If the tank marked a skull. Hit the skull. There’s a reason. Even if there isn’t, it’s good practice.
On the concept of good practice. Yes, a lot of the anal retentive crap you’ll get whined at about by tanks and/or healers in 5mans is mostly pointless. You can zerg through a LOT of 5 man content without doing all the little ‘makes it easier’ things like focus firing in non-aoe groups or doing CC, etc. However, you will need that stuff to be efficient for the higher level content and the later raids. Building those habits NOW is good practice.
Healers: look up downranking if you’re unfamiliar with it.
OOM: Tanks, this one is complicated. I personally know what I can and can’t handle, I will pull with the healer is OOM if I know I’ll be fine. Go ahead and keep drinking Priest, I don’t mind ending a pull with 15-20% health while you sit down and get ready for us to keep moving. On the flip side… tanks need to know what they can handle and pay attention to healer mana. It’s YOUR fault if you die from a pull that your group didn’t have the resources to handle.
Druids: If you’re not the healer, you’re still a healer. If you’re doing Kitty mode, you can turn a wipe into a clutch win when fit hits the shan just by shifting out and throwing out a tranquility or bust a big boy heal on the tank/healer.
Pulling: Establish who’s going to drive the pace of the group early. You don’t want everyone pulling. Doesn’t matter if it’s the tank or a DPS, etc. Whatever works for your group, but if you’re not driving the group pace, don’t pull. If you’re playing DPS and you feel like the tank isn’t pulling fast enough, rather than just pulling, just say something like “I think we can handle more than this” or “I think we can move faster”.
Pace: If you’re pulling, pay attention to how your group is doing and be aware of their capabilities. when a mob is down to 15-20% if you’ve had agro the whole time, you probably arne’t gonna lose it in the last bits so you can go ahead and pull another mob/pack to keep things rolling if your casters have mana. I personally like to chain pull like this and just alternate in smaller pulls when I see low mana. You do have to give people the opportunity to drink (i.e. be out of combat for a sec) so keep that in mind.
Communicate: type, talk, whatever, let people know what you’re doing. You don’t have to announce every single pull or backstab, or heal, but if you’re doign to do CC, warn people. Tanks tab target and cycle through packs to generate threat, if you’re trying to CC something that’s in the mix, don’t get butthurt if it gets busted immediately.
Silence/LOS: If you agro a ranged mob that’s now just sitting back there, probably near other mobs or patrols… break LOS to make it come in. If it’s a caster and you have a silence, that can be used when ther’s no LOS.
Runners: if you’re a pet class, call your pets back when a running takes off towards other mobs. Chain agro is buggy as hell right now. From what I can tell, if no one messes with a runner while they’re near other mobs, you don’t get agro. If your pet chases em down, you’ll get agro, if you’re throwing spells at em, you’ll get agro. If you multishot… you’ll definitely get agro lol. If you’re in a dungeon with runners and have a snare (crippling poison, lock curse, ‘slow’, frost ‘stuff’) use it intelligently to avoid engaging Auto Pull mode.
Casters: If you can’t drink, wand.
Warriors with crap weapon skills: It happens, you’re leveling with a 2hander, it’s annoying to keep up with one handers. Tell your group, it takes no time to raise that skill. I have, on multiple occasions taken the first couple of pulls for a warrior in our group and let them just beat on the mob while we didn’t do any DPS and the healers kept em up to power level their weapon skill. It’s a small time investment in making the rest of your run that much smoother.
AoE: If you’re not in an AOE group, be careful with AOE… especially right on pull. When the tank is bringin mobs back into the group, do not throw AEs. They don’t have much threat generated on most of those targets. Focus on the lowest health target for a little bit and then throw out some AEs to save yourself from having to run all over the place.
Tanks: Tab target and generate threat on everything. If you’ve got a pack of mobs and aren’t specifically doing AE. Mark a skull (google raid target macros), dump a couple of your threat generating things into that one, then immediately start tabbing through the pack and dropping threat generating abilities on each target in the pack.
We have new players, we have old players who aren’t used to ‘this’ version of the game, and we have returning players who might be a little rusty. There are some ‘common sense’ things that aren’t as common as you’d think. Share your tips below.
