Friday, January 14, 2011

Team Play - Group Theory

One of the things I love about WAR is the varied number of ways one can balance a group. I've given a few examples on this blog earlier. I've discovered that I can distill those specific groups into a very simple formula for balancing a group.

Players have one of three roles in a group in WAR. A player can deal damage to an enemy, deal with incoming damage to the group, or a little of both. I like to refer to these as DPS, Support, or DPS Support.

Any pure DPS class in offensive spec and gear is DPS. Any defensive tank or full healer is Support. Hybrids are DPS Support. Defensive DPS are classified here because they do not require nearly the support of an offensive DPS freeing up support classes to support others.

I use a very simple point system for building a group. A DPS is worth 2 points of DPS. A Support is worth 2 points of support. A DPS Support is worth 1 point DPS and 1 point Support. In order to be a viable group, the group requires 5 points of DPS and 5 points of Support. An exception is a group containing any full DPS needs a full healer to be viable. I'm sure there's more exceptions, but this is meant to be a general overview.

This makes for 3 viable totals. 5 DPS and 7 Support is what I classify as a defensive group. 6 DPS and 6 Support is a balanced group. 7 DPS and 5 Support is an aggressive group. I like the aggressive group personally, but sometimes defensive play is the best idea.

This idea forms the basis of my target priority selection. Basically, I'll use this to figure out how I can shift the balance of damage into my favor and approximate how long it should take me (or the enemy) to drop a target provided no intervening cause comes into play. By intervening cause I mean using a CC or potion or pocket item or something to cover for a temporary loss of DPS or Support or both.

But I'll get to that later. I've got some 50% bonus renown to get.

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