I was running an instance (Razorfen Kraul to be exact) on my priest, which is something I rarely do as I’m trying to level her to 80 as quickly as possible without leaving her tailoring/herbalism behind (screw cooking/first aid, that’s why I have a main). In this instance, the party members and I happened to get into a discussion about our other characters. One rogue mentioned that his main/first 80 was a hunter (I think, I might have those backwards). I sort of sighed and though “oh well, we all have to start somewhere.”
But it gets worse. As we were talking, I said that I thought it was good to have rolled my pally so that I would get experience tanking and healing. The rogue/hunter (why is it always huntards?) stated quite boldly that he would “never roll a tanking or healing class, and if he had a hybrind he would never tank/heal.” I was a little dumbfounded, but responded with “The best DPS I know usually have either a tank or a healer.” The healer we had added that “It’s always good for people to understand the jobs of other classes, which includes tanks and healers learning about each other, and about DPS.”
The huntard continued making outlandish remarks about how his main was in part T8 and T8.5 and was doing mad dps, which only caused me to roll my eyes and say “numbers don’t mean you’re good, it means you have gear.”
Let’s just say I felt like I was talking to a pre-teen brick wall from that point on.
Anyway, it got me to thinking about the benefits of learning other classes. Here’s a list of things I can think of as I write (I wish it was preprepared, but alas, this is a spur of the moment post) of why everyone should learn to play the other classes, even if not seriously.
1.) Learning–you learn their jobs and the difficulties associated with it. Healers and Tanks can learn some of the complexities involved in some rotations, or why on some bosses certain DPS is better than others. DPS and Tanks can learn the stress placed on Healers, who have to prioritize who to save and predict how hard members of the raid/the tank will be hit so they know who to heal. DPS and Healers can learn threat build-up easier, and thus learn how to control/manage their own aggro better.
2.) Understanding: Not the same as learning, but similar. Now Healers know why sometimes DPS gets stuck standing in the very bad thing, because they’ve spent all this time casting a spell or they blew CDs they don’t want to waste, so they are a little more ok with tossing you that extra heal if you don’t quite get out in time, so long as you aren’t stupid. Now Tanks understand that sometimes, if it looks like your health it dropping but so is the rest of the raids, those defensive CDs just need to be used to help the healers out a bit. And sometimes, DPS will crit or proc trinkets/spell procs at a different ratio, so you have to burn those extra CDs to keep the aggro. DPS can understand that healers really need to focus on those three 10k hits that the boss is about to rape the tank with, so you standing in the fire is only going to hinder their ability to fully heal the tank.
3.) Respect: Everyone knows each other’s jobs and won’t ask questions like “why wasn’t I getting heals?” Instead, they know that everyone likely tried their best on that attempt, and that it wasn’t anyone’s fault so much as a combination of factors. There is less finger-pointing, less epeen stroking, and more overall cooperation.
4.) Flexibility: You learn very quickly how to change your playstyle to match the tank/dps/heals you’re with, because you’ve been there and can recognize the signs of a player who knows very well what they’re doing, is undergeared, is overgeared, is still learning but is trying hard, is a bumbling idiot, or any combination thereof. You know to constantly spam Hand of Salvation on the tard DPS that keeps pulling because the tank is in mostly blues and the DPS is in T8 gear, or you know to drop Vigilance on the healer because their normal heal gives you 16k health or more, or you know that you need to slow down your rotation because the tank is having trouble holding aggro from everyone.
5.) Fun: You have another 80 toon! You can make more money from more dailies, and be in the same raids as friends if they happen to be missing a class you can play on another toon. You’re a bigger asset to the raid because you just know more, and you can learn fights from another perspective to make it that much easier when you go back to your “main” job. You’re basically never bored, because if you’ve done a bunch or are saved on one toon, you have another you can log in on and continue to play and experience the game.
So yeah, it’s not the cleanest, neatest list, but I think you all get the point. Basically, you have no right to complain about how another class is doing their job until you’ve done it yourself. After you have, I guarantee that your complaints will be cut down a lot, and only saved for the dingbats who don’t spec into Vigilance.
