Terminology

The enemy's attention. The player it is currently targeting has aggro. Threat influences target choice, although some boss mechanics deliberately target someone else.

If an enemy turns towards the healer, the tank may need to regain its attention.

A value enemies use to decide whom to attack. Damage, healing, blocking and threat modifiers can contribute. Threat and the damage shown on screen are not the same thing.

A tank can hold attention without being the group's highest damage dealer.

An ability effect that forces eligible enemies to focus on you temporarily. A taunt often requires the weapon's taunt-enabling setup, such as a Carnelian gem.

Check the ability tooltip for its taunt condition before relying on it to collect a pack.

Damage per second. It describes damage output over time and also names the damage-dealing role in a group.

A DPS player helps kill the pack while the tank controls its position.

Area of effect. An ability affects an area instead of only one target. Both enemy attacks and friendly healing can have an AOE.

Grouping enemies lets an AOE attack hit several of them at once.

Constitution, the attribute associated with maximum health and defensive breakpoints. More CON provides a larger margin for mistakes, but uses points that could contribute elsewhere.

Food can help reach a CON breakpoint. Count its bonus when allocating attributes.

Increases the damage you deal. Apply it before your damage window, then attack while the buff is active. Some sources only affect particular damage types or attacks.

With no other modifiers, 20% Empower turns a 1,000-damage hit into 1,200 before the target's mitigation.

Reduces the damage dealt by the affected enemy or player. Keeping it on a boss protects everyone the boss hits, so applying it before a dangerous attack helps the whole group.

An otherwise unmodified 1,000-damage hit becomes 800 with 20% Weaken, before the defender's mitigation.

Most player Fortify effects increase physical and elemental armour. More armour means more mitigation, but 20% Fortify does not mean 20% less incoming damage. Your starting armour matters.

If you have 1,000 armour and no other armour modifiers, 20% Fortify raises it to 1,200.

Most player Rend effects reduce the target's armour. Everyone attacking that target benefits while the debuff lasts. Maintaining Rend can therefore help the group more than a small increase to your own damage.

With no other armour modifiers, 20% Rend lowers 1,000 armour to 800. That changes mitigation; it does not simply add 20% damage to every hit.

Reduces healing received by the affected target. It can weaken enemy self-healing, but on your character it makes incoming healing and affected consumables less effective.

If 20% Disease is the only healing modifier, a heal that would restore 5,000 health restores 4,000 instead.

Damage over time. An effect deals repeated damage ticks for a duration. Its duration, damage per tick and maximum stacks are separate properties.

Desert Sunrise shortens eligible DoTs; it does not reduce each tick by its duration-reduction percentage.

Healing over time. Repeated healing ticks over a duration, rather than one immediate burst of health.

A regeneration potion is useful for sustained recovery, but its later ticks cannot prevent an immediate lethal hit.

Mutation difficulty levels one, two and three. Higher levels increase the challenge and can introduce additional mutation, promotion and curse effects.

Check the current modifiers before entering M3; the base expedition route does not describe every added hazard.

Mobs are ordinary enemies. Adds are additional enemies in an encounter, often appearing during a boss fight.

A call to clear adds means deal with the extra enemies before returning to the boss.

Best in slot. Equipment judged best for a particular build and encounter, rather than universally best for every player.

A piece with a specific weapon perk can be valuable to one build and irrelevant to another.

Cooldown reduction. Effects that shorten the wait before an ability becomes available again. Some operate continuously; others require a hit, critical hit or another trigger.

A conditional reduction cannot help if you never trigger its condition.

A cleanse removes eligible negative effects; a dispel removes eligible positive effects. Abilities specify what they can remove, and some effects cannot be removed this way.

A mutation curse marked as uncleanseable remains until its own conditions end.

Your build: attributes, equipment, weapon skills and passive choices. Two players using the same weapons can still have different specs.

Changing from healing to damage usually requires more than swapping one weapon.

Player versus environment means fighting game-controlled enemies. Player versus player means fighting other players. An effect can have different conditions or effectiveness between the two.

An expedition build is designed for PvE; its choices may not suit an arena match.

Pick-up group. Players who form a group without necessarily having practised together.

A PUG-friendly build may favour reliable healing or survivability over a coordinated group's speedrun setup.