(This essay and the companion essay date from before the WOW expansion and major changes to a couple of classes. Paladins are viable tanks now, as are feral druids, and party tactics vary with those classes in the tank slot. Revisions in progress as I level my pally to 70. Yeah, I took a couple of years off from the game. --ceej)

A group of similar level individuals fighting groups of higher level mobs, some of which are elite: that's The Good Fight.

The first time I killed VanCleef (a level 21 elite) in the Deadmines our puller and tank was a 30th level priest.

That's the easy fight. You spend a lot of time fighting easy fights as you level upwards in WoW, and they can build bad habits. It's easy to tell that you have bad habits when your party is wiped. It's hard to practice new skills when you're fighting for your life, so the trick is to practice them until they become habits when the fighting is easy.

[ I'd like to apologize in advance for not knowing the Horde-specific information well. ]

Some definitions

There are three basic roles in combat (in descending order of importance):

• Crowd control
• Healing
• Damage
of course there are other things you can do- -like debuff or knit argyle sweaters- -but those aren't combat roles, they are just important things you do.

There are three types of mobs:

• trash - - the dogs in BlackRock Depths have the special ability of exposing stealthers, but a priest can still beat them to death with his stick.
• elite - - these are just like trash, except they have a hell of a lot of hit points. You will find it hard to one-shot an elite warrior ten levels lower than you are. Elite mages are only a tenth as fragile as trash mages, so they are still fragile.
• boss - - boss mobs are elites with special attacks and defenses. You often need to know something about the boss before fighting him is manageable. Bosses drop phat lewt. Keep this in mind at the office.

Because we are discussing The Good Fight, count low level elites as trash.

And there are two types of groups of mobs:

• Posse - - a couple of elites (or bosses) plus trash.
• Squad - - lots of elites.

How Mobs Think

They don't, duh. They are simple computer programs.

Each mob starts in the unengaged state. When they first notice someone, they usually emit a little (and audible) yelp or growl. If they are unengaged and hear a yelp, they will make a yelp of their own. This can be somewhat comic. For instance, go into the bar in BlackRock Deep and kill the bartender. Strangely all the drunks suddenly hate you. Walk within range of one of them. He'll yelp, and a couple will hear him. They'll yelp and a couple will hear them. The drunks are pretty densely packed. Within two seconds you'll have forty elites zerging your group.

Mobs only consider a few things in deciding what to do:

• they think about who they hate. They mostly hate people who hurt them, but they also have a hard spot in their hearts for people who debuff them, or who heal the people they are fighting. Mostly, they try to attack the player they hate the most.
• they think about how far away you are, especially if they are melee. They'd rather hit the nearby person than spend a lot of time walking across the floor.
• they notice if you are concentrating, especially if you are bandaging. Don't bother trying to bandage yourself if a mob can reach you in only a few steps. It will.

A lot of combat is about manipulating their tiny minds.

Two Teams

The mobs all do damage to your group, while you do damage to them. The goal is to damage them out of existence before they get you. The amount of damage they do is about equal to the amount of damage you have to heal. The amount of damage they do is roughly proportional to the number that are fighting. The amount of damage you take is proportional to the armor type of the person being damaged.

That should give you a few ideas.

Freeze, sheep, sleep, shackle as many as you can. Make sure the only people on your team getting damaged are the ones with the best armor type. It's better to kill one of their guys quickly then to damage all of them a little bit. If all of your guys pile on one mob, isn't that exactly what you are trying to provoke the mobs to do? (Attack the tank?)

Be smarter than the computer: don't attack the guy with the heaviest armor first. In fact, attack the healer first. Or attack the AoEer first, it doesn't really matter. If the AoEer has enough hitpoints that the healer has time to heal him before he dies, you attacked the wrong guy. But if you have a couple damage types you can wipe the AoEer out while the healer tries desperately to heal him, thus wasting two mobs.

Combat Role: Crowd Control

Everyone in the party is responsible for maintaining crowd control, because a mob that is under control must not be hit. Nearly all party wipes come form a lack of crowd control discipline. [ Well, that and idiots getting too close to mobs when the party is not ready. ] Learn to recognize the different types of crowd control and respect them. There are four basic categories of control:

• banish, polymorph, freezing trap, sap, blind, shackle, entangling roots - - one mob is out of commission for at least twenty seconds, and the caster can do other things. Bosses are typically immune.
• mind control, one-tanking (and pets) - - one mob is out of commission, but one party member (or pet) is completely occupied.
• fear, intimidating shout, scare beast, howl of terror - - one or more mobs run away and recruit new assistants, but the caster can do other things (like run). Use only if there are no potential recruits or if you can reach the zone portal.
• multi-tanking - - a whole bunch of mobs beat up on one player, who had better be wearing plate, have a shield equipped, and be in a defensive mode. The other players get busy.

The rule is very simple: Do not damage a controlled mob. DO NOT DAMAGE A CONTROLLED MOB. Do not damage them with your sword, do not damage them with your spell, do not damage them with your arrow, do not damage them with your AoE. If you can think of another way to damage them, don't do that either. Don't risk hitting them with Cleave or Flurry, don't use a sword that procs AoE.

There are actually a few safe non-damaging debuffs (such as Demoralizing Shout). If you don't know that a debuff is safe, don't use it. And find out: knowledge is actually a benefit.

Also, be aware that some attacks are slow (spells, charge, lag, DoTs), and it is possible to start an attack right before a mob is controlled and be unable to stop it, thus breaking control. For this reason it is a very good idea to talk in party or raid chat about which mobs are getting which control. Know who is responsible for controlling which type of mob if it goes after which healers. Do not bleed or DoT a mob that is supposed to get sheeped.

Combat Role: Healing

Healing is the most efficient way to get aggro in the game. Imagine that a Warrior is tanking four 60th level elites, and has been doing so for 20 seconds. During that period she has done 800 points of damage to 1 mob and 100 points of damage to the other three. Let's call that 1,100 points of aggro. During that period each mob has done 500 points of damage for a total of 2,000. The Priest then heals the Warrior for 2,000 points. Let's call that 2,000 points of aggro. Suddenly the three less injured mobs will leave the Warrior and go after the Priest. They will do 1,500 points of damage to the Priest in about 3 seconds. The Priest fades and they run back to the Warrior.

Healing in combat comes from four sources:

• Priest - - by far the best choice for a main healer because they draw less mob attention when healing (subtlety), have power word shield, fade to shed aggro, and have a rez with no timer.
• Druid - - if the main healer, needs a dedicated Warrior to handle healing aggro; however this does act as effective crowd control. Useful for their combat rez (30 minute timer), poison relief, etc.
• Paladin (Shaman?) - - Paladins make great self-healing one-tanks. They don't shed aggro well, and they don't function well when being hit by multiple mobs, so as the main healer they need a dedicated Warrior to multi-tank. Having several Paladins share main-healing duties is often viable. Useful rezzers since they are often the last one standing.
• Bandages - - in real high level combat, bandages are how rogues, mages, warlocks, hunters, and damage-warriors get healed. Watch any Onyxia video and see for yourself. Make sure when bandaging to get away from mobs, because they will take a swipe at you just to break the bandage effect. Also make sure you get real healing if you are suffering a DoT.
• Potions are on too long a timer to take seriously.

Healing costs mana and mana is precious. The job of the main healer is to keep the designated tanks and the main-healer alive. The main healer(s) should never waste mana on any other player. The secret then is that players who are not designated tanks should never take much damage. This is trivially easy if you combine common sense with Crowd Control Discipline. The secrets are:

1. never damage a controlled mob
2. never do so much damage to mob that it prefers hurting you to hurting its designated tank
3. except when it is nearly dead and you can finish it off
4. never fight within the range of a different mob's pulsing AoE (the "Black Rock Depths Rule".)

Combat Role: Damage

Damage is the sexiest part of combat, so that's where most people focus their attention. There are special mods (with clever names like "DamageWatch") that purport to tell you how much damage each player is doing, and little boys get into pissing contests about their numbers. DamageWatch is BS.

Damage is what you start doing once you have your crowds controlled. It's perfectly okay to stand around waiting for everything to get set up before you start doing damage. Rushing at the nearest mob and waling away is a sure ticket to disaster. Certain classes (though they also have other roles) are optimized for damage:

• Mage - - mages can deal more damage in a given few seconds than any other class. They fight in their pajamas, however, so the penalty for drawing aggro is huge. They also run out of Mana, so they can't deal damage like that continuously. There's a way to solve both those problems at once.
• Rogue - - rogues damage from melee. The pattern is "small damage, small damage, small damage, small damage, HUGE DAMAGE". They are likely to make the largest single hits of the game. They can detaunt, which means that they can do more damage without drawing aggro than other classes. They can evade or vanish, which means that the aftereffects of drawing aggro are not so horrible.
• Hunter - - hunters also pump out damage pretty well. They wear better armor than Rogues, they can detaunt in melee, and they can feign death, so they duplicate many roguish virtues. They function best at range, and they aren't wearing plate, so the rule still holds: don't get aggro.
• Berserk-Warrior - - this is a warrior that is not the tank. Perhaps you have a spare warrior. Perhaps a paladin has aggro right now and the tank is going to pull the mob off the slow way, by berserking. Perhaps the mob is nearly dead. Berserk warriors with two-handed weapons can do phenomenal amounts of damage. Berserk reckless warriors are completely over the top. Berserking negates the advantages of Plate, so stop berserking if you get aggro. Needs a good weapon.
• Warlock - - another pajama wearing class. Not as pure flaming death as mages, but still pretty damaging. Valuable for their other abilities, such as allowing priests to rez themselves after party wipes.

It can't be repeated often enough: when you are fighting The Good Fight each mob should be controlled- -either immobilized or tanked. Doing too much damage to a mob too quickly can pull it off its tank. That's a crime. It's often a party wipe. Against some mobs- -like Onyxia- -it's always a party wipe. Controlling the mobs is more important than damaging them right now. They need to be damaged, but it's okay to damage them later.

Watching the forty member raid group wipe.

Why Tanks Wear Plate

A Group in The Good Fight

[ Raid groups way lower down]

A Priest, a Warrior, someone from the damage group, and any two others. Back-up tanks (Warrior or Paladin), back-up healers (druid or Paladin), and of course Warlocks are a big plus. Because they get a lot of AoE damage even when they don't get mob attention, extra melee damage (rogue, warrior) implies extra healing.

You want the Priest for his heals and aggro-dumping. Any substitute and you must have a multitank (Warrior) watching the healer constantly to pull mobs off. Sometimes a team of Paladins can keep each other up.

You want the Warrior for her ability to pull 4 mobs off the Priest and keep them entertained by herself. Only a Paladin can substitute, and the rest of the team must then maintain exquisite crowd control discipline.

So despite what Blizzard says, expect every serious group to have a Warrior and a Priest, and either a mage or a rogue. It's rare not to want a Warlock.

• if you expect a lot of magic resistance, prefer the rogue.
• if you expect a lot of pulsing AoE, prefer the mage.
** or bring backup healing

How to play the roles

There are an infinite number of special circumstances and combinations of players and mobs, many of which give rise to special and particular tactics. I'm going to ignore all that and start with the basics.

Playing your role: Crowd Control

Either you start out with an assigned target, or you are prepared to handle adds. Being prepared to handle an add means:

• be on the lookout for adds.
• make sure everyone knows you'll be controlling it.
• make sure you have reserved the mana etc.
• be wary of assuming there won't be an add.
** expect adds when you least expect them. Crowd control is the most important part of a fight, so everyone should be helping out. Crowd Control is very easy when people have time to think, but the nature of the game is to try and panic everyone all the time. Practice and preparation are key.

Playing your role: Healing

Healing in most combats is a very simple task. Watch the tanks' health and your own health, and when either gets low, heal. You will notice I didn't mention watching the mage's or the rogue's or the hunter's or the warlock's health. That's because those classes never get aggro. If they don't get aggro, they don't get hurt. And if they don't get hurt, they don't need healing. Of course that attitude is a bit simplistic, but it's in the right direction. There are a few situations where you can expect these classes to deserve healing:

• someone whacks the sheep. For a few seconds the ex-sheep will be pounding on the mage, before it becomes a sheep again. If you see that coming, Shield the mage.
• if you agree ahead of time that the rogue can enter the fire-elemental's aura to bring it down faster, or the mage can Arcane Blast the trash
• some mobs have ridiculously huge radius AoE
• some mobs will shoot other players than the ones they are fighting (you'll see this a lot in Dire Maul or Molten Core).
• the multi-tank gets feared or hexed or banished
** if you know the mob can do that, make sure (if you can) someone is assigned to remove it. But remember: as long as the tanks and healers are functioning, everyone else can run off and bandage themselves, then come back and fight. Every mana you spend on them is more aggro for yourself, and less mana to heal the tanks. Even better, while they are bandaging they are not generating so much aggro. Healing them is lose-lose, and if you do heal them it will happen again the next time. That's fine for the easy fight, but it just doesn't work in The Good Fight.

If you have multiple healers, you want to rotate healing so that each healer gets only a fraction of the healing aggro.

Playing your role: Damage

Damage is a very simple role. Hit shoot or nuke things until they are dead. BUT REMEMBER:

• it is a crime to get aggro.
• it is a crime to hit something that is controlled.
This turns out to be very simple in practice. Someone in the group is designated the "main assist". Assist that person and hit the thing they are hitting. If the things you are killing are big and dangerous, then hold back. Holding back is also remarkably simple: don't hit shoot or nuke them. Walk away if you are a rogue. Sit down and hope some mana comes back. Admire the animations.

It is a billion times more important to not get aggro than it is to do some damage earlier than you might have. Did you read Watching the forty member raid group wipe?

Suppose you were Randylion in that forty-person raid, suddenly the Dragon turns on you. What are you supposed to do? Feint, stop attacking, and stand perfectly still (or run and sit right in front of the main tank). Oh, did you do a rupture or use a slow poison, so you're keeping doing damage? Bad Rogue! You wiped the party!

It is in truth really hard to simply stand there taking damage. But that's what you ought to do. If you run you may take the dragon out of the tank's range. In fact, the second the dragon's head moves, every single person in the raid should stop attacking and wait for the tank to re-establish control. If you are a hunter, feign death. If you are a rogue, feint. No matter whether you think you are guilty or not, dump aggro, stop attacking.

Fighting the Posse

Someone one-tanks the boss while someone else multi-tanks the posse. If you only have one tank, guess what?

Then, the damage part of the group offs posse members one by one, as fast as possible. When the trash is really trashy (spiders in Lower BlackRock Spire, for example) you can AoE the posse as a whole.

If you have several damage types including a rogue, the rogue can tank the trash one at a time. He shouldn't even need to be healed between posse members; he might pop evasion, though, or step aside and bandage. There is often genuinely little hurry. Once more, if a mob is frail enough, even a mage can tank it for the few remaining seconds of its existence.

After you've taken out the trash, take out the boss. As usual, don't let it be pulled off the main tank.

Here's a typical posse fight for a group of Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Mage, Hunter going against three elites and four trash:

1. Tasks are assigned.
2. Hunter places a freeze trap in front of casters. If everything goes well, this trap will not go off.
3. Rogue saps an elite.
4. Mage starts casting polymorph on another elite.
5. Rogue runs away from the sapped guy to make space for AoE.
6. Warrior Charges the remaining elite and pops Demoralizing shout.
7. One elite and four trash attack Warrior (Demoralizing shout does not break crowd control, but it is more annoying than seeing someone get sapped)
8. Warrior calmly walks away from the sheep and the sap, carrying the crowd.
9. Hunter's pet, rogue, mage, and hunter pile on a posse member.
10. Priest heals Warrior.
11. Rinse and repeat.
12. Everyone piles on the warrior's elite.
13. Sap wears off. Warrior grabs elite in passing.
14. Polymorph wears off. Warrior grabs elite in passing.

While it may be useful for the Warrior to whack the same trash that everyone else is whacking, a multi-tank cannot be a main assist.

Mage and Hunter must not under any circumstances pull the trash off of the hunter's pet/rogue duo, unless it is really about to die (which it probably is).

Note that a Paladin might work in place of the warrior here, but everyone has to be real careful about placement. He practically has to use consecrate to get aggro from five at once, which means he must be far from the sheep and the sap. He may not be able to heal himself well because with five mobs on him he will get interrupted a lot and may be stunned. Yet if the priest heals him four mobs will launch themselves at the priest, so he has to be ready to deal with that.

Fighting the Squad

A lot of elite pajama casters are as fragile as trash. Take them out like trash.

The point of the elite squad is that there are no low-hanging fruit. Every kill will be a slog. It really works almost exactly like the last three mobs in the posse example. Sap one, sheep another, and this time make sure a third gets frozen. The major difference is that only a real tank can tank an elite, because they last so long. Yet, if as in the previous example you only have one tank, the tank cannot be the main assist. Because the fight lasts so long, the priest will get heal aggro several times, requiring the tank to do some chasing. Most likely the whole elite squad will chase along. Great fun!

Playing the class: Warrior

This really has four divisions:

1. one-tank
2. multi-tank
3. only-tank
4. damage add
In all cases, for the high level instances, the warrior must not have the deep wounds talent, and he must have a weapon that does not proc a DoT or debuff (he may, of course, have other weapons as well). This is because mobs (in the June 05 level) can only have a couple persistent effects, and when you add shortlived random ones (deep wounds or procs) they can drive out much better ones. This only applies to the sort of mob it takes more than ten seconds to kill, mostly bosses, but you can't turn off Deep Wounds. You also don't rend or shout at those bosses.

Tanks need healing. Damage-add, none. So count up the tanks and count up the healers; if there aren't enough healers, volunteer to solo Onyxia: at least it will be fast.

Since the amount of damage done is dependent on the mobs you are fighting, the amount of healing/number of healers you need is also dependent on the mobs. For instance, if you want killing Azuregos to be easy, bring 8 healers for your one-tank, and an extra healer-tank pair for the adds. That's only eleven. Add a competent DPS person to the add group, and some competent DPS people to the Azuregos group, and you have a very easy fight.

Playing the class: Warrior - One-Tank

To be a Tank you need three things:

1. a shield.
2. the willingness to fight in defensive mode.
3. Taunt bound to a key.
Charge the mob if you can, burn off excess rage with sunder armor, then switch to defensive mode. The mob should be hitting you real hard, which will do wonders for your rage. Use that to sunder armor, until it is maxed. Sunder wears off in thirty seconds, so apply it again every 25 seconds. I usually look at my weapon speed, divide it into thirty, subtract one, and sunder every that many swings. [ Someone tell me if there is a good mod for this. ]

Maintain a reservoir of rage so that if the mob gets away from you, you can berserk and intercept. Go ahead and spend any extra on mortal strike or heroic strike. Eventually everyone will attack your mob.

The one-tank accomplishes two things:

1. He occupies a very large mob's complete and undivided attention. This keeps it from bothering the other players who are surely busy.
2. He prepares the mob for the concentrated attention of the entire party. He does this by continuing to damage it at his slow rate (defensive mode), building up hate.

Playing the class: Warrior - MultiTank

In a good group the MultiTank has a pretty straight-forward assignment. He is the tree off which the low fruit hang. Charge into a mob of not-too dangerous creatures, pop Thunderclap, Defensive mode, Demoralize, whack a guy, turn and whack another guy, cleave, whack. Pop up the mob name-plates and whack whomever looks least damaged- -that's the guy about to attack your healer! If someone does take off after the healer (and there isn't someone else on that duty) charge after them and taunt them off, then drag them away from the healer.

Meanwhile the rest of the party will kill your playmates one-by-one.

In a bad group, the different party members will attack different mobs. This will cause mobs that were attacking you to run off in multiple directions. You will then need to run off in multiple directions at once. The party will usually wipe, or come far closer than they should. The best advice is to not rescue anyone except your healers. If you can, convince your healers not to rescue anyone. Get repeat offenders thrown out of the raid, and out of your guild if possible.

Playing the class: Warrior - Only Tank

If you're the only tank in a raid, leave.

If you are five-manning Scholo, then you have your work cut out for you. With only one tank, you should have other crowd control (there are surely 4 non-tanks). Mostly, you just do what a multi-tank does, except when it's boss time you have to also be the one-tank. It's usually far more important to keep the boss occupied then to keep up after everyone else.

Playing the class: Warrior - Damage Add

The most blissful of all warrior roles. Like any DPS class, gang up on the designated target (designated by the main assist). Hold back enough that you don't pull aggro from the tank. If you get hurt, run aside and bandage yourself. If a tank falls, know whether you are next in line and step up if you are and start tanking. If someone jumps a priest, feel free to pull them off. If the mob has a nasty AoE aura, stand a little in front of the casters and just watch the fight. Taunt the mob if he tries to run past you. Dive in occassionally and take a few whacks.

Playing the class: Mage

Mages are easy to play. All you have to do is blast the enemy. If the creature you are blasting is an elite, then you can spend your entire mana pool in couple dozen seconds, and still not kill the thing. But it will be plenty mad, run away from its tank and start hitting you. Ow that hurts! The tank runs up and taunts the elite off of you, then the priest heals you. That's a bunch of healing! The elite launches itself at the priest! But, taunt is on a timer! Uh oh!

When you are soloing, life is easy. Frost 'em and nuke them, then when they get close nova, blink, spin, nuke. Mobs are putty under your heel. Non-elite mobs, that is.

In The Good Fight Mages are easy to play. They're my favorite. First, I'm on polymorph duty. Miss casting a nuke, no biggie. Miss polymorphing an Orc: trouble. Second, I'm on anti-curse duty: especially curses that incapacitate the tanks or priests. Third, I make the best DPS in the game, while my mana lasts. So, when the main assist picks the elite squadmember to beat on, I sit down on my butt. Let that pathetic rogue hit it twice. Pop up and do Frostbolt. Then the rogue pops eviscerate. He gains aggro! The tank taunts. Better keep quiet, taunt is on a ten second timer (improved is 8). Okay: the mob is down to about 50%. Time to finish it off! Pyroblast! (1000 pts) Fireblast! (480 pts) Arcane Missile! (950 pts) Dear me, the poor thing melted. I guess I'll sit down and work on my mana pool while the setup guys start the next one.

Look! A runner! Fireblast! (Or frostbolt if there is room)

Playing the Class: Hunter

Another easy to play class- -one of my favorites- -high DPS, much like a mage. And I get a kittycat! Set up a trap to ice someone. Sometimes I pull! Pulling is easy: press Auto-shoot once to launch an arrow, press it again to stop. If I'm pulling casters, duck behind a corner so they have to come to where the tank is in order to shoot me back. Once the tank has aggro (which should be trivial because I only tagged the mob with autoshoot- -I used to carry a level 2 bow just for pulling) and the main assist has chosen a target, I give them a couple seconds to get comfortable then I turn on auto-shoot. When I think it's safe, I toss in an arcane shot (aimed shot is far too dangerous early because the 600 point aggro deficit is hard to overcome). About when the mage would start his nuking frenzy, aimed shot. When the mob gets low on health, concussive shot if it might run. If I see a runner, concussive shot, arcane shot, aimed shot. No one gets far.

One of the great things about having the whole group concentrate on one mob is that there is never more than one runner, and you can usually tell when they're about to run.

And I've got a pet! My pet always has growl turned on and is in passive mode, standing next to me or positioned next to the healers. Sometimes when we're cleaning up the trash of a posse he'll be the tank. The rest of the time his job is to catch mobs running at the healers. As soon as the tank reacquires the mob, I call him back. Mobs never run at me because I'm a good hunter, but if they did I'd feign death immediately and become more careful.