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

Recently the non disclosure agreement surrounding the next expansion to World of Warcraft was lifted and beta testing has begun. Over the past few days a flood of new information has come forth regarding all aspects of the game and many things have slipped through relatively unnoticed in the excitement.

While it would be entirely possible to run through each class reviewing the upcoming changes in depth, let us instead look at a few of the key changes to game play mechanics that will have a widespread effect throughout the game for a vast majority of classes.

Spell power

Rather than there being separate stats for improving a spells’ damage or healing capability, Blizzard has combined both statistics together into the new spell power stat. In turn the coefficients for all spells have been adjusted, particularly for healing spells since there is no longer a pure healing stat.

The net change of this is that a healer will be receiving a vast increase to their damage capabilities, while offensive hybrid casters will be able to heal far more effectively than before.

Hit/Crit/Haste

All three of the above stats have been consolidated; no longer will there be separate hit, crit or haste stats for melee and spell casters, instead both your melee attacks and spells will benefit at the same time.

This mechanics changes is massive for any hybrid capable of both melee and spell attacks such as paladins and shaman. As an example of how big an impact this may have, enhancement shaman will be able to obtain a decent crit rate to their shocks; this in turn can be combined with the talent elemental devastation for brutal synergy.

Note that this only applies to the raw stats of those individual statistics, critical strike chance increases due to stats such as intelligence or agility will still only apply to either spells or melee.

Threat

Blessing of salvation has been radically changed and so many classes which relied on it for threat reduction may be in a bit of a panic about how threat management could be an issue in WotLK.

Fear not however, tanks in the expansion have had their threat multipliers boosted in compensation; for instance a warrior’s basic defensive stance now boosts threat generated by 45% rather than the current 30%. Equally, threat reduction talents for all dps classes are now present and much easier to access.

Raid Wide Abilities

Many effects which only had an impact on your own group have now been changed to be beneficial to your entire raid. Auras and totems will now be beneficial to all those nearby but the change does not only apply to buffs.

Several healing spells will affect raid members nearby regardless of grouping and many of the new abilities such as a paladin’s Judgement of the Wise talent, will affect raid members too.

The net impact will be a much wider variety of group compositions along with more fluid PvP combat within battlegrounds where groups naturally get split apart and group composition is generally random.

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33 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Patch 2.4.3 has now gone live on all realms, with it came a couple of rogue tweaks. The big change everyone is talking about though is to the subtlety talent, cheat death.

Before 2.4.3, cheat death would absorb the damage from any attack that would kill the rogue and provide 90% damage immunity for three seconds afterward. This effect could only happen once per minute; however when combined with the rogues’ large repertoire of escape maneuvers, it allowed them to survive long enough to either disengage or receive healing.

The overall impact of this talent was that, when supported by a healer, rogues were nigh impossible to kill in arena combat. As such many rogues with access to high damage PvE kit began to sacrifice survivability stats for damage boosts with little to no consequences as to how durable they actually were.

Due to this combination of high damage from PvE kit coupled with massive survivability without any effort, rogues became one of the most dominant arena classes, being present within most of the top team setups along with seeing widespread use throughout tournament play.

However at the start of Burning Crusade, Blizzard made it clear that their aim was to keep PvE and PvP itemization separate to prevent a relapse to original release WoW where players had to be successful within PvE content to have a high enough standard of equipment to compete in PvP. Cheat death was preventing this ideal from coming into effect for the rogue class.

As such, cheat death is now reliant on resilience and has been toned down in effect. Rather than absorbing the full damage of an attack it will instead reduce you to 10% of your health, and instead of automatically providing 90% damage mitigation it will provide four times the absorption that your resilience rating provides against critical strike damage.

Due to this change, cheat death is largely ineffectual without high levels of resilience. In fact, you now require 443 resilience rating in order to achieve the previous level of 90% damage mitigation; an amount only reachable with full PvP itemization coupled with defensive enchanting or gemming.

With this move, PvE itemization no longer has such a powerful advantage over PvP equipment within the arena. This will lead to a reduction in the damage output of rogues in general due to a shift towards survivability. As a side effect however, new or under-equipped players will be struggling to make cheat death effective for them until they boost resilience levels, making them prime targets for attack within lower rated arenas.

At least that is how the change should work in theory. Unfortunately it seems that cheat death has somehow become bugged and is in many cases only activating after death has occurred, leading to many rogues declaring it a waste of talent points. This will likely be fixed quickly however but for now it may be worth steering clear of the talent.

What this change means for top end arena and tournament effectiveness of rogues, however remains to be seen, but chances are, they won’t be anywhere near as dominating as before.

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23 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Back at the release of the arena system and throughout the duration of season 1 there was one rule of thumb, DoTs were king. Resilience never used to reduce DoT damage and as such warlocks and shadow priests dominated almost every bracket due to overwhelming amounts of shadow damage.

A counter however was found as people began to access The Black Temple. Shadow resist kit began to see widespread use throughout top end arena which caused the end of the domination of shadow caster classes.

As time has gone on though it is no longer possible to swap into resist sets mid arena fight and resilience now affects DoTs. But is the same principle still applicable? Can spell resist be just as effective now or in the future for high end PvP?

While it is no longer possible to equip yourself with pure resist kit specifically tailored to the opponent you are fighting, there are a number of options available to you for increasing your spell resist without significantly reducing your combat capability.

The first consideration before thinking of going for a spell resist build is your basic resist level, paladin auras, shaman totems, certain buffs, racial traits and other class abilities all act to provide a good base level to work off when aiming to resist a single spell school. Should you not have access to these skills, it is very hard to reach significant levels of resistance and as such will probably not be worth your while.

The second consideration is just what spell school you would like to become more resistant to. The most potent options are shadow and nature. The other spell schools, while effective in the right situation, only generally apply to mages who have many spell schools to rely upon for damage in an emergency.

Being able to resist shadow spells will give you a degree of protection from mana burns as well as a chance to resist the application of DoTs to yourself and each individual tick of damage, while becoming nature resistant will enable you to resist a druid crowd control along with poisons and a bulk of the damage from elemental shaman or moonkin.

If you have chosen a spell school to aim your spell resist efforts at, and have access to a decent baseline resist, then it is time to work on your equipment. The main way of increasing your resistances is through the resist all stat. This can be found on numerous enchants along with void spheres created by enchanters.

Each void sphere will provide you with 4 spell resist to every spell school and you are able to enchant your cloak or shoulders with a further 7 each with an additional 5 resist to your shield should you have one available. As a blood elf holy Paladin for example it is currently possible to reach a basic 56 resistance to all spell schools with little trouble.

The next step is spell school specific enchants, a glyph on your helm will add 20 resist to any single spell school of your choice. Armour kits with 8 spell resist to a single school are also available for your chest, legs, hands and feet, though your normal leg and hand enchants are more valuable.

By utilizing these single spell school enchants you can reach around 90 spell resist to a single school without buffs or 160 with an aura effect active. This level of spell resist is enough to resist around half of the incoming damage from that spell school and significantly reduce the chance of non damaging effects landing on you, all without using any pure resist equipment. Add the effect of any spell mitigating abilities such as a higher fear resist chance and you can become a formidable opponent for casters which used to be your nemesis.

Unfortunately, with current arena itemization most casters can pickup 74 spell penetration without any real effort severely compromising this tactic for now. With Wrath of the Lich King however, all spell resist abilities will continue to scale and we may see reduced levels of accessibility to spell penetration, possibly allowing for a return of spell resist to competitive PvP.

For now however, the ease of gaining spell penetration prevents its widespread use outside of PvE content.

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6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

When you run as many auctions and toons as I do, having enough bag slots can become a serious issue.  I will buy out hundreds of auctions every week for resale, as well as having to manage the items for my rolling auctions as they expire every couple of days.

Add to the auction items the little piles of BoE greens, consumables and commodities (cloth, leather, metal) I pick up while leveling and raiding and it can end up being quite a mess if I didn’t use a toon for the sole purpose of asset management.  If you do everything with your main character log on right this minute and create two more characters to help you with your item management.

Even though I want to tell you how to work your trade mule, let’s start with the concept of using a dedicated banking toon.  On every server and every account I will have a single toon who does nothing but go back and forth from the mailbox to the auction house.

For Alliance choose a Gnome or  Dwarf and run them up to Iron Forge.  Horde players should use a Tauren in Thunder Bluff.  Those cities are simply the best places for commerce because the ah and mailbox are very close together.

Instead of taking time out with your main (or any other alt your are leveling) to do your ah business, always use your banking toon.  This will help more than anything to avoid mistakes and confusion.  Simply mail every single item of value to your banker and then you can deal with the whole pile at a time when you can concentrate on what to do with each piece.

Use your banker to post all your auctions and hold your gold.  I also use my banker to buy items for my toons to use as well.  My main rarely visits the ah, I’ve got more important stuff to do with that guy.

Now that you’ve got a banker, create a mule toon.  With a mule, it makes no difference what race you select although I will normally use a human for Alliance and an orc or troll for horde.  Just run this level 1 toon to the nearest inn with a mailbox and there they will stay forever.

The really neat thing about using a mule is that you can take advantage of a little exploit in the way the mail system works.  This tip will make it so much easier for the new player who doesn’t yet have the gold to blow on a full set of big bags for all their toons.  It will also make life easier for you power ah users since I don’t think we’ll ever get 250 slot bags!

When your banker’s mailbox and bags are jammed full and you’re waiting for the weekend to post all of those goodies at the auction house just use the bulk mail system and mail everything to your mule to hold.  Every mail you send can contain up to 12 items.  You can clear hundreds of items out of your mailbox and bags in just a few minutes.  I also recommend mail mods such as “Open All” and “Postman” to help speed up this process even more.

Once your Mule has everything in the mail you can let it sit there for up to 30 days.  I never leave things in there that long, but that’s the max.  After 30 days, those bulk mail items will just get returned to the banker - it doesn’t even cost you the mail fees!

But here’s the cool trick.  When it’s time to send everything back to your banking toon, just log your mule, open the mail and hit “return.”  You can return hundreds of items to your banker in a few clicks and zero postage fees.

Using the mail this way gives you hundreds - even thousands of absolutely free bag slots.  If you use the mail system to it’s maximum advantage, you’ll never have to worry about running out of space or blowing too much gold on bigger bags before you can really afford to.

You will also know exactly how to handle extra items.  Everything just gets mailed to your banker - simple.  When you have time to concentrate on what to do with everything, your banker will either post items on the ah or mail them to the mule to hold until they are ready to be sold or just to hold if you like.  Your banker will almost always mail things exclusively to your mule, and all your other toons will almost always mail everything to your banker, it makes visiting the mailbox short and sweet.

You’ll notice that the screen shot for this article shows my mule in Booty Bay.  On most servers I keep one mule for each faction in Booty Bay so that I can take advantage of moving things back and forth between Alliance and Horde auction houses.  This is a topic for another time, but if you can stand running your mules to booty bay (multiple deaths are often inevitable, especially for ally) then you really set yourself up for some dominating moves between faction auction houses.

It all sounds too simple once you read through it.  But there are so many players I see on their main toon at the auction house day after day that I thought it would be a great tip for those of you who do not use banking toons and mules up until now.  It will make your life a lot simpler and expand your storage space to near infinity.

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18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

If you have been following my arena guides lately then you should now be entering the arena with a strong team setup coupled with a sophisticated communications setup to enable your team to perform to its best.

But all that planning is for nothing if you cannot execute your attack in the right way, as with the preparations you make before attacking, the way in which you initiate your attack is vital to winning in the arena.

Should your team end up confused and scattered in the attack it is a fast road to a lost match, likewise should you be able to force confusion upon your enemy it can make your wins easier to obtain. The trick is to force the other team to play into your own hands and style; make them dance to your tune and victory is assured.

One basic and effective opening tactic is a rush, this favors high burst dps teams to take advantage of the confusion for an easy first kill. The plan is simple, hit the other team hard and from an unexpected angle before they have a chance to identify what composition they are against.

An example of an effective place to rush is Blades Edge, most teams generally line up at opposite ends of the bridge and spend some time scouting out the other team, an effective rush will instead mount up and ride to the opposing teams ramp up to the bridge to hit them in the side.

The big downside to a rush is that while the other team will not have time to scout you out, neither will you have time to identify an effective target to nuke and so it is easy to end up with your own team confused without proper leadership.

A second effective opening tactic, and my personal favorite is harassment. This generally relies on having dispell classes move forward and purge one or two of the enemy buffs before backing off again quickly. In this manner you can weaken the enemy without fully engaging them and try to make one of their members panic and charge you.

If harassing, remember to land an attack from a distance on warriors in order to put them in combat; this stops them from utilizing charge against you which is the most common way you will be chased down as a harasser.

You can also harass with mana drains such as viper sting and by utilizing low rank DoT spells which cost far more mana to be removed than they do to cast. Further harassment tactics extend to the killing of hunter and warlock pets; these are sometimes left on aggressive stance and will charge out when attacked, enabling them to be killed alone.

The third tactic involves mass AoE crowd control and is effective when combined with a slightly delayed rush.   What it typically involves is a class such as a rogue sapping enemy healers or a mage polymorphing them before/as you charge in. This forces them to trinket in order to begin healing.

It is at this point that you hit the entire team with an AoE fear such as intimidating shout or howl of terror. The healers, having previously trinketed will now be out of control and likely to run out of line of sight of their team mates, causing chaos in the enemy’s organization.

This tactic does however rely on the other team being bunched up and you being the attacker.

The final opening tactic is the stealth hunt, if you know the other team has a stealth class, especially a rogue, then the chances are high that they will be sniffing around your team scouting you out. If you can catch them out with a low rank AoE to detect them or by utilizing the shadow sight gems then you force the other team to attack in order to rescue the stealth member.

This can lead to the opposition lacking organization in their attack making them much easier for you to dominate.

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4 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We walked you through getting to Nat Pagle for this quest, and it’s high time I showed you how to catch those four fish.  Before you head out, be sure to bring along your shiny baubles otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you get to the first fishing hole!

Here’s the link to the Quest on wowhead - http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=6607 Nat asks you to go catch four fish and then return to him when you get them all. What we’re going to do is show you the fastest order to go get these fish, and the best spots to fish.  For reference, paths in yellow are for Alliance, and Horde is red.

FISH #1 - Feralas Ahi

For the Feralas Ahi just fly to Feralas (Feathermoon for Ally, Camp Mojache for Horde) and run to the little lake in the middle of the map to catch the Feralas Ahi. The map is pretty easy to follow here. Just run down to the bridge that crosses over the waterfall and jump off the road. There’s a little spot that sticks out into the pond with no roaming mobs. This one is easy for both factions.  I normally get the Ahi in just a few casts.

FISH #2 - Sar’Theris Striker

After you get the Ahi, fly to Desolace for the Sar’Theris Striker. Horde will only have to get off the bird at Shadowprey Village, run a bit south down the coast, and fish.  Be sure that you leave Shadowprey village completely, your sub-zone on your minimap should read Sar’Theris Strand, you cannot catch this fish while the zone map reads Shadowprey Village. Ally have a little longer run from Nijels Point down to the coast.

FISH #3 - Savage Coast Sailfin

Now fly back to ratchet and take the boat to Stranglethorn Vale. As soon as the boat lands, just hop off the north end of the dock and swim over to the first place you can stand near the little camp of pirates. This fish, the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin takes about 2 minutes to get. You might even try to catch one right off the end of the dock.

FISH #4 - Misty Reed Mahi Mahi

Now for the last (and hardest) fish to nab, the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi. Horde toons can fly to Stonard, but Ally Chars will have to fly to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, or to Darkshire in Duskwood and run around Stonard to catch up

When you get to the beach, avoid the Murlocs and you’ll find a little spot just after the sand ends where there are no giant crocs or Murlocs patrolling and you can fish in a little peace. Once you’re done here, hearth out.

Now all you have to do is go back to Nat Pagle and turn in your fish, and you’re done! Congratulations and happy fishing! Oh, and always remember to Dominate.

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

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

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

Offensive Hybrids

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defensive Hybrids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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