November 30, 2008
How To Be A Better Team Player In Instances (Warcraft)
There are too many players in wow that just don't know how to group and or dont know their role in instances. And too many of them know the phrase "l2p stfu noob" this is just very frustrating. This strat will hopefully open your eyes to what good groups do in instances how guilds tear thru seemingly impossible instances. I will cover just 5 man groups because one I like low manning instnaces and my idol is Fratley of Mannoroth, Mr. Low man himself (see his vid where he 5manned AQ40?) and second it will just be too much typing. This will also cover instances from ST onward but the mechanics are the same in every instances at any level.
Perfect Group: A tank and he must be a warrior (palys on the alliance can also), a healer and a hybrid or two hybrids. crowd control. and DPS.
notice I didnt tell you what classes to pick aside tank because it doesnt matter its the make up not the class. You cant do an instance without a tank, i.e. warrior/paly (98% of the time I know some of you and myself have used other classes, my favorite is a mage tank). No heals= your dead. No DPS=healer OOM and your dead.
Now specifically I will go into every class minus a paly because I have not played one at end game to knwo what exactly they do.
Warrior: Tank. 1h and a shield is a must. 5 in tactical mastery is a must (if you plan on end game content and not pvp you need 5 there). You will pull 99% of the time. Not only that you are the leader. You are the first one into battle and the last one out. You have to save everyones butt from mobs and tank all of them. Key skills: sunder armor, stack 5 up immediately and keep using it if possible. hamstring if you can. taunt and mocking blow are important. shield bash as well on casters. You should be able to tank at least 3 mobs with ease, yes 3 mobs. Your pulls are crucial to minimal mobs being attracted. Your pulls should be at max range (that you can get) and so the pulled mob attracts the minimal amount of adds with him. Don't ever worry about your health until you are around 15%-20% then either pop a potion or your last stand (if you have it). Trust your healer(s) and worry about keeping the aggro.
Rogue: Before I tell you your job…you better have your lockpicking maxed out. Nothing worse than having a rogue in a group and he cant pick the locked chest. Your main job is DPS. Use your feint whenever it refreshes. A caster pulls aggro off the tank gouge, do whatever you can for him to get on you to then give the tank time to turn and get him. You should NEVER have aggro on you.
Druid: Off healing and off dps. Your some of your damage spell sparingly. Use your rejuvanation on anyone taking damage, don't bother going into feral form. If aggro is on you go dire bear and off tank it until the MT gets it off you. Don't use abilities to raise your threat even higher. Your Innervate and combat rez are to be used in two situations. 1. All hell broke loose and 2-3 sets of adds come and you lose your priest or MT then rez them and get heals on tank ASAP, dont on the priest to let him drink. Or your priest is OOM and you still need to deal with 3+ mobs at full health with nasty adds. 2. On final boss For the most part you shouldnt have to. They are "oh ****" abilities.
Mage: Crowd control. dont bother using any damage spells until at earliest 80% of the mobs health. Just wand once the tank has taken 5%-10% of the mobs health to ensure your first damage you do does not pull the aggro of the tank. Conserve your mana until earliest 60% Health of the mob then NUKE. Mana dump and knock the mobs out.
Warlock: Use your DOTS and dont start shadow bolting until 60%. Your DOTs rarely pull aggro because the threat you gain is like renew of a priest…over time. Crowd control as needed. Lifetap to gain mana your healers will heal you.
Shaman: If I see one more cowboy shaman thinking he can DPS in an instnace, I think I just might go to alliance and deal with the 12 year old night elf noobs. Your job, support heal as needed. Always heal yourself. If a priest drops a shield on you its your queue to heal yourself. Drop totems that are useful. Mana totem is a MUST. Why are our casters going OOM when you can regen it for them. Heal totems are nice too. Get rid of debuffs with your totem and spells. And Offtank for the casters especially your main healer. Your main healer pulls aggro you are on it until the tank gets it off.
Hunters: Dps once the mob is at 85% health. If I ever see you melee…..I think I might just try to find you in RL and shoot you. On mana mobs yours your sting that drains mana. Main thing just keep a sting up and keep your autoshoot with occasional arcane shot and aimed shot(if you have it) up. Crowd control with your traps. Also use your scatter shot (if you have it) on a mob that a cloth wearer pulled to save his ass. And if you ever bitch about healing on yourself……Roll a warrior. Have you ever heard of feign death? Use it its your friend.
Priest: This is writing with the shadow priest in mind as well. Keep renews up on anyone taking damage at all times. Occasional flash heal here and there. If you can time it correctly use your greater heal on your MT if he wont die. Also make sure you ask what stance your MT is going in. If its defensive DO NOT preshield. Any other stance do so. Try to stay outside the 5sec rule to regen mana. If everyone is doing their job right you wont ever go OOM. OOM on a priest means people are not doing their job. Shadow priest…. go shadow, screw what they say. If they dont want you let them kick you out, if they dont they know they need you. DPS with vampiric up, and it will heal very well. People start taking hard hits, shield them. If your MT in low around 35%-40% health get out of shadow form and flash heal him a couple times then go back to mind flaying. Its easier with a hybrid or another priest as well. Then you will not have to get out of shadow form.
If you are geared properly and have the right stats you can 5 man almost anything. You have to know the instance. If you plan on 5 manning an instance like UD Strat preepics what do you need? I did it the other day. It was a level 60 warrior as tank. a level 60 druid (jack of all trades and master of none). a level 60 discipline/holy priest. myself a level 59 shadow priest and a level 60 mage. We had 3 forms of crowd control and 3 forms of healing. Not only that we had great DPS. We didnt wipe but we did have a few deaths because we were going too slow and the pats respawned. Once we picked up the speed we shredded thru everything.
Now for that example we knew we could 5 man it because on adds we had two priests to shackle and a mage to sheep. a tank to take 3 mobs. and a druid that was healing and semi dps and if needed could off tank. our mage could of course aoe and we had two forms of couterspell/silence on caster mobs. and 3 guys in the group that could slow down mobs speed. We focused on one mob at a time killed it and went on the next.
Tahts a big key. The initial pull by the tank might bringa total of 3 mobs. If you can CC one your are dealing with 2 now. What happens on the pull is when they are coming after the tank, whoever CC does it. Now 2 are after your tank. You let him build aggro. HIs job is to start to sunder the first mob at least 3 times then move to the next and apply 5 sunders thats where you wait until he gets the mob to the X amount of health before you "assist". Learn to target your tank and press "F" to assist him. that feature targets the mob the tank or whomever you clicked on has targeted. Occasionally thru the first mob the tank should switch over to the other mob just to apply another sunder or two quickly just to make sure he maintains that mobs aggro.
That should be enough info for you guys. If you have anymore questions feel free to respond. Thank you for your time.
Filed under wowstrategy by admin
