User:Hoopy Froodle/Melee tactics

Melee tactics
Even melees benefit from sound tactics. Whether pure DPS barbarian or paladin tank, melee tactics are much the same. Recommended priorities are roughly as follows.

1. Be a hate magnet.
Arguably your most important job (esp. for a tank, or solo with a hireling) is to get the enemy to attack you instead of your friends. You probably have teammates with higher DPS (unless you're soloing), but none of them can take a beating like you can. Intimidate loudly and often.

2. Protect your healer(s).
If your healer goes down, the rest often follow shortly. Your healer can even resurrect you when you die (at high enough level), while resurrecting your healer may not be so straightforward. (The obvious exception is a paladin who can also resurrect.)

By the same token, if your healer goes down (and no one else can resurrect), your best move is often to grab their stone and head for a shrine.

If your healer is a hireling, consider leaving them on defend, particularly if they're the type who enjoys being first into battle.

3. Stay alive.
You're no good to anyone if you're dead. Sometimes abandoning your friends while you still can is the right tactical move, especially if your healer's gone. He who fights and runs away lives to grab your friends' soul stones and bring them to a shrine.

4. Protect squishies.
Your caster friend might be able to level or disable a dozen enemies in a single attack, but die whenever someone blows on them too hard. Keep them safe, so they can do what they do best.

5. Don't get flanked.
Being flanked is bad because (a) enemies are more likely to hit you, (b) you're less likely to hit someone who is behind you, and (c) you can get penned in and unable to escape. You're generally better off with your back to a wall or corner, or running around so fast that no one can pin you down.

6. Avoid takedown.
If you happen to be fighting minotaurs, wolves, or other creatures that like to charge and knock you over, don't give them the opportunity; never stay in one place. Sometimes you can even gain the upper hand by charging the charger head-on, taking them off guard.

7. Target healers.
Particularly if you're soloing, enemy healers can keep your targets alive longer than they deserve. They should be your first targets.

8. Target casters.
Casters of all sorts are most likely to do massive damage and/or immobilize you, and are also the easiest to take down. They're the biggest bang for your buck.

9. Target shooters.
If you're fighting a mix of melees and ranged attackers, go for the shooters first. Assuming you have aggro, the melees will follow you around and get caught with your cleaves and glancing blows, while the shooters wait patiently for you to come to them.

10. Target minions.
With some exceptions (e.g., a boss whose minions all die when he dies), you're often better off targeting the weakest opponents first, because it eliminates a source of damage, and makes it easier to draw aggro, avoid being flanked, etc. This is especially true for bosses who summon a new wave of minions when they pass a certain damage threshold.

11. Wait for your trapper.
There's nothing more annoying to a trapper than for a colleague to die to a trap that could easily have been disabled. Second most annoying is for everyone to charge past and engage the enemy before they have a chance to catch up.

Of course, sometimes you just have to zerg.