Flux

Selecting a target is not easy.

Tanks, it is not the bosses, it’s the mobs. This is what frustrates or drives you crazy.  You have to change targets quickly, don’t break crowd control, and do enough threat so that everything else doesn’t go kill someone.  Separating and positioning your targets during the pull can be tricky.  Even during boss fights it’s hard when mobs add, another tank dies, something aggro wipes, or the fight requires some combination.  Use tab, nameplate, and focus targeting as well as target monitors.

As a healer the most difficult thing is changing between friendly targets.  You usually can’t afford to heal a single target.  You may also have to debuff or shackle while healing.  And you deal with more targets than any other role especially in 25 player raids.  This leads to ‘playing tetris‘.  Most of your time is staring at health bars guessing who is about to die and target hopping.  And often this is trouble because you lose track of other peoples position, line of sight, mob special abilities, or range.  Use hover and focus targeting as well as target monitors.

DPS targeting requires you to keep track of two or maybe three targets at most.  Count yourself lucky.  You only have to worry about your primary, crowd control, and next target.  But several bosses or mobs with special abilities will also require that you quickly change between your primary target and a temporary target like a totem or object.  For example, Halazzi’s corrupted totems, Selin’s Fel Crystals, or Illhoof’s Demon Chains.  Overall you have fewer targets to keep track of, but targeting them quickly is essential to increasing your dps.  Spending time picking out targets results in defeat on the damage meters and for the group.  Use assist, nameplate, macro, and focus targeting.

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There is a baleful chant over the World of Warcraft chat channels, all begging for the same thing, in caps. LF TANK or HEALER. Wide shortages of these two roles in every stage of the game persist. Why? There are many reasons including what I will call most obvious, big numbers, specialization, and scope. In short, it’s less rewarding for most to play these roles.

Some players are tanks and healers for no other reason than they love it. Tanks are center stage, control positioning, and set the pace. And healers continuously save people from death and various debuff maladies. But because of how difficult it is, it’s less interesting to people who do not naturally want to play them. So you have a number of people doing it because they love it. And the rest are doing it because it’s the only way to form a group or join a raid.

DPS isn’t necessarily easier, especially good dps. Good dps can be just as hard as tanking or healing. Maximizing your damage while not pulling aggro, crowd controlling targets, debuffing or interrupting, and not triggering some special enemy raid wiping ability all requires skill. Optimizing this when your group is at the limits of it’s abilities is hard. But because there is usually more room for making mistakes as well as some other reasons it’s more fun to dps for most players, than to tank or heal.

Let’s take a look at why.

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With the right talents there are three tanking classes; druid, paladin, and warrior. There is a fourth one eventually which we will see in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, The Death Knight.

For those of you who don’t tank, what’s the difference? Do you even care what kind of tank you have? Is there a better tank for healers or for damage dealers?

In long single target fights they all create comparable threat. The differences lie with initial aggro, healing, offtanking, multiple targets, and special abilities. Let’s take a look at each of them and what you should keep in mind when you are healing or dps’ing damage.

Druids

• best hitpoints and armor
• average initial aggro and multiple target
• worst avoidance

Druids are the easiest tanks to heal with their large hit point pools and high armor. With the right talents and gear they take damage light and consistently. Healers assigned to the druid often have extra time to take care of others. However over long fights as a healer you may find that the consistent damage may take more total healing than for a Warrior and drain your mana.

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Generally in WoW one person pulls a creature mob over to where everyone fights it. But who does the pull? The puller is usually the tank, crowd controllers, or a hunter. But which is the best?

The Tank

There are currently three tanks in the game, each with their own way of pulling. Druids will usually start a pull with damage spell or Faerie Fire. Paladin’s usually pull with Avenger’s Shield. And Warriors use their ranged weapon, either a bow or a gun. Crowd controllers control their targets after the pull starts, except with Sap. The tank builds up aggro on the loose creatures. And the party proceeds to blast the creatures in the kill order. The tank is the simplest puller to have, and it’s the most often used.

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