Can WoW Combat Tactics Translate?

[Cthulhudrew]

I wasn't planning on picking up the PHB2 but I'll try to check out the Knight.

You can check it out on the Wizards of the Coast site, here

Can anyone tell me what the taunt feat is called and what book it's in?

I believe the one Whizbang is thinking of is the feat Goad, which is in Complete Adventurer and in Races of Stone as well. It's actually one of my favorite feats.

 

[Sejs]

To be fair, a monster could do that in D&D, too. The monster running away from/past the tank can and still does get whacked on. A fast-thinking tank can snap the monster's attention back.

Ayep. In most online games, you just break out one of the tank's aggro-grabbing abilities (and if the caster keeps doing it, let him take a few pops.. aggro management isn't all one person's job, after all). In D&D, if the critter provokes an AoO as it goes after the caster - trip it. Then lean over it and tell the offender "Where you going? Nowhere. That's right".

 

[Agent Oracle]

To be fair, a monster could do that in D&D, too. The monster running away from/past the tank can and still does get whacked on. A fast-thinking tank can snap the monster's attention back.

it's a little more complex than that.

See, in WoW, the AI is set to: "Kill producer of whatever Single Attack did the most damage to me"

Which means: if a caster blows a big chunk of his mana on a single powerful hit, he might find himself the full-on focus of a dragon for several "rounds" (attacks, whatever) or even until he is dead (if the hit was hard enough, all efforts of the tank are futile)

in D&D, the DM thinks "Hmm, would that spell be potent enough to make this monster walk away from his current chewtoy... Oh, wait, spot & listen"

Which means: even after being hit by a lightning bolt, that dragon might just change targets to... hitting the fighter, the rogue, AND the wizard by backing up and unleashing it's breath weapon.

 

[frankthedm]

Non to animal intelligent foes attack for hunger. Unless the critter has a diet of steel, mithral and adamant, or enjoys chewing on such objects, it should be going for whoever has the least armor and weaponry.

Predators also go for the weakest pack members, so if the ‘tanks’ of the party protect “the casters”, they are signaling to the predators” the casters” ARE ‘easy prey’. If after that point the casters are left even slightly open, the predators should be making bee lines to the “easy prey”.

Top that off with the inherent curiosity of predators and they will likely go for the characters who carry “seasoning packets” aka spell component pouches.

 

[Fenes]

MMOG tactics work if you have braindead enemies. In any other case the usual "holy trinity" tactics are a recipe for disaster.
You are better off checking what tactics work in pvp, since players are usually not as stupid as monsters.

 

[wayne62682]

Don't MMORPG tactics pretty much rely on "metagaming" anyways, something that's frowned on in D&D? That is, in MMORPGs you can very easily check up on what you are fighting and know all of its weaknesses with no worries about "your character wouldn't know that".

And I agree, MMORPG monsters are stupid. Not so in D&D.

 

[Corinth]

MMOG tactics work if you have braindead enemies. In any other case the usual "holy trinity" tactics are a recipe for disaster.
You are better off checking what tactics work in pvp, since players are usually not as stupid as monsters.

PVP in WOW plays significantly different from PVE gameplay. The first thing to go is the idea of tanking, as the aggro mechanic doesn't apply most of the time--only one Battleground has any NPCs, and World PVP only recently got a boost (with effects undetermined as yet)--so tanking isn't done. That means that you've got healing/support and DPS, specifically "burst" DPS (lots in short timespans, but quickly exhausted, instead of "continuous" DPS that sustains over time- aka "DOT" for Damage Over Time), which means that healers and casters are top targets while melee guys are secondary- they get hit with Crowd Control abilities to keep them suppressed while taking out the casters.

Focused firepower upon one or two targets at a time remains the prefered method of execution and in PVP this means drawing off targets from their group, quickly surrounding them to create short-term local firepower supremacy, ganking them and moving on before it's done to you. Crowd Control allows you to break up enemy group coherence while you keep yours; stuns in particular are widespread in number and usage. Numbers and quality of combatants also matter; more and higher-level are unquestionably good, and many PVP fights consist of one side executing a blitzkrieg attack upon a group of enemies that they gank mostly due to outnumbering them 2-4:1, slaughtering them before reinforcements arrive to even things out. (This is known as "zerging", after the Zerg of Starcraft and that race's preffered style of warfare.)

D&D, as written, definitely plays like this when PCs and NPCs are close in level; specifics do vary--D&D doesn't promote Crowd Control as much as WOW does, for example--but in the main it is close enough to be comparable and translatable.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

See, in WoW, the AI is set to: "Kill producer of whatever Single Attack did the most damage to me"

Or has done the most healing. Or has created the most effective hit points by dropping a giant buff on everyone, etc. It's a lot more complex than just damage estimations.

in D&D, the DM thinks "Hmm, would that spell be potent enough to make this monster walk away from his current chewtoy... Oh, wait, spot & listen"

Which means: even after being hit by a lightning bolt, that dragon might just change targets to... hitting the fighter, the rogue, AND the wizard by backing up and unleashing it's breath weapon.

It happens that way in WoW, too, depending on the critter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Don't MMORPG tactics pretty much rely on "metagaming" anyways, something that's frowned on in D&D?

On some stuff, by some people, but only at the "endgame" where people are fighting foes in groups of 15 characters or more at once. The majority of the game isn't played that way except by a handful of terminally pitiful folks.