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The First Step

So you got a character done some levelling and want to do an instance or raid?? What are they? An instance or raid takes place in a dungeon type area where your interaction is private to the outside factors of the Warcraft realm. Entrances to dungeons have a meeting stone close by them for summoning party/group members and a big whirly portal which you walk through to enter the dungeon.

Why do dungeons?

Dungeons can be very rewarding in the gear that can be picked up through killing what is known as trash mobs (enemy units before bosses), and then by taking down the bosses.
Dungeons will teach you how to interact and work together as a team which is critical to how effective your group is at clearing the instance/raid you do.
There are three critical areas that any group needs to fulfil before doing any dungeon and this is based on what kind of character you want to be.

• Tank
• Damage Dealer (DPS)
• Healer

The basics of combat utilises these three areas in this simple format:
‘Tank soaks the damage from the mobs, while the DPS kills the mobs and the healer restores the party’s health.’

So what kind of character are you?? Let’s cover some basics.

The Tank

To play the role of the tank your character needs to be pretty tough. Generally only plate armour wearers are considered to be tanks however at the lower level instances mail wearers have been seen. Some classes due to a specific dungeon tactic may see other classes act as a secondary tank for short periods. An example of this is a mage in Gruul’s Lair to tank against High King Maulgar where the mage must spellsteal the shield which will inadvertantly protect the mage against the magical attack.

During my time in the game the successful tanks have been of the following classes:
Protection Warrior
Feral Druid
Protection Paladin
Frost, Unholy Death Knights (Blood DK’s can also tank)

These six combinations of class and spec give players the true abilities to be considered the main tank.

The Damage Dealer (DPS)

To play the role of a damage dealer your character must be able to do a consistent reasonable amount of damage for longer periods of time as combat can be against a group of mobs, a wave of mobs or a boss with a large health reserve. It is the responsibility of all DPS to ensure they attack the correct target as marked by the Tank. DPS should also cover the healer when necessary pulling mobs away and towards the Tank so they can pick the aggro on that mob back up.

All of the 10 classes can play the damage dealer role with the right spec and gear.

There are three types of Damage dealers (DPS):
Caster – spell damage
Melee – physical damage
Ranged – ranged physical damage

The primary role of damage dealers is to keep the dungeon run moving smoothly by killing oncoming mobs fast with as little downtime (mana/health top up) as possible. If the damage output is bad then you run the risk of respawn, or taking too much group damage which the healer cannot cover with their mana pool resulting in a wipe (all characters are dead). Some bosses can also ‘enrage’ giving their damage output significant bonuses, so damage dealers need to be aware of the ‘enrage timer’ and kill the boss before this happens.

The above DPS criteria are in no set order they are factors you need to know about depending on your class and spec.

The Healer

The primary role of the healer is to keep their party/raid group alive. Healers also provide some powerful defensive buffs which can aid any party/group in dungeon situations. The Healer needs to know the abilities of the party/group as well as if they were his/her abilities. A Healer may at some point need to make the decision who to heal in a low health situation. Primarily it’s the tank; however if you know your Tank well they have some powerful damage mitigation abilities which can buy that extra time to heal another party member first then returning back to the Tank.

A good tactic is to set your focus to the main Tank for quick switching.

The classes that can heal are:
Paladins
Priests
Druids
Shamans

As the healer you need to ensure your pool of mana and spell power is high enough to keep your party alive. Your focus is on the group and not the mobs as your tank will keep them off you.

Decision Time

So we’ve covered the basics of the PVE classes and you should by now have a fair idea of what you want your character to be. In a nutshell:

If you want to take all the mobs on, taking damage from all directions and prevent your group from taking damage in true hero fashion then the ‘Tank’s life’ is for you

If you want to kill, kill, destroy all mobs then it’s the ‘DPS life’ for you

If you want to be the saviour of your party/raid by restoring their health allowing the attack to be unrelentless then the ‘Healers life’ is for you.

The Basics of Combat in WOW

The enemies are known as mobile object/s or mob/s for short. Proximity is what defines when a mob that is unfriendly will attack you and is defined in the game as the ‘aggro pull’.

So What Is Aggro?
Aggro short for aggression is the common term used to describe why a mob will attack you rather than someone else.
Within the game there are two types of attackable mobs, neutral and hostile. Neutral are depicted with a yellow circle whilst hostile have a red circle when you target them.
To understand the combat situation you need to know what aggro radius is. This is the radius around the mob that if you enter will result in the mob attacking you either until you kill it, it kills you or you run away (cluck, cluck).

What is Aggro Radius?

Aggro radius represents the invisible distance around a mob that changes based on the mob’s level and the player character’s level. On an equal basis level for level the aggro radius is about 20 yards. The radius changes per level at approximately 1 yard per level up to a maximum of 45 yards and as low as 5 yards. Lets look at some examples: A player character who is level 30 and a mob is level 20. As the player is higher in level you would deduct the level difference from the base aggro radius. This gives a 10 yard aggro radius for that mob versus a level 30 player character. If the mob was level 40 then the level difference is added to the base. This gives a 30 yard aggro radius for that mob versus the player character.

There are however exceptions in the game where some mob’s have a higher than normal aggro radius. Creatures with the word ’starving’ in their name have a higher aggro radius. For example Starving Dire Wolves have a higher aggro radius than Rabid Dire Wolves.

When you begin to attack a mob you generate threat and this decides how long that mob will continue to attack you.

What is Threat?

Threat is per mob and increases through various actions against that target or helpful actions on you, for example: The more you hit something doing damage per second (DPS) will raise your threat on that mob. If you heal yourself during combat through any means this also increases your threat on that mob.

So in short threat is a non-player character’s (NPC) agression towards a player. Every NPC has a threat table you don’t see unless you have an addon that can display it such as Omen or KLH threat meter. The NPC will usually attack the player character with the highest threat however this is not without exception as some NPC’s have special attacks that can be randomly targeted at any player character.

The most basic form of threat generation is damage and is approximately calculated at 1 damage point equates to 1 point of threat.
Beneficial abilities such as healing spells generate global threat however this is divided amongst all the NPC’s attacking.
Healing generates threat at approximately 1 point of healing to 0.5 points of threat.

Lets look at an example considering no threat reduction talents or abilities:

A warrior hits a group of four NPC’s for 1000 points of damage thus creates 1000 points of threat against each NPC.
A healer then heals that warrior for 2000 health points thus creates a 1000 points of threat divided amongst the attackers giving 250 points of threat on each NPC.

Buffs, power gains and any ability that affects the global combat is considered global threat. For example a cleave attack on two targets will have it’s threat divided up.

Some things to remember:

• A player character being attacked is neither losing or gaining threat
• If a player is healed at full health this will not generate threat
• Normal health and power regeneration will not generate threat