Raiding for the first time. Tips?

[Deleted]

Well, I must admit, I've never done a raid. And as I'm getting close to the magic number (level 88 at the moment), I'm trying to be as much prepared as I can before entering battle. I play disc priest, and find it really hard to keep my mana up while healing.

Can you guys give me some tips and info for me as disc priest getting into raiding, or just raid tips in general?

Thanks in advance.

[Mouri Kogorou]

regarding your class, start with icy-veins.com for the basic of basics.

don't worry about mana, once you go for higher level gear which has more spirit you will be fine.

regarding raiding, it depends on how much time you are willing to put into it, you will have to start somewhere and personally i think it is from finding a casual guild that suits your raiding time and is willing to teach you the game (no shame).

gear wise for raiding, timeless isle to push to 50X -> lfr Siege of Orgrimmar + Normal Throne of Thunder (it is easy) gets you to 53X -> flexible raiding OR normal, depends on your preference and commitment.

knowing the bosses is easy, just watch fatboss guides on youtube.

finally, as soon as you hit 90 start the legendary cloak quest and do not miss all the objectives you need to do every week (i think wowhead.com has a guide).

Edit :

also for your gear, if you do not know how to gem/reforge/enchant , use askmrrobot.com to help you (the in-game addon has nice features as well)

and as said below Deadly Boss Mod is a nice addon for raiding and using keybinds is much better than clicking (although i just discovered few days ago that one of our core members was actually a clicker :d)

[TwentyTwelve]

Depends on what level of raiding you want to go for but;

- Have an active up to date boss moss such as DBM or Big Wigs.
- Have a customized UI that fits your need, E.G. Install things like Weak Auras / Tell me when to track important buffs ( for disc it could be angel stacks)
- Keybind! - It's no good playing in a raid clicking everything because atleast once in the raid you'll feel gimped and it may even result in a death, it's doable and i use to click myself but if you start praticing now, whilst your just getting into raiding, keybinding everything will make your overall play better.
- Get Familiar with tactics, even after that if there is spare time and your on a progress boss - a quick look at the dungeon journal dosen't hurt.
- track your own performance via a logging source (world of logs / warcraftlogs), compare yourself with other decent disc priests, compare uptimes and stuff...

There could be much more said and noted but tbh, as long as you take the time to look into fights and your own performance whilst knowing your class well enough, you can easily clear normal and even progress through heroics.

One thing i want to note though, which is an obvious thing but a lot of disc priests suck at, your absorbs are GAME CHANGING. Use spirit shell to reduce raid wide aoe - even normal shield... Shield before a big tank hit (corrosive blast first boss for example)

[Deleted]

Well, I must admit, I've never done a raid. And as I'm getting close to the magic number (level 88 at the moment), I'm trying to be as much prepared as I can before entering battle. I play disc priest, and find it really hard to keep my mana up while healing.

Can you guys give me some tips and info for me as disc priest getting into raiding, or just raid tips in general?

Thanks in advance.

Aliena is making nice guides for disc priest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJukl6jbfgw
Also icy-veins is a good start: http://www.icy-veins.com/discipline-...-healing-guide

You can add me on battlenet and we can run a raid or two and i can show you some addons thats good to have, raidframes, tips and tricks.
Ghoro#2215

[Xjev]

I'd suggest you experience some before going for top-notch guides. With some common sense you can do pretty much OK and learning yourself is way more fun that just copying rotations from these guides. Later on as you want to improve you can check those guides.

[dd614]

Read up on the fights, know your class well enough to be effective and go in with a thick skin. People will tend to be insulting in raids because they're insecure douchebags.

[Restors]

Best raid advice I can give you: Just relax, pay attention and truelly enjoy your raiding experience! hopefully you doing it with a bunch of guildies who all are friendly to you.

[DechCJC]

1. Join a casual guild, don't expect too much - Participate with the aim of getting better.
2. Do your best and try not to get disheartened too much if you mess up or if people criticize you, just try to consider what they tell you and don't lash out at them.
3. Practice. Do LFR's, Proving grounds, challenge modes, and the big one - PvP. PvP is a great way to get better at your class, and while it may not teach you everything that there is about raiding, it will make you a much stronger player in general - Not to mention that you don't need to worry too much about letting your team down, losing a BG isn't a big deal but wiping your raid repeatedly can be.
4. Just play to have fun and to get better, don't stress yourself out from trying to improve and just let it come naturally. With time and practice, you'll get better - And make sure that the guild you join has similar goals as you, don't be trying to join a guild in mid heroic progression, you're just gonna end out disappointed. With a casual guild you shouldn't need to worry too much, if you do a bit of PvP, LFR/flexi, challenge modes and proving grounds (gold +) etc; You'll be more than suited for normal modes so you should be fine .

[Anzen]

Well, I must admit, I've never done a raid. And as I'm getting close to the magic number (level 88 at the moment), I'm trying to be as much prepared as I can before entering battle. I play disc priest, and find it really hard to keep my mana up while healing.

Can you guys give me some tips and info for me as disc priest getting into raiding, or just raid tips in general?

Thanks in advance.

I like you already.

Post #2 had most of it, just strive to always be better. The more effort you put in, the more reward you get out.

[crunk]

http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/...acticed-skill/



here's an article that should be considered required reading for new raiders. it does an excellent job of covering the fundamentals of what the raiding game is.

[Deleted]

My, what kind and helpful comments, you guys! Going to look up all your tips and tricks and make gain out of it!
Really glad I joined this community

[TJ]

Make sure you read up on the fights before you do them, this will save you a lot of hassle with being raged at and such. Depends what difficulty you're aiming at, though.

[Rhianne]

Couple things that haven't been mentioned and are important.

1. If you're whispering to join a raid (flex, normal, heroic) make sure you have a reasonable amount of time to play, for flex- 1.5 hours (this assumes some wipes many groups can finish flex wings in under an hour), for normal/heroic-3 hours. Don't whisper to join a SoO normal raid fresh run if you only have 45 minutes to play.
2. Make sure you have flasks and food before looking for a raid to join. (not necessary for LFR). Many raids will provide food, but make sure you have a couple just in case.
3. Once you get accepted, stop what you're doing vendor and repair. You don't want to be that guy asking for a bot after 1 wipe.

[Styxxa]

The beauty (and horror) of things nowadays is the different levels of difficulty. If I were just starting out, I would try to avoid the awkward situation of going into a normal raid as my first ever raiding experience (been there, done that, sucked big time), by investing some time in LFR, then Flex runs. People have a real opportunity to be super ready for normal and heroic progress now - as far as tactics and strategies are concerned (gear and skill is a different topic). And perhaps Flex difficulty is where you end up and what you enjoy and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's nothing worse than failing in a normal raiding environment and being the bad person in a bad group - a video game shouldn't make you feel like shit.

I think you'll be able to find a guild that suits your needs and is looking for active/committed players. Hopefully they're a good group that helps you progress at a reasonable pace without holding you too accountable. As an inexperienced healer, I'd want to try to find a group that 3-heals

[Arkura]

I'm glad to see there is still new players here, what makes me even happier is all the people wanting to share their knowledge and information regarding raiding.
My best experience with learning new things is that you should not tackle raiding in general to begin with.
Focus on 1 task at a time in order for you to be sure you are actually learning and reaching your comfort zone.

Maybe start with the class itself, knowing rotation, stat priority and gear you want to obtain. As of right now you have reforging but next expansion you dont have to think to much about that and stats gets changed alot so this is a very good time for you to start raiding so you can prepare for the next expansion.

[Defaulty]

http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/...acticed-skill/

someone beat me to it.
But anyways. More UI modifications is not always better. Simple and productive is what you need for raiding.

Watch Boss guide videos online. Learn the fights. Then go watch mulitple kill videos from a PoV of your class. You'll learn so much more from PoV kill videos. Sometimes you can see what people are doing from different roles (ie: Kill engineers on Garrosh fight) there may be a way that can help you output more damage on the boss while taking care of engineer as a DPS.

EDIT YOUR FUCKING DBM. You don't need every time for every fight. You don't need to know how many stacks the tank has for the fight as a DPS or when the tank debuff is going out. So go through and modify that.

Make weakauras that BENEFIT you. Again, you don't need to know everything that is happening to your character. TURN OFF FLOATING TEXT. You don't need to see the Crit numbers or what healing your taking in, you'll be okay without the text I promise.

Hide your chat windows (if you use a UI that allows this ie: ELVUI) during a boss fight. You'll gain so much more visible space.


GLHF.

[land]

If u want to get some practice healing try getting gold in the healing Proving Grounds, or maybe achieve endless. That will certainly give you enough practice to get better at healing and managing your mana/cds/dispells etc.

[Deleted]

Many thanks to you all! Learning a lot of new things.

[Deleted]

Wanted to let you guys know that I've done a couple of LFR raids for the past days and they were actually not quite difficult at all. I seem to survive and heal rather easily.
Also, I've joined a raiding guild which currently does ToT normal, and we are at 10/12 at the moment. Really glad I could join particularly this one, because this way I don't dive in in the middle of something big (like SoO 11/14 HC or so), and get myself used to raiding.
Again, appreciate all your comments, thanks for the help!

[Anzen]

Wanted to let you guys know that I've done a couple of LFR raids for the past days and they were actually not quite difficult at all. I seem to survive and heal rather easily.
Also, I've joined a raiding guild which currently does ToT normal, and we are at 10/12 at the moment. Really glad I could join particularly this one, because this way I don't dive in in the middle of something big (like SoO 11/14 HC or so), and get myself used to raiding.
Again, appreciate all your comments, thanks for the help!

You have learned well, grasshopper.