Party Strategy Guide

[bkelly1984]

2) In your opinion, how often should a group do an AoE fight?  If a well-rounded group of five (one mage say) encountered 5 mobs, I think almost everyone would agree that AoE should be used if all five are non-elite.  Would you still recommend an AoE fight if 1 mob were elite?  What about two?  Three?

All depends on the fight, the type of mobs, and the party composition.

Well, sure, but this doesn't help me. I'm working on a strategy guide and need to give actionable advice.

I know there are a lot of factors but I tried to outline a fairly specific scenario. Okay, in addition to the above, let's say they're equal leveled mobs that melee only. No crowd control is possible. The party is Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Mage and Hunter. If there is anything else that would play a part, mention it and make an assumption. In this setup, would you recommend at least starting with AoE if of the one of the five mobs were elite? What about two? Three?

Now with that, do things change if the Hunter is replaced with a Warlock?

If the above questions are still unanswerable could someone at least provide a few guidelines as to when they would recommend AoE and when they wouldn't? I'm trying to get a feel for how much members of this forum think AoE should be used in the later instances. Coming here, my feeling was that AoE should only be used with non-elite groups, but I'm getting the impression that most find it's much more useful. If most see it as a staple attack, then perhaps I should change the whole system.

Also, your tank damned well better know just how many elites vs. non-elites are going to be in a pull.  *snip*

I'll demonstrate why the tank needs to know the pull before the pull with a little story. *snip*

Well I still don't know why a tank needs to know this. I see you're quite emphatic, but I didn't see any reasons why in your first paragraph. As for your story, it sounds like you had a bad puller but the moral I get from it is the puller and the shackler need to know who the elites are (and not even the shackler if the puller hadn't been lazy and used names), but not the tank. If a tank's job is to hold aggro, then every 15 seconds he or she needs to sunder the armor on each mob. Who cares if they're elite?

However, in this conversation I'm seeing the plan needs more commincation here. Knowing elite is important for people who need to set priorities, so it needs to be communicated to the Main Assist and perhaps crowd controlers. The tank would need the information only if he or she plans to hold aggro on specific mobs. Perhaps the puller should communicate the number of elites and non-elites. I'll think about this a bit more.

*snip two paragraphs on AoE being situation dependent*

So, after that rambling, it's best to say at the beginning "Don't AoE until the tank says it's ok". If you notice your tank is just a tool anyway, be prepared for an annoying and/or frustrating instance anyway.

Great. Any suggestions on advice I should give the tank on when to give the ok?

Brian