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World of Warcraft Guide: Beginner's Guide to Raiding
MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Deborah Dietrich writes this look at raiding for players who might be new to everyone's favorite high level pastime.
By Deborah Dietrich on June 10, 2009
So, you want to be a raider? Well, be prepared to put in some time. Raiding is fun, it has to be, it is the end-game for World of Warcraft. However, it is an expensive hobby that will require hours of preparation before one is even ready to raid and a continuing expenditure of hours to prep and prepare once one is actually raiding.
Just like preparing for any competitive activity, you begin by training and equipping. Simply because you've gotten a character to level 80 does not mean that character is ready to raid. You've probably done non-heroic dungeons as you leveled up. If you haven't done so already, now it is time to take on heroic dungeon content. The optimum situation is to have a balanced group that enjoys doing dungeons together on a regular basis. If your group is new to heroics, start with the lower level dungeons. In order by rank of difficulty the dungeons are: Utgarde Keep and The Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, Drak'Tharon Keep, Violet Hold, Gundrak and Halls of Stone.
The level 80 dungeons are: the Caverns of Time, Halls of Lightning, the Occulus and Utgarde Pinnacle. Get equipped in the lower level dungeons and work your way to the top dungeons, bettering you equipment along the way. Check out the Armory on the World of Warcraft site to see where needed upgrades are to be found. Many excellent pieces can even be crafted.
Heroic dungeons also drop Emblems of Heroism, which can be used to buy some very nice equipment. You will definitely want to work on your reputation standings with the various Northrend factions. The Sons of Hodir sell shoulder enchants, with the best enchants only available at exalted. Depending on your class, you will want to level up your reputation with the faction that sells the best head enchant for your spec. All of the factions sell nice pieces of gear as you rise in reputation. Don't overlook faction purchases as you gear up.
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The Looking for Group channel has gotten a bad rap and certainly we've all experienced Pick-up-Groups from hell. Still, I've had some excellent PUGs. If you don't have a regular group to instance with, consider trying the Looking for Group channel in the game. Just be sure to aim for dungeons appropriate for your experience and equipment level.
Naxxaramas 10-man is the next step up from level 80 heroic dungeons. Sites like WoW-heroes.com or Be Imba can give you an idea of how well geared you are versus the requirements of the instance. Goals to aim for to raid 10-man Naxx, depending on your spec, are 1600 DPS (there are target dummies in capital cities to practice on); 1500 Spell Power, unbuffed; 540 defense (or uncritable) and 15-16% dodge or parry.
Once you're geared, if your guild has regular groups running Naxxaramas 10-man, let them know you're interested in joining the fun. There are usually Naxx groups forming up in trade, so check there if Naxx raids are not available through your guild. Don't try to jump in before you are ready, however. There's a reason these groups advertise "gear check." No one wants to bring an under-geared and inexperienced player who is likely to slow down or even wipe the raid. Wipes are part of raiding, but bringing more than one or two under-geared and inexperienced players can turn an evening from fun to a tedious mess.
.Preparation is key to raiding success and it can be expensive. Don't show up for a raid with equipment that is lacking in enchants or isn't gemmed properly. Do your homework. Talk to people in your class whose abilities you admire. What sites do they turn to for advice on gems, enchants, glyphs and equipment? Look for advice on Best in Slot for pre-Naxx to help you prepare to raid 10-man Naxxaramas.
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Check out forums and blogs specific to your class, many will have a list of desirable pre-Naxx armor and weapons and add-ons that can enhance your performance in a raid setting. Some recommended sites are: Tank Spot and Max DPS; great sites for information on tanking and damage dealing respectively. Plus Heal and World of Matticus have a wealth of information for the healing classes. For specific classes, deathknight.info is good for DKs, Maintankadin is excellent for the prot pally. Thedailydruid.com for guess who. Shadowpriest.com is for the priest who walks on the dark side. Rogues will want to look at shadowpanther.net. A recommended shaman blogger is to be found at www.shieldsup.ch and Petopia is the place for information on hunter pets. There are many excellent sites. Ask around. These are a few recommended by my friends.
Among the best places to look for information for all classes are the Elitist Jerks forums. There one will find intelligent discussion of the various classes and specs with lots of theorycrafting. They have information on gear, mods, strategies, enchants, gems, glyphs and more. When I asked for recommendations on good sites, this one was mentioned as great for almost all classes and specs.
Raiding isn't cheap. If you want to be a valued part of the team and get invited back, you should come fully prepared. You will need to gather and prepare stat food or buy it on the Auction House. You will need the proper alchemy flasks or elixirs. You will need money to pay for repairs, particularly if your group is taking on new content. Plan on farming goods to sell or doing daily quests on a regular basis to have the gold for raid preparation and repair. Remember, each new upgrade will require a new round of enchants and gems.
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Now that you have adequate armor and consumables, you must have the proper addons for raiding. A threat meter, like Omen and Deadly Boss Mods or Big Wigs for encounter information are common mods used by many guilds. Ventrillo is a freeware program worth having. Most raiding guilds and many individuals will have Ventrillo channels that can be used to provide voice communication. While there is a voice communication system built into the game, it is marginally useful and I have never seen it utilized for raiding. While Ventrillo is the voice communication program of choice on my server, TeamSpeak is a similar program that may enjoy greater popularity on other servers.
Finally, know the encounter. Boss Killers or MMO Champion can provide strategy guides for most of the encounters in the game. Tankspot.com has many excellent videos of boss fights. Come prepared by studying the encounters for the raid instance you want to take on. Also, know what upgrades drop for your class there. Rolling for loot goes by quickly, so have an idea of the desirable loot each boss kill might drop so you won't hesitate to recognize an upgrade.
If you want to raid, expect to put in hours of time outside of raiding to repair, upgrade and replenish. Raiding is an expensive undertaking. It is also one of the most exciting and enjoyable aspects of World of Warcraft. If you have the time to prepare, it is well worth the effort.
Article sums up exactly why I don't raid. I actually have a job and kids so WoW is a few hours a week hobby not another job. Lucky to get 6 hours a week.
I'm with ya all the way...not to mention most of the people in my guild are in the same position...but that's why we consider it truely a leisure activity. And we get snubbed by those that are hard core...I don't care. I enjoy my life outside the game, as I'm sure you do to ;-), keep rockin' bud. Oh and I'm in my mid-40's for those who may be wondering, and have sometime on my hands this week.
World of Gear Grind. Dunno why I have pictures of hamsters in wheels in my head.
Still concice guide for anyone wanted to get sarted down that particular road.
Honestly, right now?
Get your character to 80 and PUG Naxx 10 and 25 runs until you get some gear.
Once you do that you can consider hooking up with some friends and trying out Ulduar, but that'll take more of a serious commitment.
The article fails to mention that it can be very hard to find groups to do the normal instances and then heroics these days and heck, even Naxx now since most players have already got the gear they needed from those instances by now. It is one major flaw with this type of gameplay. If your not getting the instances done while they are new, your going to be left behind or at the very least have a heck of alot of work to put in to get all the stuff you need to get onto the current tier of gear.
I agree with everything said so far... I used to raid the 40mans pre TBC and it became a grind and not fun, athe the time my Warlock was my raiding character and it became dot, dot, sot, sb, sb, sb... repeat... boring as hell... Now I play for fun, I rarely raid or do instances as PuGs tend to be more trouble and less enjoyment...
I thought raiding was the least enjoyable part of WoW to tell the truth.......Boring, repetitive, time sink, and felt like a second job......
Yep share the other guys thoughts on this.
Showing up 5 mins late for a raid to have some power hungry guy that maybe cleans toilet's for a living giving you hell for being late,try to explain your were chatting with the wife/playing with the kids and the reply would be "do that on your own damn time"
Ohh yeah great fun...happy days.
I played WoW for 2 and half years. I never raided once! I never had the time. and from every thing that I have heard or read about raiding made it a totall turn off. I really never enjoyed WoW there were just too many personality conflicts and a ton of immature kids. But hey its just my opinion and you know what they say about opinions....I am sure that there are 11. something million people who disagree with me.
I play on a pretty small server and I don't have trouble getting groups normally.
God I love raiding. Too bad I dont have time for it either :(
I find it interesting that mbd1968 said "I used to raid" and then "Now I play for fun". Reading that article pretty much just discouraged me. I agree with what has been said also about having a wife, kids and full time job. There is absolutely no way that I could do what this article says is required of me to get into raiding. You can put in as much time (or more) into this game and raiding than you do a full time job. No I'm not hardcore but I do enjoy logging into a game for awhile to have some fun. But like in another thread about "content I'll never see", I think this article sums up exactly that. I can play this game and have some fun in the time I have to play, but I'll never see any of that raid content or have the uber gear. This can be discouraging to many players. I don't understand why these games have to have such huge requirements and time sinks to experience this content. Not to mention all the homework invloved outside of the game! What were there... ten sites that she mentioned in the article? Go there and study up! That's what tightens my jaws about these games. I want to play a game, not do homework! Then the "gear check" just to be accepted into the raid. I find that both ridiculous and funny at the same time. It's just too uber and elite for me.
So during the week, after all the family and work responsiblities I have, and if I play for an hour or two each day to relax and have some fun, eventually I think I'll do some raiding and go for some epic gear..... forget about it.
Well, certain standards has to be set when Raiding in any MMOG (WoW is not really that hardcore when it comes to raiding requirements). Here's why :
1: Your performance (Or lack thereoff) effects everyone else at the raid. This includes Talent Spec, iLevel of gear and even your computer.
2: Your "time" is atleast 9 other persons time as well. Everyone in the raid setup needs to understand, and respect that.
3: Like any other formal gathering of people, a timeslot must be allocated so that everyone can be present.
If your real life doesn't allow you to raid, then thats that really. Raiding isn't ment for everyone, and it does follow a set template of sorts so if you are unable to accomidate that template then you'll not be seeing some of the grand zones and encounters Blizzard (And other Developers in other MMOG's) created.
For the beginning Raider I would strongly suggest finding a guild with people on the same part of the path as yourself. Even if you are a casual.
I would not start on PUG raiding because you'll get more out of spending your time in heroics having fun on a smaller scale (Heroics can be quite tough without proper iLevels, especially if you try to get achivements) plus you will get emblems that will allow you to purchage gear at a speed you can manage on your own.
raiding is for a subset of wow (mmo) gamers. these people are called raiders. if you dont like raiding dont raid. why come here and put down the effort of the article writer just to pettily bash. its so sad that I knew this kind of tripe would be sitting here instead of discussing raiding.
you know, most guilds arnt so anal that if your are late you get all this shit you guys claim. raided with the same guild since eu release, never has any of the crap you talk about happened.
i guess i have this i rational view on th game tho - I play with people i like doing things i like being given the content i like by a company i like. hmmm odd isnt it cant fathom why they get my 10quid a month and not another company
I agree there are some guilds that are run better but there are alot of idiots like this guy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04
Now infamous video.
All i have to say is R-O-F-L raid pre bc, none of those new 80 20 man raids compare to the strat or skill required to raid bwl/naxx.
You don't have to do countless hours of farming mats for resist gear, the actual gear or doing hours of work to get attuned how about before raiding the 7 hours a day spending a good 2-3 hours learning the strat of your class and where exactly to be what to be doing making sure your classes rotation is perfect.
Now all it is move around a little bit, or tank and spank. lol ony has more strat than any of those 80 raids.
all bc/wotlk did was make it 30x more easier for raiding so everyone has a shot at good gear not only the 15 guilds who could get into mc the 10 that could down rag (MC boss) the 5 that could down nef(bwl boss) and the 2 that were in naxx downing bosses such as razuvious,anub,patch etc...
It was very fun to do everything listed above may sound like a job to some but it was the most fun i ever had in WoW besides exploring (going to dalaran, to BC, Hyjal, into nessys tank, just about anyplace you can think of i went to.) mind you that is before those areas were released. It wasn't a chore because seeing the new areas were amazing how well they looked how they made the AI on the bosses amazed me.
WoW raiding is a joke now ty for posting this though =)
I raid in WoW and while the article, for the most part, is not technically wrong, it gives the impression that to raid you first have to spend 10 years in a North Korean hard labor camp. Of course this is not true. The article also fails to discuss why raiding is fun (which it is) and why anyone would want to do it.
Since when is raiding considered everyone's favorite high level past time, let alone for the majority of the player base. It's niche game play and I'm irritated at developers and gaming sites trying to push (glamourize) this tired agenda on the players.
As a Raid Leader and guild leader, (working on Yogg 25), raiding is definately one of the best things you can do in WoW. Unlike what some people have said here, it doesn't have to feel like a second job. In fact, if it ever feels like a second job then your guild will eventually fall apart.
Most of us are 30+, we have 6 couples and the youngest person in the guild is 19. We all have jobs or colledge and we manage to raid 4 times a week for 2.5 hours. The best part about raiding and that isn't mentioned in the article, is the social aspect of it. Getting to know the person behind the avatar, having a laugh and just enjoying some content together is what raiding is all about. Having a solid rotation so members don't feel left out or burnt out, but at the same time demanding that everyone is on time so that 1 person doesn't spoil the fun for the other 24.
If people are raiding for purples or guilds are just tailored to just clear everything as fast as possible without caring for their members aren't going to enjoy the game. If done properly though, it definatly is the most enjoyable thing you can do in WoW.
Now this I agree with,I was in a guild like this in pre bc wow and had a great time,maybe the best I have had in a mmo,after bc hit the guild fell apart and never had it in wow afterwards and quit the game.
This to me is a raiding guild,a social aspect,a good laugh and everything is taken in the way it should...a bunch of guys that become friends and spend time together as a hobby and fun,not some mindless grind for gear until you get noticed as maybe "worthy" enough to join the other members of a so called "guild"in a night of fun.
Now this I agree with,I was in a guild like this in pre bc wow and had a great time,maybe the best I have had in a mmo,after bc hit the guild fell apart and never had it in wow afterwards and quit the game.
This to me is a raiding guild,a social aspect,a good laugh and everything is taken in the way it should...a bunch of guys that become friends and spend time together as a hobby and fun,not some mindless grind for gear until you get noticed as maybe "worthy" enough to join the other members of a so called "guild"in a night of fun.
Sounds to me like you guys both had a great experience with your guilds. maybe I should not have judged something I never tried. I let my freinds negative blathering about how awful raiding was cloud my judgement. but again the time needed to raise my standing with in the guilds that I played with the time it took was just too much. I had come from EvE where it was a second life and just one level 4 mission could take up to 6 hours to complete solo. I didn't want my game to be a second life. I am preatty harsh on WoW. I spent way to much time in Warsong Gulch and other Battlegrounds trying to grind out honor gear. Raiding from both your points of view sounds as though it would have been alot funner for me than battlegrounds.
immature kids and adults kids, WoW is ok, to do, to keep from going back to FFXI. I played it off and on for 2.5 years aswell and it is fun for a 2 week period then gets boring. I have 3 lvl 80 toons, geared, and just get tired of gear chasing, T8, If you want to raid, i suggest u start at lvl 60 and work your way up. If you wait to lvl 80, alot of people will not want to hold your hand and walk u thru everything, by lvl 80 YOU SHOULD KNOW how to do you job.
immature kids and adults kids, WoW is ok, to do, to keep from going back to FFXI. I played it off and on for 2.5 years aswell and it is fun for a 2 week period then gets boring. I have 3 lvl 80 toons, geared, and just get tired of gear chasing, T8, If you want to raid, i suggest u start at lvl 60 and work your way up. If you wait to lvl 80, alot of people will not want to hold your hand and walk u thru everything, by lvl 80 YOU SHOULD KNOW how to do you job.
yeah. not going back to wow. I have decided I have had enough of WoW for a life time. no more gear chasing....ever!