Contents

Where to start

Choosing your character

The first and most important decision you will get to make is what class and spec you will play.

The four distinct roles that you can choose from in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest is:

Ranged DPS
Melee DPS
Tank
Healer

While this may seem obvious for a veteran raider, there are multiple ways that can help you make this decision.
Common questions range from “What does the team need?” to “What is overpowered at the moment?”. Both are valid, but each carries its own set of issues.

a) What do you want to play?

The most crucial question. Most players prefer being a healer, tank, or DPS (ranged or melee). This preference matters. A happy player usually delivers the desired results.

b) What can you play?

This question concerns more the players with experience. You may have a vast knowledge of the “melee playstyle”, you seek some change and you decide to go towards ranged and find that you are, at first, unable to give the same results as before. As often, there are no shortcuts. Going from one type of class to another needs practice, consistency and work ethics.

c) Know your limits

Rather than a question, this is something that you need to consider. You may think that you are really good at something because someone told you so, but this could have been in a particular environment at a certain difficulty. You may be a perfect Heroic Raider but a below average Mythic Raider. So when the time comes for you to create your new character or take the next step in your raiding career, it is necessary to (or learn to) be as objective as possible towards your own particular set of skills.

As a side point, be extremely careful if your choices are based on the performances of one particular combination of class / specialization. You might eventually end up with your character getting nerfed. If you stick to the same mindset, you could end up hopping from class to class just to catch up instead of enjoying the game. While this can be a good way to learn different classes, it might lead to burnout from constantly chasing the meta.
Choosing where to invest time and effort is an excellent skill to learn at the start.

Learning the basics

a) The right resources at the right place

Knowing where to find basic information is a key to a good start. As such, here are some starting points.
• The list for most if not all community discords: https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers
• A list for all basic classes guide: https://www.wowhead.com/classes

b) The right state of mind

• It should be obvious to everyone that in order to learn something new, you need to be receptive to the idea of learning. You’ll apply this at every step of your raiding. Learning new tactics and mastering your class for these challenges will be one of the many difficulties you’ll face.

• Learning to “play” is arguably the most difficult task in the high-strung environment that is raiding. Stress, anticipation, excitation, adrenaline, … We all respond to those substances or sensations in different ways, but having fun and playing relaxedly is a crucial step that people often overlook.

• Be patient, be steady. People often consider a steady performance better than an exceptional but unstable one. Usually, we all expect everyone to show progressive improvement. It is different for every type of content that you’re tackling, as such, learning how to be consistently good is a basic skill that goes a long way.

• Respect your teammates, even temporary ones. We’ll talk about that later in this guide.

We often talk about the critical aspect of learning to raid. Sometimes to announce that you need to be self-critical, to be able to take constructive criticism, etc. The fact that this is an exchange is not.
By learning how to be critical of your plays, your judgement calls, etc. You will learn how to judge yourself appropriately and obtain a starting point on how to discuss it with others.

c) Teamwork makes the Dream Works

We have looked at the basics of “dealing with yourself”, it is important to make a note that a dungeon or a raid requires others to complete them. And for that objective to be obtained there are a few basic skills that you’ll need:

• The ability to communicate

A microphone or a chat box is not there to sit pretty. It has to be used.
Learning how (and when) to use them is an important skill to develop over time. Talking about what you’re doing right is as important as understanding what you did wrong. And while none of those require long winded explanations, it is necessary to learn how to do both.

• To respect your team

You will only go so far alone, knowing that you can make a mistake should indicate to you that it is true for everybody in your team. Respect the idea that we’re all humans and are present for the same objective.

• To learn to move on

Mistakes happen, you will make one ( as everyone in your team ). Don’t fixate on those mistakes. Learn to let go and back at it later when it is time to communicate with your team.

Once again, all those skills take time to nurture and will develop differently for each person. It is important to know who gets fixated on a mistake so you can help him/her to let go but this can only happen if you have an understanding (even basic) of the individual.
Of course, the level of necessity will change depending if you’re in a random group or your usual team but those three points should be at the forefront of your thoughts when you’re playing with them.

Setting up your UI

While a UI is something personal, there are some common threads that need to be followed.

Here’s a bad UI example:

Reasoning:

• No possibility to see the feet of your character means it is almost impossible to react in time.

• The Spread of information is enormous. Between the left, center and right your eyes won’t be able to interpret everything correctly.

– Important messages should be interpreted as soon as they appear, not as soon as your eyes wander on them. That small gap of attention can cause problems.
– Having an enemy casting bar is not a problem in itself but it needs to be placed accordingly and, if possible, paired with a tool indicating quickly if it is interruptible or not.
– Making your eyes wander too much will cause visual fatigue that much quicker. Take care of yours.

• While having a redundancy of information can be useful if your UI looks like this. (Meaning : Multiple places where you can find the same information so you don’t miss it) It often leads to overlapping and cluttering, as such, it is not recommended.

– An exception to this are abilities effect trackers, having an indication around your character and above the enemies nameplates is a useful interaction.

A good UI is one that gives you the information you need in a place where you’re comfortable to read… after a while at least. Note that getting inspired by someone else’s UI is completely fine and should be recommended when you have no idea where to start. Just don’t get carried away by adding too much information that you need and that other player does not, or the other way around.

It is important to state that it takes time (once again) to get used to a UI and it is something that shouldn’t be done every week. Take the opportunity of a new character/expansion/patch to evaluate if you need to work on it.

In the end, when it comes to an UI, you should aim for clarity and open space.

Required Addons:

• Details – Have a threat meter installed like Details!
• DBM or BigWigs – Have a boss mods addon installed like DBM or BigWigs.
• Ora3 – Ora3 is intended for raid monitoring.
• Method Raid Tools – For assignments, raid cooldowns and more.
• Weak Auras 2 – For many special mechanics and warnings, paired with the announced WeakAuras.
• RCLootCouncil – You need this for loot distribution.

Regarding DBM and BigWigs, not Every bit of information sent to a player is useful. take great care to filter things that are not going to affect you.

Recommended Addons:

• ElvUI – A user interface designed around user-friendliness with extra features.
• ElvUI Windtools – Enhances ElvUI with more features including a button bar for addons.
• Decursive – Decursive is a cleansing mod intended to make affliction removal easy, mostly for healers, mages and warlocks.
• SW Raid CD monitor – SW Raid CD monitor displays progress bars for currently active cooldowns.
• Healer Stat Weights – Healer Stat Weights for personalized, accurate healing stat-weights in real-time. Will be explained in the “learn to sim” section.
• Simulationcraft – Simulationcraft simplifies the process of generating a Simulationcraft profile for your character. Will be explained in the “learn to sim” section.

We highly recommend installing the new Curseforge client or to run the WowUP client to keep your addons up to date. The second one doesn’t have an installation, instead you just run it every time you want to update your addons. If you don’t have the required add-ons fully updated and active during raids may result to your removal from the raid.

Master your character

a) Defining a master

While this is obvious, it is by no means a trivial task to become the master of a character. The speed at which it can happen varies from person to person and it is constantly readjusted by patches and expansions.
Even the definition of mastery is fluid, you could be a master of the DPS aspect of your class while being knowledgeable, at best, of the tanking and healing specializations.
The only constant is the work put into that character. To that effect, we assembled a few guidelines in order for you to reach that point.

b) Becoming

1. 1. Take your time

Some people would rather be thrown into the waters of raiding to learn in this environment. And while this is a valid option for advanced players (i.e.: People who have already mastered one or more classes), It is not recommended if you are trying to reach that state with your first character.
Let the class become “second nature” to you. By attaining that state, you’ll feel much more relaxed and able to pay attention to the mechanics of the raid; thus being less prone to tactical mistakes.

1. 1. Learn how to know where to look for what is expected from a character. (Logs and Sims Analysis)

Behind this elongated sentence hides a simple truth: The concept of mastering is never over. And it is by observing your own performance, theoretical or practical, against others that you’ll be able to improve even further.

All classes have a Discord channel, each with a varying amount of members and multiple sub-channels dedicated to specific topics regarding that class. In these channels you will find all the help you need in most cases as most members are very helpful and knowledgeable, so here they are:

1. 1. • Death Knight: Acherus
      • Demon Hunter: The Fel Hammer
      • Druid: Dreamgrove
      • Evoker: Wyrmrest Temple
      • Hunter: Trueshot Lodge
      • Mage: Altered Time
      • Monk: PeakOfSerenity
      • Paladin: Hammer of Wrath
      • Priest: Warcraft Priests
      • Rogue: Ravenholdt
      • Shaman: Earthshrine
      • Warlock: Council of the Black Harvest
      • Warrior: Skyhold
      • WeakAuras: https://discord.gg/wa2
      • Tank Chat: https://discord.gg/fGzZSA5

Class community leaders maintain each of these servers. They are excellent resources for both new and veteran players.

1. 1. Adaptability trumps all…

Every Mythic raider needs the ability to adapt quickly to situations, spot potential optimizations, and flawlessly execute complex tactics.

1. 1. …except for Reliability

Learn to track mechanics as well as you track your Cooldowns, Timers, etc.

c) Overlooked

Just to hit the nail on the head a bit more, it is important to never forget that becoming a master is always a work in progress. As such, Acknowledging that you’re not the best and aspiring to become good enough is an excellent first step.
It is also important to note that while talking about the idea of mastery, the basics are, after all, the foundations upon which you’ll develop into a raider, do not forget to keep those updated.

Learn to R . A². I . D .

Behind this silly pun hides 4 crucial points that should be at the top of your priorities when you decide to start.

a) Reliability

Reliability means more than just performing your role (dealing damage, healing, or tanking). It also means becoming the player others seek out for challenging tasks. Don’t be afraid to take those charges on your shoulders, don’t shy away from those. A reliable player is never overlooked.

b) Adaptability and Awareness

The ability to adapt to quick changes in tactics even after 300 pulls is a necessity in modern raiding. Sometimes, a simple tactical adjustment will lead to the coveted kill.
Do not be lazy, do not let muscle memory dull your awareness of what is happening on the screen.
Those 2 skills combined will make you a better player and a better teammate.

c) Improvisation

Things will often deviate from the planned tactic. Be prepared to make your own decisions to survive mechanics, take soaks (even sacrificial ones), all to secure victory.
It is important to make a point right now: Improvisation does not mean forsaking the established tactic to push harder for a better log / better ranking. Doing those kinds of acts makes you unreliable. See point a).

d) Deaths

You will die in a raid. More than once or twice. Being resilient and able to persevere through countless wipes are qualities that you need to develop.
There is a huge difference between a resigned-to-die player and a ready-to-die one. Keep your mental state steady, use the breaks offered by your RL wisely. Do not obsess over the previous deaths, learn to go to the next pull without any weights.

e) Resources

Here are a few useful links with boss specific raiding guides. Most of the time we are using these channels to see tactics and execution for each new boss we’re fighting.

• Stankie Gaming – https://www.youtube.com/@StankieGaming
• Limit Guild – https://www.youtube.com/@TeamLiquidMMO
• Echo Guild – https://www.youtube.com/@EchoEsports

We will keep adding more resources as we go, so stay tuned.