Why are healers more populated than tanks?

[KaivaC]

'Tis something I'd been curious about for a while, and I couldn't find any answers on reddit or here on the forums. Why are healers more popular than tanks? Just my personal opinion, but it feels to me that healers have a more demanding job, especially in 24-mans and end-game raiding, but again, that's just from my own personal experience. Forgive me for my lack of MMO knowledge, but this is something that has been something of a curiosity for me.

[Kaliesto]

I think it is the "follow the leader" kind of deal when it comes to tanks, this leads to all sorts of stress as tanks cannot make one mistake or the whole group dies.

Though most people don't realize that tanking is practically the easiest job once you get the skills down, Dark Knight is a lot of fun.

[Limecat]

Because the tank has to drive and set the pace, which involves watching the pt on the fly to see how much and what can be juggled. You also have to be keeping track of every pulled mob to make sure your hate isn't dropping off, so there's very little leeway in how much tunnel-vision you can allow yourself. Think of it kind of like Mario levels. DPS is a standard stage, you go through, you can pick your targets, and in general approach things the way you feel is best. Healers are the boss fights, with you needing to watch your timing and an eye out for the big attacks, responding as needed while mitigating damage. Tanks are the auto-scrolling stages, where everything is constantly changing and you don't get to rest ever. And because it's considered the leadership role, a lot of people get squirmy about the responsibility so they avoid it.

[Skivvy]

I do mostly roulettes during my week, so I end up in a lot of dungeons and what not. I don't like the stress of being the defacto party-leader / dungeon guide :3

As a healer, I don't have to worry about setting proper paces, or knowing which mobs will link, or shortcuts around things (granted these are rare these days). I can just sit back and do my thing in the background. Tanks seem to get far more hate as well, and I just don't want to deal with that.

Plus, I just like healing / support jobs far more. I've never been much of a DPS or tank fan.

[ChaoticCrimson]

I think part of it is the pressure of essentially being the lead in a fight or a dungeon. It can be a fairly big responsibility. You have to keep your gear on par with whatever content you're doing, and you need to be able to know when to use your cooldowns efficiently as well as your stances. That can be a daunting prospect for many. You also need to know how to coordinate these things based on your healers' gear and abilities, and also coordinate with co-tanks in trials and raids. You have to know when to expect things like cleaves and such, and know how best to position certain enemies based on their skills in a way that melee DPS can still take advantage of positionals. I'll admit, these are reasons I've been nervous to try learning to tank, though I'm at least beginning to feel ready to try it out soon.

[hynaku]

Thought healers and tank had same ratio for ones playing them. Always for me I'm rating on healer in duty finder.

[BillyKaplan]

tanks cannot make one mistake or the whole group dies.

Neither can healers, depending on content.
I think it's a mixture of both sides, personally. People don't want the stress of being the lead and the grief from losing agro, but at the same time a lot of people find the role to be boring. A prime example is this Titan NM in progress I joined via leveling roulette. I fully admitted in chat I did v. little but press my 1-2-3. But after the 5 wipes and a tank rage-quit after which I joined, they were just grateful someone kept the big guy in one place and away from them. Healers are in many ways a far more engaging role with, I wouldn't say less, but a different set of responsibilities that seems to lure in a wider range of people.

[Ultima]

'Tis something I'd been curious about for a while, and I couldn't find any answers on reddit or here on the forums. Why are healers more popular than tanks? Just my personal opinion, but it feels to me that healers have a more demanding job, especially in 24-mans and end-game raiding, but again, that's just from my own personal experience. Forgive me for my lack of MMO knowledge, but this is something that has been something of a curiosity for me.

Because the community has painted healers as these overworked slaves who have to keep the big mean DPS tanks and careless DPS alive, which is just a cover story for healers to be AFK for like 15 GCDs before they need to actually heal again which is usually just a Cure II away from being back to AFK. While Tanks get screamed at if the mobs are facing the wrong way, they're pulling too little or too big, or... well you get the idea. Tanks have to do everything that DPS do + Tank responsibilities even when people want to be casuals and refuse to do meta things like drop Tank Stance, it is apparently too stressful for them.

So, they swap to Healer where you can mash Cure 1 and keep Medica II up the entire time and people will commend you despite the fact you did nothing but watch netflix.

Source: I'm a WHM main since launch and my friends who haven't healed think it's difficult or scary but once they try it, they discover I'm doing nothing but reading or watching stuff on my other monitor whilst throwing DoTs and rocks between heals.

At higher level play, healers still have a tremendous amount of downtime and once you understand how powerful your heals are, things that drop tanks or the entire raid to no hp become as simple as 1-3 AoE heals depending on your job and Co-healer's cooperation, it's really sad watching a Cure 3 and Assize top off the raid.

[KaivaC]

Thanks for responses thus far. I have a habit of just doing things just because I want to - hence why I wasn't really sure why healers had more of an active population than tanks. Tanking comes a little naturally to me, whereas DPS'ing, I struggle with. I still find it somewhat odd, as healing feels more demanding than tanking, but again, that's just from my perspective. I liked the analogy above of how tanks are like auto-scrolling. Makes sense, when put that way.

[KisaiTenshi]

Thought healers and tank had same ratio for ones playing them. Always for me I'm rating on healer in duty finder.

Primal is mostly "Tank needed" during prime time. DPS is never needed except at like 3am, and that's on the 24-player content only. Healer needed tends to be leveling queue and level 70 expert queue, though if you select healer and pick pretty much any other queue, it's instant. Which means the queue needs both, but can only display one, or the amount of players queing don't match those already queued.

So maybe take it as "tank in need" as meaning "a high level tank is needed to fit all content under this queue where needed", because I'm pretty sure you can queue as a level 30 tank in the leveling queue and it will do nothing to remove the "tank in need" request.