Korrigan, I suggest you step back for a couple minutes, re-read what I wrote, and then tell me my logic is flawed again.

My logic is perfectly sound, but I can see where you simply don't like the logic since you're a tank. It must be nice having healers focused on your survival while you pop cooldowns every few minutes and generally don't need to avoid mechanics.





Really?

By the looks of that armory profile, you've probably done HLK. Can you honestly say in that fight, or most other encounters on the Hard Mode side of ICC, that a DPS just sits there facerolling to top a meter? That DPS doesn't have to avoid mechanics or focus on other things than a rotation? Cmon, man.

 

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Maybe you should read what I've said, notably about the number of players for each role in a raid, and having less people for a role leaving less room for error...
If it can make you feel better, healers are definitely second on the "critical role" list, and they are only second because there are usually more than tanks, so they can "take over" until the dead healer is combat ressed. A typical raid has 1-3 tanks, 6-8 healers and the rest being DPS. It's pretty easy to see which roles weight more when they fail or die.



You obviously don't have a clue, maybe you should play a tank (in a serious raid environment of course, and not facerolling heroics). As I said, I played all three roles in raids, and I know the differences.

Wanna know why tanks are so rare even for heroics, and why they have 1 second queue times when healers have a bit more and DPS have 10+ minutes? Very simple - people don't like the responsibility, they prefer faceroll as DPS and top meters, lost in the mass of the other DPS, where it's most of the times unseen when they screw up. When you screw as a tank, the consequences are immediate and most of the times fatal.



Of course DPS have things to do. But you're still ignoring what I said about numbers. If out of 15ish DPS, if one dies, it's not the end of the world, and he'll be ressed, so if he screws and "stands in the fire", it's way less encounter breaking than if a tank, or a healer does it.

 

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I can't believe some of you are still debating pve difficulty of any class or type.

Take a good player and they can in a manner of hours be 90% competent in that class. In a matter of a day of playing and doing a little research and they will be excellent.

Stick a bad player in any class and they will suck. These people are the ones that chronically bake their feet in fire/acid. You know that in any movement fight they are probably going to be the ones to die first.

The difficulty in pve lies in learning new encounters while carrying the lower echelon players. (Cheers for 10 mans)

It most certainly isn't because some class is harder to play than another.

 

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I pretty much agree with what you said, Mythril.

That's why it's easier for a "bad player" to hide among the mass of DPS than to stand out as a tank or a healer. It's only when they queue at tank/healer in heroics for shorter queue times that you really notice them. Have a bad DPS in a 5 man? Most of the times you just deal with it, and ignore him. But have a bad tank or healer, you notice it immediately.

 

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Based on the average random pug, I'd say all of them.

Based on personal experience, I'd say none of them are particularly difficult, although I could break it down like this:
PvE tank - none. I've played them all, and they're very similar.
PvE dps - cat druid I guess, by a hair.
PvE heals - no idea. None of them seem real difficult, but haven't played them enough to make a determination.


In PvP I too, like another poster said, am impressed by hunters who really play their class well. Overall, I'd say the best way to really figure out the answer to "takes the most skill to play in pvp" would be to look at the top arena teams for the different brackets and choose the least represented class, on average, over the many seasons. That's probably the class that requires the most skill in order to really shine (although even that could easily be based more on counter-comp type-stuff, as opposed to individual skill). And keep in mind I hate arenas, haven't touched them since season 2, but I have little doubt that the top arena players are the masters of their class.


The take home message is pretty simple, IMHO. Blizzard has succeeded in making the classes "simple to learn, difficult to master."

 

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Warrior tanks.


You can't just faceroll to make this work. You have to understand some things.


Also a big nod to druids. Jack of all trades means you have to understand casters, rogues, warriors to play a druid well.

 

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I'll say "all of the above" just to be contrary. All classes take some effort to "play well." There is a definite difference between someone who's decent at a class and a player who does the little things and gets the most out of everything a class has to offer.


Now, granted, WoW is not that complicated, no class is that tricky, nothing about the game is truly hard...but at the same time, I'd say the majority of players are not using everything at their disposal or playing to their max potential.


A potentially interesting note - I play on RP servers (jokes that they are) and I'm mostly PvE...but I do PvP and have on most classes, and I'm pretty good at it. My GM is the same as are a few others in our guild.


We (GM and I) find that players with good PvP experience do better in PvE, because they've gone thru the "got my backside handed too me, dug deep, figured out how to use every skill to it's fullest in a more pressure filled situation" thing. IMO, PvPing forces you to learn to play better unless you're ok with getting slaughtered constantly.


We often suggest to some of our raiders, when they're underperforming, to get out and PvP because no amount of theorycraft replaces real experience, and usually getting crushed in PvP inspires people to push themselves harder.

 

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I hear the comment about PvP and mostly agree. Blizz PvE is so scripted, that they hand you a toolbox of abilities, and you're usually only using a subset of them for any given PvE encounter... especially if you're doing instances.


Part of what I miss about some other (old school) MMO's is that the encounters can be done differently, allowing you to be creative with classes.


And yes, with PvP, because you're up against often (not always) unpredictable situations, you have to think on your feet, and have the ability to take advantage of some of those little used tools in the toolbox. (Ah, the joy of pulling off a crazy stunt that works!)


I will argue however, just like PvE, there are PvP players who use a subset of tools in PvP over and over the same way PvE players do. And are mildly to fairly successful (especially up against other PvP players who are like-minded, or BECAUSE they are up against predictable-move players.) (You see the same thing happen in chess tournaments.)


edits for tiepohs

 

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Warrior in pvp
Feral druid in pve

 

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On a completely no related subject, if you rearrange all the letters in tiepohs, you get His Poet.

My mind works in mysterious ways.

 

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