Levelling in World of Warcraft grants you access to the more exciting parts of the game, including challenges such as dungeons and raids. However, raids are not the kind of challenges that newcomers in World of Warcraft could simply participate in.
Challenges like raids are designed for players who already levelled up high enough and are willing to level up their gameplay experience. They are also the kinds of challenges where perseverance matters as they will cost you a lot of time and effort.
Raiding is incredibly challenging and undeniably complex, given that there are tons of things you need to consider whenever you try to venture into one. However, they can be highly rewarding once accomplished and done repeatedly.You can always try WoW Raid Runs to make this process easier for you.
Getting Started With Raids in World of Warcraft
Those who are just getting started with raiding should take their time to read forums and do their research before diving in. Reconnaissance is an important thing to consider before raiding, and players may not have the luxury of time to discuss things while in the middle of a raid.
There are also forums and discussions out there which can help you look for a team. You may consider looking for a raiding guild that will suit you, and you should already have a good gear before joining one.
You also need to have communication tools ready as you would need them to talk and discuss with your teammates. Your team may likely communicate through apps such as TeamSpeak and Discord.
Gearing
To succeed in raids, combat readiness is essential, and you also need a good character gear. However, prepping and gearing yourself up for raids may not be a simple task, especially when you don’t even have the right gear to start with.
Dungeons can help you gear up, and they are one of the best training grounds where you can prepare yourself for raiding and help you learn about your class in a hands-on manner.
It is a good practice to always check if you are using the right gear, and if you are improving the stats, you specifically need it for the challenge. There are a lot of guides out there that can help you identify the things you need to consider for a specific class.
Leadership and Team Coordination
The key to success on every raid is leadership and the ability of the whole team to work as one. Teamwork is the most important thing that should not be ignored and can surely be disastrous when overlooked.
In some cases, the mistake of one player can actually lead to a total wipe. Raiding is a team-based challenge, so roles must be clarified beforehand. Players must also have communication tools (e.g., VoIP) ready to keep the whole team coordinated and informed on time.
A 2011 paper titled “Leadership Style in World of Warcraft Raid Guilds” shows the efficacy of two leadership ideals. The first ideal focuses on people (County-Club Management), and the second ideal focuses on results (Authority-Compliance Management).
While the two ideals lie on the opposite sides of the spectrum, guild leaders have to find ways to cleverly synthesize them to improve the team’s performance.
Another study also shows the effectiveness of WoW raids on testing a player’s ability to work with a team and how it reflects their capacity to work effectively in virtual workplaces.
Flexibility
Each member of the team must have a clear role before the start of the raid. In this case, you have to be prepared and flexible enough to adjust your combat style and tactics according to your role, as the combat style you may have normally adapted to may not be the optimal style to apply in the raid.
Your role is also a deciding factor on which stats you will need to improve. If you are a healer in the team, you have to focus on your healing stats. If you are a tank, you have to focus on haste, strength, and armour. But regardless of role, your stats should be able to help you last long enough.
This requires practice, and you have to constantly learn from your mistakes to improve in the next game. Consider reading forums and discussions, especially when reevaluating your tactics.
Tools
If you are looking for tools to improve your gameplay and keep track of your performance in raids, check out WoWAnalyzer. It is a free, actively maintained, open-source project you can contribute to, and you can suggest improvements in the tool on their GitHub repository.
WoWAnalyzer works with Warcraft Logs, another tool that performs combat analysis and can help you when it comes to reevaluating your gameplay style and tactics.
There are also raid composition tools out there such as RaidComp, which is a raid optimization tool to help you identify buffs and debuffs, and organise teams according to their abilities. It is similar to Wowhead’s raid composition tool, which you can also find here.