The tank. The healer. The damage dealer.
This is the holy trinity of WoW. At least one of each is necessary to defeat end game content. Interestingly enough, for early end-game content, only two of these three need be good enough.
Carrying DPS is not a new concept, probably all of us have done it before. Have you ever carried a healer? Carried a tank? Do you even think it’s possible to do that?
It is, you know. Of those three, you only require two of them to be any good to knock over a heroic. You can clear Violet Hold with zero wipes with a poor healer. You can defeat Sladran without a healer. CoS can be defeated wipe free with a barely competent tank. UP can be done smoothly with 20k HP, non crit-capped paladin who doesn’t use consecrate.
Maybe this attests to the ease of the game, but I say nay. Any role, provided they are skilled enough, can carry any other role through content, provided the third role doesn’t suck.
Normally we hear about the tank and healer carrying bad DPS. How come we never hear about the DPS carrying the healers and tanks?
(It’s a feedback issue. If a tank screws up, it’s immediately apparent to everyone. Same if a healer screws up. But if a DPS screws up, unless it’s a very specific raid mechanic (Shadow Crash, for instance), that screw up is going to be picked up by the tank or healer. Usually the healers. But I digress.)
Anyway, my point is, it is certainly possible for DPS to carry the other roles. Obviously an incompetent DPS is not going to be able to carry a subpar healer, but we’re talking competent, skilled, alert, probably overgeared DPS doing what they do best: killin’ stuff real good.
The scene is heroic violet hold. Death Knight tank, myself on deeps and a couple others I don’t remember, and some poor discipline priest in waaaay over his head.
The priest had precisely one epic, the tailored robe, and everything else was an even mix of quest blues and greens. Properly itemized greens (no strength rings for this here priest), but greens nonetheless. To put it another way, I had more than double the priest’s spellpower, and I hadn’t cracked 2k yet (this is buffed, mind you).
It was still a smooth, wipe free run. Technically speaking, it wasn’t even moderately difficult. I mean, we had to do the fights properly without trying for achievements (le gasp!), but as a group we compensated for having a below average healer.
The tank used death strike a lot (this was before the changes/nerfs, back when it restored health based on damage done, about 2-3k heals for the unholy tank) (yes, I said unholy tank), and me, being an arcane mage, pushed my mana as hard and fast as it could go.
There’s something to be said for being burning your entire mana pool, restoring nearly all of it via evocation, mana gem and pot, then burning it back down to zero in less than 50 seconds.
The discipline priest was OOM by then, too. But at least the boss was dead!
The key here was that it wasn’t just the tank or just the DPS carrying the healer. It was both of them.
The facts here are simple. The tank is taking a lot of damage, damage the healer can heal through, but will be completely OOM in roughly 40 seconds. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is receiving nothing. If the DPS was bad, with the tank being the only competent one, the group would not have been able to kill any bosses.
If the tank wasn’t good enough either, that would have put more strain on the already overburdened priest. Either scenario would have resulted in wipes.
The tanks job is to mitigate as much damage as possible. The healers job is to make sure nobody dies, especially the tank. The task of DPS is to kill things as swiftly as possible, without putting too much pressure on the other two.
If a boss dies faster, there is less incidental damage, less damage on the tank, less stuff for the healer to heal. The healer’s job becomes easier, they have more mana to work with, and so forth.
Knowing how to CC, knowing that 2k DPS on the right target is better than 3k DPS on the wrong target, not standing in fire, and so forth; these are all skills that are noticed, and will set you apart from the riff raff DPS.
Having been carried (waaaaayyyyyy back when) as an up-and-coming healy priest and having been carried all this weekend as a frightened facerolling noob pally tank, I agree with this post.
I think that (like many things) while it’s easy to say it’s possible to do something, it’s harder to say *why* you’re doing something. Are you carrying some terrible PuGed tank so you can farm badges? Areyou carrying a noob healer because they’re someone you know? Are you ‘boosting’ a poorly geared dps because the guild needs them?
(Not putting any value judgement on those – or any reasons – just wondering if the carriers know why it is they carry.)
As a healer it can be FUN to carry an undergeared tank. Did a H ToC the other day where the tank took an absolutely BRUTAL beating. But my OP gear allowed me to heal through it and we successfully defeated the instance (our DPS wasn’t bad or great – they pretty much where a heroic group should be).
On the other hand, if I do a heroic (say the daily) with a guild tank and guild DPS, I can heal through most of a heroic as Ret spec, in Ret gear, using Art of War procs to Flash of Light heal the tank. Not sure which is more fun.
Yup, I’m currently getting my heroic healing kicks by nagging tanks to see how much of the CoS gauntlet they can pull in one hit
Part of the reason you hear more about the DPS being carried is that there’s an immediate judging of their main purpose for being there: Their damage. You can’t really look at heals per second, because if the tank is good and the healer is conserving their mana, the HPS should be low. You can’t judge a tank by their DPS, and either a bad healer or really good DPS would be needed to show just how good (or bad) they are. People judge DPS based on DPS meters, but you actually have to break down every aspect of a fight to judge the tank and the healer.
Good point. I even mentioned the presence of feedback loops in the post, don’t know how I missed that!
On the flip side of the HVH story, I once ran violet hold in a completely overgeared group, and the discipline priest healed the entire run using only Power Word: Shield.
I remember learning this in Heroic Shattered Halls back when you had to get revered to get the heroic key… My buddy had leveled his rogue first, then his warrior, and had just hit revered on the warrior. He wanted the Thrallmar axe to tank with, and he went in there with all kinds of greens on. The druid made it seem easy, and the dps was spot on for killing stuff fast.
Now, playing my rogue more than anything, I find other ways to be useful. Mob peels off tank, heads for priest, guess who vanishes and cheap shots it?
Great blog, btw.
We carried a tank through h Mech at the end of BC. Hunter MD + careful dps and we did it.
You can kinda carry a poor healer if you have someone there to offheal. I don’t see this happen very often though. I usually try and suggest more appropriate spells for the situation (if they’re clearing doing something wrong). But sometimes I’ll shut up and just help heal if I think their confidence needs a boost.
I’ve always played dps, but recently I’ve been gearing my shaman for resto and subsequently started healing 5- and 10mans. And DEAR GOD I sometimes hate the dps. If I had a penny for each time I get blamed as a healer for DPS screw ups I’d be rich as a goblin!
Typical example:
Yesterday Oculus was daily (yes, the entire server cried). I go as resto with a mix of guildies and some pug dps. On the 3rd boss (you know, the annoying porting mage), some of the ppl are running like headless chicken instead of just hiding behind a pillar when he does his aoe. Two dps go down.
Rogue: wtf? why did i die?
Me: aoe maybe?
Rogue: can’t you just heal through it?
Me: ….
Everyone should try playing a different role, I play my mage much better these days!
Nice comment, and it’s very true. I used to think it was easy for a tank to hold aggro on mobs, and that one or two consecrations could hold up mobs from being pulled infinitely. I recently made a tanking pally alt and discovered how difficult is sometimes can be. Of course, that doesn’t give poor tanks an excuse when they, say, let all the fire adds run wild attacking the healers in Sarth.
Also, I’d just like to add that healers and tanks can be carried through gear issues, but certainly not through competency. If a tank sits there the whole fight tanking only the boss in a heroic fight with lots of adds, there isn’t much the dps and healers will be able to do to make up for it.
Misdirect and tricks can do a whole lot for a bad tank. I’ve seen bad tanks get carried through raid encounters like this by the dps. But it does take redonkulously strong deeps to do so.
Also, unless tanks are pretty lucky with not getting critted, 3 out of 4 tank classes still have that silly defense mechanism, so while you can carry a tank to a certain extend, if they’re not defense capped it does get very, very hard.
Carrying tanks or healers is a good thing!
You may even have to use some of your abilities besides pew pew. This here thing that some of you may still remember called ‘Crowd control’, can actually come in handy
Carrying poor dps just means things take longer, not much fun in that.
I’ve been carried and have helped carry people in all 3 roles; of the 3, it is easiest to carry DPS with under geared tanks being the hardest. It’s all good as long as everyone understands the need to compensate to make up for the gaps. I love being on my rogue and evasion tanking the boss/adds if the tank goes down or on my priest and healing 3 people tanking 3 different things, that kinda stuff is really exciting and satisfying if you pull it off
Very good post–I couldn’t agree more. Through 1.0 and 2.0 my main was a warrior tank. On my mage(my main now), I dps with tank tendencies. Meaning: Oops, my ArcBarrage just blasted a mob alrdy upset with me–do I run? Hell no–blink to the tank and let him grab it(Frost Nova if necessary). That loose mob making a bee-line for the healer–gets blasted with 2 or 3 instant casts and gets dragged back to the tank. I will committ ArcExplosion suicide at the end of a trash pull gone bad, to ensure the healer lives, etc. I think raid/instance awareness is by far the most important–trumping dps, gear, etc. And also knowing the jobs of others besides just pew-pewing goes a long way as well.
This is exactly why I absolutely hate it when I’m in a PUG and someone types in party a slam against someone else’s gear. I always try to assume the best, in that this person may not have the best gear, but that their player skill will make up for it. I’ve cleared alot of content with subpar geared people if everyone can step up and if that undergeared player knows what they are doing. However, it only takes a couple of wipes for me to say…oops gotta go.
I think DPS gets called out on being carried more often because 1) there’s a lot more DPS out there and 2) it’s generally “known” that healing and tanking are skill positions and DPS is not, so those who need to be carried avoid them. Not that I think (2) is true, but I would bet popular perception holds it to be so.
And others have touched on this, but I would also note that I think part of the reason we talk more about carrying DPS than healers or tanks, is that a superb DPS can be prevented from doing it. It’s less of a problem in the current game than it was in the past, but every DPS is limited by how much aggro their tank can generate, or if their healer can keep them alive if they do happen to gain aggro. A poor tank especially can force the throttling of a superior DPS down to his level, preventing the DPS from successfully carrying him.
Is it considered carrying the tank (who cannot build agro) if mages cutback on DPS moves so as not to pull agro?
Don’t you hate it when a lame tank dies in a heroic and says the heals are crap, the dps is crap, Blizzard is crap. Likewise any weak player blaming others for their own incompetencies.
I was just about to say that I have carried a fair number of tanks. You usually know after the 1st encounter…
Cast Scorch… dead…
Mmmm, better watch the tank…
Which could then include things other than toning down DPS.. might be protecting the healer (or other dps… mob ping pong), or maybe throttling the DPS so there is less for the tank to do… hell that mob is going to take 3 seconds to get to me, maybe I will finish it off 1st… but at least that’s 3 more seconds for the healer to get the tank’s health back up.
There is a diference between a tank with crap gear or a crap tank. It’s fairly easy for a good / geared healer to carry an undergeared tank (crit immune ofc) then to carry a well geared tank that cannot create aggro to save his life, let alone everyone else’s.
The other day in AN it took 17 minutes to kill the last boss, me, healer, and the tank were quite overgeared for the instance, the dps was literaly carried (highest was 1.4k). All guildies, of course, with their alts, great fun!
On a slight tangent, my new favorite heroic group composition is Tank + 4 ret pallys. Judgement of Light and Divine Storm is more than enough with a raid geared tank.
There’s a reason you don’t hear about DPS carrying healers or tanks, and it shows in this post and its attitude.
If a tank has a healer who is not the best to the point where he has to use one of his own abilities a lot to stay alive, then he’s not GRATEFUL that the DPS goes balls out crazy to make the encounters faster. He’s IRRITATED that now, in addition to having to watch himself because the healer can’t keep up, he has to go apeshit on threat and HOPE somehow to be able to stay alive AND put out as much threat as possible.
In other words, the tank was carrying a bad DPSer in your story, too. Namely you.
@ Balthazar for:I n other words, the tank was carrying a bad DPSer in your story, too. Namely you.
All of the pure dps classes have an aggro reducing ability, so will not pull aggro, unless they are retarded. Of the hybrid classes, druid, shammy, and pally can all throw the occasional pinch heal if needed as dpser’s so no need to over aggro there and will assist in the heals.
The only classes that do not have an aggro reducing ability or the capasity to off heal, are warriors and death knights, tho they both wear plate and can take a couple hits before death
With that being said, how was the tank carrying bad dps?