Welcome to the first post in a weekly series I’m planning on releasing for raid leaders and raiders alone.  The hope of this particular column is provide valuable resources raid leaders and raiders can leverage to improve their game or make their life easier.  If you’ve got a tip suggestion or site you think I should check out, click on the tab above that says “Contact Starman“.

Ok lets face it.  As a raid leader, you don’t have all the time in the world.  You’ve got personel issues to deal with.  You’ve got strategies to read and write up.  You’ve got raids to lead.  You can’t reasonably be an expert at every race, class, profession and well… everything.  Your raiders may stare at you and think of you that way, but in reality, you just can’t. 

Our first site up that I selected is a no frills site called Raider101.com. 

Is it going to wow you with its deep insight and theorycrafting?  Well…um.. no

Is it going to blow your socks off with its deep graphical design?  Nope… sorry wrong site.

What role raider101.com serves is an intro site for getting people just the basics.  And I tend to think it serves that role well.. lets dive a little deeper shall we?

Who benefits from Raider101.com?   Raid Leaders and beginning raiders.

What is its best features?

The site has a very simplistic Wiki style layout.  Its pretty hard to miss anything you might need just off the front page.  It has links to every major “class build” that you might use for raiding.  The part that I really like is that it has a very consistent approach in each section.  Each section is broken down by the following:

  • Purpose
  • Talent Builds
  • Ability Rotations
  • Key Cooldowns
  • Key Stats
  • Recommended Glyphs
  • Recommended Enchants
  • Recommended Gems
  • Recommended Consumables
  • Additional Tips
  • Resource Sites

This level of breakdown is nice and consistent in most of the specs.  So if you’re looking for the basics of of how the raiding spec for a holy pally works.. or how the basic balance druid rotation works, this is your site.  It covers a lot of material, but its not overwhelming.  Most of the sections are fairly quick reads.

For the raid leader who may not know that much about unholy DPS Death Knights, its a nice quick glance so you can get a picture of what their rotation might look like if you’re reviewing stats.  Plus you can use this site as a quick way to figure out if someone is stacking their gear properly with the correct stats.

What’s missing?

The site for what it was designed for is not missing a thing.  However don’t expect to see deep theorycraft on whether a lunar or solar rotation are better for a boomkin druid.  If you want that, I’d go hang out with Graylo over at Gray Matter.  It is exactly what it bills itself as.  Its designed for intro raiders to get a picture of what they should be looking at to get a start.  Its not designed to impart deep advanced theory on how a class should be played. 

This site is not one I’d use to maximize my DPS, but if you’re looking for a site that will get your beginning raiders off the ground and at least give them something to read as a starting place?  This site is the place for you. 

Grades:

Site Design:  B  Its a bit graphically underwhelming, but serves its purpose well.
Ease of Use:  A+  Finding anything you want is very easy to do.
Value of Information: A  For what its designed for, the information is pretty good. 

Starman’s Overall Grade:  A

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