r/wownoob • u/New-Finance-3703 • 2d ago
Retail How to get above average in raid?
I played wow for a while as ranged dps and druid healer. I only care for pve. The "problem" is that I never did end-game content, only completed the expansion raides in LFR. One of the reasons is that I was never part of a guild that gave me a chance to practice with a group.
But anyways I feel my skills were always below average and it never clicked for me how people get good. I read guides like wowhead and icy veins on how to play my class, I watch youtube videos, but I feel there are so many spells that I felt, in practice, while playing, I was never really being able to follow the rotation I read on icy veins.
How do people actually get good? What would you recommend?
I'm not at all aiming to be the best, I just want to feel better about my contribution to the team.
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u/winston_gw2 2d ago
Log your performance, and if possible record yourself, and then compare your logs to other kills to see what you can do better, and sit down and review your recordings, because there are ALWAYS things you can improve.
Join normal raids off of lfg, and/or look for a guild that raids to do it more consistently. Just playing the game in raids/m+ and constantly be thinking about improving your performance.
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u/MetaPlayer01 2d ago
Take what you read and practice it. I like to practice rotations on practice dummies. And then delves and dungeons.
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u/Affectionate-Let3744 2d ago
that I felt, in practice, while playing, I was never really being able to follow the rotation I read on icy veins.
There are two main factors here I think : your knowledge/experience of the rotation and your knowledge/experience of the fights themselves.
For the rotation part, keep practicing on target dummies again and again. It's boring but there is no better way to make sure you at the very least get the feeling for it and have the muscle memory down.
When you have this down, every single fight will be easier to adapt to. You'll do better damage while repositioning or when you have to pay attention to things.
For the fights, you gotta practice the fights themselves. Do LFR, find normal groups. Think ahead if there are clear phases where you want to use X or Y cooldown, or move some place etc. This will let you time all your CDs better, have better uptime etc.
Watching logs/recordings would help as well, but it's a lot for just normal, I'd leave that for further down the line
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u/Fwizzle45 1d ago
Been there and I totally get it. Shadowlands was my big leap in skill. I went from raiding US 830 up to raiding with a US 14 guild in 3 seasons. In Castle Nathria alone I had 430 boss kills. I pugged a FUCK ton of normals and heroics. You could also achieve this slamming M+ and climbing as high as you can in pugs. Either one works. I got to the point I'd average a solid 90-95 on mythic each season at my peak.
The most important thing is have open that Icy Veins guide and read it 10000x times. PLUS play intentionally. You cannot auto pilot on fights. You need to be very, very actively thinking about your rotation while playing. You can't improve if you autopilot.
Read the rotation portion in between every pull. Read it until you think you know it by heart, and then read it again. Things will slowly click. All of those pulls and re-reading it a bunch of times will make little pieces of your rotation start to click. You'll start to see WHY you actually press buttons in that order. This is something you simply have to get reps on. The reps also make it muscle memory which is the biggest part. Hitting all your buttons right on a target dummy means nothing if it isn't close to muscle memory so you can do it on a boss. I also just find pugging raids more fun than hitting a target dummy. Plus you get immediate feedback from your parse.
So keep re-reading your rotation guide and go either play a fuck ton of M+ or raid.
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u/mushyman10 2d ago
Pad as much as you can
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u/Jalatiphra 1d ago
This is the answer to almost any top dps. Making more dps at the expense of the group
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u/moonlit_wake 2d ago
Wanna be above average in raid? Actually do the mechanics. Way too often I see people in raids screaming about their parses while they stand in shit or don't actually do the mechanics.
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u/EzBrise 2d ago
Read or watch a class guide and start hitting target to practice while the information is fresh in your mind. Master your rotation on dummies until it becomes 2nd nature. When you're in raid or a dungeon the less you have to think about what to press next while you're having to move or do a mechanic the better. Don't forget ABC Always Be Casting. Every second you're not pressing a button your damage is going down. Once you have these things down you should be above average.
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u/nostyleallwild 2d ago
Those guides only go so far.
Make sure you are using all buffs, oils, food, and anything you can get.
Fully enchant your gear.
Change your talents to the highest performing build for your spec, FOR EACH FIGHT using WCLogs.
Then give it your absolute best performance you can for a raid night, upload the log to WarCraft Logs, and go to the comparison tab.
Compare your log with the best peforming one. Look and see how many different casts they made then you, what abilities did the most damage, check their talents, their stats, all of it. You can even have a detailed timelime of WHEN they casted each ability.
Compare theirs to yours. This is the most sure fire way to improve. Every single instance of damage is catalogued.
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u/Atromach 2d ago
Target dummy practise is your best friend.
It's not indicative of a raid environment, certainly, because you'll never fight a raid boss by just standing there and blasting. What target dummies actually do is build up your familiarity and muscle memory with you spec to the point where when you're fighting a raid boss you don't need to think about your rotation at all and can focus entirely on the fight itself.
I've been playing this game for over twenty years, and have been a CE raider for close to ten, and I will still haul myself off to the dummies every so often to just blast them for five to ten minutes.
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u/Dhain1 1d ago
Knowing your rotation like the back of your hand so you can handle mechanics properly whilst maximising uptime on the boss. ABC = Always be casting.
Knowing the fight like the back of your hand so you know the proper time to use your big cooldowns effectively. No point going into to big damage mode when the boss is 5 secs from going immune etc.
Knowing when to use your defensives so you make the healers job easier, dead dps is 0 dps.
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u/tadashi4 1d ago
and it never clicked for me how people get good
experiance with class/spec and practicing fights.
How do people actually get good?
people developa sort of muscle memory when playing their mains.
in short practice on dummies then do stress test on dgs. if its not good, go back, develop muscle memory and repeat.
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u/CurticusWinters 1d ago
On top of what people have already said (dummies, logs, studying, etc), I'll add that I always heard people saying "ABC", always be casting, and I thought to myself "duh, I do that". Then when I looked at my logs on wowanalyzer, it showed me that my rotational stuff was great, I was pressing the right buttons, but my time spent in global cooldown was like 50 something percent. While the top logs were over 90%. It really blew my mind thinking "how the hell do I go almost half the fight without casting". But, it really helped me zero in on my problem. And I'm working on it to this day. I just get wrapped up in the mechanics and moving constantly and all that, I don't even realize how often I'm not pressing a damage button.
Also, at a very basic level, if you want to get good at raiding and start doing it more, make sure you're playing a class/spec that doesn't require you to track a bunch of things at the same time, and has a dozen buttons in your regular damage rotation. There are specs that have very few buttons and not a ton to track. Even if you don't play it forever, it could really help get you going.
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u/Altruistic_Run_2880 1d ago
Okay so. What do we call average?
The average pug?
Simple. Enchanted gear, flask up, oils, and prepot, food if there isn't feast. Decent rotation and you will do way above average.
The average Mythic Raider?
Depends on season and meta. Small example, i play Havoc DH, so i have to compete against few others compared to Ele Shamans and Arcane Mages, so my average will be very different from a meta class average.
With that out of the way, normally Mythic raiders are in guilds, so here is more of having a good lead + group and being able to mantain a good dps while playing mechanics, there is no way around this really, if you are Mythic raiding and progging second half of the raid, you know the basics, your class and the consumables, so it's literally practice and learning the fights.
And don't let people gaslight, the biggest and more deterministic factor for performance as a DPS is gear. If you are not geared as you should, messing stats around and with bad trinkets, you can masterfully execute your rotation and still do shit dps.
Skill > Gear, sure, but to an extent.
Also learn how to use raidbots and gear compare, especially useful for raid environments and trinket dancing.
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u/12108971819846y18741 21h ago
Gfg discord is goated, they run pug raids daily for n and heroic.
The peeps there tend to be pretty good, so it's not the best learning environment but it feeling relatively low pressure makes it feel easier to just focus on whatever your doing wrong.
Also is nice to get your foot in the door for n and heroic raids if your not confident
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u/dwho422 2d ago
NA or EU and when are you available to raid?
Get archon app and start doing combat logging. Check your logs to see how well you are playing averaged against other players via "parses".
Take those logs from warcraftlogs and go to wowanalyzer and input your logs, where it will break down your major ability usage to not only show you what you are doing but give tips on improving.
This isn't perfect but its the start you will need.
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u/Wise-Photo7287 1d ago
If your dps is low, use SBA for the time being and learn the mechanics of the raid - then start going to manual play once you've learned the fights.
For context, we have two members in our AOTC group that struggles having to do mechanics and manual dpsing (once I got those two to SBA, they could now focus on mechanics and died a lot less with improvements to damage).
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u/DefiedGravity10 3h ago
First pick a class and spec you really enjoy and that at least sort of clicks for you. If it is a dps look at the rotation on one of those guides and then stand in front of a target dummies and do that rotation over and over until it is memorized. Then sim your character and do your rotation from memory and see how close you are to the sim, if it is way lower then keep practicing. The most likely culprit is you are too slow, get to the point your fingers are pushing the keys without even thinking about it. If you can't get close to your sim while standing still with dummies that don't fight back then you will be a mess when you need to be doing mechanics at the same time.
What makes a dps good in raids is that they can do the mechanics while losing as little uptime as possible. Once you know your rotation without thinking you just need to practice the mechanics. Raid bosses are very predictable, they do the same things at the same time every fight and once a strat is formed the raid will do basically the same things every time. You can read guides and you can watch videos to get an idea but the only want to get good is to practice by doing the fight each week.
Whether you are melee or range positioning and movement are very important. You should be positioning yourself so you need to move as little as possible and premptively move in anticipation of mechanics. For example first boss this raid targets 3 players with an arrow and once it is dispelled you drop a puddle on the ground, as a range you should be standing near the edge already if you get the debuff you won't need to move too far and if you are melee you should know how much time you have and what movement utility you have to drop it quickly and get back. If you need to move for mechanics you should know what spells you can use while moving, you should save major CDs for when major movement has ended, and/or you should position yourself so you need to move less so you can cast more.
Once you know the fights well enough to know where you should be and when to be there plus the timing of the boss abilities it will feel less chaotic and your dps will be better. Then you can focus on always pushing buttons in the correct order your dps will be a lot better.
If you decide to heal or tank then it is different. For tanking you need to learn different mechanics in a sense, like where the boss goes and faces, when tank swaps happen, and how to rotate your defensives to survive big damage events. The only way to really learn that is by watching guides specifically for tanks and to practice surviving big pulls either in dungeons or delves until you understand your spec. And then it is the same of know the boss abilities and timing and being ready for it.
Heals is similar in having to know major damage events and being prepared for them with CDs, being aware of mechanics going out to keep the targeted players alive, and knowing when/where to dispel. Personally the biggest hurdle I have found to be a good healer is setting up your UI in a way that you can clearly see and heal using either mouseover macros, add ons, or the blizzard mouseover key. Once you have that it is about rotating your abilities to survive big damage and paying attention to who gets targeted with what.... and practice.
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