How does the Main Assist work?

[towelrod]

I'm just starting to do high level instance runs, and I'm interested in learning how people like to play as the main assist. I'm not sure I understand the term, or how one should be used in a group.

In a "normal" fight, where there isn't anything weird going on, how does your party target and assist? For example, if you are fighting a standard group of 3 elites, how does the perfect fight go? Is this right:

1. ... fight starts, there are 3 active elites all on the warrior
2. Warrior concentrates on one mob, while keeping the others interested with sunder armor or shouts or whater
3. Main Assist targets the mob the warrior is concentrating on, and starts dps
4. Everyone else does a /assist MA, and starts dps
5. Mob dies; goto 3

Or, does it go like this:

1. ...
2. Warrior spreads damage around, making sure no one hates the priest
3. A rogue or hunter or something like that peels one of the 3 off of the tank
4. All dps on that target
5. Mob dies; goto 3

It seems like that first scenario is best, but can the warrior effectively hold agro while a mage, rogue, and druid (or whatever) are all trying to kill it as fast as possible? Or is it better for the warrior to not even try?

[bonemage]

1.  ... fight starts, there are 3 active elites all on the warrior
2.  Warrior concentrates on one mob, while keeping the others interested with sunder armor or shouts or whater
3.  Main Assist targets the mob the warrior is concentrating on, and starts dps
4.  Everyone else does a /assist MA, and starts dps
5.  Mob dies; goto 3
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It's more like that. However, it's best if the warrior spreads damage around to be sure that no one hates the priest too much for healing the warrior when that time comes. I'm sure opinions will vary a bit, but I don't feel that the warrior should be too concerned with holding aggro on the focus fire target (the target of the main assist). They'll usually die before they can do much damage even if they reach a squishy. Also, if the main assist targets the mob with the lowest health, the warrior usually doesn't lose aggro as he has generated some good hate. Death greets the mob first. The idea of targeting the mob with the lowest health has two reasons:

1) It dies easier/quicker, lowering the overall output of mob damge ASAP.
2) It hates the warrior most as he has hurt it the most (as a general rule)

Point 2 is really only true if the party is following the main assist and doing proper focus fire, so the mobs that are hurt have been hurt by the tank, assuming that the main assist target has just died.

Special bosses follow different rules, but the preceeding is how I feel it works best in my experience in groups in standard combat vs. elites.

[playingtokrush]

In my late-game experience, the main assist is an off-tank who selects one mob at a time for the group to focus fire on and kill. The MA's goals (more or less in order of importance) should be:

1. Don't target CC'd mobs, which of course applies to everyone, but since all the damage dealers in the group/raid should be diligently assisting the MA, it is critical that he/she does not target a CC'd mob.

2. Do not change targets until the current target is dead or just seconds from dying, barring emergency situations. If the MA switches targets, anyone who is late in assisting him/her will end up on a different mob than the players who assisted before the switch, thus spreading damage haphazardly instead of properly focusing fire.

3. Target the most dangerous mob so that it can be removed from battle as quickly as possible. Depending on the situation, this might be a high damage melee mob (monks, assassins, and so on), a mob with very bad debuff effects, or a healer.

4. Target the lowest health mob. It's not necessary to make distinctions between targeting mobs with, say, 75% and 80% health. This mostly applies if one mob is noticeably more damaged than the others (i.e., something is at half health while the others have residual damage from attacks like thunderclap or cleave).

Note: Points 3 and 4 are of similar importance, depending on the degree of damage on remaining mobs and the danger posed by the presence of individual mobs.

5. Do (or don't do, in points 1 and 2) all of the above in a fairly hasty manner. When the battle starts or the current target dies, it is important to target the next mob to be slaughtered within a couple seconds. People who diligently assist the MA tend to get frustrated if he/she is slow in acquiring a new target, and people are more likely to just give up and attack random mobs if this is the case. If you're in the heat of battle (and thus can't ask for others' advice) and you're not sure which mob is the biggest threat and they all have similar health, don't hesitate to decide which mob to target. The most important thing is just having something targeted and sticking to it. If the rest of your group/raid is assisting properly, enemies will drop relatively quickly.

I think that covers everything an MA needs to know in general. This is more like your second scenario. Frankly, it's incredibly difficult for a warrior to keep enough threat on everything to prevent them from going after the healer(s) while also keeping enough threat on the main target so that the DPS squad doesn't peel it off. I could see this being somewhat of a problem in a five-person group scenario, if the MA isn't a class that can off tank. In raid situations, there will almost always be at least one other class that can easily off tank and serve as MA.

In either case, if everyone knows his/her role (liberal use of an assist macro), then there's nothing more the MA should have to worry about.

[towelrod]

Thanks for all the responses, this gives me some things to think about.

I'm more concerned with 5 man groups right now, as that's where my play is happening. Its fairly uncommon for my groups to have a real offtank; I'm level 56, so I haven't done anything past the sunken temple. We have a hard time finding tanks, so usually if we can get one we just go with that. I did the ST twice, with a pally as the tank each time.

The first time we didn't finish eranikus (it was the first time for all of us, and after 2 wipes several people had to go). The second time we did Hakkar and Eranikus without too much difficulty. We had Pally + Hunter + Rogue + Priest + Priest, which is kinda a weird group. I (rogue) ended up tanking Eranikus for about 45 seconds (evasion + prep + evasion) after he sleeped the pally, and we were able to win. I doubt I could have tanked that long without two priests healing me.

We used the hunter's pet as an offtank for the whole instance. He can definately hold agro against an elite for the whole battle, but we usually just let him hold off of them off until we finish the rest. Most of our fights went like this:

sap/shackle one elite
pally fights another
pet hold agro against one elite, doing no damage but keeping him off to himself

Hunter + me kill everything else. ST has a lot of non-elites, so I would usually target them and take them out before we turned to the elites. The pet could last for about 4 minutes before getting into trouble, so that was a long time to hold one elite out. The pally could last all day on his target, but he couldn't effectively hold agro against multiple targets.

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling, but my question is this: should we use the pet as an offtank, and fight the guy that he is tanking? Or should we continue to use him as crowd control? Or will he be useless in strat/scholo/DM/etc.?

[DarkCrown]

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling, but my question is this:  should we use the pet as an offtank, and fight the guy that he is tanking?  Or should we continue to use him as crowd control?  Or will he be useless in strat/scholo/DM/etc.?
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I think what you were doing was fine. I didn't see you mention the hunter's freezing trap. Even with no talent points this is 20 secs of crowd control, which is always helpful. The hunter can also feign to get out of combat and reset the trap, getting you 40 secs of CC.

How good an off-tank a pet is depends on the pet and the hunter. I've seen a bear (named 'Bunny' of all things!) belonging to a hunter with a Beast Mastery spec off-tank one of the two adds in the last room of UBRS. The bear survived the entire fight. There are many pallies who can't do this.


-DC

[savaughn]

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling, but my question is this:  should we use the pet as an offtank, and fight the guy that he is tanking?  Or should we continue to use him as crowd control?  Or will he be useless in strat/scholo/DM/etc.?
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Under normal circumstances, I would say "Yes, use the bear as your Main Assist."

There are two concepts at play here. First, damage consolidation. Damage dealing in WoW is integral. You keep taking the same amount of damage until you kill off one of your attackers. As such, the faster you kill off mobs, the less overall damage you take. The hunter's pet's damage is not inconsequential and having that damage included on the MA target can save the party hundreds of points of damage, which translates into less mana required from the healer, less chance for the healer to pull aggro (since the pally can't keep aggro as well as he should), and better happier party life.

The second concept here is damage conservation. Between you, the bear, and the hunter, either the hunter or the bear wins for highest armor. The hunter does much less damage as a tank, however, so is probably not as effective a tank choice as the bear. The end result is: if a rogue in leather is being the MA and draws aggro, the total damage from that mob is reduced by leather (aka wet cardboard) instead of the higher damage reduction of the pet. Once again, less overall damage taken = fewer heals from priest = better happier party life.

[Ynir]

Spangles is a defense warrior who raids many times each week with her guild. A controversy arose briefly during a recent outing about Spangles' penchant for breaking into sheeped and shackled mobs. I posted this explanation on the guild site, and thought it relevant to this thread also.

Over the weeks that Spangles has been raiding with her guild she has seen raid tactics become increasingly sophisticated. This is most apparent in matters of crowd control. Our group of casters has become adept at removing mobs from the game momentarily. Spangles is often a MT, and good crowd control makes her job much easier, but it also entails some decision making that may not be apparent to others in the group.

She uses a macro that is always set to assist the raidmaster, who is usually the MA. If she is told to assist, her job is straightforward. She locks onto the MA's target and helps to beat it up. No thinking involved.

She still uses the assist macro if she is MT, but in this case to determine which target to avoid. She always switches her target to the last incoming mob on the pull, assuming that the first will be handled by the assists, and that the intermediate mobs will be taken out with crowd control.

If all the mobs are locked down and she doesn't have an immediate target, she starts a timer, and uses the first 15 seconds to patrol the interval between the casters and the MA/assists to guard the healers from breakaway mobs. The active term for this triage is healers. Mages and locks are expendable, in the short term. Priests and druids are not.

When the lifebar of the mob that the MA/assists are working on drops, which is usually less than 15 seconds, Spangles targets the first CC'd mob and breaks into it. She does this because it is easier to gain first place on the mob's hate table alone than in a group, and much easier than trying to peel the mob from a caster after the CC times out.

There is risk involved in this judgement because no tactic works every time, and the mob might head for the caster anyway. This is particularly bad with warrior mobs that charge after breaking CC. However, if Spangles can place a taunt on his hate table before he charges, he will rubberband right back.

A group of MA/assists will often do no better. Until we can field three defensive warriors, two as MT and one on assist, it is my judgement that it is better for Spangles to break CC early than to risk having to run to the backfield to defend a non-healing caster.

Don't even think about recasting on a target that Spangles has already locked down, unless there is a clear and present danger that is extreme. Stopping the next autoswing is very difficult, and a caster only has time to reapply CC if there is nothing dangerous going on elsewhere. If the mob breaks away from her, CC it by all means. Otherwise, find something else to do.

I am committed to improving Spangles' tactics in the raid environment, which is why I am asking for comments here. Be advised, however, that once the raid begins, Spangles takes direction on tactical matters from the raidmaster, and from nobody else.

[Darian]

[i]She always switches her target to the last incoming mob on the pull, assuming that the first will be handled by the assists, and that the intermediate mobs will be taken out with crowd control.

If all the mobs are locked down and she doesn't have an immediate target, she starts a timer, and uses the first 15 seconds to patrol the interval between the casters and the MA/assists to guard the healers from breakaway mobs.[right][snapback]76081[/snapback][/right]

That's an interesting application, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it so long as you can verify that everything's under control -- however, I would tend to thing you should still be beating on the main target, with your visual field placed toward the crowd controlled so that you can spring to them if they become uncontrolled. Every second quicker that first mob dies is one more second the controlled mobs effectively (from the perspective of the assists) stay controlled.

When the lifebar of the mob that the MA/assists are working on drops, which is usually less than 15 seconds, Spangles targets the first CC'd mob and breaks into it. She does this because it is easier to gain first place on the mob's hate table alone than in a group, and much easier than trying to peel the mob from a caster after the CC times out.

Absolutely, although what's more important here is not so much the peeling away part, but the "make sure you're the one breaking CC" part. Most non-warriors do not understand this and it's a serious pet peeve of mine, but the chances of them drawing the aggro if they break CC are extremely minimal, whereas I can count on one hand the number of times I was unable to hold aggro when breaking a CCed mob (excepting Mind Control) with a Sunder (and in every case, it's because the caster had been obligated to CC the mob multiple times). Sunder generates more hate than any CC save MC, and even on an MC you can usually get it back with two Sunders.

[Ynir]

That's an interesting application, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it so long as you can verify that everything's under control -- however, I would tend to thing you should still be beating on the main target, with your visual field placed toward the crowd controlled so that you can spring to them if they become uncontrolled.  Every second quicker that first mob dies is one more second the controlled mobs effectively (from the perspective of the assists) stay controlled.

I agree in principle, but in practice, the our MTs are actually discouraged from assisting, unless there is absolutely nothing else to do. One reason is in the damage table we that publish after each kill. The damage output from each caster, rogue, pally, and (arms/fury) warrior on the assist is always more than an order of magnitude greater than that of the defense warrior(s) on MT. The numbers are truly astounding: a rogue can issue more than 200,000 damage in the time it takes a defense warrior to generate 8000. Damage control in the backfield is a better use of our abilities, under these circumstances.

Absolutely, although what's more important here is not so much the peeling away part, but the "make sure you're the one breaking CC" part.  Most non-warriors do not understand this and it's a serious pet peeve of mine, but the chances of them drawing the aggro if they break CC are extremely minimal, whereas I can count on one hand the number of times I was unable to hold aggro when breaking a CCed mob (excepting Mind Control) with a Sunder (and in every case, it's because the caster had been obligated to CC the mob multiple times).  Sunder generates more hate than any CC save MC, and even on an MC you can usually get it back with two Sunders.
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That is an interesting point. My attack when breaking CC is always taunt, followed by sunder, which (usually) works. I am trying to discover if the mob can be taunted before CC is broken, so that it wakes up remembering the taunt. I doubt it, but I'm still not sure.

One minor annoyance is when a conventional warrior charges my target while I am trotting over to intercept it. When this happens I head straight for the backfield, knowing that I will meet the mob there shortly. This doesn't happen often, actually, because it is so difficult to set up a charge in the fog of a raid war.

[Tal]

That is an interesting point. My attack when breaking CC is always taunt, followed by sunder, which (usually) works. I am trying to discover if the mob can be taunted before CC is broken, so that it wakes up remembering the taunt. I doubt it, but I'm still not sure.
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I find that demoralizing shout of the CC'd crowd followed by a sunder to break the CC does a much better job of locking aggro without losing your oh sh*t button in Taunt.

[Ynir]

I find that demoralizing shout of the CC'd crowd followed by a sunder to break the CC does a much better job of locking aggro without losing your oh sh*t button in Taunt.
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Very interesting. Spangles will try that ASAP.

[Darian]

I find that demoralizing shout of the CC'd crowd followed by a sunder to break the CC does a much better job of locking aggro without losing your oh sh*t button in Taunt.
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/agree

Demo does stick on a CCed mob, and it's not a "temporary" adjustment to hate like taunt is. Because of the cooldown, and the amount of disaster which can strike within a mere six seconds, the only use for taunt should be to yank aggro back to you when you know you don't have it.

Also, one other important point at which you should hold the taunt button in abeyance: when the mob's been stunned. It's entirely possible that you have the hate, and thus taunting is wasted. Better to wait, prepared, for the mob to wake up and mash the taunt button if the mob doesn't start right in on you when it starts attacking again.

That said, if you have six seconds to kill before you're going to break sheep, then I don't see a reason not to try it. In that specific case, it can't hurt.