03-21-2007, 12:17 PM
Boy, this game sure has evolved, hasn't it?
What, what am I talking about? Well, it's about groups, raids, and the dynamic of the roles involved. I'm discussing how Blizzard's approach to the game has changed over time and how it's altered the pressure of groups and raids in World of Warcraft. It's something that's subtle and has gradually altered the way people play this game since its release.
Let's look back through the hourglass of time, shall we?
2005: the first full year of World of Warcraft. Encounter designs were based on a standard MMO principle. You have your tank. You have your healer. And you have the people whose job it is to kill what's attacking your tank. While having mixed group makeups does help things, group makeup is still your basic "get tank, get healer, get 3 DPS." Since DPS characters make farming and PvP fun, it leads to all the "LF1M Tank" and "LF1M Healer" calls that we've all come to know as a staple of general/LFG chat.
The one unconditional fact of this early game was that if your tank or healer sucked, you were going to be in for a rough time. These were the two pivotal roles in the group. The tank, being the focal point of the group/raid, controlled the pace of play, kept aggro as best they could, and was the main determinant of success. The healer, being the one responsible for the health of the group/raid, would also have a substantial impact on how aggressive the group could be and how long the group could last in an encounter.
Upper Blackrock Spire. The first true raid instance. But the rules there remained almost the same. Get a tank (or two), get some healers, and fill in the rest with pretty much anything. Your tanks and healers made or broke you as a party. If a DPS'er stunk, it would take longer to kill things or cause the DPS'er to die from pulling aggro. If a tank or healer sucked, you weren't going to get far.
Molten Core. Need I say more? The instance so many DPS'ers complained about, and for good reason. Common jokes about DPS'ers "spamming one button" most of the time or Hunters who would afk and eat lunch during some boss fights abounded. While Blizzard put in a number of gimmicks to give certain classes key roles during encounters (Hunters on Magmadar, Mages on Majordomo Executus), in the end it was still an extension of the "find your tanks, find your healers, and fill in the rest." DPS'ers felt marginalized. Why go all-out, why go crazy getting the tip-top gear, enchants, consumables, etc, when all it means is that a fight runs an extra 20 seconds without that little extra contribution from you?
Even tanks weren't fully immune from this. When one of my raid guild's tanks mentioned once that he went AFK tanking Garr with autoattack because he could get away with it, I laughed. But it got me to thinking of how, as a healer, I could *never* do that. I can't go afk and auto-heal, I can't zone-out and relax, or people die and the raid wipes. This is one of the reasons why many healers would burn out. DPS'ers would burn out from boredom, healers would burn out for the opposite reason - no chance to get a break.
In short, a gigantic chunk of the responsibility for the success of *any* group back then fell on the shoulders of the tank and the healer. DPS'ers had much less incentive to push themselves. Yes, the extra 20 seconds on a raid boss might have led to a wipe one time or another, but there's little to no accountability for it; you're just one DPS'er amongst two dozen. When someone dies, however, the common response is "ZOMG WHERE WUS TEH HAELZ?" When the tank positions a boss wrong, it's "HAHA NUB TANK."
Time passes...
Mods like DamageMeters start coming out. Now there's a little more in the accountability department. If DPS'er X is doing three times as much damage as DPS'er Y, well, how come? Maybe Ragnaros would have died before the second submerge, eh? Then again, maybe not. But even still, tanking and healing are the pressure roles, with key duties of DPS'ers mostly being about moving out of AoE damage effects and avoiding taking unnecessary damage (Ragnaros).
Complaints rise to Blizzard. Not every DPS player wants to be "just one in a crowd," and requests are made to have more accountability, even if it's just as a gimmick-style thing, like Tranquilizing Shot. "Okay," says Blizzard, and they start to put more such things in their newer raid encounters.
With the release of BWL, Blizzard starts to give DPS players more responsibility and more accountability. Early on, it's still mostly in the gimmick realm. Suppression Room, anyone? Rogues wanted something to do; now they got it. The cries of "uh, GET THE TRAP already, Rogues!" are heard in raids where they've never been heard before.
Blizzard throws around curveballs and forces DPS'ers to think about aggro more. Broodlord Lashlayer punks many a Hunter who just wasn't serious about Feign Death before, and they learn fast. Firemaw teaches them that no, it's really not always the healers' fault when you die, lern2bandage.
Still, the pressure here is so humongously on the tanks, it's not even funny. Razorgore and Vaelastraz the Corrupt are fights that so hinge on skilled tanks that they can make or break a guild. While DPS'ers have more responsibilities, the tanks' job got even harder. In fact, the entirety of BWL puts so much pressure on tanks to perform well that it's a little over the top compared to the pressure put on any other role.
Razorgore? Orb controlling (often done by a tank due to aggro reasons) and kiting. Vael? Aggro control and tank rotation, quick reflexes when having aggro. Suppression room? Controlling the pace, watching the traps, not moving too slow or too fast. Lashlayer? Climbing the aggro chart, proper positioning. Firemaw? Wing Buffets and proper taunting. Ebonroc? Lern2taunt. Flamegor? Ok, easymode, a freebie. A guild's success through all of these depended almost entirely on 4 or 5 people to get their tanking done right, get geared up, have good reflexes, etc.
Then it all starts to change.
Chromaggus is the start of the new dynamic. While the tanks (if Time Lapse) and healers (ZOMG Decurse/Cleanse/Dispel) continue to have their usual pressure roles, the DPS'ers can't just sleep through a fight. Hunters have their usual Tranq Shot gimmick. DPS'ers not paying attention will get fried from Chromaggus' "random" effects and need to run and hide at the proper times.
But that's all just a warmup to Nefarian. Nefarian is possibly the first true DPS check of the game. I classify a fight as a DPS check like so: "given best-possible-in-game tanking, and best-possible-in-game healing, can a fight be won with terrible DPS players?" The answer on Nefarian is, finally, no.
As Drakonids pour out of the gates, the DPS'ers must annihilate them quickly and efficiently. Yes, tanks and healers are going their usual berserk trying to get everything corralled and keep everyone alive, but the real onus is on the DPS. If the Drakonids don't die fast enough, you lose; you fall behind and the situation just gets more and more out of hand. Nefarian himself won't appear until you've defeated 20 Drakonids of each color, and then you have to clean up whatever's left. A raid simply won't survive if kill rate does not stay roughly equal to spawn rate.
Blizzard's learning. Raids are more exciting when there's more involvement from everyone, not just tanks and healers. Guilds that have kinda glided along without much pressure being put on their DPS'ers wind up struggling a bit.
Next up, Ahn'Qiraj. Blizzard finally gets it right. Here's where it all starts becoming about the DPS.
Trash: hey, WAKE UP! Mobs that have to die before their mana pools fill up. Anubisaths that have random abilities, many of which will obliterate DPS'ers who don't pay attention while they die to AoE effects, spell reflects, or thorns damage.
Then we face Skeram. If Skeram's clones aren't killed fast, you're toast. DPS must be organized, focused, and intense.
Next up, the bug family. DPS has a number of critical roles here, the most crucial being stopping Yauj from healing herself or her family. It's a chaotic fight, for sure.
Battleguard Sartura is a real "heads up" call for all DPS'ers. GET OUT OF THE WAY is the mantra, and a serious test of melee survivability. Healers can only do so much. Add to that an enrage timer that Blizzard put in to say "no, you can't do this one if half of your DPS can't learn to get away from Sartura and her adds." People who continually die in this encounter because they're not aware enough of their surroundings hurt the raid.
Fankriss the Unyielding: DPS'ers must be aware when a worm add appears and switch to it, or it'll wipe you fast.
Princess Huhuran: gear check! A boss where, once enraged, *every second* that it remains alive significantly increases the odds your raid will wipe. While tanks/melee go all out to gear up in nature resistance, there is only so much healers can do in this fight to delay the inevitable. If your raid cannot output enough DPS to kill her past 30% in about 45 seconds, you lose.
Emps trash: here's trash - TRASH - that requires *every* member of the raid, not just the tanks and healers, to learn, pay attention to, and respond to random abilities. I know in my raids, the healers started making bets of which raid members would die to explosions because they weren't paying attention. :)
Twin Emperors: The DPS has 15 minutes to kill the Emperors or you lose. They must also deal with a steady stream of adds and have situational awareness of exploding bugs and blizzards. Compare this to the bosses of Molten Core, and you can see what a quantum leap it is in terms of what is required from your DPS players to win. While the tanks and healers remain in pressure roles, the DPS'ers are now "invited to the party" and have just as much responsibility and pressure for success.
C'Thun: I didn't get to run late-Naxxramus bosses, but in my mind little holds a candle to this fight, possibily the best-designed encounter ever. Every. Single. Last. Raid. Member. Must. Execute. Properly. This is why there were guilds that could get halfway through Naxxramus but couldn't beat C'Thun; ultimately, your raid is only as good as its weakest link in this fight. Anyone dying in phase 1 damages the raid because the DPS/tanking/healing is vitally necessary later on; if one side of the raid collapses due to Dark Glare or other effects, the deaths cascade elsewhere since you need 100% coverage.
So, looking back at Ahn'Qiraj, you can see that Blizzard figured it out. They made raiding fun and exciting for everyone involved, not just tanks and healers. No more standing in place and pressing one button over and over; you had to really work for it. :) Not only that, but there's fewer "gimmick" fights where one particular class has to do something completely right or you wipe; instead, there's a lot of group involvement.
Blizzard extended this in Naxxramus. While some bosses are easier than others (Instructor Razuvious, cough), there isn't a single fight in there that has a DPS'er standing in place and "pew pew"ing. They need to learn boss abilities, respond accordingly, and make intelligent decisions. They can't blame a healer when they fail to run the Heigan dance properly. Dying due to bad awareness in Anub'Rekhan makes you kill other people too. If DPS'ers can't destroy Maexxna's Wall Wraps in time, the attrition rate builds and you wipe. I like that fight - it requires a DPS'er to act like a healer by "healing" (read: freeing) wall wrapped people quickly and gives them a little taste of what it's like to be a healer in a raid environment. Faerlina is a gigantic DPS check. And don't get me started on Patchwerk, where if you can't stand there and output 500 damage per second, you're literally wiping the raid.
However, all of these are RAID encounters. There's no comparison in the 5-player environment. If you wanted to run UBRS, BRD, Dire Maul, LBRS, Stratholme, Scholomance, etc, you could get by just about anything with a fantastic tank and healer and, well, 3 other people to fill in.
So what am I getting at?
World of Warcraft has changed. Blizzard has brought forth that raid dynamic into 5-player instancing with the Burning Crusade expansion. It's no longer about "need tank and healer," it's about "need tank, healer, and 3 DPS'ers who can kill things fast."
It starts as early as the Ramparts. You have a boss that plants a debuff on people causing huge damage to all those around them. Usually a problem for melee, if the melee DPS doesn't catch this happening in time, a healer isn't going to save them. (This gets a lot worse in heroic mode, but there's no need to go into that for the sake of this discussion.)
"But that's just an awareness check, not really a pure DPS check," you say, and you're right. Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog, they're all the more traditional instances where a solid tank and healer can get you through even the worst DPS makeups, and there are mostly awareness checks for DPS players.
Then Blizzard takes off the training wheels and things get more interesting. Mana Tombs? The Nexus-Prince end boss is a DPS check, plain and simple. You can have near-infinite tanking and near-infinite healing, but if your DPS can't kill the beacons he plants fast enough, you are eventually overwhelmed with adds that obliterate your healer (and then you). I bring this up because it happened to me in a run recently, where the healer (me) and the tank were grossly overgeared and overpowered for the instance (being level 70s with some raid gear), but the DPS was not. Everything was smooth as silk, if slow, until the end boss.
"Ok, that's just one boss." Nope. While that boss is a pure DPS check, many other bosses continue to require DPS'ers to really pay attention to what they're doing. How many of us have seen DPS'ers nuke themselves to death on Pandemonius' green shield? Or fail to get out of the way of Shirrak the Dead Watcher's fire bomb?
Want more DPS check examples? Okay. In the Shadow Labrynth, Grandmaster Vorpil is a pure DPS check. You could have the greatest tanking in the world and the greatest healing, but without good DPS you can't kill him. Using either the "kill the voidwalker adds" strategy or the "kite him away from voidwalker adds" strategy, if the DPS can't perform you simply cannot win. I healed a Vorpil encounter with low DPS for thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes before I called it after Vorpil healed from 35% to 61% and I decided to just stop healing (yes, I was using mana potions, my regen isn't THAT good).
Setthek Halls. Darkweaver Syth. If the adds aren't nuked fast, you won't last. (Hey, that's a catchy phrase.) They'll eventually punk your healer or overwhelm your tank.
Tempest Keep! High Botanist Freywinn of The Botanica is a fight where if you take too long to kill his adds, he heals himself back up to full. You could literally fight him forever without enough DPS. Warp Splinter, at the end of the instance, is another absolute DPS check. With either trying to kill his add spawns before they heal him or just going full out on him alone, if you don't have the DPS you don't win. I've had a number of attempts on him that we'd reset after a few minutes because we were literally getting nowhere, with each add spawn healing him back up to 100%.
Pathaleon the Calculator in The Mechanar. Kill the adds fast or you won't last.
Harbinger Skyriss in The Alcatraz. Like Skeram, kill his clone fast or you will be overwhelmed.
But these are individual bosses. The crowning achievement for the absolute DPS check in normal 5-player instances is the Black Morass.
Tanking and Healing are mere footnotes in this instance; it's all about the DPS. You must protect Medivh from harm by blowing away a steady stream of incoming mobs. If you fall behind, you have no chance. With pauses built in after the 6th time rift and the 12th time rift, you're given a small breather, but then it's right back to it. Without solid DPS, the instance is completely unwinnable, and it will have almost nothing to do with how good the tanking or healing is. This instance is the "is your DPS ready for Karazhan" testing ground. I love it, even though my role as healer is marginalized, because in a sense I have so little control over the outcome. You get that "boy, I hope they can keep up - here comes the next wave" feeling that I'm sure DPS'ers get all the time with "boy, here comes the boss, I hope the healer can keep the tank up."
Karazhan extends this, with a number of DPS-check bosses. It starts with two tank-n-spank bosses (Attumen and Maiden of Virtue), and then things start ramping up. Moroes has to die before the Garrottes (1k damage per tick for 5 minutes) start to stack up on your raid, making healing impossible. The Curator must die in 12 minutes or the berserk wipes you out. Aran's on par with C'Thun in terms of individual player responsibility and an extreme need for heavy DPS.
So, to wrap up:
World of Warcraft has changed. It's moved from a "need tank and healer" to "need tank, healer, and solid DPS" in order to be successful in groups and raids. This is a very good thing, and makes PvE more interesting all around. Responsibility for success and failure is spread around much more, lessening the relative importance of the tanking and healing roles. This may help alleviate burnout. After all, in the past, good tanks and healers were always in demand to run instances, long after they'd run them 100 times already. Well, you can't run Black Morass with your guild's best tank, your guild's best healer, and 3 underleveled, undergeared DPS'ers anymore. It's like a sign at an amusement park: "You must have this much DPS to enter."
Welcome to the Burning Crusade.
Thoughts?
-Bolty
What, what am I talking about? Well, it's about groups, raids, and the dynamic of the roles involved. I'm discussing how Blizzard's approach to the game has changed over time and how it's altered the pressure of groups and raids in World of Warcraft. It's something that's subtle and has gradually altered the way people play this game since its release.
Let's look back through the hourglass of time, shall we?
2005: the first full year of World of Warcraft. Encounter designs were based on a standard MMO principle. You have your tank. You have your healer. And you have the people whose job it is to kill what's attacking your tank. While having mixed group makeups does help things, group makeup is still your basic "get tank, get healer, get 3 DPS." Since DPS characters make farming and PvP fun, it leads to all the "LF1M Tank" and "LF1M Healer" calls that we've all come to know as a staple of general/LFG chat.
The one unconditional fact of this early game was that if your tank or healer sucked, you were going to be in for a rough time. These were the two pivotal roles in the group. The tank, being the focal point of the group/raid, controlled the pace of play, kept aggro as best they could, and was the main determinant of success. The healer, being the one responsible for the health of the group/raid, would also have a substantial impact on how aggressive the group could be and how long the group could last in an encounter.
Upper Blackrock Spire. The first true raid instance. But the rules there remained almost the same. Get a tank (or two), get some healers, and fill in the rest with pretty much anything. Your tanks and healers made or broke you as a party. If a DPS'er stunk, it would take longer to kill things or cause the DPS'er to die from pulling aggro. If a tank or healer sucked, you weren't going to get far.
Molten Core. Need I say more? The instance so many DPS'ers complained about, and for good reason. Common jokes about DPS'ers "spamming one button" most of the time or Hunters who would afk and eat lunch during some boss fights abounded. While Blizzard put in a number of gimmicks to give certain classes key roles during encounters (Hunters on Magmadar, Mages on Majordomo Executus), in the end it was still an extension of the "find your tanks, find your healers, and fill in the rest." DPS'ers felt marginalized. Why go all-out, why go crazy getting the tip-top gear, enchants, consumables, etc, when all it means is that a fight runs an extra 20 seconds without that little extra contribution from you?
Even tanks weren't fully immune from this. When one of my raid guild's tanks mentioned once that he went AFK tanking Garr with autoattack because he could get away with it, I laughed. But it got me to thinking of how, as a healer, I could *never* do that. I can't go afk and auto-heal, I can't zone-out and relax, or people die and the raid wipes. This is one of the reasons why many healers would burn out. DPS'ers would burn out from boredom, healers would burn out for the opposite reason - no chance to get a break.
In short, a gigantic chunk of the responsibility for the success of *any* group back then fell on the shoulders of the tank and the healer. DPS'ers had much less incentive to push themselves. Yes, the extra 20 seconds on a raid boss might have led to a wipe one time or another, but there's little to no accountability for it; you're just one DPS'er amongst two dozen. When someone dies, however, the common response is "ZOMG WHERE WUS TEH HAELZ?" When the tank positions a boss wrong, it's "HAHA NUB TANK."
Time passes...
Mods like DamageMeters start coming out. Now there's a little more in the accountability department. If DPS'er X is doing three times as much damage as DPS'er Y, well, how come? Maybe Ragnaros would have died before the second submerge, eh? Then again, maybe not. But even still, tanking and healing are the pressure roles, with key duties of DPS'ers mostly being about moving out of AoE damage effects and avoiding taking unnecessary damage (Ragnaros).
Complaints rise to Blizzard. Not every DPS player wants to be "just one in a crowd," and requests are made to have more accountability, even if it's just as a gimmick-style thing, like Tranquilizing Shot. "Okay," says Blizzard, and they start to put more such things in their newer raid encounters.
With the release of BWL, Blizzard starts to give DPS players more responsibility and more accountability. Early on, it's still mostly in the gimmick realm. Suppression Room, anyone? Rogues wanted something to do; now they got it. The cries of "uh, GET THE TRAP already, Rogues!" are heard in raids where they've never been heard before.
Blizzard throws around curveballs and forces DPS'ers to think about aggro more. Broodlord Lashlayer punks many a Hunter who just wasn't serious about Feign Death before, and they learn fast. Firemaw teaches them that no, it's really not always the healers' fault when you die, lern2bandage.
Still, the pressure here is so humongously on the tanks, it's not even funny. Razorgore and Vaelastraz the Corrupt are fights that so hinge on skilled tanks that they can make or break a guild. While DPS'ers have more responsibilities, the tanks' job got even harder. In fact, the entirety of BWL puts so much pressure on tanks to perform well that it's a little over the top compared to the pressure put on any other role.
Razorgore? Orb controlling (often done by a tank due to aggro reasons) and kiting. Vael? Aggro control and tank rotation, quick reflexes when having aggro. Suppression room? Controlling the pace, watching the traps, not moving too slow or too fast. Lashlayer? Climbing the aggro chart, proper positioning. Firemaw? Wing Buffets and proper taunting. Ebonroc? Lern2taunt. Flamegor? Ok, easymode, a freebie. A guild's success through all of these depended almost entirely on 4 or 5 people to get their tanking done right, get geared up, have good reflexes, etc.
Then it all starts to change.
Chromaggus is the start of the new dynamic. While the tanks (if Time Lapse) and healers (ZOMG Decurse/Cleanse/Dispel) continue to have their usual pressure roles, the DPS'ers can't just sleep through a fight. Hunters have their usual Tranq Shot gimmick. DPS'ers not paying attention will get fried from Chromaggus' "random" effects and need to run and hide at the proper times.
But that's all just a warmup to Nefarian. Nefarian is possibly the first true DPS check of the game. I classify a fight as a DPS check like so: "given best-possible-in-game tanking, and best-possible-in-game healing, can a fight be won with terrible DPS players?" The answer on Nefarian is, finally, no.
As Drakonids pour out of the gates, the DPS'ers must annihilate them quickly and efficiently. Yes, tanks and healers are going their usual berserk trying to get everything corralled and keep everyone alive, but the real onus is on the DPS. If the Drakonids don't die fast enough, you lose; you fall behind and the situation just gets more and more out of hand. Nefarian himself won't appear until you've defeated 20 Drakonids of each color, and then you have to clean up whatever's left. A raid simply won't survive if kill rate does not stay roughly equal to spawn rate.
Blizzard's learning. Raids are more exciting when there's more involvement from everyone, not just tanks and healers. Guilds that have kinda glided along without much pressure being put on their DPS'ers wind up struggling a bit.
Next up, Ahn'Qiraj. Blizzard finally gets it right. Here's where it all starts becoming about the DPS.
Trash: hey, WAKE UP! Mobs that have to die before their mana pools fill up. Anubisaths that have random abilities, many of which will obliterate DPS'ers who don't pay attention while they die to AoE effects, spell reflects, or thorns damage.
Then we face Skeram. If Skeram's clones aren't killed fast, you're toast. DPS must be organized, focused, and intense.
Next up, the bug family. DPS has a number of critical roles here, the most crucial being stopping Yauj from healing herself or her family. It's a chaotic fight, for sure.
Battleguard Sartura is a real "heads up" call for all DPS'ers. GET OUT OF THE WAY is the mantra, and a serious test of melee survivability. Healers can only do so much. Add to that an enrage timer that Blizzard put in to say "no, you can't do this one if half of your DPS can't learn to get away from Sartura and her adds." People who continually die in this encounter because they're not aware enough of their surroundings hurt the raid.
Fankriss the Unyielding: DPS'ers must be aware when a worm add appears and switch to it, or it'll wipe you fast.
Princess Huhuran: gear check! A boss where, once enraged, *every second* that it remains alive significantly increases the odds your raid will wipe. While tanks/melee go all out to gear up in nature resistance, there is only so much healers can do in this fight to delay the inevitable. If your raid cannot output enough DPS to kill her past 30% in about 45 seconds, you lose.
Emps trash: here's trash - TRASH - that requires *every* member of the raid, not just the tanks and healers, to learn, pay attention to, and respond to random abilities. I know in my raids, the healers started making bets of which raid members would die to explosions because they weren't paying attention. :)
Twin Emperors: The DPS has 15 minutes to kill the Emperors or you lose. They must also deal with a steady stream of adds and have situational awareness of exploding bugs and blizzards. Compare this to the bosses of Molten Core, and you can see what a quantum leap it is in terms of what is required from your DPS players to win. While the tanks and healers remain in pressure roles, the DPS'ers are now "invited to the party" and have just as much responsibility and pressure for success.
C'Thun: I didn't get to run late-Naxxramus bosses, but in my mind little holds a candle to this fight, possibily the best-designed encounter ever. Every. Single. Last. Raid. Member. Must. Execute. Properly. This is why there were guilds that could get halfway through Naxxramus but couldn't beat C'Thun; ultimately, your raid is only as good as its weakest link in this fight. Anyone dying in phase 1 damages the raid because the DPS/tanking/healing is vitally necessary later on; if one side of the raid collapses due to Dark Glare or other effects, the deaths cascade elsewhere since you need 100% coverage.
So, looking back at Ahn'Qiraj, you can see that Blizzard figured it out. They made raiding fun and exciting for everyone involved, not just tanks and healers. No more standing in place and pressing one button over and over; you had to really work for it. :) Not only that, but there's fewer "gimmick" fights where one particular class has to do something completely right or you wipe; instead, there's a lot of group involvement.
Blizzard extended this in Naxxramus. While some bosses are easier than others (Instructor Razuvious, cough), there isn't a single fight in there that has a DPS'er standing in place and "pew pew"ing. They need to learn boss abilities, respond accordingly, and make intelligent decisions. They can't blame a healer when they fail to run the Heigan dance properly. Dying due to bad awareness in Anub'Rekhan makes you kill other people too. If DPS'ers can't destroy Maexxna's Wall Wraps in time, the attrition rate builds and you wipe. I like that fight - it requires a DPS'er to act like a healer by "healing" (read: freeing) wall wrapped people quickly and gives them a little taste of what it's like to be a healer in a raid environment. Faerlina is a gigantic DPS check. And don't get me started on Patchwerk, where if you can't stand there and output 500 damage per second, you're literally wiping the raid.
However, all of these are RAID encounters. There's no comparison in the 5-player environment. If you wanted to run UBRS, BRD, Dire Maul, LBRS, Stratholme, Scholomance, etc, you could get by just about anything with a fantastic tank and healer and, well, 3 other people to fill in.
So what am I getting at?
World of Warcraft has changed. Blizzard has brought forth that raid dynamic into 5-player instancing with the Burning Crusade expansion. It's no longer about "need tank and healer," it's about "need tank, healer, and 3 DPS'ers who can kill things fast."
It starts as early as the Ramparts. You have a boss that plants a debuff on people causing huge damage to all those around them. Usually a problem for melee, if the melee DPS doesn't catch this happening in time, a healer isn't going to save them. (This gets a lot worse in heroic mode, but there's no need to go into that for the sake of this discussion.)
"But that's just an awareness check, not really a pure DPS check," you say, and you're right. Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog, they're all the more traditional instances where a solid tank and healer can get you through even the worst DPS makeups, and there are mostly awareness checks for DPS players.
Then Blizzard takes off the training wheels and things get more interesting. Mana Tombs? The Nexus-Prince end boss is a DPS check, plain and simple. You can have near-infinite tanking and near-infinite healing, but if your DPS can't kill the beacons he plants fast enough, you are eventually overwhelmed with adds that obliterate your healer (and then you). I bring this up because it happened to me in a run recently, where the healer (me) and the tank were grossly overgeared and overpowered for the instance (being level 70s with some raid gear), but the DPS was not. Everything was smooth as silk, if slow, until the end boss.
"Ok, that's just one boss." Nope. While that boss is a pure DPS check, many other bosses continue to require DPS'ers to really pay attention to what they're doing. How many of us have seen DPS'ers nuke themselves to death on Pandemonius' green shield? Or fail to get out of the way of Shirrak the Dead Watcher's fire bomb?
Want more DPS check examples? Okay. In the Shadow Labrynth, Grandmaster Vorpil is a pure DPS check. You could have the greatest tanking in the world and the greatest healing, but without good DPS you can't kill him. Using either the "kill the voidwalker adds" strategy or the "kite him away from voidwalker adds" strategy, if the DPS can't perform you simply cannot win. I healed a Vorpil encounter with low DPS for thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes before I called it after Vorpil healed from 35% to 61% and I decided to just stop healing (yes, I was using mana potions, my regen isn't THAT good).
Setthek Halls. Darkweaver Syth. If the adds aren't nuked fast, you won't last. (Hey, that's a catchy phrase.) They'll eventually punk your healer or overwhelm your tank.
Tempest Keep! High Botanist Freywinn of The Botanica is a fight where if you take too long to kill his adds, he heals himself back up to full. You could literally fight him forever without enough DPS. Warp Splinter, at the end of the instance, is another absolute DPS check. With either trying to kill his add spawns before they heal him or just going full out on him alone, if you don't have the DPS you don't win. I've had a number of attempts on him that we'd reset after a few minutes because we were literally getting nowhere, with each add spawn healing him back up to 100%.
Pathaleon the Calculator in The Mechanar. Kill the adds fast or you won't last.
Harbinger Skyriss in The Alcatraz. Like Skeram, kill his clone fast or you will be overwhelmed.
But these are individual bosses. The crowning achievement for the absolute DPS check in normal 5-player instances is the Black Morass.
Tanking and Healing are mere footnotes in this instance; it's all about the DPS. You must protect Medivh from harm by blowing away a steady stream of incoming mobs. If you fall behind, you have no chance. With pauses built in after the 6th time rift and the 12th time rift, you're given a small breather, but then it's right back to it. Without solid DPS, the instance is completely unwinnable, and it will have almost nothing to do with how good the tanking or healing is. This instance is the "is your DPS ready for Karazhan" testing ground. I love it, even though my role as healer is marginalized, because in a sense I have so little control over the outcome. You get that "boy, I hope they can keep up - here comes the next wave" feeling that I'm sure DPS'ers get all the time with "boy, here comes the boss, I hope the healer can keep the tank up."
Karazhan extends this, with a number of DPS-check bosses. It starts with two tank-n-spank bosses (Attumen and Maiden of Virtue), and then things start ramping up. Moroes has to die before the Garrottes (1k damage per tick for 5 minutes) start to stack up on your raid, making healing impossible. The Curator must die in 12 minutes or the berserk wipes you out. Aran's on par with C'Thun in terms of individual player responsibility and an extreme need for heavy DPS.
So, to wrap up:
World of Warcraft has changed. It's moved from a "need tank and healer" to "need tank, healer, and solid DPS" in order to be successful in groups and raids. This is a very good thing, and makes PvE more interesting all around. Responsibility for success and failure is spread around much more, lessening the relative importance of the tanking and healing roles. This may help alleviate burnout. After all, in the past, good tanks and healers were always in demand to run instances, long after they'd run them 100 times already. Well, you can't run Black Morass with your guild's best tank, your guild's best healer, and 3 underleveled, undergeared DPS'ers anymore. It's like a sign at an amusement park: "You must have this much DPS to enter."
Welcome to the Burning Crusade.
Thoughts?
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.