Raiding for newbies
From WoWWiki
"Raiding" in this article means "running instances with 20 or more people". Technically a group of 10 constitutes a raid too, but needs much less organization, devotion and discipline than the bigger raids. For this reason, 10 man raids can be mastered by pickup groups with "normal" gear, while pickup groups in larger instances usually need a few highly skilled and overgeared members.
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A sample career
At start, new players usually spend a lot of time playing alone or questing in small groups of fewer than five players. Sooner or later, the next step is to run small instances with groups of five (the Instance grouping guide helps mastering this style of play). Upon reaching the maximum level, many choices are open. The world of PvP can be explored, it's possible to continue playing solo, and there are many options available for group PvE. For small groups there are the heroic five-man instances, and groups of 10 can enter the world of (non-heroic) raids.
The culmination of the PvE endgame though are the big (heroic) raids. Prior to WLK, only few players got there, only about half the number of players who killed a boss in Karazhan ever killed a 25 man boss, and less than 5% defeated the final (hardest) boss. Since WLK, these percentages have increased greatly, so raiding has become much more accessible than it used to be. Nonetheless, the old (rather exclusive) rules still mostly apply, if not in letter then in spirit.
Golden Rule
Raiding is a long term team effort. Have patience, and be a good team player.
Motivation
A common misconception is that raiding is about epic loot. Unfortunately, there are these pesky end bosses who need a coordinated and determined effort to master them. In reality raiding is about building and maintaining a team, a close-knit group of players who progress together. The most happy raid members are those who join a run because they like the challenge of the encounters, no matter whether it's a wipe night, a first kill or a farm run.
People with selfish goals, especially when it comes to loot, usually don't find much pleasure in raids. If some kind of formalized loot distribution system (like DKP) is not used, epic loot is normally distributed on the basis of what's best for the raid's future success, and not what's optimal for an individual player.
There is a fine line between personal goals ("I want to have fun") and group goals ("We want to kill that boss"), but (as in many real life group environments), these goals don't need to be at odds. If it's good for the group's success, even yielding some item (or another advantage) to somebody else can be fun. So be polite and don't put personal goals over those of the whole raid (see the golden rule above).
New players should ask themselves the following questions before trying to find a raid group:
- Can I regularly spend at least two evenings per week raiding?
- Do I want to regularly pay a repair bill of 60g plus 40–80g for consumables per night without receiving any compensation?
- Is it all right when somebody else gets the item I'd love to have, even if that decision comes down to politics?
- Can I balance my need for individuality with the need to conform to the expectations and dictates of a group?
- Do I truly love my chosen class and role, and am I willing to push it to the limit?
Only people willing to answer each of these questions with a loud and clear "yes" should seriously consider raiding. It takes a lot of effort, and the rewards are scarce.
Timescale
When playing solo it is reasonable to expect a reward every 30 minutes or so (after solving a quest). In 5-man instances, it is normal to get about one good item per run (1–2 hours). The interval between such "successes" in raids is measured in weeks. The 25-man instances reset once a week, so each boss can be killed only once in seven days. Assuming 5 bosses and two drops per boss, this yields 10 items per week, so every single of the 25 players expect at most one item every two weeks. In reality, after the initial rush, when most people have the "basic" items, the wait time is more like one drop per month, and it's not uncommon for players to wait even several months for their last cherished item to drop (or never get it at all).
Finding a raid
The most common and easiest method to start raiding is to find a raiding guild with an open spot. It's actually quite frequent that raiding guilds are looking for new members, because they lost some old hand. The realm forums provided by Blizzard are a very good starting point. If no guilds are currently recruiting, it can't hurt to write a general application there. The alternative would be to try and start a new raiding guild, but this is very hard to do without prior raid experience.
In order to have a good chance to get an invite to a raiding guild, the following technical aspects can help:
- - Have decent gear. It doesn't have to be all-epic, but there is rather good gear available from heroics and/or PvP), and a few 10 man items help to display resolve and dedication. Try to gem and enchant everything at least minimally - nothing says 'lazy' like empty gem slots.
- - The Application should be well written and thought out
- - Try to find a matching guild
The last point is really important and works both ways. A dedicated, reliable and serious player should look for a serious raiding guild, while casual or fun oriented future raiders should look for a more casual guild. Matching player and guild character is actually not so much a question of gear, the more progressed guilds are usually aware that it's hard to gear up beyond a certain level without an opportunity to raid.
A somewhat related aspect is that of chosen role and spec. Progress oriented guilds used to have rather tight "job descriptions", when they wanted a healing druid, they were usually not interested in a holy paladin. Similarly, serious raid groups usually had only a limited number of "Off-spec" spots (like elemental shaman, retribution paladin), some spec might not have been accepted at all. These rules were rather strict in vanilla WoW (where each class usually had exactly one raid-capable spec), became softer in TBC (when most classes had 2 or 3 raid specs), and have all but vanished with WLK. Since 3.0.1, it's even desirable to have many different combinations of class and spec in a raid, because nearly every such combination can contribute some unique usual ability to the raid.
Only the best of the top guilds, those competing for first kills, are still concerned about class and spec. The only challenge which remains when composing a raid is to find the appropriate numbers of tanks, healers and damage dealers (the "default" being 3-4 tanks, 6-7 healers and 14-16 damage dealers). Individual players' capabilities are nowadays much more important than class or spec. Knowledge of boss fights is paramount, as is the players' ability to get the maximum threat, healing, or DPS possible with their current equipment for tanks, healers, and DPS respectively. This is particularly important in fights where one player's ignorance can easily lead to a wipe - encounters such as Thaddius or Kel'Thuzad are particularly notable examples of this.
Hierarchy
In 5- or 10-man groups, a single leader can do all the management necessary - one person can organize healing, crowd control and target assignment without there being much danger that something is forgotten or out of sync. In a raid the tasks are much more complicated and specialized, and sometimes require detailed knowledge of class (or build) capabilities, so that actually quite a lot of the management tasks get delegated to "officers", and the raid leader himself mainly focuses on keeping things synchronized. As all hierarchies, this structure can either be maintained out of necessity, because it makes things easier and better organized, or it can be used as a means of suppression. For beginning raiders it's sometimes hard to distinguish these two forms.
Normally there are a few extra chat channels set up, for example one channel for healers, one for warlocks and mages, another for hunters, and one for all melee classes. Each of these channels should have one leader, and these leaders join the officer channel where they discuss (together with the raid leader) overall strategy and synchronization.
Behavior
Unless the task at hand is totally routine (e.g., the 20th MC run before the lava packs), chat should be kept to a minimum. Raids are not a good place to get to know the other members. There are too many people, and there's too little time. When it comes to tactics, beginners should really be careful and first try to understand how this particular raid works. Although on many bosses there are widely accepted strategies, some raids may do things different, and still have success. It is not a good idea to try to teach long term raid members things, justified as it may be. Discussions should not take place during a raid. If there are any issues they should be discussed later with the relevant officer in /w or in some forum, not during the raid.
Good methods to annoy other raid members (and the leader in particular) are to predict doom and failure before the pull even begins or to declare "wipe" when just a few people are dead. It is important for the success of the raid to stay positive, especially when learning new content. A good mantra is "Wiping is fun" (meditate about that - it really helps). So whenever anger about a bad run wells up, just think of how fun wiping is!
Gearing and tactics in a raid
Raids are the only environment where damage dealers really need a lot of +hit gear. The raid bosses are 3 levels higher than the level cap, and thus in order to maximize damage output +hit rating is a viable stat. Until the hit cap is reached, hit is the most efficient way of increasing your damage output, however hit is not infinitely more valuable then other stats.(Hit / Spell hit) For mana users, mana endurance is essential, particularly for healers. Every mana user must be able to sustain a 10 minute fight. Tanks (and to a lesser extent everybody else) may need many different sets of armor to adapt to different situations (e.g. high resistance, high avoidance or high threat).
- Tanks: Must survive as long as possible and quickly build high threat.
- DPS: Must be able produce as much damage possible and control their threat.
- Healers: Must keep everybody alive.
- All: Learn positioning and timing.
Wiping and wipe recovery
A Wipe happens when all members of the raid are dead. Part of the challenge of raiding is to recover from this and get moving again quickly. Quick and efficient wipe recovery helps to increase the raids success. While learning a new encounter, wipes usually happen every 15–20 minutes, thus in a 3-hour raid (assuming 15 minutes) a raid that takes only 5 minutes to recover gets 9 tries at the encounter, whereas a raid that needs 15 minutes only gets 6 tries. For this reason, new members should quickly find out under which circumstances they are supposed to release, when they should self-rez, and when not. If capable of a self-rez, new players should always ask the raid leader whether to use it (even while in combat).
Loot
The drops are usually distributed by a loot master during a raid. The loot rules are normally agreed on beforehand. Most raiding groups use some kind of formalized loot system (with varying degrees of freedom, politics and bureaucracy involved). Drops which are of no immediate use (like Crystals from disenchanted epics, other crafting materials or BOE items which nobody currently wants) usually go to the guild bank. Newbies need to be prudent once more, but there's no reason to despair - even if things look like it's impossible to ever get anything, it's actually quite common that there are many items which nobody else wants to take, and so newbies usually gear up quite fast. Of course, getting the top of the line drops takes much more... patience.
Following WotLK's release, raiding content has become far more accessible to pickup groups, and the most common strategy to distribute loot in PUGs is to set the loot rules to loot master, and have the leader call for rolls in a priority order. If no one is eligible or wants to roll in one priority order, next priority order is called. Rolls are done by typing "/roll 100" in the chat box. This is a slightly finer-grained variation of the need/greed system.
Typically, roll order is as follows:
-Main-spec roll: Only roll if the item is an upgrade over the piece you currently have equipped.
-Off-spec roll: If no one's main spec can use the item, then players with a secondary role can go ahead and roll.
-Disenchant/Greed: If, by some misfortune, no one can use the loot or the loot is bind on equip, everyone can roll on the item or, if at all possible, the result of disenchanting for BoP items. Some groups also stipulate that only people who have not won any loot in the current raid should roll by this point(particularly if a piece of loot is useful to every player or 25-man runs)
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