PUG Raiding and the ICC

I am a casual player, that wants to some day (with my 30% Bliz heal nerf/buff @ level 85) kill the Lich King! I would love to be able to do it before Bliz nerfs it to the ground, but being a casual I have some obstacles other than Sindragosa and the great Professor in my way. I need to find 9 or 24 other people who want what I want and have advanced thru the dungeon as I have, on my own.

Factors helping or limiting progress (and if you’re a casual your probably in the same boat).

I love my guild; we are all RL friends who have absorbed some players whom I have also become RL friends with. I have been recruited by late night casual raiding guilds, but could not leave the group I am with because,

• A. I like hanging and doing casual BS with them and
• B. They all know where I live IRL and
• C. a couple of them are more than capable of kicking my ass

So that means I have to PUG this content if I want to see it. I play late at night so I need to find a raid that is starting at 11pm server time. I need a little luck in that said raid, is another guilds run that just needs to pug a healer or that all 9 people in the pug know the content and are geared and able to do it (lol).

That leads me to the question that most casuals who want to raid will ask.

How do I find a good raid (and continue to find) for ICC content?

Here are some pointers and observations

Raid Check the raid

I am sure you have seen something like this in Trade chat,

(2 trade) (noob001) LFM for ToC25 Gear checking and must link achievement

Patience is your friend right now. When you see someone recruiting for ICC 10 or 25, before you ask for the invite, raid check them! What is raid check? It is the reverse of what noob001 is doing above. Check with the leader and see if this is a guild run, check and see what the loot rules are, ask how far they expect to get tonight AND when they plan to continue the raid. These things should give you an idea of the skill level of the raid. There is nothing worse than getting into an ICC 10 killing Marrowgar and then proceeding to wipe 5 times on cake walk Deathwhisper and being saved for a week. Poke and prod the RL, if you are worth your salt in heals they will not mind your asking before accepting.

On the other hand, if you have never seen this content and are new to this raid, you are kind of at the mercy of the PuG. When you whisper a RL that you want to go, make sure you tell them that you have not been in the raid yet, but that you have read the fights and watch some videos on them (you should go to Tankspot or MMO and read up on the fights). You may get lucky and have a guild run that will help you and “carry” you thru, you may get unlucky and have a lot of new people to the raid and wipe on trash for a while. Be prepared and open minded for either. You will need to progress thru the content and just as the progression raiding guilds did a couple months ago, you still need to learn.

Make sure you did the basics:

Have you done the following?

• 1. Have all your flasks and mana pots
• 2. Have all the regents you need for your class specific buffs
• 3. Have you repaired?
• 4. Did you enchant and Gem those new gloves you just bought?
• 5. If you’re a cook bring some FISH!
• 6. Get on VENT even if you have run this a million times its still helps

Keep an open mind:

Different groups have different strategies for killing bosses, let the raid leader lead and pay attention, you may learn something new!

Some Observations:

Timing is everything: Every Tuesday starts a new rat race; everyone rushes to get VoA, ICC and the Weekly raids done. You can almost always find a raid on Tuesdays; you will typically find more fail raids on Tuesdays as well because everyone is rushing to get things done and not paying attention or trying to do something that is above their skill level. Not paying attention to who is in your raid can doom you from the start. ICC needs a balanced group of melee and ranged DPS, if you are in a raid with all DK’s, Pallys, and rogues, you may want to rethink getting saved with that group.

BAD IDEA

The day that I have the best track record of getting into a raid that kills at least the first 4 bosses in ICC is Thursdays. I have had 100% success rate and most of them continue on Sundays which is also convenient. Usually the raid is the 2nd or 3rd raiding team from a well established guild, which has the added bonus of getting on a schedule with them and adding them to your list. Currently I have a list of 4 guilds that run a late night ICC on Thursdays, I get into one of them every time and having experienced raiding with them I know what to expect and they know what I am capable of.

Saturdays and Sundays you will find a lot of continuations of raids, usually it’s guilds that have made it to their progression point. Keep in mind that if you join one of these, you will be saved and miss out on the “easy” candy from the first couple bosses and you will most likely be learning a new fight with the rest of a guild (and there is nothing wrong with that).

Mondays is desperation night, just take what you can get and roll with it. It’s going to reset in a couple hours anyways so give it a shot and see how far you get. Don’t worry as much about raid make up or gear, it will be hard enough to scrape up two tanks and a couple healers that are not already saved.

If you are serious about raiding as a PUG (is that an oxymoron or something like that?), you need to keep notes on who was good to group with, who failed and who was great! A couple months of doing this will get you a nice reputation on your server and will get you added to lots of friend’s lists for future raid invites!

Vail