From Facerolling to /facepalm'n

It’s no mystery that raids and dungeons have become less and less of a challenge as our gear got better.  A group can easily ignore the mechanics of a fight as long as their group meets the following criteria

• They have uber dps and uber heals
• They have an uber tank and uber heals
• They have an uber group with uber dps,tank and heals

You can have only uber dps or only uber heals depending on the encounter/situation but I’m not quite sure having only an uber tank will cut it.  I mean having a great tank will of course still make most things easy but at the cost of the run being painstakingly long and unbearable.  Also uberness doesn't compensate for stupidity...that’s a hidden 4th rule...or first depending on how you look at it.  However, on some rare occasions when the stars align, being able to face-roll through a raid or dungeon can make up for a player’s lack of ability or mental capacity ( I don't have any specific statistics but at least in my own experiences if I had to throw a number out there I’d say about .99% of all cases...meaning you’d have a better chance getting a Green-Proto Drake or White Polar Bear then successfully carrying someone incompetent..at least through a raid).


Don’t get me wrong though, being able to speed through everything can be very advantageous especially to the casual player.  It leaves you more time to do other things to enjoy the game and also allows you to experience more content faster.  At the same time I believe it’s crippling a lot of players because many of them will experience a rude awakening come Cataclysm.  I can foresee healers being hit the hardest by having to deal with all of the players who won’t be used to doing other things besides “wailing away” at the boss.  I agree with recent posts from RestoDude and Shy that players will have to learn to play smarter and not rely on uber heals to carry them through everything.  It most likely will be a little frustrating the first few months (especially in PuG’s) until people are familiar with the mechanics of things and get better gear.  But that’s no excuse to become complacent because Blizzard seems to have intentions to prevent content from being easy mode as we get better gear by making bosses scale with gear.  I’m not sure to what extent or exactly how much this will affect anything but hopefully it will keep all the content interesting until the end and players on their toes.  I intended to make this post dedicated to healers but something went wrong at some point and my brain/train of thought frazzled so I guess more on that and dps’ing later :).