World of Warcraft: A Beginner's Guide to Raiding

Raiding is one of the most difficult challenges of the game. It's for people with their levels maxed out. Raids consist of 10, 25, or 40 people. They all have to know the fight, be well geared, and work together as a team. Let's start with how to get geared for a raid.

Raiding has a minimum gear level that the group member expects in order for them to be able to contribute to the raid. I will describe the basic gear requirement in order to do the easiest 70 raids such as Karazhan:

More info on this under raiding on www.wowwiki.com

Tanks: 12.5k unbuffed health minimum. 490 Defense. 102% dodge rating.

Healers: 1200+ healing. 9-10k mana unbuffed. decent Mp5.

DPS: certain amount of AP, strength and critical strike chance for melee. At least 900 bonus spell damage for spell casters.

Remember, this is the MINIMUM requirements for you to even have a chance of being accepted into a group. The best thing to do is join a guild that has a weekly raiding schedule. You will know how to do each fight well and easily be able to work as a team.

There are essential things that each player must bring to raid. Potions and elixirs are a must. Add-ons for each class are highly recommended. For example, everyone needs Omen threat meter, and healers may use add-ons such as heal bot. One thing that everyone member must have is something called "ventrilo". This is an online communicating system in which players will be able to talk to one another while raiding. It is essential for the group to have this as the fights are very difficult, and it's hard to know everything that's going on. As I said, communication is the key to success. Take time to buff every member of the group up especially before the boss fights. When you reach a boss, make sure EVERYONE knows what's going to happen, how to react to the bosses' special ability, and the strategy to beat the boss. The raid boss fights are extremely long, challenging, and requires everyone to pay attention in order to beat it. If even one person that's a tank or a healer doesn't know what they're doing, the group is guaranteed to fail. When you get to the 25 man dungeons or the high tier 5 or tier 6 dungeons, it takes hours a day and constant practice with the same group of people for weeks in order to beat the raid. Remember, raiding takes a lot of time and commitment in order to be successful. Go out there, raid, and have a good time! The drops and reward of killing the bosses are extremely rewarding!