MMOGology: Group dynamics

Leading a group in a dungeon instance can often feel like herding cats, especially if you're playing with a pick-up-group (PUG). Unlike a guild group you don't have the luxury of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the other players. PUGs also tend to have more members with less experience running the instance. Many instances I've run in World of Warcraft have involved at least one of the following situations: The huntard claims he must be the official puller and then won't shed the aggro to let the main tank do his job. The healer blows all his mana on the soft targets that shouldn't have aggro. The priest or warlock freaks out and fears off the mobs who flee to their comrades in waiting, join forces, and eat the reckless noobs stumbling through their dungeon.

No matter how good a player you are personally, you can't save a group from the four other morons that make up your party. Maybe once or twice you'll get off a group saving heal, or manage to get the aggro back onto yourself if you're a tank. Nine times out of ten, though, when the same craziness happens on the next pull, it's a wipe. So imagine my surprise when I joined up a with a group of total noobs to run the Blackrock Depths instance in WoW, and managed to finish most of my quests and take down nearly all the bosses with only one wipe. This was a group of extremely inexperienced players. Besides myself, only one other person there had even run the instance before. Because we were both on alts that hadn't seen this content in a long time, neither of us really remembered the details. So how can a group succeed when it doesn't have experience? How could this be possible when I'd run the same instance with veterans and higher level characters with less success?

First, because the group didn't have much in the way of experience or expectations about what was supposed to happen, we didn't have five leaders and zero followers. Our group was willing to actually listen to and follow the two players that had prior experience in the dungeon. In most PUGs I've been in all the players are know-it-alls. They know the whole dungeon, and they've run it a thousand times, or so they claim. The problem is that the other know-it-alls in the group don't always agree on what should be done and in what order it should be accomplished. Inevitably the group splinters and someone pulls one group of mobs, thinking that the rest of his group is loyally tagging along, while another guy does the exact same thing. As good old Abe said, a house divided cannot stand. When everyone wants to be the leader and no one is following, you might as well be going solo.

The second thing that really seemed to help was that we took our time. All too often I see groups rushing off to try to down a boss or complete a quest as quickly as possible. In attempting to bypass groups of monsters and take shortcuts, the group inevitably gets in over its head and pulls more trouble than it can handle. Our group wasn't in any rush and so the pulls were slow and steady. We got into a couple of close scrapes here and there, but on the whole it was a nice, even pace. Although this can sometimes seem "boring" to some of the spazz attack, ADD players out there, it's a great way to avoid wipes and costly repair bills. Managing aggro is not always easy, and having everyone on the same page prior to making a pull is key to the pull's success. Once you get in a rhythm you don't have to spell out the specifics of each pull. Things will start to become understood by the group and simply flow. But in order to reach that zen-like state it's sometimes necessary to spell it all out up front.

The last big thing that helped was that most members of the group had a decent understanding of their class. As a feral druid, I was main tank and would pull with Feral Faerie Fire, then use Demoralizing Roar, Growl and Swipe to hold aggro while the group did all the actual killing. Our lower-level, off-tank, warrior did a nice job peeling aggro off of our healer and taking the heat off me occasionally and the hunters did a good job managing their pets, freeze trapping adds when needed, and piling up the damage. Even though none of the players had experienced this particular dungeon before, they all knew what their role was designed to do and played their part. The hunters didn't try to tank pulls purposefully and the off tank typically remembered to watch for and pick up any mobs who attacked the healer. Once our priest, who was very new to WoW, made the mistake of fearing off mobs into another group. That was the one instance where we wiped. But after politely informing him why you typically don't want to use that tactic, he actually listened and didn't repeat his mistake. If someone is really borking up your group by playing his class like a moron, don't be afraid to speak up and let that person know. Just be sure you do it in a polite, kind, constructive way. No one likes being told how to play, but if a player continually makes mistakes and is never told how and why he's making those mistakes, he'll never learn. I've done stupid things many times and learned from those mistakes.

To sum it up, you don't have to be the most experienced group with a couple of high levels helping to successfully run an instance. You just need to designate and follow a leader, establish and play your role, and take your time. Probably most importantly, make sure you communicate with your team. These concepts obviously aren't rocket science, but most people can't seem to execute them. If you do run into those rare players that actually play well, don't forget to add them to your friends list or even to your guild if you can. It might make those annoying, but sometimes necessary PUG runs fewer and farther between.