Glossary

A quick reference for the terms used across this guide and in chat.

Aggro: An enemy's attention. The player generating the most threat holds aggro and gets attacked.
Threat: How much an enemy wants to attack you. The tank's job is to hold more threat than everyone else.
Global cooldown: The short, shared pause after using most abilities, so you cannot fire everything at once.
DPS: Damage per second, a rough measure of how fast something deals damage. Also used for the damage-dealing role itself, as in a tank, a healer, and three DPS.
Buff: A helpful effect on you or an ally, like a blessing that raises a stat for a while.
Debuff: A harmful effect on a target, like a slow, a bleed, or weakened armor.
DoT and HoT: Damage over time and healing over time: effects that tick in steady pulses instead of all at once.
Crowd control: Abilities that stun, root, or otherwise take an enemy out of the fight for a moment.
Proc: A chance-based effect that fires off something else, like a bonus that sometimes triggers when you attack.
The five-second rule: Your mana comes back at full speed only once five seconds have passed since you last spent any. Until then it still trickles in at a reduced rate rather than stopping outright, which is why casters pace themselves instead of casting flat out.
Elite: A tougher-than-normal enemy, usually meant for a group. Dungeon and rare enemies are often elite.
Rare: An uncommon named enemy that wanders a zone and drops better loot.
Mob: Any computer-controlled creature in the world, friendly or hostile. Short for mobile.
Tank: The party member who holds enemy aggro and absorbs the damage so others can fight safely.
Healer: The party member who keeps everyone alive with healing spells.
Spec: A specialization: the path you choose for your class at level 5, like healing or damage. It sets your role, grants a signature ability and a lasting mastery, and stays with you even when you reset your talents.
Talent row: Talents arrive as six rows, one at each of levels 5, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 20. Every row offers three options and you take one of them, so there are no points to save up or spend.
Pull: To draw an enemy or group into a fight, usually deliberately and one batch at a time.
Instance: A private copy of a dungeon or raid made just for your party.
Raid: A larger group, up to ten players here, formed for the toughest endgame encounter; a party converts into one once it is full.
Delve: A short, replayable instanced descent for one or two players, run from a keeper's board with a companion at your side.
Rift: A tear that opens on its own out in the zones, leading down through floors of an instance built fresh from that rift's own seed. Rifts are ranked C, B, A or S. The entrance closes to new parties after a while, and only the first party in the realm to reach the bottom seals it.
Rank (rifts): The letter on a rift, C, B, A or S, and the only thing that sets how hard it is. A rift never scales to the size of your group, so the rank is the whole difficulty ladder: C is the gentlest and S the fiercest, and every rank is meant for a group.
Dungeon Finder: The window that catalogues the dungeons and raids, queues you for a quick match, and lists the premade groups looking for people. Shift+I opens it by default.
Premade: A group a player put together by hand and listed on the Dungeon Finder board, rather than one the quick match queue assembled for you.
Deed: An achievement recorded in the Book of Deeds. Earning one grants Renown, and some grant a cosmetic title or nameplate border.
Chronicle: A zone's own collection of deeds, gathered into chapters by a local Chronicler. You can work through the chapters in whatever order suits you.
Renown: The lifetime score your deeds add up to. It only ever climbs, and the realm keeps standings of it on the Leaderboard.
Heroic: The harder version of a dungeon or the raid, tuned for geared endgame parties. Heroic bosses drop upgraded loot, and the final boss pays Heroic Marks.
Lockout: A daily cap on the biggest repeatable rewards. Each heroic dungeon pays out one clear per day, the raid tracks normal and heroic separately, and looting a world boss starts yours. A cleared five-player run stays open to its own party; the locked raid door does not reopen until reset.
Delve Marks and Heroic Marks: The two rewards the repeatable endgame pays besides loot. Delves pay Delve Marks, which buy gear from the delve shop and upgrade your companion; heroic dungeons pay Heroic Marks, which buy gear from the heroic quartermaster.
Honor: What fighting other players pays out: arena victories, Thornhollow Fields wins, and honorable kills all add to it. You spend it on the Warfare sets.
Warfare: The gear side of player-versus-player. A quartermaster sells sets of Warfare armor for Honor, and the Warfare rating they carry counts only in fights against other players.
Rested: Bonus experience your character banks while resting at an inn, out of combat. Your next kills earn extra experience until the pool runs dry.
Fatigue: Swim far enough out into open sea and the water begins to sap you: a warning comes first, then rising damage until you turn back toward land.
Unstuck Sickness: The price of using Unstuck from the game menu. Stand still through the countdown and it sets you down at the nearest graveyard, and you carry a temporary weakness for a while afterwards.
Pet bar: The command row a hunter or warlock pet adds: Attack, Stop, Taunt, Defensive, and Aggressive, bound to Ctrl plus 1 through 5 by default.
Loadout: A saved talent layout, up to ten of them. Each one remembers its row picks and its action bar, and can remember the gear you were wearing too, so swapping builds is one click instead of redoing every row.
Damage meters: The party scoreboard window for the current fight: damage dealt, healing done, and who holds the most threat, kept per encounter. Open it with its keybind (Shift+H by default).
Target marker: A symbol any party or raid member can pin over a target so everyone focuses, or avoids, the same one. Eight symbols, one target per symbol.
Ready check: A group leader typing /ready to poll the party or raid: everyone confirms Ready or Not Ready, and the group sees the counts.
Item level: One number summing up how strong a piece of gear is, handy when you want to compare two pieces quickly. Turn on Show Item Level in the options to see it on tooltips. Only gear with a known source carries one, so plain vendor basics and starter gear show nothing, and a missing figure is normal rather than a fault.
Required level: The level you have to reach before you can wear or wield a piece of gear. The tooltip shows it in red while you are still under it.
Off hand: The second hand slot. It holds a shield or a held item such as a lantern or a quiver, and a second weapon only if your class and specialization can dual wield.
Set bonus: An extra reward for wearing several pieces of the same armor family at once. The tooltip counts how many pieces of the set you have on, and more pieces unlock more of the bonus.
Soulbound: An item bound to your character from the moment you acquire it. It cannot be traded, mailed, vendor-sold, or listed on the market.
Commission and the Maker's Bond: A craft made for someone else. The crafter flags the piece as a commission, and it binds to whoever receives it in a trade; a station master will unbind it again later for a fee.
Masterwork: The finest version of a craft, which a skilled crafter turns out now and then in place of a plain copy. A masterwork always carries its maker's name.
Tool charm: A crafted charm you slot onto a mining, logging, or herbalism tool from the Professions window to improve what it brings back. Slotting consumes the charm, and the effect lasts for a set number of charges. When those run out you recharge the slot with materials rather than crafting a new charm.
Mount: A creature you ride to cross the land faster. Almost anything else you do takes you off it: swimming, entering combat, gathering, and crafting all put you back on your feet.
Riding: The skill that lets you ride at all. You buy it once from a stablemaster at level 20, and after that it stays with your character for good.
Reins: The item that is a mount. Keep a pair in your bags or your bank and that mount is yours; use them to ride. Reins can be traded, mailed, and sold to other players.
Vorgrita: The currency of the Vorgrym Store, spent on cosmetics and nothing else. It never buys power or progression.
World: One shared copy of the online game, with its own players, market, and standings. This guide also calls it a realm, and your character lives on the world you made it on.
The Pale Keeper: The realm's spirit healer, hovering over every graveyard: it can raise your ghost on the spot at the price of a passing weakness.
World boss: A raid-strength boss that rises in the open world on a steady rhythm, fought by whoever gathers to answer rather than a fixed party.