Raids are super-groups that allow up to 40 players to link their groups together. You can use raid groups to fight powerful monsters; to organize player vs. player battles; and especially to work with others to share loot, experience, and quests in raid dungeons. Raids allow you to overcome challenges that might otherwise be nearly impossible.
Quest Credit
Raid members cannot earn credit for most non-raid quests. Specifically, they will not receive credit for killing non-raid creatures or collecting items for non-raid quests. This is to prevent people from CHEESING powerful monsters or quests by just attacking them with a lot of players, thus making the battle trivial.
Experience
Raids grant substantially less experience for defeating monsters than normal groups. You can, however, still get experience which normally isn't possible unless groups join up. So while you won't be getting as much experience, you'll at least be getting some!
Raid Chat
Once you're in a raid group you can chat in the raid channel by typing /raid, followed by your text.
Raid Group vs. Party Group
A raid group shares a chat channel, experience, loot, instances, and raid quests. Besides this sharing, other groups in the raid are not connected to your group. You will only see players in your current group on the map. If you use a group or AOE beneficial spell, it will only affect players in your group, not the entire raid.
Finding Raid Group Members
You cannot see other raid members on the map if they are not in your group. If you want to find out where a member of the raid is, the easiest way to find out is to swap them into your group, then back to their original group.
Raid Leaders and Assistants
A raid leader can add and remove people to the raid group. They can move players between groups as well. Simply open up the raid group window and click-drag a player to the new location. You can promote other players in the raid so that they can also invite people to the raid group.
Text that a raid leader sends to chat will be displayed in a different color and will have the [Raid Leader] label.
The raid leader has "(L)" by their name. Assistants have "(A)" by their names.
Raid UI
You can open the raid UI and drag the name of a class to your gamefield to have a listing of all players of that class be displayed on the game field. Likewise you can drag a group name to your playfield to have the players in that group displayed on your gamefield. In either case the display will show the health, mana and limited buffs or debuffs on each player in the group or class and you can click on a player listed this way to target that player. You can then right-click on the class or group UI element to make some modifications to how the UI displays or to remove the UI element.
Selecting Raid Members
Players can target other players in a raid by clicking on their name in the raid window.
Class Colors
Classes are color-coded. There's no significance to the colors beyond allowing that class to stand out against other class colors.
Group Balancing
It is very important to correctly balance groups. Typically, you want a healer in each group. If a Priest is not available, a Shaman, Druid, or even a Paladin can help out.
Raid Warning Chat Channel
There is a raid warning chat channel available to raid leaders and assistants. Text that is sent to this channel will appear in the center of the screen for all players in the raid. The channel is called raid warning and text can be sent to it with "/rw"
Ready Check Button
Raid leaders have a Ready Check button on their raid interface. This can also be sent with /readycheck from the chat line. A ready check sends an "Are you ready?" Yes/No dialogue to all players in the raid. The raid leader will get feedback in 30 seconds on all the players who were not ready or who did not respond.
Marking Targets
Parties and Raids can mark targets for their party/raid in the gamefield. A party leader or raid leader/assistant can right-click the portrait of their target to select a symbol to associate with that target. All players in the party/raid will see the selected symbol over the head of the target as well as on the portrait of that target.
Target of Target
Players can turn on the "Target of Target" in the Raid and Party section of the interface options. When this is turned on, anytime a player is in a party or raid, it will show the portrait and health of whatever your current target has targeted. You can click on that portrait to target that thing directly or if you have the spell glove up you can cast spells on the target of target without targeting it directly.
Raid Info
Players have a Raid Info button on their raid interface that functions the same way /raidinfo works. This function will display a pane showing all of the raid instances that a player is saved to, rather than displaying it to the chat window.
The /raidinfo command shows remaining time on saved raid instances. Also shows an ID to compare with other players (if you have the same saved ID as them, you will go into the same instance)
Leaving a Raid Group
To quit a raid group, you must leave your current group. If you forget, you'll continue to be in the raid group. Requiring you to manually leave a raid allows people to log in and out without falling out of the raid group.
Raid Calendar System
Instances reset at a certain server time, regardless of when you were actually saved to the instance. The reset times are as follows:
- Molten Core: Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance.
- Blackwing Lair: Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance
- Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (40-man): Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance
- Naxxramas: Every 7 Days during weekly maintenance
- Onyxia: Every 5 Days
- Zul'Gurub: Every 3 Days
- Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (20-man): Every 3 Days
The resets, if not during weekly maintenance, are planned to occur during off-hours when the least amount of raids are active. Check out the Raid Calendar to see when an instance will reset.
As the reset time approaches, if you are in the instance, you will be informed of the impending reset every hour on the hour. 15 minutes before the reset, the reminders become more frequent; once the reset time is reached, all players in the instance will be ported to their bind point. You can access your saved raid status at any time via /raidinfo, and you will be informed of your status regarding an instance when you zone into the dungeon.
We know that this change is a major one for raiding guilds; we've done our utmost to make the reset times as convenient as possible for the majority of our players.
Overview
Slash Commands
