Role Usage in WRM
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[edit] Role Usage in WRM
This article is intended to define what the word "Role" Means to WRM and to World of Warcraft and how these roles are used and configured. For more information on the configuration of roles you may want to see the Configuration_Reference Document, linked here or to the left under the "documentation" menu.
[edit] History of "Roles"
MMORPGs, like all Role Playing Games, break player and non-player characters down into "partitions" called classes, and it is these classes that define the basic abilities that the player will have access to throughout the game. For instance Paladins are given specific spells pertaining to their roles while Rogues are given abilities pertaining to theirs. These separations of abilities are what defines the classes just as the classes define the abilities, for instance the ability to stealth and remain undetected is a Rogue ability...no other "class" in the game gets that ability.
HOWEVER, due to the design of MMORPGs (whether this design is good or bad is outside the scope of this article) players have moved "beyond" the partitions created by classes and instead gone a level higher than "class". It is a well known factor in making groups in MMORPGs that certain abilities are required to make a successful group, you must have someone who can take damage properly. You must have someone who can heal the damage being taken. You must have people to deal out damage and you must have people who can prevent damage from being taken. Each MMORPG has it's own "generalizations" of abilities, but for WoW These generalizations are typically: Tank, Healing, DPS and CC (Crowd Control). When you go below this, and start looking at specific abilities, does it really matter if the DPS comes from a dps warrior, a rogue, a ret paladin or an enhancement shaman? While each of these classes have different abilities that cause them to do damage and other abilities that allow them to maintain their ability to do damage, at a high level, each of these classes have one thing in common: They all do varying degrees of melee damage. Prot Warriors, Prot Paladins and Feral (Bear) Druids all have a very good ability to both hold agro and take in large amounts of damage without dying. Mages, Warlocks, Hunters, Elemental Shaman, and other classes all have the ability to do DPS from outside of melee range. Some classes have AOE damage, some classes do not, etc.
Instead of segregating players by specific ability (Rogues have Sinister Strike while Warriors have Mortal Strike) the player communities of all MMORPGs recognize that in general you don't need specific classes to for successful groups or raids, you simply need people competent at these high level categories. It doesn't matter if your 5 man group has a prot warrior, prot pali or feral druid in it...in all cases you have a tank. While some encounters require specific classes, many encounters (particularly non-raid level encounters) can be accomplished by anyone who can successfully fulfil the duties of the category.
This is where "Roles" come in, when forming a group players don't look for a Warrior, they look for a Tank, and they have an innate understanding that a warrior can fill that role. When a Mage replies and says "I'd like to group" the player understands that the "Mage" class cannot fulfil the "Tank" role, and will not make the mistake of inviting the mage to fill that role.
Another good name for "role" might be "job". As a design concept for MMORPGs, all classes have differing abilities, however many of the most important abilities are given to multiple classes. As described above, these generic jobs that make up a successful group can be done to one degree or another by multiple player classes.
[edit] Roles in Raid Managers
Many of the designers of raid managers like WRM (Including Myself) have recognized that when putting together groups and raids it is VERY limiting to define that you can only have 2 warriors and 3 priests in a raid. What happens when one warrior is DPS and not Prot? What happens when one of the priests is shadow and not holy? With hybred classes (Like shaman and paladins and druids) having abilities from multiple categories (Healing, Tanking, DPS, Ranged Damage, etc.) how do you state that you only want X of a particular class in the raid?
Generally when a raid leader says "I want 2 warriors" what he or she really means is "I want 2 tanks".
Thus the concept of "role" based signups instead of "class" based signups. In WRM, each profile (character) that is created is defined with both a class, and a role. For those classes (like Druids) that can take multiple roles generally they are required to focus on a specific role by the talents they take. While any Druid can Tank, Heal and DPS effectively, they cannot do so all at the same time (they can only be in one form at a time) and they are required to "focus" on a specific part of play through their talent selection. While a Feral (Cat) druid can still throw on armor and tank, he or she may not have all of the most beneficial talents to do so. And again while the druid maintains the ability to pop out of cat form and cast a heal spell, they are missing critical talents that make this a much less efficient use of their time. It is appropriate, then, for even the hybrid classes to select a "role" at the time of creating a profile on WRM...whatever role they are BEST suited for is the role they will select.
Of course these folks always have the ability to "excel" at a different role simply by re-specing their talents. In this case, players can indicate their ability to re-sepec and what other roles they may be able to fill through the comments section of WRM. See below for more details.
[edit] Role Implementation in WRM
To get specific to WRM then, roles are implemented through a set of text boxes in the configuration section. WRM inherently supports from 1 to 6 separate roles for any give set of classes in World of Warcraft. There is no way to move beyond this 6 role limit without modifying the base code.
In the configuration section (see Configuration_Reference in the "Roles" section for more information), the WRM administrator defines the roles allowable to profiles. A basic set of roles might be:
- Tank
- Healer
- Melee DPS
- Ranged DPS
Another basic design might be:
- Tank
- Healer
- Hybrid
- AOE
- DPS
Users and Administrators of WRM have the ability to define these 6 roles in ANY WAY THEY WISH, there are no limitations or built in "required" roles. WRM Admins could use "Tom", "John", "Charley", and "Sandy" as their "Roles" if they so wished, assuming then that each of these had definitions that could be broken down into "jobs" that each of the player classes could understand and be mapped to.
At the end of the day, Blizzard sets the abilities that each class has, these abilities define the "Role" that each class can play into (Rogues will never fit a "Healer" role because they have no healing spells or abilities). These "Roles" then can be categorized together to come up with the roles used in WRM. This is the decision of the guild that is implementing WRM and can/will differ from guild to guild and group to group. When configuring your WRM installation for your guild, keep in mind the categories of jobs you and your officers/raid leaders/raiders/players see and use on a daily basis. These will be your best definitions for your implementation of roles.
[edit] The Class/Role Connundrum and WRM's Solution
What we are really saying when we assign a role is "Any of these 3 classes can DPS, thus we will set these 3 classes to the 'DPS" role." More broadly when defining roles we remove the differences that make one class separate from another class. We are, in essence, saying that there really is no difference between a DPS warrior and a Rogue since both do damage in the same way. And while this IS true at a high level, this is NOT true at the lower levels of ability comparisons.
For instance, lets take a (probably badly defined) role named "Crowd Control". In this role could be Rogues (Sap), Mages (Sheep), Warlocks (Banish), Hunters (Ice Trap), and Druids (Root/Cyclone). And at a high level this all makes perfect sense because each of these abilities can be used to control mobs from entering combat. HOWEVER That's about the end of the similarity. Banish only works on demons and summoned creatures. Sap only works when the target is out of combat. Sheep only works on humanoid and dragonkin. Root is a viable CC method but it tends to break VERY early and isn't nearly as useful as, say, Sheep.
This is where the connundrum comes in, depending upon the raid or group the "Crowd Control" Role may or may not work. If you are in a dungeon with demons or elementals, Warlocks may be viable for CC, however enter a dungeon without these types of mobs and Warlocks no longer fit within the Crowd Control role.
While roles are a generic grouping of classes, there are STILL differences between one class and another class that make CLASSES still an effective breakdown of players.
WRM Solves this connundrum by allowing raid leaders and admins to take into account Class, Role, or BOTH Class AND Role when it comes to signups. WRM also implements a way to allow raid LIMITS based upon Role, but to define raid REQUIREMENTS based upon class. So a raid leader might set the "Ranged DPS" role to be a limit of 5. HOWEVER he or she may ALSO set "Mages" to be 2. In this case what the RL has stated is "We cannot afford to have more than 5 ranged DPS classes in the raid, however at least 2 of these MUST be Mages" leaving an open hole for 3 other "ranged" DPS signups.
From an implementation perspective, the software doesn't try to get "cute" with this. It doesn't actively hold a spot for 2 mages in the "ranged" group and allow only 3 "other" ranged players to sign up. If the raid leader wants to draft 3 warlocks, 1 hunter and 1 mage, he or she may do so. What the software will do is display to the raid leader (through colorization of the limit numbers in the table) whether or not the RL is meeting his or her own standards for that raid.
In the above case where the RL selects 3 warlocks, 1 hunter and 1 mage, the raid will show that the maximum number of ranged signups has been met, however the "Mage" column will display in bright red "1/2", meaning that the RL is short his required mage. It is then up to the RL to determine if his drafted group makeup can or cannot meet the requirements of the raid. If this is the only "red" column it's possible that the raid is ok. If there are several other red columns however it is likely that the group makeup, while still meeting "minimum requirements" is not capable of tackling the issues with that zone due to lack of appropriate classes.
This system gives raid leaders the most flexibility. RLs have the ability to draft whoever they feel they need or can, and they can still run their raids even if they don't make "requirements", but the cannot go over their "Limits".
When creating your "locations" it is strongly advised that the RLs spend the time to actively determine what the raid really "Needs" to be successful. Having correct requirements for a raid situation allows an RL to see, at a glance, whether tonight's raid has a prayer of going off...if implemented correctly, there is no longer a need for a raid to form, get 10 minutes into a dungeon and realize that they stand NO CHANCE due to group makeup.
