Which is best target to focus

whoknocks.4935

In a teamfight?
Let's say the enemy team is composed by:
Support (Core guardian, healbreaker or tempest).
Necro
Burn Dragonhunter
Ranger
Thief

Ranger at first of the match goes home(close) node.

Rest is mid.

I always find confusing on who to focus first.
If you focus the support, he usually start kite around and defend tank himself not to die while the others just freecast and focus back on you.
If you focus the necro, he gets supported and become usually too tanky to get down.

Of course I am not talking of a team with microphone communication and top pvp players, but general target focus on tournament pugs, soloQ ranked matches where most of the times target focus is pretty meh.

Thanks.

Trevor Boyer.6524

There are way way way way too many circumstantial factors to give you a single solid rule of thumb on this one concerning "what class/build to target first".

Examples of what I mean:

1. In a low tier match you can ignore Thieves in team fights because they linger too long and deal bad damage and don't get anything done.
2. In high tier matches if you ignore Thieves, they back-cap everything and start taking out your important players with precision +ing.
3. In a 2v2 against a good duo of Tempest/Reaper, the Tempest will likely instant revive the Reaper every time he goes down and it will take a lot longer to tear down their 2 man comp if you attempt to focus the Reaper first, if you can beat them at all.
4. In a 2v2 against a bad duo of Tempest/Reaper, the Tempest didn't bring his instant revive skill. In this case, it will be easier to take apart their 2 man comp by focusing the Reaper because it will pressure him so he can't 100% offense with DPS, and the Tempest won't be able to revive him.

Really what you need to be doing is slowing down and using common sense to size up the situation, to consider which opponent is either the largest threat to making your team lose the team fight or currently the one that is the easiest to kill. And this is regardless of what class you are or what classes your opponents are.

More examples of what I mean:

1. The enemy team has a player who is a top 20 on the leaderboards. If you do not pressure this player in team fights, he's going to run hulkamania wild and completely destroy your team in every fight. If you toss a target above his head and pressure him, he has to play defensively which will alleviate your team from his aggression. If you pressure him, your team will actually have a chance to get something done.
2. You are in a very sustainy/tanky match where the players on each team are relatively close in average skill level so the match is pretty balanced. You are at something like 140 to 150 and nodes are flipping VERY slowly because team fights are taking so long to end. In this situation you aren't looking to neutralize a big dangerous player, but more so you want to identify who can be killed the easiest & most quickly in team fights. This often amounts down to actually switching targets often, rather than focusing a target. If you can call target on the head of an opponent who is rotating or peeling and he is out of position from his supports, you can kill him quickly if your team reacts. Or maybe your team lands a couple consecutive knockback CCs on a player, which launches him far off node away from supports, and in that case if your team retargets on his head and reacts quickly, you have opportunity to down him before he gets back into the middle of his support. In these sustainy situations like this, it isn't enough to just tunnel vision a single target.

So you see it's all very circumstantial. Learn to use common sense, and learn to use your call target command.

Ragnar.4257

@whoknocks.4935 said:
In a teamfight?
Let's say the enemy team is composed by:
Support (Core guardian, healbreaker or tempest).
Necro
Burn Dragonhunter
Ranger
Thief

Ranger at first of the match goes home(close) node.

Rest is mid.

I always find confusing on who to focus first.
If you focus the support, he usually start kite around and defend tank himself not to die while the others just freecast and focus back on you.
If you focus the necro, he gets supported and become usually too tanky to get down.

Of course I am not talking of a team with microphone communication and top pvp players, but general target focus on tournament pugs, soloQ ranked matches where most of the times target focus is pretty meh.

Thanks.

In this specific scenario, first of all, it depends on which support. Tempest is alot harder to focus than a core-guard or healbreaker, and also provides less healing, so its a much lower priority, whereas a core-guard can do bigger healing but is also easier to focus down, so would be higher priority.
Second, is the necro a core-necro, scourge, or reaper? Reaper would always be at the top, or very near the top, of my target priority, but core necro would be much lower.

But above both, top priority would be the Burn DH. Now, because it will keep popping in and out of stealth, you can't focus it 100% of the time, but whenever it does appear you need to retarget on to it and force it to keep disengaging. A free-casting Burn DH is an instant-loss, but with even minimal pressure the DH will be forced to run away and contribute nothing, so just pay attention to it for 2s whenever it appears, then you can happily ignore it for the next 20s while it runs away to reset.

McPero.3287

In situation you gave with support, necro, dh, thief:

1. Whoever overextends and is an easy kill.
2. DH since it deals most damage and doesn't have insane defenses.
3. Thief if you can hit him.
4. Necro (depends on spec).
5. Support (depends on spec).

Generally you focus whoever overextends, is low hp, is easy to kill fast. Healbreaker can actually frontline because its very unkillable while core guard and tempest are easier to kill but they will usually stand where you can't hit them a lot. DH will probably be in the frontline so you normally try to poke him down with ranged abilities. Going into DH melee when he is not pressured at all is suicide. DH can also try to port engage on your team in that case you wanna focus him and avoid trap damage. Necro depends if he is core condi or reaper. Reaper will want to go melee into your comp to deal massive damage you focus him if he does that. Core necro will probably just poke with low damage from range so he isn't high priority target and DH will probably control terrain in a way where you can't get into melee range with core necro. Thief is an easy kill if you can catch him since it doesn't have high armor or hp.

Filip.7463

First target area dps class - dh/reaper and then retarget to guy thats getting low cuz aoes

Avatar.3568

I agree with the guys above me, dh should be in that case the first target.

In General focus that guy that takes most dmg and can't kite at worse.
Easy kills is on general better because you outnumber enemy's and they can start snowballing