So here goes, the first post. To start it all off by introducing myself.

I am Enapay or Alexander if you like. At the moment i study in Norway, but i originally come from Sweden. In my free time i like to do sports like handball, running and of course to play WoW, which i have done since vanilla having a few breaks in between from time to time.

So while playing WoW from a Newbie to a semi-casual raiding arena player, i have had great use off the WoW community so i wanted to give something back, but how? After some thinking i decided i wanted to start my own blogging project to help shamans and other WoW players by trying to write good, interesting and informative articles both for the casual and the more hardcore player.

So that’s pretty much where i am today, trying to progress as fast as possible up the arena ladder and the pve content. What more can i say? Stay tuned for more posts in the future.

-Enapay

At the Ebon Hold anvil, Elnoriah has learned why it is probably not the BRIGHTEST idea to use a hammer on a saronite bomb…

Greetings class, sorry this lesson is a bit overdue but here in the USA we had our Thanksgiving so it has been quite hectic around my house. So I apologize for the lightness in content around here lately, but it will be back on track starting now!

Last week, if you remember, we talked about a few professions and gathering skills as to their usefulness as a Death Knight Tank. The list so far is that 3 of the 5 discussed last week gave us enough incentive (through buffs given to you) to even bother leveling said skills. This week we are going to talk about the other 6: Blacksmithing, Engineering, Jewel Crafting, Alchemy, Leatherworking, and Inscription.

Now, we spin the roulette wheel of death and see what categories we will talk about. By categories I am talking about the general needs for that tradeskill based upon the gathering skills, as an example think “mining-based” or “herbalism-based”.

Still note that the perks mentioned are based upon a 450/450 skill in each of the following!

Mining-based Skills

Blacksmithing
Taking hot metals to an anvil and bashing them to create “art” is both awesome and a great stress reliever. In addition to being able to make some pieces of really good armor you can makes items required for other trade skills (such as enchanting rods) and are able to make a fine sum of gold by doing so.Now if that still has not sold you then the perks that Blacksmiths get will most certainly do so!

The perks that Blacksmiths get are down right awesome, first you can socket your bracers, and be able to socket your gloves to boot! Think for Tanking we can get 60 more STAM just by putting a +30 STAM gems in each. Yes, like Mining we get around a bonus of 600 HP and will be able to make ourselves some good armor.

Elno’s Thoughts: Manly AND useful? DO IT… DOOOOO IT! The extra sockets are amazing, and so isn’t some of the gear that you can make!

Engineering
This is not a skill for the faint of heart, but if you like to paratroop off of cliffs, or run like an imbecile this is your ideal trade skill. We can make bombs, warp to places in Northrend, and make some sexy mounts/mini pets. If the cute-destructive nature of Engineering has not sold you already, then you probably have your wits about you. Yes I use this, but it’s more for fun than the perks, which for Tanking are kind of… bad at the moment.

There are many perks, but as I already said there are only one or two that I think will make a good impression to you, students. Nitro Boosts, the crit rating on them is useless compared to the +22 STAM that it is holding off, but I will say they are fun as hell to use! Mind Amplification Dish it has more STAM than the leading head enhancement, but the Defense Rating we would be using by not equipping that is kind of sucky. In a PvE setting we should not need to MC, that’s what Spriests are for (BURN, but I still love you guys)!

Reticulated Armor Webbing THIS however is not half bad at all, there is a good amount of mitigation between this, but for gloves I still prefer to use the Enchant Gloves- Armsman. Although the avoidance is not worth the Enchantment, the 2% increased threat generally is desired over the 850 Armor. Frag Belt, YES YES YES! A great way to increase threat, and CC a Faction Champion the Frag Belt is probably the only thing in Engineering I would even SUGGEST to a Tank.

Elno’s Word: As much as I love the goofiness of Engineering, the perks it gives us are certainly not worthwhile. If you are focusing on being a Tank, this should not be your first pick.

Jewelcrafting
What’s the best way to propose to a girl? With a sexy ring of course! As a Jewelcrafter you can do just that, and give them a great bonus in their Stamina to boot (aaawwwuuuhhhh yeeeaaaa). Seriously though, Jewelcrafting is undoubtedly one of the best skills in WoW for ANY class/spec/role. You will save money on socketing your equipment, along with some pretty sexy perks!

In addition to being just plain awesome, a Jewelcrafter is able to make a Trinket with 2 gem slots, some dodge, and a bit of STAM. However, compared to  the easily obtainable The Black Heart, and the Brewfest Trinkets I am not enticed to use this. A newly geared Tank? Not half bad! The special JC only gems they can make, however, good call! Considering the normal person can acquire a +30 STAM gem, and they are expensive as hell, the JCer can use 3 Solid Dragon’s Eye which gives +51 STAM per gem. So let us use some basic math to determine how much more STAM you would receive!

3(51 STAM) – 3(30 STAM)=lolmorestam
153 STAM – 90 STAM=lolmorestam
63 STAM = lolmorestam

63 more stam is the equivalent to about 630 HP, which is more STAM any Tradeskill has given us thus far. It’s safe to say that this is very… VERY good!

Elno’s Word: You will save a killing on gems, plus make the best gems in the entire game. Although this does not end only at Stamina gems, there are plenty of other ridiculously awesome gems available to you! GET THIS… NOW!

And that is what you get when you piss me off!

Herbalism-Based Skills

Alchemy
Any Raider (casual or hardcore) will spend tons of their gold on Flasks and Potions each time they decide to go on a Raid. As an Alchemist you are the sole provider for these poor souls, the booster of their performance as a Raider, and for this you are greatly compensated. Plus, you can transmute worthless metals into Epic gems as well as Titanium bars and Eternals. Sounds pretty sweet, right?

Well luckily for you the Perks are pretty kick ass as well. Although they do not right-flat-out give you a bonus to stats like most of the professions, they are still quite awesome. All Alchemists are affected by Mixology which boosts the duration of any flask or elixir you drink. Instead of the base 1 hour duration on your Stoneblood and 1300 HP increase it is now a 2 hour duration with a 1950 HP increase. So by a 650 HP increase it is about on-par with the 60 STAM increases that most of the other Death Knight Tank-worthy professions are so keen on doing.

Plus as an added mini-bonus, there’s a Trinket which is about on-par with the Jewelcrafting one. As I said that time, it’s a pretty good Trinket, but for an end-game Tank, there is certainly better obtainable. Both are not bad (the JC one is probably better, 2 gem slots for STAM + 93 on it already, and an O.K. use effect).

Elno’s Word: Ehh, it’s pretty good. Though it does not directly affect us 24/7 it helps out when we REALLY need it. That’s all we can ask for, right? Plus, the amount of money saved is not a bad bonus as well!

Inscription
If I told you to go and pick pwetty flowers and crush them into finely colored inks, who would do this? For the frickin’ Glyphs and Perks I sure as hell would! Glyphs are some of the most expensive things to gear up with, so by being able to make these instead of being a pain in the ass is certainly a bonus. And you are able to make the cards to some of the best decks (trinkets) in the GAME, you will be rolling in cash, then send some to your best buddy and let him roll in the excess cash. To top it off you get basically another hearth stone, free of charge, making it easy to get to and from Dal (or any other place I guess).

The perk is not only an easy pass for the lazy Tanks, but it is also the best damn shoulder Enhancement of all time… OF ALL TIME! Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle deserves to be loved by every Tank, or envied for that matter. Compared to Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle a Scribe has quite a lead on the rest of the Tanks in terms of Shoulder Enchantments. 40 Dodge is a pretty significant amount of avoidance, plus you do not need to spend extra time doing all of those forsaken Sons of Hodir Dailies.

Elno’s Word: Pretty good, we all need avoidance and to not have to see those bloody giants. The amount of cash you will save/make + the Shoulder Enchantment is well worth the time spent to level Inscription.

I still don't believe I went "overboard"...

Skinning-Based Skills

Leatherworking
So you just ripped the flesh off of every Rhino in site, waved the carcass in front of a group of Vegetarians, and laughed your ass off. Instead of just merely going to the Auction House you can turn this stuff into gear for the Bears, Kittehs, Hunters, Shamans, and those damn Rogues. Plus there is a bit of profit to be made by doing so! At the end of the day you may question your sanity by crafting gear out of dead hides, but then your Rogue friend wants some gear and you forget about your sanity.

Perks? Hol-e-shit there are quite a few, first of all you can be one of those Paladins and give your entire raid an 8% to all stats “kings” buff, or be a Druid with the 750+ Armor, 37 to all stats, and 54 to resistances buff of the wild rip off. Yes, you do not need to have a Druid in the Raid anymore, or make the Paladins struggle to buff the entire Raid with your Drums. The downside of you being a buff master is that they are not as good as the buffs that they “rip off of”, so it still helps to have smart Paladins and at least one good Druid.

As for gear Enhancement you get a free leg enchantment which is the equivalent to the very pricy leg enhancement available to everyone. Although exclusively to Leatherworkers Fur Lining- Stamina is available to put on your bracers instead of the +40 STAM enchant. Just one thing… it gives +102 frickin’ Stamina, for basic purposes let us just say that each point of STAM contributes to the bare minimum (10 HP per 1 STAM). You get at LEAST 1020 HP just from one enchantment. Yes, this undoubtedly the best thing for Tanks since… since Death Knights!

Edited to show some maths as to why this is really good, but still on par with most of the other professions

102 STAM (LW Bracers) – 40 STAM (Enchantment) = lomorestam
62 STAM = lolmorestam

So it is actually on-par with every other profession, but why would I say it is really, really, REALLY, good? Well the fact that on my server the best Tanking Leg Enhancement is about 250g+ and LWers can do said enhancement on themselves for practically nothing is a huge incentive for most anyone. Yes, it is on par, but it will save you one hell of a lot of gold by keeping you on par!

Elno’s Word: Killing animals never felt so good, then we can put their dead bodies on our wrists and legs for practically no cost? HELLS YES!

Conclusions

So out of the 11 available Trade Skills, which ones have we ruled as completely viable to use as a Tank? Well, all are viable remember, just some actually HELP us stat-wise rather than only give us a cool mount or some “lolz”.

Pro

• Mining
• Enchanting
• Blacksmithing
• Jewelcrafting
• Leatherworking
• Inscription
• Alchemy

Kinda?

• Herbalism (useful, but I would not get it solely for the bonus)

Con

• Engineering
• Tailoring
• Skinning

Hopefully, class, you can now go out into the world and figure out what you would like to do with your lives as crafters. Remember, you can do anything your little heart desires, but for an extra “boost” there are some that are definitely more helpful than others.

Check back at the beginning of the week next week for your Death Knight Tank and You: lesson!

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

I think that, despite people’s dislike of the Turkinator achievement, this is turning out to be a great, popular holiday. There are daily quests, reputation bonuses, a cute pet, and the opportunity to level a skill many people find tedious and skip entirely. Yes, one of my favorites – Cooking.

You can powerlevel Cooking on any of your characters up to Outland levels with little effort, and Northrend levels with a bit more. All of this for any of your characters over level 5.

Yes, you read that right. Any character over level 5 can be a Grand Master Cook, and this holiday makes it easy.  As someone who powerleveled Cooking and Fishing together, over the course of several days, this change is awesome. Take advantage of the opportunity and level your alt’s skills now.

The strategy is quite simple.

1. You will need to make 4 stacks (80 units) of each of the various holiday dishes.  So, you’ll need 80 each of: Simple Flour, Mild Spices, Ripe Pumpkins, Tangy Cranberries, Sweet Potatoes, and Wild Turkey meat.  (Depending on your luck, you may want to have 5 stacks of Wild Turkey meat to get you all the way to 350/Grand Master cooking — at least once the RNG didn’t favor me on the green skillups and I got stopped at 348.)
2. You will also need from the holiday vendors: 1 Bountiful Cookbook, 16-17 stacks of Autumnal Herbs, 20-22 stacks of Honey.  Open the cookbook to reveal the recipes you’ll use.
3. Start off by training Cooking and Spice Bread.  You don’t need any other recipes yet, as they’ll just clutter your Cooking interface.  You can always go back and learn them later.
4. Make a Basic Campfire and start cooking Spice Bread.  This will go green around 30, but you’ll need all 4 stacks for the next step, so keep going even if it goes gray.
5. Cook Spice Bread Stuffing until your skill reaches 50.  At that point, go train the Journeyman Cook skill and go back to making stuffing.  This recipe goes yellow at 90 and green at 100; I’ve found you should end somewhere around 105-110.
6. Learn the next recipe, Pumpkin Pie, and start cooking it until your skill reaches 125.  Go train the Expert Cook skill and make the rest of the pies.  Pumpkin Pie goes yellow at 150 and green at 160, just in time for the next recipe.
7. You might need to switch cities at this point if you don’t have all the materials (Ironforge for Alliance, Orgrimmar for Horde), but you want to learn Cranberry Chutney and start cooking it. Train your Cooking skill at 200.  This recipe will go yellow at 210 and green at 220, but make all 4 stacks.
8. Again, if you don’t have all the mats, you’ll need to relocate to Darnassus or Thunder Bluff, but follow the same pattern for Candied Sweet Potatoes.  I love Sweet Potatoes, and not just because they bring you up to about 280-300 Cooking.  Cook everything you’ve got, but stop before you hit 300.
9. Make sure you have 4-5 stacks of Wild Turkey and Autumnal Herbs, and 8-10 stacks of Honey before you hop a boat or zeppelin to Northrend, because it’s a long run for low-level characters if you forget!  Don’t bother going to Outland; it takes too long and you can do all your training in the frozen north.
10. Train Master Cooking and then start making Slow-Roasted Turkey.  If you have 4 stacks, you should get just about to 350; 5 stacks should take you past it.  Once you’re at 350, train Grand Master and do a happy /dance!

Even if you aren’t that organized and end up doing a lot of traveling and turkey hunting, this process takes about 1-2 hours, which is a far cry from the days it used to take using Fishing.

Don’t forget that these items can’t be mailed, but they can be traded, so enlist the aid of some friends to serve as mutual material banks.  (They work like conjured items.)  High level mages can collect all the materials but the Wild Turkey meat in minutes, and friends can help you swap unused items over to different toons.

Good luck.  May your cuisine reign supreme!

We find our hero in the Ebon Hold terrorizing the newbies with Munchy’s “War Stories”. Yes, he really did man the 50cal…

Generally as you live your life and do any sort of team sport/activity you will meet friends. With these friends you will complete the activity/win the sport together, and you begin to trust in them. You trust that they will always have your back if something goes wrong with your strategy, you trust that they will save you if you are getting hurt, and much more.

Then after spending so much time together with your new friends you can basically complete any activity and KNOW the person. By this I mean, know what they would do, if they were to have trouble, and basically work together so simultaneously you are surprised you are not fused to each other’s hips.

This is what we call Synergy, and you will find this in your WoW “life”. Everyone has friends/guildies that they know very well and will be able to work well with no matter what role you play (DPS/Tank/Healer). This is probably one of the most important ties that you can possible have, and one should make use of this tie.

Raiding is like a Soccer Team, you have your players and are all part of the same team striving for the same goals (no pun intended, but it’s there anyways). If a few people do not do their jobs, you will wipe or lose the game for your team. Now if the team is full of synergy, you WILL not fail because you all know each other’s strengths, limits, weaknesses, and ability. Working together with perfect synergy is essential for both activities to succeed.

The Backstory

Yes, I joined a new guild, a 25m Raiding guild with high ambitions and two very great Raid Leaders with my friend, Bigblakbul and some other of the “core raiders” from my other guild. So far it has been pretty good, we downed everything up to the Val’kyr and decided to finish them off last night.

Just one problem, we didn’t, we sat there and wiped for quite some time until we finally just called it. Was it a Tanking problem? Hell no, Blak and I brought our A-Games for sure. The Healers were pretty good as well, but what was wrong, was the DPS. There were quite a few Melee DPSers that never switched targets throughout the night, as I am sure there were a couple of Ranged, but melee was our largest problem of them all. So what does this have to do with Synergy?

The Back Story After the Backstory

After the Raid our RL (Boomkin/Feral Tank OS) and our other RL (Prot/Ret Pally) asked Blak and I to hop into a private channel in vent with them. I knew that we had not done anything wrong, but I feared for the worst anyways. Here is (basically) how it went down, and luckily my fears were proven completely wrong!

RL: El, Blak, how familiar are you with ToC?

Me: We have both done it and lead it multiple times, why?

RL: Well, the way this used to be done made things become very “cliquey” now Co-RL and I have Tanked together and know each other very well, just like you two are comfortable Tanking with each other. What we want to do is not make this cliquey so that all of us (Tanks) are familiar with each other, because face it we will not all make it to every Raid and will have to Tank with each other regardless.

All: Damn Straight (In multiple variations, but that one sums it up)
RL: What we hope to do is to gear up people and get familiar with each other in 10m ToC, because the guild has more than enough people to do these full-guild we will be splitting off into 2 groups. Me and El will Tank the first one together, and Co-RL and Bigblak you guys will Tank the second so that we can break up any “cliques” and get to know each other.

All: Sounds good!

After, we talked about times that would suit us best and what-not, but I thought this was an extraordinary idea and it should work out very nicely. There is very little loot competition between the groups except for Trinkets/Rings/Neck/Cape and it will be easy to create a synergy since the groups can/will be swapped around once and awhile.

Skiiing! Yay!

How to Create Synergy

What my RL suggested was a great way to create Synergy between Tanks, you simply Tank with the people you will most likely be grouped with. After a few sessions you will know the person like he was your own brother in terms of Tanking. Once this happens, it will be a very powerful and effective tie for your Raid to have. Sure, the best geared Tanks in the server could do a great job Tanking some boss, but they will never know each other’s limits if they do not make a bond with the other.

Synergy is stronger than gear, being able to seriously know the person you are fighting beside is a huge advantage in any field, especially WoW. But are Tanks the only ones that need synergy?

Hell no! In fact there are multiple synergies that can be created in WoW, there are exactly 6 different combinations. These include:

• Tank to Tank
• Tank to DPS
• Tank to Healer
• Healer to DPS
• Healer to Healer
• DPS to DPS

So how does one actually create synergy? Very simple, just like our RL has done you “force” each other into playing alongside one another until you create a very strong bond. With said bond everything becomes easier because you have someone you can always count on to get the job done.

What does this have to do with my performance?

You are a Rogue and your best bud who you play all the time with is a Healer. Your buddy KNOWS that you are not always aware of fire and will be sure to top you off accordingly. The Healer buddy just saved your life and allowed you to keep DPSing your heart out. See the connection? Without that synergy your Raid would be left with one less DPS, and that can make a significant difference as to if your group will finish or crash and burn on the spot.

Let me take Klinderas for an example. There are points when my Runes start to stay on C/D and can be very tricky for me to get Aggro, as a great Hunter and friend he knew when to pop an MD on my ass and keep me Tanking when it really mattered. Hell, there were times back in TBC where he would put a Trap on me to lessen the inevitable chance of my death, it felt good to be able to count on someone.

As a Tank we will generally pop our OH SHI- buttons when needed, but depending on the Healer’s capabilities we may have to pop them earlier than we expected. If [Insert Healer friend here] and I were in the middle of a fight and I know when his heals start to dry out due to synergy, I press my shiny buttons and save both of our hides for a few more seconds.

This is very confusing, what is the point of this?

Look, we all establish ties with someone, and as *ahem* awkward as it sounds a bond with a friend is extremely valuable. Synergy is when this bond grows to the point of us being able to successfully complete tasks as if we were somehow turned into that person, and by doing so we know each other’s next move and limits. With this knowledge we can have a more wholesome experience in our Raid/Everyday life because we know who to count on and what they can do.

Synergy, it has saved my Raids, will continue to save my Raids, and makes the game that much more enjoyable because I KNOW that I have friends that I will entrust my virtual-life with.

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

On a Separate Note

@Baenhoof was taking requests for a free fully colored commission of their WoW character. All we had to do was be the 1st to tweet her with a screenshot of said character at the loading screen. Guess who got that commission?

No, I'm not taking off my pants, that costs extra!

Me! Still I question why no woman wants this hunk ‘o Blood Elf love. Those aren’t tattoos ladies, them be fightin’ scars!

One of my guildies and I were brainstorming some ideas for a new Arcane spec taking advantage of the mechanics in the fights in ToC, and we came up with a nice spec that maximizes theoretical DPS while keeping all of the core talents of the build.

Here’s a link to my WoW Armory profile; I may have my active spec set incorrectly, but you can still look at the Arcane spec.

Some of the major differences you may note are the lack of any points in either Arcane Stability or Magic Attunement (I don’t really feel the lack of 6 yd of range), as well as not taking Arcane Barrage. This is because, as I have mentioned before, the ideal rotation for Arcane is Arcane Blast x4 (or more, if you have the gear – which I don’t anymore) -> Arcane Missiles. What I’ve done with the extra talent points I freed up was dump them into Student of the Mind for a small crit bonus (although I’m not really geared for Spirit; once I get some more gear, this talent will only get better), and also pick up 3/3 Incanter’s Absorption.

Yes, Incanter’s Absorption. I don’t know whether I’ve said this on my blog, but I held for a very long time that IA was a cool sounding talent with no practical application, as you’d burn too much mana with Mana Shield absorbing incidental damage. I ended up being proved very, very wrong in 3.2 – you still aren’t burning mana, GCD’s, or anything using Mana Shield, Frost Ward, or Fire Ward, but Blizzard gave us a really cool opportunity to have a LOT of spellpower on certain fights.

Think about the mechanics of Val’kyr Twins. You pick a color aura to have – and both twins are doing a 1500/x time global AoE. By picking up an aura from the portal, you…ABSORB the damage from that color aura. ABSORB. That means…a HUGE bonus to spellpower from IA. We’re talking a hundreds-of-DPS increase here – my spellpower literally went up by 800 or more.

Situationally, you could probably gain some DPS in certain situations too – I’m thinking fires on some fights with a situational Flame Ward, or something to that effect – but largely you’re going to see the benefit coming from incidental, fight-based absorptions. Regardless, IA has shown itself as a decent utility talent, and I recommend grabbing it.

The interview with Kripparrian in  The Hunting Party Podcast #14 gave us plenty to think about.  While the message that most focused on (that of stack your cooldowns) is important, I thought another of Kripparian’s comments also deserved its own post: that you need a mindset of self-improvement.

In this post I will go over how we arrive at this mindset and then what it looks like when practiced well.

I do not want to put words into Kripparrian’s mouth, and so this is only what the mindset means to me.  The mindset entails always trying to do better next time.  It means always looking at things in terms of how they affect dps.  It means searching far and wide for new ideas, and making sure that they are good ones.  It means experimenting and testing.  It means holding little sacred (dps-wise) and keeping an open mind.

This sounds a bit like the scientific method, and rightly so.  But this is a game, right?  Why is rigorous examination necessary in this thing you do for fun?

The answer is a little long but obvious.  We are first motivated to do better dps.  But when we reach a certain point in the PvE endgame, we realize that better dps will no longer come in huge shifts: no new talents, no new levels, and stat increases from new gear are usually drops in the bucket.  Rather, better dps comes from adding up the little things, like stacking cooldowns or maybe getting that runspeed enchant.  These little changes, ranging from re-spec’ing a few talent points to sitting up straight in front of your computer, are plentiful as possibilities.

Because the potential changes are plentiful, they can add up when made to be huge changes in our dps.  However, they are also typically small individually and often cannot be found without help and/or tools.  To find them, we have to search a lot, far and wide and all the time.  We have to observe and question and experiment.  We know the little things are worth looking for, but we also know that to find a lot of them we have to be looking for them whenever we can.  As we internalize this search through its repetition and make it habitual (if not obsessive), it becomes a mindset of self-improvement.  The search for better dps becomes part of the way we play the game.

In this way a mindset is an effect, the product of various motivations.  However, it also ends up being a cause: the better your mindset for finding improved dps, the better your dps will be in result. The more rigor and objectivity you have, the more reliable your returns.  The more systematic and careful you are, the fewer things you miss on average.  Basically, the better you learn how to fish, the more fish you’re likely to catch.  Put another way, striving for self-improvement is good, but some mindsets for it are better than others.

Having described how we arrive at a mindset of self-improvement, and having given a rationale for adopting a good one, I believe I can now outline principles that lay behind such a mindset.  Different hunters do different things to discern potential dps improvements; however, from what I have seen these behaviors (the good ones) are usually structured along the same lines.  I phrase these principles as imperatives because this is a guide, but really they are also meant to be descriptive.

keep an open mind: This sounds trite and obvious, I know.  But I mention it because I see hunters holding as gospel things that were only true in The Burning Crusade.  I say it because I run into hunters still using cats only because they stopped questioning whether or not cats were still the best non-BM pet dps.  Everything should be subject to scrutiny and nothing should be given a free pass.  For if you consistently ignore something, that absolutely precludes you from working to improve it.

observe: It is not enough to just keep an open mind, you also have to actively watch for possible dps improvements in your environment.  And by your environment I actually mean a lot of things.  I mean watching the way other hunters and other dps perform in raids.  I mean talking to these people too.  I mean watching yourself play the game, within and beyond the screen.  But I also mean things outside your personal gaming experience.  You should be online looking at a variety of media, possibly including reading hunter blogs and forums, watching videos from other guilds, listening to podcasts, studying boss fights and reading the latest patch notes.  Generally, you should observe from all angles.  Have an eye to any avenue you think could lead to you bettering your gameplay in a specific or general sense.  This of course requires an investment of time and some diligence; but you’re already playing WoW, so I’m taking it for granted that you have some free time.

experiment: This takes keeping an open mind and observing a step further.  It is more calculated, more systematic, more scientific and more proactive.  Instead of waiting for things to happen to him or her, the rigorous hunter finds possible dps improvements and then tests hypotheses about these possible changes.  This can mean using a dps simulator or a training dummy to compare possible specs.  It can mean trying one thing one boss attempt and a second thing on another attempt (all the while secretly hoping everything else remains the same for testing purposes).  Always do your best to make sure your experiments are valid, though; you need to understand your tests well enough to understand what (if anything) they are actually saying about your dps.  And good experimentation often requires a bit of creativity.  Using a good test can mean devising that test yourself if you are indeed trying out something new.

be willing to make sacrifices: Once you have studied your world and run your experiments, you have to go where the data leads you, wherever that may be.  That will entail not bringing your cool blue and white gorilla to raids because you now know that wolves do the job better.  Optimal dps leaves no room for the spec you leveled up with or your partiality to bows over crossbows.  Being willing to make sacrifices is not just a matter of sentimentality, though; it is also economic.  It means ignoring sunk costs and readily accommodating new costs.  You have to be prepared to get little mileage out of that 400g worth of weapon enchants because you happen get a new two-hander the next day (which you then have to enchant also).  You have to be prepared to ditch that spider you spent so much time leveling because you mistakenly thought Roar of Recovery would make a spider worth raiding with. Some people used to ignore sunk costs (of time) to the extent that they would reroll their entire characters (Orc racials are supposed to be the best for hunter dps).  I don’t think you need to go to the extreme of a race or faction change, but you should be willing to re-gear, re-gem, re-enchant, re-spec, re-tame, re-UI (these’s re’s are making less sense grammatically as I go along), etc., whenever you have to for better dps.

seek and act on gains even if they are marginal:  This principle goes as a partner to be willing to make sacrifices partly because it will require you to make a lot of them.  Its lesson is, don’t ignore a potential means of improvement just because it may offer only a small increase in dps.  As discussed above, the little things do add up.  Sure, the one change may only bring you up 20 dps with full raid buffs.  But if you do that with five things, that’s one hundred dps.  It may even be more because I am mainly using add up as a catch-all phrase.  Consider that by stacking something like Call of the Wild or Black Arrow with other cooldowns, you aren’t just adding something onto those buffs, you are increasing them multiplicatively.  If you are wondering why you are sitting at 5k while another hunter with similar gear and spec is at 6k, it is probably because the other hunter spent time figuring out or learning about little improvements and when added together they made for 1k extra dps.  That has been my experience, at least.

keep things simple: This may not seem to fit in with what I’ve said so far.  After all, I’ve just given you the impossible task of watching and testing everything.  What I mean is, keep things simple so as to make watching and testing (and playing the game) easier. Don’t take a step down in rigor, but do what you can to make it easier on yourself and take time to evaluate what is helpful and/or necessary as opposed to what only appears to be those things.  Do you really need Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text flaring numbers all over your screen? Is there an easier, more intuitive way to track your dot(s)?  What test presents the clearest picture of what you are interested in?  Do you need that many keybindings and action bars when raiding?  These questions go on and I’m sure you get my idea.

trust well: This is almost required by the demands of the preceding principles.   Ideally, you would be testing everything out yourself, but that simply isn’t possible.  Since trusting others on pieces of information is necessary more often than not, trusting well is a good skill.  Do your best to make sure the source is reliable.  Don’t take hearsay as law.  Try to find other sources that confirm the piece of information.  Ask questions and scrutinize as much as possible so long as the game is still fun to play (and so long as you aren’t being a jerk ).  Being scientific is one thing, but no one likes the person who is always getting in trivial disagreements with other raid members and wasting the raid’s time.

collaborate and share: There are visionary, path-breaking geniuses out there, but most of us aren’t them.  Good work for the rest of us comes from bouncing our ideas off other people, asking questions of them, and actually using their feedback.  And you should be willing to give feedback and help, too.  Collaboration should happen in game, too.  You should have an ongoing conversation with your guild’s other hunters about huntering.  A healthy competition on dps doesn’t hurt either!

Is a good mindset of self-improvement as described here necessary to raid?  No, you can raid without analyzing everything.  Is such a mindset necessary to do adequate dps?  No, you can be adequate without these principles.

The thing is, though, a good mindset helps with raiding.  It helps with dps.  That’s why I took the time to describe it here.  How much of it you adopt is up to you.

- Eidotrope

I’m curious what most of my resto druid brethren out there do with their dual specs.  I currently run with my primary PvE spec and a more PvP oriented spec that I don’t really use very often.

Do most of you run with 2 resto specs?  Do you use a Boomkin or tank spec?  I would love to hear suggestions.  Any suggestions to my main spec is also welcome.

My last guide to the twins was effective, but is due for a bit of an overhaul. Mainly because it fails to address a very important hunter-specific strategy. Before I continue, go read it because I won’t be going over the basics of the fight, and will assume you know the mechanics already (in terms of orbs, auras, switching targets, penalties for screwing up, etc).

A huge factor in the success of this encounter is going to be in execution. I understated the difficulty last time because I was spoiled by being in a large competent guild. The fight actually presents significant challenges if you have new players (and/or undergeared players) in your raid. If you are riding the thin line of just enough DPS to get their shield down before it heals them back up, then you need to have that much better execution.

The most commonly used strategy for this fight is generally to split the raid in half and have each half fight each boss. As DPS, we want to collect as many orbs of our color as possible, and avoid collecting orbs of the wrong color. As hunters, we have the ability to DPS the boss from just about anywhere in the room. Thus, we have an opportunity to increase our raid’s DPS by altering our positioning.

If you’re, for example, assigned to get a light aura and attack Darkbane, instead of standing with all the other light essence players, you can stand at max range between the dark aura players and the wall, and carefully pick out the light orbs that spawn on that part of the room. This prevents people in that group from having to move to avoid light essences, as well as lets you do more DPS.

The skill of moving as little as possible and picking up as few of the wrong orbs as possible is not easy, however it comes with practice. The advantages are well worth it though. You increase your DPS, and increase the DPS of the people with the opposite color orbs, as well as reduce the raid healing required.

The above image (click for zoom) shows what I’m talking about. The big rectangles are where most of the light and dark players will be standing, the circles are the vortexes that you use to change color, the rectangles are where the bosses are tanked, and the orbs spawn along the wall. The orbs will average out to about evenly dark and light, but when they make their way into the DPS, they can wreak havoc.

Now this is actually a variation of the commonly used strategy for hard mode- in hard mode, however, hunters only collect orbs. They often have a special set of gear they use for it (typically with a lot of stam). This isn’t a hard mode guide, I’m simply taking the idea of a soaker and applying it in such a way that it doesn’t cost the raid DPS.

One problem with this is that when you need to change colors, if you are going to be standing on the top or bottom of this map (and not in the back), you will have a long distance to cover. You need to get good at disengaging for aura swapping, as well as changing your target quickly. As Kripparrian, a recent guest on the hunting party podcast, suggested, the easiest way to disengage is to jump in the direction you want to go, do a quick about-face in the air with your mouse, and then fire disengage. Practice this. It lets you aim your disengage, as well as gives you a couple extra feet of distance.

If you have any questions or criticisms, don’t be shy! Comments are appreciated

Let’s say you’ve been asked to kill 40 turkeys. I don’t know why, maybe a friend dared you to do it.

And let’s say this friend said, not only do I dare you to kill 40 turkeys, I dare you to kill each one within 30 seconds of each other.

You should have two responses.

First, take this person off your friends list! What kind of friend would ask such a crazy thing of you?

Second, bet them 100g on the spot, because you’re going to kill those turkeys AND get paid for it!

Here’s what you do.

1. Prepare yourself with some Tracker Snacks. If you can’t cook them yourself, find someone who can or buy them off the AH. Pay whatever outrageous prices people are asking, because time is money, friend!

2. Go to the zone of your choice – Elwynn, Trisifal, the Fjiord, wherever – eat a Tracker Snack, enjoy watching your minimap light up with all those yellow dots, and then…

3. Go scouting. Don’t skip this step! Ride around and find 2-3 groups of turkeys, all close to each other. In Elwynn I found a LOT of these areas -around Stone Carin Lake, Ridgepoint Tower, Jasperlode Mine – I settled for the far side of the Eastvale Logging Camp and Ridgepoint Tower. I hear the area south of SM in Trisifal is also good, but the specific spot matters less than that there are lots of Wild Turkeys there right now.

4. Now you’re going to make a macro. If you’ve never made a macro, now’s a good time to start. If you don’t like using macros, tough, because your reputation and money are now on the line. And it’s a simple one — Line 1: /target Wild Turkey, Line 2: /cast (instant-cast damaging spell). That’s it. Put it on your action bar.

5. Put on your speed boots – you have speed boots, right? – put your pet on passive, and go hunting! Always be moving to the next yellow dot. Ride whenever you are not in combat, and run when you are. DO NOT STOP TO LOOT. Kill turkeys until you’re tired of killing, and then kill some more. Don’t stop until you get [The Turkinator].

6. /dance, then go kill 25 more Wild Turkeys – this time, loot them. You need the meat for quests.

Once all that is complete, go find your friend, gloat, and collect your bet.

(If the friend was hypothetical, you can just gloat to yourself.)

Enjoy your shiny new achivement!

“OMNOMNOM, ME LOVE SANDVICH!!!” Screams Elnoriah as he devours sandwich after sandwich at the Ebon Hold’s café delicious…

Raiding can be quite the expensive investment, as a Tank I put in about 100g a night of raiding in repairs, and receive emblems and possibly loots. Of course I have tons of fun, which is worth every copper of that damned virtual currency. Nonetheless there is more to Raid expenses than just repairing, and these my friends are called consumables!

What IS a consumable?

The best way to describe a consumable is something that you “eat” and in WoW, most likely buffs you. The three examples that you will be most familiar with will be Flasks, Food, and Potions. Just by having enough of all three of these items can increase your performance quite a bit, and so most Raiding Guilds REQUIRE you to use these on Guild-Run Raids. PUGs for specific Raids, not so much, but if you are tackling hard content, then you may as well strap a few of these on with you.

Hine over at Death Goddess wrote an article on Death Knight DPS consumables, so for any of our DPS cousins I suggest you hop over there and take a peek!

Food

Up until 80 we generally only think of Food as the way to get our HP back in between pulls, but in fact cooks can create food that can buff the whole Raid/Party or just yourself. As a Tank, there are quite a few decent choices we can get, and the expense to acquire the consumables may vary depending on the server. Regardless, let us judge only by stats, not by a virtual currency.

Fish Feast: As goes the same with what Hine wrote, it’s free and it’s a pretty good buff. Generally I would use this with my guild if we were doing something that is on farm, and/or not a challenge to the group. Honestly, there is no reason to break my back fishing or break my wallet purchasing food if it is for a cake-walk Raid. As with most consumable foods it gives 40 STAM (contributing about 400 HP), and for a whole hour is a pretty sweet deal. On top of the 40 STAM, if that was not already enough to sell you, is 80 AP which of course boosts your DPS. To us this means that because we do a bit more damage, we will be doing quite a bit more TPS (Threat per second).

So for Farm content, or just plain easy instances/Raids mooch off of a friend and eat their Fish Feasts, eat them up!

EDIT: (Thanks for correcting me on that Gravity)

Blackened Dragonfin: Is certainly the best food out there for a DK Tank, with its 40 Agi and 40 STAM there is virtually nothing that can compete with it. The 40 STAM is a keeper just on its own, but what does the Agility do for us? Well, Agility as a stat increases Dodge, Armor, and also gives us a tiny bit of AP. Avoidance, damage mitigation, and a bit of Threat, exactly everything we need in a single stat. It is simply delicious, as a food and as a buff, go blackened and you will NEVER go back!

Personally I would only be using this if either your Raid has no Fish Feast (Very Unlikely) or if you are progressing through harder content that is not on farm or ridiculously easy!

Snapper Extreme: I will be completely honest, use this ONLY if you are severely lacking in Hit Rating. As a Tank we do want to get a bit of Hit, maybe not the Hit Cap, but we want to be “up there” enough to be able to successfully use each of our abilities. The problem with getting “up there” is that in ToC there are VERY few Tanking items with Hit on them, so we need to scrounge what we can out of the T9 Helm/Chest and possibly even use a couple gem slots for +Hit. Dark times indeed, but food can actually limit the amount of gems we need to “waste”! The Snapper Extreme gives 40 STAM still, but also 40 Hit Rating, which is about 1% Melee Hit and 1.5% (ish) of Spell Hit. The extra percent can easily boost your threat IF YOU NEED THE HIT RATING, otherwise like DPS overcapping HR it is completely useless.

So if you are lacking HR to the point of not being able to hit Raid Bosses and keep them on top of you the entire fight, grab a Snapper Extreme to give you that boost. Fish Feast and the Dragonfint are better but if you can not hit the Boss, you are not producing threat. What is the point of all of that survivability and uncrittable gear if you can not keep the boss on you?

Yeap, I look like a stripper now. Mother will not be pleased!

Flasks are made by Alchemists, think of them as potions that last for a whole hour and persist through death. Flasks are VERY important to have, you can go without Food for Farm content, but you should always have at least 2 flasks on you for the duration of the Raid. (Onyxia/VOA/OS you could probably get away with not using one) These flasks will increase performance pretty significantly, and they are not even that expensive! Considering there are only 4 choices to choose from for Flasks we will only be using 1 as a Tank.

Flask of Stoneblood: 1300 HP ’nuff said. Really, that is a significant amount of HP to gain just by drinking some concoction, and it will make quite a big difference in terms of your survivability. Take me for an example, normally I have about 35.9k HP, and by drinking this I am at 37.2k HP self buffed, obviously this is a great deal of difference and will help the Healers not have to work their asses off to keep me alive. Sounds like the 25g a wack is certainly worth it!

Like I said earlier, you would be able to get away with not using Flasks in Ony10/VOA/OS if you are just futzing around with a PuG. Regardless, find an Alchemist and make friends with him/her, because you are going to need them!

Potions

Potions are the trickiest of the consumables to truly understand. You can only use them 2 times in a fight, once before the pull and once during the pull, so you will need to have a bunch but be able to use them wisely. Choosing the right potions is also a huge part of it, but luckily for us we only have one that we even need to think about as a Tank. Yes we are cheaters, but we are the ones keeping you from getting pounded by that fire-breathing worm over there!

Indestructible Potion: Words can not describe my love for this potion, because frankly, it has saved my life on multiple occasions. 3500 Armor is a ridiculous amount to come out of a potion, so much that it completely takes the Runic Healing potion’s potential use and throws it out of a window. The mitigation is tremendous, but that is not all that it gives you. If you have Bladed Armor you can get around 100 AP extra just by popping one of these, so on top of the amazing amount of mitigation it provides, it also gives us a ton of bonus Threat. Just incase we were questioning its awesome power.

Keep about a stack of these with you at all times, because you will never know if you need to whip one out. They are cheap and easily replaceable so do not worry!

So let us add all of these together, if we are fully buffed with all of the best foods/potions/flasks available we will receive about 1700Hp, 3500 Armor, a tiny bit of parry, and 180-200 more AP. A noticeable difference for sure, but it does come with a price. To get fully buffed/flasked it can cost 80g+, but there are ways to limit the costs, but generally only through a little bit of elbow grease.

Level your cooking and fishing to 450 on an Alt or even your Main. The cost of Food is certainly the most expensive of all of these, so by putting a bit of effort in you will be able to cut the cost of Raiding by quite a bit. If you have a gatherer/Alchemist get them to max level and farm on them for the mats/flasks/potions, this can be a bit time-consuming, but it gives you something to do on those boring times of the day.

Great job today guys, now let us take what we have learned and apply it on our next Raid!

Unless it is OS… just face roll. *snickers*

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

On a Side Note- we now have a Guide section for the site, go to the page and you will be able to view all of the Guides written by myself and Aifel! Enjoy!

I do not see what the big deal was with that place. Sure, it took 5 people a year ago to do it, but it took 1 Elnoriah now! *flex*…

The Burning Crusade was WoW’s very first expansion pack, and certainly its finest. Some of the most challenging Raids and Instances were home to TBC, and honestly it has shaped many a player. Every pull had to be carefully executed, it was like a well-rehearsed ballet. A Hunter trap here, a polymorph there, and Sap that caster! I miss those days.

Will CC (crowd control) every be back in the PvE portion of the game? I sure hope so, it made every instance a new-found challenge. In the meantime though, the only thing we have left of those days are the memories we all shared, and one of my favorites was doing Magister’s Terrance.

A History

The Sunwell patch was the last official content patch for The Burning Crusade Expansion, and with it there were the Isle of Quel’Danas Dailys,the Sunwell raid (25 man) and of course Magister’s Terrance (5m and Heroic 5m). Both of which were hard, and both of which made me question my faith in a higher being. The group had to be fine-grained in the sense that you pretty much need 5 REALLY good people to complete the Heroic (or even normal) instance, and like the traditional group makeups of TBC Instances you had a Tank, a Healer, and 2-3 DPS that could CC.

The most fun I had here was on my Warlock, I was seducing, banishing, and christ knows what all at the same time.

Each of the fights were inventive, and of course a challenge! My favorite of which was the Faction Champions esq boss before you fight Kael’Thas. Think of it as Faction Champs but with less people, and it being about 2x as hard. It was a nightmare, but when you completed it you felt like you were THE SHIT! If someone misplaced a CC you were practically done for in that boss fight, it was stupendous. Sure, to the point that many people never even finished it in its prime, but the ones who did can agree it was hard as hell and rewarding once you finished it all.

Blizzard, you made me a happy Warlock and a very stressed Priest, and to that I thank you.

Elnoriah’s Adventure

Longing for the feeling to go back and get even with the bosses of Magister’s Terrance once again, I decided it was far overdue to make a trip through MGT and solo it. The only turn-off however was that I needed to be “attuned” to the Heroic, and so I picked up the quest and ran straight into the Terrance. With that. . . our story begins!

*Looks around*
Trash! Simplistic, these first two pulls consist of two mobs to a pull. I think the saddest part of the first two pulls is that you can literally 3 shot these things, damn straight 5k Obliterate crits are EPIC!

Now, there is a large circle with two groups of mobs on either side, which path do I choose? It does not really matter so pick the left! Let us see, 5 Belfs and an Imp, you would think this would be easy as sin, but in all honesty this one pull was harder than any trash fight in WOTLK Heroics. At the end of it I literally had 2k HP left with IBF (Icebound Fortitude) and AMS (Anti-Magic Shell) on cool down, but this will be the hardest fight in quite a while so the thrill was short-lived.

Launching myself like Kirby at the trash pulls I was a GOD, and seriously it felt GOOD! I kept up on my silences, and was doing wonderfully, and then I reached the room of the first boss, Selin Fireheart. Being the first boss, he is arguably the easiest in the entire instance, and certainly a cakewalk to solo now. Back in the day however, he was still pretty simple, but was more of a DPS check (we will talk about this in a minute), trust me, I passed the test with flying colors.

Unfortunately for you I'M the god, not you Selin!

The Boss Fight- Selin Fireheart

• Keep him in the center of his platform, the farther away he is from those crystals the better. Commence Tank and Spank!
• After he gets bloodied up enough, he runs over to a crystal and starts channeling the power from it. The longer he channels the bigger he gets.
• The crystal he is channeling from is targateable, so of course NUKE THE LIVING @!$% out of it!
• No matter how godly you are, he will still get a bit bigger and scream really lame catch phrases that only work for ME.
• After each yell he explodes with a nova of green clouds, so squishies need to move the hell away.
• Rinse and repeat until dead.

Now that he is dead we can continue to the next boss, but first the pulls before him! Mana Wyrmlings, just like the ones you have to kill at the Belf starting area, except much more of a pain in the ass. The first couple are just single squishies and are easy to kill, but afterwards they start grouping up into larger masses. Until finally in the next boss’ room down the hallway of worms there are 4 groups of about 10-15 worms per. If you are a Tank pull all of these bastards and pop a cooldown, because after each dies they explode and do a bit of damage. (Killing Machine + Rime Proc = 1 shot and a TON of lag as they asll explode)

Congratulations, you now get to fight a Voidwalker by the name of Vexallus! Honestly this was more of a Healer-Intense fight in which there was a lot of damage going out in multiple places, but if everyone was paying attention it was a cakewalk.Think of him as  mini-Curator (and if you never did Kara go do it now), which is another fun fight. I will warn you though, he is mostly a Tank and Spank . . . mostly.



Rough 'im up boys!

The Boss Fight- Vexallus

• Run in there and pop every C/D known to man. Burst him until it is not funny anymore.
• It’s still not funny, keep killin’ him!
• Pansy, you call that breaking a spine!?
• Sparks will now start shooting out, kill these things, because they tend to explode and do more damage then they are worth.
• With a group each DPS should be getting 3 each. Each spark gives a stacking buff that increases damage done, as well as received, so it can be problematic with too many stacks.
• Rinse and repeat until he is dead.

If you have the quest go to the back of the hall and laugh at the dying Belf. [Badass name] [Something with Strider or any other Belfy suffix] will give you a new one which is to go outside and use the scrying orb to spy on the Sunwell. Proceed in doing  as told and watch the cut scene that follows, and yes the guy who narrates the other cut scenes does this I think so you can listen to the liquid candy that is his voice.

What a coincidence a Blue Dragon flies down and tells you his life story, pick up the quest from him! This quest tells you to kill Kael’Thas (final boss), and by doing so you will unlock the Heroic mode for MGT.

“Wait we… AREN’T killing… the blue dragonflight?”
Not today, Munch, remember this was before Malygos decided to go crazy, so he is still “cool” with us. Well, not Bronze Dragonflight awesome-
“You know… his hair is… blue like… yours!… Except it actually… LOOKS GOOD…”
Note to self: Put less sass in his lettuce, he certainly does not need anymore.

Alright, you get your awesome buff thanks to the Dragon hanging around, and continue your quest to kill Kael. There are two robots in the hallway proceeding to an outer courtyard. They are easy, just kill them and let us get to the interesting pulls!

No, these are not holigrams, these are actual Belfs and Demons hanging around this courtyard, about 7 per pull. Remember the difficulty in the first couple pulls? Take that and multiply it by 2, damn right it’s fun! For maximum skippage pull the right or left group closest to you, kill them, then pull the middle. At level 80 you should be able to just walk down the path leading towards the next room, avoiding the back pulls.

Another robot will be patrolling the hallway proceeding to the next courtyard, be sure to pull him far enough away from both the groups of mobs you skipped, and mobs you have yet to touch.  Not bad, could have gone cleaner, but now your next task is to heal up and clear out the first half of this new courtyard. You will figure out why in a minute.

Alright, head into that Greek-Building-esq thing in the middle of the courtyard, and you will spot 5 characters. 4 randomly generated characters, and one stable person, the Princess  (Purple lady with too many arms). Incoming hard fight, GO!

So, why is there a Belf with two Fisticuffs and no shirt...?!?

The Boss Fight- Faction Champions Princess-I-Need-Less-Arms

• Do the strategy you would for Faction Champions, burn down and interrupt the Healer.
• When this is done kill the next most annoying of the bosses.
• There is no threat table, they will randomly jump from person to person. (If you are soloing then go figure)
• Destroy all of them!
• ???
• Profit!

Quick! Run into the fancifully decorated hallway ahead of you, yes, Blood Elves ahead, who would have guessed!?

There are literally about two groups of Mobs left to down before you hit Kael’Thas, and these actually are some of the easier ones. Just remember to oust the Healers first, no need to make this anymore complicated than it needs to be, no? Don’t question the Naga in the pull, I assure you most Blood Elves have no positive association with them.

TEMPEST KEEP WAS MERELY A SETBACK…

“Asshole… I haven’t done… Tempest Keep… yet!”
Didn’t miss out on much, Munchy, we killed him and he apparently rose from the dead.
“…That’s my… job…”
HE TEWK YER JAWRB

YOU TWO ARE LIKE TEENAGERS IN A MOVIE THEATRE… DAMN IT, LET’S JUST FIGHT!

My, Kael'Thas, what rotten skin you have!

The Boss Fight- Kael’Thas, trust me it won’t fail this time!

• Being the prime example of a Mage, Kael will shoot fireballs at you, do try and interrupt to minimize damage taken
• around 75-80% he will summon a Pheonix, this needs to get burned down ASAP!
• Every so often Pheonix eggs will be spawned, destroy these before they can spawn the actual Pheonix inside.
• About 60% he will cast an ability that will literally take the gravity away from you for a while, much like the Tempest Keep fight.
• During this you need to fly around and dodge the purple bubbles that will be flying towards you.
• Do this successfully and he will be stunned for a few seconds before repeating this again.
• Keep killing the Eggs!
• Rinse and repeat until finished!

It is an easy fight in theory, but then again this is coming from a member of a species that thought the sun revolved around the Earth. Honestly, even on Normal mode and switching between Unholy/Frost specs I was no able to defeat Kael’Thas, and yes I was using my OH SHI- buttons and the like. It is an extremely hard fight, both for its respective level and to solo, so I will have to bug ask Aifel to help me out with that.

Either way, it was as fun of a run as it was back when I did it at its respective level, and honestly harder than any of those damned things we call “heroics” nowadays! So go try it out, and have some fun.

I’m comin’ for you Kael’Thas!

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

P.S.

As a note to all of you aspiring Tanks that have not “gotten the hang of” when to use your OH SHI- buttons, do the first trash pulls in MGT: Norm, you will know by the end of those, seriously.

The word is out.  Patch 3.3 lands this coming Tuesday, November 24th.  Will the random LFG work as well as people have been claiming?  Apparently the PTR reviews of the new LFG tool is nothing but positive.  Perhaps I’m too much of a skeptic, cynic or a pessimist but I just can’t imagine it’s going to be much more than 1000 DPS and 20 healers and 30 tanks.  We’ll see…

I’m looking forward to seeing what the new Ice Crown Citadel 5-man is.  The raids can go shit on themselves for all I care.  (what a magnificent was of time they are)

I also like the idea of getting rewarded for using the random LFG.  I’m all about that.  From what I’ve heard players will get rewarded ‘more’ the fewer non-PuG players they have in the group.  Since I run the majority of my 5-mans with two (or three) RL friends we may not actually see much of this reward.  Meh…whatever.  I’m just happy they are putting more players into the pool as options.

What about the new class buffs/nerfs?  Well, I’m not overly concerned with any of that because I don’t care for the ‘hard-core’ aspect of the game.  Haste affecting DoTs?  I don’t care how non-hard-core you are that will be awesome.  I did a test run on my friend’s rogue last night.  If I can land a VT, SW:P and DP on him and let him ‘fly away’ he will die about 15 seconds later.

What does that mean?  That means when I’m in WG and I see an alliance hovering above me on their mount I can actually kill them as they fly away. 

How do I do this?  Well, I start with a 1.3 second cast of Vampiric Touch.  The moment it lands I put on a Shadow Word: Pain.  Then, as soon as the global cool down is released, I land a Devouring Plague.  Theoretically I can get all three up in about 2.5 seconds or so.  If they aren’t on their toes and flying away as soon as I start casting they could find themselves with 3 DoTs on them.

Who cares?  3 DoTs…big whoop.  Well, Mr. Sassy-Pants, it just so happens that in my PvP gear my 3 DoTs will do just over 26k damage to someone wearing 400 resil.  If they are wearing more resil those numbers will go down but 400 resil isn’t that small of an amount.  So, unless the person is a tank or has a ton of resil they likely can’t live through my 3 DoTs.

I love it.  I’m killing some elementals.  An alliance players swoops low to scope the scene.  I immediately cast my 3 DoTs on them.  They fly off.  I continue killing elementals and about 15-20 seconds later I see “Killing Blow” flash across my screen.  With the haste to DoTs that number may drop to 10-12 seconds.  Such fun!

PvP games like WAR tend to be a famine or feast situation. The dull, boring portions make you want to rub your face against a cheese grater. The fun, exciting times get you wondering if your pants need changing. Being able to swing with highs and lows is important in anything you do. Some people like to call it, “being balanced” or “behaving maturely” or whatever. I try to do that, but I confess, I think my frustration of late has been eeking out of me, and I hope that my experience last night does blow the lid off my frustration.

I logged on to my shadow warrior last night. Surprise, no one else was on. I decided to try a couple scenarios and see how it went. What I faced were packs of roaming Choppas, DoKs, and Chosen, with a flavoring of Sorceresses. The garnish was me never getting healed and focus fired by the enemy (my name is fairly recognizable, if not my guild tag). So, frustrated, I tried to make the best of my evening of WAR, but I had no idea what to do. Getting on my knight for PvP would be mostly pointless, for much the same reasons as it was on my SW. I don’t want to level another Order alt, and I just played my DoK last night. My only conclusion was to either not play, or do some PvE.

I decided to try to get a LV group going. *shudder*

I hate PvE in this game. Passionately. However, I still have yet to get a 60 DPS bow, and I figured, doing this crappy instance would be better than flailing ineffectually in PvP.

I was wrong.

It’s not that our group was bad, it was actually pretty strong. We had a Knight as tank, a Warrior Priest and Archmage as healers, myself, a Bright Wizard, and a Witch Hunter as DPS. We mowed shit down. But we kept hitting snags. The knight had done LV plenty of times but only as an off-tank, it was the first time for some of us to group together, and just stupid mistakes at times. The stairs that have the messenger gnoblers caused us to wipe a handful of times, and the Butcher proved difficult to kill with one tank. We overcame them eventually, but it was taking longer and longer than I expected. When I hit the three-hour mark at Gorlack (the manticore-thing with lightning before the tree) I had to call it quits. The only way I want to go into an instance like that is if I know I can be done quickly. Say, 45 minutes a wing.

So, I’m trying to remember all the good times I had before in-game on my SW. Focus on those. I’m going to set a date for sometime in the next couple weeks, if my guild hasn’t formed at least one group by then to play together, I’m going to have to look for a new guild. I can’t continue to play this game solo and enjoy it.

In raids and dungeons a pet can have to avoid several things: “standing in fire”, the cower bug, generating threat, pulling adds. Why not avoid more than one of those things at the same time? I use pet attack macros for that, and cram them full of commands (well, so long as the macro remains intuitive, useful and does not conflict with itself functionally).

I thought I’d write about these macros since I find them useful and rarely see complex pet macros discussed.  A few notes before we get into the body, though:

1. If you are not familiar with what macros are or what they do check out these links before continuing further: an intro to macros and how to make one.
2. Keep in mind while reading that these macros were built around my playstyle; if they don’t fit yours, you can modify them or not use them.
3. These macros are made for the dps pet that does the most DPS regardless of spec these days; a wolf.

The first macro is a sort of “send it in and it’s good to go” set of commands.

/petattack
/petautocastoff Call of the Wild
/petautocaston [group] Cower; [nogroup] Growl
/petautocastoff [group] Growl; [nogroup] Cower
/petautocastoff [group] Dash
/petautocaston [nogroup] Dash

This macro first sends your pet in to attack (/petattack) and then modifies its autocasts (/petautocaston, /petautocastoff). The macro turns off Call of the Wild (so you can trigger it in conjunction with rapid fire and/or a trinket), and sets Cower, Growl and Dash according to whether you are in a group or solo. It is nice to have these abilities set with one macro, especially since it works around the cower bug so neatly. It also has an advantage of transitioning your pet between soloing and raiding with little attention required.   The abilities that are not modified in the macro are the ones I leave on the pet bar and generally do not change. For example, I leave Furious Howl on autocast on the pet bar (though I may have to rethink that)[ed. note: I have a bet with Frostheim about this].

The macro below is nice for fights like Obsidian Sanctum. It sends your pet in to attack if used normally and modifies several pet autocasts for raiding. However, if you hold down any modifier key (like shift or control) and hit it again, it tells the pet to stop what it’s doing and run back to you really fast. As such, it intuitively shares the functions of both sending your pet in to battle and calling it back (if you want). /petfollow will work the same as /petpassive here if you want to leave your pet in defensive mode, but keep in mind that if you keep attacking your pet will go back to it too and that isn’t good for things like lava waves. The Dash component of this macro probably won’t work if you don’t have a point in Go for the Throat (your pet won’t have enough focus to use Dash because it will be putting everything it has into its focus dump).  Even then, you may hit a crit dry spell at the time you want to recall your pet, leaving your pet with no focus for Dash (though the /petpassive [mod] will still work).

/petattack
/petpassive [mod]
/cast [mod] Dash
/petautocastoff Call of the Wild
/petautocastoff Growl
/petautocastoff Dash
/petautocaston Cower

Note that the following macro will perform the same recall-at-high-speed function:

#showtooltip Master's Call
/cast [target=player] Master's Call
/petpassive

I prefer Dash for the recall, though, because (1) Master’s Call has a longer cooldown and because (2) its root-breaking function is wasted when you might need it later (depending upon the fight). I think that having a Dash recall will be all the more important for PvP come 3.3 once pets can’t take PvP AoE anymore, yet you will still have the incentive to save your Master’s Call for movement-impairing effects.

The next macro is a variation on the theme of the first macro and adds in the recall function of the second:

/petattack
/petpassive [modifier:shift]
/cast [modifier:shift] Dash
/petautocaston [modifier:ctrl] Growl; Cower
/petautocastoff [modifier:ctrl] Cower; Growl
/petautocastoff Call of the Wild
/petautocastoff Dash
/petautocaston [modifier:ctrl] Dash

Hitting the macro with no modifier will send the pet in to attack and set it to raid autocastings (or, it sets it to my pet’s raid autocastings).  Holding ctrl while hitting it will switch the pet’s autocasting’s to more solo-friendly settings while still sending it in to attack.  Holding shift and hitting it will perform the recall function suggested above in the second macro.

Next is a macro for changing tracking including some script that I am shamelessly copying from Kanandi over at the EJ forums. I changed the macro a bit to make it run smoother than she states, but the script line for tracking is all hers.

/petattack
/run for i=1,GetNumTrackingTypes() do local n, t, a, c = GetTrackingInfo(i); if string.find(n, UnitCreatureType("target")) then if t~=GetTrackingTexture(i) then SetTracking(i); end end end

This macro sends your pet in and then changes your tracking to the type of mob you are attacking. This is useful because most builds typically include Improved Tracking and a hunter may sometimes be tracking something other than an Improved Tracking type (like mailboxes). The macro only uses 199 of the 255 allowed characters, and so you should feel free to customize it a bit. Keep in mind that you have to copy the script exactly; one character off can screw it up and give you an error message.

Misc. comments:

1. I use similar macros to the first two for pvp’ing and extreme soloing, adding or taking out abilities as necessary. I will throw a “/cast Pin” or “/cast Web” with a modifier after /petattack for pvp, for example.
2. Keep in mind that you don’t have to have /petattack as part of these macros. I offer them mainly as examples of (1) how to gain more control over what your pet is doing and (2) how to make pet macros multifunctional. If you leave it out, you can still use these to manage autocasts, tracking, and pet returns.
3. These macros will only work until 3.3, because cower will have a different function then.
4. While we’re on the subject of macros, I’d like to add that they can be used for all sorts of things. Here are a couple I use for the Argent Tournament that I thought might ease your daily grind.

For the Flaming Spears quest:
#showtooltip Flaming Spears
/cleartarget
/tar [mod] Kvaldir Deepcaller; North Sea Kraken
/use Flaming Spears

And for that sword quest in Grizzly Hills:
/tar Lake Frog
/use Warts-B-Gone Lip Balm
/kiss

There are other pet macros than those discussed here of course, but that subject is a bit bigger than the scope of this post. For a good list of hunter macros, see this site. For a good guide to macro syntax, see this Wowwiki page. And, of course, if you have other ideas for or approaches to pet attack macros, please include them in a comment below.

-Eidotrope

The Podcast
Older Podcasts

Well due to someone *glares at Aifel* getting his rear end into the wasteland that is no Interwebs for a prolonged amount of time (unless he sneaks on!) we have not been able to do a podcast in quite some time. Luckily we found a time to do our 9th episode this week, and hope that you all enjoy it!

Topics: More talk of ToC, mostly of our new guild and its “big success” (Except the ones who are dead!) inside of there, as well as how to not be a complete idiot like one of our PuGs. Leveling also pops up, specifically how to escape the hell that is the 50-58 Lvl. range! And of course a few other topics are included.

I think my voice deepened, finally! So hopefully the squeeky noise that is/was my voice is tolerable now.

Thanks for listening!
-El and Aifel

Editor’s note: This excellent gear guide is a contribution from Eidotrope, a long time reader. It’s up to date for 3.2, and we’ll try to ensure it’s kept up to date going forward

How do you get gear that is fit for raiding if you are not already raiding? These days the answer is not simply “run heroics for drops.” The answer is a bit more complicated, and so I decided to write this guide.

If not just heroics, where else can you get gear before raiding? Blizzard wants to make it easy for you, so they provide a number of sources. You can earn raid emblems (used to purchase gear) by running heroics, you can run Argent Tournament dailies for seals (again used to purchase gear), you can obtain crafted or other “Bind on Equip” items, and you can still run heroics for drops.

Your goal in gearing up for raids is to have all your items at ilvl 200 at a minimum and most items at ilvl 219 or higher. Beyond that, strive for the highest ranked items on the table so long as you can keep your 8% hit chance. If you obtain a set of items from this list, you will be geared enough for Naxx. If you obtain a set of rank 1 items from this list, you will be geared enough for Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader.

The rank of items is listed by slot, with 1 being the best rank. Some items for the same slot sometimes share the same rank. Also, note that I count Champion’s Seals as a type of emblem, and that the current base (and only) emblem dropped from heroic bosses is the Emblem of Conquest. This emblem can be exchanged on a 1 for 1 basis with any lower emblem (heroic and valor).

FAQ:

• Why don’t I have any 1H Melee on the table? At the pre-raid level I have yet to find a pair of 1Hs that best the AT staves, let alone Marrowstrike. If you know of any that are actually worth getting instead of Marrowstrike, please post in the comments below.
• Why are AH items included when they always cost so much money? Because if you have the money, they’re a better expenditure than vanity pets or mounts. And some (namely the Darkmoon card) are just worth having period.
• Why aren’t there any items from triumph emblems? If you aren’t raiding, triumph emblems are obtained so slowly that they are not worth extensive attention. If you do get enough for a piece of Triumph gear, use your best judgment and remember that that there are Triumph vendors in Icecrown and Dalaran. The one in Icecrown that I just linked to sells the tier nine, ilvl 232 set and the one in Dal sells non-set, ilvl 245 gear.

Summary:

• If you are going to run one heroic today, make it H ToC.
  • H ToC is a bit more demanding than other heroics (according to some). Blizzard wants you to earn the better quality gear.
• If you haven’t already, start the Argent Tournament daily quests (good money plus decent placeholder gear).
• Obtaining the best pre-raid gear will require running a lot of heroics for Conquest emblems.

Este sábado vamos a ir a ver a Ilsundur, ese amigo nuestro que tira bombitas de fuego y calores para aburrir  xD.

De momento no sabemos si la haremos en NM o en HM, dependiendo del modo que le falte a la mayor parte de la gente así iremos. (Finalmente se hizo en HM)

Dado que la gran mayoría de los enemigos en esta mazmorra son djinnes y elementales, se recomienda llevar alguna interrupción, así como habilidades que eliminen la quemadura (Aliento del Gran Enano, Extinción) y a ser posible usar otras skills como Armadura Frígida, de elementalista, con la que el personaje tiene más armadura y es inmune a las quemaduras. Inversión de dolor funciona muy bien en esta mazmorra y sobre todo con el jefe final.

Aquí os djo un mapa de los tres niveles de la mazmorra:

HORA: 23:00h

LUGAR: Quedaremos en la sala del clan para luego salir hacia la zona.

INTEGRANTES:

• Samurai Shodown Ii
• Meggan Thunder
• Thor Kemado
• Herr Deorf
• Xashla Blackshadow

Aquí teneis una screen hecha por Meggan del grupo en la mazmo:

Y otras dos con el cofre final, la primera de Meggan y la segunda de Samu:

Animaos!!

We proved the worth of our world, Azeroth, tonight to Algalon the Observer.

He had this to say:

• I have seen worlds bathed in the Maker’s‘ flames. Their denizens fading without so much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and raised in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart, devoid of emotion… of empathy. I… have… felt… NOTHING! A million, million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?
• Perhaps it is your imperfection that which grants you free will. That allows you to persevere against cosmically calculated odds. You prevailed where the Titans’ own perfect creations have failed.
• I’ve rearranged the reply code. Your planet will be spared. I cannot be certain of my own calculations anymore.
• I lack the strength to transmit the signal. You must hurry. Find a place of power close to the skies.
• Do not worry about my fate <name>. If the signal is not transmitted in time re-origination will proceed regardless. Save. Your. World.

Upon our hunter’s transmission of the Reply-Code Alpha  in Dalaran:

Rhonin says: We received Brann’s message and we begun preparations.

Rhonin yells: Citiziens of Dalaran, raise your eyes to the skies and observe.

Rhonin yells: Today our world’s destruction has been averted in defiance of our very makers.

Rhonin yells: Algalon the Observer has been defeated by our brave comrades in the depths of the titans city of Ulduar.

Rhonin yells: Algalon was sent here to judge the fate of our world.

Rhonin yells: He found a planet whose races had deviated from the titans’ blueprints. A planet where not everything had gone according to plan.

Rhonin yells: Cold logic deemed our world not worth saving. Cold logic however does not account for the power of free will!

Rhonin yells: It’s up to each of us to prove this is a world worth saving! That our lives… our lives are worth living!

And on that note, RogueRaider is taking a nice jaunt to the sunny beaches of Florida for a week. Happy Raiding and living!

*credit to WoWWiki.com for the in-game scripting*

About 2 weeks ago I posted an article about Massively Starting up a weekly Q&A in which readers submitted question about Star Trek Online  on a select subject for each week and Cryptic Studios giving you there replies. The first weeks subject was SHIPS and Massively choose the best question for Cryptic to answer. one question or should I say answer peaked my interest:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  ” Marix: Will ships of different classes (IE: escort/science/engineering) have different combat styles? Will a small Bird of Prey and defiant class move faster at impulse and do a lot of circling and swerving whilst a large engineering cruiser’s moves slower and tries to punch in as much damage as possible whilst repairing itself?

Definitely. Escorts are the quick-moving, precision-striking ships of the fleet. They’re not as hardy as other ships, but they’re tough to hit and can fit cannons, which are high-damage, almost sniper-style weapons. Cruisers are big ships with a big crew and huge engines that provide them lots of power, so they can fit a lot of guns, send big BOARDING PARTIES and repair their hull and subsystems very quickly. And Science ships can detect cloaked vessels, use tractor beams to hold other ships in place and expose a weak side, take out shields with powerful tachyon beams, and lend aid to other ships in need. ”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  There are going to be boarding parties?  does this mean we can take over someone else’s ship  or more likely a PvE ship and use it or explore it for loot I want to hear more about these Boarding Parties To see the full Q&A  just follow the link

What follows is how I view World of Warcraft fiction.  Well, if I were writing it.

Tahas is driving his catapult through Wintergrasp.  The front gate had just fallen and the Horde was well on its way to victory, when suddenly he hears a voice as if from a great distance.  He could hear much grinding and gnashing of teeth from the Alliance, but they were getting facerolled… and they knew it.

“Hey, want to come to the Tournament Grounds and slap around some baddies?”  Liluye asks.

“Sure!” he says, wondering if he sounded too enthusiastic.

“Cool, invite incoming.”

So, yeah, after my strange introduction… I rolled through ToC25, Ony25, VoA25, and part of Uld 25 with Surreality last night.  Much fun was had, especially since I got to try out the elemental thing.  I… uh…  I need to do some work to get some different gear so I can stat that mess out differently.  A lot of it will come once I can get hold of my tier 9 elemental pieces… as I foolishly spent my emblems on my resto pieces.  Yeah, it was worth it at the time (and will continue to be worth it for my offspec), but I think I should have waited.

This brings me to yesterdays post.  I don’t think I should transfer an alt when I can play my Shaman like two of the classes I would be bringing over.  It may be worth my time and money to wait a little bit.  I really want to do something like that… but I don’t think I should.

OH!  And in other news… pretty much all that dropped in VoA25 was Elemental PVP gear.  So, while I may be a scrub in terms of skill… I will have a marginal increase in survivability.  So, yes.  I got purples.  I R L33t.  Now, let me tell you the most important thing last night.

I.  Had.  Fun.

Yes, that’s right.  I had a great deal of fun playing what I wanted to play.  As well, it’s leading to a re-evaluation of what resources I use, and how I use them in terms of information.  I really love the idea of the Elitist Jerks… but their elemental shaman section is lacking.  So, I turned a buddy loose on my request, and he found me the “Elemental Sham,” otherwise known as Puut.  Gotta tell you, that’s some pretty good information.

I’m going to slam some gems into the gear I have that’s not also set for resto to see how it does.  I’ve also got to get some enchants done, too.  Hoepfully, that won’t take too much gold, but I’m not going to hold my breath.  I also need to get some consumables.  Got to prepare… only a little bit of time to do it, too.  So little to do!  So much time!  Wait, strike that, reverse it.

And to close it out, I just have to say… elemental is the shit.  I don’t care what anyone says about the spec… rolling for crits and providing a great buff to the raid is well worth me playing the class.  Enhancement is cool, but melee dps is a dime a dozen.  Glad I’m not in that dozen anymore.

Hello again, friends.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post; I’ve been having some login issues recently with WordPress. It seems to be somewhat solved now, so onwards!

I’ve been doing some rather silly things tanking recently. Just tonight, I managed to take down Emalon as a solo tank, on 25-man difficulty – rather fun stuff, not gonna lie. Just hit 50k health raid buffed on my paladin, too, which has really helped as my guild has started working on 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. All sorts of fun.

All fun and games aside, though, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to step back and reassess my priorities right now. This, for me, entails a hiatus from WoW, and, by extension, from blogging. I fully expect to be back, but right now a break is needed.

Cheers.

(Before I leave, I’ll post a link to my mage’s new Arcane spec – some really cool new stuff in it that I’ll explain!)

1 დეკემბერს დაგეგმილ გაფართოვება Dominion-ში, სხვა მრავალ სიახლესთან ერთად, გაჩნდება მისიები, რომლების შესრულება პილოტებს მეკობრეულ NPC კორპორაციებთან შეეძლებათ. ქვემოთ მოყვანილია ამ მისიებთან დაკავშირებული ძირითადი ინფორმაციის ჩამონათვალი:

* Dominion-ში ორი მეკობრეული ფრაქციის – Guristas-ისა და Angel Cartel-ის მისიები გაჩნდება;
* მისიები ძირითადად 0.0 სისტემებში იქნება ხელმისაწვდომი;
* მისიების შესრულება Interceptor და სხვა Frigate კლასის გემებით იქნება შესაძლებელი;
* პილოტებისათვის, რომლებსაც მეკობრეულ ფრაქციებთან არასაკმარისი Standing გააჩნიათ, ფრაქციებს ეყოლებათ სპეციალური აგენტი, რომელიც მათ მისიების დაწყების საშუალებას მისცემს;
* პილოტს მეკობრეული კორპორაციების მისიების შესრულებით გაუუარესდება Standing-ი Empire ფრაქციებთან.

დაწვრილებითი ინფორმაცია მეკობრეული კორპორაციების მისიებზე მოცემულია CCP Jasonitas-ის Dev Blog პოსტში.

წყარო: EVE Online Dev Blog

“Munch, I am going to grab some water, do NOT touch the frag belt I just modded, alright?” Says a goggle-wearing Death Knight…

*Boom*
What part of do NOT touch did you not understand!?
The part… with you being … a Blood Elf…

Welcome class, my regrets for your classmate, he should have known not to stand near Munchy in the middle of an explosives lab. Worry not, Gnomes will be even more replaceable once we get access to Goblins! Trust me, he will be in good hands.

As any character, you should pick up two professions. The first reason for this is to simply make some quick cash, because face it, you can not repair all that plate gear on you without any cash, students! Secondly, professions have an indirect and/or direct effect on our performance as a Tank. Each profession has gear that can be created for any player in WoW, but they also give special bonuses for you to boot!

There are 3 gathering skills (skinning/mining/herbalism) and 8 crafting professions, each of these gives a flat-out buff, special ability, or gear enhancement specifically for the player. Any combination of these has a chance to be beneficial for a class in WoW, but as a Death Knight Tank, what should we be looking for out of our professions’ bonuses?

Well, with 24 different combinations of skills available to a single player,  and the ability to only pick 1 of those combinations, it can be quite a challenge to pick which is beneficial to both your income of Gold and increased performance as a Tank. Let us cut into this so-called chase and explore which skills will be beneficial as a Tank, but do remember, you are entitled to your own opinion! (Just your opinion may not be most beneficial as a Tank).

Note: The benefits listed are based upon 450/450 skill in them!

Gathering Skills

Simply put, each of these skills allows us to take from the world. Whether it be picking flowers, finding ore inside of a rock, or ripping the skin off of an animal, each acts as a base for practically every single profession in the entire game. All are simplistic to level up, as well as great ways to rake in the cash.

Herbalism
Pickin’ flowers eh? Fine, if you want to frolic amongst the Priests you may. As a Herbalist the ability Lifeblood is granted to your worthless soul! Once clicked it allows you to be a Resto Druid for 5 seconds, every 3minutes. This meaning that you can heal yourself for 3600 HP with a bunch of pretty little flowers placed all around you. How  useful! Hell, another free Heal is never a thing to pass up, so in that case it is  certainly an O.K. profession to fill in the void.

As a Herbalist, your Herbs are needed by Scribes and Alchemists in order to create potions, flasks, glyphs, and scrolls. Since there is constantly a great market for all of these items it will rake in the cash substantially. Even if you do not AH your findings and instead use them to craft your own items you will be able to save a KILLING on some very pricey Raid Flasks/Glyphs!

Elno’s Word: Alright, it is certainly an easily defended choice of profession. The Lifeblood ability produces a noticeable amount of HP, and it is very simple to level. Is it my top choice? No, but it is definitely a good option to consider as a Tank.

Mining

If bashing a rock, armed only with a tiny pick, does not sound manly to you, then I have absolutely no clue what would be. Out of all of the gathering skills combined it is the proud owner of the most useful “ability” for a Tank. Toughness at its max level of 450 adds an extra 60 STAM to your stats. A little over 600 HP by leveling one of the easiest trade skills in this entire game? Sign me the hell up!

From a money perspective, you will be able to mine Ore needed by Jewel Crafters, and turn that ore into bars for the Engineers and Blacksmiths (Jewel Crafters as well) on your server. Titanium and Titansteel bars will sell for an absolute killing, and the gems you gather as you scour the regions for these nodes will be able to be turned into useful gems to place into gear.

Elno’s Word: Honestly, I would be hard-pressed not to take up Mining as a Tank. It is practically brainless to level, produces an excellent amount of cash, and gives 60 STAM to boot! What is not to like about this?

Skinning

The Native Americans used practically every part of any animal they would kill. It is a damn waste to leave that Rhino laying there to decay! Luckily Skinners will take these rotting carcasses and recycle them into useable pieces of fine leather. The bonus it gives, however, is the least-desired out of all of the Gathering Skills. Master of Anatomy, despite having a badass name, is not desired for a Tank. We do not need Crit, if it comes off of the 2H that is perfectly fine, but we should not be gemming/enchanting/leveling trade skills solely to get the extra Crit. However, as a DPS the extra 40 crit is not half bad.

As for being a tycoon as a Skinner, your audience is not horrible. You get Leatherworkers and maybe a Tailor to consume your dead animal skins as they make “stylish” clothing articles for everyone to wear. Yes, you are the sole reason RPers look so good, congratulations!

Elno’s Word:  Despite being useful, I would rather pick flowers than skin wild beasts, the benefits are just not worth my time. Although it is the easiest Gathering skill to level, a Tank should not be touching this with a 10 ft pole.

We can dance if we want to!

Tradeskills

At this point in time of WoW there are 5 different Trade skills to choose from. All of which have their uses and perks in-game. Most of the trade skills require gathered materials that one (or more) of the three Gathering skills can acquire, because of this many people level a gathering skill and a trade skill that cooperates with it well. The perfect synergy, but what Trade skills (if any) will we be choosing!?

Tailoring

What could be less many than picking flowers for a living? Why making dresses of course! First of all, as a Death Knight we do not even bother wearing Cloth, and as a Tank this goes double do to the lack of useful Stats and armor. This is solely needed for the clothies, and just incase you have not noticed, we wear PLATE, especially as a Tank. The only use we would be getting out of Tailoring will be the bags, so if you are that dead set upon leveling it, go make a Priest for Christ’s sake.

Tailors can make leg enhancements for everyone, but as a perk for a Tailor these leg enhancements only cost a mere 1g thread to create. These enhancements are called Master’s Spellthread and Sanctified Spellthread; they give 50 spellpower and 30 STAM, and  50 spellpower and 20 Spirit respectfully. Just to burst your bubble, despite the fac that we do have Spells as Death Knight Tanks, they do NOT scale based upon spellpower, instead they work off of our Attack Power. That perk? Useless, but hey, you can make a Magic Carpet mount which makes it totally worth it! (Seriously, it is pretty epic)

Edit: Thy whom make bags also have an embroidery for their cloaks, on top of the Spellthreads for their legs. Shadowguard Embroidery, Darkglow Embroidery, and Lightweave Embroidery would be their names, and of course the mats are pretty cheap and worthwile. However, if you are a Tank, it is TOTALLY not worth your time to go for any of these. First, Darkglow and Lightweave are completely useless because once again, we do not use spellpower and do not even have Mana as a rescource. Shadowguard is not half bad however, but for the amount of time to get to that point in Tailoring is just not worth a 400 AP chance on hit proc on my cloak.

Elno’s Word: For Christ’s sakes, I know it is extremely easy to level, but there are absolutely no perks into leveling Tailoring. Even if it was useful, do you really want to be THAT GUY who makes dresses at the Ebon Hold?

Enchanting

Everyone who wishes to accomplish anything end-game will find your name and make you their new best friend, seriously. You are the guy that can boost their performance, and you can make a killing off of doing so. As an Enchanter you suck the life out of all of the useless Green/Blue/Epic items of the world and turn them into useful materials needed to put powerful spells in your’s and other’s gear. So pick up that rod and let us get to work!

As a perk for Tanks, you can Enchant Ring- Stamina to both of your rings. 30 Stam x 2 = 60 Stam! Yes, about 600hp solely off of Enchanting, and that is pretty frickin’ sweet. Plus, you do not have to go out of your way to buy mats for your own personal enchants, so you will be guaranteed to save a killing off of that.

Elno’s Word: YES! 600 HP extra is certainly a magnificent bonus, just a small price to pay for being the “enchanting bitch” and staying at the bank after Raid nights enchanting guildy’s gear. Trust me, it is made of pure win, and some arcane.

Conclusions Part 1.

As I said earlier, you can make great cash off of any of these gathering skills/trade skills, but which ones should you choose from a Tanking perspective? So far Mining, Herbalism, and Enchanting are the only “viable” options that we have explored so far. Do not worry though, next week we will take an in-depth look into Black Smithing, Jewel Crafting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Inscription, and Alchemy. I hope to see you all there!

Do you have a Death Knight Tanking question you want answered in The Death Knight Tank and You: weekly miniguide? Drop us an email at Plaguedcandles@gmail.com !

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

Hi folks! This week, Darkbrew, Frostheim, and I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kripparrian, the hunter with the most DPS records. In case you’re wondering how that works, if you go to worldoflogs.com and look at hunter DPS or damage done benchmarks, it’s his name you’ll see there most often. Kripparian is a hunter in the Exodus guild, a major PvE guild with many world firsts under their belt.

If you want to know how he does it, you can (a) listen to this week’s podcast, (b) visit his youtube channel, (c) check out a post I wrote on OutDPS trying to piece together how he manages his cooldowns, and (d) check out a similar post by Frostheim about stacking cooldowns and procs.

In addition to having beaten the PvE game, Kripparian has made (and spent!) hundreds of thousands of gold, has finished every arena season in which he’sparticipated in as a gladiator, and has 10620 achievement points.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.