Good raiders know that no amount of gear will help your DPS if you only spam one button for the entire boss fight.

Bad raiders assume their lack of gear stops them from doing ample DPS, and that they don’t get invited to raids because they aren’t well geared.

Good raiders gear themselves up with ease doing 5-mans, and learn how to play their class properly (hint: reading what your spells do helps immensely). They are invited to raids often because they come prepared, don’t hold up the raid, and carry their weight.

Bad raiders depend on their guild to provide them with every piece of gear and every dungeon run they wish to participate in.

Good raiders use the built-in LFG system, along with any server-specific group forming channels to find groups on their own, and build their social network.

Bad raiders complain that PUGs are full of idiots who are impossible to complete a dungeon with.

Good raiders know that the bad raiders themselves are those idiots.

Bad raiders don’t move out of fire or void zones.

Good raiders know that no matter how easy Blizzard makes it to get the highest tier gear available, the bad raiders will still die to standing in bad stuff.

Step #1: Create a bank alt. This is where you will store all your items that you are going to sell each week. As your bankroll grows, you can purchase a guild bank with multiple tabs. If you are just getting started, four Netherweave bags and your backpack will do just fine, though.

Step #2: Mail items to your bank alt. While playing your other toons, mail any items you collect (but aren’t using) to your bank alt instead of selling them to vendors. As a general rule, don’t vendor anything that’s not gray; these are items that can be used by other players and may prove to be valuable when sold on the AH. If you are leveling a profession, mail your bank alt the crafted items for later sale. If you have any profitable crafting cooldowns such as alchemy transmutes, titansteel smelting, or tailoring, store mats for several of them on your respective toons and make sure to transmute/smelt/weave daily. Mail them to your bank alt as you make them.

Step #3: List your items on the AH. Once the weekend comes, it’s time to turn all of your creations and random loot into a big pile of cash! The weekend is a great time to sell all the items you’ve been collecting all week long, as more people log on to play. Using an add on such as Auctioneer or AuctionLite will streamline your AH sales by helping you price your items faster. You should look at the unit cost of items being sold, in order to pick a good price for your own items. The unit cost is the amount you are charging per item. Having an auction add-on lets you browse prices looking at this unit cost, to give you a clearer picture of what the market is like. The best advice would be to use common sense when picking prices, and quantities of items to sell. If you have multiples of some items, it may be a good idea to only list one each week, because of the deposit cost. The exception to this rule is enchanting mats as they have no vendor value, and in turn cost nothing to list.

Step #4: Profit! Check back after 48 hours and collect the cash! Anything that didn’t sell you can list again the next week. Toss ‘em in the bank and go back to step 2!

With just a few minutes at the AH each week, you can turn all your unwanted junk into enough gold to pay your repair bills, flasks, and just about anything else you need to buy each week. It’s really that simple!

Farm your own mats. This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re an Engineer, Blacksmith, or Jewelcrafter, pick up mining as your second profession. If you’re a Scribe or Alchemist, become an herbalist. Skinning goes with Leatherworking. Enchanting is a bit trickier; if you have tailoring you can disenchant the items you make, otherwise it’s often worth finding cheap greens on the AH that you can disenchant. With mining and herbalism, always keep your node tracking active while questing and gather those nodes.

Level your tradeskill while leveling your toon. Don’t wait until level 80 to pick up a profession – especially a gathering profession. It’s a lot less stressful, and often less costly, to level professions slowly. One big benefit of doing this is that you can actually use many of the items that you craft while leveling. If you wait until reaching the level cap, you will miss out on one of the biggest benefits of being able to craft your own gear.

Craft items with the highest demand and resale value. A lot of crafted items are just plain useless. Unless it’s an incredibly cheap way to gain a skill point, avoid them at all costs. Check the AH to see what your crafted items go for, compared to the cost of the mats needed to make them. Knowledge is power!

Don’t unload all your items onto the Auction House at one time. If you list five of one item that’s not of especially high demand, you risk having someone list a single item and undercut you, and having all your items expire without a purchase. This will cost you a lot of AH listing fees in the long run (unless you’re selling enchanting mats, scrolls, or glyphs – of course!) List one of each item at a time, and once it sells you can list another. Keep doing this until all of your items have been sold.

Don’t waste too much time in the trade channel. Depending on your server and what you’re selling, chances are that folks in the trade channel will not be willing to pay anywhere near AH prices. Trying to hawk your wares in Trade is time consuming, and you will have to deal with your fair share of irritating folk. Unless you have something incredibly rare and valuable that you absolutely need to get rid of quickly, it’s probably best to stick to the AH and let the open market work its magic.

Myth #1: Raiding guilds require a large time commitment. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sure, some of the top guilds in the world spend seven days a week raiding, and achieve world firsts. But a great deal, if not the majority of raiding guilds, are average people with busy lives. Often the hardcore raiding guilds spend less time raiding than casual guilds do – often as few as three nights per week. They are able to do this by setting a few basic ground rules. Everyone is expected to show up on time for the raid, fully prepared with consumables, reagents, and fully repaired gear. The raid starts on time and ends on time. AFK’s are kept to a minimum and are taken during trash pulls if necessary. The raid keeps moving at all times and boss fight explanations are made as concise as possible. For 25 man raids, DPS, healers, and tanks each have their own chat channels set up to delegate duties during a boss encounter. Raiding guilds do not necessarily spend more time raiding – they simply use their time more efficiently.

Myth #2: Raiding guilds are full of elitist jerks. This may very well be true of some raiding guilds, but it’s also true of many casual guilds. It is human nature for some folks to be jerks. However, this is certainly not the norm for all raiding guilds. Hardcore raiding guilds have members who are knowledgable of their classes and roles, and regularly put in the time and effort to continue to improve their gameplay. Just because you know what you’re doing doesn’t make you a jerk. You can have no clue what you’re doing, and still lack proper behavior. Raiding guilds often have a strict application process to make sure all those who join know what they’re doing, but that is a far cry from making them elitists.

Myth #3: It’s too hard to get into a raiding guild. If you take the time to learn how to play your class/role as best as you can, and prove your worth by completing heroics and gearing yourself up properly, there is a raiding guild out there that will have room for you. You just need to look around. Some good starting points include your realm forums, the guild recruitment channel, trade channel, your friends list, and pick up groups. When you fill out an application, be as descriptive as possible in your answers and avoid simple “yes/no” responses when possible. Don’t be afraid to detail your strengths and weaknesses. It takes far less time to find a raiding guild that’s a good fit for you than it does to wipe several times in a raid!

Learn as you level. It’s incredibly easy to solo your way up to level 80. You could get all the way there without grouping up with anyone, in theory. Many people actually do this. The problem with doing this is that level 80 dungeons are a lot tricker than their lower level counterparts. The skills you hone from doing 5-man instances while leveling will prove invaluable when you hit 80 and join your first raid or heroic. If you’re a tank, there’s a lot more room for error if you’re in the Deadmines than in the Halls of Lightning. If you lose aggro on a few mobs in the Deadmines, it may not cause a wipe. But in the Halls, those mobs are going to hit a lot harder and it’s going to be a lot more frustrating for the entire group. Practicing holding threat as you level through 5-mans will pay off when you’re tanking heroics at 80. The same goes for healing, or watching your threat as DPS. If you’re still leveling in Azeroth, you probably don’t need to worry about being specced as a tank or healer to fulfill that role in a dungeon. At level 40, you have the option of dual speccing, which may help out substantially as you reach the higher levels. 1,000 gold isn’t nearly as hard to come by as it used to be, so gold should not an issue.

Use a DPS meter. Recount is one of the most widely used DPS meters, and I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re a DPS class, it’s important to be able to gauge your DPS. While DPS is not the only important factor in a raid, it’s still necessary to monitor. If you’re only doing 1,000 DPS at level 80, that’s a big cause for concern. It’s far less embarassing to find out on your own that you need to pick up your DPS, instead of heading into a raid and finding out the hard way from the rest of the raid! Even if you’re not in a DPS role, it’s a good idea to make sure the rest of the group is performing well. If you are wiping to an enrage timer because of a couple of low DPS, it will help to find out who needs some coaching, and get them some assistance.

Seek out a mentor. If you’re new to healing, find a dedicated healer from your guild and learn from them. Find out which spells you should be using in which situations if you’re not sure. If you can’t find a good mentor in your guild, you can always look outside your guild. Perhaps there was a really good healer in your last PUG that might be able to help answer a few of your questions? The same goes for any class/role.

Stay informed. Whatever your class or role, there are many blogs that can keep you up to speed with all kinds of useful information. Taking the time to read what others have to say about your role, or a specific boss encounter, will better prepare you for your raid. Taking a few minutes a day to read blogs is a great idea for raiders of all skill levels.

Watch the boss fights. You can look up any boss fight on YouTube and watch the video. This is incredibly simple to do and does not need much of an explanation!

To use the Master Looter option, the raid leader can right click his player portrait and set the looting to Master Looter along with a desired threshold of item quality (uncommon, rare, epic). Items of this level or above must be looted manually. Usually a threshold of rare or epic is used. The raid leader can right click anyone’s name in the raid window to assign them this duty. An icon that looks like a bag of money will appear next to their name.

Master looting is a simple process. While viewing the piece of loot you want to distribute, clicking on it will bring up a list of groups. Click on whichever group the person you want to assign the loot to is in, and then click their name. If the item is Bind on Pickup, a confirmation warning will come up.

If the master looter is out of range of the rest of the group, any items that drop for the group will not be master looted, and will simply be rolled upon using the default roll interface. This may happen when items drop off trash mobs between bosses if loot is being distributed. This can be avoided by making sure the group does not get too far ahead while loot is still being rolled for.

Get a DPS Meter: Using a DPS meter such as Recount is how you’ll be able to gauge your performance. If you don’t know how much DPS you are doing how will you know if you’re improving?

Find a Talent Spec: Some talent specializations are better for leveling or soloing, some are for PVP, and some are built for raids. If you are going to be running heroics or raids, you can benefit greatly from having a talent build that will support maximizing your DPS in those situations.

Get Hit Capped: If you’re going to raid, know what your hit cap is and get as close as you can to it. Hit rating is the single best stat you can have until you reach the cap. It doesn’t matter how much spell power or attack power you’ve got when the boss you are fighting dodges your attack!

Learn Your Rotations: Once you find a good spec, spend some time learning what all of your talents do, so you can see which abilities work together the best. The order in which you use your abilities will make a great difference in your DPS output. For instance, if you are a balance druid, a good rotation might be Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, then a few Starfalls.

Enchants and Glyphs: Get the best glyphs for your class/spec. If you’re not sure which ones they are, do a little research and find out what your options are. Make sure all of your gear has appropriate enchants, leg armor, belt buckle, and gems. Even cheap ones are much better than none, and will help your DPS out significantly.

Get Buffed Up: Elixirs, food buffs, and scrolls can add some extra oomph to your damage output. You don’t need the most expensive ones, anything is better than nothing.

Practice, Practice, Practice: Practicing on a test dummy in a capital city is a great way to tweak your DPS rotation until it’s at peak performance. Once you’ve got your moves down, you’ll be on your way to getting some epic gear!

The most important think you should take away from this article is that it’s a good idea to take some time outside WoW to improve your gameplay if you’re going to raid. The internet is home to an incredible amount of useful information. Searching on Google is still the tried and true method to find out anything you need to know!

Inspired by StratFu’s Guide to Faster Raiding, and the 3 hours spent in Arachid Quarter last night, here are 7 ways to make Naxx – or any raid – go faster:

1. Keep pulling!  Once you are done with one group of trash mobs, move onto the next unless a good chunk of the raid has died.

2. Don’t stop for loot! Set loot threshold to rare or epic if using master looter, so green items don’t need to be looted by the loot master. Have the master looter handle looting while the rest of the raid continues pulling trash mobs and clearing to the next boss. Spending 5 minutes handing out loot per boss * 25 raid members = Over 2 hours of peoples’ time wasted per boss.

3. Don’t hold up the raid for one person! Don’t wait for one or two people who are not ready unless they are critical to the fight. If someone’s having a computer problem, or is going to the AH to buy stuff, that’s no reason to keep 24 other people waiting. Making 24 other people each wait 10 minutes = Over 4 hours of peoples’ time wasted while someone tries to fix their add-ons, use the bathroom, or change a diaper.

4. Explain the boss fight while clearing trash! If anyone has any questions about the boss, they can be answered while clearing trash mobs. Waiting until you are at the boss to explain the fight is a big time waster. 10 minute boss fight explanation with questions and answers * 25 people = Over 4 hours of peoples’ time wasted per boss.

5. Don’t bring too many tanks or healers! You may feel safer with 7 or 8 healers in your Naxx group, but it’s just going to gimp DPS and make for lazy healers. On my server, there rarely seems to be a problem of having too many healers, but it is still worthwhile to mention. With dual specs now available, this should be a moot issue.

6. Don’t stop for buffing until a boss fight! If you need a buff refreshed, ask in raid chat. People will die during trash sometimes, and waiting for them to get buffed is not necessary. All buffs can be refreshed before fighting a boss. Just because one of your DPS overnuked doesn’t mean you need to have the rest of the raid sit still while they mana up and get buffs.

7. Get your consumables before the raid! It is nice when someone offers to hand out or sell flasks during a raid, but spending 10 minutes doing so * 25 raid members = over 4 hours of peoples’ time wasted while handing out flasks.

The main idea here is that for every 2.5 minutes the raid is idle, an hour of time is wasted across the entire raid!

Most things that cause the entire raid to come to a screeching halt simply don’t have to. Whether you raid seven nights a week, or just two or three, you can get more out of your raiding time by keeping the raid moving at all times!

Grind Old Reputations: Get yourself exalted with the Timbermaw, Kurenai, or any other faction you’re not yet exalted with. At level 80, this is a much quicker process, and you can still make a bit of gold while doing this!

Build Up Your Reserves: Northrend daily quests are a great way to earn gold, and do some gathering as part of your repetoire. The Sons of Hodir give you better shoulder enchants when you are exalted, too. Between Icecrown and the Storm Peaks, you can earn a few hundred gold per day from daily quests!

Run Some Heroics: Get more badges to finish your off spec gear set. Get to exalted with the Northrend Vanguard factions (Knights of the Ebon Blade, Wymrest Accord, Argent Crusade, and Kirin Tor) by wearing the respective tabard while you’re in a 5-man heroic dungeon.

Level Up Cooking and Fishing: If you don’t already have these professions, they are wonderful for leveling hand in hand. Farming your own raid consumables not only saves you gold, but you can sell your surplus consumables on the AH for even more gold!

Read A Blog About Your Class: Learn about theorycrafting, and get to know your class better. There is a wealth of information on the internet that you can use to become a better player.

If you are in a leveling guild, or any guild with alts, you know what I’m talking about. Yes, it’s hard to get a group together for Gnomeregan or Sunken Temple, but that does not give you an excuse to beg in guild chat asking for run-throughs. Is there only one tank online in your guild? That does not automatically mean they want to tank the daily heroic for you, or any other instance.

Mount training is expensive, but asking for a handout is not the way to get there. Need 1,000 gold for your flying training? Go out and earn it. It’s a lot more rewarding that way! Grab a mining pick, skinning knife, or whatever implement you need and get to work. They aren’t called professions for nothing!

Being self-sufficient means meeting your goals while helping other people meet their goals. It’s not hard to get to level 80 without taking your guildies away from what they want to be doing. Instead of asking for someone to run you through the Deadmines, it’s a better idea to use the Looking For Group system, or ask if anyone in your guild has an alt that would like to run with you. If you are lucky, someone might offer to run you through anyway. When I see someone constantly asking to be run through dungeons, I am very unlikely to help them.

Another benefit of being self-sufficient is learning how to play your class. When you ask someone run you through a dungeon, not only are you asking them to take time away from what they were doing, but you’re looking to get XP and loot without any effort. This does not give you a chance to improve your gameplay. Yes, it will take longer to complete a dungeon with people your own level, but the experience you will gain playing your class will pay off later on. It’s not hard to tell who has never done a dungeon the “regular way” when you are in a raid like Naxxramas. It’s the DPS who is constantly pulling aggro, the healer who doesn’t dispel, or the tank who can’t find the taunt button. Take the time to learn how to play your class without begging for help, and you will become an experienced player who has earned the respect of your guildies.