Description Of The Guide
The Burning Crusade expansion created a new era for raiding in the World of Warcraft. New raid limits have stream-lined raiding to a degree. Players for the most part cannot coast through raiding zones because fights require everyone to pay attention and be active. Competition for raiding spots is also fiercer these days and raid leaders often expect players to have some knowledge of the fights before they enter new encounters.
Included Information
This guide provides descriptions of boss encounters in the 10-player, 25-player, and 40-player raids categories. However, some instances have quest lines that must be completed before a player can even step into the zone. These quest lines are provided, as well as the starting NPCs for each quest.
Once players are ready to tackle a raid encounter, there is a variety of information for them to read. Upon starting a new raiding instance, there are brief descriptions on trash mobs provided for each instance as well as directions on the locations of the different bosses. More importantly, this guide provides detailed descriptions of boss encounters abilities and how to handle them. Where appropriate, information on necessary information useful for players is provided. Information such as resistances, statistics, or spells/abilities that can be particularly efficient in a fight is suggested in the encounter description.
This guide is separated into three raiding types based on player limitations and then further separated into tier categories. The tier information is to give players an idea of the quality of gear and weapons that can be looted from bosses. The tier categories coincide with the token set pieces that drop in this expansion. Tier Six items and equivalent gear, which is the best in the game at this point, drop from bosses in the Tier Six raid zone categories. The detailed list of loot for each raid can be found here, http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:Raid_Loot

How To Use This Guide
What better way to start this section than by stating what it does not do. This guide does not provide guilds with information on how to stack the raids. Stacking raids basically means taking what raid leaders feel is the most efficient group make up to the fight. In actuality, this does more harm than good. As a World of Warcraft player that has completed the end bosses in both the Azeroth and the Outlands, I have been with guilds that have stacked raids and those that have not. I find that the latter tends to be more successful and more adaptable in their strategies, versus constantly swapping classes in and out.
What this guide does do is tell the necessities and possible strategies that are useful but leaves the decisions for the reader. This guide is written understanding that each guild has different strengths and weaknesses and guilds may have to adjust their strategies based on these factors. Use this guide as an aid to help raids be successful. It presents different strategies as well as tips that have been proven to be successful but certainly does not promote doing fights one way all the time. Review the information provided to make informed decisions while crafting strategies for the raids.
Basic Raiding Items
Consumables are essential while learning new fights and necessary for many encounters on “farm”. Do not expect to defeat a new encounter without using consumables. Elixirs, Flasks, mana and health regeneration potions that are useful to classes should always be present in bags. Oils, poisons, and sharpening stones should be ready to be applied on weapons for boss encounters. Use food consumables that increase basic statistics and add damage, healing, mana regeneration, or give other additional benefits. Those encounters that require other items such as resistance gear or potions have been mentioned within those encounters.

Raiding Etiquette
When raiding, there are certain realities that players need to keep in mind when raiding. The first one is that unknown “Away from Keyboard” (AFK) time can wipe raids on trash and should not happen during encounters at all. Communicate disconnects if possible as well. That being said, let’s discuss a few of the mechanics of playing.
Damage dealers should not unload every cool down they have and then pop trinkets as the tank runs into the fight. This ultimately leads to certain death of said damage dealers that do this. Off-tanks also need to be reminded of this at times as well. Main tanks do have dodges, parries, and misses so threat generation can be a little touchy when going into a fight.
Crowd controllers need to crowd control. While it is vastly amusing to watch that healer or tank die, it is counterproductive to raiding and a waste of time. Do not finish that last spell before casting a crowd control spell. Healers and/or tanks may die in that time frame, which may just leave the crowd controller and a bunch of angry mobs.
Healers need to work as a group. Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans all have spells that work well together. Each healing class brings something a little different to the raid and should be valued for that. Healing also requires these classes to sometimes think outside of the box and requires common sense. In essence, healers do whatever it takes as a cohesive healing team to make rest of the raid trust them.