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The Basics
This section is designed to teach new players all about grouping. It will cover the in-game mechanics as well as help define what, when and how to group.
Due to the nature of this section, people who are already familiar with the mechanics of groups and raids can feel free to skip it.
What is a group?
A group is a team of up to five players who band together to take on tough foes. A group can do anything that a single player can do, plus many of the challenges in the game that are simply too hard for one person to accomplish. A variation of groups, called a raid, can hold up to 40 members. Because of the sheer size and power of a raid, they can only be used in a very few private dungeons called instances.
Experience is divided evenly between all nearby group members. This way, even the players who aren’t there to deal damage, such as healers, still get to level.
Being in a group of two to five players also offers a reward to experience. Any monster killed by a group will yield slightly higher experience than if it was killed by a single person. Your combat log will show you the amount of experience gained, and detail how much of that was a group bonus. Raids do not offer the experience point bonus that groups do. Grouping is meant to tackle challenges which yield experience, while raiding is more about item or player-vs.-player (“PVP”) based rewards.
For example: Monster A is worth 100 experience if killed by one player. A group will earn about 110 experience, which is then distributed to all players evenly (about 22 experience each with five members).
While it sounds like less at first glance, your group will be killing much faster than one person alone, and so it works out to be a large boost in your experience over time.
When to use a group.
Although you can form a group for any reason, they’re mainly designed to be used inside instances. Instances are dungeons with difficult monsters called elites inside. These have more health, armor and do more damage than standard monsters. Most classes have a difficult time killing elites near their level, much less a whole dungeon full of them.
There are a few very high level instances which have extremely hard boss monsters. These are impossible for a single player, or five person groups to defeat. Raids are the perfect solution to these bosses.
PVP combat is another place where many people form groups and raids. Being inside a group makes it easier to check the status of your teammates, as well as share the points gotten from player kills. Groups offer higher points per kill, whereas raids offer more firepower to use against the enemy. In PVP, it’s mostly up to the individual to decide which they’d prefer to use.
One last thing to note about PVP is that honor points follow the same rules as experience. Groups give a bonus and raids do not.
How to make a group.
There are many ways to form a group. Usually, the hardest part is finding someone who would like to join you in whatever adventure you’re going on. Below are some common methods for finding players and inviting them to join you:
- /who : One way to find specific people is with /who. It will bring up a window you can use to search for specific people. There is a text bar at the bottom to type in what you want to search for. When you’ve got someone you’d like to invite, click their name to highlight them and press the “Invite” button.
- Guild : Open your guild screen (“O” key default) and click on a player you’d like to group with. Click “Group Invite” to invite them to your group.
- /invite <playername>: Typing /invite <playername> will invite that person to your group. (example: /invite Chiknight)
- Target and invite: Click on a player and then right-click their portrait to bring up a menu. Choose “Invite” to invite them to your group.
Once you invite someone, they will get a confirmation box asking if they want to join your group. If they decide to accept, their portrait will appear under yours. As players are added, they will continue to be put under the bottom player’s portrait. If the player declines, you will receive a chat message letting you know they declined.
To form a raid, you must first have a group of at least two people. Then, bring up your raid menu (“O” default) and click “Convert to Raid”. You then invite players as you would normally for a group. A raid is actually up to eight regular groups that are banded together. You will only get portraits for people inside your group.
Managing your group.
World of War craft has many options for managing groups. All choices can be altered through the menu by right-clicking the player’s portrait. Here are the available options:
- Invite: Invites a player to join your group.
- Kick: Removes the player from your group. If you were inside an instance, they will automatically be removed from the instance in one minute if they do not rejoin.
- Leave Party: Leaves the party. If you were the party leader, a new one is assigned.
The following options are only available to the party leader:
- Promote to Leader: Makes the selected party member the leader of the party.
- Promote to Master Looter: Sets master looter for the “Master Looter” option below.
- Loot type: Allows you to set how items are handled by the group:
- Round Robin - Everyone takes turns in looting. Once everyone has taken their turn in that round, it will cycle to the beginning of the list again. If a player loots a monster, then leaves items on the corpse, anyone in the party can loot them. If the person currently looting already has enough of a quest item, other players still in need of the item will also be able to loot the corpse.
- Free-For-All - This setting allows anyone in the party to loot any corpse. The threshold (explained below) will be ignored.
- Master Looter - This setting allows the group leader to select a party member (through that member’s portrait menu) to loot everything and decide which items should go to which member. This becomes useful when rare items are dropping and people can't be trusted to pass them out fairly.
- Group Loot (default) - When an item equal to or above the threshold (details on threshold below) is on a monster that is killed, everyone within range gets a pop-up box on their screen with the item and options to pass or roll, as well as a timer bar. Anyone who rolls displays a number between 1 and 100. Whoever the highest roller in the party is automatically gets the item. Anyone who waits until the timer expires automatically passes. Items below the threshold follow round robin rules. If more than one player ties a roll, the item will be given to a random player.
- Need Before Greed – This option follows the same rules as group loot, except players who cannot equip or use the item automatically pass. This option is useful if your party wants to make sure an item isn’t rolled on by someone who can’t use it.
- Threshold - This just determines the level of items that are affected by the methods above. If a party comes across items below the threshold in group loot or need before greed modes, then those items will be taken care of by round robin rules.
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