Dkati and Karazhan...

While our guild made decent progress toward working as a group -- we failed on Attumen many times. It got me thinking about whether I was really geared correctly for Karazhan.

I ran across the following information, though I have no idea who the original author is. It was very well written, and so I repost it here, in its entirety.

End game raiding is in a lot of ways very different from the pre-BC era. Raid encounters are no longer very forgiving, meaning you can't show up unprepared and expect the group you are in to pick up the slack and still have success. Since the raid sizes have been greatly reduced, so has the margin for error. With MC and BWL raids, you could bring along 5 to 10 under geared and inexperienced people and still have success by leveraging the gear and experience from the other 25-30 raiders in the party. Those under geared and inexperienced players could then gain both of these things by attending the 40 man raids on a regular basis with little to no negative impact to the success of it. In BC, you now have to be both geared and experienced BEFORE you start raiding.

1. Look at all the loot that drops in both the 5 man normal and heroic modes and make a wish list of the items you need in order to upgrade your gear. Then start hitting the instances you need in order for you to get the gear. Granted it may take several attempts, however this is not a bad thing since you will be getting reputation so you can get keyed for the heroic instances. A good idea is to check with other guildies, they may need to hit the same instances you do in order for them to gear up as well.

2. Build up all your instance factions to revered. This will allow you to purchase the Heroic instance key from each of the faction's quartermasters. Heroic instances are very much like raids in difficulty and are a good way to get raiding type experience and gear. The last boss in each heroic instance will drop an epic item (as of 2.1 patch).

How do you know when you do have enough gear and experience? Experience and gear go hand in hand in BC. As you are building up gear, you will gain experience. There is no set gauge on this but if you really needed to put a benchmark on it, ask yourself these questions:

- How many parts of the dungeon three set do you currently have?
If the answer is less than one, chances are you are not ready to raid. If you don't even know what that dungeon three set is, then you are not ready to raid.

- Have you completed all the 5 man instances in normal mode at least twice?
If you have not then it would be a good idea to do so to help you along in your quest for gear and experience.

- How many heroic keys do you have?
If the answer is less than two, then it would be a good idea to get at least one or two more so you can start running more heroic instances. However, you really should get all the keys so you can hop right into any heroic run no matter where it might be. Keep in mind, even if a heroic may not have the gear you are looking for, you are still getting experience and reputation. Reputation in heroic is more than if you ran in normal mode. Higher reputation will make nicer gear upgrades become available for purchase from the quartermasters.

3. Learn all you can about your class. You can expand the knowledge of your class in several ways. First, find out all about the different specs of your class. Learn about all the advantages and draw backs of each type. Understand in what situations a spec is most helpful. There are many ways to do this. First you can talk to your class leader. Another way is to post on the class forums on this website. There are many other resources on the web like http://www.WoWWiki.com that can offer up a lot of information on combat mechanics to help you better understand how the game works under the covers.

- What questions should I be asking my class leader?
When talking to your class leader, here is an example of some general questions you may want to ask in order to help you figure out what you need in order to be raid ready:

- How many Hit Points should I have unbuffed?
- How much Mana should I have unbuffed?
- How much Defense should I have?
- How much Dodge, Block and Parry should I have?
- How much AC should I have?
- How much Attack Power should I have?
- How much Plus Crit should I have?
- How much Plus Healing should I have?
- How much Plus Damage should I have?
- What class abilities would help the most during raids?