Welcome to the second edition of Wipe Insurance! My name is Eder and I’m a bit under the weather at the moment, so this will be a short entry this week.

Last week we explored how to gear up, what to know and what to do when it comes to raiding. This week we are going to take it one step further and discuss getting a group. There are a number of ways to get your raid on, and they all have their pros and cons.

Hardcore Raiding Guild

• The hardcore raiding guild or “progression” raiding guild is a guild that takes its raiding very seriously.
• The major goal of these guilds is to be competitive and progressive – meaning you need to meet some serious criteria.
• Expect to put in several nights a week of progression in both 10 and 25 man versions of the current raid content.
• The competitive nature of this guild will leave very little tolerance for mistakes and/or lack of knowledge about your class.
• Attendance and loot policy are usually strict.
• Comparable to joining a Major League sports team, you may spend some time on the bench.
• Usually Requires an Application (yes, like for a job), or a current member vouching for you.
• Prepare to answer questions about your gearing choices.

Casual-Hardcore Raiding Guild

• The Casual-Hardcore guild is a guild that is usually comprised of friends and family. It offers a very social environment, but a good raiding experience as well.
• The major goal of these guilds is for everyone to have fun while still seeing content.
• Expect to run 10 mans and the occasional 25 with another casual-hardcore guild.
• Attendence and loot requirements are semi-lax.
• Some members of these guilds will have a hardcore mentality, and some will not at all – this will slow down progression immensly – but its not really about progression, its about having a good time.
• Comparable to joining a Minor League sports team.
• The raid leader will still bother you about odd gearing choices, but not to the degree that a hardcore guild will.
• Usually no application or a very small one

Casual Raiding Guild

• The Casual Raiding Guild is less of a raiding guild and more of a Casual guild that occasionally raids.
• Same as casual-hardcore except the rules are usually even laxer about raiding.

PUG

• A yes, the pug. A pick up group is a collection of strangers who get together to raid. It could be a fresh group of all pugs, it could be a guild run that just didn’t have the people online. Either way – you’ve landed yourself in one and your commited (to at least a few wipes anyway).
• Spontanious – you do the raid you want to do, when you want to do it.
• No Commitment – if the run is terrible, you can get out without trouble (Not saying you should bail on groups, but if you are on your 7th wipe from Beasts, maybe its time to start thinking about it.)
• Loot rules can be abused easily, and accountability is not great.
• Raid leader can either be great or terrible.
• The other pugs can be alts from a hardcore guild, or they can be the people the casual guild won’t even let raid with them, you don’t know how it will be.
• Depending on the leaders checking policy, comparable to finding a bunch of guys in a bar (who may or may not be 3 sheets to the wind) and going to the local park to play baseball at midnight. (Or an all star team who just have nothing better to do – you don’t know!)

So there you have it, the different types of raid guilds – choose one that fits your playstyle and happy raiding! Next week we’ll discuss how to be a good pug, or how to make a good impression on your trial run in a guild.

What is a stat weight?

Stat weights are the value we assign to a particular stat. We usually use one stat (our best one) as a point to compare other stats to, but for our uses we are going to use how much dps a stat is worth to us.

What I’ve included below is a screencap of my current weights using the web-based spreadsheet. Instructions will follow at the end on how to use this spreadsheet to obtain your own weights.

So what we see here is that each point of agility I get adds roughly 2 dps. The second column there is the “Per Budget” value of each stat, which is based on blizzards itemization budgets – as you can see attack power gets 2 points per budget point – and is actually worth more than haste point for point. So how do we use these numbers to our advantage? Well lets see it in practice.

For the sake of this article, were going to assume you know how to balance your hit cap, and swapping between either of these weapons will not take you below that mark.

So you have got lucky and won the Archon Glaive from ToC 25, great weapon! Let’s see how much dps its actually contributing.

+128 Agility * 1.97 = 252.16 dps
+136 Stamina * 0 (Because I’m marksmen – if you are survival, this will be worth a little bit)
+90 Crit * 1.67 = 150.3
+165 AP  * 0.755 = 124.755
+90 ArP  * 1.788 = 160.92

So before we even look at the socket bonus, we see this weapon will give us +688 dps.
And lets see what we should gem it with, it’s a yellow socket that will give us +8 AP. Sounds nice but lets do the math:

20 Agility Gem = 20 * 1.97 = 39.4 dps / No bonus
10 Agility/10 Crit Gem (activates bonus) = (10 * 1.97) + (10*1.67) + ( 8 * 0.755) = 42.44 dps

So ultimately this weapon is worth 730 dps.

Now lets take a comparable item from the same raid: Lupine Longstaff .

+128 Agility = 252.16
+136 Stamina
+90 Haste * 1.38 = 124.2
+181 AP * 0.755 = 136.65
+82 ArP * 1.788 = 146.6

Overall: 660 dps + gem  = 686.6 dps

Now this item has a blue socket meaning the only thing we can put in there would be a Nightmare tear (+10 all stats) or a Shifting Dreadstone (+10 Agi/+15 stamina) to fulfill the socket bonus of +4 agility. Without doing the math, it should be apparent at this point that the Dreadstone is not worth our time, but it is a good candidate to put the nightmare tear in or just fill with a +20 Agility gem. So switching from either weapon is a difference of about 44 dps.

Comparing two one-handers to a two-hand weapon is exactly the same: multiply each stat by its weight and add them all together. The one that wins out is the better upgrade.

So now that you get it, lets briefly discuss the web-based spreadsheet. Head on over to femaledwarf.com. Click on the “load from armory” button.

Now click buffs, make sure to set the buffs and debuffs that your usual group will bring to the table. (If you pug a lot, just bring the most common class buffs as a testing point). Then click on the “Update DPS” button to get your theoretical dps, and your current stat weights.

Tools:

As a means of quickly comparing Items based on stats alone, I highly suggest the add-on Pawn. You give it your stat weights and it will give you a score in the tooltip for each piece of gear. The higher score is an upgrade (most likely – its important to look at the actual stats and how they affect you, but pawn is a great first look for those quick rolling situations.) You may have noticed that the spreadsheet will even give you a pawn string to use for this, with your custom weights!

Welcome to the first edition of Wipe Insurance, Waranvil.com’s new raiding column. This will be posted every monday, so make sure you come back every week for new strategies, tips and tricks! This week we are going to discuss when you are ready to raid. So you’ve just dinged 80 and all you’ve heard about since level 5 is endgame raiding – many people will tell you its where the real game is, you level up and may even do some raids at your level along the way. But entering the current endgame raiding is different. Theres tiers, caps, stat weights, enrage timers, gearscore, jerks, death knights in full tier 9 doing 2k dps (Theres a lot of them…), casual, hardcore, no-lifers, hard modes…its enough to make your head spin.

What should you run?

The number one thing I can recommend to people who want to start raiding is to know your limits.
The way blizzard tunes instances (Gearwise anyway) is so that it is just hard enough for people wearing gear from the last tier of content (and assuming a reasonable amount of skill). The problem with this is…people want the newest gear and freshly dinged 80’s want to run ICC. If you get into that ICC 10 group in your Naxx 10 or Uld 10 gear, there is a very (very) good chance you will not be up to the minimum requirements for that instance. This, boys and girls, is a carried player. Being carried will not get you invited back to runs, and it will most likely put you on a few players ignore lists, hurting your future raiding attempts – even after  you have the gear to pull your weight. Stay in your bracket and get gear, it doesn’t take long to move up the ladder.

Disclaimer: The badge leap

When WotLK first came out, there were 2 badge types you could get: Heroism and Valor. You got heroism from running heroics, and the 10 man tier 7 raids. The gear you got from badges was on par with running the raid content. These days, you can get a full set of tier 9, and its 25 man counterparts (245 gear) just from chain-running heroics. Thats great, its a great way to gear up -  but I still suggest doing the tier 7/tier 8 raids before jumping straight into ToC or ICC, they give excellent experience in your class and in raiding techniques. Below are the raid tiers and a dps mark of where you should be to do them. These are numbers are based on the way the encountered are tuned and failure to meet them may lead to your raid having difficulty. Think of it this way – if you dont meet the minimum, everyone else in the raid has to work harder to make sure it succeeds.

Tier 7

• Tier 7 is the entry level raiding tier in wrath – as such, the gear requirements are lax and you can pretty much jump into these raids with heroic gear.
• This tier comprises of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity. To run tier 7, you can pretty much be a fresh 80. A few heroic drops, some level 200 craftables – your good to go. The main purpose for these raids is to wet your feet in raiding, give you a taste of its glory. By the time you have completed these raids and gotten a few pieces – you will be ready for the 25 man version of tier 7 and the 10 man Tier 8 stuff.
  • Fasttrack: The ToC 5 man dungeon will drop Naxx 10 level gear in normal mode and Ulduar 10 in normal. The ICC 5 man dungeons also drop Ulduar 10 level gear on normal. These are a great way to get gear without raiding the tier 7 stuff.
  • DPS Mark: 1.5-2.5k

Tier 8

• Tier 8 is comprised of the Ulduar raid, which is an amazingly well done raid that most players these days will never do. The prerequisites for this tier are gear from Tier 7 or higher.
  • Fasttrack: The ICC 5 man dungeons drop ToC 10 level gear on heroic. If you are in mostly Tier 7 or ToC 5H/ICC 5N gear these heroics are manageable and an excellent way to gear up.
  • DPS Mark: 2.5-3.5k

Tier 9

• Tier 9 is comprised of Trial of the Champion , which gets a real bad rep, and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 (Which is easy if you understand the basics of movement) . Once you have farmed tier 8 or heroics, this will probably be where most of your upgrades are. As I said before, I highly suggest you do the previous tier raids before this. There is not a whole lot of room for error in these fights – you need to know how to play your class, what your utility is and how not to stand in the fire/slime/cloud.
  • DPS Mark: 3.5-5.5k

Tier 10

• Tier 10 is the final tier of raiding in Wrath, and is comprised of Icecrown Citadel and the soon to be released Ruby Sanctum.|
  Icecrown Citadel is the culmination of all that  you have done in wrath, and the fights are great – but some of them come with serious gear and skill checks.
  • DPS Mark: 5.5k-7.5k

With the badge changes in this expansion, it will be easy to get geared in a matter of time, but until you meet the gear requirements – try to resist the urge to go into runs you are not ready for. Now, I am a firm believer that skill heavily outweighs gear, and that a 200 piece can be better itemized than a 219, it happens. This brings me to my next point.

Know your class.

I know you know your class, but do you really know your class? Do you know what buffs you bring to the table? Is your spec giving you the best tools you need to do your job? Are you stacking stats that give you more of what you need to do your job?

Ok, I’m probably going to catch some flack for the numbers above, but if you are in a gear setup that the instance is tuned for (see above), you should not have problems meeting these numbers. If you are in all ToC 10 and 25 gear and can just barely hit 3k, ask yourself – “Do I really know my class?”. Blizzard tunes the enrage timers and add health around what they expect (from lots of data gathering) players wearing a certain gear setup to put out.

If you happen to be a tank, here are some numbers that are good checkpoints to START tanking a specific raid.Keep in mind these numbers are unbuffed. As you can see, health requirements scale up significantly, this is due to bosses progressively hitting harder as you go up in tier.

Minium Tank Requirements per instance: (ALWAYS at least 540 defense.)

• Heroics/Naxx 10: 20-23k health, 20-30% avoidance, 20-23k armor.
• Naxx 25/Ulduar 10: 23-25k health,30-40% avoidance, 22-25k armor.
• Ulduar 25/ToC 10: 27-29k health, 40-50% avoidance, 25-27k armor.
• ToC 25: 33-35k health, 45-50% avoidance, 27-28k armor.
• ICC 10: 35-38k health, 45-55% avoidance, 29-30k armor.
• ICC 25: 39-44k health, 50%+ Avoidance, 30k+ armor. (The icecrown numbers reflect the current 20% buff).

Be prepared.

There are mountains of information out there regarding raids, bosses and abilities. Videos, if you like to watch – text guides otherwise! Its all out there, It will even be here in this column. Theres no excuse for going into a run dry – if you have at least a passing familiarity of what the encounter is like, it will go a little smoother when you attempt it. Also, if this is content that is challenging for you (or geared towards you) be prepared with consumables. Bring your own flasks, pots, elixirs and food. Most groups will provide fish feasts, but is that the best food buff you can get? Always try to do your best.

Ok,I’m Ready! I got my flasks, know my class, and studied the encounters!

Great! Come back next week when we discuss the art of being a good pug, and until then happy raiding!

In light of more than a few phishing emails going out lately concerning the Cataclysm alpha (and more than a few people in game getting hacked), now would be a good time to talk about computer security and WoW.  Read on for some tips on how to prevent your account from being a victim.

The best offense is a good defense: Let us put the sentries to work.

Antivirus:

The first line of defense is a good antivirus, I highly recommend Avast – its free, the resident protection is amazing, and it updates itself automatically on a daily basis. Blizzard themselves recommend AVG. Either way – get a good antivirus, and make sure it’s always running and updated.

Anti-Malware:

A excellent compliment to the antivirus is a spyware and malware scanner. I highly recommend MalwareBytes – again, its free (there is a premium version), its heuristics (how it detects threats) engine is amazing and its constantly updated. I believe this is another utility that Blizzard stands behind.

Firefox/NoScript:

I recommend using firefox as a web browser. The most important reason is the availability of plugins. The most important one here is a plugin called “NoScript“. NoScript works just like it sounds – it blocks the execution of flash, javascript and vbscript unless specifically aloud by you. This means you can allow all your favorite sites without letting “untrusted” sites execute possibly malicious code without you noticing.

Authenticator:

Get an authenticator. Seriously, they cost six dollars and maybe 10 extra seconds when logging in. They are even free if you already own a iPhone or iPod Touch. (Note: As Blizzard says in the app – a jailbroken iphone/ipod is not a reliable authenticator.) I know a lot of the above may not seem convenient, but think of it this way: Would you rather spend a little more effort and time now when your character (and all your other personal data!) are fine, or a lot of effort and time later when you have to clean up the mess?

Not being the weak link in the security chain: A few words about social engineering and biting the worm.

Humans are the weakest link in security, its a known fact. Were susceptible to our own emotions and social conditioning. So lets say for the sake of argument you really like wow (not a far stretch here im assuming). Blizzard just sent you an ingame mailtelling you that you got a beta invite! AWESOME! –WAIT–. You almost got caught in a phishing mail.

Lets explain Phishing a bit. Its exactly like it sounds – the phisher puts a worm (say…a beta key or a star pony) on a virtual hook and waits for you (being the good fishy you are – you want that beta key right?) to bite. Now the account hack comes into play here in that – you will go to a website and enter your login credentials to claim your free key, pony, gold, or whatever was promised. IF YOU HAVE AN AUTHENTICATOR IT MAY PROMPT YOU FOR THAT TOO. Usually these sites look just like battle.net or worldofwarcraft.com enough to fool the average person. You log in, you get redirected to the real site, and your credentials are logged to a database somewhere. If you needed an authenticator to get in, the hacker may login with your code in real time and replace it with a new one. So now that you know the how and why, here is a handy list of what to watch for:

• Is this too good to be true? (Did I opt in for a beta? Are they REALLY giving away a $25 mount? Am I really going to get full T10.5 for free?)
• Is this an ingame whisper or mail? (Blizzard will NEVER ask you for credentials or communicate with you in this way for account related matters.
• Is this website a part of “Worldofwarcraft.com” or “battle.net”? (If its not, DO NOT enter any information.) A trick a lot of phishers use is to append the name to something else such as wwwworldofwarcraft.com, eu-battle.net, battlenet.net or something similar. MAKE SURE it is a blizzard official site. Pay attention to the address.

Tying up the loose ends:

Other helpful tips regarding security.

• Use different passwords for different things – if someone hacks your email, and its the same as your wow – or even your bank – you just handed them the keys to the castle.
• Change your passwords after a certain amount of time.
• If you logged into wow on someone elses computer – change your password when you get back to yours.
• Do not share account information with other people – if one person is easy to hack, two is easier.
• Do not buy gold and/or power leveling services. Not only is it a good way to get banned if your caught – it also gives the gold selling company a reason to hack more accounts. And power leveling hands over your account info as is, thats just stupid.
• Do not download pirated material. Besides the fact that its illegal, downloading pirated software, music or movies is a good way to get keyloggers on your system.
• Make sure your operating system and protection above are always up to date.

Thinking beyond WoW:

Besides the prospect of logging in one day to find your character naked in dalaran with not even a heroism badge left on him, keyloggers can capture other important personal data and open your computer to identity thieves. So, you may find yourself waking up one morning to ten credit cards worth of debt and an empty bank account. Protect yourself, its worth the extra effort.

Due to the fact that we will be delaying the release of patch 3.3.5 in Europe, Korea and Taiwan in order to ensure the patch process in all regions is as smooth as possible, the Ruby Sanctum will not immediately be available on North American realms upon the release of the patch. Once patch 3.3.5 has been released in North America and we are confident about a time when we can open up Ruby Sanctum, we will provide an update here on the forums.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25171669763&sid=1

Hi there, as you may already know, we here at Waranvil.com want to make this site better, and we want to give you more content! A good way to start would be some regular class specific columns for you guys and girls! So welcome to the brand new Waranvil.com hunter column Double Killshot, making its debut here and continuing every wednesday! Ok, thats enough exlamations (thats what the kids like now, right? Exclamations?) To kick this column off we are going to do a standard “get to know your class stats” rundown.

Keep in mind these stat explanations are for PvE, leveling and beginning endgame. Extreme soloing is a different matter, and will most likely be discussed at a later time. There will also be a lot of talk about itemization points,and  that article will follow next week.

Base stats: We call these the base stats since they are basically our bread and butter. Pretty much every piece of gear you get from level 10 on will feature at least one of these.

• Agility: Agility is your number one stat. From just one point of Agility you get .012% crit and 1 attack power.
• Intellect: Intellect is a stat you will never gem for, but you will miss it at the early levels of endgame and leveling. Intellect, like all caster stats, will give you a bit of mana, a bit of mp5, and a small bit of spell crit. From a pure dps standpoint, int is nice because it lets us have less time in aspect of the viper, and less viper time = more damage. Also keep in mind that 1 point of intellect is equal to 1 ap if you took careful aim in the marks tree.
• Strength: Strength gives you MELEE ATTACK POWER. You don’t want strength. Move along. No, I don’t care that your pet uses your melee attack power and you specced beast mastery. Move along.
• Stamina: Stamina is tricky. If you are specced survival, it will provide a small dps boost (and piss off the druid tank you keep rolling against staves on). Other than that its only real value is giving you more padding against unavoidable damage. Avoidable damage is avoidable and you really don’t need to stack stamina.

Secondary stats: These are the secondary stats that appear on your gear (the green text), most of these you will not deal with until level 25 and higher, and are more of the contested and varying levels in your set.

Hit: Hit is important, you want to cap it at 8% (7% if you are, or know you will run with, a draenai). Anything over 8% is wasted itemization. Try to balance your gear around the hit cap if you can.

Crit: Critical Strike Rating is very important to us as hunters, a great deal of our trinkets and talents proc off of crits, so you want to make sure you keep a high crit rate to keep dps up.

Attack Power: Attack power is good. It scales our dps (like agility) very well. Not as good as agility, but close, due to the fact that you get double the itemization points.

Expertise: Like strength above, expertise is for melee classes. I understand there are some pieces that look pretty great when just gearing up (Uruka’s Band of Zeal, I’m looking at you.) and they are ok to take them as a stepping stone to better gear. Its just wasted itemization in the end though. (In case you are wondering about your pet, they get expertise equal to your hit rating.)

Spellpower: Back in Burning Crusade, Arcane Shot scaled from spellpower because…its arcane. Anyway, it doesn’t anymore, so stay away from spellpower-it does nothing for us.

Haste: Haste is not a bad stat, but not a great one either. It will speed up your steady shots and auto-shots (It becomes more valuable with 2t10, where more auto-shots = more procs), but it’s not worth gemming for.

Armor Penetration: Armor penetration, to put it simply (because the real explanation is very mathy) reduces the amount of armor your target has, thus increasing the amount of physical damage they take. It also gets better the more of it that you have! I do however have to issue the following big red warning label:

>>IF YOU ARE NOT IN FULL ICC 25/ICC 10 HEROIC GEAR, YOU SHOULD NOT BE GEMMING ARMOR PEN, YOU SHOULD NOT STOP USING ARCANE SHOT<<

Let me explain. There is a special spot in gearing for Marks hunters where ArP actually becomes worth more dps than agility. This is somewhere around the 850-950 ArP mark from gear alone. It also requires more than 4k attack power and over 50% crit. At this point, its usually more dps to drop the improved arcane shot talent and drop arcane shot from your rotation in order to get more steady shots off. It also comes with the condition that if you have to move, you will lose a good deal of dps.

I cannot tell you how many times I have zoned into a ToC or Ulduar run just to see a hunter with 100 ArP from gear, all gemmed up for ArP, just leaving potential dps on the floor.
Bottom line for ArP: Gem Agility, but take whatever ArP you can get from gear – as long as stat wise – its an upgrade.

Not all stats are created equal and we will go heavily into stat weights and itemization points next wednesday! All feedback is welcome in the comments, including column topics.

For those who are interested in my credentials: Armory

As most of you know, the friends and family alpha is currently live and incredibly locked down. Ok, maybe its not all that locked down – because we have a torrent of information leaking out and it would appear that the client downloader is publicly available. Now I’m not going to say where you can get it, but lets just leave it up to your google-fu to figure that part out.  KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ALPHA AND EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets look at the very first glimpse of professions in Cata.

General:

All professions will go up to 525, this is in line with every other expansion so far. Expect early recipes to cost the same mats current ones do. New title seems to be “Illustrious Grand Master”.

Mining:

• Toughness buff is up to 120 stamina.
• Smelting: Ebonsteel, made from Pyrium bars and Obsidian Shards. (Titansteel 2.0)
• Smelting: Pyrite – Looks like all the pyrite we’ve been throwing around northrend can be smelted! Time to go back to Ulduar and shoot some down! (No, not really on the shooting down.)

Herbalism:

• Lifeblood is up to 7200 over 5 seconds, well played flower pickers, well played.

Alchemy:

Only one recipe was found for alchemy so far, and it is:

• Transmute: Elemental Fusion – Transform the six elements into a random single element.

This is either Primal Might 2.0 or its some kind of “Take six crystallized pieces and make a random eternal.”  Too early to tell yet.

First Aid:

It looks like we will have 3 types of bandages this time around! Listed below are names and “Embersilk” costs. (We can assume Embersilk is the new Frostweave.)

• Dense Embersilk Bandage – (x3)
• Heavy Embersilk Bandage – (x2)
• Embersilk Bandage -  (x1)

Skinning:

• Crit bonus is up to 80!

Still weak compared to the other prof bonuses, but I expect to see an arctic fur equivalent that will make up for that.

Tailoring:

6 new rare cloths to make! Each has an element tied to it and I’m very excited to hear what blizz has in store for these pieces. All of them are on a week-long cooldown.

• Dream of Azshara (Water)
• Dream of Deephome (Earth)
• Dream of Hyjal (Life)
• Dream of Ragnaros (Fire)
• Dream of Skywall (Air)
• Dreamcloth (Shadow)

Enchanting:

I’ve saved enchanting for last since it is a HUGE list. To be honest, I will be amazed if some of these make it to live. It looks like Blizz is moving back towards PROC’y enchants like we started to see more of towards the end of this expansion. It also seems like they are adding more choice as to where you want put certain stats, and even entries to increase the new mastery stat.

• Enchant Weapon – Landslide – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase attack power by 120 for 10 sec when striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase spell power by 40 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Windwalk – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase dodge rating by 60 for 10 sec when striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Heartsong – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Hurricane – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Elemental Slayer – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes disrupt elementals  when struck, dealing Arcane damage and silencing them for 5 sec.
• Enchant Weapon – Avalanche – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes deal Nature damage to an enemy struck in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Mending – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes heal you when striking an enemy.
• Enchant Chest – Exceptional Spirit – Permanently enchant a chest to increase Spirit by 40.
• Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina – Permanently enchant a chest to increase Stamina by 75.
• Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase all stats by 20.
• Enchant Chest – Mighty Resilience – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase resilience rating by 40.
• Enchant Chest – Stamina – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase Stamina by 55.
• Enchant Chest – Mighty Stats – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase all stats by 15.
• Enchant Boots – Assassin’s Step – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Agility by 25.
• Enchant Boots – Lavawalker – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and mastery rating by 35.
• Enchant Boots – Mastery – Permanently enchant boots to increase mastery rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Precision – Permanently enchant boots to increase hit rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Major Agility – Permanently enchant boots to increase Agility by 35.
• Enchant Boots – Haste – Permanently enchant boots to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Earthen Vitality – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Stamina by 30.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant bracers to increase critical strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Speed – Permanently enchant bracers to increase haste strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Expertise – Permanently enchant bracers to increase expertise rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Exceptional Spirit – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Spirit by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Precision – Permanently enchant bracers to increase hit rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Dodge – Permanently enchant bracers to increase dodge rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Critical Strike – Permanently enchant bracers to increase critical strike rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Speed – Permanently enchant gloves to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase critical strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase Intellect by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Protection – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase armor by 250.
• Enchant Cloak – Critical Strike – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase critical strike rating by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Intellect – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase Intellect by 30.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Spell Piercing – Permanently enchant gloves to increase spell penetration by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery – Permanently enchant gloves to increase mastery rating by 65.
• Enchant Gloves – Mighty Strength – Permanently enchant gloves to increase Strength by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Greater Expertise – Permanently enchant gloves to increase expertise rating by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Strength – Permanently enchant gloves to increase Strength by 35.
• Enchant Gloves – Haste – Permanently enchant gloves to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Mastery – Permanently enchant gloves to increase mastery rating by 50.
• Enchant Shield – Superior Intellect – Permanently enchant a shield to increase Intellect by 35.
• Enchant Shield – Blocking – Permanently enchant a shield to increase block rating by 40.
• Enchant Shield – Protection – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase armor by 160.
• Enchant Ring – Agility – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Agility by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Greater Stamina – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Stamina by 75.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Intellect – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Intellect by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Strength – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Strength by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.

That’s all for now! I’ll try to keep up with any new updates that arrive. Talent Tree Changes coming later this weekend!

I kid, I kid. Icecrown is a challenging instance, or at least, it was. About a month or two ago, I stepped into the grand Light’s Hammer hall and gazed upon Tirion Fordring and the knights of the ashen verdict. The Damned clashed against their might just down the hall and a giant skeleton with the words “Lord Marrowgar” lied in wait at the end.

We quickly set forth in taking down the guards, making our way past Marrowgar and Deathwhisper, boarded the funship and spent a good hour learning how not to get hit by a blood beast before bringing the Deathbringer to his demise.

The next week, I went in again to notice King Wyrnn standing there and a nice fuzzy 5% boost to damage, health and healing taken. Honestly, that 5% felt right. For people in 10 man ToC gear and some 245 badge gear – it was enough to make it through. The 5% pushed us into some of the harder bosses, since the 5k/6.5+ required for festergut was no longer an issue.

Then came the 10%. We pushed through to the Blood Queen, Putricide and Sindragosa, and most pugs should now be able to clear festergut.

Yesterday, we welcome the 15% buff. This will almost certainly increase the chances of me seeing the Lich King (without being in a hardcore guild) and bring a lot of the people who are undergeared into the second wing.

My only concern now is – is it too much? I know the new blizzard philosophy is for everyone to be able to see the content, and I do agree with that. But a lot of the fun of raiding, at least to me, lies in its challenge.  Its set to be at 30% by the end of this buff cycle, but at that point it would be pretty hard to NOT one shot the first 2 wings, even with a bad pug.

The sky is falling! But Ill be enjoying my 15% buff anyway, and I hope all you people who are struggling on a boss push through this week. Good Luck and let me in the comments how you do, what your thoughts are, etc…

Hey all, its patch day again!

Now before you go running screaming into the night and threatening to cancel your account, lets note that its just a minor patch – but it brings some nice changes.

Big General Changes:

• The long awaited equipment manager has made it live.
• Gear now scales SotA and Wintergrasp vehicles.
• Wintergrasp quests are now weekly instead of daily.

A few class tweaks and bug fixes in the full notes included after the jump.

General

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

• Equipment Manager
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
• Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.

• Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.

• Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
• Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
• Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.

• Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.

• Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
• Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.

• Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.

• Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Tailoring

• Ulduar
  • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
  • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
  • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

So there I am, sitting in stormwind, watching the hustle-and-bustle of the trade district all around me, when it pops into my chat window.

“I nedz 10g can i has plz thx” (actual spelling, yes.)

Now being the kind and compassionate light-following paladin that I am, I decided to engage our poor illiterate friend. Join me after the jump so you don’t be this guy.

[Me] “I’m sorry, what?”
[Poorboy] “nedz 10g”
[Me] “For what?”
[Poorboy] (After a 2 minute silence) “train”
[Me] “Training at level 5 does not cost 10g. Maybe, maybe 50s.”
[Poorboy] “I nedz can i has”
[Me] “Im going to ask you a question.”
[Poorboy] “k”
[Me] “What are your professions?”
[PB] “First aid mining”
[Me] “Ok, what you are going to want to do is march into that forest over there, and start mining copper. It should fetch you about 3g/stack on the AH.”
[PB] “whats ah”
[Me] “Auction House”
[PB] “k”
[Me] “Good luck.”
[PB] “can i has 5 g plz”
/ignore Poorboy

Well, I tried. OK, so it wasn’t an actual conversation, but it was based on a real one, with that same spelling and line of questioning. There was a guildie (we can just can just call him poorboy for now) who would ask – everyday- to borrow 3g. And everyday, I would get into the same line of questioning and conversation, like clockwork.

So I’ve decided, in an effort to stop these people, to help you crit your wallet as a low level character.

Questing

Now, while I shouldn’t have to say this… questing is a huge source of money, gear, rep and xp.
Its kind of a one-stop shop for everything you need while leveling, and there are so many quests to do.
Poorboy would often reply that he did not want to quest, because it was too hard.
So lets assume that you, like poorboy, cannot stand questing.
Since questing is such a great rewarder of all things, you are leaving yourself at a great disadvantage by not doing it.
But, you can use your professions to help make up that money.

Killing Humanoids

Killing things is one of those nice by-products of questing, and killing humanoids will net you a modest income. They drop money, cloth (which always sells in the auction house), grey trash (vendor it for more money) and greens/blues (Do not vendor these – put them in the auction house or disenchant.) See the Auction House topic further down.

Professions

Your character has the ability to learn two primary professions and unlimited (well up to three because there are only three) secondary professions. Some are better for money-making than others. You see, the professions themselves, they generate income. Its complex. (100 internets to anyone who gets the joke.)

Primary professions

There are eight primary professions to choose from and they are split into two seperate types: Gathering and Crafting.
Repeat the following after me:

• Gathering skills will give me money now and later. Income is steady and mostly reliable.
• Crafting skills will give me a good amount of money later, but will be a money sink early on. Income is great for higher levels, but can be sporatic.
• Crafting skills will allow me to enhance my own character and my friends.

Did you get that? If your goal is simply steady money – pick two gathering professions. If your goal is to enhance your own character – I highly suggest taking one gathering profession and one crafting of your choice (They all have their own benefits). Try to choose a gathering skills that funds your crafting skill to soften the blow.

• Mining (Gather)

  • Mining is a great gathering profession, as ore and bars are always needed by blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting.
  • Copper is easy to gather as a low level character and will give you about 3-5g a stack.
  • Always sell the ore, rather than the bars. It gets a higher price due to it being used by more professions in that form.
  • When you hit 450 – you can smelt titansteel once a day for a decent fee.
  • Each “level” of Mining gives you a passive 3/5/7/10/30/50 stamina. (Toughness)

• Skinning (Gather)
  

  • You see that beast you just killed? Skin it. Extra income. The easiest of the gathering professions.
  • Skinning produces leather, which is used for leatherworking and occasionally tailoring, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting.
  • You get good xp while farming due to the fact that your gathering requires you to kill things.
  • Each “level” of skinning gives you a passive +3/6/9/20/32 critical strike rating. (Master of Anatomy)

Herbalism (Gather)

• Enjoy the scenery as you walk through picking flowers.
• Herbs are used in alchemy, inscription and occasionally enchanting.
• Glyphs are big business right now, and potions are always in demand. (Glyph business will eventually taper off, but should still be steady income)
• Free heal over time spell, regardless of class. Lifeblood (Rank 1)

Thats all for right now. Join me for part 2 in a few days when we will discuss how to make money using crafting skills.