yay a guide on how to raid inteligently and how not to die doing it.
lvl 20-28 you neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed only 1 party of about 6. doesnt matter if they dont hit hard or have the best equipment. these low level bosses are simple to take down and require little strategy.
as with every raid boss, the strategy is to hunt the minions first, and when they are gone, u hunt the boss. for the low level raid bosses (RB's) you need a mixture of the following:
1 elven/dark elven/human knight. this person MUST have the "hate" skill
1-2 healer preferably a cleric.
3-4 damage dealers of any other type. dwarves included.
make sure all the melee fighters have soulshots, and the healers have blessed spiritshots. make sure they use them.
about level 28 your raid grp will need to get bigger. you will need the following:
2 elven/dark elven/human knight. this person MUST have the "hate" skill
1-2 healer preferably a cleric.
5-6 damage dealers of any other type. dwarves are acceptable only if they are NOT using duals. go with 3archers/2nukers or if you want to have all melee grp, get orcs and humans by the handful.
again at 35 your raid will need now to have 2 groups and to be co-ordinated. same setup as before but doubly so.
after lvl 40 your raid will get extremely difficult if not all members are above 40 and have completed their 2nd class transfer quest and have at least SOME skills of their class.
around level 50 your raid will get bigger again, requiring 3 groups of the same setup at the minimum. some particular bosses need up to 6 groups at level 50 to get them down in under 10 mins.
beyond that you are looking at an clan-wide / ally-wide raid.
now for some strategy:
we got the elven/darkelven/human knights for a reason; that is, they have the "hate" skill. this enables the knight to let the raid boss only attack him and none of the rest of the group regardless (to some extent) of the damage dealt. once the knight has used this skill, wait until 4-5 hits have been dealt by him before the healer starts to heal or the rest of the group attacks. this will 85% guarantee your tank to hold the attention of the mob. this is called "tanking".
once your minions are gone then begins the battle with the old boss. swing away. everyone must hit the boss now. this will get the boss down faster. most raid bosses level 20-28 can be taken down in 10-20 minutes with a handful of people. after that if you still want to take it down fast you will need the aforementioned requirements to be exceeded. i.e. where i stated 2 groups for level 35 boss, bring 3 groups. the only disadvantage this poses is in the looting of the boss. where all bosses give massive exp and sp on their death, they may only drop 1-3 items and only rarely do you get a boss that shoots out 10-15 items on death. so bigger groups can be disadvantageous for the lower drop rated bosses.
hope you find this useful. there isnt much here i know, but it should give you a start.
Spud, thanks for investing the time to put this together. I'd love to see refining of this guide and discussion in general on raid tactics. I have raid experience in other games, but not really this one yet.
For instance, what happens if a raid goes bad? How are minions separated from the raid boss (or is the raid boss not social in a lot of cases)?
the instant you attack a minion, the whole band begins its assault. in this regard it is best (as stated) to attack all the minions first because if you can kill the boss before the minions resawn youve killed them in the easiest manner possible.
a raid is only successful when all the minions and the boss is dead.
the only way a raid goes sour is when either your whole grp dies too fast, or when your healers have pulled aggo and the tanks cannot regain aggro. (meaning the healers die, and nobody can get healed)
this is why everyone must bring Soulshots, Blessed spiritshots and res scrolls AND heal potions for the JUST IN CASE scenarios. raid bosses will dissappear in town.
Ok see I know, since I lvled my prophet from 30-40 by doing raids, and cata parties.
Alot of the lvl 30-39 RB's can be taken out with only 1 group,
(now note some times we cheeted had a lvl 75 prophet buff)
but for the most part we only had this as our group:
1 tank, 1 SO, 1 cleric (me), 1-2 dwarfs, 1 nuker or 2, 1 sometimes 2 archers. and about 2 daggers. sometimes 2 clerics
The groups all ways veried, but for the most part we keeped alot of the same people.
Best set up for 30-39 RB's: is 1 cleric, 1 SO(meely have to have VR), 3 Daggers, 2 nukers, 2 tanks ( or 1 but is nice to let the tanks swich sometimes) and 1-2 archers; to replace of 1 dagger and 1 tank. (alot of my groups only used 1 nuker, and they failed alot, when we had 2 nukers they lasted alot longer..and tend to finsh off the RB faster)
I totally agree that killing the minions first is the best way, gives you a good 6 minutes to work on the RB, some times we got the RB so low that once the minions respawned we just keeped on the RB.
One thing to remember is if your killing undead mobs to give holy weapon to all the players, cause I helped to kill minions and RB's when I had full mp.
One of the most importent thing that almost all ways gets your party killed!!!! not listioning to your healers, they above any one else you better listion to.
When doing low lvl RB's, and if you don't have a high lvl out of party buffer, and your useing the cleric and So to buff, you better let them regen mp atlest to 60% before you start on the RB, or your party is set to failure!!
I disagree again, the best way is to have low level mage(as little p def as possible, a high level sorc or SpS and a level 77 BD and a few normal rez scrolls. Enough said i reckon.
its 101 for a reason. this is BASICs of riading, not "everything and more about every **** raid boss in all of freaking aden and how to kill it in 45 seconds or less"
this is "basics"
2 grps are safer than 5 ppl. harder to distibute loot, yes. but still for NOOBZ its much safer. nobody dies. everyone gets exp.
btw, this is BASIC infos and prcatices. not "if u have access to lvl 75 BD, SORC and ORC for background aid"
honestly.
thanks for ******* all over my 10 minute half-*****ed post.
I mainly disagree with the higher lvl info you're inputting and thus I'm gonna drop some advice:
Tank Group:
1 Tank(for kite tanking TK is the absolute best, more hp than a SK. Use health weapon and Doom/NM armor. For tanking that is done standing still, DA/Paladin as they got more HP)
1 SwS(Dance of Earth, Dance of Vitality, for kite tanking: Dance of Wind too)
2 SE/EE(MP recharge, heals, Conversion SA weapons)
1 Bishop(heals, Conversion SA weapon)
4 spots that can be filled with any classes, but these are the basics for tank group. 1 of these should be a Prophet.
Nuker Group:
1 BD
1 SE/EE(EE only if Empower can be gotten from elsewhere, Conversion SA weapons)
6 SH(CDL baby, CDL)
1 Necro(Gloom+CDL)
Thats it, all single bosses +-3 lvls of the group will come down.
Kite tanking goes as follows: the tank aggroes the RB and runs in circles around the nuker group(not too close to avoid AoE) thus minimizing the hits he's receiving from the RB. Means that less healing is required so you dont need lots of healers. This is also only viable for TK/SK really as they got 360 block and are fast(especially with Wind). The boss also needs to be slowed, so the TK can cast Entangle on it if the SHs fail to slow. Slow is usefull for 2 reasons, less damage to the Tank and if the tank loses aggro, more time to get the aggro back before it kills nukers.
For still tanking, the tank hits UD and aggroes the RB, thus needing less healing again and there wont be that much of a problem with MP.
The Conversion SA weapons are there to enlarge the MP pool of the Bishop and SE/EE.
This also applies to bosses with minions, with the difference that the minions are targeted first and the tank will be using hate aura.
This is the barebone setup that allows you to raid the high lvl bosses fairly fast but if you have more people willing to participate they ofcourse can come, it just means that exp is divided more and it usually takes more time to organize. What you need to remember is that in no situation should people be healing/dancing/buffing/hitting the boss if the boss is blue to them as this will influence the drop chance. So if the boss is red, yellow, white = fair game. If the boss is green = small drop penalty in place and if it's blue = bad, not gonna get drops most of the time.
we do our
basic raidgroup like this
1 tank (any heavy armor wearer)
1-2 rechargers
1 healer (bishop)
rest fill ins
sofar for level 50 and below its all we've needed
50 and up were thinking of this formula
2 healers
1 recharger
2 nukers
1 tank heavy armor, hate skill prefered but not nesecary
3 dd's
-------------
from what i understand every melee needs polearms regardless of class, or its prefered, if anything to always have the ability to do damage to the boss
----------------
Leader of the raid should know when to break raid or not.
a good judgement call is to watch the mp of the healers, if they cant keep up then the grou needs to break the raid
------
Healers help by saying or shouting "no mp!"
or slapping the leader of the raid group and pming him "no mp a**hole" or you know...however you'd do it.
however some raids are just two group raids where you need a nuker group.
nukers target the minions and take out the respawn while melee stays on boss, until the boss gets to about half hp to 1/4 hp left.
the reasoning behind them not doing this the entire time is simple. with a tank that hates or not, you dont want to run the risk of agroeing the raid in the beginning, it takes to long to reestablish the control.
------------
anyone agree or disagree with this setup method?
Your setup will end in a wipe at higher lvls. A pure tank is absolutely needed unless you're running a endgame archer/titan party. The aggro will otherwise bounce around and you all will end up dead. Also, note that high end RBs have several million HP on some occasions, so you severely lack the DPS to take them down. You will be OOM before even scratching the surface. And lastly, my previous strategy was for raids over a year ago, and they've changed the RBs somewhat since then^^
Lets not forget, in interlude melee is just as important to have as nuker parties. Melee damage seems to have gone up alot on bosses, and nuker damage seems to have fallen.
Also should be noted, in the higher leveled raids, you will need 2 tanks. 1 for the boss, and the other for killing the minions/targetting. You will want to make sure everyone attacking has a targetting macro made for the targetting tank.
Also at higher levels, doing raid bosses can be more about the chance at drops then of getting XP. If you are in the tank/healer party, while you have the most important role, your XP will be less then from the other parties.
You absolutely dont need a Tank for minions. You don,t even need a healer. The only thing is to know how to do it and if you want to be successful you just have to make sure your TANK party wont die and they will keep the RB occupied. The rest of the teams will finish it in a very short time!!! Design, Obedience and Coordination are the main keys to succesfully bring high level RBs down.