This is entry #14 in the 30 days of WarCraft series of articles.
Which is my favorite character role..? Healer, Tank or DPS? I’ll give you three guesses, and two of them don’t count. Yep, you guessed correctly… DPS!
What’s more fun than blowing stuff up, I tell ya..?!
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the other roles. In fact, healing is something I really get into. I have a druid that was mainly feral all throughout The Burning Crusade, who I switched to resto for WotLK. I haven’t leveled him yet in Cata, but I enjoyed healing heroics, and even some raids, during the WotLK era.
Tanking is something I have little experience with. I did tank some with my druid back in TBC, and I tried my hand at DK tanking in WotLK, but I never really felt drawn to that role. I don’t mind it so much, but I prefer DPS and heals over tanking.
Since the first time I played WoW, I knew I want to be a healer…I loved this role in every games I played, and I still love it after years of healing! I really enjoy the feeling of being a “gardian spirit” looking after the group of the raid…and mana managment, CD cycle, the gaze fixed on the raid frame, while keeping an eye on what’s happening on the floor is…exciting <3
Every encounter is different, and I sometimes pray for that a DPS will do a big mistake which will force me to unleash :p
I've been eying for a long time on tanking too; it attracts me, cause I love being the "key stone" in a raid. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm made for this role…too stressing, I quickly panic when I lose threat on AoE trashes and can't continue x)
The last…DPS…can't bear! Expect in PvP where it's the only role which don't bore me. In PvE, I can't support spaming spells, spaming spells, spaming spells, …even with the CD gestion, I don't feel bloomed when I play a DPS…and I often can't support being cherish by an other heal 😮
So my favourite role is heal, I'd like to become a good tank and I keep my DPS hunter for PvP.
(P.S: Please excuse me for eventual bad english, I'm french)
I had an alt Priest up to Burning Crusade. I did Paladin tanking during most of BC and into WotLK. I did ok at both, but I find it stresses me out way to much. I’m the type of person that feels that if I’m the tank or healer if someone dies its my fault. No matter what friends and allies told me, I would keep thinking this. Eventually I just called it quits on both roles and have done nothing but dpsing since.
My main is a tank and I looooooved tanking. I loved learning to tank in BC, where it was a difficult job but you earned a reputation on your server for being a good tank. I would log on and get about 10 whispers asking me to tank dungeons. No dungeon finder back then so people cared about their own performance so that I’d say “yes” to them. LK was fun because you could blow through 4 dungeons in an hour with a good group and rack up the badges/points. Then came Cata. And pugs who won’t follow kill orders or use cc and always blame the tank/healer fo wipes despite their abysmal sub 4k dps in herocis, etc. The worst thing about tanking now is the dungeon finder takes away any aspect of control the tank had in how the group moved along. In BC, if I stopped and asked people to wait a bit longer to let me get another stack of sunder armor on in order to hold aggro…those people waited. There was no anonimity from the DF back then. If you were a jag who caused trouble for the group, people called you out on it. Now if you don’t like the tank’s request to clean up your performance you vote to kick him, tell the new tank you get how crappy the old tank was and continue on in anonimity.
I rolled a priest to 85 and thought healing was a blast until I got to Cata heroics. Ther I found dps that refused to not stand in bad stuff or let the tank gain aggro before they blow all their cooldowns on trash and peel the mobs off the tank. These people refused to believe me when I told them that healer mana in Cata is decidedly NOT like healer mana in LK and, therefore, my mana belongs to the tank. After getting kicked by numerous groups for focusing on keeping the tank alive, I put him on the shelf.
I LOVE playing DPS. I know what I’m doing. I know HOW to manage my aggro, WHEN to burn my cooldowns and WHAT to do if something goes wrong. I use an assist macro so that I am always attacking the tank’s target. The only time I don’t use that macro is if I’m melting the face off a mob that has dared to look funny at my healer. My healers appreciate that, when rocking the hunter, I lay frost traps at their feet to catch wayward mobs that might seek to do them harm. Those same healers are usually polite enough to stay near said traps, even when they have to move, because of the benefit/safety they provide.
TLDR version:
Tanking = not fun anymore.
Healing = somewhat fun.
DPS = fun because I know what I’m doing.
I am trying to learn how to heal and like it as a new challenge. So far I’ve only had to be told to stop DPSing the mob/boss and heal a few times. 🙂