Hit 80th - Ready to raid?

I made some very costly decisions when I got to 80^th that I wish someone had warned me against, this is hopefully some useful advice to help people avoid making the same mistakes I did.

So you’ve hit 80^thlevel – you’ve got your package of goodies from blizzard, your last talent point and all the skills your trainer can teach you – you’re at the peak right?

Wrong.

You’ve come a long way; congratulations – enjoy the moment – then lets get to work turning you into a raider!

Especially if you’re progressed past 60 and 70 since WotLK has come out you may not have raided much, hell you may not have even grouped much and you may have progressed your talents in a fairly haphazard way, you may not have even decided what spec (whatever that means) you’re going for.

Choice of Role

Time to assess and think it through – this is the first big decision, just cos you’re a rogue or a mage don’t think you can skip this, dps/tank/healer is not the whole choice, but it's a good start for those classes that have a choice. Making the right decision here can save you an enormous
amount of time and gold.

Despite having the option to dual spec I’d suggest just picking one to concentrate on to begin with. Some people look at the guild and decide how to spec to fill a niche, some look at the abilities they like, others consider what they enjoy doing. Make the choice that’s right for you, you’re gonna have to play the character.

Once you know what you want to be – research it. There are a number of good sites recommended in our links section and any of the ‘raider’ guild members for your class should be
able to provide good advice, so don’t be afraid to ask here on the forums or in the guild chat.

Gearing Up

A lot of players immediately head to the AH when they hit 80^th and buy the first purple items they can afford (I know I did). Take the time to look at some of the websites that advise on gear (shadowpanther / maxdps).

1^st you should notice that some purples are worse than some of the blues and even greens.
2^nd pay attention to how many items can be:

• Bought with faction rep
  
• Bought with tokens
  
• Crafted
  
• Rewarded from quests
  
• Bought with honor
  

Factions

Look at the wrath faction purchasable items (these generally have very low comparative prices)
and figure out which reps have priority for you, buy their tabard asap (if they have one) and make sure you are wearing it in every instance you enter. In addition to equipment several factions have ‘the’ enchantment for a particular piece of gear so consider this as well. Now you’ve hit 80^th all quests provide additional money (which is great) but focus in on the ones for
the rep you need and especially when the dailies open up – these should get priority.

Tokens

While the best items are generally bought with Emblems of Conquest or Valor you probably won’t immediately get into the groups that will let you farm these so focus first on the Emblem of Heroism items. Obviously the guild is a great place to get teams for dungeons and heroics, plus you’re more likely to have people pass on items to help your gear. The occasional ‘LFG’ comment in trade can also work – though make sure you don’t spam the channel and the LFG button will allow you to make yourself available while doing other things. The daily heroic dungeon provides
additional emblems and a nice cash reward plus lots of other people do these too. The additional advantage of going after token items is that the bosses you get them from also provide drops which may be useful.

Crafted items

We have a great range of crafting professions in the guild and often you can get items you need made (and while you should definitely not beg from guild members, a number of folk are really generous with mats). You should also consider what items you may be able to make yourself as it’s often better to learn the recipe and gather the mats than pay for the effort someone else had to put in to do it (plus you can charge for crafting them for others).

Quests

Few quests will provide you with epic items or items good enough for end game content, but they can be a good stop gap on your way to these.

PVP

While pvp gear generally focuses on slightly different abilities and stats a lot of the gear is very good for pve so look to buy items will prove useful for both.

Instances

Obviously a great deal of the top gear comes from heroics and raids, but you should do all you can to be as well geared as you can before you go into these, under performing can not only be demoralizing but can also upset the folks you're with. Once you start hitting heroics and raids don't think you can simply ignore the above, some of the reps will still be required and you may well need the crafted items if you don't get lucky on the drops.

Enchanting, Glyphs and Gems

Enchantments, glyphs and gems can give great boosts to your items but can be extremely draining on your resources so think carefully before you use up expensive mats or gems to improve an item you expect to replace very quickly. Particularly in this case you should consider a slightly less powerful and cheaper option ‘for the time being’.

Overall it’s great to skip from mediocre to great items in one go, but be realistic about your next
improvement and also remember that we have a number of great boe items, glyphs and the like in the guild vault where in general you can pay ½ the AH cost.

Skilling Up

Probably the area given least attention in guides but one of the most important.

Know your abilities

Sounds stupid okay,but we all fall into patterns and abilities we don’t use very often get forgotten, even with some we use we don’t see how useful (or how dangerous) some parts can be. Some examples from my rogue:

• Shiv [auto applies poison on offhand weapon] - not an ability I use very often but in the fight with Gulth in Naxxramas it allows me (with Anesthetic Poison) to cancel out his
  Enrage.
  
• Feint [no damage attack that reduces threat and reduces aoe damage by 50%] – with tricks of the trade this has become little used, but against XT-002 in Ulduar it helps the healers while he’s in his Tympanic Tantrum.
  
• Killing Spree – [5 attacks on enemies within 10 yards at 20% extra damage – has a teleport effect bouncing you around the area] – Against KT in Naxx you can’t use this – it’s just too dangerous to get out of position, meanwhile against Malygos it gets you out of Vortex (reducing the need for healing and allowing you to get back to dpsing him)
  

Also understand which abilities synergize – so again from my rogue – Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush combine well as the first generates bonus attacks for each attack I make and the second allows me to make far more attacks.

Set yourself up to succeed

Get the addons you need, particularly teamspeak (and a mic) as this makes it possible to get
advice very quickly in raids but also to speak with one of our core raiders about specific questions (especially useful given some people’s typing skills).

Check your system to see what it can handle and change the settings appropriately, it may be great to be able to see the very finest detail of the landscape, but in a 25 man raid this may mean you lag. An addon like ‘too many addons’ will let you save sets of addons for when you raid and when you don’t so you can reduce the pressure on your system.

Learn to write (or copy) at least some macros as these help you combine abilities you always use
together or maintain your rotation. ‘Savage Combat’ (see my key set up below) is a macro I wrote that combined the use of trinket cds (when I had activated trinkets), Evasion (I have a second version that avoids using this in raids where it’s not often needed), Killing Spree, Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. A word of warning though – be careful with this kind of macro that the cool down of one ability means you can’t use another as frequently as you’d like.

Re-arrange your hot keys to suit you – make sure that its comfortable for you and that you can get to as many abilities as possible. Personally I reconfigured my number pad as this gives me at least 13 key abilities in easy reach. Note that the key bindings affect your whole account so for my rogue * and – on the number pad aren’t used as rogues don’t have multiple special action abilities, but I have to leave them open for my warlock and druid.

The result is that my action bars for my rogue look like this:

And my number pad is set up to use them like this:

Switching to a new set up can take you time to get used to, but you’ll find yourself able to react
quicker once you’re familiar with it.

Rotations

Rotation advice is available from various sites listed on our links section. You should understand what the basic rotation for your class/spec is and practice it not only on the target dummies in the capitals, but also in combat with mobs in the world. More important than understanding the standard though is knowing when to break it. Some of this can only come with practice, but you should have a think about what to do when some of the following occur:

• You need healing but aren’t getting it (do you back off and cast a healing spell on yourself?)
  
• Players in key roles are dead (i.e. the tank falls over – can you tank/defend for long enough for a battle res and healing to get the tank back into the fight?)
  
• Too much dps is dead (can you switch to offensive casting to get the raid over the line in a tough fight?)
  
• Do you need to use an ability not normally in your rotation? (i.e. you have to purge de-buffs all fight long)
  
• You’re in a fight that requires you to switch targets regularly – (how does this impact your rotation?)
  

Making Money

Purchasing the faction items, crafting as well as enchanting material and better gems are likely to cost money, particularly if you aren’t able to farm them yourself, or are eager to get improved asap.

Generally killing any mobs will provide cash but there are certainly ways to earn gold faster a few
of which I’m outlining below. Note that no matter what you’re doing deaths cost money so be careful and don’t be afraid to blow your cool downs and use pots and reagents as the vast majority are cheaper than repairs.

Dailies

These are solid money gainers, the 80^th level versions providing 13g+ for each completed. Remember the advice above about going after the ones you need for rep as a priority, but do think about the time these take and (after the first completion) how difficult they are – some may be worth skipping if they take too long or you struggle to complete them. It is also worth noting that some quests (cooking/jewelcrafting) provide reagents for other things so doing these provides useful materials as well as the cash reward. Finally quest givers and the locations for completing them are often grouped together so try to concentrate bunches of dailies.

Of course you can only complete 25 of these a day and once you have a pattern of these down this can be done relatively quickly, still that should be at least 325g a day

Farming Mats

Some mats can be worth a lot of gold or can save you a lot of gold at the AH. Use sites like
wowhead.com to help you focus on mobs/areas with the highest drop rates, best re-spawns, least travel and combinations of drops. In addition take into account what farming you can do while on dailies or where you can get faction improvements at the same time.

While on the topic of farming you should note that some grays sell for 1g+ and so you should avoid addons that instantly delete items based on colour, even ones that do this based on price can end up destroying items that vendor for very little, but AH for a lot so be careful you're not throwing money away.

Farming Old Instances

Old instances can provide you with easy cash. In addition to the greens/blues that drop (particularly the boe items) Cloth particularly sells well along with mats people need for reputation. I find Scholo and Strath particularly lucrative.

The AH

Buy low, sell high – simple advice but hard to follow. Get yourself Auctioneer - It tracks AH prices, vendor value as well as their disenchant values. Resist the temptation to buy overpriced items unless you can get them no other way, sometimes a day or two will see prices re-set to reasonable levels.

It is often worth disenchanting green items (or getting someone to do it for you) as they provide
nearly the same value in enchanting mats, don’t need a deposit in the AH and sell fast.

You should also sell items in small stacks; people often don’t want to buy 20+ of an item and will
regularly buy 1-2 at a slightly higher price.

Deposit fees can stack up so look closely at the difference between the vendor value and the moving price of items. If there isn’t a great difference vendor the item.

If you plan to use a crafting skill to make items to post to the AH make sure you check that they
sell for more than the mats involved (or at least something comparable if you need to make them to level up). Also check to see if the AH is flooded with them.

BOE Rares and Epics can sell for very very high prices, so particularly when you have a better
upgrade in the pipeline think about if it’s worth soulbinding that item rather than putting it on the AH.

Some white items sell very well so pay attention to them additionally some items (particularly pets) sell for far higher prices on the cross faction Ahs as it is the only way for Alliance/Horde
characters to obtain some of them.

Selling Services

Hopefully along the way you’ve leveled up your crafting skills, so why not make some money out of it? Two warnings though – don’t spam trade and if you’re going to charge for the items you make tell people up front in your trade comment.

Additional Mounts/Achievements/Alts/Frill/Epic Flight/Dual Spec
I am probably the worst person to talk about this as I love having shinny new mounts, am a bit (okay a lot) of an achievement whore, love some of the frill items, seem to constantly send cash to my alts when I’m leveling them up and have epic flying, about the only one I don’t have is dual spec. That admission out of they way let me say that if you enjoy getting these go for it – people should play the game for enjoyment – so don’t feel that you shouldn’t do any of these.

Despite the above the time and money you spend on these things may delay some of your progress towards being raid ready and none of them impact on your ability to raid, so if you want to get there fast – skip them – they’ll give you something to do between raids once your set up.

So that's it, my advice on how to get raid ready. I'm by no means the expert on these things, I've just tried to outline the things that have seen my game improve and where I've made mistakes or delayed my own progress. I welcome added suggestions from other players (I hope to learn a few new things myself) or corrections if you feel anything I've written is wrong/out of date.

Also as a warning Blizzard tend to shift things about, nerfing some abilities and items as well as changing the value of certain currency so try to keep up to date on the latest patch notes, the current ones can be read here.

One final thought; once you're ready to join your first raid check out my post on Raid Preparation for some tips on performing well.

nice post lissa good of you to take the time and list stuff to help new and old lvl 80s. nice you set time to one side and do it think it be a great help to alot

Diablo

nice mini guide man.

one the best consice, pocket guides iv ever read.... must've took quite a chunk of ur time, thanks

Absolutely brilliant Lissia - it's great you've taken all the time and effort to do this and I'm sure it will turn out to be a 'classic' forum post that will be read again and again - I know I will

Thanks for all the hard work and thought.

Posh

Great post there Lissia, really enjoyed reading it, and it's really informative. Looks like we have our guild guide writer.

Mort