Instance Running 101 Explored Part 9

Crowd control skills.

This is a skill that needs a little practice. The leader needs to identify the target with a raid icon (more on those in the next post), the cc'er needs to control the target, and the rest of the group need to not break the cc!

Example of 'crowd control':
Mages have a polymorph spell. This means that the target gets turned into a sheep, and wanders around randomly. Breaks on any damage. The target also heals as fast as if it were out of combat, so it's not a good idea to sheep an almost-dead target. The spell only works on beasts, humanoids and critters.
Druids have a cyclone spell. This only lasts for 8 seconds, but doesn't break on damage. The target can't be damaged at all while under the effect. Very few mobs are immune to it.
Warlocks have a banish spell. This only works on Elementals and Demons. (including a Druid in 'Tree of Life' form). Can't be broken by damage, and the target can't be damaged.

And so on. As shown, the various crowd control spells have varying durations, allowable targets, and side effects. The short-term ones (cyclone, rogue stuns, etc) are more often used as emergency buttons for a bad situation (stopping a mob on the way to the healer, for example), while the long-terms spells (polymorph, a rogue's 'Sap', banish, etc) are normally used at the beginning of a fight for dealing with a particular target.

The goal behind 'cc' is to make a particular mob in a pull become a non-entity for the duration of the fight. A classic example is the following:
There is a pull with three mobs: Two mobs that heal, and one melee mob that hits hard. The kill order is the two healers first, and then the melee mob... however, the healers will keep each other alive while the melee mob does a lot of damage to the tank.

The leader marks one healer to be killed first, and then the melee mob to be killed second. The third is marked with the agreed 'cc' mark. When everyone is ready, the tank pulls and then the cc'er (lets say a mage, for the sake of the example) 'sheeps' the marked healer. The tank Line-of-sights the other two around the corner and then rest of the party focuses on killing the healer, and then killing the melee mob. The mage alternates between blasting the current target, and keeping the second healer sheeped. Once the other two mobs are down, the party can focus on the sheeped mob and 'burn it down', ie kill it as fast as possible.

A successful pull, due to the powers of cc! ;)