Distracting Shot

Miscellany: Raiding Alts February 16, 2010

So, we all have alts. We don’t all play on our hunters 24/7, do we? I myself have a level 80 death knight, and will be leveling up my rogue in the coming weeks. I’ll also be making a priest come cataclysm. My death knight, Gylnael, is currently about halfway heroic geared, and is getting some emblem gear as he finishes his dailies. I have been doing the weekly raid on both characters, but that’s the only raid experience my death knight has. For me, once I hit level 80, my goal is to get my characters raiding – running heroics is fun, but honestly I’d rather raid. I also happen to have a real life, including school and work, and don’t have time for raiding every night of the week. I can think of a few possible policies regarding having multiple geared alts:

• Always raid with your main, preventing your alts from getting non-badge gear. Not ideal in my opinion.
• Raid with your main in guild raids, PUG raids with your alts. This eats a lot of time very quickly, and we all know how fun PUG raids are…this does have the benefit of not committing to a second regularly scheduled raid time, which is good – because of work and school, there are weeks where I can get on every night, and weeks where I have very little time online.
• Gear your alt as much as possible on your own, and then ask to bring him on guild raids – my guild will often go back and run Ulduar if we don’t have enough bodies for two 10man teams. Bringing Gylnael along to Ulduar would gear him very quickly – but is this OK? I suppose that as long as I’m not being carried I don’t have any problems with being less geared than my guildmates, but if we’re not downing the bosses, I’d switch to my main. What do you thing about this approach? You wouldn’t gear very quickly, for certain, and it would still be a while before your alts are ready for ICC – though once they’re in ICC, you have two geared characters going into the next expansion.
• Find a less hardcore raiding guild that raids on your offnights for your alt. This would quickly gear your alt, but this doesn’t scale very well, I personally couldn’t commit this kind of time for more than a few weeks, and wouldn’t be able to do this.

I know a ton of people with two or three equally geared characters. How do you do it? PUGs or guild raids or badge gear from heroics?

I suppose it depends a lot on what kind of guild you’re in – a hardcore raiding guild might not be OK with you raiding with another guild, even though it’s your alt on offnights. Some people might freak out about that, but I’m really not sure. People freak out about silly things. Even if it was OK, I don’t have time for that. I’ll probably start PUGs with my death knight in the coming week, now that my major production at work is over and I have some free time.