So you're a raider? Here is a list of things you should know

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Below is a list of priorities to care about, not necessarily as the leadership of a guild, but especially as a member on the raidteam.

Make sure you got the first elements in order before you start concerning yourselves about the later points. I wrote this list because I’m seeing plenty of struggling guilds (read: anyone stuck from heroic raiding to never achieving Cutting Edge in mythic) handling these points with the wrong priorities, often more so the members of a guild than the officers or leadership of a guild.

I’ve been in many CE guilds from world top 3 to world top 100, but nowadays I’m a veteran who just enjoys to chill and sees guilds stumbling over the things I consider ‘most basic’. I’m not even in any guild leadership, so this post definitely was not written from the point of view of a disgruntled officer. :wink:

THE LIST

0. Raidleader or caller
Self-explanatory. But what works wonders even more than a raidleader is setting up your own addons to emphasize the mechanics you are personally struggling with.

1. Raid-roster & Bench:
Despite this being the most fundamental basis of maintaining a functional raidteam, it appears many raidguilds neglect this part.If you want to assure consistent raidprogress, you’ll need a raidroster of around 25 people, including a third tank or person who knows and maintains experience with tanking the different bosses, and including people who can offspec into healing.

There is no greater setback to a guild’s raidprogress than:
a. having to replace a tank
b. having to cancel a raid due to not being able to bring 20 people

This also means that you need to maintain a healthy “bench”. Something might always come up in the middle of a raid or broader progress which causes you to lose people. What does this mean as a raider? It means you get to choose between two options:

A. Being upset that you’ve to miss a raid this week or,
B. Resting assured that your guild might actually progress further than others because less of your raids are going to end up cancelled.

2. Raid-performance and raid-buffs:
Green parses and below really don’t belong in a high progress raid-team*. If people are getting green or worse parses consistently in your raidteam, it’s probably time to start replacing them. The only counter to this might be requiring all the possible buffs and utility for your raidteam. But even if your only mage is consistently underperforming you might want to keep recruitment open…

The only excuse for having bad parses is if you’re specifically assigned to priority targets or responsibilities that help actually securing a kill.* It also depends on how badly you want to push progress of course… if you prefer the camaraderie in your guild above all else, then don’t let me tell you who does or doesn’t belong in your raid.

3. Personal maximizing:
Don’t even bother starting to preach about “everyone must maximize to the best of their ability” when you don’t even have the previous two points under control yet.

It doesn’t matter if people don’t pick the best talent-points, don’t play the most optimal spec or class, if they’re still struggling with half-decent performance or you can barely get a full raidteam together every evening.

Of course you won’t be meeting the DPS or healing checks if your performance logs are grey, but changing around some talent points or telling the devastation evoker to go augmentation won’t help with that.

Extra Mention: Overraiding:
Not really a priority thing, but important enough to note: is that guild leadership and it’s members should keep in mind is that the general lifespan of a raid-season is 10 to 12 weeks. If you keep your guild raiding for longer than that, you are absolutely going to take a nosedive in attendance. People will start leaving and you might not even have enough of a roster for next season anymore.

Overraiding is something many guilds die to.

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None of this advice is for individual raiders, despite your claim that it is. It’s for the leaders of raiding guilds.

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Going to hard disagree with you here:

It’s important for the raiders to be the ones to understand that having a healthy bench is good for them.

It’s important for the raiders to know now to harass each other about optimal talent points / specs when the guild logs are in the grey to blue range.

It’s important for the raiders to understand that raid progress can depend more on them setting up their own raid warnings properly over whatever else the raidleader might be doing.

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I’ve been a raider. In response to the points you made:

  1. I had no control over the size of the roster. I had no control over whether or not we had people who could offspec as tank or healer.

  2. I had no control over whether specific people were part of the raid team or not. I had no control over whether the focus was on camaraderie or progress.

  3. Ah, now this is something I had control over. But, in your words, it’s something I shouldn’t even bother with if the first 2 points weren’t covered:

So, what’s an ordinary raider supposed to do when some self-proclaimed former CE raider advises them to worry about things they have no control over and not bother about the things they do have control over?

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No, but you can have control over understanding why your guild needs a bench instead of trying to find a different guild as soon as you’re placed on the bench one evening.

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Honestly your post is aimed at sweaty nerds if youve been in top 3 to 100 guilds.

The most important question for ‘lower’ guilds (and i see lower as a positive here) is that your expectations and skills are roughly on par with others in the team.

Nothing ruins a guild quicker than discrepencies in the above.

Homestly, id rather have a person that is reliable, signs up, shows up, communicates and is fun to play with that parses green then some self absorbed diva that makes selfish plays, belittles his team mates performance and parses orange.

Each to their own but i dont place any value on the points you raised.

1 Like
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It’s why I mentioned also the following:

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I don’t see a positive on being in a guild that raids 180 hours every patch, only to get stuck bashing their heads against a mythic boss halfway until the next raid drops, versus let’s say a guild that only needs about 90 hours to clear the whole thing and then can go back to spending 90 hours on IRL or other fun things instead.

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This one thing killed my passion for Mythic raiding :smiley:

Someone constantly didn’t show up and we were like 17-18 people in BFA
so when i failed CE in dazar’alor i was like i give it one more chance…but it happend again in different guild in eternal palace.
When guild i was in was stuck on orgoza and they did max 10 pulls and ditch out.
So i said Fk this i’m out only HC raiding from now on

People don’t care.

Even now in aberrus HC people don’t care i can point out specific individuals in our guild that don’t care about their perfomance.
no enchants no gems no addons when you told them how to play this spec so you are not below tank DMG person responds with i know how to play it :smiley:

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Sounds like you weren’t in the right guilds for you

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Why we need mythic flex raiding.

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