Raiding for newbies Raiding for newbies is basic guide for those considering starting raiding . " Raiding " in this article means " running instance s with 20 or more people " . Technically a group of 10 constitutes a raid too , but needs much less organization , devotion and discipline than the bigger raids . For this reason , 10 player raids can be mastered by pickup groups with " normal " gear , while pickup group s in larger instances usually need a few highly skilled and over - geared members . A sample career . At start , new players usually spend a lot of time playing alone or questing in small groups of fewer than five players . Sooner or later , the next step is to run small instances with group s of five ( the Instance grouping guide helps mastering this style of play ) . Upon reaching the maximum level , many choices are open . The world of PvP can be explored , it ' s possible to continue playing solo , and there are many options available for group PvE . For small groups there are the heroic five - man instances , and groups of 10 can enter the world of raids . The culmination of the PvE endgame is the 25 player raids . Prior to WLK , only a few players got there ; for example , only about half the number of players who killed a boss in Karazhan ever killed a 25 player boss , and less than 5 % defeated the final boss of the expansion ( Kil ' Jaeden ) . In vanilla WoW , less than 2 % of all players ever entered Naxxramas ( the original version ) . With the changes in WLK , hardmodes now are the pinnacle of raiding . All other content has become very accessible and is regularly cleared by pickup groups . Due to this development raiding has become much more commonplace , and the following rules have lost much of their exclusivity and some of their importance . During vanilla and TBC , successful raiding depended on a dedicated player base , because progress was only possible with well - practised tactics and a good organized raid . Since WLK , raids rather face problems like gear elitism ( " minimum gearscore xx , link achievement " ) , which basically amounts to beating the encounters by outgearing them , not by proper tactics . The following text is about progress raiding , that is with a group which does not outgear the instance . In effect , this means 25 player hard modes , or 25 player normal modes for raids which really strive for progress . Golden Rule . Progress raiding is a long term team effort . Have patience , and be a good team player . Motivation . Very good gear can be obtained with comparative ease by completing the daily badge quest , farming the 10 player versions and the occasional 25 player run . Gear obtained this way is just one tier below the best stuff available , and ( compared to vanilla / TBC ) with rather low effort . The remaining PvE challenge are the 25 player hardmodes . The motivation for trying this is not gear , but rather the wish to master something really difficult . It ' s about building and maintaining a team , a close - knit group of players who progress together . The most happy raid members are those who join a run because they like the challenge of the encounters , no matter whether it ' s a wipe night , a first kill or a farm run . People with selfish goals , especially when it comes to loot , usually don ' t find much pleasure in raids . If some kind of formalized loot distribution system ( like DKP ) is not used , epic loot is normally distributed on the basis of what ' s best for the raid ' s future success , and not what ' s optimal for an individual player . There is a fine line between personal goals ( " I want to have fun " ) and group goals ( " We want to kill that boss " ) , but ( as in many real life group environments ) , these goals don ' t need to be at odds . If it ' s good for the group ' s success , even yielding some item ( or another advantage ) to somebody else can be fun . So be polite and don ' t put personal goals over those of the whole raid ( see the golden rule above ) . New players should ask themselves the following questions before joining a progress raid group : Only people willing to answer each of these questions with a loud and clear " yes " should seriously consider raiding . It takes a lot of effort , and the rewards are scarce . Finding a raid . The most common and easiest method to start raiding is to find a raiding guild with an open spot . It ' s actually quite frequent that raiding guilds are looking for new members , because they lost some old hand . Blizzards realm forums are a very good starting point . If no guilds are currently recruiting , it can ' t hurt to write a general application there , and all guilds also consider serious applications even when they ' re not actively looking for new members . The alternative would be to try and start a new raiding guild . In order to have a good chance to get an invite to a raiding guild , the following technical aspects can help : The last point is really important and works both ways . A dedicated , reliable and serious player should look for a serious raiding guild , while casual or fun oriented future raiders should look for a more casual guild . Matching player and guild character is actually not so much a question of gear , the more progressed guilds are usually aware that it ' s hard to gear up beyond a certain level without an opportunity to raid . A somewhat related aspect is that of chosen role and spec . Progress oriented guilds used to have rather tight " job descriptions " , when they wanted a healing druid , they were usually not interested in a holy paladin . Similarly , serious raid groups usually had only a limited number of " Off - spec " spots ( like elemental shaman , retribution paladin ) , some spec might not have been accepted at all . These rules were rather strict in vanilla ( where each class usually had exactly one raid - capable spec ) , became softer in TBC ( when most classes had 2 or 3 raid specs ) , and have all but vanished with WLK . Since 3 . 0 . 1 , it ' s even desirable to have many different combinations of class and spec in a raid , because nearly every such combination can contribute some unique ability to the raid . Only the best of the top guilds , those competing for first kills , are still concerned about class and spec . The only challenge which remains when composing a raid is to find the appropriate numbers of tanks , healers and damage dealers ( the " default " being 2 - 3 tanks , 5 - 6 healers and 16 - 18 damage dealers ) . Individual players ' capabilities are nowadays much more important than class or spec . Knowledge of boss fights is paramount , as is the players ' ability to get the maximum threat , healing , or DPS possible with their current equipment for tanks , healers , and DPS respectively . This is particularly important in fights where one player ' s ignorance can easily lead to a wipe - encounters such as Thaddius or Kel ' Thuzad are particularly notable examples of this . Hierarchy . In 5 - or 10 - man groups , a single leader can do all the management necessary - one person can organize healing , tanking and target assignment without there being much danger that something is forgotten or out of sync . In a raid the tasks are much more complicated and specialized , and sometimes require detailed knowledge of class ( or build ) capabilities , so that actually quite a lot of the management tasks get delegated to " officers " , and the raid leader himself mainly focuses on keeping things synchronized . As all hierarchies , this structure can either be maintained out of necessity , because it makes things easier and better organized , or it can be used as a means of suppression . For beginning raiders it ' s sometimes hard to distinguish these two forms . Normally there are a few extra chat channels set up , for example one channel for healers , one for warlocks and mages , another for hunters , and one for all melee classes . Each of these channels should have one leader , and these leaders join the officer channel where they discuss ( together with the raid leader ) overall strategy and synchronization . Behavior . Unless the task at hand is totally routine ( e . g . , the 20th MC run before the lava packs ) , chat should be kept to a minimum . Raids are not a good place to get to know the other members . There are too many people , and there ' s too little time . When it comes to tactics , beginners should really be careful and first try to understand how this particular raid works . Although on many bosses there are widely accepted " standard " strategies , some raids may do things differently and still have success . It is not a good idea to try to teach things to long term raid members , justified as it may be . Discussions should not take place during a raid . If there are any issues they should be discussed later with the relevant officer in / w or in some forum , not during the raid . Good methods to annoy other raid members ( and the leader in particular ) are to predict doom and failure before the pull even begins or to declare " wipe " when just a few people are dead . It is important for the success of the raid to stay positive , especially when learning new content . A good mantra is " Wiping is fun " ( meditate about that - it really helps ) . So whenever anger about a bad run wells up , just think of how fun wiping is ! Raid Gear . Raids are the only environment where damage dealers really need a lot of + hit gear . The raid boss es are 3 levels higher than the level cap , and thus in order to maximize damage output + hit rating is a viable stat . Until the hit cap is reached , hit is the most efficient way of increasing damage output ; still , it ' s not infinitely more valuable than other stats ( see Hit / Spell hit ) . For mana users , endurance may be important , particularly for healers . Every mana user must be able to sustain a 10 minute fight . Tanks ( and to a lesser extent everybody else ) may need many different sets of armor to adapt to different situations ( e . g . high resistance , high avoidance or high threat ) . Wiping and wipe recovery . A Wipe happens when all members of the raid are dead . Part of the challenge of raiding is to recover from this and get moving again quickly . Quick and efficient wipe recovery helps to increase the raids success . While learning a new encounter , wipes usually happen every 15 – 20 minutes , thus in a 3 - hour raid ( assuming 15 minutes ) a raid that takes only 5 minutes to recover gets 9 tries at the encounter , whereas a raid that needs 15 minutes only gets 6 tries . For this reason , new members should quickly find out under which circumstances they are supposed to release , when they should self - rez , and when not . If capable of self or combat rez , new players should always ask the raid leader whether to use it . Loot . The drops are usually distributed by a loot master during a raid . The loot rules are normally agreed on beforehand . Most raiding groups use some kind of formalized loot system ( with varying degrees of freedom , politics and bureaucracy involved ) . Drops which are of no immediate use ( like Crystals from disenchanted epics , other crafting materials or BOE items which nobody currently wants ) usually go to the guild bank . Newbies need to be prudent once more , but there ' s no reason to despair - even if things look like it ' s impossible to ever get anything , it ' s actually quite common that there are many items which nobody else " wants " , so newbies usually gear up quite fast . Of course , getting the top of the line drops takes much more patience . Following WotLK ' s release , raiding content has become far more accessible to pickup group s , and the most common strategy to distribute loot in PUGs is to set the loot rules to loot master , and have the leader call for rolls in a priority order . If no one is eligible or wants to roll in one priority order , next priority order is called . Rolls are done by typing " / roll 100 " in the chat box . This is a slightly finer - grained variation of the need / greed system . Typically , roll order is as follows :