New Raiding GuildFollow

Well, making specific suggestions is pretty hard, considering we don't have info on what kind of numbers, levels, and class makeup your raids will consist of. That's important in many ways - a larger raid can do more than a smaller raid, higher level raiders can do more than lower level, and so on.

Here are a few general suggestions, which you might be able to adapt for your raids. Raiding in its simpliest form breaks down to the following:

Tactics/Strategy - This makes or breaks raids more than any other single part of a raid. Knowing how to tackle a target usually is the difference between succeeding and failing. I note this first, since as a new raiding guild, this is where you are going to struggle the most.

Tanking - The better prepared your tank is (in terms of gear, levels, AA, and experience) the better chance you have at success. You will also need to utilize SA and offtank strategies depending on the fight, and teach your tank and raiders to use "Assist" and assist messages.

Healing - Keeping the tank alive to do their job is vital on raids. Depending on the target, there are a variety of healing solutions, but the most commonly used is a CHeal Rotation, where clerics take turns healing the tank. The difficulty of the target will determine the number of clerics and the frequency of the heal rotation. Teaching your clerics how to do a CH Rotation is vital in nearly every signficant raid.

Crowd Control/Splitting - Obviously, without being able to focus your raid's force on the target, and damage on the MT, you're going to have a hard time. Getting the target to the MT with the minimal number of adds, or controlling potential adds during the raid, is vital to success. Having your pull team and CC team prepared will help you a lot.

DPS - Of course, you'll need damage to actually kill the mob. Not too much to say here, other than more = better. Gearing your DPS classes will of course increase DPS, thus making raid targets die faster (thus reducing the load on your CHeal rotation mana pools).

Leadership/Communication - Lastly, having a leader who leads, makes decisions, and makes sure these decisions are followed out are a huge part of raiding. Making sure people communicate important information such as slows, debuffs, /disc status, adds, and assist messages will also help you be effective.


When beginning to raid, start slow and easy. It'll take a while for your guild to learn raid etiquite, so don't force extremely challenging raids on them while they learn. I would also recommend entertaining raids, and locations that are rarely visited. Lastly, making sure you have a CR plan, especially at first, would be recommended. No one wants to lose their corpse on their first raid.

Maybe with some more info we could offer a few early raid targets for you.

I know this is going to sound foolish but an excellant training tool as far as starting out slow is great and everything but to do high ends and make mistakes is a given until you try something differant.... The guild i am in a long time ago what we did to practice on raids was everyone make a lvl 1 toon use the basic gear thats allready setup and just raid a lowbie zone most of those zones are un occupied nowadays Like Crushbone granted its like fighting in regular raids with out the high end content during these fights you will lvl because raid setting at lvl 1 as far as exp goes will go fast however it will make things challenging and fun with EMP Crush as the main objective. Even though you dont have the aa skills and or abilites it will make you a stronger guild in the long run to not rely on crit heals crit damages...

Basically this will heavily work on tatics and Strategy... Granted it sounds weird just grabbing a lvl 1 war cleric chanter mage granted some of those mobs will be lvl 8-14 range it still will give you a good challenge to brush up on things... because at higher lvl raid content mobs hitting for 500 quad or higher like in low 900 to 1000+ points will be a costly frustrating raid easier to make mistakes on lower end zones vs higher.... Because some mid to high lvl mobs go Poof if you fail.....

Your first concern should always be the happiness of your members. Morale is basically everything in EQ guilds, because participation is completely voluntary. A raidleader needs to earn the trust of his members, and get people to believe that they're a competent team, special in some way. Basically, no one likes to feel like they're a loser, and if your people feel no sense of accomplishment from what they're doing, your guild will swiftly decline. Even when you fail, it's your job to put a positive spin on things and deliver a pep talk. You need people to laugh at mistakes and learn from them. Any time you have a "OMG WE LOST" despair-fest, it's another nail in your guild's coffin.

Chart out the progression of your guild, always focused on some goal that helps your guild become stronger. Having clear, focused goals will help your guild members feel like they're accomplishing something. Where you can stumble there is simply having huge internal disagreements over guild priorities; it's very important to be the voice of stability and reason for your guild. Never complain. Never lose your temper. You do NOT have the luxury of being flaky, whiny, or unstable. If you are, your guild will die. It may not die quickly, but a guild with an incompetent leader is doomed.

Similarly, you need to very carefully watch for people who will poison your guild, and either change their attitudes or get rid of them. Guilds in EQ are extremely fragile entities - it's hard enough to hold them together if everyone wants to help; if someone is actively working against you, you are screwed. I've seen many a raid guild which had strong, competent leaders die in my time - it was usually because they had their members actively working against them, and simply couldn't save the guild from itself. Watch for people who are perpetual complainers, members who are never happy, people who raise "issues", drama queens, loot whores, and so on. No member is perfect, but I guarantee that some are a hell of a lot less perfect than others.

Edited, Fri Feb 6 15:15:30 2004 by Tehom