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"Raiding" in this article will mean "running instances with 20 or more people". Technically, 10 man runs are raids too, but they need much less organization, devotion and discipline than the big raids.

Not for everyone

Raiding is the culmination of PvE. The game prior to level Template:Levelcap and endgame raiding are two quite different things. It's the toughest challenge the WoW designers created, and by their own statements, they expect only a minority (about 5%) of their customer base to ever explore the hardest instances. It should therefore be well understood that raiding requires a major commitment.

Non-mainstream

To elaborate on this, World of Warcraft was the first genuinely mainstream game of its kind; that is, a game that was designed to appeal to individuals who work eight hour per day jobs and are relatively baseline normal, occupationally, socially, and psychologically speaking. By contrast, earlier games of the same genre were almost exclusively the domain of fringe subcultural groups of various kinds, and the unemployed. In addition to being the first game of its kind to have casual content, raids represent Blizzard's attempt to accommodate the MMORPG genre's more usual demographic of non-mainstream players. Thus, a player with full time employment and an offline social network is likely to find that he or she simply does not have the time for the type of commitment that raiding requires.

With the upcoming patch 2.4 however, at least two particular major raiding guilds[1][2] have expressed grave concerns about the possibility that Blizzard intend to cater to the mainstream gaming population exclusively, and severely reduce the difficulty of high end raid content, if not excise raiding from the game entirely.

There are also indications on the forum[3] of raiding guilds beginning to lose cohesion as a general trend.

That being the case, the future of larger scale raiding within World of Warcraft can be considered uncertain, as Blizzard are apparently intending to move WoW's PvE focus towards gradually smaller, more accessible, and less challenging content.

Raiding Prerequisites

There are still variations between "hardcore" and "casual" raids, but even the most casual raiding group will schedule at least two runs per week - below that any kind of progression becomes highly unrealistic. Thus, if you want to become a raider, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Can I regularly spend at least two evenings per week raiding?
  • Will I pay a repair bill of 15g and spend another 20–50g on consumables per night without receiving any compensation other than my own farming?
  • Is it alright when somebody else gets the item I'd love to have, especially when the decision on who gets what gear can often come down to politics?
  • Do I truly love my chosen class, and am I willing to push it to the limit?
  • Can I balance a need for individuality with a need to conform to the expectations and dictates of a group?

Raiding not only requires mastery of one's own class, but also needs social and political skills as raids are large groups. Players who are more solo or casually oriented, but who still want some form of end-game activity, may be happier with going the Battleground and/or Arena PvP route.

Golden Rule

Raiding is a long term team effort. Thus have patience, and be a good team player.

The latter part of this is worth elaboration. Even only a year or so ago, World of Warcraft's culture was both a lot more PvE (player vs environment, which is what raiding is the highest expression of) and a lot more team oriented. People used to understand that really getting anywhere in this game meant swallowing your ego, (at least temporarily) and putting the team first. Then, the Burning Crusade came, and with it, the Arena. Suddenly you didn't need to be group oriented to get amazing items any more; you could go into a scenario which was highly competitive, and largely one on one, and get them that way.

If you're going to raid, (or hell, even if you're only doing 5 mans) then do everyone there a favor (including yourself) and never let your game be purely about your own personal glory. Be humble, and recognize that you're a single part of a larger overall entity (the raid) which you're there to partly ensure the success of. It also follows that as a part of that overall entity, whatever rewards the raid as a whole receives, you will receive part of. Having this attitude will also mean that people will love you, which will in turn make other raids/groups that much easier for you to get invited to.

If you put the team first, you'll never come second.

Motivation

A common misconception is that raiding is all 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 learning the boss encounters. The most happy raid members are those who join a run because they like the challenge from the encounters.

People with selfish goals, especially when it comes to loot, usually lose their raid places quickly. If not some kind of formalized loot distribution system (like DKP) is used, epic loot is normally distributed on the basis what's best for the raids future success, and not what's optimal for an individual player. So be polite and don't put your personal goals over those of the whole raid (see the golden rule above).

Progression

Prior to the Burning Crusade, raiding began with a 15 man run to Upper Blackrock Spire. The only 'real' raid instances in the beginning were Onyxia and Molten Core (both designed for 40 players). There were also world raid bosses in Lord Kazzak and Azuregos that were tuned for 40 players at the beginning. After a few months, Blackwing Lair was released. In later patches easier 20-player raid instances were added to the game (Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj). The line of 40 player instances was continued with the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj and finally Naxxramas.

Nowadays, with level 70 and the expansion, the normal path of character development is to play solo, do quests and 5 man instances all the way to level 70, and start running raids only then (starting with Karazhan). If interested in progression, the only remaining 40 man instance with meaningful drops is Naxxramas. Unfortunately, the bosses there still require quite some skill, and cannot be easily killed by a "standard" group. The effort to organize a Naxx raid and learning the bosses is comparable to gaining access to Karazhan, the epic faction rewards and the 5 man heroics. Since the latter three give better rewards (and open up the path to the 25 man instances in Outland), hardly anybody goes to Naxx anymore. Still, the 40 man instances are run sometimes, but only for fun (or lack of something better to do).

Timescale

When soloing 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 evening (2–3 hours). The interval between such "successes" in raids is measured in weeks. The 40-man instances reset once a week, so each boss can be killed only once in seven days. Assuming 10 bosses and two drops per boss, this yields 20 items per week, so every member of a 40-man raid can 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.

Stories at times appear on the Hunter forum of people who have spent anywhere between six weeks and three months farming Karazhan for a desired piece of loot before it will appear. In Blizzard's vocabulary, a low drop rate means just that: low.

Finding a raid

When a player wants to join a raid, the easiest method is to find a raiding guild and join them. It's actually quite frequent that raiding guilds are looking for new members, because they lost some old hands. 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. As with job applications in real life, the application for a raiding group should be well-written, and a little thought should be put into it. It helps a lot to try to find out which type of guild it is (hardcore or casual, friendly, how progress oriented etc.), what their raid schedule is, and how good a fit it is. Many raiding guilds require their members to use certain Raid AddOns, some have very strict rules concerning attendance, others may be more relaxed.

It's also important to maintain standards of your own when seeking a raid guild; if you're a decent player, you're not merely benefiting from membership in the guild, but they will also benefit from your competence. As such, it is particularly important to ensure that the people running raids in the guild in question are mature adults.

Another factor to consider when choosing a raiding guild is what said guild's stance is on talent spec choice for your particular class. You need to decide yourself how flexible you are willing to be with regards to re-speccing. For some, a spec change is no huge deal; for others, a particular spec is the only real way they know how to play the class, and they may find their play style fundamentally altered if they try and use a different spec. If the guild you want to join has a set policy on the desired spec for your class, that is something to consider when deciding whether or not they are the guild for you.

There are certain builds which make it easier to be accepted into a raid, and others for which it's more difficult. Traditionally (before Burning Crusade), all hybrid classes were expected to heal. With the new talent trees, many more builds have become viable for raids, in particular shadow priests and tanking druids (which can easily shift to melee DPS) are very frequently seen. Most raids still expect Shamans and Paladins to be specialized for healing, and Warriors should be able to tank.

Make sure that the leadership of the guild you're planning to join is genuinely informed about about your chosen class, before you accept a demand to respec that seems to be made impulsively. The viability of various class spec builds fluctuates greatly over time, and in this regard, raid/guild leaders are often operating under outdated assumptions.

Hierarchy

In a 5- or 10-man instance group, one group 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 newbies it's sometimes hard to distinguish these two forms.

Normally there are a few extra chat channels set up, for example one channel for each of healers, warlocks, mages, all ranged DPS and melee. The warlock and mage channels are for synchronizing crowd control. Each of these channels should have a 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, newbies 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 you have an issue with anything, catch the relevant officer later in /w or in some forum, not during the raid.

In order to avoid problems be aware that raid or guild leaders and officers frequently behave arrogant or elitist. In most cases, this attitude is actually justified to some point, and serves as a means of self-protection. If approached in a polite and unpresumptuous way, even the most hard-ass leader type will prove that he can be friendly and helpful.

Accordingly, the above advice about avoiding trying to teach other raid members or contradict them strongly applies always, even if you are absolutely right. A raid is a rather close-knit affair, and you have to earn some status yourself before you can successfully try to publicly challenge another raid member. Contradicting in public is likely to make you unpopular, and so therefore is never a good idea.

Other methods to annoy the raid are predicting doom and failure before the pull even begins, or declaring "wipe" when just a few people are dead. Such behaviour is a good way to quickly lose a raiding spot. 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).

Gearing and tactics in a raid

The most universally significant aspect of fighting in a raid, is the increased value of +hit gear. Raid bosses are generally at +3 levels (73 for level 70 characters). Where as while fighting level 70 mobs and in heroic dungeons, you normally buff your character with +AP or Spell damage gear, raid bosses favor +hit or +spell hit rating. This creates a necessity to start collecting alternate gear sets even for DPS classes. Healing classes will have to focus on endurance, boss fights can last 10 minutes and longer. Many encounters also require certain resistances or high HP. The performance of the tank may be affected by such restraints. Assume for example that some battle requires the Main Tank to have a lot of fire resistance. Fire resistance gear will not have the usual amounts of strength or agility. Even though the difference may seem small, in this situation the tank will generate less threat than usual. The miss chance also plays a role - it's rather unlikely that a well geared tank will ever miss mobs of up to 2 levels higher than them, especially not consecutively. But as all raid bosses are 3 levels higher, and the tanks will need to select gear to maximize their survival, it is likely that they will stop generating threat for some period of time due to failed attacks. Thus all DPS classes have to be very careful, because even a single DPS player pulling aggro from the MT will very frequently result in a wipe.

  • Tanks: Must survive as long as possible.
  • DPS: Must be able to hit the target and produce damage on command, and must never draw aggro.
  • Healers: Must make their mana last the entire battle.
  • All: Learning 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. Warlock Soulstones, Paladin Divine Intervention, and Shaman Reincarnation all increase the speed at which the raid can get back on their feet, but mostly wipe recovery involves running back to the raid from the graveyard. Practiced raid groups who can recover quickly from wipes are generally more successful than those that cannot. While learning a new encounter, wipes will happen every 15–20 minutes, thus in a 3-hour raid (assuming for 15 minutes) a raid that takes 5 minutes to recover from a wipe will get 9 tries at the encounter, where as a raid that takes 15 minutes will only get 6.

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, which sadly, even in the best of cases, tends to be dictated by some degree of politics, human nature being what it is. Drops which are of no immediate use (like Inv ammo firetar [Core Leather] or the Nexus Crystals from disenchanted epics) usually go to the guild bank. Newbies need to be prudent once more, but don't despair - even if things look like you'll never get anything, you'll quickly find out that there are many items which nobody else wants to take, and thus you'll get decent gear quite fast. Of course, getting the top of the line drops takes much more... patience.

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