Class role
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Class roles refer to the "job" of a player in a group setting. There are three primary roles: tank, healer, and damage dealer (DPS). These may be further divided into sub-roles, such as main tank and off-tank. Groups may also choose to assign support roles, such as being responsible for crowd control. Balance of class roles is critical to attaining an effective composition in dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.
Choice of the role is largely determined by specialization, with each specialization designed to perform a specific role. While it is possible for characters to perform roles other than those intended for their spec, the result is generally ineffective and/or inefficient, and often cannot be sustained for long.
Primary roles
There are three primary roles in World of Warcraft:
Tank - Tanks protect their allies by drawing enemies' attacks toward themselves and absorbing damage.
Healer - Healers keep their allies alive by healing their wounds and protecting them from harm.
Damage Dealer (DPS) - Damage dealers focus on the critical task of dealing damage to the party's foes.
The role of a tank in the group is to take damage for the group, protecting the others from being attacked. Tanks usually have high health, high armor, and a wide plethora of defensive options. In PvE, a tank's job is to keep the monster's threat or attention on them, preventing them from attacking others in the group, who are often less armored and less well-suited to taking damage.
Tanks are often the leaders of the group choosing which groups of mobs to engage with and which to avoid. Five-man parties will have a single tank, while larger raid groups may have two, often taking turns tanking the boss. Tanks are less common in PvP, but can be extremely effective as flag carriers and defenders. Despite Taunt-like abilities being ineffective on players, tanking specializations are often still effective in PvP, trading sheer healing and damage output for resilience and staying power.
The role of a healer in the group is to heal others when they are hurt, thus keeping party members alive in order to fulfill their role. The role often requires anticipating incoming damage balancing the protection of their allies with their finite supply of mana. Five-man parties have one healer, while raids can have up to four or five. Healers are arguably the most critical and responsible members of a group, capable of compensating for others' errors and often expected to pull absent-minded allies out of the fire.
The role of DPS is to kill the monsters. This may sound simplistic, but it takes skill and know-how to dish out powerful damage consistently while attending to the other mechanics in the instance. While the tanks and healers mostly focus on keeping the party alive, the DPS must learn to deal as much damage as possible, as often as possible, to conserve the healer's mana and to avoid too much incoming damage. The most populous role and also the least responsible, DPS are often given additional tasks such as interrupting and crowd control.
For a more detailed overview, see Choosing a class role.
Sub-roles
Sub-roles refer to the breakdown of each of the primary roles into more descriptive terms.
- The Main tank is the one primarily responsible, and will spend the most time tanking the boss.
- The Off tank in a two-tank setting is the one that will hold the aggro of adds, and only take the boss in a time of need, to allow the main tank to recover.
In a single-tank instance, or an encounter where both tanks have equal responsibility (like frequently tank swapping) there is no designation.
- While different healing specializations have different strengths and weaknesses, they are not classified distinctly with any sub-roles. Any healer is able to be used in any kind of content.
- Melee DPS - a damage-dealing specialization that primarily needs to be adjacent to the mob in order to do damage, e.g. Retribution paladins.
- Ranged DPS - specializations that can deal damage from a 25 to 40-yard range, e.g. all Mage specs and Balance Druids.
- Support DPS - specializations that primarily deal damage through buffing their allies. There is only one specialization in this category, Augmentation Evoker.
Bring all you can to your group
- Main article: Pickup group#Improving your PUG experience in dungeons
Any class has many utility spells, like 
[Blessing of the Bronze] or 
[Bloodlust], that make them a distinct boon to any party. Using them can aid in fulfilling the role of "successful group member".
There are also profession based and other role-agnostic ways one can contribute to their group.
Classes
Different classes have access to different roles. Some, such as the paladin, can be any of the three roles (tank, healer, or DPS); others, like the warlock, can only be DPS.
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 Death knight
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 Demon hunter
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 Druid
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 Evoker
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 Hunter
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 Mage
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 Monk
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 Paladin
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 Priest
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 Rogue
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 Shaman
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 Warlock
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 Warrior
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