GrendelsBane

Ghostcrawler (a Blizzard blue poster) said that the pinch we are feeling in tank/healer shortage is because most tanks and healers are still leveling up in dps mode.

I disagree with this. There is not a shortage of healers or tanks. There is only a shortage of healers and tanks that are willing to run PuGs.

Why the Attitude?

The no PuG attitude is carried over from Outland. PuGs in Outland sucked so badly that I often made up excuses to leave the group (and I know others in my guild have too). I was even in several that couldn’t make it to the first boss, much less past him. I know that part of the problem with Outland was that you needed so much CC and if your group didn’t have the right makeup you were doomed. But the problem I’d see more often was that the dpsers just couldn’t follow simple directions, straining the tank and the healer. How hard is it to follow kill order when raid symbols are used and their order is explained? We all know wipes happen and are ok with that fact. But all the same, most of us have vowed to never tank, heal or dps outside of our own guild again.

Did WotLK make a Difference?

Northrend dungeons are very different from their Outland predecessors. Blizzard has made and attempt to have them be more fun by eliminating the CC. Northrend dungeons are more of an AoE fest than a strategy thing. In some ways it’s nice. You don’t really have to worry about what the makeup of your group is, and it rarely matters what class you pick up. The only people that really need to think at all are the tank and healer making PuGs much easier to handle. But occasionally I do miss the strategy and challenge that were involved in the Outland and Old World dungeons.

Is Dual Spec Going to Help the “Shortage”?

My opinion: yes and no.

I think in the short term yes. Dual specs will make it easier for healers and tanks to still level dps while questing (if they dont screw dual spec up making it for level 80’s only*) then switch to heal/tank a dungeon when they want to. It will make it easier to fill slots in PuGs if players can change to meet the needs of the group. Also a lot of people will be trying out their new specs and wanting to run dungeons to see how they work. The downside is you are going to have a large influx of people that have never tanked or healed a group before.

In the long run I’m not sure that the dual spec will really help. Most dpsers that I’ve ever PuGd with are very concerned with only one thing: their rank on the damage meter, they’ll do whatever it takes to be at the top (even if it means drawing aggro, not following kill order, breaking CC and wiping the party). That said, I think players who are dpsers at heart will try the new specs but quickly return to their old ways when they don’t put up the same numbers on the damage meter. Sure, they might be talked into healing or tanking in a pinch or switch in order to run something they have quests for, but other than that I doubt they’ll volunteer. All we can hope for is that they will take away some new understanding of what the healer and tank go through to try and keep everyone alive when some group members are only concerned with the damage meter.

(I don’t mean to bash dps and I know that the large percentage know their class and play well. I’ll admit that I’m still a little bitter about all those bad Outland groups I ran. But there is more to life than topping the damage meter at the expense of the group.)

* Update: as of the 3.1 PTR Patch Notes Dual Spec are trainable at level 40 at the cost of 1000g