The series: [Introduction, and a call for comments, Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty, PvE vs PvP, Variety vs Specialization, Solo Performer vs Group Utility, Your role in a PvE raid]

If your class can do many things, don’t expect to be unqualified best at any of them.

There are three roles: tank, healer, damage (dps). But really, every class can do damage–you have to be able to put out some kind of damage in order to play the solo game. So it’s really two specialized roles, plus the common role that everyone has. Some classes specialize completely in that common role: hunters, rogues, mages, warlocks. The rest can do multiple things, and this article concerns them.

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The series: [Introduction, and a call for comments, Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty, PvE vs PvP, Variety vs Specialization, Solo Performer vs Group Utility, Your role in a PvE raid]

No class is globally better at PvP than every other class. WoW PvP is a huge rock-paper-scissor game, where there’s an answer for every move, or in WoW’s case, Class A always feels overpowered to an opponent of Class B, Class B over Class C, and Class C over Class A. (except expanded out to an 11-way graph) While no class is universally dominant in PvP, some builds are universally better than other builds in that environment.

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The series: [Introduction, and a call for comments, Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty, PvE vs PvP, Variety vs Specialization, Solo Performer vs Group Utility, Your role in a PvE raid]

Your ability to solo partially determines the experience you’ll have in groups. If you have an easy time in the leveling game, you are going to have a more difficult experience in the endgame/group game. The following list goes from easy-to-solo to hard-to-solo.

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The series: [Introduction, and a call for comments, Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty, PvE vs PvP, Variety vs Specialization, Solo Performer vs Group Utility, Your role in a PvE raid]

It occurred to me that people who haven’t been grouping or raiding a lot don’t know what role various classes have in a raid, or of class design in general. You can go read the page on the worldofwarcraft website, but they make every class sound equally great at everything. That’s just not the reality of it. So I can keep complaining about how many people get stuck between little knowledge and expanded knowledge, or I can take my shot at fixing it via explanation.

If you don’t know how a particular character or spec of a character fits into the group game that follows the leveling game, this is for you.

It’s possible to find out everything I’m about to write from various places online, but as far as I know, there’s not one place where it’s all connected. Most articles are written from the point of view of one class or another; every guide is written by that class, for that class.

This is going to be the top level view, how raid leaders (and possibly Blizzard designers) look at classes and their role in the game.

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Matt from World of Matticus convinced me to open comments to anyone, not just registered users. If you’ve registered already, thanks much–you’re in the GoW club.

His blog has been running longer than mine, so I can’t refute his advice, because I have no idea what I’m doing. He also runs Wordpress on Dreamhost, so if he can make wide open commenting work, then I guess I can too.

If your blog has been running longer than his and you disagree, please let me know. At least you won’t have to register to do so.

I realized in my last article, I used the reference “25th person” without explaining what it meant. In my time as raid lead, it became a shorthand for the most underperforming person in the raid. A raid lead typically knows this as they’re assembling the raid.

“Hey, Lisa wants to come along to Gruul tonight.”

“We already have a 25th person.”

The Nth person is someone the rest of the raid plays around in order to make sure the common jobs get done. Good healers cover for the bad healer, strong dps makes up for weak dps, everyone covers for the tank who can’t remember to use their cooldowns, etc. This person, for whatever reason, just doesn’t help in raids that much.

You’re counting up from the bottom, so in a 10-man raid Lisa would be the 10th person.

Of course, if you’re bringing multiple people who need to be played around, you could have a 24th person, 23rd person… but there gets to be a point where somebody has to know what they’re doing. Unless you’re talking battlegrounds, in which case it’d probably be easier to count good people from the top.

(Important Safety Tip: Raid leaders should only use this language to each other, strictly behind the curtain. I do not advise referring to anyone like this publicly. Although, I would like to hear how that goes. I think it’d be funny, in a dark way.)

(Related post: Max level does not mean Skilled.)

There’s a class of player who feels that their status in the raiding game means that they’re Right. They label other people noobs, and the silly thing is that people believe them. “I have this awesome item, you don’t, therefore I know what I’m talking about and you don’t.” This frustrates me a great deal.

My guild recently brought in a new recruit. Her main is a holy priest, just like me! I’ll call her Mary. She was very personable, online a lot. She had raided a lot in the original WoW, all the way through AQ40, which I’ve never seen. She had taken over a year off from the game, and in her return was looking for a more relaxed playtime requirement while still playing at a high level. A perfect fit!

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(Related post: Raiding does not mean Skilled)

World of Warcraft, and every game like it, is really two different games. I first read this thought at Penny Arcade (can’t find where because their search function is weak). Basically, you have the levelling game where you start at L1 and then play until max level (currently L70), and then the game that happens after the levelling game, which is filled with group activities of all sorts as you improve your max level character.

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I write slowly. Even when I was writing fiction full time, I would start a story and then work on something else, until months later I finally had one piece good enough to show.

This doesn’t really translate well to blog writing, but hey, subscribing to a blog is free. I personally would rather only read worthwhile stuff, so when I don’t have anything to say, then I don’t say anything. I’m trying to stay as close to 100% signal as possible.

I’m working on a multi-part guide to WoW class design that’s coming along nicely. I’m pretty excited to finish it, but there’s also my job and my beautiful new daughter and actually playing WoW and the Celtics are in the playoffs. The end result is that the time between posts is even longer. This series will begin later this week.

To tide you over, here’s some news from a better world.