So you’d like to get started leading raids. Excellent! Everyone who wants to should get a chance to at least visit some of the most important content in World of Warcraft. But leading a raid isn’t as easy as grabbing 9 or 24 of your closest friends and steamrolling everything (well, except for VoA). What basics do you need to know?
The first thing you should consider is what sort of raids you want to do. 10 man? 25 man? Hard modes? Pugs, guild run, or a mix?
To answer this question, you need to figure out who you’re likely to run with. If you’ve got a big guild with lots of people to pick from (maybe a former leveling guild that’s gotten quite a few 80s now, or a social guild that wants to try raiding), you need to sort out who can do what jobs. For a 10 man raid, you need 2 tanks and 3 healers, and it’s good if one of those 3 healers has a dps spec for some fights. In 25, it’s 3 tanks, and 6 healers. Ideally, 1 of each group has a solid dps spec, and you have a dps with a good healing offspec so you can go with 2 tanks or 3 tanks as needed and anywhere from 5 to 7 healers as needed. In addition, you’ll want to try to balance your dps (or dd, depending on your realm) so you have a mix of melee and ranged, and a mix of physical and magical damage.
This is, of course, the ideal situation. If you can’t do that yet, that’s ok! Just make sure you have the minimum requirements – if you try to do a 25 man with just 2 tanks, or just 5 healers, you’re going to have a very hard time (unless you’re shockingly overgearing the content, then maybe you could pull it off).
The next thing you need to do is determine what you want to raid. Once you’ve got an idea of what sort of players your raid group is going to be made up of, you need to figure out the appropriate raid instance for your gear level. Currently, between the ease of getting 245 gear with Emblems of Triumph, and the huge buff everyone gets in ICC, you can probably start straight in Icecrown Citadel. If you’re not certain about your gear level, ToC is probably where you want to go.
Once you’ve got an idea of your group and an idea of where you want to go, you need to learn the fights. The Raid Leader is going to be expected to know how every fight in the raid you’re doing is going to work, and what everyone’s job is going to be. <a href=http://www.tankspot.com>Tankspot</a> and <a href=http://www.wowhead.com>WoWHead</a> are your best friends here. Tankspot produces video guides to nearly every fight, and WoWHead catalogs every piece of gear, every spell, every quest…you get the idea. Start at Tankspot and if you’re not sure how a specific spell works, WowHead is a good backup.
If you want to start a raid, this is the bare minimum – know where you’re going, what you need for tanks, healers, dps mix (ranged vs melee), and know the strats for what you want to down.
Next week we’ll cover some more basics for starting raids – necessary abilities and properly stacking buffs and debuffs.
Wasn’t able to find a contact email, as I think this is something you should review, not a piece to be used as a comment.
Nevertheless.
I wrote up the following piece some time ago for my own raiders. I pulled it back up now (it needs some minor updating), but I think it’s a good resource on how to manually put a raid together.
So the first part of Raid Leading is simply, setting up the raid.
You need to make certain that a number of tiny details are executed properly, while at the same time having everyone and their Mother send you tell after tell, asking about the littlest thing. Yay! =)
Before you do anything at all:
Send a message in Gchat that invitations will be going out in “X” minutes and that they need to wrap up whatever it is they’re doing.
Step 1:
Invite one person whom you’ll be raiding with, as this will allow you to do the following minor steps
1a: Set the raid to 10 or 25; Normal or Heroic. You can do this by right-clicking your portrait, then mousing down to “Raid difficulty.”
1b: Set to Master Looter by right-clicking your portrait, then mousing down to “Loot: …” Set to, “Loot: Master Looter.”
Step 2: MUY IMPORTANTE!
BEFORE you click “Invite Members”, you MUST check the list and move to STANDBY, anyone who may have signed up the day of the raid; their status will be shown as SIGNED UP. If you do not do this, they will receive invites to the raid and you will then have to remove people from the raid, send out explanations, and blah, blah, blah (see: extra work/drama).
Step 3:
Now click “Invite Members” located at the bottom of the Guild Events screen and watch the fun UNFOLD!
Step 4:
This step is really a combination of steps rolled into one.
4a: As Officers accept their invites, promote them to “Assistant,” NOT “Main Assistant.”
4b: If the RL for the night is known and is NOT an Officer, promote him/her to “Assistant” as well.
4c: Promote all Tanks to “Assistant” AND “Main Tank.”
4d: Choose a Master Looter (this must be an Officer) and assign that toon accordingly within the raid UI. At 10’till start, remind the ML to award On-time EP. EP awarding is described in greater detail in another thread.
4e: Choose a Paladin, make him/her assist, and have him/her set up Pally Power for the evening.
4f: As players accept invitations, you’ll want to move said players into groups.
– Tanks/Melee in Groups 1 & 2.
– Ranged/Caster in Group 3
– Ranged/Physical in Group 4
– Healers in Group 5
This will allow you to very quickly ascertain what the raid is missing/needing in order to form what’s called “good composition.”
Do we have a boomkin? Well, he/she is a ranged/caster dps, so he/she should be in Group 3. Do we have a dps warrior? I’d check groups 1 & 2; so on and so forth.
Obviously there will be some overflow (one lone healer moved into Group 5), but initially you’ll be able to tell immediately what class(es) we are short on.
==[ Rinse/repeat Steps 3 & 4 until the raid is full or up to 10'til start time, at which point you'll begin looking for replacements. ]==
Step 5:
Replacements at 10’til.
As you’ve been hitting “Invite Members,” you’ll notice a list (in your chat box) of who isn’t online, these are the people you need to replace. You may want to begin some initial poking around at 15’til, as it will often take some time to find good replacements; especially on those nights that we’re short all over.
This step will cost you the most amount of time so any pre-looking will in the end, help you greatly. To help expedite this process, one resource you should be using is consultation with your Officers. They will know best who online is a comparable/qualified replacement player.
Your STANDBY list will ALWAYS be your first pool from which to draw; HOWEVER, that is not set in stone. What is set in stone is, GOOD GROUP COMPOSITION. Remember, your focus is to build a raid that will DOWN CONTENT, if that means you have to pull from outside our standby list, so be it. Let’s not sacrifice the good of the raid because we had 6 rogues sign up (no offense to Kliner and your rogues).
Overall please note that the goal here is to have first pull at 6pm ST, SHARP; so move quickly. Otherwise Jacy becomes very pissy.
5a: KEY! Mark players who had themselves listed as “tentative” to “standby” and mark any no-shows to “tentative”. Any player marked “tentative” on a raid that has already occurred should be a player that was a no-show.
Step 6:
Your raid should now be filled
6a: Call for buffs to go out.
6b: If it’s Wed./Thurs., you’ll want to ensure that someone is/has been handing out flasks and that repairs have been turned on.
Step 7: Important!
Once a Raid Lead has been decided up on for the evening you’ll need to:
1) Pass them Raid Lead through the Raid UI, and
2) You MUST clearly announce over vent who said raid lead is. This is KEY as a leader for the evening must be made known to ALL raid members.
Huzzah! You’ve just gone from your lone self to a fully buffed, properly assisted, main tanks promoted, great composition, flasked with free repairs, and announced Raid Lead.
w00t!