Guide: End Game Elite Levels
End Game Elite Levels - UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This is a guide on how to properly approach end game team work, hopefully it will aid some players wishing to advance to more difficult bosses and levels with the basics. The strategies employed are that of which are commonly used in many MMORPG's.
Note: This is not a guide to each boss, you can find that here.
Some key terms:
Aggro - The agressive interests of a npc towards a player. Usage "Help I've got aggro!"
DPS - Damage per second i.e how much damage a player can do. Usage "My dps is low for this boss"/
Rotation - A set combination of abilities conduct in a specific order.
Burst Damage - A large amount of damage in a short period of time. "I have good burst damage"
Sustain Damage - A consistant amount of damage over a period of time.
AOE - Area of effect are spells / abilities which affect more than one target. "Let's AOE this next pack"
to Pull - To pull an npc is to draw its agro to focus on you, this many be done to a single npc or a group, often done by a tank.
Tank - A character whos purpose is to maintain agro and take all of the damage i.e warrior. Key attributes are high health, high armor and abilities that allow maintaining of npc focus / agro.
Buff - Buff refers to a temporary beneficial spell or effect placed on a player. i.e increased armour, increased damage
De-Buff - Opposite of a de-buff, refers to a temporary negative spell or effect placed on a player i.e armour reduction, damage over time
MB - Mana break, often people ask for a mana break before continuing onto the next npc.
Kiting - Combat tactic of a player character keeping a mob at a certain distance, usually out of melee distance but within ranged attack.
The Basics
Know your class - First things first, figure out what YOU are. What does your class do? What is your purpose? and What can't you do? Figuring out the role of your class is very important, by this I mean if your a warrior, your character has been designer to take a lot of damage and if your a mage, your character has been designed to deal a lot of damage. By finding out exactly what your class is designed to do you will be able to better fit that purpose.
Know your abilities - Combined with knowing your class is figuring our your skills and abilities. To be truly effective at your class you need to know what each of your abilities does, and when to use them. It's all well and good just button bashing but you'll end up wasting your mana and being rather inefficient. For instance as a rogue, knowing that if you have spent a point in 'deadly focus' each of your 'aimed shots' will provide a 10% increased critical chance for the next 10 seconds. With this in mind you want to make sure you keep that buff applied as often as you can, and not wasting it by applying another just after you've received one (unless your stacking).
Choosing your skills & build - Choosing what skills your pick is vital. There are many different combinations and many different opinions about what is the best build for a certain class. It all comes down to the way you play, a certain build may work amazingly well for a certain persons playing style but utterly useless to another. Often a build is chosen whilst taking into account equipment. It is important to keep in mind that you are part of a team, and perhaps a skill that may provide you with +10% damage for 15 seconds would not be as good as a skill that provide the ENITRE group with a +5% damage for 10 seconds. Elite levels npc's have higher health and armour and take a greater amount of time to kill, with this in mind your damage must be sustained over a longer period of time and your build will need to be more specific to a single target opponent.
Know your stats - Knowing what your stats are and how they apply to your class is important, knowing which stats benefit you and which don't actually provide any bonus. Knowing this will help you choose the correct gear to suit your classes needs.
Your Equipment - As mentioned above, your choice of build can often come down to equipment. A build that focuses on a certain stat such as high % crit can be achieve through selecting specific items. Good equipment can almost make a useless player average. Bare this in mind when you are trying to take down a certain difficult boss, no matter how good your groups equipment is, if they don't know how to play their classes, your going to struggle.
Figure out your rotation - Once you've chosen your equipment and a certain build its time to figure out your rotation. I'm not going to go into specific class rotations as its something you've got to figure out yourself. But its worth keeping in mind that there are various different rotations for different situations. If you're looking at a boss fight, the chances are that the fight is going to be a fair bit longer than you other standard npc fight. So you have to think about sustainability, its all well and good blasting out huge dps for the first 10 seconds of a fight and not have enough mana to heal 30 seconds into the fight. Its also worth thinking about a rotation that will benefit the entire party, as mentioned above in 'choosing your skill and build'. When trying to formulate a rotation have a look at your abilities and properly figure out what each one does. Practice your rotation a few times to make sure it works out, and don't be scared to alter and tweak it to try to find the best solution. After you've happy that you've come to a winning formula PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
Assemble your group - Moving away from specific character and class traits. It's time to think about forming a party. You're going to want to find a well balanced group. First things first, finding a tank. Finding someone with great gear would be an obvious choice, but if that person is not willing to work as part of a team or does not know a certain map very well you'd be far better off going for someone else. Remember, great gear dosent mean that they are a great player. A player with lesser gear but more experience and ability would be a far better choice - this applies to all group choices, not just the tank.
Know The Map - Knowing a certain map or boss well will make things a lot easier. Having a firm knowledge of certain boss tactics will be of great benefit.
Moving Forward:
Correct pulling strategy -*
Managing agro -
Kiting -
To be continued...
Liondedan - Xeqted [ingame]
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