This article discusses AoE Damage pros/cons, target priority, utiltiy abilies in combat, and inventive ability use.

AoE Is King
As is well known by this point, AoE is the most used ability style in instances.
It burns down mobs and makes dps drool over topping their last known top dps.
We’re mostly over geared now so this works great most of the time.

The Problem With AoE
There are a couple problems that come from this style of play.
The first thing that happened when people started gearing up in Northrend and AoE burning their instances was that they stopped CCing.
You’ll notice CC is pretty much not necessary any more and no one does it.
This, in and of itself, isn’t a problem.
The problem is that people are neglecting their utility abilities more or the more ‘inventive’ use of their abilities.
They don’t want to interrupt their dps rotations, thus lowering their scores on dps meters, to make life a little easier for the party on a whole.

People are no longer thinking about their full ability range, just their DPS rotations.

Targeting:
With AoE’s you don’t really have to specify a target and that’s nice.
Unfortunately, you kill each mob slower than if everyone targeted one at a time.
Remember, each mob is just as (or more so with enrages) effective at 1% health as it is at 100% so dropping a mob sooner is going to lower damage taken by the party.

The main problem here is that people see bigger total damage with their AoE’s so they stick to them.
The next problem is if people do single target mobs they often don’t focus on the same mob.
Raid Icons and the /assist function come in handy here.

Just switching from AoE style to a single target style and hitting the right mobs can turn say Halls of Reflection from nearly impossible at times to a quite manageable instance.

Utility Abilities Useful In Combat:

This is where I expect people to start speaking up and saying things like ‘But I keep Faerie Fire up!’ or ‘I always Mark my targets!’. Some people will keep these kinds of buffs up as they increase dps in longer fights.

The kinds of abilities I’m talking about are things like Distracting Shot, Kick, Counter Spell, Typhoon, Sacred Shield, etc.
They fall into several categories (leaving CC out):
Interrupts – Stopping an enemy spell cast can spell the difference between a clean kill versus fighting the mobs involved several times or having your party haemorrhage large amounts of hit points at once.
Stuns – Useful as the poor man’s Interrupt as well as putting mobs out of combat but still leaving them ‘ok’ to attack with all those lovely AoE’s.
Knock Back – Also often useful as an Interrupt, knock back abilities are frowned on for spreading out mobs and lowing AoE damage. On the flip side of this, as long as the tank has good threat on the mobs, this lowers the mob’s outgoing damage for a few seconds allowing heals to catch up some.
Damage Decreasers – Decreasing mob damage output or reducing the damage a player is taking can ease a tough fight. Tanks usually have a cool down or two to handle some of this but other classes can help with with things like Sacred Shield or Demoralizing Shout
Roots or Slows – Stopping or slowing the movement of mobs, even for a second or two, can be a life saver (especially to clothies). Frost Nova or Entangling Roots with root your target while things like Chains of Ice or a Frost Trap will slow them.
Taunts – Be careful with these because they can kill you really quickly but maybe it’s better you die than say your healer?

Inventive Use of Abilities:
Using abilities in ways they’re not necessarily meant for can really save your party. This is

extremely

class specific.
As my primary DPS character is a Hunter that’s who my example is for but be inventive. (Sorry, I’ve rolled heals and tanks the most.)

Distracting Shot is normally used to pull into a Freezing Trap for CC.
You can use it to peel a mob off your healer and to you. It taunts for 6 seconds so you’ll want distance between yourself and your healer so the taunt has time to wear off before the mob really gets to you. When it wears off, the mob will head to its highest threat. This gives your tank time to pick it back up without your healer dying and minimal damage going to you (if done well).

Let’s add some safety to this tactic. Place a Frost trap so the mob you’re Distracting will trigger it and take longer to get to you.
This takes a little more preparation time and doesn’t work well against things like ranged mobs or casters but adds survivability into the tactic.

Here’s my favorite version:
Distract the Boss. When the boss gets into range hit Deterrence. Bam, you’re a 5 second tank!
If you’re Marksman, you can pop Readiness and repeat this Distract + Deterrence combo for 10s of tanking fun.
The purpose of this combo is when your tank is about to drop and some time is needed to get them healed back up.
This is, obviously, extremely dangerous so use it carefully.

Summary
In summary, we have a lot of options on how to handle situations besides AoE and careful application of these options can turn a hard situation into an easy one.
Be aware of the fight and what you have at your disposal, not just your dps output.

Alliance:

Tesandra:
Armory: [Here]
Level: 80
Main: Holy sub Discipline
Alternate: Discipline

Tes is my healer character.
There is a lot of debate over what is the hardest role to play in WoW (and other MMO’s as well).
I place that role squarely on the Healer, especially in WoW.
All other roles in WoW allow you to do your job even with subpar party members while a Healer’s job is directly related to the performance of the other party members.
Now that’s not saying if you have a subpar party that your job doesn’t get harder but the class that has the most challenge due to a subpar party is a Healer.
If your party doesn’t follow normal procedure, please slap them into a semblance of order as ‘subpar’ performance is not ‘willfully causing problems’.

Tes is generally a calm character even while I’m seething in the background. She is always professional and will stick through an event until the end except under the most extreme circumstances. Just don’t expect her to run anything else after a raid.

Eleth:
Armory: [Here]
Level: 67
Main: Unholy DPS
Alternate: Blood Tank

Eleth is my beloved melee dps.
First of all she is a gnome and, as all my friends know, my gnomes all must speak in the third person. I find it to be quite amusing.
I enjoy the micromanagement of death knight mechanics that allow me to push my dps as hard as I can.
I’ve got her alternate speced for Tanking focusing on longevity via Blood. Not much tank gear yet.

Eleth is generally happy to help out if you ask her nicely and don’t make get mad at her for her speaking habbits.

Alindreia:
Armory: [here]
Level: 66+
Main: Beastmaster
Alternate: Survival

Ali is my ranged dps. She’s leveling for some PvP and maybe some money making for my characters in general.
I enjoy playing her as, even at a low level, I can pass through content easily and still have a lot of control over the situation via traps.

I’ve tried out survival as my alternate spec and just can’t push DPS as much as my beast master spec.

So far in outlands when I’m PuG’ing dungeons, I’m topping DPS every time as Beast Master even on the several occasions where I have my pet MT’ing as well.

Her pets are named after friend’s characters. Tank pet is a bear, DPS is a cat. Dual stealthing for pvp should be quite fun.

Ali follows my theme of being helpful. She is much closer to my old rogue characters in personality, however.
She is a little cold of a personality and will try to do things as efficiently as possible. If you’re asking for help, be specific and be ready to roll on out immediately.

She also inherits my old rogue’s need to push beyond normal boundaries. For her, it’s having her pet be able to actually act as a tank. With the 3.2 incoming resilience factoring over to pets, I’m hoping to see this increase as I move to Northrend and get PvP gear.

Kaeleh:
Armory: [here]
Level: 37+
Main: Moonkin (Balance)
Alternate: None

Kaeleh is my druid. I’m leveling one for a few reasons.

First, one of my friends thinks I should roll a Druid with him. Second, I want to get a feel for the Druid healing style differences from Priest healing. I haven’t tried it since shortly after the BC launch. Third, I’m psyched on the 3.2 feral form models.

I’m planning to roll Feral once my RaF caps out at 60.

Horde:

Maurek:
Armory: [here]
Level: 62
Main: Moonkin (Balance)
Alternate: None

Leveled Maurek to roll Balance / Restoration dual specs eventually.

Primarily did so because a friend got tired of healing on her priest so I thought I’d roll Horde there and help out. She got back into healing before I got too far in.

Haven’t played Maurek much after my RaF capped at 60. Just burn out from pushing so hard on two characters at once.
RaF is awesome leveling but is rough as you close on the cap as your gear is normally awful by then.

Aterproc:
Armory: [here]
Level: 60
Main: Unholy DPS
Alternate: None

Rolled Aterproc to try to keep interest in playing on Velen.

I find it really hard to keep interest in Outlands so it didn’t work out too well.

Current (as of posting) thoughts:

I’m running way too many alts.
Haven’t touched my priest for end game play for awhile.
Had some harsh raids, burned 36 or so Heroics to gear my Hunter alt with BoA’s (and still didn’t get the trinket for her), so I’m a bit burnt at end game.

Leveling my hunter and druid at the moment.
Looking forward to the hunter at end game. I’m thinking I might be able to run some crazy stuff with just my pet and I (Northrend instances, maybe even the easier heroics if I get some astounding gear).

Druid is doing alright but I may have her idle at some level for awhile as I haven’t figured out what I want to do with her at level cap.
I’d just like her close enough that if I get inspired or if my friend wants to run around with me abit, I’m close enough to burn most of the way there quickly.

Got several friends I’d like to run something with some time but I need proper level characters on their servers to do so.
Will & Jayme are on Velen (thus those Hordies), just can’t seem to get the focus to burn up levels on my characters there.
Roguekitty and Sdwrage are on Spinebreaker (Pretty sure they both play) but I have nothing there yet.

Wish I could build a character on a server where I have some established characters to help get leveled, then move the character to the appropriate server. Sadly, my main server is all Alliance and my friends elsewhere play Horde devotedly.
Faction swapping may help this but it’ll probably cost me $50 to faction swap and then server swap and they may restrict server swapping directly after swapping factions. That would be 3 months wait to play with some friends.

Really, Bliz, how about letting us effectively level up/down to play with friends?
I know you want us to level all quick to 80 and such but it’s still a frustrating amount of time!

.. err.. well those are my thoughts for now.

Feel free to drop me a line if you’re on my server.
~makkura

Warning: This is a large file so downloading may be preferable to streaming. You have been warned.
Movie after the break.

Warning: This is a large file so downloading may be preferable to streaming. You have been warned.
Movie after the break.