A few questions about groups. Some I should probably already know, but some I am curious about because I didn't do much grouping in the Betas. Answers will be appreciated, Jokes will be tolerated

1) What is the max group size?

2) As a tank, one thing I am most curious about is pulling and keeping agro. Does anyone know how Agro will work in ESO? Is it highest damage? Highest heals? Is there a way to keep agro as a sword n board??

3) How will tanks pull? As a DK, I can pull with my chain, but I am curious for other styles.

4) Is there a group XP bonus?

5) Will "Kiting" still work for mob groups? Most mobs I fought would chase you pretty well, but I never got a good string of them going to test it.

Please let me know if you found any really good group PvE strategies that worked well. I have a ton of PvE group experience from other games, and I would like to know how this will relate. Thanks!

1) group is 4, raid is 12 for pve I believe someone mentioned, 24 for pvp raid

2) not entirely sure, think there is 2, maybe 3 taunt skills in the game. One in sword and board, one in fighters guild, and maybe one in DK? The goal of the devs is everyone is getting hit and has to play, the 'tank' is just getting hit by more or the strongest

3) Pull like you would in any game, melee, ranged, body

4) I think there is, didnt check(only grouped with two others and wasn't that concerned with exp)

5) dunno, game is rather easy atm so I hope not.

Thanks for the first... 4 seams kinda light for me. 7 or 8 would be much better IMO. Oh well, small groups it is.

I guess even casters are wearing light armor. So no cloth wearers getting destroyed by mobs as much. But my question is, how will the tank Keep the agro once he/she pulls. If the agro switches to a caster doing more damage, can they survive without a healer (even though everyone can be a healer with a staff (dumb!!))? Will the tank be able to pull the agro off them? From what it sounds like, they won't need to. But if that is the case, then being a tank is pretty pointless! Not trying to be argumentative in any way, just trying to understand the game mechanics a bit better.

There are 2 taunts. You won't be spamming them. I think they each last 15 seconds and force the mob to attack you, so you don't have to worry about staying on top of the hate list.

You may also want to invest in some aoe abilities. If the group is focus firing, you can use taunt on the focus target and AOEs on the rest. When you are fighting a single mob, then you shouldn't have much trouble holding agro.

But yes, there will be times, many times, where you can't hold agro on all of the mobs. There may be 10 or more mobs in a group. Some will be ranged. Some will be healers. In some groups, there will be one that is stronger than the others. This mob will be taller/larger than the others and have a lot more HP.

Basically what it comes down to, in ESO, your job is to mitigate the biggest hits rather than all of them.

Anyone know if Macros are available to make? Will groups still designate a Main Puller or Main Agro? And is there a way to /assist or target a mob attacking someone else automatically? It may just be that this game isn't like that.

If that is the case, that is certainly going to cut down on actual strategy coming into play. Naturally, the goal is to kill everything as quickly as possible. But when you are fighting mobs 3 or 4 or 5 levels above the group, that can sometimes be easier said than done. And the wrong member of your 4-man group (man that seams small!!) going down, could be very costly to everyone's survival!

When it comes to tanking there are only two taunts in the game (that I know of), there are no AOE taunts and it is acceptable that you can't be able to tank everything at a given time. For me as a Dragonknight in a four man dungeon I'm found Pierce (Armour http://www.esohead.com/skills/38250-pierce-armor) and opening with tauning a large group of mobs with an AOE CC like Dark Talons (http://www.esohead.com/skills/20245-dark-talons) to be a pretty good tactic. It's crowd control that you will seemingly rely quite a bit on for now I think. I'm not entirely sure how aggro at it's core works however.

It doesnt say it in the ability info, but chain can work as a taunt. I used it several times in dungeons to keep the bosses away from the healer. The taunt on it doesnt last much but its effective most times.

I'm pretty sure healing aggro is a thing. When in group dungeons, we had to actively keep the bosses off our healer even though he was a Rest Staff guy standing in the back of the group.

My sorc also kited bosses when soloing. It worked fine, though they will reset (heal and lose interest in you) if they get too far from their start location, so I don't know how big a group you can pick up. There are lots of AoEs to use once you've got them all gathered together!

Some additional points...

1) Instanced dungeons require a formal group, but otherwise you don't need to be grouped mechanically in order to function as one, and for the most part you'll find yourself operating in this "informal group" style while questing or running public dungeons, and the only size limitation to this is technical (how many people can be in a given phase; how many your computer can cope with rendering).

2) The aggro formula is fairly complex and can't be controlled with any great precision. Damage and healing are a factor, but so are current health, relative positioning, armor, and (potentially) individual creature AI considerations. As others have said though, tanking, threat, everything that revolves around them don't really work the same way as in most other games.

3) Anything that gets the creatures' attention, and this is accomplished with all of the above. It's worth noting that, because current health is a factor in threat calculations, stacking a massive amount of health is NOT a good idea, since it makes you a less attractive target.

4) No idea about this one.

5) To the extent that creature speed and abilities allow you to do it, sure. A lot of things have ranged attacks and/or gap closers though, so don't count on using it everywhere.