How is reroller/new guy supposed to get into raiding nowadays?

[Limak]

Hey there, looking at how things are going on my server i was thinking alot about how wrong it went. The thing is that nowdays rerollers/newcommers have no chance to even ,,climb up,, to get into better raiding guilds. On my server it looks like: KZ/ZA mostly pugged, no guild dedicated to do those two. PuG raid, not the end of the world.
Here comes first catch: they want you to be minimum t4 to do KZ and minimum t5 to do ZA. While getting yourself KZ ready is possible, though nowdays they have sick requirements to get an invite into KZ pug, this costs alot of cash for crafts, and LOTS of time spent on heroics badge farm.
Here comes another catch: most pugs want full epic guys for heroics, they barely take even BEST 5man normal geared people to do heroics. But let's say you got friends/guild and you do some heroics and KZ, alright. But many people wanna go further and see some hyjal/bt or even sunwell.
Here comes ANOTHER catch: EVERY single guild doing this content require people to have t6, even those that are not in SP yet but they farm some hyjal/bt(you need t6 to farm t6, sounds stupid right?). Now let's see, how someone who worked his ass hard on kz/za/heroics/crafts should gain t6 gear? You could say: ,,join a guild doing SSC/TK then progress to hyjal/bt,,. Thing is absolutely no one is arsed to do SSC/TK anymore, there is no such guild in existence(at least on my server) they all go straight for hyjal/bt(first ez-bosses then rest).
Now to clarify, i'm not a random newbie whining that he can't go hardcore raiding straight away, I raided pretty much everything in this game, from naxx pre-tbc to BT farm so i got some in-game experience and stuff. I took 3 month break and after getting gkick(elitist hardcore guild) i've made decision i want to reroll faction and join place where i got more friends(all of them are casual, mostly non raiders) so i ended up having to start all over again.
Now my question to you guys is, how am I(or any other reroller/newcommer) suposed to get into some serious raiding nowdays? Before this ZA/Sunwell crap it was easy, you geared up in KZ with KZ dedicated guild, then gone SSC guild then TK, natural progress etc, fine. But now there is tier 5 gap - no1 does tier 5 instances, no1 progresses through them, while good raiding guilds require tier 6 from start.
Or is it my realm?

[kerwyn]

Badge of Justice loot and the better pieces of arena gear (depending on class) help a lot. Your best bet is to find a guild that's willing to take you on faith that you're experienced in the content and just switched mains. That might require a realm transfer.

[Limak]

Originally Posted by kerwyn

Badge of Justice loot and the better pieces of arena gear (depending on class) help a lot. Your best bet is to find a guild that's willing to take you on faith that you're experienced in the content and just switched mains. That might require a realm transfer.

Here comes another catch: Nowdays no pve pugs/guilds want pvp geared people, there are very often messages like ,,lf1m last spot ZA dps, min X ap, Xhit, 0 resillience,, so PvP will get me nowhere. I once got ditched from ZA raid for having PvP weapons, even though my stats were satisfying for clearing instance.
About guild like that, none of those exist nowdays.
Transfer doesn't come into account, i rerolled faction. But nevermind that, not every1 got tier 6 geared main to flash around and prove you can play(though t6 is hardly a proof of skill especially nowdays, been there, seen that). What are they supposed to do?

Badge of justice loot is great but they want tier 6, while(from what i see) 2 pieces(at least for my class) are equivalent of t6 armor, rest is somewhere around t5, they still want you to be tier6, so going with badges only is not solution here.

[AK47]

Doubt it's your realm , you see that on any realm.

[kerwyn]

Originally Posted by Limak

Here comes another catch: Nowdays no pve pugs/guilds want pvp geared people, there are very often messages like ,,lf1m last spot ZA dps, min X ap, Xhit, 0 resillience,, so PvP will get me nowhere. I once got ditched from ZA raid for having PvP weapons, even though my stats were satisfying for clearing instance.
About guild like that, none of those exist nowdays.
Transfer doesn't come into account, i rerolled faction. But nevermind that, not every1 got tier 6 geared main to flash around and prove you can play(though t6 is hardly a proof of skill especially nowdays, been there, seen that). What they are supposed to do?

Badge of justice loot is great but they want tier 6, while(from what i see) 2 pieces(at least for my class) are equivalent of t6 armor, while rest is somewhere around t5, they still want you to be tier6, so going with badges only is not solution here.

I'm sorry, but any group who's willing to dump an experienced player for having pvp weapons (unless you're a lazy little bastard still using S1 crap) probably isn't worth being in.

I had a friend go from not knowing crap about the game and just starting to being in a BT/hyjal guild in about 5 months during my last semester at school using badge loot and what pvp stuff he could get.


It would really help if we know what class you played or had an armory link. Maybe then we could suggest some easy upgrades

[Limak]

Well about suggestion on upgrades hints are not needed, i've played this game for 3 years, 2 years in hardcore PvE, know something about gear. I'm still gearing up my new main(im 70% there) which is full epic already, now minor upgrades. But still after some asking, got no chance,, all guilds are in BT/Hyjal, none in tk/ssc. They dont want people without tier 6.
About your friend hes either extreme lucky or my realm suck so much.
My question is not about what items should i get, I know this very well what I should get, but rather how to go hyjal/bt when all you got for starters are kz/za/badges stuff/crafts, nothing else.

[Dightkuz]

I see this issue too... when I got my enhancement shaman to lvl70.

First I can't do heroics because most people would either not want a enhancement but if they would, they would only want one who is pretty much all epic'd.
And there is noway I would be able to do KZ because it's pretty much T4+ quality gear needed for the pugs. So I joined a raiding guild but then I never got invited to raids because they didnt need an enhancement shaman.

And I'm not gonna grind honor for PvP gear because alliance win pretty much all the BG matches in the battlegroup. This means that no one would want me for an arena team either.
Atm I'm not playing on that shaman anymore. Thanks Blizzard...

So I'm hoping that most of these issues will be fixed in the WOTLK.

[Proctology]

I know the feeling, thankfully, the servers I am going on to have a large raid base, kara-Sunwell. So my rogue on one realm will be set as well as the warrior. I am still debating between the two. But on my server we don't even have a guild that has downed a boss in SWP so ours sucks.......re-roll here if you want to progress down and dirty.

[SavageJ]

Your realm isnt the only one. I have alts I'd love to gear but nobody does normal 70 instances anymore. Pug heroics require epics even from classes that could easily get by in their D3 blues, like warlocks. Karazhan is all about fast runs for badges, very few guilds are stuck there anymore, and I'm not going to join a guild just to gear up an alt and then ditch them when I'm geared, because thats absolutely lame.

Your problem isnt confined to your realm, its thanks to the misconceptions that Kara and heroics require epics to complete. People have forgotten that they had to have blues to make it through Kara and Heroics the first time around. They dont realize that they could easily wipe kara clean with one or two DPS in blues if the other three or four are decked to the gills.

In my opinion, the fault lies in a lack of a reason to go back to the earlier content other than Kara. And then Kara is a long long instance that nobody lieks to spend more than 3 hours in so they want a group that can do it faster. Since you cant get any gropus for normals or heroics, you cant get gear for kara, since you cant get gear for kara, the hardcore elitist fools wont let you in on their runs so you can get geared for TK and SSC, which effectively blocks your admission into any BT/MH guild.

It sucks, it really does, I'd love to get my lock up where my warrior is, but it'll never happen since he's stuck in pre kara gear and I'm working on Archimonde with my warrior. But with the inception of WotLK, everyone will be at a fresh start again. I hate to say this, because it applies to me too, but you may have to wait for the xpack to finally get back into raiding. Until then, try to break that stupid misconception that PvP gear means you arent skilled enough for kara and heroics. Just because noobs can get it too doesnt mean everyone wearing it is one.

Originally Posted by Dightkuz

And I'm not gonna grind honor for PvP gear because alliance win pretty much all the BG matches in the battlegroup.

I'll trade you battlegroups, Allies lose quite often in Rampage.

[Dietolive]

Well, what did people do when they first started progressing in tbc?
They spent hours and hours farming stuff to make crafted items, they spent many more doing heroics to get hold of the few pieces of badge loot that were available back then. You have alot more possibilities to gear up now than you used to, especially since you get bt/mh quality items for badges. If there are no guilds recruiting then that's another problem, for which transferring to another server might be a solution

My point is: to gear up a character to raid lvl takes time and effort.

[Limak]

Originally Posted by Dietolive

Well, what did people do when they first started progressing in tbc?
They spent hours and hours farming stuff to make crafted items, they spent many more doing heroics to get hold of the few pieces of badge loot that were available back then. You have alot more possibilities to gear up now than you used to, especially since you get bt/mh quality items for badges. If there are no guilds recruiting then that's another problem, for which transferring to another server might be a solution

My point is: to gear up a character to raid lvl takes time and effort.

And what did I write before? I alread got BT crafts and badge gear, I'm farming for max 3-4 replacements now before im set(badge gear). Thing is even this is not enough for guilds over here.

Please read whole thing before replying.

[Zyrus]

well if you are a new guy you should start where everyone starts: in karazhan. there's plenty of those guilds at our server, and with badge gear you shouldnt really have problems getting in. and yes, a guild, not a pug.

[Tharka]

Well dude, your server must suck tbh, getting badge loot will easily get you into SSC/TK (Yes on shatteredhand for example there are many of those guilds) I don't know your class...but PvP weps and venge/brutal can get you into a SSC/TK guild, Just pug kara while you got some badge loot (yes farm a few peices badg loot and you'll get into kara), and from there progress to a SSC/TK guild and then go for MH/BT/SP.

[Leviathonlx]

It sounds more like a problem with your realm. I was able to gear up pretty easily with just pug Karazhans on my tauren shaman who I am likely re-rolling to come WotLK. The only thing that really stopped me from going farther into raiding was since the beta is so soon for WotLK.

[[IL]Shana]

(At first: sorry for bad english)

It's difficult with some classes, that's for sure, but it's not impossible.

In my experience, most guilds are looking for players nowadays, they just don't write a big message on their homepage. Tons of people are leaving, because they just get bored. And if I check new recruits of guilds on my realm on the armory, most of them don't fit the "requirements". But somehow they made it.

Beside the gear (that everybody can see) the main thing that seperates you from other people is your application. Make sure to write an absolutely exceptional application!

There are some basic rules, that can make it easier for you to find a guild. Most of them seem to be clear, but yet, 95% of the applications I've seen don't satisfy them at all.

Form:
Structure. Grammar. Spelling. Punctuation. No abbreviations. No leet-speak. No smilies. If it's not your native language, let somebody check it.

Content:
Write something about your real life, your job etc. "Hi, I'm 15 years old, I like music and parties" maybe isn't enough. Also write something about your gaming background and so on. These are the things that give you a "face".

Don't look too elitist (woohaa, hardcore raiding since 1995) or too hardcore. Most guilds have bad experiences with that kind of people.

Be Mr. Nice Guy, be as polite as possible (Some of your postings seems to be a little bit rude. Just a very little bit, but in your application, that would be an instant fail.)

No bad mouth about your old guild or your old realm!

Make clear, that you have the best gear you can get without them. If there are possible upgrades, give a short timeline ("I'm just 100 badges away from "Pwnorizor's daggor of death", and will get full season 4-gear within 2 weeks"). Use the best enchants available and use at least rare gems. (No excuses!) If you have different types of gear make sure to log out in your pve-gear.

Make clear, that you wan't to raid, farm your potions, that it's a pleasure for you to help other people, that you don't raid just for gear and that you will still be there, when you've seen everything and are decked out. Write something about why you would like to join this special guild.
But don't go over the top, they have read this a thousand times. That's the most difficult part, they still have to believe what you write (so you better belief it yourself).

Make clear, that you will be there, when raiding starts in WotLK.

If the guild offers the possibility to send them your application via PM, use it. Send it to the right person(!). That will make it easier, if you have to apply for another guild later. Don't send an application to more than one guild at any given time, a discovered double application will be an instant fail from two guilds. Ask for their decision after some time, but don't annoy them.

Even if they don't accept you, stay polite. Thank them for debating your application, and make clear you will renew your application, when things have changed a bit. If somebody talked more than a few words to you, wave him once per day if you see him, and try to chat from time to time (but don't annoy him).


Maybe there are some additional things I forgot, but most applications I'Ve seen don't satisfy even 50% of the things I wrote.

Good Luck!