Noob Raid Question

[Game of Bones.8975]

How important are specific skill rotations in raids? Vs knowing CC, Condi, or DPS skills in general.I'm looking at SnowCrows and what they have in their opening and rotations intimidates the hell out of me. I get through the first 5-7 skills and it all falls apart.

I'm slowly getting my equipment set up, but when one person says berserker, another marauder, and a third has viper. I can't afford to have more than two sets of raid equipment on a single character or one set on two characters.

FYI: Not that it matters in Raiding, but my gotos in PvE are the DPS Minion Reaper (A/D St) and Condi Renegade (SB Ma/A).My thief (both DD and DE) are maxed for fun, but could use them in raids if easier than the above two.I don't have an Engineer, play a vanilla ranger, and am leveling a guardian, elementalist, and mesmer in my "free time."

[Cyninja.2954]

Rotations are a huge part of maximizing damage performance. Minor mistakes can already result in loss of 10-20% performance and above.

That's the bad news, the good news is: no boss needs a flawless rotation for success. While higher damage output will make fights shorter and thus easier to some extent, it is very possible to perform only 60-70% of a Snowcrow benchmark and still see easy success in raids (with PUG damage dealers being often far below those values).

I would recommend to practice rotations at the golem until you can achieve consistently 60-70% of what the build demonstration shows (thus a 35k benchmark should be practiced until you can achieve 21-25k on the golem), the more the better obviously. Also do not forget to use proper food/utility and setup the golem and yourself correctly. Make minor deductions to your target value if you are not full ascended and stat infused.

Finally, yes some classes will have easier and harder rotations. Usually there is some mention on the Snowcrows site of how hard they perceive the build. The same goes for Lucky Noobs, who also give an estimate to difficulty (https://lucky-noobs.com/). There are some easy rotation guides for some classes (usually found on youtube or metabattle) which will achieve lower top end dps but easier mid range damage output.

If using off-meta builds of self design, the values achieved should be close to the numbers I gave up top (aka, your off meta builds should also hit a minimum of 60-70% of a Snowcrows Benchmark).

EDIT: small hint for Renegade: the rotation becomes easier once you realize that you legend and weapon swap at the same time. After that it's mostly just knowing which skills to prioritize and practicing to swap legend below 10 energy to trigger Charged Mists (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charged_Mists).

[RaidsAreEasyAF.8652]

@"Cyninja.2954"EDIT: small hint for Renegade: the rotation becomes easier once you realize that you legend and weapon swap at the same time. After that it's mostly just knowing which skills to prioritize and practicing to swap legend below 10 energy to trigger Charged Mists (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charged_Mists).

You do not swap at the same time. While it might look like it when you swap from mallyx/shortbow to kalla/mace you still swap Legends first and then your weapons. When you swap from kalla/mace back to mallyx/shortbow you even use a skill before weapon swapping. Always swap your Legends first, then your weapon.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Rotations are huge part of raiding and there is even this joke between raiders that only real endgame is the dps golem.

Try out raids, if you like them, that should easily motivate you to grind ur rotations.

[Shikaru.7618]

Also slightly tangential tip to getting raid ready. One of the hidden reasons you want to be somewhat familiar with your rotation before going in there is because when you're in a squad fighting the boss, you do not want to be fumbling with your character and wondering what skill 5 does. You want to be focusing on boss mechanics, reading boss animations, and listening to communication in discord. If you can make your skill rotation largely brainless, you'll have more attention to devote to the boss.

Dps golem also isnt the only place you can practice. Once you get the gist of the skill rotation, you can use these same builds in open world, Fractals, and story to gain familiarity.

[Cyninja.2954]

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@"Cyninja.2954"

EDIT

: small hint for Renegade: the rotation becomes easier once you realize that you legend and weapon swap at the same time. After that it's mostly just knowing which skills to prioritize and practicing to swap legend below 10 energy to trigger Charged Mists (

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charged_Mists

).

You do not swap at the same time. While it might look like it when you swap from mallyx/shortbow to kalla/mace you still swap Legends first and then your weapons. When you swap from kalla/mace back to mallyx/shortbow you even use a skill before weapon swapping. Always swap your Legends first, then your weapon.

True, my hint was misleading or cut short. What I was trying to get at was: swapping of legend and weapon always happens together, which reduces complexity. Yes, there still is a method to which of both to swap first.

[knite.1542]

Knowing what your skills do is also pretty important. I know that might sound obvious, but I have encountered tons of players that don't know what their skills do or what their traits do.

It is pretty important to know all of these things so you can understand what you are doing when you fight. Some rotations are not as strict (or as difficult) as others so if you know what your hardest hitting skills are that can make things a lot easier for you. You also want to know what things give you different status boosts and ect.

I would say understanding your skills is a bit more important than memorizing the rotation (although you can succeed just by memorizing if you'd like). Just try not to be the person that doesn't know that [insert skill here] is a CC for example, because some things like this can make or break a pull.

[Taygus.4571]

I really struggle with rotation..and sadly my dps on raids is 12k-20k depending on class and boss.

I practice often on the golem, ..I can get 20k on golem easily. Play with the rotation yourself.. you can 20k+ without following exactly snowcrows rotation... you may have an easier time remembering your own.

A major reason for rotation, is so that skill cooldowns finish up by the time you're ready to use that skill again, so that you don't have to look at your skill bar or try to remember each skills countdown, and can fully pay attention to the fight.

gear a dps and condi dps, if you can.or a dps and support role

Having 2 options to play, is very useful, as you'll find raid teams will often switch around classes to get a good team composition.

you will, in time, be able to gear up more.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Taygus.4571" said:I really struggle with rotation..and sadly my dps on raids is 12k-20k depending on class and boss.

Well, those numbers are totally usual numbers when raiding with non-speed clear groups. I'm not saying you should stop trying to improve your dps/rotations but if you belong to group of dps players and it's clearly visible on Arc that you are within the range of others everything is fine unless the whole group isn't very familiar with dps rotations.In addition numbers are higher during the opening burst because it is "dps" a.k.a. "damage per second" which means everyone will fall down due to rotational mistakes, boss mechanics, rezzing downed, missing boons because support players aren't perfect neither and the list goes on. Just try to give your best and as long as you are in the above mentioned dps range you should be able to easily kill most of the bosses depending on the group and boss.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Oh and btw if you are EU and want to try out raids our guild does around 5 training raids/week. Usually raids start at 18st, 19st or 20st.Feel free to message me :)

[Painbow.6059]

Rotations are very important to optimising your performance in Raids. Some classes have rotations that are far easier and forgiving than others though so keep that in mind. It does not take long at all to consistently get close to the benchmark on Power Warrior for instance. Given the classes you listed, you could learn Condition Renegade (SB M/Ax) and Power Reaper (GS A/Wh), along with Power Daredevil (Staff). Once you have the correct gear and you're sure that you have the correct golem settings, keep grinding until you can consistently get 1-2k within the benchmark number, if you can't optimal gear, use writs or something similar to mimic the benchmark stats. If you can't get that close to the benchmark aim for at least 90%, it's not difficult to copy a rotation that is visually depicted with a written rotation.

[Game of Bones.8975]

Now I know why skills last less than 5 seconds instead of minutes. It forces players chain skills together and look for synchronicity to get the most out of a profession.I knew it before but, like most bad chess players, I couldn't put together the best multiple moves to get the outcome I was looking for.

[narcx.3570]

@Taygus.4571 said:I really struggle with rotation..and sadly my dps on raids is 12k-20k depending on class and boss.

For a lot of bosses and groups this is normal... Remember boss numbers are not benchmarks and lots of bosses have phases where you're doing 0 dps to them... And if your group phases slowly, this will effect your dps even more. For example, if your group has hyper-quick split phases during VG, it will be pretty easy to get close to 26-27k on that fight, but if the split takes longer, you could have performed exactly the same personally, but your end numbers will be like 20-22 simply because there was a longer period where you couldn't attack the boss.

If yer ending a fight at 20k in a pug group, yer actually doing pretty decent (unless it's like KC/Cairn/MO/SH/CA).