As I mentioned in last week’s article, “Neverwinter” is a very team-heavy game. While you can complete campaigns alone, and as you grow stronger, there will be dungeons that can be completed alone, the game’s most difficult and thrilling dungeons are impossible to complete without a cohesive team. The three dungeons that cannot be completed alone are Tomb of the Nine Gods, Fangbreaker Island, and Castle Never. At varying levels of power, you will find yourself unable to solo any number of dungeons, and will want to gather a party to complete any one in particular. When you inevitably need to do this, and end up needing to do it multiple times, it is imperative that you understand your responsibilities to the success of the party. When getting into a queue, public ones in particular, the class you’ve selected your character to be will align you within a role the game has predetermined for you; this role has responsibilities that somebody has to fill in order for the party to succeed in the dungeon. Without someone coherently doing this, the chance of success becomes bleak.
If you are a Hunter Ranger, Scourge Warlock, Great Weapon Fighter, Control Wizard, or a Trickster Rogue, you fall under the “DPS” category. As such, it is your responsibility to:
- Kill things. The most straight forward responsibility as DPS, or Damage-Per-Second, characters, is to damage and kill things. There isn’t any subliminal meaning to this, you simply have to ensure you’ve arranged your character to be as offensively oriented as possible so that you may efficiently do the one thing you’re truly meant to do.
- Handle non combat circumstances. This is intentionally vague because it is situational by nature and entails quite a bit. The most common example of this comes when fighting Orcus in Castle Never. It is your responsibility to combat the rifts that Orcus draws power from; the Tank cannot do it, or they risk losing Orcus’ attention and getting others killed. The Cleric cannot do it, or the Tank will be in danger of getting overwhelmed. The task of doing this type of duty falls upon the DPS character(s).
- Reviving other party members. As previously mentioned, the Tank and Cleric need to stay engaged with a boss or a large group of enemies at any and all costs. As such, if a member of your party is killed by the enemy, it is the responsibility of the closest DPS character to pick them up.
If you are a Guardian Fighter, you will be registered under the “Tank” category. As such, your responsibilities are:
- Get hit – a lot. Another fairly straightforward designation, the Tank’s job is to take a lot of hits, potentially for a long period of time. As such, it is imperative that the Tank has invested heavily in their defensively oriented stats, such as Hit Points, Defense and Deflect, so that they may absorb punishment for as long as possible. It is not the responsibility of the Tank to be the one to deal damage; that falls upon the DPS loadouts. As such, do not be concerned with how passive your Tank is. As long as they can take hard hits in rapid succession, with the aid of a Cleric, you are doing your job.
- Generate Threat. Threat is a statistic that, in game, forces the computer to direct the enemies towards whoever has the most of it. Fittingly, the Tank should be outfitted with powers and maneuvers which enable them to generate Threat quickly and often. It is often meaningless to have all that bulk if you cannot make any use of it. In rooms with hordes of enemies, locking down the attention of one enemy isn’t enough; you need to generate enough Threat to keep the majority of, if not entirety of, the group diverted towards you.
- Have fast decision making skills. Often times, the flow of the game will command the Tank to quickly figure out which group or enemy is the strongest, and subsequently needs the Tank’s attention first. In boss battles, this is easy, but dealing with a group of enemies can be difficult to do. Thankfully, attacks such as Enforced Threat provide some leeway, but the target the Tank Marks first must be done carefully, and must be done quickly.
If you are a Devoted Cleric, you will be registered as a “Healer.” Your responsibilities are:
- Maintain the health of the party, primarily the Tank. If the Tank is at 50 percent health and a DPS party member is at 10 percent, heal the Tank. Otherwise, it is your sole job to ensure that everyone is healthy, devoid of any debuffs or debilitating status effects.
- Buff the party members when nobody is in direct need of healing. The Cleric can make the job of the DPS characters exponentially easier with Buffs designed to allow them to hit faster and to hit harder. Having said that, do not prioritize Buffing over Healing; ensure that you can immediately revert back to Healing if the situation suddenly dictates that you do so.
Finally, if you are an Oathbound Paladin, you have but one thing to note, primarily upon reaching the end of the game:
- PICK A DIFFERENT CLASS. Preferably one that isn’t a watered down Devoted Cleric or Guardian Fighter. Seriously, the existence of this class is a spit in the face of the aforementioned two. It’s like having a misfit third child come after two children who get all As in school and stay out of trouble; you only exist to remind everyone that you’re an inferior version of something else.