The Genius Among Us

For every 10 blogs like ours – infrequently updated, meandering around, not topic-specific – there is a single example of a “real” blog – one that is professional in presentation, has tons of good info, can dip into game mechanics without requiring an Engineering degree (Gnome, Goblin, or otherwise). These blogs are worth their weight in gold, metaphorically speaking, since they don’t actually weigh anything. BRK had a blog like that, until he went off to farm Wife Rep in that curious MMO known as Real World. And another blog like that is Big Bear Butt.

Now, why, you may ask, am I referring you all to a Druid-specifc blog written by an ALLIANCE player of all things? Well, there is plenty of good gameplay info there. Tons of stuff about balancing real life and WoW. Some amusing interplay between the author and his wife. BUT, the real reason I want you to go there is this…I was preparing to write up our official “Rats Policy” on Raiding. You know, how we, being a casual guild, are going to handle raid scheudling, raid activity, absences from scheduled runs, etc…and that beautiful bear went and did it for me. If you’re going to be raiding with the Rats, here is your introduction to how Lor and I feel about raids:

Raiding Rules as a Casual Guild

Some times it is better to be lucky than good Read it up, digest it, and feel free to let Lor or I know what you are thinking about the philospophy in general. And don’t forget to drop ol’ BBB a line thanking him for working hard so Hawk doesn’t have to

Lazily,

- Hawkwind

Instance Jobs in Action

OK, after running several instances and noting that our philosophies have not transmitted themselves psychically via 3G networks to all the rest of you, I suppose it is time for me to slap some real live pictures and stuff out into the world to show what we are talkin’ about! Let’s take a lower level instance, and demonstrate how the Rats will handle the great majority of groups!

Let’s start off with a potential Rats group for Ragefire Chasm…how about:

Beastroller, a Hunter; Vierna, a Priestess; Shiftabull, a Druid; Moomanchu, a Shaman; and Leviticai, a Paladin. We’re able to make some pretty instant assumptions – Leviticai will have to be our tank (only toon that can wear Mail out of this group), Vierna will be the best choice for our Healer (best selection of heal spells at lower levels), and everyone else can play DPS. Pretty straightforward so far.

How about secondary roles? Good Question!

Crowd Control: At lower levels we will only have a very few flavors of CC available to us – and in this party they are both provided by our Hunter, interestingly enough.  Beastroller will have a pet along with her. Going into an instance it is almost always wise to bring along a pet that acts as a tank (High Armor, High Health, good taunting ability), unless your party leader specifically requests a DPS pet. This pet will be acting as our off-tank – someone who can tie up a secondary foe until the party is ready to deal with them. The hunter is usually able to heal their own pet, but it always pays for the healer to pay attention to pets within the party as well. If another party member was available with decent armor and Health, such as a Warrior, or Feral Druid in Bear Form, they also could be taking up this role.

The second type of CC is “removal” – something that keeps an enemy from participating in the fight whatsoever for a (usually limited) period of time. Again, in the above party, this job will fall to the Hunter. His job will be to use his Freezing Trap ability to pull one of the critters out of the main group over to a site where they are away from the main combat action. He will have previously set a Freezing Trap up, and as soon as the main target is pulled (not before) he will take a single shot at his target to draw it over to his Trap. Voila, the creature is frozen for 10 – 45 seconds, depending on the strength of the trap and the level/resistance of the critter.

There are, of course, many other types of removal CC available across other characters. Mages can use Polymorph, Rogues can use Sap, Warlocks with a Succubus pet can use Seduction, etc. just about every class will have some type of CC available to them, though in the cases of Pallies and Shamans it isn’t until much higher levels. It is flexible enough that just about any party set-up can use it in one way or another, and it is a great way of controlling the ebb and flow of battle.

Secondary Healers:  In this party you have not one but TWO potential secondary healers: both your Druid and your Shaman are capable of tossing off a heal or two if necessary. This can be useful in a couple of ways. First, and foremost, if your primary healer gets incapacitated, runs out of mana, falls off a ledge (don’t laugh! it happens!) or whatever, this person needs to be ready at an instant’s notice to take over healing the tank. Notice that I didn’t say “the party”. Your secondary healers are almost always set up for the job of DPS in 5-man dungeons. They are not going to be set up with special gear or talents that aid in healing, and are therefore going to have to focus on keeping the tank (and therefore the party) alive until the end of the current combat, when the main healer can be rezzed or otherwise rejoin the fight and rejoicing may occur. A secondary healer that tries to do too much will ALSO run out of mana or draw aggro off the tank, the tank will die, and the Party’s Long and Sad Walk to the Instance Door will result.

A secondary healer may also be called upon to heal on off-tank as a fight goes on. This will usually result in a DPS/Heal/DPS casting rotation, but will keep your off-tank alive until the rest of the party can focus their attention.

Lastly, and most trickily, you may get called upon to take up the dual heal/single target job. Honestly, this almost never occurs in 5-man dungeons anymore since Blizz lowered the difficulty of most 5-man boss fights. But the idea is that BIG heals take about 2 – 2.5 seconds to go off. Little heals may not be enough to keep up with damage to the tank. So, The primary healer fires off a heal. 1 second later, the secondary healer fires off a heal on the same target.  Continuing this rotation will result in a nearly continuous stream of heals being applied to your main tank, as well as a 3-way split of threat between Tank, Primary Healer/Secondary Healer. It can be fun to watch, but alas is rarely called for anymore.

So, enough theory, yes? Let’s show some examples!

Example #1:

Pretty straightforward, right? 2 Searing Blade Enforcers, ready to be carved into their individual components. We know that they both are melee fighters, not casters. How do we know this, you ask? Because of the lack of the blue mana bar below their red health bar. So, we set it up as follows:

The Skull over the target to the left designates him as our primary target. Anyone who is charged with DPS within the party will focus on him until he is dead. Very simple.

The Blue Square to the right designates the female Enforcer as the target of our #1 Crowd Control. since we only have one CC-er in the party, she must be dragged off to a freezing trap, (hopefully) to be held there until the party is done with the skull.

The fight will develop as follows: The tank will pull the skull to the area the party wishes to fight him, usually with a single shot from a missile weapon or spell  (Hand of Reckoning, in the case of Pallies). This will activate both enemies – the Skull because he has been damaged, the Square because she is following along. At this point, our Hunter will also fire a single shot, this time at the Square. She will now develop her own personal hatred at the one who shot her, and go careening off toward the Hunter, to be hauled into the Freezing Trap. When the Skull arrives at the fight site the tank will engage…and the rest of the party will do NOTHING. For a few seconds, at least. Give the tank a little time to gather some aggro on the primary target, then everyone else jump in. 3-5 seconds is usually plenty, your tank will tell you if this needs to be longer or shorter. The Hunter will verify that his target has been trapped, then he will also start firing at the Skull. Keep in mind that if the trap breaks early, the Hunter will most likely then get his pet to attack the Blue to tie ‘em up until the party can jump in. After the Skull is down, the party switches to the Square, again giving the tank some time to grab aggro before jumping in en mass. Soon, your targets are dead, and the party can move on!

…to Example #2!:

Here, we have 3 targets, instead of two, and most importantly – a mana bar attached to the Ragefire Shaman’s Health bar! And in the Rats, we have a simple rule: Kill The Squishies First. Given a choice between a caster and a melee trooper, we always kill the caster first. Casters are either A) Healers, who need to die rather than prolonging fights or B) DPS casters, who can wreak havoc from long range. In either case, the rule applies: KTSF!!

You will also noticed that we are using the Red X here. In Rats terminology, that simply means “Kill This One Next”. The tank is still responsible for capturing and holding the attention of that foe as well as the Skull, but DPS attention should focus first on the Skull (KTSF!!), then the X.

The fight here will go as follows: The tank will still open up with a single shot on the Skull. But the Skull will not be moving forward to engage the tank here, as he is a caster. So the tank will move forward to engage the primary target instead. After that first shot is fired, our hunter will again fire a shot to grab the attention of the Square, haul the square off to the side out of combat somewhere into a Freezing Trap, then join the general fighting, downing first the Skull, then the X. At this low level, there is an excellent chance that the trap will break before the 2 primary targets are down. If that is the case, the hunter should merely sic his pet on the previously trapped foe, and let the party know that this has occurred.  Once again, there should be no major difficulties in defeating the foes, which leads the party to….

Example #3:

Wow, look at all those enemies!

OK, not to panic, it is all a matter of picking and choosing. First, we look for a caster’s mana bar. We find one on the Searing Blade Warlock, and immediately set him up to die first. We also note that though a group, these folks are kinda divided into two duos (with an extra, who we will mention in a sec). So, we pick the guys on the right to die first, the guys the left as CC – bait. We also are now using a 4th symbol, the Crescent Moon. In Rats parlance, this means that the target selected is going to belong to our off-tank OR our secondary CC toon, whichever is available in the party. In our case, this will be the Hunter’s pet, which kinda counts as both, so we proceed as follows…

Our tank pulls the attention of the Warlock, then charges in to meet him. He also makes sure he captures the attention of the Red X Cultist as he goes by, with a taunt or a whack. Our Hunter unleashes his pet on the Crescent Moon, then fires a single shot to pull the Blue Square into a previously laid Freezing Trap. All is right with the world, until…

The Freezing Trap will certainly break before the party finishes up with everyone else here. As soon as it does, the party is left with two choices. Either the tank can collect the Blue Square, which is recommended if the Skull is down already. Or, the hunter’s pet can throw itself into the way of the Blue square, hauling the Moon along with it. At lower levels this almost certainly means that the pet is going to die, but the time bought here is probably enough for the party to be able to drop two targets, OR for the Hunter’s cooldown on his freezing trap to be over, meaning he can re-freeze the Square. Under no circumstances should the party be attacking the Square before the Crescent is down – the Crescent will already be damaged from dealing with the off-tank, and will die faster.

And, what about the VW, you ask??? Well, the VW can safely be left for last. They have health like Elephants and hit like kittens. They will be smacking on the tank the whole time combat is going on, and a taunt or two by the tank should keep them safely cemented there. If the Warlock has a Succubus or an Imp, that critter would count as another caster, and would be susceptible to the KTSF rule.

There you have it! Our Instance operational code in a (really over-stuffed) nutshell! Feel free to query, comment, or blast away!

- Hawk

Instance Jobs and You

While we pride ourselves on our professionalism and expertise in instances, we are starting to get an influx of new members in who have not spent tons of time in instances just yet. Since that is the case, we are hereby reproducing, for your reading pleasure, gentle reader, a previously published work on what we are expecting from instance jobs. So, without further ado, here is:

Instance Job Descriptions

(by Urfeck)

There has been a considerable amount of confusion recently pertaining to everyone’s individual jobs within the instances we’ve been running. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page as we tackle more difficult areas, here’s a listing of what we mean by certain positions within a 5-man party.

First, the 3 positions every party needs to have filled:

Tank – The primary focus of any party, a great tank can create success out of failure, and a bad tank creates failure wherever he/she goes. The tank’s job is NOT, as many assume, to damage creatures in combat. The tank’s job is make sure that creatures stay angry at the tank, thus preventing the critters from attacking anyone else in the party. The tank needs to have high armor, high hit points, and a constant awareness of where every enemy is at all times. Should an enemy leave, or “peel” away from the tank’s attention to go attack someone else in the party,  it is the tank’s job to go get that enemy and draw them back, using damage, taunts, or what have you. Keeping the enemy focus on the tank – known as “keeping aggro” – takes practice and coordination with the rest of the party.

Classes capable of generating and holding aggro are the Warrior, the Paladin, and the Druid in Bear/Dire Bear form.

Healer – The healer’s job, unsurprisingly, is to keep the tank and everyone else alive. However, there is a little more to the job than just that. The healer must keep a constant awareness of everyone’s health level – even pets within the party. But the healer must also know what a particular health bar means – consider two health bars, belonging to a Paladin and a Mage. The Paladin’s health bar represents, say, 2000 HP, with enough armor to provide 40% damage mitigation. The Mage’s represents, say, 500 HP with only 21% damage mitigation. Who is in more trouble – The Paladin at ¼ health, or the Mage at 75%?? You guessed it – the Mage. It is critical to know how much your heals affect everyone, so that you are not casting a heal that could heal someone for 40% of their life when they are only down 10%.

The other tricky parts of heal-bots lives are mana management and aggro management. Mana management is simple. You are bored there at the back of the party, waiting for something to do. So, you start firing off an offensive spell or three….next thing you know, a patrol has appeared behind your party from out of nowhere. Your frontliners jump in, but are all down about 50% health, against a new set of enemies…and you have used 75% of your mana. The next chapter in this sad little book is a post-wipe run back from the graveyard, with everyone bitterly complaining about what a lousy healer you are. Every healer has done this, and every healer has regretted it. If you want to help out offensively, use mana-conservative methods such as wands.

Aggro management is trickier. Generally, every point of damage you heal for is considered the same as a point of damage against your opponent. When the amount you’ve healed for is larger than the amount of threat developed by your tank, guess what? You are the new target. However, it is critically important that you keep healing, right? There are a couple of things you can do. First, be patient. At the beginning of each combat give your tank a good 5-10 seconds to gain the target’s full attention. If your tank is getting wrecked that early into a battle, your party has larger problems than aggro management. Secondly, do everything you can to not generate additional hatred by monsters. And yes, once again, that means hanging around in the back and not doing much until you are called upon to heal. No one ever said a healer’s life was all about glory in combat – just about getting everyone else home alive.

Classes capable of being primary healers are Priests, Caster Druids, and thoughtfully equipped Paladins and Shamans.

DPS – At last, the job that everyone really wants to do. Engaging the evil monsters in combat and reducing them to a pile of steaming mush. And here, at least, the rules are pretty simple – every single character in the game is capable of being a DPS (stands for Damage Per Second) character. Only a couple of rules apply.

First, target focus. Make sure everyone who is a damage dealer is shooting at or whacking the same critter. Don’t focus on your tank’s target – your tank will be switching targets frequently to keep everyone’s attention on the tank. Usually your party leader will set an order of precedence using the raid markers above your foes heads, indicating who should die first, then next, then next, and so on. The general rule, though, is kill healers first, then any other kind of caster, then regular melee types last. If you obey that order you can’t go far wrong.

Lastly, aggro management. The same issue applies to DPS and Healers – don’t draw your target’s attention away from your main tank. The usual way to prevent this is, again, to give your tank some solid time (5-10 seconds) to grab everyone’s attention. If, for some reason, you damage a creature so much as to pull it away from the tank – DON”T RUN AWAY. This is for two reasons. First, a healer will need to heal you soon, and can’t do that chasing you down the hallway. Secondly, always lead this runaway back to your tank, so that the tank can re-capture its attention. The instinct is, of course, to back up, but in the end this is counterproductive.

Any class can be a DPS class, but focus should be placed on equipment and spell lists to make sure you are putting out the highest amount of damage possible for your class/level. Though you don’t want to be pulling aggro off your tank, you don’t want to be bringing a knife to a gunfight either.

However, that is not the end of the story. Every party requires the components above. If you think about it, even a soloer has to account for all three jobs listed. But there are several other slots to be filled within the average dungeon, some really important, some only situationally important. Let’s take a look at a few of them:

Puller – With the exception of healer, there may not be a more poorly understood position than that of the puller within the average instance dungeon. To many parties, it is a given – the Warrior walks up front with his bow, fires off a round, and engages whoever comes running. Everyone else surrounds the warrior and pounds on the critter(s) until they fall down. Rinse. Repeat.

But a good puller is worth their weight in GP (considerable when you consider Draenai and Tauren pullers). A puller can single handedly prevent 90% of most wipes. The idea to remember is that the puller’s job is to bring foes BACK to the party, not to LEAD the party into the enemy. In short, the Puller should pick a target, wait for it to be pulled by itself or with a single companion (see CC or Off-Tank below), verify that the pull has gone correctly, THEN lead the target(s) back to where the party waits. If the pull goes wrong, the puller manfully waits where he started from, is mauled by the enemies, and dies. The enemies are never exposed to the rest of the party – who can then rez a single party member (the puller) instead of having to go through a desperate fight leading to a party wipe.

The most important concept for Pullers to remember is that they are pulling a critter in order to hand off to the Tank. A puller should take ONE shot, spell, etc, then lead the target back to the tank, who will then establish aggro, leaving the Puller to move back into the ranks of Ranged DPS. Don’t make the Tank’s job harder than it already is.

Pullers need to have ranged combat capability.  Hunters and Warriors make the best pullers, but most classes can do the job.

CC: Ah, Crowd Control. That which can take an invincible group of enemies and turn them into a one-target at a time vending machine. The idea behind crowd control is to disable, distract or otherwise tie up members of a group of foes so that the party can deal with them in a pre-selected order, instead of having to hose them all down at once. Careful use of CC is what seperates the pros from the amatuers in instances. A rogue’s Sap, a warlock’s Banish, most especially a mage’s Polymorph – these are the tools that can be used to pick and choose which foe will be killed first, second, etc.

A few things about CC. First, nothing pisses off your party faster than interfering with Crowd Control. Refered to as “breaking” CC, this is usually done by accidentally damaging an already disabled enemy. And it will bring the wrath of your party down upon you faster than a very fast thing. Once an enemy has been selected as a CC target, make DAMN sure that you are not going to attack that enemy, and most importantly that you will not catch them in the area of an area of effect attack – by far the most common way of breaking CC.

Off-tank: A specialized form of CC, the off-tank captures the attention of a specific enemy and ties them up till the rest of the party can join in the fun. This is usually done when there is no other good solution for tying up this enemy, or when the party wants to kill two foes in a row quickly. While any tank-capable class can handle this duty, it can also usually be handled by melee-specced Shamans and Warlock or Hunter pets.

Runner Duty: This can be a SUPER important job within a party – it is your job to keep a mortally wounded enemy from running and making its way to reinforcements. When a runner takes off, you must slow/stun/or otherwise mutilate your target and keep them from getting away. There are any number of stuns and slowing abilities available to many classes – learn the ones that apply to your class and be able to use them at an instant’s notice.

OK! Enough theory – how about an example? Stay tuned!!

- Hawkwind