I OWN THIS AUCTION HOUSE - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

There’s a new commercial out for a video game where this guy jabbers about crushing his peeps in a game of video football.  At the end of it he says: “Doing things like that makes you wanna say things like - ‘DUDE, I own you; pass me that soda!’”

How would you like to so thoroughly Dominate the AH that there just isn’t any argument left.  You can just tell other players you own them and pass the Mok’Nathal Shortribs!  It’s pretty hard to do, but there is a way it can be done if you have the knowledge and gold to pull it off.

A lot of you probably won’t like this.  Many of you may not be able to do it on a large scale.  Most of you will need to practice before you can really use it like the serious weapon that it is.  Almost none of you will have the patience to wait for the right timing.

BUT - if you don’t mind being an uber-greedy capitalist pig, have a decent amount of gold to play with to begin with, a lot of experience working the ah, and can wait like a ninja to strike; I can guarantee you there is simply no faster way to make enormous piles of gold, period.

All of our amazing gold-making secrets are in our Auction House Mastery guide (Which we will be releasing as soon as it’s perfect)  This little tidbit is only a small section.  What I’m going to tell you how to do today is how to corner a market segment and watch the gold pile up in heaps.

Cornering A Market

Depending on the size and prices of the AH on your server, don’t even try this unless you have between 5,000 - 10,000 gold you can blow.  In order to do this properly you are also going to have to use Auctioneer Advanced and have several months of daily scans in your database.

You will also need to have the ability to watch the AH like a hawk.  That means logging on every few hours to your banker to peel the newly posted items off the market before anyone else can buy them.

This technique is only possible because the WoW economy is a closed market with limited fluctuation.  What you’re going to do is pick a niche of the market and OWN it.  At least for a couple of weeks every month or two.

Here’s how this works - Pick an item type and buy out every single one that gets posted during the week (suck up the entire supply) and then stick it back on the market on Friday at +200% markup.  In order for this to work you really have to be the only guy at the AH with that item type for sale.  You have to buy every single thing so that you completely control the market segment.  You have to have absolute and total power over supply.

I normally pick enchanting mats.  I have the most experience with those and the market tends to be fairly stable for these items.  This technique also works best with the very highest end items, thus the need for so much gold in order to begin.  In order to truly make this effective you need to buy up a complete niche such as Large Prismatic Shards, Planar Essences, Void Crystals, and Large Brilliant Shards - basically all of the high-end enchanting mats.

You’re also going to have to figure out what things actually go into a niche, that is why this is really risky unless you have a ton of gold already and don’t mind losing a big bunch of it if you guess wrong.  In my example above I found out that on several servers Arcane Dust just has too much supply feed to corner, it’s almost impossible to do.  But keep in mind that not every server is the same, so you’re going to have to be a real gambler with serious skill to guess right every time.

You will sell a few things the first weekend, and maybe get back 50% of what you spent the first week buying up your niche.  You have to keep it up for at least another week.  Keep buying everything and post it all up the next weekend.  The next weekend you should clear back what you spent plus a hefty profit to boot.

Why does this work?  Because people have the attention span of gnats.  When they need something, they would rather pay 2-4 times it’s market value than wait a few weeks hoping prices will drop.

Yes, it makes people mad - laugh at them and shrug while you make thousands of gold.  You can snicker at the people yelling in trade chat about the jerk who is jacking up the market with his stupid inflated prices and giggle when you open your mail full of big piles of gold.

After two weeks of this, stop buying and just sell.  Those folks who post the same stuff will by this time tend to match your new price and only undercut you a little bit.  You will normally find that prices will re-stabilize at your much higher rate for some time.

At this point sell down and stop buying for a while.  You can watch while prices continue to drop until they reach the level they were before you did this.  Now it’s just lather, rinse, repeat.  When prices return to historical averages, you can do it again.  This is where the waiting part comes in.

You see, as prices rose, you need to stop buying everything because your profit margin is shrinking.  Once prices drop again the margin returns.  When prices spike, you can move on to a new niche if you like, or just take a break and do other things for a while.

If you couple this with rare events such as a patch or the recent Season 4 arena start, it can mean wicked profits.  We posted the experience of our editor - Lawbringer, doing exactly what we’re talking about here during the Season 4 opening in Lithanial’s article “Season 4 - A Unique Opportunity.”

Lawbringer began with 5,000 gold to work the market.  He cornered the enchanting mats mentioned above and was able to turn 5,000 gold into a little over 12,000 in two weeks.  Now, during the sell-down phase it’s closer to 15,000.  That means he tripled his gold in right at two weeks - not bad!

We’ve also done this with Darkmoon decks right before the Faire hits town, epic recipes, high-end cloth items, and on and on and on.  The possibilities are vast.

We also have developed a system that makes us over 1,500 gold every single week with less than 2 hours spent working the ah.  Oh, and I don’t ever farm - I mean EVER.  Nor do I grind out dailies for chump change, dailies are for rep and the itty bitty bits of gold that go with them are a bonus.  Why spend 2 hours a day to make a hundred gold when I can make 1,500 a week in two hours at the ah?

I also used this technique when Shaman got dual-wielding in a previous patch.  I bought up all the axes for a few weeks before the patch and marked them up severely the day of the patch.  I made about 4,000 gold in two days when all the Shaman rushed to the AH to get another axe.  Once you get the hang of this, it’s almost too easy.

So get out from behind your farming plow and join the world of the power AH broker.  The cars are faster, the gold piles are bigger and you can walk with that extra swagger that comes with Dominating!

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19 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

With a little over 50% of the vote, the winner is Fran Molina!  Her torch-tossing heart dominated the competition. Fran wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, now we just have to figure out how to get the card to Brazil!  Congratulations Fran, I guess you helped all the guys find their romantic streak!

The Contest is over - and you better believe this: girls rule.  I guess all you guys lost your artistic streaks in all the bone-crunching testosterone of mangling fires.  Or maybe you just forgot it like we all do birthdays, anniversaries, our wallets . . . what was I saying?

I digress.  There were only three entries in our little competition and unfortunately nobody actually got a shot of the fireworks.  Gavin had me working like mad on our next project so I missed the show as well.  There’s always next year right?

The nice thing about having only three entries is that it’s going to be pretty easy for you guys to vote on the winners and we’ll have a clear 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.  So let’s show you what the lovely ladies sent to us and you can be the judges.

ENTRY #1 - Fran Molina

Fran hails from Brazil and took this terrific shot of the torch tossing event that was one of the daily quests during the festival.  As you can see, this took some planning and coordination between Fran and three of her friends.  Vote Fran if you love girls from Brazil!  (Oh, wait - vote Fran if you think she’s the greatest WoW artist at DYS)

ENTRY #2 - Eleanor Anderson

Eleanor submits this fabulous display of herself and four others dancing around a brazier of dancing flames in the throne room of Lordaeron.  Chicks certainly know how to make friends and influence people!  A vote for Eleanor may also be “FOR THE HORDE!”

ENTRY #3 - Ellimace

In full fire festival regalia, including the Crown of the Fire Festival, Mantle of the Fire Festival, and Vestments of Summer, our night elf princess Ellimace watches over her Brazier of Dancing Flames.  It certainly took the effort of visiting every bonfire and dousing all the Horde capital city fires to acquire all that gear.  A vote for Ellimace and this goddess will watch over you!

Leave your votes for our three lovely ladies as comments in this post, and may the best woman win!

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67 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Hybrid classes form the backbone of many an instance group or PvP team, acting as the essential supporting mesh that pure classes rely on - often being the unsung heroes within the group.

Playing as a hybrid requires a great deal of skill to master compared to a pure class, especially in PvP and as such can take a while to learn for new players; however if you are up to the challenge then a hybrid class can be far more powerful than their pure-bred brethren.

There are two main play styles within the World of Warcraft that each hybrid class fits within which can loosely be described as an offensive style or a defensive style, below is a description of each and pointers to help you get the most out of your hybrid.

Offensive Hybrids

An offensive hybrid is a damage dealing class primarily and a backup healer as its secondary role. Examples of classes that fall within this category are shadow priests, Moonkin and Shockadins.

The trick to mastering these classes is to know when your healing abilities are required.  Far too many new players achieve a state of tunnel vision towards the damage dealing aspect of these classes; which is only a portion of your potential.

Nothing emphasizes the strength of an offensive hybrid more than arena play. At the start of a match an offensive hybrid is able to analyze the other team to assess just how pressured his own healers are going to be; and as such, how much he will need to support his own team as opposed to applying pure damage.

A simple example is the choice a Shockadin must make in 2v2 arena - if he should use avenging wrath or his defensive bubble. By analyzing the other teams’ damage output he can choose to either go all out on the attack with avenging wrath (should the other team lack damage) or play it defensively with his bubble against burst teams to try and simply outlast them.

Options like this simply are not available to pure classes but dramatically increase the range of team compositions with which you can effectively fight within the arena.

Similarly in PvE many late game encounters such as Archimonde can cause raid members to become separated from their healers while taking significant damage; nearby offensive hybrids can act as an emergency response if they are attentive.

Defensive Hybrids

A defensive hybrid is primarily a healer and offensive support is their secondary role. With the introduction of free spell damage on all healing kit each healing class fulfills this role - though some better than others.

Good examples of the most effective defensive hybrids are the Restokin build and holy paladins. In contrast to an offensive hybrid, the defensive hybrids’ challenge is knowing when to put its offensive potential into play.

While an offensive hybrid is more about assessing the overall situation and deciding if you need to play it safe, playing a defensive hybrid to its potential is much more about the timing and reactions needed to exploit a situation.

Similar to an offensive hybrid, many new players focus solely on the healing aspect of a defensive hybrid to the cost of all else, but when they become more comfortable with their class they can begin to bring the offensive aspects into play to push their class potential to the limit.

The arena is, once again, the place where bringing your offensive potential to full effect shines the most. A holy paladin who only focuses on healing may eventually succumb to crowd control or loss of mana when playing it safe; leading to a slow death.

However should that same paladin take to the offense at key times by using his hammer of justice to stun an enemy healer to prevent heals while unleashing supporting damage in the manner of a Shockadin; then he can at the very least put the other team on their back foot, if not force a kill.

By utilizing both the offensive and defensive aspects of your hybrid you ensure a level of unpredictability and adaptability in your actions, becoming much more of a threat to help ensure your domination of others.

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14 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

On July 3rd, Blizzard made the above post at www.worldofwarcraft.com This is big news from Blizzard for WotLK since the Beta for Burning Crusade was a closed event.

Hurry over to the home page and register your accounts for the Beta opt-in.  Now, registering an interest in being invited to the beta does not guarantee that you will be included in the Beta by any means, just that you will at least have a chance at getting into the Beta.

The only way to guarantee a spot in the WotLK beta is to buy a Beta key somewhere.  As of this morning there were 8 Beta keys available from people who attended Blizz Conn in Paris that listed their beta cards on ebay, if being in on the beta is worth $600 bucks or so to you.  Of course, these beta keys also come with a murloc suit or a Tyrael pet (which is an awesome thing to me being a monster D2 fan!) but the price is a bit on the - well, silly side of enormous.

Normally when Blizzard announces an opt-in for a Beta, the beta itself is not very far away from starting.  Sometimes it is a matter of a few weeks between an open Beta announcement and the start of the beta itself, which is pretty exciting.  This announcement means that we can be pretty sure that the full retail release of the WotLK expansion will be before the end of 2008.

We try to not only help you be prepared at DYS, we also want you to get so far ahead you can Dominate!  What better way to dominate WotLK than to know it before anyone else does.  Register right this minute - if you get in on the Beta, be sure to post back here with your toon names so that you and other DYS readers can team up and crush everyone else from day one in the Beta and beyond.

Good luck, and always Dominate!

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Previously I have covered how to go about creating your arena team to give yourself a good chance of success, however going into an arena match with a strong setup and basic plan is only one small aspect of the battles within.

There are many steps and tactics that you can undertake to improve your teams’ chance of success before you are even engaged with your opponents; indeed many matches are won or lost by the preparation made right at the start.

Arena combat is highly competitive and so you must give yourself every possible advantage to be able to keep up; you can guarantee that your opponents will be utilizing every possible means they can get to improve their game play and so, you must do likewise.

The first thing to work on is improvements to your teams co-ordination and communication. To that end, one of the most important things to have for any serious arena team is voice communication.

The in game voice chat is unfortunately not too great - often having problems with its volume being much too quiet even when set to its maximum output. The two voice chat applications generally used throughout any competitive game play worldwide are Team speak and Ventrillo.

By making sure your entire team is connected to a voice chat server and has working microphones you instantly boost your performance due to being able to watch each others backs far more efficiently.

For example, healers can call out when they are silenced allowing hybrids to provide emergency backup healing as needed, and the DPS classes can co-ordinate their attacks and crowd control with much more speed to put some serious pressure on the opposition.

The second means to boost your team co-ordination is so simple and yet missed by many players. Arena combat can get very hectic and your team can end up scattered leading to confusion as to where the rest of your team is at any one time. This can lead to players becoming isolated from support.

The solution is simple, assign everyone in your team a raid marker. This allows you to easily track exactly where your team mates are at any one time, even through walls; a vital piece of information to ensure that you don’t end up accidentally getting out of line of sight of your healers.

With team communication and co-ordination improved, the next step is to improve the information available to you about your enemy. A fairly standard arena management mod is Proximo ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/8291/ ) and what this lovely little mod does is provide a target status box for every member of the opposing team that you can target them by. But more importantly it shows this information the second anyone in your team with Proximo targets an enemy player.

This allows you to very quickly know at the start of an arena match just what you are up against in order to form an effective plan. And if you don’t manage to target everyone in the opposing team then one of your teams stealth classes, if you have one, can go and “scout out” the other side with ease.

Be warned however that hunters have discovered a nasty way to bug out Proximo. When you target someone via Proximo it targets by name, and hunters have taken to naming their pets after team mates to mess up your targeting.

Now, fully prepared to dominate, it is time to prepare your attack!

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5 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

One of the key skills required for success in a group or raid for any damage dealing class is the capability of the player to manage their own threat levels and this is a skill best learned early on in your gameplay.

When you start out in early instances such as Deadmines and Wailing Caverns, mobs don’t have a huge amount of punch to them and so the penalty for poor threat management is low. However as your progress through higher-end content you will quickly find out one simple fact: if you pull aggro, chances are you will die and in the process may take other players to the graveyard with you; obviously this is something best avoided.

Luckily threat management is a simple skill to pick up, and there are numerous things you can do to ensure you do not pull aggro, ever!

The first measure any player should take is to install a threat meter into their UI, there are several out there but most rely on the other players in your raid or group to have the same meter installed for it to work properly. The best advice here is to ask other players in your guild or server what addon they use and then choose the most common one.

Failing that my personal favorite is Omen, which can be downloaded at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/9101/

What a threat meter will do is provide an accurate visual representation as to how close you are to pulling aggro from a mob.

At its most basic, threat management is simply making sure you never exceed the tanks’ threat on your meter but in reality that can cause your DPS to drop should you reach the point where you must stop nuking to avoid the buildup of threat.

As such there are various tips and tricks you can do to give you an easier time of controlling your threat till you feel confident that you don’t even need to look at your threat meter anymore.

The first trick is to think carefully about what spells and abilities you open up with against a mob; using an attack which causes a large amount of instant damage as your opening spell is a very bad idea!

A much better idea is to open up with DoT attacks and debuffs, for instance I tend to open up with insect swarm. This way you can still deal a large amount of damage right from the start of a fight but you delay the threat from it until your tank has had time to build up a decent amount of threat himself.

A second trick is to bring a paladin along with you, they can give you a buff called blessing of salvation that will reduce all threat you produce by 30%, it is quite rare to be able to pull aggro with salvation on unless you are deliberately attempting to do so.

The third trick is to utilize threat reducing talents and skills such as feign. However this measure should only be undertaken after trying a few instances without such threat reduction.

Talent choices for threat reduction or spending time actively reducing your threat will reduce your DPS and so should only be done as a last resort. It is much more preferable to manage your threat through other means.

Finally, certain classes get methods to completely reset their aggro. Mages can ice block or turn invisible, Rogues can Vanish and hunters can feign death. If you find yourself climbing the meters or actually pulling aggro from the tank then do not hesitate to use either one of these skills.

With these simple tricks you can ensure the ability for you to DPS mobs down without fear of reprisal, allowing smooth dominating runs throughout any instance in the game!

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22 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Arena season 4 has now officially begun on all servers, and with it the new Brutal and Guardian PvP items are now available. The big twist this season however, is that team selling has truly been stamped out and most items now require a player to have a high enough personal rating to purchase them.

The quality of the items available however is extraordinarily high; high enough to match or exceed the power of loot obtained from heroic badges and so it is well worth players to look at entering the arena in order to gear up.

Most of the items available require a personal rating of 1700 and this should be an achievable goal for many players if you enter with a favorable team setup and a solid plan. Outlined here are some basic pointers in assembling your own arena team to help you hit that 1700 target.

Which Bracket?

The first question you should ask yourself is if you want to be playing 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 arena. It is much easier to assemble a 2v2 team but your team setup is critical to success here and this bracket allows for few mistakes. 5v5 allows a much broader range of successful team setups since each player can compensate for their teammate’s weaknesses -  but it can be a large hassle to schedule times when your whole team can play.

3v3 is a comfortable medium between each bracket being both relatively simple to organize a team and allowing a reasonable variety in class composition. If you are fairly new to the arena, I would highly recommend the 3v3 bracket to you.

Forming the Team

The first thing you need to keep in mind first and foremost when forming your team is each individual’s survivability since this will have a huge impact on your tactics.

As an example, having a subtlety rogue in your team allows you to play rather offensively since he is difficult to directly attack and highly mobile, as such he will require little healing which allows him to successfully partner with a DPS class stacked team or a more offensive hybrid healer such as a moonkin or shadow priest.

In contrast a warrior has little in the way of escape measures but hits like a freight train to compensate, if he went with a fully offensive team he could easily be burned down and as such a warrior is best accompanied by a healing teammate.

By keeping in mind the survivability of your teammates you can ensure that your team composition supports each other to counter your weaknesses rather than just compounding the problems.

Making a Plan

The second most important thing in arena is to have an overall plan as to what the team strategy is to win and select classes that will accomplish that. There are several highly successful strategies common place in the arena that will work well for newcomers.

The first basic strategy is a drain team, this relies on having mana draining abilities available and in order  to accomplish this you require a hunter, priest or warlock present. The main idea is to have steady damage on the opposing team to wear them down while directly attacking the enemy healers’ mana. If you can make the enemy healers run out of mana before yours do then you can easily start killing off his team mates.

A similar strategy to this is a grind style team. These teams tend to have a high number of healers accompanied by a dps class whose damage does not ever “run dry” - usually a warrior. The goal here is to be so survivable that nobody in your team can easily be killed while slowly chipping away at the enemy team until something gives way, usually the enemy healers running out of mana.

The final basic strategy is the burst team. This style of team is very risky but can be quite effective due to its instant shock value. The trick is to take 3 dps classes that can dish out horrendous damage while supporting this with a high amount of crowd control and silences. What the plan entails is to hit one person as hard as you possibly can while stopping him from being healed.

The big risk however is that if your burst does not succeed then without a healer your team will gradually be picked off, as such it is vital to pick the correct target. Attacking someone who has an escape measure such as a paladins bubble or a mages iceblock will cause your attack to fail.

Attacking a class such as a warrior or shaman however yields a high success rate.

With these simple tips you should be able to construct a strong backbone to your arena team and be ready to dominate your way to that 1700 rating target.

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12 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

The Midsummer Fire festival won’t last forever!  You only have until July 4th to take advantage of all the buffs, gold making opportunities and last (but certainly not least) some really killer loot from Frost Lord Ahune.

Ahune <The Frost Lord> is a new boss which can be summoned inside Slave Pens, in Zangamarsh. Ahune can be completed on both normal and heroic modes, both with differing difficulty and different items dropped after defeating him.

Ahune  is a frost lord in Neptulon’s service. The Twilight’s Hammer plan to have him battle Ragnaros to start an elemental war on Azeroth. Players summon Ahune in the second room of the Slave Pens, at the Ice Stone to the left. He is only available during the Midsummer Fire Festival.

If this is your first time killing Ahune, he will drop an item called Shards of Ahune which starts the quest Shards of Ahune. Accept the quest and bring the shard to Luma Skymother, and she will reward you with Burning Blossom x20 and your choice of a unique tabard: the Tabard of Summer Skies or the Tabard of Summer Flame. You can only complete this quest once, so you will not be able to receive both tabards on the same character (well, not until next year at least)!

The quest to summon Ahune can only be completed once per day, per person. Which means that if you have a five person party, each person can complete the quest to summon him one time (provided you didn’t actually save yourself to the Heroic) and you could potentially do five runs, one after another. Even if you have killed the boss, as long as at least one person in your party is able to take the quest and summon him you’ll have yet another chance at some of the phat loot he drops!

In Normal Mode Ahune Can Drop:

Shared Loot for both Normal and Heroic Mode:

On Heroic Mode Only Ahune Can Drop:

Don’t dawdle any longer!  If you have a level 65 or above find you a group and start whacking at this big icicle until you get you some of this stuff.  Special event bosses have great gear and Ahune is certainly no exception.  You’ve only got a few more days - go dominate that dude!

Contributing Author - Slavrix

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

Requires 2 of each gem

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

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

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

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

Requires more red gems than yellow

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

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

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

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

Requires 2 blue gems and one yellow

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

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

Powerful Earthstorm Diamond - 18 Stamina + 5% Stun resist

Requires 3 blue gems

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

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

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

Relentless Earthstorm Diamond - 12 Agility + 3% Critical damage

Requires 2 of each gem

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

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

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

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

Requires 2 yellow and one red gem

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

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

Thundering Skyfire Diamond - Chance to increase attack speed

Requires 2 of each gem

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

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

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4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

One of the best ways to maintain you dominant advantage on your server is to be one step ahead of everyone else. The very best opportunities are often found in the patch notes for the PTR (Public Test Realm). If you don’t make it a habit of watching for updates and patch notes, you should.

The patch notes are great because they let you in on what’s coming well before it happens. I made a fortune in gold when I read that Shaman were going to get dual-wielding in a previous patch. All I did was go buy up all the axes on the ah for a couple of weeks and then put them all back up for sale the day the patch went live!

To see the latest patch notes, bookmark this link: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The next patch is 2.4.3 and while there isn’t anything of interest from the gold-making perspective, it does contain some really big news that will get everyone in a tizzy. We wanted you to hear it from us first.

Mounts will now be available at level 30! That’s right, and not only that, but the cost for the apprentice riding training has been reduced to 35 gold. This is really going to speed things up when working on a new alt since your travel times from quest to quest will be drastically reduced for those classes without travel speed forms or talents.

Some other interesting tidbits in the next patch:

Tailoring - The cooldown for regular mooncloth will be removed completely
Rogue - Cheat death seems to be nerfed to a large degree
Shaman - Lightening Overload will also be nerfed, although it’s almost impossible to tell how much
Warlock - Curse of Shadows is gone completely, while Curse of Elements takes on shadow buff properties
Quests - Several quests have been fixed. One, the Blueleaf Tubers quest in RFK, has been broken for as long as I can remember - I’ve actually skipped it for years now.

Head over to the link above and check out the hundreds of minor details. It’s definitely worth the time to read the patch notes, there’s always a few exciting fixes, otherwise they wouldn’t go to the trouble to change them! OH, and get ready to enjoy your mount at level 30! Mounts at level 30 is a dominating occurrence in my book.

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