The two most versatile classes are the druid and the paladin. Not only do both contribute to dps, tanking, and healing, they offer important buffs that are vital for carrying out grouping, raiding, and bg’ing.

The paladin is an amazing class. They have key ingredients for arenas and raids due to their special abilities. This guide will help you chose what spec is right for you from level 1 past level 70.

When starting out, it is safe to work down the retribution line. This gives the most solo capability for running through quests quickly and leveling. Even through instances up to ZF, retribution paladins can tank without protection points or even a shield.

After hitting outland it is smart to switch over to holy or protection, there is always a demand for healers and tanks for the 60+ dungeons. Even if you only plan on dealing with one spec, it is always wise to collect gear for all 3 specs. You never know when you might switch over.

For end game, most paladins are protection or holy. Retribution paladins are very rare in raids or heroics, due to the amount of dps and CC (crowd control) they are limited too. Some players do take the retribution line, for there is some awesome raid gear out there to be earned. Retribution dps can be effective.

Here is a brief run down of what you need to know for paladin specs:

The Healadin

The holy paladin is a strong class for raiding and pvp. They offer constant heals that are largely accumulated. Just thinking about characters in plate that can heal makes me grin.

• Relies on crit healing
• High amounts of mana regeneration
• Able to cast large heals consecutively in a short amount of time
• Due to abilities, very good class for arenas

The Retadin (aka Retardadin by popular demand)

The retribution line is harshly under rated. It does not necessarily yield the outstanding dps that other classes can put out in pve. But in pvp, this is an excellent talent line.

Retadins are just as rare in pvp as in pve, but a geared retadin can solo down any class with ease. They are reliant on burst damage in combination with their stun and timing. Even though they necessarily do not have movement slowing effects, the advantage of pursuit of justice used with seal of justice will make it so no enemy can ever escape you.

• Relies on strength, crit, and spell damage
• Use improved BoF (blessing of freedom) with seal of justice so no enemies escape you
  For mobs or characters that do not run, apply seal of crusade then phase through seal of command for the best dps outcome
• Use slowest 2h weapon for greatest proc damage

The Tankadin

Tankadins were not always favored as a main tank for guilds. However, people soon realized just how effective they are, especially in heroics. Their ability to control multiple mobs through consecration is far superior to warriors tabbing targets while spamming sunder. The tankadin doesn’t generate threat through physical damage and taunts, rather through spell damage. It is important for end game tanks to spec not only in defense and stamina, but in spell damage as well to hold max threat.

• Relies on stamina, defense, and spell damage
• Can easily control multiple mobs
• Extra buffs - BoS (blessing of Sanctuary) and BoK (Blessing of Kings)
• Can support groups with their special abilities where warriors can not (ie blessing of protection, resurrection, divine intervention)

It is great to be able to switch between different specs such as healing and tanking while using the same class. Crossing a geared pally can be harsh, especially when they are in combination with another good class. They are one of the most needed characters in raiding while doing some even more amazing things for the simple heroics.

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23 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

One of the most versatile classes to play is the druid. They can be set up for tanking, healing, melee DPS, and ranged DPS. The best part; any spec is highly effective.

Given the balance and restoration trees, there are some incredible abilities that can lend support to each other. Keep reading on to learn how to manipulate these two talent lines to get a dps/healing effect that is incredible for PvP, raiding, and just running simple heroics.

Before I explain, here is the link. This is known as the Dreamstrate healing spec. The idea is to use the talent abilities Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate to replace ToL (tree of life.)

Dreamstate healers spec fully in intellect and +healing. They are not reliant on spirit because it really does nothing for them. The cycle of healing consists of lifebloom, rejuvenation, and regrowth on at all times while casting healing touch (HT) appropriately.

HT is extremely powerful (especially with empowered touch) so lower levels of this ability are required. Healing touch will not be spammed, but used appropriately when big heals are needed. Combining it with nature’s swiftness is vital for getting a 6k heal in half a second to save a tank. With 1800 bonus healing and empowered touch, a HT crits for 10k or more.

The only thing that hurts this spec is losing swiftmend and the threat that HT generates. However, the effect of HT easily replaces swiftmend. The bonus healing from ToL form is replaced with Lunar Guidance.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the dreamstate build:

Pros:

• Spell damage is now applied, also giving an extra ability (Insect Swarm)
• Moonglow reduces nearly all spells by 9% mana cost
• No shapeshift form. Healing touch can now be used and no speed reduction
• Dreamstate gives 10% mana regeneration every 5 seconds
• Nature’s Grace

Cons:

• No Swiftmend
• No Improved Regrowth
• No Empowered Rejuvenation
• Casting Healing Touch causes more threat

This is a different strategy to bring to the table, but is still very effective. It all depends on your style and equipment. The druid is very diverse and can be manipulated in several ways. In addition, the ability to off-DPS or solo daily quests without difficulty makes it much easier than being full restoration. There is plenty of DPS to carry around through this build, making the life of a healer more simplistic.

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37 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We had such awesome feedback during our writing contest, I decided to give you guys the floor one more time. During our writing competition we had so many players submit entries with a very high level of expertise that it was quite startling. So now what I want you to do is help us explore a very overlooked aspect of the WoW playing experience.

We could go on for months and months about action bars, UI mods and macros without ever getting close to covering even a fraction of the things you can use in those areas. We will certainly do our best to give you some major players in the UI mods genre in the coming weeks, and our staff writers are hard at work paring down the options into useful articles.

But first, we’re going to take a closer look at how our readers actually interface with the game by finding out what hardware master players are using. I mean, what good is having all those extra bars and macros if they are difficult to access because you use a crummy stock mouse and gooped-up keyboard?

I personally use a programmable mouse that activates macros and other functions. When I play a hunter, my right clicks go through a complete shot cycle, so I have far greater control over the combat sequence. I am able to do everything a hunter is good at without ever really worrying about what should come next, my mouse takes care of most of it for me. That way I can spend more time (especially in raids) watching for those surprises and changes in the combat environment that require my special attention. But without my particular mouse, it would be virtually impossible to accomplish.

Our editor, Lawbringer swears by a particular game pad he uses. I gives him 36 extra keys to play with. He actually goes in a very different direction with his play style. While I never take my hand off the mouse, he rarely touches his. With a compact keyboard, a little clever hotkey assignment, and a bar mod, he has over 60 hotkeys at his fingertips without ever having to do anything like press [shift]+F1 or [Cntl]+5. He plays fast, fast, fast. Since virtually every skill is at his fingertips, the only thing he ever has to wait on is cooldowns!

If you have a setup that enhances your game play, now is your chance to tell us about it. Keyboard, mouse, peripherals, headsets, monitors - anything that you use to increase your ability to dominate!

Post your setup and why it helps you dominate as a reply to this thread. We’ll review the submissions and then do a series of articles about the very best products you guys actually use. It will be a huge help to the new and intermediate player looking to advance to serious raids and PVP action. Those of you who have already been through the process of selecting the very best equipment to use can give them a little great advice and we’ll help you by giving everyone links where they can find all the cool toys you recommend.

I know you guys like to brag, so let me have it. Show Gavin how your setup rocks the competition, and gives you the ability to truly Dominate!

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18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/clearfocus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/focus

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

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

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

When adding the macro program this time type:

/cast [target=focus] spellname

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

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

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

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

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

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

The writing contest is over, the judging is complete, and we have a winner! We received more than 45 entries for the competition and the quality of the entries was terrific. But only one can win first place. This young man really stood out and made choosing a winner much easier than we expected it to be.

Congratulations to Marco Piccirillo, the hands-down champion. Marco receives the $500 First prize and a staff writing position here at DYS. Marco followed the contest directions to the letter, and wrote several articles that were everything we look for at DYS. The information was fresh and he had some great new tips. His style was easy to read and his grammar was unimpeachable.

Once you begin to read some posts from Marco, we’ll sure you’ll agree with us that he will be a very welcome part of the information we give here at DYS, and we fully expect him to have his own groupies!

Second place and $250 dollars goes to Gareth Morris. Young Mr. Morris hails from England and he really knows his stuff. Gareth already has some WoW fame for his guides and in-game play with druids; many of which have been stickied on the European forums. He actually tanked Grull in Moonkin form, a class play style he calls a Panzerkin. We watched the video he made of the kill, it’s one of the most out-of-the-box impressive things we’ve ever seen. Check it out for yourself here: http://videos.curse.com/details/816/

Third Prize of $100 ends up in the very capable hands of Jacob Towles. Jacob’s expertise is in the rogue class, and his rogue information is outstanding. He’s also done a little video work of his own in the form of an impressive piece of machinima you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyydJbzcWvA Those of you familiar with the frostsaber mount grind will appreciate it immensely.

It took some lengthy discussion and we had to get wickedly picky to choose between these guys. In fact, the work of the Mr. Towles and Mr. Morris is so good we have also asked them to be regular contributors to DYS as well. You are going to love their unique view of the WoW universe as well as their uber information on Druids and Rogues.

Next, we don’t want to leave out some other contributors who did some really excellent work. Special thanks to Cameron Jones, Scott Smith, Mj Nix, Kaeshan Nallanathar, David Norton, Nick T, and Dave D. All of these authors provided us with difficult decisions when it came time to sort out a top 3.

Now is the time for all you DYS nuts out there to start begging to see the work of our winner. All we’re waiting for is his acceptance speech! And we really do appreciate the response we got from every one of our readers for the contest. Some of you were wondering how good the entries would be based on the example of the posts to the contest thread. All we can say is that it blew away our expectations.

So again, Congratulations to Marco for writing his way to the grand prize. Three cheers for Jacob and Gareth for the silver and bronze medals. These guys really know how to dominate!

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8 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Choosing a profession is a lot like picking a pet or even what you want your toon to look like. Everyone has an opinion, and they all work. But what we want you to do is Dominate. If you really want to maximize your gear and earning abilities there are some professions that stand out from the rest.

Of course, we have a complete model at Dominate Your Server that can put you head-and-shoulders above everyone else on your server. But for the casual WoW player who hasn’t leveled all of the professions yet, we can give you a few great tips on choosing a profession based on class synergies and marketability.

You can only have two professions at a time, so every character will force you to make some interesting choices. Let’s give you a little list of certain classes that work very well with certain professions as well as our top picks for money-making.

All Classes - Everyone should have at least one gathering profession at least until level 70. After that, you may choose to do two production professions for the epic gear. Your gathering profession should feed your production profession so you are not forced to buy all of your mats at the AH. But we recommend starting almost every character with two of the gathering professions; Mining, Herbalism, or Skinning until after level 30 or so when you can actually train the really useful patterns from the trainers.

Rogues, Shaman and Druids - Skinning and Leatherworking. Since these guys are stuck with wearing leather Armor, this can keep you in decent gear all the way through the game.

Mage, Priest, Warlocks - Engineering and Tailoring. These professions make really useful gear for cloth-wearing classes. Combine with skinning with tailoring, and mining with engineering and you’ll have most of your mats for these professions.

Hunters - Engineering and Enchanting. We like guns better than bows for the most part, since it’s much easier to find (or in this case make) guns with more DPS than bows at comparable level requirements. Also, ammo from engineering outclasses arrows at every step of the way.

Warrior, Paladin - Mining and Blacksmithing. With the new specializations in weapon making skills in Blacksmithing, these guys can really take advantage of some truly epic weapons, as well as keeping themselves in decent armor.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that skinning with tailoring is maybe the best combo for a caster class for both gear and gold-making. Tailoring uses skins, but not a lot of them, so you can sell your extras at the ah. Beyond that, bags can earn serious money since everyone needs them and the majority of them are not soulbound.

Utility professions including Alchemy and Jewelcrafting can make decent money, but not enough to get overly excited about. You should really only think about using these two professions on one of your secondary teams.

And our favorite is enchanting. Enchanting is the cash cow profession, and nothing else comes close. We actually consider Enchanting to be one of the gathering professions since we use it primarily to gather enchanting mats to sell at the AH. You don’t do this profession to enchant for others, but to disenchant items and sell the materials. Let someone with no life find all the nearly impossible recipes. You’ll make enough money to pay for the uber enchants, and have enough left over to buy anything else you want. This profession is a must have for one of your toons if you are serious about Dominating Your Server.

If you’ve only got time to play one or two teams, you should do Mining/Enchanting with Skinning/tailoring to start. This will maximize your earning potential so that you can buy whatever you think you really need. Soon we are going to post a complete set of articles on power leveling each profession from 1-375, as well as a full list of what professions we give our teams to Dominate.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Blizzard calls them taxis. Most of us in the WoW community call them Flight Paths (FP for short.) And they make travel a breeze throughout Azeroth. Without them you would be running yourself or your mount to death. Envision a world where you spent most of your time running - not very fun. So we can definitely thank the good folks at Blizzard for putting those wonderful birds and bats into the game for us.

But we know this has happened to you: You get on the taxi and then you’re fiddling around with your bags or quests killing time and then you suddenly remember “I am about to fly right past a quest turn-in!” But you’re stuck on the bird until you land. Unfortunately Blizzard will not allow us to dismount a taxi or land at a destination we didn’t fly to directly. Sometimes I would rather be able to jump off the bird at like 500 yards in the air and take the corpse run.

This only leaves you with two very unsavory choices. You can either take the bird right back to your missed location, or hope that you remember to do it on the return trip. Since you’ve probably already forgotten it once (and usually more if you’re like me) the chances are that you may eventually just abandon the quest or item if it goes to gray.

Well, we’re not going to blow you away with some uber technique on this one, but there is a simple way to avoid ever making this mistake again. It’s just common sense, but unless you do it a few times and make it a habit you will inevitably take the wrong taxi at least once every level and end up wasting gobs of time just flying around in circles.

What we like to do is fly from one taxi node to the very next one, allow ourselves to dismount and then get back on the taxi to the next destination in the series. Since the cost is the same between the locations regardless of whether you fly over each base or land there, it will not cost you a single copper more. Even on long flights, it will add very little time to the entire flight. All taxi routes take the bird through a landing pattern much like a real airport, instead of flying right over the node, so it doesn’t waste more than about 2 seconds to go ahead and land. Furthermore, it only takes about 4 seconds to toggle the flight master screen and select the next location, so on a route through 5 FP spots we’re talking about adding 15-25 seconds to the trip.

If you do this you can eliminate several headaches. If you’ve flown in the entirely wrong direction, it’s much easier to just turn around and take the right trip. If you’ve forgotten something, you can be sure that you land in the right spot to buy that limited quantity recipe or turn in that quest in your log that’s been there for like 6 levels.

So if you have a forgetful streak, and want to be truly efficient with your time; give this little trick a shot. We guarantee you’ll be glad you did many times before you hit level 70.

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10 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

One of the things that can make playing a paladin tough is that they have no ranged attack for pulling mobs. They cannot use guns, throwing weapons, wands or bows. It can make some situations a little sticky when going solo since you don’t always want to be charging into situations like furbolg camps in Ashenvale and end up with 5 of them chewing on you at the same time.

At around level 45 you can use some of the skills you get from talent trees to pull. For Protection Paladins, the skill Avenger’s shield can be used, but it has a tendency to hit more than one target. Holy Paladins get Holy Shock which can get the job done. At the greatest disadvantage is the Retribution Pally with Repentance. The problems with this spell is the long cooldown time, the fact that the target will not come at you for 6 seconds, and it will only work on humanoid targets.

Blood Elf Paladins have a racial skill that makes a great pulling attack – mana tap. But it will only work with mobs that have mana, so there’s a big problem using it for pulling just anything. Caster mobs will not chase under normal conditions, so drawing agro usually means they will stand where they are and start using spells on you. Since Warrior mobs do not have mana to tap, you can’t pull the mobs that will actually pursue.

So what do you do before level 40? You can learn the fine art of body pulling – running just close enough and hope you only agro one mob before retreating a fair distance to take them on. Not really the best sort of pull, but it might get you one or two mobs instead of three or four.

But there is a way around the overall problem, and that is in engineering. Engineers get all sorts of nifty bombs and dynamite to use and they are normally fairly cheap to make as far as mats are concerned.

If you choose to go engineering, it can be a lucrative profession at higher levels. You rarely see people using explosives sine they don’t do tons of damage, but that doesn’t mean they are completely worthless.

You need to be careful when using bombs to pull. It’s not the most precise attack in the game. Most bombs have an AOE (Area of Effect) component which means they will damage everything within a certain range. The way to pull a single mob is to throw your bomb to an area near the mob and not right on top of it. When you toggle a bomb, you will get the green circle grid that indicates roughly what it will damage. Place you grid so that your target is on the very edge of the circle and you can normally get a single pull. Bombs also tend to have stun effects, so your target may have to recover before they chase.

The exception to all of these not so good points is EZ Throw Dynamite, which can be used by anyone. It makes a decent ranged pull, since you’re not all that worried about damage from your pull anyway; you just want to get them moving to the right spot. It’s sort of like throwing a rock at Godzilla at higher levels, but at least he’ll notice you and get angry.

We wish we had better options for you, but that’s pretty much the gambit. If you don’t want to mess with engineering, just buy you a few stacks of EZ Throw at the AH. The nice thing about it is that you can get it pretty cheap on most servers. Many engineers don’t use it since they have more powerful bombs available, but they do tend to make quite a bit of it leveling up their engineering skill. High supply, low demand always spells decent prices. You can always have a buddy make you some as well for the very best deals.

You’ll need to practice a bit using explosives to pull, but it will keep you from having to charge into every single fight head-on.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

When you first begin playing, it’s fine to go it alone. But you are going to miss out on most of the game if you only ever play by yourself. And since trying to do instances with just pick-up groups can be a real drag, let’s talk just a bit about guilds and why you might want to join one as opposed to merely building a friends list.

Guilds are groups of players who have joined a permanent “team.” You can create your own guild by visiting the guild master in any major city to buy a charter. You then have to get 9 other players to sign your charter, and now you’ve got a guild. It costs 10 silver for a charter and once you’ve got a guild, you can create a crest for 10 gold. Having a crest is a bit of fluff that shows up on your guild tabard. Not necessary, but it can be a sort of calling card.

People form guilds for a lot of reasons. Some guilds are more social than others. The main purpose of social guilds is having all their friends chat in the guild chat instead of whispering them individually. Other guilds are built for raids and end-game content. Guys in these guilds are often quite serious about the game and can be a little rough on newbies, or even just decide they don’t like certain play styles. Still other guilds will be built around things like PVP, or even more specifically Twinking, all the way down to “level 19 twink guilds.” I’ts really pretty amazing how specific they can get.

If you choose to form your own guild, get ready to do a lot of recruiting. Building and maintaining a guild roster can chew up a good portion of your time unless you grab a few guys with big friends lists. Now that WoW has been out a few years, it can be harder to recruit than ever. I recently created a fresh set of characters on the very newest server with the lowest population. It already had more than 50 guilds, and the top ten guilds were 95%+ lvl 70 and above. Everyone looking to do end-game content will be looking to join a top-end guild, so it might be a big chore building a roster in these situations.

You best bet when forming a guild is to catch a server when it first opens, like the first couple of weeks. Experienced guild masters won’t have trouble building a guild even if they move to an older server and start from scratch 2 years late. But if you’re new to the GM world, getting an early bird bonus will help you a lot. Even if you do form your guild early in the life of the server, you better run pretty quickly to 70. It won’t look all that great for the guild master to be lvl 20 in a guild full of 70’s. Or you can choose to make a lot of friends and just do a more social guild. It can be tough to get to the really interesting high level instances this way, but possibly more fun if you’re a people person.

If forming a guild and recruiting constantly sound like no fun, then you seriously need to consider joining a guild. Guilds will normally fall into the social or power categories, with a few somewhere in between. If you want to make a serious run at every ounce of game content you need to join a power guild.

If you want to find out about guilds on your server you can use www.warcraftrealms.com to do so. Just go to the realm data button at the top of the page and select US realm stats from the list. Choose the first server in the list Aegwynn and click the hyperlink. The main page for this server will tell you quite a bit about the server. Aegwynn has 11,688 toons, and of those 68% are horde and 32% are Alliance. (The really interesting thing is that this article was originally drafted several months ago and the ratio at that time was 56% Alliance and 44% Horde). Additionally, 1/3 of the players on this realm are either hunters 18%, rogues 13%. So your best bet at some really good gear and the most group or guild invite possibilities probably come from playing a priest 8%, or a shaman 7%.

Now if you click the name for the first guild in the list: Continuum, you will get to see the same data for this one guild. We see this is an alliance guild with 161 members. Of these, 149 are level 70. With that many level seventies and virtually no characters below level 45, this is more than likely a power guild. Since they are also at the top of the guild ranks, they are the guild with the most level 70 characters on this server - might be hard to get an invite to this one.

Choose another guild further down on the list – Raided R. This guild is also Alliance with 42 members. But in this guild the character levels are a lot more spread out, with 12, or more than 1/4 below level 65. They only have 30 level 70’s, so they are probably running some end-game content, but that’s not nearly enough toons to make a run at SSC or the bigger raids so this might be a spot you could find a home. You would just have to talk to some of the members and see what their goals are.

Somewhere in the listing of these guilds on your server will be a group that would love to have you and will help you out a lot. One of the reasons you might want to start in a guild with more low-level toons is that it makes running the low and mid level instances so much easier. Don’t worry about that if you plan on rushing past them to 70 and worry about instances in Outlands. I only recommend that for people who have been around the block a few dozen times though. When you first start out, don’t even worry about high level content until you get there. Join a guild with about 20-60 characters your level and work your way into Outlands, refining your solo and group play technique along the way.

Just like I don’t like skipping instances, I don’t like doing them out of my guild. I also don’t like not being in a guild. I’m a people person and guild chat is fun for me. It doesn’t keep me from playing hard, but I like talking to people I have become friends with through my guild affiliations. Being in a guild makes instance running much easier. As a matter of fact; the higher you go, the harder it will be to find pick up teams for instances. So find a guild with people that suit you, and if it doesn’t work out, just find another guild. However; don’t give up on guilds altogether just because one group doesn’t act right. Once you find a group of guys and gals that you enjoy playing with, it makes the game just that much more fun.

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