Question About Raiding

My friends are I are thinking about all getting a subscription at the same time and raiding: what is the minimum amount of players you need to raid? Can you raid with just 5 people?

The minimum you need for active raid content (not an old raid from a previous expansion) is 10 players, maximum is up to 40 players. Raid Bosses health and damage they cause scales depending on how many players are in your raid. A general rule is 2 tanks (most bosses have extra mobs, or require tanks to taunt and take turns tanking), and at least 1 healer per group (a group in WoW is 5 players, so if you have 10 for raid, you would need a minimum of 2 healers). I usually do 1 healer per group, plus 1 for progression (new) bosses until my group becomes more comfortable with the boss fight. Mythic raid is the only time you are forced to have a certain amount of players, which is 20. If you have less then 20 on Mythic Raid, the amount of health and damage the boss causes will not decrease according to your size, it will stay the same. If you have more then 20 on Mythic Raid, only the 1st 20 players will be able to enter the raid before saying there are to many players inside.

If you only have 5 players, you can do dungeons as a group, which have their own Mythic version. The higher the keystone you have for a Mythic, the harder it is. Extra events happen both during trash and boss fights, and both the trash and bosses also gain more health and damage as the keystones get higher and higher. This might be the better option for you and your friends unless you decide as a group to join a raiding guild that is willing to take all of you.