The Importance of Postioning

As if you couldn’t tell, I have been doing a lot of research lately. As I prepare to respecc my character – who has been specced the exact same way for 60 levels and 10 months – the math underlying the various calculation in WoW has become very important to me. I am not going to bore all of you with the math, especially since a lot of my research is warrior-specific, and only some of it is applicable to other classes. If anyone wants me to send links to good math info that I find, let me know and I will send the link so you can read at your leisure.

Anyway, along with math comes information, and some of that information has to be shared. Today I want to share my feelings on positioning during fights. I have explained this to some of you already (primarily our melee classes and healers), but it bears repeating for everyone, as well as elaboration. This info is primarily for fighting difficult mobs – instance bosses and the like. Against easy mobs, we don’t need no stinkin’ strategy.

My preference is always to have the tank (who I will call “me” in this example) positioned on one side of the mob. I’ll call this the front, because if everything is going correctly, he should be attacking, and thus facing, me. The other melee fighters should be positioned behind the mob. Melee pets (primarily Hopper) should be positioned 90 degrees to the side. Wolfbrother & Blog, I don’t know how much control you have over pet positioning (it has always seemed like none), so I tend to “reposition” the mob around the pet (i.e., the pet stays where it is, so I turn the mob until the pet is on the side.

IMPORTANT, for melee fighters that should to be positioned behind the mob, when I move, YOU MOVE. I try not to move a lot, but sometimes I have to – to taunt mobs off a squishy, to turn for the pet (above), to pull aggro on an add, etc. If I move, you move. You’ll understand the importance of this when I explain why we position this way.

1) As a tank whose job it is to take most, if not all, of the damage from a mob, I need to know who the mob is attacking. If Balt, Allyn, Hopper and I are all standing next to each other swinging, this can be very difficult to figure. I have enough things to look at and worry about without having to also check other people’s health bars to make sure they’re not getting smoked. If the only way a mob can attack someone else is by turning 180 degrees, this makes it very easy to tell when he’s attacking me and when he’s attacking you. Trust me, this is a huge benefit to you. Also, if the mob turns to attack Hopper, I might or MIGHT NOT taunt the mob back on me right away. If Hopper’s health is good, I can afford to let him take a few ticks of damage, buying me some time to rest, heal, cue up some rage for damage, etc. No mana (as far as I know) should be “wasted” healing Hopper. It’s a totally different story if he spins on Balt. A mob that hit’s for 750 per tick will take that leather-wearing tank-wannabe to the floor in about 3 swings. I have to taunt fast and furiously. So, with me in front, pets on the side, and everyone else behind, I have a very easy time telling when I have lost aggro on a mob.

2) Closely related to that – when the mob can only attack in front, the healer has a very easy time telling whom the mob is attacking. As far as I am concerned, healers waste far to much time and mana staring at health bars and making unnecessary heals (I know I’m not a healer, so I’m just speaking from a tank perspective here). If a mob is only attacking the warrior, the dps classes (like say the rogue) should ALMOST NEVER get healed during a fight. Who cares if the rogue or DPS pally never gets a single heal and ends the fight with half health? Half health is beautiful. 25% is even better. It means we did our jobs and did them correctly. If the tank is holding aggro correctly, it should take a very long time for the rogue to reach half health. If he does, and there is a lot of fighting left, then the healer needs to make some decisions about whom to heal first. But, most of the time, if the rogue is at half health, but the mob is attacking the tank, ANY HEAL on the rogue is a wasted heal, and potentially wipes us. This is especially true when our primary healer is a “slow” healing pally, rather than a priest or druid. Using a 2.5 sec heal spell on the rogue then the tank means 5 or more seconds (accounting for targeting) before the tank gets healed - that could be VERY BAD. If the mob turns on the rogue when the rogue is at half health and the mob has a lot of hp left, THEN the healer has to worry about keeping him alive (although hopefully the tank will taunt the mob off the rogue quickly). If the mob attacks the pet, the healer can “top of the health” of the tank or other players or maybe even take a 2 or 3 second break. Otherwise, mob attacking tank, rogue at half health, heal the tank (or if he’s fine, save the mana). So, again, the principle here is that the healer can easily identify who is being attacked if the tank is in front, the other melees behind, and pet to the side.

3) Bandaging. I assume everyone knows by now that a melee attack against either a bandager or a bandagee breaks the bandage. Then there is a 60 second cooldown before the next bandage can be applied. If you have to bandage mid-battle, you have should focus on someone NOT being attacked. Let the healer heal the char getting attacked. There are exceptions, and you guys have saved my life when a mob has gone on a miss/dodge/parry/block streak (which will hopefully increase with my new build), but focus bandages on others. This goes for bandaging yourself, as well. If the mob is on you, do not bandage. Wait until I taunt him off, then bandage. Even if the mob comes back after you whenthe taunt wears off, you’ll get more bandage applied than if you try it mid-attack.

4) Block and parry only work if you are facing your attacker. This rule applies to PCs AND MOBS. Most equal-con mobs (lev 60 vs. lev 60) have a 5% each unmodified miss/dodge/parry/block rate. So, if you are fighting from the front, you have a 20% chance to have your attack negated or reduced (5% miss, 5% dodge, 5% parry and 5% block (if they have shield). Melee attacks from behind can not be parried or blocked, so the chance of negation/reduction is halved to 10%. That is huge! Stand in front of the mob and you double your miss rate just by being out of position.

5) If you are a DPS pally, DPS warrior or Druid, standing behind the mob lets you know exactly what spec you should be using. If the mob is attacking the main tank (MT), then you are not getting attacked. So, whip out your big-hitting 2-hander, or dual wield some major damage. The defense of a standard pally/warrior without a shield falls by more than 2,000 armor, or about 35%. If you are getting beat on, then carrying a shield is a waste. If the mob is not attacking you, your armor rating is irrelevant. If you are standing behind a mob using a 1-hander + shield, then you are not doing the most damage possible, which means you are not doing your job. If the mob turns on you, you throw on the shield. When the MT taunts the mob back, you’re back to damage spec. Similarly, for a druid, if you are behind the mob, you are a cat – spewing damage like the very fur that you shed all over my couch. A bear behind a mob is bearly useful (heheh). If the mob attacks you, go bear, but from behind, eye of the tiger, baby.

6) Some abilities only work from behind the mob. I think this may only apply to rogue and cat Druid. Backstab and Ambush may be some of the highest DPS rogue abilities in the game, but they’re useless if you’re standing in front of the mob. If you have them use them, and you can only do that if you’re standing in the right place.

7) A lot of mobs have knockback. There are 2 things to consider here. First, if the mob is “AOE” knockback, there is not much we can do. We all fly, doesn’t matter where you stand. The good news is AOE knockback is rare. The most common knockback is frontside knockback. If you’re standing in front of the mob you fly. If only the MT is in front, only the MT flies, and everyone else keeps working the mob over. If my dps people are in front, we all fly, and we lose valuable damage seconds. Second, some mobs, especially in high-level instances like Scholo, Strat, MC, etc. shed all hate/aggro when they knockback. In other words, the MT may be hate/aggro spamming the heck out of a mob, but as soon as he gets knocked-back, the hate/aggro is lost and the mob is free to go after anyone. For mobs that do NOT do this, positioning works well. The MT gets knocked back, the mob chases after him, and everyone else just follows the mob, continuing to rage damage from behind as they follow. For the mob that DOES do this, there is nothing we can do to stop it. Someone is gonna get hit when the MT flies. But, if everyone is positioned where they are supposed to be, the MT and healer can immediately tell who is taking the damage and the MT can figure what to do to reacquire aggro on that mob. I have completely different urgency depending on whether it is Hopper (low priority for my reacquire), rogue/pally/druid/hunter (medium priority for me to reacquire) or a squishy (high priority for to reacquire). I will also use a different strategy/skill-combo to reacquire the mob in each of those situations.

8) Last, but not least, there are a number of mobs, especially in ultra-high-level raid-type instances that have front-side AOE attacks. These fall into the category of things like core hounds, fire-breathing dragons, etc. It is nasty, it is wicked, it is cruel, but it only affects targets standing in front of the mob. When fighting these types of mobs, I usually face them away from the entire group. This is easy to maintain with ranged attackers – they don’t move much. But melee chars need to make sure they stay behind the mob. There is nothing we can do to stop the dragon from breathing fire, but we can control how many of us she breathes on. Not a lot of this in the current instances we’re running, but there are whole strategies in MC that revolve around facing the mobs in one direction or another (in the last battles before Luci, the tanks have to pull 5 mobs into a very tight radius and make sure that they are all facing in different directions and none of them are facing the ranged attackers. If you want to learn how important positioning is, make some runs to MC).

And, that’s about it. I know I went into tons of detail, but I am hoping that everyone had at least a couple things that illuminated their role in the group and how/why positioning applies to them. If anyone has anything to add, let me know.