How To Power Level Jewelcrafting

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

Dominate Your Server Jewelcrafting Guide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Two Trade Skills That Fit Great On Bank Alts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How To Meet All Your Meta Gem Requirements With One Stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Now on to a part I know you will all want to know….THE GEAR. Most gear is simple and straight forward. Most of us know what gear we “think” would be the best, but for those of you who maybe aren’t sure, we are dedicating an article just for it.  Keep in mind all that we have gone through in stats,   gems and enchants and you will have a better idea of what your really wanting  for gear.

The Death Knight starts with some pretty decent gear for all intents and purposes and it can get you far into the game towards level 80. Some quests give you some gear that may provide a boost in stats and that’s fine and dandy. But when do you need a major overhaul in gear? Your fist and most important gear set will be when you are level 78 when you will want a full set of

Savage Saronite Battlegear

• Savage Saronite Bracers
• Savage Saronite Gauntlets
• Savage Saronite Hauberk
• Savage Saronite Legplates
• Savage Saronite Pauldrons
• Savage Saronite Skullshield
• Savage Saronite Waistguard
• Savage Saronite Walkers

If you notice there is a repeating theme in these items. Firstly, Strength and Stamina and Secondly Critical Strike Rating and Resilience. These are really good stats for your Death Knight at this time and can get you running regular Dungeons and once you get to Level 80, running Heroics.  Even if this set is more for PvP, it can certainly boost your gear beyond the Quest greens you picked up alongside the BoE blues. There are a few items you can get to compliment your build even better.

Lvl 80 Crafted gear:

Icebane gear is a nice choice but you may ask why. They have uses down the line that can benefit you more than you might know. The best feature about these 3 pieces of gear is that they are highly customizable since you don’t really care about the socket bonus. You could for example fill all 7 available sockets with 20 str gems for a total of 140str.

• Icebane Girdle
• Icebane Treads
• Icebane Chestguard

Couple the Icebane set with these 2 crafted items (possibly replacing the boots):

• Spiked Titansteel Helm
• Spiked Titansteel Treads

Regular and Heroic Trial of the Champion

In Regular ToC, you can enter the dungeon as of level 75. You won’t be able to equip the loot in there until level 80 but the XP is good and if you can get carried (Yes, carried!) through it often enough you can certainly have a decent set of gear when you hit 80 (enchanted and gemmed).

• Banner of Victory
• Breastplate of Imperial Joust
• Drape of the Undefeated
• Gauntlets of the Stouthearted Crusader
• Girdle of Arrogant Downfall
• Helm of the Violent Fray
• Uruka’s Band of Zeal

Conversly as soon as you hit 80 you can start doing the Heroic version of the dungeon once every day to obtain the following gear:

• Ancient Pendant of Arathor
• Legplates of Relentless Onslaught
• Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates
• Plated Greaves of Providence
• Vambraces of Unholy Command

Weapons:

Two hand weapons or our thing and anything that adds Strength and Stamina are great such as your first weapon once you hit level 80,  the Titansteel Destroyer. This weapon is a weapon of choice because of its stats. You cant get much better until you run some heroics and get a nice drop. Keep in mind the stats you have learned to look for and you should do just fine.

A weapon to look for that is far superior is Edge of Ruin and can be found only in Heroic ToC.

Next thing your working toward on gear of course is Raid gear. You know that gear that is all pretty with the purple name tags and lots of gem slots and stats that make you drool that the other person is wearing and you think must be hacked because you have never ever seen anything like that before so it just cant be real…Oh its real…and you can get it. Even if you only play one hour a day you can get the gear for raiding.

Emblem Gear

Gear can also be attained by using Emblem of Conquest and Emblem of Triumph. This is the gear of champions. This is the gear that gets you invited to raids. Keep in mind you must know your role and how to play your character but the gear helps.

Emblem of  Conquest gear:

2-piece T8.5

• Conqueror’s Darkruned Helmet
• Conqueror’s Darkruned Battleplate

5 other pieces of gear that are of interest to DKs:

• Belt of the Singing Blade
• Bladebreaker Gauntlets
• Sigil of the Vengeful Heart (The Emblem of Triumph one is FAR better)
• Legplates of the Violet Champion
• Spiked Battleguard Choker

Emblem Of Triumph Gear:

When it come to Emblems of Triumph, Blizzard changed the rules for Tier 9. There are 3 versions of every one of the tier 9 pieces of gear that share a common set bonus. Let’s refer to them as 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 for simplicity. the last set (9.3) can only be obtained from Heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-H. ToC) token drop. and a single token can purchase any of the 5 pieces available. Gone are the days of running an instance 10 times to get the one piece of Tier gear you actually want.

The two other tiers 9.1 and 9.2 can be purchased with Emblems of Triumph: 9.1 requires only the emblems themselves where as the 9.2 set requires 1.5x more emblems as well as a Trophy of the crusade. On a side note the 2 and 4-piece bonuses of T9.x are way better then the T8.x equivalent.

Here is the complete list of items that are of interest to you:

• Bloodshed Band
• Faceplate of Thunderous Rampage
• Shoulderplates of Trembling Rage
• Mark of Supremacy
• Sigil of Virulence (This should be your FIRST PRIORITY)

Tier 9.1

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Conquest
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Conquest
• Koltira’s Helmet of Conquest
• Koltira’s Legplates of Conquest
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Conquest

Tier 9.2

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Triumph
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Triumph
• Koltira’s Helmet of Triumph
• Koltira’s Legplates of Triumph
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Triumph

You should note that if you are inclined to PvP there are complete sets available for purchase with both Conquest and Triumph emblems. For more information about gearing up to Raid, check out  Agorg’s Quick Gearing Guide for the Want to be Raider

Follow that guide and you’ll be raiding in no time flat, and Dominating the DPS meter in the process.

I hope you have enjoyed yourself on our DK tour of The Best DPS build for Blood Spec Death Knight in patch 3.2 and may your DPS meters hit the roof.

On a personal note. I don’t claim to have all the answers to all the questions about the Death Knight but it is my favorite class. I play the DPS DK exclusively and study and test it all the time. I have several lvl 80 DKs on different realms for testing and one I play on. I will get you up to speed on the upcoming changes as best I can for patch 3.3 and thank you for all your input.

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Special Abilities And Pet Management

In this installment we’ll cover the little things that are important to know while playing your DK, some are common sense and some you might already know, but a quick recap never hurt anyone.

Keep in mind: your DK is a 2-Hand weapon specialist. Gearing up will be our next part of the series so I won’t go into details here.

What other skills will I need to use?  

Pestilence:

Is very useful for multi-mob as it puts your PS and IT on all causing damage to every mob. If you’re soloing, it works out just fine but in a group it can cause problems. In a group (5-10-25 man), the tank gets aggro on the first mob and you hit the main target right after. The tank in the meantime is making sure he has aggro on all the mobs in the group. If you hit Pestilence before he does get aggro on the group you could pull threat off the tank … and that is not good. Timing is very important. While you heal yourself for the most part, if you get aggro you will not be able to heal yourself fast enough causing your healer to start healing you as well as the tank. FYI If the healer has to make a choice between healing a Silly DK who pulled threat and the Tank that will keep the rest of the group alive, do you want to guess who’s getting the heal?

For the most part you should be able to keep yourself healed up without any help and sometimes….you get a healer that refuses to heal DK’s and up-time is critical for the success of any group.

Death and Decay:

D&D is not one of your very useful skills for a Blood build but it does have its uses.

Trash mobs! Now in Culling of Strath there are a few times to use it on the little turned humans being sure to get all your runes back up and ready for the next fight. Again this takes practice and there are a few dungeons you can use it but not many. It works alright when soloing a bit but again it’s not a skill used much for this build.

Chains of Ice:

Chains of Ice is mostly used as Crowd Control in PVP and does have its uses while soloing but rarely will you ever use it in a dungeon. All bosses are immune to CC and you want the tanks to keep the trash mobs busy. While soloing, you could be questing along just fine and fighting solo mobs that tend to run away when one gets away and brings back his friends en mass. OOPS!! This is about the only time it’s a very useful thing to use. It’s nice to have be be aware of it’s limitations: CC

The Pet:

Your Pet Ghoul (summoned from Raise Dead ability) and your Dancing Rune Weapon. These guys can boost your DPS quite a bit to the point of amazement. There are a few tricks however to using them that will help you get the most out of them you can:

• Make sure your Ghoul is ready for every boss. Summoning him is on a 3 minute cool-down and your Dancing Rune Weapon has a 1- ½ minutes. So this also takes practice and timing. Make sure both are off CD for every boss, (ie. Don’t click “Ready” on the ready check if you’re not ready!)

• Whatever you do, make sure you have your pet out on every fight and Keep control of your pet at all times. It should be attacking the same target you are. It won’t change target unless the target it’s attacking is dead. If it isn’t, command it to do so using the Gnaw ability or  Ctrl-1 to force your pet to attack a new target.

• If you control your pet in this way there is absolutely no reason to ever take your pet off of Passive mode, that way it can attack the Boss while you’re kiting some trash (Gluth fight).
• Keeping your pet on passive will allow him to attack a target that you death grip much faster. Otherwise your pet jumps 20 yds. to your target and is stuck running back to you at a leisurely pace, by which time your target is most likely dead anyway.

• If the pet is low on health, you can ask your healers to throw a little love(Heals) it’s way. Certainly not at the expense of the tanks, of course, but you can remind your healers that pets need health too.

• When all else fails and your health is really low, remember that you can sack your pet for the health benefit of Death Pact. Yet another “Oh, $H1T!” button at your disposal.

• Unless you’re Tanking yourself, don’t use the Dark Command ability (Taunt), every tank will be grateful, and so will you. The days of Crowd Control seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur with Wrath but thankfully, Blizzard has specifically stated they were bring it back “in the near future”, whatever that means.

Maybe by then the DKs will have to learn to use their pets again and so will Hunters. CC some mobs, protect the healer, even back-up tank (Yes, Hunter Pets used to be quasi-acceptable tanks back in the day). Until that day, focus on what you do best: DPS.

So there it is, mass destruction is a Death Knights purpose and it is key that when you’re playing one in DPS that you should do just that. Enjoy your Death Knight and remember practice and timing are your best friends.

The next, final, installment of the DK series will cover Gear.

… To be continued.

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Welcome to our next installment in the DK series. Today we cover Professions, Gemming, Enchanting and a few stats.

Professions:

JewelCrafting and Blacksmithing are you two top choices when it comes to professions for a DK. They combine the most Raid-Benefits to your character than any other professions. They are also the most expensive.
If you choose Jewelcrafting as one of your trade skills then you’re in for a treat. Jewelers’ Gems will be your best friends. You can have 3 of these unique Gems on your equipment with stats like 34 to Hit Rating or 34 to Strength and even 34 to Expertise that can produce results.
As a Blacksmith you’ll get two extra sockets to put those bad boys into.
One way to mitigate that expense, is to level Mining first while picking up twice as much ore as you really need. Get JC up and then drop Mining to pick up BS and use the remainder of your mats for that one.
If gold has always been an issue for you, feel free to pick up Gavin’s AH Mastery Guide

Your gemming priority is as follows:

1. Hit Rating
2. Strength,
3. Expertise / Armor Pen
4. Critical Strike

Enchants:

1. Strength
2. Attack Power
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste

Some Stats to make the above make sense

Hit Rating:

DKs and all melee classes share the same 8% cap on that, until you get 8% hit rating (263 Hit rating) this stat is your top priority. As long as your are not Hit capped you should be trying to get there. This is especially important when using a 2-H weapon, after all, every swing you miss is damage that you’re NOT doing.
Once you are Hit capped, Strength: you can never have enough Strength. For a DK 1 Strenght = 2 Attack power. Attack power directly translates into DPS …

Now the following comes from the guys at ElitistJerks.com. These guys really know the math.

Expertise vs. Armor Pen

Expertise
•1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25%
•32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried.
•8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged and parried (each) and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.

Armor Penetration Rating
It doesn’t affect our damage from Diseases, Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike or Death Coil. This makes Armor Penetration have a reduced value for Unholy and Frost Specs. Blood however does have quite a lot of benefit from ArP Rating, due to the majority of its damage being Physical.
We need 15.39 Rating to ignore 1% armor on our target.

So although ArPen is cheaper to get (15.39 = 1% armor ignore) the Expertise affects both Dodged hits and parries which redure your DPS significantly. Bottom line, for a DK they are relatively equivalent because we use a slow 2-H weapon and Strength is always more valueable anyway, so gemming and enchanting for those stats may not be so wise. Don’t forget that most of your gear will naturally come with some of those stats

“What  do I need to upgrade first?”

Just remember, you will never be taken seriously as a player, for end-game content, if you don’t enchant and socket your gear.

WoW-Heroes.com

WoWHead.com/profiles

Both have a fantastic tool to look at yourself in the mirror so to speak. Using those web sites you can see, at a glance, what your character has equipped, what he is missing, what upgrades are available and where to find them.

That’s it for this installment of the DK series, tomorrow we’ll cover the finer points and before we’re done we’ll have gone over the gear as well .

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Spreadsheet Helps You Track Your Expenses And Income

Yes, I said Jewelcrafting.  I know there is this misconception out there that I hate Jewelcrafting, but that’s not really the case at all.  Although I don’t think it should be the cornerstone of your gold making business, it can still be a decent part of it.  The real reason that I haven’t reported much on JC is that I haven’t had one, but recent changes in patch 3.2 have forced my hand into the business.

Jewelcrafting has become far more like what it was in BC than it has been to date in WotLK.  If you have all the recipes you can make some real dough.  The trouble, of course is knowing exactly where the profits are.  And although Lil’Sparkys can help, we all know that it doesn’t update quite as often as it should and has a tendency to be quirky.  In other words, it is more of a guideline than a hard and fast analysis tool.

And that doesn’t really work for the seriously anal retentive.  There are people who want to know things precisely.  I don’t happen to be one of those people.  I’m getting back into JC to shield myself from spending too much on jewels for all my new gear sets.  BUt I do realize that if I’m feeling pain when it comesto prices, that must mean that the market has evolved to the point where there are some profits to be made.  Anytime it hurts, I want to put the hurt on someone else besides me.  Yes, I’m a robber baron, so sue me.

with all that being said, I don’t always make up everything I teach.  You don’t need to go around inventing the wheel all the time if it already exists.  And while this might not be the most sophisticated tool you’ve ever seen, it certainly might help you take advantage of the current market situation and get the insight you need to truly Dominate with Jewelcrafting.

An alert reader, one that is keen on the JC market, ran accros a spreadsheet at Warcraftecon that helps you track everything you need when it comes to Jewelcrafting.  Thanks to Jurandr for sending us the email, and after a cursory review I can say that it definately will help you track all of your prospecting and profits should you choose to engage in such activities.  I know on the alliance server for the DYS guild I have scooped up all the cheap mats I can find for alchemy and transmutes because the profits are nice.  You can only do it once a day, but an extra 1,000 gold a week for two minutes worth of work sounds like my cup of tea.

So check the spreadsheet out at this link: http://www.warcraftecon.net/?p=1777 and see if you can make it work for you.  It just might have you, and the rest of us, Dominating with Jewelcrafting again.

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Professions for the Tank: an exercise in futility if you get it wrong

My personal choice for professions is based solely on what they bring to the fight. As a Tank you are expected to be the best you can be and nothing less. As much as I like some of these professions and most of them can be quite useful, they are not all equal for the role we play in a group.

This article will help you determine what professions are best for you as a Paladin Tank:

• Herbalism: a Heal over time every 2 minutes that will sometimes save you … but it’s a HoT and if your healers are on the ball it’s relatively useless.

• Alchemy: Twice as long potions/flasks and a minor effect increase: that’s nice

• Inscription: No farming Sons of Hodir rep for the shoulder enchants, “scroll of Recall” is handy but overall, lacks a little luster for my tastes.

• Skinning: Crit bonus: not exactly our most praised stat as a tank.

• Leatherworking: Utterly USELESS in a raid.

• Engineering: Handy and fun to tinker with, expensive to level, it had its uses when Palys didn’t have any ranged abilities, but now is not nearly as efficient as other professions.

• Enchanting: Extremely profitable if you’re using the AH Mastery Guide but useless to a Tank… better suited to Tailors/Cloth wearers)

• Tailoring: Even more useless then leather working, unless you absolutely MUST ride your flying carpet into battle!

• Blacksmithing: Expensive to level, but adds 2 Prismatic sockets to your gear: extremely convenient and very useful.

• Mining: 60 Stam bonus when maxed along with the  ability to make Titansteel, and gather Ore.

• Jewel crafting: Finally the BEST (and arguably the most expensive) profession for a tank:  Jewelers’ gems baby … that’s what it’s all about. Especially at early levels this single ability can make the difference between sitting out a raid at 535 Def rating and picking up all the gear that drops in a single run just because nobody needs it. This will allow you to customize your character more then any other profession in the game, it gives you versatility and is an absolute MUST when upgrading gear since you may have to re-socket  2-3 pieces just to be able to wear the new whatever you just won.

For my money Mining and JC are the best. Some will argue Blacksmithing for the two extra sockets that will hold prismatic gems. All I have to say about that is: if you’re going to fill those up with Stamina (like you should) then Mining is a direct equivalent with the 60 Stam Mining bonus (2x 30Stam gems), it’s far cheaper to level, you’ll actually MAKE money with it and it will subsidize your other expensive profession: Jewel crafting!
For other classes that would like to add versatility or fill the need for a very specific stat (Druids & Armor Pen) then Blacksmithing and JC are the better (and most expensive) way to go.

Gems you want:

• Blue:  Stamina, Stamina and MORE STAMINA!
• Red:  Strength > Expertise > Attack Power
• Yellow: Defense Rating > Hit Rating > Crit.
• Orange, Green, Purple: Pick any of the stats above and get the corresponding mixed one.

Now let’s go over what enchants/Gems you want to have on your gear.

Head

• Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector: 37 Stam; 20 Def – Argent Crusade: Revered
• Arcanum of the Defender: 16 Def; 17 Dodge – Keepers of Time: revered

You’ll want to get to Revered with Argent Crusade as soon as possible since you’ll be putting that on every helm you will ever wear during your career as a tank.

Meta Socket

• Austere Earthsiege Diamond 32 Stam; +2% Armor from gear
• Eternal Earthsiege Diamond 21 Def; +5% Block Value
  

In the beginning you might want to consider the Eternal for the Def bonus but could easily migrate to the Austere as your gear gets better (2% of 25,000+ is nothing to sneeze at)

Shoulder

• Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle: 20 Dodge; 15 Def – Sons of Hodir: Exalted
• Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle: 15 Dodge; 10 Def – Sons of Hodir: Revered
• Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle: 52 Dodge; 15 Def – Inscription (400)

Sons of Hodir are the only faction that sell Shoulder Enchants. You will have to grind that rep eventually, so might as well get the (super) long quest chain going while you’re making your way to 80. This is a must since you’ll need that rep for every shoulder enchant regardless of what you choose to do with your Paladin Character.

Cloak

• Enchant Cloak: Titanweave 16 Def
• Enchant Cloak: Major Agility 22 Agi
• Enchant Cloak: Mighty Armor 225 Armor
• Enchant Cloak: Superior Agility 16 Agi
• Enchant Cloak: Steelweave 12 Def

Agility is far from being the best stat for Tanking but it goes a long way when it comes to avoidance. In this particular scenario when you start having choices you can keep the Titanweave enchant and start changing out some of your Gems instead.

Chest

• Enchant Chest: Super Health275 Health (roughly equivalent to 21 Stamina for Paladins)
• Enchant Chest: Powerful Stats +10 to All stats
• Enchant Chest: Greater Defense 22 Def
• Enchant Chest: Super Stats +8 to All Stats
• Heavy Borean Armor Kit 18 Stam
  

Greater Def has most itemization and will definitely help with reaching the Def cap initially but you might want to consider Powerful Stats as your end-game raiding chest enchant since Paladins are one of the few classes that actually benefit from most of the 5 stats (Str, Agi, Stam, Int, and less from Spirit)

Wrists

• Enchant Brace: Major Stamina 40 Stamina
• Enchant Bracer: Major Defense 12 Def
• Fur Lining: Stamina 90 Stam (Leatherworking 400)

Here again Defense until you reach the Cap and then switch to Stam. You can never have too much Stam: Ask any healer.

Hands

• Enchant Gloves: Armsman 10 Parry; +2% Threat
• Enchant Gloves: Major Agility 20 Agi
• Enchant Gloves: Precision 20 Hit
• Enchant Gloves: Expertise 20 Expertise
• Enchant Gloves: Major Strength 15 Str
• Reticulated Armor Webbing 885 Armor (Engineering 400)
• Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket 1654-2020 Fire Damage on a 45 sec CD (Engineering 400)

Armsman is your best bet initially from a Defensive stand point, although you may want to consider the Strength (even if it is a Burning Crusade Enchant) for more DPS  down the line.

Waist

• Eternal Belt Buckle Adds a Prismatic Socket to your Belt

A must have for EVERY belt you ever buy. Being a Jewel Crafter this gives you Options.

Legs

• Frosthide Leg Armor 55 Stam; 22 Agi
• Jormungar Leg Armor 45 Stam; 15 Agi

The Jormungar Leg armor is far cheaper than the Frosthide, so if you plan to upgrade soon you may want to hold back if money is an issue.

Feet

• Enchant Boots: Greater Fortitude 22 Stam
• Enchant Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality 15 Stam +8% Run speed Increase

Greater Fortitude if you have PoJ, Tuskarr’s if you don’t.

Weapon

• Enchant Weapon: Mongoose the Agility on proc is worth quite a bit of Avoidance.
• Enchant Weapon: Blood Draining The BEST enchant you can get (worth ~200 Stam)
• Enchant Weapon: Blade Ward Possibly the 2nd Best enchant
• Enchant Weapon: Accuracy 25 Hit; 25 Crit
• Enchant Weapon: Potency +20 Str
• Enchant WEapon: Titanguard +50 Stam
• Titanium Weapons Chain 28 hit; -50% disarm duration

As expensive as you think Blood Draining might be, an instant heal worth 2000 health that only procs when you need it (fall below 35% health) is about as good as it gets. It’s the equivalent of 200 Stamina … no other enchant even comes close.

Shield

• Enchant Shield: Defense 20 Def
• Enchant Shield:  Major Stamina 18 Stam
• Titanium Plating 81 Block Value

As with other pieces of gear, initially you’ll want the Def to reach the Cap but should switch to Stam or Block Value down the line. (81 Block value is far from negligible).

This should cover most of our bases when it comes to upgrading our gear and will show you most of your options. Knowing is half the battle, now you KNOW: get out there and Dominate!

Articles in this thread:

Part 1 – The Basics

Part 2 – Combat Ratings

Part 3 – Armor: Mitigation vs. Avoidance

Part 4 – Hit Table and Threat Generation

Part 5  – Abilities and Rotation

Part 6 – Professions and Upgrades (you are here)

Part 7 – Buffs and Starter Gear

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Well 3.2 is here folks if you hadn’t noticed. Your add-ons don’t work, you’ve got the default WoW UI (good grief how do people play on that?!?), some of you have no more talents, most of you need to re-spec, and all of you want/need to get new epic gems!

It’s been rather chaotic here too, what with discovering the new Dailies, grinding the Daily Heroic for Emblems of Triumph, exploring the new Raid, as well as doing heroics till our eyes bleed for the Conquest emblems.

That’s all nice and dandy but How did it mess up our play style this time? Well here’s a break down of the major changes and how it affected the Protection Paladin.

• Shield of Righteous got nerfed … rather significantly.

The biggest change is to Block Value: It got a SIGNIFICANT bump and the inevitable Hard Cap (2400). My block Value went from 1450 to 2100, yet my avg dmg from Shield of Righteousness went from 3.5-6K (7-12K Crit) all the way down to 2-4K (4-8K crit).  As a result: I’ve since swapped out pieces and Shield Block now sits at just below 1900.

This single changes has moved my Shield of righteousness from the top spot on my DPS charts to on-par or below Hammer of Righteousness.

• Blizzard saw fit to modify some of our key abilities in subtle but significant ways as well: Hammer of Right is now considered a Melee attack along with Judgments. (Expertise and Armor Pen anyone ?) I feel myself becoming more and more feral… miaou/Grrr

• Seal of Corruption/Vengeance got a really big boost, combined with the DoT it’s the on of our biggest DPS ability and account for as much damage as Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of R. (10% Judgment glyph is no longer an option.) The combined seal effect and DoT component now.

• Blessing of Sanctuary is now fantastic for 5-mans but unchanged for raids where there are 2 or more Paladins.

• Judgment of Light now returns a fixed 2% of max health for every physical hit as opposed to a value based on spells power. Since Tanks have the most health of any raid member this is now our seal of choice. I find myself regularly 3rd in heals on 10-mans. Remember here that two of our abilities are now considered “Physical”. This tiny change combined with the other changes stated above is HUGE !

• Jewel Crafting got a Big upgrade: Epic gems and JCers got “nerfed” by having their Jewelers gems not be prismatic anymore. On the up side of that shenanegan we also have the ability to make a new BoE  Prismatic Gem that gives +10 to all stats and fits any socket. Especially useful to Paladins who can make good use of Strength, Agility, Stamina and Intellect (Spirit: not so much) it also counts as one of every color gem without hindering your 3-max Jeweler’s gem count.

In essence all Epic gems are a 25% upgrade from the blue ones

• 16 Str *1.25 = 20 Str
• 19 AP *1.25 = 24 AP
• 41 Stam *1.25 = 51 Stam
• etc…

As far as changes go in the big scheme of things, it’s been a really good patch for Paladins. Try it out for yourselves and you should at least notice an increase in DPS.  You’ll notice a further increase in DPS by buying up all the badge gear you can get your hands on. You’ll need 248 Emblems of Conquest for every spec you want to deck out (including: 2-piece T8 Head and Chest, Neck, Gloves, Belt, Legs and libram.

On the upside, doing heroics has never been easier. I’ve even managed to pick up a few achievements without even trying for them. Now get out there and Dominate !

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A New Realm Is About To Find Out Who Moneybaggins REALLY Is

There is a way to make gold in WoW that is so easy you’ll never believe it.  You probably don’t know it exists because you would think that anyone who would make this opportunity available just ain’t right in the head.  But it happens all the time.  If you’re leery about becoming an auction house guru, this is the place to start.  You might catch a fever for it if you try this one small taste for a while.

I took a lot of heat last week for talking bad about Jewelcrafting and then again here.  It’s like I was bad-mouthing somebody’s sister or something.  I was accused of using stupid arguments and being an idiot and some other things that I’ve already blown off.  But one dude apparently thought I was worthless because I banged on JC but didn’t give an alternative, therefore I suck.

I can live with that, and far be it from me to not give out a good tip.  And to a degree he was right, in spite of the fact that we’ve been handing out free tips here for three years.  What have you done for me lately eh?  Fine.  The problem is that the only reasonable way to teach people how to work the AH is to make them commit to it completely.  And the only way they will even come close to committing to learning the process is to pay to learn the process.

For those of you unwilling to do so, we feed you the best we can.  The system is incredibly complex, but we’ve boiled it down to a few clicks here and a few clicks there.  It couldn’t be any easier, but you do have to read through all 130+ pages and work at it pretty good every day for a month to get it down.  It’s not for everybody, but everybody who does it our way makes more gold faster than anything else they’ve ever done before.

We used to be a little secretive about our methods, but we’ve figured out that even AH pros don’t do everything we do.  The guy who isn’t even close to ruling the AH isn’t going to figure out the whole system from a tip here and there straight from the guide.  It’s a system that took us over two years of research to develop and over 130 pages to explain.

So here is one of our favorite steps – it’s the very first thing we do every single day.  We never EVER skip this one.  It won’t make you a ton of gold, but it’s the safest investment you can possibly make.  as a matter of fact – it’s the only market play we will ever recommend that has absolutely ZERO risk involved.  You CANNOT lose gold on this one.

You’ll need AADV (Auctioneer Advanced) and it doesn’t hurt to have Lil’Sparky’s and ATSW (Advanced Trade Skill Windows), but they are not necessary for this step.  But you can’t do without AADV.  It’s the back bone of everything we do.  Without it you can’t do this at all, there is no way.  With it, the whole world becomes a veritable tree from which to pick glorious bunches of golden fruit.

Yeah it’s cheesy as hell, but it’s the truth.  You can run around farming all you want, I’ll do my 15 minutes at the AH and make the same amount of gold (or more than likely a LOT more) thank you very much.  Anyway, load up AADV, fire up the game and then run straight to the AH.

The next cool thing about this tip is that you can do it while you build your database.  Normally we recommend people do nothing at all with AADV for a week or two except scan.  This is the only exception.  You can start doing this day one.

Open up the auction window at your favorite auction house and the hit the little Fastforward button (yellow circle) at the top of the AADV window and tell it you don’t care if it boots you off.  If you’re on a slow connection you might never get the fast scan to work, if that’s the case just hit the regular play button (red circle) and go grab a drink or something.

Once you’re done with that just right click (that’s RIGHT CLICK) the little magnifying glass (green arrow) to open up the window where we basically print money all day long.  Click on Searchers (red arrow) and then select Vendor (yellow arrow) from the list.  Set your vendor Minimum profit to 10s and the minimum discount to .5% (that’s point 5 percent, NOT five percent).

Leave Allow Bids and Allow Buyouts checked and then just hit Search near the bottom left.  Your screen will fill up with possibly the most amazing opportunity to make crazy gold off of folks just not using their heads you’ve ever seen.  There is simply no duplication for this is real life.  If there was I wouldn’t be writing articles about WoW let me assure you.

The things you see in the list below are items that people have listed on the Auction House for sale BELOW their vendor value.  Catch that?  It means you can buy them from the AH, turn around and sell them to a Vendor nearby for a profit.  How silly easy is that?  All we have to do to bid or buyout every single one of these items is hold down Ctrl+Shift+Alt and hit the “Purchase ALL” button.  In this case we spent 20g, 92s, 62c on 18 items with a vendor value of 28g, 47s, 49c.  And yes, you have to spam click the “Yes” button on each one, there is no way around it without botting and getting banned.

It only takes about 2 min to scan the AH, another 12 seconds to scan for vendor, a minute or so to hit Yes a few dozen times and then you can go back to doing dailies or mining or whatever else you’re going to do today.  But I just made about 8 gold in 4 minutes.  And I was writing this article as I did it.  Now I can log out and go back to work on the podcast and the Alliance leveling guide.

The above example is on a very low pop server.  On high pop realms there may be hundreds of items for vendor.  I consistently make over 50 gold a day on one of my bankers from this little trick alone.  For the AH nub or new toon on a new server this is the easiest way to turn 10 gold into 100 gold in a week we’ve ever found.

And because you are bidding or buying these items below vendor cost, you simply cannot lose a single copper in the process.  If someone outbids you above vendor price you just get your investment back and no harm done.  If you buyout the item you can get your gold back plus a bit from a vendor in about 20 seconds.  It’s simply amazing how much gold you can actually make from this.

I find that on average I make a good 100-200 gold a week on every banker I have that does this several times a day.  That’s like doing an extra 5-10 dailies every week, or mining for an hour or two.  Plus I probably only spent about 20 minutes total on the whole deal which means that gold per hour spent earning it is still way higher than anything else I might be doing.

Now, buying for vendor is only one tiny part of our complete system.  But if I told you that there were dozens of ways and thousands of items that could turn you profits just like this for such a teeny tiny bit of time would you want to know how we do it?

That’s the perspective I’m coming from when I say farming is schlub work.  That’s what I mean when I say JC is a little too much on the work side.  If I can make a couple hundred gold here for 10 minutes worth of clicking, and a couple hundred there and a couple thousand over there and . . . .why would I spend time buying, prospecting, selling, making, de’ing and reselling THOSE mats when I can do the same things and make even MORE gold by just flipping all that around just a little bit.

I buy ore all the time, but I never prospect it for gems.  if I get it at a low price my best gold per hour spent is to merely resell it at the right price.  If I want more enchanting mats to seel or more things to DE I don’t go make them I buy the greens.  I don’t ever sell gems because they deposit costs hurt my feelings – there are simply too many other things that have very low or no deposit costs out there to make it worth taking a 15% profit margin for an hour of my time when I can do a dozen other things that will get me a 25% or higher margin for 15 minutes of my time.

Normally the profession that’s best for crafting to DE is Tailoring (yes, I will explain why next week).  The profession that makes the most consistent high profits (for actually making things to sell) is Alchemy, the profession that means the most work for the lowest return is normally Leatherworking, but those are just averages and your server may be different.  But no matter what server I’m on I can earn thousands of gold every week with only one profession using the techniques we’ve honed until a toad could use it – and JC isn’t in it.  Matter of fact, I don’t even have a JC on any realm (although I will soon have several of them, but not to make gold – for the tasty +a ton to stat X ).

You can learn everything we do in the Auction House Mastery Guide.  But at least this way you can see what we mean by free money.  People are just giving it away basically.  And you don’t even have to work for it.  All you do is clicky-clicky, and it rolls in.  Try this one out for a while and see.  It won’t waste more than a few minutes of your time and just might convince you that there really IS a much more Dominating way to make gold in World of Warcraft.

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