Guest Blog: @Seshatar is one of our valued Trion Creators, a veteran EU RIFT Streamer at https://www.twitch.tv/seshatar and community supporter. We are delighted to share his Beginner’s Guide to Raiding with you! “In this guide, I want to help you to understand the key indicators of a good raid group, so you can find your way into raiding.
Raid content is generally known as the most challenging and rewarding PvE content in MMORPGs. This is mainly because there are a huge number of factors that influence the success of a raid. Some of them can compensate the lack of another, while others are totally mandatory to achieve your goal. In this guide, I want to help you to understand the key indicators of a good raid group, so you can find your way into raiding.
Check your gear and skill levels regularly – are you the best you can be? If not, get to it!
Gear & Skill
If you want to dedicate yourself to raiding and achieve progress, you should constantly work on your character’s equipment. And yes, that actually requires a lot of effort outside of raid time. Gearing includes grinding notoriety, farming dungeons & events, crafting as well as upgrading your items. Gear will increase your stats, so your abilities will be more effective and the additional health and resistance will make you less vulnerable to enemy attacks.
The most important stat for raiding is hit, which increases your chance to hit the enemies with your abilities. If your hit is below the minimum requirement, some of your attacks will miss, meaning you are way less effective. But hit is certainly not the only stat you need to increase in order to raid. Depending on your class and roles, you should work on increasing your most important stats. A cleric healer for example wants extra wisdom and spell power for more powerful heals, while a rogue DPS needs dexterity and crit power to achieve higher damage output, and a warrior tank is looking for more endurance and guard to increase survivability. Don’t forget to use proper runes & dream orbs to give your stats an extra boost!
The second key factor for being a good raider is skill. But what exactly is “skill”? There is actually a lot behind that small word, starting from your soul build & roles, ability rotations, knowledge of your class and powers, combined with awareness, flexibility and your ability to respond on different situations. Some of this can be learned through practice, while other skills come from personal affinity. Some people are just born to be keyboard warriors, while others are a little bit slower and have to work harder at it. Always focus on what you can change easily first.
Check the forums for current specs, read or watch all the guides you can find, and learn how to play your role well. Make sure to prepare at least 2-3 specs that are useful in a raid environment, preferably with at least one non-DPS role. Offer specs that you are skilled in; a raid is really not a place to learn your skills and rotations. Make sure to have your interface, ability bars and key bindings set up properly, so you don’t have to spend time looking for critical abilities during the fight.
For the more personal skills such as awareness and response time, practice helps a lot, but you can also help your performance with add-ons such as KBM or Karuul Alert. These can be set up to show certain events more obviously on your screen, so you can react faster. If you can’t manage raid mechanics efficiently on your own, you should totally consider installing these.
Skill & gear can compensate for each other. A well-geared player with bad skills can easily be outperformed by a skilled player with lesser gear, while good gear can partially compensate a lack of skill. Your goal, however, should be to get both good gear AND a high level of skill – as a raider you should always aim high instead of just meeting the minimum requirements.
Always keep several roles prepared and remember to practice at them all so that you’re always ready for a challenge!
Time & Preparation
Another important factor for a successful raid is time. Raiding requires a lot of time and good time management, especially in Progressions. Never join a raid if you know you have to log off soon. Be aware of how much time you should calculate for any given raid. Often you will not be able to increase your precious allotted play time, but you can save a lot of time if you come prepared.
- Good raid preparation means having your specs, hotkeys and macros organized in advance.
- Educate yourself on the boss mechanics (written or video guides).
- Have raid consumables such as potions, weapon stones, insoles, etc., ready in your bags.
- Simple, common sense measures such as going to the bathroom before the raid and having a drink or snacks on your desk might also be small but valuable time-savers.
- Try to avoid taking more than a small bio break once every 90-120 minutes to avoid slowing down the raid. Ideally the raid leader will set up fixed break times, so that everyone takes their break at the same time.
Team & Communication
So now that you improved your skills, geared up and prepared yourself for the raid, you will encounter another important factor about raids: the impact a single player has on the raid’s success is way lower than in any other PvE content, but a single player can still ruin a raid.
This means you need a good team of 9-19 other players who are also skilled, geared and prepared. This might actually be the hardest challenge about raiding. There are many ways to socialize with other players in Rift and build raid groups, but the easiest and by far most comfortable ones are those created by guilds. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to find a new guild immediately in order to raid, but they offer the experience and structures needed for organized group content. Check if your current guild (if you are in one) has a guild raid, ask friends from other guilds if you can join one of their runs or keep an eye open in the public chat for guilds or experienced PuG raid leaders that want to fill a few spots. The better you know the people you want to raid with and the higher your reputation in the community, the fewer requirements they will ask you for (achievements etc.). If you really want to raid on a regular basis, you should research all available guilds and try to join the one that fits your ambitions best – don’t rush and guild-hop too much.
During the raid, communication is the key to success. If you have a good raid leader, they will take over a lot of the communication, but sometimes the raiders need to organize themselves. Talk with each other on a VOIP program like TS3, Discord or Mumble if possible, which makes things so much easier. Bring your ideas, and if things aren’t working out, change roles and responsibilities within the team. Coming back to the personal skill sets, a good “mechanic announcer” in voice chat can help you and others to fail less mechanics and to react faster and in a more organized manner when unexpected occurrences arise. Most importantly, always stay friendly and constructive while communicating with your team mates, anything else will be counterproductive for the raid.
Treat your raid mates well – your life and reputation depend on it!
Pro Tips
If you keep all the previously mentioned suggestions in your mind and heart, you’ll be a successful raider in short order!
Last but not least, I want to share some personal advice with you:
- Having tank or heal roles available on your rotation will make you much more attractive and will make it easier to find a raid group.
- Bringing some feasts or sigils to the raid that benefit the whole raid team will leave a good first impression. Sharing is caring.
- Do not fake your numbers to get into a raid. If you state you can do 500k DPS but only do 200k in the raid, your chance to get in another raid will decrease drastically. Instead, wait for a raid for which you meet the requirements. Guild raids are generally more willing to help you as a newcomer.
- Do not talk bad about other players in your raid team, even if they perform badly. You can give the player some constructive feedback or talk to the raid leader in private. If it is your own raid and a player doesn’t meet the requirements you asked for, tell him that in a friendly way and kindly ask him to leave.
- If you are stuck on progress and you feel you are burning out, bring the raid to an end or ask the raid leader to replace you. Do not force yourself into a 4-hour wipe fest if you are not in the mood for it. Gaming is about FUN.
