Getting into guilds capable of doing heroic modes

[Müdür]

you, with a big chance, wont be able to jump a hardcore guild, so i'd suggest to semi-hardcores with that. Any guild that currently has 1-2/13 hc progress should be suitable for you. some guilds (like mine) starts the week with progression, then when we think its enough, we clear everything at the end of week on normal to get better gear for next week. You, as a trialist, will be taken to normal mode farming and get gear which wont be needed by other mains. In two-three weeks you should be able to gather enough gear to step into heroics.

[minkage]

Highly recommend you get into openraid runs to gear up in tier 14 and at least clear all of tier 14 for some 'has experiance' clout.
Farm current LFR, Nalakk and Oondasta for gear and try and pug some ToT runs.
It honestly dosnt take that much effort to gear yourself upto a 500 ilevel nowdays and thats more then enough to get into decent ToT runs.

[Nobleshield]

I can't offer any advice but I'm just stating I'm highly interested in the replies here as a returning player myself (left in October; I think I did Stone Guard on Normal one time, and have done just all of MSV once in LFR; never set foot in HoF or TES or ToT obviously). From past experiences one of the biggest issues is the huge skill gap you find. Any good guild should already be working on hard modes, while the less progressed ones are usually outright terrible (2/12 or whatever on this tier's wall boss), this usually means you have to join a less-progressed (I'm loathe to use the term "scrub guild" but that's what I'm talking about) team just to get some experience under your belt, and use it as a stepping stone to the higher ones. If they're 6/12 normal and you're 0/12 normal, you get what I mean... being 6/12 makes you that much more desirable to the 11/12 normal guilds, and the like, certainly better than having no experience at all.

What I am curious about though is an earlier reply that was basically "Focus on gearing up now and getting into a heroic guild for next tier" because it's been my experience that even with a brand new tier, guilds aren't going to look at people who don't have current heroic experience (barring things like being a former guildmate who they know used to be good in the past, or being vouched for by officers, etc). Especially if like the OP you don't have much (any?) current expansion raiding experience, let alone having fully cleared the raids or dabbled in heroic modes. How is that meant to work?

[Phair]

Trust me. You do NOT want to get into a higher-end guild with no gear. It seems nowadays that the amount of gear you currently have is overlooked and you're expected to perform onpar with their current raiders, or better.

I say suck it up and find some guild that is progressing and get some experience and gear from them. I'm not saying use them, as you may end up liking who you are with, but if they don't seem to sate your hunger for progression maybe then you can start looking at top guilds.

Pretty much this, it doesn't matter if you're the worlds most skilled player, you really can't expect your Honda Civic to keep pace with a pack of Ferraris. If you're not within 5-8 ilevels of your closest competition, or you don't have a decent weapon, trinkets and your legendary meta gem complete(or almost complete, since it's going to be mandatory by the end of the month) you're just not going to be competitive and will spend the majority of your time warming the bench.

Find a guild still clearing normals, it's all you can do. Unless you know a guy that knows a guy in whatever HC guild you're apping for, you're only going to set yourself up for a failed trial.

[LordBalkoth]

Pretty much this, it doesn't matter if you're the worlds most skilled player, you really can't expect your Honda Civic to keep pace with a pack of Ferraris. If you're not within 5-8 ilevels of your closest competition, or you don't have a decent weapon, trinkets and your legendary meta gem complete(or almost complete, since it's going to be mandatory by the end of the month) you're just not going to be competitive and will spend the majority of your time warming the bench.

Find a guild still clearing normals, it's all you can do. Unless you know a guy that knows a guy in whatever HC guild you're apping for, you're only going to set yourself up for a failed trial.

The legendary quest line is going to be a problem. I only collected one sigil from tier 14 and have not done anything since. The best thing I can do is to transfer to a vibrant server raiding wise. My chance of getting noticed and landing somewhere would be much increased. Biggest mistake I made in the past was staying on a horrible server for years.

[Subetei]

I would recommend now finding a guild that just recently killed Durumu and needs your class. That would give you a good mix of fights to do good on and still do some serious progression with Lei Shen etc and get used to the guild etc get some leftover gear maybe before HM. I wouldn't want to do a trial period with a guild just starting HM. That is after you get some decent logs up. Keeping in mind the HM in Dragon Soul were super easy and not something to get exited about.

[Arhippa]

If you know for a fact that you've got what it takes and you have something to prove it with, don't be afraid to apply to a good guild. Feeding loot from farm bosses to a new player is an extremely small price to pay if you turn out to be worth it.

Key here being though, you really want to have something to show for it too. Past experience does play its part, but that alone, especially if it's from several tiers ago, might not be enough. Having a few friends vouching for you helps a lot.