3 Things I’ve Learned from Group Expeditions in Albion

Daily Ramble #8: 3 Things I’ve Learned While Running Group Expeditions in Albion

My ramble today takes a look again at Albion, and more specifically expeditions. This time though, I’m running group expeditions – 5 man content that involves much more difficult bosses and provide better rewards.

Running group expeditions in Albion is a bit different than the solo versions though and I’ve learned a few things that may help keep you alive.

#3: Don’t Run Out of Energy

Learning to group in an expedition is partially about control. When you’re on a solo expedition, you shoot, shoot, shoot to burn down the bad guys as quickly as possible so you’re not taking damage. In a group situation you sometimes want to slow down your casting. When you’ve got a damage over time spell on something that has 5 seconds left on it – wait a bit until you reapply it – there’s no reason to burn through your energy so fast. And do you really need to cast that expensive AOE spell when you’re only facing one bad guy? Sure, if you’re in danger of wiping or running outta time, but mostly, you’re not that close to the edge. Sometimes, it’s better to save that energy in case you need to target a wandering ADD or to hit something that started targeting your healer.

In any case, it’s better to learn control in group expeditions rather than just spaming spells.

#2: Avoid Generating Too Much Aggro

As a mage using a Great Fire Staff I have a tendency to cause a bunch of burst damage. Fire also causes a lot of damage over time. Both of these can add up to quite a bit of threat generation such that you can pull bad guys off the tank – particularly ADDs.

You really want to try to avoid this because most things can easily kill a cloth wearing caster in these expeditions. Sure, you’re healer will try to do what they can to keep you alive, but their focus should be the tank because if the tank goes down you tend to wipe. As a DPS, you’re just an afterthought for the healer – they will heal you if they can.

What I’ve found tends to work is make sure I’m targeting whoever the tank is focusing unless there’s a reason to divert my damage. Hitting the boss when the tank is generating threat on him will keep you safe from his wrath and it burns down the boss faster – both are good things.

#1: Stay Out of the Red!

Run! Don’t walk outta the red circles or zones. Stop all casting and run. If you stick around in the red zone you’re most likely going to lose half or more of your HP and cause your healer headaches. And if you’re the healer, you’ll just cause yourself more work. As a tank, you can probably stick around a bit – I don’t play one so I’m not as up on their tactics, but as DPS or Healer – just get out. Keeping you damage per second at the top of the list is not worth the trouble you can cause by standing in the red zone or waiting until that last cast is completed.

Not only is it wise to get outta red zones as fast as possible to avoid damage, it gives you the opportunity to avoid future damage from new red zones. I don’t know how many times I’ve run outta a red zone and another circle shows up in front of me. If I didn’t leave as soon as I saw the first zone appear, I wouldn’t have been able to also dodge the second zone.

If nothing else, do this in group expeditions and you will have people inviting you back, you will have more successful runs, and you won’t have to constantly be running back from the start of the instance.