Raid

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Raid instances

“Leading a raid can be like herding cats, but by the graces, they're your cats.”

— Stylean Silversteel

Raid groups are a way to have parties of more than 5 and up to 40 characters, divided into up to 8 groups of up to 5 players. The terms "raid" and "raiding" primarily refer to PvE raid-specific instances. Raid instances require playing as a team, and are designed to be the most challenging and entertaining PvE content available in the game.

While in a raid group, players do not receive credit for completing quest objectives unless the quest calls for a raid. Players also receive an experience reduction for any mob killed while in a raid group. These are to prevent players from creating very large groups in order to complete normal quests or other game content intended for parties of 5 or fewer.

Instances requiring a raid are subject to a Raid lockout, which means that defeated bosses within the instance will remain so until the instance is reset (typically once a week). Modern raid instances are flexible, changing their difficulty to permit any amount between 10 and 25 characters for all difficulties except Mythic, which is 20-man only.

As party leader, a player can convert their group into a raid group by accessing the "Social" Panel, selecting "Raid", and choosing "Convert Group to Raid." It can also be done by right-clicking your character portrait and selecting "Convert Group to Raid" from the menu. From then on, any new players invited to the group will join the raid group (up to a maximum of 40). This requires at least 2 people - A person alone cannot form a raid group.

Raiding as end-game content

Raids are designed as activities for people whose characters have reached the level cap. As the game does not introduce new abilities or powers after that point, raiding becomes one of the avenues to increase a character's power as part of the end-game.

Raid encounters demand that the raid members have particular levels of gear and skill, expressed as dps, damage mitigation, and healing ability. In addition, a majority of such bosses also require the group use particular, sometimes unique tactics.

Given these unique requirements, most raid boss encounters require some amount of practice to defeat - even though a raid group might be full of particularly well-geared characters.

Raiding guilds are guilds that devote some or all of their collective time to playing in raid instances, defeating (or practicing to defeat) raid encounters. They have the advantage of being able to get to know the abilities (or lack thereof) of their various members, and adjust their tactics accordingly. They also have a shared investment in the success of not just that raid, but future raids as well, a feature that "pick up raids" lack.

Raiding guilds often use additional measures to enhance their chances of success, notably voice chat software, and particular addons that provide encounter tips and other services not available in the default WoW client.

Starting a raid

The leader of a party can convert the group to a raid by clicking the "Convert to Raid" button in the Group window. At this point it becomes a "group of parties" with up to 8 parties, each with 5 characters. The leader of the raid can drag characters between groups to move them to different parties. The leader can promote other characters, which gives them the abilities to invite and kick from the raid and also use the broadcast raid warnings (using the "/rw" command).

See Raiding for newbies for further details.

Raid AddOns

Raid AddOns generally improve raid performance. There are various mods which offer features such as main tank lists, raid warnings (messages that appear mid-screen for all raid members), voting mechanisms and boss status trackers. Another useful utility for raids are voice communication programs like Discord. Install them even without a mic - unless acting as the raid leader, it's not imperative for everybody to be heard.

Boss mods keep track of the special abilities of most raid bosses, and inform the raid when certain critical events take place. Deadly Boss Mods serves this purpose.

Raid instances

Kalimdor

Eastern Kingdoms

Bc icon.gif Outland

Wrath-Logo-Small.png Northrend

Cataclysm Elemental Plane

Mists of Pandaria Pandaria

Warlords of Draenor Draenor

Legion Broken Isles

Legion Argus

Battle for Azeroth Zandalar

Battle for Azeroth Kul Tiras

Battle for Azeroth Nazjatar

Shadowlands Shadowlands

Dragonflight Dragon Isles

The War Within Khaz Algar

Trivia

  • The first (and for about one year the only) raid addon was CT_RaidAssist (CTRA for short). It could be found at CT Downloads.
  • Raid leaders traditionally needed to organize characters amongst the parties within the raid to have certain characters benefit from party-wide buffs only, like Spell nature windfury.png [Windfury Totem], Paladin auras, and [Battle Shout] - These abilities were eventually changed into raid buffs.
  • The intended number of players for a raid instance has varied greatly in the past, with the most extreme setup being 40-man raids, eg. Molten Core and others in vanilla-era WoW. Since Wrath of the Lich King, all new were introduced in a 10-player and a 25-player version. In Mists of Pandaria, Flexible Raiding was introduced with the Siege of Orgrimmar, allowing any amount between 10 and 25 players, and in Warlords of Draenor, the flexible scaling technology expanded to all difficulties except Mythic, which is 20-man only.

Patch changes

  • Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.1.0 (2012-11-27): Raid groups are no longer necessary to enter pre-Mists of Pandaria raid dungeons. Enemies in these raids that previously required more than one player to defeat are now more easily dealt with by players battling alone.

See also

References

 

External links

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