by Harold Larson

Created on: March 26, 2007   Last Updated: April 12, 2007

Over the past couple of years I've worked on figuring out what makes a good team. I've played through various mmo's, more recently Guild Wars after a little conflict with a World of Warcraft guild. The first gear that is needed in building a team is a no brainer...team work. If you find that two people don't get along on the team, get rid of one of them (or both if the problem isn't solved). I also find that those who think that they are better than everyone else don't work well on teams either. I try to avoid some of the newbies as well; mainly those who don't know the difference between a sword and a bow.

Once you have that taken care of you must decide what type of team do you want to go for. Will you go for a blind rush of warriors? Or will you shoot at them from afar? I find that more of a balanced team is able to face most encounters rather than relying on a "super build" that has a dire weakness to one specific monster. Because knowing my luck out of experience, that one monster always showed up.

The best way to learn good team strategies is to watch videos from battles that guilds have saved. This is a great learning tool for new players and veterans who want to learn some new tricks. Surprisingly, watching henchmen or other npcs in battle isn't too bad of a way to learn new combos either.

Lets take Guild Wars for example: you have a team of eight players, so what do you bring? Taking my personal favorite, you need one high damage dealer/support like an Elementalist/Monk (yay for emos!). Depending on personal preference I'd bring two warriors to keep away all of those bad people that want to hit your soft team members (elementalists and other spellcasters). So now we have five more spots to fill right? So now we need some one to babysit the team and keep them alive. Two monks is the key, one is too little, and three isn't cost effective. The other team/monsters will most likely have healers as well, so we need to be able to take them down. I use a duo of a mesmer and a necromancer, the mesmer as an energy denial, the necromancer to curse the monk. The final spot I usually reserve for a ranger or another elementalist, depending on what needs to get done.

So now we have our team build, but is that really enough? No, just having the team isn't enough. Communication is what makes or breaks a team. Without communication, your team will fall apart to a more organized foe. At the very least one must use text communication, though usually this doesn't work fast enough to make a difference. Ventrillo and Teamspeak are commonly used voice communication servers that allow teams to communicate instantaneously. The team leader is able to relay information: like who needs healing, the next target etc.

All of this information will help you to better prepare your team, but will do nothing if not applied to ingame. Experience in the end will make the team better, even a loss gives the team a learning experience that will help them next time.

Learn more about this author, Harold Larson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.