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.

Look at it, its beatutiful.  If the only decent thing Garrosh ever does to the horde, hes getting my vote baby.  Just looks at it, pure unadulterated win.

Check out the gallery below for more images.

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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

A couple weeks back as I was levelling an alt through Hillsbrad, when a level 71 Deathknight sends me a message.

Hey, I’m leaving the game do you want my gold?

Never in all the years I’ve played has anyone ever given me gold!  In fact its usually me giving out the gold to such choice characters as Kirioth (I’m sure he’ll only but agree).  So you can imagine, when I received this message I was in a state of shock.

Then it struck me, this can’t be real.  Its clearly somebody taking the piss.  Hell, this is World of Warcraft.

I replied, saying I’d only be to happy to get hold of this money as it could be put to good use.  Alts don’t magically get flying you know, some poor fool has to pay for it.  The Deathknight then assured me he’d send all his Azerothian wealth to me over the mail system.  If I get the money it would be great, if not….its just another goon messing around, I’d just have to take it on the chin like any other hero.

The next day, I have this waiting for me:

Holy shit!  He actually sent me the money.  Now I’m in a total state of shock and awe.  A random player contacts me, sends me a large sum of gold and waves goodbye.  I’m not a rich man in game by anyone’s stretch of the imagination so this gold will help me out loads.

Has this happened to anyone else?  Share it with us in the comments if it has!

So to you Daplff, if your out there.

Thanks /bow

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…