How do you Raid?

[Moongirl]

Greetings! I hope you are having a nice day!

I've always been more of a solo player in WoW, and I have reached 60 on some classes. However, raiding always seemed like 'the thing to do' once you are max level. As a solo player, the process seems very complex and I have no idea where to start. I don't know if I want to get to Naxxaramas or Kharazan level, I just would like to experience a 'simple' Molten Core or Onyxia.

1. Gear
How do you know when you are ready for a raid? I see the questline for the Tier 0.5 and it seems very difficult. But, if you are a healer or tank, do you even need to do it? Turtle has added a lot of new items and I don't know a clear indication for when you have the correct gear. I'm assuming each raid is different and would require certain stats, like specific resistances.

2. Guild
I think most people do raids in a guild, which is understandable. However, most of these guilds need active people, or need you to join Discord. I usually take long breaks from WoW and I don't have discord, so you can see the difficulty. For an old game like WoW, I'm really confused why you can't just use in-game chat. My best chance is probably a pick-up group for raids, but what about the 'attunement'? (I think its called that?) For Molten Core, you need this douse, and for Emerald Sanctum you need to do Dire Maul East... but these don't appear easy for a solo player to do. To make this part short, is it too difficult to try and do Raid related things without a guild?

I would rather not make this post too long, but perhaps you can see my worries and confusion. I may not have the mindset for something like a raid in Turtle WoW, but it is a big achievement in Azeroth and I want to experience it, even just once. Besides, I do not know what else to do at max level other than RP and PvP, and I can only do leveling process so many times.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any tips will be appreciated. Have a great day, and good luck on your journey.

[Reploidrocsa]

1 the moment you reach lv 60 you are ready for some raids. Kara 10, zul gurub, molten core and ahn qiraj 20 will be a good raid challenge to you. Once your gear is mostly from those raids you can go to bwl and aq 40. Once your gear is mostly from those two raids you can go to naxxramas. And same process for kara 40.

2 Voice chat is mostly mandatory once you get into bwl/aq40. You need to either listen for calls or do the calls yourself, and the chat just won't do when you need to make split second decisions. Especially of you're a tank or a healer.

And yes, some raids you'll need an attunement. You'll need for the most part a guild or a group of friends willing to come along, since most of the attunements can't be done solo.

[Bayanni]

For getting into raiding, the gear you need for MC and onward very much depends on your class. Healers generally can get away with less gear than a DPS and a DPS can get away with less than a tank.

It's unlikely you'd be able to join a raid team as a tank with pre-raid gear at this point in the server's life, there's too many geared people who can do better threat. A DPS will largely depend on what's available for them pre-raid, but for melees and hunters I typically see hit cap as the requirement. Zero idea on typical caster requirements but no green gear and all blues at least lvl 50 should get you to MC without a lot of hassle, it's not a hard raid by any stretch. Healers can get away with greens if they have a lot of +healing on it but otherwise just stack good blues from instances and quests and you're solid.

Attunements will require you to group with people, but this is usually done in world chat. MC requires BRD but can be done with a lava run easily enough. ES requires ST at some point and a few elites, but Azshara ones aren't too hard and the Hyjal one won't take long to find a group. BWL is just an UBRS run and those pop up fairly often. Onyxia, though, is not easy and would likely require you to just find 3-4 other people on the same part of the quest as you so you can do it all together at the same time. Otherwise, it'll take a lot of luck, time, or gold to pay people.

Lastly, you need a source of income. You need to be able to farm gold or materials that you can sell for gold on the AH. This will get turned into raid consumes and is going to be a large factor in if any raid groups let you tag along. Some are very accommodating to people who come prepared, so finding a slot will probably be easier than you expect (Natare is a great place to start imo), but if you want to do so repeatedly you'll need to ensure you're not a burden on the team. This doesn't mean absolutely maxed-out everything-possible pre-raid (skullflame shield is too expensive man), but it does mean showing initiative with some enchants, solid gear, and all of your consumes. It's a plus to review the fights beforehand and I've only met two raid teams that don't like it when you ask questions, but they don't take PuGs anyways so no loss there.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck.