We always need folks to step up to run the raid tool, but it can be intimidating to get started with, so I thought I'd put together a guide to make it easier.
This guide assumes a guild going through TLP on a server like Agnarr.
Setup[]
Make sure you know your hotkeys for opening the raid tool (I have Alt+R) and opening the expedition tool (I have Alt+Z). You'll be opening and closing them a lot.
Get your colors right! You care a lot about organizing these classes into groups, so each of the classes below should have their own color (though folks in the same category, like other healers or tanks or melee dps, can share colors).
- Bards
- Clerics
- Shamans and Druids
- Tanks
- Melee DPS (Monks, Rogues, Rangers)
- Other
I don't follow my own advice (partly because I set up my raid colors months before ever running the raid tool and never changed them), but if I were setting things up again from scratch, that's how I would do it.
To change your colors, click the "options" button in the raid tool. Note that you can only do this when you're in a raid already.
General Tips[]
"Everyone remember to /dzquit!"[]
It's actually often a good idea if the DZ leader doesn't /dzquit. The reason for that is that the dz leader can boot people from the DZ to speed things up. I usually don't indiscriminately boot people (because sometimes people want to hold the DZ open on an alt to finish up some trash later), but it can help speed things up. You can boot people by selecting their name and then clicking "remove player"
How do you do any of this? It isn't working when I click the proper buttons![]
Unfortunately, the raid tool seems to be pretty laggy. It's pretty common for me to press buttons to try to move people between groups (even when the raid is locked and such) and have no change take effect for 10 or 20 seconds. It's annoying, but there's no way around it.
How do you invite someone?[]
There are several options!
1. /dzadd playername, /raidinvite playername
2. Click on their name when they send you a tell and choose invite to raid.
3. Click on them and then press the invite buttons in the raid and DZ tool.
I normally use #1, but I think most folks prefer using #2 when running raid tool.
How do you make someone the master looter, give someone mark NPC, or make someone main assist?[]
There are three buttons in the right-most column of the raid tool. Click on someone's name and then click one of those.
Note that the RemLeader, RemLooter, and AddLooter buttons aren't used for any of this. My first time raid leading, I had a big confusion because I tried to use AddLooter rather than MstrLooter. That won't do anything useful with how we use the raid tool.
Why is main assist weird? There are multiple target circles![]
For some reason, it's possible to delegate multiple main assists. Often, the person running raid tool will forget to remove someone from main assist when there's an MA switch. To see if this is happening, you can click on the "Role" column on the top of the raid tool to sort by role. Then, only the people that have a role (MA, master looter, or mark NPC) will go to the top, so you can see if there are multiple MAs. To remove on MA, just target them and press the MA button again.
What does it mean if someone's name is a different color in the raid tool?[]
There are a few colors.
Red is for the person you have most recently clicked on in the raid tool. This person is selected, so if you move groups, delegate MA, or do something else in the raid tool, it'll probably happen to whoever is red. This is separate from your target in game (though it is related) because most raid tool things work across zones.
People who are AFK are one color (Blue? Orange?)
People who are out of zone are one color (Orange? Blue?)
Everyone else is white.
How do you do all of this and still participate in the raid?[]
When running the raid tool, your main priority is managing the tool more so than playing your class because that way you can keep the raid running. Often, that will mean you'll forget to attack trash mobs, you won't be healing your group, etc. That's fine. You'll get better at multitasking over time, but until then, your main job is running the raid tool.
This is why clerics shouldn't run the raid tool.
There's a lot to keep in mind! I don't think I'll be able to do it![]
Don't worry about getting everything perfect. Especially at the start, the raid tool is pretty overwhelming. It's like that for everyone. Your help is still REALLY appreciated even if you do things a little slowly or make a few mistakes.
Also, if you're concerned that you aren't getting group compositions right, feel free to ask after you have your first draft of group compositions done. One of the raid leaders will be able to give you the green light or tell you what changes to make.
How do you move people between groups?[]
Using the tool[]
This is the main part of your job (aside from inviting folks).
First, figure out who you want to move where. If someone tells you "I want to be moved from group 3 to group 7," then it's pretty easy: sort by groups if you aren't already (click the "grp" header at the top), find them and click on them, then click the number at the bottom. Those numbers at the bottom of the interface mean "move the currently selected person to the group number I press." Also "NoGroup" means "move the currently selected person out of group."
That's great if people tell me group numbers, but they never do! How do I figure out where people are to move them?[]
Usually, people won't tell you what group they want to be moved from and to, which makes your job harder. Rather than hassling folks every 5 minutes to remember to include group numbers in their tells to you, there are a few ways to get around this.
1. One is just to have a perfect memory and know which group that person is in. This is actually often feasible if you have a strategy for how you organize groups.
My strategy: bards always go on top. What this means is that if there are 4 bards, then that means there is a bard in group 1, group 2, group 3, and group 4. Most of your job involves deciding who gets to be grouped with a bard, so having bards on top helps a lot.
After that, put other folks that you need to juggle around a lot (tanks, clerics, melee dps) on top.
Keep at least one group (towards the bottom) empty for when folks need to be moved into a coth group or something like that.
If you have a strategy for how you organize groups, you'll be able to stay in "sort by group" mode a lot of the time.
2. If you want to move a specific person, you can sort by player name (by clicking that button at top). You can click player name again to reverse sort to reduce scrolling. Usually, if I want to do this, it's because someone wants to be put with their alt or with a coth mage or something, so it's good to check out the destination group first to make sure that it has room. That requires finding the name of one person, re-sorting by groups to see who else is in their group, booting one person, resorting by names to find the other person, and then moving that person. And then maybe putting the booted person somewhere.
3. When you're forming groups originally (or when you need to drastically remake groups), sorting by class is usually helpful. If you click the "class" header at the top once, it'll sort (eg, bards on top), and if you click it again, it'll reverse sort (eg, warriors on top).
How do you get everyone with their alts?[]
This comes naturally over time. It's okay if you don't put everyone with their alts.
If you want to do this:
1. An easy way of seeing who is whose alt is by opening the guild tool (not the raid tool), making sure you do NOT show offline players, and then sorting by the notes column. By convention, the main's name is always the first word there.
2. After you form up groups initially, ask people to send you tells if they want to be moved. This is their opportunity to be switched into the same group.
3. Generally, I don't worry about then when initially making groups. Just get groups made and then make tweaks for alts after the fact.
The main people that I try to accommodate:
1. Anyone with a boxed bard. It sucks to box a bard and not get any of the benefits from that bard.
2. Monks with boxed healers or mages. It can help a lot for the pullers to have their CotH and Torpor handy.
How do you know when to switch between the below group compositions?[]
Ask the raid leader. Always try to know who the next boss is going to be and whether that boss will need balanced groups or clerics with bards. That way, you can start rearranging groups as early as possible.
Bards are great! Who gets to be in bard groups?[]
#1: The main tanks need to be in a bard group. Usually, there is one bard for the tanks.
#2: Clerics need bards. Usually, when bards are dedicated to clerics (rather than clerics being spread out), there are two bards dedicated to clerics. If there are extra slots in those groups, they go to necros for twitches (or dot army).
#3: Melee DPS. I think that bards provide more of a DPS boost for melee DPS (who already are usually at the top of the DPS charts) than they do for casters. Priority order on melee DPS is monk > rogue > ranger. This is because, currently, that's the DPS ranking, so bards would get the most bang for their buck by prioritizing melee DPS that way.
Booting people from groups is REALLY helpful[]
I think that one of the main reasons that I'm able to get people in new groups pretty quickly is that I don't hold the previous groups sacred and I keep things organized for efficiency. It's okay if people are out of group for a few minutes. It's okay if you separate people who were together before. If you need to move folks into group 1, then clear out group 1, then put whoever you need in group 1 (without consideration to where they were before).
This is more disruptive, but I believe it's also quite a bit faster. Our raids are resilient enough to handle disruption, so it makes sense to prioritize speed in raid tool usage.
What general group compositions will you be using?[]
Composition 1: Balanced Groups[]
When we're clearing trash or when a boss has a big AoE such that everyone needs heals, we might have balanced groups. This means that there should be a healer in every group.
Often, when you're going to switch between balanced groups and clerics with bards, the groups won't be very close to your desired end goal. As such, it's usually helpful to start with a clean slate. Boot everyone from group 1, then sort by classes and find the people you need and assign them to group 1.
If I want to go totally blank slate (eg, you're forming groups at the start of a raid or you're forming groups after people had to camp out), then I usually have a different strategy: assign class by class. So, first assign all bards to groups (group 1, group 2, group 3, etc). Then, assign all clerics to groups (group 1, group 2, group 3, etc). Then, assign non-cleric healers to the bottom groups. Then, assign tanks to groups (sometimes, I frontload the tanks. Eg, group 1 and group 2 would each have bard, cleric, cleric, tank, tank, tank). Then, assign melee DPS to the remaining bard slots. Then, assign the remaining folks arbitrarily.
When assigning people in a given class, I usually put the better geared tanks / melee DPS / clerics (eg, the ones that attend every raid) on top. Better geared tanks usually end up doing a lot of the tanking, so having them with clerics that have bigger mana pools helps. Better geared melee DPS do more DPS to start with, so they get more of a benefit from a bard.
Composition 2: Clerics with Bards[]
For harder targets or targets where we don't need everyone to heal from huge AoEs, we often have clerics consolidated with bards. This means that many groups will not have healers. That's okay.
Group 1 is the tank group. Bard plus 5 tanks (except in rare circumstances like when the tank group needs a dispeller, in which case it's bard, dispeller, and 4 tanks)
Groups 2 and 3 are the cleric groups. Each group is bard, 5 clerics. Or, ideally, if there are 8 clerics for instance, the first group would be bard and 5 clerics, and the second group would be bard, 3 clerics, 2 necros. Necros need mana to twitch clerics and such in long fights (plus they do good dps).
Then, the next groups with bards are melee DPS groups. These groups should be one bard and five melee DPS (monk > rogue > ranger).
Remaining groups should be balanced as best you can given the above constraints.
Similar to composition 1, when arranging these groups, I just boot whoever is in the first few groups and then sort by class to put people where they should be.
Composition 3: CotH Groups[]
Take whatever groups you had before and boot one person (ideally, not the cleric) so that you have groups of 5. Then, move the coth mages through the groups in order. Have the cothers send you a tell and announce in voice chat when they're ready to be moved to the next group.
If we can start clearing trash before everyone is cothed, then try to get a tank, cleric, bard, and DPS through early.
In general, try to make sure that the cothers have mana. This means cothing bards, necros, and at least one enchanter early.
Once a group is cothed, you could start rearranging that group, but be careful if you do so -- you don't want to mix up people who have vs haven't been cothed.