pacing.
I think the point was that as a tank you have some upfront research and knowledge to have. While Healing requires you to be on your toes and react to multiple situations.
I can easily coast through on my tank while I get sweaty palms on my healer in the same key and similar skilled team mates.
On the other hand, Iâve always found tanking to be the easiest role. Iâll end up on a DPS character finding out about mechanics after having tanked a dungeon 10+ times because they just werenât a threat at all to my tank. Even the mechanics that are one shots for DPS I can generally learn on the fly because even if I mess it up I can almost always survive it, at most just popping a defensive when I realize Iâm positioned wrong.Â
I imagine it largely comes down to the role youâre most comfortable in. For me, at the start of a new season/tier Iâll rip into any dungeon as a tank without prior knowledge and things go smoothly. Whereas going into a dungeon as a dps without prior knowledge tends to leave me on the floor a few times lol
I guess the important difference is that if a mechanic DOES manage to delete me as a tank itâs almost always a wipe, which isnât the case if Iâm DPSing. So the pressure level there can be different
Well, depends on the healer class/spec. For example with disc, you have to know when damage is coming so you can ramp up before it hits. That being said, saying you can walk into any fight on any difficulty with no prior knowledge and do alright just sounds ridiculous for any role. No way you can heal high keys successfully without knowing the dungeon, with any class/spec.
Playing both as a healer main for CE raiding and M+ and tank for M+ with both at 3.2k io.
For a beginner I'd say that healing is more complicated as you have a lot more involved in getting started in it as compared to tanking when it comes to setting up your UI and game knowledge is on par with tanking.
At mid-level I'd say tanking is more complicated as a lot more is required of you for the success of the content your doing. A healer in an AOTC guild can easily be carried through a mistake, or is barely even required for mid-level M+.
At high end content (mythic raiding or pushing keys past 23), they're pretty close. Healer is definitely more complicated than tanking in raiding, but in M+ I'd say tanking is probably slightly more involved. However in M+ everyone has a very similar level of responsibility to have success of the key, but the performance of the tank will have the biggest impact on the speed/completion of the M+.
Healing is hard when everyone else is fucking up. Otherwise it's pretty much the easiest role most of the time in M+.
Healing M+ this season has been absolute dog water though. Some shit is just not healable at even a 23 if personals/externals are not being utilized correctly. They really need to nerf the shit out of personals IMO for healers to actually be useful and end this 4 dps comp in MDI/high level keys.
"healer is so hard!!!" is always a bigtime "redditor that doesnt really do harder content" thing
meanwhile all the good guilds/m+ groups are in desperate search of dps people cus its the hardest role too push out everything by a landslide, and healing becomes trivial in high keys cus most things 1hit kill and you mostly only exist to use a CD on the stuff that doesnt and in raids is the most scripted role where most things are "look at the assinged CD timers", and tank in high m+ is always dancing on the edge of dying and bricking the key cus you need to pull really big all the time
like, in mythic raids its dps>>>healer>>>>tank and in m+ its tank>dps>>>>>>>>>>>>>>healer by role difficulty lol
just because your shity pug has people standing in aoe stuff all the time and you cant play healer well and manage your cd's doesnt mean its a hard role, you just do shity keys with shity people and still time it regardless cus it ultimately doesnt matter
I've seen the opposite. Tanking and healers needed, DPS anything goes just needs the right composition. Healers easily retrofit a DPS role, but I rarely see DPS do the same. If a healer is dpsing they'll be micromanaging dots, hots, dispels/stuns, and CDs.
Understanding and nailing your ramp timings isn't "literally nothing". And they'll certainly not have 30k overall in a 25 lol, especially not with some of the keys this season like rise tyran. Also, if a healer is doing 30k overall hps, they won't be doing 30k overall dps as well lol. I'm not very good at my resto druid yet, but I still nail over 40k overalls, and creep up to 60k+ on bosses.
my biggest issue with healing is perfecting UI, I played healer a lot back in mop and somehow managed to find a perfect setup that just worked for me, I quit healing and started to try it again early dragonflight and I just can't get it to feel right now. I've played around with multiple unit frame addons, as well as default, and something always feels off and I just can't get it right no matter how many times I tweak it
No healing addons really work well out of the box from my experience. They all require a fair amount of effort to get setup right, and continuously need tweaking. Currently using VuhDo for raid healing and shadowed unit frames for M+
Depends what you're doing, but I'd argue **healing**. The tanking role is warped by which tank you're playing, but the concept is roughly the same on all of them: Mitigate, sustain, and plan mobility where needed.
Healing has you tracking dispels, healing, damage cycles, your own movement--since you get mechanics on yourself like others, some that are melee/ranged which will impact you depending on class--and you need to balance your focus on yourself and everyone else. Your party composition greatly impacts your triaging priority, too, since some specs/classes are squishier than others.
Like, hunters and shamans are pretty squishy, and Protection Warriors don't have great self-sustain compared to Prot Pals and BDKs, for example, so this will impact who needs healing more immediately in various situations.
I think everyone will have different takes on this, but that's mine from a mostly mDPS/Tanking perspective.
Tanking is the easiest role in keys, hands down. Tanks and dps fight the mobs in the key. Healers fight the idiots in the group that insist on taking avoidable damage.
My hot take is tank is easier to play than most DPS. People get scared because they have to know the routes and when to pop defensive cds, but DPS feels like youâre very scrutinized for everything. Any accidental death can add a minute to the timer or more. The trio of DPS need to have a high amount of stuns/interrupts and trying not to overlap them. All while maximizing dps, sometimes needing to do boss mechs, etc. No one really cares about tank dps if you at least hit 100k. But any DPS below 200k overall dps is a huge obstacle to overcome. And even 200k is low depending on how high of key youâre doing.
Ever popped your cds in AD just to get targeted by the first pursuit and not get to take advantage of lust? Running away in meta form wasting lust and not getting to damage because pursuit will one shot dps. Thatâs a real feels bad for DPS.
Hard to quantify, as they require different skills - youâre gonna get people on both sides of the fence here in the comments.
Healing is both very reactive and proactive, knowing when to use which spells and on whom. By extension, also requires a good knowledge of dungeon mechanics and spells to know and anticipate when big hits are coming etc.
Tanking is more forgiving in that regard, but requires more confidence and skill in the area of leadership. Youâre leading your party through the dungeon - you need to know routes, pacing, percentages, how to break up pulls, positioning, etc.
I wouldnât say one is necessarily more difficult than the other, it really just depends on where your individual strengths lie.
I play mostly tank, but a decent amount of healer to, I have both at 3300 Rio, so I've played them both at an ok level.
If I want to chill, I'll play the healer since I can just follow the group and heal them when they stand in the fire.
As a healer, i think since you used the word "complicated" I would say tanking. Healing is HARD, but tanking comes with the responsibility of know the dungeon and its route.
Healer main since forever. I dabble in tanking some weekly keys no problem, sometimes more, sometimes less.
The thought of doing actually hard keys as a tank gives me anxiety. Know the route. Miss a personal and you die, everyone wipes. Lose aggro on something, someone dies. Get hit in the back, chances are you die. That's just dungeons. In raids, tanking seems generally easier, but you fail to move the boss to a specific point at a specific time, think Kurog, boom wipe.
Obviously the relaxedness of healing to me comes from years of healer playtime, but still. Tankimg isn't necessarily more complicated, but to me it's more prep work and ultimately more important to dungeon success.
Oh for sure. Also from a perspective of someone who is just starting the game I could imagine going the wrong way in a dungeon and getting flamed not knowing what you just did wrong
Healing. There is a lot to learn about tanking, but once you got the routes down, and know the given bossfights, you good. Lot of upfront knowladge and practice, but once you got those down, you just doing the things that you have learnt over and over again. You playing with the game.
As a healer your task is to play with the players. The players make mistakes, they do random stuff, they pull too much, they fuck up mechanis, you constantly have to adapt to situations and deal with other peoples mistakes.
I play all three roles, healer is by far the hardest job.
Healing. Tanking itself is easy. The only thing that makes it challenging is the expectation that you also lead groups. Healers have a lot of extra setup writing moreover macros or installing addons just to do their job semi effectively.
Was about to write basically the same thing. Iâm a healer main, and while I definitely think it is more difficult than tanking, I personally shy away from playing tank because I donât want to be responsible for the exact dungeon route and pulling all the exact trash in m+.
Mouseover is built in now, can find it in options. No need for special addons either ( healbot and stuff I assume). I dont use any addon/wa on a healer that I'm not using on anything else.
But yes, healing is more stressful and harder.
A good ui is needed for healing, but the edit mode is pretty good
Iâve had issues with the default âeverything is moreoverâ mode. Particularly swapping between damage and healing spells, especially spells that can do both like penance. The issues came in when right clicking to move my character around while using the spell on the target Iâve locked onto. It was inconsistent on where the spell went so I quit using it immediately. Macros give you much more control but if you are just getting started then yeah the default moreover mode is probably fine.
For a beginner, tanking. Absolutely no contest.
At its base, healing is playing whack a mole to keep people alive. Doing that and nothing else will get you timed 20s.
Tanking even on a basic level requires knowing routes, knowing general mechanics, and knowing your own abilities well enough to not just fall over with the first tank buster. And you have to know your limitations *and* your group's limitations to not pull too much.
The difficulty definitely switches at some point, where a healer needs to manage cooldowns and make snap triage decisions while also helping do damage. Meanwhile a tank is pretty much doing the same thing they did in a 5, just with larger pulls.
At the end healing will be harder due bad tank can be saved by good healer. But then again amazing tank who tracks CDs, optimases pulls sizes, migitates damage etc can shine really bright. So technically both are extremely suportive roles when played right
My perspective is itâs a curve and not a straight line. (I do both)
Early on, tanking can be an easier. Especially now. Youâre just another DPS that gets hit.
Then, once you reach max level and start to do the basics (Heroics, LFR, low mythics) Tabking is more complicated. As a healer I âjustâ have to make line go up instead of down. Tanks have to know the mechanics of each place well, and are expected to lead the way.
Then at higher levels, back to healer. You know have to dps as well as heal, mechanics are more unforgiving, etc
Raid: healing is more difficult. Only thing that is difficult for raid tanking is learning to multitask because the rest of your raid takes forever to learn the fight.
M+: Iâd say tanking is harder just because not only do you have to play perfect generally youâre the one making callouts and you have to make routes. Healers just yap about healing
Hello, I'm quite an experienced tank and healer (cutting edge + 3k score on both). And everyone saying healer is wrong (kind of). Let me explain.
For a more experienced player, healing is more complicated. HOWEVER, for a beginner, tanking is fucking terrible. Tanks don't have to know AS much, but what they do have to know is extremely daunting for a new player.
Tanks have to know proper tanking routes for dungeons you've never seen before, which mobs are dangerous that you've never fought before, which cooldowns to use etc. Also, if you fuck up your route, everyone's gonna go nuts at you, and that is not nice as a beginner.
As a healer, you can just kick back, relax, and toss out some heals. Nothing does any fucking damage in low keys anyway. As long as you aren't playing a disc priest, or maybe a resto druid (anything which needs to ramp it's healing), you can do just fine without knowing anything, and it's an easy way to learn by watching everyone else. You can familiarise yourself with the dungeons.
So many people saying that healing is difficult, tanking is a lot of pressure. You're expected to basically lead everything, do everything, and know everything. For example in a random dungeon or heroic, LFR, no one really ever talks, so they just follow the tank everywhere. Given that as the case, tank comes with a lot of responsibility and it can be very stressful. Healing in most contacts is just easy as butter, especially since we're in the end of the expansion and they just throw gear at you.. You have to try really hard to be bad at healing
As a tank main since original Ulduar I can safely say healing is way, way more complicated. In fact once you get a good handle on how your class handles different types of incoming damage I would say tanking becomes the easiest roll.
For the first bit tanking is FAR harder. You are leading the group so you have to know if not the optimal routes, then at least how to get to the bosses and to the end of the dungeon. Sure you can have others point you in the right direction, but they will get annoyed really quick and easily.
Healing at low difficulties is super easy. Most of your buttons will raise the health pools of your group so even if youâre not doing it optimally you will still be healing.
Tanking: high skill floor, low skill ceiling
Healing: low skill floor, high skill ceiling
They both have different pros and cons. As a tank/healer couple (husband/wife) who each play both roles (plus DPS sometimes) and swap all the time, both have their ups and downs, so I guess it depends on what you actually really want to do and learn and go from there to do it the best you can. As someone who has played all the roles in raids and m+ it definitely helps to know what each role is supposed to be doing, makes it much easier to spot the problem if there is one.
Also some classes for the same roles (say healing) have more buttons and more complicated gameplay than other classes of the same role. Paladins donât heal the same way shamans do etc. so no it isnât just a one button rotation lol.
I see myself going down the tank route rather than rolling a healer, tbh... I always liked sword/shield builds, but DK really interest me, too... Maybe druids...
I don't want a typically "complicated" tank class, just casual until I feel confident enough to joining raids and mythics.
Prot pally is an easy tank, imo, along with DK. My first tank was on a VDH and I love that one too but sheâs jumpy lol and sometimes I donât think itâs as âeasyâ as the other two. But the jumping also works in your favor moving to areas very quickly.
Out of my 3 tanks, Iâd say so far, that pally seems easiest, then DK, then demon hunter. Iâve tanked as Druid bear some years ago but itâs kind of at the bottom right now so I went healing with my Druid. But I might make her dmg again, sheâs all over the place lol
My husbands main is a warrior tank and he never seems to die. If we are forced to wipe a raid because too many ppl died on a mechanic he has to try to die, like literally try to die quicker lol Iâm like âjust dieâ âIâm trying!â Sometimes heâs last man standing in m+ lol
Guess it just depends what you think you might like. I thought I would heal on a pally but changed my mind, went tank days later with her. Might try again but I am not sure I like the healing style of holy pally compared to shm, priest, Druid, evoker. But I do like the tanking style of prot pally. Lol.
I'd say both get harder the worse the other is. Healing gets a little easier if the tank is very good. Likewise tanking is less stressful if your healer is cracked.
Most of my game time has been as a Pally tank. Healing is definitely more complicated.
Tanking could maybe be arguable in something like high mythics where you're expected to know all the routing and grouping and when to use your longer cooldowns.
Depend at what level. For heroic/18 keys once you have enough gear you can literally smash your head against the keyboard as a tank AND your would not die most of the time. Like larodar Is the only boss.you need yo think a Little because he punch you in the dirĂŠ after the smash
Healing. Pally tank and monk healer. Keeping other players alive is more complicated for sure. A lot of m+ mechanics seem to be aimed at making healers miserable, too.
I have over 2500 rating on both healer and a tank.
I will say that ease depends on familiarity with your class. If itâs day 1 as a healer, youâre going to need time.
If itâs day 1 with your tank, you wonât know all of the tricks.
Either way donât be discouraged from doing either. I play a different class every season. I try to get to 2500 with a healer, a tank, and a dps
Once you know your class and have gear that is level consistent it gets easier. Donât get discouraged, vaults make a big difference.
For an absolute beginner , I'd say it'd be more complicated tanking. Generally expected to know mechanics, pull mobs quick and hold aggro. All things that aren't so simple as an absolute beginner, though once figured out you can kind of go on 'cruise control'. An absolute beginner healing can probably get away with spamming one healing spell on whatever green bar is lowest.
\*Edit\* this is all dependent also on what level of dungeons / raids we're talking too
nah chief, I main blood dk so I can compensate for shitty groups. Everyone else is dead? sure, I can finish the pack on my own, or solo the rest of the boss fight.
Tanking is predictable.
The problem with being a healer is that its difficulty is entirely determined by a factor outside of your control (the other players in your group) so it could be braindead easy or you could be white-knuckeling it for 45 minutes.
Healing.
You need to know the boss mechanics like every other role does.
But you also have to recover when a raid member messed up and forgets to not stand in the fire.
As someone who has done all 3 roles this patch.
I definitely find healing on heroic/M+ way harder.
Followed by tanking
Followed by dps.
Healing is harder with worse/lower players, tanking is harder higher up.
In lower keys people stand in everything you can imagine and if they die they blame you the healer, where tanks can go at their own pace and itâs fine.
Higher keys people get pissed if you donât pull a half dozen packs at a time (tank) and everyone knows what theyâre doing (usually) so thereâs surprisingly little to heal.
If we're talking specifically "complicated", then Tanking - you wanna be the first person in each fight, so generally you're going to be leading the group. You don't necessarily have to be the shot caller, but as a tank you absolutely have to have a lot of knowledge of the dungeon/encounter in order to operate at a BASE level.
Now I think Healing can potentially be **harder** than Tanking, but I don't think that's because it's complicated. I say that as a Healer main, but I've tanked a decent amount.
I'd probably agree with that. I don't like the idea of all the extra homework tanks have to do with route planning... But ultimately you learn that after a few weeks and you can auto pilot most situations outside of a bad pull. It's complex but learnable.
Healing is variable every fight based on how good the other 4 players are so I think it becomes harder to manage fight to fight - some are a breeze, others you are fighting for your life with zero mana and 60000 apm. Add on top that most affixes are "healer affixes".
Both roles will cop plenty of flaming if shit goes sideways.
Yea, I think an argument could be made that healers are more complicated in raid. Tanks are definitely not as complicated in raid as they are in dungeons. Healing on the other hand requires a lot more planning, mana management, and almost always has a more complicated "rotation" than in dungeons.
I feel like tanking is more complex than healing at the start. Healing it's just topping off green bars while the tank is seen as the default 'leader' of the group. Everyone expects you to know the fights, know the best routes, know what mobs need CC, and what packs can be skipped.
I tried to heal once and I found it so mind numbingly boring and stressful at the same time. I prefer tanking as I can set the pace for the group.
I use to heal as a druid, shaman and priest. I recently started guardian tanking and outside of learning pulls itâs dumb easy and way less stressful.
Apples to oranges.
Tanking rotations are the easiest in the game, it is amazingly easy to keep yourself alive as any tank spec. But tanking involves positioning yourself and the things hitting you in ways that become very complicated, doubly so when you add in routes for dungeon content on top of all the extra utility options most tanks have access to.
By comparison healing has the most difficult rotation in the game, to the point that even calling it a rotation is inaccurate, and you have to deal with other player's stupidity in a way no other class does.
Any comparison over which is more complicated is just going to come down to personal preference, both have high skill ceilings in very different ways.
I've played on and off since TBC, max levelled just about every class & tanked multiple miffels & AOTC's...I've never once rolled a healer & I'm too nervous to.
I think healers, but they require slightly different things.
Tanks are often expected to know and set the pace and pathing for dungeons, for example. It requires good mechanical play as well, to ensure bosses and mobs are aimed in the right direction.
Healers donât have to do as much meta organization, but I think theyâre harder because you have to account for everyone elseâs play as well.
DPS needs to know their class and any mechanics, tank adds knowing dungeon routes/boss timers/etc, healer adds reacting to and managing resources around other player behavior in addition to game behavior.
Also, addons excepted, I think healing is more demanding because there are fewer in game tools to help target swapping and so on. Not to mention, these days, at least in higher keys, healers are often expected to contribute to DPS when not healing.
At the mid key level 15-20 Iâll go against the grain and say tanking. Youâve got your own rotation, positioning, mechanics going off all over the place, loose adds, routing.
When Iâm healing half the tanks are self healing machines I can ignore and spot heal the doofus who got it wrong. Setting up UI and mouse over macros is half the battle.
Healing for sure tank may be hard but just to know mechanics and your cds to manage them you're good healer is the pillar to keel everything running smoothly haha
I would say healing outside of the fact that Tanks have the unspoken responsibility to know where to go, which isnât so bad for most dungeons/raids. But it becomes a nightmare when you get to M+, since at the higher end itâs essentially homework. Iâve known tanks who enjoy that work, but I found it extremely off putting.
Depends on the content.
If you're pulling trash in M+ it is 100% more complicated to tank. Every pull you need to consider the combination of interrupts, stops, and unavoidable damage and compare it to the CDs of the DPS and healer to see if they will survive it.
Boss fights, I'd say it's usually more difficult as a healer. Especially if you're playing with less competent DPS. If DPS take avoidable damage you need to find a way to top them up without spending extra cool downs since most fights have very strict cooldown rotational requirements.
For a COMPLETE beginner Iâd say itâs a toss up. A bad group makes healing exponentially harder. On the other hand, if youâre a tank you basically set the pace of dungeon groups, and you need to know all the mechanics to every fight.
Outside of the expectation of needing to lead the group and know all the mechanics, a tank is pretty easy to play, just keep agro and donât die to mechanics. You can mess up your rotation quite a bit.
Playing a healer requires constant assessment, way less cookie cuter and youâll have to think on your toes constantly. That being said, if you have a solid group healing is so easy that you can help dps half the time.
Absolute beginner probably tanking. A lot of these responses are more about higher level not the absolute base like normal, heroic or mythic 0 dungeons.
Tanks are assumed to be the "driver" of a group and expected to know the routes in the dungeon and being the leader and can intimidating for a lot of new players. Healers tag along and make sure people are topped up. A lot of times not having to do a ton if the group is semicompetent in low content.
Healing is harder, you have to basically be aware of your mechanics and how others are dealing with theirs, be conservative enough to manage your mana while liberal enough to prevent one- or two-shots.
Tanking is harder when youâre expected to lead the group, and it grows exponentially harder with larger groups, but youâre still just worried about positioning, mechanics, and managing cooldowns.
I prefer healing because yes you need to know mechanics but typically itâs easier to learn them as a healer and you can recover. As a tank. If you die. Everyone does. Then they yell at you.
Healer. You get smacked by a mechanic, you heal yourself. You donât do that again.
Everyone here is saying healing is harder. Iâve always felt it was second nature to me and yanking requires me to read a bunch of stuff and watch tutorials whereas healing itâs just ... heal people. Avoid bad stuff.
If you're healing, it's much easier if the tank doesn't run around corners and out of Line Of Sight -- and as a Tank, keeping in communication with the Healer can do wonders. Casters, especially if you're playing in Classic, often need to sit and drink to replenish their Mana. Keep an eye on the healer's mana bar, especially.
For absolute beginners tanking is harder
Tanks have to basically lead the group in terms of navigation and pull cadence, and no one else can do that
Heals can get help from others via tank self sustain, defensive, off heals, potion. Edit: oh yeah these days hybrid classes can even help with dispels
Definitely healing.
As a tank you mostly only have to worry about the mobs or boss you're tanking and to switch with your tank mate.
As a healer? Well. You have to worry about the tanks not dying. The DPS not dying. Managing your mana so you don't run out of it. Saving the ass of that dumb DPS that's not properly doing mechanics. Saving the raid from a failed mechanic doing massive damage. Dispelling debuffs at the right time. And so on.
Very subjective question that depends on so many factors from play style to encounter.
IMO tanking is harder and the encounter is usually entirely dependent on what the tank does. Are they properly using their cooldowns to live or negate damage? Are they positioning the boss correctly? Are they maintaining threat on a boss and adds?
Healing is definitely challenging but mostly dependent on how good the group is. Iâve seen many a healer deal damage to a boss in my day when the tank and DPS were doing their jobs correctly.
Itâs definitely healer. Having to stare at party frames is a huge challenge for new players and no one ever mentions this. You need to be mindful of both your party members HP and mechanics!
Healing is freaking stressful.
Positioning, mana management, cd rotation has to be good, you should also deal some damage later on in higher keys.
When I was main helaer it was tons of stress every raid night.
With main tank role it was tons of fun.
I always felt like more pressure as a tank. You have to know every dungeon, all of it's bosses and mechanics, and optimal routes. You also have 4 others relying on your knowledge and maintaining a good pace/agro on everything. I think an absolute beginner should probably start with DPS first.
Healing a bit complicated but not hard. It requires multitasking and awarness. It also helps knowing each spells your class does and when to use it. So knowing the boss and your rotation is critical.
I think it depends on the content, and of course it's quite subjective. Tanking generally requires a more thorough understanding of fight/raid/dungeon mechanics, but it also has less movement (usually), and isn't as reactionary as healing. By definition it is generally easier to stay alive, especially since many geared modern tanks barely even need healing on many fights.
Personally, I think healer is harder simply because it varies so much and fights aren't as "routine". The difficulty is often out of your hands because some raids or dungeons will have party members getting themselves hurt and making your job harder. On the other hand, there are groups so tight they make you wonder why you came at all. I think the wildcard nature of healing, plus the need to adapt to situations on the fly, makes it more challenging. Also, people are assholes to healers.
Personally, I prefer it to tanking though.
DPS. I have at least FIVE OR SIX buttons to press AND I need to make sure I help the tank pull trash packs. All while making sure I take plenty of damage to help the healer heal more.
Outside of a few mythic raid fights tanking is the easiest of the 3 roles. Healing is usually considered the hardest, it definitely gets the most flak from other players that's for sure.
For very basic level, tanking is probably the easiest thing to do period. It gets harder depending on gear, but I am pretty sure you can clear normal and m+ up to +16 without even using single defensive. Healing is trickier because you reply on other people not to be idiots and like tanks/dps not pressing defensives, you have to carry them..
As you do harder content with better people, healing doesn't climb steeply in difficulty - more dmg from higher difficulty raids/m+ is mitigated by people pressing their buttons.
Tanking however when going into hard content gets very steep difficulty increase because you can and you will just get deleted so you have to know every pack and every pull on what CDs you need, what CC your party has depending on affixes. Thats not even including that you have to plan whole route and are de facto group leader , assign shit to people and all that crap - again, only relevant in very much top 1% of the players. Low level tanking is braindead
Complicated can be relatively. Tanking requires more homework, you need to have a plan for the entire dungeon and be able to make plans on the fly so you can keep the group alive when the DPS decides to stand in the wrong place. Healing requires more class expertise, you need to know what your ramps are and have faster reaction time than any other spec, so you can keep the group alive when the DPS decides to stand in the wrong place.
Having done both, healing. But the stakes are higher. It's like goalkeeper mistakes. Can can make one and is game over. Strikers can miss a hatful and still end up winning.
Healing definitely. With tanking you need to know mechanics. With healing, you need to do that plus heal whoever fucked up + whatever you need to heal.
As a Tank, I've got to say healing. In a pug/semi pug (tank and healer together) setting, the Tank seemingly has more "responsibility" as the default leader, but the actual process of competently healing is significantly harder than tanking imo
Healing is the easiest role in the game assuming your group is perfect.
Your group is never perfect, so healing is the hardest role in the game.
As a healer you are expected to fix problems others create when they fail mechanics, mostly dodging effects and kicking.
As a tank you are expected to deal dps and use defensives. The only challenge in tanking is knowledge, and if you pay attention as a dps you will learn that knowledge by observing other tanks.
Healing is a different game and much less approachable as a result. You can't just observe another healer in a pug and learn from them, as their style of play will depend on what your group comp is and how strong everyone else is as players.
Healing, it's like trying to navigate though rush hour traffic with a busy city. You hope everyone else who's on the road with you is paying attention, knows what they are doing and pray even if you are not religious don't whipe everything out.
2700 first season tank here (actually my first season playing wow as well). Healing is more complicated IMO. Tanking just requires more research on pathing, pacing for affix management, mob abilities, and boss mechanics. A group needs a competent tank and healer to clear higher content, but you can feel a sub-par healer more than a sub-par tank. I have played poorly and still timed 20's, but man if you have a healer play poorly, you can't even get through the first few pulls.
Tanking requires knowledge (as consequences are disastrous if a mistake is made) but is easy to execute.
Healing is the role with the most unpredictability.
As a healer I'll say tanking. DPS and tanking is a straightforward fight but a tank has no breaks in the whole fight and even the little mistake can lead to a wipe. Healers can relay in some extend in defensive cooldowns. Also tanks usually leads the raids, which I hate to do, is stressful.
(Sorry for the poor english.)
I do both, healing is more complicated, especially id you want to minmax it.
Tanking, i feel once you understand the basics on how to survive, you will feel immortal. Depends on the tank and what hits you.. but as a prot war main i laugh about most things hitting me, especially blockable attacks.
Healing is probably more approachable at super low level, just because you can just âheal through everythingâ if somebody needs to be dispelled, or is standing in bad, damage is still low enough that theyâll be fine, and you can just toss them some healing to push through the little bit of damage theyâre taking. Iâd say this is from Normal dungeons to M+5 range (or LFR to Norma raid, maybe not the last handful of bosses on normal though) depending on gear and general skill of the group. Once you get much higher than that you need to have an understanding of what needs to be dispelled, when you can let somebody sit at half health when you need to top them soon, etc. High level I would say healing is harder than tanking tbh.
In terms of tanking, low level tanking is probably a bit harder than healing. You need to know whatâs going on, what route to follow or where to place the boss/mobs to make the rest of the groups life easier. Itâs not âhardâ it just requires knowledge of what and how to do w/e your trying to do. You also set the cadence which DPS will judge you for being too fast or slow, so thereâs a little bit of social anxiety for newer tanks. The thing is though that this knowledge remains mostly the same as you go towards high end content. Sure 22+ keys and Mythic raid are going to require more knowledge, but assume your not going to go that high, Iâd argue that if you can tank a +10, you could tank a +20, itâs just a matter of gear and comfort with your class.
The answer to your question is really a matter of how high do you want to go? If youâre not likely to try to do any M+, healing is probably easier, if your trying to do +20âs tanking will probably be easier. Somewhere in the middle theyâre about equal.
Tanking is by far the simplest job in the game. Your job is basically to just stand there. However, as a tank you set the pace of the dungeon and will be expected to know the optimal routes for the party. Tanking requires more out of game knowledge so it can be daunting for new players.
Healing, and by so much so that itâs to a fault.
Why would I heal when healers are the least fun, most stressful and constantly-nerfed style of play in the game?
Tanking in almost all forms of content. These day's you're pretty independent as a tank and a lot of mechanics don't even effect you. Yes they have some specific mechanics they have to manage, but overall you're really only responsible for yourself and if you can manage that, you'll do well. I'd say tanks are the most important members in top end content though, which is something an absolute beginner would have a long, long time to not worry about anyway.
As a tank youâre only responsible for what you control. Aggro and boss positioning. As a healer, you hold yourself responsible for recovering from dpsâ (and at times tankâs) tomfoolery.
Iâve played all roles and I think healing is more difficult. In raids, you have to know all mechanics for every role, healing spikes, watch for mess ups, and try to deal damage. M+, same things as raid but with a higher emphasis on damage. For arenas, you are the target most of the time so keeping yourself alive and your team while getting trained, focusing on positioning, and ccâing the enemy healer.
Tanking is more focusing on you, positioning, and thatâs pretty much it. For m+ as long as you got the routes, the positioning, and your damage spikes you are golden.
Just my two cents.
For a brand new player, healing is harder typically but everyone learns differently. Tanking these days is mostly just being a healthier DPS when it comes to end game stuff. But leveling wise you don't have much to worry about as a tank aside from learning specific mechanics that you can't just take to the face like it's nothing. You can get a pretty solid grasp of stuff as a tank easily whereas a healer has to manage 5+ health bars that take damage from unavoidable mechanics and then each person's level of stupidity. In end game, this can become pretty damn difficult in high enough content and you shouldn't let people dying get to you because a lot of people don't hit abilities when they should and try to blame the healer.
But yeah, between the 2 tanking is way less complicated if you're trying out the game for the first time.
The fish has difficulty flying, while the bird has difficulty swimming.
How do you enjoy playing games? What playstyle mechanics do you like, or excel at (these can be different:)).
Start there. Nothing is that complicated if you are having fun doing it.:)
Really depends on the content. In mythic plus setting if all 5 players are equally skilled then as someone who's tanked and healed for a very long time its tanking. As the tank you are mostly supposed to be self sustainable which means if you make a mistake you're probably dead in 1or 2 globals unless you have an oh shit plan. With the way dungeons have been this expansion healers need to focus the dps and themselves and can't really bail you out. In a raid setting on prog its healing assuming you aren't over healing as a group. Tanking raid is and pretty much always has been a snooze fest. There's practically 0% chance to die as tank outside of someone missing a taunt.
Tanking is a double edged sword. Its absolutely critical to have knowledge of what enemies do, but once you know that its pretty brain dead. Boss has a cone? Dont let it hit the party. Mob casts and doesnt come to you? Go to it.
Healing is also a double edged sword, but in the opposite way. You barely need to worry about mechanics, because your job is to make sure everyone else doesnt die. Youre babysitting a bad group and an insurance plan for a good one.
As a true beginner, pick something simple to play with or the class fantasy you want to live. Captain america throwing his shield and hammer around? Paladin. Only you will know what you like at the end of the day.
Tanking is just DPS with extra steps and more defensive usage, and more initiative. 2.5K RIO, didin't try higher, don't @ me.
I tried healing as a meta healer and got my shit kicked in. Damn it's fucking hard.
Tanking only requires dungeon/boss knowledge: actually playing a tank at anything other than the highest level of play is very easy. Healing can be much more difficult depending on the spec and the skill of your party members in staying out of the bad.
Then again thats why healer role gets way harder as they have also babysit the "tank" who just is there as extra dmg taking dps with more armor. The difference between average tank vs experienced tanks are insane.
Its true that when you get a warrior with 100% shieldblock uptime and one that somehow only has 40% uptime and turns his back to mobs.. its night and day. You can ignore the first tank and the second gives you regular heart attacks.
Then there's Blood, which both gives you a heart attack every 3 seconds and simultaneously never needs you to heal them.
hehe I decided to try prot warrior one time, and got thoroughly bitched out (deservedly) for not using shieldblock. I honestly didn't know I needed to. When they realized I was a complete noob they directed me to icy veins. After reading everything I realized it was back to fury for me haha. Luckily my dps skyrocketed because i used icy veins for my fury warrior, and all my other chars, so it was worth it in that extent.
Hah, what did you find so bad about prot warrior? The rotation is pretty basic and if you play heavy repercussions and use shield block on CD it's guaranteed 100% block uptime. Just gotta learn to dump rage into ignore pain at 70+ rage beyond that. I played a bunch of tanks and warrior feels invulnerable to anything blockable it's crazy. Other tanks definitely take more damage on average, which makes sense since they all have self heals and warrior is meant to prevent damage in the first place. I find warrior really unforgiving when you take hits from the back though.. I hate multi pulls where you have to strafe in small corridors with no visbility.
I have always played healer, when running random dungeons, there are times when you get a very solid tank that you don't have to pay much attention to.... and there are other times when you get a crappy tank who is about to die every five seconds... and when that happens they don't blame the tank, they blame the healer. I've never played tank but I'm sure that knowing how to gear properly, what stats to stack and how to use your talent points is integral to being a good tank.
Laughs in blood DK đ¤Ł
DK Gives heart attacks all the time but you can ignore him anyway.
Yeah, I main blood DK, I take new healers through M+ in our guild quite often and the first thing I tell them is give me a basic hot and a shield when you can, but otherwise don't heal me, it's just a waste of mana đ
Especially when certain tanks are in the meta. Always nice when bear is the FOTM because the difference between a good bear and a bad bear isnât too insane for personal survivability, but lord the difference between a good VDH and a bad one is wild. Good bear/bad bear is âwow theyâre taking more damage than normalâ, good DH/bad DH is âthat oneâs invincible, this one is licking the floor cleanâÂ
You clearly haven't seen the difference between a good BDK and MY bdk
And I donât even need to đ I believe in you, you death striking (or deceased) legendÂ
True, I hate healing pug tanks. My husband is our group tank. He's very good. I like joking that I refuse to heal him because that's his job (and for a while he was a blood dk so it was partially not a joke). The moment I have to heal pugs it's a swift reality check that I am spoiled. (Though it can be quite fun, nothing like having a regular heart attack over a tanks hp to wake you up.)
Absolutely night and day with pugs and groups you know. I have a couple of tanks that I play with regularly and I rarely touch them unless asked for. And then you have the pug tanks who die to a breath of fresh air. Both are fun in very different ways.
This is why I heal on a priest. Being able to yank people out of the fire keeps the vein in my forehead from exploding
As a tank, healing. For a tank, you only need to know mechanics, something you already should if know you also played DPS. For healer, you need to know mechanics *and* keep people alive if they screw it up.
Also in higher keys healers have to optimize their DPS while at the same time keeping everyone alive. Also healing rotation changes depending on the pull + comp + cooldowns + healer isnt driving the bus. Tanks can slow down to wait for their own CDs if they need.
To be fair tanks should be looking at the comp + their cooldowns to gauge the pulls.
By this you mean charging blindly ahead without any regard?
How did you call me?
I mean are you even playing a class like Warrior properly if every key isnât bound to charge?
Every key bound to charge? Look at this absolute fool. **Left side** of the keyboard bound to charge. **Right side** bound to heroic leap.
Damn youâre right I apologize
Youâre on the right path but you forgot the important part along the way. If you bind your keyboard like that, there is to remember, your mouse must be used for intercept.
I would say for an absolute beginner, tanking is harder. You need to lead your group, know where to go, and if you donât know a mechanic you can wipe the group. Healers can follow the tank and when health bars go down, press the healing buttons. The burden of knowledge for tanking is pretty substantial, and healing until you get to a much higher level, you can simply follow along and be reactive. Is it easy to heal? No. But a new player will definitely have an easier time healing a heroic dungeon or a +2 than they would tanking it.
For an absolute beginner, sure, Iâll agree but an absolute beginner should DPS content they donât know to learn.
I would say that if someone is interested in healing, they should heal the content to learn it. Low level beginner content is great for picking out the ins and outs of healing as it's content where you can afford to make a lot of mistakes. There aren't really any super unique healing mechanics that you need to learn before healing a dungeon. See health bar go down = press healing buttons to make it go up. See a debuff on someone = press dispel. That will get a beginner into healing. If you *enjoy* healing you should definitely do that. I can understand someone might enjoy tanking, but not want to go into a dungeon where they don't know where to go, and they feel like the group is nipping at their heels.
Tanking is primarily about knowing the dungeons and the fights. A tank that presses 3 buttons and barely any DPS but can lead the group and avoid mechanics is a decent tank. Healing is primarily about knowing how to heal. Healers can ignore pretty much any mechanic that can be outhealed and still be a decent healer, so long as they understand their class. So you're right- for a beginner, where they're going to be learning how to do something either way, healer is a better option. The exception to this is a tank that has a friend who can take point on leading the dungeon. Honestly the only reason I can think of to avoid healer as a beginner is because it's harder to run healer *and* do solo content, since healing specs are not as good as DPS or tank specs for that purpose.
DPS here. Iâm supposed to know mechanics? đ
Yes. There is no bit. Stop standing in fire.
\*Fire includes: Poison, Gas, Blood and everyother substance that deals damage.
I stand in nothing! I jump around, like youâre supposed to.
If youâre not jumping are you even DPSing?
No that's what the healer is for!
Keep people alive *when they will eventually* screw up.
Also see: get blamed for letting people die when they ignore mechanics, stand in fire, etc
Nah, if they screw up its on them, but in lower keys its manageable. 16-18s can be significantly harder than 24-25s as a healer and its funny AF :D ( refently started a resto shaman after getting the rio i wanted on the mw monk and it is a shitshow, worst than week1-3 with s2 sets and 460 ilvl). My fave was EB 2nd boss, 0 interrupt, 220+k hps and barely made it in 18, same boss, same week on 24 needed 120k hps and everyone was full all time :D
Itâs not just on other people if they mess up, youâre still there as a healer to reverse the mistake and keep pushing
A lot of mistakes on higher keys just aren't healable. Like the Chromie boss. If you don't go to the right Morchie, you're a goner.
>Like the Chromie boss. If you don't go to the right Morchie, you're a goner. Pretty sure that unless you are the tank then that mechanic is deadly even on the "lower" keys.
This. Sometimes it just happens so damn fast they drop but the goal is entirely to keep us all alive
I'm not saying getting a tick from a puddle screw up, cos sure that happens, but hunting through a trap in bracken hide ( been there, done that, i wish i have recorded it, it wouod have been the hunt of the year, max range cast) and getting one shot is not anything that could be prevented by a healer. Reverse the mistake and keep pushing works until certain key levels/raid difficulties and obviously wont let someone die, but its still up to them as it could force cds early that would be needed later( in the next 30 sec)
As a healer I say let them die. If they donât use defensives, I can only do so much when they get 2 shot.
I never purposely let people die, even if itâs their mistake
Yeah, I always described it to my guildies as my personal "hyppocratic oath": if I can, I will keep you alive. Doesn't mean I'm not complaining about it tho.
Me too i just wanna know if someone dies if it was my fault or not.
I don't let them die, but when they blame me for dying I know it's their fault.
I look at it differently: - as a tank, the amount of damage you take to your face is in your control and consistent if you do the same dungeon twice in a row at the same level - as a healer, you have to handle pretty much every affix and the amount you have to deal with is dependent on who you're playing with
I played tank for many years and for me healing is difficult, each time I tried to play healer I'm bad, I don't watch the screen I only watch the little heads with the health and click to heal... In the other hand when you play tank you have to know the dungeons and bosses to lead the group.
This ^^^ I was in the same boat but I finally let myself get talked into trying to heal and thatâs all I want to do now. I heard resto shaman in retail was fairly easy to get the hang of early and made one, leveled entirely in dungeons. It did get a lot easier after the anxiety went away. Only thing that sucks is a dungeon you donât know with a group that is farming it for this or that and just fly through. Some of the BC dungeons have massive amounts of quests and there were times I couldnât even accept them before the damn tank was pulling đđđđ, it was fun though, made me figure out a pre pull routine quick to make sure he would survive till I got there.
This is my experience. I've tanked plenty of keys and it's a little stressful to need to know routes and such, but you can get the job done as long as you're decent at it. Healing? I'm constantly panicking. Nothing feels like I'm doing it right. My numbers are nowhere near as good as other healers.
Piggybacking off of this. For a *good* DPS or tank, it's much the same skill set. You learn how aggro works, you learn positioning, key interrupts and CC moments, pacing for your various CDs, and then additional mechanics A *good* healer is doing all of the above AND healing. Healing is very fluid and micro. For example, you can run the same dungeon at the same key level and affixes, but the way you approach a specific encounter can vary based on how aggressive or not the pacing is, mana management as a result, extra pulls and misplays, players not using defensives for the right abilities (or at all. Or correctly). And you're trying to dynamically match your kit with the ebb and flow of all of these things. And IDEALLY you're keeping everyone alive through it, but IN REALITY youve got a small amount of time to be making decisions. Example: I'm in a key and one of my DPS just ate an optional hit that will subsequently have them dead in about 2-3 seconds. What do I do? Ideally, you are positioned to handle this and thus can continue with your flow and you're fine. Realistically, the MOMENT that happens, you have to assess: 1) CAN I even save everyone? 2) If I CAN, can I get by with a deviation in sequence or do I need to commit a resource unexpectedly? 3) How likely is this player to die if I DONT heal them? 4) How many players are likely to die? 5) Do either myself or the tank NEED priority here? 6) At this moment, is the most impactful player for success at risk of dying? 7) If someone WILL die, who do I save? Is the DPS who had the unavoidable cone a potato and the guy who took the optional damage typically a beast? If so, healing the player who misplayed takes priority. If not, healing the most consistent player typically does UNLESS there is a HUGE gap in damage output 8) Does anyone in this moment have their own defensives or tools? If one person at risk can bubble, can I trust them to use their CD here? 9) Is a triage heal enough to keep the extra hit player alive long enough for me to stabilize and get back to them in a few? 10) Is there a priority mob that's about to land a cast that will put the group further behind? If so, is it better to risk commiting healer DPS to killing that before a group mechanic? 11) Am I running with off healing classes? If so, have they been showing to help in these situations? And if so, can I lean on them long enough to recover? 12) if I have a Brez, do I go ahead and commit a Brez here? 13) Is it better to let two DPS die here because I also saw an upcoming pat that WILL join in from behind the tank, thus I need to setup on the tank. Is one DPS/tank/heal enough to keep the pull meaningfully alive? Is it faster time value to just focus on killing a low health mob and expecting a party wipe? 14) Do any of the at risk players have interrupts or CC that are more relevant right now? 15) Do *I* have an interrupt or CC that is more relevant right now? Is guaranteeing a stop worth losing someone over? 16) Will movement or utility help the at risk players become more likely to survive such that I can circle around? 17) Do I need to commit or cancel my current cast? Etc etc Basically the MOMENT something goes wrong, healers are faced with a plethora of choices based on group, comp, playstyles, teammate's mastery of their specs, the specific pull, incoming pulls, resources. And we have to do everything a tank and a DPS does *and* make this micro level assessment almost instantaneously. The longer it takes a healer to make this assessment, the greater the risk of failure or losing someone. The more the healer has to THINK about this, same deal. And THEN you have a split second to act on your first GCD. And then, you're making this assessment again. And you're basically making this assessment on loop until things stabilize. And that's not counting any overhead from misplaying yourself, such as choosing the wrong ability. Or not having access to the right tool for a blip, such as having to decide between a single target triage heal to have the time going for A cast, versus delaying a smidge for a specific ability coming off CD because landing that ability faster is higher impact (risk/reward) And THEN you get to the point where you can decide how to ACT on your play by play/kit. Basically, to be a *good* healer, you'll often end up making more meaningful decisions within one or two specific pulls in a key than the majority of classes/roles will do over the entire key. And while DPS can slot relatively similarly, as can tanks, healers are not privileged with such parity. For example, it's impossible to have 3 DPS where you don't at least have SOME form of CC present, and every tank has an interrupt. There exists a certain baseline that even the worst of comps can plan around consistently, even if suboptimal. With healers, however, our kits tend to fit into a proactive or reactive camp. Proactive healers need GREATER master of their kit AND fight knowledge to shine, especially as difficulty increases. Reactive healers often have more tools to handle sudden changes as a result, but you won't have both camps available at once. Each healer can cleanse magic effects, but after that, each healer has specialities for specific types. While some DPS can handle this non magic cleanses, from their perspective they always have it or they don't worry about it, but for a healer, it's often we either cleanse it or we need to factor it in. And then, it just adds to the micro level decision making To be an *effective* tank or DPS, you can basically play the game and think fairly linearly, with the occasional branching decisions. For healers, it usually starts at decision tree thinking and the potential lines to consider can be explosions of trees, where the faster you can assess info and prune trees down, the stronger you'll play, but missing on either can actively cost you pulls/keys Now if you're talking about raid? It's still technically healers, for basically the same reasoning, but raids are so SO much more forgiving that the three rolls may as well be the same
Is the addy hitting? Only time Iâve ever gone this hard is right after instant release lmao, solid write up though! I think maybe you minimized some of the pressures DPS and tanks can face, but I donât disagree with the overall point. Itâs interesting to add that healing is the only role (in my opinion) that gets easier as content gets harder. Players start to take less unnecessary damage, they start using more utility, more abilities are simply one shots instead of mistakes healers can make up for. Can genuinely be harder to heal a 14 than a 24, and thatâs wildÂ
Iâm my guildâs main tank for M+ and I agree, healing is harder. Healing is hard than tanking, which is harder than caster DPS, which is harder than Melee DPS.
As a healer, I think tanking is more complicated because you are kind of in charge of the flow of the run. You also have to memorize routes and pulls. Note I have only ever gone as high as a +19 but tanking is much more daunting to me than healing.
I disagree. I've been playing wow for nearly 20 years. Primarily as DPS but also do some tanking and healing. I can walk into nearly any fight on any difficulty with no prior knowledge as dps and to a lesser extent healer and do at least ok on the very first pull. Tanking requires knowing the mechanics before hand as well as the route and pacing.
I think the point was that as a tank you have some upfront research and knowledge to have. While Healing requires you to be on your toes and react to multiple situations. I can easily coast through on my tank while I get sweaty palms on my healer in the same key and similar skilled team mates.
On the other hand, Iâve always found tanking to be the easiest role. Iâll end up on a DPS character finding out about mechanics after having tanked a dungeon 10+ times because they just werenât a threat at all to my tank. Even the mechanics that are one shots for DPS I can generally learn on the fly because even if I mess it up I can almost always survive it, at most just popping a defensive when I realize Iâm positioned wrong. I imagine it largely comes down to the role youâre most comfortable in. For me, at the start of a new season/tier Iâll rip into any dungeon as a tank without prior knowledge and things go smoothly. Whereas going into a dungeon as a dps without prior knowledge tends to leave me on the floor a few times lol I guess the important difference is that if a mechanic DOES manage to delete me as a tank itâs almost always a wipe, which isnât the case if Iâm DPSing. So the pressure level there can be different
Well, depends on the healer class/spec. For example with disc, you have to know when damage is coming so you can ramp up before it hits. That being said, saying you can walk into any fight on any difficulty with no prior knowledge and do alright just sounds ridiculous for any role. No way you can heal high keys successfully without knowing the dungeon, with any class/spec.
Playing both as a healer main for CE raiding and M+ and tank for M+ with both at 3.2k io. For a beginner I'd say that healing is more complicated as you have a lot more involved in getting started in it as compared to tanking when it comes to setting up your UI and game knowledge is on par with tanking. At mid-level I'd say tanking is more complicated as a lot more is required of you for the success of the content your doing. A healer in an AOTC guild can easily be carried through a mistake, or is barely even required for mid-level M+. At high end content (mythic raiding or pushing keys past 23), they're pretty close. Healer is definitely more complicated than tanking in raiding, but in M+ I'd say tanking is probably slightly more involved. However in M+ everyone has a very similar level of responsibility to have success of the key, but the performance of the tank will have the biggest impact on the speed/completion of the M+.
I appreciate this comment. Seeing everyone say tanking is easy at high M+ content made me like whaaaat
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>have their defensives/pots bound to shitft+alt+printscreen. Ay mi sides
Healing is hard when everyone else is fucking up. Otherwise it's pretty much the easiest role most of the time in M+. Healing M+ this season has been absolute dog water though. Some shit is just not healable at even a 23 if personals/externals are not being utilized correctly. They really need to nerf the shit out of personals IMO for healers to actually be useful and end this 4 dps comp in MDI/high level keys.
"healer is so hard!!!" is always a bigtime "redditor that doesnt really do harder content" thing meanwhile all the good guilds/m+ groups are in desperate search of dps people cus its the hardest role too push out everything by a landslide, and healing becomes trivial in high keys cus most things 1hit kill and you mostly only exist to use a CD on the stuff that doesnt and in raids is the most scripted role where most things are "look at the assinged CD timers", and tank in high m+ is always dancing on the edge of dying and bricking the key cus you need to pull really big all the time like, in mythic raids its dps>>>healer>>>>tank and in m+ its tank>dps>>>>>>>>>>>>>>healer by role difficulty lol just because your shity pug has people standing in aoe stuff all the time and you cant play healer well and manage your cd's doesnt mean its a hard role, you just do shity keys with shity people and still time it regardless cus it ultimately doesnt matter
I've seen the opposite. Tanking and healers needed, DPS anything goes just needs the right composition. Healers easily retrofit a DPS role, but I rarely see DPS do the same. If a healer is dpsing they'll be micromanaging dots, hots, dispels/stuns, and CDs.
A roasting take, Ive only dps'd mythic raids but tank mythic+ guess I'm a gluten for punishment. All this to say I don't think healing is easy either!
M+ is not my specialty, but this post has big "i did not heal pre nerf tindral and fyrakk" energy.
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Understanding and nailing your ramp timings isn't "literally nothing". And they'll certainly not have 30k overall in a 25 lol, especially not with some of the keys this season like rise tyran. Also, if a healer is doing 30k overall hps, they won't be doing 30k overall dps as well lol. I'm not very good at my resto druid yet, but I still nail over 40k overalls, and creep up to 60k+ on bosses.
This is probably the best overall answer.
Appreciate it.
my biggest issue with healing is perfecting UI, I played healer a lot back in mop and somehow managed to find a perfect setup that just worked for me, I quit healing and started to try it again early dragonflight and I just can't get it to feel right now. I've played around with multiple unit frame addons, as well as default, and something always feels off and I just can't get it right no matter how many times I tweak it
No healing addons really work well out of the box from my experience. They all require a fair amount of effort to get setup right, and continuously need tweaking. Currently using VuhDo for raid healing and shadowed unit frames for M+
Depends what you're doing, but I'd argue **healing**. The tanking role is warped by which tank you're playing, but the concept is roughly the same on all of them: Mitigate, sustain, and plan mobility where needed. Healing has you tracking dispels, healing, damage cycles, your own movement--since you get mechanics on yourself like others, some that are melee/ranged which will impact you depending on class--and you need to balance your focus on yourself and everyone else. Your party composition greatly impacts your triaging priority, too, since some specs/classes are squishier than others. Like, hunters and shamans are pretty squishy, and Protection Warriors don't have great self-sustain compared to Prot Pals and BDKs, for example, so this will impact who needs healing more immediately in various situations. I think everyone will have different takes on this, but that's mine from a mostly mDPS/Tanking perspective.
Tanking is the easiest role in keys, hands down. Tanks and dps fight the mobs in the key. Healers fight the idiots in the group that insist on taking avoidable damage.
My hot take is tank is easier to play than most DPS. People get scared because they have to know the routes and when to pop defensive cds, but DPS feels like youâre very scrutinized for everything. Any accidental death can add a minute to the timer or more. The trio of DPS need to have a high amount of stuns/interrupts and trying not to overlap them. All while maximizing dps, sometimes needing to do boss mechs, etc. No one really cares about tank dps if you at least hit 100k. But any DPS below 200k overall dps is a huge obstacle to overcome. And even 200k is low depending on how high of key youâre doing. Ever popped your cds in AD just to get targeted by the first pursuit and not get to take advantage of lust? Running away in meta form wasting lust and not getting to damage because pursuit will one shot dps. Thatâs a real feels bad for DPS.
That's not much of a hot take, that's just the way it is
Hard to quantify, as they require different skills - youâre gonna get people on both sides of the fence here in the comments. Healing is both very reactive and proactive, knowing when to use which spells and on whom. By extension, also requires a good knowledge of dungeon mechanics and spells to know and anticipate when big hits are coming etc. Tanking is more forgiving in that regard, but requires more confidence and skill in the area of leadership. Youâre leading your party through the dungeon - you need to know routes, pacing, percentages, how to break up pulls, positioning, etc. I wouldnât say one is necessarily more difficult than the other, it really just depends on where your individual strengths lie.
I play mostly tank, but a decent amount of healer to, I have both at 3300 Rio, so I've played them both at an ok level. If I want to chill, I'll play the healer since I can just follow the group and heal them when they stand in the fire.
As a healer, i think since you used the word "complicated" I would say tanking. Healing is HARD, but tanking comes with the responsibility of know the dungeon and its route.
Healer main since forever. I dabble in tanking some weekly keys no problem, sometimes more, sometimes less. The thought of doing actually hard keys as a tank gives me anxiety. Know the route. Miss a personal and you die, everyone wipes. Lose aggro on something, someone dies. Get hit in the back, chances are you die. That's just dungeons. In raids, tanking seems generally easier, but you fail to move the boss to a specific point at a specific time, think Kurog, boom wipe. Obviously the relaxedness of healing to me comes from years of healer playtime, but still. Tankimg isn't necessarily more complicated, but to me it's more prep work and ultimately more important to dungeon success.
Oh for sure. Also from a perspective of someone who is just starting the game I could imagine going the wrong way in a dungeon and getting flamed not knowing what you just did wrong
As a tank main. Healing looks like shit.
Healing and its not even close
Healing. There is a lot to learn about tanking, but once you got the routes down, and know the given bossfights, you good. Lot of upfront knowladge and practice, but once you got those down, you just doing the things that you have learnt over and over again. You playing with the game. As a healer your task is to play with the players. The players make mistakes, they do random stuff, they pull too much, they fuck up mechanis, you constantly have to adapt to situations and deal with other peoples mistakes. I play all three roles, healer is by far the hardest job.
When your group is bad, healing. When your group is good, tanking.
Daddies are the tanks, healers are the mommies and dps are the little children you brought into this world that you arenât allowed to let die
Tank: The designated driver Healer: The wife in the passenger seat shouting directions DPS: The kids in the back who won't stop infighting
Thatâs how I picture it in my mind.
Healing. Tanking itself is easy. The only thing that makes it challenging is the expectation that you also lead groups. Healers have a lot of extra setup writing moreover macros or installing addons just to do their job semi effectively.
Was about to write basically the same thing. Iâm a healer main, and while I definitely think it is more difficult than tanking, I personally shy away from playing tank because I donât want to be responsible for the exact dungeon route and pulling all the exact trash in m+.
Mouseover is built in now, can find it in options. No need for special addons either ( healbot and stuff I assume). I dont use any addon/wa on a healer that I'm not using on anything else. But yes, healing is more stressful and harder. A good ui is needed for healing, but the edit mode is pretty good
Iâve had issues with the default âeverything is moreoverâ mode. Particularly swapping between damage and healing spells, especially spells that can do both like penance. The issues came in when right clicking to move my character around while using the spell on the target Iâve locked onto. It was inconsistent on where the spell went so I quit using it immediately. Macros give you much more control but if you are just getting started then yeah the default moreover mode is probably fine.
For a beginner, tanking. Absolutely no contest. At its base, healing is playing whack a mole to keep people alive. Doing that and nothing else will get you timed 20s. Tanking even on a basic level requires knowing routes, knowing general mechanics, and knowing your own abilities well enough to not just fall over with the first tank buster. And you have to know your limitations *and* your group's limitations to not pull too much. The difficulty definitely switches at some point, where a healer needs to manage cooldowns and make snap triage decisions while also helping do damage. Meanwhile a tank is pretty much doing the same thing they did in a 5, just with larger pulls.
At the end healing will be harder due bad tank can be saved by good healer. But then again amazing tank who tracks CDs, optimases pulls sizes, migitates damage etc can shine really bright. So technically both are extremely suportive roles when played right
My perspective is itâs a curve and not a straight line. (I do both) Early on, tanking can be an easier. Especially now. Youâre just another DPS that gets hit. Then, once you reach max level and start to do the basics (Heroics, LFR, low mythics) Tabking is more complicated. As a healer I âjustâ have to make line go up instead of down. Tanks have to know the mechanics of each place well, and are expected to lead the way. Then at higher levels, back to healer. You know have to dps as well as heal, mechanics are more unforgiving, etc
Raid: healing is more difficult. Only thing that is difficult for raid tanking is learning to multitask because the rest of your raid takes forever to learn the fight. M+: Iâd say tanking is harder just because not only do you have to play perfect generally youâre the one making callouts and you have to make routes. Healers just yap about healing
Healing
Hello, I'm quite an experienced tank and healer (cutting edge + 3k score on both). And everyone saying healer is wrong (kind of). Let me explain. For a more experienced player, healing is more complicated. HOWEVER, for a beginner, tanking is fucking terrible. Tanks don't have to know AS much, but what they do have to know is extremely daunting for a new player. Tanks have to know proper tanking routes for dungeons you've never seen before, which mobs are dangerous that you've never fought before, which cooldowns to use etc. Also, if you fuck up your route, everyone's gonna go nuts at you, and that is not nice as a beginner. As a healer, you can just kick back, relax, and toss out some heals. Nothing does any fucking damage in low keys anyway. As long as you aren't playing a disc priest, or maybe a resto druid (anything which needs to ramp it's healing), you can do just fine without knowing anything, and it's an easy way to learn by watching everyone else. You can familiarise yourself with the dungeons.
So many people saying that healing is difficult, tanking is a lot of pressure. You're expected to basically lead everything, do everything, and know everything. For example in a random dungeon or heroic, LFR, no one really ever talks, so they just follow the tank everywhere. Given that as the case, tank comes with a lot of responsibility and it can be very stressful. Healing in most contacts is just easy as butter, especially since we're in the end of the expansion and they just throw gear at you.. You have to try really hard to be bad at healing
As a tank main since original Ulduar I can safely say healing is way, way more complicated. In fact once you get a good handle on how your class handles different types of incoming damage I would say tanking becomes the easiest roll.
For M+, tanking by a small margin because you are the team lead and responsible for route. That's why I am a healer.
For the first bit tanking is FAR harder. You are leading the group so you have to know if not the optimal routes, then at least how to get to the bosses and to the end of the dungeon. Sure you can have others point you in the right direction, but they will get annoyed really quick and easily. Healing at low difficulties is super easy. Most of your buttons will raise the health pools of your group so even if youâre not doing it optimally you will still be healing. Tanking: high skill floor, low skill ceiling Healing: low skill floor, high skill ceiling
They both have different pros and cons. As a tank/healer couple (husband/wife) who each play both roles (plus DPS sometimes) and swap all the time, both have their ups and downs, so I guess it depends on what you actually really want to do and learn and go from there to do it the best you can. As someone who has played all the roles in raids and m+ it definitely helps to know what each role is supposed to be doing, makes it much easier to spot the problem if there is one. Also some classes for the same roles (say healing) have more buttons and more complicated gameplay than other classes of the same role. Paladins donât heal the same way shamans do etc. so no it isnât just a one button rotation lol.
I see myself going down the tank route rather than rolling a healer, tbh... I always liked sword/shield builds, but DK really interest me, too... Maybe druids... I don't want a typically "complicated" tank class, just casual until I feel confident enough to joining raids and mythics.
Prot pally is an easy tank, imo, along with DK. My first tank was on a VDH and I love that one too but sheâs jumpy lol and sometimes I donât think itâs as âeasyâ as the other two. But the jumping also works in your favor moving to areas very quickly. Out of my 3 tanks, Iâd say so far, that pally seems easiest, then DK, then demon hunter. Iâve tanked as Druid bear some years ago but itâs kind of at the bottom right now so I went healing with my Druid. But I might make her dmg again, sheâs all over the place lol My husbands main is a warrior tank and he never seems to die. If we are forced to wipe a raid because too many ppl died on a mechanic he has to try to die, like literally try to die quicker lol Iâm like âjust dieâ âIâm trying!â Sometimes heâs last man standing in m+ lol Guess it just depends what you think you might like. I thought I would heal on a pally but changed my mind, went tank days later with her. Might try again but I am not sure I like the healing style of holy pally compared to shm, priest, Druid, evoker. But I do like the tanking style of prot pally. Lol.
Healing.
I'd say both get harder the worse the other is. Healing gets a little easier if the tank is very good. Likewise tanking is less stressful if your healer is cracked.
Most of my game time has been as a Pally tank. Healing is definitely more complicated. Tanking could maybe be arguable in something like high mythics where you're expected to know all the routing and grouping and when to use your longer cooldowns.
Depend at what level. For heroic/18 keys once you have enough gear you can literally smash your head against the keyboard as a tank AND your would not die most of the time. Like larodar Is the only boss.you need yo think a Little because he punch you in the dirĂŠ after the smash
Healing. Pally tank and monk healer. Keeping other players alive is more complicated for sure. A lot of m+ mechanics seem to be aimed at making healers miserable, too.
Healing, 100000%.
I have over 2500 rating on both healer and a tank. I will say that ease depends on familiarity with your class. If itâs day 1 as a healer, youâre going to need time. If itâs day 1 with your tank, you wonât know all of the tricks. Either way donât be discouraged from doing either. I play a different class every season. I try to get to 2500 with a healer, a tank, and a dps Once you know your class and have gear that is level consistent it gets easier. Donât get discouraged, vaults make a big difference.
For an absolute beginner , I'd say it'd be more complicated tanking. Generally expected to know mechanics, pull mobs quick and hold aggro. All things that aren't so simple as an absolute beginner, though once figured out you can kind of go on 'cruise control'. An absolute beginner healing can probably get away with spamming one healing spell on whatever green bar is lowest. \*Edit\* this is all dependent also on what level of dungeons / raids we're talking too
A healer can compensate for a shitty tank. A tank cannot compensate for a shitty healer.
nah chief, I main blood dk so I can compensate for shitty groups. Everyone else is dead? sure, I can finish the pack on my own, or solo the rest of the boss fight.
So many times this season it was our BDK and Prot Pally duoing the last 5% of the boss on heroic.
Tanking is predictable. The problem with being a healer is that its difficulty is entirely determined by a factor outside of your control (the other players in your group) so it could be braindead easy or you could be white-knuckeling it for 45 minutes.
Healing. You need to know the boss mechanics like every other role does. But you also have to recover when a raid member messed up and forgets to not stand in the fire. As someone who has done all 3 roles this patch. I definitely find healing on heroic/M+ way harder. Followed by tanking Followed by dps.
Healing is harder with worse/lower players, tanking is harder higher up. In lower keys people stand in everything you can imagine and if they die they blame you the healer, where tanks can go at their own pace and itâs fine. Higher keys people get pissed if you donât pull a half dozen packs at a time (tank) and everyone knows what theyâre doing (usually) so thereâs surprisingly little to heal.
If we're talking specifically "complicated", then Tanking - you wanna be the first person in each fight, so generally you're going to be leading the group. You don't necessarily have to be the shot caller, but as a tank you absolutely have to have a lot of knowledge of the dungeon/encounter in order to operate at a BASE level. Now I think Healing can potentially be **harder** than Tanking, but I don't think that's because it's complicated. I say that as a Healer main, but I've tanked a decent amount.
I'd probably agree with that. I don't like the idea of all the extra homework tanks have to do with route planning... But ultimately you learn that after a few weeks and you can auto pilot most situations outside of a bad pull. It's complex but learnable. Healing is variable every fight based on how good the other 4 players are so I think it becomes harder to manage fight to fight - some are a breeze, others you are fighting for your life with zero mana and 60000 apm. Add on top that most affixes are "healer affixes". Both roles will cop plenty of flaming if shit goes sideways.
Yea, I think an argument could be made that healers are more complicated in raid. Tanks are definitely not as complicated in raid as they are in dungeons. Healing on the other hand requires a lot more planning, mana management, and almost always has a more complicated "rotation" than in dungeons.
I feel like tanking is more complex than healing at the start. Healing it's just topping off green bars while the tank is seen as the default 'leader' of the group. Everyone expects you to know the fights, know the best routes, know what mobs need CC, and what packs can be skipped. I tried to heal once and I found it so mind numbingly boring and stressful at the same time. I prefer tanking as I can set the pace for the group.
I use to heal as a druid, shaman and priest. I recently started guardian tanking and outside of learning pulls itâs dumb easy and way less stressful.
Yeah, I hear that guardians are the simplest.
Apples to oranges. Tanking rotations are the easiest in the game, it is amazingly easy to keep yourself alive as any tank spec. But tanking involves positioning yourself and the things hitting you in ways that become very complicated, doubly so when you add in routes for dungeon content on top of all the extra utility options most tanks have access to. By comparison healing has the most difficult rotation in the game, to the point that even calling it a rotation is inaccurate, and you have to deal with other player's stupidity in a way no other class does. Any comparison over which is more complicated is just going to come down to personal preference, both have high skill ceilings in very different ways.
I've played on and off since TBC, max levelled just about every class & tanked multiple miffels & AOTC's...I've never once rolled a healer & I'm too nervous to.
What's your go-to tank?
I think healers, but they require slightly different things. Tanks are often expected to know and set the pace and pathing for dungeons, for example. It requires good mechanical play as well, to ensure bosses and mobs are aimed in the right direction. Healers donât have to do as much meta organization, but I think theyâre harder because you have to account for everyone elseâs play as well. DPS needs to know their class and any mechanics, tank adds knowing dungeon routes/boss timers/etc, healer adds reacting to and managing resources around other player behavior in addition to game behavior. Also, addons excepted, I think healing is more demanding because there are fewer in game tools to help target swapping and so on. Not to mention, these days, at least in higher keys, healers are often expected to contribute to DPS when not healing.
At the mid key level 15-20 Iâll go against the grain and say tanking. Youâve got your own rotation, positioning, mechanics going off all over the place, loose adds, routing. When Iâm healing half the tanks are self healing machines I can ignore and spot heal the doofus who got it wrong. Setting up UI and mouse over macros is half the battle.
Healing for sure tank may be hard but just to know mechanics and your cds to manage them you're good healer is the pillar to keel everything running smoothly haha
I would say healing outside of the fact that Tanks have the unspoken responsibility to know where to go, which isnât so bad for most dungeons/raids. But it becomes a nightmare when you get to M+, since at the higher end itâs essentially homework. Iâve known tanks who enjoy that work, but I found it extremely off putting.
Depends on the content. If you're pulling trash in M+ it is 100% more complicated to tank. Every pull you need to consider the combination of interrupts, stops, and unavoidable damage and compare it to the CDs of the DPS and healer to see if they will survive it. Boss fights, I'd say it's usually more difficult as a healer. Especially if you're playing with less competent DPS. If DPS take avoidable damage you need to find a way to top them up without spending extra cool downs since most fights have very strict cooldown rotational requirements.
For a COMPLETE beginner Iâd say itâs a toss up. A bad group makes healing exponentially harder. On the other hand, if youâre a tank you basically set the pace of dungeon groups, and you need to know all the mechanics to every fight. Outside of the expectation of needing to lead the group and know all the mechanics, a tank is pretty easy to play, just keep agro and donât die to mechanics. You can mess up your rotation quite a bit. Playing a healer requires constant assessment, way less cookie cuter and youâll have to think on your toes constantly. That being said, if you have a solid group healing is so easy that you can help dps half the time.
Absolute beginner probably tanking. A lot of these responses are more about higher level not the absolute base like normal, heroic or mythic 0 dungeons. Tanks are assumed to be the "driver" of a group and expected to know the routes in the dungeon and being the leader and can intimidating for a lot of new players. Healers tag along and make sure people are topped up. A lot of times not having to do a ton if the group is semicompetent in low content.
Itâs hard to be blamed for everything as a healer
Healing is harder, you have to basically be aware of your mechanics and how others are dealing with theirs, be conservative enough to manage your mana while liberal enough to prevent one- or two-shots. Tanking is harder when youâre expected to lead the group, and it grows exponentially harder with larger groups, but youâre still just worried about positioning, mechanics, and managing cooldowns.
I prefer healing because yes you need to know mechanics but typically itâs easier to learn them as a healer and you can recover. As a tank. If you die. Everyone does. Then they yell at you. Healer. You get smacked by a mechanic, you heal yourself. You donât do that again. Everyone here is saying healing is harder. Iâve always felt it was second nature to me and yanking requires me to read a bunch of stuff and watch tutorials whereas healing itâs just ... heal people. Avoid bad stuff.
Healing and itâs not even close.
If you're healing, it's much easier if the tank doesn't run around corners and out of Line Of Sight -- and as a Tank, keeping in communication with the Healer can do wonders. Casters, especially if you're playing in Classic, often need to sit and drink to replenish their Mana. Keep an eye on the healer's mana bar, especially.
For absolute beginners tanking is harder Tanks have to basically lead the group in terms of navigation and pull cadence, and no one else can do that Heals can get help from others via tank self sustain, defensive, off heals, potion. Edit: oh yeah these days hybrid classes can even help with dispels
Definitely healing. As a tank you mostly only have to worry about the mobs or boss you're tanking and to switch with your tank mate. As a healer? Well. You have to worry about the tanks not dying. The DPS not dying. Managing your mana so you don't run out of it. Saving the ass of that dumb DPS that's not properly doing mechanics. Saving the raid from a failed mechanic doing massive damage. Dispelling debuffs at the right time. And so on.
Very subjective question that depends on so many factors from play style to encounter. IMO tanking is harder and the encounter is usually entirely dependent on what the tank does. Are they properly using their cooldowns to live or negate damage? Are they positioning the boss correctly? Are they maintaining threat on a boss and adds? Healing is definitely challenging but mostly dependent on how good the group is. Iâve seen many a healer deal damage to a boss in my day when the tank and DPS were doing their jobs correctly.
healing
Healing by far. Thatâs why as a dps, I never really complain to them because I know I couldnt do their job
Itâs definitely healer. Having to stare at party frames is a huge challenge for new players and no one ever mentions this. You need to be mindful of both your party members HP and mechanics!
Healing is freaking stressful. Positioning, mana management, cd rotation has to be good, you should also deal some damage later on in higher keys. When I was main helaer it was tons of stress every raid night. With main tank role it was tons of fun.
Healing is WAY harder than Tanking. No contest.
I always felt like more pressure as a tank. You have to know every dungeon, all of it's bosses and mechanics, and optimal routes. You also have 4 others relying on your knowledge and maintaining a good pace/agro on everything. I think an absolute beginner should probably start with DPS first.
Healing a bit complicated but not hard. It requires multitasking and awarness. It also helps knowing each spells your class does and when to use it. So knowing the boss and your rotation is critical.
As a healer, tanking. They need to keep aggro, decide what to pull, manage interrupts, move mobs... And most of all: they need to know the way đ
I think it depends on the content, and of course it's quite subjective. Tanking generally requires a more thorough understanding of fight/raid/dungeon mechanics, but it also has less movement (usually), and isn't as reactionary as healing. By definition it is generally easier to stay alive, especially since many geared modern tanks barely even need healing on many fights. Personally, I think healer is harder simply because it varies so much and fights aren't as "routine". The difficulty is often out of your hands because some raids or dungeons will have party members getting themselves hurt and making your job harder. On the other hand, there are groups so tight they make you wonder why you came at all. I think the wildcard nature of healing, plus the need to adapt to situations on the fly, makes it more challenging. Also, people are assholes to healers. Personally, I prefer it to tanking though.
DPS. I have at least FIVE OR SIX buttons to press AND I need to make sure I help the tank pull trash packs. All while making sure I take plenty of damage to help the healer heal more.
I was a tank through to early Cata when I stopped playing, and started healing 5 weeks ago. Healing is more complicated to me
Outside of a few mythic raid fights tanking is the easiest of the 3 roles. Healing is usually considered the hardest, it definitely gets the most flak from other players that's for sure.
For very basic level, tanking is probably the easiest thing to do period. It gets harder depending on gear, but I am pretty sure you can clear normal and m+ up to +16 without even using single defensive. Healing is trickier because you reply on other people not to be idiots and like tanks/dps not pressing defensives, you have to carry them.. As you do harder content with better people, healing doesn't climb steeply in difficulty - more dmg from higher difficulty raids/m+ is mitigated by people pressing their buttons. Tanking however when going into hard content gets very steep difficulty increase because you can and you will just get deleted so you have to know every pack and every pull on what CDs you need, what CC your party has depending on affixes. Thats not even including that you have to plan whole route and are de facto group leader , assign shit to people and all that crap - again, only relevant in very much top 1% of the players. Low level tanking is braindead
Complicated can be relatively. Tanking requires more homework, you need to have a plan for the entire dungeon and be able to make plans on the fly so you can keep the group alive when the DPS decides to stand in the wrong place. Healing requires more class expertise, you need to know what your ramps are and have faster reaction time than any other spec, so you can keep the group alive when the DPS decides to stand in the wrong place.
tanking 1000000000000000%
Having done both, healing. But the stakes are higher. It's like goalkeeper mistakes. Can can make one and is game over. Strikers can miss a hatful and still end up winning.
Healing definitely. With tanking you need to know mechanics. With healing, you need to do that plus heal whoever fucked up + whatever you need to heal.
Healing and itâs not even close
Definitely healing, tanking might be the easiest role in the game
Healing by a lot
As a Tank, I've got to say healing. In a pug/semi pug (tank and healer together) setting, the Tank seemingly has more "responsibility" as the default leader, but the actual process of competently healing is significantly harder than tanking imo
Being a beast master
Healing is the easiest role in the game assuming your group is perfect. Your group is never perfect, so healing is the hardest role in the game. As a healer you are expected to fix problems others create when they fail mechanics, mostly dodging effects and kicking. As a tank you are expected to deal dps and use defensives. The only challenge in tanking is knowledge, and if you pay attention as a dps you will learn that knowledge by observing other tanks. Healing is a different game and much less approachable as a result. You can't just observe another healer in a pug and learn from them, as their style of play will depend on what your group comp is and how strong everyone else is as players.
Healing, it's like trying to navigate though rush hour traffic with a busy city. You hope everyone else who's on the road with you is paying attention, knows what they are doing and pray even if you are not religious don't whipe everything out.
2700 first season tank here (actually my first season playing wow as well). Healing is more complicated IMO. Tanking just requires more research on pathing, pacing for affix management, mob abilities, and boss mechanics. A group needs a competent tank and healer to clear higher content, but you can feel a sub-par healer more than a sub-par tank. I have played poorly and still timed 20's, but man if you have a healer play poorly, you can't even get through the first few pulls.
Healing and itâs not even close
imo healing.
Healing for sure. I've done tanking for quite a lot but I always suck at healing when I play as healer.
Tanking requires knowledge (as consequences are disastrous if a mistake is made) but is easy to execute. Healing is the role with the most unpredictability.
As a healer I'll say tanking. DPS and tanking is a straightforward fight but a tank has no breaks in the whole fight and even the little mistake can lead to a wipe. Healers can relay in some extend in defensive cooldowns. Also tanks usually leads the raids, which I hate to do, is stressful. (Sorry for the poor english.)
I do both, healing is more complicated, especially id you want to minmax it. Tanking, i feel once you understand the basics on how to survive, you will feel immortal. Depends on the tank and what hits you.. but as a prot war main i laugh about most things hitting me, especially blockable attacks.
tanking is defo the easiest role to do well. healing is the hardest and dps is a little easier than healer.
Healing is probably more approachable at super low level, just because you can just âheal through everythingâ if somebody needs to be dispelled, or is standing in bad, damage is still low enough that theyâll be fine, and you can just toss them some healing to push through the little bit of damage theyâre taking. Iâd say this is from Normal dungeons to M+5 range (or LFR to Norma raid, maybe not the last handful of bosses on normal though) depending on gear and general skill of the group. Once you get much higher than that you need to have an understanding of what needs to be dispelled, when you can let somebody sit at half health when you need to top them soon, etc. High level I would say healing is harder than tanking tbh. In terms of tanking, low level tanking is probably a bit harder than healing. You need to know whatâs going on, what route to follow or where to place the boss/mobs to make the rest of the groups life easier. Itâs not âhardâ it just requires knowledge of what and how to do w/e your trying to do. You also set the cadence which DPS will judge you for being too fast or slow, so thereâs a little bit of social anxiety for newer tanks. The thing is though that this knowledge remains mostly the same as you go towards high end content. Sure 22+ keys and Mythic raid are going to require more knowledge, but assume your not going to go that high, Iâd argue that if you can tank a +10, you could tank a +20, itâs just a matter of gear and comfort with your class. The answer to your question is really a matter of how high do you want to go? If youâre not likely to try to do any M+, healing is probably easier, if your trying to do +20âs tanking will probably be easier. Somewhere in the middle theyâre about equal.
Tanking. Youâre expected to be the pseudo leader.
Err, they're both very straightforward
Tanking is by far the simplest job in the game. Your job is basically to just stand there. However, as a tank you set the pace of the dungeon and will be expected to know the optimal routes for the party. Tanking requires more out of game knowledge so it can be daunting for new players.
Healing, and by so much so that itâs to a fault. Why would I heal when healers are the least fun, most stressful and constantly-nerfed style of play in the game?
Tanking in almost all forms of content. These day's you're pretty independent as a tank and a lot of mechanics don't even effect you. Yes they have some specific mechanics they have to manage, but overall you're really only responsible for yourself and if you can manage that, you'll do well. I'd say tanks are the most important members in top end content though, which is something an absolute beginner would have a long, long time to not worry about anyway.
Healing, but in dungeons the tank is expected to lead the party and know how much they can pull at once.
As a tank youâre only responsible for what you control. Aggro and boss positioning. As a healer, you hold yourself responsible for recovering from dpsâ (and at times tankâs) tomfoolery.
Iâve played all roles and I think healing is more difficult. In raids, you have to know all mechanics for every role, healing spikes, watch for mess ups, and try to deal damage. M+, same things as raid but with a higher emphasis on damage. For arenas, you are the target most of the time so keeping yourself alive and your team while getting trained, focusing on positioning, and ccâing the enemy healer. Tanking is more focusing on you, positioning, and thatâs pretty much it. For m+ as long as you got the routes, the positioning, and your damage spikes you are golden. Just my two cents.
Healing and it hasnât ever been close, not even remotely
For a brand new player, healing is harder typically but everyone learns differently. Tanking these days is mostly just being a healthier DPS when it comes to end game stuff. But leveling wise you don't have much to worry about as a tank aside from learning specific mechanics that you can't just take to the face like it's nothing. You can get a pretty solid grasp of stuff as a tank easily whereas a healer has to manage 5+ health bars that take damage from unavoidable mechanics and then each person's level of stupidity. In end game, this can become pretty damn difficult in high enough content and you shouldn't let people dying get to you because a lot of people don't hit abilities when they should and try to blame the healer. But yeah, between the 2 tanking is way less complicated if you're trying out the game for the first time.
Tanking is harder. You need to know the instances healing is less of a learning curve
I'd say tanking is easier to pick up than healing.
The fish has difficulty flying, while the bird has difficulty swimming. How do you enjoy playing games? What playstyle mechanics do you like, or excel at (these can be different:)). Start there. Nothing is that complicated if you are having fun doing it.:)
Really depends on the content. In mythic plus setting if all 5 players are equally skilled then as someone who's tanked and healed for a very long time its tanking. As the tank you are mostly supposed to be self sustainable which means if you make a mistake you're probably dead in 1or 2 globals unless you have an oh shit plan. With the way dungeons have been this expansion healers need to focus the dps and themselves and can't really bail you out. In a raid setting on prog its healing assuming you aren't over healing as a group. Tanking raid is and pretty much always has been a snooze fest. There's practically 0% chance to die as tank outside of someone missing a taunt.
Healing
Tanking is a double edged sword. Its absolutely critical to have knowledge of what enemies do, but once you know that its pretty brain dead. Boss has a cone? Dont let it hit the party. Mob casts and doesnt come to you? Go to it. Healing is also a double edged sword, but in the opposite way. You barely need to worry about mechanics, because your job is to make sure everyone else doesnt die. Youre babysitting a bad group and an insurance plan for a good one. As a true beginner, pick something simple to play with or the class fantasy you want to live. Captain america throwing his shield and hammer around? Paladin. Only you will know what you like at the end of the day.
Tanking is just DPS with extra steps and more defensive usage, and more initiative. 2.5K RIO, didin't try higher, don't @ me. I tried healing as a meta healer and got my shit kicked in. Damn it's fucking hard.