Finally! You’ve geared up, perfected your talent spec and addons, and know all about the boss encounters you’ll be facing. You’re now ready to do your first raid!

For the purposes of this guide your first raid will be Naxxramas, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s currently the only raid at the cap with more than one boss. Second, VoA is ridiculously easy regardless of gear or spec, and OS10 with no drakes isn’t particularly difficult beyond dodging flame waves.

Regardless of whether you are PUGing it, or going with your guild, make sure you are fully prepared.

Before you enter the raid: Bring your consumables (and repair)!

Before you enter the raid, there’s a few things you’ll need to make sure you have.

Repair

Whether your gear is at 10% or 90% durability, get it repaired before you go in. The last thing anyone needs is for someone to have to go repair after they died a couple of times, because they didn’t do so beforehand!

Food

A 20 stack of food – preferably made with the 400 skill cooking recipes. If you know your stats, as you should do at this point, you should know what foods you’ll want. For example, physical DPS should be using Attack Power, Strength, Agility or Crit Rating foods, as appropriate to your spec and stats. Hunters and Demonology Warlocks should also bring pet food in the form of Spiced Mammoth Treats or Kibler’s Bits. Warlocks talented into Dark Pact that are using their minion as a mana battery  may also want to consider Sporeling Snacks.

Don’t forget to bring standard food and drink too – if there are a few res spells going around, the healers probably don’t have time to heal your lazy backside – eat!

Potions

There are three types of concoctions in WoW; Potions, which are limited to one per battle (typical examples are Health and Mana potions), Elixirs (Which come in two flavours – Battle and Guardian – one of each can be active at a time) and Flasks (Count as both a Battle and Guardian Elixir, but lasts two hours and persists through death.) You’re going to want to bring a few of each.

Bring an ample supply of Runic Healing and Runic Mana (as appropriate to your class) potions – as a Hunter with Aspect of the Viper, I find myself chugging more Health potions than Mana, but your mileage may vary.

You’ll want to bring either or both of the following; 20 stack each of one Battle Elixir and one Guardian Elixir/3-5 Flasks. Again, you should know what you are looking for here. Some of the best, but by no means all of the Elixirs will be prefixed by Mighty. Flasks are harder to categorise, so I’ll just link the three I think are the most important – Endless Rage for Physical DPS, Frost Wyrm for casters, and Stoneblood for Tanks. The Flask of Pure Mojo may also be handy for certain classes.

The reason it’s a good idea to bring both Elixirs and Flasks is that, even on your first run, you may not actually die a whole lot – in which case, Elixirs provide both the best overall benefit, as well as being a whole lot cheaper than flasks. On the other hand, if you do find yourself dying a lot – which is likely, even if you know what you are doing – a Flask will be the best choice as it lasts through death and will end up cheaper after multiple wipes.

Ammunition

This is most important for Hunters, but Warrior tanks should usually have a stack or two of ammo to hand. Hunters, make sure your quivers are full. I try, though I often forget to switch (No one is perfect, ok?), to use the vendor quality level 75 ammo for trash, and use the much better quality, Engineer made ammunition for bosses.

Warlocks should also make sure to have an ample supply of their own form of “ammunition” in the form of Soul Shards. You’ll probably be able to grab a few whilst you clear trash, but be sure you have a large amount before you go in. Also, if you haven’t already, go kick Blizzard in the shins for not really taking steps to improve the shard situation.

Bandages

Hopefully you were keeping on top of your first aid whilst you leveled, and should bring a stack or two of Heavy Frostweave Bandages to the raid with you. If you haven’t, it’s not a huge issue, but I do recommend you go and work on your First Aid skill, just to be prepared.

Consumable Summary

You’ll need a 20 stack of food, another 20 stack of pet food if your class requires, normal food and drink for out of combat healing, either 20/20 Battle/Guardian Elixir or 3-5 Flasks, an ample supply of Healing/Mana Potions, and enough Ammunition to cover the raid, plus bandages if you are capable of using them. Unfortunately, this is going to run you quite a bit of gold – such is the price of raiding. A large portion of this can be covered if you pick up Cooking – everyone can take it, and it’s actually not that hard to level from scratch, with a bit of patience.

Before you begin the raid: prepare yourself.

Before the raid starts, you’ll want to do a few common sense things. Go to the toilet, get yourself a drink, and make yourself comfortable at the computer. You shouldn’t be going throughout the whole raid without a rest, but you should be able to clear a wing in one sitting.

Make sure you are fully awake, and try and relax. Since this is your first Naxx run, you’ll probably be more than a little intimidated. Don’t worry about it – you’re well prepared by now, you can handle it.

If your class can provide a raid wide buff, then do so. Make sure you summon tables and healthstones as required and (here’s my hunter bias coming through) buff the Hunter’s pet if you are a Paladin – especially if the Hunter is BM specced. Pets count as Warriors, so if there’s one in your group, the Greater Blessing should also reach the pet.

Before a Boss Fight: Double check

So, you’re standing before a boss – now is the time to double check everything. Do you have all the buffs you should? Do you have the right gear on? (Ammo, additional Hit Rating gear?) Are you clear on what to do?

Hopefully, you’ll have read the strats and watched the videos, and you should have a good idea of what you are meant to be doing – but you aren’t a robot. There’s a lot of info to remember for various bosses, and if you are at all unsure about a certain boss, ask. All it may take is a few words to jog your memory with regards to that boss.

During the boss fight: Stay calm, stay alive.

Now you’ve engaged the boss, and it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. Keep an eye on your threat meter – make sure you aren’t overtaking the tank, or if you are the tank, make sure none of those pesky DPS are catching up to you. Stay aware of your surroundings – you’ll probably need to avoid various bits of nastiness. Watch your boss mod – is the Grand Widow coming up for a Frenzy? Get ready to Embrace her. Watch out for others – if you are a sturdy DPS, get that spawned add off the healer and the other squishies!

Hopefully you’ll make it through the fight – if you do die, try not to worry about it. It happens. If a mistake leads to a wipe, hopefully your group is made up of decent people who remember they were new once, too. Just make sure you remember what you did wrong, and take steps to avoid it again.

You cannot be perfect, especially not on your first run. Something will probably go wrong – it’s not the end of the world, and it can be pretty funny sometimes. I mean, look what I did on Thaddius and Heigan!

After the boss fight: gathering your phat lewts.

When the boss is dead, it’s time to divide up the loot. First, remember to grab your Emblem! Then, have a look at what else dropped. If there’s nothing for you, don’t get disheartened – you can’t get something every time. If there is, you may end up competing with a few people for it.

This is where things can turn nasty, depending on loot system, but you should accept whatever the outcome is gracefully. You simply can’t win ‘em all – and there’s fourteen other bosses in Naxx that could drop something else for you! If you did win it, congratulations on one of your first pieces of Raid gear! Make sure you enchant and socket it as appropriate when you get a chance.

Press on, brave adventurer!

Be prepared to spend a lot of time on one run in Naxx. Depending on how fast you are getting through the place, it could take a couple of nights for a full clear. Eventually, you’ll finish the place, and have your first full raid clear! Congratulations! You’ve come a long way from that level 10 scrub who had no idea what they were doing with their talent point, or where to go next!

I’ve beaten Naxxramas! … Now what?

Now, be prepared to do it all again. In order to progress, you’re going to need more gear. Hopefully, you’ll continue to enjoy raiding – the raid itself should be fun, and the gear should only be a way of advancing onto other raids, or as a symbol of your achievements. The day raiding becomes solely about the gear, and not the fun, you’re doing it wrong.

In conculusion…

As of the time of posting, this is basically where I am now – just cleared Naxx for the first time.  Since I clearly wasn’t a total failure, I thought, hey, why not share this with other new raiders? I hope you’ve all found this series to be helpful and enjoyable. I certainly had fun writing it, and I hope at least a few people out there see it and put it to good use.

Lengthy Thanks

This is not something I really figured I’d put in, but this guide has kind of exploded in popularity, and I’d like to thank people for that.

This little guide seems to have become pretty popular – mostly due to Dan O’Halloran at WoW Insider linking to these posts (Thanks! ). I’m hoping that got it out to people who could use it.

Aside from the obvious huge amount of hits from WoW Insider itself, I’ve been gathering numerous smaller hits from guild forums all over the place. One particular post that just made me smile was a brazillian guild forum – I babelfished it to get the gist of what it said, and it was awesome to know that even people who aren’t great at English have found this useful.

The WoW Twitterati, who urged me to go ahead with the idea, and some of whom corrected some stuff here and there, you guys get a huge thumbs up. Everyone who’s commented me about the guide, or who passed it on to their friends and guilds, thanks.

I hope everyone who’s read this has found it useful, and that at least some of you continue to come back to the blog in the future. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to top this, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the silly stories I tell.

What do you mean too sappy? ^.~; I’m a small blogger! I’m allowed to be excited people liked this!

I’m finally going to shut up now…

If there’s anything you wish to ask me about, or corrections/suggestions you wish to make, feel free to contact me via the details on the sidebar, or in the comments.

For now, good luck and happy raiding.

Faulsey’s Newbie Raiding Guide:

Part 1 : Gearing Up

Part 2 : Research – Talents, Strats and Addons

Part 3 : Your first raid

In the first part of this series, I discussed gearing up to a raid worthy level. You may now think you’re ready to charge right into raiding.

Just you wait, hot shot!

Before you dive into a raid, you’re going to need to do some research on Talent Specs and Boss Strats, as well as get ahold of the right addons.

Speccing for fun; How do you play?

You might think that once you’ve gotten to 80, your messing around with talent points is complete. Not so. The spec that may have served you very well for leveling may not serve you quite so well in a raid setting – or even a heroic instance setting, for that matter.

So, you’re going to have to do some research on Talent Specs. For a Hybrid class like Paladins, your spec defines your role, so you don’t have to chose between DPS specs. For other Hybrids like Shamans and Warriors, and the “pure” DPS Classes, who have two or three separate DPS specs, you need to figure out how you prefer to play your class. Do you prefer to do top DPS? Go for whatever the classes current top DPS spec is. Or, like me, is your spec choice based on the play style of the spec? Spec for what you enjoy playing the most.

At the moment, at least for most normal guilds, you should not have to spec your classes “spec du jour” to raid. All DPS specs are more than capable of putting out excellent DPS with a skilled player behind them. The difference between specs is small enough that it shouldn’t be an issue with the current (3.0) raids.

Speccing for success; how to choose your talents.

Now that you’ve decided on what your main spec shall be, you need to pick the right talents. While there are plenty of “cookie cutter” specs out there that will work perfectly well, I suggest that instead of just blindly following one of them, that you research exactly what talents you must take, and then spend the rest of your points to suit yourself.

Each spec is going to be different, but all will have a certain core of talents that are absolutely, 100% necessary for raiding. As before, you will want to consult sites like Elitist Jerks, or blogs relating to your class to find out what these are.

I’m going to draw upon my own tree for an example of how you would go about speccing, though as this is a general guide, I won’t be listing the talents – just the number of points.

As a BM Hunter, there 42 talents in the BM tree you must* take, and 18 points in the MM tree. That leaves 11 points to use roughly as you wish, though 8 of those points must be spent at various points in the BM tree to allow you to access some of the key talents (fillers). Basically, this gives you 8 points that you can spend however you like within a certain area of the tree, and 3 points you can truly spend freely. It doesn’t seem like there’s much room for customisation, but even a couple of points shifted from here to there can make a major difference.

I can’t speak for other classes, but BM is a sort of extreme case – you need those points in MM. I believe mages are in a similar position with Torment the Weak in the Arcane Tree, but beyond that, I think there should be more options open to other classes than there were for me.

*In my opinion and experience.

Now, hopefully you’ve specced yourself to your satisfaction; taken your key talents, plus spent filler and free talents to improve further upon your strengths, or help with your weak spots. Surely by now you can raid? Well… you now have the gear and the talents to raid, but you are still lacking the knowledge.

Know thy enemy; learn the strategies!

This is where I’m going to admit a slight elitist leaning – there’s nothing I find more frustrating than spending 10-15 minutes before a boss whilst it is explained using the inadequate tool of text, and text alone. Such explanations are not always going to be enough for you to understand, so I cannot recommend it enough that you read the strategies, and even better, watch the videos.

Personally, I used the written strategies at Bosskillers and the videos at TankSpot to help me understand the fights. At first, this is going to seem like a lot of information – an impossible amount to fit into your head! Don’t worry – just do it a bit at a time.

For example, set aside half an hour-forty five minutes of time, and do a wing of Naxxramas. Read the strategy, and watch the video, on a boss per boss basis. If you think you’ve got that wing sussed, success! Do the same for another wing whenever you’ve got the time, until you’ve worked your way through the entire raid. If there’s anything you aren’t clear on, give it another go over – it’s not as hard as it looks to start with!

Learning the strategies before you even go in is really the best way to go about it. If you are anything like me, you will be petrified when you see your first boss. Having seen the fight before can make it a lot less stressful.

Know thy enemy, know thyself, and know thy raid; addons to augment your awareness.

By 80, you’ve probably downloaded and installed a few addons. Maybe you downloaded Auctioneer to help make a bit of cash, or SexyMap to bring some colour to the otherwise bland Blizzard UI. But, now that you will soon be going into your first raid, there’s a few addons you’ll need.

Threat Meter

This is essential, especially for trigger happy DPS – you do not want to be pulling aggro from your tanks in a raid – you will die, and you will die horribly, and in a lot of cases, wipe the raid, or at least lead to a chain of deaths. A threat meter lets you know exactly how your threat compares to the tanks, so that you know when you need to throttle the DPS for a bit, or when you can blow everything for a massive burst.

Personally, I use Omen, and I haven’t actually heard of anyone using anything else – it’s got a monopoly on the threat meter front. Download it, learn to use it, learn to love it.

A Boss Mod

These keep you notified of when you can expect a nasty ability from a boss. This can be especially important for healers and tanks, who need to know when a big hit is coming, so they can take appropriate countermeasures. It’s almost as important for DPS, too – you don’t want to let a decimate slip by with you happily continuing to pewpew Gluth!

The two most common mods are Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs. I have used both, and they both do the job well. Choosing between them is mostly a matter of preference on the part of yourself or your guild. BigWigs is slightly less spammy, so I’ve found I prefer that.

Other addons

I’d say those are the two essential addons for every raider. There are, however, others that will help to greater or lesser degrees.

Recount: DPS and Healing meters. Handy for letting you know if you need to improve, just try not to get caught up in the epeen swinging DPS competition.

Unit Frame Addons: The default Blizz unit frames (Health/Mana/Portrait displays for yourself, party and raid members) can be somewhat lacking, functionally and aesthetically, so feel free to tweak those with addons.

Action Bar Addons: Again, the default Blizz action bars are a bit lacking in functionality, so a bar mod can be a worthwhile download. Personally, I use Bartender4. It offers a huge amount of options for moving and shaping your action bars, plus an easy way to set keybinds.

Oh, and this isn’t addon related, but I’m going to throw it in: I recommend that if you currently use the arrow keys or WASD to move, that you at the very least familiarize yourself with mouse movement. It’s a lot quicker and more precise than keyboard movement, and I can’t imagine doing Heigan whilst using the keyboard to turn.

Faulsey! Surely, after all this work, I’m ready now?

By now, you’ve got the Gear, the Talents, and the Knowledge to raid. With those, you are all set for your first raid. In the next installment, I’ll be talking about what to do and expect from your first raid.

Faulsey’s Newbie Raiding Guide:

Part 1 : Gearing Up

Part 2 : Research – Talents, Strats and Addons

Part 3 : Your first raid

I know that generally I just post a lot of nonsense on here, but from time to time I do like to make the occasional thoughtful or even (gasp!) informative post. This is one of those rare occasions!

Anyone who has been reading this blog since, oh, at least the last entry, should know I am new to raiding in WoW. I didn’t see so much as a Kara run in BC – I mean, I hit 70 2 weeks before Wrath, why bother? Molten Core? 40 Man raids? I’m sorry, I’m more a modern history person. I don’t go back beyond the 19th century.

So, Wrath is my first taste of raiding. It seems I’m not alone though – in every other group I’ve had so far, there have been new raiders, of varying qualities. I’d like to think of myself as a “good” newbie (Not necessarily a good raider!), and these posts should hopefully help you, my fellow nublets, avoid being the person who wiped on Thaddius by crossing the charges.

Disclaimer!

Please note, this is a general guide. A player of any of the 30 specs in the game should hopefully be able to read this and get some use out of it. As it is a general guide, things such as gear lists and talent spec recommendations are not linked on a spec by spec basis.

I am one person – I simply do not have the time to trawl through hundreds of blogs and forum threads to find a spec and gear guide for every spec in the game. General tips as to speccing and gearing are given here, as are links to help you find more specific information. This guide will point you in the right direction – it will not spoon feed you.

To begin with, I’m going to talk about Gearing Up for raids – an absolutely essential step for all but the very best players.

Faulsey’s Newbie Raiding Guide; Gearing Up

This is hugely important. No doubt you will have seen people talking about clearing Naxxramas in greens and blues. This is probably possible… for people who raided in BC and know what they are doing. You, newbie, did not raid in BC, and if you turn up to Naxx in a green, you should be pushed off the side of the tiny summoning stone chamber. You need to gear up first! There are a couple of steps to this.

Know your stats!

First, make sure you know what stats it is you want on your character. Learn what they do, and which stats are more important than others. This will allow you to make informed decisions on what is an upgrade and what is not, instead of just thinking “Eh, I’m a priest, it’s cloth, it has X stat, I’ll roll on it.” You should be able to find such information at Elitist Jerks, WoW Wiki, or on any number of blogs. Now, you want to actually aquire gear.

Before you begin:

To start with gearing up, make sure you have first gotten to friendly reptuation with the Kirin Tor, Ebon Blade, Argent Crusade and Wyrmrest Accord factions. At this level of reputation, you can purchase that factions tabard, which will grant your rep with them if worn in a level 80 dungeon. Depending on your class, you are going to want different levels of Rep with each of these factions.

Gearing to a heroic capable level:

Next, start running normal difficulty dungeons at the top end of the leveling spectrum in Northrend. These include Halls of Stone/Lightning, Culling of Stratholme, The Oculus, and Utgarde Pinnacle.

Using a combination of Rep Gear (usually from Honored/Revered reputations) and Dungeon gear, you should be able to prepare yourself adequately for doing Heroic Five Man Instances. You may be able to find gear lists on WoW Insider or on Blogs, but don’t count on it. Even if there is a gear list, it’s important you don’t rely on it – you need to be able to make relatively snap decisions on what does and doesn’t benefit you.

Before you run heroics as a DPS or tanking class, you will probably want to reach the hit cap for heroics. The hit cap is the amount of Hit% required to totally eliminate misses. For Melee and Ranged specials in heroics, this is 5.4%, or around 180 Hit. For spells, this is 6% which is around 158 Hit rating. (Physical and Spell hit share the same stat on items, but are calculated differently.) I advise you don’t go over the cap, however, as it’s a waste of the items budget*, which would be better spent on other stats at that point.

*All items have a “budget” based on their item level (iLevel). Usually, you don’t see this in game, though some addons will show it. iLevel calculations are pretty complex and beyond the scope of this guide, but all a normal player needs to know is that having hit that takes you significantly over the hit cap, or any amount of hit at all as a healer, is a waste of those points, and you’d be better served by a similar level item with, for example, more crit rating.

But wait! Don’t forget to enhance your gear:

Once you are geared to a suitable level, you’re not quite ready to tackle Heroics yet. Make sure all your gear is enchanted, and where possible, gemmed. Personally, I feel that if it’s a normal piece you will be replacing in a Heroic, you do not need to buy the best enchant for that slot, nor use Blue gems. Make sure you are still getting a high quality enchant, and if possible, a perfect gem cut (usually only slightly more expensive than normal, but still far cheaper than a Blue quality gem), but don’t worry about forking over hundreds of gold for a top enchant or gem.

In addition, I recommend that you reach Honored with the Sons of Hodir faction, and Revered with an appropriate championed faction, before you do a heroic. The Sons offer impressive Shoulder Inscriptions, and the championed factions have powerful Helmet Enchantments available at Revered. Melee DPS/Hunters will want Revered with the Ebon Blade, Tanks with Argent Crusade, and spellcasters with either Kirin Tor or Wyrmrest Accord, depending on what stats are most valuable to your spec.

Onto Heroic Five Man Instances:

After you’ve enchanted and gemmed your gear properly, the process of gearing begins anew in Heroics. I hope you didn’t get too attached to anything you have equipped, because it will be getting replaced in short order.

As with Normal Dungeons, you may be able to find gear lists, but don’t rely on finding one. Checking the loot lists on WoWHead and taking note of upgrades can be a good way of building your own gear list. Also, be sure and find your factions Emblems of Heroism vendor in Dalaran – a number of excellent pieces can be obtained via EoH’s, which are dropped by bosses in Heroic Five Mans. You’ll also notice a large increase in Rep rewarded for your championed factions whilst running Heroics – there are some good epics that can be earned when you reach Exalted with factions, so make sure you look into what is available from them, too.

As you get upgrades from Heroics, be sure to Enchant and Gem them as required. Again, you do not need the top enchant, but where possible, I strongly advise you do take it. For example, Massacre (110 AP) can cost up to fifteen times the price of Greater Savagery (85AP) – a price simply not worth it for a weapon you’ll be replacing in one of your first raids. On the other hand, Superior Agility (Cloak, 16 Agi) may cost only 60 gold less than Major Agility (Cloak, 22 Agi), so you should go for the better enchant in this case. For gems, you should be using blue quality gems, and, if possible, a good Meta gem. There should be a helm available from Heroics, or even tradeskills, with good stats and a Meta gem slot, which you should aim to get.

Other enhancements you should consider with heroic level gear are Eternal Belt Buckles, which add a gem slot to a belt, and Leg Armours/Spellthreads, which offer a variety of stats for improving your legwear.

Gearing up from Heroics is relatively easy, even with pick up groups, and can be enjoyable, though it’s significantly more difficult than a normal instance. Be prepared to spend a lot of time trying to get upgrades. Sometimes, an item just will not drop, even after repeated runs, and it’s important not to get too worked up over it. Or, you’ll have a streak of bad PUGs, saving you to an instance where you haven’t beaten a boss. This is something that will happen to everyone at some point, so just bear with it, and eventually, you’ll get what you seek!

What you’ll be aiming for before raids varies between class and spec, but I’m going to mention hit rating again here: To be ready for raiding, you will want to be at the Hit Cap. If gear and talents are leaving you short, be aware that there are some consumables which can help – I’ll go into more details about consumables in the third post in this series.

More on Hit Rating

I discussed the Heroic hit cap briefly in the relevant section, but the Heroic hit cap is different from the Raid hit cap. In raids, you should be aiming for around 8% hit to ensure that melee and ranged specials always hit. This is roughly 263 Hit Rating. For Spellcasters, the Hit Cap is 17%, which is roughly 446 Hit Rating.  Those numbers may seem quite daunting, but many specs have talents that affect their hit%, requiring less pure hit rating from gear.

Hunters, Casters, and I assume classes like Paladins that use one melee weapon, are able to totally eliminate misses for their usual abilities. Dual Wielding class, such as Enhancement Shaman and Rogues, require far more hit rating than is worth it to totally eliminate misses on normal swings, and should aim for the cap relevant to their class specials (Melee or Spell.)

So, you think you’re ready?

When you have completed your gearing up from Heroics, you aren’t quite finished your preparations for raiding yet. There are still some vital steps you’ll need to take, which will be covered in the next post in the series.

Feedback:

Do you have any questions about this article? Are you a veteran WoWer who thinks you’ve got something to add? Leave me a comment! Good questions or additional suggestions will be added to the post.

Faulsey’s Newbie Raiding Guide:

Part 1 : Gearing Up

Part 2 : Researching: Specs, Strats and Addons

Part 3 : Your first raid