Voice Communication In Groups

[Jaycub]

This is something I worked on a bit with blakokami/lekaru (RIP) as a kind of internal guild document for a while when NA had a pretty healthy 6 man scene, but ultimately fizzed out and was never finished as consequence of that. But since there really is no guides for something like this I thought I would see if it is something people would be intersted in. I'm not sure, mostly becuase communication tends to be an organic thing that groups just kinda create over time (if they stick together long enough) out of neccesity or wanting to get better. But like most organic things there are principals. Which is what this guide will try to cover, giving you the tools/framework to create a good communication enviroment rather than just say the flow chart we were using.


When thinking about how to get better at this game, you have 3 avenues.

>Mechanics
>Game Knowledge
>Teamwork

Mechanics in this game are pretty easy, it's a tab target style MMO with a global cooldown after all. Mechanics being how well you perform actions which are limited to movement, camera controls, and using actions. As long as you can control your character well (dont uh keyboard turn), and always have an action used every GCD (~1.2? seconds here) then your mechanics are nearly perfect.

So an example I'll use for probably one of the hardest actions mechanically (simply because of off GCD abilities), and ill build on it with the other 2. Imagine you are a runepriest running from the spawn in serpents passage to the part, with your entire team infront of you. But on the way there you are flanked by a mara and chosen. Thankfully you see them in time and are able to harbringer into stagger the mara before his pull animation is finished buying you some time. You switch out of harbringer back to healing, start pre hotting yourself and prepare for them as best you can detaunting the mara, and getting ready to AoE punt as soon as they are in range.

Mechanically what you did here was you were able to very quickly hit harbringer, hit stagger, and come out of harbringer all in under 1.2 seconds (ideally), then control your character forward while panning camera properly and hitting the buttons you needed to every GCD without losing any time inbetween.

Game knowledge then is, how you decided what abilities to use. You used stagger immedietly becuase it's stopped the marauder from pulling you. You detaunted before he could even touch you, you waited for them to get in range again to punt both to avoid snares and buy more time, and you started to pre HoT yourself to better deal with pressure when it came so you could use more GCD on direct healing. Game knowledge also encompasses how your built you character, what gear, tactics, mastery, use of potions, etc...

Now you have done everything you could possibly do on your own, so now what?

The only thing left is teamwork, which is driven almost exclusively by communication. Without it no matter how well you play solo you are going to run into situations where you are just screwed. So now at this point on your runepriest, you hit your PPT button or whatever, and you ask for help. Now instead being left to your own fate unless the right person checked behind your entire team instantly knows what is going on and takes the actions needed to help you. By simply communicating you avoided dying or at least being held up to the point where you would be unable to heal your team.

Hopefully this intro wasn't too long winded, but I wanted to explain why it was important in the best way I could. Now what follows is 100% my opinion on the matter of a specific style of communication that uses a shotcaller who is fed information by everyone else and then uses that information to tell everyone what to do. It works for us, but there is a major drawback in that the shotcaller has to be a very exceptional player. There is a qauntum leap from what most percieve as a great top 1% player, and then those in that catergory that can also do this.


...


Communication should be as efficent and concise as possible.

Redundancy and unneccasary information has to be sqaushed first and foremost. This means each archtype, and role within needs to have a set of information it is responsible for. That information has to be conveyed in as little as time as possible, yet still be instantly and perfectly understood by all. And only that information should be congesting the chat.

Secondly, and probably most importantly. All this information has to be taken in by the shotcaller, he has to make a fast desicsion and they must be followed without question. And to make the descision making process actually function to some degree the shotcaller needs to have a plan for everything, he needs to know what to do in every situation. Which means he needs to understand the communication processes explained here, and the everyone else needs to know how to communicate. And again it needs to be followed to the T by everyone else, even if it's a bad descision. Commentary should be saved for after the fighting is over, commentary is healthy and the best way to get better so don't shy away from talking about what went wrong just don't do it in the middle of things.

Lastly the biggest problem most groups will have off the bat is a lack of communication from certain players, or certain players who just stop communicating/shut down during fights where you are losing badly. It can be hard to work out these problems, but they should be pointed out constantly. I promise you a mediocre player who is willing to communicate and does so well, is going to be much better than a "pro" player who never speaks up. And I've personally run into many of these types of players.



Starting off from here with an example, healers are in charge of keeping people alive (duh) and thus when they are in a situation where they feel like they cannot keep someone up much longer this has to be communicated, and this is really one of the worst offending things I run into in six mans. So a very simple call we use on healers to convey this is "pot" is a very short almost utterance that lets any DPS in the **** know that they need to pot, but not only that. Dropping rage on slayer/choppa, tank defensive morales, cleansing winds, RD charge/flee out for reset etc... A very simple word that easily conveys an idea that can set off a neccesary chain of events to save your group.

But going further and finding out how we got to this link in the chain of communication, what puts the healers in such of situation where he cannot keep the party alive? The first thing that comes to mind is overwhelming damage on the DPS/front line. This is almost exlusively a problem that comes from bad push or target calling. Our groups use a shotcaller, who is 99% of the time a DPS player on a class that the group is built and played around. Slayer was really the ipitemy of this in the melee train days. But I'll keep this example healer only for simplicity sake.

Now healers are also in the best posistion sighting wise to call for DPS and tanks to pull out, I like to think of it as healers having a leash on everyone else. They can see the backlines, the frontlines, and everything in between. A shotcaller may make what seems to be a good call for a push on a target a bit out, but he doesn't know there is enough enemies in the backlines near his healers to pose a lethal or at least enough of an annoyance to significantly cripple thier healing output. This is where healers must always keep the shotcaller informed of whats going on in the back, so he doesn't try and push while his healers are swamped, and subsequently dies in the process. But the healers cannot cosntantly be gumming up chat with every little detail.

So how exactly should backline threats be communicated?

Let's use the most common... the solo WH/WE, These classes have both incoming and outgoing healdebuffs. Ofcourse not all are created equally and a good healer can watch his buffhead and see if they actually are using outgoing. The combination of both means anyways that not only is the groups total healing outup reduced by ~25% but heals are going to get siphoned from the front line into the targeted healer to keep him from dying as residual HoTs and AoE heals are not going to cut it against a good WH/WE. While they are annoying only as one, they are incredibly easy to kill with any kind of setup, even more so with a ranged DPS focused party. A simple "WH or WE on me" is fine.

But what should be done isn't as simple. Usually the shotcaller is going to ask, or the healers will ask specifically for immediete help if neccesary. Maybe you are just smashing pugs and healing even cut in half isn't a problem, but you should still call it out as maybe that might be the best target at the time if your DPS is only able to hit cross gaurded tanks etc... You might be in a situation as a healer where you were poped on by a WH/WE while barely keeping your DPS alive in the front. This is the second situation where you will hear "pot" called and most likely "get back now", but a more dire situation than just the front in trouble as they are now kiting back with enemies in pursuit to a crumbling backline. This is where bellow/ID healer defensive morales will be called out. This is also where DPS should be getting as far away and safe as possible and when doing so calling out they no longer need gaurd ("im safe") letting the tanks know they are free to guard whomstever. Generally shotcaller will be calling for a "reset" which basically means everyone try to get to saftey, whether it be gaurds in the SC and postern in RvR, even a corner in say BFP could be the rally point.

The communication here serving the purpose of saving as many party members as possible instead of just full wiping becuase your frontline or DPS are tunneling on someone while they don't know thier healers are having trouble or worse dying.

The last part of this section I'm going to go back to the organic nature of communication and how it develops in groups. Becuase really there are tons of way to approach a situation. We start off using logic, theorycrafting if you will. "What should we do if X happens". Or we by expierence notice something went terribly wrong in say a scenario, again going back to commenting on what happened after the fact being a very healthy thing.

So let's say our 6 man was fighting another 6 man in Talabecland Dam at the part. And the other 6 man's offgroup came from thier side bridge coming back after planting the part and put us in a 6v12 situation (lets say our offgroup is terrible/nonexistant). Thier offgroup immedietly went for our healers and we fully wiped even with a timely call for a reset, and other proper calls.

And now we have our "X" and we ask ourselves well how do we react to this without wiping? And logically I think most groups will come to a central idea that fights need to be approached better and with the extra group(s) in mind, becuase the set of fundemental calls didn't do anything even when executed properly. This is where communication gets into the territory of preimpetive calling (planning) rather than reactive which is all that I talked about before. Becuase you simply cannot react to suddenly having an entire group hit your backlines while fighting an equal force in front unless you always have ID or 2 perfect bellows on both groups followed up by good secondary morales.

So now your group comes to the concensus that all further Talabecland Dam's the group will posistion themselves much better to have an escape route, not open themselves up to a flank from either side bridge, and to only push past the part with proper lockdown, and a quick check of whats coming in if anything. Becuase the problem identified was you were pushed the other premade to thier bridge just duking it out, but doing so opened yourselves up to a wipe. The same logic can be used anywhere, say the north postern of the destruction thunder mountain keep, or the central BO in Caledor.

And this is preemptive communication, becuase it doesn't take place actively during the fight. It was planned out before hand that it was how you were going to approach this scenario every time in terms of part control. But just like active communication this must be followed exactly, even if it isnt working. You need that constant there, so if it doesn't work you can observe what is happening and then adjust that plan accordingly. It might take 500 talabecland dams with your premade before you have an extremely solid idea of how to approach it and what not to do. And you might change a certain facet 10 times over.

And I think a lot of premades have done this specfically with nordenwatch. Im sure you know what happens if you chase pugs and try to cap every point. You either lose or barely win. So you get to together and say that every time you get norden you are just going to hold mid the entire SC and win everytime that way instead of winging it and possibly losing. Maybe you hold mid and racks or lighthouse. Try both and see which one is more successfull in decent pool of matches and different groups fought against.

This is where I'm going to stop for now (it's still a bit of a jumbled mess), and there's a ton more to cover but this is some of the basic ideas with a few examples thrown in, rather than say a complete flowchart or what have you. Not even getting into what each archetype and role should be responsible for in full etc... But I'd rather see how people feel about this so far then spend anymore time on this atm.

[dansari]

Really solid advice in all of that. You're right that having ranged shotcallers normally works better because they have a more wholistic view of the field. Obviously having 6 people that continually work together and thus start to develop habits and can predict their team's actions is the best case scenario, but implementing simple calls can help immensely even in non-optimal setups, rotating players, etc. Thanks for sharing!

[Dabbart]

Excellent read. And it's very far from a jumbled mess btw.

I'd be interested to see how you break down melee pushes vs overextending.

"Redundancy and unneccasary information has to be sqaushed first and foremost. This means each archtype, and role within needs to have a set of information it is responsible for. That information has to be conveyed in as little as time as possible, yet still be instantly and perfectly understood by all. And only that information should be congesting the chat. "

-best portion imo. No need for shot caller to tell you the class type. We have an assist macro, "my target" works just fine. "On M4" is entirely sufficient, no need to explain you have your imac ready for whenever we might need it. However, this only really works with a team you know. I used to find it hard in OS groups, cause I didn't know everyone by the sound of their voice... Obviously however, this is for "organized" and "practiced" groups.

One thing I would add to the Healer "pot" call, and this really only applies to healers/RDPS, you need a yellow/red type of call. 1 that states, "I am being pressured but believe I can make it, but keep an eye on me", and another for, "oh **** I just agro'd the entire enemy realm". No need to drop an Imac when your healer is 1GcD from CWing his way to safety, but you still should prepare just in case. Designating a backline caller can help as well. If you have 1 person that excels at vision/calls there is no reason they can't support someone who has issues making a call while under pressure.

The largest part of teamplay, is on the Shot Caller. And knowing the people you are playing with. Some guys/gals just seem like they can tank the world, others need assistance quicker. Some players attract agro, others seemingly get ignored. Know your teammates. And if the Shot Caller makes a call, REACT. Back means Get Back, not push for that final DB...

Hope you continue with this.

[peterthepan3]

Well said.

Unfortunately, I think it will fall on deaf ears.

[Jaycub]

Really solid advice in all of that. You're right that having ranged shotcallers normally works better because they have a more wholistic view of the field. Obviously having 6 people that continually work together and thus start to develop habits and can predict their team's actions is the best case scenario, but implementing simple calls can help immensely even in non-optimal setups, rotating players, etc. Thanks for sharing!

Yes having 6 people that always play together is in itself a massive advantage over having to rotate in others all the time. One of the biggest reasons gankbus dominated for so long imo. But having basic fundamental set of calls and communication roles help assimilate new players in significantly faster than waiting for it happen organically over time. The other advantage of having the same people all the time is you learn how to call through actions rather than words in some cases. When I played WL and blak was on Slayer we had easily over 500 scenarios of him shotcalling with me playing assist (no cd pounce was best assist dps ever) and a lot of the smaller questions or calls specifically needed for my role as assist didn't need to happen.

One thing I would add to the Healer "pot" call, and this really only applies to healers/RDPS, you need a yellow/red type of call. 1 that states, "I am being pressured but believe I can make it, but keep an eye on me", and another for, "oh **** I just agro'd the entire enemy realm". No need to drop an Imac when your healer is 1GcD from CWing his way to safety, but you still should prepare just in case. Designating a backline caller can help as well. If you have 1 person that excels at vision/calls there is no reason they can't support someone who has issues making a call while under pressure.

Ya this is one of the most complicated things to deal with, usually our healers/rdps might say "X is on us but it's fine" or "X in the back I'm getting ****" or if they don't know how things will turn out just state what is back there. I see a lot of slayers and SM in the back on my zealot and I always call it but they are usually just messing around attacking other people so there isn't a whole lot of importance put on it.

The complicated part anyways, is how say your front line if you are doing a melee train is to react to a call from the backlines that they need immediate help. Because more often than not just instantly pulling out of the front to help your backline opens up a can worms were your group kind of compacts on top of your healers and you get sandwiched by what you were dealing with up front with what you are having to deal with in the back. And it becomes altogether a massive headache when you got say a crossgaurding outgoing healdebuff knight and IB with the help of a SM or something hitting you backlines constantly pressuring healers, mostly because your offgroup isn't doing much of anything. Because pulling off the other teams DPS to deal with crossgaurding near unkillable tanks is a "damned if you do damned if you don't" type of situation. Usually when that happens we try to split the other team by going to outlying objectives or just essentially play for kills with our backline against something they can be safe with.

For the usual adds messing with our backline we have to deal with, our DPS pull out first while tanks hold everything back by punting, keeping snares up any CC they can then usually 1 tank that doesn't have AoE snare comes back to help and we slowly fold back into the backlines rather than all at once that usually invites disaster. Not to say that works everytime, but observing different methods that seems to work the best. Because you are kiting back and healing a tank or crossgaurding tanks rather than worrying about DPS being caught. And you are finding yourself kiting out if you can't take care of the backline threats before the rest of the enemy shows up from the front. That being another major mistake we identified through play, we would go back to help the backline and end up in a situation where we were aimlessly trying to kill whatever when we should of cut our losses gave up the ground (objective/part whatever) and reset somewhere safer. And often times you will find that as you pull out the other team might see it as a wipe and overextend hard giving you a kill or two which them immediately allows you to retake what you lost.

edit: It should also be stressed that just because a healer is saying get back or they need help right now or they are going to die, nothing should happen until the shotcaller says so. Everyone is simply feeding him info and it's not until he says to do something at least pertaining to the entire groups movement that is done. Because there are situations were a healer might be left to die because whatever is about to happen or is happening up front is more important or leaving immediately will result in basically an instant wipe. For instance maybe the dps just need 5-10 more seconds to kill both DPS and/or their last healer, and that would clear up pressure or guarantee a wipe for the other side, and it's worth losing a healer or even both. There has been a few situations we have been in where we let this happen but you know one of our DPS and two tanks live after wiping the entire other group and cap the point or take the part, and it's just a regroup from there. The RDPS heavy meta we are in right now pressure plays a gigantic role as well, your group might be the only thing holding back 3 bw's and an engineer from going to town on everyone (another terrible situation to be in and one you need to plan to avoid).

So you don't want people to start peeling off just because your RP called for help unless it's blatantly obvious like the situation in serpents where you are just starting from spawn and there is no other fighting going on.

Well said.

Unfortunately, I think it will fall on deaf ears.

It's enjoyable at least thinking about stuff like this. It's also stuff that carries over to every team game and not just WAR so in that sense it's not a total waste of time.