This post is intended to help you decide which role to play in tbc if you are motivated by how easy it will be to get groups for pve content. Its based on the ratios of each role needed for content of different sizes and assumes 3/5/17, 2/3/5, and 1/1/3 group composition. Feral druids are considered tanks for the purposes of these calculations and the ability to respec is not accounted for, and may affect the accuracy of the below.
The most in demand roles for different sizes of content will be:
25 man: dps > healer > tank
10 man: healer > tank > dps
5 man: tank > dps > healer
This is based on the following required populations:
This suggests that tanks looking for 25 man groups will have the hardest time, but will find it easy to get groups of other sizes, while healers looking for 10 man groups will have the easiest time but may struggle to get groups at other sizes. DPS will find getting spots in 25 man content easier but struggle with 10 man; they should be able to get a spot in 5 man groups and have no trouble finding a healer, but will still struggle to find tanks.
I played TBC on private servers for 8 years (not that I’m proud of, been a retail subscriber since WoD). In my entire TBC career I never had issues finding guilds/pugs with ANY class/specc.
If you’re committed and you enjoy playing your class, stick with it. Eventually you will have the edge in skill/gear and you will have no issues progressing.
You have to see it in a perfect world where in a pool of 25 players:
3 play a tank
6 play a healer
16 play a dps
and you split this into 5x5man groups, you can have
3 groups with tanks
6 group with healers
5.33 groups with dps
So theoretically, dps find more dungeon slots than healers.
But the reality is, there are too many dps players, even for a 25man environment, so healers and tanks will always find groups in every content
Yes, this is all on the assumption that people will pick (and keep playing in endgame) roles based on whether or not they can actually do the content, and that all types of role want to do all content equally. If you have a situation where, for example, the players who just want to do heroics and not do 10 mans or 25 mans are more likely to choose dps, and the players who want to do 10/25 man content but not heroics are more likely to play healers then of course dps players will have a harder time finding heroic groups.
I do think it’s entirely feasible though that dps players will not struggle to find 5 man groups or find healers for groups they form, except for the tank of tanks preventing 5 man groups forming in the first place.
It’s also worth noting that not all dps players are equal, so if you play a non-meta dps you will find it harder to get groups than a meta dps.
How much of that time did you spend tanking 25 mans and can you honestly say you had no trouble finding a tank spot for these?
Tanks have always been in demand and always will be. I don’t know how many people will roll tank in Classic, but on private servers there’s an eternal shortage of tanks. We often resort to paying one to tank for us.
Never had an issue getting my lockout for the week on any class, even tanks. There will be so many guilds/pugs going.
in the perfect world I would be a healer in dungeons/raids and with a dual spec feature I would be able to do quests and grind reputations on my dps spec In TBC, I will just play a spec that I can also play when solo.
This looks cool but have you considered the ammount of warriors (now, tanks) that will progress from classic to TBC and how it will saturate the tank demand and how it could affect inyour results? Just curious.
90% of said warrior tanks were just Fury-Prot hybrids who have no interest in playing deep prot. Fury warriors could still decently OT while pulling good dps, that just isn’t the case now, however with Druids and Paladins receiving buffs and making them extremely viable OT and even MT’s it could balance out, time will tell though.
Yes, thinking horde side at least I imagine that initially there will be two things that we see that will drop off as the expansion progresses and people start to reach 70 with fresh characters and re-consider their choice of mains.
Lots of dps warriors who will struggle to get raid spots.
Lots of raid groups using 2 or even 3 warrior tanks because they cannot get paladins and druids. Many of these warrior tanks will find themselves struggling to pug or transfer guild, or even in some cases being straight up benched in favour of paladins and druids in a few months.
Priests will be in a similar position and will find it progressively harder and harder to get raid spots over the first few months as more paladins/shamans/druids enter the talent pool.
So, launch day is showing very high demand for tanks and less so for healers. Even as a lvl 58 (which frankly is not ideal for Ramparts with a grp of naxx geared 60-61s) I’m getting instant invites as tank and when I looked for a new healer I got 3 whispers right away.
Also note I have experienced ZERO toxicity in my first 4 dungeon runs tanking TBC. This is despite being lower lvl/geared so my threat sucks, and causing a few wipes due to learning some of the pulls and making errors. Everybody is being very nice. Well done.
In TBC, I will just play a spec that I can also play when solo.