Home › Game Forums › WildStar
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Tank or Heals? Which is more difficult?
Cleverjack
Member UncommonPosts: 72
in WildStar
I don't know if there is a thread about this already or not, but as I've been playing the open beta I found myself enjoying both tanking and healing. I played a Engineer and tanking seemed very simple with that class, where as healing seemed to be more difficult. So I ask you guys what's your opinion about it. This game boasts that it takes skill, but Engineer tanking seemed to lack that.
What is more needed in WS a tank or a healer?
Comments
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
The guy who yell's " TRAINNNNNNNN "
MAGA
I'm so use to theme park mmo's with their Holy trinity prioity when it comes to dungeon que's. The dp's is always the leeast prioity cause they're so many of them, and I guess tank or healer is simply based on server, but WS pulls from multiple servers for dungeon grouping. It just felt like tanking was way easy, so I would expect more people to role a tank at launch rather than a healer.
In my experience with other games, mostly WoW, tank is easier during 5 man content, and healer is harder during 5 man content. But that changes when you move to raiding, as tank becomes harder and more involved as the boss mechanics that the tank has to deal with become increasingly difficult, and the healing role gets harder for similar reasons, but not at the same rate as tanking. That coupled with only having 2 tanks in a 25 man raid in WoW, versus 6 healers, puts more responsibility on the tanks to perform perfectly and their errors are noticed more easily than anyone because there is only 2 of them.
In Wildstar, I'm guessing that tanking will scale in difficulty similar to games like WoW, but I believe that healing will scale in difficulty faster than in WoW (due to the more complex healing mechanics than in WoW), thus possibly making the healing role as hard or harder than tanking during raid content. I'm basing this on my beta experience and watching as many raid videos of Wildstar as I've been able to, so obviously I can't say for sure, and I'm guessing nobody really can.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I think, mechanically, Healing is going to be more difficult. This is because most heals are going to be telegraphed rather than targeted. It's going to take a change in DPS/Tank mentality to make sure that they position themselves to get hit by them. That said, im probably going to be playing a medic, which this problem is going to hit the hardest imo wish the shorter range, especially if most of the dps are ranged.
With a targeted healing system, ive always found healing easier, because as a tank I have to fight the AI and the gear of other players to keep aggro. While as a healer the better gear other people have the less work I have to do, but as a tank I have to do the same or more.
i think healing in wildstar is going to be pretty challenging.
i am healer in rift which is challenging game but most of the time i need to pay attention to raid members HP bar and sometimes you need to run out of boss aoe or some other stuff not often basically just stand and heal , while in wild star which combine action game play with doge and holy trinity and as result you need to pay attention to both boss fight mechanisms and HP of others which makes it pretty challenging.
That's something that has been missing in mmo's of late in my opinion. The pride factor. When you clear a hard dungeon, or just rekt shit in pvp, even just being damn good at your class and being acknowledged for it, all those things matter and builds your excitement in this genre.
I don't know how single target heals work in WS, but i know espers are designed to be main tank healers for raids. They got bubbles and great solo burst heals. If and when you get good, they will be all over you
Healing is the only role where you can compensate other players mistakes. That however doesn't mean you have to.
Healing at the required "minimal" level isn't where the challenge lies. The challenge lies in compensating bad players and trying to carry them through mistakes.
Personally I can't wait to flame DPS who are piss poor at dodging telegraphs because they are trying to top the meters. Wildstar requires the whole group to be on their toes and if the DPS is slacking (in surviving) healers can't compensate everything.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Mostly I see Healers being more 'difficult' but the role of a tank in most fights can become more difficult when they do what tanks usually do in terms of directing the flow of combat and taking some leadership. It tends to make tanking the more difficult role to fill then healing.
In terms of Wildstar, I'd consider healing to be the harder role, particularly with damage from telegraphs being far less forgiving, and how healings work making it more difficult without people knowing HOW to get healed correctly.
That being said, Tanking and Healing >>>>>>>>> DPS any day in any game in both its difficulty and over-all effect on success. Dps is the little boy's pants, and yes its fun to show off numbers (Which btw, the one demeaning it here will likely wipe the floor with you in most games
) its no where near as vital of a part of a raid and its open to FAR more mistakes then the latter two roles. Dps misses a spell, they lose some dps and most cases its not a big deal. A tank misses it could end up being the death of some people, a healer it can be the death of one or multiple people at once.
I find both kind of equally difficult.
You can't really face tank as a tank and you can't really heal faster than the damage mobs can do.
I would say dodging and not getting flat out destroyed is the hardest part.
Healing is my main reason to play this game...
there is two things that make healing more difficult the in normal MMOs..
1) targetted heals... You need to aim them
2) boss mobs telegraphs, healers need much more battlefield awareness then in other MMOs..
With tanks both the aiming and the battlefield awareness come more naturall...
So my best guess is that healing is more difficult tehn tanking, but with a small margin..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I got several tanks and healers up to around lvl 18. So I can't comment on later builds. I know some classes completely flip-flop at later levels while others stay pretty much the same.
Warrior - Getting and keeping aggro is hard. The warrior has the most defensive cool-downs but using them pretty much guarantees you will lose aggro as they aren't building it. For a long time most guilds banned them from raiding, not sure how much has changed in recent patches. For early content, if DPS pull aggro I had a heck of time getting it back.
Medic - Early content fun, and healing wasn't bad if the group doesn't split. When some DPS tries tanking adds off to the side by themselves they either die or learn to join the group. You just have to have explain to them how you heal. I would assume raid healing would be rather difficult as a Medic.
SS - Early levels...mostly suck. You are more stationary than an Esper and the devs tried to portay you as highly mobile, not true. You have telegraph heals and single target heals. This is much harder to use than just telegraphs. It's like a bad mix of Tera and WoW healing that feels clunky. The Medic is more fluid and fun. The SS's special ability doesn't really help in this regard either. It's just an overall clunky class. People will play t hem to be space rangers, but they are on of the least fun classes I tried.
Stalkers - Great DPS and easier aggro building than warriors. The only drawback to me was their extremely short range making hitting multiple targets a tad harder than using a warrior.
I do, however wish more MMOs would force certain classes to be healers or tanks. I think that's one of the biggest flaws with modern MMOs using the trinity.
In EverQuest your role was pretty clearly defined. If you wanted to be a Paladin or a Warrior etc you had to be a tank. But giving the option of not having to be a tank means more people are going to want to play the class but then say "eh I'd rather just be a dps".
Many players will choose the path of least resistance when given an option. But many will try something out if they are forced to. If you think an Engineer sounds friggen awesome but you don't normally like to tank you might give it a go anyways and learn to like it. But a lot of people are going to play engineer just to be a dps.
Wildstar tanking was a bit weird for me as a level 20 Engineer fully tanked specced and up to date questing gear.
The first 2 dungeons I made the first time, I was getting raped just by normal attacks, non telegraphed ones, but I managed to complete the dungeons with few wipes. It was a LOT of fun because it really was a challenge.
Then I repeated the dungeons with different parties and I was getting completely stomped and dying by normal attacks from bosses again. This time the healers couldn't keep up with the damage and we just kept wiping and people quickly left the dungeons over and over quickly being replaced by group finder. People's attitude towards wipes was very poor this time, everybody was blaming everyone and left. Reminded me the kind of mentality I found in WoW when group finding was introduced.
If the healer sucks, the tank dies and you're bound to wipe a lot.
If the tank sucks and doesn't pop defensive cooldowns when its needed, then you better hope to have a great healer in the group or you're bound to wipe too. All of this from un-telegraphed damage, if you get hit by telegraphed damage you're pretty much dead.
A couple of levels later I came back to do the dungeons which scaled me back to level 20. I don't know if it was luck of having good healers in the group but I was tanking pretty easily. Had to pop defensive cooldowns still since the bosses hit for a lot of damage, but it became so much easier to tank. Boring even since I don't have to fight for aggro, its pretty easy to tank if the rest of the group is good.
The damage I was taking initially when I first tried the dungeons at level 20 and the damage I was taking after I came back at level 22-23-24 scaled to 20, was very different. I was taking a lot less damage later on but also felt much safer probably because of good healers.
In my opinion healing is much more difficult and important in a dungeon, positioning is key such as situational awareness. Tanks will still be harder to find since most people don't even pvp as tanks. Gladly there are dual specs for everyone.