Do you prefer to Tank or Heal?

Also why do you prefer this?

I prefer to heal. I find tanking very stressful in DF although it can be lots of fun with friends.

Prefer heal, like other mention i found tanking too stressful in DF, I only tank with my FC

Been tanking for the majority of it, and someone told me to switch to healing to understand the stress of being a healer. I did just that, Just got my Conjurer to WHM, having a blast so far since easy to keep your distance to see the area around you and fun skills to keep people alive, if get bored can pew pew some.

I wish I could do both at the same time. No matter what I pick, I inevitably get matched with an undergeared potato or a Buddy McNobuttons.

I end up playing healer most nowadays since tanks are easy to votekick out if they're exceptionally bad. It just so happens that bad tanks seem to be less common than awful healers.

It takes me 2-3 dungeons runs as a tank to get the groove down but the stress returns every new dungeon.
I feel like tanks have a lot to do, especially in raids.
Know every single mechanic to the tee + tank swaps so they don't kill everyone or themselves.
I won't tank trials/dungeons, too much for me. I do feel a bit better/safer with a friend with me.

Tanking is always stressful for me - Pt wipes? blame the tank! Not pulling enough mobs, blame the tank! I struggled with multi-pack pulls before 5.0... I'll have to try it out now post-xpac.

Healing has always been second nature to me... I find it really relaxing!

Healz. Mostly 'cause I have trust issues and don't like relying others to heal. xD And tanxiety is still something I occasionally struggle with, but far less now that enmity management is nonexistant.

I prefer to tank because although there's always some DPS that can't turn autorun off, at the end of the day I get to lead. I don't have to worry about being able to keep up with anyone. I'm the one that gets to drive, no matter how many backseat drivers I have with me.

Depends on the content...if it's an alliance raid with adds/mechanics that cause a tank to disappear from the arena for a bit, then I prefer to tank because so many times I've died as a SAM during something like that when the boss decides I look like a nice snack.

For healing, I prefer to do that in dungeons because they aren't as hectic(and I'm a mediocre healer at best)....but DPS is my go-to pretty much 99% of the time when I don't have much left to level(or am not going after very specific achievements - like tank mounts)

Tanking. Aside from the obvious benefit of instant queues at max level, I've simply always enjoyed the concept of a tank. I've mained a tank in every MMO I've played. I like the concepts of mob management and being the "frontline defense" for my party.

Also, I like that if I do my job well, we're able to complete things even faster (though that's true of all roles I suppose).

No preference :o I do both and dps, it's all about the same in terms of difficulty, just for different reasons. Unless you're talking about Floor tanking, in which case, that's very hard.

Tank, i like being able to take a hit and keep on kicking, when the same hit would have turned any other class into a fine pink mist.

That feeling of being able to LOLNOPE! the foes clawing at your face appeals to me.

Tank.

#roeintheshell

Heal, definitely. Tank is easier to a degree, since you can just stand in one spot and occasionally react to a mechanic or two, but what mechanics you do have to do tend to be make or break and if you make a mistake it's super noticeable and players are not forgiving of tanks in general.

Healers are easy most of the time, just doing their little pew pew dps to pass the time with bursts of fast reactive healing here and there. As long as you're aware of what mechanics are coming up, you can do pretty much what you want as a healer and no one will notice if you're making a mistake here or there as long as everyone isn't dying. And most of the time player death is on that player, not you, and even when it is people are more understanding.

In summary, they're both intermittent high pressure jobs in their own way but I find healer pressure to be mechanical in nature, but tank pressure to be social in nature. I'll take mechanical pressure over social pressure any day.

Prefer to Tank in everything apart from the Alliance Raid roulette. I like being able to dictate the pulls and have faith in most healers to keep my HP topped up. I adjust the size of pulls if I notice either the healer can't keep up or the DPS is too low for large pulls.

Reason why I don't like tanking in Alliance Raid roulette is because I don't like going into enmity wars with other tanks and secondly the queue times for tanks are usually bad in this particular case.

Most of people prefer dealing damage.

GNB > PLD/WHM > Drain-SCH > WAR > AST/No-drain-SCH > DRK for me.

For me, unless you've got a good group going whole-hog speedrunning through a dungeon, DRK is mostly just good for before falling asleep, and only so long as you don't need to get to the end of the run before it kicks in. (In a speedrun, though, the absurd strength of TBN keeps one wide awake.)

I prefer to heal. It's my personality type. Healing allows me to take care of people.

Tanking is fun too. Paladin is a blast and I hope to pick up gunblade.

But my heart is the heart of a white mage.

Heals. Quick Que >:3
But also I love the Challenge of Keeping everyone (even the noobs and slackers) alive. The responsibility is what makes it fun.

I prefer tanking

Tanking, from a gameplay perspective, is actually the most kickback job you could play. I suppose dgn mobs would make people skittish but when it comes to basically bosses, there's actually very little to do. Furthermore, you will never get punished for mechs as hard as any other jobs, thus allowing you to survive longer and more importantly, gets you more opportunities to learn the mechs of a fight, especially if it's day 1 raids. There are barely any rotations for tanks and when it comes to cycling cds, all you're asked is to remember the tankbuster or the tank swap debuff (those are far and few in between).

All I can suggest to people who want to tank but are afraid of failure is this: just tank. Keep tanking. Keep at it, find a cushy duty, keep tanking. Don't strive to be a master tank from day 1. Start from the basics and keep upping your game little by little. Own up to your mistakes but don't be shackled by them; remember them instead so you can do better the next time. Find your style but don't brush off beneficial hard facts about the tank job you play as an excuse to hide in a comfort zone that's not actually benefiting anyone but yourself.

The only person that's truly denying you of your tank fun is yourself.

Tank for me. While I've never played a healer outside of PotD I have done stuff on my DRG before, and man do we tanks get it good. No positions for our WS, high HP and DEF, better tools for keeping our selves alive if need be, all while being a front line melee type. And the tanking part it's self is fairly easy once you get use to it. Learning when to use a DEF CD, knowing when to stop a cast, knowing when and where to stand, it all becomes second nature after a while. Though, I'm sure any job would become like that over time, but I've been doing this one since early 1.0 so I may as well just keep doing what I'm already good, I say.

Oh, and to top all that off, there's no PLD in the MSQ NPC cast so I can freely insert my own PLD as the MSQ PLD. And I look great, in my opinion, standing there in all my "Holy Knight" armor with my "Hero's Party" of MSQ NPC's around me.

Tank

I am not a Healer person and it get stress full when people start thinking the Healer has unlimited MP to spam as much healing as possible thus they get reckless and start taking more hits when a group member (or two) is undergeared.

Larger pulls = more focus on healing and less on DPS.

Smaller pulls = more focus on DPS and less on Healing.

If Tank drop their HP too fast or DPS are not properly geared enough for their DPS to kill enemies fast enough, the stress on Healing get more heavy the more reckless the group acts.

I prefer to heal over tank. My reason is that tanking in this game doesn't suite my play style. I will do it just to max level them, but once they are maxed, I usually don't touch them.

I don't really have a preference for tanking or healing. What I have a preference for is WHM, though it's a bit more boring now than it was in SB.

Tanking, healing is too easy outside of high end content.

Targeting is still an issue for me with controller if I choose to heal 8-man content on progression.

Tanking for sure, I find it quite comfy now that I'm used to it.

That said, I've been levelling SCH recently and quite enjoying it - and I enjoy healer in PvP too.

When I'm playing well I like healer more but I main warrior. But I don't care for it as much as I did since 2.0.
They kind of broke tanks making all 4 to close to the same thing.

Can I say I prefer both? Because DPSing is so boring.

It is quite interesting, I found tanking the easiest role to pla, rotation are simple, aggro are so easy to hold and just need to pop CD at the right time, compare to DPS, more complex rotation, keeping the optimal output while dodging mechanic. Yet, it turn out tanking way more stressful than dps, I believe it have something to do with the community. As a tank I screw up, the run turn into a mess and likely get wipe, as a dps it is not so obvious if I screw up. As a tank, you pull wall to wall at the start and healer can’t keep up, it is our responsibility I will not object that, however, if we are unfamiliar with the dungeon or got many spout and we pull small, we got the blame. Even if we take sometime to observe the party before we go big, someone will complain

Always tank. For some reason, ever since my first MMO FFXI, I have hated healing and have desire to do so.

I say it's because I'm a sado-masochist. I like to hit things and get hit.

As others have said, I prefer to heal because tanking is stressful. I just don't feel comfortable in a leadership position and tanks are generally seen as the "leader" in a dungeon. It's also easier to go into a run blind as a healer than as I tank I think. As a healer I can adjust to the unexpected more easily and be less likely to have my adjustment put others in danger.

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Originally Posted by Cythil

Also why do you prefer this?

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I like to heal more. The reason? Well, even people saying otherwise I feel that tankers have more responsability than healers (yes, I know that some of you thinks otherwise for a lot of reasons). And I don't like to be responsible for the dungeon pace.

oh, and I love the support the healers provide to the party!

Neither, I find tanking/healing stressful as hell. Which is funny because of those who I know who also tank/heal say that in higher content such as savage and ultimate that being a DPS is a lot more stressful for them. I doubt that's universal but did make me arch a brow.

Note - I haven't done ultimate, so I can speak on this. My friends however have, and that was just their input.

So I give kudos to anyone who tanks/heals well.

I enjoy playing healer. The same dungeon can become a different experience depending on the party and their skills overall.

Due to my inherent fear of failure and the resulting light to medium social anxiety (thanksfully, probably not the medial definition of it), neither in dungeons but during the ARR "large-scale" fates, I prefer to "tank" if you were to count it for this content *lol*.
So yeah, if I had to choose: Tank. They get their AoE skills understandabily MUCH earlier and have a different feel of "oomph" behind them. Level 45 for Holy felt due to my personal issues quite long to finally get WHM AoE magic, but I have already cried about it somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by Cythil

Also why do you prefer this?

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I prefer tanking even though I find it harder to do. To add context, I used to be a healer main in WoW a decade ago before they allowed players to change specs easily. While I don't find healing to be particularly hard, I do find it to be anxiety inducing. If somebody dies, it feels like it's my fault even if it's just another player failing at the boss mechanics. Because I'm staring at my cast bar cooldowns, my own mana bar and at the health bar of everyone else and at the boss' cast bar, I tend to lose sight of the battle, so I have no idea if the team is failing or I am. When I heal I just have poor situational awareness.

Tanking on the other hand, gives me a better view of the team because it doesn't require me to look at more then 2 things at once. Tanking gives me the best situational awareness of the 3 combat roles which is why I prefer it, even it does often require me to be more knowledgeable about the bosses. It's my job to keep aggro and keep myself alive, which is easier to do then keeping other people alive as a healer. Even if the healer isn't at fault, it was still their job to keep everyone alive so they are still failing in some respect. This is why healing produces anxiety in me. When everybody's health just starts dropping like a stone, it feels like my fault that I'm not fast enough to keep up.

When I'm tanking, I know when I'm failing or if my team is failing.

Tanking def. Since the rotation is straightforward it lets me pay attention to the fights themselves so I'm better prepared when I go in to heal or DPS. Half the time if I queue as a healer the tank or dps just tear off before I'm ready and I'm sprinting behind them to try and get something off to keep them alive before they die. On the upside, experiencing both has made me much more aware of how I can make my healers time easier when I'm running my tank.

I prefer healing since I like helping the party out. I also get really uneasy if I’m too close the enemy and don’t get a chance to run to safe distance (not that there’s ever much real need to be distant from the enemy lol. That said, I’d consider playing Paladin since it gets decent tools to help out the party and the spells look really cool (no idea how it plays currently since I haven’t used since Stormblood lol)