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[LordBucket]

is this the part where the Tank and Healer say the raid doesn't happen without them?

Yes.

Everyone likes to assume DPS that can get you through a raid are a dime a dozen

Situation 1:
You're a skilled, geared and generally awesome dps. Your friend is a skilled, geared and generally awesome dps. You both want to do a 10-man

Situation 2:
You're a skilled, geared and generally awesome tank. Your friend is a skilled, geared and generally awesome healer. You both want to do a 10-man


Who has an easier time filling the other 8 raid slots?

Try meeting the DPS necessary to win some timed fights without well-geared, smart DPS who know that DPS doesn't happen when you're dead

Situation 1
You've successfully put together a 10-man pug. Two of the dps turn out to be undergeared and incompetent. You need to replace them.

Situation 2
You've successfully put together a 10-man pug. One tank and one healer turn out to be undergeared and incompetent. You need to replace them.

Who will be easier to replace?

[Darvi]

That's not these roles being more vital, that's just basic demand and supply.

[nenjin]

It's also the same argument that I would hear when I played and raided and organized raids.

Retraining/reteaching/explaining DKP yet again for the 4th week in a row because DPS is a revolving door of mediocrity sucked. Way more than hunting for a tank and healer, who generally knew what they were supposed to do.

So I always went to pains to make sure the DPS that was good felt wanted so they'd come back.....rather than seeing all DPS as effectively the minimum wage worker of raiding world, who constantly had their role denigrated by the tanks and healers with massive superiority complexes. And I can't count the number of egomanical jerks and Prima Donnas who were tanks and healers, specifically because they knew their roles were in demand. Had a couple actually try to hold raid hostage in violation of the DKP rules. At least I never had to put up with that shit from the DPS.

[Hanzoku]

Retired WoW players, go! My girlfriend and I played from the end of Classic through most of Mists of Pandaria before we burned out on the game finally. We were that tank/healer combination mentioned in Situation 1, which always worked out pretty well for us.

Spoiler: More Retired Ramblings (click to show/hide)

We belonged to a close-knit guild of real life friends - there were enough players in the guild to form a 25-man, but we had the misfortune of a pretty even west coast / east coast split, with a few players out of Australia or Europe thrown in to liven up the mix. (I can tell you that while it was a blast raiding with our friends, getting up at 4AM every weekend was what really burned us out in the end.) Anyway, because of the time zone problems, our guild tended to run two seperate 10 mans for everything. Towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King, my girlfriend came up with the idea of raiding Icecrown 25-man with a pug. We figured that even with a PuG, we'd manage to kill the first few bosses, and that maybe we'd get lucky and pick up some loot.

Imagine our surprise when a few months later, our PuG was starting to down heroic bosses in the first half of the raid. There were a few things that made our raid as successful as it was.

- Before inviting people in, we did a basic gear check (at the time, there were sites that would check the armory data for you and generate a report on the character.) We weren't hardasses about it, but if a tank or healer wanted to come in with a PvP spec and questing greens to do what was still end-game content? We politely declined. DPS we were more lenient on, but we did hold people to certain minimum standards of gear quality and obvious ability to care about doing their jobs. (correct gemming, corrent enchants, etc. It didn't have to be the best, but it did need to look like you cared about getting the most out of your char.)
- We kept loot simple, and it worked out amazingly well. My girlfriend was the loot master, and I'd have an excel sheet open with everyone's name, the boss we killed, what dropped and who it went to. One item per raid unless everyone has gotten one or noone wants it, Main spec before off-spec before greed, and if it was BoE you had better slap that thing on straight away or we'll kick your ass out of the raid so fast your head will spin, and then the top ~10 alliance guilds on the server would blacklist your ninja-looting ass , because we had members from all of them in the raid by then. Since this was before LFR really got off the ground, this was a serious reason to behave. I think we only ever had to do so once, and he was begging and apologizing within a week or two once he found out that he had an instant reputation...
- Most of all, we had one simple rule for everyone - DBA, or Don't Be an Ass. Given later experience with LFR, it w as great to see that people could follow that rule easily and without complaint.

As for tank and healer primodonnas, I've run into quite a few after LFR was a thing. Luckily my co-tank was the guild leader and a really cool guy, but LFR really gave you a view on the full spectrum of WoW players. It was teeth-grindingly bad sometimes, but there was a certain satisfaction to tanking EVERYTHING in the firelands hunter boss encounter and pulling it out after your co-tank decides to taunt back once too often with debuffs on. (Like every 8 seconds, in defiance of all logic and reason.)

I think for us, our worst primadonnas were actually rogues. I'm not sure why, but rogues in our guild were simply cursed. They'd come in as normal, average people, and in a few months to a year, they'd be guildquitting in a huff because we don't hold up the raid by an hour because they (unannounced) were going to be working late, or try to split off long-standing members of our 10-mans to form their own raid, effectively snarling all three ten-mans by locking geared characters with ungeared alts.

[Flying Carcass]

I agree that the Onyxia quest chain was a really fun and epic one, as was the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest chain that began in the Blasted Lands. Attacking that troll city in Arathi Highlands (back when it was filled with elites) to complete its multiple quests and obtain the Zul'Farrak hammer was fun as well... 'twas basically a pseudo dungeon that lead into an actual dungeon. I'll admit that I was somewhat disappointed they removed some of the old world-spanning quest chains in Cata (and class quest chains before that) and changed most elite world mobs to normal mobs, they were fun to do sometimes.

[nenjin]

I think for us, our worst primadonnas were actually rogues. I'm not sure why, but rogues in our guild were simply cursed. They'd come in as normal, average people, and in a few months to a year, they'd be guildquitting in a huff because we don't hold up the raid by an hour because they (unannounced) were going to be working late, or try to split off long-standing members of our 10-mans to form their own raid, effectively snarling all three ten-mans by locking geared characters with ungeared alts.

Yep. Wizards and Rogues, from my experience. I think it's what happens when you have "all dat deeps" but no real responsibilities other than "hit your cooldowns", "attack the right targets" and "don't stand in the fire, you moron." You tend to feel you should have a bigger role than you actually do.

Then again, when you're ~8 to 12% of DPS just by yourself, when you fuck up, everyone notices

[LordBucket]

Retraining/reteaching/explaining DKP yet again for the 4th week in a row because DPS is a revolving door of mediocrity sucked.
Way more than hunt for a tank and healer, who generally knew what they were supposed to do.

I think it depends on the size of your guild. My best WoW experiences were in a 10 man raiding guild with two core raid groups and an open raid night. Tuesdays and Thursday were raid nights, and we'd run two teams simultaneously. The A team, which was invite only, and the B team, which was typically 5-7 regulars with the remaining spots filled via guildchat. In A-team we all knew each other, we knew we'd be raiding again together next week, and there was never any loot drama. If two people wanted the same drop, they'd link what they were upgrading from and most of the time somebody would say "you need it more than I do, go ahead." If not, they'd both /roll for it. Teaching boss fights was rarely an issue. It was a progression guild. During the learning phase of a new raid, we'd read the fight strategies and watch the videos. People generally showed up knowing what they needed to do, or at least being familiar with it enough that somebody could explain it easily. And once a raid was on farm, everybody knew what to do. If you didn't, you generally didn't get invited.

B team was mostly a core group of good players in the guild, led by an officer from A team who missed raid night, or one of their alts. When there weren't enough people, it went out to guild chat: "need 1 heals and 2 dps for X, leaving in 10 minutes, msg me if you want in." That group tended to need more explaining, but it was usually at least half experienced players, so there were as many people able to explain as needing explaining. And since we had the B team, anytime somebody from A team couldn't make it, we'd bump somebody from B to A, then fill the empty B slot from guild chat. And since it was pretty common that we'd have unfinished raids, often an officer would open them up later in the week let people see and get trained on late game content. "Hey, we never finished Ulduar. Who wants to try Kologarn? Never been to Ulduar? No problem. Raid resets in a few days anyway. Give it a try." So even if somebody wasn't good enough or geared enough to be in the core raid groups, they'd still get to see content.

Then we did 25 mans on weekends, open to the whole guild on a first-come-first serve. Empty spots went to pugs. Those nights generally involved a lot of explaining. But we handled it with open rolls. Everybody was allotted two two pieces of gear per night, a "main" and "offspec" piece. Raid lead would link a drop, then call out main rolls. Anyone who wanted to spend their main roll would roll. Whoever won the roll got the drop and lost their roll for the night. If nobody rolled for main, he's call for offspec rolls, same deal. And if nobody rolled on a drop, disenchanted and into the guild bank. Fast, simple, not a lot of extra accounting, and no needing to convince pugs who might never show up again that they needed to accumulate DKP that they might never get to spend. Mounts and things were open rolls to anybody who didn't have them. Teaching fights took a lot more time on open raid night, but since half the time they had pugs, that was just something we accepted. If you led the raid on the weekend, you knew you'd be doing a lot of teaching. Typically five minutes for every boss, and on some especially complicated fights, sometimes more.

In guilds where every raid is a 25 man, it's more difficult to have that kind of arrangement. Things are more complicated. There's more drama. It's a lot harder to get a core group of 25 people who will be there every night and will take the time to watch 20 minutes worth of fight videos if they don't know the fights. And it's harder to bring yourself to teach fight mechanics to your couple newbies, every single boss, every single time, all while the 15 people who know what they're doing stand around waiting for ten minutes. Or to be the guy standing around for every single boss fight, every time, when you and half the rest of the raid know what to do.

The worst, though, is the small guilds trying to be raiding guilds but that just aren't big enough to do it. Every raid it's a struggle to find people, teach people, fill roles...I generally didn't stick around for guilds like that. Too much misery and drama.

[LordBucket]

Yep. Wizards and Rogues

For me, hunters have generally been the worst. Mages...yeah, sometimes, though they seemed to get smarter for some reason once cataclysm rolled around. I've had a lot of good experiences with rogues. Since they have to run up to everything they want to hit, and they all do pvp so they understand moving and fighting at the same time, it's not such a huge stretch for them to learn to not stand in lava. But then you get hunters who can't keep their pet under control and think that they can just stand in one spot the entire fight. "What do you mean don't stand in the lava? I'd have to move to do that, and that would totally kill my dps! You're a healer. Just heal through it."

[beorn080]

Yep. Wizards and Rogues

For me, hunters have generally been the worst. Mages...yeah, sometimes, though they seemed to get smarter for some reason once cataclysm rolled around. I've had a lot of good experiences with rogues. Since they have to run up to everything they want to hit, and they all do pvp so they understand moving and fighting at the same time, it's not such a huge stretch for them to learn to not stand in lava. But then you get hunters who can't keep their pet under control and think that they can just stand in one spot the entire fight. "What do you mean don't stand in the lava? I'd have to move to do that, and that would totally kill my dps! You're a healer. Just heal through it."

Are warlocks still in even? I dont think I've seen one mentioned yet, and as a former vanilla Lock main, that worries me.

[Baneling]

From what I'm aware of, locks basically got nerfed into the centre of the earth with Mists and maybe in Cata, too. They just kinda suck compared to the majority of classes and I think they actually trailed behind a couple tank or healing specs in terms of dps, towards the end of Mists.

[Niveras]

I'd like to think that warlocks are those quite guys in the back of the office. You have a problem, you can go to them and they'll get it done, quietly and without fanfare or need for recognition (as long as you don't also try to steal that recognition anyway). But that's ego talking because I liked them a lot, especially WotLK/Cataclysm era. They were plagued by a couple bugs (it took probably months for Blizzard to recognize that Incinerate's bonus damage when Immolate was on the target was flat, not scaling like it should be), Demo was always a bastard stepchild, and Blizzard always seemed to be taking away the cool toys, but I had a lot of fun with mine.

Almost as much fun as waddling around as a tree healing the shit out of people at resto's "prime" during WotLK. The old treant model was just hilarious.

(I really shouldn't say Demo was always a bastard stepchild; really, in Cataclysm, warlocks might have been the only pure DPS where all three specs were all viable in both PvE and PvP. Some classes (hunters) never managed to be viable in either with their specs at the same time, while others (rogues) always had "this is PvE" and "this is PvP" trees.)

[nenjin]

My guild was somewhere between 30 and like 70 people at its peak. So a moderately sized one with all the problems you mention. I wasn't leading 40 mans, our guild didn't have the characters or the man power to run those but I remember them well as I got in the on the twilight years of the real hardcore raiding of the old world. (MC, AQ, ZG, ect...) Most of my experience section leading or raid leading was in the 25 mans and smaller in BC. I cooked up and managed our DKP system. So 10 mans and Kara runs were the raids I actually got to have fun in because it was casual by comparison.

Part of the problem with the upper tier BC raid fights (we beat _all_ the raiding content in BC except BT, and the last part of Tempest Keep. I went on to finish them with another raid group later) is that the tolerances were tight. With only a few hours to do the boss IF you were running in good form, got started on time, cleared the bosses you needed to get where you're going, people had to be on their shit for the fights that counted. And for them to be on their shit, they had to know the fight, have lived it. Because some of those fights had the whole raid group moving and covering this that and the other thing. BT was even worse in that regard. We would sometimes alot a night just to failing at a boss fight so we could figure out what we're doing, who needed to do what. The goal was always getting farther and doing better than we did the night before. Getting somewhere, getting the gear, moving on to new raids. For that, you need a crew of regulars. Pubbies and pickups just won't cut it after a certain point. And when you're working your way into the content, and your gear isn't quite there yet, there is almost no room to fuck up.

Hunters

For some reason, I was always able to shrug off douchey hunters. Sometimes they were mission critical, but they were often a minority at raid. More than any other class, they struck me as the kind of player who liked being off, doing their own thing, so it made them easier to dismiss. They didn't need groups, so in turn, groups often didn't need them. Plus, in the day, pets were just a complication no one wanted to deal with.

Are warlocks still in even? I dont think I've seen one mentioned yet, and as a former vanilla Lock main, that worries me.

I don't think they've taken them out? But I wouldn't know. They were kind of a dying breed, even back in WotL. I know some raid groups considered them an awkward fit in the raid dynamic. It kinda got to the point our raid group would start to ask "Is it really worth getting this class, or should we just find another shaman?"

[Mech#4]

I did like the Warlock class for all the extras, as questionably useful as they were. Four players work together with one randomly dying to summon a demon, calling down an Infernal that eventually breaks free from your control and rampages, water breathing, eye of Kilrogg.

[Flying Carcass]

I leveled up my affliction warlock a bit during my recent brief return. He's fun to play, just run around and DoT up everything in sight and let the voidwalker (or tank) handle the aggro.

...Four players work together with one randomly dying to summon a demon, calling down an Infernal that eventually breaks free from your control and rampages...

For better or worse that summoning ritual's been removed and the Infernal doesn't break free anymore. In fact the Infernal is now an instant cast summon that lasts for a little while and can fight alongside the warlock's regular pet. Same with Doomguard.

[LordBucket]

I kind of liked locks. Only ever managed to get mine to 50 or 60 or so, but he was fun to play. I especially loved running around warsong gulch, spamming tab-123-tab-123 until I went out of OOM, then suiciding. Then waiting to ress, watching on the yellow numbers filling my screen.

They seemed to get changed a lot though. I remember for a while fear had no diminishing returns, so one on one they could keep you more or less permanently running away from you while they DoTed you up. As a resto druid, fighting warlocks was just a matter of who had better gear. If I did, my HoTs would keep pace with their DoTs until they got bored and left. If not, fear, trinket, rejven, fear...wait, DoT, DoT, DoT, wait...swiftmend! ...fear, wait, wait, rejuv! ...fear, wait, wait, wait...dead. Wasn't a lot of fun.

Wasn't as bad as frost mages during cataclysm though. That got kind of dumb. Or death knights during early wrath. "DKs are a hero class! We're supposed to be better than everyone else!" As a resto druid, it was discouraging seeing a DK both in the #1 dps slot and the #1 healing slot for a battleground.

But then it was a lot of fun fighting DKs who insistently kept trying to use icy chain/chain grab combos on me. Guess they figured druid=caster, so...interrupt, right?

Strafing in circle spamming moonfire...wait, did he seriously just chain me? *shrug* ok, travel form, run away, back to moon- oh look, he grabbed me, shift to travel form in the air and now I'm a flying kitty, yay! ...run through death knight, moonkin, big long starfire cast while he stands there confused trying to figure out where I am, back to moonfire spam, repeat!

I liked being a flying kitty.