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Raid Academy

From RaidWiki

Currently, our raids are only open to guild members, but this guide may contain hints that are helpful to others.

Contents

Equipment recommendation

Unless otherwise noted, equipment recommendations are for T7 raiding, since it is currently the highest tier, where most raiding is taking place.

Armor and Weapons

  • Resists are the first thing you should look at. First make sure you don't get killed, then worry about your DPS or healing performance.
  • You need around 3500 in all resists to survive entry-level T7 raiding (easy KoS zones). This is not hard to achieve using a mix of Mastercrafted, Legendary and Treasured gear. As you progress to harder zones, you'll have to get more. But you'll notice that by the number of times you get killed by Area Effects.
  • When signing up to a raid, check if any special resists are needed.
    • If not otherwise specified, you probably need at least 6000 in those resists for most KoS zones. EoF zones tend to be harder, and you need more 8000 resist to survive the Area Effects there.
    • Also buy a couple of Grandmaster's xxxx Reprieve (where xxxx is Noxious, Mental or Arcane). They are made by Alchemists and ward against damage, and can be used from level 62 up.
  • The EOF instances often throw up some pretty smart treasured resists gear if you want to go farming.
  • If you can't afford the best equipment, you can buy some cheap Handcrafted resist jewellery to swap in when we get to an enemy with a nasty AE (though you'll lose the stats you get from better jewellery). This can be very efficient, especially if you have several sets for different types of damage. For instance, buying two handcrafted earrings, two finger rings and a necklace with cold/heat resists will give you over 3500 vs. cold/heat, while costing less than a plat.
    • Mastercrafted T7 resist jewelery gives roughly +900 mitigation in either heat/cold, poison/disease or magic/divine.
    • Handcrafted T7 resist jewelery gives roughly +700 mitigation in either heat/cold, poison/disease or magic/divine.
  • Some mobs are immune to some types of damage, and more vulnerable to others. If you're doing melee DPS, it's a good idea to bring several different weapons (pierce, slash, crush).
  • There are two good reasons to save your old amour:
    • You can choose the armour with the resist you need for the moment.
    • You have a spare set if your repair status goes down to zero.

Spells and skills

Please try to upgrade key spells to A3 as fast as possible. Especially:

  • group buffs, heals, tank mitigation/avoidandce buffs
  • mob de-buffs, resists buffs
  • damage

Potions

It's a good idea to carry a stack of these on you at all times, even outside of raids:

  • Totem of the Chameleon or Totem of the Jaguar (if you don't have your own invisibility)
  • Grandmaster's Arcane Reprieve, Grandmaster's Noxious Reprieve, and Grandmaster's Elementary Reprieve. These wards against different types of damage, and are sometimes necessary to survive AoE's. Usable from level 62 and up.

Equipment status

You are expected to come to raid with your equipment at 100% condition. Plan time before raid to stop by mender to make this true.

Raid conduct

Before raiding, make sure you are registered at:

Before the raid

Sign up to raids in the appropriate forum, using this format:

Myname / level Class / slot

For instance,

Badazz / 70 Assassin / Melee DPS

Make note of the time, meeting place, and any special resists needed. If it's an alliance raid, also check how many DKP you have.

Be at the meeting place at or before the prescribed time. If you are late, your place may go to someone else.

Communication

  • Raid chat (/raidsay) is primarily for raid leader, MT/MA, and for urgent messages like "Adds incoming!".
  • Some raid leaders allow jokes, welcomes, congratulations, etc. in raid channel, but consider using group chat or our chat channel first (ask guildies what channel to join).
  • If you have something important but non-urgent to say, tell it to your group leader, and ask him/her to notify the raid leader. This is so the raid leader doesn't get swamped with tells.
  • Use /say, /gsay and /raidsay in macros only when necessary.
    • For instance, do people really need to know when you cast a debuff? Unless your raid carefully coordinates debuffing, and people save their big nukes until you cast your debuff, the answer is probably 'no'.
    • Tell your group if you're a about to do a Lifeburn - not the entire raid.

Going AFK

We usually have a 5 minutes pause every couple of hours. Be sure to use the AFK flag if you leave your computer.

If you absolutely have to go AFK unexpected, please

  • tell it in group
  • set /follow on your group leader and tell him
  • set up /AFK flag (remove it when back) so all can see you are AFK

Leaving raid while bidding in progress

When you decide to leave raid while bidding is still in progress, make sure you are not one out of last two in group. In such case the group will disband and leave raid. Make the other person in group aware you will leave in few seconds, so he/she can manage invite from other group to see how bidding proceeds.

Command 'all die' or 'wipe' issued by raid leader

In such case, find some nice place possibly not on spawn point of any mob, close to original fight and wait for encounter to come kill you, will not take long. If you can feign death, do so. Do not try to run away for your life out of visual contact from battle-field. Once dead, stay dead. Do not click revive automatically, wait for raid leader instructions on how to proceed. It is possible clerics will need to revive you where you are, or all will have to revive at same time, or all need to be dead before first person revives so aggro breaks properly/effects removed, etc. When asked to revive make sure you selected right instance, most of the times wrong one is the default option.

Active items and doors in raid zones, zone in/out

  • Raid zones can be full of traps, for instance, mobs that spawn as soon as you click something. Don't click ANYTHING unless the raid leader says so, or you may wipe the raid.
  • There may also be items that need to be clicked for quest updates, and if not everyone does it in the right order, some may miss out on the update.
  • The same thing goes for quest NPCs: hailing these may spawn mobs or cause your buddies to miss their quest updates, so don't interact with any NPCs unless the raid leader says so.
  • The same thing goes for zoning: Clicking a door may cause the entire raid to enter the raid zone unprepared, leading to a wipe. Zoning out may cause you to get locked out, which means the raid will be understaffed.
  • Therefore, don't interact with ANYTHING in the raid zone unless the raid leader says so.

Group leader duty

  • Kick/invite people in/out group as fast as possible to follow RL commands quickly.
  • Group leader can't go AFK until he gives leadership to another active group player.
  • When RL says 'Check group presence' group leader immediately check if whole group is ready to action (fight, zone etc) and sends report to raid channel.
  • In case of voting group leader organizes vote in group and sends report to raid channel.
  • Receive questions/ideas from group members and pass them on to raid leader.

Tactics

Assisting

At the beginning of raid, raid leader will tell you who is Main Tank (MT) and Main Assist (MA). Be sure to remember this.

The MT's job is to keep the mob hitting on him. The MA's job is to show people who to hit.

All DPS classes (scouts, fighters and mages) should target through the MA, unless othewise instructed. All healers should target and heal the MT first, and take care of group members second.

If you make a macro, it should read "/target Mainassistname", not "/assist Mainassistname". Do not forget to update the assisting macro every time main assist is changed.

  • Do not attack BEFORE assisting message!
  • The MT usually warns a couple of seconds before he engages. Don't attack yet.
  • The MT then tries to build up hate with the mob. Don't attack yet.
  • When the MT has enough hate, the MA will tell you to assist. Now you may attack.
  • Do not target anything else unless you're told. Exception: Healers can target what they want for healing purposes, and may do CAREFUL DPS through the MT. (The CAREFUL applies doubly to Furies ;)

Debuffs

  • Mitigation/WIS/Resist - Will make the mob go down faster. Use them as standard part of fight while assisting MA.
  • Max Health/Max Power debuffs decreases the mob's Max Health/Max Power by a fixed amount (more against Epics than Heroics, and more against Heroics than Solo mobs). Health debuffs are useful, but Power debuffs are meaningless since all mobs have huge power pools, and it's almost impossible to make them run out of power.
  • INT/DPS/STR - Will decrease the amount of damage the mob will do to us. Use them against tough mobs that risk taking someone down.

Area of effect spells

Sometimes the raid leader will tell you not to use AoE damage. Sometimes encounter-only AoE is allowed, sometimes no AoE at all. Every raid member HAS to know their spells and make sure they don't cause AoE when they shouldn't.

Remember:

  • Single-target spells have a RED background.
  • Encounter-only AoE spells have a GREEN background.
  • Cross-encounter AoE spells have a BLUE background.
  • Tank and mage pets do AoE. Scout pets only do single-target damage.
  • Pets should be set to NOT defend themselves or their master - in game commands for this are "/pet preserve_master OFF" and "/pet preserve_self off"
  • Buffs can cause AoE - for instance a damage shield on the tank can cause damage to the entire enemy encounter.

Mesmerized mobs

Mesmerized mobs are now immune to AE. Casting an AE Spell/Combat Art will only wake up the mob you're targeting. Of course, only that mob will take any damage.

However, you should be very careful casting DoT AE spells. If a mob is hit by a DoT spell, and then mesmerized, it will wake up every time the DoT causes damage.

Movements

If raid force has to move one person is selected as the person that has to be followed. NO-ONE can outrun this person even if he knows where raid is moving.


DPS players - aggro management

DPS players, please control your damage output so you do not take aggro from main tank. Main tank has limited amount of abilities he can play to hold aggro. All tanks play them in most effective manner during the fights. There is no way for tank to be able to hold aggro in case you are aproaching your full DPS potential, it is fact. It is not prestigious or funny when you steal aggro to show your damage output is so strong that you can do that. The fact is, it just shows poor level of playing abilities and discipline of that DPS person.

The solution is just one, reduce the level of DPS to amount that does not cause mob to run after you. Do it even when it means you will not play your best DPS spell/skill and it will reduce your DPS output dramatically compared to 'theoretical maximum' you could deal if the issue with getting aggro would not exist, it does. Main tank loosing aggro to DPS is one of the worst Raid Leader's night-mares at all. It never passes un-noticed and is always considered to be fault of DPS person. We know you have wonderfull spells/skills that if used will deal 15k damage or even more, and also will in 99% make you aggro 1 second later. Do not play them, or play them just to finish the mob.

If requirements on DPS players should be put in 3 lines it would be:

  • never take aggro
  • watch for resist report given by Raid Leader
  • do as much damage as possible with proper skills/spells

...in this exact order.

It cannot be stressed enough. We love DPS players that do A LOT of damage while not getting aggro, we hate DPS people that do extreme amount of damage and run risk of taking aggro. It is your skill and feel, show it.


Resist reports

Raid leader will provide, if known, resist report on mob before fight or during fight. It will look something like this 'POISON CRUSH RESISTANT'. It means we do not want anyone to cast posion based spells and use crush weapons on this mob at all, not even once to try it. Even when it means that the role of player is reduced to clicking hex dolls and playing 1 debuff, please stick to that. There might be unexpected follow on fight where the saved power will be needed, so do not use it anyways assuming it makes no difference, it does.


Raid grouping

If you're leading a raid the set-up is all important. You need to do the best you can with the classes you have available.

Raid Class Definitions

For sign-up & grouping purposes the classes fall into several categories. Knowing these class categories can really help with the quick and efficient formation of a raid force.

Main Tank (MT)

Any fighter class able to hold aggro & live through the beating (preferably plate wearing)

Plate Healer

Either of the cleric type healers that wear plate armour

Chain Healer

Either of the Shaman style healers

Leather Healer

Either of the Druid style healers

Other Healer

Any of the 6 priest classes

Mage Utility

Either of the Enchanter classes that can mezz mobs & have regen

Scout Utility

Either of the Bard classes that have regen

Fighters

Any of the fighter classes that aren't down as MT

Ranged DPS

Any class that can sustain 900+ dps while staying at range. Primarily mages and rangers

Melee DPS

Any class that can sustain 900+ dps when in melee range, primarily scouts.

Main Assist (MA)

Any class, though usually a fighter, who directs the DPS onto the correct target

Off-Tank

Any tank who will be in charge of secondary targets.

Forming the groups

There is one typical raid set with two tanking groups that is used very often. In these two groups are typically three healers, one mana buffer, one fighter-tank and one fighter-buffer. The whole group buffs as much as possible the fighter-tank. Fighter-buffer buffs the fighter tank with mitigation and avoidance buff (both in A3 at least). Fighter-buffer normally does not take aggro so he can be in offensive stance with a 2h or dual-wield weapon. Fighter-buffer starts fighter's HO as much as possible (every 8sec if possible) but he lets the fighter-tank finish them with taunt. Mana buffer ALWAYS place hate generator on fighter-tank. Exceptions not to place hate generator on fighter-tank must be discussed with Raid Leader. Fighter-tank has to always be in defensive mode even he is not in main-tanking raid.

Typical strategy is that one of the tanking groups is Main Tank (MT) group. This main-group pulls and keeps mobs on its fighter-tank. Fighter-tank from off-tank group (usually also main assist (MA)) is in defensive stance, builds aggro parallel with fighter-tank from main tanking group. He attempts to take aggro of all adds and also if someone from raid steals aggro from fighter-tank from main tanking group. Fighters-buffers usually never try handle adds or lost aggro.

All members are in Main Tank group to provide beneficial spells/buffs on their tank as their primary objective. Mana-regens also provide power to entire group. The objective of this whole group is to keep dedicated tank in the best shape and alive all the time. So by default stick very close to your tank, or at Raid Leader's command 'maximum distance' at maximum distance from him to keep him still under the influence of your buffs and within your effective healing range. Make sure you understand what your tank is about to do as it is likely you will have to follow him forward and back with pulls or other moves, so he stays 100% time under your protection. This is expected to be your default behaviour.

Back up Healing

Some classes have the ability to heal or revive even though they're not a priest. This can be useful if you're short on healers – just place a necro & a pally in the group and they can provided limited healing. It is also imperative that you make sure all non-healing classes who can rez (necro, dirge) make this their number 1 priority in the raid, so the healers can maintain their focus on keeping people up.

Class Specific Benefits

Once you start raiding the tougher objectives you'll need to carefully select which classes you take along and how you group them together to defeat certain mobs. Whilst we all know the game pretty well by now, it's not so easy to know the specific benefits each class has to offer at high levels, so here is a place to add your own class-specific raid benefit so we can build a useful database.

Please add your class specific benefits to this list by editing the correct page & adding another bullet point. There is a guide to editing these pages here

Fighter

Fighters, also referred to as "Tanks", use brute strength and sturdy weapons to deal physical damage to their enemies.

  • All fighters have a buff that increases avoidance. Can be cast on any raid ally (since GU#37). Useful to reduce wear & tear on the MT.

Berserker

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Tank/Melee dps

  • With the right set-up Zerkers can make an excellent tank or off-tank as they do a lot of damage at the same time as holding agro
  • Has many AE attacks, which helps them keep aggro from many non-linked mobs

Bruiser

Armour: Leather
Raid class definition: Fighter

  • Please add details here

Guardian

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Main Tank, Off-tank, Fighter

  • The favourite for Main Tank for most raiders because of the combination of protective & taunting spells together with some serious plate armor

Monk

Armour: Leather
Raid class definition: Fighter

  • Have group & single feign death – useful to avoid total wipes and for ratting out nasty traps.
  • Useful for pulling and taking the first blow from a mob (using Tsunami).
  • Useful as an off-tank. Can "peel" adds off other raid members using their high DPS.
  • Group buff that increases Haste and Casting Speed makes monks useful in both mage and scout groups (since GU#37).
  • With AA's:
    • Can cast Altruism on a raid member, which gives them auto FD instead of actual death – useful for main tank healer. Void if the monk dies first.
    • Moongoose Stance has a chance to reduce hate every time the target melee attacks. Can be cast on any raid ally (since GU#37). Useful on scouts and berserkers that tend to get aggro (unless the monk uses the buff on him/herself!).
    • Evade Check is a detaunt that reduces hate for all non-fighters in group (since GU#37).

Paladin

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Fighter

  • Have limited healing abilities
  • Can revive in-combat
  • Best hate transfer in game (can transfer around 40% of group ally's hate to themselves)
  • Buff that increases physical mitigation of any raid ally (since GU#37). Useful to reduce wear & tear on the MT.

Shadow Knight

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Main Tank, Off-tank, Fighter

  • Buff that increases physical mitigation of any raid ally (since GU#37). Useful to reduce wear & tear on the MT.

Mage

Mages wield powerful forms of magic to strike down their opponents, but wearing cloth armor need to be kept out of harms way as they die really fast. Chanter classes can mezz the enemy to limit the number of mobs a raid is fighting at one time.

Coercer

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Mage Utility

  • Can mezz adds (provided not epic)
  • Can root Epic targets since Game Update #36
  • Can mem-wipe mobs of all aggro, but it's tricky to do. When an important mem-wipe is needed (i.e. to split Vyemm & Alzid) place a troubadour with increased subjugation buff and short term INT boost in the same group.
  • Have power regen for group

Conjurer

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Ranged dps

  • Have ability to cast plane-shifted tank pet to pull mobs with a big initial hit
  • Can provide raid with power regen shards
  • Can Call of the Hero players to port them from a different part of the zone to the raid force.

Illusionist

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Mage Utility

  • Can mezz mutiple adds (provided not epic)
  • Can root Epic targets since Game Update #36
  • Have power regen for group

Necromancer

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Ranged dps

  • Have limited healing abilities
  • Can provided raid with power regen hearts
  • Can revive players in-battle

Warlock

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Ranged dps

  • Area Effect specialist - very high DPS against large linked groups. Useful for quickly taking out large groups of weaker enemies, or burning down encounter members that are not directly targeted (like Doom Ravager Ru'ystads two friends).
  • Group-wide casting skills buff (+Subjugation / +Ministration / +Ordination / +Disruption). Useful if the mage group gets spell resists. May also be useful to boost a coercer trying to mem-wipe. Effect radius: 50 meters.
  • Group-wide noxious resist buff. Effect radius: 50 meters.
  • With AA's:
    • Vacuous is a group buff that increases all taunts/detaunts by 25% (since GU#37). May be useful to reduce hate of a DPS group, provided the DPS:ers are using their detaunt spells, and may even help a tank keep aggro by improving taunts and hate transfers.
    • Volatility reduces the casting range and area effect radius of an encounter by 20% (since GU#37). Works on Epic targets. Can make it easier for ranged DPS to avoid area effects.

Wizard

Armour: Cloth
Raid class definition: Ranged dps

  • Uber dps, but will need hate control in group to use it to best effect

Priest

Priests augment and replenish the health, and ward off attacks, protecting their comrades to help them survive longer in combat. Each class has different group cures (Arcane, Elemental, Noxious, Trauma) so depending on the mobs you are fighting make sure you have one healer with the correct group cure in the MT group.

Defiler

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Chain Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Noxious and Trauma
  • Group augmentation that increases the noxious resistance and health pool of the defiler's group. The noxious resistance protects more against disease than poison

Fury

Armour: Leather
Raid class definition: Leather Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Elemental and Noxious
  • A group augmentation that increases the elemental resistance and health pool of the fury's group. The elemental resistance protects more against heat than cold
  • Agitate - single target melee buff that gives increased STR and a proc that increases attack speed and DPS (can be enhanced to proc more often with EoF AA)
  • Hibernate - A delayed group heal which will trigger 10 seconds after casting - decent heal and can be enhanced with EoF AA to trigger early if a group member's HP fall below 10%.
  • Group INT/WIS buff which when enhanced with EoF AA will give group members a large INT boost and good WIS boost.
  • Ferine Vim - single target INT + power buff (so so make your mage group happy by giving them a fury). It requires 1 concentration slot. Can be cast on multiple group members provided you have enough concentration slots free (dropping the group mit/hp regen buff will allow you to have 3 active vims).
  • Using the druid AA STA line (Serenicist) a fury has the ability to make the target of any beneficial spell temporarily immune to stun/stifle/knockdown (chance to proc with each cast, chance increases with AA points spent), as well as having an ability which renders the fury immune to stuns for 30 seconds.

Inquisitor

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Plate Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Arcane and Elemental
  • A group augmentation that increases the arcane resistance and health pool of the inquisitor's group. The arcane resistance protects more against mental than divine and magic.
  • A good healer for melee dps groups as they have a buff to increase attack damage
  • Can cast Verdict – timed correctly when mob hits 2%HP Inquisitor can kill him stone dead with this spell.

Mystic

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Chain Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Noxious and Arcane
  • Group augmentation that increases the noxious resistance and health pool of the defiler's group. The noxious resistance protects more against disease than poison

Templar

Armour: Plate
Raid class definition: Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Arcane and Trauma
  • A Templar in the MT group can increase the tanks health & mitigation considerably.
  • Can cast Sanctuary – with AA modification this group augmentation can last 36 seconds & protects group from control spells (stun, stifle, fear, pacify, root) – useful for tough pulls (3 min reuse timer). Remind your MT to call for sanctuary if he knows the mob uses control spells. The Templar must stay within range of the MT for him to be covered.

Warden

Armour: Leather
Raid class definition: Leather Healer/Other Healer

  • Group cure = Elemental & Trauma
  • Group resist buff = Elemental and Trauma
  • A group-wide temp-buff that wards against elemental damage and increases resistance to it. Useful to avoid being one-shotted by elemental area effects.
  • Has the highest healing amounts in game. Useful if the MT/group is subjected to massive amounts of damage for more than a few seconds.

Scout

Scouts use stealth and cunning to explore areas and strike devastating damage to their foes. Bard classes use music to augment group strengths & debuff the enemy.

Assassin

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Melee dps

  • Very high single-target DPS
  • Single-target physical and noxious debuffs
  • High hate transfer, useful in MT group to help MT keep aggro. (can transfer around 30% of their hate to a group ally)

Brigand

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Melee dps

  • Excellent debuffs

Dirge

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Scout utility

  • Can revive players in-battle using both a single-target and group rez
  • Has a single-target heal-over-time that will replenish an ally's health at the cost of the dirge's health. The dirge is stifled but can still move about to melee-attack
  • Has a group power-regen buff
  • Has a hate gain buff, appropriate for the main tank. Can also be used on non-tanks that need to maintain hate with the mob
  • Has group STR/AGI buff, group parry, group DPS, group ranged/slashing/piercing/crushing buff. This makes the dirge excellent for buffing the melee group, as well as the MT group.
  • Buffs a group's noxious resistance
  • Debuffs the mob's attack speed as well as physical/magic/disease

Ranger

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Ranged dps

  • Miracle shot – super-long-range attack can allow distant pulls, but be careful of highly social mobs dragging the whole room with them
  • Confounding arrow - A ranged combat art which will increase the aggro of the target mob towards the next person it hits for 10 seconds. A risky but useful ability if timed correctly.

Swashbuckler

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Melee dps

  • Please add details here

Troubadour

Armour: Chain
Raid class definition: Scout utility

  • Power regen for group
  • Troubadours can hold one non-epic mob mezzed
  • Has hate reduction buff for non-fighters
  • Has group buff to increase subjugation – useful for mem-wipes (see coercer)
  • Has group buffs to improve resistance on "magic, mental & divine" and "cold & heat"
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