Master of arms can take a LONG time if you only have a couple of weapons close to 400, especially if you want to add the unarmed bit. Those last three or four points can take 30 minutes to get even if you are swinging constantly. It really stinks if you’re starting from 50 or so and the mob fights back.
Normally, this means you run to some starting area somewhere and swing at level 10 mobs for a while with several different weapons, then move up to another area and repeat, then somewhere else – blah. I totally ignored this whole ordeal until I found a very out of the way mob that is perfect for this type of weapon training.
Now, if you look this achievement up on Wowhead, you’ll find folks sending you to mobs in the back of Dire Maul or some other nonsense. I’m not going to try to walk anyone through an instance when there is a much easier mob to get to.
The advantage of the DM guys and maybe one or two others is that you can start swinging and then go afk (sort of, there are problems). But I don’t mind making one click every two minutes if getting to them takes me half an hour less in the first place. Plus, you can use these little guys at almost any level past 50 if you want to get a head start on the achievement or level up your skill in a new weapon type because you got a shiny new epic.
So let me introduce to you the Phantasmal Lash. They are little flower guys in a very out of the way corner of Moonglade. What makes these guys so good? They are high enough level that you can whack on them for a while, plus they instantly respawn and will not attack you (for the most part).
You find these dudes at (70.3,61.1) in moonglade. It’s in the tree/cave thing and the lash mobs are supposedly popping into Azeroth from the Emerald Dream. The cave itself is full of them, but the two we are interested in are the two closest to the entrance.
Those two lash mobs are in constant battle with two druid NPC’s, so they are otherwise engaged. If left alone, the druid will duke it out with the flower fellow and kill it in around 1 minute. About five seconds later, another one will appear to take the place of the fallen, so there is always something there to whack at.
Now, you will eventually pull aggro from the druid NPC’s, but not normally until around weapon skill 350+, which means that you’re high enough level that taking a whack of two (and pretty weak whacks at that) from the vine won’t do much to you at all. In other words it’s nothing to be concerned about.
They also work with wands, unarmed – well, anything. So all you have to do is head out to Moonglade and run into the mouth of the tree. There you’ll find a lash in endless battle and all you gotta do is slip up behind him and wail away.
When he dies, wait a few seconds, right click and you’re off again. It’s kind of nice to click like once every minute or so and watch those skill points fly right by while you watch TV, listen to music, surf the web or whatever else you want.
It makes getting the arms and armless achievements about as easy as you could hope for, and doesn’t require a trip to some blasted dungeon to do it. Fast, effective, easy; and in our book, pretty Dominating.
If you don’t mind feeling a little silly for a few minutes you might have some fun with this one. I remembered reading about this in some patch notes somewhere that this quest had been added for horde, so I thought I would check it out.
Getting a chicken pet has always been available for Alliance, but only recently did Blizz show Horde a little love on this one. If you collect pets, this is super easy, although a tad goofy.
Here’s what you do:
Horde toons head out to Brill, Ally to Sentinel Hill in Westfall. Once you get there you are looking for William Saldean (Horde) or Farmer Saldean (Ally). Farmer Saldean is north of Sentinel Hill at Saldean’s farm on the map.
I guess Bill got into a bit of a scrape with the scourge at one point, but they must be related. I’m not into researching back stories so you’re on your own from there.
Anyway, both of the Saldean boys sell Special Chicken Feed. Buy a sack and then head over to the nearest chicken. Target a chicken, then use the /chicken command over and over again. You can make a /chicken macro, or use this elegant little script we found.
/run local f=0 for i=1,GetNumQuestLogEntries()do if GetQuestLogTitle(i)==”CLUCK!”then f=1 end end if f==1 then DoEmote(”cheer”)else for i=1,200 do DoEmote(”chicken”)end end
Eventually, I suppose after the chicken has pity on you, the chicken will go from yellow to green (friendly) and will offer you the quest “Cluck!” There is supposed to be a mechanic in this deal where you’re supposed to/cheer at the chicken, but I’ve never done that and it seems to work out fine. The script above does it automatically anyway.
Just accept the quest from the chicken, and then /cheer. The chicken should now register a ? for a quest turn in. If for some reason the turn in doesn’t appear, just go through the whole making a fool out of yourself routine again until he goes green and this time the turn in should be available.
Turn in the quest (you have to have the special chicken feed in your bags) and the chicken will lay a lootable egg, from which you will learn Summon Chicken Egg. He’s got to be the fastest chicken in the world. This little pet doesn’t do anything slow.
In fact, he’s so fast it’s hard to watch him move – nothing like the battle chicken from engineering. Maybe the special feed is laced with fowl steroids or something. Whatever it is I want some of it before the next NFL draft. Me at epic mount speed would make me the baddest punt returner in history – even with my chicken legs. Hey, if the chicken can do it, why not me?
So pop on out to Westfall or Tirisfal Glades and nab yourself a farmyard pet. Maybe it’s best to do this at a low server pop time, and especially after Noblegarden is over. Come to think of it, maybe when everyone else is running around in bunny suits is the perfect time to do something cool (cough) like flap your arms and cluck. We can’t say it’s Dominating, but it certainly is different.
I. Quest Walkthrough
II. The Black Knight Quest Chain
III. The Art of Mounted Combat
IV. Achievements
After 8 days, the Argent Tournament Dailies will net you 172g/day, and all the quests can be done in under an hour, and that’s generous. You can do them in about 30 minutes if you’re fast, and most of that will be travel time. Once you get the hang of mounted combat, you can make boatloads of gold and get some pretty neat rewards along the way. The Argent Tournament dailies have become the Sunwell Isle of Wrath of the Lich King, so if you’re one of the unlucky few still flying around on a failmount, or need to get Artisan Riding for an alt, these dailies should be done, well, daily…
The real gold starts flowing once you get Champion, which will take 8 days (3 days for Valiant, 5 days for Champion.) The maximum number of Seals (Aspiriant, Valiant, and Champion) you can get per day is 5. For Champion quests, you will be rewarded Seal(s) and either a Champion’s Writ (which you can use to purchase a Commendation Badge to increase your rep with any faction by 250) or a Champion’s Purse, which contains 10 gold. Add that 10 gold to the standard 13 gold reward for doing the quest. Not bad, eh?
It doesn’t end there, however. Once you become a Champion for your faction, you can become a Valiant of another faction! The quests are almost identical, so basically you will be getting double credit for almost
all the quests! You cannot, however, be a valiant of two factions at the same time.
The only limiting factor is that once you defeat a rider of any faction you cannot challenge a rider from that faction for an hour. You will get a debuff: “Bested [Insert Major City Here].” This really isn’t a problem at all, since the Valiant version of the quest asks you to defeat 3 riders, and the Champion’s version 4. There are 10 factions in the game. The easiest way is if you’re horde, beat 3 horde riders in the Valiant’s Ring and 4 Ally riders in the Champion’s ring. (If you’re alliance, just do the opposite..oh yeah, and reroll horde ).
I. Quest Walkthrough
To begin fly to Northern Icecrown:
Speak with Justicar Mariel Trueheart in the Argent Pavillion (7). She will send you to the Sunreaver Pavillion (Big Map, 1) for Horde or the Silver Covenant Pavillion (2) to start the process of becoming an Argent Champion.
Inside you will find some dudes (and dudettes) from each faction standing around. Your first time there they won’t have any quests for you, but you can look at the gear rewards from the quartermasters. As a side note, the Tournament Grounds is littered with trainers and vendors, and you can set your hearth to your faction’s Pavillion. It is only a cheap (54s) flight back to Dalaran, so you may want to.
Once you talk to the Sunreavers (or Silver Covenant types) you automatically become an Aspirant for your faction, and quests will open up.
The names of the quests change as you turn from Aspirant to Valiant to Champion, but they are basically the same. The quests involve:
killing any Icecrown scourge outside of The Bombardment
practicing mounted combat (vs. targets and NPCs)
a random “blade” quest
After you become a Valiant, there is another quest involving fighting elite scourge (mounted) at the foot of Icecrown Citidel, and after becoming a Champion, there will be a group quest to kill a level 82 Elite. This quest is important because it is the only one that awards 2 Champion’s Seals.
Mounted Combat Quests:
To do any quest involving mounted combat, you must first find and equip a lance. Lance racks are all over the place, and lances don’t cost you anything, so go ahead and pick one up:
You must also use a mount from the argent tournament. During the Aspirant phase, you will be using the Sunreaver chicken mount, but once you hit Valiant you will use your faction’s mount. The mounts are right outside the pavilion and next to the Ring of Champions. You may not participate in mounted combat on your own mount.
Once you mount, you will be given a new action bar. These are: Thrust, Shield Breaker, Charge, Defend, Refresh Mount, and Duel. To duel other players with mounted combat, you must use this button or it will be a standard duel.
See “The Art of Mounted Combat” section if you are having trouble with these quests.
Aspirant:
As an aspirant, you will be practicing your skills against targets. Be sure to find an appropriate target for the skill you want to get credit practicing. That’s why they are labled “Melee, Carge, and Ranged”
Targets. They are all around the area.
Valiant:
As a Valiant, things get more interesting as you must fight and defeat 3 NPCs in mounted combat. These NPCs are in each faction’s Valiant Ring (Small Map, 3). You can go to the Ally ring and challenge their Valiants for the “Lance-a-lot” achievement if you want.
Forward Base Quests:
Valiants and Champions get a second mounted combat quest to travel to the Forward Base and kill elite scourge there on mounts. Use the horses at the forward base to kill the required number and types of
scourge. Until you’re more experienced with mounted combat, you may want to avoid the Champions, they are tough for beginners. Use Shield Breaker to kill the Gargoyles and just trample over the footmen.
The Blade Quests
These quest all require travel, but they are the most important because they reward 2 Seals (Aspirant, Valiant, and Champion). This is why you may want to set your hearth here. The three “blade” quests are:
A Worthy Weapon
The Edge of Winter
A Blade Fit for a Champion
A Worthy Weapon
At the gate between Icecrown and Crystalsong (Big Map, 4) you will find Winter Hyacinths. COLLECT FOUR OF THEM! My first time I flew all the way out to Zul’Drak with only one and was severely disappointed when I had to go back for 3 more.
Then you’ll have to fly to the lake on the border between Dragonflight and Zul’drak. The fastest way is to take a taxi to Ebon Watch and go South. In the middle of the lake there will be a circle of stones that are impossible to miss. Hop in there and use the 4 Winter Hyacinths in your inventory. The troll lady will blab on about how no one visits here anymore and then a blade will spawn that you have to use to loot.
The Edge of Winter
Go South of Dalaran to the Crystal Vice on the border with Crystalsong and Dragonblight (1). There you must defeat Lord Everblaze, a fire revenant, and loot his Everburning Ember (2). Then fly out to Camp Winterhoof in the Howling Fjord and go to the middle of the lake to the southwest (3).
There will be a dryad encased in ice on a small platform. Use the Everburning Ember to free her. This one you don’t have to wait for her to talk or loot anything, as soon as you free her the sword goes in your inventory (so make sure you have a slot open).
A Blade Fit for a Champion
This is probably the most fun blade quest. On accepting the quest, you will receive Warts-B-Gone Lip Balm, “for all your frog kissing needs.” Fly to Camp Oneqwah in the Grizzly Hills (if you’re alliance- reroll horde). Either way, go to the lake southwest of Oneqwah and find Lake Frogs. Target a frog, drink the Warts-B-Gone, and type /kiss. If you’re lucky, like Lawbringer was, you’ll get it on the first try. If you’re like me, it took 4-5 frog kisses before it turned into a princess. You’ll have to drink the Warts-B-Gone before each kiss (don’t worry, it has a short cooldown). When you find the frog princess, talk to her to receive the blade.
Extra Dailies:
There are two dailies that reward no Seals, but if you’re out and about you may find them worth 13 gold. The goblins (Small Map, 6) Each have a quest for you.
Jack me Some Lumber
I do this quest EVERY time for two reasons. 1) It’s right next to Dalaran, and 2) You can farm quest items. What I mean by farm quest items is that you can use the goblin’s axe to collect as much lumber as you want without turning the quest in. If you’ve got the time, stock up! Each turn in requires 12 lumber, and each tree gives you 2.
After chopping the tree, an angry tree ghost (usually lvl 77) will attack you. Use the Dalaran Crystal to teleport down to the Violet stand. Look for the “Crystalsong Oaks.” They look different from any other tree in Crystalsong and are targetable. Target the tree, click the axe. This quest literally takes about 2 minutes starting from Dalaran.
A Chip Off the Ulduar Block
For this one, fly to Grom’ash Crash Site (or reroll Horde) and go north to the Inventor’s Library. Look for the large stone blocks around the area, use the bomb on them, and stand back for five seconds. The stone will explode into 3-4 lootable blocks. Repeat until you have 15. Unfortunately, though, once you have 15, you can’t blow up any more blocks.
Threat From Above (Group Daily)
In order to be eligible for this quest, you must have completed the Black Knight quest chain (see below). The elite Frost Wyrm, Chillmaw, is level 82 (Big Map, 3). He hits pretty hard and has some adds that will come off of his back and lay bombs on the ground just like the bombs from Chip off the Ulduar Block Quest if you’re trying to 2-man it without a healer (which is possible), just get away from the bombs and kill the adds as soon as you can. The suggested players is 3, and you should probably take that advice. Still, so many people are doing this quest it’s almost impossible not to find a group, even on a low-pop server.
All you need to do is start asking in Icecrown general chat for a group for the quest while you work on the other dailes. You should find at least 2 other people that still need to do it. On top of that, there will probably be other groups standing around waiting for him to spawn.
II – The Black Knight
The quest chain involving the Black Knight is important to do because it unlocks the Daily Group quest Threat From Above. The chain starts with Crusader Rhydalla with The Black Knight of Silverpine? (for horde) and The Black Knight of Westfall? (for alliance).
The second quest, The Seer’s Crystal involves killing a satyr in the Folorn Woods, just south of Dalaran.You shouldn’t have to kill many before one drops.
For the third quest, The Stories Dead Men Tell, take the crystal and use it in front of three graves in the graveyard (Small Map, 9).
There’s Something About that Squire asks you to go back to Crystalsong. Next to Maloric (who will be neutral to you) will be several skeletons chopping wood. Kill one of the skeletons and loot the femur. Use the femur to hit Maloric. He will crouch down and become lootable. Right click on him to get the Murderer’s Toolkit.
When you turn in the Murderer’s Toolkit, Crusader Rhydalla will give you some Enchanted Reigns. Take them to the Black Knight’s camp and use them. The Gryphon will automatically take you to the Black Knight’s house on a small, floating ice block to the northwest. There will be a few mobs to fight, but inside the house you will find the Stolen Tournament Invitation and the Black Knight’s Orders. Fly back to Crusader Rhydalla and turn in.
For the final quest, talk to a squire (look for a tiny orc kid standing on a box) on the northern side of the Ring of Champions. He will summon the Black Knight, mounted on his gryphon, and you fight him. Midway through the fight he will dismount and challenge you to fight on foot. Get off your ride and kill him. He’s a normal level 78-79 mob. [Tip: When you dismount, you will still have your Lance equipped, which only does 1-2 damage. Equip your normal weapon(s) when you dismount.
III. The Art of Mounted Combat
Learning the ropes of mounted combat is a bit tricky, and is mostly trial and error. But with these strategies you won’t waste any time figuring it out, you’ll be fighting like a champion from the get-go and maximizing your rewards while minimizing your effort.
To start, let’s look at the new action bar. The new abilities are (from left to right): Thrust, Shield Breaker, Charge, Defend, Refresh Mount, and Duel.
Thrust
Don’t believe the tooltip. Thrust does not remove a charge of Defend. I tested this over and over, and it’s just not true. With the combat strategy I developed, I rarely have to refresh defend in a fight. Thrust also does not share cooldowns with the other abilities, so if they’re in range, you should be thrusting.
Shield Breaker
This is your bread and butter. Why? Thrust and Charge don’t do much damage if the enemy has three charges of Defend. In fact, if your enemy has more Defend charges than you, YOU will be damaged if you Charge and/or Thrust. So the key to winning mounted fights is having more Defend Charges up than your opponent. Champion level opponents start with 3 charges and are very quick to refresh them, so mastering Shield Breaker is a must.
Charge
Charge does massive damage on a target with no Defend charges. You have to be a certain distance away to Charge, and after you charge it takes longer to turn around because of momentum. As I said before, it is VITAL that you have more charges of Defend up for your charge to be beneficial.
Defend
Thrust does not take away Defend Charges, only Shield Breaker and Charge do. The mistake people make with mounted combat is they refresh Defend as much as possible. That’s why they lose or think it’s hard. Only refresh Defend after you see your three little green shields turn into two little yellow ones. If you are in melee range the only thing that will take away your charges is the 1 minute timer. [Tip: Never start a fight until you’ve have all 3 charges of Defend.]
Refresh Mount
Only usable out of combat. Heals your mount to full health.
Duel
Use this button to request a mounted duel with other Player Characters.
Strategy:
The idea of the strategy is to dance around the minimum range of Shield Breaker. Get just enough range to throw yours, then immediately close in towards your opponent to prevent them from throwing theirs. This way you will rarely (if ever) have to refresh defend. Wait until they back off to set up a charge, and either charge yourself or stay close behind and hit them with Thrust a few times.
Here is a video of this strategy at work. Honestly once you practice this a few times you’ll see how easy it really is.
When you reach Champion, you get 10 Champion’s Seals and an Argent Gruntling;
Talk to the gruntling and he will carry the banner of any faction you have reached champion for.All of the purchasable rewards are the same except for the race-specific tabards, rare pet companions, and banners. The banners just place banners on the ground. There are no special effects, and they have a 3 min cooldown.
V – Achievements
There are many achievements for the Argent Tournament, but if you’re like me, you only care about ones that give you titles.
Each race/faction has an achievement starting with “Exalted Champion of…” To get this achievement, you must reach become a champion and exalted with that faction’s home city. Then you get the title “<[Your Name] of [City]>.” Pretty cool, huh?
The other achievements will be easy for you. Complete the Black Knight chain, Win a mounted duel vs. another player, and defeat riders from all Horde and Alliance factions.
Thanks for reading guys, now you have the knowledge and tools to take advantage of the Argent Tournament
It’s Easter with a Heff ref., although I guess we have to put up with at least a little no-so-G-rated in all of the holiday goop. So if you don’t mind spending a couple of hours as a rabbit you might actually have a little fun with this event.
It’s really pretty simple. I took a few minutes to research the thing and what I found was what you normally expect to find when it comes to advice. Just odds and ends and nobody really boiled it down to its bare essentials. But we’ll do that for you.
Here is the key – loot a bunch of eggs. Let’s assume you have no idea what Nobelgarden is at this point. It’s the latest holiday event Blizz added in patch 3.1. Personally I find it the biggest time sink and most mind-numbing, but it may also be the easiest overall to complete.
Perhaps it really doesn’t take as long as some of the other ones, but since you’re pretty much just grinding around in circles picking up eggs it seems like it takes forever. But back to the tips.
Head out to a starting area. Horde can choose from Razor Hill, Bloodhoof Village, Falconwing Square and Brill. Alliance toons run around in Dolanaar, Falcon Watch, Goldshire and Thelsammar. Advantage Ally for sure on this one. There are just a lot fewer folks on Teldrassil and certainly Azuremyst Isle. Horde toons will have a lot more competition.
Once you get there you’ll pick up two quests: The Great Egg Hunt and A Tisket, a Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket. The Great Egg Hunt is a repeatable daily for the duration of Noblegarden, the other is just handy as we will soon find out.
Accept both quests and then equip the basket you got from the Tisket quest. Then make yourself this nifty little macro:
You’re here to pick up Brightly Colored Egg – lots of them – 205 to be exact. So all you have to do is spam your shiny new macro and the speed boost you get from the basket will be up almost all the time. The macro also opens all your eggs so you don’t even have to mess with them at all. Run circles around the Inn at first to get a feel for where the eggs spawn, and then gradually broaden your search until you find a path to run over and over again that you like and yields a few eggs with each circuit.
Don’t turn in the quest A Tisket, and just keep the temporary basket. We want to get all this done without wasting the 10 chocolates. So just run around for an hour or two and then see if you’ve lucked out or not.
Honestly, it’s pretty much just get eggs until you have around 200 chocolates. Once you’ve got 205, check your bags to see if you’ve gotten a tux set or a dress, Spring Robes, Spring Flowers, and Blossoming Branch. If you do, you’re done. Just hit up the Noblegarden vendor and buy your rabbits foot, and a Noblegarden Egg.
Now you can get down to completing the random-ish achievements that are left. Here is a list, and they are pretty self-explanatory so I won’t go into them in-depth.
The only tricky one is Hard Boiled, and it’s less tricky than sort of a pain – especially for toons under lvl 50. So you might read the comments at Wowhead on that one. Other than that you’re all done. We were able to complete the whole thing in a little under 3 hours on our first toon, so now that you know what to do and what not to do you should be able to Dominate this one even quicker than we did.
If you’re level 80 and bored out of your skull, listen up. Need some quick cash? Looking for a thrill? Want to actually Kill a raid boss for a change? Onyxia has been steamrolling newbs for years now. But hey, you’re 80 and there’s no more crazy attunement quest, why not give it a shot? Still not convinced?
Here are the top 5 reasons why Onyxia is the girl for you:
For the kind of cheapo who’s using Netherweave Bags or god knows what else; Onyxia drops one to two 18 Slot Bags Guaranteed.
Sleeping beauty will give you a Retro Raid Achievement for killing her, and she’ll also help a lot with “Got My Mind on My Money”.
You’re playing a fantasy MMO, I’m pretty sure slaying Dragons is in the EULA you didn’t even bother skimming. She’s Cute and She drops Tier 2 Helmets for all you armor collectors plus some decent DE-ables. Not to mention you can succeed with a party of less than three where 40 players once failed (Even if they were 20 Levels lower than you).
With all the wiping you’re headed for in end game raid content, you’ll need plenty of practice your battle cries. “Whelps! Left Side!”, “More Dots! More Dots Now!” and “THAT’S A FIFTY DKP MINUS!” are a few classics you’re sure to fall in love with.
Scraping between couch cushions for repair funds? This little lady has 100 – 180 gold she’d be more than willing to share with you. While you can only kill her once a week, she is still a very good way of making some quick gold to supplement your income.
So now that you’re interested Besting this Black Dragon, you’ll need a few pointers before taking her down.
Bring a Friend – Although it’s possible to solo this it’s best to bring a friend to the fight. A healer is required; so unless you’re a self healing tank you’re out of luck doing this solo. Yeah you may have to split the loot, but the fight goes much quicker with a Healer/DPS team.
Take it Slow – She has ~1.1 million hit points which you will whittle down over three phases. My fastest solo kill took me 28 minutes and fastest duo took 13, so expect a long fight.
Heals are Key – This isn’t a difficult fight, but it’s long. Onyxia doesn’t do much in the way of damage and you’ll find the healer can often get some DPS in. Don’t let this lull you into a false sense of security, make sure to keep an eye on health bars.
Position Yourself – She has three phases, in the first and last phase she does a wing buffet that knocks back. Make sure that the tank (who happens to also be main DPS) positions themselves up against a wall to avoid getting knocked into whelps.
Now all that’s left is a quick run through of the phases: Onyxia will hit the tank with Cone attacks (Flame Breath, Wing Buffet, Cleave) and Tail Swipe behind her. Tank should run behind her and tank against the back wall. Onyxia spawns Whelps (Adds) periodically that must be killed quickly. Then Target Onyxia in the air and DPS. (You can Melee her in the air by standing beneath her). She deals Melee Damage as well as shoot Fireballs at players. She lands once again and retains all phase 1 Abilities plus, an added AoE Fear. Follow Phase 1 Strategy until shes dead.
Now, next time you’re bored or strapped for cash, grab a friend or two and show this Dragon who’s boss!
“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,”
Somwhere someone mentioned due diligence. At minimum this means the authors claims should add up. Suggesting we do things in a particular order to achieve a specific result hinges on those options being available, at least for the first rotation. .In this case KS is unavailable till the final rotation.
leaving us with less DPS than promised.
Let me say, thanks for taking the time to research and write the article while providing us with additional sources to learn from, but the authors theory does not stand primarily due to a lack of due diligence. Gavin Says:
Spiker, this is not a case of lack of due diligence. The fact is that there is no way of knowing when KS will be available, so we can’t publish a shot rotation that looks like this:
That would just be ridiculous, so instead you have to truncate the rotation. Even the above ‘full’ list of shot ‘rotation’ will not always be the case. On a 75 mob in Zul Drak you might never get to use KS at all, while on Thaddius you might have to repeat the SpS/MS/AS/SS portion 20 times before KS becomes available.
This is not the fault of the listing in a priority based rotation. Neither does it show a lack of understanding or even poor thinking and representation. It’s that there is no clean way to say for sure exactly which buttons YOU are going to push in every single fight in the game. It can’t be done.
So any “rotation” for any toon will always be very situational. The priority based lists above are as good as you can get. Use KS when you can in that particular spot in the rotation. In other words, you go SpS/MS/AS/SS until KS is available and then prioritize KS over MS but after SpS just like we said.
To put KS anywhere else when it IS available would be a nerf to your DPS. Lawbringer even mentions this in another part of the thread when someone took us to task about the subject of AimS vs. MS. There is no single perfect rotation, there is no way to write one out for every single fight you will ever be in.
So the premise does hold plenty of water. The problem is that there is more water than there are buckets. This is also not our direct theory, only our review of a fabulous spreadsheet for testing DPS. When we review a headphone set, it doesn’t mean we didn’t do our due diligence in recommending it because someone has an enormous melon and they hurt his huge head.
So in a way, you are correct. You cannot use KS every time through, in this way you cannot achieve max DPS as listed. However, you have to mention KS in there somewhere in order to get max DPS when it is available. So what would you have us do?
So for kicks, here is a redo of the portion of the article you took issue with us on, hopefully formatted and reworded in a way that meets your personal tastes. Parenthetical references denote changes.
The Shot Rotation – (SpS/MS/AS/SS)
It’s basically use all your shots that do damage in the order listed above then repeat ad infinitum, (until KS becomes available and then it will change to this:)
SpS/KS/MS/AS/SS
You will do a LOT more DPS using (these) rotations.
I still think this is an unnecessary construct, and probably most people understand a priority based listing of skill usage. Almost everything has cooldowns that must be taken into account. When you look at ‘best DPS’ rotations for ele shamans you end up with the same quandary. The cooldowns never match up quite perfectly so you might add and extra LB in the standard rotation every 2 or three times through, but you might not if you are moving or any number of other variables.
We only ask that you read between the lines a little bit with us on things. We’re not writing a book of scriptures here. If we tried to think up and write down every possible itty bitty detail the articles would be four times as long and not really offer better and more complete information.
So you’ll have to excuse us if we abbreviate, condense and/or distill things from time to time in the interest of brevity. It certainly doesn’t mean we didn’t follow through. When we don’t feel comfortable giving advice we don’t. When the advice is solid we do and you can be sure we did plenty of due diligence both in research and in-game testing on every single thing we do.
Brand new 80s in quest reward blues are just as worthless as a level 1 Orc hunter named LoknLodLol collecting Scorpid Worker Tails in the Valley of Trials. Nobody knows you, nobody likes you.
Sure, you can do 5-mans. You could spend the rest of your WoW life killing Gul’darah over and over, but the hard truth is that if you want to ever see the real content you will have to raid.
Blizzard’s site makes a great (cough) effort to introduce new players to the playable classes in the game, but there’s nothing on there about how to raid. I guess they figure you’ll just have to figure all that out for your dang self.
The class players think they are playing from levels 1-80 is not the class they actually will play when they start raiding. Once you hit the level cap, the wonderful diversity of the ten different classes disappears – and is replaced with “Tank, Heals, and DPS.”
Yes, all that leveling your way through Azeroth and Outland, running heroics, farming for mats for crafted epics, getting the right jewels, glyphs, enchants, researching talents and optimum ability rotations, will finally get you to the point where you can confidently say: “/r I can DPS.” Three to six months of effort condensed into 7 letters – .
Then, when you feel like you can use those seven letters, you get another whisper: “Whats your bonus spell dmg?” (Remember, nobody knows you!) When you reply 1650, you will be called a noob and go on someone’s ignore list. But don’t worry! Pester people long enough and eventually you will find a raid so desperate for people they will invite you – and subsequently blame you for everything that goes wrong. Then you, my friend, can officially call yourself a raider.
This guide is for those of you who find, or have found yourself in this situation, and will help you deal with the political aspects of raiding. Within the realms of “Tank, Heals, and DPS,” there is a completely separate level of classes. Raid Leader, Scapegoat, Latecomer, and Lootard, just to name a few. Knowing the ins and outs of these classes and how to deal with them is necessary if you ever want to set foot in Ulduar, or eventually, fight the Lich King himself.
Part 1 – The Raid Leader
We will begin with the guy who probably is the one who has you on ignore; the Raid Leader. Nine times out of ten the Raid Leader is the Main Tank (well maybe 7, but MT Raid Leaders can make 1 run feel like 2). He’s cleared 25 Naxx with 12 people at least a hundred times this week, and certainly doesn’t NEED your help, especially with your laughable spellpower. Here’s a little overview of the Raid Leader:
This is where all your research on boss fights will help. All you have to do to not be labeled a noob and kicked out by the Raid Leader is not do anything overly stupid. Fortunately for you, you will be surrounded by people doing stupid things, so as long as your stupid is not as bad as someone else’s stupid, you’ll avoid the Raid Leader’s wrath.
Stupid happens because no one takes the time to know what they should actually be trying to do. This is supposed to be the raid leaders’ job, but he’s done the fight so many times he’s tired of telling the 4,000th nub how to do it.
So, when asked to explain the boss encounter the Raid Leader will either
1) ignore the question or
2) provide an absolutely terrible explanation.
Unless you are raiding with experienced people in a raiding guild, SOMEONE will inevitably do something wrong (stupid). The Raid Leader will then pick a random player (usually one not in vent and therefore unable to defend himself) and blame the wipe on them.
To ensure that this player is not you, immediately join in the ridicule and explain the fight yourself during rezzing/corpseruns. Not only will your explanation be far better than the Raid Leader’s (even if it is stupid), the next time he picks a random player to blame the wipe on, it won’t be you.
Even though he’s a jerk, the raid leader took the initiative to tear people away from their other important duties, like:
collecting reward-less achievements
getting haircuts at the barbershop
standing in front of the Dalaran bank
the lofty debates of trade chat (philosophy, politics, and doodie jokes)
So, even if you can’t find a way to avoid his verbal abuse, don’t let it get you down. Just make sure to verbally abuse someone else more. Trust me, with all the ’stupid’ flying around in raids, finding that person won’t be too hard.
That person is the Scapegoat, who will be the subject of Part II. Be sure to check back so you can learn a little more about how to Dominate, not get Dominated or perhaps just remind yourself why you already do.
We’re not sure if all of you read the responses in the threads after each of our articles. If you’re like me, you may find reading threads hurts your feelings. So if you skip them there are times you miss some fairly spirited discussions.
You also miss Gavin and Lawbringer spending the time to further clarify to readers some slightly different angles there just wasn’t time or space to cover in the post itself. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to treat these rather longish posts we do and have decided to bring them to the top for you to read as a full post (you know how long-winded Law can be).
So our first post begins below. And we’ll keep this up unless you think it’s dumb, but we’ll put up the best responses from Gavin and Law on subjects that just need more answers after an article. Enjoy!
I think I actually feel stupider having read that.
You have a Main Spec and an Off spec. Nothing has changed. Just the ease of switching. If your raiding as a healer 90% of the time, then that is your main spec. If you want DPS to be your Main Spec then do it. If this doesn’t suit your guild, then find a new one, or recruit a new healer, and kick the scrub DPS that cant hold his own.
I’m a DK. I raid as DPS, and have a tank offspec. I occasionally need to tank in raids. I used to have to port back and respec. Now its a click. Doesn’t mean I bid against our actual tanks for gear. Once they have the items they want, its defaulted to me anyway.
If your so selfish that you think you getting your DPS gear so you can do your dailies is more important that your guilds progression, then best of luck to you. If your having issues with others in your guild rolling on offspec items, then pull them up. Dont complain and think that blizzard has to implement a new loot system. Thats just plain wrong.
Milesy.
Lawbringer responds:
Maybe you were stupid already?
Just a jab dude. Relax, I agree with you to some degree. People should do what they do best in raids. The point of the article is that unless you have a completely iron-fisted guild you will not be able to enforce things in the same ways going forward.
So you are correct, for the “serious” raiding guild this is going to sound preposterous. And as a GM getting a Chicken set is the last thing on my mind in reality (mostly because a chicken in tree gear aint too shabby – selfish would be rolling against rogues on feral crap).
My problem with your overall logic is that it conflicts with itself. You mention it would be ’selfish’ to roll on some types of gear, yet you want to kick the scrub DPS that can’t own.
So which is it? If you are more like our guild, we are already pulling people up as you say, and AS we pull up a pally we make sure they have ALL the gear they need for what we need the toon for considering, of course, what they WANT to be doing.
I also mentioned in the article that this will not be a big problem in the majority of guilds. We are generous and mostly geared anyway, so handing a DK some tank gear is not an issue at all. Neither are 90% of our rolls. We already do distribute gear as fairly as we possibly can anyway.
I wasn’t complaining, I was stating a fact, and the real fact is that this IS going to be an issue with pug runs, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with building 2 sets of gear for ONE toon. I’m sure you have people in your guild that started an completely new toon to fill another role. What’s wrong with having someone play two roles on one toon?
So are you saying that if someone in your guild gets a little tired of tanking you just force them out? Or not let their mage join the guild? So why not let them go DPS and really build a set that can help your guild progress that way as well?
My real thought is that dual specs may do more to help any guild progress than anything else, but only if you let people build decent gear sets for their second build.
You can say main spec is main spec and main spec aint off spec and all that stuff just like I knew some of you would. But the reality is that unless you are going to actually boot people for this, it’s going to come up – and soon. Then you will either deal with it harshly, or conform.
Agreed that it may never come up for you a lot. we have a very casual and friendly environment and it will stay that way. But we will also allow our members to explore other options than being pigeonholed into a single role for the rest of their wow existence.
We also won’t make them leave and join another guild if they want to stop tanking. Much better to gear them to the teeth in TWO specs than saying – NO PUNK YOU ARE A TANK AND THAT”S YOUR MAIN SPEC AND MAIN SPEC IS MAIN SPEC AND MAIN SPEC NUB GET OVER IT NO ROLLING ON ANYTHING BUT MAIN SPEC OR GET OUT.
Pretty harsh – and that is sort of the point I was trying to make. IF you are really interested in gearing your entire guild to perform at maximum ability, you’re going to allow them to gear their second spec. I would certainly want your DK OT gear to be as good as possibly so you could actually do as terrific a job tanking as you did on DPS.
So in the end I’m not so sure we disagree all that much except for the fact that you are all hot and bothered about me saying that the term Main Spec is odd now. Keep it if you like, you don’t have to agree with my terminology. But if you’ve already been gearing an off spec when we truly had off specs and not a second current spec then how can you possibly complain when I think we should see more of that – whether we like it or not?
I never said the loot system was broken either. I wasn’t complaining at all – I like it. I think that group and raid leaders are going to have to take a new dynamic into account during loot rolls. Players expectations are about to shift, and they very well could be dramatic.
Blizz already did something. I like it. Blizz doesn’t have to do anything about a new loot system, they never have. Blizz didn’t invent DKP, SK or any of that stuff. Players did. Players invented those systems to combat what they saw as inherent inequities in loot distribution. Now that paradigm is shifting and those loot systems will have to shift again in some way.
What I actually see is more dynamic loot rolling systems that adds weighted values for 1st spec, 2nd spec, participation points and a little bit of suicide roll in there to randomize it more and prevent point hording. We’re actually working on an algorithm around here to do that sort of thing. We’ll let you know when it’s ready for testing.
So you’ve really missed the point somehow. Your argument is not with me. The person you are chewing out above is not the guy who wrote the article. Best of luck to you sir, and as always – Dominate.
Just when you thought you had it all figured out Blizz comes along and throws a huge wrench in loot rolling. I’m not sure anyone really saw it coming either. We were all so happy to get dual specs that we didn’t take into account the other things it might affect.
Now, Dual specs have certainly made a number of problems go away completely. Perhaps the nicest for me is the fact that BG’s and Dailies are no longer a big hassle as a healer. I just pop into my chicken suit and blast away. Another nice thing we have noticed is that it is much easier to build a raid group because now you really CAN bring the best available player instead of a particular must-have spec or class.
But dual specs have already begun to toy with one of the foundational concepts of loot rolling in pugs – the concept of main spec. For as long as I can remember, the only toons allowed to roll on a piece of gear were those people whose current raiding spec was directly suited to the gear that dropped.
But with dual specs, even in limited raiding after the patch, I have seen dual specs come into question in over 30% of loot roll situations. And we’re not talking about loot ninjas here either – that’s just in our guild only runs. In pugs dual spec comes into play in more like 50% of all roll situations, so it’ is something that is going to have to be addressed.
Now before you roll your silly little eyes at me, let’s look at this a little deeper shall we? You can scoff and just say – main spec is main spec is main spec and main spec rolls and main spec should main spec for main spec it’s all main spec dummy. But you’re going to have to face the fact that the game as far as loot rolls is concerned just got blowed up.
Dual specs made main spec an obsolete term
The only time that you can actually say that anyone has a main spec any more is in the case of the person who either cannot afford to dual spec or refuses to play more than one spec. Personally I get FORCED to play heals on every toon Ive got – even though my self-declared MAIN spec on my paladin is DPS. So if I came to the raid to heal because I was forced to, does that mean I can’t roll on Ret gear against the Ret pally that’s in the raid who has Ret gear worse than mine and is doing a crummy job DPS’ing and refuses to spec heals? You can see the inequity here. This is also bolstered by the fact that the expectation of players has changed, and the shift will only get more dramatic.
Fundamentally Loot roll systems are: methods of determining how to distribute loot in a way that seems fair to everyone in relationship to their expectations. It has nothing to do with what is actually best for everyone involved, but what is best based on a balance between round robin and need.
It’s crazy subjective, and there is no clean system until Blizz implements some kind of deal where every single bit of gear in the entire game is class gear such as the Tier sets. Until and unless Blizz forces loot restrictions on every item you won’t be able to cleanly distribute every thing that drops. and that’s probably never going to happen.
The point is that players now EXPECT to be able to roll on loot for both specs, and it’s only going to get worse.
So you might as well get used to the fact that the game is GOING to go that way. No one is going to spend 1,000g for that second spec and then just sit there happily content with crappy gear for the spec. Plus, when you consider that the main reason for implementing dual specs was to make raiding more fun and easier to group up for, you’ve got a whole other level of pressure to conform to the new mindset.
Two weeks ago it was a luxury to have four real tanks in a raid just for the 4 horsemen fight. It was a luxury to have 6 healers for Patch, it would be nice to not have 6 healers for Thaddius, how cool to have a few less melee DPS for KT? You can have all of that now and never replace a single raid team member.
Go ahead and bring four warriors if you like. Two of them can go DPS for 90% of the instance and switch to tank for the 2 or 3 fights where an extra tank is needed. Have a few guys that are decent healers and great DPS (shammies and druids perhaps)? Awesome, you can just choose how many healers or DPS you need before a fight. The variations on this theme are now virtually endless.
I can actually envision a time coming to a raid near you where you will begin to pick your raid members NOT based on their main spec but on their versatility. You might begin to exclude those guys who can ONLY tank in favor of those folks who can tank well and DPS well too.
You used to demand that DPS toons be capable of 2k before they would be allowed in your run. Now you can really get picky and ask for a tank that’s hit capped and also does 2k in DPS spec. That dude makes a MUCH better addition to the raid than the one trick pony – but we still want to limit people rolling on that one trick? It’s preposterous, a formula for uber failure.
Here’s what’s going to happen – people will put up with the old status quo of only rolling on main spec for about a month, then they will simply refuse to run with you any more unless they are allowed to roll for both specs. You can act all tough if you want and say fine your loss, but so many people will do it and so much sooner than you think that you will ultimately have no one willing to run under the old loot roll systems.
Guilds may have an easier time with this since Karma, DKP, Loot Council or whatever system you use will work just fine for this. Dominate was using a DKP variation that allowed for people to pick up loot for an off spec when off specs existed. My contention is that the only off specs left in the game are those that are not on your talent bar.
The off spec on my druid is feral. I have no kitty or bear gear and shouldn’t be rolling on any unless the stuff is just going to go to shard. Even then, as GM I have to consider that the shard is probably worth more to the guild than me getting some bit of gear that I will never ever use.
So my new definition for off spec is a build NOT in your current book. If it’s not in your current book there is NO WAY you are rolling on the item – period. If the off OFF spec was really important to you at all it would be one of your two builds.
New Term = Current Builds
So let’s coin a new term here – Current Builds. There is no such thing as main spec any more. There may be a priority system where you use one current build more than the other, but frankly even though I spend 90% of raids in tree form, I spend more overall time in Boomkin. I would like to get some chicken specific gear as well, and the only place I can get that sort of stuff that is better for a chicken over my tree gear is in big heroic raids. And I’m not alone.
I have an idea for a new rolling system that will take all of this into account, but unfortunately it needs to be well thought out and massaged before it will be of any real use to you. But I do want to grab all of you raid leaders by the lapels and give you a directive before we close this discussion.
IF you EVER ask a raid member to change current builds in the raid – you are flat out WRONG if that person is not allowed to roll on gear for both specs. If you ask a person to play a role they don’t necessarily want and they are doing you a favor by using another current build for your raid you are wrong if you don’t allow them to roll on gear for the preferred spec just because you made them play the other build.
Think about it in terms of the situation we talked about above. If you bring along a warrior specifically for his dual role capability – he does you no good if his DPS gear blows. He does you even less good if his tanking gear is sub par. You simply cannot ask people to play more than one role without allowing them to obtain gear for both sets.
So while I still think that the term off spec has even more power than ever for limiting rolling on gear, I do firmly believe that the term Main Spec is now completely useless. At least in the fact that someone’s Main Spec may now be Two Specs. In that case there is no single main spec, but rather Current Builds that they can use to help your raid win or help your guild progress.
People have been crying for a while now that you should take the player, not the class. Now that you really can, you have to reward the player and NOT the build. You have to allow players to build gear sets for their current builds. And it’s not like someone can just declare a build and go rolling on everything either. This is just as verifiable as anything else we’ve ever based selecting raid members on.
Armory the guy and see if both specs are worth a dang. Have them show you both sets of gear. Although you need to allow people to roll on both gear types, that doesn’t mean you have to let the guy who just built a new second build grow his second set in your 25 man Naxx either.
You can put the same kinds of quality restrictions on this concept as you have with all the other systems. This just allows you to finally choose team members based on what it should have been all along – skill. So allow those skilled players to get the gear they need to Dominate in either of their current builds. It will make your team just that much better, and every member of every raid you ever lead will appreciate the fact that you were ahead of your time in this matter. Dual specs are awesome, don’t let your archaic loot rolling ideals ruin them.
We sacrifice all the time for our readers. In order to show you how to do things faster and better than anyone else on your server, it generally takes us a lot of time and effort in research and testing. Some of the things we mention may not sound like a big deal, and yeah you can look up the info for yourself, but isn’t it just a lot better to let us do all the work and take advantage of the tips?
We thought so. So here’s a mini tip for the day for a little general achievement that might also put some gold in your pocket if you play it right. We did a survey of all the available vendor drinks in the game to see if there was a fast and easy way to get the achievement “It’s Happy Hour Somewhere.”
Turns out there were lots of tips that were just plain old dumb. “Just get the thing hardly anyone has or even knows about and get these drinks.” “Get these 6 drinks during the Darkmoon Faire.” Sigh, follow the advice of most goobers and you’ll be running all over the world for months on end and still not have this achievement.
But we dug a little deeper and found a way for you to get 25 different drinks in about 30 min or less. And while you’re there picking up the things for yourself for your own toons, you might as well grab a few extras for sale at the AH. The only thing you’ll have to do to make this work is advertise the drinks for sale in trade chat to make sure people know they are there and why they might want to get them.
Keep in mind that mages can make 9 different drinks that also count, but if you find yourself fresh out of mages on your friends list there is a 100% vendor route you can take and still get 25+ drinks in less than an hour – a lot less.
So here is how you do this, it’s really short and sweet. You’ll need to be at least level 75, and honestly this achievement isn’t really worth working on before that anyway. You can finish this deal with only 3 vendors.
Arille Azuregaze in the Legerdemain Lounge, Dalaran – buy all 6 beverages.
Boots at area 52, Netherstorm – buy all 15 of his beverages.
Barkeep Kelly in Old Hillsbrad Foothills – buy 5 of his beverages.
And that’s all there is to it. If you do it in this order you can start in Dalaran, port to Shattrath and fly to area 52, port from Shatt to Azeroth and fly out to Gadget/run to CoT. You’ll be done in 15 min if you’re fast. If you’re good at math you can even see you’ll have one more than the 25 beverages you need.
Of course, this assumes you’ve opened the CoT instances, but all you have to do to get into Old Hillsbrad is do the walk-around quest from Nozdormu. It’s boring but easy so we figured anyone could handle that part.
Stock up with a few stacks of everything Barkeep Kelly sells. Normally Rumsey Rum Black Label sells pretty well anyway, and since Kelly is the only place you can get 5 of these beverages it’s worth it to pick up about 100 of each for the AH.
(disclaimer about some people are complainers when this type of advice doesn’t work in like 10 seconds on their server so don’t do this unless you have 20k gold already even though it will only cost you about 5 gold to get 500 drinks or something really simple and ridiculously small but we can’t have QQ’ers spamming up the threads because it makes my face hurt)
Anyway this makes a quick way to grab an achievement and maybe make a little extra pocket or repair change. If the turn on the AH works out well for you (remember to spam trade chat that you’re selling rare drinks for the achievment) you might want to make the trip to OHb a regular run. It’s not super Dominating but making some gold off of getting an achievement in record time aint bad either.
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