I firmly believe not everyone can be a healer or a tank but anyone can do dps with at least one dps class. I suck as a hunter and as a rogue but give me a DK, shadow priest, boomkin, lock or mage and I can do it all day.

Respectfully, I disagree. My second spec is feral dps – and after a single day of reading the wonderful blog over at Unbearably HoT (cheers!) – and following a recent “dps cycle schematic” she posted – my new kitty dps is already up in the high 3K’s – and on stand and fight encounters,I’m pushing 4.5K.

My feral kitty has “need2know” mod that helps me keep passive attention on my DoTs and CooldownTimers to monitor my big talent CDs. Remember – these cycles and timers are important to monitor with a single objective, applied to a single target on boss encounters. On trash, kitty dps is arguably a just a couple of buttons (in Naxx anyway) as you use your swipe ability for AoE damage.

Contrast that with the weeks (and possibly months) of fine tuning (through practice alone) that raid healing takes. Mouseover macros, grid fine tuning… not to mention the razor thin decision making that takes place “during a GCD” on which of the 25 targets taking damage needs your specific priority of your next 1 or 2 GCDs… followed by the next few targets. More than that, like never before, healers have been re-tooled to use most of their spells – as the situation and healing necessity demands. Accordingly – after thinking for 1 second, and prioritizing need, situational awareness, mana, boss timers, spell timers… we then have to decide the best way to heal the specific target… ie: Mage? In fire? Not likely to take additional damage? Ok HoT. Which HoT? LB? Sufficient? Probably not, Rejuv? Are other range dps taking damage? Rejuv followed by WG on that target?

Sorry to rant. But if dps is in a “ball park” – it’s a ball park in a 3rd world country when compared to what goes through a healers mind – especially a healers mind in Ulduar 25.

Running Elk’s last blog post..Hunters 101 – part IV: Haste and beyond

You mean I’m there for another purpose? Surely, you jest!

There are some fights that are 100% about healing and getting it done, and some fights that take an equal play from everyone to do the job. While I do agree that healing is extremely intense and *very* stressful at times, and that we do generally have more to do than the next person, I think that there are some encounters that are extremely stressful to DPS and Tanking as well.

For example, take pre-nerf Brutallus. Your DPS had to be spot on to get that sucker down. There was no room for someone to miss a rotation, or hit the wrong button. On top of that, they had to move out of the flames if they got targetted. That was a VERY stressful encounter for DPS, and we certainly burned some of ours out trying to hit that benchmark.

An example of an encounter for tank stress, I think, would be Illidan. From being the Illidan tank (OMG DON’T FORGET YOUR BLOCK BUTTON!) to tanking the Flames of Azzinoth (uh…kiting the flames FACING the raid = BAD!), where the entire success of your raid could be plummeted by one error, you and you alone made. Talk about some serious pressure there!

Is healing more stressful? At times, sure. But I would wager a bet that there are times when tanks and DPS feel an equal amount of pressure to perform.

I agree with you 100% however, that I would never go as far to say healers carry a raid. Each role has its part, and each part has it’s own stress factors =)

Beruthiel’s last blog post..Val’anyr Proc Explained! And yes…it IS good for druids too!