So, it’s Sunday afternoon and my guildie friends aren’t online, so I’m doing some solo questing in Tanaris, near Steamwheedle Port, frostbolting Pirates and taking thier Pirate's Hats that I need for a quest that’s in my book.

There’s other Horde people there, and probably a few Alliance toons as well (I can’t tell anymore, Horde-side Blood Elves and Pallies in general just confuse me in telling the sides apart without paying strict attention).

There’s a group of three Hordies, all PvP flagged, playing together. A 45 Mage, 47 Hunter and a 45+ Rogue, I believe.

I stay away from what they’re killing so we don’t have competition issues, and then I get a whisper:

“y r u not mass killing?”

I didn’t respond.

Mainly, because I’m a Frost Mage Noob and hadn’t even attempted much AOE grinding except in dungeon situations where the mobs are already occupied by the tank. And of course, being a level 45 ‘noob’ I didn’t want to invite abuse from the fellow mage who obviously had a better handle on this than I did (and I watched him, he did).

In my standard introverted way of handling things, I hearthed out and spent a wee bit of time doing research on YouTube for some Frost Mage AOE grinding videos. At some point I looked up a list of recommended AOE grinding areas (I’ll link it here later) and adjusted my training path according to it.

My first couple of attempts were before I researched the grinding guide. I started over in Swamp of Sorrows, gathering up the Murlocs that live on the shore of the ocean, far to the east side of the zone. I didn’t do very well starting out, so I thought I’d move to slightly lower-level murlocs. I headed to Tarren Mills and went south of Southshore and started to try to AOE grind there, only to discover that those Murlocs have ranged attacks (lightning or knife throwing) and AOE grinding wasn’t going to work there at all.

It was at this point that I looked up two things: First, the spec of the Mage who had sent me the whisper, and second, the AOE grinding guide online. I re-spec’d to match this other guy since he was also 100% Frost spec’d, and then used the online guide to lead me to Duskwallow Marsh. There, I practiced gathering up the (35-38) Raptors that are Northeast of Brackenwall Village, and AOEing them down. Because I am also still working on skilling up skinning, beasts were my prime choice over humanoids, and I’ve now moved to Ferelas where I’ve been gathering up the 41-42 Wolves and Bears.

The General AOE Grinding Strategy

The generalized process of this strategy goes like this:

• Find a place with melee mobs that are close together and can be gathered up.
  
• Activate Ice Barrier shielding

• Mount up
  
• Run around and aggro a bunch of mobs
  
• Dismount and blow a Cone of Cold at the train of mobs coming after you
  
• Frost Nova them in place, and run far away from them
  
• Cast Blizzard on the group of them, with the center of the Blizzard being just in front of the group
  
• Turn around and Blink further away from the oncoming mob of mobs
  
• Turn back towards them and Blizzard the group again, making sure the Blizzard center is in front of the group so they get hit for a long time
  
• Run up to the group and Cone of Cold them and Arcane Blast them until they’re all dead.
  
• Loot, Profit, Drink Water, Repeat

On occasion, I’d also use my Ice Block for handling emergencies or handling when my Frost Nova was still cooling down. Having watched how the Ice Block was used in those Grinding videos helped a lot - I watched the timer count down and was ready to run and Frost Nova and drink a potion as soon as the Ice Block melted and free’d me.

I died a few times in this practice, for sure, but clothy repairs don’t cost much so I wasn’t all that worried, even about taking the ressurection sickness when I didn’t feel like running back to the grinding area.

I’ll do a little more practice tonight, but probably won’t get much practice again until later in the week when my Real Life social commitments thin out. Maybe by this weekend I can be back in Steamwheedle Port practicing my AOE grinding techniques on level 44-45 mobs, and not looking like the one-at-a-time-Frost-Mage-Noob that I was initially.

Final Thought, Regarding Skinning Profession and Being A Frost Mage

I must say, after all of this, I’m glad I selected my Mage to be my Skinner. This AOE grinding stuff is great for skinning advancement and farming skins in general. Being a miner or a herbalist wouldn’t have been as great of a choice for this toon, but I really didn’t think about it until just yesterday.

Focusing Damage In Party Play

One of the big differences between a Pick-up Group (in-guild or through other Looking For Group methods) and a cohesive team is coordination when it comes to taking down packs of mobs in party situations.

The standard “stamp” of an unexperienced team is that the tank ends up running around a lot, pulling mobs off of leather and cloth-wearers who have “pulled aggro” on an enemy target that wasn’t focused on the mail and plate wearers well enough yet, due to ill-coordinated targetting. If they’re lucky, the healer doesn’t run out of mana keeping the cloth and leather-wearers alive. If they’re not lucky, the healer does run out of mana, and then doesn’t have enough to keep the tank up, and the party wipes.

Simple explaination of Pulling Aggro:

Each attack against an enemy builds “threat”. Enemies determine who they are attacking by these “threat points”. If an enemy does not have the tank building threat on it, a caster or non-tank DPS party member may find themselves the target of the enemy’s attacks and at risk of death or draining of healer mana which may wipe the entire party.

A team that gets to play together more often than in some random Pick-up Group is one that can start to coordinate efforts more, because while the teammates learn their own capacities and that of their team partners, the absolute basics of successfully progressing through a dungeon become easier, and in turn, new “order” can be added to the team’s understandings.

The Strategy of An Assist Macro

One of the easiest ways to begin coordination within your team is to get each member to set up an “assist” macro which is hot-keyed for quick execution. You can find quick-and-easy information about how to set one up in this entry.

At the beginning of each party, discuss and agree upon who everyone will configure their ‘assist’ macro for. Usually I find it’s best to designate the Off-Tank (whether it’s player or player’s pet) as the one players will assist, as a good Main Tank switching targets regularly and wouldn’t reliably be a good one to assist at any given moment.

Once the macro is configured and accessable by hot-key, every “squishy” wearing cloth and leather should hit that macro before firing off attacks, and hit that macro again after every mob is downed until the entire group has been taken down.

The Strategy of Raid Icons

Raid icons augment the ‘assist’ strategy as above, giving the Main and Off-Tanks instruction as to “burn-down order” of mobs being pulled, as well as giving Crowd Control party members a chance to reduce the number of attackers for a while early in the fight.

The first step in a successful strategy with Raid Icons is to decide upon and communicate what each icon being used means. The person in charge of assigning Raid Icons (called the “Main Assist” or MA) can assign any symbol as long as it is explained, but consistent teams will generally find themselves developing a consistent symbol order no matter whether this Main Assist job is always done by one or if it switches around.

Something To Remember About Raid Icons:

Less is better than More. Too many symbols gets confusing. Consider using three or four symbols at the most until your team is very comfortable and wishes to increase complexity or Crowd Control practices.

Here are some suggestions:

Skull: Pulling target, First to die
Red X: Second to die
Moon: Sheep
Square: Ice Trap

Also, check out this thread in the Official Forums: Marking Targets.

With icon-marked targets, it’s much easier to avoid breaking of the various forms of Crowd Control designed to make multi-mob fights easier, and with focused assisting from all partymates, healing can be focused as well - on the tank, where it’s likely to be the most efficient.

Good luck as you gel with your online buddies!