Back to Basics: Clustering

Posted by admin on 02 27th, 2009

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The fundamental concept behind Multi-target and AOE tanking is creating clusters. Clustering is the act of taking a pack of mobs and grouping them together. Given enough practice this is something we all end up doing one way or another and we all end up taking for granted. Starting your Cluster Clustering starts before you’ve actually charged or shot a mob. The most important aspect of it is identifying the types of mobs you’re dealing with and while there are some variations when it all comes down to it, there’s just 2 types. Movable Mobs Stationary Mobs Movable Mobs are your standard melee style mob that’ll follow you wherever you’ll take them as long as you’ve got threat on them. Stationary Mobs are your ranged DPSers either of the caster or hunter-style (we’ll call them shooter) varieties. Dealing with Movable Mobs Generally speaking, the easiest pull you’ll deal with is a pack of Movable mobs. Once you engage one of them, they’ll all naturally go after you. Now whether you wait for them or not depends largely on 2 factors: How spread out are they? Will other packs patrol into them? If the pack is very tightly knit then it’s pretty safe to charge in there and start tanking the pack. Even if patrols are a risk, a tight knit pack can be safely backed up after a Thunder Clap has established aggro on all of them. (Note: Shockwave will stun all of the mobs you’re tanking. Stunned mobs don’t move.) If the pack is spread out and there’s no risk of a patrol running into your group then you’ll first want to engage the closest mob and put some quick threat on it then second move towards a natural centering point past the mob you engaged. The Centering Point is the point in the middle of a group of spread out mobs in which the distance to reach you is equal for all mobs. In other words, we want all of the mobs that are spread out to reach you at the same time as this will be the fastest way to cluster them. If the pack is spread out and there is a risk of a patrol coming then you’ll want to shoot the pack and wait for the first mob to engage you and then move to the centering point to cluster the pack up quickly. A good way to reduce the likelihood of healing aggro is to Concussion Blow the first mob that reaches you then move to the centering point. When the mobs reach you, Thunder Clap is once again your best bet to establish some quick threat on all of them. Dealing with Stationary Mobs Clustering Stationary mobs is very similar to clustering Movable mobs as long as you can bring the fight to them and as long as there’s only one of them. Handling that is just a matter of engaging the lone Stationary mob and letting the Movable mobs come to you. But, what if… A patrol is going to pat into them? There are 2 or more of them? If you can’t fight the Stationary mob where it’s standing then your next course of action depends on whether it’s a caster or shooter mob and whether or not you’ve speced into Gag Order . If you’ve got Gag Order and it’s a caster then the pull is handled effortlessly by using Heroic Throw on the caster mob causing it along with the rest of the pack to run towards you. If it’s a shooter mob (silence has no affect on it) or you aren’t speced into Gag Order (you can’t silence) then you’ll have to shoot it and run backwards forcing it to move due to not being in range of you or you’ll have to Line of Sight (LOS) pull it. LOS pulling is shooting a mob and then running around a corner forcing them to follow you around that corner to get into range. This has the benefit of not forcing you to waste a lot of time back tracking and in most cases, it’ll cancel any spell being cast on you. This type of pull requires your DPSers to hold off longer until you can get the pull moved to a safer place. Suffice to say, we all know how impatient DPSers can be and as a result, the more often we can avoid this situation… the better. (which is why you really should be speced into Gag Order for this reason as well as for the huge Shield Slams it’ll produce) When dealing with 2 or more Stationary mobs, the easiest way to cluster them is to LOS pull as simply running back isn’t likely to cluster them very much especially if they’re really far spread out to begin the pull. If LOS pulling isn’t an option, it’s time to play hard ball. It’s certainly still an option to shoot and run and we’ll have to do that if LOS pulling isn’t an option and we run the risk of a patrol hitting them. However, if patrols aren’t a risk that’s when we get to open our bag of tricks. 1 Shooter + Casters Your goal is to bring the fight to the Shooter mob. This can be done by Heroic Throwing the caster and charging the shooter or by charging the caster and Shield Bashing them then moving to the shooter with the caster playing follow the leader on your heels. The final option is to engage the shooter and hold the caster by using Spell Reflect . This is the easiest option, but it won’t produce enough threat to allow your DPSers to AOE so either make sure they aren’t AOEing or make sure the caster is outside of the AOE pack. 2 Shooters Probably the most frustrating scenario is dealing with 2 shooters. Shoot and run can be done, but it doesn’t really cluster anything. Which leaves us with a very slow option, but an option nonetheless. We engage one of the shooters and we slowly back them into the 2nd shooter. As long as we stay in melee range of the shooter, it’ll slow reposition itself over and over again and follow us to the other one. Whether this needs to be done or not depends largely on how hard the shooter actually hits. If it doesn’t hit very hard or is stunnable then usually it’s easiest to simply tank 1 shooter + the movable mobs and allow your DPS to nuke down the other shooter first while using any stuns available that they may have. Handling Waves and other Events A lot of tanks struggle for longer than they should on wave encounters like you’d see in Halls of Stone or events like running the hallway in Utgarde Pinnacle. The reason is you don’t have time to think or more to the point that you don’t take the time to think. Handling these comes down to 5 key principles: Identify Stationary Mobs Clustering Don’t Thunder Clap too much Save Shockwave Use Challenging Shout The Halls of Stone wave encounter sends a group of 2 tightly knit casters at you at various times during the event. You have to bring the fight to them either by running to them or charging them. ( Warbringer ) The 3 melee mobs that usually precede them will follow you and you’ll create a nice cluster that you desire. This wave encounter really tests your Thunder Clap usage. You’ll find it’ll quickly turn into chaos if you blow 2 Thunder Claps and your Shockwave on the very first triple Movable mob group. This is unnecessary. A single Thunder Clap followed by tabbing between the 3 units placing Shield Slams, Revenges and Devastates will be enough threat until they’re dead. Shockwave should be saved for the situations where mobs are coming so fast that your Thunder Clap is still on cooldown or to cover up the mistakes you make. (like not tabbing to a target or Thunder Clapping too much) The Utgarde Pinnacle hallway is a lot uglier. It frequently sends shooters at you as well as movable mobs. Educating your DPSers goes a long way to trivializing this encounter. Simply put, the shooters need to die first and should be focus fired. You’ll want to follow the same general principle as Halls of Stone in that you’ll want to Thunder Clap only a single time on a set of mobs as you’ll always need it available for the next group. Also just like Halls of Stone, Shockwave should be saved for the situations where your Thunder Clap is on cooldown and you need some fast Multi-target threat. Challenging Shout acts as a reset, but it does not last very long at all. If it feels like Chaos is about to ensue (you know that gut feeling) then it’s time to shout. I’m not just talking about Challenging Shout either. I’m talking about dictating on Ventrilo or Teamspeak with what needs to be done. You have only 6 seconds to get your DPSers focused… act quickly. What do I tell them!? DPSers have 2 common tendencies that can lead to chaos: Switching to AOE Wanting to Finish off the kill When DPSers see a lot of mobs starting to form up, they always want to start AOEing the crap out of them. In the case of Halls of Stone, once you’ve Challenging Shouted you need to tell them to Focus fire mobs with low health. In particular, if you can call out the exact name of the mob and say, “Get that down!” then that’ll go a long way towards creating order in the face of chaos. For the Utgarde Pinnacle encounter, it’s the need to finish the kill that gets them. This is because they’ll make short work of the first shooter and naturally switch to the Movable mobs. Once a new shooter has arrived, you need to keep them on task and let them know that they’ve gotta leave the mob they’re on and get on the shooters. Wow… we take a lot for granted Yup, we do. It’s amazing how many little choices are taking place in even the most seemingly simplistic pull. It’s why you’ll often see a dramatic difference between an experienced and an inexperienced tank in a 5-man. Those of you new to tanking reading this… if you made it this far, I commend you. It’s an overwhelming amount of information. The reality is that you’ll naturally learn a lot of the techniques layed out in this post just through practice. Hopefully by understanding all the little choices, you’ll be able to greatly speed up the process though.

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