The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Assisting
by Vonya
Okay, okay. I promised an entry on Assisting, so here it is.
What is Assisting?
If you are assisting, then you are not choosing your own mob.
That…that’s pretty much the gist of it. At it’s heart, that is all assisting is. Not picking your own mob.
By now you know me well enough to know I’d never leave an entry that short, so of course I’m going to complicate things.
If you aren’t choosing your own mob, how are you getting the mob? The answer is the key to assisting - the Main Assist.
Okay, What’s a Main Assist?
The Main Assist (MA) is a position within a group or raid. It’s every bit as important as the Main Healer or Main Tank.
So what does the MA do? The MA is the one that chooses the target for you. The MA’s job is to look at the next group of mobs and decide what order they need to die in.
Say you’re dealing with a group of mobs up ahead. The average player may see that there are four mobs ahead. A slightly more experienced player may note that there are two with robes, and two without.
The MA has to look at that group and note that there’s a healer, a caster, a warrior, and a rogue. And he has to weigh the danger offered by each mob, and decide what order they should die in, to make the encounter as easy as possible.
Let’s take a look.
- The warrior mob is the biggest in the group. He’s got some truly astounding armor, a great big shield, and he just LOOKS impressive. And he also just called your momma a bad name.
- The rogue mob doesn’t look as impressive, but he can pump out a goodly amount of damage with his daggers. He also has a habit of randomly cheap shotting the tank and wreaking havok among the clothies until your tank wakes up.
- The caster has a few tricks - he has arcane missiles, an AOE fire attack, and he also randomly chooses a group member to turn into a sheep.
- The healer doesn’t do very much damage at all, but he’ll heal an injured group member back to full health, often doubling or tripling how long it takes to kill someone.
So what order would you think they need to be killed in?
Not quite as easy as it sounded at first, is it?
The answer is different depending on what your group makeup is. The general rule is that healers need to be taken down first. If you can manage to stun, silence, or interrupt the healer when he’s casting a heal, he will go down fast. VERY fast. If every damage dealer in the group focuses on him, he should be toast before any of the other mobs has time to try any of their fancy tricks.
Who next? As tempting as that caster may be, his sheep can be dispelled by a quick-thinking priest or paladin. Although he’s a pain, you should probably take care of that rogue next - his ability to completely remove your tank from the group for a few seconds could easily result in a group wipe. If everyone concentrates on him next, he should go down fairly quickly.
Who next? Definitely the caster. Not only is that sheep an irritating spell, but your tank is loaded down with ARMOR. Spells don’t care if you’re wearing plate mail or cloth - the damage from them is not mitigated by armor. So that mage is doing a lot of damage to your tank. And since the mage is wearing cloth, he should go down like a dead stick before a fire, as long as everyone concentrates on him.
Lastly, we’ve got our big, intimidating warrior-type. He takes the longest to burn down, because he’s got a lot of health and armor, but he’s got no sneaky tricks, nothing to make him more dangerous than the sword he’s carrying. And since he’s got a shield, his damage to your tank is a lot less than if he’d been using a two-hander. So even though he takes more time to kill, he’s not doing anything important in the meantime, it’s just a normal tank and spank.
Obviously, that strategy will be different, depending on group makeup. Your group may have a mage and decide to sheep the rogue mob, or maybe you have a rogue and end up sapping the mage mob at the beginning of the fight.
And your MA will have to take the CC into consideration, and react quickly to CC wearing off or breaking early.
That Seems Like an Awful Lot of Work, Why Should I Care?
Because I say so.
Seriously. I’m going to explain why it’s important, but it won’t make sense to you until you’ve grouped with people who are not assisting; until you’ve done an encounter five times and wiped, then passed it by like it was cake when you assist. You won’t believe me. But even if you’re thinking that now, I hope you remember this article and come back. Because the higher you get in level, the MORE important it becomes to assist. Blizzard made the low levels easy on purpose, but it does a disservice by allowing people to enter a state of complacency - my way has always worked before, so why should I bother learning a new trick now?
I have seen it a million times. I’ve explained assisting, patiently shown dozens of people how to make an assist macro, and they refuse to use it.
I SWEAR TO YOU THAT I AM TELLING YOU THE TRUTH. I promise. I don’t care if you think I’m the most pompous, bubbleheaded idiot you’ve ever met. On assisting, I am dead serious.
So, that being said, let me answer the question.
If everyone is assisting, that means that your damage dealers are ALL on the SAME exact mob.
This helps the Main Tank. Especially in the case of warrior tanks dealing with multiple mobs, getting enough aggro on all mobs quickly can be difficult. With a MA target, the tank knows exactly which mob is being hit, and thus which mob he needs to focus building hate on. Obviously, he’ll still need to cycle sunder (you ARE cycle sundering, aren’t you?), but he can spread the hate thickly on the one mob he knows is being attacked by the rest of the group.
This helps the Healer. If everyone is assisting, and the main tank is able to keep all of the mobs attacking him — I only have to heal one person. And that one person is the guy with the most armor and the most health - the one that is best equipped to be catching all the beating from various mobs. I’m not worried about the mage pissing off a random mob and getting gobbled up in two bites before I can blink. I’m not worried about the hunter or his pet getting beaten on. I don’t have to worry about anything except the tank.
This helps the group. If everyone is assisting, and the healer only has to worry about the tank, then mage doesn’t have to worry as much about pulling aggro and getting eaten. The mobs die very quickly, and intelligently, so that the most dangerous mobs are taken out quickly. The entire encounter takes a fraction of the time that it would take if everyone was just picking their own targets and trying to kill different mobs.
The only people that Assisting doesn’t help are the mobs.
I can tell already that I need to have a post on aggro and hate - I’m restraining myself from adding too much information, and this post is already reaching epic proportions.
Your tactics may change depending on group makeup, but assisting will ALWAYS help.
If you use CC, like sheep or shackle or freezing trap, assisting ensures that the CC never gets accidentally broken. How could the rogue possibly accidentally target a sheep if he’s assisting?
You will never have the hunter accidentally target a mob in a different group and attack them, bringing them into your group if you are all assisting. How could he possibly target them, if he is not choosing his own target?
It is INSANELY easy to tell when someone is not assisting, because you will frequently die from it. They will accidentally break CC, they will accidentally pull another group, they will accidentally pull aggro and die — I don’t even have to notice that their attacks are landing on the wrong mob. The game will tell me if they aren’t assisting.
And I will let them die. I will. I will tell them that I let them die, and I will tell them that if they don’t want to assist, they can find another healer. Accidents happen, but willful disregard for assisting will piss me off faster than almost anything else. This game is so easy if everyone plays by the rules, there is absolutely no excuse for maverick behavior. If you want to solo, then you don’t need to be in my group. My group helps each other. If you’re not interested in helping, then you’re on your way to a group kick faster than you can say “but it always worked for me before.”
And if you’re thinking that right now, let me tell you something. For every ten people I have taught to assist - three have actually listened. And EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM has praised us, THANKED us for showing them how to assist, and been 100% astounded at how quickly and efficiently we kill things. I have never ever EVER had someone truly try assisting and decide that it was worthless.
Never.
If you learn nothing else from my blog, please, PLEASE learn this.
Okay, Okay, Put the Gun Away….How Do I Assist?
*holsters her cannon* There are a lot of different ways to assist. You can click on someone and hit the ‘f’ key. You can have your UI set up so that you can see someone’s target, click them, then click the target window.
I’m here to tell you that although those ways will WORK, they are extremely clumsy. Any time you have to move your mouse to do something, it is inefficient and will take more time than if you could just use your keyboard. And I didn’t pull that out of a hat, either. There are tons of studies on productivity, and using the mouse is ALWAYS more time-consuming than not. There’s debate about it, but I can swear to you that in this instance, there is absolutely no comparison.
So what’s my magic assist button? A macro, of course. And a simple macro, at that.
/assist SoAndSo
Obviously, replace SoAndSo with the name of the person that has been designated as MA.
But that’s it. Make the macro, drag it down on your bar, and spam it like there’s no tomorrow. As long as SoAndSo has something targeted, it will automatically make that thing YOUR target as well. You never have to choose your own mob again. I am to the point where I get cranky if I have to mouse-target something to kill.
Every time you need to target a mob, hit that macro six or seven times. Brand new pull? Spam the macro. First mob dead? Spam the macro. Second mob dead? Spam the macro…..
You get the picture. If you’ve been playing this game long, you’ve got your main abilities arranged so that you can just hit 1, 2, 3, 4 to access them and control your character. My assist macro is ALWAYS my number one slot. 1 (assist) 2 (SW:P) 3 (wand)……
Why Spam the Assist Macro? I only need to hit it once!
This is true, you do only NEED to hit it once.
But remember, your MA doesn’t have your sophisticated assist macro to pick a target. They still have to use old fashioned mouse clicking. So give them a few seconds grace, to pick the right mob. Even an experienced MA will need time to find their mob in a rampaging mass of bodies. As soon as you see them attacking, you know you’ve got the right mob and can attack as well.
And they may need to say “Reassist” in group chat to let you know that they’ve swapped mobs. Don’t argue - assist again, and use your new mob.
We Always Assist the Main Tank!
*rubs forehead and sighs wearily* I have heard this, and it’s a bad idea, folks. Not just a bad idea, but a terrible idea.
I don’t care what flavor of tank you have - every single tank will need to swap targets mid fight to build aggro on multiple targets. The whole idea of having a MA is that everyone is on the same mob — if you’re assisting someone who doesn’t stay on the same target, then you will have everyone in your group on a different mob. The tank should assist the MA, not the other way around.
If your tank has tunnel vision and stays on the same mob during a fight, never swapping to any of the additional mobs to build aggro, then you should leave group immediately and tell him to roll a pure dps class, like a rogue. Tunnel Vision Tanks are group death. No tank worth his salt can be the MA, and that is an indisputable fact.
So Who Should Be MA Then?
Anyone who will be expected to stay on a single mob throughout the entire fight.
Shaman make excellent MA. Hunters can be MA, as long as they aren’t expected to contribute to CC. Mages, again, so long as they aren’t sheeping for CC. Rogues, as long as they aren’t expected to CC/sap.
Warlocks make bad MA. A good warlock will probably be moving from target to target applying DoTs. Healers make horrid MA - we rarely even contribute DPS, and we certainly don’t have the time to spare for making sure we target the right mobs for a reassist. Tanks (again) make awful MA. Moonkin druids may be a bad choice, if they are cycling DoTs.
As your group, “Who will be staying on a single target for the entire fight, never swapping targets?” There’s your MA, assuming he’s also shrewd enough to judge mob priority and watch the fight to see if CC breaks.
Having a good MA is just as important as a good Tank or a good Healer. Period.
Assisting Versus Raid Icons
I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t need to assist, as long as things are raid-marked.
The idea behind assisting is that everyone is on the same mob for dps.
Raid marking makes it easy for everyone to see whether or not they’re on the right mob. If everyone is attacking the “skull” then you’ve basically got a situation where everyone is assisting. You get the main benefits of assisting using this method. It does NOT, however, help someone GET that target.
In my not-so-humble opinion, you lose some of the value of assisting if you skip the /assist and only use raid marking. You still have to mouse-click to get your target, which means you might get the wrong mob, and you may spend a goodly amount of time flailing around trying to find the right target. An assist macro will instantly give you your target, no clever mouse-clicking required.
If you do not have an assist macro, I heartily pray that you’ve got the ‘v’ feature turned on, so that you can click on the health bars to get your target.
I’m not saying that raid-marking is a bad idea. I’m just saying I still think that assisting is cleaner. Heck, if you can get raid-marking and assisting going at the same time, that’s probably as close to perfect as it comes.
Summary
Make an Assist macro. Assign someone intelligent and appropriate to the role of Main Assist. Never, ever, ever, ever choose your own target.
August 3rd, 2007
Aha! That’s what Off-tanking is! I guess I hadn’t understood what the distinction between tanking and off-tanking was.
Lemme see if this summarizes it:
A tank holds all the aggro possible by doing high threat, low to high damage (if possible) to as many mobs as they can/needs to, since the tank should try not to pull more mobs than they can handle.
A healer keeps the tank alive.
The Off-Tank or Main Assist is the one who initiates combat with the mob you’re going to burn down. Everyone else makes the MA their focus, so they kill whatever he/she’s killing.
The MA lures mobs away by doing more specific damage to them than the tank is doing.
Right, rite?
Sorry, just trying to get descriptions straight in my head. I mainly do solo questing, and rarely get around to doing instances. I can’t usually commit to a chunk of time that long.
August 6th, 2007
@Bloodshrike
This, of course, is the “Perfect World” scenario.
Pretty much all PuGging and most guild instance runs are quite different. Usually in those it’s kinda of an “every man for himself” type thing, and getting people to assist is harder than pulling teeth. You’ll get the mage or the hunter pulling prematurely, multiple wipes, a tank that refuses to acknowledge that more than one mob may come at a time, people tab-targetting and pulling something that drags five groups of mobs…
…that’s the kinda stuff that drives me batty.
August 7th, 2007
Off tanking and Main Assiting are two different things.
Main Assist (MA) - someone who picks the current target to be killed. every damage focus on this target and he goes down quickly. If your tank is doing his job then that mob should never take his eyes off teh tank even though everyone is beating on him.
Off tank (OT) - a class capable of taking some damage when needed who will keep a single mob busy so the tank does not have to worry about them. Say you have a big pull ahead…a 4 pull. the tank asks a DPS Warrior or a Druid to take one guy becasue hes worried that 4 people hitting him will be too much damage at once. That person will be getting hit and need healing as well as teh tank. In this case you will normally kill the off tanks mob first. The Main Assist will pick the off tanks mob. Off tanking is not needed until you get into raids or very high level instances. Its usually a very bad idea to have too much offtanking becasue your healer is spread to thin.
The off tank and the main assist are two differnt jobs. Both of these jobs can be performed by the same person but they dont have to be.
The tank dictates when he needs an offtank and it shoudl be very rare. If you need an offtank for every pull or even every instace then someone is not doing thier job.
August 9th, 2007
@Necro
In the situation you’ve mentioned, then an off-tank could be used as a main assist.
In most raids, the offtank will not be the same person as the main assist. And in most of the instances I’ve run, we’ve not had a second person capable of tanking.
But what you’ve laid out there makes sense, and if that’s the situation you find yourself in, it’s totally valid (and a good idea).
August 11th, 2007
I feel transported back about a year when reading this. While the general principles stikll apply, raid marking has made it easy to pick dps-target, and you can have tanks or healers as MAs with no problems as long as they are up to the task.
August 13th, 2007
@Groiny
I’m gonna have to disagree there. Raid marking makes it easy to know whether or not you’ve got the right mob, but it doesn’t simplify GETTING that mob. And the person who marks is not the main assist. If your healers are spending the entire battle targeted on the mob that needs to be killed, then you either have a lot of addons, or are in a group that I don’t want to be a part of.
August 27th, 2007
Updated to include comment information up to this point.
October 4th, 2007
Ego, I just want to say thank you for some excellent topics of discussion, I was once a shadow priest from level 1-70, I’ve done a few instances here and there and was basically a dsp / mana battery for groups. My guild really needed a holy spec priest when our best (of the few) holy priest had to leave the game – I decided to stepped up to the plate and try to help out. My guild helped me collect some fairly decent +healing / mp5 gear and I even got a few mods running (healbot, decursive etc). Finally, they ran me thru some instances to get some practice – I even got attunded for Karazhan. I found for the most part, I could heal fairly well. I went into Kara with my group and was asked a simple question, “Ok, do you have a focus macro setup for the skeleton horse pulls?” …. What??? We got thru it and several bosses but some basic things were a struggle, as I was still (am) a pretty green healer. I stumbled upon your website a few weeks ago and found your post very informative, yet easy to understand. I mean, I know the basics but I didn’t understand WHY certain things where important. Your topics on the different types of heal spells is an excellent references for me. This topic on assisting is yet another one of those “Yeah, I know what assisting is…” but now I know WHY it’s so important – Thanks again
October 9th, 2007
@DJ
You’re very welcome, and that’s exactly why I post - because some of this stuff isn’t nearly as obvious as it seems once you know it. =]
October 25th, 2007
I am a “Tab” mob selecting kind of guy, and with raid markings it is just as easy for me to assist useing this method, even more so because my mage has so many spells and pots and items to access, as well my bars and macros are set up to accomodate being MA, dps ,or CC as the situation demands that I don’t have room for much more. IE. your assist macro. Still I can se how this would benefit people who havent had the experience to set up their bars in such a way, and believe me it took a lot of trial and error to work it out.
October 30th, 2007
Did you know that you can create a macro that sets 2 separate targets for atacks? its the /focus command. you set your focus at the start of a battle and then you can pick any target you like, but when you macro says attack focus, it attacks your preset focus target, this is great for mages with CC, cause it lets them MA as well as CC, since they can target a mob, sheep it, and swich back anytime it breaks sheep with a single click.
This is 2 macros
/target=focus
/cast polymorph
and
/target focus
/cast polymorph
/Assist SoAndSo
Another trick for MAs is that they can create a macro that does their attack, but ALSO sets the skull over the head of thier target ( or any other tag they like) . This is the best of both worlds, especially for PUGs since the ones that assist are doing so porperly, and the ones that refuse to, still get the skull target to focus on. Now, when that rogue just wanders off on his out he’s just S.O.L. and deserves the wait for a rez, but I digress.
also for DPS, a macro that /assists is great, but you can create a macro that will attack in your favorite spell/attack order with one click, and automatically target the MAs target before every attack. This means that with 1 button I can /assist the MA, cast my spells in my prefered order, 1,2,3,4 and not have to move my hand at all. button 1 can cast every spell I want to use, and ensure I am assisting the MA with each cast! That means I never have to think about it,and the MA can switch targets without issue.
Try this:
/assist SoAndSo
/castsequence reset=Combat/target Frostbolt, Fireball, Fireball,fireblast
Awesomeness at its best! and I can bind it to any handy key and cast the same spells, in that order, everytime we start combat, just mash it everytime the GCD is up!! ( BTW, when it gets to the end, fireblast, it restarts at the beginning with frostbolt,as well as reseting to frostbolt when you start a fight, or change to a new target)
There are a LOT of tools in the macros now that can make runs go SOOOO much smoother now, I dont know why anyone wouldnt use them?!?!
December 6th, 2007
This is the macro I use for sheeping and I must say, it’s damn handy. Note that it assumes you have pig / turtle, adjust as needed if you don’t have those two:
/focus [modifier:alt]
/focus [nomodifier, target=focus, noexists]
/focus [nomodifier, target=focus, dead]
/castrandom [target=focus] Polymorph(Rank 1: Pig), Polymorph(Rank 1: Turtle); [target=target] Polymorph(Rank 1: Pig), Polymorph(Rank 1: Turtle)
December 20th, 2007
Bless you for posting this. I am the main healer in my guild, and I’d be a rich (sha)man if I had a nickel for every time I heard:
* “Well, I tried to click on the skull, but some other mob got in the way.” (wipe)
* “I tried to TAB over to the next target, but it didn’t work, so I just started blasting at whatever.” (wipe)
* “Oh, were we supposed to kill the X after the skull? I went after the square instead and then got 1 shotted when I pulled hate on it…” (wipe)
* “I tried using the F key to assist, but nothing happened” (again, followed by a wipe)
* “Do we go after the ice block or the sheep next?” (precious time ticks away while everyone wrings their hands trying to decide… both the ice block and the sheep break, then we wipe.)
I am going to start requiring my guildies to familiarize themselves with this simple /assist macro, because quite frankly, my repair bills are getting too expensive for me to tolerate avoidable wipes and keep smiling about it.
December 20th, 2007
/QUOTE
And I will let them die. I will. I will tell them that I let them die, and I will tell them that if they don’t want to assist, they can find another healer. Accidents happen, but willful disregard for assisting will piss me off faster than almost anything else. This game is so easy if everyone plays by the rules, there is absolutely no excuse for maverick behavior. If you want to solo, then you don’t need to be in my group. My group helps each other. If you’re not interested in helping, then you’re on your way to a group kick faster than you can say “but it always worked for me before.”
/END QUOTE
Amen, sister, amen.
January 3rd, 2008
Great blog Ego, very *readable*. Just found you so I’m working through your ‘essential artificles’.
Have you tried Clique? It makes healing much faster and lets me target whoever I like. That can be helpful when I want to look for debuffs, contribute some DPS or just have a bigger MA’s target UF.
When I’m mage-ing, I usually mouse-target for the simple reason of lag. By the time the MA has picked the target and that info has made itself known, I could have targeted and started casting already. In fact, I often retarget before the last mob has died - the fireball I’m still casting will finish it off.
+1 to letting people die. It’s the only way they’ll learn.
re: FSR, to save more threadromancy than required - as you’ve no doubt read on EJ, clearcasting + inner focus + trinket makes a lovely potion-substitute.
Eldr/Deira, Argent Dawn-EU
January 7th, 2008
Aahhh, the joys of assisting. This reminds me so much of my EQ days (and I think you made a reference to your EQ time in another post). You haven’t mentioned another good reason for assisting - crowd control. In EQ crowd control was critical and breaking mez often ended up in a wipe. I have yet to be in a situation in WoW where CC was as critical. But still, if someone mis-targets and breaks CC it can be irritating and add confusion.
March 4th, 2008
[...] Priest, a blog concerned with the priest role - however, this post is about the concept of a Main Assist - basically, a dps role who picks which target to melt down while the tank is controlling general [...]
March 15th, 2008
I use a similar setup in raids. One MA (usually a Hunter) is added to the MT list. I use X-Perl and oRa2 so I see all my tanks, the MA and all their targets in the MT list. Rather than using a macro (and adding another button an already very crowded Fire Mage’s casting bar) I simply select target of target from the MT list. It has the benefit over the macro that you can see from the MT list exactly what the MA is looking at, he will occasionally mis-click and select a tank, random raidmember, wrong mob or his pet, and if he does, I can see when it happens and react accordingly.
But one other thing that I feel very strongly about and isn’t covered in your otherwise excellent post is this:
THE MA IS ALWAYS RIGHT, EVEN WHEN HE’S WRONG!
I’ll explain what I mean. Say in your example above, we sheep the rogue, tank the warrior, sap the caster and nuke down the healer. The healer goes down and the logical next target is the caster, because sap, unlike sheep, cannot be reapplied in combat. We may even have discussed this before the pull. Everyone’s expecting us to hit the caster next. Except the MA has a minor rush of crap to the brain and breaks CC on the sheeped Rogue instead.
What will normally happen is that the mage in your group will start spamming his/her polymorph button and try to resheep the caster which won’t work because half the dps will assist the MA. The other half of the dps will follow the logical target and break CC on the rogue. Wipe.
Sure, the MA picked thw wrong taqrget, but as long as everyone picks the wrong target together it doesn’t really matter. Where it all falls apart is when dps start thinking to themselves “What’s the MA doing, that’s the wrong target!” and start taking matters into their own hands.
THE MA IS NEVER WRONG, YOU ARE!
If everyone assisted the MA in the example above, the worst thing that could possibly happen would be that the sap would break before the dps were finished on the caster. Big deal. You have a free polymorph now that the caster is being nuked. Problem solved.
It doesn’t matter if the MA picks the wrong target, as long as you’re all wrong together, things will generally be fine.
March 15th, 2008
Bleh, got my caster and rogue mixed up in the example above.. hopefully you can still see my point. Oops.
March 18th, 2008
Still new to the priesting game (69 atm leveling shadow) but I figured I would drop in an assist macro I used on my hunter, just for the format, your milage may vary =)
at the beginning of an instance I would plug in the correct names of corse:
#showtooltip misdirect
/cast [target=nameofmaintank] Misdirect
used that one on every cooldown to give them some of my aggro =)
/assist mainassist
(already listed I know)
March 20th, 2008
excellent decription of the main assist. and well written. thanks for explaining the dynamics and logic of the main assist.