One of the many ways to maximize your profits at the AH is carefully regulating your stack sizes.  Although it can be tempting to put everything up in maximum lots to save a little time, or to split everything into singles, you could be robbing yourself of some serious cash in the long run.  So I’m going to give you some pointers to use that will really help you know exactly what to do that should cover you in almost any situation, and really boost your gold-making.

There are three classes of things we’re dealing with here.  First are those items that simply stack into lots of 5, 10 or 20.  Next come items that convert, such as motes (from stacks of 10) and essences (from stacks of 3).  And finally are those oddball items that stack up to 250.

For the most part you will hardly ever want to post in maximum stack sizes for several reasons.  The biggest one is that there are still a lot of people who do not use Auctioneer.  I know it’s hard to believe, but because of this, there are a ton of folks playing this game that only see the final price and not the price per unit.  Smaller stacks are going to look cheaper than larger ones to them.  It’s just human nature to want to spend less (even if you are really spending more in the long run).

You can see per item prices in the WoW tooltip, (see posts by Ren and Trevor) but that doesn’t mean everybody will.

Don’t believe me?  Go to the grocery store and see how many things are being sold in smaller and smaller units in real life.  If multi-billion dollar companies use this little trick, then it’s safe to say it’s a good bet in WoW.  You can buy the ginormous bag of chips for 5 bucks, but people still buy gobs of the snack packs for $3.50 - even though the total weight of the the chips in the snack pack bags is less than 25% as much as is in the big bag.

Use this on things like cloth, especially wool.  If you split into stacks of 5, you can actually raise your price a touch over everyone else and still sell a ton of whatever it is you are selling.  People will see the 20 stacks of wool selling for 5g 50s (a price of 27s 50c each) and will often opt for your five stack at 1g 50s (a price of 30s each).  This works best when there are is a lot of price variation among the competition.  Without Auctioneer, it makes it very hard to tell what is really cheaper if the prices are all over the map.

Another area that this really comes in handy is on ore.  You also need to learn this now before WotLK when herbs go through the roof.  By this time you know that if you pay close attention to the AADV stats on metals, you can often make more money selling ore for prospecting than you can smelting the stuff and selling it that way.

Prospecting uses a LOT of ore.  Although most high end Jewelcrafters are not burning through the ore like they were at the beginning of the year, it is still a lucrative part of my weekly AH routine.  It’s not going to be any different with WotLK.

You see, Inscription has a skill called milling that is exactly like prospecting.  So far, it doesn’t seem that Inscription is going to use a lot of herbs directly, but it will be using even MORE herbs in the long run because of the milling process.  Milling uses five of any herb and turns it into a Pomace for the various Inscription recipes.  There are different Pomaces made from different level herbs, so herbs of all types will be in high demand, regardless of how rare they are, unlike alchemy which requires specific herbs.

We’ll do an article on Inscription when we know more.  Lawbringer is working on an Inscription guide, but since there are only about 10 recipes functioning now in the Beta, he hasn’t been able to test past about level 125.  But it is obvious from our initial look at Inscription that herbs are going to be a huge market.

We already told you to buy up all the herbs you can find of all levels.  Initial testing in inscription took us about 10 stacks of level 5 and 10 herbs just to get through the first few recipes.  So those stacks of peacebloom that go for next to nothing now will be worth well over 1g or more when WotLK goes live.  Expect even more profit increases from the higher level stuff.

Here’s how to capitalize on this with stack sizes. Since Milling requires 5 herbs, don’t post your lots in stacks of five, force them to buy more.  Since it’s going to take a LOT of herbs for the milling process, they need stacks of 20 and probably multiple stacks, but don’t give it to them that way.  Then as the power levelers pass you by, there will be stragglers that do only need five just to round out a skill point or two, and you can take advantage of both types of folks by splitting into stacks of 3 or 4.

Stacks of 4 requires them to buy at least 5 stacks from you.  Since milling takes 5, and only 5 will do, a stack of four is not enough.  8 is not enough, neither is 12, and 16 is still a mess.  The only way they can get a multiple of 5 for 4 milling runs is to buy 5 stacks of 4 for 20 herbs.  The other size, a 3 stack, also requires 5 purchases to get to a multiple of 5 at 15, but may be too frustrating for the dude who needs 200 herbs and doesn’t want to hit buyout 67 times.

This example of how to take advantage of stack sizes in this one area should open you mind to a lot of other areas at the AH you can do the exact same thing to really maximize you profits.  Just by splitting to smaller stacks, and raising your unit price a bit, you can still APPEAR to have lower prices, and yet price your stuff over everyone else.

Remember, people have the attention span of gnats.  They want to get in, get what they need and get out fast.  Post your stack items consistently in reasonable stacks and you can take advantage of their rush to get what they need and get on with whatever else it is they would rather be doing.

Next, there are those monster stack items.  I have found that weird stack sizes do best with these.  If you have 100 green power crystals, post a stack of 29, one of 41, and the last one at 24.  Just vary it up a lot, and make the unit price for each stack a little different.  If they need a whole bunch of them, they will be forced to buy your higher priced stack to go with the other two.

Finally, comes the ones I always harp on here at DYS - the enchanting mats.  These have the greatest stack separation potential for making even more gold above what you already do with DE.  Please tell me you buy things with the help of AADV for DE!  Don’t make me lecture you again on this.  OK, off my soapbox now - on with the show.

For enchanting mats as well as the mote conversions there are no real hard and fast rules, but I’ll give you the general things to look for.  With essences, the conversion rate is 3 to 1.  One greater splits to 3 lesser, 3 lesser to 1 greater.  MOST, but not all, of the time, you should be selling lessers.  This is one place you’ll have to check the conversion suggestion in the AADV tooltip to make sure.

When selling Greaters, split to a stack of 2.  Lessers go in a stack of 4.  We sell 2 greaters because not many recipes require an even number of greaters to create, and we don’t want to sell just one.  If they only need one, they have to buy two to get it from me.  As for the lessers, if they need greaters, they have to buy three sets of four to convert them all cleanly, and again, I always want them to buy more than they need.  If they only needed one greater and bought my 4 lessers to make it, they ended up having to buy one more lesser than they needed.

This also applies to motes.  I normally sell motes and hardly ever convert to primals.  This is because if I am selling primals I use a 2 stack (make them buy more than one), but since many primals are pretty steeply priced, it’s tough to buff your unit price on those since it’s going to look a lot more expensive than a single.  Remember, we want them to THINK they are getting a better price, and never KNOW they just got hammered.  For motes, use a stack of 6.  Again, a 6 stack requires 5 to convert cleanly to primals (5 stacks of 6 is 30 for 3 primals).

Finally, also apply the stack of 2 to any large shards.  There’s just no helping this one.  remember, make them buy more from you.  A few things we didn’t mention so far are dusts, which I will normally put in a stack of 5.  That sounds odd, since I’ve been preaching other oddball stack sizes and 5 seems like a nice round number.  This is because I did a survey of the different enchants, and very few enchants use a multiple of five, so the 5 stack maximizes over-purchases the vast majority of the time.

You can see, there are a LOT of little things you can do to boost your sales and gold potential at the AH, and we’re putting every single one of them in our gold guide.  But you’re going to have to wait for that one.  Until then, split your stacks right and Dominate the auction house on your server!

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39 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

In a word, “bad.”  These guys are tough, strong, plate wearing, killing machines.  It’s almost unfair to every other class in the game.  You could think of them as Warlock/Mage/Warrior/Rogues.  Warcraft’s first hero class is simply Dominating.

Lawbringer and I both got our beta keys the other night and began our run through the beta.  Now, no WotLK run would be quite the same without at least giving all the other classes a shot.  The new talent tabs are just too tempting and we certainly want to keep everyone up to date on how the traditional classes will fare - but playing a Death Knight is awesome.

Let me just say Blizzard did not disappoint, especially in the starting area.  For those of you who have strong moral biases, you might find the quest line dialogue a bit dark and disturbing at first.  Aligning yourself with the most evil guy in the game, Arthas, and some of the quest objectives are pretty grim.  But there is a bit of redemption in the end.

I don’t want to give too much away, but if you can get past the basic premise of slaughtering people without qualm for a couple of hours, you’re going to have a ton of fun with your first Death Knight.

Let’s start with the bits that relate to game mechanics before we get to the DK’s themselves.  Blizzard did some things with the starting area that are really brilliant.  The quest lines are linked very well, and guide you through the starting zone in a very linear fashion.  You don’t have to run all over the place, so your first three levels go very fast.  You can reasonably do 55-57 in under 3 hours even your first time through.

As you begin, you notice a few things different about quest mechanics for the DK.  Quest tools are quite often placed on a special action bar that takes a little getting used to.  When you do the mount quest, there is a special button you need to press to turn in the quest, which can be confusing for about 15 seconds while you wonder what in the heck you have to do to get the yellow turn in question mark from the NPC.  But once you get conditioned to pay attention to these special action buttons, it actually makes it easier than ever to figure out exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.

Next, you get to do a whole pile of really nifty quest types.  You loot, kill, strafe, bomb, cannoneer, hide in two different costumes, pillage, crush and steal your way through a wide variety of things that are just plain fun.  Yes, the text is evil and a bit disturbing at times, but the chains are anything but dull.

The biggest change is that all of the quest loops are instanced.  It’s a little hard to describe.  Think of the DK starting area as five different zones, even though they are all in the same place.  Once you complete the first set of quests, everything in the zone changes for you.  The mobs are different, the NPC’s have moved, and the action shifts to the new quest line - but only for you and everyone else who is in that set of quests.  It’s fabulous.  You don’t have to run to a completely new area to do new content, the content just changes depending on your progression.

It’s wierd at first, since the zone chat will have people asking about the first quest line while you are in the exact same spot working on something completely different and you can’t see them even though they may be only a few yards away.  But it’s nice that there aren’t a half a billion other DK’s competing for the same mobs and NPC’s since they can be seperated into five different instances of the same area.

By instancing the quest lines, Blizz solved the problem of congestion, as well as making the story line much more engaging.  There is a terrific flow to the story and it will make the question of “why are we all going to Northrend?” make a lot more sense.

As for the DK, I really don’t even know where to start.  There’s enough new information in just a few hours of play to do 20 articles about these dudes.  And so much of the initial experience raises even more questions than answers about how they fit into the overall scheme of PvE, PVP, and raiding.  But I’ll give you some sweet little observations this time around.

DK’s operate on the Runic Power system instead of mana, rage or energy.  But Runic Power works a bit like all of them.  Like rage, you gain runic power by mele strikes.  Like mana, you use runic power to cast some spells, although certain spells generate runic power.  It is actually difficult to run out of runic power if you are fighting pretty regularly.  That’s where the DK class has an advantage over all the other systems.

If you are low on RP, you aren’t in trouble, and you don’t have to stop using spells.  You can just cast a few spells, which do damage to mobs and even healing to yourself to get more runic power and then it’s back to busting heads.  It’s a little like life tap for a lock, except you gain power without losing anything in the process.  Talk about a dominating advantage.  It’s hard to say anything but WOW once you see it in action for yourself.  You begin to feel invincible.

But runes go beyond the power bar.  You also have two each of blood, frost and unholy runes as well as a fourth proc rune called a death rune.  These runes are seperate from the power system and have a more traditional cooldown system.  Talents in all three trees buff these runes with things like instant cooldowns on critical strikes and other things that will take a lot more play to figure out completely, but I don’t think it will be ferociously complex.

As for the other little tidbits that are completly unique to the DK’s, the starting city is a huge floating ziggurat above the far eastern borders of the Eastern PLagulands, and it is really super cool.  Check out our shot of the Ebon Hold below.

To get you geared and talented up before you leave the starting area, most of the quests have a nice blue item and bonus talent points as rewards.  By the time you finish the starting area, you have a complete set of blues and 49 talent points in your tree of choice, as well as four runeforge spells to put on your weapon/weapons.

It’s too early for me to tell just how well a DK will tank and DPS.  I can see them being very hard to defeat in arenas, but I can’t see them being a true MT based on what we see from the talent trees alone.  I’m not so sure they will be able to out-DPS a well geared lock or mage, and even though many of their diseases heal them, they may still need a healer from time to time.  It’s just too early to tell.

I don’t think they make every other class unnecessary by any means, but so many of their talents point to raid resistances, buffs and damage increases that I can certainly see a 5 man group wanting one DK from each tree for an instance run.  I’m sure the WoW comminuty and DYS will work out all the details for how the DK class really fits into the grand scheme of things soon - I mean, that’s our job right?

So even though I don’t have time, space or all the knowledge yet to tell you everything there is to know about playing a DK you can be certain that you will be impressed.  The starting zone is unique, the game mechanics smooth and entertaining, and the class is nearly ridiculously powered.  You get great gear and talents uber fast, and it doesn’t take forever to get ready to roll in outlands and beyond.

My advice, get WotLK the first day out and we’ll certainly get you ready ahead of time to go out on your deathcharger and Dominate!

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53 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Yesterday I started a little argument with one of our faithful readers and posters James M.  Don’t take it personally James, and I certainly appreciate your feedback, it makes me really research hard to back up my points.

The original statement I made is that most of your gear from tBC is already obsolete since WotLK will be out in a few months and you’ll be replacing almost all of your gear in a few levels anyway.  That certainly was the case in tBC, and I expected nothing different from the next expansion.

To make myself perfectly clear, I probably should restate the position a little more carefully (again, thanks to James).  It’s not that you will NEED to replace T5 gear with greens because the greens in the 71-73 zones are better, but you probably shouldn’t START trying to get geared up for the expansion if you aren’t already because the gear you will get in Northrend will be ALMOST as good anyway.  If you already have 4 out of five of your T5 set, and a guild running the right stuff to get the last bit, then go for it.  But if you have several toons at 70 that aren’t in high-end raid gear, now is certainly too late to worry about the grind of getting top end gear.

Now, Blizzard has certainly made every effort to make the gear from tBC raids more viable in WotLK than pre-BC gear was in tBC, but there is also a bigger difference between level 75 and level 70 toons and gear than there is between level 60 and 55.  The reason is that as you rise in levels, the gains from gear contribute a more significant percentage of your base skills than at lower levels.  I don’t have time in this article to go into a lot of detail on that, but every level gain is a more significant leap than the last one.  By the time you get to 75 you will be fighting mobs that will just be a LOT stronger and tougher.  Therefore, the gear has to scale faster to keep the game playable solo without having to go back and do 25 man raids from the previous patch.

Just so you all know I’m not pulling this idea out of some mental dork zone, let me give you a good example of what I mean.  The following picture is of the T5 hunter shoulders from the Rift Stalker set.  To get these shoulders you have to be able to go to Tempest Keep, a 25 man raid dungeon.  These are a 54%  drop and in a 25 man raid you can reasonably expect at least 3-5 folks to be rolling for these.  That reduces YOUR chance of getting the roll to below 10% per run, meaning you may need to make 5 full runs to have a reasonable shot at them.  Sound hard yet?

I would imagine that no more than 5% of the nearly 40,000 people who read DYS on a regular basis (or only about 2,000) have even sniffed the prospect of getting into a run on TK.  I would wager that the real number of people at DYS who have had a legitimate shot at these is in the low hundreds.  So saying that T5 will be ok until level 78 is making a HUGE assumption that there are just lots of people who have been able to build their complete T5 sets.  If you look at the guild progressions on any given server, there are normally less than 5 guilds from each faction that have even made it to TK even today.  That means it’s a pretty safe bet that only a few dozen guys on each server have completed even the T5 set, much less the T6 stuff.  It’s that rare.

(Uber Dominate Your Server congratulations to those of you who have completed full sets!  If you’re one of those guys you might pop your armory link into the comments)

Here they are:

Now, my original intent was to show that you will be able to get almost similar gear SOLO in Northrend fairly quickly and easily, so if you’re just beginning to collect T5 stuff, you probably just don’t have time and it might be a waste of time unless you already almost have all the set bits.

For one little quest in the Dragonblight zone at level 72 you can choose these green shoulders as a reward:

Ok, so no sockets, no intellect, and no hit rating, but if you CAN’T get your T5 shoulders before WotLK, these should do you just fine.  Going solo, the extra 19 stamina, 4 agility and 10 AP will almost make up for the loss of Intellect - especially for BM hunters.

Let’s look at a couple of others a little higher up the level ladder at level 73 and 74:

Besides that, these choices would also be a decent fit for a Shaman depending on spec.  If you have multiple toons, you probably have not had time to get a whole pile of epics for all of them.

Not good enough to show you what I mean yet?  Ok let’s try weapons, those are a different type of thing, so let’s stick with hunter weapons and look at some good bows from tBC compared to some simple solo quest rewards from WotLK.  I’m just going to assume you all know or can find out how difficult it is to get the epic bows I’m showing here, the greens and blues that follow each tBC bow is from WotLK level 75 or lower solo quest reward.

So I think you’re beginning to catch on to what I mean.  You can certainly go to Northrend in your T5 gear and not worry about having to completely replace everything in two or three levels, but if you’re not uber geared there’s no need to worry about it much.  In many cases, even good epic weapons will be replaced pretty quick.  Armor seems to have a bigger gap but there’s one more thing we haven’t talked about yet that may make the armor argument completely disappear.

We have not yet seen the gear drops for Northrend instances!  If they are as good as tBC instance drops, you may certainly expect to find gear that rivals T5 and T6 at level 72-73 Boss loot tables, we just don’t have a way of looking at those yet on wowhead.  I could probably have made even better cases for T5 armor vs. Northrend early instance drops if there was more information on WotLK items, but there simply is not enough to choose from as of yet.

One interesting thing about WotLK drops is that there are a lot of items that come with random enchantments.  Not that that is any different from the other two sections of the game so far, it’s just that we haven’t seen all the random enchantment drops yet so the names for all those possibilities don’t yet exist.  All of those Booger Beater Longbow (of the bandit, of the fletcher, of the whale and that sort of thing) all we have is the pre-name without all the suffixes yet.  The random chant stuff may be the best fit for many specialty builds.

So if you don’t like the armor comparisons above (I admit I wish I had more to choose from but it made the point anyway - triple stat greens are not really going to happen) just wait until you see the boss drops from the first few Northrend instances.  If a couple of level 73 greens have decent stats you can bet that the blues from Boss drops will be even sweeter.

The whole point of the original discussion with James was not to bust your hump to try to finish up tBC raids for gear (and certainly not for rep) since you will be able to find comparable gear in WotLK relatively easily and quickly, and you are certainly going to want to save the rep grind for the new factions unless you are REALLY close to hitting exhalted with someone.  It may not always be BETTER than tBC epics, but it will be close, and for leveling that’s good enough.

Besides, just like we’ve been saying all along with tBC, the really fun stuff will be the NEXT end-game content, so go quick to 80 and then start collecting your gear for the serious raids at the end of the WotLK.  If you think the T5 and T6 stuff is good, you will be beside yourself looking at T7 and T8.  When that stuff starts popping up we’ll certainly let you know.

The nice thing is that you’re not going to have to wait long for a final verdict on this topic.  Gavin and I both got our Beta keys last night, so we’re about to find out how fast we both replace all our gear during testing.  We’ll be sure to keep you posted about our progress.

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48 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

In any good experiment you have to have a control group.  For instance, if you are testing a prescription drug you would give one group the real thing, another group a placebo and yet another group nothing so that you have a baseline.

In our quest to give you the very best leveling guide possible we are using the ultimate control toon - the priest.  It is pretty much the standard line that hunters can level solo faster than any other class.  You could make arguments for a lot of other classes and builds, but when it comes to raw killing power and low downtime it’s just really hard to beat a BM hunter for fast leveling.  No wonder almost everyone who has done a leveling guide has used a hunter to do the speed run.

But to make sure that Gavin’s leveling guide is better than anything else you’ve ever seen, we’ve done something different.  Now, I still use a hunter to test routes and do the final speed run for time, but I wanted to make sure that anyone, with any class, could do everything in the guide with relative ease.  That means everything from beginners and nubs to complete pros; from BM hunters to warriors and priests.

Even though we always recommend you run in a party, that’s not always possible, so we wanted to make build our guide so that you can run through from 1-70 no matter if you’re by yourself or have an entire guild full of buddies.  In other words it has to be able to work for anybody in any class.

It would also be hard to argue that priests can have a tough time with leveling solo. They don’t have a whole lot of firepower, are very squishy, have no AOE and can only crowd control undead.  That means that they pretty much have to try to force mobs into 1 on 1 matchups.  A bad pull usually ends up in a bubble, scream and run.

So while I was jamming through on my hunter I wanted to ensure that I didn’t put anything in the guide that anyone would have major problems with.  So I asked our good buddy Lawbringer to bring a priest through the guide segments as I completed them and since we’re almost to 70 I thought it would be good to report some of the interesting tidbits he has uncovered when it comes to leveling solo as a priest.

1. Toss out everything you think you know about playing a priest when leveling.  Start all over with a clean slate and look at it as though you were playing a mage or lock and not a healer.  Select gear with +Int for a larger mana pool and increased crit rate to help you kill mobs faster.  In other words, kill them before they burn through your bubble.
2. Dump all of your points into the shadow tree and select a build that you certainly wont find on the wiki or anywhere else for that matter.  Here is Lawbringer’s setup: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxZZEMgtMtRhtEo The 5 points in the discipline tree only come after level 65, until then spend them all in the shadow tree.
3. By using spirit tap AND blackout, you reduce your downtime and give you a blackout or two in almost every fight.  95% of the time mobs will never burn through you bubble, meaning you get hit very very seldom.  Blackout will proc quite a bit, and spirit tap gives you enough mana regen to make it through about 10 mobs before you have to drink.
4. When you hit 60, start collecting “of the invoker” gear.  The high intellect, spell damage and critical strike will really speed up your kills.  I know it’s tempting to opt for spirit, but you are killing, not healing.  It sure is nice to have back to back crits of 1700+ from mind blast and shadow word death from all that extra spell damage, crit rate and the shadow power and misery talents. 3,500 Dmg in two seconds is pretty dominating for any class.
5. Dot, rebubble and then take them out one at a time.  If you get vampiric embrace up you can take an extraordinary number of hits in shadow form and never lose much health.  If you are getting hit so much that you can’t cast, you can always wand something to death if you are waiting on a bubble cooldown.  There are several really nice wands as quest rewards in outlands that make this feasible.
6. Don’t be afraid to be a little girl.  Psychic scream, bubble and run if you get in a tight spot.  It’s better to get out of the way than take the corpse run.
7. Don’t forget to hotkey Touch of Weakness.  With the buffs to shadow talents it will often crit for over 250!  When you add in the debuff that reduces the damage they do to you it can be a pretty big help, especially when faced with multiple mele mobs.  Put this skill somewhere as easy as your bubble and make it just as automatic to throw it on again every time it pops.
8. For heaven’s sake level fishing and cooking.  The extra 23 spell damage from poached bluefish makes a difference you can really notice in every fight.  That’s also why the invoker gear can be a make or break selection when running solo in shadow form.  Invoker gear and bluefish can give you +350 bonus damage before level 65 which aint too bad considering we are only talking about stuff you can grab from the AH and quest rewards - just greens in other words (remember it has to be something you can do solo, so don’t laugh if you’re comparing that to instance drop gear).
9. When you get shadow fiend, you can take on up to 4 mobs and come out smiling.  The mana return is great, and he can keep several mobs focused on him while you get everyone their very own set of dots.  By the time he expires one or two of them are dead and the others are in bad shape.
10. If you get in a groove with your fighting and know when to blow your cooldowns, you can fight longer than you would think and make more pulls than you thought possible with a priest without drinking.  You may be giving up mana regen for selecting gear with int instead of spirit, but you can kill so much faster that you’ll never miss it.
11. It’s pretty fun to be able to nearly keep up with a hunter once you understand the process of playng a shadow priest solo.  And heck, if Lawbringer can run to 70 on his first priest nearly as fast as he did on his hunter, then you can do it too.  Part of that is that we have built the guide so that anyone can follow it.

It can be tempting to start collecting healing gear as soon as you get to outlands.  If your ultimate goal is level 70 and heroic dungeons and raids, then don’t mess with the level 61-68 instances.  Just get to 70 as fast as you can and then go blow through all the ones you missed on the way.  It’s so much faster to hit the level cap and then go raiding than to try to do them both together.  That way, you only have to respec once to holy when you hit 70.  You may even find a guild that actually needs a shadow priest in the rotation for 10-25 man raids.  They come in awfully handy in Kara.

Also keep in mind that in a few months everything in TBC is going to be instantly obsolete anyway.  More than likely those guys who have spent months getting all that purple gear will be replacing much of it with greens from Northrend, so don’t kill yourself getting T5 now.

So don’t be afraid of the super squishy priest when it comes to leveling.  If you’ve always wanted to try one, now you have the basics of how to play one without it taking you a year to hit the top.  Of course, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Gavin’s guide is simply better than anything else the WoW world has seen.  You’ll have to wait a little longer to get your hands on it, but it sure proved that with the right system, even a priest can Dominate at leveling.

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35 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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24 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

(You guys loves her so much during the screenshot contest for midsummer festival that we convinced her to bring a few of her other skills to DYS - our first entry from Fran Molina!)

Herbalism is usually an over-looked profession. People usually pick up Mining to make money, because of the synergy mining has with various professions in the game.

What many people don’t know is that Herbalism has a huge market too, because of the always high demand on Alchemist Potions. Although Herbalism doesn’t have as many synergies as Mining does, you can make a good amount of gold from it as well.

In this guide I’ll teach you how to farm Terokkar Forest, and the trees from Skettis. Terokkar Forest may be considered the zone with the highest potential for making money with Herbalism in the entire game, because of the huge variety of herbs.

We always start with a route, right? Routes are the easiest way to farm herbs. It’s much better to follow a path you know to get your nodes easily than just going around at random.

So, this is the route I use to farm my herbs. You can get the Gatherer Add-On (http://www.gathereraddon.com/) to help you track your herbs, but once you’re accustomed  to your route, it’s no longer needed.

There are herbs that spawn in Cenarion Thicket, Veil Shienor, Veil Reskk, and Firewing Point. The fact is, I don’t find as many herbs in these places as in the places I pointed out on my route. If you are luckier than me, then props to you! This is an example of a basic route, feel free to use it and change to suit your needs.

Quick description on the herbs you can pick up in Terokkar:

• Felweed is a common herb in Outland, and can be found in every zone. It usually spawns out in the open, or near other small plants. You use Felweed for the basic Super Mana/Healing Potions, and popular Elixirs like Adept’s Elixir or Elixir or Major Agility. You need a skill of 300 Herbalism to pick it up.

• Dreaming Glory is usually found at the feet of mountains. They’re used for Super Mana Potions, and Elixirs related to Regenerating Health or Mana. Because of those properties, when you pick a Dreaming Glory you’ll gain a buff that regenerates 30 Health every 5 seconds for 15 minutes. 315 Herbalism is required to pick this herb.

• Terocone is a kind of a rare herb. It spawns only in Terokkar Forest and on Arakkoa settlements in Shadowmoon Valley, making it a nice money-maker. They usually spawn on the feet of the big Olemba Trees. You use it for the really useful Haste Potion, and various Elixirs that are always in demand; requires 325 Herbalism.

• Mana Thistle is a plant that used to spawn only in places accessible by flying. This plant is used for most of the flasks in TBC and all the Resistance Cauldrons. They aren’t called “Mana” Thistle just for nothing; upon picking a Mana Thistle, you gain up to 3500 mana!

What you will need:

• At least 360 Herbalism, to be able to herb the Skettis Trees that are lv72, although I do recommend 375 so you will never fail a pick-up. If you can wear leather, you can ask for a Leatherworker to craft a pair of Herbalist’s Gloves (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7349) to help you.

• 300 Riding Skill and a Flying Mount.

I usually start in Allerian Stronghold, then go to Bonechewer Ruins and fly my way to Skettis. In Skettis, I usually do 2 laps to look for Skettis Trees (hoping to make some more cash!), then fly down to Veil Shalas and continue on my way following my usual route.

Pick every herb you see. Even if they aren’t worth a lot (like Mana Thistle), it’s still money, and there’s a chance of getting a Fel Lotus on every herb you pick up. Fel Lotus is a rare herb that grows along with Outland Herbs, and can be gathered when you gather any other herb. You use them as a reagent for all the flasks that were added with The Burning Crusade.

What are those “Skettis Trees”?

Those famous trees are mobs called Talonsworn Forest-Rager http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=23029 which wander around Skettis. They don’t drop great loot when killed, but an Herbalist can really get full benefit from them! They drop 2-5 Motes of Life every kill, and 4-8 herbs of many kinds, except for Netherbloom and Nightmare Vine.

They have 4 different spawn points, and there’s a maximum of 2 trees spawned at a time. Here is a basic map with the approximate spawn points and their initial patrolling path.

Although they are lv71-72 Elites, they’re pretty easy to solo with any class. The only thing that would make things hard is their Thunderclap ability, which slows attack and movement speed, and that can make a melee toon’s life hard.

Here’s a small video I made on how to kill it as a BM Hunter, also demonstrating the loot quality of the trees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyuOowmef6E

On highly populated servers, the Talonsworn Forest-Ragers can be pretty hard to find, so I’d recommend you to alternate between killing those and picking herbs from Terokkar. But if you’re virtually alone (which usually happens during off-peak times, or on low population server), you can stay around Skettis and farm only those, picking the Dreaming Glories and Mana Thistles on the way.

And now, with this small guide, you’re ready to start dominating the herbalism market on your server.

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17 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Let’s talk about the grind of leveling a little bit. The really fun stuff only starts at level 70; and that dead period starting at about level 30 where you nearly have to live in Stranglethorn Vale is something we all hate once we’ve done it a few times.

The are two ways to take the pain out of leveling and do it faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible. Joanna’s guide brags about making it from 1-60 in 6 days played time. But when you look at the rest of his characters they are a much more modest 7 or 8 days played time to level 60. Still sounds fast right? You can do it too, without having to memorize every quest in the game and without having done it a hundred times before. Guys like that spend all their time doing only that. They love creating new characters on new servers and racing everybody to level 70. Not me, that’s the grind part, unfortunately it must be done.

Now, keep in mind that Gavin and I are working on making leveling a serious breeze even going solo.  (And Gavin is going to hit 70 WAY faster than 6 days!)  Our horde leveling guide is going to walk you through every single step from 1-80.  That’s right, I said 80, more on that in the next few days.

Gavin is a solo nut.  He gets a real thrill out of leveling which is just not my bag.  I prefer another method.  It took me some time to convince him to try it with me, and I’m not sure he’ll ever like it as much as going solo, but at least he can see what I mean now.  The screenshot for this post is Gavin and me as we worked on our quest pathing in Hellfire.

There are other things much more fun about this game than making leveling itself a race. It’s also really hard to do un-twinked. If you are starting from scratch on a new server, it’s tough to level really fast because you have to spend at least a little time gathering and selling something or you’ll be too broke to afford repairs and get your training.

Furthermore, I hate getting one character all the way to level 70 and then stopping and going back to level 1 with another toon and having to do it all over again. There’s a better way of doing it. There are two parts to this – two rules I level by. The first rule is: never quest out of rest. The second one: Never roll alone.

Don’t Quest Out of Rest.

If you will create three or four toons on your account, plus one banker, you can pretty much play all the time and almost never run out of rested experience bonus. When you kill mobs under the rested bonus you get 200% experience. Plus, if you combine it with questing you can get almost two full levels of experience from one full bar of rest. That’s because every time you turn in a quest, it pushes your rest bar further along since you are gaining experience without killing anything.

One quest turn-in generally speaking is about the same as killing ten mobs at a minimum at low levels, the higher you go the more a quest turn in is worth in relationship to time. If you are killing mobs about the right level you can get one or two lines per ten kills up to about level 30 or so. So if you do 5 quests and kill 125-150 mobs, that’s 1 level - especially at lower levels.

If you are killing a mob every 10-20 seconds that’s 3-6 kills per minute, meaning you can gain a level every hour or so as long as you don’t run out of quests to do. This will work up to about level 20, and then it’s going to take you up to two hours per level. Past level 30 you can count on about three hours a level, around 40 will take four hours, after 50 nearly five hours; and watch out for level 65 plus, they take some time.

If you just can’t stand it and have to do something with your toon and you’re out of rest, use that time for farming (which I never do) or grinding for rep, or running instances for gear.   Of course, there isn’t much of a need any more to grind out rep until you hit 70 anyway, so if you must go looking for herbs or something do those kinds of things when your rested bonus ends.  Since I never farm you can see why I can make a hard and fast rule that I just don’t do much of anything out of rest.

Just for grins let’s say you follow my rule and never quest out of rest much. How long will it take to hit level 70 if you can average the leveling times I listed above? Seven days 5 hours. Considering even Brian Kopp is showing some of his toons hitting 60 in 6 days, that’s pretty good! Seven days playing it easy too. We’re not talking about trying to achieve perfection or break any records. Just by questing in rest, you can take your time and have some fun. Run a few instances and do a profession; help out a friend or two along the way – keep it a game for Pete’s sake! This brings us to rule number two.

Never roll alone.

Now you can certainly go from level one to around level ten much faster solo questing. You might even go up to 16 or even 20, but after that I recommend going questing in a group of two. Two people can kill mobs 125% faster than you can alone. Even though you have to share experience, if you are questing in the rest bonus it’s the same amount of experience you would be getting if you were feeling “normal!” Plus; if you can kill 100 mobs per hour alone (if the mobs are your level or lower) you will be able to kill about 225–250 mobs per hour with a friend. And you will be killing mobs up to two levels higher than you. This means you can take another day or so off of your leveling time to level 65 just by doing everything with a buddy.

Even if you don’t buy the argument that it’s faster in leveling time, you can certainly agree that two people with some skill can do almost anything but run instances.  You can bag every rare elite you come across, do all of the team quests, and even quest in areas two to three levels higher than you could solo.  Plus, it’s just a LOT more fun.

Sure, you have to kill twice as many mobs for the loot quests that require you to get 10 of something, but it will end up taking less time to get 20 for two people than it would for one person to get 10 by himself. I can pretty much count on getting a ding every time I sit down to play, most of the time two, on every character I log in without having to grind it out for hours at a time.

As an added bonus, if you are cycling through characters like this, by the time you are done you’ve got three or four level 70 characters with awesome gear ready for just about anything and probably less than 25 days played time. Now THAT sounds like a lot of time, but my first toon didn’t hit level 70 until 23 days played time (dang I was a nub). Granted, it was faster the next time out, but both of my first 2 70’s took me more than 30 days. If I had known this back then I could have had four or five level 70’s in the same amount of played time.

The other really cool thing about playing with a friend is that you’ve got some good company and many things that will make you mad trying to do solo are almost too easy with two players. So get back to having a good time and have more of it - quest under rest and roll with your crew. It will bring the fun back into the greatest game around.

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33 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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5 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

If all has gone well with your arena preparation, and your opening tactics have put your opponent on the back foot, it becomes time to hunt for your first arena kill of the match.

There are many ways in which you can force a kill against the other team, each with their own complexities of execution, ranging from the simple to the devious, listed here are just a few of the most popular ways of squeezing that kill in past the enemy healers.

Drain them dry

By far the simplest method of winning an arena match is to outlast your opponents’ mana pool; while lacking any particular flair it is effective. Through a mixture of mana drains and healing efficiency de buffs such as wounding poison you can ensure that your target can no longer be healed simply because of a lack of mana.

Many an even fight in which no team can tactically gain the upper hand comes down to a mana war such as this; particularly with defensive orientated teams accompanied by many healers. It is important to ensure you are capable of winning in the outlasting game to prevent a slow and frustrating loss.

Control the healers

This method is generally the standard way a kill is earned in the arena. It relies on your team having moderate burst capabilities and crowd control skills.

Simply use a crowd control ability on an opposing healer when your designated kill target is moderately low on health to prevent heals from landing. Typically your kill target will be another healer if present allowing you to easily interrupt further heals.

This method is simple to execute and the one most teams utilise when starting out so as a healer it is important to learn how to defend yourself from enemy crowd control by attempting to stay out of line of sight from enemy crowd controllers.

Split DPS

Slightly more complex is a split DPS method, most healers have emergency healing measures that can rapidly heal one target or mitigate large amounts of damage to one target. Many healers however struggle to heal multiple people efficiently.
As such, by splitting your DPS between two targets when the opposing team has a low amount of healing power can cause them to rapidly be overloaded when concentrated damage could be countered.

Target switching

Reliant on fast reactions from your team to voice communicated information, target switching is by far one of the most effective methods of claiming a kill and is commonly how tournaments level teams win matches.

The premise is that your DPS can switch target faster than the enemy healers can react. With enough burst damage you can have a target down to low health before the opposite team get a chance to react. Coupled with well timed crowd control or preliminary damage from a split DPS tactic and kills can come thick and fast.

This is the tactic that all teams should aspire to learn, but it does require your team to have competent leadership as timing is everything.

The almighty Cyclone

This tactic is only available if you have a Druid in your team and requires precise timing to work. The plan is to hit your target with a large burst of damage to get him low on health, normally he would then be healed up but by landing a cyclone you prevent him being healed.

From there you have 6 seconds to line up a killing burst of damage as soon as cyclone breaks so timing is everything; time your attack too late and heals will land preventing the kill, time it too soon and your attack will do no damage.

While complex, this is my favourite personal tactic for 5v5 arena and is a fantastic way of stealing a kill from under the noses of teams with a high amount of healers.

Using the right tactic at the right time is pivotal to success in the arena, but now fully informed, you should be able to put them into practice with your own teams as you prepare to dominate all who stand before you.

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31 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post