By Boltress, level 53 Priest

If you play a Priest, (I hope) that you picked it because you like to group up for instances. It's what they're made for. Human nature is a constant, and most people prefer to play tanks or damage-dealing classes, because they're more "fun." Now, some players pick Warriors thinking that they'll be the "ultimate melee class," and find out later that Rogues actually do more damage. Oh, well. But rarely will you see someone new to the game select a Priest because they wanted to "own with spell damage."

Priest aficiados know that the Priest, with shadow talents, is quite the nuker. But the term "Priest" invokes ideas of a class that cannot solo, and is only around to heal. This is reinforced from years of other MMORPGs like Everquest where a "Priest" class was mostly a healbot. So word's just now starting to sink in with the masses that Priests can solo just fine and nuke targets, to boot. Hence the sudden recent surge in Priest populations on some servers.

Still, when the time comes to group up for instances, it's time to play the role your class was made for. Some players have troubles with this - they want to do all the cool things they do when they play solo, and refuse to reduce their bag of tricks for the good of the group. Hence the shadow priests that get uptight when they're asked to "just heal" in instances, insist that they can nuke as well, and then run out of mana when their healing services are required, leading to a wipe. We know that Warriors rock with Berserker stance, but it's not the best use of the class' abilities when grouping. Rogues and Mages can annihilate, but they have to learn to hold back or they'll get aggro, draining the mana of the healers fast...etc. So, if you play a Priest, I hope you enjoy healing and get a kick out of being the "mother" of the party. Your job is to keep everyone alive, even when they screw up. Sometimes the screwup is too big to save, but the most fun a Priest can have is rescuing a group from what seems like a certain wipe through quick decision making and just-in-time heals.

For those who have never played a healer class (Shaman, Druid, Priest - Paladins are okay, but not as a primary healer), understand that the pressure put on a healer in an instance group is immense. It is very true that the two most critical positions are the primary tank and primary healer. Why's this? Because if one of them goes down, a wipe will usually occur within 20-30 seconds. Without a solid tank, the squishy players (cloth wearers) go down hard, and without a healer, death arrives quickly. A bad player in either position equals a doomed party. The healer is under the additional pressure that if they make a mistake, someone dies. Liken it to a goaltender in hockey - sure, the defenseman might make a horrendous mistake letting a forward get past him, but if the goaltender then blows the save, that's all anyone's going to remember. The pressure of being responsible for the survival of your party and having to deal with others who have no clue how to protect a healer tends to end the career of many potential Priest players. They give up in disgust after playing with bad groups.

What do Priests look for in parties? A good tank player more than anything. Someone who understands that the role of the tank is not about doing damage, but holding aggro and protecting their teammates, accepting that if anyone dies, they'll probably be the first to go. Ironically, a tank who is dedicated to being the "first to die" will never do so, because they make the job of the Priest so easy that the healer will have no difficulty keeping the tank alive. When tanks die is usually when Things Go Wrong™ and damage winds up getting spread out amongst too many party members, forcing the healer to use up their mana very quickly keeping everyone off the floor.

What else do Priests look for in parties? Well, along with a fantastic tank player, knowledgeable party members who understand that protecting the healer is key. That Hunter who sends their pet to growl a mob off of you, or a Mage willing to "take one for the team" by drawing aggro off of you with a nuke. This relates to what I wrote earlier - that the tank and the healer are the non-expendables. But perhaps even more important is aggro awareness. The most difficult parties to handle are ones in which aggro gets distributed. Every player decides that they're going to handle their own mobs, spreading the damage out and forcing the healer to have to zing off heals for 4 other players - this happened to me recently in a Sunken Temple run. Two Warriors (who had no idea what Defensive Stance was for taunting), a Rogue and a Hunter. On every fight, every one of them would get aggro in some way. With the Hunter and Rogue getting hurt too quickly, I'd be forced to heal them - and draw aggro in the process, because we'd be facing packs of monsters too many in number for all to be handled. Had quite a few wipes in there, and I knew I had no chance of explaining what they were doing wrong. They couldn't understand.

Another example of a bad group: I was in Zul'Farrak with a pickup group (of course) where the Warrior "tanked." I use the term loosely, since countless Warriors assume that they do enough damage in Battle or Berserker stance to hold aggro, and they don't. Anyway, this Warrior insisted that the only viable strategy to take down a boss was to zerg in there and have everyone pound solely on the boss to kill it quickly. There's a catch, of course, in that the moment you face the boss it summons about 10 basilisks to help out, and continues to spawn more as the fight continues. Patiently, I explained before the fight that this won't work.

Me: "This won't fly - the moment I heal *anyone* even one hit point, every add is going to turn and romp on me."
Warrior: "No I protect u"
Me: "This isn't going to work!"
(Warrior attacks)

Here was the fight:
1) Party attacks boss
2) Basilisks start ripping into the Warrior, Mage, and Hunter of the party, because they spawn in various locations
3) I'm forced to heal the Mage
4) 10+ Basilisks start to rip me to shreds
5) I cast Fade, basilisks head back to other party members and tear them apart
6) I heal Warrior
7) New basilisk spawns start wailing on my squishy body
8) Fade wears off
9) Boltress dies in a glorious swarm of 15 or so basilisks, while Warrior shouts "HEAL HEAL" as he's dying
10) Wipe

Here's the kicker. We did that *twice* because the other party members insisted after the first horrendous attempt that it would work, and that I just "didn't know how to heal right." I left the party after the second wipe so they could find another healer to abuse.

Then again, I've been in some great pickup groups. I did a Sunken Temple run with four members of the guild Raiders Haven, and they all knew their roles in the party very well. No wipes, no difficulties, and none of us were over level 53 (we weren't overpowered). It was a bit close on the final boss fight until their Druid cast Innervate on me to give me a huge mana boost. That was the only time we were threatened. The Warrior tank used Defensive stance (gasp!), the Mage and Warlock rocked with AoE damage when needed, and the Druid used Bear and Cat form when the situation warranted. But what made the instance such a good experience was that the Warrior was just as psychotic about holding aggro as I was about keeping everyone alive, with constant target switching, taunting, and group attacks (Cleave, shouts) to keep the monsters' attention. With 90% of the fights, the only time I'd need to heal someone else (other than the tank) in the party was when I would need to shield and heal the AoE attackers.

Other healer pet peeves:

1) Others in the party who heal. If you're in a 5-man instance, and you're a Priest especially, it can be particularly irritating when another player (Druid, Paladin) starts whipping out heals. If you're a character specifically designed to do one thing really well - heal - as I am with a Disc/Holy Priest, I don't want to see someone else doing my job. It's not an ego thing, it's an efficiency thing. When players get hurt, I'm going to heal them. However, if another player is healing them too, one of us is going to waste a gob of mana on the double-heal. Add to that the fact that "overhealing" - when you heal someone to completely full and then some - generates a lot of threat. The end result is that the Priest will get aggro more often, waste mana healing someone who was healed a moment earlier, and watch as another player used up their mana that would have been better used for offense. Kill things faster instead; I've got the healing down, thank you very much. You'll be better played using your mana offensively, because my contribution to offense is usually just my wand damage. The caveat to this is when the healer runs out of mana and requests help in the healing department, and all healers learn quickly that announcing they are /oom is crucial, so that the other players know that they're in a bind. But mana efficiency is something all Priest players devote themselves to, and good players will rarely run out (provided they're in a group with some modicum of gaming expertise and don't force the Priest to waste heals like mad).

2) Players who insist you heal them when they have only 10% damage. The most mana-efficient way for Priests to heal is in large chunks. Also, at the start of the fight, a Priest wants to wait as long as possible before starting to heal, because they want to avoid drawing aggro. At level 53, my Greater Heal can heal a whopping 2300 hit points per cast. That means that, if you're a tank, you won't see that loving until you have at least 2500 hit points in damage (because I want to avoid overhealing). Tanks that get nervous when they're at 50% health amuse me - relax, the heal's coming. You won't die unless your healer runs out of mana. I notice that the higher in level I get, the less I see the tank with the "heal me" shout macro when they get low on health. They learn that annoys the crap out of healer classes and turn it off. Trust your healer - it's their job to keep you alive just as much as it is yours to hold aggro, because if you die, they're going to die. I forget who said that if you're the primary tank, the one thing you never really need to pay attention to is your own health. Everyone else's health, sure, because you need to draw aggro off them if they're getting hurt - but you have to trust your healer to do their job.

So if you've never played a healer class, I hope reading this gives you some perspective on what pleases a healer. I've played both sides of the coin (healer and tank), so I know how difficult holding aggro is and there's nothing I respect more than a good tank player. Nothing else has a larger impact on the Priest than the ability of the tank to hold aggro.

Comments? Thoughts from another class on group play? Maybe this can be a "gripe" thread about roles in parties.

-Bolty

I did a few pick-up WC and ragefire runs with my new troll priest this weekend. It was a blast despite being everyone being pretty new to the whole business. I got my Deep Fathom Ring, and advanced my personal quest to teach everybody about the instance event in WC.

My question is: Is there a standard (and fast) way to express the concept that "Your priest is being attacked by an elite four levels above his and will die if somebody doesn't pull aggro of him right now"? My usual cry of "help" on the party chat tended to have the result of a shaman or druid quickly throwing a lesser healing wave on me, then going back to their business till my health fell again. The heal was not at all unwelcome but didn't actually solve the problem; the only reason I wasn't healing myself was because I was attempting to "play dead" and minimize my threat level.

These weren't clueless parties. They were aware of the need to keep things off their underlevel priest, and it only happened a few times. The only way I could deal with it was by dropping out of the role of party healer and wasting all my mana keeping myself alive, until somebody figured out what was going on. That happened in the graveyard more often than it should have.

It seems like the kind of thing that happens all the time, and that WoW culture would have come up with something to say in that situation by now... any suggestions?

-- frink

Set up a macro saying "/e is getting mauled by %t. Get it off!"?

Sorry. I'm a bit spoiled with my healer and I can just yell at GG sitting in the same room as me to get the critter off so I don't have to worry about it really. Wish I could help you more.

My one comment would be that I think a secondary healer could work, if you agree in advance who will heal who. Maybe the secondary healer can heal an off-tank or the party's pets and you'll heal the rest. Maybe their charge will be to heal you, if you ever get aggro and are getting beat on, so you don't have to generate more by healing yourself.

If I am not the main tank then I see my responsibility is to protect the squishy folks and especially the healer. If the healer has taken damage I heal them and attempt to take aggro off the healer. I also will tell the healer that I will heal the squishies and remove magic/poison effects so that the main healer can conserve their mana for the maintank. I have to be careful with my mana, however, because if things go wrong™ with the main tank I have to be ready to step into his role.

If Blizzard would fix the threat level of Paladin heals to what it was like at Beta end it flash heals would be the ideal taunt to work in conjunction with Seal of Fury.

This is something that still has me kind of wondering if it is true or not. I've read it in several places, but then I've also read:

from http://www.theamazonbasin.com/wow/forums/i...?showtopic=3871

I know enough to admit that I don't know enough about the topic and so I find that I'm generally in the dark as to if overheals are actually really bad for aggro or not. Of course they are horrible for mana efficiency, but neglecting that; I find I'm confused about the whole deal.

They were clueless. A tank who lets his lifeline get pounded upon is not being a tank. A Shaman who doesn't steal aggro with rockbiter from the priest isn't being effective.

As a tank I appreciate a macro that says "On me" from the priest to know when an add has taken an interest in him/her. Otherwise I play as main tank the way most folks on the PvP server do. By constantly scrolling around with the mouse to check out my party and surroundings.

But take heart, WC and RFC are early instances. Folks at that level are still learning their way around a class. If you find yourself getting hit a lot in fights talk to the tanks about it. Let them know that your job is to provide for their welfare, theirs is to provide for yours. Remind them that if you take a dirt nap so do they which is counterproductive to completing the quest.

Earthshock first, then swing with Rockbiter on if the shock didn't pull aggro. You're more likely to miss with your melee weapon than the critter is to resist your earthshock (except for the druids in WC) and earthshock is just quicker if you happen to be wielding a slower weapon.

I come from the opposite end of the spectrum. I play a warrior (after a year of playing a healbot, sorry, White Mage in Final Fantasy 11) and it's interesting to see how it is for the other half of the party's defensive line. Your logic is solid, and I just have a few questions/additions.

Power Word: Shield. I love this skill, and it's great that Priests can spam it on a warrior in its improved form. That doesn't mean they should. Warriors gain a small amount of rage from being hit, and while it's not a lot (especially right now, with Parries and Blocks bugged so that they give the warrior no rage, thus making Deflection and Shield Specialization actually hurt you in a small way), it adds up when there's >1 monster on the warrior. So, save spamming PW:S for that crazy mage that feels like nuking the night away.

I'm curious about how the warriors you group with keep agro on multiple targets. Do they use AoEs such as Demoralizing Shout and (if they took talents for it) Piercing Howl? I know that's my current method, but it doesn't seem to work as well as I'd like, especially if the party seems hell bent on not focusing on one target. Howl also has the benefit of locking down runners, and therefore I try to reapply it within its 6 second duration. Still, I'm not holding hate as well as I'd like. Do you have any advice?

The other thing I want to ask is your thoughts on backup tanks and backup healers. I know you've given bits of your opinion in regards to them thus far (mainly, that backup tanks existing to save the priest is a useful role, and that a secondary healer can screw things up with overhealing), but I'm curious what you think of secondary tanks as regards to them being more useful for holding agro on a large number of targets, or less useful because they require you to alternate heals between two targets. I'm also curious what you feel about a backup healer, be it a druid, a shaman, or even another priest (likely shadow) for when things go wrong and more healing than you can provide is required.

That about sums up all I can ask/provide. I'm only 33 at this point, so while I've seem a good amount of the game's instances (horde side up to Razor Fen Kraul and Gnomereagan), I haven't seen them all, and I'm curious, as a shield using defense focused warrior, where to go from here. I may not need to worry about, say, finding healers (I'm good friends in real life with two even leveled Shamans and a Priest), but I do want to know how to care for them.

I think the game would be helped GREATLY by a quest that demonstrates how aggro/threat works. Something of an escort quest that has increasing numbers of elite enemies and a fairly fragile AoE mage or healer to escort.

Many people would probably just complete it overlevel or ignore it, but it should be there, have a good reward and be available at every major city in some form or another.

Too many times my priest(s) have been teamed with the "melee damage" warrior who focuses on only one target. Most recently one who didn't pay attention to my mana bar and kept charging to pull (causing at least 2-3 extra adds on top of what we should have had) He, of course caused a wipe because he started a battle when I literally had zero mana.

I used to think the healer was the most important party member, but after having played priests and warriors in several instances, I'm going to have to change that to the tank is the single most important member of the party. The healer's role is fairly well defined and self evident, while the tank's role is apparently not as easy to pick up. I've partied with more good priests as a warrior than good tanks as a priest.

Add to the complication that in 2 out of 3 character trips to RFC, someone in my party has called in someone 40+ from their guild to help out, and I'm beginning to understand why people in higher level instances have little clue how to play their class in a group.

The ideal way to test this would involve a paladin and any healing class.

The paladin goes into battle with the wonderful bubble of immunity up and full health The priest would heal the paladin and see if that pulled hate. If this pulls hate, then overhealing generates at least some agro. If nothing happens, overhealing is a myth.

What this won't prove is the amount of hate overhealing generates. Whether or not it's truly the great amount of hate our priests think cannot be proven without further testing.

Anyone care to try this out? I play a horde warrior, so there isn't much I can do to test this.

May want to peruse this thread about defensive stance. It's got some interesting little things about tricks of the trade for warriors. I know Gnollguy's Gnolack can hold aggro really well, even multiple critters (if the rest of the group waits a short while before charging in). I still only have baby warriors around so I can't really answer much about it. I have already seen sunder armor do great things though for aggro management, but things can get complicated if you have two warriors in the group, even when one is designated as main tank beforehand. If you do have two warriors in the group, I think only the main tank should be doing the AoE aggro generators. I know it's thrown off Gnolack for the second warrior to throw out dem shout or another AoE "taunt" at the same time he is. It seems like then neither one of the warriors has things stuck really well to him/her and then it's easier for some squishy to accidentally pull aggro. Let the main tank hold aggro on most of the critters. The off-tanks/second warrior should only really work to get aggro if more than one thing is loose among the squishies.

This is mainly coming from watching Gnolack work and hearing GG's comments and seeing just how much more healing I have to throw out so I may be slightly off, but things work best for the groups where the second warrior just does more basic attacks rather than all the AoE type skills he uses when soloing - the MOBs are less likely to get to the squishies (yeah, I know that seems a little backwards), the healer only really has to heal one target, and the second warrior can just pick a critter to attack and the rest of the group knows (if they don't know, be sure to tell them after the first fight) to /assist that second warrior rather than the main tank so damage doesn't get spread out all over the place and the group of critters ends up dying quicker with the player group being in less danger through it all.

Edit: Changed a little wording.

No, that would be bad. A Paladin should not have such a short timer AoE taunt. That is what a heal is, an AoE taunt. A paladin should not have any better aggro tool than a warrior. I do not want to see a paladin hold aggro by healing himself under a druids innervate while everyone else freely pummels everything else. I didn't get to really see the paladin heals in beta but I heard about them. Healing the priest to save his life and take aggro at the same time is just out whack.

I'll try this next time our group is on together. I'm surprised to find out that priests hate it when someone else heals. I can't help but think that it is extremely wasteful to not allow a secondary healer to help. It just needs to be communicated correctly in some way.

As far as wasting mana due to overhealing, I suggest simple healing macros.

I play a paladin with a druid as our primary healer and a warrior as primary tank. Frankly as a paladin my mana is not nearly as valuable as the druids. I can only increase my DPS somewhat by burning mana--it seems a waste to not be able to help out by healing now and then. Both of us always use heal macros that state who we are healing, and we both know to watch for those. I think my heals are quite useful particularly so our druid can focus mainly on our warrior.

I am wondering about our party tactics. They seem to be against what everyone suggests, but we are highly successful (enough so that I no longer do pickup groups for instances as they frustrate me). We pull with warlock, distribute aggro (we have warrior, paladin, and voidwalker), and use a secondary healer occasionally.

Yet as a full party we have not wiped since our first try at the Deadmines (none of us really knew how to really play at that point) at levels 19-21. Our most recent "new" instance excursion was doing the Scarlet monastery cathedral, at 39-40 (druid at 42). We had a little fun with Whitemane/Mograine because we were too slow clearing everything and we had several respawns join in just before Whitemane resurrected Mograine, but only lost the mage.

Are these tactics going to run out of gas as we get to higher level instances? If so, what is going to hurt us, and what should we change?

Even if your group doesn't focus fire there are some things you can do. I always try to either pull with charge or if someone else is pulling then charge them just before they get to the group. Then I hit them with Demo Shout, Piercing Howl, maybe Thunder Clap, or even a quick Whirlwind with my big weapon. Then I ususally switch to defensive and try to get a whack or two and maybe a sunder on all the active targets, then switch to the main target (or assist the squishiest of the non focus firing groupmates), build a little rage, taunt and begin the Shield Block/Revenge/Sunder spamming with Mortal Strike for flavor if Thrash and Windfury start doing their thing. But tell your teammates to focus fire, they will usually listen.

Although the priest is a "passive" character in an instance, I find it a demanding intense class to play. One has to be constantly aware of everything that is going on and keep constant track of everyone and their pet.

Anyway, I have another different gripe about playing a priest. Out of courtesy, I will usually pass on leather, mail, swords, etc. But players playing other classes do not extend the same courtesy. I was once in a 5 person party that included an orc hunter. A wand dropped. The hunter won the roll. I asked him nicely for it. He refused, but then offered to sell it to me later. After a partial wipe we all took a break outside the instance to buy and sell. I asked to see the wand and he told me he had already sold it to a vendor. I reallly didn't feel like healing that guy anymore in combat and was delighted when he left the group.

This also is a problem that turns up with the need before greed loot setting. I find that it helps caster characters very little. This is because all it really does is restrict people to rolling on items that they can theoretically use. Since every character can use cloth items, they all can roll on them even if the caster in the group is the only one who actually has a use for the item. Wands are a little fairer in that not all classes can use them, but overall I feel that casters have the toughest time lotting just because more of their items are usable by all classes.

As it stands now a Paladin has three means of holding (haha) aggro. Seal of Fury, consecration and dps. Seal of fury works fairly well as long as I get the first hit in and stay on the upside of the Aggro mound. If a mage or priest overpulls aggro it is very, very difficult for me to get it back. Consecration is a AoE DoT that works fairly well, again, so long as no one overpulls aggro. It also has the effect of breaking sheep, sap, and mez. Granted this isn't as much of an issue if you fight the main mob out of range of the CC'd mobs. DPS on a paladin is a joke so unless I'm partied with lowbies, I won't pull aggro that way. So if you have a paladin as main tank, and things go wrong™, there is very little I can do but go OOM healing and smacking things with Seal of Fury and finally as a last resort hit divine intervention.

Now some would say that this is working as intended™ but I believe it isn't. Blizzard has stated that in their class vision for the paladin that they wanted a group who had a paladin as MT to not feel gimped. This is certainly not the case as it stands in the game now.

Lets look at the other hybrid class in the game, the Druid. The druid in bear form has a taunt ability but not as many skills for holding aggro as a warrior. The difference is that druid heals do cause aggro, especially if done on the person that has drawn aggro off the druid tank. However, I can go /OOM healing folk when things go bad without drawing aggro off anything. You saw this first hand in the fight before the boss of Gnomeregan. I fully healed Aleri twice and healed you for half life once without drawing any more mobs that what were already pounding on me. This would seem out of whack to me in what Blizzard intends for the the heal to threat ratio.

Unfortunately, damage is the way to hold aggro right now. Defensive Stance sacrifices damage output, and that means you're MUCH more reliant on skills to contain aggro, rather than sheer damage output.

Obviously, this is fine if your party wants to wait thirty seconds or so for you to get a Sunder or two on every mob in the pull, but that just takes too long.

My party frequently has two mages. A pull works like this: I use Charge, and use the rage generated for a quick Whirlwind, then a Dem-snare combo. The mages charge in and spam IAE and/or Blizzard interspersed with Frost Novas and Blinks. The mobs die, the Priest has about 80% MP left, the Mages have about 35% MP left. I start a new pull, and the Shaman and I proceed to kill the mobs while the mages drink. The mages get up after they're done drinking, nuke whatever's left, and rinse and repeat.

I honestly think that using a heater and beater isn't productive. Some swear by it, but it is MUCH easier to hold aggro with a standard 2H setup. The way my group clears the instances might not be the "correct" way, but it's DAMN sure faster than the "correct" way.

If it takes you 30 seconds to sunder everything in the pull, your party has pulled incorrectly, linked mobs or no and there are other ways for your main tank to hold aggro than simply sundering everything. A tank who is solely relying on sunder to keep and hold aggro simply isn't going to be a good one. You can hold aggro and hold it well when you are in defensive stance if you have the mindset for it. There are plenty of tools available; you just have to know what ones to use and when. I'm not saying you can't hold aggro with two-handers (because you can), but you can also hold aggro with a one-hander and shield too. It depends upon how well the different stances/weapons fit your playstyle. If something is completely against your playstyle, then it's not going to work as well for you, but in groups you do typically have to adjust your playstyle at least slightly for most classes.

Edit: Typo in the formatting.

Edit2: Though of something I forgot to say.



Personally, it just bugs me to have a group take off when I'm drinking. As long as you guys are usually grouped though and the mages don't have an issue with it, do what works for you. Different groups means different chemistry which means different tactics used. Do you use the same tactics when you don't have high DPS monkeys in your group? Does it work just as efficiently (I know you're big on efficiency) without the DPS monkeys as it does with the DPS monkeys?

I agree with almost everything Bolty has to say about healers in groups. But I do have a bit of an issue with not wanting other classes to heal.

I play a Druid, I'm level capped, and I've been there a while now. Most Druids at this point are Restoration specced, because they are usually called on to heal. My problem is that many parties will not let the Druid play as a Druid. The tanks don't want you playing off-tank, even though in many cases I have more hit points and armor than the pally they might be using in the role, and the Priests don't want you to heal since that's a 'waste of mana'. This leaves me standing at the back of the group, doing my measly 45-60 caster DPS and wondering how to explain things to people.

If there is a Priest and a Druid in the party, they should almost always split the healing duties. I often pair with a holy specced Priest, and when I'm along he's free to use mind control to great advantage, since he doesn't have to worry about the healing. He'll let me use the bear form when it's needed, and move himself into a healing role. This makes a great combo, one that along with a Mage, a Rogue and a Warrior was able to easily and quickly handle the BRD escort quest.

It's also quite viable to let the Druid do the initial healing, and then have him drop into bear form to deal with the ensuing aggro. This keeps the Priest alive and at full mana later in the fight, and gives him two tanks to help him out.

But when the Priest has told you 'Don't heal', and the main tank has told you 'Don't use forms', it's simply a complete waste of my abilities. And a pet peeve, as you can probably tell.

-DarkCrown

I definitely agree that agro management is a group effort. Mages help out by not overnuking when unnecessary and rogues use feint and vanish. Hunters can use feign death before they even get agro to lower their overall hate level in the fight. Rogues and hunters make excellent peelers to fed-ex the adds to the tank or get it off the priest. Priests try not to use PW:Shield during combat unless necessary to keep their hate levels lower.

I would suggest though in pickup groups that if a priest were to get agro, he might run with the mob into the LoS of the tank so that the tank would more easily notice.

I, on behalf of other warriors who use defensive stance, call Bullcrap. It isn't the way to hold aggro right now. Yes, I have to use my skills wisely, yes I have to manage my rage properly.



Oh give me a break. You don't have to land a sunder on every mob to get its attention. Demoralizing shout to grab the attention and then a sunder on each throughout the battle seems to do okay. Unless you have a bunch of DPS monkeys spamming AoE spells you won't need to worry overly about holding aggro on adds.



Never mind then.



Thats good for you and your group. The neat thing about WoW is that there are so many ways for folks to play their characters. This is why I tend to get argumentative when somebody tells me that their is only one way of doing things.

YMMV

The last I'd heard on the over-healing issue is that over-healing generates threat, but no more than if the heal had not been an over-heal. In other words, a heal causes the same amount of threat no matter how much health the target has. Of course, I don't know if this is how the game mechanics work, but this is my current opinion on how things work as of the last thread I've read on the subject.

I love having druids with me, on the rare occasions when I do. I don't tell them "don't heal", but most of the time since I don't mind being a heal bot, the druids don't have to heal so they don't, but I definitely don't tell them "stay the hell out of my domain."

And I just can't imagine someone telling a druid to not use forms. I'm so sorry you run into that. The druids I've been with have been so helpful simply because they are so versatile! One of the most fun I've had in a group was actually a random group with a druid and a mage (I was playing my priest and GG had his gnome warrior). We got a little sloppy and pulled two groups of critters at once, and then another one or two patrol groups came upon us at the same time. It was fantastic watching the druid be a bear when we needed an extra tank, a cat when we needed a little bit more DPS at the time and then shifting back to caster form and healing me when I was starting to get low on mana and was badly hurt since I wanted to save mana for healing the tank/off-tank so I wasn't healing myself (I still had desperate prayer to save my butt anyway). It was fantastic to watch a druid really get to work and show off his skills and his versatility (thanks Hippie!). Thankfully, that happened early in Aleri's career so I don't tell a druid what to do and what not to do; I trust in them to know what they're doing unless they prove otherwise. Since druids aren't flavors of the month, they don't get as many monkeys flocking to the class, not knowing how to play, and then ruining the rep of the class in general. There are still some of course, just like any class has it's utter twits. You can't avoid that. I just wish I could remember better that there is a secondary healer sometimes so I don't blow my desperate prayer unnecessarily.

The Basilisk fight in Zul'Farrak is a bit tricky because on first glance, many players get the impression that the boss will continually summon minions unless he is quickly dispatched. The basilisks also annoy the AoE usual suspects with their high resistances. Their numbers are limited, however.

A reasonably leveled/geared tank can tank that pull starting in Zerker stance, using demo/ whirlwind / cleave to get a lead on healing aggro on as many basilisks as possible along with keeping sunders up on the named. If the rest of the group focuses fire on the basilisks first (with priority to any that break towards the healer) , the fight becomes quite managable. Similar tactics work on the Divino-part if the AoE players don't have the mana/endurance for the whole battle on the stairs.

I certainly don't want multiple healers overhealing or wasting mana, but I would rather have multiple seperate players use multiple small heals than one player use one large heal when it's an option - makes losing aggro to healing much less likey - see mongo's Neriad tales for the "how I learned to love healer rotations" account.

Something like that was working well for me. I was in a party with another priest of somewhat lower level, and after a period of stepping on each other's toes, we settled into a routine where I renewed everything as the fight started, applied SW:Pain and my troll racial debuff as was safe, and sat back and wanded. The lesser priest lesser healed, and for small pulls that was it. If the fight went long, she'd run OOM and charge with her staff; I'd have full mana again due to the extended period of no casting, and be able to drop heals on whoever was taking the pounding. (unfortunately not always the tank due to our poor party discipline, but that's a side issue).

-- frink

Hmmm. I've read this thread, and I do tend to follow GG's style, at least in instances. Out of instances, I'm not in a party, so what I do doesn't matter all that much to people.

My build will eventually get Imp. Revenge and Conc. Blow. Unfortunately, I went to grab Tac. Mastery, Piercing Howl, and Anger Management first. So, no great seond taunt and great stuns. Such is life.

I'm going to see if I can't get into the habit of Sundering even more than I usually do... and it's good to know that the priest/warrior duo works well for you as well.

When you stop zerging instances, you'll find this tactic won't work. At level 58, you should be running lower Blackrock Spire and Scholomance in 5-man teams, or if you want a little easier time, you can run Blackrock Depths. But from our earlier discussions (when you were running the Scarlet Monastery at mid-to-high 40's), I imagine that you're just running Marauden and the Sunken Temple now. When you fight mobs of roughly your own level and boss mobs at levels higher than you, you'll find that many of the tactics you had used before stop working.

In particular, the 2H setup thing. Oh, man, when I see a warrior try that, I just shake my head and groan. But I'm a patient person, and since I will have already wasted a lot of time getting to the instance and waiting for the party, I figure I might as well get some amusement out of the situation. So, first I'll suggest to the warrior that maybe he or she should break out their shield. If the person says, "no," and goes on about how he or she can tank and hold aggro without a shield, I'll let them go ahead for a couple of pulls. I mean, you never know. Maybe this is the 1 in a 1000 warrior who has figured out a new technique, right? After the warrior inevitably dies twice (usually with party wipe), because the warrior lacks armor and blocking and takes more damage than can be healed in time, I'll bring up the idea of using a shield again. I've seen some warriors sheepishly switch to a shield and end up tanking decently well for the rest of the instance. However, I have had a couple of people who kept insisting that they can tank without a shield. At this point, depending on my mood, I either stay to watch them die a few more times for my amusement and then hearth out, or I'll hearth out immediately.

Artega, you're probably sick of hearing me ask for a better way to hold group agro, and as you prescribe the same cure each time, you're wondering why I haven't taken it.

Well, I did try it. My current build is (effectively) Arms/Fury, and I swapped in a nice 2hander, Corpsemaker, to test this strategy. The verdict is such:

It's not bad, but it doesn't solve my problem, and it doesn't play any 'better' than my shield strategy. I kill faster, but I need significantly more healing, and pulling with charges gives my starting rage and a free hit at the cost of a safe pull. My damage output is nice, but it only speeds life up against weak monsters...

---

Ultimately, I think what you don't realise, or choose to ignore, is the fact Defensive stance is given a significant boost in hate generation (10% base I think) to compensate for its reduced damage. Until recently, I didn't notice how well this helped things, but after doing Razor Fen Kraul a few times with overzealous mages, I began to notice a pattern. I could hold agro on my main target in some of the instance's required multi pulls, but if the mages went ahead and AoE'd at the start of the fight, the monster would be pulled off me regardless of what strategy I was using...


Ultimately? The easiest way for a warrior to keep multiple target hate is for him to pull, use his AoE hate generation, and for the healers and nukers to hold off a few seconds. Defensive stance helps this because a) the Warrior is generating equally good hate while dying slower and (unconfirmed) Abilities generate more hate.

Maybe your method is working for you, Artega. It's not the only way.

If you're partying with a Priest that is casting PW:S on a warrior, inform them of this. I never cast it on Warriors in groups because I know it stops the buildup of rage.



Any and every group aggro technique should be used. On top of that, Warriors should try to rotate their targets to gain more aggro. Ideally, by the time the healer has to pop off their first heal, the tank has smacked around all the mobs a bit. This is hard to do.



There's nothing wrong with backup healers. Things Will Go Wrong™, and also for boss fights, it's supremely handy to have another healer around to save the day when the primary runs out of mana. But for most fights, you only need one healer, and if you're playing with a holy/disc priest, you're not having them along for their offense.

As for tanks, secondary tanks are just dandy if they can hold aggro. While a party of four Warriors and a Priest would not be all that effective, having a Paladin accompany a Warrior along in an instance makes life *easy*.

-Bolty

When a warrior is taking almost all the group's damage and only dealing a small fraction of the groups damage it makes a ton of sense to maximize mitigation via defensive stance and shield in exchange for reduced damage output. And I for one can't understand how battle stance makes for better tanking.

When I duo with my brother's shaman I usually go with 2hander and battle stance, and he holds aggro the whole time, not even using earthshock or rockbiter. But when I go defensive with sword and shield I can out aggro him with no difficulty at all.

I'm not saying that defensive stance is the best in every situation and that it should always be kept to. Stance switching for overpowers, whirlwinds, intercepts and charges are very important, but in general defensive stance is the win for aggro and saving your healers mana.

But that's just for my mundane kill once monster at a time strategy. I can't really comment on your AOE style of play, suffice it to say I've never been in a group with 2 mages, I consider myself lucky if my groups have either a priest or a mage to complement the usual 2 shamans and a rogue or 2 rogues and a shaman.

Edit: paragraphed for readability.

I know little of Druids. I assumed they had a little firepower in the casting department and would be of more use with their mana that way. I usually expect to see Druids in bear or cat form if I'm doing the healing.



The problem with this is that a Holy spec'ed Priest is very focused on healing. It's what they're made for, it's what they're good at. Having one with you *should* mean that you get to have the night off for healing duties and can concentrate on dishing out damage. Mind Control is such an iffy spell for Priests; I only use it when I'm in a non-threatening situation, like if the group is fighting mobs that are all 5 levels lower than us and not much of a problem. If you take healing away from the holy Priest, what they have left is...Shadow Word: Pain and Smite. And that ain't much.



This I agree with quite a bit - a Druid can help keep aggro off a Priest this way.



Now, my question: why would a tank tell you not to use forms? If a Priest has the healing covered, wouldn't they appreciate the extra damage you provide? Keeping you around purely for healing makes for a SLOW group, since you're down to just 3 offensive slots...

-Bolty

Actually, that's a myth. PW:S doesn't affect rage generation positively or negatively.



I usually tell shamans that if a fight gets rough, I'll expect them to take care of healing themselves and I'll handle the other guys. I'll throw the occational renew on a shaman and if others aren't in dire need of healing, I'll occationally throw a flash heal on a shaman. But to me, a shaman is mostly one less person I have to heal during a fight.



Ugh, I forgot to mention this. I hate charge pulls in higher level instances, for many reasons, but not limited to:

1. Mob groups tend to be more tightly packed together, so a charging warrior will frequently end up pulling extra mob groups.

2. Higher level instances have more patroling mobs, so you want to pull mobs to where patrols won't add during the fight. Having the warrior charge forward means that fights happen right where the mobs are and right where patrols will walk by. The alternative is that the warrior can charge forward and then walk backward to the party, but then that's several seconds where the mobs are pounding on the tank without them getting pounded on. (Or, that's where the priest heals the tank and pulls all the aggro and gets pounded on).

3. Mobs in higher level instances often have special abilities like knockback and fear. If you fight the mobs where they are, that means you have a lot better chance of being knocked into more adds.

Just use Inner Rage or whatever thing you have to do to build up a little initial rage and shoot pull the mob group to the party. It's so much simpler and less likely to wipe a party that chooses to fight mobs of its level.

Actually, two offensive slots, since neither the priest nor the warrior is dealing much damage, either.

When my healer and my shaman reach level 58 with me, maybe we'll stop "zerging" instances. Unfortunately, they rarely have time to play, excepting Saturdays, which means they're Lv.52 while the others are Lv.56 or higher.

I HAVE done BRD tanking with a 2H, and it went just fine.



And you're assuming the Warrior doesn't have a brain, and is unable to think on his feet. If it's a blatantly messy pull, I have someone else pull for me (typically the Shaman or the Priest will pull with Silence or Shackle, depending on the mobs in question), and I charge as they get closer.

Just because I don't use a board doesn't mean I don't think.

I agree that paladin could use some other aggro gabbing tool, but I can see way too many exploits if it is a heal. I understand the frustation too, but a pally heal generating as much aggro as a priest or druid just looks too exploitable to me.

Remember a Druid can't really tank in caster form and it takes considerable amounts of mana to form shift. That limits how frequently a druid could use a heal as a taunt form while tanking. If you are tanking anything and shift out and cast a heal, you will take enough damage to need another major source of heal on yourself. At least that has been my experience. Also keep in mind that a bear druid can't use pots (and I don't think it could use a soulstone either) so it loses that out and really won't want to be shifting as an aggro hold. At least it's been a pretty bad idea for me when I've tried to shift and heal while tanking.

The paladin should not be as good a tank as the warrior. It should be right around what a shaman or druid could do. I agree there are issues with the paly in this regards. Shaman can pull and hold aggro easier than either of the two (earth shock and rock biter), but they can't take as much beating. But if you give pally heals the aggro gen of a priest or druid it just feels like they will tank better than a warrior and have more party benefits with the buffs and auras they can do.

It's just a tricky area.

I'm not asking for the aggro generating level of a priest or druid. I'm just asking for it to generate MORE threat than it does at present. I shouldn't be able to heal to heal the priest twice to full and the warrior to half health without generating some interest from a mob.

A good Hunter can do amazing things for a group. http://www.nuklearpower.com/hunter.php has some great strategies for how a Hunter should pull. I've been the primary healer in BRS and Stratholme and this method of pulling makes life easy.

Another thing is a good tank makes a Priests life soooo much easier. I find that if I party with a tank that knows how to hold aggro I enjoy the instance much more.

I've seen Mind Control used all through Black Rock Mountain. It's one of the standard techniques of almost any raid I've been on. In a five man group it's a powerful way to control certain situations, as long as the group is ready to deal with the possible failure of the spell. It's a killer priest spell, and I'd suggest you play around with it more.



I'm not suggesting that a druid partied with a priest 'take away' the priest's role as healer. That's the same problem I described in the first post, only in reverse. I'm saying that if the druid is not forced into a particular role he allows other players to better use their abilities. The priest can do a better job of healing with backup, as long as the two healers work together.



The problem as I've encountered it is that most players want to fit each member of the party into just a few possible roles. There's a tank, there's a healer, and there are characters who supply DPS. Many players are uncomfortable with party members that don't fit neatly into one of these slots. And so they force the druid into a particular role, and that role is almost always healer. Very few players think that a druid is capable of tanking, and even fewer are ready for a character that moves fluidly from off-tank to healer as the situation demands.

-DarkCrown

Actually, I've been dabbling in a low lvl Priest recently -- she's a lot of fun, not to mention quite the nuker. I really enjoy being able to heal/buff people. But, even with the best will on my part to use my skills for the good of the group, I pity the poor party that relies on me to heal them. They will be going down while I wonder which darn healing spell I should be using (takes a while to alt-tab out to MongoJerry's healing efficiency table), or which hot key I should hit; and even if I succeed in hitting it they'll die while my heal spell is going off, or because my renew spell didn't heal enough, or because I hit cure disease by mistake. If I'm anything to judge by, lord knows what kind of priests all those "LFG VC NEED HEALER" tells are really getting. They'd honestly be better off with my de-sheeping/de-shackling hunter.

Though I agree with some of what that article talked about, I feel the thing about a hunter pulling is that although the actual pull will be better (less wipes to bad pulls) you might lose the benefit of additional CC.

In a LBRS group last night (priest, mage, paladin, rogue, hunter) the safety zone idea was still applied but the intial rogue sap made a huge difference. I played the rogue (no improved sap) and when I immediately side strafed after sapping a mob, I was not hit by any melee attacks. The mage would poly as the mobs approached the group and the hunter's preplaced freeze trap at the edge of the group camp spot would incapacitate another mob. In a pull of 4 (sometimes can't be avoided) with these tactics you would be fighting mostly one mob at a time. The mage ends up casting poly (very low mana cost) 2-3 times during the entire fight.

The rogue's skill "Vanish" functions similar to fein death. However, as far as I've seen, the "drop agro" portion of the skill cannot be resisted. As long as you use the vanish while outside the agro range of where the mobs were when they were pulled, they will drop agro and return to their original pre-pull location. A missile in flight can cause the rogue to become visible again but the monsters will have returned after vanish is used.

Now, if a hunter were to pull you would lose the benefit of sap. The puller (hunter) would be at additional risk due to fein death resists. Lastly, having to re-apply traps (near the safety zone) while waiting for roamers adds to pull time.

I had a very good first instance (RAGEFIRE CHASM) experience as a tauren hunter, with a druid tanking, a mage, and two shamens. The tactics relayed in the article are how I survive against tightly clustered mobs when I play solo (which is usually). Only that I need to transfer aggro to the pet, which with my tricks and his growl is very easy. We lacked a good tank, but using team work we made up for it. However, I can see that for more difficult instances better strategies are required.

In the end the team made a mistake trying to shortcut to finish a quest (one player needed), and jumped down off a cliff to get to the boss without clearing his minions. I made a mistake in assuming that since they had jumped down, that my pet would not be able to find a way. He did, and he had all the uncleared bosses minions in tow. It was the "Holy Crap!" moment that precludes a wipe. It was a good learning experience for me, and the team was gracious in sharing the blame for ignomious hike back to our corpses. My only option while my pet was alive and for not having this heppen would have been to stay up out of the fray, and keep the pet with me.

But, up until that point I felt very effective in using my pet to get attackers off of the mages and shamen, and pulling using ranged attacks or using the pet to quickly run in and pull one mob at a time where possible. It wasn't mentioned, but I find that many times if a lone walker can be pulled from very far range using the pet rather than ranged attack providing extra attack time for me with ranged (stun) when they return to my zone of lethality. When I see that the pet has pulled too many, we both continue running until the mobs return back. Worst case scenario is that the pet gets stunned or knocked down and dies, which means a res for him and some fish.

I played in a 5-man guild group consisting of a priest and a druid and we used mind control very effectively to handle difficult 4-5 pulls of elites.
I would simultaneously sheep with the MC priest removing two adds from the fight. The priest then aggros all the other mobs as best as possible while doing the most she could with the mob's abilities. We usually went for priest or pally mobs. This not only held most of the agro for all the adds (until the MC died, but removed an add from the fight completely. The other members were free to use assist kills on the remaining mobs one by one while the MC was tanking. The druid woudl have an easy time covering the heals on the main tank on these 1on 4 situations.
-MB

It seems to me that you could have also dismissed your pet and then resummoned him after the drop. This would have caused him to lose some happiness, but that would be the only drawback I believe. You could have also told him to stay instead of to follow. I do agree with the overall point though that alot of the shortcuts groups take make it tough on the classes that have pets and often make things more dangerous.

In our frequent BRD runs (see Windsor escort thread for why we keep clearing the jail) we have used Mind Control to great effectiveness. Talking about the jail specifically (but these tactics extend to other areas as well) a standard 4 pull involves a polymorph and an MC. Depending on the group a banish or Succubus' seduce can also be used. The standard tactic is to then kill the one remaining mob with the MC and the rest of the party and then take out the other mobs one by one.

When this is done properly and MC doesn't break early the other 3 mobs are all dead before the MC breaks. I then run the MCed mob a small distance from the party so everyone can set to intercept the mob as it tears after me when I break the control. Lately Nini has saved his Hammer of Justice to stun the mob as soon as the MC breaks and then we finish it off. This allows us to safely take out 4 pulls without really needing a healer. If I'm ever concerned or there are hounds involved I'll throw up a few preshields before casting MC. The only time there are issues is if the MC breaks early but that is manageable as long as I let everyone know that I now have an extra angry mob tearing after me. This is usually done in haste so it is understood by the group that any random string of unintelligible characters typed by Flyndar mean that MC broke early .

- mjdoom

I did put him in passive mode. I'm still a little new at this, but the idea of dismissing him never crossed my mind. I probably would never dismiss him, but I should have told him to stay.

Or you can tell him to stay, jump down yourself, use Eyes of the Beast (if you're bigger than level 14) and use that to jump the pet down with you. No loss of happiness, no need to feed him after calling him back again and no training.

"good point, well made."

I would have never thought to use Eyes of the Beast. I couldn't even swear that I have learned it. (though I probably have since my hunter doesn't lack for money like some of my other characters) Thanks for enlightening me to that option.

I didn't buy it, but I think now I will. However, jumping down was a very risky stupid thing to do IMHO. I won't do it again.