Clock spots

"Clock spots" is the term for a common position assignment in high-end duties in which each player is assigned a cardinal or inter-cardinal compass position (North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest) to handle certain mechanics.

An example of a clock spot assignment.

On North American data centers, these are often assigned prior to the fight by placing down a waymark and having players arrange around it to match their desired clock spot position. Other data centers may prefer to call out compass positions in the party chat, or even have clock spot positions be purely dictated by job roles.

Players positioning around a waymark to assign clock spot positions.

Additionally, there are two types of clock spot orientations: True North and Boss Relative.

1. True North means that clock spots will be based on the arena. The north assignment will always move to the north side of the arena regardless of boss position.
2. Boss Relative instead has whichever direction the boss is facing as north (often being where the main tank is standing), with the back being south.

Clock spots are commonly assigned for positioning large spread circles or spread lines / cones, but can be useful for many other types of mechanics.

While there are no set rules to clock spots, common trends and strategies have resulted in roles having preferential positions:

• As most bosses are typically faced north for tanking, the north spot is often reserved for the tank that currently holds the highest enmity.
  • For this reason, the two tanks may deem to swap clock spots dynamically depending on who has the boss' attention.
• Melee DPS tend to prefer the southeast and southwest clock spots for ease of hitting positionals.
  • For large, stationary bosses with omni-directional hitboxes (i.e. "wall bosses"), melee DPS players prefer the northwest and northeast clock spots as they are closer to the boss.
• Tanks and healers may prefer to take opposite clock spots. While this not only gives healers better AoE coverage, certain boss mechanics may target only tanks/healers or only DPS, thus requiring an equal distribution across the arena.