I like a good laugh.  We all know that there are times during the grind of the time-sink that is playing WoW that frustration sets in.  Despite all the nerfs and buffs to leveling it still takes a while.  So it’s nice that the folks at Blizzard have a good sense of humor in designing certain quests to give you a decent chuckle from time to time.

Actually, a lot of the quests and NPC’s have names that invoke something from pop culture.  These are good for a snicker or two.  There’s Spraggle Frock in Un’Goro, Haris Pilton in Shattrath, and quests like ‘Message in a Battle’ that always make me grin a bit.  But there are two quests in Outlands that really take the cake.

The first one is in Hellfire Peninsula.  Foreman Razzlecraz just outside of Thrallmar has this little chain quest with the task “Shizz Work.”  You’ve helped him get parts for his broken down shredder in the quest “Outland Sucks!”  Which is a little funny to me since by the time Gavin and I were getting to this chain Outland was sucking wind a bit already.

So, once you bring Razzlecraz his shredder bits, he claims that one of his felhound pets ate his key.  In his own words:

I finally got my shredder working but I seem to have lost the keys. I keep a pack of felhounds to protect my camp. They don’t do a very good job and they like to bite me a lot. They also like shiny things. I think this one felhound I have may have eaten my shredder keys. I’ll pay you if you’ll take my felhound on a walk. Kill some hellboars and let him eat. He’ll do his business. When he’s done, see if you can’t find the keys in his “leavings.’

This is a prime example of why you should read the quest text.  Pretty funny so far, but the sheer ickiness of this quest only gets better.  So you go start whacking hellboars nearby.  When you kill one, you blow this whistle and the felhound goes to “work.”  There’s this horrid ’splut’ when the felhound eats the pig, and then a big steamy felhound fart and PLOP!.  Now you’ve got a nice big pile of poo to root through.

What’s worse is that now all quest items sparkle.  Sparkling, fresh felhound mess!  Digging through this juicy treasure chest is no picnic either.  It yields a couple of things you really wouldn’t want to find - like gnawed bones and acidic slime.  You even get the “Stanky” debuff from the adventure (I’m not making this up) which you can see below.

In the second shot you can see that the debuff even occupies the “Dummy” slot, meaning it does nothing, but you might be a little dumb for rooting through demon poop.  The only thing it really does is give you a green “stank” aura.

If you have a mod that shows spell casts on your screen you will also notice that Blizz is very thorough when they do anything.   When the felhound drops his load, the spell he casts to make it happen is called “Create Poodad,”  here’s a pic of this wonderful talent - too bad they don’t give out cards for vanity spells like this at Blizzcon eh?

The next bit of fecal fun comes in Nagrand.  Elementalist Lo’Ap wants you to root through piles of poo to find digested Caracoli beans.  While I was working on this quest I came across a pile of poo that was quite different from the rest - see for yourself:

How did THAT get there?  I don’t see how any of the Talbuks in the area could do the deed up in that bush, but there it was - a curly, sparkling load of Talbuk treasure.  At least we can assume that these piles are not as fresh as the Shizz Work turds, since there is no stanky debuff after sorting through them.

Once you get all the beans you need from the curly-que poo, you get a stack of Nagrand Cherries.  Lo’Ap responds like this:

Please do not wash yourself in the sacred waters of the Throne.

<Elementalist Lo’ap holds a prepared caracoli tablet up.>

You place this under your tongue and allow it ample time to dissolve. Once it has dissolved, you will be able to breathe water as if it were air.

I have to eat these?  He knows where they’ve been!  These guys are just sick.  Actually there is something like this in real life.  If you’ve seen the movie “The Bucket List,” you know that one of the big jokes in the movie is that Jack Nicholson’s character likes a certain kind of coffee called Kopi Luwak.  The reason it is the “rarest beverage on the planet,” is that the people who make it get the coffee beans from the dung of the Asian Palm Civet, a cat sized mammal.  Again - I’m not making this stuff up, people really drink this stuff.  You can see the Wiki for yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

So in WoW instead of making coffee from our latrine beans, we get some sort of timed release, under the tongue tablet that lets us breath under water - you think it’s from the gas?  Before Blizz made all the quest objects sparkle for us, the Rare Bean quest was actually a little difficult.  One comment at thottbot read something like “so now I have to find these piles of crap that are the exact same color as the background, just what I needed to make my day - a quest to find camo poo.”

I know this wasn’t a big tip that you can use, but it might serve as a nice little reminder that there are a lot of silly and whimsical (ok - sometimes doodie jokes) fun things in WoW.  So take your time and enjoy a laugh or too, even if it means sorting a little poo.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

There is a real void in the marketplace for high quality gaming headsets.  You can count the number of decent sets on one hand.  You can find great audio headsets in the hundreds.  You can get single ear headsets with terrific microphones all over the place as well.  We’re not sure why it’s so hard to find a headset with 5.1 stereo sound AND a good noise canceling mic at the same time, but that’s just the way it is right now.

There are certainly a big pile of products out there that CLAIM to be both of these things, but you know someone is lying to you  if they are trying to tell you that their headphones have great sound and uber features for $29.95, that’s ridiculous.  I guess some companies have not quite figured out that lying to their customers just doesn’t = win in the long run.

If you’re cheap, just stop reading this right now.  Stick with your Wal-Mart Logitech earbuds and forget you ever saw this post.  (Logitech makes great mice, but the headphones - not so much).  I’m not cheap, and I’ll tell you why.

There are certain things you should spend really good money on.  We (should) spend 25% of our lives in bed sleeping, you should spend some serious dough on a really good bed.  You spend a good majority of your time wearing shoes, those should be very comfortable and high quality (this applies to all clothing really, but especially to shoes in my book).  Life is too short to eat yucky food, and so forth.  So I typically default to “you get what you pay for.”  Spend a little more on most things and you will be much happier with the results.

I mean, how many times have you gone to a restaurant like Village Inn or some huge chain thing and gotten horrid food with really bad service?  Go down the street to the more expensive place and the food will be spectacular and the waitress will be awesome - it’s worth it to me.

It’s the same thing for me with headphones.  If I’m going to be wearing something for 8 hours every night they are going to have to be comfortable and sound good.  And since I use Skype and Vent a lot the mic needs to be out of the way and work well.

I’ve had headphones that sound great but hurt my ears.  Microphone booms that rub on my face and I can’t get into a position that feels right where people can still hear me.  Comfortable headphones with crummy quality sound, headphones with bad connectors, you name it.  There was always something majorly wrong with every single combo headset I ever used or reviewed.

I finally had enough with all of it and went on a major search for a real quality gaming headset.  I even looked at aviation headsets, although the sound quality and connection to computer seemed iffy on those (as well as costing up to $750.00) .  I just wanted something good, and I wasn’t too worried about what it cost.

Some of the gaming headsets seemed a bit gadgety to me.  The rumble feature doesn’t seem to be as important as really clear sound and comfort.  So I looked at the offerings from one of the most trusted names in quality audio headphones - Sennheiser.

Sennheiser has always been a good choice for the audiophile.  Not the very best, but certainly always mentioned with the best.  It’s hard to beat Sennheiser for quality as well.  Everything they make is solid, both in performance and construction.

Enter the PC 350 gaming Headset.  These babies were only recently released, or I would have been using them for months already.  From the moment you pull them out of the box, you can just tell you’re ears are going to thank you for them.

Everything about the PC 350’s is just right.  They are probably the most comfortable headphones you will ever own at this price, and you can wear them forever.  The sound is great, even if you have to tweak your levels a bit through your sound card interface.  Some reviewers have complained about the bass level, but honestly, when have ANY headphones been able to really thump?  If you have a decent sound card you can add some nice sounding bass boost to the sound and I actually had to turn the bass boost down for the PC 350’s.  In other words, they can handle whatever you throw at them.

The mic is out of the way, doesn’t pick up ambient sounds, and yet still gives great voice clarity in every situation I’ve used it.  It’s not all up in my face either (you can tell I have personal space issues).  In other words, everything about these headphones is what you’ve always wanted. I mean, the cord is even 9 feet long!  The picture above does not do them nearly enough justice.

These are going to set you back a bit more than $150.00, but when you are ready for a serious upgrade in your sound and voice environment, go grab a set of PC 350’s, you’ll never settle for a lesser gaming headpiece again.  All you need to do is click the picture to get your own pair from Amazon.

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24 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I got an email from Blizzard last night. At first, I thought maybe it was my beta invite - but no such luck.  It was news about a new program that can really help you level if you use the Lawbringer rules.

Now It seems that Blizz gets it from both directions from a lot of players.  New players say the game is too hard at times, experts hammer them when they nerf things.  It seems like every decision they make is met with some controversy.  It’s not going to be any different with this one.

A few days ago I told you about the two rules I run with: never quest out of rest and always run in a party of two.  Well, the new recruit a friend system is really going to make rule number two very attractive to a lot of folks, and probably draw the ire of many power players.

Here’s how it works: you refer someone to play WoW and when they activate their new account they insert a code that links their account to yours.  The two accounts stay linked for up to 90 days and if you also play with the toons of the friend you referred you get some BIG buffs to your leveling.  Take a look at these!

• When in a party with your friend you both get TRIPLE experience
• For every two levels your friend gains, they can give one of your alts a free level
• You and your friend can summon each other from anywhere in Azeroth

Now, if triple experience doesn’t get you fired up I don’t know what will.  There are a couple of other nifty little things that might be of interest to you as well:

• When your friend pays for 60 days play time, you get an exclusive Zhevra mount (Epic Speed) at level 60
• When your friend buys their first 30 days of game time you get 30 days free.

So for those of you who already run in a team this could be a real bonus.  It certainly will blow all of the arguments for going solo out of the water.  And before you say - “well, yeah, if you can get somebody else to play,” think about it really hard.

Gavin and I already own three accounts each.  But this buff is so good, we may very well just have to have one of us start a new account to take advantage of this little deal.  For all of you couples and buddies that already play, you might consider doing the same thing.

In 90 days you could probably get 2 or 3 toons each to 70 using these experience buffs and summoning skill.  Since you get 30 days free when you buy 60 days, your total out of pocket cost is $40 for the TBC key and $15 for the 60 days play time since you get $15 free on your main account.  So for $55 bucks you can get the better buffs than any set of epic in the game as far as leveling is concerned, and a vanity epic land mount to boot.

Considering that if you were to buy a level 70 with zero gear it would set you back about $500, and powerleveling will cost you about $350 to 70 (if you even trust those things) and just buying one or two thousand gold would cost you more than $55 bucks it sounds like a bargain to me.  I am in no way advocating those things, I discourage them strongly, but in the current market place being able to buy triple experience and 35 free levels for just $55 bucks sounds like a deal.

You see, Blizz wants people to actually enjoy the new content in WotLK, so they have made a way for you to level to 70 as easily as possible.  Especially if it gives new players a serious buff to leveling, then it’s a good move so that more people will be ready to go when the next xpac goes live than were ready for tBC.  So they nerfed XP from 30-60 and now this.  Plus, since Death Knights will start at level 55, it only makes sense to make leveling for any other class easier as well (although I assume this will still be in effect for DK’s when WotLK comes out - talk about getting to end game fast!)

So go get your mom, your brother, your granny an account and double box it if you have to to make this work for you.  You can’t make leveling any easier than this friends.  Refer yourself - and Dominate.

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38 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

There are times when I am a little bit reluctant to give away one of my best-kept secrets.  I’m certainly not the only one who uses what I’m about to show you, but it makes making gold so foolproof, that somehow it hurts my feelings just a bit to tell 40,000 people about it!  Oh well, you can see how dedicated I am to giving you the very best tidbits without holding anything back for myself.

If you’ve been reading DYS for any length of time you’ll know I’m a big AH power broker.  I typically run hundreds of auctions each week and virtually all of my gold comes from being a merchant (not a farmer).  I don’t do dailies except for rep situations, and I can easily afford anything I could ever want.

What I am about to show you is a big part of that process.  There was a time when this was a lot more guess work and expertise, but this little mod has just blown the doors off of making money from trade skills.

Once upon a time, you had to just know a LOT about how each profession worked, and which recipes were good for what.  You needed to know the cost of all the mats for about a dozen recipes in each profession; which things you could vendor, which to DE, what went on the AH - it was enough to drive you pretty batty.

I’ve done articles here at DYS about bags, using DE to make big gold, some rare recipes - in other words, a little bit of all of this.  Well, that was back in the stone ages as far as I am concerned now.  I found a mod that does everything I ever wanted and even a bit more when it comes to trade skills: Lil’Sparky’s Workshop.

Lil’Sparky’s is gold just waiting to be made.  And for some crazy reason this mod has been around for about a year but only around 3,000 people have downloaded the thing.  That is insanity to me.  More than 15,000 folks have looked at it and had no clue how much gold it was worth to them.  Here’s hoping you are smarter than that.  Take my word for it and go grab Lil’Sparky’s right this second.

You can download the latest version here: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7663-LilSparkysWorkshop.html

Now, what this mod is going to do is tell you what every single recipe you know is worth to vendors, the AH and for DE.  That covers every way you can possibly make money from a crafted item.  You have to use a few other mods to make Lil’Sparky’s do this, just read the requirements in the download screen (I recommend AADV, Informant and ATSW)

Once LS (Lil’SParky’s) is up and running (and assuming you have plenty of AADV data to work with) all you do is open up your profession screen and you are going to see a wealth of new information.

I’m not going to walk you through every single thing in LS, because frankly that would take a fairly long guide, and I figure you’re all big enough to figure it out for yourself.  But the screenshot above illustrates a couple of things I do want to point out.

Whenever you see numbers in bold, bright letters, that means there is money to be made on that item.  On the top you see we can expect to get 116 gold if we sell Soulcloth Gloves at the AH (the little “a” next to 116 means ‘auction,’ a “d” means ‘disenchant,’ and “v” is ‘vendor’).  The number to the right means we can purchase ALL of the mats to make Soulcloth Gloves either at AH or vendors for just 54gold 44 silver - a profit of  61gold 56 silver - so I just pop over to the AH and start buying up everything I can find for these little gems, knowing I will make a hefty profit in no time flat, plus get a few skill-ups to boot!

Even better is the second example.  Remember one thing kids if you hear nothing else in this post:

ENCHANTING WILL MAKE YOU MORE MONEY THAN ANY OTHER PROFESSION PERIOD!

Now we have a mod to help us make even more money from enchanting than ever before possible.  I don’t even have to wait for bottom scanner to pick things up for DE, I can just craft them with the info from LS!  I see here I can make Netherweave Belts for just 7g 19s and then turn right around and DE them and sell the those mats for 21g 11s on average.  Holy cow, that’s about a 200% profit!  I don’t know about the Ah on your server, but I can probably buy 100 stacks of Netherweave at any given time.  That’s a lot of Netherweave Belts - and a LOT of gold about to go in my pocket.

Without LS I would never really know which recipes I can do this with so easily.  Now it’s right in front of me every time I open a trade skill window on ANY of my toons.  Not only that, I can save recipes like this on one toon and it will give me a shopping list like this:

As you can see the shopping list tells me how many of each item I have on alts, in banks, and inventories on all my toons on the server.  Then it will list which things I need to purchase from vendors - it will even auto-buy the exact amount of vendor items I need with the push of a single button at the trade merchants.  Getting excited about this yet?

This shopping list will appear on my banking toon when I log in - my goodness; am I in gold heaven or what?  So I just log all of my toons, pop in a queue for all of the best recipes for each profession, log the banker and go on a serious shopping spree.  As long as I buy the mats for each thing in the queue for at, or below 100% of ah market value, I win big.

Then I just mail all that stuff to the trade skill toons, make everything, send it back to the bank or enchanter for DE, and it’s CHA-CHING, CHA-CHING, CHA-CHING.

Don’t waste another minute - go get this mod and start Dominating with crafted items right away.

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37 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Wrath of the Lich King will be introducing a new profession to the game upon release that stands to have a very large impact upon the game economy.  There is currently little in the way of comprehensive information available about Inscription but what little we do know puts you in a position to exploit the changes that Inscription implementation will have on the game as a whole.

So what do we know about Inscription?

To begin with, we know Inscription is a crafting style profession that is fueled by the gathering profession herbalism.  All inscriptions seem to be created by a mixture of inks and parchments; parchment is bought from a vendor while inks are created either directly from raw herbs, or from a pommace.

A pommace is created by the process of milling herbs; this works in a similar fashion to a jewelcrafter’s prospecting ability but renders down stacks of 5 herbs rather than ore.

Once an ink is made an inscriber can create a variety of items with them, all of which have the potential for resale. The first items that are created by an inscriber are scrolls such as a scroll of intellect.  Previously these were only found randomly throughout the world to give yourself temporary buffs to your raw stats but will now also be created by an inscriber.  By utilizing scrolls, a player can ensure they remain fully buffed even when soloing.

The second important creation from an inscriber is the combination of Bleached Parchment and Treated Vellum. These two items can be utilized by enchanters to store enchants within.  With an enchant stored within, an enchanter can then place the item on the auction house for use by others to use on their own equipment without needing to directly trade with an enchanter.

Finally an Inscriber can create Glyphs.  Each character in the game will be given 6 Glyph slots of varying power.  A Glyph will act to change the properties of certain spells either cosmetically or through significant increases in power; as such Glyphs will be in demand from all high level players capable of utilizing them.

Minor Glyphs will largely only be cosmetic changes to add more character to spells or slightly increase usability without any real change in a spells’ power; effects will include increasing the duration of buffs or changing of a spells’ graphics.

Lesser Glyphs provide small game play changes to a spell by reducing its costs or providing minor power boosts without massive changes to the ability; examples would be reducing the rage cost of debuffs or increasing the chance of certain attacks hitting.

Greater Glyphs will significantly improve the way in which an ability works and will be the most sought after glyphs.  An inscriber will get an additional Greater Glyph slot compared to other players as a profession advantage.  Examples of Greater Glyph effects will be to improve your spell damage or add secondary effects such as snares or knockback resistance to them.

So, how can you exploit this profession to the fullest?  The answer is simple; when inscription is implemented the demand for herbs is going to skyrocket.  Not only will people need low level herbs to raise their skill level in inscription, but in the long term, Inscription demand for herbs will continue to be high as other players demand Scrolls and Glyphs.

Those who are prepared will be able to stock up on a large variety of herbs and sell them for a fortune on release of the expansion; you won’t even need to be an herbalist to benefit.  Simply scour the auction house to build up a stockpile and seek to dominate the market.

(Keep in mind that the last time Lithanial gave a gold-making tip Lawbringer tested the information on several servers - and made more than 15,000 gold on one toon in less than two weeks.  You have several months before the xpac comes out, if I were you I would follow Lithanial’s advice and buy every herb you can get your hands on for the next couple of months.  The release of the expansion will mean massive profits as demand rises through the roof if you can control the supply of herbs of all levels to the ah!)

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31 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

From time to time I remember Benjamin Buford Blue (Bubba) from the movie “Forest Gump” as he went through all the dozens of ways you could cook shrimp.  It’s one of my all-time favorite movie bits.  While I can’t say that there are hundreds of things you can do with a bear flank, I do “know everything there is to know about cookin” them.

The reason I chose these as a tip is because these two recipes have a very different buff from most cooked foods until you get to the Outlands recipes.  The other reason is that it’s pretty easy to get the bear flanks, so these two recipes make sense for almost every class if stamina, spirit or just a little health regen is not your main concern.  Finally, these recipes were only added in patch 2.4 so many of you may not even know they exist.

There are two reasons for using food from cooking.  One is to regenerate health, although it’s often easier to simply buy food from vendors for that.  The other reason is for the buffs.  A hefty number of the cooking recipes give you a boost to stamina and spirit if you spend 10 seconds eating, but there are others that have different variations on the food buff theme.

Bear Burgers and Bear Kabobs are one of only a few old world recipes that give buffs that are different from stam/spirit.  And these two buffs can be pretty useful.  Combine that with the fact that neither of these recipes require a spice to make, and it’s a winner.

Now, some will argue that the best non SS food buff from old world foods is the recipe for greater Sagefish, Sagefish Delight.  The problem with this is that Raw Greater Sagefish are a pain in the butt to get since they can only be fished from schools.  But bear flanks drop from 11 different mobs in four different zones.

Combine these things with the other fact that bear flanks are normally available in fairly high quantities for really low prices on most servers and it’s certainly something you should consider picking up if you’ve leveled cooking - which I highly recommend.

Part of this phenomenon is because this recipe was only added in patch 2.4, so those guys already in Outlands tend to ignore them; as well as folks who are just rushing through on their way to Outlands.  The recipe was added to help you level cooking from 250-300 without having to fish or cook fish to do so.

I already did a series on fishing and cooking because it’s the best combo to speed up the leveling cooking process, but if you’re one of those people who just refuses to suffer the time sink of fishing you are going to need these recipes - and the nice thing is that the benefits are terrific in every direction.

Here’s what these two recipes look like from wowhead:

I had Lawbringer stir us up a batch of these things while we were leveling through the 50’s, and we still keep some around now that we’re in Outlands until he gets those killer fish recipes.  As a hunter, the +24 attack power is terrific, while Lawbringer’s Shadow Priest get a sweet little +14 to all spells.  That’s the equivalent of wearing another blue item with those stats for each of us.

You can purchase these new recipes in Felwood at the Alliance and Horde General Goods vendors in each faction base.  Malygor is the Alliance vendor and Bale is “FOR THE HORDE!” 

Kudos to Lawbringer for grabbing these and recognizing that they were new as we ran like mad through the Felwood segment.  We picked up enough flanks in Felwood, Winterspring and Western Plaguelands to last us quite some time, and we put that buff on every 15 minutes or so while questing.

All in all, it’s easy to get the mats for these, gives a nifty buff, and will help you non-fishing style folks gain a couple dozen points to your cooking skill = win.  Go Dominate, and may the bear never get YOU.

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5 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

Recently the non disclosure agreement surrounding the next expansion to World of Warcraft was lifted and beta testing has begun. Over the past few days a flood of new information has come forth regarding all aspects of the game and many things have slipped through relatively unnoticed in the excitement.

While it would be entirely possible to run through each class reviewing the upcoming changes in depth, let us instead look at a few of the key changes to game play mechanics that will have a widespread effect throughout the game for a vast majority of classes.

Spell power

Rather than there being separate stats for improving a spells’ damage or healing capability, Blizzard has combined both statistics together into the new spell power stat. In turn the coefficients for all spells have been adjusted, particularly for healing spells since there is no longer a pure healing stat.

The net change of this is that a healer will be receiving a vast increase to their damage capabilities, while offensive hybrid casters will be able to heal far more effectively than before.

Hit/Crit/Haste

All three of the above stats have been consolidated; no longer will there be separate hit, crit or haste stats for melee and spell casters, instead both your melee attacks and spells will benefit at the same time.

This mechanics changes is massive for any hybrid capable of both melee and spell attacks such as paladins and shaman. As an example of how big an impact this may have, enhancement shaman will be able to obtain a decent crit rate to their shocks; this in turn can be combined with the talent elemental devastation for brutal synergy.

Note that this only applies to the raw stats of those individual statistics, critical strike chance increases due to stats such as intelligence or agility will still only apply to either spells or melee.

Threat

Blessing of salvation has been radically changed and so many classes which relied on it for threat reduction may be in a bit of a panic about how threat management could be an issue in WotLK.

Fear not however, tanks in the expansion have had their threat multipliers boosted in compensation; for instance a warrior’s basic defensive stance now boosts threat generated by 45% rather than the current 30%. Equally, threat reduction talents for all dps classes are now present and much easier to access.

Raid Wide Abilities

Many effects which only had an impact on your own group have now been changed to be beneficial to your entire raid. Auras and totems will now be beneficial to all those nearby but the change does not only apply to buffs.

Several healing spells will affect raid members nearby regardless of grouping and many of the new abilities such as a paladin’s Judgement of the Wise talent, will affect raid members too.

The net impact will be a much wider variety of group compositions along with more fluid PvP combat within battlegrounds where groups naturally get split apart and group composition is generally random.

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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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We did a post on the Artisan cooking quest, as well as a two-part guide to the Artisan Fishing quest.  There was a bigger purpose to all of that.  Some of the best raid buffs come from cooked foods, and even more specifically, cooked fish.  We don’t want you to have to always buy everything from the AH, so here’s how to put those two secondary profession skills together to make leveling cooking a breeze.

(We have yet to find a way to make leveling fishing faster, so you’ll just have to grind that one out)

Cooking fish is the easy way to get from 1-375. The recipes are easier to find, the mats are easier to get. It’s is much faster to fish up 3 or 4 stacks of fish than to grind out 3 or 4 stacks of raptor eggs.

To find where to go to get each type of fish, just click the Thottbot link and then sort the fishing list by clicking the Drop % on the list with the header that says “From Fishing.” These pages will give you the very best location to catch the maximum number of each fish per type.

1 – 50: Brilliant Smallfish = 80. Mats (1 Raw Brilliant Smallfish)

• 80 Raw Brilliant Smallfish

51 – 100: Longjaw Mudsnapper = 80. Mats (1 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper)

• 80 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper

101 – 175: Bristle Whisker Catfish = 120. Mats (1 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish)

• 120 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish

175 – 225: Rockscale Cod = 80. Mats (1 Raw Rockscale Cod)

• 80 Raw Rockscale Cod

Here you’ll go do your cooking and fishing quests.

226 – 275: Spotted Yellowtail = 80. Mats (1 Raw Spotted Yellowtail)

• 80 Raw Spotted Yellowtail

Before you move on to the next step, go get the Master Cookbook so you don’t have to stop and run all over the world to go get it in the middle of cooking.

276 – 325: Your Choice – or combination of the following = 80.

• Mightfish Steak. Mats (1 Large Raw Mightfish, 1 Hot Spices, 1 Soothing Spices)
• Baked Salmon. Mats (1 Raw Whitescale Salmon, 1 Soothing Spices)

After you reach 325, go get all of the Outlands fish recipes:

• Blackened Trout – Mats (1 Barbed Gill Trout)
• Feltail Delight – Mats (1 Spotted Feltail)
• Blackened Sporefish – Mats (Zangarian Sporefish)
• Grilled Mudfish - Mats (1 Figluster’s Mudfish)
• Poached Bluefish – Mats (1 Icefin Bluefish)
• Golden Fish Sticks – Mats (1 Golden Darter)
• Spicy Crawdad – Mats (1 Furious Crawdad)

Seriously, that’s all there is to it. The Trout and Feltail will get you to 340, the next four to 365, and Spicy Crawdads to 375. Short and sweet – and very Dominating!

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