Re-activating your WoW account, or interested in "Trying Before You Buy"?If You Want To Raid… Get This Rep!
Starting The Sons of Hodir Chain
Ulduar isn't a walk in the park despite the fact that some of the well-popularized bleeding edge guilds have blown through it (after many hours of pounding out their own strategies in the PTR - see what World of Matticus has to say about this topic).
Vault of Archavon's new boss Emalon and his trash buddies are no walk in the park either, and the PUG scene for VoA has taken a severe hit as a result.
Raiding Guilds Recruiting Like Mad
From what I've seen on our realm forums, and on the WoW traffic I read through Twitter, right now is an amazing time for a player to find a new raiding guild home.
Guilds of all sizes, in all stages of progression, on all servers (and all types of servers), on both Horde and Alliance sides are looking for players of all classes to join their ranks and fill out their already well-oiled teams.
And of course, there are always a plethora of new "spin-off" guilds that have recently started up with a core of very experienced raiders who are looking for more members to fill out their new raid team.
Lots of places to get raiding experience, no matter what level of experience you currently have.
Solid Raid Team? Or Revolving Door?
For The Horde!
If you're brand new to raiding, you'll probably have to go through one or two "revolving door" raid guilds in order to get geared up and get experience with the fights, so don't feel so bad about that. (Shameless plug for my own Gearing Guides, written for players who are gearing up for their first Naxxramas raid)
But if you're ready to find that SOLID raiding team where a large percentage of the raid team is the same from day to day and week to week, and not only month to month, but YEAR to YEAR... then you need to take a good look at yourself to make sure that you're ready to jump right in to the level of progression that they're currently at.
What Solid Groups Expect
Solid Raid Teams use very few methods to screen out new applicants before even considering a "test run". Even with great gear and lots of raiding experience, there are some things that will nuke your app in no time:
- Incomplete Enchants / Gemming**
- Not meeting Hit, Defense or Expertise Cap requirements for class and spec
- Low-quality shoulder enchant
** Another Shameless Plug: WoWGrrl's Gemming and Enchanting Guides for New Raiders
High-Quality Shoulder Enchants Require WORK
- Unorthodox, Muradin (Alliance)
- Not Quite Immortal, Silver Hand (Alliance)
- Asylum, Zul'jin (Horde)
- Mortal Bulwark, Zul'jin (Horde)
- Eden, Mal'Ganis (Alliance)
- Exodus, Darkspear (Horde)
- Hogger On Farm, Rivendare (Alliance)
Recruiting Guilds Featured
You see, the Raider-Quality shoulder enchants come in one of two forms: Being a high level Inscriptionist, or having your reputation at Exalted with the Sons of Hodir.
Either way, it's not something that you can correct overnight, and therefore it's something you should start thinking about a few weeks BEFORE you submit an application to what you perceive to be a Solid Raid Team.
Do You Have Questions?
If you're new to the raiding scene, or have been raiding for a while but are displeased with your guild environment and considering your options, you probably have a lot of questions.
And of course, it can be a mistake to ask the "wrong" people those questions, because you could get booted from your current guild, or labelled as a "noob" at the new guild you're vying to join, before you even have a chance to represent yourself.
Feel free to post your questions here - anonymously if you desire - and get them answered without judgement.
Send your guildmates here to get their questions, answered, too!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
- Summertime's Effect On Your Raid Team
- Achievement: For The Horde! Off Night Raids
- To That Alliance Rogue I Don't Really Know…
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Interesting post. Seems like endgame in any game is the same :)
Prior exp, gear, and willingness to work at a goal.
I know from my experiences in FFXI, it was the same, I miss that game sometimes. (Warhammer had a miserable endgame,,,,boring)
I really cannot wait to get to 80 etc. I would ilke to see how the fights are in this game.
As a pally tank I personally prefer the Greater Inscription of the Gladiator. More Stam is a boon to me on all levels and the resilience isn't a total waste if you come up a point or so short on defense. But otherwise definately go with the Sons of "Dailies make my eyes bleed but ok" Hodir
Mister K’s last blog post..Is a tank all that I am?
My statement on twitter I think needs a little justification. Prior to 3.1 I didn't put a lot of emphasis on shoulder enchants. I understand doing dailies for a faction can sometimes be overly time consuming and some people couldn't do it. I never begrudged healers for it since there were comparable enchants through the wintergrasp shoulder chants.
However, now we have 3.1 and with the changes to the various classes the Hodir shoulder chants become important once again. Example shamans. T8 loses mp5, it's now very important that we get the Hodir shoulder enchant with mp5 to compensate for some of the loss. I agree with you that it's a good point to show a players devotion, and I think it shows a wealth of commitment.
Great post btw =D
Lodur’s last blog post..Speccing Your Holy Paladin
I would consider us a solid raid group with very little 'turnover' though granted, we're made up primarily of 3 guilds that were born pretty much at game launch and have a strong community spirit that existed before we started raiding.
I agree 100% with point 1. If you roll up with no enchants or gems (or very very bad ones) then you're pretty much doomed.
Hit, Defense, Expertise. If the application was otherwise good then we would forgive this unless it was crazy low. Gear can always be fixed but good attitude and personality (it's important that people fit in with us, see aforementioned community spirit) can be hard to find.
3rd one. Well we're not min/max'ers or particularly hardcore so we'd not be that fussed if you didn't have the exalted SoH enchant, pretty much for the same reasons as 2. That said we'd certainly expect people to be working on it.
Our guild has had a handful of folks go into Ulduar and hopefully as guildies gain knowledge of the fights, we will be able to bring in more people. Folks will certainly need to be at the top of the game, attentive, well geared and prepared with flasks/buffed food.
We are in no rush to complete the content merely to slowly get everyone in there and see the place and hopefully bring home a few sweet loots:)
Cathy’s last blog post..Making A Living
Some things become clear to me only over time.
I've read in a number of posts about the importance of shoulder enchants, and I was always baffled: "What's up with shoulders? What makes an enchant on a shoulder piece different from any other? Why not pants? Why not boots?" And here's the answer that's come to me so far through experience - you can tell me if I'm wrong (and delete/correct my mistakes, please):
Enchants come in different ways. You're not going to find one vendor that sells high-quality enchants for every piece of your gear. One guy will sell a helm enchant, someone else will have a chest enchant, and so on. (I didn't really get this concept because I hadn't run across vendors selling enchants, and haven't placed much emphasis on it until hitting 80. While lvling up, sometimes a fellow player would give me a free enchant, such as +STAM on bracers, but that was about it.)
And what's so important about enchants in the first place, if you're on your first toon (with no enchants) and you've been doing fine without them all the way to 80? - Well, once you hit 80 and want to start doing the harder dungeons, you're going to need to really amp up your gear in order to kick out the kind of damage necessary to succeed (and keep fellow group members from complaining about your lack of contribution).
To get a really good shoulder enchant from a vendor, there's only one place in Northrend: the Sons of Hodir. But of course, they won't sell you the really good ones until you're exalted with them. So you run all the quests available, then do the daily repeatable quests until you're exalted.
FYI - In addition to the daily SoH quests, you should also keep your eyes peeled for Everfrost Chips. These are worth 350 rep with SoH. You'll typically find them on the mountainsides, and mouse-over will give you the gear icon. These are typically visible at a longer range than mobs. They look like icesickles sticking up from the ground... I took a screenshot but also discovered there's already many screenshots of Everfrost Chips online. Look them up.
This explanation about enchants may seem too basic, but for someone like me on their first toon, it's very new territory. Hopefully it's useful to someone.
Awesome explanation! Thank you for the addition!
A LETTER TO THE SONS OF HODIR:
Dear Sirs,
I am hereby writing to you to give you my formal resignation. Monday will be my last day serving as your horribly-underpaid employee. I have toiled every day for you for many weeks now, and it has NOT been fun.
I'm tired of feeding Arngrim. After Monday, he needs to find his own Jormungars. If he's too feeble, he should find some softer food to chew, like Gnomes. I've seen quite a few buzzing around like flies right there in Dun Neffelem - let him eat those.
If you want Hodir's helm oiled, well sirs, you're going to have to go into that bear cave and get your own oil. I don't care if you're too big to fit. Go on a diet, or just let the stupid helm rust, I don't care.
As for those invisible infiltrators, well, it doesn't look to me like you guys have ANYTHING to protect or hide in that empty, ice-hole you call home, so let them spy all they want - I'm not stepping in any more ghostly worg poop just to find some spies for you.
I've already brought you a mount of scrap iron, and killed enough Brittle Revenants that they must surely be close to extinction. I feel sorry for them - find some other way to cool off your scrap iron. And by the way, what exactly are you using all that metal for? It doesn't seem to me that you've built ANYTHING with the hundreds of pieces I brought you. Time to put that anvil to use that I (yes, once again it was me) brought to you. Apparently all of you together couldn't walk down the road and get it yourself. But now you have it, and you have the metal, so get to work.
And as for your forefathers, I'm not releasing them any more after Monday. They can walk around on that frozen battleground until the stars burn out for all I care.
And finally, I'm sure you've all had a good laugh at watching me fall to my death over and over as I attempt to kill a Wild Wyrm for you. I'm such you get a big kick out of watching a cloth-covered Warlock try to survive without and useful spells, potions, or decent weapons. Well sirs, yuck it up all you want, because I'm NOT doing that stupid quest for you. Find some other shmuck to laugh at.
So come Monday, you'd better have my frigging Shoulder Enchants ready and waiting. Because I'm not standing around while you guys finally do some work yourselves. Have it ready when I get there. After I get my enchants, you will never, ever see me again.
Your soon-to-be-ex-employee,
Mortigan
PS - I hate you.