Group/Raid Roles

PapaToad

Active Member
The class guides are an awesome idea? Would it be possible add what the class roles are in a group or raid, such as healers, Casters, tanks, DPS’er (rogues hunters, etc)

After reading a lot of the boards and being in raids, it seems there is so much to learn. Being 55 now, from 51 to 55 I have been invited into a lot of raids and groups and I am always learning new things from where to stand, to how to heal, to just standing in one place awaiting “orders”

It would be awesome to learn from the veterans, about healing, like from Itchus, Avesther and others on how they do things. I am sure there are young tanks out there who would like to know how best to make use of there skills, just like the hunters and rogues and paladins and others.

This would save us from embarrassment of wiping groups and knowing what we should be doing in any given situation. Just an Idea, I do not know how plausible this would be.

Maybe we could add it to the class guide. This would be such useful information

Icthus makes a good point on the Gearing up there pertaining to healers.

From my point of view after being in many a group and a few raids and listening to the chit chat in vent this weekend, that people hate stupid mistakes. And unless we n00bs know what is expected of us, mistakes happen.

Many of these mistakes could be avoided, if we knew what was expected and could go in with a better Idea of our role in the group.

Maybe this information is posted and I missed it. But it would be nice to find it easily.

Thanks
 
What would you all think of changing the "Class Guides" forum to a more general "Guides" forum? Class guides would still be included, but we could include other, non-class-specific articles as well.
 
I think its a great idea Papatoad. This last week for some of us has been very hectic and the time hasn't been there to start posting some pearls of wisdom.
 
I think we should keep the class guides as it but leave or add an area for roles in a group/raid or just post them in the class that someone has information about.

either way, I need to know how best to be the druid I am in any given situation. I mean I know what to do,, and maybe I just had a rough weekend. But any info is helpful and theres alot of us out there who are up and comming
 
I am no healing expert, but I do play a 29 shaman. I can main heal most 5 man groups easily (all I ever do when I pvp is heal, occasionally run flags depending on my mood). The easiest mistake and perhaps what many healers do is OVERHEAL. This means healing for more than what is neccessary. Also many healers tend to use only the high rank of their various heal spells... this is by far the biggest waste of mana and leads to overhealing. As a healer, you should have a healing bar set up so that it has top 4-5 ranks of each healing spells that you use frequently, and 1-2 highest of the ones that you don't. Tanks should be receiving full heals as opposed to heals over time (althought it doesn't hurt if the tank will need more), everyone else in the group/raid (unless off-tanking) should get heals over time when needed. Also judge how to spend your mana, try to keep everyone alive as well as avoid oom, and over healing. Being a good healer is hard job and that is why I will never play a healer to 60!
 
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Thanks thats good stuff to know. And stuff like that should be posted uner the Class list, some one should make a Healer Title there so us n00bs and go there and Look at it.


Over healing is rarely an issue with me as my (add ons) are designed specifically to use the lowest rank needed for a heal, as well when I nuke, I use the lowest rank need to kill the mob I am up against. Its all about mana conservation.

As far as a single group it’s a rare and nearly unique thing for me to ever have my group wipe unless someone does a bad pull or it’s a day I need an attitude adjustment.

Most of my concern is when I am in a 10 man or better and the “other’ primary healer is not communicating with me. In DAOC or early EQ it seemed that communication between healers was awesome, we would spilt the group and we could focus on our patients.

IN my last 10 man there was another druid who I think was upset because I was a “lowbie” and seemed to think it was not important to communicate who he was going to heal and who he wasn’t. but quick to send me tells about what he observed about my toon

This I feel is dangerous and puts our raid at risk, I am healing targets he’s already healed and vise versa. And then I feel there is a tension because I can not read his mind.

Same with taking n00bs like me level 51-54 in to a run and then getting stressed when the groups ones to a certain place. Because no one answers you. I follow suit and aggro everything. People tell you Np and that I should stealth and stay in one place.

After the fact.

If I can keep up a full group of tanks and rogues, warlocks and mages. It seems only natural with 2 or three of us, we could keep a raid alive with communication and knowledge of our roles.

At 55 I think I have experienced enough to make me an expert at what I do. Even in a raid, with clear commands I should not be failing my team(s) unless there is a bad pull or the correct orders were never given.

Now I tend to be a little obsessive about how well I know my char. I live with DaWife how is a purely hack and slash kinda of gal, I would have went with a priest but I could not stay alive long taking aggro off Dawife. Hence druid, and with the exception of really good priests and priestess, I hold my own with them so far. Their heals are better by far, but its all about playing your char to the best of its ability. I just respec’ed to complete my resto and a smidge in balance. ( I had 2 points out of place, I hate that)

But always , there’s someone who can show you something and none of us are ever to old or “Expert” to learn new things, if we would just listen.

So share away what you know under the class specific areas. Thanks
 
On Paladins:

Paladin group roles depend greatly on the instance and the group, as we are built to be offtanks and offhealers simultaneously, giving us a bit of a hard time fitting in. Tanking i noticed is usually more difficult in the higher-end dungeons because of lack of aggro generation, although speccing holy/protection is quite fine for tanking in 5 man instances. At times pallys can offtank in the bigger instances like ZG. From levels 1-50, paladins are perfectly what you want them to be; tanks/warriors that heal/bless. Tanking is relatively easy, and damage is decent.
But at 55-60, because of gear issues things change. In levels 1-50 everyone's gear is only mediocre, so everyone's damage is not incredibly high, allowing a paladin to keep aggro easier. But at 60, gear increases all other classes' damage exponentially while the paladins' stays about the same without epic gear, and this is where the paladin gets a new role:

Most of the time people will ask still ask you to stand in the back and heal, buff, and cleanse. And seriously, this is why many, many paladins are angry at Blizzard for basically lying to us in the class description. "Tanks overall...toe to toe with things" did not imply that we would become healbots endgame. Druids actually tank better than paladins. The difference is simply that paladins can tank and heal at the same time, while druids can do only one or the other, although better than the paladin in each individual aspect. In beta paladins used to have the combat rez ability, simply because it matched the lore as paladins are the healers and support in the frontlines. For some unknown reason, on release the ability was given to a druid who can heal better than a paladin but cannot really be the only healer because of the 30 minute timer on the combat rez!!

In endgame content, unless you have full tier 2 epics, you will basically spam cleanse and flash of light the entire instance. Maybe sometimes you get to autoattack a bit. You can check out my onyxia and molten core videos for an example of that (I'll link them in a minute)
This is not to say we're totally pigeonholed; we have our uses, like the shield-pull we use in ZG a lot where a paladin charges at the bosses and draws them to the rest of the group while protected in divine shield. But, after the tanks grab aggro, paladins usually become healers. Don't try to dps; you will phail miserably. Still, it is undoubted that we are the most durable healers/rezzers so we are often the ones that receive the warlock soulstone to prevent wipes. We also have the divine intervention skill, the only ability in the game to commit suicide (WHY are people saying this overpowers the paladin!? "Yes, our ability to commit suicide is totally overpowered. yeah.") for the sake of keeping another healer alive for 3 minutes under full protection.
Anyway, sometimes if the warriors drop a paladin is often required to offtank for a few seconds. It's been done against bosses as big as Onyxia, so it's definitely possible. Normally it's difficult to hold aggro, but usually the main problem is that the paladin is not geared well enough to last long enough, since just having high armor from plate isn't enough to tank big, big bosses.

Beserking and swining away is sadly, not something a paladin can do very well because of the proc system from seal of command, or simply the fact that seal of righteousness is rather weak. In fact, feral druids do it much better than a paladin can, and in bear form druids tank better because of the taunt ability. Additionally, because of the weak damage a tanking paladin MUST have a good dps group, otherwise the tank will die if the enemies don't drop fast enough before mana expires, and here's the problem: To tank a paladin needs a good dps group, but in a good dps group it's too easy for aggro to be lost off the paladin! My brother and I tried to 5-man stratholme with Goblit and a few others, with my brother tanking and myself healing. Let me tell you, it was really, really, really difficult; I had to start my holy light casting before my brother even engaged in combat. To hold aggro he had to spend all his mana simply casting judgements and consecration. We lasted a while, but when we got to the Scarlet Monastery part it really fell apart.

Hacking and slashing for a paladin only come in pvp, usually only solo pvp. If you try to do that in endgame instances or in battlegrounds with selfish warriors and rogues, you will likely either get flamed and booted or you will cause a wipe, and THEN get flamed and booted. Been there, done that, and I've had enough. If there's a warrior, the paladin is not going to tank. Dps is out of the question. What's left? Mana-efficient heals.
Normally, like the shaman, we're supposed to heal in pvp, and run the flag sometimes.

It really is rather easy, if not boring, to play a paladin in endgame content. I seriously just repeatedly press 1 button the entire 4 hours (we do have very mana-efficient heals, however, so in a sense we are pretty good at healing) and simply follow positioning orders through ventrillo, usually depending on the instance. While in non-endgame content like sunken temple, however, things are much more fun; throwing off consecration with righteous fury on to keep group aggro, holy shock for instant taunt, and seal of righteousness/judgement to hold aggro. (This requires 31 points in holy, though)

For this reason i don't like doing dungeons very much, and I hope to leave the battlegrounds as soon as possible and just go solo world pvp. I really enjoy playing my paladin, but I don't like getting flamed because of what others think my role is supposed to be.
 
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I think this is a good idea Papatoad. I'm very new to the game and I'm learning alot, usually the hard way. If there are any more tips for me for being a tank, I will gladly use them. Instances are hard to get used to and honestly the reason why I dont do them more often, ie: deadmines. I've been through WC on cenarius and did pretty good, but i could use some more pointers.
 
I would think with healing and in raids, that because raid groups are in sets of 5 members then a healer should just focus on his/her group, if you are in group 2 then that is your primary group to be healing, and the healer in group 1 it is their responsibility to heal theirs, and now that shouldn't stop there, if you can see or hear that they are about to yell out OOM then maybe you can then start to back them up in keeping their tank alive. What should happen also as a healer is to ask the raid leader to move different people around so each group can be more balanced. If there is more than one tank then have one in each group, some times a raid leader might not be setting up groups from a healers point of view so if you ask them to move one person or more around then I am sure they will have no problem with that.
Now I am not real sure how this will work but I would think this style would work better than trying to figure out who to heal and not and so that one person isn't getting double healing and the raid might run more smoothly.
 
Some nice posts, I'll add some thoughts from a raid group perspective...

95% of the time i'm in the MT group and usually if you're in this group it falls unto you to make sure your MT stays up... That does not mean that if you see someone at really low health and not getting heals to just stand there, if you're having easy time in the MT group then help out groups that might find it difficult. And heal over time (HoT) should be on the MT all the time (anadi pay more attn to what I do than just my bars :p). Its the job of the MT healers to do it, therefore if you're not in that group do not toss a HoT. I usually just overwrite it if someone else casts it.

If you're not in MT group, your primary goal is basically to keep your group up...watch your group first than the others. You also have to be aware about MT, and if he needs a heal be ready to do it especially in boss fights.

Another thing is cleansing...usually mages get caught up with dps'ing and not cleansing...gotta be aware about that.

At lvl 60 raid as a healer you have to get used to having a spreadsheet of groups/classes on your screen :)
 
yup....its hard to enjoy the battles with 40 people's life and mana bars cluttered all over your screen. Basically I dont really even see what happens in the fight; i just blasted see which bars are low and press a button and hope the bar goes back up. In fact, when it's time to reposition i actually hide my interface so i can actually even see where the heck i'm going.
 
I don't use the spreadsheet style of healing. I just turn on CTRA's emergency monitor, apply a few healing strategies and do just fine. I'm not the top healer in raw HP healed, but I often have the lowest amount overhealed. Crunching the numbers, I find myself the most efficient healer in MC night after night with very few exceptions.

When I am single target healing, like on offtanks on golemagg fights, my overheal rate hovers at 1%, while turning my mana bar into 55,000+ health for the off tank.

During trash mob fights, I have a bigger issue with overhealing and with not being as mana effiecent with my heals because of all the cross healing, other healers flash healing a target where only a renew is required or when prayer of healing is just the better option to heal your group. It is just something you have to deal with in a raid.
 
I need some one to show me CT assisst I have it but never use it , see how I am speced RESTO, Maybe one fo these days I could log in to vent and someone could give me a quick run down of how best to use it

*Cough*
ITChus
AVES
MIRI
*Cough*

I tend to be a better seer, than a reader

I am a quick study!
 
Ok well I guess I will take a stab at giving as comprehensive as possible a class guide for 20-40 man raids.

First some general tips:

If you are a ranged/casting class and you pull agro, if you cannot feign death / iceblock / fade off the agro immediately then you MUST run towards the meleers. This serves 2 purposes, 1) most raid mobs have a cleave or AoE and the bulk of the party is in the back with the casters. 2) The more time a tank spends chasing a mob the less time he is actually getting threat on it.

Healers, remember that your rogues are generally your softest target that is taking consistant damage, if you do not have the main or off tank in your group then your rogues should probably be considered as needing the most time critical heals.

Always repair before you raid. If you dont you will regret it

Be sure to stock up on your class specific supplies, arrows, flash powder, symbol of kings, sacred candles, etc

It is not a bad idea to have 2 full sets of gear on you, often times certain situations call for a different setup and if one piece breaks you can put something semi useful in its place.

Raids last a long time, but they last even longer when people leave halfway through and a replacement must be found. If you can only play for half an hour and another player of your class is available please yield your spot to them. If you know you are going to be leaving, let the raid leader know well in advance and remind him as that time gets closer so a replacement can be ready when its time for you to go.

There will be times, especially in molten core, where you will be killed instantly with nothing you could have done to prevent it. These things happen so try not to sweat them


Rogues - I will start out with my bread and butter class, the rogue. Rogues have for the most part a very easy job, do as much damage as possible without pulling agro. At the same time its the rogue's job whenever possible to take as little damage as they can, in most cases taking damage is unavoidable, but understand that you will be taking a lot of damage.

Rogues should always remember that vanish drops all your agro, so in long fights vanish can be an important strategic move.

Rogues also need to do what I call spot tanking. Sometimes a tank dies, this is about the worst thing that can happen because usually second on the agro list is a healer. If a mob is free its the rogues job to try and tank him. As a rogue you are pretty much the most expendable class in the raid, its better for you to die than to have a healer go down. I have seen MC mobs tanked for 15 seconds by rogues who pop evasion, it can be done and if it is done at key times it can save the lives of multiple people.


Hunters - Hunters have a fairly simple task as well. Hunters are there to provide a good chunk of consistant DPS without taking up much healing. As a hunter you should not be taking any damage. It is basically your job to dump out as much damage as you can, stay at max range and keep from taking agro. Hunters are a great asset because if you are short on healers you can put all the hunters in a group with a single healer and probably not lose 1 player the whole raid.

A few things hunters need to remember are to Feign death often and don't have your pet out, your pet is doing a limited amount of dps, probably isnt gonna be able to tank anything and is generally just a distraction.

Also 1 hunter is usually the lucky person who gets to be the puller. Pulling is easy, it just takes patience. If you get to pull, take a few seconds to watch the natural movements of the mobs and see when the best time to shoot is, and remember you can always feign if the pull goes wrong.


Mages - Mages have 3 main purposes in raids, one of them they tend to like a lot and the other 2 they tend to dislike a lot.

First is DPS. There are a lot of times in raids when you will have an oppertunity to aoe or dump out a lot of direct damage. Just remember to pace yourself as much as possible. You do not want to pull agro at all, if you do pull agro and you cannot ice block it is best for the overall health of the raid if you blink DIRECTLY INTO the mob you have pulled agro off of.

Second, cleansing. Its a dirty job, but someone has to do it. The mage is the most useful de curser that the raid has, usually druids have a full time job healing and they can't throw around decurse.

Third, Moving water fountain. Need I say more?


Warlocks - Warlocks are another intesting raid class. Firstly its important for the warlocks to establish a soul stone rotation. Second one warlock is usually relegated to curse of elements and one usually to curse of shadows. Generally speaking you do not want to be throwing a lot of DOTs because of the 16 debuff limit. Third, you are a general DPS class, yes warlocks can get pretty high up there on the damage list, but its dangerous because you cant drop agro.

As a note, you should probably always have your imp out, phase shifted and set to passive. Don't have him attack, he doesnt hardly do any damage. I know you may be demonology spec'd and you get some amazing buff if you sac whatever pet, but trust me when I tell you that the rest of your group will love you for the aditional 400+ health you provide them.

Also in some instances it will be your job to chain banish mobs so keep a heads up.

Warriors - Warriors are another fun class. Firstly each raid has those two special warriors, the main tank and the off tank. If you are either the MT or the OT you probably want to have out the fastest 1 hander you have and a shield. +defense gear and high health are important. As a note 425 defense is the special number where a lvl 63 mob will no longer crit you, if you can get there you will be in much better shape.

Non tank warriors, your job is twofold, do as much DPS as possible while trying to reduce the damage you take whenever possible. But more importantly you have to be the alert fighters in the group. If the MT or OT dies it is your job to try and take and hold agro on the mob. Communication is also important, if you have to pickup agro and you successfully get a taunt off, call out on vent that you have the mob so healers can target you and keep you up until the raid can settle back into dpsing it down


Paladins - I am of the opinion that paladins are heavily underrated in raids. Firstly as a paladin you should have all the greater blessings. Second you should have at least 100 symbols on you, keep in mind that if no one dies at all, you will use 80 candles in just 2.5 hours of raiding.

Paladins should set up a blessing rotation. There should be 1 blessing on each person for every 1 paladin in the group.

Choose your auras depending on the situation, certain fights you may use fire resist auro, but generally you will probably be using either devotion or concentration.

But mostly, in a raid of this size, you are a healer. A lot of people think that the pally heals arent very good but thats a bunch of crap. Paladins generally want to throw the small heals to try and keep players topped off so that if something goes wrong they have a better chance of surviving. If you are healing the main tank generally you can just go ahead and spam the heck out of flash of light. This will give the tank a consistant positive health flow, making it a lot easier for the priest or druid to cover the big hits.

Also in some fights you will be cleansing.



Priests - Your job is healing. Generally speaking you want to use the quicker heals like flash heal and renew. Renews are good for when no one in your group is taking a siginificant amount of damage. Generally speaking though you want to try and keep everyone in your group at max health. If you are healing the main tank you can sometimes get away with greater heals, but be sure that you are paying attention to how fast his health is going down.

Party heal is only a viable heal in very specific fights

Priests in some cases may also need to dispell.


Druids - This is probably the class im weakest on. Generally speaking you are a full time healer. You want to use whatever the quicker druid heal is and use the Heal over time spell.

In some fights you will be required to decurse but remember you are primarily a healer.

Tranquility is not a group heal, I don't care what you say, don't use it in combat
 
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