A raiding guide, from a newbie, for newbies – Research

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

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