Thread: Fellowshipping? Terms?

To start out, I'm a level 25 Elf Hunter. I've never played his game before. I have gotten familiar with my character and a little bit of Trait-related stuff. I'm just a little confused with how fellowshipping works. I also am unfamiliar with terms like aggro, cc and others I see in the forums. Thank you for explaining me if you do!

A fellowship is a group of up to 6 characters who have joined together to do things like quests and instances. When you're in a fellowship, you share the XP for whatever you kill. It's a way to do content that is too hard for solo players.

"Aggro" is a term for how much a critter wants to attack a player. (The term you'll see used in skills is "threat".) You build aggro when you do damage to the critter, or heal someone who is doing damage to the critter.

In a group, it is important to make sure that the players most able to withstand attacks (the "Tank") is the highest on the critter's hate list. You "have aggro" when the critter is attacking you. As a hunter, you need to time and adjust your damage so that you do not pull (get aggro) from the Tank.

The reason it is important to keep aggro on the tank is so that the group can control how much damage it takes. It is harder for the healer to heal multiple people, especially someone who isn't built to take damage like tank classes are. If you pull aggro too much, it becomes easier for the healer to let you die than to risk getting too much healing aggro trying to save your life. If the healer dies, your group will typically wipe (have everyone die and have to start some or all of the encounter over).

You can also use your excellent damage skills to save the day. If the healer has gotten aggro, you can pull the critter off of the healer. This may mean sacrificing yourself... but healers also have skills that can resurrect you in place after the fight is over.

"CC" is short for "crowd control". That's a generic term for various ways you can make a critter unable to participate in a fight. As a Hunter, traps are a form of crowd control. You can hold back a critter while the group works on killing another one.

It may be time for you to re-read all your skill descriptions, and think about how you would use them differently in a group (fellowship) vs alone. And ask more questions as they come up!

Originally Posted by Shukar

A fellowship is a group of up to 6 characters who have joined together to do things like quests and instances. When you're in a fellowship, you share the XP for whatever you kill. It's a way to do content that is too hard for solo players.

"Aggro" is a term for how much a critter wants to attack a player. (The term you'll see used in skills is "threat".) You build aggro when you do damage to the critter, or heal someone who is doing damage to the critter.

In a group, it is important to make sure that the players most able to withstand attacks (the "Tank") is the highest on the critter's hate list. You "have aggro" when the critter is attacking you. As a hunter, you need to time and adjust your damage so that you do not pull (get aggro) from the Tank.

The reason it is important to keep aggro on the tank is so that the group can control how much damage it takes. It is harder for the healer to heal multiple people, especially someone who isn't built to take damage like tank classes are. If you pull aggro too much, it becomes easier for the healer to let you die than to risk getting too much healing aggro trying to save your life. If the healer dies, your group will typically wipe (have everyone die and have to start some or all of the encounter over).

You can also use your excellent damage skills to save the day. If the healer has gotten aggro, you can pull the critter off of the healer. This may mean sacrificing yourself... but healers also have skills that can resurrect you in place after the fight is over.

"CC" is short for "crowd control". That's a generic term for various ways you can make a critter unable to participate in a fight. As a Hunter, traps are a form of crowd control. You can hold back a critter while the group works on killing another one.

It may be time for you to re-read all your skill descriptions, and think about how you would use them differently in a group (fellowship) vs alone. And ask more questions as they come up!

+ Rep for Shukar. He pretty much covered everything. At least the basics. A tip for you to NOT pull aggro would be to wait till the tank has gotten the mobs (critters) attention. A solution for this would be let the tank attack the mob for about 5 seconds or so until he has gotten sufficient threat; once the tank has sufficient threat, you can generally (this is used lightly) attack without the mob facing to attack you. As a Hunter however, you make A LOT of aggro (threat) because your attacks are so damn damaging, so if you attack too soon or if you have a bad tank, you will generally be the target of the mob/critter. So be careful. Good luck though! I hope this helps.

Originally Posted by Shukar

A fellowship is a group of up to 6 characters who have joined together to do things like quests and instances. When you're in a fellowship, you share the XP for whatever you kill. It's a way to do content that is too hard for solo players.

Though this is a pretty good desctiption there can be various other reasons to team up, like socialising, learning how to play in a group, spent time with friends/etc. it is however true that somethings are the same in fellowship but somethings are different.

for he rest Shukar covered most of it except the fact that loot is shared with the people in your fellowship. you can see that by the roll button. make sure you press the roll button in time (before the time-bar is empty) to have a shot of getting the item. In general if you play with people you know well you make agreements bout who rolls for what, and when in a pug (pick up group meaning a fellowship of complete strangers) you won't know why others need stuff so you roll it all (besides maybe weapons and gear that are useless for you)

Another thing is the conjunction or fellowship manoeuvre. You sometimes see a circle with at east compassdirection 4 smaller coloured circles. make sure you always click one of the smaller coloured circles. though combining them within your fellowship can make them a lot more powerfull it goes a bit far for now to explain it fully. so if you didn't get any directions from the fellowship leader, just pick the one you think is best.
Red circle: deal direct damage (of the type that goes with your weapon)
Blue circle: restores power
Yellow circle: deals common damage, and might deal damage over time
green circle: restores morale.

sometimes you see a smaller button where the circle is, it looks like a bull's eye target with 4 arrows circling it. this means you need to click it to get on the right target for the conjunction (wich would be a good idea).

One more way that groups control who takes damage is to make sure that everyone is attacking the same target. The tank will pay extra attention to the selected target to make sure it is on him, and even if it does get away for a short time, it should die very quickly, before it has a chance to do too much damage, with everyone on the same target.

If you go into your options (escape>options) and search for target assist, there will be box to show target assist panel. In a fellowship you want to have that turned on. I keep it on at all times. That panel allows you to see what mobs the chosen target assists are targetting. The fellowship leader will usually have two target assists -- the tank and a dps target assist (often a hunter). Everyone should usually be attacking only the dps target assist's target. That helps avoid both squishier characters getting aggro of hard-hitting mobs and crowd control getting broken and releasing dangers mobs into the group.

Thank you all for teaching me the terms. It was helpful, one other thing, what's dps?

Originally Posted by kotorswbf2

Thank you all for teaching me the terms. It was helpful, one other thing, what's dps?

DPS = Damage Per Second.

Basically, it's the voodoo that you do so well. You can determine your basic DPS by looking at your weapon's stats. However, that readout doesn't include your special abilities, skills, attacks, buffs, critical and devastating hit chance, et cetera.

Originally Posted by kotorswbf2

Thank you all for teaching me the terms. It was helpful, one other thing, what's dps?

DPS = Damage Per Second. When a group is "looking for DPS", they're looking for a class that is good at dealing damage. DPS classes are typically Hunters, Champions, and DPS-traited Runekeepers.

Originally Posted by Shukar

DPS = Damage Per Second. When a group is "looking for DPS", they're looking for a class that is good at dealing damage. DPS classes are typically Hunters, Champions, and DPS-traited Runekeepers.

To differentiate a bit further, there are kinda two types of dps, single target and area-of-effect (AoE). Single target is self explanatory, you do heavy damage to a single target; Hunters and Runekeepers excel at single target dps. As a hunter you can easily take down a on-level mob before they even get to you. A signature mob might take an extra 3 seconds. Champions can do both single target and aoe dps, but they're the masters of aoe dps. To explain this further, AoE means that they can attack more than one target at a time, many of the Champions' attacks do damage to 3-5 targets (8 in some cases). Just keep that in mind when you are in a group and you do DPS.

Some other basics that people may take for granted, but newer players may be unaware of ...

The various classes are designed to fit a well established pattern of roles that many games share:

1. "Tanks" - Guardians, Wardens

2. Healers - Minstrels, Rune Keepers

3. DPS (Damage Dealers) - Champions, Hunters

4. Support - Burglars, Lore Masters, Captains

Groups can be any mix you like and still succeed, but it is most efficient to have one tank class (in a tanking role) and at least one healer class (in a healing role) in every group. Any game content (quests or locations) that is designed specifically for groups will have the difficulty set assuming a tank and healer will be present.

The tricky thing is that every class has also been designed to be able to solo, which is a mix of the roles, but mostly about dealing damage. In groups, Tanking and Healing is not at all about dealing damage, so those players have to completely adjust their play styles (which is fun and where those classes really shine).

Roles in detail

1. Tanks are just brave (or obnoxious?) meat-shields. Their main job is to hold the attention ("aggro") of the enemies to protect the rest of the group. They have skills and equipment that help them do that better than the other classes. However, when they focus on this, their damage output is reduced (compared to running solo).

2. Healers are designed to have enough healing skills to keep one tank alive through even the hardest fights. Sometimes they can heal more than one person at a time, but usually not for long because healing can draw the enemy's attention away from the tank. While healing, they have minimal defences and must be protected.

3. DPS classes are responsible for actually killing stuff while the tank and healer are busy doing their stuff. In an ideal fight, the DPS players take minimal damage because the tank has all the attention. However, they are designed to be able to do just enough damage to get an enemy's attention if they go all out, or attack before the tank has attention. That can be deadly because group enemies tend to hit harder than in solo content, and you can't run them off.

4. Support classes generally do some damage themselves, while also helping to strengthen ("buff") party members and weaken ("debuff") the enemy. That can include more morale and damage output for you, and less damage dealt to the tank. Some support classes also have crowd control ("CC") skills, which can help to reduce the number of enemies the tank has hitting him.

Benefits of playing to roles

- You'll find a well balanced group playing their natural roles can beat much tougher content than if they all play as they would solo.
- Tougher content usually means better loot.
- A good tank/healer combo can allow the group to take on many enemies at a time, which can be great fun and a faster pace than soloing.
- If things go wrong, healers can even revive players who have been defeated (with certain limitations).
- DPS players can reach their true killing-machine potential e.g. your Hunter can ping away with arrows without getting interrupted or having to use the weaker melee attacks, and can shoot many targets at once with "AOE" skills.
- Satisfaction of successful teamwork. It really is more fun when it goes to plan, although a bit of chaos every now and then doesn't hurt!