Last year I was in Colombia when the Brewfest was going on, so I did not know any of the quest or what getting the Brewmaster achievement entailed. I was on early in the morning the other day and got a jump on all the fun right after Pirate’s day. The quests are pretty straight forward and require only enough patience to actually read the instructions. I am only a couple achievements away from getting everything related to this holiday which seems easier than any of the other ones.

Our Ulduar group is progressing nicely with getting 5 bosses down on their first try, almost all of them being one shots. We have grown to a pretty healthy size and now have enough tanks to have 4 heroic farming groups going in a good night. We are still trying to balance raiding with casualness but I think we have found a happy medium.

Bluearcher has a KODO now, and we are all pretty jealous. That has to be one of the coolest mounts an alliance can have!

Raiding is one of the funnest things you can do in WoW. Coordinating a group of people to accomplish a goal is the most exciting and challenging thing about the game IMO. I get questions quite often about how to run a certain dungeon or when will I be ready to run a raid… so I wanted to write something that applies in a general level to people that want to get started in the raiding world.

As much fun as raiding can be, it can also be nightmarish and time consuming. Nobody likes to have a repair bill with nothing to show for week after week. Some people don’t mind doing the same content over and over, (check out my pug checker, I can do DTK every day and still love the place) but die enough times and it will grind a group to a halt. Lucky for us, our guild has been very relaxed and even though we have not advanced as much as some people might like, we still love the game and playing with each other which I think its the most important thing.

That said I wanted to be very honest about how involved raiding can be, and how the following are some of the things you seriously have to consider when you start raiding.

Every class in WoW has very specific intricacies that put together in a raid group lead to killing that freaking big dragon. While every class is extremely different in some respects and the level of customization in the game is the highest I have ever seen for a video game. All of that flexibility makes things complex enough that you can truly hurt yourself with your character build. But, when it comes right down to it, playing the World of Warcraft raiding does have some basic principles.

Movement

From the first time a whole raid was charred to a crisp fighting in Kara I learned the frustration that can dismantle a group after a wipe. Don’t move means serious, don’t move… no seriously, let go of the keys, don’t try to get that last spell out, don’t try to move a little bit to get a better angle view, just seriously don’t move. At the same time, RUN AWAY, means just that. So many elements of the game have to do with where you are, how far you need to be from something or other party members… don’t stand in black circles. Whenever you are not sure about an encounter, you need to ask and follow the directions of the experienced people.

Your CAP

The thing that will dictate a lot of what you do when it comes to raiding is your “CAP” which means that you have hit the maximum level for your more important stat. However, there is other caps along with that one. While a tank being 540 is very important so he does to get “crited” anymore, his hit rating and expertise are also crucial so he lands the hits and does not get dodged or parried. Once you know your goals, then you can start planning your gear shopping list

The LOOT

Loot at times feels like chicken and egg. Blizzard just made things a lot simpler and even though I was already playing a simpler game than original WoW raiders, this latest patch (3.2) equalized a ton. You have the Tournament of Champions, a place that you can get 10 man raid level gear with just 5 people. That and now all the badges put into two groups make it very stright forward to obtain new pieces of gear without relying on the luck of a drop and the chance at a /roll.

With LOOT though, you have to once again do more research. You need to know where the loot drops that you need. If you are still missing that amazing neck piece and your DPS is still towards the bottom of the list, you need to read up on where to get it. Gear will help you achieve tons, but it is only part of the equation.

The other important thing once you have the gear is to get it enchanted and gemmed.

The Build

So you have the gear, but your (DPS, Healing, Threat generation) still are lacking? The next thing to consider is your build. Your build simply put is the methodology you use when assigning your talent points, and also what glyphs you use.

The easy way is to look for someone’s build and copy it, however this is not the answer. You don’t know how that person plays. Some people have no problem using 5 or 6 abilities, some people use simply 3 or 4. That does not include cooldowns. I will caution you on your builds and glyphs to make sure you don’t spend valuable talent points or spots on your glyph slots that you just don’t use or use very little.

The Rotation

What buttons you press on what order is as important as everything else in the game. If I don’t hit one of my shouts or charge into our DPS and my rage will suffer. If I am DPSing and don’t hit my trinket that gives me extra attack power right before I hit one of my special abilities, I am not doing a good job. If a high DPS hunter does not misdirect on me when we start an encounter, their DPS might pull agro from me.

While your primary abilities are important, knowing what secondary abilities you need to use in what situation makes a huge difference in a raid. It also ensures that your DPS, Heals or tanking stays constant. It does not matter that you hit 4K DPS once, if you cannot maintain it over the course of a run.

How do I know when I am ready then?

The baby step for almost everyone is to join a guild that raids, casual raiders will probably be more patient than people that are doing the hardest content and consider themselves hardcore. If the guild has people that know the class you want to play and are willing to share their knowledge you have struck gold. Keep in mind that they will be able to steer you in the right direction. They can only open the door, you have to actually go through and learn the theory behind things.

That said, there are tons of ways to “cheat” to acquire the knowledge above about your character.

There are several add ons that will tell you where the gear is “hidden” all over WoW. Also there are gear evaluation add ons, and a new nifty interface built right into WoW itself that will compare the gear you want with what you have currently on your character.

The internet is full of resources, class specific blogs and “evaluators.”

So if you want a straight answer, Imba can tell you where you are ready to go based on your gear (check out the Gear-O-Meter at the bottom), and WoW Popular will tell you what is the most popular currently. But you cannot replace everything with shortcuts, and if you want to raid, you need to do your homework and practice.

Feel free to post the resources you use in the comments

Last night we gathered on the stairs of the StormWind Cathedral to have a guild meeting. The officers and I wanted to share the rules and our vision of the guild. We are averaging about 20 people online every night and are very happy about our new regular players. Last night we had almost everyone there at the time of the meeting except for those that had family visiting from out of town. After we had gone through all the information we needed to discuss Aloea’s new little addon started counting down Wintergrasp and we decided to head there as a guild, plus a couple of our friends. We had our own raid and had a blast actually taken over with about 10 minutes to spare. The we decided to go raid Undercity since we had an actual guide with us.

We entered via the sewers and did quite well until the horde started showing up. Our raid had 20 people and was able to get Sylvanas more than half. I perished when I tried to take some of the hunters that showed up only to encounter about five others around. They picked us off quite easily after our big bruisers all of our plate wearers were subdued. We try to start it back up again but guards plus horde were too much. If we would have had a full raid, which is what we will do next time she would have been down. It is an interesting encounter, and a lot more fun than what I thought it was like. My previous experience has been simply defending Ironforge and a failed attempt by a mostly pug Thuderbluff attempt, and for it being our first time as a group I was impressed.

Raiding seems to have taken a back sit lately for our guild, its funny because now that we can get a 10 man going any night, we are busy having fun doing something else. While some of the W007 L007 is still stuck in Naxx25 and Ulduar, the Tournament of Champions has made getting people ready for those encounters a matter of running 5 mans. The stuff that drops on the regular ToC is comparable with Naxx 10 gear, and much, much easier to obtain with a good group. I think the past 3 days we have replaced the blues that our main raiding group had left. The gemming and enchanting is also going well and I think that as soon as we want to run something, we will be able to. Besides leaving dragons up in OS, there are really no runs that I think we are going to do this week.

I read a while ago that factions were going to experience some changes. It was mostly around the discussion of being able to “change” factions. It all sounded far away and I have not been in the character creation screen for a bit. Then Mr. Honjuder created a horde in our server… and we all went What? After the shock wore off… Yeap, you guessed it, our Horde guild was born. It has been hilarious because people are even transferring toons from other realms to our newly created full of lowbes guild.

A long time ago during some down time in our server I rolled a Belf Pally, and leveled him to six… that was the extent of my horde experience. However I now have a rogue and a cow… yea, I have a freaking cow! I am loving it too. I think we all are excited to run around doing low quests together. Our vent has stayed full and we have pulled resources together again and have a tabbed bank in the other side and pretty much everyone bagged. We also have finally found a druid that is going to bring l337 heals to our raids… and now getting a 10 man together is just a matter of deciding where to go. Bottom line everyone is having fun. This patch has improved playability quite a bit.

I got my first piece of 226 gear Shard of the Crystal Forest via emblems. I am also getting closer to my second piece, but I am afraid that I really don’t need much gear until we start doing harder content. Its not necessarily a bad thing. I do have to regem for hit to get my DPS up a bit though. Running chain heroics and ToC over and over has been a lot of fun, that and running around on a cow hitting things with a stick. LOL. Good times.