After learning the game initially as a Hunter and then advancing a Mage to experience 10 and 25 man raiding for the first time, I decided it was time to stop being a DPS leech and to contribute to the delicate balance of Tanks and Healers that are the biggest bottlenecks to getting anything “group like”, done.

Realizing that Tanking Is More Than Just Taking Damage and Leading The Dungeon Party, I decided to start out by contributing as a Healer, and I rolled an Undead Priest.

This Healing Priest has slowly advanced through the levels via healing dungeon PUGs since about level 38, and only headed out to quest for a short a period of time between level 52 and 58 where I gave up on finding Blackrock Depths PUGs and pushed my way through to the Outland.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m quite enjoying healing in dungeons, and over time I started a Druid and a Shaman with the intent of bringing up more healers for a broader experience. I’ll write some entries about my thoughts about the differences soon.

This Healer Can’t Read Omen

I’m finding healing in dungeons to be quite a bit different than DPSing in dungeons for one main reason: I have no clue how to read Omen when I’m dealing with healing aggro from multiple targets, so other than having Omen on to see who else in the party has a threat meter installed, I find it basically useless. Most of the time I’m not even targetting a mob, I’m worrying more about health bars of my party mates.

Does anyone have any ideas about that one for me?

The Goal of DPS vs The Goal Of Healing

In terms of 5-man regular dungeon DPSing, the ultimate goal for every damage dealer is to deal as much damage as possible without pulling their target mobs of the tank. (This “not pulling aggro” part is why DPS Warriors and DPS Shamen are at a disadvantage in finding dungeon PUGs when compared to other DPS classes)

When it comes to 5-man regular dungeon healing, the ultimate goal is to keep everyone in the party alive without getting too much “healing aggro” and dying as a result.

At quick glance, my strategies as a good Mage and my strategies as a good Healer start out very similar:

Wait for a while before casting a spell!

But, as a Healer, I can almost immediately tell whether I’ve got a good tank or a bad tank, whereas with a DPS, unless I’m tremendously overgeared compared to the tank, it takes a little bit longer.

How do I tell? Well, if I wait for the tank to go down 3-4k health and toss out a single Greater Heal and all but one mob he was tanking turn towards me, I know it’s going to be a long and painful dungeon run.

What Tanks Tank The Best

While doing a lot of dungeon PUG healing, I’ve also had a lot of opportunity to ponder the whole role of “tanking” in an Outland dungeon party. I’ve watched how tanking has evolved from the old Azeroth days where Raid Icons didn’t even exist for the longest time through to the Outland where tanks are commonly asked to “mark a kill order” right from their first run in Hellfire Ramparts and where NOT specifying or following a kill order can have disasterous results.

So, are there any tanks that I, from a healing perspective, think are better than others? Paladin, perhaps? Or Druid, or maybe good old Warrior?

Well, the answer is “kind of but not really”.

The general consensus I’ve reached with the Committee of Me is that a good tank is a combination of so many things that it couldn’t possibly all be attributed to a single class type.

But, this entry is long enough, I’ll write more on that topic later.