Guide:Introduction to Raiding

Disclaimer: This guide is aimed at beginner-intermediate level raiders. The “rules” set out here will often have exceptions, but these exceptions will almost always apply to high-skill groups. In the interest of brevity, these have been omitted under the assumption that groups to which the exceptions would apply will already be aware of them.

Overview

This guide aims to be an introduction to raiding in Guild Wars 2. It will cover the various roles that classes will commonly fulfill within a raid, and how these roles were settled on. For new groups, there will be an explanation of how to set up a squad for an encounter and provide some good builds for new players. If there are unfamiliar terms, the glossary may be of assistance.

Roles

When tackling raid encounters, one of the key ingredients to a successful kill is having an effective team composition. Like many RPGs, Guild Wars 2 features distinct roles similar to the “Holy Trinity”. However, Guild Wars 2 differs slightly in that it features a soft trinity of Damage, Support and Control. These map onto the traditional roles of DPS, Healing, and Tanking, but with some additional functions.

Damage

Deals damage. Damage (or DPS) is ultimately the most important, and focused role within a raid and the majority of actions of Support and Control players will be aimed at enabling the DPS players to do their job. The design of attributes in Guild Wars 2 is such that damage roles will focus on either power or condition damage. The two types differentiate themselves as follows (with some exceptions):

Power - bursts damage in a short duration and hence suits fights with short phases. A few bosses also have low toughness, which strongly benefits power builds.

Condition - takes some time to ramp up their damage, but deals more long-term and so are suited to fights with longer phases. Some condition builds apply Confusion or Torment, which deal extra damage when the target activates skills or stands still. Builds that inflict these conditions are able to deal damage very quickly on suitable bosses.

The best DPS classes will vary from encounter to encounter and group to group, so there is a lot of variety within this role.

Support

Support comes in two main flavors - boon support and healing. These flavors are not mutually exclusive.

Boon Support - provides boons to the squad.

Healing - keeps the squad alive.

Support players are often tasked with handling mechanics in fights, as they typically have downtime in which they do not need to be healing or applying boons.

As will be discussed in this guide, some supports are significantly more effective than other options, so many groups will run the same core group of supports on most encounters.

Control

As a role, control usually manifests as the tank. It also refers to control effects (CC), and while this is rarely a dedicated role in itself it can inform the optimal builds fulfilling the other roles.

Tanking in raids is very binary - there will be a single requirement, and whichever player fulfils that requirement will be the tank. It is most common for the tank to be the player with the highest toughness stat, though other encounters have the tanking based on proximity, randomly assigned, use of specific Special Action Keys, or have no tank at all. It is extremely rare that control will be a role in itself, as will be explained below the functions of control are usually handled by Damage or Support players.

As such, the role of tank will usually be assigned to the most suitable class of those the squad has already taken to the encounter.

A kiter may be considered a sub-role of tank. Rather than control the boss’s aggro, they will typically be the target of a particular mechanic, though the exact requirements of the role vary greatly depending on the encounter.

Role Fundamentals

This section covers two fundamental goals that define how the previously described roles are best covered. While the two goals may seem contradictory, both must be considered when defining builds or compositions.

Role Specialization

One of the biggest stumbling blocks when moving from open world to raids is the need to unlearn much of what Guild Wars 2 teaches players while leveling: That classes are built to be self-sufficient, and able to perform all three roles at once.

Team-based game modes such as raids promote role specialization (particularly in DPS players), as focusing on one particular role will be much more effective than multiple players all trying to fill multiple roles.

Put clearly - a player on a damage role is there to deal damage. Sacrificing that damage to improve personal healing or survivability lowers the effectiveness of the entire group, as the lower the damage, the longer the boss will take to kill. The longer the boss is alive, the more mechanics will occur that have the chance to cause a wipe. With Guild Wars 2’s active defense there are practically no mechanics that cannot be avoided with skill, mitigated through encounter mechanics, or out-healed by healers.

Team members must be trusted to fulfill their roles, and not plan for failure by pre-emptively covering for others' mistakes. Adjusting a build to be less specialized should be a reaction to failure rather than in anticipation of it.

This is the reason why it is often recommended to run a “meta” build. These builds are optimized to perform their roles in the most effective ways possible. In cases where builds have options to fulfill other roles as well, this will have been chosen such that it has the minimum impact on their primary role, with the maximum gain of the supplementary role.

As previously stated, of the three roles damage is the most common to focus utterly on just one role.

Role Compression

Where damage is concerned, more is always better. With support, however, a build can provide more healing or boons than is necessary. Where this is the case, supports will often partially fill other roles, though their priority should always be the primary role.

A good approach to support builds (and team compositions in general) is: “As offensive as possible, as defensive as necessary”.

Tanking is almost always a “compressed” role. Many classes in Guild Wars 2 come with sufficient active defense to survive as tank (aided by healers) without the need to build for survivability at all, and so the tank role will be fulfilled by a damage or support (typically a support).

Group Requirements

Aside from the specific requirements required for each encounter, there are a number of common effects that groups should seek to provide on (nearly) every encounter.

Essential Boons

One of the key support aspects that every group should fulfill is providing certain essential boons. These boons are considered essential because of the huge damage increase each provides - if a class could provide just one of these boons to the group it would be worth taking instead of a DPS player even if it did literally nothing else. In practice though, most boon supports can provide multiple boons.

Might - Might provides a massive damage boost to both power and condition damage builds.

Quickness - Quickness speeds up (almost) all actions in the game, allowing players to get more skills into a smaller window of time. This is of huge benefit to all players.

Alacrity - Lowers the cooldown of all skills. Similar to quickness, this allows more skills to be activated within a smaller window of time and is of huge benefit to all players.

Fury - Increases the chance to critically hit by 20%. Almost every power build will require fury to reach 100% crit chance. In addition to the damage boost, many builds have on-crit effects that form part of their rotation and it is especially important to those builds. Even condition damage builds frequently have on-crit effects that make the boon very strong.

A note on boon strip

At the start of a raid encounter, support classes should begin providing their essential buffs as soon as possible. However, all boons will be removed from players shortly after the encounter begins (varies from encounter to encounter, but usually within three seconds). This means that players providing boons need to wait until after this boon strip occurs before they begin.

Additional Buffs

Non-essential boons

The above boons are essential for every damage class, and should always be provided. Some builds rely on additional boons, and these should be provided when you have such builds. Generally, some amount of these boons will be provided by the class in question, but the higher uptime the better.

Swiftness - Swiftness provides a damage boost to both power Weaver and Warriors using the Discipline traitline (both core and elite specializations).

Vigor - Vigor provides bonus condition damage to Mirage and increases the damage potential of both Daredevil and Mirage as their rotations involve frequent dodging.

Resolution - Power guardian builds (and elite specializations) gain multiple benefits from having Resolution.

Regeneration - Mesmer builds that use the Chaos traitline gain multiple benefits from having Regeneration.

Defensive Boons

In addition to the above boons, there are a few that can be very useful in the right situations. Aegis and Stability in particular are still somewhat rare, so their presence in a build can be very potent.

Aegis - Blocks a single incoming attack. Providing this to your subgroup allows them to ignore certain mechanics that might otherwise require a dodge, which can result in higher damage and/or less chance of death when used at the right time.

Protection - Reduces incoming strike damage by 33%. This is a massive boost to survivability that can easily make the difference between an attack one-shotting a player or not. Resolution works in a similar way against conditions, but the vast majority of damage will be strike damage.

Stability - Works similarly to Aegis in that it allows for the ignoring of some mechanics. While it doesn't prevent damage, you can have multiple stacks on you at once, preventing multiple incoming control effects.

Essential conditions

While many classes benefit from particular conditions being on the target, the only truly essential condition is Vulnerability. Many builds (particularly power) provide enough Vulnerability to keep it capped on a boss, but in the event Vulnerability is not capped some adjustments will be required.

Pulls/Cleave

An aspect of role assignment that is often underappreciated. Around half the raid encounters feature enemies or objects that will spawn near the group and can either cause serious damage to the squad or waste the squad’s time dealing with them. Depending on the encounter the simplest solution is to use skills that pull enemies into the boss where they will be quickly killed by the DPS, or skills that hit targets over a large area so that enemies or objects will be defeated without the need to take focus off the boss.

Numerous skills can fulfil this function, but two in particular are worth mentioning due to their potency:

Temporal Curtain - A Chronomancer can take an offhand focus to access Temporal Curtain. The curtain itself can be placed at 900 range from the Chronomancer and activated a second time to pull up to five targets within 600 range to the centre of the curtain. Unlike other options, the pull is not restricted by line of sight, can pull to remote locations, and affects a larger AoE than most alternatives.

Epidemic - A condition necromancer can take Epidemic as one of their utilities. This is a low-cooldown skill (when traited) that can hit up to 5 targets within 900 range of a primary target, copying conditions to them. With sufficient conditions on the main target, this is enough to kill the majority of additional enemies, thus offering an incredible amount of cleave without ever needing the necromancer to take focus off attacking the boss.

While the above options are strong in their own right, they can also be supplemented by additional skills. The following are worth mentioning as they are taken by support classes that many groups will already have in the group.

Blazing Edge - Firebrand will normally take an axe for DPS or to provide Fury. This skill is a moderate 600 range pull on three targets.

Path of Scars - A Ranger (typically a Druid) can take an offhand axe to gain this skill, which will pull three targets towards the player. The skill has a range of 1200 but will only pull targets 450 units as the axe returns, and is somewhat slow-moving.

While the above two skills are not strong on their own, they can be very effective when combined with Temporal Curtain - either by using them to pull foes closer after Temporal Curtain groups them up or by pulling additional foes that may have been missed by Temporal Curtain.

Scorched Earth - If the squad has a Condi Berserker, then their longbow burst skill is Scorched Earth - a large 1,200 range AoE that deals a large amount of burning and can be used very frequently while Berserk is active. The AoE is divided into 5 separate sections, each of which has its own target cap, so the skill could theoretically hit up to 25 targets. The best use of this skill is for the Berserker to line themselves up so that the boss is between them and the target(s) to be cleaved. Not only will this allow for effective long-range cleave, but hitting multiple targets will provide higher stacks of Furious, making this a DPS increase!

Squad Composition

All these factors will combine to define the structure of a squad. The vast majority of boons affect five targets. So there will need to be at least two sources to cover every player.

The examples below cover the most common options (at the time of writing). Other options may also be viable, particularly in regards to Might and Fury.

Quickness

There are seven reliable sources of Quickness in the game - Catalysts, Chronomancers, Firebrands, Harbingers, Herald, Scrappers and Warriors (any elite specialization). Daredevil or Thief can also provide Quickness on raid encounters with the Detonate Plasma stolen skill (currently Matthias, Keep Construct (from the Projections), Mursaat Overseer, and Adina).

Catalyst deals a lot of damage, and can provide more quickness by adjusting their rotation. However, their only source of Quickness comes from a single skill every ~11 seconds, and missing it will leave a player completely without Quickness until the next application.

Chronomancer brings the option for excellent pulls and is a very effective tank due to the high amount of active defense and the ability to provide boons at range, meaning that they can be further from the group. However, their damage is lower than other options and Quickness generation relies on constant clone generation and shattering.

Firebrand’s Quickness is limited to a narrow cone and a small AoE around the Firebrand, and they do not have as strong a pull as a Chronomancer. However, they do good damage with a relatively simple rotation and also apply Quickness frequently and instantaneously, making them very reliable.

Harbinger is similar to firebrand in that it applies shorter duration Quickness more frequently and so are generally a reliable source. Unfortunately they rely on staying in shroud for long durations for good uptime, and taking too much damage in this mode can kick them out early. They also have a smaller boon application radius than other options.

Herald deals good damage with a rather fast-paced rotation, and brings a huge amount of supplementary boons - including high Might generation, which is a rarity in Quickness supports. More importantly, they have access to Revenant legends such as Jalis that can provide near-permanent Stability or Ventari, that has a long-duration mobile projectile block. Finally, they can bring a staff in their off-set which gives access to Surge of the Mists - the most powerful CC in the game.

Scrapper provides AoE Quickness around it at regular intervals, making it more reliable than Chronomancer. However, it cannot provide boons at range, and has limited additional utility outside of Superspeed.

Any Warrior specialization can provide Quickness via banners and the Discipline traitline. They are average in terms of reliability, DPS and utility, but they have a key benefit in that their banners can be dropped at 600 range. Once the AoE is taken into account this means that they can hit players up to 960 units away, which is over twice what any other build can manage (except Catalyst). When you also take into account that they only need to be used once every ~25s, this allows warrior to easily provide permanent Quickness uptime to their subgroup while dealing with mechanics off-stack.

Alacrity

There are eight reliable sources of Alacrity in the game - Chronomancers, Mechanists, Mirages, Rangers (technically any ranger spec but Druid is most common), Renegades, Specters, Tempests and Willbenders.

Chronomancer has to run a very specific build and high boon duration in order to maintain Alacrity, but it can provide boons at range and brings mesmer's powerful utility skills, which can be useful in some groups.

Druid can only really be run as a healer, but brings a great variety of boons and can provide more healing at range than other options. For a DPS alacrity ranger build, Untamed can abuse Fervant Force to get away with no boon duration and only two spirits, but the rotation is very difficult to pull off and provides almost no additional boons.

Even when focussing on damage, Mechanist provides a decent amount of incidental barrier, which can enable some groups to run with fewer healers. It also has access to some an on-demand source of Aegis and Stability (albeit on a long cooldown), which can make it very potent on the right encounters.

The utility of Mirage is limited, but it is also capable of maintaining permanent Might on the squad, and applies a significant amount of Confusion which makes it a very strong DPS in its own right on certain bosses.

Renegade has many of the same benefits as Herald, but otherwise deals low damage and provides few additional boons in comparison so other Alacrity options.

Similarly, Specter also provides a good amount of incidental barrier and has the option to target specific allies to support them directly, which can be very helpful for tanks in particular. With Well of Bounty, they can provide a good range of boons, and deal a good amount of damage while doing so.

Tempests bring a wide variety of boons even when on DPS variants, but the necessity to complete long overloads to provide alacrity makes them struggle on encounters that may disrupt their rotation.

Willbender is the weakest option of the bunch. Its damage is average, and Alacrity generation depends on constantly hitting the boss, making it significantly less versatile than other options. As such, it is by far the least common option used.

Might and Fury

While many classes can provide Might to allies, there are some that are worth highlighting as they are able to keep their subgroup might capped while also offering Fury: Deadeye, Druid, Tempest and Warrior (all elite specializations).

When run as healers, Catalyst and Firebrand are each able to provide three of the key boons: Fury, Might and Quickness.

Per the rule of role compression, these builds will typically also perform healer (Catalyst, Druid, Firebrand and Tempest) or DPS (Deadeye and Warrior) roles as well. As the majority of groups will require at least one healer, Druid is by far the most common for the following reasons:

• It provides Frost Spirit and Sun Spirit, which are two potent buffs unique to Ranger. It can also provide a Storm Spirit if the group’s Vulnerability output is lacking.
• It provides Spotter to its subgroup.
• It can heal and provide Might while off the stack. This enables a Druid to handle other mechanics away from the group without losing much effectiveness.
• It can provide a good amount of CC through pets.
• It has the option to bring an offhand axe for additional pulls.

On the subject of Fury, it can be provided by the following classes that also offer other key boons, that haven't been mentioned so far:

Firebrand and Harbinger can provide permanent Fury as well as Quickness while providing a lot of damage.

Specter is the same, except that it provides Alacrity instead of Quickness.

When run as a healer, Mechanist is able to provide permanent Fury in addition to Alacrity.

Healers

Depending on the boss, a squad may desire multiple healers. While groups should always be aiming to have as few healers as possible, as many as necessary should be taken. It is most efficient to have a Druid as one of those healers, but Druid’s sustained healing is comparatively weak so it may be beneficial to something else as an additional healer.

Special mention must go to Scourge - while it has low healing and provides practically no buffs, it has the strongest access to barrier in the game. Barrier effectively prevents the targets from taking damage and can even allow the group to survive some attacks that would otherwise instantly down players. Scourge also has access to Transfusion, which will teleport downed players to your location and begin reviving them. This enables Scourge to save a group from situations that would otherwise be a wipe.

A note on reviving

It is important to note that reviving players from downed state is everyone’s responsibility - letting a player die because a DPS player won’t break their rotation will result in much lower DPS overall.

There are a few exceptions:

• If reviving the player would get other players killed.
• The tank should not revive as they will turn the boss towards the rest of the group, making matters worse.
• Healers are well suited to reviving as healing % modifiers affect the speed of reviving. However, in cases where there is only one healer, the loss of healing on the remaining players can easily lead to more people being downed. With multiple healers, this is less risky, but you should still avoid having all healers reviving.

Of course, everyone should still revive as a last resort if no-one else will.

A note on buff priority

Generally speaking, boons apply on the following priority: Subgroup -> Proximity. This means that a five-target buff will be applied to members of the subgroup within range, and if this is fewer than five, it will then be applied to the closest player regardless of subgroup. Similarly, if there are more than five targets within the subgroup in range, it will apply to the five closest players to the source of the boon.

Healing and condition cleansing is slightly different: a healing skill will not target a player that is at full health, nor will a condition cleanse target a player with no conditions (there are some exceptions, typically when the skill also provides a boon), and will instead apply to the highest priority target that can be healed. This means healing will “overflow” to other subgroups, though the healer’s subgroup will still receive more.

A note on stacking

There are very few abilities in Guild Wars 2 that target a specific character for boons or heals, most are instead applied in an AoE according to the priorities described above. This means that groups will “stack” near one another to ensure that supports can hit as many players as possible.

In general, melee weapons deal more damage than ranged options and so the result is that the stack will want to be in melee range where possible. Therefore, in the vast majority of encounters the tank will face the boss in one direction while everyone else stacks directly behind it. This also ensures that players take less damage, as attacks aimed at the tank usually cleave.

Because of this, the benefits of ranged weapons are somewhat minimized and even classes that are capable of dealing all their damage at range are still encouraged to be in melee.

Group Layout

Looking at the options above, a squad of 10 players will usually be divided into two subgroups and each should have a source of Alacrity, Fury, Might and Quickness.

As there are many viable options, the following is only one example. As Druid and Warrior offer powerful 10-target buffs, we will chose to take one each of these, and Chrono also provides a huge amount of unique utility, so we want at least one of those. In this example, we also chose to maximise survivability by providing permanent Protection to both subgroups (the druid can provide ~60% Protection uptime to the entire squad with Stone Spirit), so the source does not need to be permanent. Finally, we want to leave the squad as flexible as possible by limiting the number of supports we take and only taking a single healer as standard. This means we can freely swap DPS around or take an additional healer without needing to worry about rearranging anything.

As we already have a Druid, that means we don't want any extra healers and also that Fury and Might are sorted for one subgroup.

So next, we look for extra sources of Protection. Firebrand, Renegade and Scrapper can all provide Protection for “free” without adjusting their builds or rotations, and are all DPS-focused so we will chose one of these.

As we have a Chronomancer already, we can complete this subgroup by taking a Renegade to provide Alacrity and Protection and putting them together with the Druid:

Subgroup
1	Chronomancer	Druid	Renegade	?
2	Firebrand/Renegade/Scrapper	Healer/DPS	?	?

For the second subgroup, we are left with three options. The simplest is to run a Firebrand and a Mirage, which covers all the boons we need. We can then place the warrior in the appropriate subgroup (subgroup 1 for power, subgroup 2 for condi) and we're finished.

Subgroup
1	Chronomancer	Druid	Renegade	DPS/Warrior
2	Firebrand	Mirage	Healer/DPS	DPS/Warrior

Alternatively, we could get the Warrior to run Phalanx Strength in order to provide Might to subgroup 2. This would allow us to bring either a Scrapper with a second support providing Alacrity and Fury, or a Renegade with a second support providing Fury and Quickness. As we also want to limit the number of supports we bring, this means the following groups are also possible:

Subgroup
1	Chronomancer	Druid	Renegade	DPS
2	Renegade	Firebrand or Harbinger	Healer/DPS	PS Warrior

or

Subgroup
1	Chronomancer	Druid	Renegade	DPS
2	Scrapper	Specter	Healer/DPS	PS Warrior

These compositions only cover the first four slots in each subgroup to allow for layouts other than five-five, and remaining slots will typically be filled with DPS or encounter-specific roles.

As a Warrior’s banners hit 10 targets, it does not matter which subgroup they are placed in. However, as a power Warrior benefits greatly from Spotter and Swiftness, it may be recommended to place them in the Druid’s subgroup.

If there are additional healers, these should be spread such that there is at least one in each subgroup.

All that remains is placing the DPS players. Four classes, in particular, are of note:

Mesmers running the Chaos traitline require high Regeneration uptime. Most healers are capable of providing this to at least their own subgroup, but in the case of single-healer setups they should be placed in the same subgroup as the Druid.

Weavers and Power Berserkers (DPS or banner) - Both of these classes get a significant damage buff from Swiftness and require Spotter. As the Druid is also the most reliable source of Swiftness thanks to Call of the Wild, these classes should be placed in a Druid’s subgroup if there is no other reliable source.

Next, Dragonhunters require high Resolution uptime, which is best provided by other Dragonhunters. Hence Dragonhunters should usually be placed together or split evenly between the two subgroups if there are too many. As Dragonhunters don’t require Spotter but benefit greatly from Assassin's Presence, it will often be best to place them in the support Renegade’s subgroup if there is one.

Remaining DPS should be placed depending on whether they require Spotter to crit-cap or not.

Simple Raid Builds

For a selection of recommended builds for beginners, check out our Simple Raid Builds guide

Raid Guides

Hopefully this guide has provided an understanding of the considerations that go into forming a raid team. Both this and the guides below aim to be written in such a way as to be relevant irrespective of the current balance. They provide details on the roles that are required for each encounter and together with this guide should be enough to build compositions for each encounter that work for your group.