I'd like to hear how people progressed into becoming better raiders. Hopefully this will help show those who wish to start raiding how to begin, but otherwise, I'm curious to see if there are different paths then the one I took.
I was in a social casual guild, the type that accepts all members and send /ginvites to every guildless player we see, when I started getting bored and decided I wanted to start raiding. At the time, I was wearing mostly quest blues and some pvp gear. Based on the date of some of my achievements, this was about when Patch 3.2 (ToC) was released.
I left the guild and posted in trade "Retribution Paladin looking for guild for Heroic Dungeons and beginner raiding.". Several minutes later, I was in a guild. It was fairly small, a 10 man raiding guild with one or two standby raiders. I thought we did well, successfully finishing Naxx 10 off in about a month, one-shotting Kel'Thuzad. Then we went to Ulduar. Flame Leviathan and Razorscale were easy enough, but XT and Ignis were nearly un-downable. We'd eventually get XT down, but could progress no further. Some raiders became frustrated, and left. We could no longer field ten raiders.
Luckily, an officer in our guild was friends with a GM of another guild that was in a similar situation as us, and the guilds performed a merger. We were able to breeze through the second section of Ulduar, and downed Hodir after several nights. At this point, our new GM decided we should move on to ToC. We managed the Beasts of Northrend and Lord Jaraxxus easily enough, but Faction Champions was a frustrating experience. Our guild progression was once again on a decline. However, the GM would take several of us along whenever she joined ToC 25 and Ony 25 man pugs.
By now, ICC had been released, and the guild had begun running the 5 mans to get the gear we couldn't get from ToC 10. Once again, we performed a guild merger, and downed the first quarter of ICC 10. We never did it again. For several weeks, we did no raiding, as only five or so people would even be online at the scheduled times. As luck would have it though, I would spot the following message in Trade Chat.
"LF Ret Paladin for Deathbringer Saurfang, 25 player. Link highest achieve and GS" (For those that remember, one of the earlier methods of beating DBS before he became faceroll was for a Paladin to DI whomever received the Mark, then brez/soulstone the pally). I contacted the raid recruiter, and after several attempts, we downed him. We also did a few attempts on Festergut, but lacked the dps (this was before the 5% buff). The very next week, I see the same recruiter in trade, once again asking for a ret paladin. Once again, I pst him, and I'm in. As soon as the raid was over, I asked the raid leader about joining the guild. He directed me to the guild webpage. I was impressed, as this was the first guild I had applied to that had high enough standards to have people apply online.
I was very happy with my first 25 man raiding guild. The players were more active, the raids were current, and the loot was better. Over the following months, we would down Festergut, Rotface and the Blood Council. Professor Putricide is were trouble began. At first, progression on him seem to be going at a normal rate. We'd get slowly better with each attempt, even pushing him to Phase 3. Then, the following week, we could barely make it through the first experiment of Phase 2. We began regressing, and started wiping on Blood Council as well. Problems were only slightly lifted when the officers and several raiders downed Lich King in 10 player mode. Things were starting to look up, until the GM promoted his girlfriend to an Officer position. This angered several other officers and raiders, as she immediately started promoting and demoting some of the other players. Eventually, they left the guild and formed their own, cutting the guild in half. When I logged on the next day, I was guildless, and the GM and his girlfriend had Realm-Transfered and name-changed.
I think the new guild would likely have excepted me, but I was pissed at the guild meltdown, and left a rant on their webpage. It wasn't so much a rage-quit as it was a rage-don't-invite-me.
At this stage, I decided it was time to step it up a notch, and I applied to the best guilds for my faction on the server. The #1 guild shot me down, as I could only make 3 of their 4 raid days, and they were full on all Paladin specs. The #2 guild was more interested, as they consistently had to replace raiders who left to join the #1 guild. They also had accepted several others who had been in my previous guild and had wanted nothing to do with the new guild that had formed from it. We proceeded to kill 11/12 ICC 25 man, and a few weeks later, got the guild's first LK 25 man kill. Several months later, we would be the 3rd guild on the server to get [Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player)], as well as Realm First [The Twilight Destroyer (25 player)] (The guild above us did the 10 man first, whereas we went straight to 25, so we had a bit of a head start. Four guilds downed it the day it was released).
I am still with this guild, and we are still among the top raing guilds in the realm. There have been minor problems, such as some leaving for the #1 guild, or breaking off to form their own 10 man now that there is shared loot, but I am content with where I am, and am probably at the pinnacle of my raiding career.
Judging from my achievement dates, it took me about 15 months to go from [The Arachnid Quarter (10 player)] to being the realm third [Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player)]
Honestly, I don't really remember. It started with some tiny guild who didn't care that I never raided and didn't mind that I was in blues. They were very nice to me and patient with me.
We started in Naxx. I was still using the default UI and I remember asking one of the super-awesome priests "How do you heal 25 people?!" when he introduced me to addons. EoE captured my imagination, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Sounds very much like my situation, started as a noob, played in a social guild but progressed far beyond others in that guild, joined a social/ raiding guild during naxx period and got sick and tired of people not being able to complete certain ulduar bosses or achievements. Left that guild after extended bouts of trying to motivate people to raid better without results so extreme frustration...and pugged for (a year or so guildless) the entirety of TOC and the start of ICC, became friends with a group of guys who regularly cleared icc25, and am now in a small 10man progression guild which i prefer.
I started WoW Feb '09, dinged 80 in late March '09. I geared up in heroics, got all the gear I could, and joined Naxx pugs. I joined a new raiding guild that was clearing Naxx every week on 25man with a few pugs, and when Ulduar came out we started doing that on 10man. We could only kill the first 4 bosses, then people got frustrated and left. I left this guild, and joined another guild that had all bosses on Ulduar down and was starting on hardmodes. With them I got about half of the hardmodes in Ulduar 25man done + full normal clear of Ulduar 25, and we spent 3 weeks on hardmode Iron council 25man before people started leaving.
After this, I then realm changed to a 4/5 ToGC 25man guild. Was there from October '09 to Feb '10, but we never got heroic Anub 25man, although I was in the top 10man def, we would clear 10man ToGC Dedicated Insanity and Insanity every week farming the mount. My 2 close friends who I xferred realms with left this guild to join the #1 guild, which was about a world ~500 guild, and I left and joined them. I learned how to play Holy just to get into this guild, but I picked it up quick, enjoyed it more than Ret/Prot. We then progressed to do 11/12 HM ICC 25man, Bane of course, but the guild broke up in September '10 because we couldn't kill H LK.
I took a break until Cata came out, applied to a US top 10man guild in January '11 and now I'm 11/13, soon to be 12/13 HM. I think I've been doing pretty well, and as long as this guild never stops raiding I'll be here for the rest of my WoW career
Was in a casual guild, who then decided to start raiding, was kinda natural progression at the time we all pretty much levelled together then progressed onto dungeons and progressed to raiding then progressed into elitists so i left.
My friend pulled me into a Karazhan run right away when I hitted 70, I was instantly hooked, however not until 80 I actually raided. I couldn't raid in TBC cause I hitted 70 about 5 hours before the release of WotLK. I did however saw my friend raid in Vanilla and TBC but I was mostly playing on low levels :P
"Hey Adt, we're a few short for our MC run, I know you're a little low(was 58 at the time) but you fancy tagging along? you'll need to download Teamspeak, It'll be fun "
Get there and summon the other 32 members one by one and make each one a healthstone then nearly shit myself at how big the molten giants were.
Started mid TBC, leveled to 70 on a warlock, joined an average guild that was recruiting for Wotlk. Wotlk came and I decided to level druid, then joined a pretty bad guild, but still did naxx and maly with them. Then someone from a decent guild noticed me in a VoA pug and told me to apply, after that guild transfered from the realm I joined the second best guild on the realm - which eventually merged into a new guild (due to attendance issues in ICC) which managed to get LK 25 HC down realm first, then.... that guild died early in cata so I joined pretty much the last guild on my realm that raids at a high level, it's going pretty well so far, all three realm firsts for t11 and a decent world ranking.
Met a group of guys running dungeons one day...started farming UBRS / Scholo / Strat / BRD and just in awe of doing all the high level stuff together, then our guild went into MC! 20-30 wipes to trash later, we got to Lucifron, who proceeded to kick our butts. Been raiding since then
Hmm well it was a long, long time ago. I was GM of a very casual, leveling guild called Advancement of the Horde. I remember being curious about raiding and taking a few brave guildies in ZG to see what we could do. Needless to say, with zero knowledge of WoW raiding and many of my guildies not exactly being the most knowledgable members of their classes, we were steamrolled by the trash in the beginning of the dungeon and decided we probably shouldn't be there.
After the experience, I decided to attempt to recruit people into the guild to build a raid team and was given some advice about MC and the Duke Hydraxis quest chain by a raider from another guild. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to realize I wasn't going to turn my casual, leveling guild into a raiding guild so I passed the reigns on to one of the more loyal members and decided to app to an actual raiding guild. As a feral tank in vanilla, it was challenging finding a guild to accept you as something other than a healer but eventually I followed a friend to his guild where I became one of their MT's and really got into raiding.
Several years later I still have fond memories of that guild, though the server blacklisted me as the stubborn Druid who didnt want to heal. Though in all honesty, I did spend my dkp to build a healing offset and there were 1-2 fights in MC that I regularly healed. As the saying goes, what's right isn't always popular and what's popular isn't always right.
I had been playing WoW since Vanilla, but never really got into enough to get a char to max level until WotLK came out, and all my friends and family I wanted to play with started to level again. I got some Rockstars and pulled some long nights in order to 80 at the same time they did. I got an invite to the guild they were in, and slowly tried to build a good reputation as a bear tank to try and get in on their 25 mans. Problem was... I sucked. I had leveled so quickly that I never learned the ins and outs of tanking. Through a lot of trial and error and reading several guides to try and improve my skills, I finally got an invite to replace one of our MTs for a day that he couldn't make it, and did well to prove my skills. The GM said he liked how I played, but unfortunately, 2 of our 3 tanks were already druids, and therefore there was no room in the roster for another... but we did need a Boomkin! Made the switch and ended up as Balance for the whole expansion, loving every minute of it, especially since it allowed me to raid with my friends and family. Went from complete noob to downing content at a competitive speed in that expansion, still goin' strong in Cata with the same group
I was some clicker in VoA and kept doing shitty dps, 4k in 212 ilvl gear as an arms warrior. Was getting made fun of. I'm a competitive guy, so I did as much research as possible, learned the ins and outs of my class, and transferred off server. By the end of wrath, I had top 100 kills on most hardmode bosses, a bankroll of 500k, invincible, realm first titles etc and many #1 parses. Heh.
started raiding after me and my brother reached 70 at tbc. i was kinda a late leveler. after that my brother joined a guild named the casual approaches and i just joined the club. first i did some Bg to get epic shield and shoulders but then i started raiding.
after that i tryed pvp, but it wasent for me since of the crappy shaman has been at pvp. tho enhancement are good now i still dont do it.
My SWG guild moved to WoW, we had talked about it for awhile, and on wow's launch we moved over.
We started raiding as soon as we got 40 of us to 60 and somewhat geared. We were the, I think 2nd guild on our realm to down Ony, and the 3rd to down rag. We then sat around for awhile, farming the two raids and getting annoyed at bugs/random loot drops...and being teased when for awhile T2 dropped in MC. When new raids came out, we jumped into them. We ended up getting realm first to down C'thun, and 2nd guild to clear naxx 40.
Then BC came, we were excited, and we powered through lvling to get to the first few raids. I was the first mage to make it to lvl 70, and as soon as we got our MT at max lvl we jumped into kara. We downed the first few bosses, and then more people started to hit 70. The GM decided to be a jackass and only took his 10 friends every week, and told the rest of us we couldn't make other groups....big fight in guild, guild break up, I said screw it and quit wow.
Came back during wrath, and was amazed that people actually puged raids (back in vanilla, I had stopped pugging dungeons to avoid morons). Due to work I couldn't play as much as I used to, so was never competitive in wrath...still downed most bosses, but way after other people had. Also had to deal with guilds breaking up over and over due to people getting bored of the game....having to restart ICC like 3 or 4 times is kinda annoying.
Cata came, I had joined a bran new guild where everyone was friends and had high hopes we'd stay together, but it fell apart even before we started raiding due to some people lvling faster than others and the fast guys leaving cause they didn't want to wait for the slow people. Joined another guild, and got to 11/12 normal, and 5/13 heroic before I just got bored of doing the same crap over and over again. Have stopped playing wow, but still watching site due to being somewhat hopeful that something will get me interested in playing again.
Back in classic I was in a guild called Nocturn. After a bit we started in on MC and I got to go to most of the progression raids. After a week of plowing through MC an Obsidian Edged Blade dropped and the master looter thought it would be hilarious to give it to some one who already had the Untamed Blade. Since I had the most points (and should have had it) I was understandably angry and ended up leaving for another guild that had just started up. Even though they had been a guild for a day, they cleared MC and were killing the Silithus 40 man bosses for fun. The next day they went into BWL and Razorgore dropped the Untamed Blade which they gave to me. Getting a piece of loot for all the work that went into it got me hooked.
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