I have been asked several times by multiple players in the guild when we are going to start raiding. After reviewing is where we stand:

Based on blue posts, and the beta, the gearing progression has been established to be this: First players will set themselves up with normal dungeon gear, crafted gear, and gear from questing. That will allow players to run Heroic Dungeons. These heroic dungeons will be a necessity to gear up in, in order to survive within the raids. Players should work toward acquiring heroic dungeon gear, Valor/Justice gear, and crafted epics. Once a player has geared in the heroic dungeons, they will then be prepared for Normal Raiding.  The Devs have stated that they don’t really want “Looking For Raid” to be a necessity in the path to progression and gearing up in MoP, so there is no obligation to obtain gear from LFR as a prerequisite to raiding (unless you really want to!)

• Quests: Best rare quests have ilvl 440-450 rewards, most quest greens cap at 430-440.
• BoEs: epics drop from mobs in Dread Wastes and heroics. In addition, lower-level epics are zone-wide drops from all rare spawns in the zone.
• Crafted gear: ilvl 450.
• Justice Point gear: ilvl 450 from reputation vendors at Honored. (I’d save your JP, and look for crafted gear that’s just as good)

Once you ding 90, you should be able to fully deck youself out in 450 crafted items and maybe a quest reward or two **make sure you run the new arena scenario for a 450 weapon, and dire brewfest for a 470 trinket**

• Scenarios: Chance of random-stat ilvl 463 gear for completing, also select rare rewards for completing first-time quests.
• To queue up for heroic dungeons, you will need ilvl 440 gear. (at 448 I hadn’t done any heroics yet)
• Heroic Dungeons: ilvl 463 with a chance for an ilvl 476 epic from the last boss.

Before you get set for raiding, you’re going to want as much 463+ gear as possible – every slot if you can get it.  Make sure that you have everything gemed and enchanted for raiding too.  We WILL NOT even entertain the idea of raiding without.

• LFR will be dropping 476-483 gear when it comes out in a few weeks – the dev’s have said that LFR gear isn’t supposed to be needed to be sucessful on the first raids, but it sure will help.
• The first tier of raids are iLevel 496 gear, 503 for heroic raids.

Raiding iLvL Baseline:

Because raiding in WoW is more gear intensive than in the past we are going to have a very general gear score guideline. If your iLvL falls under that buffer you may be asked to sit for other people, and asked to run more five man heroics to increase your baseline gear, rather than raid. Once you are within the buffer, we will not sit you based on iLvL, however we reserve the right to redefine the buffer zone limitations depending on experience. For instance: If people below certain gear scores simply don’t have enough health to survive certain encounters, we will be forced to revise them.

Right now based on information from the beta, we’re putting the benchmark at iLvL465. As we get updated information, this benchmark may change.

Raids:

Raids in MoP are gated, so raiding will not be immediately available with MoP’s launch.  The initial raid is Mogu’shan Vaults. It has 6 encounters, so it’s a slightly smaller raid than Dragon Soul. Mogu’shan Palace will roll out shortly after launch, with Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring following in the subsequent weeks. Raids will also be split into segments, with encounters unlocking over time rather than being available all at once.