Worm Raid Roles & Strategies

This guide will teach you everything you need to create your own Worm Raid. If terms like Empower and Rend are new to you, check this guide that explains it all.

Common Questions

Why Keen Awareness instead of Thrust Damage for Rapiers?
Bleeds are your main Rapier damage and Thrust Damage doesn’t affect DOTs. Thrust Damage also counts towards Empower, which is capped at 50%, and you easily reach it in a raid of 20 players without the ring, so Keen Awareness is the better option.
Keen Awareness → more crits → faster CDs → more Flurry hits → more Bleeds popped → more DPS.
Why do the same weapons have different skill trees?
Some weapons apply DOTs or debuffs that stack if they are maxed or not in skill trees like Poison Shot or Skewer.
Why is the Flail so important?
Group Empower, lots of Weaken, and extends debuffs, which makes it an S-Tier support weapon.
What’s the best team composition?
You can reach Empower, Weaken, and Rend caps through different team lineups. There is no right or wrong here as long as your group covers the basics.

Lights & Tank

Tank (usually Ranged): Musket or Bow is common (keeps aggro at range). Rapier as a secondary is great for riposting Acid Spits and taunting if needed. The Hatchet is also a good option for survivability.
Light players: typically Bows (top pick) or Muskets; bring Finisher or VG for Oblivion Empower.
At least one player must handle Acid Balls:

Musket: pass-through hits in Shooter’s Stance or using Quick Load and Tactical Reload.
Bow: Penetrating Rapid Shot with Refreshing Penetrating Shot. This method only works if the Bow player is the only player shooting the Acid Balls to get his Penetrating Shot refreshed by hitting all balls at once. Others only clean strays.

Aggro vs. Taunt

A Ranged tank holds aggro, but can’t reliably chain Taunts.
Melee Tank: Advanced groups can have a Melee tank that Taunts the boss so players can benefit from the Carnelians’ damage boost when slotted on gear.
Add a Melee tank on the opposite side of the stack to rotate Taunts so Carnelian effects stay active and DPS can cook.

3 or 4 Light players? Preferably more Melee to do higher damage. The Tank can be one of your Light players, plus up to three more Lights for mechanics/DPS. If you’re more comfortable with 4 Lights + Tank on boss only, then that also works.

Rend

Worm has 50% Rend Resilience → to hit the effective cap you need 140% team Rend.
Scorpions: 70% Rend cap each (no resilience)

Rend sources (examples):

Hatchet: Rending Throw 20%
War Hammer: Armor Breaker, plus Sundering perks for Clear Out and Shockwave (together can reach ~65%)
Void Gauntlet: Disintegrate 30%
Other weapons and skills contribute. Use what fits your comp; just ensure you reach the cap.

Empower

Target the 50% Empower cap. Prioritize sources that buff Rapier players.

Common Empower sources

Source	Empower
Honing Stone	7%
Oblivion (VG)	15%
Omnidirectional Evade (gear)	Empower on Evade
Flail – Leader of the Pack	10% to nearby raid
Flail – Arcane Vortex	10% (almost 100% uptime)
Sword & Shield – Leadership	10% to party (group-only, not whole raid)

After Rapiers are near Empower cap, consider swapping Thrust Damage → Keen Awareness for better attack rotation.

Extending Debuffs

The core is DOTs + Rend with duration extension so you apply once per phase and pump.

How to do it:

Flail – Vital Embrace: +7% DOT duration
Flail – Arcane Eruption (Debilitating Extension): +30% duration to all status effects (incl. debuffs like Rend)
Sword & Shield – One with the Shield: +5% debuff duration
Distained Infliction (perk): +5% DOT per player

Result:

Apply DOTs/debuffs once (per phase), then keep extending them until the phase ends.
War Hammer as a main is not required. Use it to apply Rend, then swap to Rapier.
Fewer dedicated Rend roles, more slots for Rapiers.

Applying DOTs Efficiently

Rules of Debuffs

Same status effects from the same source don’t stack beyond their limit.
If multiple of the same debuff are applied, the highest one counts.

Runeglasses (6 elements): try to have one of each across players.
Heartrunes: several apply different DOTs. Bile Bomb variants are different DOT types → they stack. Firestorm (normal vs. Stalwart) also differ and can stack. Check out this guide for more info.

Weapon skills with multiple versions

Skewer, Poison Shot, Powder Burn: upgraded vs. non-upgraded versions apply different DOTs.
- Two Skewers from the same tree → 1 Bleed.
- Two Skewers from different trees → 2 Bleeds.
- Powder Burn needs a headshot; Worm has no head hitbox → ignore for Worm.
Perforate (Rend): upgraded vs. base apply different Rend stacks.

Pairing attributes

DOTs scale off weapon damage.
Pair weapons with roles/attributes they already build for (e.g., Spear with Hatchet or SnS for STR/DEX synergy; Rapier leans toward DEX).

Attunements ≠ DOTs

They are extra on-hit damage with ~1.5s cooldown and do not stack from multiple sources. Use one of each across different players.

Rapier: Your Primary DPS

Worm is stationary, has a back, and takes a small +1% Thrust. This is a great environment for the Rapier to shine.

Builds: Evade and Bleed

Tondo vs. Flurry: both apply the same Rapier Bleed. Evade Rapiers spam Flurry, so a Rapier Bleed is always present, letting Keen Tondo benefit even if you don’t directly cast Tondo.
Typical comps run 8–13 Evade Rapiers; that’s enough to keep Bleeds rolling. You can run 2 or 3 Bleed Rapiers to keep popping the Bleeds that the other Evades are applying.

Healers & VG Value

Most of the fight is you hitting and not getting hit; Healers shine during Nephilim, Scorpion Phase, and bad RNG.
Best option: VG main using Void Blade (meleeing, adding Rend stacks) and Oblivion under the group for Empower.
At least 1 Healer is recommended. A VG-Healer + a backup Healer for safety also works. You don’t really need more than 2.

Offtank

You want to have a faster and safer Scorpion Phase. The way to do that is by using the Storm Chaser buff that you get from picking up the Nephilim sword.
Two Nephilim spawn together. Assign one player to aggro one of them and prepare him by lowering his stamina to the minimum without breaking it and then kiting him around the arena until the phase ends. After that your team can quickly break him and pick up the sword for the buff.

If you break his stamina by mistake or did not prepare him enough, that’s also fine. There’s always time to do Lights before the phase ends.

Scorpion Phase

Two main approaches:

Split: two groups, one per Scorpion.
Kite: one player kites a Scorpion while the team deals the other before coming to help.

Melee Stamina Break

Melee weapons do more stamina damage → this phase can be faster.
Harder to survive: Acid debuffs keep reapplying downstairs.

How to Manage

Stalwart Firestorm Heartrune: chain it across multiple players to cleanse them while standing in heals as you break stamina.

Execution

Stack Melee in one spot (mid/right/left), heavy-attack spam, caller times kicks.
Bring a secondary Melee weapon for stamina damage: War Hammer, Greatsword, or even Great Axe are great.
Acid Circles: keep middle clear so you can stack safely there. Faster Scorpion kills help.

Mining

You don’t need the full raid to go mining.
Assign a group or specific players on mining duty.
Players handling Lights can take care of the mines on top while this group will handle the mines in the arena.
Watch out for the Heavy Attack when mining.

Summary

Bring Flail and SnS to extend debuffs/DOTs.
Reach Rend cap: 140% for Worm; 70% per Scorpion in splits.
Apply all DOTs you reasonably can and extend them.
Fill as many remaining slots as possible with Rapiers.
Reach Empower cap (Oblivion + group auras + stones + gear).
Handle Acid Balls cleanly (one Bow shooter or Musket).
Use an Offtank to clear Scorpions faster.
Assign players for Mining.

These are the best points to lead a successful Worm raid.
Remember: The best comp is the one you execute well. Meta is a tool, not a rule.
Thank you for reading and good luck raiding.