In a raid, tanks and healers are even LESS like parents, because the “parental units” are the raid officers – the people ACTUALLY responsible for putting the raid together. Some of those officers might be tanks and healers, but that’s just the balance, not any kind of particular penchant for leadership on the part of tanks and healers. And really, raid officers are a lot more like managers, or benevolent dictators, than they are like parents.

Tanks are like the father figures of the group, acting as a human shield protecting people, and healers are the mommies, following behind, making sure your coats are buttoned and all your buffs are in place so you don’t catch a chill from the nasty coldflame, and patching up the booboos received along the way. The DPS are like our kids. sometimes bratty teenagers in the case of some PUGs, but still. We’re used to feeling responsible for the lives of our group, and when you feel responsible for others, you err on the side of caution.

To illustrate my point, consider the Sartharion3D fight:

- numerous RL choose a Warrior as their MT b/c they trust them most even when they have a DK tank available. This is incredibly stupid b/c it’s unnecessarily taxing and complex on the healers for that tank and it’s done by some of the best RLs I know.

- numerous RL don’t get that Warriors are actually the BEST add tanks on this fight by a large margin since add duty is not about threat which warriors lack in the AOE department, but about snap AOE aggro and AOE survivability both of which we excel at compared to all of the other tank classes

Now, I may have made it sounded like a bigger issue by saying Healers see a healing problem. I’m talking about our train of thought. I’m not saying every problem is a healing problem. I’m saying that a healing RL is much more likely to use a healing solution to a problem that has multiple solutions.

Consider Gluth:

- Do you tank the adds and heal the tank or do you kite the adds?
- Do you stack enough DPS so you only have 1 Devastate or do you play it safe and make the fight last 2 or 3.

Consider Malygos:

- You’re hitting the enrage. Do you drop a healer or expect your DPSers to L2P?

These are all choices and my theory is that role is going to influence these decisions. I think where I really failed in the article is not pointing out that all of these raid leaders succeed. They just do in different ways and on very simple fights, they all end up with identical strategies. But, there’s a lot of choices to be made… all of the above considerations are done all the time with 1 of the 2 choices and they’re done successfully, but they’re also very telling of who is in the driver seat.

To stray from this… that still doesn’t change that you ignored my 2nd take on a healing RL and instead chose to say my article thought on healing RLs would take lots of healers to make it easier on themselves when that’s not the conclusion I came to at all. (and probable led the most to be getting roasted by your fanbase)

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I understand what you’re saying, but I still disagree with even this comment. THings like

We are influenced my our role in how we see other roles. A dps sees dps as the solution to a fight. A tank sees tanking. A healer sees healing. And we all are more likely to screw up everything other than our primary role when it comes to assignments because ultimately, we just don’t live and breath those roles like a person who plays that class does.

I find to be both not true of raids I’ve been in, and not true of the best raid leaders, because they are above their role in a fight – maybe I run with the weirdest, least self-focused raid leaders in the history of warcraft, but I still abjectly disagree that this is either how it *is* or how it *should be*. The point of leading a raid is to lead all of it – and while a single RL may not know everything there is to know about all classes, they need a basic understanding – and people that can help – so that they make the best decisions.

A Healer RL approaching all problems as healing problems is… short sighted, and probably stupid. Sure if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail – but as a RL you don’t just have hammers. You have 25 people, with different classes, strengths, roles, and abilities – and a good RL will take advantage of that, and be bigger than their own class/role bias.

I also disagree with your bias against DPS as Raid Leaders. But that’s a different set of comments, I think.

That being said, I think you missed the overall point (which admittedly is my fault as the writer) and you definitely seemed to glaze over the 2nd paragraph about Healing Raid Leaders. (to which I must say… I wonder how many who commented here actually read the whole article…)

“healer RL’s will bring too many healers all the time so their job will be easier and nobody has to work hard, and will assign tanks in ways that minimize damage”

I said this in my first take on Healing raid leaders. (although you’ve certainly blown what I said out of proportion and I think ultimately this paragraph led to your whole post being wrote) If you read Take #2 though… I said that healing RLs if anything would bring too few. They’d balance this by assigning things in such a way that there would be a greater chance of survival. Essentially, I was saying that a Healing RL would take a smaller, stronger core team of Healers b/c he or she knows his healing team can do it.

The point of the post is we all have a particular template in how we approach an encounter. We are influenced my our role in how we see other roles. A dps sees dps as the solution to a fight. A tank sees tanking. A healer sees healing. And we all are more likely to screw up everything other than our primary role when it comes to assignments because ultimately, we just don’t live and breath those roles like a person who plays that class does. (and I don’t think it’s a fair assumption to say that RL are notorious for being very well researched and passionate about their role and class)

In the end though, they all find their way to a strategy that works. They just go about it in a different way. Fights that have very limited options… all of the RL end up with basically the same setup, but fights that allow for a lot of grey area… end up with very different successful strategies and approaches to encounters based on the RL’s role.

My point was RLs are human. We have tendencies. We have different ideas of what’s important. That doesn’t make us selfish or self-serving. It just makes us real people. The article was a theory about human behaviour and part of trying to prove my point was taking it to the extreme a little bit.

I can’t help, but be disappointed in those that from this decided that I, myself, am a bad RL or that my raid would be a bad experience. (which I suppose is the same) I’ve had the same group of people for over 2 years now. Our raids are very casual, but also progressive and filled with laughter and joking. The post was just an exercise in… how can I be a better raid leader by considering a different role’s approach to it. I wanted the reader to question how much they let their passion or competitiveness influence their leading decisions.

Anyway this has gone on long and I realize I’m starting to talk in circles, but I just can’t help shaking my head that not a single commenter understood where I was coming from. A writers job is never done

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