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First time in a warband [Archtypes & roles]

In this section, you will find some advices and basics to start quietly ingame. Question like " I'm lvl 1, what shall i do?", "What class shall i pick?", will find some answers in this place.
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wonshot
Posts: 1101

First time in a warband [Archtypes & roles]

Post#1 » Wed Aug 05, 2020 2:14 pm

Hello,
With the latest chatter about Order not being organized and the current steam of Destro domination in Citysieges it had me thinking, that the previous aspects of the game never really forced anyone to play in warbands before. You could quite litterally reach RR 80, genesis, scenario staff etc by purely pugging. And there might be a player or two out there, who have never been in a guild, friend-group or a warband before and therefor dont know what is expected of them.
I will try to cover the absolute basics, some of the more expected stuff and add a note about a tip or a trick as I attempt to cover the archtypes on the list.

Tanks
Basics: Your role as a tank involves the basic of mitigating damage, usually done with the "Guard" ability where you need to stay in 30feet range of your allied target to soak 50% of their incoming damage onto yourself. Along with Gaurd, you have a "challenge" ability which is a frontal debuff on enemies in front of you decreasing their damage output by 30% for 15seconds or untill you have been hit by them 3 times (treat it as an aoe taunt in pvp). Defensive morale abilities such as M2 Distracting Bellow, or M4 75%damage mitigating for your party for 10seconds are important cooldowns to help your role do it's duty.

Expectations: Staying in guard-range of your damagedealer in your party, throwing out your Challenge on enemy damagedealers and if you have a Shield equipped doing Hold the Line(only works against spells and arrows) in front of your allies will mitigate the damage intake. You also have interrupt abilities to Taunt animations when you get familiar with them, this game doesnt have a castbar so you need to look for arm-movement and try to get familiar with how each enemy animation looks an what it does, and then interrupting the important ones - this might take a while but dont get discouraged.
Your way of building on a tank, in general. Is to soak damage. Getting around 780 toughness, 0.00%chance to be critted (or lower!) and high wounds is a great start. Stack some Block, pary and dodge/disrupt on top and you will survive for much longer with a healthy balance.
Abilities to interrupt, buff your allies, crowdcontrol the enemy or debuff/mitigate their damage, are all expected things people want from their tanks in group pvp play, even at the entry-level.

Tips and tricks: Even if you hit for 100 with a sword and board, assisting your guarded dps is very nice. Debuffing the target, taunting their healing, snaring them and helping your damagedealers finishing and sticking to the target all helps. More experienced tanks can build balanced builds with twohanded weapons for assisting more on the offensive role without completly neglecting their damagemitigation role.

Damagedealers
Basics: Your role as a damagedealer involves killing the enemy, figureing out what the correct target is and when it isnt correct anymore, and assisting down enemies. First step is to bring the correct stats and build. If you are doing two player roaming, chances are very slim that an AoE build will grant you many kills. Same as if you are singletarget speced in a 300v300 battle might not be the best option for you, to be as impactful as you can be. Plan accordingly and find out what spec to bring matching your activities. Learning your burst abilities and how to get your highest burst or consistant damage output done can be practised on Capital Dummies.

Expectations: Dealing burst damage on a target and not hitting them for 100 over 9 seconds. If you have important debuffs, apply other debuffs first to "mask" your important debuffs so they dont get clensed by enemy healers instantly. Positioning yourself correctly so you are not standing in every damagepuddle on the ground, not running in ahead of your tankline, and should you get isolated by Crowdcontrol, go back into formation find your tank help your healers out. Hitting on the damagedealers before the tanks is important, can you hit the enemy healers then that is even better.

Tips and tricks: Installing Shiftassist addon to help quickly assisting of other damagedealers in pug scenarios, warbands, or cities make life easier for you. Or use the goold old fasion "/assist [name]" macroes and put it on your hotbar to get your Mainassist's target whenever you coordinate to kill targets. Other addsons like buffhead makes it easier for you to track of a target is guarded, and then make better judgement calls if a target is "correkt or incorrect" to attack over other nearby enemies.

Healers
Basics: Your role as a healer involves healing, ressing, clensing and positioning! If you die as a healer not only do someone else need to ress you, but also your party is extremely exposed to getting killed. Staying alive yourself is upmost important. Finding a good position and watching the party-frames to recover your allies with either healing over time, singletarget bursthealing or grouphealing.

Expectations: Having Enemy addon is close to mandatory for most guilds or pvp groups. The addon gives you so much information about who is healdebuffed, have a HoT running on them, or even if someone in your party is staggered. Prehotting before the damage lands on your party, clensing debuffs and dots when burst is about to land, and burst healing when your allies are caught or struggling is expected of healers.On top if this, you need to reevaluate your position as a battle unfolds, are you safe where you stand and started healing 5seconds ago, or is the enemy about to come to your possition and you need to reposition if your party is stable enough for you to do so.
Detaunting enemies attacking you is probably the best beginner tool to mention. 50% less damage on that enemy beating on you, will greatly help you withstand his damage. Picking a correct target to detaunt and not wasting it, is really really important!

Tips and tricks: Setting up your hotbars and User Interface to best allow you to make these spit second decisions helps you perform better and have a more enjoyful time healing. Moving your Enemy group central on the screen makes you not have to move the mouse all the way over to the left for each hot or singletargetheal. Addons are great for healers to get an overview of who is getting hit and who needs immidiate help contra who is not in critical condition.

Overall expectation of joining a group/warband. Some allies might ask you to join discord simply to listening to orders, that could be if the group have a strategy for tanks to rotate challenges or just moving from zone to zone without having to type everything out. Muting yourself on discrd, joining and listening improves results a great deal.
Going randomly afk, or not sticking together with the party/warband you have joined is seen as rude and annoying, expect to either get called out or directly kicked depending on the leader. But if you have to go shortly afk, simply typing it in the chatchannel and informing the rest of your allies, is a great way to doing it when needed.
Last edited by wonshot on Wed Aug 05, 2020 2:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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M0rw47h
Posts: 898

Re: First time in a warband [Archtypes & roles]

Post#2 » Wed Aug 05, 2020 2:17 pm

Challenge does last 15s, not 10s.
Also, would be good to mention Distracting Bellows. Kinda, MVP here.

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Arbich
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Re: First time in a warband [Archtypes & roles]

Post#3 » Wed Aug 05, 2020 3:22 pm

Mhm... That's some very basic tips :D
These tips are not only for wb play, but the archetypes in general, I would say.

I would add that fo4 tanks one of the most duty is crowd control. Tanks have the best tools for this. Your number one tool is (aoe-)snare, cause it provides no immunities. Use it, whenever you can. Offensively to hinder enemies to escape and defensively to secure your backline.
For the CC skills that did give immunities , the general rule should be: use single target CC on cooldown and AoE CC with caution. The enemy team has high pressure? Kick or knockdown one of their dps! Start the fight with an AoE stagger? Maybe not a good idea.


For healers your statement of cleansing is a bit confusing. The rule is: First applied, first cleansed. So you should cleanse everytime you can (basically on cooldown). Even if you think your teammate has only a long running Magus dot where it's not worth to waste the AP to cleanse it, this magus dot can work as cover for any nasty dot that might come after it. So, if you can cleanse, do it.
Arbich-BW/Xanthippe-WP/Schnipsel-AM

M0rw47h
Posts: 898

Re: First time in a warband [Archtypes & roles]

Post#4 » Wed Aug 05, 2020 5:07 pm

Arbich wrote: Wed Aug 05, 2020 3:22 pm Start the fight with an AoE stagger? Maybe not a good idea.
It's actualy very good idea, if you properly put stagger on and split enemies into half while they are moving, but its requires a little more positioning practice than just mashing that stagger button on impact.

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