First Aid Leveling Tips

Yes, I know what the ‘pros’ will say, that a First Aid guide for WoW is silly.  But maybe they don’t know everything about everything.  And yes, leveling first aid isn’t really on the level of brain activity that might be required for brain surgery or calculus – but if you would rather NOT have to think about it any more than necessary, it’s nice to have it all listed out for you neat and clean.

At the very minimum it will save you a couple of trips back and forth between the AH and the trainers.  Really, if you could just go to the AH and buy every single scrap of cloth you needed (and you already knew exactly how much you would be needing) and could just stand at the trainer and hit the ‘create all’ button and come back every few minutes – that’s not something a total nub would do.  Just a little Dominating.

But even in first aid in wow there is a little trick we can let you in on that will save you s tidy bit of gold through the middle of leveling first aid.  And you wish you had thought of it – really.

Remember back in the day having to go all the way out to Theramore or Hammerfall for your artisan First Aid quest?  Triage is not required any more, but those of you who skip it are missing out on a couple of things.  Blizz giveth, and Blizz replaceth that way.  Not exactly biblical, I know, but . . .

Anyway, when Blizz removed the requirement for the Triage quest, they added an incentive in the form of a XP bonus that doesn’t seem to have a level cap.  In other words, you can still go grab the first aid quests at any point on your way to 80 and get XP based on your level.  Not bad to snag 10,000 to 20,000 experience out of a foofoo quest eh?

And if that’s not enough for you, just go out there during your first aid powerleveling work to save yourself a tidy bit of gold.  Enough for a decent repair of your mains T10 gear after a few wipes – seriously.  You see, the good doctors will train you for Heavy Mageweave, Runecloth and Heavy Runecloth Bandages absolutely free if you complete the quest.

All of those first aid recipes will set you back 37 gold 50 silver if you buy them anywhere else.  Excuse me, but I can turn that 37 gold into about 50 in a couple day’s work – throwing it to some trainer is not my idea of a good time.  Getting to Theramore may be a pain (hush Horde, Hammerfall is easy), but not enough of a pain to blow almost 40g.

So there you have it, a decent couple of tips out of something you thought was completely worthless.  You really shouldn’t judge before you read.  If you already knew about this little trick, you’re not a nub.  If you thought you were REALLY pro and didn’t know it – tsk.  If you’re glad to know it, stick around, we find this kind of thing all the time.  It’s why we (and you) can Dominate.

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Powerleveling Leather Working From 1 to 450

Leatherworking  is one of those professions that doesn’t get a whole lot of play.  But it does have reasonable gold-making and toon buffing potential for your character – plus it’s not all that expensive to power level if you do it properly.  Having a good Leatherworking Guide can certainly save you time and expense.  The link above will take you all the way through the steps to do it cheaper and faster.

Primarily we recommend that you use professions that have the greatest benefit to your toon for end-game activities such as arena and raiding.  The crafting professions are generally best for this but the list of professions with the best toon buffs combinations is fairly short.

You’ll see a lot of casters going with Tailoring and Enchanting, while mail and plate wearers tend to go with Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting for their min/max needs.  It’s hard to beat those combinations for pure added power.  However, if you already have those professions covered and need something different for balance Leatherworking isn’t a bad choice either.

The fur linings can actually outdo the extra gem slots from blacksmithing, even if you are slotting in the JC only gems.  If Spell Power and Attack power fit your toon needs best, Leatherworking is a great choice.

The Leg armors and drums also have some decent profit potential from auction house sales.  And considering there are probably far fewer Leatherworkers than Tailors on many servers it means that for the most part you can probably make more selling leg armors than threads.  That’s not always the case on every server, but you might look into it.

Getting all the mats for leather working may be a little tough for power leveling, but if you know ahead of time what you need and have any patience at all at the ah you should be able to get it done without too much waiting and expense.  Northrend mats should be plentiful, it’s the mid levels that might give you fits.  A DK alt with skinning is just the ticket to solve that issue.

If you’re cheap, and don’t mind farming, skinning is a joke to level.  If you skin your way through the mats list in our Leatherworking Guide, you’ll have no trouble making it through the rougher parts of the leatherworking mats.  Plus, DK’s come with all the flight paths and and epic land mount to boot, so you don’t have to waste skinning on a main.

So while Leather working may not be your first choice, it’s certainly not a bad choice for an end-game profession.  And if you’re using it for raiding you may very well end up with one of the new 264 ilevel gear recipes which are selling quite well in patch 3.3.  As a matter of fact – I may just do JC/LW on my old druid.  In the end leveling leatherworking is not all that hard and gives you a chance to Dominate in raids and at the AH.

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How To Power Level Jewelcrafting

Now that we are well on our way here at DYS to getting you the best builds for all the classes, it’s high time we jumped up and became your go-to source for professions as well.  We’ll start it off with our Jewelcrafting Guide.  We’ll do the best we can to get all of the professions up in short order, including the secondary professions such as first aid and herbalism.

Dominate Your Server Jewelcrafting Guide

Just use the link above to go directly to the complete jewelcrafting powerleveling guide.  The rest of this article will discuss the ins and outs of leveling jewelcrafting as an overview.  We just might be able to save you a lot of time, gold and headaches if you’ll flow through this bit first.

Leveling JC is something Law will probably never do again, which means at least not for a few more weeks.  It still irks me to no end that about the only way to level the dang thing without spending what amounts to a small fortune is to farm your way through it – YUCK BOMB!  That’s right, the only way you can reasonably spend less than a huge pile of gold on mats for this is if you have a miner and a whole lot of hours to kill.

I prefer to use other people’s hours, that’s what the AH is for.  So I suppose if you are also patient you can just meander along through the leveling Jewelcrafting process as you find good deals for what you need, but I’m not that patient.  Rich and impatient means that I leveled JC from 1-450 in about 6 hours.  Not all in one sitting, of course.  It took a few days when there just wasn’t a single truesilver bar left on the entire AH and I had to wait for someone else to go get them for me.

But in the end I’m pretty happy with having chosen jewelcrafting for my shaman.  I had already done Blacksmithing and dropped Inscription for JC – for the buffs.  Sure, the shoulder enchant is awesome, but the JC only gems are even better – plus two extra sockets to shove more stats into from BS.  For  a lot of classes it’s really hard to beat the BC/JC combo for min/max.  It would be almost as good on my Mage as Enchanting/Tailoring, though not by much.

Anyway the first reason you should consider JC is the same reason we always recommend you choose a profession – because it helps your toon do whatever it is you like most.  PvP guys like engineering, but it’s pretty much novelty stuff in Raids (yes I know that repair bots can be handy but honstly there is a repair guy or three inside ICC).  While you will find tanks with mining skill for the buff, there are other professions with better buffs.  In other words, Gathering professions just don’t help your toon all that much for the most part, at least, not enough to do them on a main.

Lawbringer Has one toon for all of the professions (even though I skip gathering for the most part), which means that I make everything I need on all my toons.  One man show.  Flasks, threads, gems, chants, I never buy crafted anything – buy the mats cheap and make it my dang self.  And in that way Jewelcrafting has been the awesome of the bunch.

It’s hard to imagine living without jewelcrafting and enchanting, with alchemy coming in a close 3rd place.  One toon has fishing and cooking maxxed and there is a tailor and leatherworker in the mix to deal with the leg enchants.  But being able to cut your own gems is awesome.  You don’t have to ask if “anyone has the +12 to nub / +10 geek gem, you just keep up your dailies and go get it.

Now, JC is NOT my favorite thing to use for making gold, although you will see in this thread that there are people who swear by it.  It feels more risky to me since there is such a high cost of entry to the market as a seller and the ongoing costs (in the form of auction house deposits) can absolutely kill your margin.  But I do have a few pet gems that I keep up on the AH at all times – on our server the PvP Meta gems are a good, consistent sellers.

When you use our guide you might not want to go buy all of the mats at once.  It’s hard to keep track of everything, so do it by each guide segment.  Buy all of the mats for apprentice, get them in your bags, then stand at the trainer while you use up the mats.  Then it’s off the the mailbox to clear your inventory and back to the AH for mats for the next level.

We’ve tried to make the guide in such a way that it will be the cheapest route on most servers from 1-450, but you might find a different sweet spot in your leveling where you can get something like 80 shadow gems for next to nothing.  So shop with your eye on the guide page and look for those opportunities.  Even though we think the guide is about as good as it can get, it can’t take all things into consideration for all servers all the time.

In the end we think you’ll enjoy jewelcrafting as much as we do (even though Law resisted it completely for two years).  Is Jewelcrafting the best profession in WoW?  Maybe it is for some people, and it certainly might be the best one for you.  But one thing is for sure, getting your jewelcrafting leveling done with speed and precision (and at the lowest possible cost) is completely Dominating.

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Hit Rating For Spells And Mages Explained

There really isn’t an easy way to completely understand hit rating.  There are so many variables involved when it comes to talents, abilities, resistances, and the fact that Blizz has a tendency to change their mind from time to time (such as making all hit rating just plain hit rating instead of both mele and spell hit rating, whew!)

But since you are probably looking for spell hit rating we’ll just leave it at that and separate out the different classes so that you can find what you need without having to root through some huge table (if you can even find one that makes sense).

So here we go with Mage Hit rating and caps.  To keep thing simple we’ll just go straight for the kill shot and not go into some tedious explanation of combat ratings and all that other what-not.  So here goes.

In order to maximize your DPS you need to get hit capped before you worry about anything else.  For every 26.232 hit rating you will gain 1% DPS.  There is simply no other stat that matters more until you hit the cap.  Once you ARE hit capped, more is worthless and then spell power (up to about 4k spell power for mages) haste and crit become more valuable.  Be sure to see our post on Making Gear Decisions For Your Toon.

So now that you know you must be hit capped to maximize your DPS,  we need to talk about what the heck the hit cap is.  You’ll hear two terms when people talk about the hit cap.  One is the hard cap, the other is a so-called soft cap.  The hard cap means that you have reached a point where more hit is worthless, the soft cap is a term used for abilities past which point have diminishing returns.  There is no such thing as a soft cap for hit rating.  You are either at the hard cap, or you are not capped and need to get there.

The absolute hard cap for hit is 446 Hit Rating = 17% in the tooltip

The hard cap represents the amount of hit necessary to ensure that you never miss.  That means the hard cap is a 100% chance to hit any and every mob in the game.  It may not seem like a big deal to have a 1% chance to miss, but if you miss on a big, fat Arcane Blast for 15K it will seriously erode your DPS in a big, fat hurry.  Now let’s talk how to hit the hard cap without having to get to 446 hit rating from gear and gems.

We’ll start at the top and work our way down.  For every one of these things you have available, your hard hit cap for spell hit drops to the next number down.  Just find yourself in the list and you’ll know how much hit you need to have to be hit capped and never miss.  Keep in mind that anything that adds +% chance to hit does not necessarily show up in the tooltip (like +17%), so the hit rating is a much better way of looking at things.

• Dranei or Dranei in Party – Hit Cap = 420

• Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 368

• Dranei or Dranei in Party Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 342

• Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 289

• Dranei or Dranei in Party Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 263

There are a few levels past this if you do a lot of 25 man raids, or have just the right combination in your ten mans.  If you always run with a druid that uses improved faerie fire or a shadow priest using misery you can get by with just 210 hit rating.  And if you happen to be a Dranei or have both a Dranei AND SP/ImpFf in your raid you can do as little as 184 and be capped.

Keep in mind that heroic Presence is party only, so folks may be fighting to get the Dranei in their group, meaning you might not always be able to count on this buff – plus it’s a 30 yard range so on fights with a lot of movement you may be out of range for it from time to time.  Your best bet is to stick with the absolute cap of 289 unless you ARE a Dranei (in which case you will always be in your party and can’t get out of range without some wicked bipolar debuff) in which case you can always be safe with a hit rating of 263.

The bottom line is this.  If you are an arcane mage your basic hit cap is 289.  If you are a Dranei or always party with a Dranei your basic hit cap is 263.  Everything else is just gravy.  Now, the more gravy you get, the more hit rating you can drop in favor of other stats.  But the reality is that it’s much harder to balance staying just barely above the cap than it is to find a bunch of gear without hit on it.  It can be tough to get hit capped when you first hit 80, but later on you’ll be looking for nearly every chance you can find to dump hit for spell power or haste or just about anything else.

One more factor to consider, however is that many bosses will have a certain amount of resistance to one or multiple schools of magic.  In the end the balancing act can be almost impossible to hit precisely between just enough hit to overcome both the regular combat hit rating and any resistances a boss might have.  It’s not a bad idea to just go for 289 as a mage and anything above that is going to overcome a certain amount of resistances that might be present.  But it would probably not be a great idea to carry around a hit rating of 350 at the expense of spell power or something else.  You can get anal retentive about it if you wish and figure it out for every boss, but only if you have a lot of time to kill.

So there is hit rating for mages made simple.  If you are arcane, your goal is 289 add in Dranei and it’s 263.  Once you get hit capped it’s far better to try to stay as close to 289 or 263 as you can (and still be over) and then use the Simcraft Engine to figure out what else you should be stacking and how much.  The less hit you can get away with and still be over the cap, the more of those other DPS stats you can stack which will really bring your DPS up to Domination levels.

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When And What You Post Can Make A Big Difference

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

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

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

“Work smarter, not harder.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Two Trade Skills That Fit Great On Bank Alts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How To Get Elixir Mastery Without Doing Black Morass

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

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

Here are the three quests:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How To Meet All Your Meta Gem Requirements With One Stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Highest Mage DPS Using Best In Slot Gear From T9

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

Gear

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

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

Talent Build

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

Glyphs

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

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

Priorities

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

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

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

10,587 DPS Arcane Mage Single target damage spread

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

Pawn Scale

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

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

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

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

Don’t be Great, Dominate!

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