Hello guys, I'm Triggeredcow of Lordaeron and this is my beginner's guide on raiding.
First of all, I'd like to mention that Lordaeron raid content is buffed compared to retail content of the same patch. The reason for this change in difficulty is warmane's urge to make content more fun and challenging. All of this sounds really exciting but it can also cause problems when it comes to raiding with people that haven't encountered heroic bosses or just ones with harder mechanics to comprehend.
In order to take proper care of your gear you can and should read a guide to your personal class' role in general PvE encounters.
Anyways, this guide is about the encounter itself and what you need to know in order to have an adequate behavior when fighting bosses.
I enlisted everything you need to be familiar with below:
1. Awareness
2. Environment
3. Boss skills
3.1. Boss skills that manipulate the environment
3.2. Boss skills that manipulate the boss itself
3.3. Boss skills that manipulate players
3.4. Boss skills that simply deal damage
4. Communication
5. Timing
1. Awareness:
Raid awareness - the most important type of awareness really. Raid awareness means knowing what's going on with your teammates
not just in the group but in the entire raid. Why is that so important? Well, most mechanics that blizzard implemented into bosses and raids in general require teamwork to be executed properly. You can't really coordinate with your teammates if you don't know what's going on with them at the time. The solution:
2. Environment:
Raid environment is the main foundation for raid instances. Without the proper environment, bosses would not be able to execute the
correct script for the fight.
That's why you can notice a door closing behind you every time you start a raid boss fight. This is necessary so that the boss can
manipulate environment safely without the possibility of bugs in the script and exploits of the instance. When you raid an instance you get familiar with its environment, and by environment I mean literally the physical floor and walls textures and all that. What we need to watch out for, though, is the boss manipulating that environment to make in unsafe for us. For example:
Here you can see that Dreadscale has spawned a green poisonous cloud on the floor of the stadium, thus manipulating the
environment to be harmful to players who stand in exactly that area. Paying attention to the environment around you is very important, because most boss raid-wiping mechanics rely on players being crushed by unsafe environment, but we'll talk about specific environment raid-wiping later.
3. Boss skills
The only thing you need to know about bosses for an encounter to be successful are their skills. Not their lore, not their loot, but their
skills. There are several kinds of boss skills and mechanics that I'd like to discuss.
3.1. Boss skills that manipulate the environment
As I stated above, bosses often rely on environment-manipulating skills in order to wipe the raid. Those can be poisonous
clouds(Acidmaw & Dreadscale, Grobbulus), fire clouds(Gormok the Impaler, Koralon the Flame Watcher), any kind of elemental clouds or rays(Thorim in the arena, Kologarn), volcanoes erupting from the floor(Jaraxxus), Lava erupting periodically from the floor(Heigan the Unclean), Rain of fire(Grand Widow Fearlina), Lava wave moving from one side of the platform to the other(Sartharion), Death & Decay-ish circles on the floor(Runemaster Molgeim) and so on. You need to have visual perception of these mechanics' occurences. There is practically no other way to avoid them than anticipating and moving away from them.
3.2. Boss skills that manipulate the boss itself
These are often dispellable(Rage, Berserk, etc.) but when they are not(Koralon's Molten Fists) we need to
anticipate their occurence and deal with them appropriately. Now Koralon is a good example as we have all seen a hunter use distracting shot to taunt him away when he casts his buff so that the boss would actually never hit anyone with molten fists on. There are other raid boss self-buffs that we need to watch out for. For example Grand Widow Fearlina's Frenzy, Icehowl's Enrage when he hits a player with a charge, Gluth's self-heal when he eats a Zombie Chow and so on. You can negate these by simply anticipating them before they actually happen. That way all raiders can react accordingly and kite/silence/dispel the boss to prevent a raid wipe.
3.3. Boss skills that manipulate players
There can be several types of boss skills that manipulate players. They are most often debuffs that bosses put on
us or our fellow raiders. You should be aware of the debuffs' occurences by either looking at your raid grid or having an addon that displays boss' debuffs on players. Either way, you need to know who has a debuff and for how long EVERY time the boss casts said debuff. That way you can keep track of the boss' debuff pattern as well as you can see if you have a debuff on your character. Not all debuffs are dealt with in the same matter as others. Good examples are:
Acidmaw's poisonous debuff - to remove this you must run to the offtank's side(where your offtank is tanking Dreadscale) so that his own fire debuff(that Dreadscale casts) can dispel your poisonous debuff and you can go back to fulfilling your role.
Thaddius' negative or positive charge - to deal with this you must stack with fellow raiders that have the same debuff as yours. If a negative (-) charged player goes near a positive (+) charged player they both take increasing damage over time.
Grobbulus' Mutating injection - to deal with this you must run to a corner of the room so that when you spawn a gas cloud it does not affect other players.
XT Deconstructor's various debuffs - to deal with them you must run away from the rest of the raid in order to only deal damage to yourself when the debuff expiers and blows up.
3.4. Boss skills that simply deal damage
These can be Chain Lightnings, Fire Breaths, Exploding Vortexes, Frostbolts, Firebolts, Fire Novas, etc. You
usually cannot dodge them so your healers must heal you back to full health once an effect like that has appeared. However, it's good to anticipate these as well so you can use your defensive cooldowns accordingly. That way you would not trouble your healers at time of massive damage intake.
4.Communitacion
I stated a couple ways to prevent a raid wipe but honestly, the best way to do that is to simply communicate with your fellow
raidmates. That's why every raid has a leader in the first place. The raid leader's position makes him a shotcaller about important decisions such as tank movements and using combat ressurections. The raid leader has a vision for the encounter that many other raiders don't, so it's important that your raid leader is competent and trustworthy. However, that does not mean that the rest of the raid should not communicate. A good way to coordinate with your teammates is to simply ask them what they need you to do on Discord, Teamspeak, Raidcall, Skype or other matters of vocal communication.
5.Timing
Via communication your raid can easily spread information about the boss' most critical skills and mechanics. If every raid member is
aware that the boss is going to spawn a poison cloud, every raid member would most likely dodge that cloud, thus preventing a raid wipe. That's why practice is so important when raiding. Raid leaders can't always yell at their teammates about an add spawning or /rw about someone having a debuff. A good way to take some weight off your leader's shoulders is to be aware when the boss is going to do something bad to the raid before it actually happens. There are tons of addons concentrated specifically on boss fight timings so I urge you to download and use such addon when raiding.
In addition to all the advice I put into this guide, Tankspot's videos on raid boss encounters are really thorough and easy to comprehend at the same time so I urge you to watch those on Youtube or any similar website before actually engaging a raid boss. That way you can save both yourself and your raid leader a lot of time.