You already know how to play the game.  But you know you could get better.  You picked the PvP server on purpose to give yourself a challenge.  But it’s starting to get old.  I seems like everywhere you go you’re getting sand kicked in your face.  You win some, you lose some, and sometimes - you just get pwnd.

You think it might be just the fact that they have you out-geared.  But then another dude comes along and whips the guy who just ate your lunch, and made it look easy.  You know there’s a secret to it, but you’ve just never figured out what it is.

Well we’re about to tell you a little secret we use to Dominate every area of the game.

Being a great player is all about reaction times. Now, there is something to be said for being proactive, but there are just so many situations that require you to SEE what’s happening in the game and then USE the right spell or action.  When you get so fast you can respond to everything going on around you and have time to spare - that’s when you start making them react to you, and that’s when you begin to dominate.  Sure, you have to know WHAT to do and WHEN to do it, but you have to think fast, recognize fast, and cast fast.

When you get so fast you are waiting on the global cooldown for your next THREE spells, now we’re talking being ahead of the competition.  That’s when you can just yawn while you rip someone’s head off.

Rookie professional athletes talk about having to get used to the “speed of the game.”  Pros are just bigger, better, stronger, and way faster.  But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with being a 100 pound WoW weakling forever.

Now, there is something to the gear issue.  You really WILL get your head knocked off in arena matches if you have vastly inferior gear.  Which brings up an interesting point: how do you get the gear to dominate if you can’t dominate enough to get the gear?

You Need An Edge

A little boost so that you’re not stuck grinding it out in the battlegrounds forever for season 1 welfare epix.  And even though we’re talking about PvP a lot here, it will make an even bigger difference in PvE.  You’ll be the first person people come to to start their groups.  The MVP of your raid and guild.

One of the best ways to get your speed kicked into warp gear is to use macros.  Have you ever looked at the poor schmucks on the forums trying to find a macro?  Unless you’re a whiz at that sort of thing, writing your own toon specific macros is probably going to end in frustration.  It did for me.  There are just way too many variables to give you a set of macros you can put on your 1-9 keys that will cover every situation.

But there is another way, and it’s simpler, easier, and far superior to macros and mods alone.  The Fang gaming pad can put you in the driver’s seat, and turbocharge your play speed.

We process things in the game visually.  We can’t really smell the ganker coming over the hill behind us, and unless you dropped serious bucks on sound cards and headphones you won’t hear them either.  So we rely on what we can see.

The best way to improve your reaction times is practice.  See what your opponent is doing and then counter that move.  It all starts when you’re a poor little level 1 lowbie.  You learn to react to a limited number of things mobs throw at you.  By the time you reach 70 you have a pretty good feel for what to do in a lot of situations, but you’ve just run out of simple ways of using what you know.

That’s where the Fang will become your best friend.  With this little weapon, you can put every single skill in your book at your fingertips.  After just a few hours practicing, your fingers will be hitting all the right keys so much faster than before it will amaze you.

The Fang has 36 programmable keys that you can hotkey to the action bars in WoW.  It also has the traditional movement keys right in the center including the strafe functions, but with bigger, better feeling buttons that really make moving better than it’s ever been.

How does it help?  You’ve probably heard some jerk elitist dork say “get rid of all that clutter on your screen, learn 2 play!”  I guarantee you there was a time (like 3 years ago) when he didn’t play without looking either.  So don’t listen to the turds.  Get you a mod like bartender and put ALL of your spells out where you can see them and then link them to the fang and your 1-0 keys - then get ready to rumble!

Next, just go out and work through some tough situations.  Do things that you have found difficult in the past.  Fight elite mobs, take on 5 mobs, go to a heroic instance, do some battlegrounds - in other words, Practice!

You will find that you will naturally group together certain types of actions on the fang in little clusters.  Now your right thumb becomes a lethal weapon against rogues - your pinky dots folks to death, and your middle finger?  Well you’re starting to see the point.

With the right tool and a little practice, your game will make a quantum leap in speed.  You will be able to see not only what the game is about to do to you, but make the keystroke NOW!  You’ll already have your counter spell in motion and the offensive spell ready before they knew what hit them.

Now, you can choose to spend a couple of hundred hours learning to be the best macro programmer you can be, good luck with that.  For those of you who DO use power macros - imagine having 36 situation specific macros to use!  We’re not knocking macros, but they are only useful if you can trigger them easily.

There is simply no better way to trigger skills and macros faster and with fewer keystrokes than a Fang.

Sure, you can do without it.  You can figure out how to to toggle 4 actions bars worth of buttons with four different keystroke modifiers and just use your right hand to click 2 or three buttons, but WHY?  That’s like walking around the block to get to the store across the street.

The easier you make it on yourself, the faster you will play.  Make it easy on yourself to Dominate and grab a Fang.

Use it for a month and you’ll never be able to live without it.  How much will that set you back?  About 30 cents an hour - and forever after that it’s absolutely free.  So what do you think?  Is it worth three dimes to absolutely spank everything in sight for an hour?  You’ll never miss a few bucks, but once you play with a Fang we guarantee you’ll know what you’ve been missing.

All you have to do is click the picture to check one out or grab one right away.  It’s time for you to Dominate.

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31 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Yesterday I started a little argument with one of our faithful readers and posters James M.  Don’t take it personally James, and I certainly appreciate your feedback, it makes me really research hard to back up my points.

The original statement I made is that most of your gear from tBC is already obsolete since WotLK will be out in a few months and you’ll be replacing almost all of your gear in a few levels anyway.  That certainly was the case in tBC, and I expected nothing different from the next expansion.

To make myself perfectly clear, I probably should restate the position a little more carefully (again, thanks to James).  It’s not that you will NEED to replace T5 gear with greens because the greens in the 71-73 zones are better, but you probably shouldn’t START trying to get geared up for the expansion if you aren’t already because the gear you will get in Northrend will be ALMOST as good anyway.  If you already have 4 out of five of your T5 set, and a guild running the right stuff to get the last bit, then go for it.  But if you have several toons at 70 that aren’t in high-end raid gear, now is certainly too late to worry about the grind of getting top end gear.

Now, Blizzard has certainly made every effort to make the gear from tBC raids more viable in WotLK than pre-BC gear was in tBC, but there is also a bigger difference between level 75 and level 70 toons and gear than there is between level 60 and 55.  The reason is that as you rise in levels, the gains from gear contribute a more significant percentage of your base skills than at lower levels.  I don’t have time in this article to go into a lot of detail on that, but every level gain is a more significant leap than the last one.  By the time you get to 75 you will be fighting mobs that will just be a LOT stronger and tougher.  Therefore, the gear has to scale faster to keep the game playable solo without having to go back and do 25 man raids from the previous patch.

Just so you all know I’m not pulling this idea out of some mental dork zone, let me give you a good example of what I mean.  The following picture is of the T5 hunter shoulders from the Rift Stalker set.  To get these shoulders you have to be able to go to Tempest Keep, a 25 man raid dungeon.  These are a 54%  drop and in a 25 man raid you can reasonably expect at least 3-5 folks to be rolling for these.  That reduces YOUR chance of getting the roll to below 10% per run, meaning you may need to make 5 full runs to have a reasonable shot at them.  Sound hard yet?

I would imagine that no more than 5% of the nearly 40,000 people who read DYS on a regular basis (or only about 2,000) have even sniffed the prospect of getting into a run on TK.  I would wager that the real number of people at DYS who have had a legitimate shot at these is in the low hundreds.  So saying that T5 will be ok until level 78 is making a HUGE assumption that there are just lots of people who have been able to build their complete T5 sets.  If you look at the guild progressions on any given server, there are normally less than 5 guilds from each faction that have even made it to TK even today.  That means it’s a pretty safe bet that only a few dozen guys on each server have completed even the T5 set, much less the T6 stuff.  It’s that rare.

(Uber Dominate Your Server congratulations to those of you who have completed full sets!  If you’re one of those guys you might pop your armory link into the comments)

Here they are:

Now, my original intent was to show that you will be able to get almost similar gear SOLO in Northrend fairly quickly and easily, so if you’re just beginning to collect T5 stuff, you probably just don’t have time and it might be a waste of time unless you already almost have all the set bits.

For one little quest in the Dragonblight zone at level 72 you can choose these green shoulders as a reward:

Ok, so no sockets, no intellect, and no hit rating, but if you CAN’T get your T5 shoulders before WotLK, these should do you just fine.  Going solo, the extra 19 stamina, 4 agility and 10 AP will almost make up for the loss of Intellect - especially for BM hunters.

Let’s look at a couple of others a little higher up the level ladder at level 73 and 74:

Besides that, these choices would also be a decent fit for a Shaman depending on spec.  If you have multiple toons, you probably have not had time to get a whole pile of epics for all of them.

Not good enough to show you what I mean yet?  Ok let’s try weapons, those are a different type of thing, so let’s stick with hunter weapons and look at some good bows from tBC compared to some simple solo quest rewards from WotLK.  I’m just going to assume you all know or can find out how difficult it is to get the epic bows I’m showing here, the greens and blues that follow each tBC bow is from WotLK level 75 or lower solo quest reward.

So I think you’re beginning to catch on to what I mean.  You can certainly go to Northrend in your T5 gear and not worry about having to completely replace everything in two or three levels, but if you’re not uber geared there’s no need to worry about it much.  In many cases, even good epic weapons will be replaced pretty quick.  Armor seems to have a bigger gap but there’s one more thing we haven’t talked about yet that may make the armor argument completely disappear.

We have not yet seen the gear drops for Northrend instances!  If they are as good as tBC instance drops, you may certainly expect to find gear that rivals T5 and T6 at level 72-73 Boss loot tables, we just don’t have a way of looking at those yet on wowhead.  I could probably have made even better cases for T5 armor vs. Northrend early instance drops if there was more information on WotLK items, but there simply is not enough to choose from as of yet.

One interesting thing about WotLK drops is that there are a lot of items that come with random enchantments.  Not that that is any different from the other two sections of the game so far, it’s just that we haven’t seen all the random enchantment drops yet so the names for all those possibilities don’t yet exist.  All of those Booger Beater Longbow (of the bandit, of the fletcher, of the whale and that sort of thing) all we have is the pre-name without all the suffixes yet.  The random chant stuff may be the best fit for many specialty builds.

So if you don’t like the armor comparisons above (I admit I wish I had more to choose from but it made the point anyway - triple stat greens are not really going to happen) just wait until you see the boss drops from the first few Northrend instances.  If a couple of level 73 greens have decent stats you can bet that the blues from Boss drops will be even sweeter.

The whole point of the original discussion with James was not to bust your hump to try to finish up tBC raids for gear (and certainly not for rep) since you will be able to find comparable gear in WotLK relatively easily and quickly, and you are certainly going to want to save the rep grind for the new factions unless you are REALLY close to hitting exhalted with someone.  It may not always be BETTER than tBC epics, but it will be close, and for leveling that’s good enough.

Besides, just like we’ve been saying all along with tBC, the really fun stuff will be the NEXT end-game content, so go quick to 80 and then start collecting your gear for the serious raids at the end of the WotLK.  If you think the T5 and T6 stuff is good, you will be beside yourself looking at T7 and T8.  When that stuff starts popping up we’ll certainly let you know.

The nice thing is that you’re not going to have to wait long for a final verdict on this topic.  Gavin and I both got our Beta keys last night, so we’re about to find out how fast we both replace all our gear during testing.  We’ll be sure to keep you posted about our progress.

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46 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

In any good experiment you have to have a control group.  For instance, if you are testing a prescription drug you would give one group the real thing, another group a placebo and yet another group nothing so that you have a baseline.

In our quest to give you the very best leveling guide possible we are using the ultimate control toon - the priest.  It is pretty much the standard line that hunters can level solo faster than any other class.  You could make arguments for a lot of other classes and builds, but when it comes to raw killing power and low downtime it’s just really hard to beat a BM hunter for fast leveling.  No wonder almost everyone who has done a leveling guide has used a hunter to do the speed run.

But to make sure that Gavin’s leveling guide is better than anything else you’ve ever seen, we’ve done something different.  Now, I still use a hunter to test routes and do the final speed run for time, but I wanted to make sure that anyone, with any class, could do everything in the guide with relative ease.  That means everything from beginners and nubs to complete pros; from BM hunters to warriors and priests.

Even though we always recommend you run in a party, that’s not always possible, so we wanted to make build our guide so that you can run through from 1-70 no matter if you’re by yourself or have an entire guild full of buddies.  In other words it has to be able to work for anybody in any class.

It would also be hard to argue that priests can have a tough time with leveling solo. They don’t have a whole lot of firepower, are very squishy, have no AOE and can only crowd control undead.  That means that they pretty much have to try to force mobs into 1 on 1 matchups.  A bad pull usually ends up in a bubble, scream and run.

So while I was jamming through on my hunter I wanted to ensure that I didn’t put anything in the guide that anyone would have major problems with.  So I asked our good buddy Lawbringer to bring a priest through the guide segments as I completed them and since we’re almost to 70 I thought it would be good to report some of the interesting tidbits he has uncovered when it comes to leveling solo as a priest.

1. Toss out everything you think you know about playing a priest when leveling.  Start all over with a clean slate and look at it as though you were playing a mage or lock and not a healer.  Select gear with +Int for a larger mana pool and increased crit rate to help you kill mobs faster.  In other words, kill them before they burn through your bubble.
2. Dump all of your points into the shadow tree and select a build that you certainly wont find on the wiki or anywhere else for that matter.  Here is Lawbringer’s setup: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxZZEMgtMtRhtEo The 5 points in the discipline tree only come after level 65, until then spend them all in the shadow tree.
3. By using spirit tap AND blackout, you reduce your downtime and give you a blackout or two in almost every fight.  95% of the time mobs will never burn through you bubble, meaning you get hit very very seldom.  Blackout will proc quite a bit, and spirit tap gives you enough mana regen to make it through about 10 mobs before you have to drink.
4. When you hit 60, start collecting “of the invoker” gear.  The high intellect, spell damage and critical strike will really speed up your kills.  I know it’s tempting to opt for spirit, but you are killing, not healing.  It sure is nice to have back to back crits of 1700+ from mind blast and shadow word death from all that extra spell damage, crit rate and the shadow power and misery talents. 3,500 Dmg in two seconds is pretty dominating for any class.
5. Dot, rebubble and then take them out one at a time.  If you get vampiric embrace up you can take an extraordinary number of hits in shadow form and never lose much health.  If you are getting hit so much that you can’t cast, you can always wand something to death if you are waiting on a bubble cooldown.  There are several really nice wands as quest rewards in outlands that make this feasible.
6. Don’t be afraid to be a little girl.  Psychic scream, bubble and run if you get in a tight spot.  It’s better to get out of the way than take the corpse run.
7. Don’t forget to hotkey Touch of Weakness.  With the buffs to shadow talents it will often crit for over 250!  When you add in the debuff that reduces the damage they do to you it can be a pretty big help, especially when faced with multiple mele mobs.  Put this skill somewhere as easy as your bubble and make it just as automatic to throw it on again every time it pops.
8. For heaven’s sake level fishing and cooking.  The extra 23 spell damage from poached bluefish makes a difference you can really notice in every fight.  That’s also why the invoker gear can be a make or break selection when running solo in shadow form.  Invoker gear and bluefish can give you +350 bonus damage before level 65 which aint too bad considering we are only talking about stuff you can grab from the AH and quest rewards - just greens in other words (remember it has to be something you can do solo, so don’t laugh if you’re comparing that to instance drop gear).
9. When you get shadow fiend, you can take on up to 4 mobs and come out smiling.  The mana return is great, and he can keep several mobs focused on him while you get everyone their very own set of dots.  By the time he expires one or two of them are dead and the others are in bad shape.
10. If you get in a groove with your fighting and know when to blow your cooldowns, you can fight longer than you would think and make more pulls than you thought possible with a priest without drinking.  You may be giving up mana regen for selecting gear with int instead of spirit, but you can kill so much faster that you’ll never miss it.
11. It’s pretty fun to be able to nearly keep up with a hunter once you understand the process of playng a shadow priest solo.  And heck, if Lawbringer can run to 70 on his first priest nearly as fast as he did on his hunter, then you can do it too.  Part of that is that we have built the guide so that anyone can follow it.

It can be tempting to start collecting healing gear as soon as you get to outlands.  If your ultimate goal is level 70 and heroic dungeons and raids, then don’t mess with the level 61-68 instances.  Just get to 70 as fast as you can and then go blow through all the ones you missed on the way.  It’s so much faster to hit the level cap and then go raiding than to try to do them both together.  That way, you only have to respec once to holy when you hit 70.  You may even find a guild that actually needs a shadow priest in the rotation for 10-25 man raids.  They come in awfully handy in Kara.

Also keep in mind that in a few months everything in TBC is going to be instantly obsolete anyway.  More than likely those guys who have spent months getting all that purple gear will be replacing much of it with greens from Northrend, so don’t kill yourself getting T5 now.

So don’t be afraid of the super squishy priest when it comes to leveling.  If you’ve always wanted to try one, now you have the basics of how to play one without it taking you a year to hit the top.  Of course, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Gavin’s guide is simply better than anything else the WoW world has seen.  You’ll have to wait a little longer to get your hands on it, but it sure proved that with the right system, even a priest can Dominate at leveling.

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34 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

(You guys loves her so much during the screenshot contest for midsummer festival that we convinced her to bring a few of her other skills to DYS - our first entry from Fran Molina!)

Herbalism is usually an over-looked profession. People usually pick up Mining to make money, because of the synergy mining has with various professions in the game.

What many people don’t know is that Herbalism has a huge market too, because of the always high demand on Alchemist Potions. Although Herbalism doesn’t have as many synergies as Mining does, you can make a good amount of gold from it as well.

In this guide I’ll teach you how to farm Terokkar Forest, and the trees from Skettis. Terokkar Forest may be considered the zone with the highest potential for making money with Herbalism in the entire game, because of the huge variety of herbs.

We always start with a route, right? Routes are the easiest way to farm herbs. It’s much better to follow a path you know to get your nodes easily than just going around at random.

So, this is the route I use to farm my herbs. You can get the Gatherer Add-On (http://www.gathereraddon.com/) to help you track your herbs, but once you’re accustomed  to your route, it’s no longer needed.

There are herbs that spawn in Cenarion Thicket, Veil Shienor, Veil Reskk, and Firewing Point. The fact is, I don’t find as many herbs in these places as in the places I pointed out on my route. If you are luckier than me, then props to you! This is an example of a basic route, feel free to use it and change to suit your needs.

Quick description on the herbs you can pick up in Terokkar:

• Felweed is a common herb in Outland, and can be found in every zone. It usually spawns out in the open, or near other small plants. You use Felweed for the basic Super Mana/Healing Potions, and popular Elixirs like Adept’s Elixir or Elixir or Major Agility. You need a skill of 300 Herbalism to pick it up.

• Dreaming Glory is usually found at the feet of mountains. They’re used for Super Mana Potions, and Elixirs related to Regenerating Health or Mana. Because of those properties, when you pick a Dreaming Glory you’ll gain a buff that regenerates 30 Health every 5 seconds for 15 minutes. 315 Herbalism is required to pick this herb.

• Terocone is a kind of a rare herb. It spawns only in Terokkar Forest and on Arakkoa settlements in Shadowmoon Valley, making it a nice money-maker. They usually spawn on the feet of the big Olemba Trees. You use it for the really useful Haste Potion, and various Elixirs that are always in demand; requires 325 Herbalism.

• Mana Thistle is a plant that used to spawn only in places accessible by flying. This plant is used for most of the flasks in TBC and all the Resistance Cauldrons. They aren’t called “Mana” Thistle just for nothing; upon picking a Mana Thistle, you gain up to 3500 mana!

What you will need:

• At least 360 Herbalism, to be able to herb the Skettis Trees that are lv72, although I do recommend 375 so you will never fail a pick-up. If you can wear leather, you can ask for a Leatherworker to craft a pair of Herbalist’s Gloves (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7349) to help you.

• 300 Riding Skill and a Flying Mount.

I usually start in Allerian Stronghold, then go to Bonechewer Ruins and fly my way to Skettis. In Skettis, I usually do 2 laps to look for Skettis Trees (hoping to make some more cash!), then fly down to Veil Shalas and continue on my way following my usual route.

Pick every herb you see. Even if they aren’t worth a lot (like Mana Thistle), it’s still money, and there’s a chance of getting a Fel Lotus on every herb you pick up. Fel Lotus is a rare herb that grows along with Outland Herbs, and can be gathered when you gather any other herb. You use them as a reagent for all the flasks that were added with The Burning Crusade.

What are those “Skettis Trees”?

Those famous trees are mobs called Talonsworn Forest-Rager http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=23029 which wander around Skettis. They don’t drop great loot when killed, but an Herbalist can really get full benefit from them! They drop 2-5 Motes of Life every kill, and 4-8 herbs of many kinds, except for Netherbloom and Nightmare Vine.

They have 4 different spawn points, and there’s a maximum of 2 trees spawned at a time. Here is a basic map with the approximate spawn points and their initial patrolling path.

Although they are lv71-72 Elites, they’re pretty easy to solo with any class. The only thing that would make things hard is their Thunderclap ability, which slows attack and movement speed, and that can make a melee toon’s life hard.

Here’s a small video I made on how to kill it as a BM Hunter, also demonstrating the loot quality of the trees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyuOowmef6E

On highly populated servers, the Talonsworn Forest-Ragers can be pretty hard to find, so I’d recommend you to alternate between killing those and picking herbs from Terokkar. But if you’re virtually alone (which usually happens during off-peak times, or on low population server), you can stay around Skettis and farm only those, picking the Dreaming Glories and Mana Thistles on the way.

And now, with this small guide, you’re ready to start dominating the herbalism market on your server.

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17 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Let’s talk about the grind of leveling a little bit. The really fun stuff only starts at level 70; and that dead period starting at about level 30 where you nearly have to live in Stranglethorn Vale is something we all hate once we’ve done it a few times.

The are two ways to take the pain out of leveling and do it faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible. Joanna’s guide brags about making it from 1-60 in 6 days played time. But when you look at the rest of his characters they are a much more modest 7 or 8 days played time to level 60. Still sounds fast right? You can do it too, without having to memorize every quest in the game and without having done it a hundred times before. Guys like that spend all their time doing only that. They love creating new characters on new servers and racing everybody to level 70. Not me, that’s the grind part, unfortunately it must be done.

Now, keep in mind that Gavin and I are working on making leveling a serious breeze even going solo.  (And Gavin is going to hit 70 WAY faster than 6 days!)  Our horde leveling guide is going to walk you through every single step from 1-80.  That’s right, I said 80, more on that in the next few days.

Gavin is a solo nut.  He gets a real thrill out of leveling which is just not my bag.  I prefer another method.  It took me some time to convince him to try it with me, and I’m not sure he’ll ever like it as much as going solo, but at least he can see what I mean now.  The screenshot for this post is Gavin and me as we worked on our quest pathing in Hellfire.

There are other things much more fun about this game than making leveling itself a race. It’s also really hard to do un-twinked. If you are starting from scratch on a new server, it’s tough to level really fast because you have to spend at least a little time gathering and selling something or you’ll be too broke to afford repairs and get your training.

Furthermore, I hate getting one character all the way to level 70 and then stopping and going back to level 1 with another toon and having to do it all over again. There’s a better way of doing it. There are two parts to this – two rules I level by. The first rule is: never quest out of rest. The second one: Never roll alone.

Don’t Quest Out of Rest.

If you will create three or four toons on your account, plus one banker, you can pretty much play all the time and almost never run out of rested experience bonus. When you kill mobs under the rested bonus you get 200% experience. Plus, if you combine it with questing you can get almost two full levels of experience from one full bar of rest. That’s because every time you turn in a quest, it pushes your rest bar further along since you are gaining experience without killing anything.

One quest turn-in generally speaking is about the same as killing ten mobs at a minimum at low levels, the higher you go the more a quest turn in is worth in relationship to time. If you are killing mobs about the right level you can get one or two lines per ten kills up to about level 30 or so. So if you do 5 quests and kill 125-150 mobs, that’s 1 level - especially at lower levels.

If you are killing a mob every 10-20 seconds that’s 3-6 kills per minute, meaning you can gain a level every hour or so as long as you don’t run out of quests to do. This will work up to about level 20, and then it’s going to take you up to two hours per level. Past level 30 you can count on about three hours a level, around 40 will take four hours, after 50 nearly five hours; and watch out for level 65 plus, they take some time.

If you just can’t stand it and have to do something with your toon and you’re out of rest, use that time for farming (which I never do) or grinding for rep, or running instances for gear.   Of course, there isn’t much of a need any more to grind out rep until you hit 70 anyway, so if you must go looking for herbs or something do those kinds of things when your rested bonus ends.  Since I never farm you can see why I can make a hard and fast rule that I just don’t do much of anything out of rest.

Just for grins let’s say you follow my rule and never quest out of rest much. How long will it take to hit level 70 if you can average the leveling times I listed above? Seven days 5 hours. Considering even Brian Kopp is showing some of his toons hitting 60 in 6 days, that’s pretty good! Seven days playing it easy too. We’re not talking about trying to achieve perfection or break any records. Just by questing in rest, you can take your time and have some fun. Run a few instances and do a profession; help out a friend or two along the way – keep it a game for Pete’s sake! This brings us to rule number two.

Never roll alone.

Now you can certainly go from level one to around level ten much faster solo questing. You might even go up to 16 or even 20, but after that I recommend going questing in a group of two. Two people can kill mobs 125% faster than you can alone. Even though you have to share experience, if you are questing in the rest bonus it’s the same amount of experience you would be getting if you were feeling “normal!” Plus; if you can kill 100 mobs per hour alone (if the mobs are your level or lower) you will be able to kill about 225–250 mobs per hour with a friend. And you will be killing mobs up to two levels higher than you. This means you can take another day or so off of your leveling time to level 65 just by doing everything with a buddy.

Even if you don’t buy the argument that it’s faster in leveling time, you can certainly agree that two people with some skill can do almost anything but run instances.  You can bag every rare elite you come across, do all of the team quests, and even quest in areas two to three levels higher than you could solo.  Plus, it’s just a LOT more fun.

Sure, you have to kill twice as many mobs for the loot quests that require you to get 10 of something, but it will end up taking less time to get 20 for two people than it would for one person to get 10 by himself. I can pretty much count on getting a ding every time I sit down to play, most of the time two, on every character I log in without having to grind it out for hours at a time.

As an added bonus, if you are cycling through characters like this, by the time you are done you’ve got three or four level 70 characters with awesome gear ready for just about anything and probably less than 25 days played time. Now THAT sounds like a lot of time, but my first toon didn’t hit level 70 until 23 days played time (dang I was a nub). Granted, it was faster the next time out, but both of my first 2 70’s took me more than 30 days. If I had known this back then I could have had four or five level 70’s in the same amount of played time.

The other really cool thing about playing with a friend is that you’ve got some good company and many things that will make you mad trying to do solo are almost too easy with two players. So get back to having a good time and have more of it - quest under rest and roll with your crew. It will bring the fun back into the greatest game around.

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33 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

If all has gone well with your arena preparation, and your opening tactics have put your opponent on the back foot, it becomes time to hunt for your first arena kill of the match.

There are many ways in which you can force a kill against the other team, each with their own complexities of execution, ranging from the simple to the devious, listed here are just a few of the most popular ways of squeezing that kill in past the enemy healers.

Drain them dry

By far the simplest method of winning an arena match is to outlast your opponents’ mana pool; while lacking any particular flair it is effective. Through a mixture of mana drains and healing efficiency de buffs such as wounding poison you can ensure that your target can no longer be healed simply because of a lack of mana.

Many an even fight in which no team can tactically gain the upper hand comes down to a mana war such as this; particularly with defensive orientated teams accompanied by many healers. It is important to ensure you are capable of winning in the outlasting game to prevent a slow and frustrating loss.

Control the healers

This method is generally the standard way a kill is earned in the arena. It relies on your team having moderate burst capabilities and crowd control skills.

Simply use a crowd control ability on an opposing healer when your designated kill target is moderately low on health to prevent heals from landing. Typically your kill target will be another healer if present allowing you to easily interrupt further heals.

This method is simple to execute and the one most teams utilise when starting out so as a healer it is important to learn how to defend yourself from enemy crowd control by attempting to stay out of line of sight from enemy crowd controllers.

Split DPS

Slightly more complex is a split DPS method, most healers have emergency healing measures that can rapidly heal one target or mitigate large amounts of damage to one target. Many healers however struggle to heal multiple people efficiently.
As such, by splitting your DPS between two targets when the opposing team has a low amount of healing power can cause them to rapidly be overloaded when concentrated damage could be countered.

Target switching

Reliant on fast reactions from your team to voice communicated information, target switching is by far one of the most effective methods of claiming a kill and is commonly how tournaments level teams win matches.

The premise is that your DPS can switch target faster than the enemy healers can react. With enough burst damage you can have a target down to low health before the opposite team get a chance to react. Coupled with well timed crowd control or preliminary damage from a split DPS tactic and kills can come thick and fast.

This is the tactic that all teams should aspire to learn, but it does require your team to have competent leadership as timing is everything.

The almighty Cyclone

This tactic is only available if you have a Druid in your team and requires precise timing to work. The plan is to hit your target with a large burst of damage to get him low on health, normally he would then be healed up but by landing a cyclone you prevent him being healed.

From there you have 6 seconds to line up a killing burst of damage as soon as cyclone breaks so timing is everything; time your attack too late and heals will land preventing the kill, time it too soon and your attack will do no damage.

While complex, this is my favourite personal tactic for 5v5 arena and is a fantastic way of stealing a kill from under the noses of teams with a high amount of healers.

Using the right tactic at the right time is pivotal to success in the arena, but now fully informed, you should be able to put them into practice with your own teams as you prepare to dominate all who stand before you.

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31 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

A light went on for me a few days ago as I was feverishly working on my current speed leveling run.  I always run a hunter for speed runs and I don’t take a single second longer than I absolutely have to for anything.  That means I’m not spending precious time at the ah looking for every teeny tiny gear upgrade, or anything else for that matter.

As a result, I can end up having mana issues.  I’m not able to spend the time to get all the exactly right gear and spec MM to make that sort of issue go away, since that would defeat the purpose of trying to break records anyway.  Think about it, if I can save just 5 minutes in every level it will take 5 hours and 45 minutes off the total time.  So spending even 10 minutes running to the nearest AH to get minor gear upgrades is completely out of the question.

But taking 10 seconds between every six to ten fights or so to mana back up is also a time killer.  But if you back off on your skill shots, you don’t mow them down as fast - you can see the dilemma.  Kill fast = more down time to drink.  Slow down a touch = slowing down (I hate that).  But I found a really nice little exploit for this issue.  It doesn’t work for more than 10 levels or so.  But at levels 51-60, when the quests all seem like gathering quests, a little speed boost to down-time is just the ticket.

So whilst I was speeding through Azeroth wondering how to better manage my mana drain, I had to go to Org to turn in a quest in the valley of honor.  And then it hit me: Alterac Manna Biscuits!  I logged out for a minute to check Wowhead for these little nuggets of goodness.  Here’s the tale of the tape:

See that?  4410 health AND 4410 mana on one food.  Well I didn’t waste another second, I logged back in, jumped into an AV and bought 10 stacks of these.  A little pricey, but well worth it.  At level 52 these things will fill up your mana bar in about 5-7 seconds, talk about speeding things up!

You’ll notice that you can’t use these until level 51, so it’s a bummer for you until then.  You can’t join AV before level 51 anyway, so you just have to wait until then.  These are available at Gruunda Wolfheart for horde in Frostwolf Village, and Gaelden Hammersmith in Dun Baldar for Alliance.

A little more research showed that there is not anything to compare to the Alterac Manna Biscuit (AMB’s) until well into outlands and level 60.  So for ten levels I’ve got the very best thing available to fill my mana bar - so fast, in fact, that I can just sit down to munch and send my pet to the next mob.  I can virtually fight non-stop all the way to Hellfire.

Now I was looking at this from the purely mana-regeneration perspective, since I normally don’t have a lot of health damage running on the hunter.  These things are a great boost to all the mana-using classes as we will see below.  But there are also big benefits to the warrior and rogue who have no other way to heal themselves after a tough fight than by using bandages or food if they are running solo.

As a matter of fact, you might think that the only class that might not get a big boost from these is the mage.  Mages get to conjure all their food and water for free, but until they get to train rank 7 of conjure food and water at level 60 (Rank 7 food from a drop tome as well), these things are much better than the rank 6 conjured items.  Past that, rank 6 of conjure food and water only regenerate 2148 health or mana, so AMB’s have twice the punch and give health and mana simultaneously!  So every single class wins with AV Manna Biscuits.

So as you slog through the 50’s on your next toon, be sure to hop an AV match and grab some of these, they will certainly do more than anything else out there to keep you on your feet - dominating!

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18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

When you run as many auctions and toons as I do, having enough bag slots can become a serious issue.  I will buy out hundreds of auctions every week for resale, as well as having to manage the items for my rolling auctions as they expire every couple of days.

Add to the auction items the little piles of BoE greens, consumables and commodities (cloth, leather, metal) I pick up while leveling and raiding and it can end up being quite a mess if I didn’t use a toon for the sole purpose of asset management.  If you do everything with your main character log on right this minute and create two more characters to help you with your item management.

Even though I want to tell you how to work your trade mule, let’s start with the concept of using a dedicated banking toon.  On every server and every account I will have a single toon who does nothing but go back and forth from the mailbox to the auction house.

For Alliance choose a Gnome or  Dwarf and run them up to Iron Forge.  Horde players should use a Tauren in Thunder Bluff.  Those cities are simply the best places for commerce because the ah and mailbox are very close together.

Instead of taking time out with your main (or any other alt your are leveling) to do your ah business, always use your banking toon.  This will help more than anything to avoid mistakes and confusion.  Simply mail every single item of value to your banker and then you can deal with the whole pile at a time when you can concentrate on what to do with each piece.

Use your banker to post all your auctions and hold your gold.  I also use my banker to buy items for my toons to use as well.  My main rarely visits the ah, I’ve got more important stuff to do with that guy.

Now that you’ve got a banker, create a mule toon.  With a mule, it makes no difference what race you select although I will normally use a human for Alliance and an orc or troll for horde.  Just run this level 1 toon to the nearest inn with a mailbox and there they will stay forever.

The really neat thing about using a mule is that you can take advantage of a little exploit in the way the mail system works.  This tip will make it so much easier for the new player who doesn’t yet have the gold to blow on a full set of big bags for all their toons.  It will also make life easier for you power ah users since I don’t think we’ll ever get 250 slot bags!

When your banker’s mailbox and bags are jammed full and you’re waiting for the weekend to post all of those goodies at the auction house just use the bulk mail system and mail everything to your mule to hold.  Every mail you send can contain up to 12 items.  You can clear hundreds of items out of your mailbox and bags in just a few minutes.  I also recommend mail mods such as “Open All” and “Postman” to help speed up this process even more.

Once your Mule has everything in the mail you can let it sit there for up to 30 days.  I never leave things in there that long, but that’s the max.  After 30 days, those bulk mail items will just get returned to the banker - it doesn’t even cost you the mail fees!

But here’s the cool trick.  When it’s time to send everything back to your banking toon, just log your mule, open the mail and hit “return.”  You can return hundreds of items to your banker in a few clicks and zero postage fees.

Using the mail this way gives you hundreds - even thousands of absolutely free bag slots.  If you use the mail system to it’s maximum advantage, you’ll never have to worry about running out of space or blowing too much gold on bigger bags before you can really afford to.

You will also know exactly how to handle extra items.  Everything just gets mailed to your banker - simple.  When you have time to concentrate on what to do with everything, your banker will either post items on the ah or mail them to the mule to hold until they are ready to be sold or just to hold if you like.  Your banker will almost always mail things exclusively to your mule, and all your other toons will almost always mail everything to your banker, it makes visiting the mailbox short and sweet.

You’ll notice that the screen shot for this article shows my mule in Booty Bay.  On most servers I keep one mule for each faction in Booty Bay so that I can take advantage of moving things back and forth between Alliance and Horde auction houses.  This is a topic for another time, but if you can stand running your mules to booty bay (multiple deaths are often inevitable, especially for ally) then you really set yourself up for some dominating moves between faction auction houses.

It all sounds too simple once you read through it.  But there are so many players I see on their main toon at the auction house day after day that I thought it would be a great tip for those of you who do not use banking toons and mules up until now.  It will make your life a lot simpler and expand your storage space to near infinity.

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18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

If you have been following my arena guides lately then you should now be entering the arena with a strong team setup coupled with a sophisticated communications setup to enable your team to perform to its best.

But all that planning is for nothing if you cannot execute your attack in the right way, as with the preparations you make before attacking, the way in which you initiate your attack is vital to winning in the arena.

Should your team end up confused and scattered in the attack it is a fast road to a lost match, likewise should you be able to force confusion upon your enemy it can make your wins easier to obtain. The trick is to force the other team to play into your own hands and style; make them dance to your tune and victory is assured.

One basic and effective opening tactic is a rush, this favors high burst dps teams to take advantage of the confusion for an easy first kill. The plan is simple, hit the other team hard and from an unexpected angle before they have a chance to identify what composition they are against.

An example of an effective place to rush is Blades Edge, most teams generally line up at opposite ends of the bridge and spend some time scouting out the other team, an effective rush will instead mount up and ride to the opposing teams ramp up to the bridge to hit them in the side.

The big downside to a rush is that while the other team will not have time to scout you out, neither will you have time to identify an effective target to nuke and so it is easy to end up with your own team confused without proper leadership.

A second effective opening tactic, and my personal favorite is harassment. This generally relies on having dispell classes move forward and purge one or two of the enemy buffs before backing off again quickly. In this manner you can weaken the enemy without fully engaging them and try to make one of their members panic and charge you.

If harassing, remember to land an attack from a distance on warriors in order to put them in combat; this stops them from utilizing charge against you which is the most common way you will be chased down as a harasser.

You can also harass with mana drains such as viper sting and by utilizing low rank DoT spells which cost far more mana to be removed than they do to cast. Further harassment tactics extend to the killing of hunter and warlock pets; these are sometimes left on aggressive stance and will charge out when attacked, enabling them to be killed alone.

The third tactic involves mass AoE crowd control and is effective when combined with a slightly delayed rush.   What it typically involves is a class such as a rogue sapping enemy healers or a mage polymorphing them before/as you charge in. This forces them to trinket in order to begin healing.

It is at this point that you hit the entire team with an AoE fear such as intimidating shout or howl of terror. The healers, having previously trinketed will now be out of control and likely to run out of line of sight of their team mates, causing chaos in the enemy’s organization.

This tactic does however rely on the other team being bunched up and you being the attacker.

The final opening tactic is the stealth hunt, if you know the other team has a stealth class, especially a rogue, then the chances are high that they will be sniffing around your team scouting you out. If you can catch them out with a low rank AoE to detect them or by utilizing the shadow sight gems then you force the other team to attack in order to rescue the stealth member.

This can lead to the opposition lacking organization in their attack making them much easier for you to dominate.

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4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We walked you through getting to Nat Pagle for this quest, and it’s high time I showed you how to catch those four fish.  Before you head out, be sure to bring along your shiny baubles otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you get to the first fishing hole!

Here’s the link to the Quest on wowhead - http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=6607 Nat asks you to go catch four fish and then return to him when you get them all. What we’re going to do is show you the fastest order to go get these fish, and the best spots to fish.  For reference, paths in yellow are for Alliance, and Horde is red.

FISH #1 - Feralas Ahi

For the Feralas Ahi just fly to Feralas (Feathermoon for Ally, Camp Mojache for Horde) and run to the little lake in the middle of the map to catch the Feralas Ahi. The map is pretty easy to follow here. Just run down to the bridge that crosses over the waterfall and jump off the road. There’s a little spot that sticks out into the pond with no roaming mobs. This one is easy for both factions.  I normally get the Ahi in just a few casts.

FISH #2 - Sar’Theris Striker

After you get the Ahi, fly to Desolace for the Sar’Theris Striker. Horde will only have to get off the bird at Shadowprey Village, run a bit south down the coast, and fish.  Be sure that you leave Shadowprey village completely, your sub-zone on your minimap should read Sar’Theris Strand, you cannot catch this fish while the zone map reads Shadowprey Village. Ally have a little longer run from Nijels Point down to the coast.

FISH #3 - Savage Coast Sailfin

Now fly back to ratchet and take the boat to Stranglethorn Vale. As soon as the boat lands, just hop off the north end of the dock and swim over to the first place you can stand near the little camp of pirates. This fish, the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin takes about 2 minutes to get. You might even try to catch one right off the end of the dock.

FISH #4 - Misty Reed Mahi Mahi

Now for the last (and hardest) fish to nab, the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi. Horde toons can fly to Stonard, but Ally Chars will have to fly to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, or to Darkshire in Duskwood and run around Stonard to catch up

When you get to the beach, avoid the Murlocs and you’ll find a little spot just after the sand ends where there are no giant crocs or Murlocs patrolling and you can fish in a little peace. Once you’re done here, hearth out.

Now all you have to do is go back to Nat Pagle and turn in your fish, and you’re done! Congratulations and happy fishing! Oh, and always remember to Dominate.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post