Here we are! It’s the last post in this series and it’s more or less a wrap-up of everything else we talked about, as well as a few other things I thought I’d throw in…

(NOTE: these posts typically have links in them that go to other websites that delve into deeper detail than I will, in case you’re curious to learn about the nitty-gritty.)
(Briefly) What Did We Discuss?
Well we started with the basics, didn’t we? We talked about what raiding was all about. More importantly, I explained about progression, and how that explains why we raid to begin with. Then we went over the topic of gear, and how to enhance it.  Next up, we discussed about improving yourself through consumables. In the last post, we talked about what goes on in a raid, and what to expect while you’re there. We pretty much went over all of the highlights. If you didn’t understand raiding when you started, you should at least have a better idea now.

Being Prepared
Something I didn’t really touch on in the last post, and I really should have, which is being prepared. Many people will hop on 15 minutes+ early to make sure they’re ready to rock come start time. You really should too. There are two reasons why the raid starts late: needing to find subs, and players forgetting one thing or another, and having to go back for it. So, before you head to the instance from a capitol city, ask yourselves the following questions…

• Is my game patched, mods updated and Vent ready to go?
• Do I have enough reagents?
• Do I have enough food/water?
• Do I have enough health/mana/special pots/flasks/etc?
• Am I wearing the gear I need?
• Did I unequip the riding crop? (Or other trinkets that won’t really help you, LOL)
• Did I bring a pet? (It’s tradition with our guild.)
• Did I bring enough bandages?
• AM I READY TO GO COME START TIME???

Being ready to go come the start time of the raid, ensures everyone has the maximum amount of time to do as much as they can. Even though I’ve raided plenty of times, I go over that check list right before I leave a capitol city, so I won’t burden anyone to have to wait any more than they have to.

Do I Have To Use Mods?
With our guild, yes. We require only a few mods to be used while raiding. Now, there are some people who don’t use any mods at all. (More power to them.) It’s certainly a big challenge to run a raid without any mods, but it also takes quite a bit more skill do to so. (For most players, at least.) Out guild doesn’t ask you use 1,001 mods, just a few. The reason why is that the vast majority are used to monitoring certain things to get us through the instance…

• Omen is a threat meter. Basically, it tells you how much aggro you have, as well as everyone else. Why is this important to have? It warns you if you’re exceeding the aggro of the tanks. (Because, especially if you’re a fragile class like a mage.) There are many times when exceeding aggro causes wipes, so we’ve found if everyone can see where they are at in the aggro table, they can back-off DPS if needed.
• Deadly Boss Mods: Figuring out boss strategies is very exciting, but with how dynamic World of Warcraft’s content is, that’s only half the battle. Deadly Boss Mods makes the other half of that a walk in the park, thanks to a wide array of data hand-entered by the authors, that will display boss ability cooldowns, warnings for specific abilities, and a lot more.

Those two are, primarily, the two mods we require for raiding. Now, there are plenty of other mods available that will better help you through a raid. THIS list on Curse is a pretty good list of those other mods you may want to look into.

Additional Help
There are many other resources that, for one reason or another, I didn’t include with many of the original posts. I hope to give you some more help here, (In no real particular order) …

• MMO-Champion: Mega site with all kind of good information. For this series, they have detailed guides for all TBC raids.
• Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists: Super guide to help you look at gear just for your class. There’s even a class gear planner.

Separately, I wanted to list quite a few series that WOW Insider has, since they too have a wealth of information…

• WOW Insider’s Gearing For Kara Guides: Starting with Kara? These guides can help you out!
• Raid Rx: Posts on raid healing.
• Ready Check: Posts on raiding in general. Quite a few good reads with some boss strategies thrown in for good measure.
• Build Shop: Posts discussing various class talent builds.

There are literally millions of pages on the ‘net for World of Warcraft. There are many, many strategy guides, blogs, and mega sites that can help you out with not only raiding, but the game in general. In the LINKS section of my blog, I’ve listed quite a few of them that may help you as well.

Lastly, always feel free to ask people for help. In our guild, we’re more than willing to take the time, be patient, and walk you through anything you dont’ understand. After all, we’re a team. We’d much rather everyone go in prepared and not knowing what to do and cause a wipe.

Thank You
Well, there you have it. My first series and from some of the comments I’m getting, it was a good one! I hope everyone enjoyed reading it as I enjoyed writing it. More to the point, I hope this series helped some of you, even if you only learned one new thing. Thanks again to my guild and everyone else who gave me the support to push me to finish this!

/bow

Tags: being prepared, Guides, help, Mods & Add-Ons, raid, raiding, strategy