RTI Rotation & Benchmark Guide

So you’ve probably been told to go “practise your rotation on the golem” before or “you need to reach x% of the benchmark”, but you don’t fully understand what that means? That’s exactly what this guide will cover, along with a full overview of the usage of the training area and relevant websites and resources. This will be addressed towards players new to raiding; you won’t find specifics for the individual classes since that is subject to future changes of the game, and this is supposed to be generally applicable. You might, however, find some resources you are looking for in the advanced section at the end.

The importance of rotation, gear and benchmarks

In general, raids are a big part of the endgame content in Guild Wars 2 and thus designed to work optimally with the best gear available. For this reason, players have come up with what they have found to be the most efficient tactic available (called the meta). This includes squad composition, stats on gear, and sequence of skill usage to get the most out of your role. The meta changes dynamically with balance changes in the game and is usually established and published by the most dedicated and experienced players of the community.

The most-referred to is the guild SnowCrows [SC], but there is also Lucky Noobs [LN] and MetaBattle. The builds are basically the same; they just offer different written guides and details about the builds. Discretize [dT] / Quantify [qT] also provide meta builds, but these are designed for fractals.

Benchmarks are the gold standard of every rotation and are aimed to be the best execution of the rotation. The reason why varying degrees of knowledge of your rotation and class are required by a lot of people in LFG and also RTI is that, once you’re at the point where you don’t have to focus on executing your rotation and role during a boss battle, you can pay attention to the mechanics of the boss. The requirement makes sense because most raid training guilds including RTI are there to teach you mechanics, not how to play your class. While class- and boss-specific details will very likely be pointed out by commanders during a raid training and questions are always welcome, you are expected to have learned your class to a degree where your rotation won’t become a burden to the squad.

Navigating snowcrows.com

Right up on the starting page below the logo, you can find the most current speedruns of SC members. While this is interesting to look at and see how the high end of the raiding community approaches bosses, these runs reflect only a very minor percentage of the raid player base and is not something you should try to learn from as a beginner. Compositions and rotations are optimised in the smallest details and due to this and inflation of DPS over years, mechanics will be ignored, skipped, and handled completely differently than what you will likely experience in training runs.

Next up is the benchmark section. Here you can see the benchmark numbers of the rotations of all classes and specialisations (including trait variations) in a ranking. As you can notice, the ranking is split up into “large” hit box (corresponds to huge hit box on the golem, see later) and small hit box. This is because some classes benefit from bigger hit boxes since some of their skills hit more times and/or more reliably on those. This can later also help as a guideline to decide which classes to play on certain bosses.

The numbers correspond to the DPS numbers obtained from the in-game log feature after killing the golem on the respective settings. The top one is the highest number achieved so far, while the one on the bottom reflects the average number achieved with a perfect rotation. (This is due to damage numbers being partly reliant on chance, but as you can see, the difference is negligible and thus basically irrelevant).

Clicking on the Buffs button on the top, you can see the exact settings the benchmarks are based on. To reflect realistic raid scenarios, benchmarks are done with 7 boons and 6 (class-based) buffs. While you can generally apply all conditions to the golem to practice your rotations, exceptions are outlined here. As a rule of thumb, though, always replicate the buffs, boons and conditions you can see in the respective benchmark video. More about that later.

SC has also listed optimal compositions for all of the bosses, including an overview of the roles and target DPS values. While this can be a general guideline, raid compositions in LFG and trainings will almost always be different. In RTI trainings, the commander will take care of the composition and ask for specific roles and classes that will make the training as accessible and enjoyable as possible.

Raid builds

The raid build section will be the most relevant for someone wanting to learn a class and its rotation. SC offers several builds for several roles on all classes and relevant specializations. You can select the class you are looking for from the drop-down menu, and you will be redirected to a build of one of the specialization of that class. In the menu-band on the top you can switch between the other available builds.

Note: all of the icons used on the page support mouse-over tool tips that display in-game information about the associated skill, trait, etc.

On top of a build page, you will find a short paragraph about the build’s relevance and role as well as other details. On the right, you can see a colour-coded viability grading of the build on specific bosses. Most commanders will ask for classes deemed at least mediocre or the specific boss. This can give you a rough idea of where you will be able to play your desired build. Below you will also see an estimation by SC on the build’s relevance and accessibility which can help you decide which build to adapt or rotation to learn.

Note: Many bosses favour power-based DPS and many others favour condition-based DPS. The viability grading will often reflect this - a power DPS class won’t do very well on a fight like Twin Largos but will do a lot better on a fight like Samarog.

Gear & Food

The meta equipment for that build is shown here. Only stats, runes (superior version), and sigils (superior version) are shown, but the gear is assumed to be ascended quality. An important thing to bring with you is consumables such as food (nourishment) and utility (enhancement) .

Because ascended food exists, you can usually expect commanders in RTI to provide the nourishment for your class but you are expected to bring the respective enhancement yourself. That being said, it is still recommended to bring both, since it makes quite a difference to your performance. The infusions shown here provide +5 to the respective stat per infusion, but this is not something the average raider or trainee is concerned about since it can be exorbitantly expensive and only contributes a very minor difference. Just like the food and utility shown here however, infusions are used in the benchmarks.

Traits & skills

Here you can see the skills and traits used for the build. Just select them as shown and you are good to go. You can obviously change to order of utility skills to your preference. For some builds, there are situational trait variations which is usually explained in the overview.

Rotations

Here you can see the optimal sequence of skills of your build. Most rotations consist of an opener (usually this is equivalent to your opening burst) and one or several loops. On the right, below the video where the DPS numbers in the benchmark are, you can see additional notes helping you to better understand your rotation. While this is generally good to keep in mind, it should not be the main concern when starting to learn a rotation. While the written rotation can seem like a lot and doesn’t feel very approachable, it is recommended to check out the benchmark video linked on the right to get a feeling for the rotation.

Benchmark video

Here you can see the written rotation in action on the golem in the training area. The DPS numbers overlaid on screen or in the in-game chat correspond to the values of the in-game log feature which calculates DPS every 20% of the boss’s health as you attack it (the last number here is the one used in the DPS ranking in the benchmark). Most of the time, you will also see the ArcDPS DPS meter, which shows DPS in real-time. In the end of most videos, the player will show off their food and utility, as well as traits and gear again for you to replicate. You will hopefully also be provided the link to the log of the benchmark run in the YouTube description, where you can look at the rotation in detail.

Class guides

You can access class guides by clicking on the raid guides button on the menu band of your build or select your build from the drop-down menu of Class Guides. Here you will find basic as well as detailed explanations of your role, gear traits, and rotations which are very useful to develop a better understanding of your class. It also provides details about all relevant raid bosses for your build and tips, which are very beneficial to read before a raid training. However, keep in mind that some of this may not be optimal for you or your squad and the commander may ask you to make changes.

The rest of the SC website might not be as relevant to you. It includes a gear optimiser that will help you optimise your gear for each specific boss, links to the Snow Crows help desk discord and raid training discords, as well as an application form to SC in case you think you will be able to participate in the next raid speed run ;).

The SnowCrows Help Desk is a very good resource for detailed questions about your build, where you can ask SC members and other experienced players in class-specific text channels. If you can’t find answers to your questions on the main website, feel free to ask away as there are no stupid questions and nobody improves without asking questions in the first place.

The Special Forces Training Area

The golem on which the benchmarks are done can be found in the Special Forces Training Area [&BCAJAAA=]. It’s accessible through the Lion’s Arch Aerodrome found in the south of Lion’s Arch. The Aerodrome functions as a lobby where you can access all raid wings. The portal to the training area can be found in the north-eastern corner of the map, and like with the normal raid wings, it can only be entered in a 10-man squad. This means you need to create a squad via the party menu on the top left corner, check the box for raid mode, and you are ready to go.

The Special Forces Training Area mimics a raid wing, which means you cannot use certain consumable or novelties. Walking up the the main area you will find a Golem Spawner and the Arena Console. The nearby technician will tell you something about the training area and how to use it. The Jam-r-Tron allows you to change the music for the time of your staying.

Arena Console

This console allows you to adjust your character and environment to make it reflect a raid scenario.

Environment

Adjusting the environment gives you the option to toggle on pulsing arena damage of three different levels. This is helpful to test out your ability to sustain and heal constant ticking damage pressure but is irrelevant for practicing benchmark rotations.

Adjust Self

Here you can apply all of the boons available in the game that will stay on you indefinitely until you leave the training area or remove them via the console. Remember that some boons like resistance and stability are not easily maintained permanently in a realistic raid scenario. You also have access to all class-specific buffs (profession-specific combat enhancements). Again, depending on your choice, the results might be unrealistic.

For comparing yourself with Snow Crows benchmarks, you can find which you need to activate in the Buffs section of the SC benchmarks. Remember the golden rule: you should always double check by paying attention to the buff bar in the beginning of a benchmark video. Food and utility is not something you can apply through the console and must be consumed from your inventory as usual, but there is a workaround if you don’t want to spend money on practicing your rotation and still be able to compare your results - see later.

Unfortunately buffs and boons cannot be removed individually; you can only remove all of them at once. You are able reapply the last configuration if you accidentally removed anything. The stored configuration will update with every change you make when updating buffs/boons through their sub-menu.

Golem Spawner

This console allows you to spawn a golem that you adjust to your needs. Once you apply the needed conditions, you need to go back twice or exit and interact with the console again to get to the main menu. Via Spawn a golem, you can select the hit box size of the golem. Benchmarks are only done on either average hit box (small hit box as termed on SC benchmarks) or huge hit box (large hit box as termed on SC benchmarks). Please check if your build has a relevant interaction with hit box size and look up your target numbers accordingly. For most classes you should default to average size.

Now you can select the health pool. All benchmarks are done on average health (4,000,000 HP) to yield comparable numbers. While this generally doesn’t matter in the beginning, certain builds have traits that are affected by target health percentage and will thus affect your DPS. Additionally, the benchmark numbers are taken from the last in game DPS log, which will be very different for different health pools.

Now, under additional settings you can add conditions to the golem. This is the only setting relevant for benchmarks. The conditions used for benchmarks can be found in the Buffs section of the SC benchmarks and you should double check by paying attention to the golem in the beginning of a benchmark video. Now you can spawn your golem and it will appear behind you. If you made a mistake while adjusting the golem settings you can reset them and start over.

You also might have noticed a special action key called Mushroom King's Blessing which will reset all of your cool downs to zero. This is helpful to reset a failed attempt or to only practice your opener.

Note: Practicing rotation on a budget: While Lucky Noobs pretty much offer the same guides and builds as SC, one thing useful for people looking to practice rotations is their full buffs benchmark. This is done by applying all buffs, boons and conditions and without food. This makes it very accessible and eliminates mistakes from setting up. The full buff numbers can be found by going here and navigating to full buffs.

Starting to learn a new rotation

Before you start hitting the golem, make sure you covered all of the following:

• Equip the correct gear, traits and skills.
• Apply the correct buff food.
• Set up yourself and the golem via the arena consoles correctly.
• Check if you are required to flank the golem.
• Optional: have ArcDPS open so you can see your DPS and more details in real time.

Note: At any point during your learning process, feel free to take a look at the benchmark video. Some people learn better reading through a written rotation, but sometimes the video can also teach you details that you wouldn’t otherwise notice.

You are now ready to start memorising your rotation. I recommend trying to memorise only a few skills at a time. Make yourself familiar with which buttons you need to press in what order (please, please refrain from using your mouse to click skills!). To achieve good DPS values, it’s especially important to know what the animations of your skills are, how long they take and when they are done. This is indicated by a yellow channel bar that appears during a skill’s animation. Every skill that has an animation will only fully do it’s effect when the channel bar is complete.

In the beginning, don’t focus on speed, but rather to execute each skill fully before you activate the next one. Now continue memorising the rotation by adding in more and more skills, while watching your character’s animation during the skill and the channel bar. Once you think you’ve memorised the rotation, you can start executing the full rotation on the golem, to see how it loops and where you might have to go back to look at the correct order of skills. Keep in mind that removing the golem via the console allows you to get out of fight (or out of combat / ooc).

Give your rotation practice to build up that muscle memory and then take a look at the Advanced section for some more detailed tips on how to get better!

Advanced

Skill priority

In some cases, you might notice that you consistently interrupt certain casts at specific points in your rotation. This is because some skills or actions take priority over others. In general, skills that provide you with any kind of survivability or crowd control (CC) will interrupt casts that do not give you that. Dodging takes the highest priority, followed by weapon-stowing, followed by heal skills with animations, followed by hard CC (stuns, dazes, launch etc.), and lastly soft CC (inhibiting conditions like fear, slow, blind etc.). Additionally, all skills take priority over your first weapon skill (auto-attack), assuming you have it set to auto attack. So, if your rotation uses one of these skills, you need to be careful to activate it after the previous cast has fully finished. This is most commonly a problem with rotations that have a heal skill baked into them.

Skill queuing

When you’ve reached a point that you’ve honed your muscle memory on the rotation and are pressing the right buttons, it’s time to start working on speed. If you find that you’re doing your rotation correctly, have the golem/yourself set up correctly, and you’re still shy of the benchmark value, the very likely culprit is a low rotation speed (followed closely by skill interruptions). A crucial part of executing a fast and clean rotation is skill queueing. You may have noticed that if you press skills while another one is still channeling it will be activated right after the previous skill has finished without a delay. This means pressing skills in fast succession allows you to execute them without wasting time in between.

Keep in mind though, that higher-priority skills as mentioned above, will interrupt the previous skill immediately and cannot be queued. Another thing to mention is that if you try to skill-queue during a long channel/animation, your prompt might time-out before the cast is finished, meaning you will have to press the skill you want to queue just at the end of the previous channel bar. Some skills also tend to not like to be queued, which can be helped by spamming the button for the respective skill until it is successfully queued.

Note: Some skills do not have any animation at all, but instead they instantly activate. These skills can be pressed and will activate immediately during any other animation and will not interrupt skills or skill queueing.

Note: If you notice that there are a lot of unwanted auto-attacks in your rotation, you can deactivate it by shift+right-clicking on your first weapon skill. If this is enabled, your first weapon skill (and subsequently the whole attack chain) will be automatically queued when you don’t skill-queue during the previous skill. This can waste time and it adds an unwanted animation. Disabling it forces you to pay more attention to skill queueing and deliberately pressing your first weapon skill when it is part of your rotation.

Improving on your rotation speed is the last stage of learning and also practising and perfecting your rotation. In theory, you achieve the highest rotation speed by skill-queueing all of your skills while timing interrupting skills as quickly after the previous cast as possible. If you reached this point and think you won’t improve much more on speed but you are still not quite happy, I recommend watching the benchmark video at low replay speed to find out exact timings of skills and skill-queues for specific rotations. Remember that most of the times you will also find a log file attached that might help you.

After-cast

The execution of a skill technically consists of multiple stages, each visually indicated. If you press a skill with animation, the skill icon starts pulsating and the channel bar will appear and progress. Meanwhile your character will play the skill animation and inflict the skill’s effect at specific points of the cast. Once the bar completes, the icon will go black and the cooldown timer will start. On most skills though, the cool down timer does not immediately start with completion of the channel bar. Some skills also have an animation that lasts longer than the channel bar.

This is referred to as the skill’s after-cast and is usually avoided by skill queueing (animations that extend beyond the channel bar will fully complete if you don’t skill queue). However, there are some skills whose after-cast you cannot cancel by simply skill-queueing; to work around that, you can use a higher-priority action to cancel it, which is most commonly weapon stowing and in some cases merely moving your character. This is also applicable for animation-cancelling: Some skills inflict their (full) effect before their animation is done and you would thus waste time by waiting out the entire animation.
For more details refer to this wiki page.

Reading the description of all your skills and traits

To truly be able to play your class to its full potential, it is crucial to know what your build does. This includes skills, traits, runes, and sigils. It is highly recommended to make oneself very familiar with at least the ones used in the meta build. It helps you understand how your rotation and play style is structured and allows you to make small adjustments for specific situations. It will also help you find mistakes that you do while learning your rotation.

Troubleshooting

I don’t have infusions; is that why my DPS is so low?

No. Full stat infusions (18 +5 infusions) make up 4% of DPS at max (slightly more on condi classes). Also, RNG will usually introduce more variance than what infusions can make for a difference. On some tries it’s completely normal to get low numbers although you are think you did a good rotation; you can blame it on chance a few times. Remember that the numbers of the benchmarks were obtained by doing the same exact rotation over and over until they got blessed by RNGesus.

Then why is my DPS so low?

• Check your gear, traits and skills. Make sure they match the benchmark you are trying to replicate. At the end of most benchmark videos, you will see the hero panel of the player; compare yours to theirs.
• Pay attention to permanent and temporary buffs. Some will come from the settings on the console, and some will come from your traits and skills.
• Watch your positioning. Does your build provide advantages if you flank your enemy? Everything that is not in a 90-degree cone directly in front of the golem counts as flanking.
• Check your arena setup. Do you have all necessary boons and buffs? Does the golem have the right conditions, is it the right size, and how much HP does it have? Some traits provide bonuses scaling with the amount of boons you have. Make sure you copy the ones in the benchmark video.
• Make sure you have the current version of ArcDPS installed if you use it. You can find the current d3d9.dll here.
• Make sure you don’t interrupt any skills. Interrupted skills will be shown with a red outline in Player Summary - Simple Rotation.
• Be fast enough! Speed is key.

If you checked all of the above and still have no idea what is going on, feel free to join the SnowCrows Help Desk, ask in RTI Discord/guild chat or send a mail to Zael.3942 (Bullied Weaver).