Raiding

Want to start Raiding?

Raiding can be one of the most enjoyable experiences one can have in WoW - especially if you have a group of like minded mature players at your side. With us at your side, you can learn to tackle almost any raid challenge. It might be a slightly bumpy ride (IE you'll likely eat floor a lot more than you might expect), but it is worth it for the feeling that you and your guildmates has laid low yet another of the mightiest villians in the game.

So how can you become a raider? Well, there are many routes to it but it generally involves the folowing processes - picking a favorite character and role, learning how to play that role, and gearing up.

• Decide on a Character and Role: The very first thing you will need to do is to decide what character you want to raid on and what type of role they will fill. You'll be using this character almost exclusively during guild raids so its important to decide what you enjoy playing the most.

• Learning Your Role: Spend a little time reading up on your preferred spec and practice your rotation/priority on a target dummy if possible. Then get some real life practice wherever you can - tank, heal, or dps for some guild dungeons or scenarios. This step is often short changed by people in thier rush to get geared up, but knowing how to execute your role will help you become raid ready much faster than just getting gear alone.

• Gearing Up: Gearing up is often thought of as the slow part of getting ready to raid. The big thing to know about gearing up for your first raid is this: your gear doesn't need to be prefect to start raiding. It just has to be functional enough to make you viable. So in other words, if you really know how to play your role, you can become a raider a lot earlier than those that don't really spend much time learning thier class.

  Having said that, try focusing on improving your weapon(s), trinkets, and larger armor pieces such as the head, chest, and pants if possible. The smaller pieces like rings, cloak, and bracers really don't offer as much of a boost so save them for last if your purchasing them with valor/justice points.

  Finally, gem, enchant, and reforge your new gear appropriately for your spec.

  (*) Some roles are more gear sensitive than others - tanks in particular. An undergeared but otherwise prepared tank or healer may be asked to come along as dps initially so we can get them geared up a bit before bringing them in as thier preferred role. We don't expect amazing damage - especially since you are generally geared for a different task.

Once you have these three things down, you are just about ready for your first raid. To finish your preparations there are a couple more things you need to do. The first and foremost is to try an familiarize yourself with the boss fights. Without a little bit of background knowledge, learning a new fight can easily take 2 or 3 times longer (often much worse), which can be a hell of a morale killer. So to prepare yourself for the first encounter with a boss, watch a couple videos on it or read up on it on a site like wowhead (reading is generally preferred as comments tend to have neat tricks).

The last thing you need to do is install Ventrillo, a communications program to help with spur of the moment organization, and a raiding mod such as Deadly Boss Mods (DBM is currently preferred) or BigWigs which will warn you of major raid boss abilities. However, these mods won't tell you how to react so you still need to be familiar with the fight.

The first few raids might be a little rough as you will likely die a lot more than others. This is a normal and expected part of learning to raid or even learning a boss fight. Things will get better once you get into the flow of the fights. Soon, you'll be downing bosses with (relative) ease and enjoying one of the major offerings of Arcana Solarie.