Flux

	Class	Ability	Icons	Time	Breaks	Resist	Targets	Creature	Cooldown
Primary	Mage	Polymorph		50	yes	arcane	one	humanoid, beast	0
	Hunter	Freezing Trap		20-26	yes	yes	one	any	24-30
	Rogue	Sap		25-45	yes	no	one	humanoid	special
	Priest	Mind Control		60	caster	yes	one	humanoid	0
	Warlock	Seduction		15	yes	shadow	one	humanoid	0
Limited	Druid	Hibernate		40	yes	yes	one	beast, dragonkin	0
	Druid	Entangling Roots		27	no	yes	one	any outdoors	0
	Priest	Shackle Undead		50	yes	yes	one	undead	0
	Warlock	Enslave Demon		300	no	shadow	one	demon	0
	Warlock	Banish		30	no	shadow	one	demon,elemental	0
Emergency	Druid	Cyclone		6	no	no	one	any	0
	Hunter	Wyvern Sting		12	yes	yes	one	any	120
	Mage	Frost Nova		8	partial	frost	all ranged	any	21-25
	Paladin	Turn Undead		20	no	yes	one	undead	30
	Paladin	Hammer of Justice		6	no	no	one	any	45-60
	Priest	Psychic Scream		8	no	no	5	any	30
	Rogue	Blind		10	yes	yes	one	any	90-120
	Warlock	Fear		20	no	yes	one	any	0
	Warlock	Howl of Terror		8	no	no	5	any	40
	Warrior	Intimidating Shout		8	no	no	6	any	180

For most instance creatures you have to use some sort of crowd control or your group makes a quick visit to the graveyard. Who decides crowd control usually falls on the puller, often the tank, though anyone familiar with it can do it. That person usually has rough idea of what’s what and uses the raid target icons, , to mark the creatures before the pull and fighting starts.

We talked before about easy ways to mark mobs with hot keys and mods.

What gets crowd controlled (cc) and what doesn’t is mostly about knowing the mob and your group’s cc. It’s also a part art depending on how strong you feel your party is and how safe you need to play it.

Ask yourself what is your group’s cc, the target creature type, the creature’s abilities, and what is the kill order going to be. In practice this is pretty easy once you know the mob and know about cc abilities.

Crowd Control Abilities

Crowd control abilities come in many different flavors. Officially these are Charm, Daze, Disorient, Fear, Incapacitate, Root, Sleep, Slow, Snare, and Stun. But this isn’t very useful for deciding when to use them. So we have listed the crowd control abilities in three different groups assuming maximum level and rank .

The Primary group are the abilities you will use most often. These work with the most creatures and last the longest.

The Limited crowd control abilities are often just as powerful but they only work for a certain creature types and situations. They are valuable but you won’t be using them most of the time.

Finally, there are the Emergency abilities. These are risky or don’t last long. We haven’t listed abilities that lasts less than six seconds. We aren’t going to talk about these since we want long safe crowd control, but we are listing them for later because they are useful in a number of situations.

Most of these abilities can be resisted and suffer from diminishing returns. Essentially this means that on every heartbeat of the game, which seems to be every couple seconds, a creature may resist your control and break out. You can reapply your control if they break out early or when the normal duration runs out, but the new duration will be half as long as before and it won’t work at all after doing this four times.

Some abilities ‘break’ when damage is done to the creature. If a controlled creature is damaged then they need to be recontrolled, which is not always easy to do. This also means that it’s essential that no one put a damage over time on a controlled creature. The damage will continuously break any attempt to recontrol. Both of these will lead to cry’s like, “You break it, you tank it.” and “Stop dotting my sheep!”

Notes:

• Sap can only be used out of combat. You get to use it once before the creatures are pulled. It has no resist so it will always go at least 25 seconds unless damaged.
• Entangling Roots and Frost Nova stop a creature from moving, they can still cast. Entangling Roots is best used for a melee creatures outdoors, which is not very often in instances.
• Mind Control breaks earlier the more damage and healing that is done to the caster as well as distance from the controlled creature.
• There is no universal standard for which symbols to use except for dies first and dies second. There aren’t enough symbols for every group combination and everyone has their own favorites. We have listed some of the favorites.
• There are some creatures especially in heroics instances which are immune to all crowd control or some specific crowd control. You won’t know without looking them up or previous experience, but they are uncommon outside of heroics.
• Crowd Control effects PvP differently than PvE, we are assuming creatures are your target, not players

Creature Type

The majority of creatures in instances are humanoid, which mean five abilities and classes stand out for crowd control; Mages, Hunters, and Rogues and to a lesser extent Priests and Warlocks. The variety and length of mage crowd control make them the best in the game. Generally you’ll want at least two crowd control classes since many mobs have four or five creatures. But having three to four people ccing makes it smoother and helps with some of the uglier pulls in the game like the bunk room in Shattered Halls or what seems like all of heroic Mana-Tombs.

You can’t easily tell the creature type without a mod but it’s usually obvious. Most of the unit frame and nameplate mods have an option to show the creature type. If you have one you should enable it. The ones that matter are Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids, Mechanicals, and Undead.

Mark humanoid for anyone except Druids. Mark beasts for Druids or Mages. Mark demons and elementals for Warlocks. And mark undead for Priests. If it’s a giant or a mechanical, you will have to just kill it.

Knowing Your Target

If you haven’t been through the instance before, usually you can make some good guesses about a creature’s abilities based on the name they have. Generally you will run into four types; melee, ranged including casters, healers, and specials with nasty abilities like fear or aoe explosions. Generally you want to cc specials first, then healers, ranged, and finally melee.

Why cc everything else and kill the melee first? If everything went perfectly, it doesn’t matter, but usually as the fight continues cc will break, either by accident or when it runs out, and the person ccing can’t recontrol it fast enough. If a melee creature gets lose and your tank can’t immediately pick it up, it’s going to hit one of your cloth wearing squishies. On heroics many melee creatures will one shot kill a squishy. Things can snowball from there and the group can wipe.

The main exception is when your don’t have enough cc and your tank needs to tank more than one creature at the same time. If your tank is not quite as tough as you would like you may have to control one of the melee creatures instead of a non-melee creature. This helps take the pressure off the tank and healer. Leaving ranged/casters up is usually better than leaving healers and specials. Alternately if you have two tanks you can offtank the extra melee creature. If more than three tough melee creatures can’t be cced, you’ll probably have to offtank or use emergency cc.

Keep in mind there are many creatures that have specials like Coilfang Rays in Slave Pens fearing you, Coilfang Sirens in Steamvaults aoe fearing, Mechanar Tinkerer’s aoe arcane Netherbombs, Sunseeker Gene-Splicer in Botonica aoe Death and Decay, etc. Most of these have to be dealt with immediately either by cc or killing them first because their effect is too dangerous to the group. For example, the fear’s often cause groups to run off into other mobs and add them to the fight, usually causing a wipe. With a few exceptions, you are best off ccing these and dealing with them by individually after the melee is dead. Also, sometimes the hardest hitting creature is not obvious. For example the dogs in Shattered Halls and Ramparts hit much harder than their masters but are easier to kill.

Kill Order

It is best to establish a kill order so everyone knows which creatures to start killing next and which cced creatures need to stay that way. Only the tank should be breaking cc. If you start breaking cc for them, it makes it harder for them to build threat and keep the fight from going out of control, and a group wipe.

Here’s a suggested kill order based on how long each cc potentially lasts, it’s difficulty in maintaining, and which allow the party do the most damage or healing. The duration is using the ability one to four times with no breaking. Four times is the maximum because of diminishing returns.

Target	Duration	Why
Skull and X		The first creatures to die are the ones that the tank and offtank are fighting. These should usually be melee creatures.
Seduction	15-37	Only 15 seconds per cast and the succubus which casts this spell is quite squishy, so there is a good chance she will get killed between recasts, especially is she seduces melee.
Entangling Roots	27-67	Can’t be recast while a druid is shapeshifted except as a moonkin, usually giving you only 27s. Also it’s likely your next melee target.
Hibernate	40-100	Can’t be recast while a druid is shapeshifted giving you 40s. This is best taken care of next unless you are willing to have your druid shapeshift to recontrol.
Sap	25-45	No resist for the first 25s but it can’t be renewed in combat, so it’s next.
Mind Control	60-150	Your priest, likely shadow since healers can’t do both, can do more damage as a priest than by mind controlling.
Freezing Trap	20-65
Banish	30-75	Combined with Curse of Shadows, Banish almost always lasts the full 75s.
Shackle Undead	50-125	Same as Polymorph but freeing up a priest for off healing towards the end of a fight can be helpful.
Polymorph	50-125	One of the last ones to die.
Enslave Demon	300-750	Extraordinary long duration and the warlock can continue to dps even while enslaving.

Strictly speaking you would want the shortest duration to die first and the longest duration to die last, however because of how the abilities work you vary this. Let’s list some other variations to keep in mind as well.

Druids can’t generally crowd control and stay shapeshifted unless they continually shift, which is an especially bad idea if they are your tank or healer.

Mind Control last a long time but except for a few creatures that have great abilities to use while mind controlled, you are better off dropping this early to increase your parties damage. However, it is fun to mind control and some get a kick out of doing this the entire fight. This is not usually a risk, unless it’s melee and the priest can’t recontrol fast enough.

Freezing trap is unusual. If a hunter places a trap well before the fight starts, their cooldown has reset and they will have an ‘extra trap’ during the fight. It their first trap breaks early they have a spare. After their spare breaks they may have to resort to kiting until their cooldown resets again. A hunter can usually use a combination of frost traps and other abilities to kite and retrap a creature for most of the fight if it doesn’t hit hard. But at this point your hunter is no longer doing as much damage as they can to the main target, and unskilled or unlucky hunters will get themselves killed. Your tank should watch for early trap breaks, and if the second/spare trap breaks they should pick up this creature next, before another crowd control.

Banish like mind control is sometimes left for last if the fight is going quickly. Or sometimes if it expires the party takes care of it immediately instead of the next cc. This is because unlike most cc, you can’t intentionally break Banish. You have to wait for it to end which can be frustrating when everyone is standing around staring at the last demon.

Summary

Here’s a simple list to follow. When in doubt ask your group members. They should know their class well enough to offer ideas or catch mistakes while you are marking.

• kill melee first
• mark humanoid for anyone except Druids
• mark beasts for Druids or Mages
• mark demons and elementals for Warlocks
• mark undead for Priests
• kill order = skull, X, sap, freezing trap, polymorph

Enjoy and don’t loose control!

Tips and Tricks

• Warlocks and Demons are close friends. A warlock using enslave and the help of a healer can have the demon solo and sometimes clear a mob. This is especially useful in The Mechanar on the first level before the first boss.
• Seduce non-melee creatures to increase the chance your demon lives when it breaks.
• Mind Control first and let them die. If you find a mob that is too big and have a priest, you can mind control one of the creatures and let them die a cruel death before starting the fight. Leaving one less to worry about. Of course you wont get the loot from the creature, but who cares, it’s only a trash mob.
• Be careful which creatures you mark with sap. If a patrol walks by the sap creature when it breaks, you will get an add, often leading to a wipe.
• Banish is sometimes frustrating waiting for it to end. Consider downranking to 20 seconds instead of 30 seconds when you know the fight is fast.
• Druid tanks can cast hibernate on beasts to start the pull. This is like sap, because they won’t be able to reapply it while tanking.
• Warlocks cast Curse of Shadows before Seduce and Banish to reduce the chance of resist, it also helps mage polymorph from breaking
• Felguards make disposable offtanks if you don’t need Seduce
• Warlocks, it’s usually not a good idea to keep a demon enslaved for the next mob, or you might get a surprise when it turns on you in the middle of the next fight.
• There are some creature mobs which are a large number of weak creatures. You can skip all crowd control except Frost Nova or Frost Trap and burn them down with area of effect damage.
• Spell Hit generally reduces the chance for a creature to resist crowd control.
• The three area of effect or multi-target attacks Avenger’s Shield, Swipe, and Cleave from tank classes briefly didn’t break crowd control on the player test realm for the 2.4 patch. As well as Shaman Chain Lightening, Hunter Multi-Shot, and Priest Reflective Shield won’t break it either. Currently some of these do and some do not.

Tags: skill, tip
Author: aos

This entry was posted by aos on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Games, WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.