Frost Tree Blood Presence Build Tops Charts In 3.3

Every now and then, a patch makes a big change to a class.  You don’t always see the changes coming, and it often takes people a while to adjust.  With a theoretical maximum of 9923 – this build rivals even mages for chart topping Domination

Gear

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=18133075

Since the build at simcraft didn’t contain the Pawn scales for this profile, you’ll just have to make do with looking for the best-in-slot gear from the profile itself.

Talent Build

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=18133075#talents

Glyphs

Major

• Frost Strike
• Obliterate
• Disease

Minor

• Horn of Winter
• Pestilence
• Raise Dead

Runes

• Rune of the Fallen Crusader – Main Hand
• Rune of Razorice – Off Hand

This is one case where the minor glyphs are as much a part of the build as the Major glyphs.  Having the Horn of Winter glyph moves the horn of winter ability to the bottom of the priority list, although you will want horn of winter up before the pull for obvious reasons.  We’ve also included the rune forging choices for each weapon to bring the entire thing in line with the build.

Priorities

• Blood Presence
• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Dragonfin Filet
• Auto Attack
• Raise Dead
• Icy Touch
• Plague Strike
• Pestilence
• Howling Blast
• Deathchill
• Obliterate
• Blood Strike
• Blood Strike/Death Strike
• Frost Strike
• Empower Rune Weapon
• Howling Blast
• Horn of Winter

You can see that although this is quite a bit more complex than the Arcane mage priority list, it’s nothing compared to something from the Blood build rotations you’ve seen in the past.  As you look at the chart below you get a good feel for just how easy this can be.  Your mele weapon white swings do a big chunk of your DPS, so after you hit Empower Rune Weapon you can just wait for the Howling Blast cooldown, hit it and then start back with Icy Touch.  Just be sure to throw in a raise dead whenever you can.

We know that the temptation is to mash buttons like a fiend, but it is really hard to argue with the numbers here.  There are other DK DPS builds in the Starfox file with Priority lists that include internalized rotations – in more than one spot.  If I want to think that hard about what I’m doing I’ll go engineer a bridge or something.  The great thing about this build is that the priority list is simple and it does ridiculous DPS.

Damage Sources

Obviously the fellow who built this profile doesn’t go in for Pawn scales (you might not use them either) so you’ll have to live without them in this case. Considering that this build should handily beat any other DK build for DPS and it has a painfully simple rotation (yes I know we’re not calling it a rotation any more) for a DK, you just might find yourself falling in love with beating almost everyone but rogues and mages (and the odd feral druid who knows what they are doing) while Dominating with this build.

19 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Welcome to the second insance of Icecrown Citadel: Frozen Halls last time I did a guide on Forge of Souls, now, here’s my guide on Pit of Saron.

Pit of Saron (3 bosses)

This is the second wing of the dungeon complex known as the Frozen Halls, located within Icecrown Citadel. The The Forge of Souls must be completed before a player can access the Pit of Saron, and this dungeon must be completed in order to access the Halls of Reflection.

Quests

Trash

<Cult of the Damned>

• Deathwhisper Necrolyte - Interupt Conversion Beam to reduce shadow damg.
• Deathwhisper Shadowcaster – just shadowbolts.
• Deathwhisper Torturer – Curses and debuffs.

Ymirjar ,Wrathbone and Other undead

• Ymirjar Deathbringer -Shadowbolts.
• Ymirjar Flamerbearer-Firebolts and does hellfire best to kill them first.
• Ymirjar Wrathbringer-meele.
• Ymirjar Skycaller with Iceborne drake- does Glacial Strike with healers must get off fast since drake and rider do frost damg.
• Wrathbone Coldwraith- Interupt frezzing Circle as much as possiable.
• Wrathbone Laborer – Meele.
• PlaugeBorn Horror-stay out of poison areas.
• Ghouls – Meele.
• Fallen Warrior-Meele

Boss Guides

Forgemaster Garfrost

A master of Scourge weaponry, the forgemaster hauls stocks of saronite ore and other precious materials to the cold forges where the mechanisms of death are born. With a host of rime weapons and exotic alloys at his disposal, it could get cold in here.

Garfrost smash

Abilities

TIPS

• Garfrost’s main attack outside of basic melee is to throw saronite boulders at ranged players. The boss emote appearing above only is displayed to the player who actually has a boulder heading his/her way. Thrown boulders carry a large amount of kinetic energy and will both knock a player back and deal tremendous damage to anyone foolish enough to stand in its shadow.
• At 66 and 33%, Garfrost AoE stomps the instance, then jumps over to one of the two forges in his room and reforges his weapon to increase his frost damage dealt by 50% (100% in Heroic mode). While Garfrost is in his corner it’s important that the tank (and everyone else as well) should stand behind a saronite boulder and let the stacking debuff wear off.
• After the second phase transition, Garfrost’s +frost damage bonus has increased to +100% (+200% on Heroic). Garfrost will use Deep Freeze on random players in the party. Make sure the player is at full health (and shielded if possible) when the debuff wears off, as Deep Freeze hits hard.

Krick and Ick

Zombies serve as mindless muscle in the Pit of Saron’s mines, stockpiling metals for Forgemaster Garfrost, and Krick – a devious leper gnome – supervises the operations from atop Ick, Krick’s ghastly means of transportation (Master Blaster anyone?).

TIPS

• For the most part, this is a fairly simple fight with a lot of movement. When engaging Krick and Ick, Ick will stick to basic melee, while Krick will ride atop Ick’s back, firing globs of poison that will land and create a field of poison.
• Krick yells: No, that one! That one! Get that one! Krick will target a random player. Whoever is targeted (except the tank) must immediately run away(not back-pedal), kiting Ick around the area taking care to not get cornered. Ick’s attack power is increased, so do not get caught.
• Krick yells: Quickly! Poison them all while they’re still close!-Ick will cast a poison nova, which is a point-blank AoE that deals extremely high damage (around 30k on Heroic) followed by a DoT ticking for 1500/6000 every three seconds. It only has an 18 yard range, so run away while he’s winding up, as it’s a five second cast or use the crates as a Line of Sight (to be confirmed). Healers: Decurse/cleanse or whatever else here is far more valuable than any heal you’ve got.
• Krick yells: Enough moving around! Hold still while I blow them all up! In this attack, Ick remains stationary while Krick continuously summons mines at every player’s position for 18 seconds. Said mines explode after a few seconds, so keep moving.

Scourgelord Tyrannus

Tyrannus is a terrible force who will no doubt demonstrate his powers to those brave enough to enter the Pit of Saron. The scourgelord must die if players hope to make their way into the third and final wing of this dungeon

Abilities

• Forceful Smash – Knocks an enemy back with a powerful blow, inflicting 28275 to 31725 Physical damage.
• Overlord’s Brand – Brands an enemy with the mark of Tyrannus, causing all damage dealt by the Branded foe to be mirrored to the caster’s primary target, and all healing done by the Branded foe to be amplified and mirrored to the caster.
• Unholy Power – Empowers the caster with dark might, increasing physical damage by 75% but reducing movement speed by 50% for 10 sec.

Rimefang

• Mark of Rimefang – Marks a target for attack by Overlord Tyrannus’s frostwyrm, Tyrannus.
• Hoarfrost – Deals 4813 to 6187 Frost damage to enemies within 8 yards of the point of impact and stuns them for 5 sec.
• Icy Blast – Deals 4813 to 6187 Frost damage to enemies within 7 yards of the point of impact.
• Icy Blast – Reduces movement speed by 75% and inflicts 2313 to 2687 Frost damage per 2 sec. on those caught within the lingering icy chill.

TIPS

• Tyrannus deals fairly heavy damage and can spike with Forceful Smash, so keeping the tank constantly at full is very important.
• Scourgelord Tyrannus roars and swells with dark might! Which he seems to do after a Forceful Smash. This will double Tyrannus’ damage and movement speed, possibly overwhelming the tank. To survive this, the tank needs to drag Tyrannus over the frost patches created by Rimefang, which will slow him and allow you to kite him around (the range of the patches are generously large for slowing Tyrannus, so it’s possible to simply skirt him over the edges to slow him). Once Empower wears off, you can return to tanking him normally.
• The only other major thing to watch for is Overlord’s Brand. Any DPS that receives this needs to immediately stop doing damage, as any damage they deal will also be done to the tank in addition to Tyranus’ own damage. Additionally, if a healer is marked with the brand, all heals done will be amplified and then mirrored on Tyrannus. but this isn’t as bad as it simply prolongs the fight a little.

And that sums up Pit of Saron. With the Scourge Lord dead, you’re now free to enter the fabled Halls of Reflection, the home of Frostmourne, The Lich King’s legendary weapon. We will be covering that in the next part of this series.

5 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Welcome my name is Gustava and this is my guide to the new five mans in 3.3. I will be going over new dungeons in this guide. Players will be getting a starting quest from one of the NPCs in their factions’ area in Dalaran then head West to the citadal. On the right-hand side of the citadal on the top rampart (2nd floor) there will be a small opening that the Ashen Verdict has blasted throught that leads to the five man instances. They have the be completed in sequence the first time you ever do them and you can then enter whichever you want once the pre-requisit dungeon has been completed. This applies to both Regular and heroic versions of the dungeons. So here they are in order:

Forge of souls (Two Bosses)

is the first wing of the dungeon complex known as the Frozen Halls, located within Icecrown Citadel. The instance portal is located to the left inside the secured area of Icecrown Citadel, near the meeting stone. No attunement is required for entry, but completing the instance is required to gain entrance to the Pit of Saron.

Quests-

• Inside the Frozen Citadal- Enter The Forge of Souls from the side of Icecrown Citadel and locate Lady Sylvanas Windrunner(H)/Lady Jaina Proudmoore(A).
• Echoes of Tortured Souls -Kill Bronjahm and the Devourer of Souls to secure access to the Pit of Saron.(2 Frost Emblems)

NPCS

<Cult of the Damned>

• SoulGuard Adept-Healer must always be killed first
• Soulguard Animator-The soul sickness it casts need to be Dispelled
• Soulguard Bonecaster-Casts shadow bolts
• Soulguard Reaper-Meele
• Soulguard Watchman-cast magic reflection spellcasters beware

Ghosts

• Spiteful Apparition-Random explodeing ghost
• Spectral Warden-does a dispellable debuff to tank that reduces healing to 25%
• Soul horror-Warping around  droping aggro

Bosse Guide

Bronjahm <Godfather of Souls>

He oversees some of the most disturbing devices the Scourge engineers have ever created – the Soul Grinders.

Abilities

• Magic’s Bane – Inflicts 2,500 physical damage and additional damage equal to half the tagret’s total mana. Hits all players standing close to the boss, but does not exceed 10,000 physical damage.
• Shadow Bolt – Inflicts 2,828 to 3,172 Shadow damage. Used if the primary aggro target isn’t in melee range.
• Corrupt Soul (Phase 1) – Channels a spell on a player for 4 seconds. Will summon a Corrupted Soul Fragment at the player’s location.
• Corrupted Soul Fragment – Attempts to move towards Bronjahm. On arrival it heals Bronjahm through Consume Soul.
• Consume Soul (Phase 1) – Consumes a Corrupted Soul Fragment and heals Bronjahm for 120,000 health.
• Teleport – Teleports Bronjahm to the center of the room. Used when Bronjahm’s health reaches 30% and marks Phase 2.
• Soulstorm (Phase 2) – Conjures a vortex surrounding Bronjahm. Players touching the boundaries are hit by Soulstorm.
• Soulstorm – Inflicts 10,000 Shadow damage and reduces movement speed by 50%. Lasts 2.5 seconds.
• Fear (Phase 2) – Fears an enemy into the vortex. Healers need to watch out for feared players.

Tips

1. Tank him near the north door of the stage.Casters keep max distance to avoid Magic’s Bane and that goes for hunters too.
2. If you have Corrupt Soul beining cast on you, run far away from the tank to create max distance to kill Soul fragment. Use any crowd control moves like chains of ice to keep fragment from getting to the boss.
3. Bunch up in central stage when he at 30% he starts casting soul storm and get ready to burn him. Using anti fear moves and if not use magic damage reduction skills.
4. Or alternately … (if your tank and healer are geared enough) Tank and Spank in the middle of the room.

Devourer of Souls

A being of unknown species.

Abilities

• Phantom Blast – Inflicts 11700 to 12300 Shadow damage.
• Mirrored Soul – The Devourer of Souls mirrors the targets soul! A percentage of damage from the Devourer of Souls is being mirrored with you.
• Well of Souls – The Devourer of Souls leaps towards a target, slamming the ground creating a Well of Souls.
• Well of Souls – Inflicts 2925 to 3075 Shadow damage.
• Unleashed Souls - The Devourer of Souls is releasing tormented souls periodically.
• Wailing Souls – Lets loose Wailing Souls, inflicting 4875 to 5125 Shadow damage to anyone infront of her and knocking them back

Tips

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Highest Mage DPS Using Best In Slot Gear From T9

Using BiS gear, excluding new content from patch 3.3, this is the  highest single target DPS there is (or was). With new Tier 10 becoming available since 3.3 hit the realms, there will be new information available soon, but since the BiS for T10 may not be available for some time now, this is as good a place as any to start.  Arcane Mages have ruled the DPS charts for some time now, and we don’t expect that to change any time soon.  Mages were designed to be the all DPS all the time channel, and this build will get you tuned in to Dominate.

Gear

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14306468

With best in slot gear the theoretical max for this build is higher than any other class or build in the game at 10,587 DPS.  The link above will show you a character paper doll screen at wowhead where you can take a peek at the gear you are looking for. This figure(DPS) is calculated based on a 300 seconds encounter on a single target, level 83 mob.

Talent Build

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14306468#talents

Glyphs

• Arcane Blast
• Arcane Missiles
• Molten Armor
• Slow Fall
• Arcane Intellect
• Fire Ward

Of course, the minor glyphs are completely up to you, but the major glyphs are a must have for maximum DPS.

Priorities

Ironically enough, this has got to be one of the simplest rotations in the game …

• Molten Armor
• Icy Veins
• Arcane Missiles
• Arcane Blast
• Trinket (On Use Items)
• Mirror Image
• Arcane Barrage (if Moving and Blast Has 4 Stack or no Missile proc)

It’s basically 2 buttons, that’s it, Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles.  Lather, rinse, repeat, throw in a Mirror Image and an Icy Veins from time to time, top the charts, mash more buttons, yawn, Dominate. As counter-intuitive as this may sound, No, you don’t use Arcane Barrage, it’s just not as cost effective. Build up with Arcane Blast and then lay down the Arcane Missiles and do it over and over.  The rest of the things in the list just increase the output of your two main spells.  You can throw in a Barrage if you are on the run and dont want to waste a 4 stack of Blast, but if you can stand still – missiles is the only way to go.

10,587 DPS Arcane Mage Single target damage spread

Like we said, pretty simple.  Hit Icy veins every time it’s up, pop your trinkets as soon as they are off cool down and the rest of the list in order.  It’s pretty much just Blast and Missiles. Use Mirror image to multiply your damage output , but keep in mind it is last on the list and should be timed properly.  You should be able to easily get them all in, however.

Pawn Scale

( Pawn: v1: “Arcane”: HitRating=3.7733, HasteRating=2.1107, SpellDamage=1.8406, Spirit=1.2953, CritRating=1.1455, Intellect=1.0797 )

As you can see Hit rating is THE biggest priority, more then Haste and SP combined! Every spell you miss is damage you’re not doing and a cool down you just wasted. If you’re already hit capped and know how to juggle when to get more hit and when to skip it for Haste, you can use the next scale:

( Pawn: v1: “Arcane”: HitRating=0.0000, HasteRating=2.1107, SpellDamage=1.8406, Spirit=1.2953, CritRating=1.1455, Intellect=1.0797 )

There is quite a bit of information for you on this page, and this write up doesn’t account for mana management, but this is something you should be fairly familiar with by now. Stay tuned for more builds in different specs for every class over the next month or so. If you liked this you’ll LOVE what’s coming next.

Don’t be Great, Dominate!

43 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Recruit your best friend …  YOURSELF!

In the 1st article we outlined the basics of the RAF program.  In this article we will explore the ways to exploit the program for maximum DOMINATION.  Some of these setups may be beyond you and/or your computer’s abilities.  It is up to you to choose the one that best fits you and enjoy the free extra xp.

Let’s start with the basic Acct setup as this is the same regardless of how you use the program.  You will end up having 2 accounts with this program, the Veteran account and the Recruit account.  The veteran account is your main account that you want a new alt on.  The recruit account is a free account you are just using to gain extra XP with.  Now lets get down to business.

1. The 1st step is to send YOURSELF a recruit a friend email using the warcraft website.  Just log into the veteran account (via the Blizzard web site) and send a RAF invite to your email address.
2. When you receive the trial offer email follow the email instructions and in no time you have a free 10day trial that is tied to your main account.  This is what can be called a disposable account. After the 10day trial, you may never use it again. Now the fun begins.

Log onto your veteran account and roll up your desired new alt.  Please keep in mind that the trial account is Vanilla WOW, so no Draenei or Blood elf quest zones are available for questing with the trial account.  You can make one of those on your main account if you wish, but the pair will not be able to use those starting areas.

Character pairing tips.

• If you make a melee based toon, I highly recommend a Shaman for the trial account if possible, but honestly any healer class will do quite well. I like the shaman because they can just drop a few totems which will buff your primary toon, then sit there ready to heal if needed. Again, maximizing benefit for least amount of work.
• If you make a caster toon, then you will probably want a melee class for the trial account. If you’re not planning to dual box, then any old toon works on the trial account as it is just going to pop up when needed.

Now that your accounts are set-up and you have rolled your toons lets discuss working the pair.  We covered Multi boxing in a previous Casual Corner article.  Make sure you read it, it covers the basics of the Multi boxing style of leveling, and nothing changes when using it for RAF.  Well nothing other than getting THREE TIMES the XP per kill and quest!

It is realy just that simple. In no time at all your new alt will be level 20 and into the fun levels, or better yet all the way to lvl 60 and ready to hammer outlands into submission!

Now I know your all asking, well what about the toons on the trial account? You have options for those toons.

• If you really want those toons, you can always pay to move them to your main account.
• Or if you want to push and get maximum boost you could turn the trial account into a full blown account, which buys you a full month of bonus XP mayhem and opens the door to RAF your way on to lvl 60 on both accounts.  An added bonus of the recruit account being a full account is that now you can trade between toons to make sure they are both geared! Plus after those 60 levels you then have 30 free levels on the trial account to hand out to another toon on the veteran account WOOT!

One last tasty RAF leveling tip;

Leap-frogging Levels:  When dual boxing try to keep the recruit toon’s lvl slightly ahead of the veteran account toon. This can let you leap-frog the veteran toon a level at the last minute before hitting 20. When the recruit toon dings to 20 and the veteran is just a hair short of 20 the recruit can gift the veteran toon a level! BAM your lvl 19 that was 99% to 20 is now 99% to 21 YEEHAA! Then turn in that last quest on the veteran and catapult into 21 in style! This also applies to lvl60 if you decide to convert the trial account into a full blown vanilla WOW account.  Get the Veteran account to lvl59.99 and then gift it a free level!

You can do similar when your gifting levels to your other alts.  Before you start gifting levels, get the verteran account alt as close as possible to going Ding THEN grant the levels.  That way you are working for cheaper lower level XP and buying your way higher into the gifted levels.

I am not a power leveler by any means.  But this system really makes power leveling possible for even the most casual WOW player, and you could soon find yourself with a fleet of 60’s ready to sprint thru outlands. At one Point in a single month I ended up with a total of six lvl 60 toons, two pairs I ran up and then a pair of toons on the veteran account that were already lvl 30 and were granted free levels to 60!

Something to  watch for

Blizzard recently did a sale on vanilla wow, it was $5.00 for the full base game, including the free 1^st month.  For $5.00 you had yourself a power leveling tool good all the way to 60! Sadly, this was a 2-day sale and is over, but keep your eyes open, you never know when they will do it again, and pricing for the base game should only drop as they release Cataclysm.

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

8 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Leveling the Hardcore Casual way

In the last few years Blizzard has made numerous changes to the “low level” game to help get players into Northrend as quickly as possible.  XP is lower per level and quest rewards are increased, leveling a toon has never been faster.  Add to that the Recruit-a-friend (RAF) program they implemented back in June 2008 to help push players into TBC content and we have an Altoholics paradise!

I am going to share a little set-up I have found quite useful for getting toons past the often tiresome lvl 1-mid 20’s, FAST.  I am talking 1-20 in a single day of relaxed playing, or a single evening after work if you use Gavin’s guide or know the start zones well.  The best part it is FREE! This article will focus on the lvl 1-20 program.  It can be adapted to help all the way to lvl 60 as well, but more on that later.

Many players do not truly understand or appreciate the RAF program.  They do not realize it can be a leveling tool; they don’t have any friends to recruit, so why pay attention right?  A few of us Milk it for every level it is worth! To begin lets cover a few key points about RAF:

• The RAF invitation includes a FREE 10day trial account for the “new player”

• Once the offer is accepted the accounts are linked for 90-days, well past the 10-day free trial (more on this later).

• This trial account is a Std trial account; it can’t trade, buy in AH, and is quite limited due to past abuses.

• The trial account is Vanilla WOW, with no access to Blood Elf or Draenei starting areas.

• When the linked accounts are partied together they both get TRIPLE XP for EVERYTHING that is not grey to them. That means mobs AND quests, but they must be partied to get the bonus.

• Each toon can summon a toon from the other account once per hour.

• For every 2 levels gained by the recruited account they can gift a free level to a lower level toon on the veterans account.

• ALL bonuses stop at lvl 60.

• After 1^st paid month on recruit acct, the veteran acct gets a free month.

• After 3 paid months the recruit account can gift one Zhevra mount to any single toon on the veteran’s account.

As you can see the benefits are quite large, and well worth exploiting.  Now that I have outlined the base program for all of you I will throw some teasers and tips out to you to get you thinking about the next article.

• Holidays;  Blizzard is now giving xp for the holiday quests, the RAF program triples this too, so take advantage and get some easy triple xp! The recent Pilgrim holiday was a a perfect example and I actually double dipped. Those that follow DYS read about how easy it was to get 1-300 cooking skill for a few gold, but each quest kicked out 3x XP using RAF!! As a toon in my teens I was seeing 3500xp per quest!

• Traveling: The free hourly summon ability is extremely handy. It works not only with the new alts, but all toons on both accounts.  What I found worked well was having the toons hearthed to different places.  Like one in Org and one in UC. Need to travel to TB or Org for a quest turn in, hearth the toon there and summon the other toon.  Need to head back to UC for training your undead priest, hearth him home, train and then summon him back.  Need to run to the next FP or quest point?  Log onto a bigger toon , fly there, then summon the other toon to you.  Log off the big toon, onto the new alt and use the trail to summon him.  Bam, in minutes you safely made the journey. I actually used that to get both toons every FP in both continents when they were only lvl 20 over the course of a week.

That’s all for now, see what trouble you can cause and as always DOMINATE.

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

2 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

In my previous article we shared a fairly common player type: the Alt-o-holic.  At times the pull of this addiction becomes so strong that simply playing one alt is not enough.  The altoholic finds themselves wishing to play multiple toons at once.  Well we, at Dominate, are here to help!

I want to introduce you all to an extreme form of Altoholism called Multi-boxing.  In the past this was typically called Dual-Boxing, but has in general changed to Multi-Boxing.  Seriously, once you have 2 toons running, why stop there! ?

Some of you that have been playing the game for a while have probably had exposure to Multi-boxing already.  Those that have experienced it on a pvp server arena, or battlegrounds most likely shudder just at the mention of Multi boxing.  This is because you are one of the thousands of victims of this cruel form of Darwinism, a true “Peace thru superior firepower” solution to pve and pvp.  For those unfamiliar with it let me paint you a picture before we go any farther.

Imagine being on a pvp server and innocently running out of Booty bay to go kill some Pirates.  You look around to make sure nobody is close to gank you, all is clear so you begin casting on a mob but suddenly about the time your spell hit it’s target POOF you are dead.  Wait, what just happened?  You spin the camera around a there stands 5 shamys all waving at you simultaneously.  You rub your eyes thinking your seeing things, they all move in one motion, maybe it’s a glitch because your pc is overheating…  While you sit there wondering what happened you whatch them all mount up and run off.

No you were not imagining it, You just got Multi Boxed!  Don’t despair, even the best player can’t overcome the sheer firepower that can be thrown out by a master Dual boxer.

Basic Set-up

There are various ways to set-up your computer(s) for what is called Multi-boxing.  That is, running 2 or more sessions of WOW at the same time. These will typically fall into one of four basic formats.

1. running multiple computers manualy
2. running multiple computers using keystroke clone software
3. running wow multiple times on one PC manually
4. running wow multiple times on one PC using keystroke clone software

Multi-boxing is a subject that can and does fill entire websites.  The set-up, macroing and software variations are far beyond what can be covered here.  For real detailed information, help and up-to-date set-ups I highly recommend visiting http://www.dual-boxing.com and http://www.multiboxing.com they have everything you need to know about how to get set-up to dual box like a pro.

• I have always in the past  used the 1st option listed.  It can be cumbersome to control and may not maximize output like the story example above, but it offers the benefits of tackling quests that require more than one character without having to look for someone to party with.
• For the last month I used option 3 with two WOW windows and I click back and forth.  Not very efficient and tedious to use, but I was up and running within seconds of logging on both toons.  There really is no “set-up” other than tiling your wow sessions like shown.
  
• Just this week I have begun the trial of using keyclone software, and while it has taken time to get going, now that I am figuring it out, it is the best way to go by far and worth a few days of research and set-up.  Having all your toons locked together and casting/healing/targeting with one keypress is jus thte best way to go.

Character pairings

The combinations and ways of pairing your Dual boxing toons are about limitless, and vary greatly based on the player’s desires and playstyle.  Usually dual boxers fall into one of two styles.

• Pure firepower
  This is a group like the one I mentioned earlier. Typically they are caster classes and rely on sheer dps to knock down anything in their way in one cast cycle, or 2 if the target is much bigger or elite.  Some people will mix caster classes like mages, priests, shaman, and warlocks, others will stick to one class.
• Balanced group
  These players will stick with two maybe 3 classes in their little party.  The group will typically have a melee toon and play more like a classic group meleeing mobs down, healing etc.  Shaman are a very common toon in these as they offer offensive casting, totems and healing in one class while still retaining some armor for defense, druids and paladins are also a great choice.  My preference is to run a Retribution Paladin lead with shaman in tow.  Plate armor and solid dps backed up by heals and caster dps plus totems..

Since I was a manual Multi-boxer in the past, I typically ran a Balanced group format.  My favorite pair by far has been pali lead and shamy follow.  The pali as we all know is a very strong solo class, add to that the shammy with totems, heal and offensive spells make a nice strong team.  Once they get up in levels they get reallt strong.  Consecrate, Chain lightning and Magma totem make a Brutal AOE grinding package from an early level.  I have run a shamy & Priest pair lately, and while strong, it does not compare to the Pali/Shamy

Now that I have a keyclone package working, I am experementing with the multi caster format and have a mage/priest pair up to lvl 6.  I know it is not much, but I have never leveled a mage past 20 so it is a start!  Talk about power though, it is something that cannot be appreciated until you try it!!  Now I am debating on making another pair of toons to try 4boxing for the 1st time.  However that requires additional accounts, and I will be covered in another article!

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

8 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.

Despite what you may believe, it’s not easy leading a guild, ask any leader who’s guild has been around for more then one or two patches. We’ll be covering various aspect of Guild Leadership over the coming months. Dominating is more than just about DPS and gear.

In the last few months there have been quite a few things going on in-game for Dominate. With new leadership, sometimes you also get new ideas. One of the biggest challenges that any guild faces on a regular basis is dealing with the guild bank, funding it and allowing access to resources.

For starters you should know that it costs nearly 10,000 gold (9350 to be precise) to get all 6 possible bank tabs so before you gripe about your rights as a member, rememeber that someone paid for the bloody thing. Every guild has it’s own system for keeping it filled and it’s own ideas about how to use it and who should have access. Of course for most guild the problem isn’t distribution of wealth, really, the real challenge is Acquisition of said wealth to distribute.

Just as in-game we strive to give you tips and tricks to make your gaming experience more enjoyable, so too in this series we’ll share with you some things that we’ve picked up along the way.

There is no single way to fund the guild bank just as there is no single way to spend the resources in it. Cataclysm will make this significantly easier with the option to tithe members whenever they loot anything. Until then, here’s a nifty and fun little way to go about it.

Submitted Anonymously

GuildLotto

The basic premise of this strategy is exactly the same as most state lotteries. everyone who wants to, buys a “ticket”. At a set date, there is a “draw” and the winner takes home a large purse (say half the pot) and the other half goes to the guild bank . You can take this concept and tweak it all you want, I’ll just detail how we at Dominate are going about it.

There will be a lottery (4 actually) that anyone can buy into. Out of all the money accumulated from “ticket” purchases, half will go to the winner and half will go to the guild bank for mats, flasks and reagents to help fund the raiding (or whatever special project you have in mind)

Dominate will host 4 lotteries:
The Lowbie lottery:

- Only open to those who don’t have a toon past 70
- Only 1 entry per person/human being (not character, not account)
- 5 gold entry
- 2 winners (50% and 25% of the pot respectively)
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Leveling Loto:

- Only one entry /human player
- Open to anyone in the guild
- 25 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Raider Loto:

- Only one entry /human
- Open to anyone in guild
- 100 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

There will also be an EPIC Lottery:

- Only 1 entry /human
- Only open to those who raid, are present or contributing in some way to Guild Raids.
- 1000 gold buy in
- 1 draw/MONTH (On the first of the month?)

Game Rules:

In order for this to work it has to be administered in fairness, impartiality and with complete transparency or you may as well just disband your guild right now.

If you ever lose the Respect and the Trust of your guildies, you are Finished as a guild Leader.

If you decide to play the Lottery you will be assigned a number (sequentialy) that will be yours as long the lottery is in place. There is no easy way to do this quickly and fairly in-game so we have to accommodate the rules of participation to the in-game mechanics available to us. In that respect, once a guild member choses to participate to the Lottery they will be attributed a number (sequential seems easiest for our purposes) and that number will not change (for admin purposes)

• All ticket purchases should be sent to a single character, created specificaly for this purpose: “<Guild>Lotto” character preferably from your main toon, stating which characters you are contributing for (Name your Alts) .
• Draws will be made from a /roll 1-xx (Where is the number of contributors) from that toon: <Guild>Loto.

• The Guild Bank will be aloted the first number to every lotery (roll 1 = Guild bank wins) but will re-roll for the lowbie Loto. Should the guild bank win a roll , the entire sum gets rolled over to next week’s Jack Pot

• If someone doesn’t want to play that week or doesn’t pay in time for the roll, and their fixed number comes up all the money is rolled over into the pot for next week’s “bouble jackpot “

• All roll will be made in the presence of at least 3 witnesses, Idealy in a raid group so everyone who’s interested can see the actual roll.

The purpose of this lottery is to supply the guild bank with sufficient funds to help out the Raiders with Flasks, Reagents, Enchants, pay for repair bills and whatever else the guild need. After all it’s a lot easier to raid when your gear is enchanted and socketed and you have flasks and repairs are paid for.

Just as there are rules for the lottery so too should there be basic rules for the administration.  Here are some guidelines:

1. Full disclosure and complete transparency (Not optional)
2. Clear, pre-established rules/guidelines as to where the money will go and who will have access to it.
3. A spreadsheet with everyone’s positions (numbers) will be made available to everyone in the guild as well as the totals for each jackpot. Web site, FTP, in-game mail, e-mail … whatever it takes.
4. Communicate with your members. Informed guild mates are trusting guild mates.

Everyone has his/her own idea of how it should be done, we’re just trying to share some ideas. Feel free to add your ideas on how you fund your guild bank, I’d love to hear about other success stories out there.

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Welcome back folks, we’ve got another budding author that has an interesting point of view to share with us, I’d like you all to welcome Wicked to our writing staff, go easy on him. -Agorg-

The Alt-o-holics’ Casual corner.

The time comes once in a while for us all to reflect back on our past and present and realize the sort of player we are and what we wish to be.

Hello. My name is Wicked, and I am an Altoholic.

The game of World of Warcraft has made exponential changes and advances since its early origin’s in November 2004. While patch 3.3 was looming menacingly over our heads, some people were scrambling to get toons leveled up, geared up, and tweaked to be ready to Dominate the new instances.  With good reason, each expansion and big patch has changed the various classes and their roles in the game, and at times it can be learning the game all over again, some people hate it, I happen to like it. You see I am a member of the vast legion of players known as: The Altoholics.

Some players live to raid. They get a single character to level 80 then spend every single moment online devoted to getting it better geared. They endlessly grind reputation, earn badges, farm mats and all the other mayhem associated with obtaining better gear. Their out of game time is spent tweaking stats in spreadsheets at work trying to find the best combination or gear or rotations to dominate the next raid.

Other players just get in game to hang out with like minded friends, do a little questing, and just generally have fun. They often do not have any particular goal in mind for their playtime beyond that simple pursuit.

Then there are the Altoholics. We are those guys that seem to play all day and night for days on end, yet only have one or two quest geared 80’s to our names. No fancy epic or badge gear, maybe not even a single epic flying mount. We rarely raid, yet we are always online playing one of countless toons.

We are the people that complain to blizzard that 10 toons slots is just not enough. Seriously how can you have one of every toon and still follow Gavin’s Advice of having a banker and mule with only 10 slots? It’s preposterous!

A typical altoholic routinely spends no more than a few days or a week on the same toon. The reasons for this can be as varied as the character names. A few common ones are;

• Some people toon hop because they are following DYS’s advice of never leveling outside of rested XP. That is probably the BEST way to maximize leveling efficiency in the game outside of the RAF program, more on that little gem in another article.

• After a time toon hopping like this players often fall into another trap as it were, though it really is more of an addiction. Who doesn’t like to go ding as often as possible, it is seriously addictive!!

• Others just flat get bored very easy. A Few days playing the same toon and we run by another class and go “Oh I have one of those, wonder what his rest xp and trade skills are like?”

• Some of us hop toon when we find guild mates, or friends of almost the same level. Or We hop to and alt to help another player or guildie and stay on the toon for a while afterwards

However at the root of every altoholic is a true love of this game universe that Blizzard has created for us. It brings us back for more until we fall asleep at our keyboards, and then has us daydreaming about it all day at work/school. It is the reason we fork out $15.00/month regardless of the economy. The love of the game has us searching for the next toon to play when we feel the tingle of boredom creeping in. The love of the game has guilds like Dominate resurrecting and reinventing themselves as outlined in Agorg’s Lifecycle of a guild article . The love of the game has altoholics like myself paying $25.00 per toon to change servers and move all of our horde alts to Fenris to join Dominate. Their format for the guild just makes sense, and any true altoholic can’t ignore a good guild when they see one.

Keep your weapons handy and, as always, DOMINATE

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Retrospect on Raiding in Wrath

Welcome to my 3.3 preview live from my time on the PTR, this is Gustava, and this week I am going to talking about dungeon updates.

Let’s look back for just a second, since Wrath is little over a year old now and the story of this saga has really changed raiding. We started in Obsidian Sanctum and the return of Black Dragons.  Twilight Drakes showed us the first taste of hard modes and fire avoidance. Then we return to a classic raid: Naxxarmas. Raised from  the depths of vanilla WoW raiders’ nightmares as a new level 80 raid with Tier 7 gear. New raiders could learn the joy of slimes, Patchwork and Deep Breaths/Frost Tombs all over again. Once you got  a key in Naxx, you can go fight Malygos bringing new meaning to fighting fire with fire – with drakes.

Ulduar opened its gates in 3.1 where hardmodes abound and new Tier 8 gear. From the massive tank opening that was way better than flying drakes in the Malygos encounter to the madness of Mimirons’ fight with a giant robot and an old God with a thousand maws. Ulduar was truly a challenge with its epic scale with some of the hard modes offering more replay value  than ever.

Following that: the Trials of the Crusader opened its doors in 3.2. The fights were new and challenging with monster beasts,  demons, champions and undead – plus the Tier 9 gear. Now all that’s left is the icy fortress of the lich king in 3.3 and a conclusion to the epic tale of Northend once and for all.  At least, we think so . . .

Icecrown Raid Difficulty Functionality (source)

We chose this particular functionality because we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

• Many bosses and creatures have had their total health reduced.
• Several bosses and creatures have had cooldowns on specific abilities increased, effect durations reduced, and damage on some of these abilities reduced.
• Ring-Lord Conjurers and Sorceresses now hang out in packs of 4 instead of packs of 5.
• Vehicle scaling on the drakes based on the rider’s item level has been increased to make them more powerful.

Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen halls (New 5-Man Dungeons)

The Frozen Halls

4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post