Party Strategy Guide

[Kevin]

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?

1 Elite and 4 non elite with your party. Puller pulls, tank hits and holds the elite mage and hunter can AoE, or hunter can focus on the elite with the rogue.

2 Elite and 3 non with no CC possible. Pull, tank gets attention of everything with a dem shout or whatever (more likely a thunder clap after an intercept charge if not the puller), get sunders on both elites, AoE with both mage and hunter or mage and warlock. Tank should be able to hold both elites and AoE will wipe out the rest. If priest has to heal early and pulls the non elites AoE around priest to get aggro. Tank can pull not elites into AoE if they feel they can hold them from hitting the AoE.

3 Elite and 2 non elite. Pull, tank gets everythings attention. Focus on the elites first of course. Hunter does a volley that will pull the nons to him but should leave the elites. Mage can then AoE them with a shield up and everyone goes back to focus fire. Mage and lock you can have the mage flame strike then have them AoE. Want mage to get any aggro as lock can be interrupted. Depending on the tank the primary target has probably been feinted around. Kill it. Tank should have solid aggro on other two you can focus or AoE them down.

4 Elite 1 non. Can AoE or focus fire. To AoE. Tank gets everythings attention while people hold back. Rogue can start attacking primary target. I would put the pet on another target with growl one, tank can ignore that one. AoE up by the tank. Rogue my have to evasion tank one of them. Pet should hold the one, warrior should hold 2, rogue may very well have to evasion tank the primary here, but it will die quickly with a mage and warlock AoE or a mage AoE and a hunter focus on it as well. Would most likely focuse fire down a group like that though.

5 elite. Can still be AoE'd but the rogue will be out of combat for awhile while tank builds aggro or will have to evasion tank. Hunter pet would have to hold one in the AoE as well. Would not recommend AoE here as tank won't be able to hold that many elites through AoE and the elites will kill the AoE person.

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?

Because the elites need to be held the most strongly. If you are going to lose a mob to a peel it should be a non elite or the least dangerous mob. The tank needs to know what is CC'd so that they don't waste time locking that mob down. If the tank knows that AoE is happening very early he wants to keep the elites from hitting the people doing AoE since they do the most damage and can very likely ignore the non elite mobs. There is no reason to let one or 2 elites ever hit a squishy, but if the tank doesn't know where or what the elites are they waste time in finding them to get them locked down. And you won't be able to keep the elites in check if you spend time holding the non elites. Or if you have bad rage generation that fight for some reason you let the lower priorities have the higher chance of exiting lock down. If focuse fire is going to be heavy and you are only holding the rest vs healer aggro you can be even more stingy on how that aggro is applied to make sure the mob doesn't go peeling off to a DPS class.