Not Just A Raid Buff For 25’s Any More – Shadow Holds Its Own In 3.3

Another class that gets the short end of the PvE stick because of how OP they can be in PvP is the priest.  One little change to keep these guys from melting every face in arenas and they get a little worthless for PvE – again.  But the interesting thing about 3.3 is that there doesn’t really seem to be any class that is just completely on the bottom of the pile.  Almost every class has at least one spec in the 10k range, and the priset is now no exception.

Gear

Shadow Priest Example Gear Setup

Talent Build

Shadow Spec DPS Build

Glyphs

Major

• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Flay
• Shadow

Minor

• Fortitude
• Fading
• Levitate

(As per usual; the minor glyphs are quite a matter of personal preference since they have little or nothing to do with DPS in most cases).

Priorities

1. Flask = Frost Wyrm
2. Food = Fish Feast
3. Fortitude
4. Divine Spirit
5. Inner Fire
6. Shadow Form
7. Vampiric Embrace
8. Potion of Speed
9. Shadow Fiend
10. Shadow Word: Pain
11. Vampiric Touch
12. Devouring Plague
13. Mind Blast
14. Mind Flay
15. Shadow Word: Death (if moving)
16. Dispersion

Damage Sources

Remember to run your own numbers to get your Pawn scales for your current toon.  Plus, re-run your scales in the engine every time you get a new piece of gear so that you are always completely up-to-date when it comes to making gear choices.  We show you how to do that in the Article Making Gear Choices For Your Character. It’s been so freakin’ long since Law did shadow (think leveling with Sherpaman before WotLK as in this article: The Solo Priest; You Can Do It! and The Lawbringer Rules ) that I won’t even attempt to give you insight into the priorities here, you’ll have to get that from the thread below.

But at least at this point the shadow priest is more than just a decent addition to a 25 man raid, they can actually be a big contributor on an individual basis in the form of some seriously massive, and quite Dominating, DPS of their own.

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When And What You Post Can Make A Big Difference

This one hearkens back to an old saying – since some of us are older than others (and I’m not sure they even use this phrase much any more) an intro is in order.

“That guy could sell [snow cones/refrigerators/ice cream/(anything cold)] to an Eskimo”

Yeah maybe – but wouldn’t he sell a LOT more snow cones to people in Phoenix, Arizona?  I mean there are some people that are just born with a certain amount of arrogance, and it is quite natural for that to directly translate to e-peen.  In other words, why go out of your way to sell the worst possible items at the worst possible time in the worst possible way just to prove you can sell something.  There is another old saying that I like quite a bit better:

“Work smarter, not harder.”

That, in a nutshell, is our entire gold-making system.  You can go farm, you can track hundreds of items, you can depend on your main toons’ crafting professions, you can spam trade chat, you can sell ice in Northrend . . .

As for me, I prefer smarter.  Now, being smarter doesn’t mean you’re some sort of genius.  All it means is that you track what works and what doesn’t work quite as well.  Then you have to filter that information to find out what really works best based on some sort of quantifiable number.  We can all be very subjective about things, being smart is when you set your preferences aside and just make a cold, hard decision based on cold, hard facts.

And that’s what we did.  For two years we tracked everything about everything we did that had anything to do with gold in any way.  What we came up with is a way of making gold that is based on a very simple root – time.

For a few years, I was a personal trainer.  I did the same thing with working out.  I hate working out – HATE IT.  So when I found a system that cut the time requirement down to the bare minimum and got even better results – I could do that.  And it was so simple I could teach other people how to do it as well.  The cool thing is that it works every time, for every person, regardless of age or any other factor.

And the idea rubbed off into everything else I do.  So when I started in WoW, it wasn’t long before I realized I needed more gold – a lot more.  So I applied the time factor to everything I did to make gold – and I did it all.

• My first 1000 gold farming copper, tin and bronze in Darkshore (pretty nub stuff)
• Grinding mobs for cloth
• Farming SMGY
• Farming rares for twinks
• Crafting blues
• blah
• blah
• blah

That was pre-BC.  Around the time the Burning Crusade came out, I was full tilt into the AH.  And what I found was that I could make more gold at the AH in less time than any other method.  And not just a little more gold – a LOT more.  I could scan the AH for under-priced stuff other people had farmed (copper, cloth, twinkitems) and then just re-list it for a profit and never leave IF.

And that is why I never farm – ever.  There is always someone else out there willing to waste hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of their time and sell those farmed mats to me for under market price – it’s the silliest thing I ever heard of.  Then, for about 2 minutes worth of work, I can turn right around and sell those mats for market price and make 15%-50% profit.

If I was just doing it with copper and tin it wouldn’t amount to much really.  But when you do it for EVERYTHING – it turns into a lot of gold really fast.  But I have digressed egregiously from our original premise – well, sort of.

When you begin operating an AH-only methodology, you get a really good feel for how the market moves.  And you don’t have to be anal retentive to sense things.  Today we’ll look at just one timing tip that can make a big difference in how fast you make gold on one type of crafted item – and time is everything.

A few days back we posted the article: Best Gold-Making Professions On Bank Alts, which was a follow-on from the article: Alchemy – WoW Quest Tricks.  Both of those articles bring us to the real point.  If you’re going to use a bank alt for crafting professions (which you should) there are some professions that fit bank alts better than others.  Alchemy is a great fit for a bank alt.

If you’re going to use alchemy on a bank alt, you need to be an elixir master for the procs of extra elixirs and especially flasks.  Since you’re getting the mastery for flasks, you will want to be selling those flasks for maximum profit – and now we come to the point.

As you scan the AH for things to sell throughout the week, the temptation is to just post them as you get them.  For certain categories, that works well – such as mats.  Mats are like a little black dress or blue jeans, always in style in every season and decade or day of the week.  We only resell items (armor, weapons etc.) on weekends when the most people are on (especially the nubs who don’t get to play all that often).  And there is a best time for other things as well.

For flasks, it’s Tuesday.  I know I know, big surprise, but it’s an easy thing to overlook.  After server reset, everyone is rushing back into ICC or doing the weekly for their frost badges, or even VoA for the week and the demand for flasks goes from a trickle to a roar.  And since there is a huge demand spike on Tues, there is a corresponding price spike potential.

If the raid leader requires you to flask and there are only 10 flasks on the AH (all yours btw) then you will pay whatever the price is or you don’t raid.  Pretty simple when you think about it.  Buy up all your flask making mats during the week and on the weekends (especially from the farming goobers who are killing time on Sat afternoon).  Then on Monday brew up a few dozen of each.  Tuesday morning you can throw all your flasks up on the AH (even buying out the other guys selling too cheap), corner the market, and quite easily double whatever you spent on mats.

So:

• Get you a DK
• level to 68
• get elixir mastery
• buy up flask mats during the week
• make flasks on Monday
• buy out cheap flasks Tues
• sell all flasks Tues
• make another 1,000g a week
• Dominate

It’s when you start stacking things like this that you really start to get rich in WoW.  Find a sweet spot for alchemy, Inscription, JC, DE, resale, mats and whatever else you can get your grubby little enterprising hands on and pretty soon you will never want (or need) to pick another weed, kill another mob or swing another pick as long as you play WoW.  And, you’ll have a LOT more gold to boot, which is quite simply – Dominating.

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Retribution Is Back With A Holy Vengeance

Perhaps no other class waxes and wanes more in overall DPS than the paladin.  A lot of it has to do with PvP.  Paladins get a PvP buff, then in a week there is one in almost every arena team pwning face.  That’s no kind of balance so they get a nerf, then they are worthless in PvE.

We’re not sure why Blizz has such a hard time keeping PvP and PvE separate for pallies, but at least for now, the Ret paladin can do more than just respectable damage in raids.  The following build and numbers bear that out.  Since all we’ve done on Paladins for quite a while has been about tanking, we thought it was high time to do a DPS build for them.

Remember that the following comes from the Simulationcraft Engine.  If you have any problems with the use of gear or glyphs, you can download the engine yourself and tinker with the simulated toon and rerun the numbers for yourself.  Be sure to save your output and post it below if you can beat the preset numbers.

Also, once you’re done retrofitting your toon with any new spec changes and glyphs, run the engine yourself to get a fresh set of Pawn scales – you can read how, and why you should do this, in the article: Making Gear Choices For Your Character.

Gear

Gear Suggestion Character For Ret Paladin Early Patch 3.3

Talent Build

Retribution Paladin Build For Patch 3.3

Glyphs

Major

• Judgement
• Seal of Vengeance
• Consecration

Minor

• Anything you like

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Dragonfin Filet
• Seal = Vengeance
• Hammer Of Justice
• Divine Plea
• Arcane Torrent – (Assuming You’re A Blood Elf)
• Avenging Wrath
• Judgement – (Your choice here depending on raid makeup and mana issues)
• Crusader Strike
• Divine Storm
• Consecration
• Hammer of Wrath
• Exorcism
• Potion of Speed

Damage Sources

Ret experts should help out the neophytes by giving tips on how to use the priorities above, and there will probably be some discussion about how gear choices might have changed a bit now that three wings of ICC are open and it is at least fairly likely you could have gotten one to three pieces of t10 or t10 equivalent gear by now.

If you had your Paladin DPS spec on the sidelines for whatever reason, it might just be time to dust that bad boy off and give him (or her) a whirl.  One thing is certain, a decently geared Ret paladin can pump out some seriously dominating DPS in patch 3.3.

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A Tool That Helps You Make Gear Choices In Two Seconds – One Piece Of New Loot At A Time

You know that guy – he’s probably one of the dudes, maybe even the Fonz himself.  Always knows exactly what a particular piece of gear means to his current set, and probably every other spec for not only his toon but everyone in the raid.  The fellow who seems to be able to see the game code in his head and actually understand how it all works together.

You may actually be that guy, if so you probably won’t use this tool at all.  But for everyone who ever wondered whether to take the Staff with a bit more haste over the main hand/off hand with spirit, this little gem will make processing those decisions a matter of about three seconds worth of work.  If you can look at two numbers and tell which one is higher than the other one – you’re set.

The Tool is the Simcraft Engine from Wowwikki.  Over the last couple of months we’ve been posting builds and specs from the engine for different classes and talent trees, but never really used the engine ourselves until last week.  The reason behind this is that trying to figure out all the possible parameters and commands just makes my teeth hurt to even think about, but there are some interesting things you can do with the engine that applies to your own toon, and not some made up best-in-slot mega toon.

First you’ll need to download Simcraft to your computer – Simcracft Engine Downloads – and install the thing on your hard drive.  (no there isn’t going to be a big long explanation of this – f you can’t figure it out on your own, you’ll never be able to use it anyway, so tech challenged folks will have to go to the wikki forums for the engine itself for help, this isn’t going to turn into product support for someone else’s stuff).

There are versions for both Mac and PC, so no matter what you’re platform, you should be good to go.  Launch the engine and set your options in the first tab.  I prefer to use Helter-Skelter and Player Skill = good.  Those settings seem to most realistically mirror what I can expect out of my toons in a real life boss encounter.

Next, just import your toon from the armory.  Find your toon in the armory interface and click Import at the bottom right, once the import is done, the same button will then read “Simulate!”  Hit the simulate button and you will end up with a wealth of information about your toon.

The engine will run your toon through a simulated boss fight 1,000 times and then generate a LOT of numbers.  It will tell you almost everything you need to know about how to get more out of your DPS.  It will show you how to maximize your priorities, what buffs to use and most importantly, how stats scale for you with your current gear.

You see, stats are never quite static.  Almost everything suffers from diminishing returns.  You can only get so much out of stacking Haste, for example, before more Haste is not worth as much as more Spell power or something else.  Unfortunately, trying to figure all that out as a human being is the realm of the uber geekoids and those blessed with some sort of freakishly natural ability to do so.

I ain’t that guy, but I know a good machine when I see it.  I don’t have to build the dang thing myself, but if it makes my life easier and gets me something 99.5% as good without having to re-invent the wheel, I’m all over it.  The Simcraft scales are my kind of machine.

Near the top you will see the custom generated scale factors for your toon based on your current gear.  I did this for my mother’s poor little shadow priest and got the numbers you see below:

OK, so you cant read the pawn scales all that well in that format, but there they are.  All I have to do is drop those suckers into Pawn for her and when the very next piece of gear drops, she can tell in two seconds just how much better it is than what she’s got.

Now here is the really slick part.  All of that took me about 2 minutes.  The next time you get a piece of gear, you just reload your toon into the engine and then run it through the simulator again to re-balance your scales.  Every new piece of gear will affect all future pieces of gear.  With up-to-date scales, you never have to wonder if you are giving enough weight to Crit or Spirit or whatever, you can just pop in a new Pawn scale and go one with your day.

Basically what this means is that now you can theory-craft and min/max every single piece of gear you ever get on the fly and then update your entire set of scales with every new piece of gear you get.  And you can do it without having to scratch your head and look at five web sites and threads all over the internet, all you have to do is read a couple of number, and that is very Dominating.

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Happy new year from all the Dominate Guilds!

Yet another year of help, guidance and assistance from www.DominateYourServer.com is behind us – and to celebrate Dominate has some Major Announcements.

As we speak, on Fenris (Horde), we have had a mediocre year turn into a Great year.  We now have over 200 members, 90 of those are lvl 80 and 15 are lvl 70+. Over 75 are leveling and a few bankers round that figure out. Now its time for phase two of domination on Fenris and we want YOUR help. Don’t panic, all we ask is that you pass the secret of DYS to all your WoW friends, all your guildies and your buddies – the more of us there are the more we can help YOU.

We want to say a special hello to all our European and British Subscribers, WE HEAR YOU. We are hopping to announce, soon, our first guild on a Euro server and would like to hear from English-speaking folk from all over Europe to help us help your countrymen. Enjoy our web site, services we offer and to help us Build Guilds on Euro servers.

To all our North American servers subscribers: yes we hear you too and our new Alliance Guild on Fenris will be the first of our new Guilds announced this year, YES, we are coming to a server near you soon.

And on Fenris Horde we want your help too, we want Hardcore Raiders NOW!!

This is the status of the Dominate Guilds as it stands right now

DOMINATE

Realm: US

Server: Fenris

Faction: Horde

Hardcore Raiders can’t get in the best raid guild or fed up with drama? Join our Crusaders and Dominate ICC.

Looking for :

• Tank Healers

• 5K+ DPS for Ice Crown Citadel

• Genuine Raiders wishing to clear end-game content.

Pre-requisites: Must know your class, have Ventrillo and DBM (at the very least).

Raid Times: 7:30pm server (east coast) Over by Midnight the latest.

We need raiders that know their class, are willing and able to take criticism to help make themselves and the Crusaders Raid Team of Dominate the best they can be. Must show up on time and ready to raid (repaired, have flasks, all new gear enchanted and socketed etc.)

If you are interested, contact: Dindrane via in-game Mail, state that you wish to join Dominate Crusaders and give some details of toons: Names, experience, (enough to be able to gearcheck you on wowhead and wow-armory)

Don’t worry we still want all levels and all classes for casual players but now we are starting a hardcore raiding squad as well.

Coming this month the Alliance Guild on Fenris

DOMINATE II

Realm: US

Server: Fenris

Faction: Alliance

Looking for:

• All classes

• All levels

Qualified as: Training Guild

Are you working towards raiding end-game content? Or PvP maybe?, Just a casual raider or need help leveling?

Hardcore raid team starting soon (more info in the weeks ahead) So watch this space for grand opening date.

Now remember as I always say what ever floats your boat we have the ocean but you have to sail the boat. We will help you all we can but you must help your self. I would like to thank every one in Dominate for all the fun last year and to wish you all a very happy new year lets Dominate our way to a fun filled and successful 2010 Have fun. don’t be great: Dominate.

We would also like to mention DYSSENTION a new alliance hardcore Guild on Kalecgos some of us play there as they raid when Fenris is asleep.  If you are a fan of the Fonz and the Dudes, now’s your chance to raid with them or if you’re horde on Kalecgos, you can die by them (lol).

They’re harder to join, have very strict guidelines and only recruit the best endgame players. When I asked the Fonz to sum it up he said “No baddies (scrubs) allowed, if you cant raid don’t apply!”

DYSSENTION

Realm: US

Server: Kalecgos

Faction: Alliance

Looking For:

• Tank Healers

• 5K+ DPS MINIMUM

• Genuine raiders wishing to clear end-game content

Raid Times: 20:30 (8:30pm) Server (West Coast) (11:30 pm EST)

Initiates -

As a new member to the guild you will be subjected to a two week trial period during which time you will be tested. (e.g. brought to a raid or dungeon and put in a position where you must preform) You will also need to be able to take instruction as to how to better your character.  Suggestions may help you from one or several of our officers or raid leader, this will allow us to see how serious you are about being the best you can possibly be as well as your ability to take criticism. You will be expected to show up for all raids during this trial period, if there is an emergency and you’re unable to attend please bring it up with me, Redstick. During this time if you fail to meet our requirements, or fail to take criticism constructively and improve over the two weeks you are a part of Dyssention or you are causing drama, any officer in Dyssention will be permitted to remove you at free will in order to keep a productive, successful, fun environment to play and raid in.

Thanks,

Redstick

So visit www.dyssention.com , see forums and reply there Good luck

For any of our guilds click on the dys guild link at the top of the front page. We will also be announcing a new Guild website soon for all DOMINATE GUILDS. Also more articles and I here a rumor of the return of the podcast so don’t be great, join Dominate

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Two Trade Skills That Fit Great On Bank Alts

Alright kids, let’s review.  We don’t farm here at DYS – well almost never.  From time to time the perfect conflagration of once per year occurrences happens that makes us do it, as we have mentioned in this post: Investing And Farming For Gold.

Next, we recommend banking be done in certain ways.  First, a bank alt is by far the best use for a DK we’ve ever seen, and we’re going to tell you which two professions suit bank alts best.  But a DK banker is perfect because you only have to get to level 65 from a level 55 start to train all the way to Grand Master in any profession.  But over the last six months we’ve figured out two professions that just stand far and above the others when it comes to making gold quick and easy.

The first one will come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone who reads DYS.  Enchanting – the gran-daddy of them all when it comes to gold making.  I recently had to change my tune a bit when it comes to Jewelcrafting, but I still don’t make as much from Jewelcrafting as I do from enchanting – not by a wide margin.  Just in case you missed it, here is another post if you want to read about the true power of enchanting for making gold: Best Profession For Those New To Gold Making.

Currently, you’ll want to focus on DE items between level 200 and 300 skill.  With everyone doing 5 million heroics per day, the market for Northrend mats is pretty depressed already – flooding it with another 50 stacks of infinite dust will just generate even more downward pressure on the price by inflating supply that much more.

A few months ago we suggested using a DK as your bank alt and giving them Enchanting, it’s a little more complex than that if you want it to be, as in this post: More Banking Toons Make It Easier To Make Gold At The AH.  But after working with that system for a few months, another profession has jumped out of the woodwork as absolutely perfect for the single DK bank alt.

You will need one DK, a desire for more gold and enough patience to gain 13 levels.  You’ll need  to hit level 68, but with a DK that’s pretty easy to do in just a few hours if you concentrate.  Then it’s off to the profession trainers for Enchanting and . . . Alchemy.

Alchemy is perfect for a bank alt because it requires zero rep to get all the recipes, so you can stand all by yourself in the major city of your choice and end up with every recipe in the game through discovery.  And you’ll make all the accidental discoveries in record time.

In our last post – Alchemy, Wow Quest Tricks, we talked about how to get the Elixir Master profession bonus for Alchemy without doing the Elixir Master quest, which is a pain in the tookus.  At level 68 your DK can do exactly the same thing and end up with Elixir Mastery and that’s where the real dough starts rolling in.

On an average day I will have my DK bank alt brew up around 200-300 elixirs and flasks.  Now that’s just the number I have mats for.  Since the proc rate for Elixir Mastery is a little higher than 10%, I generally end up with an extra 10-15 flasks for every hundred I make, sometimes more.  With flasks on our server going for about 60g, that’s 600+ gold for zero extra work.

All I do is put all of the herbs and other mats for the best alchemy potions (Lil’Sparky is a must here) in my Snatch filter for AADV and grab everything under 100% market price a couple of times a day.  Then I just afk brew, post the products and profit – generally while raiding or watching SportsCenter.

Alchemy is ridiculously easy to make gold with, and unlike Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and other professions that can be lucrative, they also all require that you be level 80 and gain exalted rep with certain factions or acquire recipe drops in raids to get the patterns that will make you serious gold.  (yes, I have seen the stupid youtube video of the guy DE’ing the JC rings a bazillion times, but with northrend DE mats prices being what they are LilSparky’s tells me I would lose a lot more than I gained doing that right now.)

So My main DK banker does Inscription and Alchemy.  Inscription is another good fit for bankers, but if you only have 2 to work with.  On a single bank alt, alchemy and enchanting is the only way to go.  Between those two professions you should be able to knock down an easy 2,000 to 5,000 extra gold each week and not spend more than a few minutes each day fiddling with it.  It’s easy, fast and very Dominating.

9 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Affliction Warlock Spec For Patch 3.3

Although all three trees for Warlocks have good DPS builds (over 10k DPS) the following Affliction build is between 250-500 higher than the rest in patch 3.3.  As with all of these builds, remember that they come from the Wowikki Simulationcraft engine, so any anger can be taken out on the engine itself – we are just the messenger.  With that being said, you might find that this build definately helps your DPS.

Gear

Best In Slot Affliction Warlock

Remember, at this point in patch 3.3 we have yet to see all of ICC and there are no heroic modes open yet.  So best-in-slot is still a mix of ToC, T9 and T10 gear.  Once ICC opens completely and heroic modes are available, you can expect plenty of changes to the gear you see above.

Talent Build

Tier 9 Tier 10 Affliction Lock

Glyphs

Major

• Curse of Agony
• Haunt
• Life Tap

Minor

• Whatever floats your boat

Priorities

• Flask = Frost Wyrm
• Food = Fish Feast
• Spell Stone
• Fel Armor
• Pet = Felhunter
• Life Tap
• Potion = Wild Magic
• Haunt
• Corruption
• Curse of Agony
• Unstable Affliction
• Drain Soul (when target health less than 25%)
• Shadow Bolt
• Life Tap (When Mana is under 20%)

Remember, the list above is NOT a rotation, it is a priority list, which means that you will use whatever is the highest on the list whenever it is available (not on cool-down) with certain conditionals, of course.  Master affliction locks will help you out in the thread below for more insight into rotations.

Damage Sources

You may also have noticed that the best-in-slot gear is min/maxxed with Tailoring and Enchanting.  That combo of professions is almost impossible to beat for caster DPS toons.  You will also note that while you may never see most of the gear from 25 heroic ToC (until it is not best-in-slot any longer) you can get a good idea about which pieces of Tier set pieces to use and what should be off set.  In the case of this lock, you can feel comfortable using all five set pieces.

13 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

How To Get Elixir Mastery Without Doing Black Morass

Not all professions are created equal.  While I don’t use alchemy on any of my raiding toons I like to have one around to make gold with.  The only problem with that is that in order to really make a killing you certainly need to make it to level 68 and go get the Elixir Mastery specialization so that when you’re brewing up a few hundred flasks you have a chance to get even more to sell on the AH.

So off an on I’ve been leveling my trusty DK banker (who does alchemy and inscription BTW (and perhaps the only decent use I know for a DK (just a little DK dig there))) to level 68 for just this reason.  If your alchemy is at level 325 and you are also level 68 you can get one of three quests from several NPC’s scattered around Outlands.  Even if you do it the hard way the Elixir mastery specilization is worth it, but there is a much more Dominating way to get it done.

Here are the three quests:

• Master of Elixirs
• Master of Potions
• Master of Transmutation

Well, I never liked Black Morass anyway.  Then, when you consider the fact that you are going to have to do the silly walk-around quest and Old Hillsbrad first, bah, I’ve got gold to make with my time.  But I really REALLY want the extra flask procs – so what do I do?

I go get the last quest – Master of Transmutation and then pick up the recipe for Transmute: Primal Might.  By this time there are enough people just fiddling around in Outlands but not really doing anything there that making a Primal Might really shouldn’t be all that expensive.  In other words it’s pretty reasonable to find all the primals on the AH for cheap since no one uses them much any more, even if they are rare-ish.

Now, even though I want Master of Elixirs, I can use any of the Mastery quests to get there.  The only one that doesn’t require me to do a dungeon run (and have a flying mount for TK, not wasting that gold on a DK bank alt)  is the Master of Transmutation quest.  So I head out to Zarevhi in Netherstorm with 4 each primal earth, air, fire, water and mana – and the recipe from one of the vendors above.

If you go prepared you’ll be a Transmutation master in about 30 minutes or less if you don’t get lost easily and have the flight points.  Next just talk to Zarevhi again and tell him you don’t really want to be a transmutation master after all and pay him 150 gold (cheaper than a flying mount) to unlearn what you just did.  Don’t worry, it all works out well in the end.

All that’s left is to fly back to Shattrath and talk to Lorokeem (the bird doods kinda freak me out, but there’s not much I can do about it in this case).  Tell him you want to be an Elixir master and POOF!  You’re a brand new Elixir master ready to get all those free flasks out of your usual business for free.

Free gold is interesting to me, and so are shortcuts.  This way I don’t have to get a lock summon or buy a flying mount up to TK and then to the second boss.  I don’t have to do all the pre-reqs for BM and then actually do BM four or five times.  As a matter of fact there is an off chance the Primal mights could be already sitting on the AH from someone else making them for some goofy reason.

This works for any profession specialization, but specializations don’t mean quite as much now as they did in vanilla wow waaaaay back in the day.  Who knows, maybe Blizz brings that flavor back.  But in the meantime, on your bank alt alchemist (which I highly recommend btw) getting elixir mastery doesn’t have to be a huge pain in the tookus.  All you have to do is use this little trick and you’ll be maximizing your auction house domination of the flask market in no time.

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Marksmanship Build Back At The Top In Patch 3.3

We’re not really sure why Blizz does this from time to time.  Back in tBC Marksmanship hunters were all the rage, with the odd BM hunter holding on to his leveling days until they finally gave up and joined the Marks crowd at some point.  At the beginning of WotLK it was the BM guys who had their Devilsaurs stomping around shaking screens in everyone’s face.  Then, finally, Survival hunters have been the flavor of the last six months or so (a spec I always wanted to play in tBC – when I was still allowed to play a DPS toon).

That all changed in the last patch, and we’re back to Marksmanship as the top DPS spec again.  The Wikki Simulationcraft engine lists four builds for DPS potential:

• Beast Mastery at 9725 DPS
• Survival at 10920 DPS
• Marksmanship at 10964 DPS
• Marksmanship at 11084 DPS

So BM has definitely been relegated to leveling duty once again, which may be because everyone else simply hates the BM pets in a raid.  The other builds are separated by by just 164 DPS, so it certainly doesn’t man Survival is dead by any means, but if all you care about is beating everyone in a raid in DPS, you’re probably going to want that 11k DPS build giving you every possible advantage.

Remember that this build is based on the Simcraft engine, but what what we’ve been able to tell from testing in multiple classes and specs – the engine just doesn’t lie.  My Shaman now hardly ever uses Chain Lightning, and my Mage pushes like 2 buttons.  And it works better than just making things up as you go along.  But, there will always be subtleties in every priority list that our readers will point out in the thread below the post, so ask questions if you have them and the experts will come to you.  And yes, we’ll try to make sure they are nice to the nubs.

Gear

Here is the best in slot hunter gear for T9T10 in Patch 3.3; at least it’s best in slot based on current content and what someone could possibly have at this point.  That doesn’t mean you could run out and get all this gear in a week, or even a month, but it should give you an idea what you should be (cough) shooting for.

Tier 9 Tier 10 Hunter

Talent Build

Patch 3.3 Marksmanship Hunter Spec Build

Glyphs

Major

• Glyph of Serpent Sting
• Glyph of Aimed Shot
• Glyph of Steady Shot

Minor

• Mend Pet
• Feign Death

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Hearty Rhino
• Hunter’s Mark
• Pet (Wolf)
• Trueshot Aura
• Aspect of the Hawk
• Serpent Sting
• Rapid Fire
• Kill Command
• Aimed Shot
• (wait for Chimera Shot if Cooldown on Chimera is less than .25 sec.)
• Chimera Shot
• Kill Shot
• Readiness
• Steady Shot

That’s all there is to it.  Kill command when you can, and then Aimed Shot at the top of the list.  Follow Aimed with Chimera and Kill Shot when it becomes available.  If not, pop readiness and then do steady shot.  So it’s really just Aimed shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot – Aimed Shot (Chimera Shot if cool-down is up), Steady Shot – Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot.  And you pop cooldowns for rapid fire and readiness when they are available, although you’ll want to wait on the readiness cool-down until after you’ve used both Chimera and Kill shot so they refresh for the next run through the list.

Damage Sources

Pawn Scales

This pawn scale is a little rough, since the engine didn’t spit this out and we had to build it manually, but it should be as close as you could hope for without the programming help.

( Pawn: v1: “Marksmanship”: Intellect=0.519, CritRating=0.893, Agility=1.444, HitRating=0.236, ArmorPenetration=1.116, HasteRating=0.124, Ap=2.837, GemQualityLevel=81 )

So for those of you who played Marks back in the tBC days, now is your chance to go back to your roots.  For everyone else, there at least is a very viable option to Survival builds, although BM is a good 1,300 DPS behind.  I was a big fan of Survival being the top spec, not that the guild will ever let me play a hunter, but it gave me a warm and squishy feeling deep down.  But no matter if a hunter was your first toon, or just another in a long line, this Marksmanship spec will help you Dominate.

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How To Meet All Your Meta Gem Requirements With One Stone

For the min/max guy this is going to just make you mad so you can go read something else. But if you’re a normal person and sometimes wonder exactly what gem to put in every single slot you have you may just appreciate this tip.  It’s a neat trick because it’s a pretty cheap way of getting your meta gem activated without having to put something goofy in a yellow socket just because you need something yellow.

For almost every class, you are going to end up with a piece of gear with a strange socket color.  And that means you have to start doing all the math over again or maybe you’ve just given up (like Fury warriors and some Shaman healers) and just chosen the best gem and it goes in every single slot no matter what – socket bonuses be danged.  Or maybe you just go cross-eyed wondering where in the heck you’re going to get a blue gem to activate your Meta gem in your helm when you’ve got zero blue sockets in sight. (don’t forget about Eternal Belt Buckles by the way).

Only problem with saying bye-bye to your socket bonuses is that you probably don’t have all of the right color gems in place to activate your meta gem.  We’re not going to go into picking meta gems for class and spec, that’s an argument waiting to happen (and it can happen somewhere else).

But there is one little gem that should be easy to get your hands on no matter what server you’re on that will activate any meta gem no matter what the requirements are with a single socket.  That gem is the Nightmare Tear.

Not terribly long ago this was a JC only gem, but patch 3.2 made it available to everyone as a unique equipped item.  That means you can only use one of them, but at least you don’t have to be a Jewelcrafter any more.  The price on some servers may be a little higher than you would like, since making one requires a Dragon’s eye, but you should be able to peg the price for getting this cut from the price of Dragon’s eyes on your AH (if there are any).  The only other mats required are 5 infinite dust, and there is probably more of that on most servers now than there is real dust in your house.

The cool thing about the nightmare tear is that since it will fit any socket color it also acts for some odd reason as every socket color once you put it in.  So for frustrating Meta gems like the Relentless Earthseige Diamond which requires three different gem colors to activate, you can throw a Nightmare Tear in your helm with this and get on with your day.

Granted, for some classes, like mages, this isn’t the greatest choice.  And for the mage there are plenty of good gem choices that make the use of the Nightmare Tear to activate a Meta completely unnecessary.  But even for Mages if you just want to throw a meta in a level 219 hood or something while you are gearing up and don’t feel like spending another few hundred gold activating it, a single nightmare tear isn’t a bad idea.

It’s a hassle free way to get around not having to use a Yellow gem if you really don’t want to waste another socket on a Yellow gem when there aren’t any decent yellow gems for your class or spec; or any other color for that matter.  It’s a pretty easy way to activate any meta gem no matter what the requirements might be.  It’s not even lazy, but it is easy – and Dominating.

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