Ghostcrawler is wise

[kagemoth]

molten Core healing HO!!!!

[Ellori]

Well, to clarify, I've played druid in early BC so things are very different right now, but I just never found it very engaging or extremely challenging. Back then we did everything from Karazhan to SSC and TK.

I did enjoy 5-mans, I admit. The level of challenge and the responsibility that lies on your shoulders is really fun. I did so much PuGs on my resto druid and I absolutely loved it! In raids however the challenge somehow dissipates.

This is just my opinion and experience of course, but for my part it's more fun and engaging to play a mage (or a Moonkin for that matter) in raids. I have no experience as melee DPS and my tanking experience taught me enough to know it's a tough job (I only tanked Karazhan though, my feral gear was pretty crap ).

So if I were to rank I'd say the leader's and the main tank's job is toughest. The rest is on about the same level.

[kagemoth]

Hmm. In TBC druuds were jsut rolling hots on tanks for the most part and throwing rejuvs on the raid werent they? I can see how that might feel a bit limmiting. YOU NEEDED TO PLAY MURU

[delling]

Healing at Kael'thas was pretty fun, and Vashj was down right nasty with the add spawns, and AOE... (especially if you did it with 5 healers, or whatever we did it with)

TBC didn't really get tricky until RoS in BT, Bloodboil was fun too (healing + movement is always a fun combo).

Then, of course, Sunwell was by far the hardest thing we've ever had to heal. Thinking Ulduar hard modes will be tricky, but in a different way -- more of the 'damage prediction' as Kage says, and less of the intense spamming, while trying to watch the screen and stay alive

[Grishnag]

Raid leader > MT > Healers > Melee DPS > Ranged DPS > Hunters

(in order of stress/skills required to perform well under pressure)

why arent you a troll priest?

[Ellori]

Now we're down to which healing class is harder to play than another, aren't we?

I simply don't think the situation is as clear as many here presented it, that's all I meant to say.

And saying "you're a mage so you think it requires a brain surgeon to play your class" is pretty silly. Mage is admittedly not a hard class to play, especially in PvE. And yet there are differences in performance between similarly geared mages, so there is something more to it.

[kagemoth]

Raid leader > MT > Healers > Melee DPS > Ranged DPS > Hunters

(in order of stress/skills required to perform well under pressure)

why arent you a troll priest?

Cause WotF rocks. Breaking fears on cat lady and MCs on Yogg is too good.

[delling]

I'm afraid, Ellori, 'having to kite the adds on Vashj' and 'Occasionally having to sheep a mob' really does bump mages down to the bottom of the list.

Put it this way, put the list in order of importance: who can go AFK the easiest?

WoW is an easy game. You can't really measure things in relative difficulty, because they're all easy. Yes, a good mage can creep up past a bad healer, through dedication or attendance, or awesome reflexes...

But my list is basically a list of importance, nothing else.

[Morbid]

Beeing a healer is way more demanding, stressfull and challenging then ranged dps for sure, atleast imo.

And i've played/raided on Morb long enough to know a ranged dps compared to other type of classes in the raid have the easiest job overall.

p.s. Must admit, and stated on vent yestrday also, that i hope i be able to do the "downstairs" part of Thorim phase 1 on Morb once. That rly sounded like a challenge yesterday.

Not that keeping everone up, upstairs untill the downstairs group arived wasn't challing enough.

[Ellori]

I agree Delling, when it comes to importance. Mages can't dual specc to fill in a second role, all our buffs and debuffs are inexclusive and providable by classes that also provide much more. In level of importance mages are the rock bottom and a raid should function just fine without a single mage in it, which cannot be said about many other classes.

But I got the impression that this wasn't about importance but rather about the level of difficulty, which is comparative (I quote: "in order of stress/skills required to perform well under pressure"). Either way, I stand by what I said before.

[Kawe / Dave]

When it comes to dps, the true competition is largely (or should be) with yourself. Although I don't know how well that holds true with casters, where you're never required to press more than 1 button per global (correct me if I'm HIDEOUSLY OMG-HOW-COULD-YOU-SAY-THAT wrong, I apologise in advance) or consider resources.

I think I generally agree with Dell's list. Things certainly change from fight to fight ofc (some fights where as a tank all you have to do is stand still and smack your threat buttons on a single target and wait for the raid to learn and complete the fight), but most of the time it probably holds true.

I think healing is actually kind of hard to quantify in direct difficulty comparisons in a PvE context and, like tanking, from fight to fight it also varies rather a lot.

My 2 cents!

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

downstairs on thorim is not hard from a healer pov.
The damage is very low if people stand in the right side and stuff is sheeped correctly.
I used shocks and judgement of light basically except on the two minibosses.(bacon on the mt ftw.)

[Goza]

OMG-HOW-COULD-YOU-SAY-THAT-DPS-IS-EASY!!1!
                f*cking healwhiners.

[Palmar]

I'm gonna throw my opinion in here.

I have lead quite a few raids, through vanilla, a few in TBC and again a handful in WOTLK. I've played both healing and dps roles.

The difference in perception comes from the different metagame. When I'm playing as a healer, I feel that if we beat the encounter, I've played well and succeeded. If we beat an encounter and I come in low on the dps meters when I'm shadow, I'm not at all satisfied.

Of course, a good raid leader is the heart and soul of any raid. His role is generally not so taxing though. When I'm leading raids I just hold down my push to talk button and say out loud what I'd be thinking anyway. I think actual raid leading is far from the hardest role a raid leader has to perform. Logistics and human resources is a much more taxing and difficult role to play. And that is in fact the hardest role anyone has to play in this game.

The difference in DPS and healing is that healing is random intensive focusing, which makes it harder to react to, while dps-ing is constant focusing, making it harder to be aware of your surroundings. I can tell you all that when I'm healing, I have much more free time to MOVE OUT OF FIRE and make sure everyone else does. But I also have to react much more readily to changes that might come up during the encounter.

You see, some healers might not appreciate that monitoring your dps is actually a job that requires more attention than whatching bars. It does NOT require the same amount of reactivity though. When I'm healing all I have to do is watch the action bars and be prepared for a change. It often doesn't matter very much if my initial reaction is a flash heal or a power word shield. Main thing is being able to act on demand.

When I'm dps-ing I need to follow a very much pre-required rotation or a priority system that does take up a fair amount of attention to maintain perfectly. Unlike when I'm healing where I don't very much care if my renew falls off the main tank for 2 seconds, as long as his health is fine, dps-ing is all about managing everything that's going on.

I can tell you that I wouldn't fancy leading a raid while still having to pay attention to my dots, cooldowns etc. As a healer it's not very important I CoH/Penance on every cooldown, while it's much more important as DPS. You have much more time to get a good overview of the situation as a healer, but you also need that overview to be ready to act on demand.

It's just entirely different skillsets. I enjoy healing more than I do dps-ing because I like the overview, but I still like the meta-game of maximizing my gear/rotations/cooldown useage, something I can't do when I'm healing.

I'm not going to comment too much on tanking, but I do think people overestimate the difficulty involved. Also tanking varies more than the other roles between fights. Noone's gonna come and tell me that tanking loatheb, patchwerk, deconstructor etc is hard. Press threat abilities, and watch your health bar.

So yeah, everything in this game just requires a different set of skills.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

This is my best troll ever