Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

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.

Now, every class can’t do everything in the game (except druids). That’s part of what makes groups fun. With the correct mix of characters, you can accomplish goals that a group of identical characters couldn’t do alone.

That variety in gameplay that you enjoy in the solo game, the ability to kill mobs and heal and be tough… that entire skill set doesn’t directly translate to your endgame experience. Generally, each of those roles opens up to various niches for you in raids.

Three examples:

• Paladins can heal, tank, and dps. They’ve got all the bases covered! However, each role is not complete and universal coverage of that role. Pallies heal single targets extremely well, but struggle with being stunned and group damage. Pallies tank large groups of mobs extremely well, but struggle at times with raid bosses and caster bosses. Pallies dps well in PvP, but struggle with the continuous high level of damage needed for PvE.
• Rogues do one thing: damage. When built correctly, they can damage in any situation in the game, caster or melee, PvP or PvE. They damage well. They have to, because they don’t tank or heal.
• Priests can heal or damage. Priests are great healers. However, even when they choose to spec and play a damage role, their damage rarely compares with pure damage classes, either in PvP or PvE.

While the best guilds will value a good hybrid player (the druid who can tank or dps, the pally who can tank or offheal), there simply aren’t that many hybrid positions available in raids. Most of the time, you have to excel at one thing, which means largely sacrificing that versatility and embracing your class’s niche. You have to learn to kick butt as much as possible in the one thing you choose to be excellent at.

Here’s where I lift a toast to every restoration druid who has ever received the raid or instance direction:

“The tank’s dead! Tree-man! Go bear form and pick up that boss!”

Tree-man is sitting there thinking,

“I’m wearing a mix of leather and cloth healing gear. The warlock has more health than I do, and I have a pally salvation buff. I do have a tanking set of gear, but it’s trapped in my bag because we’re in combat.

“Bear form is not a Superman cape!”

But Treeman switches anyway, because he’s built for restoration and hardly ever gets to rawr in groups. It’s a more fun way to die.

Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

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.

For example, protection warriors are a PvE tanking spec. They don’t provide a heck of a lot of control or damage, and no healing, to a PvP group. (They do get to annoy casters and melee dps though. Also, reflecting pyroblast back at mage is joy.)

Likewise, a character that is heavily invested in pvp is specialized in abilities that don’t matter in pve, like extreme survivability or crowd control. The extreme survivability doesn’t matter because of the basic nature of PvE: you have an absurd amount of damage coming into points of the raid whose job is not to be instantly killed by it (the tanks), you have people’s whose job it is to keep those people alive (the healers), and then everyone else has to remove the source of that absurd damage (the dps). If your raid’s system breaks down and the boss starts running around the raid and killing non-tanks, your priest or warlock’s improved fear won’t help, your rogue’s cheat death won’t help, your arms warrior’s and paladin’s plate won’t help. Various class’s ability to recover from critical hits doesn’t matter when the boss hits you for four times your maximum health. All those PvP tricks don’t matter.

Running a PvP spec toon in PvE raiding is pedaling uphilll while others are on even ground, and some are rolling downhill. If you’re a PvP spec and are awesome in raids, then congratulations: you are a great player! However, your guild also knows you’re a great player. There are many other people of your spec who are frustrated and confused as to why people pass them up for groups and instances. PvP specced people are even more reliant on having outstanding gear and greater skill than an equally-geared pve spec player in order to do the exact same job in a PvE raid.

This is fair. PvE spec people are less effective in battlegrounds and arena. (Unless by “effective” you mean “easier to kill”, in which case they are much more effective.)

Both ways, the average experience can be overcome with sufficient skill, but given two equal characters played by two equally skilled players, one built for pve and the other built for pvp, with no other variables a raid or group lead is going to take the pve build, because it’s designed to be successful in the content that they want to run.

Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

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.

• Hunters are the easiest class to level while playing the solo leveling game, no matter what spec. Pet plus ranged damage is just simple.
• Warlocks are second. Again, a pet class. (I might be wrong on this. Someday I have to fill in my knowledge gap regarding warlocks)
• Rogues and mages are third. Lots of damage is easy grinding.
• Then shamans and druids, because of the damage/healing hybrid nature.
• Until finally you get down to classes that are harder to solo, like paladins, priests, and warriors.

Now, I’m not saying that paladins are hard to solo. All of WoW solo content is easy with every class. It’s just that leveling a pally is harder than leveling a hunter or a warlock. Of course, it’s possible to build a “hard to solo” class like a pally in such a way that when matched against a poorly-played warlock that the pally would come out ahead. Player skill counts for a lot, and that’s true of all the comparisons to come. But given two equal players, there’s no way to correctly spec and play a priest so that they’ll solo as fast or as easily as a correctly spec’ed and played mage.

So why does this matter? Well, classes that are easier to level have that balance come out somewhere. Somewhere inside their decision tree, and this is just an example, Blizzard said “hunters will not have an easy time in raids because they level so easily”.

Now, individual hunters can be great in raids, just as great and useful as other classes. But your typical fully-leveled hunter never had to build a good skill set that a player needs to be a good raider. Four parts pet attack button, four parts Autoshot, one part Mend Pet. Sprinkle Arcane Shot and Multishot to taste. Let simmer for /played. Voila, max level!

Blizzard decided that hunters would have to work harder (shot rotations based on hidden cast times, non-obvious math, and spreadsheet-only derivations regarding weapon choices and haste) to do comparable performance as other classes in their role (damage). If it were easy for a hunter to be competitive in raids, nobody would ever play anything but hunter! They would rule both inside and outside groups.

Now, the solo game doesn’t just come to a screeching halt when you hit L70. There are dailies, reputation grinds, crafting that requires plenty of hard-to-find materials… in fact, much of this is very helpful to generate the resources to give you an edge in performance while participating in the end game. However, the playstyle of all this content is exactly like the solo/levelling game. So for the purposes of this discussion, it’s the same.

When farming motes for primals, everyone groans when the hunter arrives. Nobody has it easier. You don’t find many RMT-farming priests, warriors, or paladins.

On the flip side, the frustration that pallies, priests, and warriors feel while leveling and playing the solo game is more than made up for in their group play. Tanking and healing shines in groups, and this is the big payout.

Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

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.

I write here simply to relay what I’ve come to understand as the game of WoW as it relates to the PvE endgame. If you disagree with something I’m about to say, that’s fine, but please remember that I’m not thinking of any one player, especially you, when I’m writing this. I’ve read as many internets as I could, led many raids, played too many classes, and this is what I know.

Now, I’ve raided with a number of classes at high level, but not all of them. I’ve lead many raids of various sizes, but not all the way through the endgame in either version of WoW. Some of what I’m about to say might be incorrect. Therefore:

Please comment to educate me, and I’ll update the articles as necessary.

Hope you enjoy it.

(Someone else can write a “The Secret Design of WoW: PvP” guide or series. I’ll be glad to link from it here.)

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!

One of our top dps’ers had levelled a priest to maximum level and was looking for a rundown of how to heal as a holy priest. (He wanted to be able to fill out a heroic instance or raid in the case that we were short healing) He posted in our guild forums, asking how to manage mana, which spells were good where, the differences between instancing and raiding, and so on. The other primary holy priest in the guild and I posted a decent overview of general strategy and how to use the various tools in the priest’s toolbox.

Mary, still in her first week, posted a lengthy and emotional rebuttal to what we wrote. Her entire priest healing strategy is: Flash Heal. As far as she’s concerned, it is the only spell anyone needs as a holy priest. Her defenses were long, full of passionate and anecdotal evidence, and even had bad math to back her up. (I love bad math of all kinds) She was fully entrenched, she downright took offense to the thought of using other spells, and basically framed her argument such that to disagree with her was to start a fight. (I’m not going to go into details about why she’s wrong, just take my word for it.)

Needless to say, she didn’t stay long.

We chuckled about it, but I didn’t understand how she was going to find what she wanted. How was she going to even pass the application to a mid-tier raiding guild?

The answer: Mary could succeed in raiding, because her other healers could heal around her. I remember this in painful detail from the 40-man days. But there’s no reason that it couldn’t continue in 25-man or even 10-man raids. So Mary moved right up to a SSC mid-tier guild, where she’s no doubt the 25th person in some raid. They’re probably progressing, too. She’ll get overgeared and then be back to her elite flash healing self, and looking down at everyone who isn’t geared like she is.

The funniest part of this is that Mary could only ever find success in large raids. Not smaller group play, not ever small raids. And yet, raiding is supposedly a prestige environment. Raiders are serious business. They’re seen as elite players. I mean, these people have zomgepics that are simply inaccessible to most. They have to know the game, right?

Ah well.

Now don’t get me wrong–there is a tier of players who by definition of where they are must know what they’re doing. They’re the ones pushing new content as it’s released, who write the wowwiki articles, and write and tune the spreadsheets. The rest of us are, for lack of a better term, scrubs who execute well-defined strategies. I’m not saying that raiders don’t know what they’re doing, I’m just saying that their position in raiding guilds doesn’t mean that they do. They’re hit and miss, like everyone else.

(The title of this article really should have been “Mid-tier raiding and below does not necessarily mean Skilled”, but it wasn’t catchy.)

(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.

Which brings me to another iconic player, Lisa. I’m sure that all of you have met her before:

“I’m max level! I couldn’t have gotten here unless I knew something about my class. Let me tell you about why…”

“…my retribution paladin has a lot of defense.”

“…my hunter has a lot of spell damage.”

“…my holy priest only uses flash heal.”

“…my warrior tanks with a two-handed weapon.” (Note: reroll deathknight in a few months)

“…my mage loves to wand.”

Lisa feels like she knows what’s what, because all these super-raiding-types she sees in the common cities? They’re the same level as she is. Aside from their zomgepics, there’s no visual indicator that what they’ve done is any different than what she’s done… in her mind. And frankly, since anyone can get zomgepics in battlegrounds, even that is less of a clue than it once was.

The problem is that hitting maximum level in one of these grinding-type games has absolutely no relation to knowing anything about the game and how to play it. All it means is that you have been dedicated and persistent, and hopefully had fun along the way. Especially in World of Warcraft, the game is extremely forgiving and easy to solo play.

There’s no smooth transition between the first game (levelling/solo play) and the second game (endgame/group play). I’ve read a lot of intelligent suggestions on how to bridge that gap, but the reality is that as long as Blizzard sticks with their design choice of letting anyone get to maximum level, with no intermediate checks along the way relating to their skill of play, then the vast majority of players are going to go the easiest way possible, because people are fond of success. Also, Blizzard is fond of money, and this super-casual crowd is a decent chunk of their base.

When a hunter can level to max level by using only melee weapons and never once firing a ranged weapon… don’t get me wrong, I think that what Gweryc did is cool. He deliberately made the game challenging in the levelling process, which is an interesting turnabout for a hunter. What makes Gweryc notable is not that that he did it, it’s that he did it on purpose.

There are thousands of people making those same against-the-grain choices but not understanding that they’re doing so. I usually find them waiting for a battleground to begin, wondering aloud if their 20-game losing streak is ever going to end, and silently weeping for the 15-45 minutes I’m about to waste in the upcoming losing effort.

What makes Lisa so annoying isn’t that she’s max level, it’s that she doesn’t understand the difference between the levelling game and the endgame. She doesn’t understand that there’s more knowledge to be attained, so she dismisses any advice or criticism out of hand. After all, she’s been to the zones, done the quests and gotten the quest rewards, same as you. She doesn’t care or even really think about the fact she skipped every group quest and every instance.

You: “Hey Lisa the pally, what’s the cooldown on Divine Intervention?”

Lisa: “Divine Intervention?”

You: “Yeah, it’s a spell I heard about that you have.”

Lisa: “O rly? Let me check my spellbook.”

(time passes)

Lisa: “Pssh, I’ve never seen this spell before.”

Actually, she did. Lisa just instantly dismissed it when she saw that it killed her to cast it… which is opposite of the whole point of the game when you’re solo’ing. What possible use could it have?

Max level isn’t even a hint.

(Related post: Take the Group Role)

The following statements are all true for raiding guilds:

• The health of a PvE guild is dictated by its ability to progress through the game’s content at the guild’s expected rate.
• Groups and raids live or die based on being able to assemble, launch, and progress. A successful raid has all three roles (tank, heal, damage) filled to sufficient levels.
• The ratio of tanks/healers/damage in a typical successful raid is something like 2/3/5.
• The ratio of tanks/healers/damage in total available, raid-ready players on my server (and I have no reason to think this is unique) is along the lines of 2/3/25. I just made these numbers up, but this is what I’ve seen. You can always, always find another damage-person to come along.
• Officers are invested in their guild’s continued existence and success.

The logical sum of these points is that officers of PvE raid guilds, even casual ones, should take up the roles that are most needed to keep their guild raiding, namely tanks and healers. Even if the character is not their main, they should have an alt ready to step into one of these needed roles should someone decide to retire from the game, lather up with crazy sauce, or just hit the next stop on the progression train.

Your ability to raid, your entire health as a guild, can be brought to a screeching halt if a couple key tank/healer roles leave the guild. I’ve seen this happen and have dealt with keeping the crippled guild afloat after that. It’s ugly, and amazing to see how quickly you can go from healthy and winning to despondent and bleeding members.

“We haven’t raided in forever (one week)!” “What about my zomgepics!” “I don’t wanna run the previous endgame just to gear the new tank up, I wanna raid just like we were again! AND I WANT IT NOW!” (It’s really funny to hear grownups speak in these tones. That’s the only upside to guild discomfort.)

Anyone can do damage. Extra tanks can do damage, extra healers can do damage. Maybe not progression-content-role damage, but enough to get the group through farm content. Conversely, extra damage dealers can only rarely heal, and nearly never tank… at least without a unwanted respec.

Officers: roll a healer or tank.

I’m a healer. I have other toons: a raid-ready tank that I love to play, a couple of decent dps toons. But in my heart, I love being a healer.

I’ve recently realized that people who are annoying tend to die more often in raids where I’m healing.

For example, my guild’s current offtank is as annoying as hell. He’s the living example of the Dunning-Kruger effect… I could go into great depth, and I very well might in a future piece, but suffice to say that there is often an undercurrent of private tells deriding him during every raid he participates in. However, our guild is like a family, and he’s the weird cousin who makes it to every cookout. His availability is decent, he’s not completely terrible at his class/role, and he tries to be friendly even if he lacks the social skills to pull it off. But there are all-too-frequent occasions where I wish I had a button I could push that gives him an anonymous electrical jolt in his real-life chair.

Actually, as it turns out, there’s a little button that I don’t push that does the same thing. It’s actually a series of buttons, each of them bound to healing spells. He dies more than average.

I only realized this pattern of behavior a couple of weeks ago when, over guild chat, this fellow was instructing new raiders to make sure they do their dailies every day in case of high repair bills, and also how elixirs are a waste of time–just get flasks, even for farm content. I was ready to type out a reply saying that we only die often enough to matter in progression runs, then thought… hmm. He does die pretty often, but the new raiders won’t. And I somehow know this ahead of time.

It’s funny how you can suddenly realize that your behavior is completely counter what you thought your goal was.

I don’t seek out the opportunity to let him die, and I don’t try to manufacture events where it will be possible. Because he’s an offtank, there are many events where we simply don’t need his offtanking. In the remaining events, you only need offtanks up to a certain point. Outside of that? Opportunities. And I occasionally partake.

It’s not just me. I mean, we often have two or three healers on our 10-man runs, so someone could bail him out. But it just doesn’t happen. Consistently.

This behavior isn’t limited to just this person, or just raids. In one of my early Magister’s Terrace runs, I ran with an annoying shadow priest who told us all how ineffective all healers are without a shadow priest in their group. He died a few additional times. Not a word was spoken. The other three members of the group knew exactly what was happening.

The same thing happens when a dps class pulls too much aggro or breaks crowd control too often. In the past, I’ve advocated letting those people die, because they’re hurting the group/raid from a tactical sense and need feedback. However, I guess that via my example I extend that behavior for other reasons too. I know that my healer friends all do the same thing, even though we rarely speak about it.

Is this counter to the group’s goal? Sadly, yes. We want smooth and speedy progress. Is this counter to my goal? No. My goal is to have fun. Is this part of why I love being a healer? I’d like to say “No!” but I strongly suspect that the answer is “Yes.”

I’m not proud, but I am smiling.

Like most people, I learned the hard way about second chances at relationships–backsliding, regression relationships, whatever you want to call it. Namely that they don’t work, despite the fact that regression sex might sound like just what you need after a series of terrible first dates. However, unless one of you has been in a coma or similarly life-changing event, inevitably the crazy in your ex or the behavior that brought out the crazy in you (or both) manifests again… and then you finally wake to find yourself stuck in a supremely depressing place: exactly the same kind of unhappy situation you were in before, except you’re older and you have demonstrably not learned your lesson. You’re connected again to this person who makes you unhappy.

Then you somehow break it off. Whether you’ve extricated yourself via your own force of will or via external causes, you’re free of this person and you now have some ability to see this kind of situation coming again. When faced with future backsliding, eventually you either:

1. Realize that the number of seconds you have on this planet is finite, and perhaps regression sex-and-crazy this isn’t the best way to spend those seconds. You opt out from that person.
2. Let them back into your guild.

Big jump, but stay with me. I suspect that those of you who have walked both the dating road and the long-time guild member road see where I’m going with this.

You’ve got this guy, Bob, in your community who appears to be friendly/funny/talented and has learned to cleverly disguise his crazy. Bob knows how to sound aligned to the goals of your guild, because how hard is it to sound like that when said goals are likely written on your guild’s front page? Honestly, only the really thick people ever do anything stupid enough to warrant immediate kicking. Not Bob–he can seem like a good guild member… but at some point, you know from firsthand experience that he’ll will do one or more of the following:

• Feel justified in a broken give/take ratio
• Complain whenever they don’t get instantaneous service from guild resources, like officers and crafters
• Pick fights with people inside or outside the guild
• Beg for anything over /g, especially gold
• Be an embarrassment in public, like /trade, hurting your guild’s continuous recruitment efforts
• Make suggestions that involve a lot of work, not offer to help with execution, and then get pissed and complain
• Sow dissension
• Only participate when there’s a clear chance for personal reward/suggest large guild investments in their own personal improvement
• Speak in txtmsg like they’re not sitting at a keyboard (”y cant i come 2 ZA”)
• Link random people’s gear over /g with text-drool of how much they want that gear
• Tell Chuck Norris jokes or other completely played-out memes
• Freak out when they don’t get attention frequently enough

…or whatever it is that pushes your Button of Incompatibility. The fact that Bob is talented and/or funny and/or generous isn’t the question; it’s that he brings out the crazy in you. The experience of being in this Bob’s company makes the game unfun for you.

How do you personally deal with Bob? For me, a notice of silence followed by enforcement of silence works. “Bob, I wish you well but I’m going to do my best to avoid you.” No conversation after that is necessary. I’ve tried “having it out” and “an honest conversation”, but honestly an extended conversation about incompatibility, however you deliver it, isn’t necessary. You’re not going to enlighten this person. The equivalent of silence in MMORPGs is some variation of /ignore and refusal to group with this person. Do not break this silence for any reason. It works great!

If only it were that easy in MMORPGs.

The problem is that you’re in a guild. The pool of people around you on the server is mostly static and is certainly limited. Your friends in this guild–the ones whose company you seek out and that you’ve come to enjoy–are perfectly good people with the glaring exception that they don’t share your opinion on Bob. This person who you’ve concluded is a complete waste of your time, he doesn’t drive them nuts like he drives you nuts.

As long as Bob plays the game and you play the game, you’re going to exist in the same limited social circle. You’re going to be around him. You’re going to see him in the bank, he’ll be grouping with your friends. He might even still be in your guild! The only method of escape is server transfer, but that means leaving everything you enjoy about where you are. The vast majority of the time, this is an unacceptable solution.

So what happens? Drama, that’s what!

Now take this two way relationship that can happen between any two people and bring that to a group of ten people. Or forty! The odds of this happening between any two people is small, but the more people you add to the mix, the more likely you are that it’s going to happen. Add the variable of time and you can pretty much guarantee that it’s going not just happen to someone in your guild, but happen to you. No matter how good you try to be, drama happens.

This is why there’s always one thing you can count on in massively multiplayer games: Drama is Inevitable.