Hot Five-man Action.

No, this isn't a post about gay pr0n (sorry Manx!), but a discussion of the five-man dungeon team as I've experienced it to date in the Burning Crusade.

Whilst five-man Dungeons played a big part in CD's initial activity when we first formed in September/October 2005, we quickly moved past them to the full-scale raid encounters, and over time, over time, we got out of the habit of playing together in such confined environments. Rediscovering how we do this has been a big part of the joy of the Burning Crusade.

In forty-man raids (and to a lesser extent, in twenty-mans), most classes get dumbed down to their lowest common denominator; healers heal, tanks tank, and damage dealers deal damage. Running Molten Core as a Hunter, I could probably get away with spamming three buttons (Aimed Shot, Multi Shot and Feign Death) for four hours without it ever being a problem. Crowd Control wasn't usually needed since we usually had enough tanks to handle most packs and enough healers to keep them alive. Sure the mobs in raid instances may be harder, but they're rarely eight times as hard as the more challenging five-man pulls. Well, except possibly until the Ahn'Qiraj/Naxxramas level.

With only five people, everyone has to pull their weight and there's a lot more multi-tasking. A good Main Tank and Main Healer are, of course, essential and they form the axis around which the rest of the group is formed. In the other positions we need off-tanks/crowd control (to reduce the amount of mobs the main tank's taking down to a manageable number for him and the healer) and enough damage-dealing ability to get all the mobs down before the healer runs out of mana and/or the tank runs out of health.

In groups as a Hunter specialised in Beastmastery, I bring solid damage and a strong pet that can act as an offtank. I can also take one mob out of play with a freezing trap if nessesary, although this is a short-term solution at best. I tend to look for the others to fill out the roles:

Main Tank: Warrior, Druid, Paladin. Someone able to take a beating and keep the mobs focussed soley on him. Warriors have the best damage mitigation, followed by Paladins and then Druids, but Druids and Paladins have better skills for tanking multiple mobs, but Paladin's are limited by their mana pool, whilst Warriors and Druids have regenerating Rage bars.

Main Healer: Druid, Priest, Paladin. Druids have slow, powerful heals, whereas a Priest can react quickly to damage being dealt, and if specced for healing will usually be the best option. Paladins can also do a good job, but they aren't quite up there with the other two unless they have amazing gear.

DPS/Crowd Control/Utility: Mages, Rogues, Warlocks or even another Hunter go here. Their job is to take one or two mobs out the fight whilst killing the first target. Since I class myself in this category, I usually only look for one more. The exception being when I can't find:

Back-up Healer/DPS Hybrid: Shadow Priest, Paladin or Feral/Balance Druid, there to do damage and assist in healing when the main healer's struggling or dead. Shadow Priests are great in this role since they can heal for a percentage of the damage they deal, and provide sheilds to stop people dying until they can get healed. Paladins are useful as well, and since they wear plate armor and can take a hit if they get into trouble. Feral Druids are trickier, since you normally have to decide before each pull wether or not they're going to be doing damage in cat form or healing in caster form, since that affects the gear they wear. This role seems to be the hardest to fill normally, since our healers are often stretched thin compared to our damage-dealing types, so quite often we end up with another damage-dealer.

The instances are great, most of them take between 1-2 hours depending on the group's level and familiarity, and you quickly see how each person plays more. Since I'm usually the one setting up the pulls inside an instance, I quickly find myself working out who can do what, and usually within ten minutes, the group functions like a well-oiled machine. Some tanks can handle two or even three mobs easily, whereas some can't and mobs need to be controlled to stop them beating on the healers. Some healers are able to crossheal excellently, even to the point of keeping my pet in the fight, but some really are only able to focus on the tank, and once again, the additional mobs need to be carefully controlled.

I tend to talk about the healer/tank axis a lot, but it's the cornerstone of any good group in my experience. Case in point was a run to Sethekk Halls on Saturday night. On the final boss, Wulf, the Rogue and the Paladin all died whilst the boss had 15% health. I thought it was going to be a wipe, but the healer (Druid) and the tank (Warrior) proceeded to bring him down very slowly. Admittedly it took about ten times the length of time it'd normally take, but he went down!

I'm really enjoying this period of 5-man playing, which is good, since I imagine it'll be months until CD ever gets back to raiding (if, indeed, it ever does at all) and getting there will require a lot of challenging quests in 5-man dungeons be completed. I can't wait!