Crowd control - it's not just for breakfast anymore!Follow

Gather around boys and girls and let me tell you about this old school thing called "crowd control" - aka CC.

Once upon a time the xpacs were new and so players would be going into instances with groups that were composed of toons that either never had been in the instance before or had only been in it a few times. The gear on these toons, while impressive compared to the previous expansion, was woefully under rated for the mobs the players would have to fight, meaning that a tank who tried pulling large numbers of mobs at once, a healer that wasn't fully paying attention or DPS who'd go full burn before the tank had aggro oftentimes brought ruin and failure upon the group.

To compensate for these difficult pulls, players developed a technique known as crowd control in which they'd use the various spells and abilities of their classes to immobilize and silence mobs so as to neutralize their abilities to heal each other or hurt the players' toons.

Mages would do stuff like sheep or silence casters, classes with root or freeze-type spells would lock melee oriented mobs into place so that they couldn't hit anyone, classes with spell disrupt capabilities would have these abilities on their hotkey bar so that they could prevent mobs from casting particularly nasty spells or healing each other, etc.

This would result in one or more mobs being neutralized and/or having their capabilities degraded during pulls, meaning that the players wouldn't have to worry about mobs healing each other, raining magical death upon them, or having three or more beating on the tank because, well, until the gearscore of the entire party is so far above the rating of the instance you're in that mobs healing or putting out massive damages doesn't matter, removing those threats is useful.

Unfortunately, most players are new, have short memories and/or were solidly geared last xpac and as a result, never really had to deal with this "CC thing" or, in d00d-speak - "lol CC wut why?"

For the past year we've all been breezing through instances, barely even stopping to let the healers drink for the simple fact that most tanks were so solidly geared that the healers often times switched to DPS spec mid-instance because they were bored and if a group took more then 15m to finish an instance you put them all on ignore because "20m is too long to take to clear something as simple as heroic HoR - you people suck!"

But things have changed now - healers are leaking mana like a 12 inch bucket with an 11 inch hole in the bottom, the mobs are casting offensive spells and healing like they were being controlled by skilled players and most groups you end up with are only evenly geared (at best) for the instance, with many people only just barely squeaking by the GS minimum (and quite a few doing so by cheating too - ie/queuing geared in the highest stuff they could find even if it doesn't match their spec and then swapping out to lower, but appropriate, pieces once they're in).

As such, learning how to use and actively using the CC/disruption tools available to your class is now vital as too many players are still of the "one wipe and I bail" mindset, especially tanks and healers, who don't have to deal with 30m+ queue times like all the DPS folks do.

I'm sure by spring the overall GS of the average toom in a pug will reach the point that you'll be able to start being sloppy about CC and not waiting for the healers to mana up, but until then, get used to either crawling through instances and succeeding or multiple wipes and nerd rage disbandings, because CC is once again a matter of life or death.

Bear CC is fun, but it makes me want to /facepalm when I'm tanking and doing more CC than the BALANCE DRUID who didn't even spec into Solar Beam. Failchicken didn't glyph his Rebirth either, so the one time I accepted his BR I took a dirt nap again in short order. Interrupt and silence effects are just as useful as CC in a lot of encounters, and prot pallies especially need to remember that Avenger's Shield IS an interrupt.

Also, the iLevel checker isn't smart enough to check for gear you can actually equip, it apparently just scans your bags and maybe your bank for the best item you have for each slot and uses that. I had a guildie last night queue up and run a heroic while he was finishing up Twilight Highlands. He finished one heroic, went and vendored all the quest loot he didn't want or couldn't use, and suddenly couldn't queue again; his iLevel apparently dropped from 330 to 328. Not to say that there aren't people that will go buy all the 346 rep gear they can just to get into heroics, but the gear checker could use some fine-tuning. If you queue as a tank, check only plate Str gear (or leather Agi gear for druids), caster type-appropriate gear for healers, etc for DPS.

For that matter, the need/greed checker could use an overhaul, too. I was on my shaman in Stonecore and able to roll need on the Str/Dodge relic when it dropped.

Ah, but you see, that alone sets you apart from those this post was aimed at - you think.

Now obviously I'm not advocating turning every dungeon crawl into a literal crawl with CC and mana breaks for every fight but when you see a large group and it's got an even mix of mobs (or multiple casters that are spread apart) then a little CC goes a long way towards negating the need for the healers to mana up after the fight, have to rez peeps or, God forbid, a wipe.

Same goes with working with the tank when he pulls - if he says "LOS pull" then that means don't stand there and let the mobs attack you as the tank goes running past you around a corner.

If you see a mob standing off by itself because it's been sheeped, rooted or shackled, do not range attack it (or send your pet off to attack it) and for the love of God, don't attack it with DOTs - it's sad that they've had to include CC glyphs that strip the target of DOTs thanks to idiots who can't figure that out - those player's stupidity is costing CC classes glyph slots.

I would add "Don't charge into a pack of mobs face-first when your healer and DPS are changing specs or trying to catch up for whatever reason." The first part of a big pull with no CC is the hardest, and if you (the tank) aren't willing to pop one of (or all) your CDs when you're taking damage from 4 mobs (first pull in HoO), be prepared for a dirt nap.

I had a tank in GB that would charge into every pull. I mentioned I could CC to relieve a lot of the stress off the healer and this was what the tank said, "But I will end up breaking it when I charge in so don't bother. I need to hit them also so they don't kill the healers, only use CC if they are going after the healer". After several pulls of explaining to him to let people CC and the tank pick them up as they are running to the group he decided to try it. I hex, lock banishes, paladin repented, I then pop off my frog and not a second later the tank heroic leaps and then thunderclaps breaking everything but the banish and the frog, which the amphibian didn't last much longer. I whispered the healer letting them know they were doing a great job keeping him up and the group in the nasty splash damage that was going around and that if the tank tries that stunt on heroic he will get creamed.

Mind Control ftw!

Seriously, with the exception of Grim Batol, almost all non 1.2M health mobs can be MC'ed. And those melee mobs can do 10k DPS on trash, where shadowpriests are the weakest. If you have a shadowpriest, work them into the CC mix and get them mind controlling. It's one of the most solid CC's out there (aka, it can't be broken by damage). I even work some pulls where I MC a mob and let the other ones take it down for me! (I just need initial agro and we get no rep for the mob.)

That said, make sure EVERYONE is awary that when MC drops, the shadowpriest IS going to have hate, so people need to be ready and quick on the re-apply (if needed), otherwise the priest will go down.

You what annoys me the most? Tanks in SFK that pulls 2 groups of mobs, make me sweat my *** to the point I have to use Innervate in a trash pull and when I sat to drink, he goes and pull another group of mobs, die and drop the group saying I`m a bad healer.
Yeah, right.

I'm not sure what attititude we're talking about, mine in expecting people to realize a druid BR may not bring you up at full health? In whatever spec I'm in, I heal if needed. If I'm going to take the time to do a BR, I heal them and MOTW them, healer or not, to save anyone else from having to do it and to KEEP THEM UP. Now if it's the tank we're probably all ready screwed but I tried!

I am all about doing whatever it takes to stay alive. I love crowd control and got excited in WoTLK dungeons when someone let me use it. But honestly, I was mainly confused because I would expect that someone would use a glyph spot for that if they are dps when there are others that would be so much more beneficial to their spec.

Ya, Wrath was out before I ever started playing. I know, feels like forever.

Banish is great. Trouble is, as I said, it was never needed. Killing mobs was always far more efficient than cc'ing them. Could you imagine me banishing, say, one of the elementals in OK or HoL?

"OMG lock u suck!!!1 now we gotta wait!?!!11! gogogogogogo" /ragekick

There's not much I miss about EQ, but this is one of them. The ability to cc multiple mobs at a time required a lot of finesse and I enjoyed it. And I'm pretty sure all of us had a message to the effect "[mob] has been mezzed, you spank it you tank it!"

Perhaps you already know, but just in case.....recasting Banish will remove the effect, rather than refreshing it. No waiting necessary! I only discovered this sorta recently, and I've been trying to educate the warlocks (and other group members) that I've come across since.

You do realize that for Boomkins, Shadow Priests, and Ele Shamans, spirit = hit right? I can imagine it's frustrating having to compete with us for your healing gear, but we don't roll on it because we think it's neat, we roll on it because we can use it. Now if you have a mage or a lock rolling on your spirit gear, feel free to get annoyed and upset. If I'm not hit capped (and currently I'm not, 1100+ hit is not easy to achieve) you better believe I'm rolling on spirit gear.

Well yeah, that's a given. I'm assuming the person I quoted is referring to necks, capes, rings, trinkets, weapons and off hands being rolled on by Boomkins. If a Boomkin or a Shammy is dumb enough to roll on gear that isn't of their specialization, then yes feel free to get aggravated with them and to mock them openly.