<DPS>
My opinion is DPS classes. Its the class that actually becomes "more powerful". Doing more damage is the universal measurement of strength in games such as this. But why?

Heres my analogy: Your a priest, and your in Warsong Gulch with your warrior friend. Your solo healing him and keeping him up, and he runs in and rips apart 5 people in 6 seconds. Who is truely more satisfied? The Warrior of course, its just a more satisfying thing to do.

<Tanking>
I think tanking is the second most satisfying playstyle. Its always fun to be the centre of attention, and the person who is stopping the mob from killing your fellow players. However, being a tank is pretty useless when your not raiding. Its always nice to be able to take a lot of hits, but hey, what purpose does that serve when your not tanking?

<Healing>
Ahhh, the healers, the backbone of raid groups, yet the least satisfying. While its fun to save player lives, the fun level greatly diminishes when there are 15 other people doing the same thing. Its probably the most robotic role in the game, and the role that gets the least credit. Why? Because its very difficult to express your healing skills in world of warcraft. This is because the definition of a good healer cannot be monitored properly. DPS have damage meters and aggro control, and tanks obviously hold targets. While there are healing meters, they do not express accurately the performance of a healer. However, after a long period of time, one can evaluate a healers performace, but it is still subjective.

A huge part of the fun factor and satisfaction comes from players playing well and being recognised for it. Healers unfortunately miss out on a lot of this.

We all love recieving new and more powerful loot, it improves our characters usefulness, and to some degree caters to our e-ego (pun intended).
Its a subject I think about quite often, which class is more "satisfied" with loot upgrades from raids? Who is truely rewarded? I think this goes hand in hand with the above subject. DPS become individually stronger which is the most satisfying, especially due to pvp and dueling etc, while tanks and healers get gear that helps them help the raid.

In other words, dps classes get loot that increases their characters overall "strength" (which includes raids, pvp and solo play) while tanks and healers get loot that increases their characters effectiveness in just raids/groups. It seems to be more selfless as a tank and healer.

When it comes down to it, a healer and a tanking class can only progress in their raid effectiveness, while a DPS class progresses in all aspects of the game. While healers can heal in PvP, and tanks can sometimes play a part, it is not as satisying, in my opinion, than being a DPS class.

I like to heal. It is fun.

On the other hand, playing DPS in raids is more "robotic" (to use your word) and significantly less varied than the other two styles. They need PVP to keep them from going batshit nuts, y'see. ;)

I do think your point about the satisfaction of receiving new gear is a good one. I cared significantly more about gear upgrades on my Rogue and Warlock than I've done on my healers. So, too, do raid groups at large- better-geared DPS means deader bosses!

Let me guess, you play a healer that wishes you were a DPS class?

You also assume that PvP and dueling is primary reason to get new gear, and that is what is satisfying about getting said gear. I think a lot of people would disagree with that. Furthermore, I find it pretty unsatisfying to be a DPS class in raids, because your contribution is utterly quantitative and measured constantly, not that I don't personally enjoy maximizing my DPS, but it's just sometimes utterly boring.

Try playing a DPS class for a year and realizing you have little to no control on the outcome of the fight, despite doing your job perfectly. Last night we were doing Loatheb without buffs, and getting him to 68% in 2 minutes on the dot every single pull. What was the DPS even there for except to die as healers practiced their rotation?

my primary character is clearly a DPS class, and i've played it for over a year and a half and still love it. that being said, i've both healed and tanked on my alt (lawlferaldruid) in raid situations, and i found both of them quite satisfying as well. but i enjoy trying to pick apart encounters in the broad sense, so on new content at least i'm rarely just looking at how to best shoot the big bad boss, so in that sense my enjoyment of raiding is entirely divorced from the class i play.

that being said, i think it's painfully obvious that 'what is most satisfying' depends entirely on the individual and what they enjoy. our retention rate for priests is perhaps the highest of any of our classes - 5/7 of the priests at our first rag kill 16 months ago are still playing, and 7/8 of our priests from our first nef kill are still here. they must like something about what they're doing.

I never said its the primary reason. Its one reason. You mention having little control in the outcome of encounters, I think thats the case for everyone in a 40 man raid. However, your contribution to it can be measured, and its always fun to do huge crits, and see your damage scale up as you progress throughout the game. Whereas, healers don't get such a feeling of satisfaction from "healing for greater amounts" or "regenerating mana faster". In my opinion that is.

I think playing the same role for any long period of time will make that role seem boring to you.

I play a priest and love bringing my rogue to MC / BWL raids, but I know rogues / dps warriors that love bringing their priests ; )

Nothing as satisfying as a 3.5k Natures Swiftness crit heal on a MT just as he/she's about to bite the dust.

I felt a bit emasculated when I started playing my druid after so long as a hunter, but I love a lot of the healing now. It's the best feeling when you're assigned to one tank in a healer-light raid and you have to absolutely play at the edge of what you can do to keep him up.

In fact I like it so much I've just levelled a priest...

For me it's not so much the actual class that keeps me interested, but rather my drive to simply become a better player. Even when doing farm content, I always try to think of ways to min/max and become a more efficient healer / DD / tank / raid leader. I hardly go AFK even during MC because I enjoy trying to push my limits, analyze data, and push my limits even further. This has been true for all the classes I've played and I've been itching to roll another healing class since I simply love healing.

To give an example, in our guild, we have certain named people who we compliment on their ability to do huge dps, and praise named tanks for their ability to catch and hold targets. However, its very difficult to name individual healers for their healing efforts. We only know that our healing is "good enough" to do X amount of content. This is because we simply do not know which players are healing better than others. But we do know which of our tanks can hold aggro the best, which tank has the fastest reflexes, which dpser does great damage in X encounter.

Fixed.

Anyway, to the OP, I am impressed that you've managed to level and equip three different characters to have such a wealth of firsthand experience upon which to base your claims. Here's a synopsis of your post:

I personally prefer healing in PvP to trying to 'lolferaldps' but thats because I've made friends with some warriors who I enjoy playing with and watching rip people apart.

One of my more favorite PvP memories was during my rank grind I went into AV game in progress (it was an hour and a half in or something) with a warrior friend. Within 20 minutes he was leading the killing blows. Obviously this isn't a great indicator of anything in particular, but it was a hell of a lot of fun being part of a two man team tearing apart a 5-10 person offensive.

Its all about playing style. I was specced 'full feral' for a while and it was kind of fun for PvP, but I can't kid myself and believe that I was more useful to my PvP group as a feral druid than I am as a some variety of Restoration spec. This is even more true since the change of Innervate to Swiftmend. Its simply an amazing tool for PvP healing.

Also I think getting +healing upgrades is far more satisfying than mp5 upgrades because they are easier to quantify. Adding 20 +healing shows an immediate difference in my rejuv ticks, while the mp5 upgrade is less noticable except in specific cases (though a mod that shows the mana/tick is a little helpful in immediately quantifying the upgrade).

I would think this varies from guild to guild. Our guild most definitely has a best healer, and everyone knows it.

(It isn't me :( )

Additionally, in fights/raids where one healer is assigned to keep up certain people, you can definitely see from their feedback and the healer's performance what kind of job was done. In full-crosshealing situations that's obviously harder.

The thread is subjective. I don't claim to "know" which type of playstyle is the most satisfying. As I mentioned several times, this is only my opinion and I want to hear yours.

I'm primarily a main tank, and I enjoy my role. It's satisfying to know that you saved an entire raid with a well placed taunt, or shield wall, or simply by doing your job right and never losing aggro so that everyone else can do thier job.

It's fun to DPS once in a while, so on the lower level raids, we'll let the newer warriors tank, and I'll go DPS for a change of pace, but when we start having difficulties with a boss, I'm the guy (or one of them) that will put on the tanking gear and lead the charge.

Healers and DPS are obviously very important, and I'm glad that people like to fill those roles, or no raids would ever be successful. And yea, main tanks figure out pretty fast who will keep them alive, and who won't, and which DPS will start early and pull aggro, and who won't.

I play a DPS class that wishes he was a healer...does that make me...gay? Kidding...lawl...I LOVE the ladies ;)

Anyway...you get out of this game what you put into it. I wanted to play a healing role just because it requires more critical thinking then say a hunter class. When you get into circumstances where hate isn't an issue messing up by not doing enough DPS won't wipe the raid (in most cases).

However if you're a healer and you fuck up the effects are felt a lot more. Depending on what satisifies you more then healing might not be a role for you.

There are people in this world that are happy they are millionaires. There are people in this world that are happy they're famous. They're people that are happy they're both. Good healers are like "quiet millionaires". They don't need the recognition of others to know they're doing a good job.

If you require attention just join a new guild...tell them you're female and you don't have a mic. Get some fake pictures, and you should fulfill your fantasy of being an attention whore :P

*edit* Forgot to add something satisifying to do as a healer is 2 man an instance with a warrior and tear it up. Also never use PVP to enforce your point...it's weak. Sure people overlook the soliders in many wars, but they sure as hell don't overlook the Winston Churchill's and General Patton's...it's just the way of the world...

/endrant

It's only more satisfying if you insist that the healer didn't really kill those 5 people. I'm not sure why you'd think that though - I don't personally draw a distinction between who's head your numbers pop over for who actually did the work, as long as your conjoined effort is what killed them and neither of you were completely expendable.

Good healers can get good reputations as good pvpers as well. I remember when I had a PvP group some 7 months ago, the other factions good team would complain about us having invincible healers. In group PvP, I'd go so far as to say good healing makes the biggest difference (followed closely by proper assisting, then crowd control).

In raids I would probably rate these three roles as tanking, healing, then DPS last. Once you get over the concept of who's head numbers appears over, healing really isnt any less fun than DPS. As a healer you have multiple targets to work with and you usually have quite a bit more going on to pay attention to.

There's definitely the trend for dps people to not feel as important (before the promised land of timed enrages anyway). If we slip up and die, it's usually a recoverable loss, unlike a MT or lag on healers. For the same reason, I think dps classes are less stressful in raids. I've had lots of fun playing a 43 prot warrior and a 60 healing priest, I'll see what it's like if I ever get them into 40-mans.

It's probably more satisfying to have an alt in one the areas your main isn't good in. Chances are your main's spec and gear will be suited for your primary role. Supposing that you're specced and geared for healing, even if you bought dps gear, you wouldn't experience the dps role as much as if you were specced that way. But if you have a dps alt, you have a more "pure" dps character. Plus, you can cover more professions, like herbalism and mooncloth/cured rugged hide bot. And when you roughly understand how the other classes in the raid work, you get a better idea of how to work with them. I never knew you had to be grouped with someone to cast PW:S on them before I PvPed as a priest. Stuff like that is neat to learn. (I also never knew how frustrating tanking can be when your shaman has a good weapon and procs windfury right at the beginning of a fight)

As far as gear from instances, even dps classes have a distinction between raiding, solo, and PvP gear, although our raiding gear generally provides more solo benefit than healing or tanking gear. PvP gear is debatable though - a MT in tanking gear carrying a flag in WSG along with a pally in healing gear will make people cry.

It's funny that a lot of people seem to think that the grass is greener on the other side. Every class has it's ups and downs.

Thats exactly it. When I'm teamed up with someone in PvP, warriors in particular and we're duoing stuff. He maybe would have gotten one kill without a healer. My restoring his health, and forcing their attention away from him/her is what enables us to kill the others.

On the other hand, solo PvP is for me, not very fun at all but thats mostly because it just takes so long. This is what has encouraged me to find good warriors to be friends with. ;-)

I disagree that healers miss out on this, especially when it comes to PvP. I'd list the skills necessary to play a healer well as follows, in no particular order:
1. Reflexes - recognizing and reacting fast to an unexpected threat
2. Prioritization (quality and speed) - making the best decision about targets to heal to maximize the success of the healer's team/raid
3. Timing - understanding the pattern of incoming damage and how best to use your abilities to counter it
4. Situational awareness - anticipating or avoiding a potentially imminent problem (or taking advantage of a potential opportunity)

While some PvE encounters do not give healers the opportunity to display certain skills listed above, a good PvP battle almost certainly will. A good PvP healer stands out and (hopefully) is recognized for it. The presence or absence of these skills will also be evident on the dynamic, multifocus PvE encounters that do allow your healers to "show off."

It's true that primary DPS classes have an easier time applying their raid upgrades to a soloing situation, where - surprise! - everyone has to DPS. If this wasn't evident to anyone at character creation, it certainly is now. Leaving aside the secondhand dps gear even tanks and healers can acquire, having a primary role other than DPS doesn't mean that you are less functional outside of raids, but only that you function differently. Look to leverage your strengths. On my Holy specced Priest last week, I needed some Runecloth; I didn't go running out to Silithus to spend 2 hours wanding things to death; I jumped in a UBRS pickup and got it that way (wearing Devout/Virtuous to save money, keke). As an exceptionally geared healer you are well suited to doing 2-3 man runs of the standard five-man instances for money or materials purposes. And don't get me started on the things that a well-geared tank can solo; Shield Block invulnerability haxx.

In terms of PvP, I get the most satisfaction from knowing I've made a large contribution to our victory. Healing is generally the most effective way to do that. Leaving aside the 'omg healers should heal in pvp!' issue that I've no real desire to discuss, I'll just say that I do enjoy using my raid healing upgrades in PvP because I definitely get a kick out of making my opponents feel frustrated, impotent and weak.

edit: on PvE playstyle: I find it interesting that you comment about your tanks that are recognized for "holding aggro" and having fast reflexes. Which of those is supplemented by their raiding upgrades, again?

That certainly wasn't the case in my old guild. Maybe it doesn't get relayed to the person often enough, but it's pretty easy to spot a kickass healer vs. a mediocre or poor one, given that you raid with them for any amount of time. I specifically remember one bluebie priest recruit we got, and over the course of his first month or so raiding, even though he was typically given side-jobs healing DPS or running 20 mans, I recieved lord knows how many tells about what an awesome job he did or what a great healer he was. Over time, your raid leaders get a pretty good feel for who they can trust with a tough new task vs. those that need to be stuck in a corner with more limited responsibilities, and that's true of any class.

You're absolutely fooling yourself if you think that, at the very least, the tanks don't know who the good healers are and aren't.