If you have been following my arena guides lately then you should now be entering the arena with a strong team setup coupled with a sophisticated communications setup to enable your team to perform to its best.

But all that planning is for nothing if you cannot execute your attack in the right way, as with the preparations you make before attacking, the way in which you initiate your attack is vital to winning in the arena.

Should your team end up confused and scattered in the attack it is a fast road to a lost match, likewise should you be able to force confusion upon your enemy it can make your wins easier to obtain. The trick is to force the other team to play into your own hands and style; make them dance to your tune and victory is assured.

One basic and effective opening tactic is a rush, this favors high burst dps teams to take advantage of the confusion for an easy first kill. The plan is simple, hit the other team hard and from an unexpected angle before they have a chance to identify what composition they are against.

An example of an effective place to rush is Blades Edge, most teams generally line up at opposite ends of the bridge and spend some time scouting out the other team, an effective rush will instead mount up and ride to the opposing teams ramp up to the bridge to hit them in the side.

The big downside to a rush is that while the other team will not have time to scout you out, neither will you have time to identify an effective target to nuke and so it is easy to end up with your own team confused without proper leadership.

A second effective opening tactic, and my personal favorite is harassment. This generally relies on having dispell classes move forward and purge one or two of the enemy buffs before backing off again quickly. In this manner you can weaken the enemy without fully engaging them and try to make one of their members panic and charge you.

If harassing, remember to land an attack from a distance on warriors in order to put them in combat; this stops them from utilizing charge against you which is the most common way you will be chased down as a harasser.

You can also harass with mana drains such as viper sting and by utilizing low rank DoT spells which cost far more mana to be removed than they do to cast. Further harassment tactics extend to the killing of hunter and warlock pets; these are sometimes left on aggressive stance and will charge out when attacked, enabling them to be killed alone.

The third tactic involves mass AoE crowd control and is effective when combined with a slightly delayed rush.   What it typically involves is a class such as a rogue sapping enemy healers or a mage polymorphing them before/as you charge in. This forces them to trinket in order to begin healing.

It is at this point that you hit the entire team with an AoE fear such as intimidating shout or howl of terror. The healers, having previously trinketed will now be out of control and likely to run out of line of sight of their team mates, causing chaos in the enemy’s organization.

This tactic does however rely on the other team being bunched up and you being the attacker.

The final opening tactic is the stealth hunt, if you know the other team has a stealth class, especially a rogue, then the chances are high that they will be sniffing around your team scouting you out. If you can catch them out with a low rank AoE to detect them or by utilizing the shadow sight gems then you force the other team to attack in order to rescue the stealth member.

This can lead to the opposition lacking organization in their attack making them much easier for you to dominate.

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We walked you through getting to Nat Pagle for this quest, and it’s high time I showed you how to catch those four fish.  Before you head out, be sure to bring along your shiny baubles otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you get to the first fishing hole!

Here’s the link to the Quest on wowhead - http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=6607 Nat asks you to go catch four fish and then return to him when you get them all. What we’re going to do is show you the fastest order to go get these fish, and the best spots to fish.  For reference, paths in yellow are for Alliance, and Horde is red.

FISH #1 - Feralas Ahi

For the Feralas Ahi just fly to Feralas (Feathermoon for Ally, Camp Mojache for Horde) and run to the little lake in the middle of the map to catch the Feralas Ahi. The map is pretty easy to follow here. Just run down to the bridge that crosses over the waterfall and jump off the road. There’s a little spot that sticks out into the pond with no roaming mobs. This one is easy for both factions.  I normally get the Ahi in just a few casts.

FISH #2 - Sar’Theris Striker

After you get the Ahi, fly to Desolace for the Sar’Theris Striker. Horde will only have to get off the bird at Shadowprey Village, run a bit south down the coast, and fish.  Be sure that you leave Shadowprey village completely, your sub-zone on your minimap should read Sar’Theris Strand, you cannot catch this fish while the zone map reads Shadowprey Village. Ally have a little longer run from Nijels Point down to the coast.

FISH #3 - Savage Coast Sailfin

Now fly back to ratchet and take the boat to Stranglethorn Vale. As soon as the boat lands, just hop off the north end of the dock and swim over to the first place you can stand near the little camp of pirates. This fish, the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin takes about 2 minutes to get. You might even try to catch one right off the end of the dock.

FISH #4 - Misty Reed Mahi Mahi

Now for the last (and hardest) fish to nab, the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi. Horde toons can fly to Stonard, but Ally Chars will have to fly to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, or to Darkshire in Duskwood and run around Stonard to catch up

When you get to the beach, avoid the Murlocs and you’ll find a little spot just after the sand ends where there are no giant crocs or Murlocs patrolling and you can fish in a little peace. Once you’re done here, hearth out.

Now all you have to do is go back to Nat Pagle and turn in your fish, and you’re done! Congratulations and happy fishing! Oh, and always remember to Dominate.

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I OWN THIS AUCTION HOUSE - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

There’s a new commercial out for a video game where this guy jabbers about crushing his peeps in a game of video football.  At the end of it he says: “Doing things like that makes you wanna say things like - ‘DUDE, I own you; pass me that soda!’”

How would you like to so thoroughly Dominate the AH that there just isn’t any argument left.  You can just tell other players you own them and pass the Mok’Nathal Shortribs!  It’s pretty hard to do, but there is a way it can be done if you have the knowledge and gold to pull it off.

A lot of you probably won’t like this.  Many of you may not be able to do it on a large scale.  Most of you will need to practice before you can really use it like the serious weapon that it is.  Almost none of you will have the patience to wait for the right timing.

BUT - if you don’t mind being an uber-greedy capitalist pig, have a decent amount of gold to play with to begin with, a lot of experience working the ah, and can wait like a ninja to strike; I can guarantee you there is simply no faster way to make enormous piles of gold, period.

All of our amazing gold-making secrets are in our Auction House Mastery guide (Which we will be releasing as soon as it’s perfect)  This little tidbit is only a small section.  What I’m going to tell you how to do today is how to corner a market segment and watch the gold pile up in heaps.

Cornering A Market

Depending on the size and prices of the AH on your server, don’t even try this unless you have between 5,000 - 10,000 gold you can blow.  In order to do this properly you are also going to have to use Auctioneer Advanced and have several months of daily scans in your database.

You will also need to have the ability to watch the AH like a hawk.  That means logging on every few hours to your banker to peel the newly posted items off the market before anyone else can buy them.

This technique is only possible because the WoW economy is a closed market with limited fluctuation.  What you’re going to do is pick a niche of the market and OWN it.  At least for a couple of weeks every month or two.

Here’s how this works - Pick an item type and buy out every single one that gets posted during the week (suck up the entire supply) and then stick it back on the market on Friday at +200% markup.  In order for this to work you really have to be the only guy at the AH with that item type for sale.  You have to buy every single thing so that you completely control the market segment.  You have to have absolute and total power over supply.

I normally pick enchanting mats.  I have the most experience with those and the market tends to be fairly stable for these items.  This technique also works best with the very highest end items, thus the need for so much gold in order to begin.  In order to truly make this effective you need to buy up a complete niche such as Large Prismatic Shards, Planar Essences, Void Crystals, and Large Brilliant Shards - basically all of the high-end enchanting mats.

You’re also going to have to figure out what things actually go into a niche, that is why this is really risky unless you have a ton of gold already and don’t mind losing a big bunch of it if you guess wrong.  In my example above I found out that on several servers Arcane Dust just has too much supply feed to corner, it’s almost impossible to do.  But keep in mind that not every server is the same, so you’re going to have to be a real gambler with serious skill to guess right every time.

You will sell a few things the first weekend, and maybe get back 50% of what you spent the first week buying up your niche.  You have to keep it up for at least another week.  Keep buying everything and post it all up the next weekend.  The next weekend you should clear back what you spent plus a hefty profit to boot.

Why does this work?  Because people have the attention span of gnats.  When they need something, they would rather pay 2-4 times it’s market value than wait a few weeks hoping prices will drop.

Yes, it makes people mad - laugh at them and shrug while you make thousands of gold.  You can snicker at the people yelling in trade chat about the jerk who is jacking up the market with his stupid inflated prices and giggle when you open your mail full of big piles of gold.

After two weeks of this, stop buying and just sell.  Those folks who post the same stuff will by this time tend to match your new price and only undercut you a little bit.  You will normally find that prices will re-stabilize at your much higher rate for some time.

At this point sell down and stop buying for a while.  You can watch while prices continue to drop until they reach the level they were before you did this.  Now it’s just lather, rinse, repeat.  When prices return to historical averages, you can do it again.  This is where the waiting part comes in.

You see, as prices rose, you need to stop buying everything because your profit margin is shrinking.  Once prices drop again the margin returns.  When prices spike, you can move on to a new niche if you like, or just take a break and do other things for a while.

If you couple this with rare events such as a patch or the recent Season 4 arena start, it can mean wicked profits.  We posted the experience of our editor - Lawbringer, doing exactly what we’re talking about here during the Season 4 opening in Lithanial’s article “Season 4 - A Unique Opportunity.”

Lawbringer began with 5,000 gold to work the market.  He cornered the enchanting mats mentioned above and was able to turn 5,000 gold into a little over 12,000 in two weeks.  Now, during the sell-down phase it’s closer to 15,000.  That means he tripled his gold in right at two weeks - not bad!

We’ve also done this with Darkmoon decks right before the Faire hits town, epic recipes, high-end cloth items, and on and on and on.  The possibilities are vast.

We also have developed a system that makes us over 1,500 gold every single week with less than 2 hours spent working the ah.  Oh, and I don’t ever farm - I mean EVER.  Nor do I grind out dailies for chump change, dailies are for rep and the itty bitty bits of gold that go with them are a bonus.  Why spend 2 hours a day to make a hundred gold when I can make 1,500 a week in two hours at the ah?

I also used this technique when Shaman got dual-wielding in a previous patch.  I bought up all the axes for a few weeks before the patch and marked them up severely the day of the patch.  I made about 4,000 gold in two days when all the Shaman rushed to the AH to get another axe.  Once you get the hang of this, it’s almost too easy.

So get out from behind your farming plow and join the world of the power AH broker.  The cars are faster, the gold piles are bigger and you can walk with that extra swagger that comes with Dominating!

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

With a little over 50% of the vote, the winner is Fran Molina!  Her torch-tossing heart dominated the competition. Fran wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, now we just have to figure out how to get the card to Brazil!  Congratulations Fran, I guess you helped all the guys find their romantic streak!

The Contest is over - and you better believe this: girls rule.  I guess all you guys lost your artistic streaks in all the bone-crunching testosterone of mangling fires.  Or maybe you just forgot it like we all do birthdays, anniversaries, our wallets . . . what was I saying?

I digress.  There were only three entries in our little competition and unfortunately nobody actually got a shot of the fireworks.  Gavin had me working like mad on our next project so I missed the show as well.  There’s always next year right?

The nice thing about having only three entries is that it’s going to be pretty easy for you guys to vote on the winners and we’ll have a clear 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.  So let’s show you what the lovely ladies sent to us and you can be the judges.

ENTRY #1 - Fran Molina

Fran hails from Brazil and took this terrific shot of the torch tossing event that was one of the daily quests during the festival.  As you can see, this took some planning and coordination between Fran and three of her friends.  Vote Fran if you love girls from Brazil!  (Oh, wait - vote Fran if you think she’s the greatest WoW artist at DYS)

ENTRY #2 - Eleanor Anderson

Eleanor submits this fabulous display of herself and four others dancing around a brazier of dancing flames in the throne room of Lordaeron.  Chicks certainly know how to make friends and influence people!  A vote for Eleanor may also be “FOR THE HORDE!”

ENTRY #3 - Ellimace

In full fire festival regalia, including the Crown of the Fire Festival, Mantle of the Fire Festival, and Vestments of Summer, our night elf princess Ellimace watches over her Brazier of Dancing Flames.  It certainly took the effort of visiting every bonfire and dousing all the Horde capital city fires to acquire all that gear.  A vote for Ellimace and this goddess will watch over you!

Leave your votes for our three lovely ladies as comments in this post, and may the best woman win!

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

67 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Hybrid classes form the backbone of many an instance group or PvP team, acting as the essential supporting mesh that pure classes rely on - often being the unsung heroes within the group.

Playing as a hybrid requires a great deal of skill to master compared to a pure class, especially in PvP and as such can take a while to learn for new players; however if you are up to the challenge then a hybrid class can be far more powerful than their pure-bred brethren.

There are two main play styles within the World of Warcraft that each hybrid class fits within which can loosely be described as an offensive style or a defensive style, below is a description of each and pointers to help you get the most out of your hybrid.

Offensive Hybrids

An offensive hybrid is a damage dealing class primarily and a backup healer as its secondary role. Examples of classes that fall within this category are shadow priests, Moonkin and Shockadins.

The trick to mastering these classes is to know when your healing abilities are required.  Far too many new players achieve a state of tunnel vision towards the damage dealing aspect of these classes; which is only a portion of your potential.

Nothing emphasizes the strength of an offensive hybrid more than arena play. At the start of a match an offensive hybrid is able to analyze the other team to assess just how pressured his own healers are going to be; and as such, how much he will need to support his own team as opposed to applying pure damage.

A simple example is the choice a Shockadin must make in 2v2 arena - if he should use avenging wrath or his defensive bubble. By analyzing the other teams’ damage output he can choose to either go all out on the attack with avenging wrath (should the other team lack damage) or play it defensively with his bubble against burst teams to try and simply outlast them.

Options like this simply are not available to pure classes but dramatically increase the range of team compositions with which you can effectively fight within the arena.

Similarly in PvE many late game encounters such as Archimonde can cause raid members to become separated from their healers while taking significant damage; nearby offensive hybrids can act as an emergency response if they are attentive.

Defensive Hybrids

A defensive hybrid is primarily a healer and offensive support is their secondary role. With the introduction of free spell damage on all healing kit each healing class fulfills this role - though some better than others.

Good examples of the most effective defensive hybrids are the Restokin build and holy paladins. In contrast to an offensive hybrid, the defensive hybrids’ challenge is knowing when to put its offensive potential into play.

While an offensive hybrid is more about assessing the overall situation and deciding if you need to play it safe, playing a defensive hybrid to its potential is much more about the timing and reactions needed to exploit a situation.

Similar to an offensive hybrid, many new players focus solely on the healing aspect of a defensive hybrid to the cost of all else, but when they become more comfortable with their class they can begin to bring the offensive aspects into play to push their class potential to the limit.

The arena is, once again, the place where bringing your offensive potential to full effect shines the most. A holy paladin who only focuses on healing may eventually succumb to crowd control or loss of mana when playing it safe; leading to a slow death.

However should that same paladin take to the offense at key times by using his hammer of justice to stun an enemy healer to prevent heals while unleashing supporting damage in the manner of a Shockadin; then he can at the very least put the other team on their back foot, if not force a kill.

By utilizing both the offensive and defensive aspects of your hybrid you ensure a level of unpredictability and adaptability in your actions, becoming much more of a threat to help ensure your domination of others.

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

14 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

On July 3rd, Blizzard made the above post at www.worldofwarcraft.com This is big news from Blizzard for WotLK since the Beta for Burning Crusade was a closed event.

Hurry over to the home page and register your accounts for the Beta opt-in.  Now, registering an interest in being invited to the beta does not guarantee that you will be included in the Beta by any means, just that you will at least have a chance at getting into the Beta.

The only way to guarantee a spot in the WotLK beta is to buy a Beta key somewhere.  As of this morning there were 8 Beta keys available from people who attended Blizz Conn in Paris that listed their beta cards on ebay, if being in on the beta is worth $600 bucks or so to you.  Of course, these beta keys also come with a murloc suit or a Tyrael pet (which is an awesome thing to me being a monster D2 fan!) but the price is a bit on the - well, silly side of enormous.

Normally when Blizzard announces an opt-in for a Beta, the beta itself is not very far away from starting.  Sometimes it is a matter of a few weeks between an open Beta announcement and the start of the beta itself, which is pretty exciting.  This announcement means that we can be pretty sure that the full retail release of the WotLK expansion will be before the end of 2008.

We try to not only help you be prepared at DYS, we also want you to get so far ahead you can Dominate!  What better way to dominate WotLK than to know it before anyone else does.  Register right this minute - if you get in on the Beta, be sure to post back here with your toon names so that you and other DYS readers can team up and crush everyone else from day one in the Beta and beyond.

Good luck, and always Dominate!

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Previously I have covered how to go about creating your arena team to give yourself a good chance of success, however going into an arena match with a strong setup and basic plan is only one small aspect of the battles within.

There are many steps and tactics that you can undertake to improve your teams’ chance of success before you are even engaged with your opponents; indeed many matches are won or lost by the preparation made right at the start.

Arena combat is highly competitive and so you must give yourself every possible advantage to be able to keep up; you can guarantee that your opponents will be utilizing every possible means they can get to improve their game play and so, you must do likewise.

The first thing to work on is improvements to your teams co-ordination and communication. To that end, one of the most important things to have for any serious arena team is voice communication.

The in game voice chat is unfortunately not too great - often having problems with its volume being much too quiet even when set to its maximum output. The two voice chat applications generally used throughout any competitive game play worldwide are Team speak and Ventrillo.

By making sure your entire team is connected to a voice chat server and has working microphones you instantly boost your performance due to being able to watch each others backs far more efficiently.

For example, healers can call out when they are silenced allowing hybrids to provide emergency backup healing as needed, and the DPS classes can co-ordinate their attacks and crowd control with much more speed to put some serious pressure on the opposition.

The second means to boost your team co-ordination is so simple and yet missed by many players. Arena combat can get very hectic and your team can end up scattered leading to confusion as to where the rest of your team is at any one time. This can lead to players becoming isolated from support.

The solution is simple, assign everyone in your team a raid marker. This allows you to easily track exactly where your team mates are at any one time, even through walls; a vital piece of information to ensure that you don’t end up accidentally getting out of line of sight of your healers.

With team communication and co-ordination improved, the next step is to improve the information available to you about your enemy. A fairly standard arena management mod is Proximo ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/8291/ ) and what this lovely little mod does is provide a target status box for every member of the opposing team that you can target them by. But more importantly it shows this information the second anyone in your team with Proximo targets an enemy player.

This allows you to very quickly know at the start of an arena match just what you are up against in order to form an effective plan. And if you don’t manage to target everyone in the opposing team then one of your teams stealth classes, if you have one, can go and “scout out” the other side with ease.

Be warned however that hunters have discovered a nasty way to bug out Proximo. When you target someone via Proximo it targets by name, and hunters have taken to naming their pets after team mates to mess up your targeting.

Now, fully prepared to dominate, it is time to prepare your attack!

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

5 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

The end of the midsummer festival is fast approaching.  We certainly hope everyone has read our tips on leveling and maximizing your gold earnings during the festival.  Also, if you haven’t done so already you really should take a shot at Ahune and go get yourself some great loot!

At the end of the midsummer festival on July 4th there is a special event.  The goblins of undermine set off a fireworks show that is said to light the very sky on fire.  Appropriate that this should be on July 4th - you’ll just have to pardon Blizzard for being an American company.

What we want you to do is get your very best screen-shots of the fireworks event and send them to editor@dominateyourserver.com

We’ll give everyone until Sunday night at midnight on July 6th to get creative with those shots.  As you’ve seen from our writing contest, we have some pretty talented people that visit Dominate Your Server, so pop those screenies into Photoshop and show us all how it’s really done.

We’ll collect all the entries and post them next Monday and let the entire DYS community vote on their favorites through the end of the week by posting comments stating which picture is the absolute best.  The winner will recieve a $50.00 gift certificate to Amazon.com and an autographed photo of our main man - Gavin himself!  Well the autographed photo is probably not going to happen, but you’ll definitely get the $50 card!  

So be sure you’re logged in for the fireworks, get those screenshots in interesting locations, buff them up and shoot them to us.  We’re all looking forward to see how you can dominate artistically!

Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!

9 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post