I’ve been playing through dungeons, which are grouped matches with 4 other players where you fight tougher than normal enemies. These groups generally consist of a Tank, who absorbs damage and attracts the enemies, a Healer, who keeps the tank (and the group) alive. And three DPS or Damage Per Second people, who have the job of dealing out as much damage as they can, as quickly as possible. I am DPS, which is the most common type, since it’s easiest to play. I like to think that I’m actually pretty awesome at DPS though since Fury Warrior ie Berserker is essentially entirely designed around buffing yourself up to throw out critical hits all over the place. When I hit, there is a visible drop on the enemy life bar, even on bosses.
Dungeons are good for a lot of things. They give good experience, you can use them along with Tabbards to increase your reputation with factions, and they drop the best loot from monsters. We’re talking sometimes ten times the stat boosts of normal quest equipment of comparable levels. Not to mention that working with a group of people is fun as well. Most groups seem to work pretty well for being random pairings, the system is really designed to work well. You can even often manage to loose a DPS or possibly two. Occasionally the Tank or Healer drops out, which tends to mean the death of the group though. Sometimes a DPS can step up and Tank, the healer is usually not replicable.
The biggest real problem I’ve found is the Tank gets over zealous and pulls in half the dungeon population at once. The healer can’t keep up and the DPS can’t deal lout enough damages to keep things at bay. Eventually the tank dies. Next, all your DPS which suddenly find they are the target of a horde of enemies, finds themselves in the graveyard. It’s easy to forget that you even have a life bar as DPS, since your focus tends to be on the enemies and not how well you’re doing.
If you’re lucky, the Healer noticed that his Tank dies and his DPS has dies and he’s cut and run to a safer area. This means that once the enemies clear out, he can revive everyone on the spot. Otherwise you all get to walk back to your corpses in spirit form, which can be a long process. If someone gets frustrated and drops then the walk becomes pointless anyway as the group quickly falls apart.
The Healer probably kills most groups, though it’s not often his fault. Sometimes the Healer just doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but if the Tank is pulling too much, there isn’t much the Healer can do.
