I have noticed some hits from people looking for information about getting ready to raid. I know this has been said countless times but I’m going to cover it again.

I didn’t start raiding until I felt ready. It took longer then most people want to spend. Some people get their keys and think they can walk right into Kara and get some Epic loot. I personally tell those people to go and gear up before they open the gate.

I’m not saying you can’t raid Kara straight out of BM. If you have 9 other good players in your raid and they are geared for the encounters you may be able to finish a few bosses. I feel that in order to get Epics you need to put forth the effort to show you want them.

Hyouzan went into Karazhan once before I was ready to. I was asked to join my guild in a Curator fight to DPS the Astral Flares. Sounds Easy right? Well it should have been, that fight is mana intensive right our of BM. In BM you get a little break between bosses to drink and make more mana gems and what not. The Curator is a different animal all together, he has an Enrage timer and the flares just keep coming. Needless to say we didn’t kill him and I blamed it all on myself and my lack of being geared.

It took me another 2 months at least to get to a point where I felt I could do significant DPS while having the efficiency to DPS for 5 minutes non stop.

If my memory serves me right I was sitting somewhere in the 575-600 Bonus Damage range, I had about 80-90 spell hit ([item]29132en[/item] FTW) and about 17% Spell Crit. These numbers aren’t that hard to get with enchants and socketing correctly. I remember asking the RL on my first Karazhan run how my DPS was. He told me I was over 400 DPS which is good for just walking in the door.

So if you are unsure about where you sit for DPS, get the add-on Recount. Go fight Dr. Boom for 5 minutes and see what you DPS is. Then ask your RL if xyz DPS is good enough to start raiding. Some guilds want super easy Karazhan runs, meaning they want higher DPS from their players.