What equipment do I need to be raid ready?

[CheapToad]

I hear you all talking about how someone can't go on a raid beacuse they do not have the proper gear. Well what is the proper gear for my DK (dps)?


Melatonin

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[Kamui]

What do you want to do with him? tanking or DPS?
There's a great guide to tank gear here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Wrath_tanking_equipment_(death_knight)
A lot of that will work for DPS as well, but you'd be looking for more +str, hit, crit, and haste.

[Torf]

Hrm. Well, a good place to start is with your friendly neighborhood blacksmith. There are halfway decent (blue) crafted sets that are reasonably easy to make that will get you started. You'll need to buy or mine a lot of saronite, but that is cheap and easy nowadays.

There are also some crafted epics that you can get from a blacksmith, the Titansteel Helm, boots, and weapon of some sort. Titansteel is NOT cheap, and has a cooldown on making it. But it is pretty good stuff regardless.

You can also start doing the new Tournament dailies in Icecrown. After a couple of weeks of doing those, you will be able to buy yourself a pretty nice epic weapon. The weapons are as good as the crafted Titansteel epics, so you can pick one or the other depending on what is easier for you.

It would probably be easier to gear yourself for DPS rather than Tanking. Raiding tanks have to have really good gear. There is a wee bit more leeway with raiding dps, at least in the lower level raids (Naxx, OS, Vault).

Torf

[Deaco]

Importance of raid gearing generally goes Tanks > Healers > DPS. So if you're going the tanking route it will take considerably more work and drops to be raid ready.

Being that you're blood I'm guessing DPS and if that's the case, I'd say take a look at an unholy dps spec. If you're sold on blood though, the gearing is still melee-centric. Proper gearing for either means you're melee "special" capped or very close to it (I'm honestly not sure what the melee special cap is for 2h but i think the overall cap is in the 250-270 hit rating area) and you're at or near the expertise cap.

http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t36638-death_knight_pve_dps/ will answer your dps questions and

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t42539-death_knight_faq_read_before_posting/ will answer the tanking questions

[CheapToad]

well thanks for the great info. I am blood atm but am not married to it. Can you tell me the difference between blood dps and unholy?

So who is one of our blacksmiths that I can talk to?

[Deaco]

I honestly don't know the big difference between blood and unholy other than all of our DPS DKs are unholy=P I haven't played the class enough to tell you why one is better in a raid setting but I'm guessing Blood is more solocentric now.

[Kamui]

I don't have an 80 DK (yet?) but from what i read, frost was intended as the true tanking spec, blood as pve, and unholy as pvp (with a generous amount of overlap).
In practice, any spec can tank if they get the right talents early on in each tree.
unholy will give more straight DPS, but blood gives some nice raid utility.

[Teidilu]

I can BS. Give me a tell in game or let me know what you need here and I can work on what you need. =)

[Moritz]

I am going to attempt to give a good comprehensive overview here. Deaco is right, gear is important more so for tanks > healers > dps. So since you are just getting started I would recommend figureing out if you want to tank or dps first.

Now as far as gear goes the big thing I want to point out is, in some situations, the required gear is relative to the event or to the raid. In other situations there is a set minimum you need to reach stat wise in order to not give you and your team a big repair bill. So lets cover the basics.

Tanks: The biggest starting issue for a tank is reaching the defence cap (535 for heroics and 540 for raids). The reason for this is because when you reach that cap, you are no longer affected by critical hits. If a raid boss crits you, its going to make your face not as pretty. After def cap is hit you are going to want to maintain some level of health. With decent starting gear as an orc warrior I was able to reach 25000 health easily with only a few cheap crafted epics (which I mine all the time so if you need titanium hit me up). Once you have reached that your next big issue is your playing style. Common things for tanks to look at is their health, mitigation, and threat. There really are no set minimums for avoidance and threat, it just matters how you play. I personally have 12 stam 8 expertise gems in most of my sockets ( I color code for bonuses). This allows me to do more damage on bosses, and thus never lose agro. Once again, thats just my style.

DPS: A DPS has many differnt roles in a raid. The most basic of course is DPS... You pretty much try to pump out as much damage as possible (unless your passing your tank in threat, then you need to ride the threat line too). I found a respectable level of dps to be around 2000. If you can do 2k dps its considered pulling your weight.

Last I want to address the individual raids so you can get an idea of what to expect when you see the guild is attempting them.

Vault of Archavon: This is the easiest raid. It can be done with no problems for a def capped tank, or a dps fresh from level 80. Even on 25 man its not difficult. The only issue is with patch 3.1 they introduced the second boss, Emalon. Emalon is a differnt story and requires pretty solid equipment.

Obsidian Sanctum: Another very simple one boss dungeon. OS really has lax requirements too. Again a Def capped tank with 23000 health could easily pull it off, as well as a fresh dps. Even on 25 man its not bad.

Naxxramas: Naxx is where things pick up a bit. Starting out in naxx it is recommended the tank have 25000+ health. DPS at this point should at least be able to do 1600 (you will need to be pulling 2k by razouvious and patchwerk unless your raid has some really high dps). In 25 man it will scale up a bit more. But if your dps in a 25 man you will likely have plenty of people doing way more than pulling their wieght. So if your undergeared, no worries.

Eye of Eternity: Until Ulduar, Malygos was the highest end raid. Tanks will require 30000 health minimum when buffed and dps need to pull 2500 dps bare minimum. Even as a dps you will need to have 18000 health after buffs to survive the vortex.

Ulduar: Having little to no experience in here its really hard to say. As a guideline id recommend having mostly full epics (25 man + malygos loot will help a lot). We shall see this road shortly im sure.

Well this is a pretty broad guideline of what to expect. As either a dps or a tank id recommend getting as much crafted gear as you can, and then hit up heroics (if you feel comfortable with em). Badges and drops are great for gear. And even if your just starting out, dont be afraid to hit up Vault or OS when ya get the chance. And when ya feel your ready to get your feet wet, we will test your mettle in naxx :)

[Coffee!]

"Raid Gear for DPS DK"

No matter whether you're Blood, Frost or Unholy, as a dps, you want to go thru heroics and get the best that you can. That's a basic guideline no matter the class and role. A really good start is, as mentioned a number of times above, hitting up a blacksmith for the L78 pve/pvp Saronite set as well as the epic helm, boots and weapon. Rings/Necklace, you can get by with blues until you start looting them.

Blood DPS: Primarily made for soloing and maintaining your own health as you go. If specced right, it's a really good single/dual target dps spec for raiding.

Frost DPS: With all the new changes to Frost, you're better off not bothering with 51 into Frost unless you're going to tank.

Unholy DPS: Pretty well the standard right now. Unholy has a large amount of AOE damage as well as a few tools that increase their damage to single targets, innately. The Specced out Ghoul (+frenzy), the gargoyle, and 10 min Army of the Dead, make it hard to consider any other spec as a dps, as long as you use your tools as often as possible.

[Demeth]

I'm oldschool. I typically follow the progression that the developers set up - do the questlines in the zone that lead in to a dungeon, then do the dungeon at least once. Figure out questlines that will lead to good upgrades. Pick up the simple crafted item upgrades while I start farming for the better ones, meanwhile work the level 80 dungeons for reputation and gear, then start the simple heroics. Do the basic raids (Vault, though the new boss is tough, and OS), fill out your collection with the complex crafted gear, reputation gear, the Emblem loot, 80 dungeon gear and heroic gear, and move into Naxx. Then, move into basic EoE and 25 mans. Last is heroic EoE and Ulduar (beyond the first boss requires studly gear and a real awareness of the environment; playing your class should be effortless at this point).

The advantage of taking it slow is that you learn your class properly. Soloing gives you the basics but you need to do instances with other people to understand group dynamics. Look at gear upgrades and plan things out so you make good choices when you invest materials, gold, emblems, and when you choose a tabard for reputation gains. Play with people your own level every so often - you'll learn a lot, especially from the mistakes. (You'll be successful with a buttkicking group - but they may be instinctively compensating for you, and you may never realize it!) (or come up with ideas to improve your play)

It's good that you're looking into these things. Probably all of us have been in a group or raid (let's pretend it's a PUG) with someone who's undergeared, doesn't know the fight, won't listen to direction, doesn't know their skills and class mechanics all that well, doesn't grasp basic concepts like aggro in a group setting... and ends up making it harder for everyone.

There's no rush. My personal philosophy is to keep building a single awesome character up, rather than spread my resources (time, gold, etc) across a lot of substandard toons. Hitting 80 is just the beginning, the real fun comes after that.