Group Dynamics Guide
This short guide is to help all you players who are just beginning to experience group instances and quests. I will outline the different roles in a party and how they fit and work together.
Let me begin by saying up to level 35 which is around the last level, group dynamics are less important than later levels. As you begin to go to tougher higher level dungeons, group dynamics become more and more important.
Group Dynamics is nothing more than each player understanding his or her place in the party and understanding how they fit in with other classes.
The Tanks: Warriors, Druids, Paladins(Protection) – These are the characters that usually have the best armor and best damage reduction in the party. In addition they also have skills (active or passive) which increase threat. Threat (aka hate, agro) is nothing more that the likelihood that an enemy will attack them rather than another player, no matter what that other player is doing. These are the players in the party who should be taking the most damage and should have the attention of every MOB (enemy) that the party is engaging.
The Healers: Priests, Druids, Paladins, and Shamans – These are the characters that heal the party and keep people alive. Healers can be divided into two types: Primary healers and backup healers. Primary healers are Priests, Druids (Resto), Paladins(Holy), and shamans (Resto). Back up Healers are Paladins and Shamans who are not healing speced. Besides having healing spells, primary healers have skills that increase their mana pool and healing done and decrease their casting times and the threat created from their healing.
The Crowd Control: Mages, Rogues, Hunters (Ice trap), Druids (Hibernate), Warlock (Banish)- These are the characters that take out one of the MOBS with a spell or ability and allow the party to engage a lesser number of enemies. Each class is limited in who they can take out. CC’ers must be watched by the tank and others to make sure they are not jumped by the group of MOBS.
Damage also known as DPS: Everyone designated as DPS and not a primary healer or tank. Crowd Controls are usually also DPS’rs. Their job is to burn down the mobs, TO KILL period.
Now lets take a look at how they all work together.
The tank of the group must maintain agro (agro is the term used that indicated the MOBs hatred of certain players and who they will attack) Tanks must use their agro generating abilities and stances, shape forms or seals. Tanks usually have a taunting ability that allows them to make a MOB attack him for a short time. Tanks must also use their stances, shape forms and auras to mitigate the damage they take.
Now while the tank has the attention of the MOBS or MOB and they are beating on the tank. The DPS’rs swing into action. They begin to kill the MOB or MOBS. Now contray to popular belief, this is not an unorganized melee. This is a focused use of power on a SINGLE TARGET. If the party is facing a group of mobs one character is usually designated as primary assist. The job of all the other DPS’ers is to attack the target of the primary assist. The target of primary assist can be found by selecting the primary assist and pressing the F key. The primary assist is a survivable melee character like a DPS,ing warrior, Druid in cat form, Paladin Shaman or Rogue, they are not Mages Warlocks or Hunters. When DPS’ing they have one other job, to do as much damage they can without drawing agro from the MOB. The big deal about DPS’ers drawing agro, is that they are usually not very survival, they take far more damage than the tank. If a DPS’er draws agro and starts taking MONDO damage, a healer will try to save them (resistance is futile) when the MOB kills the DPS’er the next person who is now on top of his hate list is the healer. The job of DPS’ers is not hell on earth; it is a well controlled, calculated and planned killing. Good DPS’ers are beautiful to watch, they walk a fine line, doing as much damage as they can yet not drawing the attention of the MOBs
While all this is going on, the healer is healing the tank and anyone else who requires. The job of the healer is not only to keep everyone alive but to make sure he goes the distance in the fight and does not run out of mana. This means no casting damage spells. Another thing that will cause a healer to run out of mana is overhealing, that is if your tank is taking very little damage and is only damaged for 100 hitpoints (HPs) and you heal him for 200 hps. This may not seem like a lot but in long fights it is a killer when you run out of mana because you have been over healing. Another thing that healers have to do is to sometimes choose who lives and who dies. For example your party engages a mob or a group of mobs, the mage has a power trip and starts to melt faces mobs turn on the mage. Now this can turn out several ways but with veteran healers it should go something like Shield mage, mobs blow though shield, dead mage no heals, priest fades and the tank runs around like a madd man trying to regain agro on everything the mage had been blasting on. Now I just use one character there, there are many other examples, like a rogue going stab happy, or a hunter using up all his shots at the beginning of a fight, this was just to give you an idea. Sometimes it is a choice heal tank or heal a DPS’r: let’s see groups have 3 DPS’ers and 1 tank, which is more important.
To sum it all up in a few quick pointers:
- Tanks hold agro from MOBS. Tanks use abilities for this and never try to DPS tank, that is hold agro by out damaging everyone else.
- DPS’ers control your killer instincts, and if you get agro try to break contact with the MOB, there are several abilities that do this Feign Death, Cower, disengage and such. For warrior ALWAYS DPS in bezerking stance, more damage = more rage and bezerking stance generates less threat. Use mocking blow only when trying to pull a MOB off the healer. Druids DPS in cat for, less threat and you have the use of cower a threat mitigating skill.
- Healers conserve your mana, do not attack and do not over heal. Sometimes you have to make the choice between who lives and who dies, do not be afraid to make that choice.
While it is true that you may get tougher and tougher as you level, the instances get harder and harder far faster and team work becomes more and more important.
There are many guides on character play at www.worldofwar.net in the forums sections that give good advice on individual character play, check it out for more info on your character.
So GOOD LUCK to everyone and hope to see you in a Dungeon soon.
Game ON
Roshambo
Druid Lead.
Subject: Group Dynamics 
Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:59 am
