[Musclebound]

I am a part time raid leader for a guild that is fairly new to raiding (Only a small handful of members, myself included, have raiding experience before 3.2)

We're currently 8/14 in Ulduar (We easily clear FL, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, and Auriaya every lockout, and down Iron Council, Thorim and Ignis with some difficulty). Right now we gear check our raiders using wow-heroes to see if they're prepared to come to ulduar. The problem with that, is that we've had members who are undergeared according to that site perform fairly well, while others that are at or above the gear requirements don't perform as well as we might expect.

I think my guild needs a better method to judge a players readiness for this instance. My question is, what is the generally accepted minimum dps for this raid and what stats should I and our other raid leaders expect our dps players to have to reach this minimum, besides the obvious things such as being hit capped/expertise soft capped. I'm talking things like attack power, spell power, and the like.

If this information is useful, our current raid Team generally consists of 2 dawrf warriors (Myself being one of them) as tanks, A Dranei Ret Pally, A human Holy pally, 2 boomkins, A tree druid, A Survival and a Marksman hunter, and a Holy priest. Occasionally the other warrior tank is replaced by another paladin tank.

[Bashal]

wow-heroes.com is usually a good baseline meter for who is ready (gear-wise) to go. As far as actual performance goes: for early ulduar, if the DPSer can't get at least 2.5k dps, they aren't ready. For deeper in, you want people doing 3k.

These are extreme lower bounds; if people are only meeting these minimums, completing hard modes will be very rough or even impossible.

EDIT: as far as stats go, aside from the obvious things you mentioned, if the gear is there but the DPS isn't, it is usually poor gem/enchant/spec choices holding the player back, or a bad rotation. Looking at those things will help more than saying "you need 600 more AP and 132 more Agility before you can join us".

If you want to test someone's readiness without taking them to ulduar, take them to a heroic. If they can't consistently hit 2k in a boss fight in a 5-man, they aren't ready. Again, that's an extreme lower bound.

[Musclebound]

Most of our dps averages between 2500-3k right now. As a tank I average 2k, sometimes more and a lot of times I'm #3 on damage done for a fight. I think coordination is hurting some of our newer members but we haven't raided enough yet to be sure.

I'm thinking of taking our dps to the training dummies one at a time and watching their rotations and the like. Our GM is also our druid healer, and an excellent boomkin. One of our other boomkins was absolutely terrible at first (I'm talking 1100dps terrible) until he took her to the dummies and had her practice her rotation with him. She's usually fighting our survival hunter for top dps (Granted, she significantly outgears him). I'd like to see similar performance from ALL our dps. Like I said, right now we plow through all the way up to Auriaya/Ignis, and that's where we fall apart. I think that stuff not dying fast enough is part of the problem (For example, the group in thorim's arena wipes before the gauntlet team reaches him unless we put 6 people in the arena and 4 on the gauntlet).

[Bashal]

If you suspect it may be spec or rotation, but aren't familiar with the class, looking at the guides on ElitistJerks is pretty helpful; they often include multiple specs for each tree, as well as gearing recommendations and rotations. Some of the specs even have unspent points, allowing for some customization. It isn't always 100% up to date, and sometimes I do disagree a bit with what they say, but more often than not the majority of the information they have is very good.

The class guides which are being put up here will also likely be a very good source.

[Theotherone]

Survival Hunters FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...sza&n=Wharfrat

[Musclebound]

Source: Theotherone Survival Hunters FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The World of Warcraft Armory

I have to agree. I think Hunters are under-rated in raiding right now. Our survivalHunter was running a Disc priest for our raids but once he was able to bring his hunter in instead it made a lot of difference. He's usually our top dps or close to it.