Raiding in World of Warcraft not only represents the some of the most challenging content in the game, but it also runs to the core of why so many players remain infatuated with WoW today. Whether you’re new to raiding or are a returning legacy player, this guide will help you get up speed – preparing you to jump into the best and toughest raids the game has to offer.
Understanding Raids
If you’ve raided before, you can skip this. But for new players, understanding what Raids are is the essential starting point for figuring out how to get prepared for them.
What Exactly is a WoW Raid?
A WoW raid is a high-difficulty multiplayer instance designed for large groups of players to progress through, fighting one or more powerful bosses and overcoming challenges. These typically see 10 to thirty players dive into a dungeon where players progress towards a final boss fight featuring unique abilities and mechanics. Because of its unique nature, a WoW raid often requires considerable coordination and communication between players – as a single error can, in some circumstances, cause the entire party to die.
While difficult, a WoW raid offers some of the most valuable and powerful loot in the game – rewarding players with gear which will give them a significant boost or be sold for a pretty penny.
What are WoW Raid Locks?
In WoW you cannot simply farm raids every day. Instead, once you attempt or defeat a raid boss you’re usually “locked” out of that content for the rest of that week.
This means you’ll only be able to benefit from the same raid again the following week.
What are Keys?
Dungeons and raids weigh in at different difficulty levels – meaning that the same WoW raid can be completed at different difficulties. These difficulties are known as “keys”, as you need keys to access the different levels of the dungeon.
The higher a key level, the more difficult it will be and the greater the reward you will get if you’re successful. Generally speaking, you will want to complete lower tiers of a dungeon before attempting later key levels.
Preparing for Raids – Core Principles
Now we’re all on the same page regarding what raids are, it’s time to gear up. When preparing to raid there are several considerations to be made: including your level, your equipment and your mechanical ability/knowledge. This guide will focus on how to gear up with the best equipment for raids.
Understanding Item Level and Its Importance
Item level (or ilvl) is a number attached to each piece of gear in WoW, indicating how strong that piece of gear is. You can think of it like a power rating – you will be able to get multiple versions of the same gear, but the one with the greatest ilvl will be the best and most valuable.
While ilvl may seem like a small part of the game as you’re levelling up your character, when it comes to maximizing your potential, it is huge. This is because:
- Higher ilvl items means more powerful base stats, which means even higher potential.
- Most raid groups use ilvl to check if players are ready for specific content. For example, asking for ilvl of 450.
- Better gear makes difficult fights more forgiving, by buffing your stats.
The Three Pillars of Gear Progression
So, how do we get better equipment? This road is comprised of three clear parts:
Planning
Identifying what gear you need to obtain and why. Then clearly understanding the steps to obtain that gear with the desired stats. This will help to inform what content you should focus on, and how often you’ll need to play.
Of course, we all want the best gear – but these plans should be realistic. What gear is necessary to reach your current goal. Not to be the best specced player in the entirety of WoW.
Optimisation
So you’ve identified your desired year… but is it really the best and most realistic that you can obtain? Reconsider your stats and specs, and ensure that the gear you’re finding fulfils all the criteria for your given class.
Diversification
Can you combine different methods to find your gear? For example, can you gather this gear effectively over a few weeks given things like WoW raid lockouts? How can you avoid the soft locks the game puts in place? And if there are locks, are there better ways to obtain your desired stats which are not through that specific item?
What Gear do I Need?
This is a big question, and will depend greatly on your class, character, skills and overall desired. For this reason, this guide will focus on getting you to the right resources for you rather than running down every possible build.
Understanding Gear
When we think of gear, we immediately think of armour and weapons. But there’s plenty more when it comes to end-game raiding. These are the key types of WoW items you’ll have to think about, find, or buy:
Armour
A large proportion of player stats come from amour selection. So you’ll of course need to get your hands on some great armour.
Weapons
Like armour, weapons are one of the primary means of increasing your character’s ability and output.
Gems
While armour and weapons get the spotlight, gems are a key way to further the potential of your gear. These will provide essential stat bonuses.
Enchants
Gear is great on its own, but with enchants its effectiveness is taken to a whole new level. So spend some time figuring out the best enchants for your build.
Consumables
While your gear is your base-level stats, consumables can provide significant boosts during WoW raids. These buffs primarily come from flasks and food, which you will likely need to craft or purchase. If you’re low on resources, you can easily get what you need by purchasing WoW gold. Because of this, you may need to create a budget for these buffs – considering both expensive and budget options.
Advanced Tools to Choose Gear
There are three main tools used for finding the gear you’ll need:
Community Engagement
I hate to be obvious, but the richest tool is community knowledge. Whether it’s talking to guild mates and friends or researching on forums, the player base is a font of realistic and helpful knowledge when it comes to identifying the best gear for you. So spend some time engaging with the community and online forums to find your desired build and equipment.
Using SimulationCraft
This community tool helps to you explore and visualise the options at your disposal, modelling how your build would do in different situations. This can help you select different strategies or gear to world better at certain WoW raids.
You can even directly import your character!
Raidbots
This is a version of SimulationCraft run in the cloud, allowing you to benefit from all of its perks without needing to download and run the program yourself. While it does have some premium, paid features, it’s worth it for time saving. But for those not willing to pay, you can use it’s free features or run SimulationCraft directly yourself.
How to Gear Up
Now that we understand all the general principles, let’s get into something more concrete: how to actually achieve good raid-ready gear.
Gearing Up from Zero
This path will be one for players who are yet to – or have just reached max level.
Complete World Quests and Regular Dungeons
Completing the campaign of your current expansion will provide basic gear to help you get started on your journey towards raid-ready equipment. This will also unlock important features and locations which will allow you to progress. And, of course, get you to a high enough level to begin participating in WoW raids.
World quests are self-explanatory. But in order to get involved in regular dungeons use the Dungeon Finder (press “I”) and then run each dungeon at least once to become familiar with the layout. Don’t worry, regular dungeons are very forgiving.
Move onto Heroic and Mythic Dungeons
While regular dungeons will bring some gear, it won’t be your end-game goal. Instead, you’ll need to move into the higher tier dungeons. If you’re new to these, consider joining runs labelled as “chill” or “learning” so that you can learn the ropes in a more relaxed environment.
Do weekly raids and reset activities to gain gear.
Once you’ve learned how to raid, you’ll be ready to start a weekly rotation of WoW raid challenges as you grind towards your desired gear.
How to Grind the Weekly Reset Activities
Many of WoW’s most rewarding activities, including a challenging WoW Raid, reset every Tuesday – giving you a fresh chance to earn loot and progress. These are the ones you should keep your eye on as you’re trying to gear up for high-level raids.
Great Vault
This is a special reward system which offers some great high-level gear based on what you achieved in the previous week. If you complete the other activities on this list, your Great Vault rewards will improve – netting you some of the best gear available to your character.
WoW Raid Difficulties
Completing the hardest raids you can will net you good rewards as you gear up. This will not only allow you to approach higher level raids, but also improve your Great Vault.
Mythic+ Dungeons
This isn’t going to be possible early on, but as you improve it’s vital to start on Mythic+ Dungeons as these are where you get into the best of the best endgame gear. Try to join experienced teams which can help teach you and somewhat carry you. Albeit you will need to be up for the challenge.
Rated PvP (Player versus Player)
Outside of raids, PvP can net you some great rewards and give you access to better Great Vault rewards. As this is different to Raiding you may need different equipment and play styles to compete at high levels – but taking part will net you some good rewards.
World Quests
Simply completing special PvE world quests each week will net you some rewards and Great Vault progress. Also offering a great place to start if you’re lacking the gear to begin Raids or PvP.
Time to Gear Up for the WoW Raid
As we have explored, gearing up is going to be a long process – first of research, then of consistent execution as you slowly improve your character and reach your long term goals. While this is a challenge, it is a fun one. Pushing you to engage with some of WoW’s most challenging and rewarding elements as you grow.
While the fine-grain details of the equipment and gear you will need will be dependent on your class, play style and desires, this guide will have equipped you with a clear process to orient yourself towards those goals – setting you off on your journey to achieve them, and thus take part in some of toughest WoW raids.
Good luck out there.