RTI Raid Quickstart

If you’re on this page then you might be new to raids and looking to get into the game mode. This game mode has some of the most fun content that Guild Wars 2 has to offer, and this guide will show you how to get started with raiding with our guild! Click on any step in the below list to expand it and get a helpful image.

RTI Banner

Joining RTI

Make sure you’re on the RTI discord!

Make sure that your Privacy Settings allow you to receive DMs from users on our server.

Go to the #welcome channel and hit the ✅ Join button to join our community.

Fill in the form.

Press the Submit button to confirm your application. It will be sent to officers who will manually review it and approve your application shortly.

Preparing for Raids

Gearing up:

Choose the class you wish to raid with. All classes in the game are viable with some build or other. Take a look at the #class_guides channel in the RTI Discord to get a better idea of what class to go for and what a typical RTI raid class composition looks like.

Choose a build to use for your class on Snow Crows. Builds broadly fall under categories of DPS (damage-oriented), boon DPS (giving important boons like quickness/alacrity), or healer (giving boons while also being able to heal allies). Consult #class_guides to get a better idea of what builds we recommend.

Gear those builds. Those builds on Snow Crows assume full ascended rarity, but for RTI, a good standard to follow is exotic armour and ascended weapons/trinkets. The most important thing is that the stats, runes, sigils, and relic are correct! Infusions are unimportant. You can find how to get gear here.

Other preparation:

Make sure your character’s elite specialisation for the chosen build is unlocked. For example, if you choose Power Staff Daredevil as your build, make sure your Thief has the Daredevil specialisation fully unlocked.

Make sure you have your masteries all set up by gathering experience and mastery points in Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire. You can start working towards raid masteries after having completed a single raid boss. These are the masteries we recommend working towards:

Make sure you’ve practised your build in the Special Forces Training Area. You will find a rotation video and step-by-step guide on the Snow Crows page of your chosen class and build. You will also find class guides at the top of the page that are an immensely helpful resource to guide you through what to do on your class for each boss.

Joining Your First RTI Raid

Every time a new raid is published, a new raid channel is created in the RTI Discord. You can scroll down to the CURRENT RAIDS section to see all of our raid channels, with an indicator next to them indicating if they’re full (🔴) or if spots are still open (🔹). Choose any one of them to view more information about the raid.

There will be a message at the top of the channel with information about the raid. Make sure to read this information to see when the raid is happening, check whether you are suitable for the raid, and understand what is expected of you and what you can expect. Most RTI raids come in the form of trainings, practice runs, or kill runs. Training runs are for completely new players and will have basic explanations on everything. Practice runs are for people who have done the fights at least once before but still want to get better at the mechanics. Kill runs are for experienced people that want to go in and clear the encounters.

You will be sent a private message asking you what role to sign up as. Sign up for the role you plan on attending the raid as. If that role is full, you can sign up as reserve and get notified if a spot opens up in the raid, in which case you should sign up for the core role as soon as you can before the spot is taken.

On the day and time of the run, if you signed up as a core role and not as a reserve, the commander will ping you with a /sqjoin command that you can type in the in-game chatbox and press Enter to join the raid squad.

Go into Lion’s Arch Aerodrome, join the raid wing instance, and enjoy the RTI raid!

As an additional note, use the #training_requests channel in the RTI Discord if you are new to certain raid wings to request them and get priority to join future raid trainings on those wings. We even offer this service to people who have cleared the encounters before but want to learn new special roles such as tanking. Do note that you need to have given us your API key in your RTI application OR when filling in your training request to be able to use this feature!

Tips Any New Raider Should Know

General:

You can repair your armour in raids at Ley Rifts with the mastery. If you don’t have this mastery, you can use the anvil present at the start of every raid wing.
If you get someone to open an instance at a particular boss for you, don’t “opener snipe”, which is loading into that instance until they’ve confirmed that they’re loaded in.
If you open a raid wing instance of a wing you haven’t completed all the bosses for that week, then it will open with your progress saved.
/gg allows you to quickly suicide without damaging your armour. It’s used to reset a raid boss attempt to try again.
You can use /gg to teleport to the squad upon entering an instance.
If everyone dies while fighting a raid boss (even by using /gg), they respawn with their cooldowns reset.
You can filter most raid sellers and guilds looking for members from the Raid LFG by entering -[ into the search bar.
If you miss a ready check and can’t ready up, press P or click the arrow at the top left of the squad UI and ready up from there.
Party chat (/p) is only visible to people in your squad subgroup. Squad chat (/d) is visible to everyone in the squad.
LFG squads often ask for things like “40KP” or “200LI”. They expect you to, upon entering, hold Ctrl and click spam 3-4 times on your KP or LI in your inventory to prove you have it.
Raids have a reputation of being full of toxicity and elitism, but you’ll find that this isn’t nearly as true as people think. Don’t get disheartened!

Settings:

In Graphics Settings, turn up your Character Model Limit for raids to be able to see all mechanics/attacks.
In Graphics Settings, set Shaders to at least Medium or some arena floors won’t render correctly.
In Graphics Settings, turn on Effect LOD so that other people’s spell effects don’t clutter your screen and make it difficult to see what’s going on.
In General Settings, turn on Show Skill Recharge so you can see your cooldowns more precisely.
In General Settings, turn on Show Target Health Percent so you can see exactly what percentage the boss’ health is at.
In General Settings, turn on Lock Ground Target at Maximum Skill Range to make it much easier to cast targeted skills at long distances.
In General Settings, disable Melee Attack Assist or else you won’t easily be able to enter the boss’ hitbox (something you need to do often in raids).
In General Settings, disable Double Tap To Dodge because it makes it difficult to make precise movements or dodge with precise timings.
Bind your skills to buttons, including your Special Action Key. Avoid “skill-clicking” (clicking on your skill icons to cast them) as much as possible!
Keep track of your mouse cursor in raids. Download YoloMouse!

Gearing:

Exotic armour has a tiny loss in stats compared to ascended armour. You can get exotic armour of any stat from many areas, such as Bladed armour in Verdant Brink.
Check if exotic equipment is salvageable before slotting in expensive runes/sigils. Karma armour or armour from levelling, for example, is not salvageable.
Sometimes, ascended food is cheaper to craft than its exotic counterpart. Use GW2Efficiency to compare prices!
The 1-hour version of enhancements is much more cost-efficient than the 30-minute variant.
If you want to play as DPS, have a condition and power DPS build ready. Many bosses heavily favour power DPS and many others heavily favour condition DPS.
Doing Strikes and Fractals nets you currency for ascended gear.
The Advanced Logistics mastery gives you access to vendors that are the only way to get your hands on useful food and enhancement recipes.
You can stat-swap ascended gear in the Mystic Forge very cheaply, but be careful because you lose your upgrades inside it.

Combat:

Turn up effects volume - many attacks in raids have sound cues!
Stand tightly in the stack as often as possible. This is where all the boons and healing is!
There is a red bar indicator below your skills when you’re out of range of your target.
Know your CC skills and which CC of yours is more impactful. This Wiki page helps a lot with that!
Many skills, traits, and upgrades rely on you being able to flank the boss. This counts for both being behind the boss and to the side of the boss.
On almost all bosses, standing behind the raid boss is recommended to avoid taking unnecessary damage that should only be designated for the tank.
You can prioritise whom to resurrect by clicking on their name in the squad UI before beginning to resurrect, which will target their downed bodies.
You can easily target the raid boss by clicking on their health bar in the raid event information UI at the top right.

Rewards:

When you kill a raid boss, you get its tokens (referred to as “KP”). Keep these! Pugs want to see at LEAST a wing’s final boss’ KP to gauge your experience level.
If you get any spare minis from raid bosses, you can convert them into raid currency at any raid vendor.
Doing a raid boss more than once in a week doesn’t give more rewards. Every Monday morning, progress on raid bosses is reset and you can get rewards on every boss again.
The Envoy I collection is a basically free set of ascended armour of any weight/stats of your choosing.
The weight you choose in the Envoy II collection is what you’re stuck with for legendary armour.