Raids at release

[Pelleas]

Hello guys,

I'd like to submit to you the following facts on Cata to check if I had them right:

- Raids will require Heroics gear
- Heroics will require full normal L85 gear (You don't run heroics on quest greens) as well as Reputation status (like BC)

Would the 3 raids at release be tiered? Ie have to complete Raid1 to do Raid2? Or if progression hard-coded, general advice is to start with one then the others? Or are they same difficulty?
I'm trying to understand how I am going to manage Raid objectives and IDs for my guild and how I can control their PUGing outside of official raid nights so they don't burn their IDs on PuGs.

Many thanks!

=Pel

[Noakh]

perhaps this is an overly simple reply, but just tell them not to pug. Guildies should keep ID's clear for guild runs, that's kinda the point of a raid guild. (disregard if this answer is dumb for some reason)

[huth]

No clue about raids since they are unavailable, but Blizz specificially said that you should have full iLvl 333 equip for heros, which seems about right for 85 normals.

[Shadowy Teddy]

As it stands right now on the beta, you definitely need as good gear as possible for Heroics. There are mobs in DM hitting for about 90K on geared tanks.

EDIT: It's gone so far that some groups deliberately grab two healers. Which means it'll probably be nerfed a bit in terms of straight-up tank damage. So long as the nerfs are compensated for, it's all good in my opinion.

[underdogba]

I doubt that you are going to need full 85 heroic blues and epics just to start raiding. No content in WoW has ever required you to be completely maxxed out in the previous tier's gear in order to start the next. Even in BC, you didn't need full 115 blues and every available heroic epic to start downing the first few Kara bosses, until you got to around Curator.

If anything, if they design the raid instances intelligently like in the past, you'll run into brick-wall gearcheck bosses along the way, like in BC how Curator was for dps output and Maiden was for healing.

[Shadowy Teddy]

I doubt that you are going to need full 85 heroic blues and epics just to start raiding. No content in WoW has ever required you to be completely maxxed out in the previous tier's gear in order to start the next. Even in BC, you didn't need full 115 blues and every available heroic epic to start downing the first few Kara bosses, until you got to around Curator.

Yeah, but that was BC. Several Heroics were harder than the first raids, which is something I hope won't repeat itself.

[Sleepysnik]

The 3 raids at release will be the same tier, so you will not have to finnish one to do the next one.
Blizzard stated that they want more smaller raids, so I think thats why there is three. Even tho we did get OS maly and naxx in wotlk, but in cata we should get 3 raids of more or less the same size.

[underdogba]

Yeah, but that was BC. Several Heroics were harder than the first raids, which is something I hope won't repeat itself.

This is kind of a moving-target question though I think, because you will come to a very different conclusion due to player skill. In BC, there were plenty of players who couldn't finish Kara until the ilvl 128 badge gear was available. In Naxx, there were plenty of players around launch who couldn't handle Thaddius before getting decked out in gear from the other bosses, yet objectively everything in there was defeatable in ilvl 200 blues or less.