Melee classes have a large variety of meta gems to choose from that are highly effective in any given situation. But it does raise the question as to which meta gem is right for your melee class?

There are two factors to take into account when picking the right meta gem for you, the first is its requirements of other color gems, the second is how well it fits with your class mechanics, below is in-depth information behind the melee based meta gems to make that choice easier.

Brutal Earthstorm Diamond - +3 Melee damage + chance to stun

Requires 2 of each gem

The stun chance on this meta gem is 1% and does not have a cooldown, it does however cause diminishing returns on other stun procs such as mace spec for warriors and rogues and as such most classes with passive stun procs from talents or weaponry choose to pass over this gem.

The main advantage of this meta gem is its base 3 melee damage increase, however it needs to be said that this damage increase does not scale with your weapon speed. As such the damage boost is best for classes with a very fast attack rate, the best being a feral druid in cat form for who this meta gem adds an effective 42 attack power.

If you use slow weapons however, give this meta gem a pass unless you really want the stun proc.

Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond - +12 Critical strike rating +5% Snare and Root resist

Requires more red gems than yellow

Normally a crit based gem would be passed over in PvP due to resilience but due to this gems special effect it suddenly becomes much more viable. The snare and root resist effect stacks with the surefooted enchant along with any talented snare and root resists such as a rogues fleet footed talent.

With snare and root resists stacked up from multiple sources you become much more mobile and in PvP it can mean the difference between catching your target to finish them off or being stuck in a frost nova eating shatter combos.

The requirements for this metagem are equally simple to meet if you do not favour yellow gems.

Eternal Earthstorm Diamond - +12 Defense rating +10% Shield block value

Requires 2 blue gems and one yellow

Strictly a tanking gem for prot paladins and warriors, the gem requirements are defensivly orientated and so easy to meet for a tank and the increase in block value scales well with your equipment to make it the best option for shield using tanks.

On top of the extra mitigation provided, the higher block value will also increase the damage output of a warriors shield slams to increase his threat capacity.

Powerful Earthstorm Diamond - 18 Stamina + 5% Stun resist

Requires 3 blue gems

A defensive based PvP gem; the requirements end up taking away from your offensive capability however the stun resist can be worth it if you have other ways of boosting it up.

5% Stun resist alone is almost a non factor in PvP, throw on the orc racial stun resist however and things quickly become a different matter, add on top any stun resist talents your class may have and you quickly become a rogues worst nightmare.

The conditions to fully exploit this gem are rather specific, but if you can then the rewards for doing so are well worth it. If not, then it is just a glorified stamina gem and not the best use of your meta slot.

Relentless Earthstorm Diamond - 12 Agility + 3% Critical damage

Requires 2 of each gem

The best offensive melee gem going for PvE, this scales well as your kit and crit rate improve. Not quite as effective in PvP situations however due to the effect of resilience.

This gem also makes a good tanking meta choice for a druid both for threat generation and proccing improved leader of the pack for self heals.

The main drawback to this gem is its requirements which can detract from your offensive capabilities but for PvE the bonus to your critical damage more than makes up for this loss.

Swift Skyfire Diamond - 24 Attack power + Minor run speed increase

Requires 2 yellow and one red gem

This gem is mostly used by those who want a surefooted enchant but do not wish to lose out on a run speed increase for catching their opponents in PvP if they do not have a talented movement speed increase.

The requirements are simple to meet and it provides a solid damage boost making this a safe choice, though unless you specifically want both the surefooted enchant and a boost to your run speed there are likely better meta gems for you.

Thundering Skyfire Diamond - Chance to increase attack speed

Requires 2 of each gem

The proc from this gem provides 240 haste rating for 6 seconds with a cool-down of 40 seconds. For most situations a Relentless Earthstorm Diamond will provide you a higher dps increase due to the lack of an internal cool-down.

That said there is one situation in which this gem excels, and that is for a blood elf retribution paladin using seal of blood, a class for whom haste is key. For any other melee dps class there are better options available.

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It has recently been announced by Blizzard that season 4 of arenas will begin on the 24^th and 25^th of this month on the US and European servers respectively and this presents a unique opportunity to all players to make a good sum of gold.

When season 4 goes live not only does the brutal gladiators’ set become available for the top arena players; but also season 2 equipment becomes purchasable for honor. Currently each servers’ PvP players are working diligently at stashing away masses of arena points and honor for season 4.

What this inevitably leads to is an astronomical one-off influx of new equipment into each and every server much larger than normal kit replacement. All this new kit will be needing gems and enchants, those prepared to provide the materials needed for these gear buffs stand to make a good deal of gold indeed as demand will far outstrip supply leading to inflated prices.

In an effort to aid you in exploiting this massive demand for enchants, let us explore exactly what will be in demand on a profession by profession basis.

Tailoring

Spellthread of all types will be in demand for leg enchants by all casters, and in order to create those threads large amounts of primals are needed.

The common ingredient to all spellthread is a primal nether, unfortunately these cannot really be farmed and are not worth spending badges on to resell the primal; if you have any spare nethers stashed away however, then this is the best opportunity to sell them you will likely ever have.

The next ingredient needed is either primal life or primal mana in very large quantities, both will see massive price escalation and so are ideally suited to being farmed for profit.

Leatherworking

Leatherworking creates leg enchants used by melee classes. These also use a large quantity of primals which can be farmed by anyone.

Once again primal nethers are required, creating an even larger demand for them. However this time it is primal earth and air that is required; unfortunately primal earth is almost always in surplus due to a high amount of miners in game so these are generally not worth farming. This is not the case with primal air - it always sells well.

Secondly, if you are a skinner, all leg armors require a large amount of knothide leather so it may be worth farming some to sell.

Jewelcrafting

Gems of all colours will be in high demand, however PvP kit comes with a mix of yellow and red sockets leading to a much higher demand for yellow and red gems over blue.

Since you have little control as to what gems specifically you get, just hold back any gems you have for sale once season 4 is released and you should see a price rise for all types.

Alchemy

Alchemists create the base meta gems before a jewelcrafter can cut them, and creating meta gems requires primals. Earth, water, fire and air will all be in demand.

Note that primal air is also required by tailors so having two professions requiring primal air only serves to further increase the demand for primals and motes of air - and as such raise its price even further.

Enchanting

All base enchanting materials will see a price hike as the demand for them will be overwhelming; when out farming other materials keep any greens you find for disenchanting either by yourself, if possible, or a friend.

Besides the basic materials though, enchanting requires an astronomical number of primals. Primal fire, water, life and mana are in demand for caster based enchants while a small amount of primal air is in demand for agility enchants.

Misc

On top of all these profesion based requirements, new shoulder enchants will be in demand which will lead to a rise in the price of arcane tomes and fel armaments; arcane tomes are more common due to the sunwell runs now available so if you plan to farm either then I suggest you farm fel armaments.

Once you have farmed a good amount it will be time to dominate the auction house on the 24^th/25^th for some good old fashioned profiteering.

Addition by Lawbringer:

After doing a test on this theory (and being flamed for it in the comments by Richard) I decided to post the results of my own experience with this information directly in the post for all to see.  The following screen shot show the bags of my banking toon on Fenris, Horde side, toon name “Moneybaggins.”  I sent every penny I had past 5,000 gold to my mule toon on Fenris to hold for the duration of this experiment.

With my 5,000 gold I spent the 22nd, and 23rd purchasing every available items for DE that would yield high level mats as well as purchasing every available Void Crystal, Large Prismatic Shard and Arcane Dust.  Fenris Horde has a fairly small AH, just over 160 pages on average (information from AADV).

On the morning of the 24th I re-posted every single enchanting mat I had gleaned from my purchases and DE efforts for approximately 150% more than market value based on data from AADV and Bottom Scanner.  Needless to say, since I had the only available mats in any sort of volume I was the only choice.  I would also spend some of my earning each day buying out people who tried to undercut my price by a significant percentage as well as any auctions of large stacks to make sure I kept nearly complete control of the market.

What was really amazing is that I was able to corner the market on a server as mature as Fenris with as little as 5,000 gold.

The following screen shot shows the results of this exercise as of the morning of July 5th, 2008.  You can see that I was able to far more than double my 5,000 gold and I still have a mailbox full of mats I sold at the ah I haven’t even opened yet.  If you doubt the existence of any of this, you are welcome to meet me on Fenris and I will be happy to show you first hand.

I certainly hope that many of you were able to profit as handsomely as I did from this tip and I look forward to more of these tips from Lithanial as well as the pointers Gavin and I try to give you when the fruit is ripe for the picking on the AH - we don’t just make this stuff up folks, we know how to make things work!

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In part one of this guide on focus targeting I explained the basics of how you can utilize focus targeting to direct your spells and abilities towards a second target, specially selected by you.

There are however some limitations in the default UI that prevent you from fully exploiting the potential of focus targeting; the main limitation being a complete lack of visual representation as to the status of your focus target. Unfortunately, you do not even get confirmation as to what your focus target is.

To rectify this matter we need to delve into the world of interface modification; and more specifically you require what is known as a unit frame mod. Personally I use X-Perl.

Interface addons can be found on any good interface site such as http://wow.curse.com and are simple to install.

To install, simply download the addon you want and extract it into the addons section of the interface folder in your World of Warcraft folder.

Once you have the addon installed you will find that when you log into the game, all status bars for yourself, your party and your targets have changed.

Before you start playing with your addons settings and getting things to make them look how you want; assign yourself a focus target as a test by using the macro you made in part 1 of this article.

What you should find is that you now get a full status bar for your focus target as well as one for your normal target, you will also find that no matter how much you try, you cannot make the focus target status bar disappear unless you move out of the targeting range of your focus target.

There are times however, when you do want to de-select your focus target; and doing so is simple. Go into your macro window as shown in part 1 and create a new macro with the following text.

/clearfocus

what this new macro will allow you to do is de-select your focus target.

So what has adding a status bar for your focus target actually achieved?

> You now get visual confirmation as to what your focus target is.
> You can now see a cast bar for your focus target which is invaluable for well timed spell interrupts.
> You can see what buffs and debuffs are on your focus target along with duration left which lets you know when crowd control spells and the like need renewing.
> You can keep an eye on your focus targets health and mana status.

Once you have finished setting up your unit frames how you like, there is one final thing that can be done to improve the functionality of your focus targeting, and that involves utilizing a bar mod such as Trinity bars.

What a bar mod allows you to do is have many more buttons available on screen compared to the standard UI as well as drag them around to where you want them.

Some addons such as Trinity bars also give you the option of setting the target of any button you create; this allows you to setup a bank of buttons that will only ever have your focus target as their target.

The beauty of this is that you will no longer have to write macros out for every spell you want to use, instead, you can just drag them straight into the right slot.

Furthermore, since the spell slot has your focus target as its target, it will also take the focus target as the point of reference for showing a blanked out icon if an ability is out of range, combined with the information from your unit frame addon, you have a vast horde of information as to the status of your focus target.

As an extra bonus, buttons that are set to only target your focus target will not show on screen until you actually have a focus target, dramatically reducing screen clutter for a nice clean UI.

And that is all there is to know about focus targeting. Have fun dominating two targets at once!

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(This article was written by our second-place winner in the writing contest. A young man who plays under the toon name Lithanial. He’s got tons of great information, especially about druids. Lithanial is the fellow who tanked Grull in moonkin form, a style he calls the Panzerkin. He’s creative and a great writer, you’re going to love his info.)

Have you ever wished you could keep your eye on two targets at once with no hassle whatsoever? The good news is that you can! The bad news however, is that to be able to do so can be rather complex if you don’t know how to set it up.

Within the basic functions of WoW is a feature called focus targeting which allows you to assign yourself a second target separate from your normal one; this second target will be locked and unable to change until you specifically tell it to.

On its own this feature would not be too useful. But with the use of a few simple macros you can set up custom spell buttons that will affect your focus target, rather than your normal target; this is where focus targeting starts to shine.

So why would you go through the effort of setting up focus targeting for yourself? Here is a short list of what can be achieved with a little careful configuration :-

> Be able to heal a friend without having to target them.
> Be able to quickly crowd control an opponent without switching targets.
> Be able to keep an eye on enemy healers in PvP for well timed spell interrupts.
> Be able to attack two mobs in melee with little effort for much better multi-mob aggro generation.
> And many more uses besides.

Hopefully that will have grabbed your attention, so how do you go about configuring focus targeting? The first thing you need to do is create a macro button to assign your current target as your focus target.

Log into the game and then go into the options menu. There is a button labeled macros on the main menu, press that to open up your macro window. From here create a new macro; select whichever icon you desire and name it “Focus.”

In the bottom window of the macro frame you can add the macro program, in this case it is just a simple case of typing in:

/focus

that’s it, nothing more, nothing less. And it should look something like this.

Now drag your new button from the macro window in to a free slot on your UI, when you press your new button it will assign your current target as your focus target.

The next step is to create a spell macro that will cast your ability at your focus target rather than your current target. Again, go into the macro window and create a new macro with a name and icon of your choice.

When adding the macro program this time type:

/cast [target=focus] spellname

now this can be tricky depending on the spell as the spell rank data needs to be entered as well, luckily there is an easy way to get it right. When entering the spell name, rather than typing it in, shift-click on the icon within your spell book that you wish to cast.

By shift-clicking the icon, its spell name and its rank is automatically placed into your macro for you, assuming both windows are open.

Now drag this new icon into a usable interface position and get ready to try it out. First off target anything, then press your first macro to assign it as your focus; next, target something else and then press your second macro.

The spell should now cast at your focus target despite you having something completely different as your main target!

Feel free to experiment with creating new macros for whichever spells you would find most useful and in part 2 I shall show you how you can expand upon the focus targeting feature with some custom UI mods to take full advantage of it.

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