How To Level Up Faster And Easier Using Inscription And Herbalism

When it comes to leveling fast there is no doubt that Gavin Garrett is the undisputed king of the solo speed run.  And even though his methods are no secret, they can be hard to duplicate if you don’t know exactly where to go and what to do, and what NOT to do.

The methods are no secret since anyone can duplicate them, and thousands have done just that using the Horde Leveling Guide.  Gavin’s in-game mod guides you every step of the way from 1 all the way to 80 using exactly the same formula I’ve developed to break world records.  We’ve also given out dozens of my very best leveling tips here at Dominate Your Server over the last three years.

The real key to leveling fast: waste less time and you’ll hit 80 faster than you can imagine.

Before you all start yelling we need to cover a couple of things.  There is NO substitute for the Refer a Friend program if you need a level 80 right now, today.  RaF and a decent level 80 toon can have your alt to 60 in just a few hours, but since not every single person (and that’s 12 million+ folks) can, or will, do an RaF uber powerleveling run, that means there are millions of you stuck doing it the old fashioned way, and that’s where this tip comes in.

The comment above may not sound earth shattering in any way.  But it really is the key to my world record for solo leveling.  Think about it; if you spend an extra 5 minutes running the wrong direction just once during each level, you’ll add an extra 6 hours to your time from 1-80.  Just a few extra seconds at the vendor a couple of times each level and there’s another 4 or 5 hours.  Every single second you waste messing around can end up adding up to an entire day to your time.

I don’t know about you, but cutting out 10-20 hours of the time it takes to get to 80 is time I can spend doing other thing that are a lot more fun.  So here is one thing I always do to make sure I never waste a single minute on travel time, getting my mounts, or finding certain quest items on every single run I ever do.  It’s also the very best way for a pure melee toon to ensure you don’t ever have to make a time killing corpse run.

Two Ways To Cut More Than 10 Hours Off Your Leveling Time From 1-80

• Herbalism

Herbalism does several things for you while you level.  First, it makes it incredibly easy to find certain quest items on your mini map.  It seems that there are dozens of quests where someone is asking you to get 10 Tiger Lilies or something of the sort.  Herbalism makes these quest items far easier to grab.  Time saved: 1 hour.

Herbalism is also a nifty way to make some extra cash while you level.  I only pick the herbs that are close to my mob kills, but they can add up really fast.  Just mail them to a banker and sell them at the AH and your mount costs should easily be in the bank before you ever need them.  Running around when you could be on an epic mount is a killer.  Time Saved: push.

But the best part of using herbalism to level is the herbalism only skill Lifeblood.  Lifeblood gives any class or race a heal that can keep you alive when things go wonky.  As a general rule, Lifeblood will heal you for about 25% of your health bar, and that’s probably as good as whatever bandages you could be using, but requires no mats.  Lifeblood and a bandage and you can reduce the time you spend eating to regain health by a ton.  Do your pulls right and you can cut out the number of times you stop to eat.  Time Saved: 4 hours.

• Inscription

Inscription is a beast.  It takes a load of mats and is very tough to get a decent return at level 80 using it as a gold making profession. (Remember, I never spend gold on a profession, or anything else for that matter, where I don’t get a decent dividend on the investment, and I wrote the Guide to making gold with Inscription).  But the return for Inscription when leveling can mean the difference between a world record and a very pedestrian time.

The key here is in the Scroll of Recall.  Ever since Blizz lowered the time on the hearthstone cooldown to 30 minutes, my leveling times have been better.  But when you use your regular hearthstone AND the scrolls of recall, you can get back to your primary quest hub 6 times every hour!

Since my leveling method is to take maximum advantage of multiple quest turn-ins, it means Inscription is a serious time saver.  Since I am always using Herbalism anyway, I also have the mats for the scrolls, so the synergy is there.  I can just go pick up a round of quests, head out and complete them all and then hearth or recall right back to the quest hub no matter how far the quests took me.  By not having to run back to the quest hub you can save gargantuan amounts of time on your way to 80.  Time saved: 6+ hours.

So What Are You Waiting For?

For a warrior, rogue or mage with no self healing capacity, the herbalism is a huge benefit in the form of Lifeblood.  And every class can see their very best leveling times drop by a huge amount using the scrolls of recall any time they are up and you’ve got quests to turn in.

I don’t normally keep Inscription beyond level 80, but it is undoubtedly the single greatest tool you can have when it comes to leveling faster than you ever have before.  So the next time you decide to run a toon, make sure you have the tools the masters use to really Dominate!

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Spiker writes:

“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:

SpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/MS/AS/SSSpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/KS/MS/AS/SS/SpS/KS/MS/AS/SS

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.

-Gavin

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

Finding Your Best DPS – Hunters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beast Mastery

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

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

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

Master Marksman

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

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

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

Survival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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With the advent of Wrath of the Lich King, so many things have changed that it’s hard to know where to start.  But since we’ve been talking a lot about professions lately it makes sense to start there.  There are some cool new buffs you can get from several of the professions, so let’s give you a closer look at each one.

Engineering:

This one works like the Ultrasafe Transporter: Gadgetzan, except that it can transport your entire group and not just the engineer.  However, just like the not so ultra-safe transporter, it can also leave you merely near Gadgetzan about 1000 feet in the air.  This is not such a great thing if your entire raid team wipes on the deal and has to spend 150 gold on the repair bill.

Jewelcrafting:

The Grand Master Jewelcrafter gets a nice ability to get gem cut procs from green quality gems.  These perfect cuts have slightly higher stats than the regular versions and should fetch a much higher price at the AH.  It’s hard to tell right now what the proc rate is for this, but reasonable reports suggest it’s between 25% all the way up to 45% of every cut you do will be perfect.  This ability is learned from a quest, and only applies to green quality gems and not rare or epic cuts.

Tailoring:

Can be trained at the tailoring trainers for 5g.  It is pretty straightforward – extra cloth appears for the tailor.  Even if someone else loots the mob and gets a piece or two of cloth, the tailor will be able to loot an extra piece from time to time.  Not a huge help, but can get you a few extra bolts during your run to 80.

Alchemy:

Alchemists can train this skill at level 50, which is very nice.  This skill doubles the duration of all potions, flasks and elixirs; and that’s not all.   This skill also increases the effects of alchemy items when you use them.  For instance; Flask of Relentless Assault normally gives +120 attack power, but a mixologist recieves +180 ap for the same flask – a 50% increase.  These effect increases range from 10% to 50%, and every little bit helps in raids.  This can give alchemists a big boost.

Skinning:

Even though skinning may not make you much cash, it will certainly help you get more critical strikes.  This is especially handy for those classes which would normally take the skinning/leatherworking combo such as druids and rogues.  You can see that at rank 6 it improves cs by 25 points.  Depending on how people interpret the formulas for translating rating points into crit chance this is somewhere between .6% and 1% cs chance at level 80.  This will be an even bigger boost at lower levels, but since it also applies to spell power, it’s just another little buff for every class.  It may be better for leveling than an end-game benefit like mixology could be.

Herbalism:

For those with a green thumb, you also get a cool heal over time spell in lifeblood.  2000 health ticks in just 5 seconds is a save-your-bacon kind of thing that actually works really well.  Warriors especially dig this one when going solo, and it can make the difference in a tough or close fight.  Since herbalism can be a great gold-maker as well, lifeblood is well worth taking this profession.

Mining:

Our last entry; the miner gets a great buff for prot classes.  Mining is a cash cow, and toughness is a nice lift to hp – warriors take notice.  Any prot spec can make great use of toughness, but almost anyone could benefit from it as well.  For our money, mixology, lifeblood and toughness are simply awesome.

So if you have been on the fence about professions at all, these might help you choose a side.  We’ve been hyping mining and herbalism for making more gold, and the buffs you will get from them are no slouch either.  So get out there, get to mixing, get to digging, just get to work and get to Dominating!

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After a week of nearly no sleep, Gavin and Money are going to drag themselves into the studio for you.  It’s been a heck of a time the last few days and Gavin needs a shave.  Money is just naturally bald, so no trim needed there although the beard could use a little attention.

We know you have a bazillion questions so this week we’ll take even more time on reader items, so send them in right away so they can get to work making sure you get all the answers you need to Dominate wrath.

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As you get ready to enter WotLK, you may find yourself looking to max out a profession to 375 to make sure that you are going to get in on the hot new recipes and items you can make.  We wanted to give you a little info to snack on that may make choosing a profession or a toon for each profession a little easier if you’ve ever wondered about it.

When it comes to maxing out a profession, you definitely want to try to match professions to a racial bonus if that is possible.  The primary reason for this is that it will make the upper levels of each proficiency range quite a bit easier.  You see,  all recipes have the same skill point proc rate based on a static table. Since  Engineering is going to be a hot profession for WotLK for the motorcycle mounts, let’s look at an example from that profession so you can see what we really mean.

For everyone but Gnomes, the recipe for Felsteel Stabilizer would be orange at 340, always granting a skill-up.  At level 350 it goes yellow, meaning probably a skill up, let’s assume at least 50%.  At level 360 it goes green meaning hang on to your wallet, it’s going to be expensive.  As much as it is possible, you want to only create items that are orange, and the first few skill-ups in yellow.  Just common sense there, unless there is a green recipe with really cheap mats compared to the orange recipes you have.

I know this is all a little “old hat” for some of you, but here’s how the racial bonus helps the gnome at this level.  A gnome making Felsteel Stabilizers will be able to stay in the orange guaranteed skill up range with this item until skill level 365, and then it will remain yellow up to 375 before it goes green.  While every other race is spending crazy gold making other things, the gnome will be able to make this much lower level recipe with more inexpensive mats or at least easier to farm considering Fel iron isn’t all that hard to mine in Hellfire Peninsula.

A gnome can basically make this one recipe all the way to the profession cap while the rest of us are trying to make a bunch of flying machines or other nonsense to hit 375.  It can literally save you hundreds of gold, if not a thousand or more depending on the economy for the mats you need on your server.

So if you are considering Engineering, and have a gnome, then it’s a no-brainer if you are not capped yet.  The same holds true with Jewelcrafting and Dranei, and Enchanting with Blood Elves.  Tauren get an Herbalism boost, but it’s not nearly as useful with a gathering profession as it is on a production profession.

Ally finally get a serious advantage over horde as well in this category with two races holding a bonus to two of the most difficult to level and expensive professions in the game.  If you use enchanting like we do and DE tons of things to sell the mats, then enchanting isn’t nearly as tough as either of the other two.

With the motorcycle wanting frenzy about to start, you might want to consider adding engineering to your gnome and get it leveled up quick.  Sure, you can do it with any race, but a gnome just makes it that much easier to Domainte.

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You know that we give a lot of gold making tips at Dominate Your Server.  And most of the time we only talk about things that you can do NOW, or at the very least SOON.  But every now and then we come across something that’s going to require a bit of a wait, but you have to act NOW if it’s really going to make you any serious gold.

Most of the time, these gold-making opportunities are related to the holiday events.  For instance, Moneybaggins keeps a couple dozen stacks of snowballs around and small eggs to put on the AH the next year the week before the Christmas event begins.

This one is the same sort of thing, only you won’t have to wait that long.  But, you might actually choose to wait even longer than a year if you have that kind of patience.  All you can really say for a fact is that you need to hurry and grab some of these before the prices get silly, and get a bunch of them if you can.

The item in question is the Haunted Memento that drops from the mobs at the crystals during the scourge invasion event.  The mementos are unique, so you can’t carry more than one, but they don’t soul-bind, so you can transfer them around all you want one at a time.  The item even works a bit like the heavy leather ball in that you can throw it at other players to haunt them.  But you don’t want to give this one away.

Prices for the haunted memento are already climbing close to 100g on some servers.  In six months it will be 500g or more.  Since there may never be another chance for anyone to get their hands on these ever again, this is really a one-time opportunity to turn a basically worthless item into big gold later down the road.

It will be one of those vanity things that everyone wishes they had kept, and the ghost following you around is just pretty cool – IF you can get your hands on the haunted memento and keep the thing.

That’s where you come in.  Offer to buy these from anyone you can, buy them on the AH when possible, beg, borrow, cheat, steal to get as many as you can and then flip them back and forth between your mule and your banker in the mail for a long as you can stand it.

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There are a number of special bosses in instances throughout Azeroth during the zombie invasion event, but the new face is Tenris Mirkblood. Ok, it’s not a pretty face, but new is always a good thing. We wanted to give you Kara capable folks a few pointers on this guy since he will only be around for a few more days.

Tenris resides in the servant’s quarters of Karazhan. He’s not that difficult to kill if you know what to expect, and you also get a shot at grabbing some loot from Atuumen as well on the way. So get up a group, get yourselves to Kara, and go Dominate this guy.

Fight your way through Atuumen, and then clear the room with the repair guy and head upstairs. Clear all the mobs around the large circle in the tower there so you have plenty of room to move – you’ll need it to take most of the pain out of the Tenris encounter.

Once all the trash is out of the way, open the kitchen door and Tenris will pop out ready to suck your blood. He even looks a little batty. Tenris uses two special abilities that can be a bit of a pain, but are fairly easy to counter.

The first is a soul link. He will attach himself to one of your party members with a bright red ribbon of light. When he does this, stop all damage on Tenris. Any DPS aimed at him will also damage your party member. A few crits on Tenris and you lose one of your buddies, so be quick with that escape key.

Next, there will be a lot of little red, floating, glowing orbs that spawn during the fight. Stay away form them and everything is good. Get in the middle of a bunch of them = bad. So what you need to do is keep Tenris moving around the circle from room to room. By the time you make a complete circuit, the orbs will be gone. Keep him moving and you’ll be ok.

Tenris has a very small loot table. He drops a bat non-combat pet for every party member. (Nice if you’re trying to hit the pet collection achievement and don’t want to buy all of them). He can drop badges, and he has an axe called the Arcanite Ripper. The ripper is a two hander, that also double as an air guiter – erh, axe guitar, steel guitar… Anyway, if you can equip this thing, you can right click it to be transformed into an undead and get a little guitar jamming animation sequence complete with guitar riffs everyone around you can hear.

So pick up the quest for this in EPL at Light’s Hope and then get your team to Kara right away and get your bats. That’s not the only loot we picked up last night doing this run, but we’ll tell you more about that in the next post. Until then, make plans to go and Dominate this dude.

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The scourge invasion has been going on for several days, and will be around a few more.  So we wanted to do a quick post so that everyone will know how we Dominate the invasion events at the ziggurat spawn locations.  This part of the zombie invasion world event is primarily for groups at level 70, but if you are in the 50’s it’s worth it just to go watch the insanity a time or two while it lasts.

If you are level 70; visit the Argent folks at the tents in any major city, but you’ll probably want to find the one in Undercity or Iron Forge since it makes the next part a bit easier to get to. Accept the quest they give and go to Light’s Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands. There will be several quests available to you there. Pick them all up and be ready to get to work.

Every few hours, the world map begin to show a purple skull in several zones on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. The skulls mark zones in which a scourge necropolis (or more) has appeared and is feeding a necrotic crystal. There will be a big pack of mobs surrounding each crystal. As you kill the mobs, it damages the crystal.  As you can see above, the scene at the crystals is nothing short of only slightly organized chaos.

By the time the crystals are about to die there are normally several groups of players slaughtering mobs and competing to be the first to tag one of the rares that will spawn as well as the shadows of doom that appear when the crystal is destroyed. The rares always drop a level 70 elite gear item from the undead slayer’s set for each armor type. The shadows also have a chance to drop 30 necrotic runes, which can be turned in for the last two pieces of the set at Light’s Hope in EPL.

Our Dominating technique is to take a full group to a zone under attack and camp a crystal location. One group member keeps an eye out for the rare spawn, and tags them as soon as they appear. This will ensure you almost always get at least two epics for the group at every crystal you camp.  But you have to be fast with an instant cast spell considering the crowds that will be there most of the time.

Next, as soon as the crystal goes down, spam your AOE attacks to tag the shadows. If you are quick, you can nab two of those as well. with three zones on each continent, and at least three crystal locations in each zone – with a little quick movement we have been able to grab 20 epics in less than an hour. If you bring an enchanter along, you can DE the redundant drops and get a stack of 10-12 void crystals as well. Not bad for an hour’s work.

If someone trying to solo one of the rares or elite shadows dies, just tap it and the loot is yours (you’ll have to finish it off of course).  If some jerk is spamming AOE spells and pulls all the spawns, including the one you summoned, you will have to try to pull aggro from them and lead the mob away until their health resets.  If you can manage this, you can get your tag back. You spent runes on the mob, do whatever it takes to get the loot.

But the best way to stock up on plenty of epic drops and runes is to hit some of the least populated locations.  Our favorites are in Azshara and Winterspring.  In Azshara, head to the three crystals on the beach.  Most folks will be at the one closest to the flight paths in the western part of the zone, leaving you with three locations to watch for rare spawns.  Then when the western crystal goes down, they will all come help your team kill the remaining low level mobs and spawn the shadows.

But the best place is Winterspring.  For some odd reason, the two crystals in the northern part of the zone just south of frost saber rock are almost always left alone until every other zone is cleared.  We have been there three days in a row and gotten every single rare spawn.

You might also check the Tanaris crystals, as it seems that that zone takes the longest to get cleared, although we haven’t tested it yet because it’s so far out of the way.  But that may be the reason no one else seems to be going there as well, leaving it wide open for you to Dominate.

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This week on the Domination podcast Gavin and Moneybagguns have a lot of ground to cover.  listen in while they talk about the new patch, Inscription, and answer a whole pile of questions from our readers.  They also have a special request for listener feedback.  Hit the play button below to listen, or you can download the entire show.

 

 Domination Podcast Episode 1 [25:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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