(This post contains information from a previous patch and is out of date.  For more recent info on hunters visit the latest post here: Highest DPS Talents – Hunter Build For Patch 3.3)

Finding Your Best DPS – Hunters

We agree it’s high time that we started getting back to discussing something other than Deathnots.  By now we figure that anyone fairly serious about getting through the game content has already hit 80 and begun to gear up in Naxx for Ulduar.  So, in the first of our ‘not DK’ articles let’s discuss the absolute best hunter builds for DPS.

Keep in mind that in order for some of these builds to be effective you will need to be hit capped and other sorts of gearing considerations.  But if you really want to know where to put every single point to reach the highest DPS possible, these builds will give you the current bench mark from extensive real play and theorycrafting.

Also, remember that these are not leveling builds or utility either.  If you ever need to kite the zombies for Gluth they might not be the best for that sort of thing.  They also don’t rely on AOE damage from volley to buff the numbers.  This is straight up, any target, single target, standard shot rotation DPS.  And as such, you can get wickedly good numbers in any situation.

For the hard-core theorycrafter, Elitist Jerks is the place to be.  We do a lot of research there when it comes to maximizing our toons abilities.  What we show here is a serious condensing of the Best Possible DPS thread using the incredible spreadsheet made by Shandara.  It’s truly mind-boggling work, but you don’t have to let it be confusing.  Just use the information and watch your Deeps go through the roof.

Also, we want you to keep in mind that until you have every single ‘best in slot’ item in the game, and a full set of heroic raid buffs you are NOT going to come close to the numbers we are going to list.  Think of them as comparison between specs.  These DPS numbers were calculated on a spreadsheet, and while they can be approximated on target dummies (within 1% or so) you will find it hard to nearly impossible to get within 5% in actual raid situations.

This is primarily true in situations where you can’t just stand there and go through an infinite shot rotation (like you can with Patchwerk) and are instead forced to move a lot (such as Grobbulus).  Your numbers will also be nerfed in 10 man raids with fewer buffs, and if you are not using every single self buff available – which can be expensive and not really necessary.

Beast Mastery

The beast master hunter finally falls to the bottom of the barrel in hunter DPS builds.  This has really never been the case before.  It represents a complete reversal as a matter of fact with BM hitting the bottom and Survival topping the charts.  We can’t say whether we like it or not, although personally I’ve always wanted to see SV get a whole lot better than just a  trapping utility spec.

• The build – 52/12/7
• The Shot Rotation – SpS/KS/MS/AS/SS
• Crit Rate – 40.53%
• The pet – Raptor
• Pet build – Ferocity
• Hunter DPS – 3,431
• Pet DPS – 2,594
• Total Best DPS for BM – 6,025

This may very well not be your shot rotation.  You might still be under the influence of BC theory that had you doing 3 auto-shots and skipping things, but those days are gone.  No Concussive Shot in there either to boost SS.  It’s basically use all your shots that do damage in the order listed above then repeat ad infinitum.  You will do a LOT more DPS using that rotation, and you don’t have to watch it as closely either.

Master Marksman

The MM hunter is still a bit of a ‘tweener.  Frankly I’ve never been a big fan of the MM hunter, but they can sure hold their own on DPS these days as you can see below:

• The Build – 15/51/5
• The Shot Rotation – SpS/CS/KS/AS/AimS/SS
• Crit Rate – 51.55%
• The Pet – Raptor
• Pet Build – Ferocity
• Hunter DPS – 5,026
• Pet DPS – 1,145
• Total Best DPS for MM -  6,171

The MM hunter will use a little more traditional shot rotation with a CS thrown in there.  Aimed Shot gets a spot as well, but you’re going to drop Multi-Shot out of your rotation, it messes with the cooldowns.  By now you can begin to see things working probably the way Blizz always intended them to work.  Use your Talented abilities in a rotation with almost everything else you can squeeze into a smooth roation instead of just hitting 3 buttons all the time.

Survival

An now the king of the current DPS charts, and let me repeat – thank you Blizz.  Explosive shot is awesome, and it’s really cool to be able to top the DPS charts and also have the increased survivability.  Since the SV hunter does so much DPS, you can probably fiddle with points a bit to get even more out of your traps or a bit more of a PvP build in there without dropping below the BM hunter for PvE raid DPS.

• The Build – 6/14/51
• The Shot Rotation – SpS/KS/ES/MS/SS
• Crit Rate – 56.41%
• The Pet – Raptor
• Pet Build – Ferocity
• Hunter DPS – 5,517
• Pet DPS – 1,184
• Total Best DPS for SV – 6,701

That’s right folks – 700 DPS more than the BM hunter.  Talk about a stupid crit rating too; almost 6 out of 10!  This guy goes fast, fast, fast and crits a LOT.  And we’ve got even more good news (well, it might be bad news for some of you), you might not have to live with the same old ‘best dps’ pet that all the other hunters have.  But more on that another day.

We know you’ve all been in raids where the lowest DPS in the raid was around 900.  Imagine being 700 DPS over the next guy on the list!  Now, we know straight up Deeps isn’t everything.  But if you are going to make a serious run at some of the dungeon achievements having a couple of guys who can pump out 4-5k DPS on a regular basis will certainly help your chances as a team.

Now, race and professions can have a serious impact on these numbers as well.  Dwarves and Dranei rule the lot because of racial bonuses.  Best profession combination for max DPs is Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting.  Those amped up gems in every slot make a big difference as well as getting a couple of additional gem slots.

But even if you are not trying to squeeze every last drip out of the meters, you will certainly improve your damage a ton if you duplicate the builds above, and stick to the shot rotation religiously.  Check out the EJ thread for best in slot gear choices and more tips on gemming your gear and you will have your hunter Dominating the DPS charts in no time!

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Coping with the undead

Whenever you fight against a Death Knight there is more than just the plate wearing, glowy eyed psycho in front of you to worry about; there is also his pet ghoul to deal with. The threat this little beast poses to you differs greatly depending on talent expenditure but is always something you need to keep an eye on.

When it comes to Ghouls there are two main types you need to concern yourself with; pets and minions. By default every Death Knight is capable of summoning a Ghoul minion for 2 minutes which is not under the players control, this minion is generally weak with low damage output and health while being highly susceptible to AoE effects.

The main problem with a minion Ghoul is that it is an excellent target for the Death Knights ability Death Pact; this sacrifices the ghoul in order to restore 40% of the players health. This sacrificial heal is capable of critting for a 60% heal and can be further boosted by Vampiric blood; when fighting against Death Knights it is in your best interests to prevent this.

So how do you prevent the Death Knight from sacrificing his Ghoul? The theory behind it is simple; most players who plan on sacrificing their minion only summon it when they need it and while the Ghoul is clawing its way out of the ground it is unable to be targeted by Death Pact preventing an instant sacrifice. As soon as you spot the Ghoul being summoned you should use whatever incapacitate or silence effects you have on the Death Knight before quickly killing the Ghoul.

Should the Death Knight be foolish enough to summon the Ghoul before he requires it then make sure to kill it first; not only will he not have the runic power to instantly sacrifice it but there will be little to no damage on him to be healed.

When it comes to dealing with pet Ghouls things become a little more difficult; unholy Death Knights are able to precisely control their Ghouls, giving them specific targets to attack and being able to recall the ghoul safely from danger. When the Ghoul is controllable it also gains the ability to stun its target for 3 seconds every 30 seconds in a similar manner to a Hunters Intimidate skill.

Pet Ghouls typically have large amounts of health too and are able to Huddle to reduce all damage taken by 50% so simply CC’ing the Death Knight while killing the Ghoul is rarely a good idea as it will require significant effort; further to this an unholy Death Knight is able to resummon his Ghoul far sooner than any other spec due to the Night of the Dead talent.

Due to this speedy resummon and the pet Ghouls higher health pool a further threat becomes apparent; a Death Knight is able to command his ghoul to explode by casting the spell Corpse Explosion on it where it will detonate after a short time for 25% of its health. This explosion can typically hit for nearly 5k health, causing obscene burst damage in combination with normal attacks.

So how do you deal with this versatile monster? The best way is to control it; unlike most undead it is susceptible to fear effects as well as anti-undead spells such as Shackle Undead and Turn Evil; use such skills to buy yourself time to engage the Death Knight on his own. Alternatively if you have a friend nearby with a taunt skill it is possible to taunt pets off their current target and onto a more sturdy class making it a great means of generating free rage or Rune Strike procs.

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Dual Wield or Dual Handers: The Great Debate

Right now a great debate is going on as to the weapon style of Tanking Frost Death Knights. Some claim that dual-wielding is the way to go because there is a talent for it in the frost tree, nerves of cold steel, and that the only tank weapons, aside from the Titansteel Destroyer, are one-handed weapons.

The other side claims that two-handed weapons are the way to go arguing that nerves of cold steel is for dps frost Death Knights, and that although most of the tanking weapons are one handed, the boss’ chance of parrying you is increased, and ultimately more stress on the healers.

Blizzard has posted that they did not intend for dual-wielding to be a tanking alternative, but they do not have problems with it existing, and are happy that people have taken it up as an option. So where does that leave us?

In all reality we’re not sure Blizzard really intended Death Knights to become main tanks at all.  I mean, look at those tooltips.  Both talents seem to be better suited for a DPS spec than tanking.  But since we have to live with the fact that DK’s want to tank (and yes, some make very good tanks), we might as well talk about it.

Really good DK tanks who have also tanked as a warrior or paladin will tell you that being dependant on rune combos and cooldowns makes tanking as a DK a much more challenging proposition.  However, when they blow all their cooldowns they are basically unkillable for 30 seconds.  That’s a LONG time to be OP.  Patch in Frenzy, Maexxna enraged, pop all your stuff and it’s pretty easy going on healers.

However, Healers will also tell you that healing a DK tank can be an out of body experience most of the time.  DK’s take a LOT spikier damage than any other tanking class, so healing a DK is very scary (unless you’re a tree, and then you begin to feel like you could heal anyone through anything).

Both side’s arguments are broken down into one core issue: survivability. Let’s start with the dual-wielding point of view. Almost all tanking weapons are one-handed, thanks to previous classes only having the option of a shield. This has created the longstanding tradition of having one-handed maces, one-handed axes, and one-handed swords as choices for the average protection pally and warrior.

This weapon trend passes into the tanking Death Knight, but they will use two one-handed weapons instead of one. This extra weapon will make up for the stats that are lost with the shield, and give an extra rune, an extra swing, and more threat. These things taken into consideration make the dual-wielding tank a viable choice for Death Knight tanking.

The two-handed point of view argues otherwise. Due to the fact that you have two one-handed weapons, your chance of getting parried has more than doubled; and parries from bosses are really scary. When a boss parries, they attack you instantly, and it resets their swing timer.

This is especially problematic for bosses who hit extremely hard (think Prince Malchezzar, Phase 2). This, however, was answered by Blizzard and now the bosses that hit extremely hard are ones that cannot parry (Patchwerk).

The threat still persists, however, that a dual-wielding tank will be parried much more often, therefore they will sustain more damage from any other boss than a two-handed death knight.

In conclusion, both sides are right, and when you choose your style, you must consider both arguments. You may have more bonus stats and an extra rune while dual-wielding, but you will absolutely take more damage. Likewise, with a two-handed weapon you reduce the chance of being parried, but you are reducing the amount of avoidance you have in general.

We’ve seen good tanks with both styles tank heroics and raid bosses with no problem and do a damn good job at it, although the number of really good dual wielding DK’s is very low, but that probably has a lot to do with gear choices.  We’ll discuss those choices in another article.

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WotLK Quest Achievements Howto Part 1: Mine Sweeper

As many of you probably know, there are a hefty amount of achievements under the quest tab generally involving the completion of quests in zones. Yet, there are two achievements that are commonly overlooked by people every day, and they are really easy to do if you have lady luck, patience, planning, and time. These achievements are: Mine Sweeper and Rapid Defense.

Both achievements add ten points to your total (which if you’re like me means everything) and completing them will finish off the quest section of the Wrath of the Lich King tab (considering you’ve done everything else). I am going to cover with you a little guide of sorts to show you the easiest and best way to do both achievements.

In the Storm Peaks, a few seconds west of K3, is Sparksocket Minefield. This little area is covered with land mines, each on the verge of detonating as soon as you take a step. This is the location of the Mine Sweeper achievement.

To do this correctly, you must be blown up by the land mines, while never “landing.” In this, the word “land” is misused. When you hit the ground, a timer starts and you cannot be on the ground for more than two seconds. This leaves you enough time to take one or two steps at most to get to the next closest mine.

First walk to the very center of the minefield where the goblin is. While facing outward run at one of the mines, (when they blow up they send you in the direction you ran from) and then cross your fingers. It will explode and hopefully you’ll land next to another mine, as that one explodes it sends you into the air again, and again hopefully to get the credit. If you get unlucky and don’t land on top of a mine, if you’re close enough, then walk a little bit to the next one.

There is also a chance that you will be more than a two second walk away from the closest mine. If this happens the timer hits two seconds and your explosion count gets reset to zero. If this happens, do NOT just run into the closest mine! Chances are that it is too far away from the group and it will explode you outward even more. If you do fail, find the safe path into the middle, and start again. Practice makes perfect.

Some things to look out for:

Health: The explosions only do 600-700 fire damage, but continued explosions will drop your health. Keep a health pot or if you’re a healer pop instant heals in the air time.

If you’re a pally pop fire resistance aura, this greatly mitigates the incoming damage.

Combat log: The amount of explosions is NOT the amount of times you’re in the air, it’s the amount of mines that explode! You could get three mines to explode at once, and send you in the air once, but that counts as three explosions, not one. The combat log will show you how many times a mine has gone off.

All in all, stay on your toes, watch your health, and in this case look as you leap. For getting every achievement is one way to set yourself outside the common crowd.

Next Time Part II: Rapid Defense

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Recently Blizzard have changed the way arena teams are paired up with each other and in the process completely overhauled the way in which rating is gained or lost; the main problem is this system has yet to be decently explained leading to many arena players wondering what exactly is going on.

What has happened is that every player now has a separate invisible rating called the matchmaking mating which is not viewable by the player leading to its nickname of the “spooky ghost rating”. What determines each player’s matchmaking rating appears to be data from past arena game performance.

When you que up to arena matches now you are placed up against teams that have a similar average matchmaking rating to your team to help ensure you are always playing against players of a similar skill level; the reason behind this change was to stop new teams hitting a wall that stops their progress when they keep running into experienced players who reform their teams to try new setups.

If you win or lose a match your team ratings still adjust as normal depending on the current team ratings; what this leads to is players with low team ratings but high matchmaking ratings gaining large amounts of points per win since they should be matched with high rank teams allowing them to quickly rise in the ranks without disturbing less experienced players.

Where this system can be unfair though is the fact that top teams can end up matched against low rated teams that have high matchmaking ratings. Since the matchmaking ratings are similar it is expected that the games will be fairly close however for every win a high rated team has they stand to gain very little while every loss costs dearly; this means it is going to be much much harder for high level teams to stay at the top, giving little incentive for them to play more than their mandatory 10 games a week.

Equally it will be very hard for players who perform poorly in the arena to simply reset their teams when their rating drops low since they will still be matched with low ranking players making it much harder for them to advance to higher ratings; what will matter now is consistent performance rather than a lucky win or loss streak through a setup change.

On top of these ratings you will still have your own personal rating which is designed to show your overall contribution to a team and prevent players from simply being boosted; this should always converge towards your team rating as you play more games.

Overall these changes to the arena will make for much more challenging and fair matches for every player and provide a closer estimation of a players actual skill levels all while making things far more challenging and risky for the battle to become a Gladiator. The players at the top will only be able to stay there if they truly are the most dominating teams in the battlegroup!

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The Truth About Competition On The Auction House

We know you all want to make more gold.  And we’ve given you dozens of tips here at Dominate Your Server to help you do just that.  We’ve even got the very best guide available on how to make gold by using the auction house efficiently and effectively (but most importantly faster).

But from time to time we get a lot of complaints from some people who seem to think that our methodologies fall somewhere in the robber baron classification.  Others think that we are messing things up by releasing our gold making secrets to – everybody.  Still others argue that if you are out to make more gold that automatically steps on the throats of all the “little people;” whoever that is.

Well we want to set the record straight concerning how using the things we have told you not only help those who read Dominate Your Server – but everyone else in the WoW marketplace as well.  Ironically, we would never have discovered just how powerful it was going to be until a unique set of circumstances proved a thesis we had held all along, but just didn’t have the empirical evidence to support our viewpoints.

Now, as we tell everyone in our auction house guide, we are not economists; nor are we experts on economic theory.  But certain properties of competition in marketplaces always hold true according to the laws of supply and demand economics.  So we’re going to tell you what we’ve discovered and how.  And why you should be cheering every single toon you see at the AH with several hundred auctions competing right alongside you every week.

Last October, Dominate Your Server began the Dominate guild on the Fenris realm.  Our goal was to form a team that could not only clear content to give everyone a better overall perspective of the game, but also to have a lot of fun doing it.  We also have made no bones about the fact that we are there to help everyone improve their experience.  And that means cutting out the drama from the prima-donna’s, and coaching those with less raiding, leveling, and yes, gold making experience to new heights of Domination.

So there we were with Mr. Moneybaggins.  Happily scraping up about 3,000 gold a week working the auction house in truly Dominating fashion.  Then, six weeks later, we released Gavin Garrett’s Auction House Mastery Guide.  Wouldn’t you know it, about 10 members of our very own guild began using the very same techniques on the very same auction house on the very same realm – at the same time.

Well, you might think that Money saw his profits drop and made a lot less gold now that there were 10 people doing all the same stuff.  But that is not what happened.  Now, Moneybaggins is making over 5,000 gold each week, and we even have a guild banking toon pulling in another 3,000 each week.  Our guild members report making anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 every week as well.  Our best estimate is that members of the Dominate guild are pulling in more than 25,000 gold a week from auction house reselling alone.

So how in the world can such a drastic increase in direct competition still leave room for everyone to make that kind of gold?  The answer lies in the very nature of supply, demand, and competition.

You see, by their very nature, monopolies (where one firm or business has actual or relative control of a market) will always have lower profits than in situations where three or more competitors are vying for the same opportunities.  While businesses operating in situations with a high degree of competitive pressure have to operate more efficiently in order to survive.  The weird thing is that this pressure tends to drive profits UP, and hardly ever down.

The WoW economy is weird, there’s no getting around that.  Supply is severely limited, while demand is virtually infinite for certain items.  Because it is a completely (well almost) closed system there is always a great deal of fluctuation in the relative value of all of the commodities in the market.  The price of entry and exit as far as being a competitor is so low that it’s silly, and the number of “firms” operating at any given time equals everyone basically.  In a way that means competition is also as close to infinite as you can get without actually getting there.

So all this nonsense about limiting competition is just foolishness.  Every single person who ever places a single item on the auction house is in competition with you.  In most cases that’s probably 99% of the people on your realm.

Now, when you are talking about power players in the marketplace, you might also think that you would want to stay in a situation where you remained the ONLY power user on your realm.  Do so to your own detriment folks.  What you really want (even though you might not know it yet) is a minimum of 20 power users to start, and the more the merrier.

Fenris, Horde side has always been a horrid market.  It usually has less than 10,000 items for sale at any given time.  Because of the 2 to 1 ratio of Alliance to Horde on the server it’s easy to see why the Ally AH is typically more than twice as large with 27,000 auctions running on most days.

Well, larger markets are more stable, and we’ve always made more gold on the ally side.  Part of that is just the sheer niftiness of economies of scale (selling more things more often).  Part of that is that prices tend to be a lot more stable over time.  So we’re not always chasing trends or getting stuck with stuff that was selling like hotcakes one month and tanking the next.

Which brings us to our point if you are still with me.  Those silly folks on the horde side only knew one method of selling anything – mark it down.  They seem to think that the only way anyone will buy their cloth is if they undercut everyone else.  And not just undercutting by a few coppers – we’re talking markdowns of 2 gold on a 10 gold item!  You can actually watch prices drop by the day.  It’s maddening.  Then when everything bottoms out, prices will insta-hop back up to above where they were before.  It’s freaky and frustrating.  But most of that is a thing of the past now.

Here’s how it works and we’ll give you a real life example.  Moneybaggins bought a whole bunch of Saronite arrows that some doofus had listed for 5g a stack.  It was a lot of stacks, something like 100.  Must have been leveling engineering and had no clue what the market value was for those things.  Until that day they had been selling quite nicely for around 10-12 gold as stack.

So now this guy is KILLING my pricing data.  I bought him out and they went right back up on the house for 11 gold.  But foolish pricing far below demand prices had already killed the market.  He flooded the AH with way too much stuff, then mashed the price to the floor because he was impatient.  I wasn’t worried.  I knew I could re-list those things for weeks and the demand would eventually sell every single one.

Now, for those of you who think we price gouge everyone, our AADV module marks those arrows down every time we re-post them by 5%.  So the price gradually dropped to about 7 gold and then BAM – every single stack sold in a single day – to another member of Dominate!

His system was also telling him that the price for those things was too low.  So he bought Moneybaggins out and re-posted them back at the proper market price of 11g.  He sold about half of them to regular folks, and then BAM, another Dominator bought the rest out for 9 gold and re-listed for 12.  By that time the market price was once again firmly established and in a few days, they were almost all gone.  And every single one of us made money off of them.

So instead of a single knucklehead ruining the market for an item so badly that I would have been lucky to get 6g per stack on most of them I made 400 gold instead, then next guy made another 300 gold, and the last one made about 300 gold.  It’s easy to say that I could have made 1,000 gold if I had just stuck with a price and they had eventually all of them sold, but it’s not as simple as that.

You see, posting fees chew at your profits, so I would have spent another 100-200 gold in listing fees and only made about 800.  Some other nut would have undercut in the meantime and slowed my sales again.  Taking into account the time value of money I would MUCH rather have 300 gold in a single week than 800 spread out over 2 months.  As it turns out the three of us sold out much quicker than we normally would have and were able to re-invest that money back into the market (another market stabilizer) for another return on investment in a much shorter period of time.

So in a nutshell, the power users provide a great deal of price support in a limited market.  That’s a GOOD thing folks.  Besides that, they also virtually guarantee profits to each other.  And last, because they are constantly re-investing their capital back into the marketplace they also provide a much stronger base for everyone else’s prices over a much broader range of items.

In other words, the guys who DO choose to farm can be absolutely certain to get a better price than ever for their goods and are also assured that they will sell almost anything they post since there are so many more toons with so much more money to invest in the market than ever before.  Would you rather sell ALL you stuff to the Government (who has a LOT of gold) in one lump at a small discount, or to 500 guys named “Willkillyounub” who will wait until you drop the price to the point where you know it’s not worth it and then STILL whine in trade chat about how you are ripping the shoes off their whelplings feet?

Well, we could go on for pages and pages about this and still never really scratch the surface.  But we did want to make a thorough and clear answer to all those guys who throw junk out there from a monopolistic or downright communistic point of view.  We’ve always said that our system will help you Dominate.  Now you know it’s better for everyone ELSE on your server as well.  It’s a great thing to know that Dominating ALSO serves the greater good.

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Controlling Your Pet As  Death Knight

New unholy Death Knights often complain that they have problems controlling their Ghoul and many find that they do not get the most out of it in terms of effectiveness. The following article aims to outline some of the tricks and macros that change your Ghoul from being a simple fire and forget DoT pet to an effective part of your character.

The first thing you should understand is how to maximize your Ghouls raw power. When you first summon your Ghoul it takes a snapshot of your current stats to determine its own; the two key attributes relevant to it being your stamina and strength. To get the best possible results from your Ghoul you will want to summon it when you are buffed and preferably with any strength procs such as your Rune of the Fallen Crusader active.

The best way to activate your procs before summoning your Ghoul is by using the target dummies located in most main cities. For PvP and Arena it can be far more important to have the most health possible on your Ghoul to ensure its survival so equipping a tanking set before summoning can give a significant increase to its health for a small reduction in its strength.

After you have your Ghoul summoned it’s important to understand how to control it. The best pet stance to choose for maximum control is passive and you will want to take both Leap and Gnaw off auto cast; this allows you to specify exactly who your Ghoul attacks as well as pull off several unique moves. The first thing you will want to create is a Ghoul recall macro as follows.

/cast [target=player] Leap
/petfollow

What this macro does is cause the Ghoul to instantly leap to you if in range and follow you; since you will be in passive stance your Ghoul will not run off again to engage another target. By doing this you can keep your Ghoul out of dangerous situations caused by him either chasing someone too far or to keep him out of the lava waves when fighting Sartharion.

The next macro you will want is an offensive one.

/cast Leap
/petattack
/cast Gnaw

What this macro will do is cause your Ghoul to leap to your current target and begin attacking it if it is not currently near it; Gnaw will not cast since it was not in range to begin with. If your Ghoul is currently attacking your target though and is next to it Leap will not cast since you will be too close however Gnaw will causing your Ghoul to stun the target for 3 seconds.

Between these two macros you have complete control over your Ghouls mobility and its stun. The final macro you will want is to get your ghoul to explode for a massive burst of damage.

/target pet
/cast Corpse Explosion
/targetlasttarget

This will command the Ghoul to explode starting its fast cast timer; do note however that if the Ghoul has just used an ability which activates its global cool down then it will not explode but the runic power cost and cool down period of Corpse Explosion will be used. Either time the ability carefully or quickly turn off auto casting on Claw before exploding your Ghoul.

By combining these macros together you are able to get the most of your Ghoul by precisely directing its movements and chaining together your Ghouls stun and explosion with several of your own large hits. With timing a combination of your Ghouls explode and a critical Scourge Strike hit can deal 8-10k damage instantly and reliably; truly dominating a target.

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Spell Resistance – The Easy Way

Previously I have covered just how devastating spell resistance can be in PvP and the importance spell penetration has in countering its effects; but spell resistance is by no means only important in PvP game play. Throughout much of the PvE content in World of Warcraft there are numerous encounters with high amounts of elemental damage; in fact it has been fairly traditional that most raid wide damage taken by players will be elemental in nature be it from curses placed on you or a damage aura.

It has normally been quite hard to increase your spell resistance to help counter this damage without having to equip specific resistance equipment which would heavily compromise your ability to perform your normal tasks. With WotLK however it has become much easier to gain spell resistance without any massive changes, allowing you to be far more durable and reduce the pressure on healers; the following is a list outlining the simple ways you can increase your spell resistance with minimal sacrifice.

For every spell type except for Arcane there are classes that can provide an aura or a buff that will increase your spell resistance by 130 (23.5% mitigation against bosses) these auras will not stack with each other or with the spell resistance provided by Mark of the Wild but will stack with all other effects.

Several classes are able to increase their resistance levels via talents; Mages can gain 140 resistance (25% mitigation) to all spell schools with a fully talented Mage Armour and frost Death Knights can gain 150 resistance (27% mitigation) from the Acclimation talent.

All classes are able to enchant their helms with 25 resistance (4.5% mitigation) to a single school of magic while Leatherworkers are able to place unique fur linings in their bracers that provide 60 resistance (11% mitigation) to a single spell school.

Alchemists are able to create lesser flasks of resistance that provide 50 resistance (9.5% mitigation) to every spell school, this can be further increased by the Alchemists mixology ability to 82 resistance (15% mitigation)

All of these simple means are widely available at a very small cost to other attributes and when combined can provide massive amounts of mitigation; for example a frost Death Knight could easily achieve 330 resistance (59.5% mitigation) to any spell school by combining their Acclimation talent with a flask and another classes aura; all without wearing a single piece of resistance based equipment.

This high level of resistance would allow the player a lot more flexibility in raids as he would not have to worry so much about avoiding raid wide damage which can lead to a greater amount of time spent fulfilling his role instead of changing position.

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Are You Calculating Your Gold per Hour?

We’ve mentioned a time or two (or twenty) that farming is not the way to make massive amounts of gold in WoW.  There is simply no way to make the kind of gold you need to buy all the things you are going to want in this expansion and roll in truly dominating style if you are out hitting mines and picking flowers.

the only way to generate true wealth in world of warcraft is by working the auction house.  And there is a very good way to track just how well you are doing in the achievements panel.  Once you know exactly how much gold you are earning every day, you can easily convert that number into an even more useful benchmark for measuring your gold-making domination.

Now don’t tell us that making gold and tracking it is too complicated.  That’s hogwash.  You guys are figuring your poison hit cap down to the last point.  You study up on defense rating,expertise points and as of yesterday, spell penetration.  You won’t even have to spreadsheet this one.  All you have to do is divide.

In order to really show you what we mean here We’re going to introduce you to the idea of a benchmark for gold per hour.  But that starts with gold earned per day which you can see in your statistics tab of your achievements panel.  What you want to shoot for is 500 gold per day – EVERY DAY.  That’s a good round number that would garner you an epic flying mount in less than two weeks, or a Tundra Mammoth in a bit more than a month.

Here’s what this looks like on Moneybaggins (Fenris, Horde side).  These are totals starting from the day after WotLK was installed.  I know it’s depressing.  We spent way too much time leveling the first two weeks, and missed a lot of auction time, which is why the total looks so low.  But that’s ok, you can still see that we’re operating above the benchmark for Gold per day.  A pretty good clip above the benchmark, and that’s even without really concentrating on working the AH all the time.

You see it right, that’s 73,888 gold since the middle of November.  It will be pretty dissapointing if that’s not 100,000 before Valentines day.  One hundred grand every 90 days is pretty much what I’m shooting for.  That would be almost half a million gold in a year.

In Contrast, if you have a pretty clear farming spot that you can run without competition it’s not that hard even for a total rookie to farm enough mats to make 100 gold an hour in Sholazar Basin.   Let’s call 100 gold an hour the benchmark for farming.  It’s sort of the understood minimum for good farming spots.  Of course, there is so much traffic with all the other farmers in Sholazar that you’ll probably have to give up some sleep to run here at 3am to get a clean run at it for more than an hour.  I was doing some fishing on the coast after a raid the other night at 2am server time and three people ran through me – and I was almost outside of the zone!

Compare that to the 500 gold per day benchmark for working the AH exclusively.  In order to hit the same level of earning you would have to spend 5 hours farming alone.  Past that you would still have some administrative duties to do putting all that stuff you farmed up for auction.  If you are not a total dunce and use AADV and LilSparky’s to help you with that you still need to scan, check for profitable crafted items, manage your mailbox and a half dozen other things that have nothing to do with farming.  Let’s call that 30 minutes.

Some of you may be thinking something like this: “If I can match the benchmark per day of 500 gold and just farm it (which sounds easy) then why is that worse than 500 a day working the AH?”  The answer is gold per hour.  You see, I don’t spend 7 hours making 701g 41s 85c a day.  I spend about 2 hours in an entire WEEK making that much gold.  When you divide your gold per week by the number of hours you spent, that’s when you get your gold per hour spent working on making gold.

In this case it’s:

(Gold per Day*7)/Time Spent per Week = 2,681g 42s per hour

701*7 = 4,907 gold per week

110 minutes = 1.83 hours

4,907/1.83 = 2,681 gold per hour spent

You can see that I keep close track of how much time I spend.  So while you were out farming, my toon Sherpaman did the entire Lunar Festival achievement run, a full clear of Naxx 10, some Naxx 25, Vault and OS both 10 and 25 man versions, and leveled a druid from 73 to 76 and STILL made 5,000 gold – and never picked a single flower, or mined a single node.

Get in your achievement panel right this second and look at your gold earned per day and then plug it into the formula above to find your gold per hour played.  If it’s not over 1,000 then you are not doing something right.  It’s like going into a 25 man Naxx raid and doing 800 dps – lame.  And it doesn’t matter what level your toon is.  The screenshot above is from a level 2 toon.  All you have to do is apply the principles we’ve been talking about for the last two years and you can hit 1,000 gold per day in your sleep.

Do we still farm some mats?  Sure, the guild needs a lot of flasks and crafted items.  So we all go out and dominate a zone for about half an hour and make a couple dozen things.  Go ahead and farm a little while you are out working on stuff, or if you get bored.  But use those mats in your professions, use professions to make gold, and make the majority of your gold at the AH.

The view from the top of the gold heap is nice – so get out of the farming runs and join us at the pinnacle of gold-making prowess and Dominate!

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Spell penetration always has and will likely always remain a highly misunderstood statistic on peoples equipment. Before WotLK pretty much nobody deliberately sought it out, treating it as the red headed stepchild of itemization that seemed to have no use.

With WotLK however things seem to have changed as many classes have come to realise just how important it is for them in PvP; a movement that has mostly been spearheaded by the Death Knights unique mechanics making certain things stand out. To understand just how important spell penetration is though you need to have an understanding of how spell resistances work.

Every spell and melee strike in PvP has a basic 4% chance to miss completely, this can then be further increased by racial traits to 6% or even further with a few classes talents. This basic miss rate works exactly like your chance to miss in PvE content and can be countered with hit rating; for a death knight, a missed attack does not fully consume a rune but instead puts it on a 1.5 second cooldown only.

Separate to this basic miss chance is a spell resistance check which can work in one of two ways depending upon the skill used. Damaging spells or elemental melee attacks that only deal damage come under the rules of “partial resistance” while spells with non damage based effects such as polymorph, entangling roots and chains of ice come under the resist rules of “binary resist”.

Attacks which fall under the rules of partial resistance have a chance to have anything from 0-100% of their damage resisted; increasing in 10% increments. The chances for this damage mitigation are dependent on how much resistance the target has; the highest effective level of resistance against a level 80 target is 400 which will yield average mitigation of 75%.

A class such as a Paladin is able to activate an aura which will grant them and their allies 130 shadow resistance which gives a proportional amount of average damage mitigation against partially resistible spells that works out around a 24% damage reduction. This amount of damage mitigation is very significant and can be crippling when attempting to burst down a target.

Far more crippling however is spell resistances effects upon binary spells. Since a binary spell generally does little or no damage a partial resist would do little to protect you from its effects; instead what happens is the average damage reduction that would have applied to a partially resistible spell gets added as additional miss chance.

Taking the example above a binary shadow spell would have an extra 24% chance to miss its target completely should it be under the effects of a Paladins aura. For classes such as Priests who rely on long cooldown abilities such as psychic scream landing for their survival a resist of this nature can be catastrophic as they cannot simply cast the spell again if it does not work. Similarly a spell cast by a Death Knight that is resisted in this manner will fully consume its runes placing them on a full 10 second cooldown, making resists fully capable of completely crippling their rotation.

Considering the damage such low amounts of spell resistance can do it is well worth gathering around 130 spell penetration should you decide to seriously PvP; especially for classes that are reliant on binary spells with cooldowns.

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