Refine Your Skill And Hit 80 In Record Time

We’ve been hinting at this for weeks now. Gavin and Law have been testing out a new way of leveling from 1 to 80 and it has exceeded our expectations. There comes a time when you just have to admit that you have to really stay on the front end of the curve in order to keep dominating, and this time it wasn’t us.

The new dungeon finder system brings the power of instance leveling to anyone and everyone. And even without the RaF bonuses, it’s faster than leveling solo. Plus, as we mentioned yesterday in the article “How to NOT be a Nub”, you’ll end up being a far better player on your new level 80 toon if you level in instances than if you go the solo route.

Leveling solo can leave you with a lot of bad habits as a DPS; and for tanks and healers it’s even worse.

You will hardly ever see anyone leveling in a healing or tank spec, so you end up with a level 80 toon that you have no idea how to play as a tank or healer – having been DPS the whole time up to 80.  But that has changed and the days of the solo leveler have become obsolete, even if you don’t know it yet.

Oh yeah, you can scoff if you like. When the car was first invented, folks laughed too. But in just a few decades the horse drawn carriage went from being the primary form of transportation to something you do out of nostalgia. the dungeon finder system has made solo leveling something that is just far less efficient and it won’t be long before most players figure that out. You can get on the cutting edge now, or be left in the dust. And WoW changes and moves a whole lot faster than RL.

Besides just being faster, as well as letting you play your desired spec (such as prot or resto) instance leveling also gives you far better gear and a lot more gold as you level up. The rewards from instance quests are far better than those from solo quests. As a matter of fact the xp per quest is about double and you can do quite a few that have blue gear as rewards. Throw in the extra gold from those quests as well as the enhanced loot from mobs and bosses in instances and you’ll be richer and far better geared when you hit 80.

That means you won’t be the dude starting heroics in quest greens doing pathetic DPS or struggling to keep people alive or hold threat. Most of your items will be blue at a minimum and the whole term “quest greens” will be far below you. You will go right from leveling straight into heroics and be able to hold your own while you rack up the 232 level epics and beyond.

Now, if you’re going to do instance leveling, you still need to do it the right way. And it’s not enough just to queue up the random dungeon finder and hit it that way. The ONLY way to use instance leveling is to combine the randoms with the dungeon quests as well. That’s where the real speed comes in. The problem is that those instance quests are scattered out all over the world of Azeroth and you could reasonably spend hours looking them up and chasing them down. But that’s where our test comes in.

Our good friend Dugi has developed the first instance leveling guide. If you’ve used our horde leveling guide before you know how much easier it makes everything. People tell us all the time they miss the guide being there to tell them every little step once they hit 80, that they almost feel lonely without it. Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide uses a version of the mod we used for Gavin’s guide, with a few neat perks of his own.

Dugi’s mod is highly refined with a slick UI. It makes moving between guide segments really easy, it’s quite a step above all of the other guide mods on the market. But once you get past the ease of use, you get to the real meat of Dugis dungeon leveling guide.

The guide will lead you all the way from 1-80 doing only instances and their quests. And trying to do it without a guide like this would be mind-boggling to say the least. Most instances will have quests from several different zones, or even continents, and the quest givers are typically in out of the way places and give you prerequisite quests that are hard to chain without a lot of time spent on Wowhead. Forget that, I have better things to do with my time, like level fast, and Dugi’s guide does all the heavy lifting for you.

And if you do happen to go ahead and do a RaF account and use Heirloom items, you can just move forward into the next dungeon segment if you find yourself doing dungeons several levels below you. So this is the one guide on the market that will work for anyone, at any level – it leaves no one out in the cold to fend for themselves.

So that’s where we’ve been the last few weeks, testing Dugi’s awesome dungeon leveling guide. At first, we were both a little skeptical to say the least. We’ve been leveling toons for years and Gavin broke the world record using our horde leveling guide, and we’ve both fiddled with powerleveling in dungeons. While powerleveling works like a charm, it’s also kind of a pain – not to mention a bit of a bore.

But after just a few dungeons we knew Dugi had hit the nail on the head and made our solo guide virtually obsolete. He’s even got some special bonuses in store for those of you who want to upgrade from Gavin’s Horde guide (which will no longer be available) to the new dungeon leveling system. It takes a lot to impress Gavin, but once you try dungeon leveling with all the dungeon quests built into a guide – there is just no way you’ll ever go back to solo hacking your way to 80.

Maybe the best part is really getting to know your new toon. Playing all the way to 80 as a healer and a tank has been a nice change of pace. Sure, some groups are a little lamer than others, but that’s to be expected. Some solo quests suck more than others too. None of this would be possible, of course, without the random finder. Just last year this would have been silly to even try. Putting together a group for Maraudon? Forget it, it aint happening – but the random dungeon finder can set it up.

I almost forgot another bonus. One of the reasons people don’t mess with the old world dungeons much is because they never did them and don’t know their way around. Dugi went above and beyond on this one. Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide includes a map for every single dungeon in the entire game. Plus, each map has very clear markers for boss locations and quest item mobs and pickups.

The maps alone are worth the price of admission for me. WC is a pain in the fiddle faddle even if you’ve done it several (hundred) times like I have. Throw in all those instance quests all over the world and make it easy for me to pick all those up, now we’ve got a winner.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: “I’m not going to spend money on some guide!”

And I used to be the same way, I know exactly how you feel – at least I used to. But then WoW became a real hobby. I have other hobbies, like golf, that cost me a TON just to get started. Then there are green fees ($50), a new putter ($150), some sweet shoes ($125), but shooting in the 70’s? Priceless.

I can’t directly attribute a better golf score to the shoes, but it certainly seems to help. Most hobbies are like that, you spend a lot of money because whatever it is you are buying increases your enjoyment in some way. I know this dude who plays paintball and he’s always getting some new gun or gear, but I have no idea if it makes him a more [deadly?] paintball player.

A guide for WoW is no different – or is it? The very first money I ever spent on WoW that didn’t go to Blizz went to Dugi. I had long since gotten over being cheap about my hobbies. And I used Dugi’s original guides for quite a while until I met Gavin. And I can say from personal experience that the fastest way from Nub to Pro starts with good information.

Without Dugi’s guides it would have taken me much longer to become Lawbringer. We surpassed some of that original advice, but frankly I never level without a guide of some kind running – which is why we built gavin’s guide in the first place. Gavin and I both wanted an in-game interface that reminded us what to do next. Even Gavin is human and you can’t memorize the entire leveling process – a guide helps even the best levelers stay on the right track.

So, if you really enjoy WoW, Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide can actually make leveling a lot more fun. You’ll level faster, get better gear and never be stuck wondering where to go and what to do next. You’ll have more fun leveling your toons, which is never something I look forward to all that much unless I’m vegging out, and leveling while brain dead is awesome with a guide.

So when you’re ready to Dominate leveling – there is no better or faster way than instance leveling. And Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide is the only one of its kind. It’s slick, easy to use and will have you going from 1-80 faster than ever before. It’s not easy to impress Gavin when it comes to WoW, but after using Dugi’s guide we are firm believers that there is no other guide out there that even comes close, not even ours.

And to sweeten the pot we’re going to throw in a couple of bonuses of our own. For a limited time we’re going to throw in a copy of Gavin’s Horde leveling guide for those times when you feel like going solo, or if you’re DPS waiting on a dungeon queue. We won’t be selling Gavin’s guide alone any more, so this is your last chance to get it.

But the big bonus is Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide. That’s right, while you are dominating the leveling scene, you can also learn how to completely pwn the auction house, making more gold in less time than ever before. Hundreds of other players have used Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide to blow the roof off their earnings – and you can do the same.

Here’s what you are getting when you order Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling Guide right now:

• Dugi’s Dungeon leveling Guide 1-80

• Gavins Horde Leveling Guide ($20 Value)

• Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide ($30 Value)

That’s three completely Dominating guides for the price of one. No other offer for your favorite hobby even comes close to this kind of value. You’ll have more fun, level faster and make more gold. And it’s all just a click away. Use the link below for the Gavin Garrett bonuses when you order Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling guide right now.

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How To Not Be A Nub, No Matter What Class You Play

You already know this, although it may not be on a conscious level, but WoW is actually several games rolled into one platform of graphics and interface. No matter what you like best, WoW gives you ways to do it. Achievements, the Auction House, PvP, Battlegrounds, Raids, gathering, dailies – there’s always something you can be doing no matter what part of the game you enjoy most. But one thing is certain: each of these aspects of the game is very different.

Although I fought the concept for quite a while, if you are good at PvP you are probably also good at anything else in the game that requires killing something. PvP requires such a high degree of awareness and quick response times that PvE in raids is pretty boring and tame in comparison. The real difference is that in PvP you’re only trying to coordinate the actions of up to five people, while in a raid you have at least twice that many and up to 25. If you think it’s tough to find just one other good PvPer to do 2’s with, it’s also harder to find 24 other excellent players to raid with.

And no matter how good you are at killing bosses and toons, that still doesn’t mean you know jack about making gold. We’re still shocked when we see otherwise excellent players relying on dailies and farming to make their gold. But to each – their own. Making gold on the AH is something that’s fun for me, while PvP = not so much. The truth is that very, very few players are good at EVERYTHING in the game. We all have a hole or two, and that’s because there are only so many hours in the day.

But one thing is for certain, there is a rather large divide between those who are ready to raid or begin serious PvP, and those who are not.

Typically the “not” class gets lumped into the “nub” category and they either give up on raiding or get better. Although I know a few who just have naturally thick skins and raid even though everyone knows they are a nub and will always be a nub, the vast majority of nubs just tend to stay that way and never get measurably better without a lot of intervention.

One of the keys to not being a nub is to make up your mind that you want to play well. Do what everyone else did to get better – research, adjust, take advice, ask questions. The difference between those who can and those who can’t can be boiled down to one thing: internal analysis. Constantly looking at what you are doing and wondering if there is a better way of doing it.

There is always room for improvement – even if you are the Fonze. As a matter of fact, the Fonze himself spends several hours each week trying to find out if anyone else is doing it better than he is, just so he never falls behind by even a step or two. It’s that constant improvement and struggle to win even more that separates the very best players from everyone else.

Which brings me, finally, to the point. We find ourselves at DYS in a situation where someone has done something a little better than we have, and in that something is a way for you to ensure that you reach a far greater level of mastery of killing things than ever before. We’re not going to let the cat out of the bag on the first bit until tomorrow, but today you need to know one thing that can make all the difference for both the nub and the pro.

Auction house aside (and don’t ask for farming routess either – you’re on your own there) there are two major things you can do once you get to level 80:

• dungeons and raids
• PvP.

That’s it – sure you can do a whole bunch of the solo achievements, but I don’t see a lot of that going on. Raids and PvP is where the vast bulk of the game lies. The endgame, and getting there is less than half the battle.

I used to tell my mom that when she first began to play. There is more game PAST 80 than there is before 80. She didn’t believe me until she got there. After that she was pretty boggled by the complexity and competition. So today we’re going to give all of you some advice that will help you hit 80 ready to go into almost any dungeon or raid environment and do well, even if you’ve never raided a lick in your life.

The key is leveling to 80 using instances. The benefits are too numerous to mention here, so check back tomorrow for a more complete accounting, but the one thing you need to know right now is that it will absolutely force you to play well or perish.

This is especially true for tanks and healers. Probably the worst thing you can do when you get the itch to try tanking or healing is to level that toon as DPS and then try to start tanking and healing after you hit 80. You’ll have 15 new spells to use and no idea what the heck to do with them, and four people yelling at you to do it right.

But, if you tank and heal from level 16 on, you’ll get the chance to use each new spell fifteen or twenty times in live fire situations before you get a new one. By the time you get to 80 you will have mastered all of them and the only thing left will be better gear. Now, you’ll still need to work on refining your style and spec (if I see another tree spamming Nourish I’m going to tear my face off), since some of the things you might have to rely on as you level up just aren’t as good at level 80 and in raids, but at least you’ll know where they all are and how they work.

It won’t make you a pro by any means, but you will be a much better tank or healer if you level up using instances primarily. Oh, and it’s faster too. That’s right, you can do only instances and the related quests and get to 80 faster than leveling solo. For the casual player it’s even better, since your toon will more than likely be in rest the whole way.

And this whole thing makes sense for DPS toons as well.

By using your spells just a few at a time and against bosses in real fight situations, you will have a better grasp at just where your DPS comes from than you ever could killing non elite mobs. Elites and bosses will give you a much better picture of how to actually kill something and work with other team members.

Which brings me to my last point. Leveling solo develops a LOT of bad habits that are just not kosher in instances and raids. Such as DPS pulling mobs. Such as tanks pulling entire rooms like they do on their level 80 with ICC gear. Being a low level toon in the right instances means you have to play properly most of the time. It’s actually a challenge. Steamvaults is still no joke at level 68. You might just learn to CC a bit here and there along the way.

So in the end what we’re saying is that if you really want to play the game as it is at level 80, you might as well get to 80 doing the same sorts of things you’ll be doing at 80. I’ve seen far too many people level their first toon solo and never do a single instance – they have no clue what in the heck to do when they attempt their first heroic.

So figure out how to heal, learn to tank and get a grip on how to do some real DPS in instances so that you can dominate once you hit 80. Oh, and you’ll get to 80 faster, with more gold and a lot better gear along the way as well. And check back tomorrow when we will reveal exactly how to take maximum advantage of instance leveling.

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One Simple Macro Is A Big Help

Everyone is looking for things that will make playing the game simpler.  Unfortunately, simple isn’t always better.  But every now and then you run across something that really changes the way you play.  We don’t always do simple (because the pros gripe at us), but it’s a pretty good bet that not everyone knows about this little gem.

If you’re a healer, you already know about this one, although you might not even know it.  Anyone who uses Clique, Healbot or Vuhdo use it all the time, it’s just built into those mods.  But recently I ran across a situation where I needed to extend the capability of clicking on something to cast a spell.

Every time we do a post about gear we get hecklers.  When we do product reviews it really is because we like the thing, not because we’re paid to talk about them.  The Razer Naga mouse is a great example, the G13 from Logitech is another.  Yes, you can do well with a two dollar mouse and the keyboard, but the G13 and the Naga really make the game easier to play at a much faster pace.

The problem is that not every product interfaces well with the game UI and all your mods.  In other words, getting the G13 and the Naga to do everything I wanted them to do wasn’t just a matter of plugging them in.  The G13 really needs bartender and the Naga . . . is a story all it’s own.  The Naga has a product specific in-game mod, but it overrides Bartender, so I had to find another way to get those 12 extra buttons to work.

The issue there was that I wanted to be able to use those buttons by clicking on the Vuhdo bars.  That turned out to be tricky.  But the neat thing is that once I found the solution it made a LOT of things easier on all my toons – and not just for healing.  The solution is also so easy that even a complete newbie can figure out ways to use it without having to know everything about the game or being a master at making macros.  And you will even find plenty of ways to use it even if you don’t use stuff like the G13 and Naga.

Let me introduce you to the mouseover macro

The mouseover macro lets you cast any spell you like on any target without having to target them first.  OK, that sounds wierd, so let’s go at it another way.  There are several ways to “target” a friendly player or mob.  One way is to click on their toon, lots of folks target this way, clicking on the boss or mob directly instead of tab targeting.  Tab targeting is another way to do this.  The only problem is that tabbing may or may not select the mob you want to actually target, so you’re looking for the red aura around their feet to see what you are nuking.  Another method is to click on a character portrait.  You can click on a bar in your group or raid in any UI to target a friendly player.  There are other ways to target with hot keys, but we won’t review them all.

As you can see, each method has certain drawbacks.  If you tab target you can’t target friendly players and don’t have complete control and may have to tab several times to get the right target.  If you are trying to target friendly units, you have to click a portrait or the player’s toon directly.  There isn’t really one targeting method that does everything – but the mouseover macro fixes all of that.

All you have to do is open the macro screen and type this:

/cast [target=mouseover] Spellname

Now, the spell name needs to be whatever spell you want to cast exactly as it appears in the tooltip.  For instance, if you want a macro for something you rarely use but need to cast quickly in an emergency, such as Lay On Hands, you would make the macro read like this:

/cast [target=mouseover] Lay on Hands

Notice that the words ‘Lay’ and ‘Hands’ have a capital letter, but ‘on’ does not.  You have to type the spell name in exactly the way it appears in the tooltip.

It comes in handy for a lot of spells for every class.  And what it does is reduce your reaction times by a click or two.  Instead of having to target something with a tab or a click, all you have to do is hover your mouse over the toon, the portrait, or any other bar on your UI and hit the button for the macro.  You don’t have to hit a button to target and then hit the one for the macro.

Warriors can use it for things like intervene, intercept and interrupts.  Paladins might want lay on hands and divine intervention.  Mages might like it for something like slow fall and priests for levitate.  I use it on my druid for innervate.  Anything you want to cast where it’s just easier to hover your mouse and hit a single button that helps you play faster is fair game.

So for my Naga mouse, I have up to six mouseover skills on the bar assigned to the mouse, and then Vuhdo for the standard stuff on left and right click and the scroll wheel.  This little macro has opened up a whole new level of versatility and I just didn’t know about it until I needed to find a solution.  It’s nothing new, but it just might help you Dominate like never before.

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Products We Love – Razer Naga, The Ultimate WoW Gaming Mouse

Click Here To Order Yours!

We’re a big fan of nifty peripherals here at DYS, just in case you hadn’t noticed, but every now and then even we get blown away.  Every month or two we test a new product in the market to see if it offers something more for our readers.  In order to get a review at this site, the thing really has to add something to the wow experience for the novice and pro alike.  Not making our cut doesn’t mean it’s a bad product, just that it doesn’t meet our Dominating and demanding flavor.

But every now and again we come across something that actually changes the way we play.  The Sennheiser headphones are great, but won’t really make you a terrific player.  The G13 game pad will – I still use both of them every single time I play.  But the Razer Naga blows away everything we’ve ever reviewed by such a huge margin that it’s a little hard to know where to start saying just how good it really is.

First things first, then.  It’s a standard size mouse (even though the button field looks pretty intimidating in the pic above) with 12 extra keys on the thumb side (for righties anyway).  That is the big difference between the Naga and every other mouse on the planet.  It has the standard left, right, scroll, scroll click, four and five buttons as most gaming mice – but adds twelve more keys for your thumb.  One look and we KNEW we had to give it a spin.

How Does It Feel?

In just ten seconds it was apparent it was the most comfortable mouse ever.  It’s like holding hands with your sweetheart.  The texture is just smooth enough to be soft, just matte enough to be completely slip free.  Not only do your index and middle finger glide into the perfect rest position, but there is a little shelf for your ring finger and a cup for your pinky that actually make it more relaxing to have your hand on your mouse than anywhere else.  You hate to let go of the thing to type.  So in the tactile area the Naga gets a 10+ out of 10.

Cursor Response

The drivers are super easy to install both on Mac and PC.  The interface is clean and offers a degree of movement control that is nothing short of outstanding.  It supports Dpi ranges from 100 to 5600 – which is a range from nearly dead turtle to fighter jet speed.  You can also adjust the acceleration factor and frequency response over broad ranges.  But the really slick part is that you can set it to control the X and Y axis Dpi independently.  That is a real WoW factor.  If you use a wide screen setup it is so nice to have the cursor move faster from left to right than up and down.  Cursor response and setup = 10 of 10

Movement and Function

Most mice have a few little slip pads on the bottom and a big bright lazer or whatever.  This beauty has a slip ring around the entire perimeter of the bottom, which makes it glide like butter.  It even has an extra slip ring that completely surrounds the invisible lazer orifice.  One thing is for certain, if your mousing surface isn’t completely clean, you’ll know it in about half a second. (we also prefer the Lazer exact mat for all our mice, but it’s especially nice with the Naga).  I prefer a free-wheeling mouse, but since very few have that option I can’t deduct too much for the incremental scroll.  The four and five buttons are right up at the very front and absolutely WILL give your a hand cramp if you try to use them very often, but we’ll get to why this makes almost no difference later.  And, finally the button clicks are easy enough to make without much force, but firm enough to avoid lots of accidental clicks – pretty much perfect.  Movement and function = 9 of 10

Extra Juice

Now we get to the good stuff.  Those 12 extra buttons are so good it’s not even fair to rate this thing against other mice.  It turns all those other mice into meece.  There’s everything else – and then there’s the Naga.  I pitched my G3 in a drawer for good and didn’t have a qualm in the world about doing so – and I loved that mouse.  Even apart from the extended functionality, the Naga is just a much better overall mouse, but those extra keys are WAY past incredible.  And then I played with them.

I fully intended to try to use as little hyperbole as possible, but that’s completely impossible in this situation.  Compared to every other mouse I’ve ever used – and I go through mice like a tomcat, the Naga would have no peer, leaving even the G3 completely in the dust.  But those extra buttons make it so different that it becomes completely unfair to all the other mice in the world.  If the G3 (a really good mouse) rated a 45 out of 50, the Naga (even without the buttons) would have raised the bar to 60, and that’s no kidding.  Those 12 new buttons put the bar at 100, and we’ll put the Naga right there 95 out of 100, which means there really isn’t any way to compare apples to apples.  everything else just got pwned.

That extra button pad automatically binds to either the: 1 through = keys on your keyboard or the number pad keys, whichever you prefer.  I already had bar one and two in Bartender assigned to those suckers as it is, so with the flip of a switch I can use my one mouse to toggle 24 keys – it’s so slick you have to use it to believe it.  And then comes Vuhdo – yikes.

Plug this thing into Vuhdo and you are one little macro command away from complete and total healing Domination.  And, in reality, it could almost make the choice between Healbot, Grid/Clique and Vuhdo closer to meaningless than ever before.  We’ll discuss that macro in the next article since it’s so slick and useful for so many other situations, but just know that you probably would never use it nearly as much without the Naga.

You’re Wasting Time Here!

All there is left to say is get one.  Get one right this minute.  Do not pass go, do not argue, just get it and Dominate.  Ask for it for Thanksgiving, your birthday, Christmas and New Years.  Beg, borrow, cheat, lie, steal or work like a fiend until you can get one.  Get up from your chair right now and go to the store – yes, it’s THAT good.  Once you plug this dude in, you’ll find 50 new ways it can improve your WoW life in about 5 minutes.  I am seriously excited about this thing, as if you couldn’t tell, but it really is the single best gaming peripheral I have ever seen.

If you can’t stand it, and we’ve done our job, you can click on the pic at the top of this article (or below) to go directly to Amazon and get one for yourself.  You don’t have to use our link, of course, but honestly, once you use the Naga you’ll never know how you played with anything else.   Go get one, and bring your Domination to a whole new level of pwn.

Order The Razer Naga Now

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Mods We Love – Skada Vs. Recount And Omen

These days healers never worry much about threat.  As a matter of fact, besides the odd mage or lock aggro pig, it rarely comes into play.  But since I recently began playing a mage just to fiddle with, I began to have to pay more attention to aggro.  Remember, we never level alone, so I’m running the mage with an Arms warrior.  It’s a lot more fun to just stand back and nuke mobs til they glow, and without all the prot aggro abilities, a young mage has to watch themselves.

So as a result, I decided to go ahead and download Omen, since I was familiar with using it from back in the BC days.  Opened up Wowmatrix and typed in aggro to the search frame and there was no Omen in sight.  Apparently only Curse carries Omen. So, for one of the few times, however, I did no real research and decided to try out another mod in the list.  I’m just not a huge fan of curse, but that’s a personal thing.

The reason I chose the mod I did was because it claimed to replace both Omen and Recount.  I like consolidation, it cleans things up and keeps you from having to manage too many different things.  I run a lot of little mods for things like moving frames and gear comparisons and mailing tons of crud to bankers and other minor tasks – but when it comes to UI mods I stick with DBM, Bartender, Xperl and Recount.  I don’t want 500 things running in a big raid to kill my frame rates.  But a threat meter was in order, and so I thought I would give this new one a try.

And I love it.  The mod is Skada, and it was perhaps the best accidental mod find ever.  Like any mod interface and configuration, it takes a  little fiddling with and getting used to, but it does everything the other two do all in one package and you can configure it to suit yourself better than either Recount or Omen.

The one thing I really like is the ability to open multiple windows and name them for what they are tracking.  So now I keep three little windows up all the time.  There is one for DPS which shows overall damage plus DPS.  The next one shows healing, since I’m always interested in that sort of thing.  And the last – threat.

Now, when I’m healing, the threat window doesn’t help all that much, except to know who is messing up and nuking too hard at the start of a fight.  You actually can use it to tell who is about to get one-shot and maybe wind up a life saving heal.  Having DPS open let’s you know how you are doing against enrage timers and if you need to call out on vent for “MORE DOTS!”  And the healing window tells me who needs to step up their game or if we’re just fine and I can throw out a few dots myself during the fight just for grins.

Another nice thing about Skada is that the configuration is saved on the Interface level, so it spans across all accounts and realms.  Set it up once and you’re done.  You can have it do character specific windows as well, though – so whatever floats your boat it will do.  Fonts, window sizes, number of rows, number of fights to save – you can set it all with Skada and report any window to chat or whisper just like Recount.

Recount does a nice little graph, but I don’t necessarily need more visuals, I can make my own pie charts in my head.  With Skada, all you have to do is mouseover a bar in the chart and it will tooltip all the stats for that particular player without a single click.  It’s the same information with instant access for your entire raid.

All of this might be most helpful to those of you who regularly lead raids or have at least a leadership role.  Or maybe you’re just interested in winning, and more information about what happened can get you much closer to what you want to happen.  If you don’t know what is happening you have no idea how to fix what is wrong.  You might just tweak something that is working and get worse if you are just guessing.

Skada makes it easy to have all the combat data right in front of you in whatever way makes sense to you.  You can get too many mods and end up suffering from information overload, but for the raid leader who is used to watching what is going on Skada is a great way to take your Domination to a whole new, and easier level.

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Raid gearing guide for the new 80.

(We’ve had some reports that this article didn’t come up properly so I had to update it)
“So i made it to 80 now what do i do?? I  am lost: HELP!!”

We hear it or read it in chat every day and once again it came up in the replies to Law’s wonderful article on Lore. Now I must admit: if it wasn’t for my fellow guildies at DOMINATE I would still be totally lost apart from all the new reputations to work for and daily quest for professions and the factions, you have all the other dailies for rep and the heroic dailies and all the new instances. And you can’t even get a group to do any of them.

You see in trade: “LFM HTOC” or “LF2M Heals+ DPS for H CoS (Daily)” or what ever and you whisper said person only to receive a whisper back 4 to 5 mins later: “Sorry, full” and you sit there thinking how do these others get their whisper in 1st? Don’t I type quick enough? Then you find out it is down to your gear score “Sorry your gear score is too low” and you don’t want to ask because you already feel as useful as a chocolate tea pot.

Whether you’re new to the game or it’s your 17th 80 these steps are a must for anyone that even remotely wants to raid.  Since patch 3.2 gear has become more and more easily available so we thought we’d publish a quick reference guide to Raid gearing. None of these steps require you to enter a single 10-man raid.

There are 5 things you should focus on:

Reputation with the right Faction for your Head Enchant:

This is one of those things that nobody can do for you, yet will be using for every single spec and every single head slot piece of gear you will ever wear.  Depending on what you choose to do,  you will need to raise your reputation for a different Faction: You need only hit Revered for the best Enchant. Go pick up the tabard of the appropriate faction and wear it in every heroic you do.

Kirin’Tor: Caster DPS

Argent Crusade: Tank

Knights of the Ebon Blade: Melee DPS

Wyrmrest Accord: Healing

Reputation with Sons of Hodir for your Shoulder Enchant:

Again this is another one of those things that nobody can do for you but are worth it since they will be applicable to every piece of gear you ever equip on that character regardless of talent choices.

It used to be that you had to complete the entire quest chain and do the dailies for a whole month to get to Exalted, then Blizzard saw fit to simplify the process and allow you to trade in the (Back then BoP) Relics of Ulduar for some Rep with Sons of Hodir. Next they made the relics BoE so you now could theoreticaly buy your way to exalted .

Recelty Blizzard has introduced yet another way to get faction rep with the only faction in the game that gives lvl 80 Shoulder enchant: Comendation Badge: Sons of Hodir. They can be obtained from doing the REGULAR Daily. This is fantastic since you can complete the quest while doing it on Heroic as well and pick up the Emblems of Conquest that every boss will be happy to drop for you.
(Note: Scribes (Character that level the Inscription trade skill) can do a much upgraded, self-only version to shoulder enchant but that’s another matter all together)

Crusader’s Coluseum: Trial of the Champion: Reg + Heroic

This new instance (since 3.2) is your easiest stop for level 200-219 gear. Regular ToC will drop level 200 gear from every boss. You can clear it on Regular, step out, reset the instance and do it all over again. In fact you should do your best to run through that place as many times as you possibly can and pick up all the drops that you can. If you run it often enough it’s also a great place to gear up your second spec.

Running the Heroic give you Ulduar-level gear from every boss, including weapons and shoulders. By far the easiest place to pick up 219 starter gear.

Doing the Daily Heroic for the Emblems of Triumph:

Every time you turn in the Heroic Daily quest you will be rewarded with gold as well as 2  Emblems of Triumph. These are your all access pass to Tier 9 and level 245 gear. They can be obtained at a rate of 2/day this way. Emblems of Conquest are the fringe benefit that doubles your payout for these runs along with the actual gear that may or may not drop for you. You can also obtain them from the fire bosses in VoA and Onyxia.

Running Heroics for the Emblems of Conquest:

At this point there is nothing stopping you from doing more Heroics and picking up Emblems of Conquest. Emblems of Conquest: Pick up ~250 of them to obtain 2-piece T-8 (Head and Chest), Neck, Waist, Hands, Pants and Ranged. All of the Conquest gear is level 226 and will contribute greatly to your cause (Gearing up)

Knowing where you stand:

With that being said, you should also have tools to tell you where you stand and what you still need to work on. For both of the web sites below: enter your time zone, your realm(server) and your character’s name and look yourself up.

www.WoW-Heroes.com for a very good overall picture of your current situation gear-wise (My personal favorite).

www.WoWHead.com/?Profiles For the same thing (slightly different) from WoWHead.

Do those 5 things and it really won’t talk long to get a 2250 gear score and more. Gear score is what quite a few people will judge you by when you ask to get into a raid. It is not a complete picture however since it doesn’t account for experience or knowledge of the game but it is here for you and you should take full advantage of resources at your disposal.

There are far too many items in each category to list them all: That’s what WoWHead.com is there for you. Hopefully this will give you a sense of direction to get geared up.

Now get out there and DOMINATE.

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Dominate Your Server Launches Alliance Faction Guild In Two Flavors

You’ve been asking about it for a while now, and Dominate Your Server is always listening.  Last October we launched the Dominate Horde guild on the Fenris realm, and now it’s time we did the same for Alliance.

We’ve been getting ready in advance this time, and have a couple of options for all of you ally freaks out there.  First of all, we took a little flak for the horde guild being on a pansy-wansy PvE server.  None of that this time.  Our Alliance guild is on a full out warfare PvP server.

Our experience with the Horde guild also taught us that we needed to be pretty certain that we picked the right time zone so that both late night and early raiders can all get in on the action, so the new server is Pacific Time to ensure that those folks on the East Coast have a good shot at getting their fill of raiding at peak server pop times.

Next, we also wanted to make sure that everyone got the experience they needed from the guild.  We have a lot of casual players in Dominate, but also a group of pretty serious folks who really want to kick some butt and take some names.  To make sure that everyone has a place without rubbing each other the wrong way, we’re not just announcing one Alliance guild – but two.

For the casual player who just wants to hang out with folks and have a good time with people who have their WoW screwed on straight, thee is the DYS guild.  DYS will be the nub and learning friendly place to come hang out and get geared up or hone your skills until you are ready to join a much more elite group of raiding folks.

From the very top of the Dominate guild, a group of our senior officers have agreed to defect to Alliance and have formed a sister guild – Dyssention.  Dyssention is a hard core raiding team with one goal in mind – clear content now and let Arthas beware.  These guys will be raiding all the time, I kid you not, and will have some of the best players we’ve ever seen.  You’ll need to apply for Dyssention and you can get details for that during the first live DYS guild meeting.

The meeting will be this Friday at 6pm server time, which (in case you missed it) is pacific.  That means 9pm on the east coast.  If you’re out of the country you’ll need to figure it out on your own, but I’m sure you’re used to that by now.  We’ll meet right outside the front gate of Stormwind to sign everyone up.  So come and join the fun, or come to find out more about Dyssention.  Either way, DYS wants to give fair and equal treatment to both sides in the Horde vs. Alliance debate.

And even though Law and Gavin are snowed under with an exciting new project these days, you’ll be able to catch them sneaking about the Ally guilds in the coming weeks as Dyssention clears content like a bunch of crazed dogs.  So come meet the crew, and make some new friends with DYS and Dyssention this Friday at 6pm server time on the Kalecgos realm.  Whether you already DOminate, or want to learn how, you’re sure to find a place in DYS.  See everyone Friday!

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Taking The Next Step Past Healbot To Advanced Raid Healing Coordination

Recently we did a review of the most popular healing addon – Healbot.  An alert reader (thank you Mr. Vilem) suggested an alternative.  After just a few minutes we were hooked on this fabulous addon.  We wanted to try it out in some of the more complex raid  healing situations and on every healing class before we did a review, and after two weeks the review is in – and Vuhdo rocks.

What Healbot does, Vuhdo does even better.  The only drawback we can see a relative newcomer having is the massive variety of configuration options available.  With that being said; however, the interface for making those adjustments is by far the best of any WoW addon we have ever used.  Frankly we’re not real sure how they did it.

Vuhdo (voodoo in case you were wondering how to say it) is a mouse-over spell execution addon much like Healbot.  And since it’s easier to configure, it has taken the place of Healbot on all of our toons.  As a matter of fact, it’s so good we are requiring Vuhdo for all of our guild healers – even if all they use it for is the clean way it provides vital information to all raid healers.

You see, for some time we have wanted an addon that could show us all of the HoTs on everyone in the raid in a clean and simple way that doesn’t take up the whole freakin’ screen.  Grid can show all that information for sure, but learning to make sense of all the goofy dots and blocks and bars is kinda silly.  If you get the grid panel big enough for it all to make sense you can’t really see where you’re going.

But with Vuhdo, you get miniature spell icons with countdown timers for not only your own HoTs, but also every other healer in the group or raid, regardless of whether they are using Vuhdo or not.  Did you catch that?  How slick can you get, eh?  No matter how many folks are in the PuG or BG, I can see every single HoT on every single target all the time, instantly, even if I’m the only one using Vuhdo.

This one feature has allowed our guild to coordinate healing better than ever before.  Our paladins can see the druid hots and priest bubbles before they reach over and spam heal someone who is in fine shape.  It has reduced over-healing in general by all classes by quite a bit, and paladin over-heals by a really big bit.

Plus, the bars and panels in Vuhdo can be almost infinitely customized, making nameplates far easier to read than with Healbot.  Beyond that, out of range indication is far easier to see at a glance, just because of the way you can configure the toon plates.  All in all, Vuhdo is absolutely the best combination of power (as opposed to Grid/Clique) and ease-of-use (as opposed to Healbot) you are likely to find.  We’ve never seen anything quite like it.

After using Vuhdo for two weeks, it takes everything Healbot can do and does it better.  It does everything Grid does and makes it easier to configure and see.  You can honestly sit back in your chair and power heal some the most difficult raid situations with one hand on the mouse – and yawn.  Not everyone will be able to do that, of course, but an accomplished healer will be amazed just how much more efficient they can be.

Putting your spells into Vuhdo is also easier.  You jut open your spell book and drag and drop.  It also allows for more options from the mouse clicks with more modifiers, as well as mouse-over heals for those of you who still want to push some buttons not on your mouse.  You can tell we like this one – a lot.

Vuhdo does pre-load several panels that we find unnecessary, but you might think you need them so we’ll leave it up to you.  If you decide you don’t like one of the panels or want more, they are easy to close and add from the options interface.  You’ll want to take some time to go through all of the option screens.

Another drawback is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to save a configuration to pre-load on other toons.  This means you’ll have to go through the setup process on every single toon, but in our book it’s worth it anyway.  Plus, not everyone plays on 4 different level 80’s either (not to mention the ally alts we’re leveling – sheesh).   Go grab Vuhdo HERE right away.  Learn it and share it with your guild mates.  You’ll be surprised at just how much easier and Dominating your healing can be.

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When we left off, I had just left Tankzilla’s group because he pulled a whole room and we wiped and the hunter ninja-hearthed after winning an EPIC (:roll:) two-handed mace.

About 2 minutes later, I got an invite to another group from someone we’ll call Dwarfadin. “To [Compy]: Please heal DM, we have a good group.”

He was at least polite, so I joined. Too bad Dwarfadin’s and my ideas of a “good” group seemed to be radically different. On paper, sure, the group seemed OK. Dwarfadin himself was only level 16, a bit low for Deadmines, but there was a 22 Rogue, a 20 Warrior, and an 18 Hunter. Before we got inside, the warrior felt the need to announce to everyone that he wasn’t a tank, and Dwarfadin said it was ok because he was.

Ok. Level 16 tank. I felt like perhaps I could heal him through it, although Van Cleef might have been trouble. I really didn’t care if we killed Van Cleef, I already had my Staff of Westfall. I was just there for XP.

As we fought our way to the entrance, I kept expecting Dwarfadin to pull out his shield. While we were outside, away from any elites, it didn’t really matter, after all. But, after we get in and he starts pulling, and by pulling I mean running around and attacking everything randomly, I noticed he still had his 2H Axe.

I figured he may have just forgotten to put on his shield. I can understand how melee classes can get caught up in fighting, especially when they’re attacking things randomly and ignoring the casters, who are lobbing giant fireballs at the healer, and not killing the mobs who run off with 4 hp to bring back 3 friends who go straight for the healer who decides to just spam Holy Nova over and over…

So I asked Dwarfadin where his shield was. He said he didn’t have one. I was shocked (well, maybe not so much); ANOTHER paladin who thinks he can tank sans-shield! Having horrible, Tankzilla flashbacks, I told him he was “[expletive deleted] stupid.” Then he said he had a shield, and he would use it on the boss. Fine, I said, “then I might heal you on the boss.”

For the rest of our adventure, Dwarfadin asked me to heal him with increasing intensity. Eventually he was yelling:

“COMPY YOUR MANA HAS NEVER BEEN BELOW 500 HEAL ME!”

I healed the rogue, the “fury” warrior, and the hunter’s pet, Bongles, but I never healed Dwarfadin.

I calmly explained that if he’d had a shield, I would heal him.

Then he said, “I’m a DPS tank!” and called me a terrible healer, and I was kicked out of the group.

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