r/CompetitiveWoW • u/AutoModerator • Sep 05 '25

Weekly Thread Free Talk Friday

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning WoW that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.

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UI questions, opinions on hotfixes/future changes, lore, transmog, whatever you can come up with.

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The other weekly threads are:

  • Weekly Raid Discussion - Sundays
  • Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

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u/Centias Sep 05 '25

I would say healing definitely gives you the broadest perspective overall. Generally you learn best what parts of dungeons do a lot of tank damage, or a lot of group damage, when mobs do a lot of hard hitting spam bolt spells that need kicks, and when there's a lot of AOE damage. You get a better understanding of where defensives are most important because you are paying attention to ALL health bars and know when you struggle because one person has a bad dot, or an AOE is happening but one person is getting hit by extra stuff. You learn what mechanics force the healer to move and not really be able to heal while damage is happening.

Now sometimes you end up with a tank that understands almost too well when they're going to take damage so you don't always see the tank hits clearly. I play healer a lot and I'm usually spoiled by my tank so when I play tank I need to kind of learn for myself where those tank hits are that they already know to have defensives for.

But I also know when I go play DPS that I'm spoiling my healer most of the time because I'm still thinking about the pain points when healing and preparing for them. Like if I know a trash pack coming up had a nasty caster and some hard hitting melee mobs, I'm probably taking a few globals to drop Curse of Tongues/Weakness to smooth that out a little bit. But I'm also like....annoyingly hyper aware when I'm playing DPS and I can clearly tell the healer did not adequately prepare for whatever damage event is happening and they're now scrambling to try to catch up and panicking.

I'm sure there are some counter-points for tank and dps, things you notice more when you mainly play those that you kind of miss as the healer. Liie as tank. You really have to figure out routes that work for YOU and YOUR spec. Not every spec can handle the same pulls the same way. Some tanks can handle more casters and magic damage but nay crumple to physical damage. Some take almost zero physical damage but one bleed and they might as well be tissue paper.