Ive been on the wow cata classic grind for awhile and am level 82 and have an i lvl of 250 i just wanted to start raiding partly to solo some content for mount drops but also just raid in general for higher tier gear, do i have to keep leveling or can i start now and if so what is the way to start or join a group, also the lfg viable.
You are 82 in Cata Classic, right?
OK, so raids happen at the end of expansions. The raids for Cata are the only ones that will give you useful gear, and they are for level 85s, so you have three levels to go.
However, when you first hit 85, you will not have enough gear to survive in a raid. Cata is currently on Firelands, its first raid. Most parties for Normal level will expect you to have something like item level 370 gear - though more is always better, ofc.
LFG is viable for dungeons, which is what you will need to get your ilevel up to 370-ish, but LFR for raids doesn’t enter the game until the last raid of Cata.
So for raiding Firelands, you will want to join a guild or get to know some people who regularly do groups. Out of game, you may find a Discord for Cata Classic where you might meet some people.
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Soloing older raids and dungeons for mounts (and don’t they have transmog as well in Cata Classic?) is certainly something you can do.
This guide
is for Retail, but all the mounts it names are there in Cata - up to Cata itself, ofc.
Don’t neglect dungeons. There are several mounts available from dungeons. And there are some available from reputations with factions. For example, the WInterspring Frostsaber is famously a reward from doing dailies in Winterspring. I remember getting that one fondly, and I still use it as a non-flying mount. You can also get other races’ faction mounts when you get Exalted with them, which you can often do by buying and wearing their tabard and running TBC dungeons repeatedly.
At 85, with a bit of gear, you can easily solo all Vanilla and Burning Crusade level dungeons and raids. Wrath dungeons should be possible. Wrath raids will be beyond you solo, especially as a Mage, so you will have to team up with others if you want to farm those.
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Firelands isnt the first raid. There was already Throne of the Four Winds, Bastion of Twilight, and Blackwing descent that came out before it.
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You are right, ofc. I have no idea why I typed that. Apart from my typing being erratic, I find that sometimes when I’m writing a longer answer, my fingers hallucinate something that is off the main point. PEBCAK, I guess.