Hello everyone!
Guild Wars 2 Raid Training [NA Only] is a Discord server that has been operating since June to help provide a space for players who are new to raiding to have a jumping off point, and for experienced players to be able to share their knowledge and find other equally experienced players.
We believe we fill a spot somewhere between the toxic LFG “link 150+ LI Exp Only” mess and those who are already lucky enough to have a static group to run with. Instead, we aim to provide a network for players of varying degrees of experience to form up and become more experienced in a low stress learning environment. We are Guild-Agnostic, meaning anyone from anywhere can join us without having to formally join a guild and “rep” with us, so feel free to bring your guild members along for the ride.
Size and Scope: The TL:DR
We currently have over 600 members in our discord server and expect to grow larger in the near future. We conduct our runs every day of the week, often running two or three runs simultaneously if the demand is there and trainers are available. While we would love to expand faster, we are in need of more trainers to accommodate our growing population. Read more on this down below if you are interested!
Tier System – Experienced Based Progression
We use a “Tier” structure to track learning progress with each member that is based off of “your personal experience with each boss encounter.” We have a spreadsheet that we use to help players and Trainers keep track of each player’s “progress” in learning each individual boss. Each Raid boss or encounter has been sorted into one of four difficulty Tiers based on our interpretations of the mechanical difficulties and damage thresholds required to successfully complete the fight consistently. Once a player finds “all of the bosses within a Tier” as trivial, easy, and can clear them with very high consistency, we graduate that player into that Tier so that anyone who is looking for someone to bring to a raid knows that this person “knows their stuff” for any boss “At or Below” their Tier and so trainers will know that this person likely would benefit from training runs for bosses “One Tier Above” their current Tier.
The Two Types of Runs
Training Run – This is a run in which we expect to spend time explaining mechanics and helping players learn the encounter. The goal is not to achieve a quick, easy kill, but rather to get a first kill or at least learn the mechanics! Training Runs are generally conducted on content that is “One Tier Above your Tier” to give players a chance to learn the bosses and encounters that are “a bit” harder than what they are already proficient at killing each week. These can be conducted every day of the week, but generally occur more frequently from Wednesday to Sunday.
Clear Run – This is a run in which we expect to spend minimal time sorting out mechanic roles, and we expect everyone present to “know what to do” and to clear the fight in as few pulls as realistically possible. Clear Runs require that you be “In or Above This Tier” to participate. This is especially useful for players simply looking to get their quick kills completed early during the week to save more time to progress on Training Runs for bosses they are less experienced with. These can be conducted every day of the week, but generally occur on Monday reset and Tuesday to complete anything remaining from Monday reset.
Trainers Needed!
With all of the above said, the primary issue we have run into is that the ratio of Trainers to Trainees is out of sync: we have a lot of people interested in joining our runs, but this has exceeded our current supply of available trainers!
We have been hesitant about posting on the official forums and Reddit due to our relative lack of trainers, so for the time being we would prefer to hold off on linking the Discord directly (also, hello potential Reddit Hug-of-Death!) until we can build up our roster of trainers so that we can provide training to a larger community.
I wouldn’t mind a rev on my team with exception of Deimos/matt/samarog as break is low, and as it’s still pre-PoF, no range option.