Yet Another Warlock Nerf

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2008-05-17T02:09:00.004+02:00

Yet another warlock nerf moved to www.locksucks.com.

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Teh Gladiators

2008-05-03T17:49:00.005+02:00

There are various ways that you can break stealth in the arenas. A well-timed Demoralizing Shout will pull any rogue out of stealth. A Piercing Howl is good too, the kind you get if you listen to Justin Timberlake songs really loud. In fact, I'm pretty sure Justin Timberlake would pull any rogue out of stealth with his voice, or, at the very least, would cause a ticking bleeding effect in their ears which would prevent them from successfully vanishing.

Seems it's popular to link to comics lately, so here's some love for Teh Gladiators from me. The above quote is epic.

Teh Gladiators

New Medallion

2008-04-24T18:52:00.009+02:00

Is it my imagination or is Blizzard just trying to come up with more reasons to grind honor?
This baby will cost us 40,000 honor points for a whooping amount of 25 resilience. Another must-have for serious PvPers, but again, that's going to be a boring grind again just like Battlemaster.
I'm guessing the trinket will be changed soon and require a personal rating of 2000.

> New Medallion

S4 Rating Requirements - Casual Killer

2008-04-23T18:12:00.006+02:00

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:

Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:

Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

No more 10 games per week and getting all the gear. No more playing specs for fun (destruction warlocks, balance druids for example). No more boosting friends or selling points.

Getting to 2200 rating for the shoulders is a hard task, I'm not even sure I can get that high. I can't help to wonder, what will happen to all those stuck at 1500 rating or less. Sure, they suck at PvP, but even if they're getting 300ish points per week, they'll be able to get some decent gear with the current system. This change might completely kick the fun part of arena combat and make it elitist only. Even those at 1500 rating invested their time and good will.

Some players are very happy about this change, mostly the ones at 2000+ rating. Sure, you know how to play and you deserved your items, but you didn't get that far just because you had the gear.
You can give full S3 gear to some random scrub and he'll be stuck at 1500 rating, regardless of class (ok rogues might get 1600).

I've played a good part of this season with some close friends, most of them poorly equipped and skilled. But I helped them get some points and learn a few things, and it was fun. We usually got together after arenas and discuss about it (read: me laughing at them). But the point is, it's more fun to play with people you know then some random guys who you've never met.
One of them is a shadowpriest, and it's common knowledge they perform poorly in arenas. He'd probably do much better specced discipline, but he has no healing gear and doesn't want to healbot people.

Let's take a look at some random player who likes doing arenas from time to time. We'll call him Mr. B. Mr. B is a hunter usually found in SSC or TK. He likes killing big monsters with 24 other people, trying out new things like PvP specs, and playing battlegrounds every now and then. Mr. B doesn't have the best gear, nor a whole lotta resilience. But he's got decent ratings and always learns something new.
With his ratings, he won't be able to buy any weapons, head, shoulders, boots, and maybe even rings next season. I really hope he gets better, but if he doesn't play more, he'll be stuck at that rating forever, and won't get many season 4 items. Mr. B is very good at killing those monsters in raids, yet he understands PvP is another game and requires a different mindset. If someone magically gave him all the PvP items, I doubt he would reach 2200 rating anytime soon.

Why would you deny items to a fine lookin' hunter like Mr. B? He's doing ten times better in arenas then most other hunter (or any other class for that matter) bloggers out there and I'd say he's a very happy dwarf. Let Mr. B buy whatever item he wants.

S4 Rating Requirements

Addons: Proximo 2

2008-04-21T16:34:00.006+02:00

Proximo is an arena unit frame which will display your enemies health and mana bars, allow you to target them, and a number of additional goodies. If you missed my review of Proximo, I suggest you do it now.

It's recently been updated to include some new features: race icons, buff & debuff tracking (I still recommend Afflicted for that task), and additional mouse button bindings.

The addon is pretty customizable, so you can choose whether you want to display class/race icons, mana bars, debuffs.

Like its predecessor, you can configure it outside arenas by typing /proximo test. The window can then be moved with ALT-click, and additional options are available by clicking your right mouse button.

Note that the talent inspect feature has been removed, but that's only because Blizzard disabled that particular feature with patch 2.4. Other than that, all old features are present (macros, announcements, focus, all that kind of thing).

Although a number of other similar addons exist (Arena Unit Frames etc.), Proximo is still the king and it's popularity is growing.

Get Proximo 2: Curse.com, WoWInterface.com, WoWAce

Previous addons: Reslack, Afflicted, Proximo, Advanced Tradeskill Window, Posessions, Doublewide & Lightheaded, Auctioneer

> Addons: Proximo 2

The Evolution of Trade Chat

2008-03-28T11:02:00.002+01:00

First, there was [Dirge].

Now, it evolved from linking [Dirge] to various spells and talents.
If Blizzard only knew what kind of impact this will have... Dirge lasted for a few months and I still see it at least once per day, but I wonder how long this new [insert spell] will last. The ignore list is far too small to silence all those spammers playing with fire. Yes, I'm trying to think of more spells to link here.

I'm sure a lot of people hope for an opportunity to kick those spammers from trade, but not me. Whatever makes me laugh while idling in Shattrath is good. Just check Arcane Torrent in the picture below.

The Evolution of Trade Chat

Fixing Combat Log Spam

2008-03-28T09:55:00.003+01:00

It's annoying, it can cause low fps, and it's spam. And annoying.

When you zone from an instance to the outside world, the combat log goes through a massive loop, pasting every combat log message in the last 5 minutes. I'm sure you have all seen it, and here's an easy way to fix it (courtesy of deleted topic).

Instructions
1. Select the “Everything” tab
2. /script Blizzard_CombatLog_CurrentSettings.settings.showHistory = false

This will prevent all combat log messages from being re-filtered when you zone.

Side-effects
This will also prevent you from seeing old messages with the “Everything” tab.

How to undo
If you accidentally set this on the wrong tab, select the broken tab and type:
/script Blizzard_CombatLog_CurrentSettings.settings.showHistory = true

Simply relog and it should work.

> Fixing Combat Log Spam

Harry Potter is a Warlock

2008-03-19T14:51:00.002+01:00

The enemy of God! Yes, you heard it right.
Sorry in advance if this offends anyone but I can't stop laughing at it, this must be seen.

Also check out how's it like to be a warlock in 5v5 from oom.

> Harry Potter is a Warlock

Frostmourne Hungers

2008-03-15T16:46:00.006+01:00

Partnered with Epic Weapons, Blizzard released a limited edition replica of Frostmourne, a sword wielded by Arthas in Warcraft III.
The sword enabled him to defeat the wicked Dreadlord Mal'Ganis, but also cursed him so he became a Death Knight. But who cares anyway. If you want to read more lore check it out on wowinsider.

The sword looks freaking awesome. It will cost you a minimum of $429 (ouch!). If you're interested, read more about the auction here.

Just like with those WoW commercials with Shatner, Mr. T and others awhile back, yet another great marketing stunt by Blizzard.

> Frostmourne Hungers

Druid Form Skins

2008-03-12T01:13:00.006+01:00

While the use of these models would be a violation of the Terms of Service (and thus, I wouldn’t recommend it), it is still an amazing showcase of talent and dedication. I have to say that the award for "most improved" goes to his version of Tauren Cat Form, whose newly closed mouth and darker fur make it appear far more majestic than before.

I completely agree with Phaelia, and although I don't really care about my character looks, I have to admit I'm a bit tired of the same old forms. These new look absolutely adorable and I'm sure many players wouldn't mind seeing some changes. Screw the Sunwell, give us new models!

> Druid Form Skins

Buffing up for Botanica - Get a Priest

2008-03-10T16:23:00.005+01:00

Doing pugs has its bright sides, you always learn something new. Like this for example.

I was nicely surprised when my boomkin got this huge spell damage boost a few days ago when I went to Botanica. All it takes is one priest to Mind Control a mob named Bloodwarder Mender. There are several of them close to the start of Botanica. While you won't be able to finish the whole instance buffed with Holy Fury (only lasts 30 minutes), you might save some time and finish it sooner.

Who would guess priests are still useful in groups. ;)

How about you? Any tips for those pesky heroics?

> Buffing Up for Botanica - Get a Priest

Life Tap Changes Reverted

2008-03-05T23:30:00.005+01:00

That's right, the old Life Tap is back. I'll sound like an ass now but I expected it, nobody can hate warlocks that much. LT will surely see some changes in the future, but nothing as drastic like now.
Hopefully the devs won't put this crap back.

> Life Tap Changes Reverted

Epic Gems for Badges

2008-03-05T00:52:00.006+01:00

Finally! The patterns were already added to Shattered Sun rep vendors, and all that was missing were gems. These gems and recipes were for months a thorn in my jewelcrafter's eye, and buying them from the auction house is painful even for my budget.

I'm sure there's a lot of guilds out there unhappy about this, since it will be a significant loss of gold, but dedicated PvPers like myself are finally one step closer to all the PvE riches.

Hopefully this trend will continue so we don't end up again with such sought after epic items only available to raiders.

> Epic Gems for Badges

Addons: Reslack

2008-03-03T20:49:00.006+01:00

I thought we might take a break from all the useful and serious addons, so this time I'll show you something new.

You know all those confirmation boxes for summons, ready checks and resurrects? Sooner or later it becomes annoying, and here's a way to bypass it.

Reslack will automatically accept those summons and resurrects so you don't have to risk carpal tunnel syndrome. Duh!
It will also hide the ready check window so your raid leaders won't think you're afk. Sure, it defeats the whole purpose of a ready check but who cares!

Get Reslack now on wowace.com! If you download and install before your next raid, I can almost guarantee a gkick!

Other addons: Reslack, Afflicted, Proximo, Advanced Tradeskill Window, Posessions, Doublewide & Lightheaded, Auctioneer

Things To Do Before Patch 2.4 Hits

2008-02-25T15:36:00.002+01:00

New patch notes are always a great source of useful info. Each patch, besides screwing most of your addons and nerfing your class has its impact on economy and it's always good to prepare yourself. Here's a list of what you should be buying.

Void Crystals
Currently, the price for Void Crystals is 15-20g per piece, and you can expect the prices to double as soon as 2.4 hits live realms. Large Prismatic Shards sell for 25-30g.
A new enchanting recipe will be introduced, which will enable you to shatter a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards, once every 23 hours.
Be sure to stack up on those Void Crystals soon, because I'm sure there are many others who expect to make a profit from this and the price will rise even before patch. You should be able to make a decent profit just by selling Void Crystals also. Large Prismatic Shards' price will probably drop a bit over couple of weeks after patch, so don't expect this to go on forever, but there's no reason not to earn a few hundred easy gold with this.

Primal Nether
It will no longer be Bind on Pickup, which means you will be able to sell it. If you're doing heroic dungeons often and have no profession that can use Nethers, I'm sure you can snag a lot of them before 2.4. Even if you can't use them, the hell with it - just need when they drop. For the first few weeks I'm sure the prices will be around 50g or more, so it's worth it. Grab the daily heroic quest and that's another 25g extra, plus some Badges of Justice, which you will need for the new gear. If you have too many Badges (I like to call it Badgers), you can even buy Primal Nether for 10 of them.

Jewelcrafting
There are some new recipes to cut Talasite, Dawnstone and Noble Topaz into spell haste gems. With the change to spell haste (decreased global cooldown) these gems might become more valuable, but not much.

Arcanite Bar
Get rid of them, pronto. The transmute will no longer have a cooldown after 2.4 and they will be next to worthless. They can go for up to 10g on auction house, depending on demand, but the prices will most likely drastically decrease.

Fishing
With new daily quests, many players will start fishing... daily. Additionaly, feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools and they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail. Golden Fish Sticks price may decrease.

Fel Lotus
Sell it while it's hot. It's over 30g a piece now on my realm, which is way too much. There's a few changes which will affect Fel Lotus' price: Ancient Lichen will now drop Fel Lotus instead a random piece of worthless green jewelry. Herbing creatures in Outlands will now yield Fel Lotus, and no longer Black Lotus. Also, the chance that Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Ragveil, and Flame Caps will contain a Fel Lotus has been increased..

Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker
The loot they drop will no longer be bind on pickup, so if you have the chance to get a few items from them, you should be able to sell it for decent prices. I know, it's a long shot, but a lot of guilds are just doing these bosses for fun and disenchant the items later. Come up with some reason to /need it, for the looks or whatever.

Enchanting
There's a bunch of new items, including new Badge of Justice rewards, new Tier 6 items, additional PvP items for reputation, season 4... Enchanters will again be extremely busy; most wanted enchants would be:
Gloves - Superior Agility, Major Healing, Major Spellpower,
Bracers - Spellpower, Superior Healing, Enchant Bracer - Fortitude
Boots - Fortitude, Surefooted, Boar's Speed
Chest - Exceptional Stats, Major Resilience
Weapon - Mongoose, Soulfrost, Savagery, Deathfrost, Executioner, Major Healing, Major Spellpower
Check out the required mats for those enchants and try to stock up on shards and primals.
Don't forget various leg enchants, as well as Arcane Tomes and Fel Armaments for shoulder enchants.

Marks of Honor
This one won't make you any gold, but will instead save you some time farming honor. The new For Great Honor quest requires you to bring 1 mark from each bg, therefore 100 marks will yield 31,400 honor, which is a great boost. If you're missing some marks, now is the time to get them.

PTR Patch notes can change before it goes live, so be sure to check up on them from time to time to see if there's any new additions.

> Things to do before patch 2.4 hits

New Class Changes in 2.4

2008-02-20T15:38:00.006+01:00

It looks like those fake 2.4 patch notes weren't completely fake after all.
Here's the recent class changes from mmo-champion:

Druid

Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

Hunter

Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Mage

Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
Improved Fire Ward has become Molten Shields.
New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Paladin

Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priest

Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.

Rogue

Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

Shaman

Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.

Warlock

Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.

It will be interesting to see how some of these changes will affect smaller arena brackets, especially 2v2. Paladins should finally be able to do something against warlocks, since their Holy Shock is buffed moderately, and Turn Evil working on pets should give them a chance to drink also.

I'm sure a lot of shaman will easily find 2 talent points to get improved Ghost Wolf in enhancement tree, which will then make it instant cast. Tremor Totem changes will mostly benefit versus warlocks, but we'll destroy them anyway.

Rogues are getting buffed again (what a surprise!), Improved Backstab talent will improve Mutilate damage, in addition to Backstab. I guess too many of them specced Shadowstep as Blizzard wanted.

As for priests, with Power Infusion's spell haste they will spam Mana Burns like mad; I would lie if I said I like it.

Feral druids are getting a nice buff, but it won't help them one bit. There's still not much utility they can bring as restoration druids, especially in 2v2. Restoration set's 4-piece bonus will be changed to a bonus to Regrowth. I was just getting used to the run speed increase, but the nerf is necesarry so I can live with it. I'm not too happy about Lifebloom nerf either; yes, druids are strong healers in 2v2, but I'm afraid this will have huge impact in PvE where I don't feel as strong as some other classes.

There's no word about warlock's pets not scaling, so the change is either delayed or indeed a bug.

Here's something non-class related.
A few new neck pieces dropped from Twin Eredar on PTR, which have resilience. Sin'Dorei Pendant of Conquest, Salvation and Triumph.
If you missed my rant about such items check it out here, but I'll say it again, get PvP items away from PvE!

> New class changes in 2.4

Warlock's Pet No Longer Scales

2008-02-18T16:13:00.007+01:00

It seems warlock and hunter pets are currently not scaling with their master's stats anymore. The only stats which they get are spell damage, intellect and armor, but no stamina or attack power.
What this means, other than being the biggest warlock nerf ever, is that your Felhunter will have about 3000 health, which will make it completely useless in PvP.

There's a few threads about it already (here, here, here and here) so it seems it's not an isolated issue.
Someone did the math in one of those threads, and here's what Felguards look like now:

Example: Felguard
Pre and Post current 2.4 fix.

Pre:
6200ish hp base
1247 attack power base.

Post:
3600 hp base.
343 attack power (no modification from gear)

There's dozens of threads on official forums for a few months now about hunter and warlock pets, all asking for buffs and more scaling, especially getting a part of master's resilience. Our pets are too squishy each passing day, while other classes get more and more damage. It seems Blizzard is doing exactly the opposite.

This issue is not yet confirmed by blues, so it's unknown if this is a bug or an intended change, but I certainly hope it's a bug. This change alone is enough to bring SL/SL and Demonology warlocks to extinction.

(via mmo-champion)

> Warlocks pet no longer scales

Sorry Mate, You Have to PvE

2008-02-16T18:48:00.007+01:00

First, they added PvP cloaks which you can buy for 60 Badges of Justice (BoJ). Then there's items like Hex Shrunken Head, Warglaives of Azzinoth, Berserkers Call and many more which are far better for PvP then some Shankers or Slicers. Tidewalker in SSC drops this ring which is pretty good actually; here's one from Hydross. I wish I could get Seal of Danzalar for my warlock, the armor bonus would be awesome.

Battlemaster's Cruelty (and other versions) can be bought for BoJ as well as honor. Karazhan and Zul'Aman bosses are now dropping Badges of Justice, and after patch 2.4 you'll get them in 25-mans as well. In fact, all the new PvP stuff in 2.4 can be obtained via PvE, even the welfare epics.

I got Jewelcrafting on my lock, and there's no way to get the best gems without going to Hyjal, except buying them for hundreds of gold a piece from the auction house.
I unlearned herbalism on my druid recently and leveled up enchanting. Having extra 40 healing on rings feels good, and in PvP every bit helps. I can't earn much money with it since I don't have access to most of the formulas people need, like Mongoose, Sunfire, Executioner and many others.

You don't need any attunement to enter battlegrounds, thus every scrub can go PvP anytime they want. Sooner or later, you will get some good items even if you only play an hour or two daily. All those hunters with season 1 gear in battlegrounds are pissing me off; most of them aren't capable of doing anything except autoshot, yet still they manage to do insane amounts of damage and kills. I don't remember the last time alliance had less than 4 hunters in EoTS.

I always thought of battlegrounds as some sort of training grounds, where you learn stuff, where dying doesn't matter much like in raids, a place not just for farming honor to get better items but also to better yourself and gain some skill. If you farmed your Season 1 items mostly AFK, and you wonder why you can't pass 1500 rating in arenas, that's why. You suck, stick to your PvE.

You can AFK in battlegrounds and get honor. You can't AFK in raids and get items. Until Blizzard decides to kick players out, it won't be any different. I didn't hear about anyone getting banned for AFK-ing yet, and even if it's happening, I don't care. I'm in the battleground NOW, and I want those three or ten who are AFK kicked out because we're outnumbered and I want to win.

Now, MMO-Champion reports you will be able to buy Season 1 gladiator items for Tier 4 tokens, Season 2 for Tier 5 and 6 tokens. With T6 tokens from Sunwell you will be able to buy Season 3 gear. How cool is that! No, it's not fucking cool, it's sad.

I like doing battlegrounds and arenas. Sure, it can be frustrating sometimes, but raiding can be as well. Where's my PvE gear for honor? Why can't I buy those damn enchanting recipes with honor?
I don't know about you, but in Wrath of the PvE King I'll be raiding.

> Sorry mate, you have to PvE

PvP Tips From a Dwarf? Never

2008-02-12T19:30:00.002+01:00

Mind Vision druids if you know they are about to stealth as you will then be able to still see them when they do.

I didn't know that.

There's a bunch of cool tips about fighting certain classes on Dwarf Priest. Although it's from a priest perspective, it doesn't make it less useful and you should check it out.

Thanks to Kestrel's Aerie for pointing it out!

> PvP tips from a dwarf? Never

Patch 2.4 - PvP Additions

2008-02-11T00:14:00.001+01:00

It doesn't look like patch 2.4 will change much about class (im)balance, but there are some interesting changes so far. Looks like we'll be doing the same thing again: farm reputation, Badges of Justice, and honor.
Here's what awaits those of us on the frontlines.

New PvP cloaks, this time with spell haste:

Battlemaster's Alacrity is a new BM trinket, again with spell haste:

This head enchant might be useful for those with poor PvP gear and lack of stamina and resilience:

New battleground repeatable quest (you can complete this as many times you want per day, but you'll get the gold only once):

And here's some new welfare gear for you scrubs:

Druid
Dragonhide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Kodohide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Wyrmhide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Hunter
Stalker’s Chain Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Concussive Shot by 1 sec.

Mage
Evoker’s Silk Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Blink spell by 2 sec.

Paladin
Crusader’s Ornamented Battledgear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.

Crusader’s Scaled Battledgear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.

Priest
Mooncloth Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the duration of the Weakened Soul effect caused by your Power Word: Shield by 2 sec.

Satin Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the duration of the Weakened Soul effect caused by your Power Word: Shield by 2 sec.

Rogue
Opportunist’s Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Gouge ability by 1 sec.

Shaman
Seer’s Linked Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Stormstrike ability by 1 sec.

Seer’s Mail Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Improves your chance to get a critical strike with all Shock spells by 2%.

Seer’s Ringmail Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Nature’s Swiftness ability by 24 sec.

Warlock
Dreadweave Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the casting time of your Fear spell by 0.2 sec.

Warrior
Savage Plate Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.

New enchant, Deathfrost. I'll leave the math to others but it looks interesting for PvP:

Credits to Mmo-champion and WoR.

> Patch 2.4 - PvP additions

Addons: Afflicted

2008-02-07T19:35:00.007+01:00

Afflicted is a PvP timer mod, which shows you enemy silences, interrupts and buffs in a convenient way. Although the name of this mod might suggest it's for warlocks, rest assured it's not.

You can open the configuration window (image below) by typing /afflicted ui, and change where and how you want it to be displayed.
Afflicted also supports notification via party chat and raid warnings, so you can easily notify your (arena) teammates of important events, such as counterspell resists or similar. You can also configure it to show such events only to you so you don't spam other people's chat frames.

It supports the following buffs and spells (and more can be added manually):
Buffs: Divine Shield, Ice Block, Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection , Cloak of Shadows and Spell Reflection, Pain Suppression
Spells: Silencing Shot (Hunter), Silence (Shadow Priest), Feral Charge (Druid), Spell Lock (Felhunter), Counterspell - Silence (Mage - Imp CS), Kick (Rogue), Pummel (Warrior), Shield Bash (Warrior) and Earth Shock (Shaman).

Is the addon useful? You bet it is. Knowing your enemies cooldowns on counterspell/kick/pummel etc. is an invaluable asset in arenas, so if you're looking for a simple addon to help you track it, look no further.

You can download Afflicted on wowinterface.com!

Other addons: Reslack, Afflicted, Proximo, Advanced Tradeskill Window, Posessions, Doublewide & Lightheaded, Auctioneer

> Addons: Afflicted

Making Gold: Farming Consortium Reputation

2008-02-02T22:36:00.001+01:00

If you did a few quests on your way to 70, you probably are at least friendly with The Consortium.
If not, check Stealing from Thieves and A Head Full of Ivory quests in Nagrand.

After that, you have a number of ways to obtain Exalted:

Repeatable quests:

If you reached friendly status, you can farm Obsidian Warbeads in Nagrand and turn 10 of them in Aeris Landing (31,57 in Nagrand) for 250 rep. A Heap of Ethereals quest in Netherstorm also gives 250 rep for ten Zaxxis Insignias, and is even better, since the mobs you will be farming also drop Ethereum Prison Keys.
Your best bet for farming Zaxxis Insignias are Zaxxis Raiders and Zaxxis Stalkers (check Wowhead for location; very close to Area 52).

Ethereum Prison Keys only drop at about 3% in Netherstorm, so you won't get many there, but when you do, visit Ethereum Staging Grounds and open one of those purple prisons: a random mob will spawn and drop green or sometimes blue BoP items (you might want to bring an enchanter with you), as well as Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Tag, which you can turn in for this quest, giving 250 rep.
Sometimes you won't have to kill anything, but a random mob will spawn and give you 500 rep with Cenarion Expedition, Sha'tar, Lower City, Sporeggar, or other factions. You won't get the I.D. Tag but it's better than nothing, especially if you're farming rep for other factions as well.

Daily instance quests

Non-heroic quests give 250 reputation with Consortium, while those for heroic difficulty dungeons give 350. You will probably be doing them anyway so it's a nice boost.
Non-heroic quest also gives you one Ethereum Prison Key, so that's an additional 250 reputation.

Instances

Currently, you can only gain Consortium rep in Mana Tombs. A rather unpopular instance, but pretty easy. Normal difficulty will only get you to honored - after that you will have to switch to heroic mode. One run should give over 2000 reputation, assuming you skip all trash mobs you can. Additionaly, mobs there have a good chance of dropping Ethereum Prison Keys as well (about 5 keys per run), but be prepared to roll with 4 other people for them.

Here comes the best part: each month, you can visit Aeris Landing in Nagrand (31,57) and collect your consortium wage. Depending on your reputation, you will get one of the following sacks:
Friendly - Gem-stuffed Envelope
Honored - Unmarked Bag of Gems
Revered - Bulging Sack of Gems
Exalted - Bag of Premium Gems

Bag of Premium Gems can contain 100 gold or more worth of gems. I once got 4 blue gems in it, but once I also got 8 green ones so it's rather random, but still worth it if you ask me.

Of course, I forgot to take screenshots of the loot yesterday, but I digged up some I've had for months now - you can check them out here.

Also, Consortium has one of the coolest looking tabards in game :)

> Making Gold: Farming Consortium Reputation

Destruction is Dead

2008-01-30T12:26:00.001+01:00

Or so they say.

The ez-mode SL/SL spec is, despite all nerfs, still the most popular build for PvP warlocks.
There's not much room for having fun in arenas - you either play seriously or stick to PvE, so it's a real gem to find warlocks who manage to achieve high ratings with non-demonology spec.
While affliction still has its bright moments, destruction is now usually considered obsolete, mostly since resilience is introduced which severely gimped the previous popularity of this build.

Heidiheinken achieved what most players dream of - almost 2400 rating, which is really amazing for a destro lock.
First few minutes in this vid will show you how to beat warrior and druid combo, which is currently the most popular in 2v2, as a SL/SL lock teamed with a druid. It has come excellent tips & tricks which you should always keep in mind. I'd love to see more of it, but can't blame the author since the movie is about destruction.

If you're interested, be sure to check out the video to see how this forgotten build is still alive and kicking.

> Destruction is dead

WoW Humor 2: Do you know how hard it is to play a warlock?

2008-01-27T15:54:00.001+01:00

Can't say no to Failoring.

(from wowbash.com)

Q = Icelance? No, Q = QQ whine about warlocks.

Mage vs. Shaman: Epic battle. I just love Windows Paint made images.

> WoW humor 2: do you know how hard it is to play a warlock?

2.4 Patch notes

2008-01-23T16:51:00.001+01:00

It's probably fake, but still there are some stuff here that should (not) be changed in near future.
I won't list all of them, but only those I find particularly good or dumb.

Silence and Interrupt effects are now subject to diminishing returns.

Won't happen.

The Backpack has been redesigned. It will now start as a 10 slot bag, but it will gain 2 slots every 10 levels. New characters will be given an additional 6 slot bag. Existing characters below level 30 may have items moved to their mailbox that no longer fit in their Backpack. Players affected by this should also find a 6 slot bag in their mailbox.

That would mean 22 slots on level 70. I had my own suggestions about bags but this doesn't sound bad either. Too bad it probably won't happen.

The human Diplomacy racial now also increases healing received by 3%.

Lol ye right...

Cyclone now has a 15 sec cooldown.

It needs a nerf, but a 15 second cooldown sounds a bit too harsh.

Frenzied Regeneration: The amount of health restored now scales slightly with bonus healing effects.

It's something I've wanted for quite some time now, but not like this. Sure it has its uses when you're being smashed in PvP as bear, but it should also be increased by your strenght or agility so it would be more useful for tanking as well. Trading 100 rage for 2500 health is a high cost.

Celestial Focus: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Cyclone by 5/10/15 sec.

Didn't we just nerf it?

Shredding Attacks: This talent now also gives the critical strikes from your Claw, Shred, Mangle and Maul abilties a 50/100% of reducing the effectiveness of the next direct healing spell on your target by 20%.

I like it - feral druids might have a chance to kill a healer with this.

Ice Lance now has a 6 sec cooldown.

Ice lance spam ftw. As much as I'd like to see it nerfed, its not necesarry.

Holy Shock: The cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec and the amount of damage and healing done has been slightly increased.

Just give paladins a HoT and be done with it. But this sounds good also.

Mana Burn now has a 6 sec cooldown.
The effects of your Mana Burn and Fade spells now scale slightly with Shadow spell damage.
Focused Power: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Mana Burn by 0.5/1 sec.

If additional Shadow damage effects Mana Burn, a cooldown would be nice.

Rogues can now generate combo points on up to 3 targets at any one time.

Reminds me of hunter's deadzone removal, kinda. A limitation you had to live with. It might also have an impact on Shadowstep's usefulness.

Cloak of Shadows: The cooldown has been increased to 2 min, from 1 min.

Please do it, please please please... /beg

Your Sap and Distract abilities no longer require targets to be out of combat.
Sap now has a 15 sec cooldown.

Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, mace stun, Gouge, Blind, AND Sap? Gtfo.

Preparation once again resets the cooldowns of all your Rogue abilities.
Premeditation and Preparation talents have swapped locations.

Fake. It never reseted the cooldowns of all rogue abilities. And if it did reset the cooldown on Adrenaline Rush, there's no point since you can't have both AR and Preparation with this change.

Ghost Wolf now frees the Shaman from movement impairing effects when cast, renders the Shaman immune to polymorph effects and can no longer be dispelled.

There's so many possibilities with this I won't even try to think about it.

Windfury Weapon now only grants 1 extra attack and the bonus attack power granted has been reduced by approximately 19%, but the chance to proc has been increased. Overall shamans should see more consistent dps.
Windfury Totem: The attack power bonus has been reduced by approximately 46%, but the chance to proc has been slightly increased. Overall the totem should see a slight decrease in effectiveness.

No need to nerf it in my opinion.

Pets will now receive a percentage of their master's resilience and an additional percentage of their master's stamina.

It shouldn't be a percentage of resilience, rather a full benefit. As for stamina, more health is also always welcome, and probably necesarry.

> 2.4 Patch notes

Useful Druid Macros

2008-01-22T12:39:00.001+01:00

Cancel your current form and switch to caster:

/cancelform

You should make a macro for each form, so you can 'powershift' easily from one form to another with this:

#showtooltip
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form

It will switch from any form to caster without exposing yourself in caster form. Simply change Cat Form to whatever form you wish.

Cast Innervate on yourself:

/cast [target=player] Innervate

Buff your target with Thorns & Mark of the Wild

/castsequence reset=target Thorns, Mark of the Wild

Cast Nature's Swiftness and Healing Touch

/stopcasting
/cancelform
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch

Barskin & Hurricane (or Tranquility)

/stopmacro [channeling:Hurricane]
/castsequence reset=30/combat Barkskin, Hurricane

Equip healing weapon and idol when in caster form, and feral weapon or idol when in Bear

#showtooltip Dire Bear Form
/equip [stance:1/3] Gavel of Pure Light
/equip [stance:1/3] Vengeful Gladiator's Idol of Tenacity
/cast [nostance] Dire Bear Form
/cancelform
/equip [nostance] Earthwarden
/equip [nostance] Idol of the Wild

Or use this cool macro to switch different weapons for cat/bear (PvE):

/equip [stance:1] Terestian's Stranglestaff; [stance:3] Earthwarden
/cast [stance:1] Cat Form; [stance:3] Dire Bear Form

Use potion and healthstone while tanking

/cancelform
/use Master Healthstone
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Major Combat Healing Potion
/use Fel Blossom
/cast Dire Bear Form

Switch to Cat and cast Prowl

#show Prowl
/cancelform [nostance:3]
/cast [nostance] Cat Form; [stance:3,nostealth] Prowl

Charge an enemy and Growl. You can replace Growl with Bash, Mangle...

/cast Feral Charge
/stopcasting
/cast Growl

Cure poison & Remove Curse

/cast Cure Poison
/cast Remove Curse

Announce Rebirth in party chat (%t will say the name of your target). Change /p to /ra for raid chat or whatever:

/cancelform
/p Rebirth on %t
/cast Rebirth

You damn Night Elves can use this in arenas to drink:

/use Star's Tears
/cast Shadowmeld

So that's it, I don't remember ever using any other macros, but if you have some feel free to comment below.

If you want more macros you don't need, check out one or more of the following links:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=48565126&sid=1&pageNo=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=54889606&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=74337875&sid=1
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Macro's+and+Addons
http://www.wowwiki.com/Useful_macros/Druid

> Useful druid macros

Increasing WoW Performance III: Drugs

2008-01-18T10:10:00.001+01:00

Although this post is labeled as jokes, these guys are serious.

This new medicine apparently improves your gaming performance - if there is any truth in what the German based producer Tomarni GmbH have to say.

Tomarni have said that the FpsBrain medicine enhances your reactions, increases your perception and stops your hands from shaking – and all this starts to take affect in around 60 minutes.

I can certainly see the use for it - sometimes my hands start to shake so much after loosing arena matches I'd strangle my cat or something. Good thing I don't have one.

I prefer the good ol' coffee, but if you're into this sort of drugs, you can get 60 capsules for 19.99€ on fpsbrain.com.

(stolen from sk-gaming)

> Increasing WoW performance III: Drugs

Felweave or Dreadweave

2008-01-17T08:34:00.001+01:00

I read the post over at PvP Source yesterday, about Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers being better than Vindicator Leather Bracers, and it just so happens I bought my Vengeful Gladiator's Felweave Cowl yesterday also and noticed a similar thing.

So here's the problem.

Vengeful Gladiator's Dreadweave Hood

Vengeful Gladiator's Felweave Cowl

Normally, destro items (Felweave, with crit chance) have less spell damage than Dreadweave, but that's not the case with this piece, so you might want to think twice before you buy your Season 3 head. 5 more spell damage and 1% crit over some pointless stats? Yes please.

By the way, who the heck designed this?

> Felweave or Dreadweave

PvP Matrix

2008-01-14T17:02:00.001+01:00

PvP Source released a cool new toy today, called Arena Matrix.

It's pretty low on info right now but it should soon be full of great tips and guides on how to beat your opponents easier.
Arena Matrix has (or will have) info about 1v1 duels, but also arena setups: 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5.

It will be interesting to see how this tool develops further.
If you're a warlock you don't need anything other than the good old faceroll, but you still might want to check it out, or even submit your own strategy.

> PvP Matrix

Out of Mana

2008-01-14T09:25:00.001+01:00

Megan's having her first (blog) birthday, so go visit it and congratulate. Tell her I sent you ok?

Here's a short list of posts I especially liked in the past year:

Arena: Top 10 things I hate

#3 is lol, now my blog's description for the time being.

The Art of (PVE) Seduction

Not much to say, the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Nerf 51/51/51 Locks even more

And I thought I was the only one who thinks Ming sucks.

10 Tips for EoTS

I probably told the first tip (#10) a hundred times to players in EoTS - dude it's not a freakin' WSG!

PvP Outs

You died, you suck, here's why.

2v2 Lock Specs

Turns out SL/SL is still the king.

Guarding the Mage in 5v5

Icelance spammers ftw!

PvP Tunnel Vision Part 1 & Part 2

You know what's a really embarassing moment in WoW? When you're dueling outside Orgrimmar, loose, and then that level 9 boar which you AoE'd kills you. That's gonna happen to you if you don't read these two posts.

> Out of mana

Thou shall be banned

2008-01-12T17:38:00.001+01:00

We can all agree the afk reporting feature in 2.2 patch didn't help much - in the first few days after the patch hit everyone was eager to report people and it did help a bit. If nothing else, I felt like I could finally do something about the afkers except live with it. You can't spend half of the time checking the map and see who's inactive and who is not, and even if you did report them, they just got in combat to remove the debuff and kept on afking. There's been a lot of requests and suggestions on how to further improve it (such as kicking players out of battlegrounds), but up until now Blizzard probably didn't know what to do.
Finally, it seems they got tired themselves and announced the following:

In our continued efforts to support fair gameplay in World of Warcraft and to provide a positive experience for players, we are currently taking steps to ensure fair and enjoyable competition in the Battlegrounds. Starting immediately, we will be issuing warnings and penalties, including suspensions and the removal of Honor points and recently acquired Honor rewards, for non-participation in Battleground games.

So, issuing warnings and penalties eh? That doesn't sound so bad now - it's certainly more than I expected. I guess it will be again very forgiving, your account won't be suspended for doing it a few times, but those who constantly abuse the system will sooner or later be caught.

It's nothing special really, but I've figured this out awhile back. If I'm too lazy to do battlegrounds, I just don't do it no matter how much I need the honor. Or if I'm too lazy to fight, I just defend. Standing still on farm in Arathi Basin doesn't take much effort, and killing some random hunter or rogue from time to time who tries to take the node ain't that difficult.
That way, I can watch TV but still contribute in the game.

I'm glad Blizzard finally did something serious about this issue. I doubt this will really end the leeching in battlegrounds, but it sure will help.
But I wouldn't mind if inactive players got kicked from the BG as well. *hint*

> Thou shall be banned

WoW Humor: Part one

2008-01-10T18:27:00.001+01:00

I'll start with warlocks this time, so you don't flame me immediately.

Do you know who invented warlocks? Someone who couldn't win a single duel with any other class.

My lock is so imba he doesn't even need mana - my pet uses Dark Pact on me.

Now this one's old but who cares.

Admiral Proudmoore landed on Kalimdor with a large force. He was then startled by a voice that called out to him from some nearby bushes.

"Hey Human! One warlock. Two humans!"

Realising this voice belonged to one of the foul orcs, and confident in the superiority of his own race, the Admiral took the orc's challenge. Calling out for two of his best soldiers, he pointed to the bushes.

"You two. Go in there and slay that warlock!"

Obediently the two soldiers rushed into the bushes and out of sight. Then the sound of a loud but all too brief battle erupted. Followed by the death cries of two humans... Then silence...

"Hey human!" the voice grunted again. "1 warlock. 10 humans!"

Growling, the Admiral again took the orcs challenge, and gathered 10 very eager volunteers, all impatient to avenge their two fallen comrades.

"Go in there and destroy that beast!"

Again the men charged into the bushes out of sight. The sounds of battle again erupted, and lasted a little longer this time. But just the same as before it ended with the deathcries of the human soldiers.
Then again there was silence.

"Hey human! 1 warlock! 50 HUMANS!!!"

Furious, the Admiral decided to take no more chances and called upon his 15th battallion, a hundred of his finest troops, and again pointed into the bushes. "CHAAAARRRRRRGGGEEE!!!" he roared at the top of his lungs.

Charging in the army vanished into the dense bushes. Knights on horseback, sorceresses and priests, footmen, even dwarven riflemen and mortar teams made up this mighty force.

The sounds of a massive battle came from within the bushes, the earth shook, trees fell and large parts of the landscape exploded. There were gunshots, clashing of blades, fleshy thuds, and a veritable chorus of death cries. But soon, once again, there was silence.

Then without warning, one of his men came limping out of the bushes, with a frantic look on his face. He was bleeding profusely, an arm had been chopped off, and he looked ready to die. But before passing out, he cried out to the Admiral.

"Sir, sir! Its a trick!! There's 2 of them!!"

Why didn't the undead cross the road with the chicken?

...he didn't have the guts.

What do you call an elf on drugs?

A High Elf.

The druid says to the warrior, "what classes do we need". The warrior says, "about 10 mages, 5 priests, 4 druids, 8 warriors, 3 warlocks and 6 rogues." The druid replies, "Ok I'll go get a shaman".

A dwarf goes into a bar in Stormwind and orders four beers. He starts drinking them, one sip each at a time, and after about a half hour he's finished all four, pays, and leaves.

The next day he returns, doing the same thing. The bartender looks at him funny, but pours the four drinks and serves them. He drinks them the same way, until he finishes all four, pays, and leaves again.

The third day, when the dwarf returns, the barkeep can't take it anymore. "If you drink the beers one at a time, they'll all be cold and won't get flat at the end. Why do you want all four at the same time?"

The dwarf explains: I have a brother in Ironforge, one in Booty Bay, and one who lives on Theramore Isle. We can't get together as much as we want, so at the same time each day we all go to a bar and order a round. We drink 'em all and pretend we're all at a bar together".

The barkeeper nods and serves four beers. Nobody else disturbs the dwarf while he finishes off the four beers.

The next day the dwarf comes into the bar, but only orders three beers. Silence falls. Nobody at the bar can look the poor dwarf in the eye. Finally, the barkeeper walks over to try to console him. "I'm so sorry for your loss. Do you want to talk about it? Tell us what happened to your fourth brother".

The dwarf looks confused for a moment, then bursts out laughing.

"It's not what you think!!! I just quit drinking today!"

You got any jokes of your own? Post a comment or mail me and I'll be sure to post it next time!

> WoW humor: Part 1

Making Gold: Darkmoon Faire

2008-01-04T15:04:00.001+01:00

Wow I didn't know about these buggers!
You can read the entire story on Wowinsider, but here's what it's all about.

Lhara and Professor Thaddeus Paleo are selling gems, motes, herbs, potions and leather for pretty low prices. It's on limited supply like Khorium Power Cores, but these are on a much faster respawn - if Wowhead comments are right, 20ish minute respawn could easily yield about 1000 gold per day, assuming you stand there camping for 5-6 hours.

You can check the official calendar to see when Darkmoon Faire is coming. They are scheduled to appear in Mulgore January 8 - January 14, so be sure to check them out. Good luck!

> Making gold: Darkmoon Faire

Goodies from The Bronze Kettle

2008-01-03T17:31:00.001+01:00

Here's a couple of excellent images from The Bronze Kettle.
Don't forget to check out some previous works, especially these stickers and this wonderful wallpaper.

I'm lovin' the warlock!

> Goodies from The Bronze Kettle

Increasing WoW Performance II: Latency

2008-01-02T14:19:00.001+01:00

Unlike the previous trick with using Windows Media Player, this one worked for me. I was surprised to see my latency dropping from 120-150 to about 50, so read on to find out how.

For this you will need to dig a bit deeper into the registry of your PC, but don't get scared, it's much easier than you may think.

First, go to Start > Run, and type regedit.

A window should pop up.
Find: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\

At this point you can click on Favorites > Add to favorites in the menu and add it so you can quickly browse to it in the future.

Now you need to find your network interface. There are probably more than one listed, so check each one. The one where your IP address is listed is what you're looking for. If you can't find it, just select the one with the most values in the right pane.
Now, right click on the right pane and select New > DWORD value. Name it TcpAckFrequency. Right click on this entry, select Modify, and in Value Data field type "1" (no quotes).

Click OK and go to next step.

Now find: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters

And again, right click somewhere on the right pane, choose New > DWORD value. Name it TCPNoDelay, right click the entry, select Modify and set a value of 1 again.
Click OK and close the Registry Editor.

You're done. Restart your PC and go check your latency!

Disclaimer: don't blame me if you mess up something! Follow the steps and everything should go smooth with no harm done. If you have any problems, you're welcome to post a comment and I'll try to help. Thanks to elitistjerks for this.
This worked for me like a charm on Windows Xp. If you're using Vista, I got no idea if it works or not.

Be sure to tell me if this worked for you!

> Increasing WoW performance II: Latency

The World's Slowest Leveler

2007-12-31T15:19:00.001+01:00

Here's a guy who won't be writing any leveling guides. Ever. Haggis is his name.
He's been playing World of Warcraft since release, and still isn't 70.
He is ATM attempting to ding for one last time, and is liveblogging about it.

As he said, if he won't die from lack of sleep or go into a diabetic coma, he should be able to achieve his goal. I can't imagine what it's like leveling after more than 2 years - took me about 2 months with my first character. I find joy in pwning noobs in battlegrounds, he enjoys doing hammertime for 15 minutes. Can't figure out if he's a wacko or... just casual?

He's 3 bars away from level 70 now, so show him your support by visiting his site, digging it or posting a nice comment.

> The world's slowest leveler

Addons: Proximo

2007-12-26T14:27:00.002+01:00

Updated to Proximo 2!

Proximo is an enemy unit frame specifically designed for arenas. It will show your enemies when you or your other team members mouseover them, so you can see who you're fighting with as soon as the match starts.

The frame will show only when you enter an arena so you don't have to worry about it in instances or whatever.
The size and position is customizable (/proximo for commands; or hold alt and click on the window to move it) so it will fit in any UI.

Proximo can also announce low health, new enemy, player death etc. via party chat or raid warnings. It supports some macros but you won't have to worry about it at first.

Not only is this addon useful, it's also mandatory. Whether you're serious about playing arenas or you just want your 10 games per week, you will get used to Proximo pretty fast.

You can see the full list of features and download it at: curse.com, wowinterface.com, or wowui.incgamers.com. Or get the latest version from Wowace.

Other addons:
Proximo 2, Reslack, Afflicted, Proximo, Advanced Tradeskill Window, Posessions, Doublewide & Lightheaded, Auctioneer

Making Gold: Winter's Veil

2007-12-22T13:23:00.001+01:00

Have you sold any brooms lately? I have to admit it didn't go well as I planned. I sold all flying and swift ground ones (15 of them or so), but didn't have any luck with Magic Brooms. Nobody wanted to buy them so I gave them away for free after a few days of trying. I sold Swift Flying Brooms for 30-40 g a piece so I guess it was worth it in the end.
Don't forget to get rid of the brooms before patch 2.3.2 hits - they will be changed to 14 days realtime duration! Yeah, bastards nerfed them. If nothing else, they will make a great Christmas present for random lowbies in Orgrimmar.

Anyway, back to the topic.

There are 3 recipes which are available only during Winter's Veil, and now's the time to take advantage of it.

Elixir of Frost Power is used in alchemy, and it's quite good for a level 28 elixir. Winter's Might weapon enchant is not great, but some mage twinks might like it. Lastly, Snowmaster 9000 is the only way to get Snowballs till next year's Winter's Veil.

The recipes aren't that hard to get - simply do all the quests and you should easily get at least one. Kaliope has some tips on that!

If you have a profession which can use any of this recipes, learn it just for the sake of it if you want. But just like with brooms, someone will want to buy it eventually, so I suggest you pay a visit to your favorite auctioneer (I like the one on the left in Orgrimmar's AH, how about you?) and buy as many as you can - for a reasonable price of course, which greatly depends on the realm but I'd say less than 40g.

Keep the recipes somewhere safe, and hope there won't be too many people doing the same thing. Trust me, in 2-3 months, you will easily get over 100g per recipe.

P.S. Here's some great tips on making gold with alchemy!

The most obvious way to make money with Alchemy is to transmute Earth to Water, since earth generally goes for 3 to 5 gold and Water goes for 15 to 20 gold. Get your Sporeggar rep up to Revered and start doing this transmute daily. It is the easies 10 to 15 gold you will ever make.

I was actually gonna make a post about it but too late now. And I wouldn't say this is obvious - I still see dozens of tards selling Primal Might transmutes etc. in trade channel for 5 gold.
If you choose transmute mastery, I recommend transmuting either Primal Might or Skyfire Diamonds. And not for someone else's mats and giving them the procs for a measly 5g! You'd have to be insane to do that. Take a couple of hours and farm the mats yourself or just buy it on AH.
If you have elixir or potion mastery, transmuting Primal Earth into Water is, as stated, the easiest 10-15g you will ever make. Each day.

> Making gold: Winter's Veil

WoW Christmas Gifts

2007-12-17T18:03:00.001+01:00

Why not surprise your loved ones this year with some WoW themed gifts? I did a little research on Amazon, and there's quite a few cool stuff you could buy real cheap.

The obvious first - for someone who didn't start with World of Warcraft yet, this Battlechest is quite a money saver. Although less useful, WoW Collectors Edition is a classic. They already have both WoW and TBC? No worries - 60 day prepaid gamecard will do fine.

For those who will spend these holidays unplugged, WoW board game can easily entertain you and your friends. If you're planning to spend a lot of time outside, make sure you're dressed properly! Get the +20 frost resistance zip-up hoodie, or at least this stylish +15 frost resistance beanie.

If you're staying home this year, why not decorate your walls with this 2008 WoW wall calendar. Or if you're looking for something to read, you can check out this Master's guide: it has maps, profession info, stats, quests, strategies... An interesting read in maintenance downtimes. Or would you rather read some WoW comics? If you're not happy with my gold making tips, you could always try this unofficial gold making guide.

I have to mention the Outland map mouse pad! It would fit nicely with my mouse (which is bad btw).

My fellow blogger over at Camp Taurajo might wanna get the Camp Taurajo shirt. Perhaps that will get him to write more often.

Illidan's You were prepared shirt is /lol, but if you wanna be prepared for the next expansion, get the Wrath of the Lich King shirt.

There's also a bunch of class shirts available: warlock, rogue, mage, shaman, warrior, priest, druid, paladin, and last but not least hunter.
Or if you're not particularly proud of your class (loladins lol), get the Alliance crest or Horde crest shirts. Show them what you're made of!

> WoW Christmas gifts

Increase your game performance

2007-12-17T17:04:00.001+01:00

I've tried it myself and it didn't work, but there's a lot of players reporting it does indeed help in some cases. It sounds weird but if your game loads slow, try running Windows Media Player prior to WoW.
It should help with loading time, low FPS issues and even latency problems.

As someone mentioned in the thread, Mac users should get the same effect by running Quicktime.

Let me know if it works!

> Increase your game performance

Farming Netherwing Reputation

2007-12-14T21:51:00.001+01:00

Galoheart really inspired me today - he got from neutral to exalted with Netherwing in only 6 days!
I've tried doing the Netherwing quests some time ago, but found it a bit dull, and Netherwing Ledge is kinda out of the way, unlike Skettis, where I can also often finish daily cooking quest as well.

I'm usually not THAT dedicated about farming, nor I want the netherdrake mount, but as I said - I'm a bit inspired right now and might get started with those quests again. And if (or when) I do, I'll definately remember to look for tips in Galoheart's guide he posted:

At Neutral with Netherwing faction you start off with having to report to Dragonmaw camp on Netherwing ledge which gives you reps from the Quest giver in Netherwing Fields in Shadowmoon Valley. Prerequisite is having 300 Flying skill and Mount.

You can do about 3-4 Quests/Dailies starting from Neutral. One or two the quests are one time quests for reps. If your a Miner/Herbalist/Skinner you get to choose to do One quest that match your skill for gathering for Netherwing.

...

The quicker you can get to Friendly you more daily quests open up. So do too at Honored & at Revered. Eventually you reach up to about 9 Daily quests including some one time quests you get to do at the different levels. There is one quest thats always in Shadowmoon Valley at Scryer or Aldor camp which you always have to remember to check and do easily or you will forget to do at Revered. So you want to get to Friendly-Honored-Revered as fast as possible.

...

When you get to Revered your doing all the dailies you can do. Finding Eggs from Mob kills, Hidden Eggs, Mining & Herbalism (need Skill) or on island or Dragonmaw camp is how you find them.

Be sure to check his post for the full guide, and some nice screenshots!

> Farming Netherwing Reputation

Ming sucks!

2007-12-14T14:02:00.001+01:00

The latest 2.3.2 news surprised me today. I didn't expect a rogue nerf at least till 2.4, but AR/Prep was more ez-mode than SL/SL.

* Ambush: The damage multiplier on this ability has been increased from 250% to 275%.
* Hemorrhage: This ability now correctly does additional damage when its debuff has already been applied.
* Preparation now resets the cooldown of Shadowstep and no longer resets the cooldown of Adrenaline Rush.
* Shadowstep now adds a 3 second, 70% movement speed increase.
* Sinister Calling now also increases the percentage damage bonus of Hemorrhage and Backstab by 2/4/6/8/10%.

If you're a rogue, you can pretty much choose any spec atm and you'll be fine in PvP. That's hardly the case with other classes - some don't even have one decent talent tree.

Anyway, back to the point. I've read Ming's post today and it kinda makes me sick the more I look at it.

Also, a lot of people probably didn't notice this, as a hero of the rogue community, as soon as I saw the 110% hemo nerf, I posted two bug threads on PTR and bug forum

Self-proclaimed hero of the rogue community my ass... It's not the first time he said something like that either. Seriously, it was funny when Athene did it but in Ming's case it's just pathetic. But that's just me. I bet half of Ming's visitors would spec 0/0/61 if he said so.

Rogue needs damage more than anything else and even with AR/prep there are plenty of classes that can eat two AR's and still wreck us 1v1. Rogue's overall success (class as a whole, there will always be special players with special teammates like XOM) is still not top tier in anything other than 3v3.

*cough* roflcraptastic *cough*
Not even warriors can beat you, and they're your counter class (as much as I hate using this term).

We do have the best balanced talent trees with this change, unfortunately the best balanced class tends to be the weakest class as well.

Are you fuckin' kidding me? I thought you said rogues were finally the strongest class? No golden age?

Your Ambush is buffed (hello, anyone noticed?), Shadowstep's tooltip will soon cover half of your screen, and still rogues complain. Not to mention the class got quite a few buffs in 2.3.
To all those 'ima gonna reroll' rogue whiners out there - AR/Prep needed a nerf, face it. Rogues are fine, its a l2p issue.

Hate me, flame me, nerf me, unsubscribe me, /ignore me... I can't help it. I'm probably the only guy in the known universe who hates Ming, but I do. There, I said it.

> Ming sucks!

Making Gold: Imbued Netherweave Recipes

2007-12-12T17:08:00.001+01:00

Time for another making gold post! This one will be short and sweet, since images speak thousand words. Or something like that.

Pattern: Imbued Netherweave Robe and Pattern: Imbued Netherweave Tunic
Where to get it: Arrond, Shadowmoon Valley: 55,68
Price: 6g

What's the catch? You can buy it only if you're Scryer. Arrond sells it in limited supply, but you can find the patterns pretty often, unlike Khorium Power Cores.

You think I'm bullshitting? You can't even imagine how many of these I sold already.
Screenshot or it didn't happen:

You can also try your luck with dozens of other vendor recipes, but for some reason these two seem to sell the best for me.

> Making gold: Imbued Netherweave recipes

Chuck Norris plays a lock

2007-12-08T18:01:00.001+01:00

Yes I know, Chuck Norris jokes are really lame and old. But that doesn't mean it's not funny!
If you ever leveled in Barrens, I'm sure you heard plenty of them, but these are a bit different. Ever since Chuck visited Barrens, people never stop talking about him. I wish they put Chuck Norris in those commercials, and not Jean Claude Van Damme.
This topic really has some gems and made me laugh, so if you're too lazy to read all 8 pages, I'll list some which I found particularly funny.

Chuck Norris tore the Eye from Kilrogg
Arthas rents the frozen throne from Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris shot down the Exodar with a Shadowbolt
Chuck Norris had to spec Grim Reach to get close enough to cast Curse of Recklessness before the mobs run away.
Chuck norris can drain your soul through trade window!
Illidan wasn't prepared for Chuck Norris.
Chuck norris actually found a use for Firestone.
Chuck Norris' life tap uses other peoples health.
Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge were actually created when Chuck Norris first got Rain of Fire.
The last time Chuck Norris received a whisper from an in-game gold advertising site, half of Asia had to be rebuild.
Chuck Norris never cleared Mount Hyjal because the first trash wave refused to spawn.
Chuck Norris' fear actually sticks for the full duration!
Chuck Norris spat on the ground east of Lordaeron and thus created the Plaguelands.
Murlocs use to speak fluent common up until Chuck Norris used Curse of tongues on them.
Chuck Norris's Soul Fire Missed and created Molten Core.
Chuck Norris is the reason warlocks are considered overpowered.
Chuck Norris joined The Seven. 52 days after TBC release they clear all content. If only he hadn't spent 51 days on vacation.
Chuck Norris can also Drain Wife; after that she doesn't want to kiss, have sex or cook.

> Chuck Norris plays a lock

25 Awesome Warlock Tricks

2007-12-04T14:32:00.001+01:00

Warlocks have a lot of tricks, and while they might not always require much skill to play (talking about SL/SL mostly), there's always things which separate skilled players over casual ones.
Perhaps you know all of this already, perhaps you don't. But it's always good to have an open mind and a few uncommon tactics so you can adapt to almost any situation.
I'm like Athene of the warlocks, giving away free tips. Read on to find out what hides in the warlock's trick bag!

1. I'll get this out of the way: use macros. There's plenty of them to be found, and a good place to start is my Useful warlock macros post.

2. I'll get this out of the way also since it's related to one of my previous posts. Get the Felguard Legionnaire. Enslave Demon is not completely useless - you can check this topic to see a list of cool demons which can be enslaved.

3. In PvP, always buff yourself with Detect Invisibility and Unending Breath. It's 2 more magic effects, meaning it might take 1 more priest's dispel or shaman purge to get your Fel Armor off of you. And those pesky Arcane Shot spamming huntards need to spam even more!

4. In PvE, you can break Fear on mobs by casting Curse of Recklesness (CoR) on them - use rank 1 CoR, it won't do much threat nor waste much mana, and the attack power bonus is negligible. When the mob is coming back at you, just throw another curse and he will run in fear again without the need to recast it.

5. If you send your pet to attack a rogue (or druid), even if he stealths the pet will attack him and break his stealth.

6. If you're using Succubus to CC in instances, pull with Searing Pain (or Soul Fire) for max threat. This is especially important for heroic instances: if your succy gets attacked it will probably get one shotted; if the mob goes after you it will give your pet enough time to reseduce the mob.

7. You can keep players in combat in arenas by sending your pet after them - they won't be able to drink. Also, if you didn't know, Star's Tears is the only drink you can use in arenas. Buy a stack, you never know.

8. You can banish druids in Tree of Life.

9. Always have your Felhunter's Paranoia buff on. There's no reason not to, and a lot of invisible reasons why you should.

10. You can summon yourself with Ritual of Summoning. Helps also if you get stuck behind objects in instances (happened to me in Shadow Labs on first boss when he feared).

11. You can Devour paladin's Hammer of Justice. Obvious, but often overlooked.

12. Spend 1 talent point in Shadow Embrace (affliction) if you can - it's one more magic debuff on your target - one more cleanse/dispel.

13. Use your felhunter to dispel Unstable Affliction on you - he won't take damage.

14. Banishing a warlock's pet will get rid of his Soul Link.

15. Get Boar's Spee d.

16. You can cast curses on mages - some of them are retarded (sorry but it's true).

17. Spam Rank 1 Corruption to get that paladin OOM faster! Also spam it when the rogue pops Cloak of Shadows - it might stick on him and break his vanish.

16. Cast Siphon Life on hunter's pet - free healing ftw. Also, you can either cast Curse of Weakness to reduce it's melee damage, or Corruption (rank 1 is fine) for Nightfall procs if you specced.

17. If you have Dark Pact: when buffing up in raids, get your imp out of phase shift - tell your priests and paladins to buff him with spirit/mp5.

18. You can carry 3 healthstones of the same rank, if they are from 3 different warlocks, depending on how many talent points they put into Improved Healthstone. Also, you can make different ranks of healthstones for yourself in arenas, which is useful if the fight lasts a bit. Note: all healthstones share the same cooldown.

19. In arenas, summon Voidwalker first. About 12 seconds before the match starts, start summoning Felhunter/Felguard - spam Sacrifice and you should get the shield after about 5 seconds. If you have talent points in Master Summoner, it's a bit tricky - you can still get the shield, but it's really hard if you have latency above 300. Start casting about 8 seconds before the match then. This way, you should have the shield for the first 25 seconds of the match.

20. If you're low on health, use lower ranks of Life Tap.

21. If you're facing a wipe in instance, Life Tap to low hp and use Hellfire. You will kill yourself, but won't loose any durability.

22. You can cast Curse of Tongue's on mage's Water Elemental. If you're banishing the Elemental, try to Spell Lock the mage first (maybe also Fear if you're sure he won't break it instantly) so you don't get Counterspelled. You can also CoT + Siphon Life + Corruption to kill the pet.

23. If you see a warrior pop Spell Reflect, cast Curse of Recklesness. Congratulations, you're now immune to fear! You can also cast Siphon Life - it will heal basically heal you a bit due to Fel Armor bonus.

24. Hellfire triggers Prayer of Mending - if you're on full health, life tap and use Rank 1 Hellfire.

25. Recast Fel Armor on yourself before using bandages or Cannibalize.

Help me with more tips - that's what comments are for.
Did you know all this, or did I just make a totally useless post? Got any tricks for your own class, or did you find a way to beat warlocks?
What's your tip?

> 25 Awesome Warlock Tricks

10 Most Expensive Items

2007-12-01T14:15:00.001+01:00

10. Twinblade of the Phoenix
Drops from: Kael'thas Sunstrider (TK: The Eye)
Sells for: 18g, 4s, 62c

9. Soul cleaver
Drops from: Teron Gorefiend (Black Temple)
Sells for: 18g 17s 70c

8. Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer
Drops from: Illidan Stormrage (Black Temple)
Sells for: 18g 39s 48c

7. Pillar of Ferocity
Drops from: Anatheron (Hyjal Summit)
Sells for: 18g 43s 68c

6. Torch of the Damned
Drops from: Essence of Anger (Black Temple)
Sells for: 18g 43s 86c

5. Apostle of Argus
Drops from: Archimonde (Hyjal Summit)
Sells for: 18g 60s 39c

4. Cataclysm's Edge
Drops from: Archimonde (Hyjal Summit)
Sells for: 19g 57s 38c

3. Warglaive of Azzinoth (main hand)
Drops from: Illidan Stormrage (Black Temple)
Sells for: 24g 31s 12c

2. Warglaive of Azzinoth (off hand)
Drops from: Illidan Stormrage (Black Temple)
Sells for: 24g 39s 74c

1. Blade of Wizardry
Drops from: everything...
Sells for: 43g 29s 49c

- items listed here can be gained from drop only, not from vendors.
- items bought from vendors which require reputation, like Earthwarden or Stormcaller usually sell for higher amounts and are not listed here.

> 10 most expensive items

Zul'Aman - tanking, looting, wiping

2007-11-26T09:15:00.001+01:00

I said I'll visit Zul'Aman, and so I did. Although I'm not much into raiding, there's some nice items in there, pretty scenery, and I needed some reason to waste those consumables I've been gathering for months.

First of all, I got my Tattered Hexcloth Sack, and since then I'm thinking more and more about getting Primal Mooncloth Bags. 400g for one bag sounds pretty expensive, can't decide whether it's worth it or not.

Anyway, back on topic. The first night we managed to clean everything till Zul'Jin - since most of the people were there for the first time, including me, I think we did pretty good. Oh yeah, I should mention it was a PUG, not a guild run. Many of us didn't knew tactics, but after a couple of wipes we usually figured out what was wrong and successfully downed the boss.
Killing animal bosses (Nalorakk, Akil'zon, Jan'alai and Halazzi) was a cake, but Hex Lord Malacrass caused us some problems. We wiped about 5 times on him, but it was worth it!

We did a couple of tries on Zul'Jin, but we were missing another healer (he needs 4) so we had to call it off. The next day, we succesfully downed him, but it wasn't easy. I won't get into tactics too much, but the fight has 5 phases. He starts in Troll form, and every 20% of his health he switches to other form - Bear, Eagle, Lynx, and Dragonform. Eagle form is in my opinion the hardest - each time casters cast a spell, they get about 1,200 damage. In that phase, healers should use long cast heals (we said no Flash bubbledin!), while melee damage should get his hp to 40% as soon as possible. Also, a bunch of tornadoes spawn on his platform, which will follow you around and knock you away if you get close to it, so you will have to be moving a lot. If nobody dies in phase 3, it's pretty easy after that.

About other bosses' tactics, I'm not impressed. I could probably write an essay on rogue vs. warlock duel, but I can't think of anything that stands out. Sure, each boss has some trick (Halaazi for example one shotted our tank with Saber Lash - cleave-like spell which splits damage with offtank), but nothing spectacular.

I probably will go back there, but to be honest I'm not sure. There's not many items for feral druids there, except Staff of Primal Fury and a couple of other items.
But it's good to get away from daily quests and battlegrounds every once in awhile.

> Zul'Aman - tanking, looting, wiping

Making Gold: Netherweave Cloth

2007-11-22T16:13:00.002+01:00

One of my favorite auction house moments are those when I find items which can be vendored for more then it's buyout price. Jaggal Pearls are one of those items, and so is Netherweave Cloth.

A stack of Netherweave will sell for measly 1.6g to vendor, so don't try to make profit that way. On my realm, it usually sells for 3.5-4.5 gold, but like every other item, the prices tend to rise and fall frequently. I don't find it this cheap everyday, but at least once a week someone puts it for less than 3g and here's how we can use it to our own advantage.
I usually just buy this auctions and resell the cloth in a day or two when the prices are back to normal, but if you have First Aid, you can simply make Heavy Netherweave Bandages; 1 Heavy Netherweave Bandage sells to vendor for 30 silver - 20 Netherweave Cloth is 10 bandages, meaning you can vendor it for 3g.

It won't make you a fortune, but it does feel good to earn a few gold on fools.

> Making gold: Netherweave Cloth

Wowhead Goes Berserk!

2007-11-20T20:03:00.001+01:00

Well not really, there's nothing wrong with Wowhead. It's me gone berserk, because finally I can use item tooltips (example) without breaking my site's layout, or having to link to Thottbot.

The new Powered by Wowhead feature enables you to show item tooltips on mouseover on your site. Someone got more details on it, but it works really simple - just add a line of code to your site's source, and voila, if you ever linked to some item on Wowhead, the tooltips will be there. No need to change any previous posts or links, simple as that.

Bigbearbutt posted another method some time ago, but it refused to work well with my site, and frankly it was too much trouble for me to try and fix it. If you prefer Thottbot over Wowhead, you can check Mania's Arcania - it works pretty much the same way.

> Wowhead goes berserk!

Links

2007-11-17T19:07:00.001+01:00

As you might have noticed, there's a whole lotta links to other blogs on my site. Before today, I had only a handful of them because I didn't want to clutter my site too much, but it's impossible to pick the ones I really really like over those I just like, so I just copied them all from my Google Reader and added it.

There's probably a lot of blogs I forgot to add, so if you know any just post a comment (or email) and I'll check it out! I'm not much of a blogger so I don't have high standards when it comes to other people's writing, but if you make quality posts you have nothing to worry about, I'll gladly link to you.

Also, if I linked to your site, please don't bother saying thanks. Really, there's no need. If you want to thank me, please link back from your site to mine (if you posted a link back, your blog will appear with bold text). That's all I ask. Maybe also add me to your Technorati favorites or Digg, or some other social bookmarking site.

If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to contact me!

> Links

Addons: Advanced Tradeskill Window

2007-11-17T01:39:00.001+01:00

Advanced Trade Skill Window (ATSW) is a replacement for Blizzard's tradeskill window. It provides you with a much better overview of craftable items, and supports a number of useful features.

Although search is implemented in the standard interface now, ATSW has a much more advanced search functionality - you can filter items by level requirement, quality and more. It's much bigger than the standard interface so you can stop wasting time scrolling so much and trying to find a certain recipe.
It also supports production queues so you can go make yourself a cup of coffee or watch Lost. Furthermore, ATSW will show you all the reagents required to make an item, and whether you have them in your bank or on another character. It can even buy items from vendor as you produce them. The shopping list on Auction House does not work well with Auctioneer (at least not for me), but that's hardly an issue.

ATSW supports all professions, including secondary. It's just one of those addons I can't play without anymore. I highly recommend it to everyone!

Download: wowinterface.com or wowui.incgamers.com

Other addons:
Proximo 2,
Reslack,
Afflicted,
Proximo,
Advanced Tradeskill Window,
Posessions,
Doublewide & Lightheaded,
Auctioneer

2.3 Second Impressions

2007-11-15T15:42:00.001+01:00

I finally had some time to check out the new patch myself, so here's some things I noticed.

New cooking daily quest ain't that bad - I can finally get some Golden Fish Sticks without actually having fishing. You wouldn't believe but I actually had a hard time finding Monstrous Kaliri; usually they are the ones trying to find me.

Still didn't get my Tattered Hexcloth Sack nor have I seen Zul'Aman, but I'm getting close.

It seems Primal Nether can no longer be looted unless you have a profession that can use it.

I played a bit with the guild bank, and claimed the first slot for myself. It's great not having to relog now to get bandages or potions.

Battleground preparation time is great. Also, there's always a kind mage now who casts Ritual of Refreshment before the battle begins, so I can easily stack food for the whole day.

I don't think this was in the patch notes either - trinkets now show cooldown in spell description. A+

The number of Marks of Honor we get in mailbox is now also displayed without opening the mail first. Small change but hey, I noticed!

Daily quests for heroic instances have nice money rewards, ~~but I'd rather get a bonus Badge of Justice instead of Ethereum Prison Key, especially since Mechanar is nerfed. My days of farming consortium reputation are long gone.~~ Actually the quest in this image is for non-heroic instance, that's why you dont' get Badge of Justice.
Be careful with the chests in Hellfire Ramparts and Mechanar - supposedly you have to loot them first or you won't get Badge of Justice. Or something like that. Don't worry, it will be fixed in 2.4.

I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it .....

Unfortunately, we don't get 4000 honor points, but 419 ain't such a bad bonus either, plus a bit of cash. Too bad it took me 2 and a half hours to win Arathi Basin. I guess alliance started winning more since noob classes like hunters and rogues got buffed (yes, flame me), and oh boy they got plenty of those.

Hehe's some other posts from the blogosphere which weren't published in time for my yesterday's 2.3 impressions.

Wowinsider reports about Chaotic Skyfire Diamond dropping only for jewelcrafters. I can semi-confirm that: I had a non-jc friend farm it for several hours without a drop, and it dropped for some other guy who was a jewelcrafter within minutes. Also check WI's Zul'Aman preview.

Warlock Therapy needs some therapy. Seems two Azure Whelpings aren't enough so he had to farm more.

Kat got fish tracking! My fishing is still stuck on 229 for months now, maybe it's time to level it up.

For Amava Knows Aggro the patch went pretty smooth, and also likes the hunter deadzone removed, but also raises a good point: the deadzone was part of the challenge of being a hunter. I have to agree on that - whenever I fought a good hunter, it was nearly impossible to get in his deadzone.

White Whisker has some tips for Zul'Aman Bear, Eagle and Lynx bosses.

Someone is worried mostly about double-freezing. I'm not much of an expert when it comes to hunters, but I'd like to point out that you can't fear two targets at the same time, nor sap, nor polymorph them.

Mystic Chicanery ... well, just read it!

Kaestrel's Aerie has the same problems with Auctioneer as me.

Is Kaliope ever doing anything but farming?

Now post a comment on this post or I swear my next 10 posts will be rants and whining about hunters!

> 2.3 second impressions

2.3 Impressions

2007-11-14T17:01:00.001+01:00

World of Raids reports about undocumented changes. I especially like the one about T6 Resto Shaman gear not having token cost.

You can read about 2.3 from a warrior's perspective on Warriorpwns and The Positive Warrior.

Jagoex from Warlock Therapy got Azure Whelping. Grats!

Karthis talks about addon issues and Karazhan.

Frostbolt.com has some Zul'Aman screenshots. Among other things.

Laser Chickens have a right to speak also!

Here's some random thoughts about the patch from Liquid Silver.

> 2.3 impressions

Phat Loot Monday: Tattered Hexcloth Sack

2007-11-12T03:18:00.001+01:00

I couldn't think of any decent post title, so I shamelessly stole Wowinsider's. Sorry folks, I promise not to do it too often. :)

Name: Tattered Hexcloth Sack
What is it: It's a 20 slot bag. Duh!
How to get it: You will get a quest as soon as you enter Zul'Aman, which requires you to get a map from the platform where the first boss is. I hear it's possible to get it without aggroing the boss, but you will have to clear some trash. Since this bag is a quest reward, you won't have to /roll. How cool is that!
Getting rid of it: Don't even think about it. But if you have to know, vendor will give you a measly 5g for it.

You probably already know I have serious problems when it comes to storage, and while this bag won't help much (it's only 2 slots more), it's a great step in the right direction. I only hope we will see more of these bags soon, or at least in Wrath of the Lich King.
I'm not much into raiding, but I'll be visiting Zul'Aman for this one!

> Phat Loot Monday: Tattered Hexcloth Sack

2.3 Auction House Changes

2007-11-11T17:06:00.001+01:00

There are some new categories added to the auction house interface, consumables and trade goods.

You will be able to search consumables for food & drink, flasks, potions, bandages, scrolls, elixirs, and other misc items like various drums made by leatherworkers.

For trade goods, the categories are elemental (essences, primals), cloth, leather, metal and stone (ore, bars and stones like Heavy Stone), enchanting reagents and rods, herbs, engineering reagents & devices, explosives, and meat.

It's an interesting and a welcome change, apart from all those nerfs&buffs we're hearing about all the time.

> 2.3 Auction House changes

Soloing Nagrand Group Quests, Lock Style

2007-11-09T11:08:00.002+01:00

Although rarely used, Enslave Demon is one of the coolest spells warlocks got. There's many demons both in Azeroth and Outlands which you can enslave, but they are usually marginally useful. Other than Felguard Legionnaires, I can think of only two places I've found enslave to be useful - first, in Botanica on those satyr-like demons, and second in (heroic) Blood Furnace - those imps at the start have firebolts which hit for about 3k. Yeah baby! Anyway...

Felguard Legionnaire is a level 67-68 elite, which can be found in forge camps in Nagrand (both Fear and Hate). The mobs have around 31.000 hp and hit for about 800 damage. If you're having problems finding groups to do those Nesingwary or forge camp group quests, look no further! If you're not a warlock, I'd suggest finding one, which shouldn't be too hard. These menacing felguards will be a cake for any warlock to enslave!
Unfortunately, you won't be able to bring these guys to Elemental Plateau to gank alliance/horde, but that doesn't stop you from spreading panic in Halaa, does it.

> Soloing Nagrand group quests, lock style

PTR Changes: Mage & Hunter

2007-11-08T17:03:00.001+01:00

Additional Aimed Shot changes

In patch 2.3, aimed shot will not only reduces healing done to the target by 50% for a ten seconds, but we're also reducing the shot time by 0.5 seconds.

I predicted changes to Aimed Shot in one of my previous posts - it's not yet instant but 0.5 sec cast time reduction is a good start. And it will most likely be further reduced, judging by what Eyonix said.

Hypothermia back to 30 seconds, Ice Block trainable

It's a deliberate change. We initially felt like it was too quick at 30s and decided to test it out at 45s, but after playing with it for a while we felt like it opened mages to focus fire a little too much so we decided to keep it at 30s. It's worth pointing out that making changes like this and later un-doing them is not at all uncommon, it's just most of you generally don't see that process in action since it often happens before the patch even gets to the PTR.

Since I'm here, I'll also make a small pre-emptive strike against the incoming "what about other mage concerns!" replies I'm about to get and say the following.

Two things we'll be making improvements to in the near future (although these aren't likely to make it in on time for 2.3) are having iceblock be trainable (to make sure all mages have it as a tool for pve encounters and to open up other trees as being more viable options for pvp), and to-be-finalized improvements to mana issues in longer fights.

All the mage whiners out there can finally stop now! But seriously, Ice Block is one of the most important abilities that makes a mage what it is in PvP, so I guess the fire talent tree will be a bit more popular now. I rather not speculate what talent will replace Ice Block, but it will probably be nuke-the-hell-out-of-this-warlock type spell.
Can I now get Soul Siphon or Soul Link trainable? Or at least instant Corruption - I have yet to see a warlock without spending 5 talent points there.

> PTR changes: mage & hunter

WoW Population Demographics

2007-11-05T19:05:00.001+01:00

Okoloth always fascinated me with his dedication of pulling interesting info from the WoW Armory.
This time, he analyzed 4.5 million characters, which is ~~half of WoW's population~~ a lot. You can check his site for more detailed statistics, but I was really surprised to see the class breakdown.

It seems the myth about druids being the least played class is finally over - only 7% of players choose shaman as their preferred class. If I had to guess, I'd say hunters are the most played class, but I would be wrong - warriors lead by 14% of total player base. Nerf mortal strike! Nah, just kidding. There's a lot of mages also, 2% more than there are rogues, warlocks and priests. Surprisingly, there aren't many paladins either.

Of course, this data does in no way tell us if a particular class is well balanced or not - the overpowerness (wut?) changes from patch to patch - I rather check www.geekboys.org/arena to see who dominates the endgame, which I plan to write about soon also.

> WoW population demographics

New PTR Build: Ain't getting better

2007-11-03T16:40:00.001+01:00

Mad Alchemist's Potion
It seems this new potion has a 95% chance to proc an additional elixir effect, and it's class dependant - meaning you will get buffs depending on your class, so casters should get Elixir of Draenic Wisdom or similar, and melee classes should get Elixir of Mastery or Major Agility. Good news. But I wonder how will it work with different specs or roles - what exactly will my feral druid get?

Druid

Growl: The chance for this ability to land successfully on its target is now increased by hit rating.
Challenging Roar: The chance for this ability to land successfully on its targets is now increased by hit rating.

I believe spell hit rating was previously increasing the chance for these spells not to be resisted so this is good news. Tanking druids still lack serious hit rating though.

Warlock

Unstable Affliction: The silence from this ability is now subject to diminishing returns.

What can I say... nerf to dual lock teams.

Warrior

Challenging Shout: The chance for this ability to land successfully on its targets is now increased by hit rating.
Taunt: The chance for this ability to land successfully on its target is now increased by hit rating.

Same as for druids, a welcome and needed change. Intimidating Shout, Demoralizing Shout and Piercing Howl are not getting changed though.

Raids & Dungeons

The Mechanar: The Cache of the Legion can now only be looted by players who are present during some portion of a successful attempt of the Gatewatcher Gyro-Kill and Gatewatcher Iron-Hand encounters. In addition, on Heroic difficulty Gatewatcher Gyro-Kill and Gatewatcher Iron-Hand no longer drop Badges of Justice. Instead, the Cache of the Legion contains a Badge of Justice for each player present.

My favorite Badge of Justice farming instance is getting nerfed :((

You can read the full patch notes on worldofraids.com.

Also, I'd like to point out that Ming, considered a very good rogue (and a very nice blogger) thinks Rogues are finally the strongest class in TBC.

I got no idea how I missed this, but Wowinsider is here to point it out. Druids will be able to shift forms without exposing themselves to vulnerable human form, which is in my opinion overpowered (I got a druid, remember). While the change looks very cool and somewhat logical, I believe it is hard enough for any class to catch a druid as it is.
Also from latest patch notes:

PvP Trinkets: Insignia of the Alliance, Insignia of the Horde, Medallion of the Alliance, and Medallion of the Horde now clear the debuff from Judgement of Justice.

So long paladin, you shall not catch my druid anymore! Can this please be nerfed?

> New PTR build: Ain't getting better

Bags, keyrings and more bags

2007-11-02T15:44:00.001+01:00

PvE gear, PvP gear, trinkets, food, quest items, resistance gear, mounts, battleground marks, reagents, soul shards, potions, gems, pets, fishing & cooking stuff, bandages, items from seasonal events, primals, shards, dusts and essences...
Bag space has always bugged me since the day one. I was buying my first bank slot on level 12 or so, and by the time I was 35 I had 6 bag slots in bank. Sure, I manage my items with the help of banker alts but still, I often find myself destroying items I might need in future, or items I simply want to have as a reminder or for some sentimental reasons.

But what about the things I can't vendor or store on alts, things I have to carry around with me because you never know, like quest items or potions.
Warlocks, druids and hunters (and paladins, thanks Nibuca) in my opinion have the biggest problems. Hunters with their ammo pouches, druids with 3 sets of gear (tank, heal, dps), and warlocks like me who can't imagine having less than 30 shards with me at all times. Besides gear, I always have consumables like food and potions, and more than often several types of elixirs. And Archmage Vargoth's staff of course.

I believe it was with the release of The Burning Crusade we got keyrings. Can you honestly say you could live without it? Imagine going back to the bank to get your heroic key and making your party wait for you. Sure, we got a lot of additional keys in TBC with the introduction of heroic instances so the keyring is much more needed than before, but still, Scholomance key, Scarlet key, BRD key - I'm sure there's a few more from the pre-TBC era.

I don't need 5 keyrings, one for consumables, one for gear, or whatever else. But why not add a Consumables bag, or Quest Item bag. Quest items are a bigger issue while leveling, but we carry our consumables all the time, even if we don't use them that often.
I suggest one of the following:

Consumables bag - keeps all your food, potions, elixirs, flasks

Quest bag - I don't mean quest rewards bag; this would be used to keep your boar's intestines, cat's fangs, bird's feathers and similar items required to complete your quests.

Reagent bag - used to keep the reagents required for spells, like Holy Candle or Wild Thornroot. Since reagents usually take 3-4 slots, it's not really necesarry, but I'd take just about anything.

Trinket bag - I'll give my druid as an example: 2 different trinkets for tanking, two for dps, two for healing and 1 for pvp (one dps and Insignia). That's 7 trinkets I have to carry all the time! God forbid I take engineering - all those cool little gadgets and no place to put them. And I got tons of trinkets just sitting in bank which could be excellent in certain situations, or simply fun (Six Demon Bag :> ).

Sure, we got soul shard bags, engineering toolboxes, herb bags and similar which can ease up the space with certain profession items, but still, I sure don't carry a herb bag with me all the time simply because I don't do herbalism 24 hours a day.
From all aforementioned, I'd love to have consumables bag and trinket bags. I believe no player would ever complain about it. I hope we will see some new rings in the expansion, because by then not even guild banks will be enough for me.

> Bags, keyrings and more bags

Addon Profiler: Posessions

2007-11-01T14:50:00.001+01:00

Posessions will keep track of your items and money on all your alts, including worn items, items in your inventory, items in your bank and even items in your mailbox (that you've seen).

So, if you want to see if you have any silk cloth anywhere... you can just do '/poss silk cloth', and Possessions will show, in its window, all items matching 'silk cloth'. Mouseover that, and you'll see, for example, that you have 10 silk cloth in your bank, 50 silk cloth in your mule's inventory, and 5 silk cloth in your mailbox.

With 2 level 70's, several lower level toons and 2 bankers, it's impossible to track where your items are, or even if you still have them. It saves you from a lot of relogging when searching where your primals are, or if you have enough mats for that new enchant. Simply type /poss, not matter what character you're on at that time, and a window will open (pic) where you can search and filter any items across all your toons.

When you first install Posessions, log in with all your characters and open all your bags and mailbox, and that's it - you can start using it. There are no additional scans or hard to remember commands you need to use.
It does it's task more than well, and it will use very little of your memory so you don't have to worry about that.

Download Posessions from Curse.com

Other addons:
Proximo 2,
Reslack,
Afflicted,
Proximo,
Advanced Tradeskill Window,
Posessions,
Doublewide & Lightheaded,
Auctioneer

Shardscore

2007-11-01T14:45:00.001+01:00

While writing about Posessions, I was thinking about how I need some sort of score system to rate the addons.
I don't intend to write about bad addons, still there's often a big difference in a good & useful addon, and those who are just brilliant and you can't live without them.

I introduce to you the Shardscore!
It's basically a simple scale from 1 to 5 explained below, plus one special score for those who even fail at special olympics.

Shardscore: 5 - Perfect

Brilliant, amazing, flawless... Simply the best. This one is a winner.

Shardscore: 4 - Very good

Nobody is perfect, right? Well, almost nobody. This means it's just one step behind.

Shardscore: 3 - Useful

This could use a few tweaks and features.

Shardscore: 2 - Needs more work

The idea is good, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

Shardscore: 1 - Even I could do better

While it still has its uses, this needs a lot of changes and work to perform better.

Shardscore: 0 - Terribad

This is awful. It's so terribly bad it doesn't even deserve a proper word!

> Shardscore

Making Gold: Broooooooms!

2007-10-29T11:30:00.001+01:00

Bornak cleared up an issue with those Hallow's End brooms - it seems they won't dissapear on November 1st as I initially thought.

Just to clear up any confusion, the items with a duration on them won't all vanish on November first, you just won't be able to get any new ones.

What this means, the Duration: 14 days on your brooms means /played time, so the brooms will indeed stay for awhile longer. I plan on selling them in 4-5 months, how about you?

Since the brooms are not bound on pickup, make a level 1 alt, send the brooms to him, and simply don't play with him. Put the items in his bank for safekeeping.
Don't use your regular banker for this, if you even have one. My level 1 Tauren Warrior banker has about 3 days playtime, therefore I created a new one so I get to keep the brooms for long long time. I don't know yet if I will be reselling them or using since they are so darn great!
I'm a bit late with this tip I know, but you still have time to visit SM and snag a few.

> Making gold: Brooms

The Chinese are prepared

2007-10-29T10:26:00.001+01:00

Mmo-champion (again) reports about a chinese guild TheSeven, who managed to clean The Burning Crusade content in 52 days. It might not seem as much of an achievement at first, but it is. TBC was released in China on September 6th, which is almost 8 months (I think) after the rest of the world got it.

It pretty impressive if you take a look at their items: warrior in T4 and Karazhan shield, and a bunch of other guys equipped with T3 (yes, Tier 3!).
While I don't mean to undermine their achievement, there are a few things to note. First of all, guilds like Nihilum didn't know the strategy behind a boss most of the time - I can only imagine how it's like for 25 people to not know what they're supposed to do, much less learn to do it correctly. Also, a lot of boss encounters were nerfed in patches since BC launched.

Still, I'd congratulate any guild that put an end to Illidan. PvE is really not my domain, so I'll probably kill him when Wrath of the Lich King comes out.

> The Chinese Are Prepared

Hunters, rejoice!

2007-10-25T11:02:00.002+02:00

Who do you think will be more overpowered in next patch, rogues or hunters?
Hunter's ranged attacks min range is now 1 yard . Mmo-champion calls it mega major über change. I'm completely and utterly dissapointed - Mortal Strike, Dispel Magic, and now reduced minimum range... Wait - it's not instant? Oh, no worries hunters, wait a day or two it will be.
I can't wait to see what BRK has so say about this!

Update:

It seems hunters won't be able to shoot from 1 yard afterall - supposedly it's a tooltip error.
But I can't help to wonder, why were hunters able to shoot from 1 yard on PTR? Imo, it's easier to say it's a bug then explain to the community why they did such drastic changes and then reverted it. Drain Life didn't get nerfed also - it's just a bugfix after 2.5 years.

Drysc:
There's a tooltip error, it should be "5-35 yards". We want melee and ranged to be kept separate, so that when in melee attack range you should not be able to use a ranged attack. There's some amount of 'give' there, especially in fast paced PvP which can produce some temporary gray area but that's fully known with this change.

Feeding the issue of the tooltip error is a bug currently where you can indeed range attack someone while being meleed, but that's in the process of being resolved as well.

Yes I know, I'm complaining a lot. I love my warlock and I'd hate to abandon it - every class got some love this patch, except locks and shaman. Oh wait, shaman got free spell damage from healing. I won't get the Merciless Gladiator mount, and it will be twice as hard in Season 3 with the newly nerfed lock.

But hey, seems my druid will have something to look forward to.

The Mad Alchemist's Potions "side effect" is actually a random buff from other elixirs. However it won't replace existing elixir buffs if you have one on.

It would be wrong to make an entirely new making gold post about this, because there ain't much to say.
When I first found out about Mad Alchemist's Potion, I thought the side effects would be negative, like on Fel Mana (hunter pot!) or Fel Rejuvenation Potion. It seems I was wrong. Although the buffs you get will be random, so it might not be exactly what you need at the moment, it's still a pretty solid chance to get a useful stat boost which does stack with other elixirs! Gosh I can't wait to try it.
There's not many potions you can make from Ragveil, so people usually don't even bother picking them up, but since this new pot is so cheap to make, expect Ragveil prices to increase. It won't make you a fortune, but you won't regret it either.

> Hunters, rejoice!

Useful Warlock Macros

2007-10-24T18:57:00.001+02:00

For the longest time I didn't even think I need any macros, but after learning more about them I realized they could actually help me. I won't get into /castsequence macros, because they are unnecesarry, and you shouldn't be lazy to press a few extra keys (unless you're a clicker!).
These macros are mostly for PvP, and will help you a lot in arenas and battlegrounds.

Destroying Shaman totems

/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]; [target=Grounding Totem]; [target=Earthbind Totem];

Simply change [target=Totem] if you wish to add more totems to attack. Saves a bunch of time for targeting totems and manually send your pet to attack it. Sure, you could use your wand for totems, but you can't do much else then.

Focus

/focus

This will make your current target focused, and even display an additional unit frame in for that target. You can target another player then, and use the following macro to cast on focused target without deselecting your current target:

/cast [pet:Felhunter,target=focus] Devour Magic
/cast [target=focus] Fear (Rank 6)

You can also easily modify this by yourself, for Banish or Spell Lock.

Use ranged slot

/cast [equipped:Wand] Shoot; Master Spellstone

If you have a wand equipped, it will shoot with it, and if you have a spellstone, it will use it.

Recast Drain Life/Mana

/cast [nochanneling:Drain Life] Drain Life

/cast [nochanneling:Drain Life] Drain Mana

This macro will recast Drain Mana or Drain Life when it finishes.

Easy Devour Magic

/cast Corruption(Rank 8)
/cast [pet:Felhunter, target=yourname]Devour Magic(Rank 6)
/cast [pet:Felhunter]Devour Magic(Rank 6)

This is absolutely brilliant. You can even replace Corruption on your bars with this macro - first, it will cast Corruption on your target, then, if there's any magic effects on you your pet will automatically dispel them, and if there are none, it will Devour a magic effect from your target.

Here's another version which I use for arenas:

/cast Corruption(Rank 8)
/cast [pet:Felhunter, target=teammate]Devour Magic(Rank 6)
/cast [pet:Felhunter, target=yourname]Devour Magic(Rank 6)
/cast [pet:Felhunter]Devour Magic(Rank 6)

Replace teammate and yourname with appropriate names. This will basically do the same as previous macro, but will first try to Devour Magic on your team mate. Excellent for fast dispel of Polymorph, Hammer of Justice, or similar effects from your healer.

You could use the following macro if you don't want any additional spell cast.

/cast [pet=felhunter, target=yourname] Devour Magic(Rank 6)
/cast [pet=felhunter] Devour Magic(Rank 6)

First, it Devours from you, and if there is nothing to devour then it will devour on your current target.

The following macro will Devour Magic on you, and if shift is pressed it will Devour on your current target:

/cast [modifier:shift, pet:Felhunter] Devour Magic; [pet:Felhunter, target=yourname] Devour Magic

Announce summon in raid/party

/script local C; if(GetNumRaidMembers()==0) then C = "PARTY" else C = "RAID" end
SendChatMessage("Summoning %t to << "..GetMinimapZoneText().." >>. Please assist.", C)
/cast Ritual of Summoning

If you're in a raid, it will announce in raid chat, and in party chat if you're in a party.

Use Healthstone

/stopcasting
/use Master Healthstone
/use Major Healthstone

It's my panic button! This macro will use your healthstone even when you're casting a spell - good when that warrior suddenly smacks you to 20% hp. If Master Healthstone is already used, it will use Major. Sure, they share the same cooldown, but my fights often last more than 5 minutes so often enough I use two.

Summoning with Fel Domination

/cast Fel Domination
/stopcasting
/cast Summon Voidwalker (Summon)

Feeling creative?
Learn more about macros:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/macros.html
UI & Macros Forums
Wowwiki Warlock Macros

> Useful Warlock macros

2.3 - More Rogue Buffs

2007-10-23T17:17:00.001+02:00

Mmo-champion brings us the news of the latest changes on public test realms. These are not as bad as last ones, but (surprise!) rogues got a huge buff again!

Cheat Death (Subtlety) chance to trigger increased to 33/66/100% and now also causes the rogue to take 90% less damage for 3 seconds when the effect triggers. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.
Dirty Deeds now also increases damage against enemies below 35% health (previously, reduced energy cost of Cheap Shot and Garrote by 20 for 2 points).

Cheat Death requires 30 points in Subtlety tree (33 for 3/3 CD). Previously, it had a 10/20/30% chance to proc. Shadowstep got buffed, Dirty Deeds got buffed, Deadly Throw got buffed, Blind got buffed, Hemmorhage got buffed... Geez, why the hell didn't I roll a rogue?
The 90% less damage for 3 seconds part sounds like yet another warlock nerf, no? We wouldn't want a DoT (or anything for that matter) to finish up the precious rogue, would we.

But of course, this site is more about warlocks then rogues, I must not miss this huge buff we got again:

Soul Siphon (Affliction): If a Warlock already has a particular spell cast on a target, reapplying before its duration ends will no longer grant an additional bonus.

Oh wait, it's not a buff... It's a nerf! You can call it a bugfix just like Drain Life/Siphon Life being affected by Mortal Strike and similar effects - but it's still a nerf.

But why, why buff rogues again? After reading some posts on World of Ming lately, I'm sure those guys would disagree with me, but come on. Blizz killed lock+healer combo; when top teams will consist of rogue+healer, I wonder if Rogues will get nerfed. This is what I want Rogue talent trees to look like!

There's more changes, mostly about professions and interface, you can read full notes at mmo-champion.

> 2.3 - More rogue buffs

Hallow's End: Things you should know

2007-10-19T10:37:00.001+02:00

I couldn't wait to go kill the Headless Horseman, after I saw his loot a couple of weeks ago. Unlike Brewfest and most of the seasonal events, this one will give you a pretty good chance to get some great heroic-quality epic rings, plus flying brooms which are way more cool than the Brewfest Ram!
How can you deny my warlock of that broom? In the words of Uther: have I somehow wrong you in life? (something like that at least). Ok, on a serious note, although the broom's description ingame says "only good for one ride", you can mount more than once. But still, the broom only lasts for 14 days, meaning it won't be permanent like the ram. Why can't locks get a broom class mount - we could also use it to clean the pile of bodies we leave behind.

The Headless Horseman, once a knight of the Silver Hand and hero among his fellow paladins, is cursed. Driven insane within the Scarlet Monastery, he believes that he is alive and we are dead. Now, his fervor no longer serves the Light. With the coming of Hallow's End, he spreads gloom and fire across the villages of Azeroth.

The Headless Horseman is a boss in Scarlet Monastery - Graveyard wing. He can be summoned by interacting with the pumpkin shrine in Forlorn Cloister. The fight is very easy, you can check Wowwiki for details (sounds more complicated there than it is). The quest you receive counts towards you daily quest limit, so make sure you can take it. Only one person in the group needs to start the summon, and only that person will have the quest count and he won't be able to resummon him till daily quest reset. However, other 4 people in your group can also summon the boss - simply reset the instance. Therefore, you can kill him 5 times a day, which gives more than enough chances to get those rings. If you find another group who can also summon him, you can even kill him more.
I haven't had a chance to check if the items he drops can be disenchanted or not, but my guess is no - too bad.

Other than The Headless Horseman, there ain't much to do, except put out some fires near Brill, Goldshire and similar 'starting' towns, and trick or treat the innkeepers each hour - another easy way to get free food, and some cool disguises. Pumpkin-headed tauren is one of the funniest things I've seen in this game.

You can read more about Hallow's End here.

> Hallow's End: things you should know

Making Gold: Khorium Power Core

2007-10-18T02:06:00.001+02:00

The guy you see on the picture here is a goblin named Qiff, and while they are known to be all greedy and stuff, this one's different. In fact, besides repairing your items, this guy will help you make gold by selling you the widely used engineering reagent (Wowhead says 20 recipes), Khorium Power Core, for almost nothing. Although rare indeed, I've bought a few Khorium Power Cores from him for 4gold and 80s, and oh boy it felt good to resell them later on for 40-50g. Yes, these babies cost a whole lot more than what he sells it for, since it requires 1 Primal Fire and 6 Khorium Ore to make one.
But the trick is, Khorium Power Cores are sold in a limited supply - very limited to be precise. I don't recommend farming the npc for these, since your time can be much better spent. But the next time you're in Area 52 (he's at 32,66), check him out - you could be 50g closer to your epic flying mount.

And while we're still in Netherstorm, there's one other guy you should pay a visit also, Dealer Najeeb. He's located in Stormspire, 45,36. He won't be as profitable as Qiff is, but you have a pretty good chance to snag a few motes off him. He sells all 7 different motes, for 16 silver a pop. It may not seem like much, but suppose you grab 3 motes of air for 48 silver - you can resell them for 6-8 gold. There's no better gold than free gold!
Also, he sells Hardened Adamantite Tubes for 12g, resellable on auction house for 30g each. Both the motes and Hardened Adamantite Tubes are in limited supply, so don't expect to get them each time you check him.
But it's worth a trip, don't you think?

> Making gold: Khorium Power Core

Addon Profiler: DoubleWide & LightHeaded

2007-10-15T08:39:00.001+02:00

This will save you some money if you plan on buying one of those World of Warcraft leveling guides.
These addons are so simple, yet so brilliant and useful - after a day of questing, you won't look back ever again.

LightHeaded

When you click on a quest name in your quest log, LightHeaded will show you the data it has on the quest, like NPC who starts or ends it, the amount of experience it gives, required level etc. Also, it will show comments posted on Wowhead.com, where you can often find useful guides, and even more often - coordinates. Usually the comments are "I soloed it at level xx class" (who cares, really?), but someone also posted coordinates for almost every quest. It saves a huge amount of time for me, since there is no longer a need for alt+tab and checking Wowhead, or whatever your favorite wow database site is.
I've found out about this addon when I started leveling my druid 35+, and I have to admit it's really been a breeze, I got from 35 to 70 in a couple of weeks.

DoubleWide

DoubleWide is even more simple than LightHeaded, it will only split your normal quest log into two separate parts - left one will display the list of quests, and description and quest text are in another window to the right. It's much more pleasant to browse through your quests and find what you're looking for.

I wish I had these addons when I started leveling my first character. I have to say, as much as I hate questing, I actually enjoyed doing them with these two babies!

Download LightHeaded from wowinterface.com
Download DoubleWide from wowinterface.com

Other addons:
Proximo 2,
Reslack,
Afflicted,
Proximo,
Advanced Tradeskill Window,
Posessions,
Doublewide & Lightheaded,
Auctioneer

2.3 - Farming Badges of Justice, again

2007-10-12T20:36:00.001+02:00

Ysira from Kargath posted these new item screenshots on Test Realm forums. They can be obtained with Badge of Justice, currently a drop from heroic instances. In patch 2.3, badges will drop also from Karazhan bosses, as well as Zul'Aman, and you will even be able to get some from the new daily quests for instances.

Trinkets, neck, off hand and wand - screenshot
I especially like the wand - it will be much better then my Wand of the Netherwing. Spell damage+stamina gem , or just stamina will fit perfectly in the blue socket.

Cloth items & Back - screenshot
Excellent tanking cloak; other cloaks will probably be used widely for PvP, since they have resilience. Melee cloak has armor penetration on it - more rogue/warrior buffs, just what my warlocks needs.

Leather items - screenshot
All I can say is OMG - I know my druid will love some of this stuff!

Mail items - screenshot
Enhancement shamans will be particularly happy about these.

Plate items - screenshot
Cool, tankadins and retnubs finally get some nice items.

Librams, idols, totems - screenshot
Oh boy... 20 badges for this babies is nothing! Feral druids (like me :p) will be pleased - there's a new idol which has a proc on mangle to increase your agility by 65 for 10 second.

So this is it - I don't believe any class or spec left behind, there's a bit for everyone. I'm a bit tired of farming heroic instances for badges, but with the addition of daily quests it might be faster.

> 2.3 - Farming Badges of Justice, again

Making Gold: Easy Herbs and Primal Life

2007-10-12T01:41:00.001+02:00

Talonsworn Forest Ragers are level 71-72 elite mobs located in Skettis in Terokkar Forest. There are 4 of them roaming around, with approximately 10 minute respawn timer.
Although they often drop green and grey items which can be vendored nicely, the main reason why I mention them is because they can be 'skinned' for herbs . They also drop a fair amount of Mote of Life, which usually goes for 12-14g on my realm (you might want to keep Primal Life if you need any +healing enchants).

They have 29.500 hit points if my MobInfo is correct, and no special abilities except Thunder Clap, which reduces your melee attack speed. Seems high at first, but those numbers are not high these days. Their melee attacks are pretty strong - about 900 damage on cloth; I farm them on my druid and with Demoralizing Roar up, they hit me for less than 400. A few weeks ago, I could barely solo them, but now it's pretty easy, sometimes I don't even have to pop out of bear form and heal, if I get lucky on crits, and they don't. These mobs can be feared and stunned - only class that might have a problem are balance druids or elemental shamans (from the top of my head), since they are immune to nature damage.

Let's take a look at their (herb) loot table.
2-5 Mote of Life 100%
2-8 Dreaming Glory 48%
2-8 Felweed 48%
2-8 Ancient Lichen 26%
2-8 Mana Thistle 26%
2-8 Terocone 26%
1-2 Black Lotus (yes, Black Lotus) 3%

To simplify these numbers, the loot usually looks like the one pictured above. You can see more loot pics here. You get the point by now - each kill should give you a minimum of 6 gold. It takes me a bit more than 3 minutes to kill one of these guys alone.
You don't have herbalism but still want easy gold? No worries, simply group with someone who can herb these mobs and share the profits; let him have the herbs, and you take motes. You get the short end of the stick, but it's still worth it. My favorite setup would be feral druid and shadow priest - mobs will drop like flyes, and no healing will be required besides Improved Leader of the Pact and Vampiric Embrace. Don't worry about respawns, as soon as you're done with all 4, the first should already respawn. Here's the map of their locations if you missed the link above.

And now the obvious question - how much gold can you really make from this? Honestly, I can't say about you - but I do know how much I earn. Primals and herbs are roughly 120g per hour, but being an alchemist myself (elixir spec), there's even more profit since I sell elixirs and flasks later on. So I'd say about 150g per hour. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't nerf these mobs already.
Is it worth it? You tell me.

> Making gold: Easy herbs & primal life

Warlock Raid Consumables

2007-10-08T16:19:00.001+02:00

It seems some people have joined the cause after Big Bear Butt's idea about having a list of raid consumables on guild websites, so I thought what the heck, I'll make a list for warlocks.
Although my list will be much more simple since warlocks won't be healing or tanking, still there are certain buffs that will benefit you more than the other. Don't use shadow priest consumables, ok?

Alchemy

Flasks:

Flask of Pure Death - Increases spell damage caused by Shadow, Fire and Frost spells by up to 80 for 120 min. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Cost: 30-40g per flask

Flask of Mighty Restoration - Increases mana regeneration by 25 mana per 5 seconds for 120 min. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Cost: 30g

Flask of Pure Death... even the name suggests it's the best flask out there. Mighty Restoration is merely an alternative.

Elixirs (guardian):

Elixir of Major Fortitude - Increases maximum health by 250 and restores 10 health every 5 seconds for 60 min.
Cost: 2g per elixir.

Elixir of Major Mageblood - Regenerate 16 mana per 5 sec for 60 min.
Cost: 5g per elixir.

I'd prefer Major Fortitude, since it doesn't cost so much and more health and hp/5 means more Life taps.

Elixirs (battle):

Elixir of Major Shadow Power - Increases shadow spell damage by up to 55 for 60 min.
Cost: 4-5g per elixir

Elixir of Major Fire Power - Increases fire spell damage by up to 55 for 60 min.
Cost: 10-12g per elixir

Adept's Elixir - Increases spell damage and healing by up to 24 and spell critical strike rating by 24 for 60 min.
Cost: 3g per elixir

Major Shadow Power is the best here, however if you're a fire lock (and you shouldn't be, especially if you're raiding) you might want to use Elixir of Major Fire Power. Adept's Elixir is quite good also, but use it only if you find yourself unable to get Elixirs of Major Shadow Power.

Potions:

Super Healing Potion - Restores 1500 to 2500 health.
Cost: 2-3g

Super Mana Potion - Restores 1800 to 3000 mana.

If you have talent points in Improved Life Tap, Super Healing Potions should be better than Mana Potions. But you can save a bit of money and don't use potions at all - use Life Tap, Siphon Life and Drain Life.
You can also get 2 potions a day by doing daily quest in Skettis. And don't forget - if you have too many marks from battlegrounds, you can exchange them for potions also (two marks for one potion) in Hall of Legends of Hall of Champions. They won't restore as much health or mana as Super pots but are pretty cheap.

Cooking

Blackened Basilisk - Restores 7500 health over 30 sec. Must remain seated while eating. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 23 Spell Damage and 20 Spirit for 30 min.

Poached Bluefish - Restores 7500 health over 30 seconds. Must remain seated while eating. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 23 Spell Damage and 20 Spirit for 30 minutes.

Crunchy Serpent - Restores 7500 health over 30 seconds. Must remain seated while eating. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 23 Spell Damage and 20 Spirit for 30 minutes.

Blackened Sporefish - Restores 4320 health over 30 seconds. Must remain seated while eating. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 20 Stamina and 8 Mana every 5 seconds for 30 minutes.

Blackened Basilisk is very easy to get (basilisk in Terokkar Forest have a good drop); Crunchy Serpent is a bit harder since mobs are higher level and more spread around. For Poached Bluefish and Blackened Sporefish you will need fishing. I recommend Blackened Basilisk over Sporefish, since we don't need mp5 as much as spell damage.

Enchanting

Superior Wizard Oil - While applied to target weapon it increases spell damage by up to 42. Lasts for 30 minutes.
Cost: 10g for 5 charges.

Superior Mana Oil - While applied to target weapon it restores 14 mana to the caster every 5 seconds. Lasts for 30 minutes.
Cost: 12g for 5 charges

42 spell damage is much better than 14 mp/5 for a warlock. These temporary enchants will stack with permanent enchants (major spellpower or similar), so there is no reason why not to use them. Also, they won't dissapear after you die, although 30 minutes might not be enough for two boss attempts.

So there you have it!
If you buff yourself with spell damage consumables mentioned here, you will get an extra 145 spell damage. You will spend around 100g for a few hours of raiding, but if you finally out-dps that mage it will be worth it, right?

If you got something I didn't mention here, be sure to let me know.

> Warlock Raid Consumables

Making Gold: Jaggal Pearl

2007-10-06T02:04:00.001+02:00

I've inflated prices on Jaggal Pearls on my realm, usually they cost 2-3 gold now, but as always, there are ignorant players who don't care or know about this and sell it much cheaper. Before I figured this one out, these pearls used to cost 15-30 silver a piece.
So what's the catch?
Jaggal pearls aren't used by many recipes, so the price is pretty low. Even Wowhead shows 15s buyout price. These pearls can be found in Jaggal Clams, which you will get more than enough if you run Steamvaults twice to exalted as I did. Too bad I didn't know this from the beginning. Still, if you don't run instances, you will find more then enough of these pearls on your Auction House. In patch 2.10, some jewelcrafting recipes were introduced which require these pearls, and one of them is Purified Jaggal Pearl, it's a +7 healing & +3 spirit gem. A vendor will give you 10 silver for one pearl, however when cut into Purified you can sell it to vendor for 1g. Cutting it will also require one Purified Draenic Water, which you can get from almost any food&drink vendor. I like to buy it from Scryer Innkeeper but it's totally up to you :). It costs 3 silver 20 copper.
So, 3 silver 20 copper for water, 15s for pearl - let's say that's 20 silver for an item you can vendor for 1g as many times as you want. Being a jewelcrafter myself, I have more profits since I don't pay myself any fee, but get 20 of these, find a jewelcrafter, give him 5g for cutting 20 pearls, and you still profit 11g if my math is correct. Do this once per day, and it will add up. If you want, you can even sell Purified jaggal pearls on AH for 2-3 gold for even more profits, depending on your realm's economy. Personally, I don't like to sell these gems on AH due to their high deposit costs.

If you know any items which can be sold like this, let me know! My email is in my profile.

> Making gold: Jaggal pearls

Warlock Nerfs

2007-10-03T17:49:00.001+02:00

I've been browsing the forums a few days ago and noticed this topic, listing all the changes affecting Warlocks. I've checked old patch notes myself and ever found a few missing, so I decided to update this list.

Patch 1.1

Howl of Terror: Increased the chance of breaking early.
Fear: Increased the chance of breaking early.

Patch 1.02

Warlocks can no longer kill players in duels. (not really a nerf, just a bugfix - but sounds funny)
Fear: Players now have an increasing chance to break free of the effect, such that it is unlikely the effect will last more than 15 seconds.

Patch 1.03

Fear - Mana cost changed to a percentage of base, which results in an increase in cost.

Patch 1.04

Seduction (Succubus) - Is now considered a Fear effect for purposes of diminishing returns.

Patch 1.5.0

War Stomp (Doomguard) - Now has a maximum of five targets.
Warriors: Deathwish - Is now usable while under a Fear effect, and will also remove an existing Fear effect.

Patch 1.7.0

Inferno - The stun effect can now be resisted.
Druids: Druids should now be able to shapeshift back into caster form while Feared.

Patch 1.0.8

Soul Link - Percentage of damage split with pet has been reduced (50% to 20%)
Improved Drain Mana - Damage caused by this talent will now cause 150% damage instead of 200% damage, which is now consistent with other damage spells.
Pets no longer break off attacks when their target is affected by Warlock Fear.

Patch 1.0.9

Hellfire - Victims of Hellfire are now able to resist properly. Warlocks continue (as designed) to be unable to resist their own damage.
Curse of Shadow and Curse of the Elements - These curses can no longer cause resistance to become negative.

Patch 1.10

Death Coil - The horrify component no longer affects undead creatures (they've seen it all before.)

Patch 1.11

Soul Link: If your pet is banished, Soul Link will stop functioning until Banish wears off. In addition, Soul Link's tooltip has been clarified to indicate it only works with your imp, voidwalker, succubus, or felhunter.
Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on player targets as on non-player targets.

Patch 1.12

Howl of Terror: This spell now uses the same resistance checks as the Warlock spell Fear.

Patch 2.0.10

Demonic Tactics now grants increased critical strike chance to you and your demon pet, instead of increased damage. (affliction nerf)

Patch 2.0.12

Melee damage of "Felguard" has been reduced (about 40%)
The bonus that the spells "Corruption" and "Curse of Agony" receive from bonus spell damage effects has been decreased by approximately 10%.
Soul Fire: Bomus damage reduction from 171.4% -> 115%
Soul Link: The damage mitigation component has been reduced. (30% -> 20% mitigation)
Imp Firebolt bonus damage reduced by 50%
The talent Improved Firebolt changed from 1 second max reduction to 0.5 sec.

Patch 2.1.0 22

Chance to break crowd control from damage: The increased chance for a spell to break from taking a critical strike has been removed. Instead, all targets over level 60 have a slightly larger chance to break out of crowd-controlling effects when they take damage. (Affliction (and Demo) nerf) - In addition, fear and seduce both have "heartbeat" resists and can break at any time, whether damage has been applied or not.
In PvP, all CC's have a maximum time of 12 seconds.

Patch 2.1.3

Curse of the Elements and Curse of Shadow now have a duration of 2 minutes when used on PvP targets.
Curse of Tongues now has a 12 second duration when used on PvP targets.
Death Coil is now is now subject to diminishing returns in the Horror category. Currently, only Death Coil is in this category.
Soulstones: Soulstones can no longer be used on targets not in your party or raid. In addition, the soulstone buff will now be removed if the target or caster leaves the party or raid.
Spell Lock (Felhunter) duration reduced to 5 seconds (rank 1) and 6 seconds (rank 2), and cooldown reduced to 24 seconds.

Patch 2.2.0

Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
Resilience Rating: The reduction to the percent chance to get a critical strike now also reduces the damage dealt by damage over time effects by the same percentage.

Upcoming changes:

Patch 2.3.0

Mortal Strike and other healing reduction effects (like Wound Poison) will affect Drain Life (and probably Siphon Life).
Fear Ward will now be available to all Priests at level 20.
Hunters are getting a debuff similar to Mortal Strike

Other classes:
Rogue:

poisons will last for one hour now, increased from 30 minutes.
the speed at which Deadly Throw travels is being increased significantly, so it will reach the target much faster, and the snare duration is being increased by 1 second.
Shadowstep can now be used at any time, not only while stealthed. In addition, after use of Shadowstep threat caused by the next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab will be reduced by 50%. The cooldown will however be increased to 40 seconds.
Also on the Subtlety front is a change to Dirty Deeds so that it will also be increasing damage of special attacks by 10/20% against targets that are below 35% health.
We're also taking a look at bumping up Hemorrhage a bit, but no details yet on what that may be.
Fleet Footed will now be a 15% speed increase instead of 8%
In 2.3 Blind will no longer require a reagent. It will also be changed to a physical attack, will share the same diminish category as Cyclone, and diminish in PvE as well as PvP. (basically, Blind can no longer be dispelled)

Hunter:

Arcane Shot (ranks 6+) will dispel 1 magic effect in addition to the normal damage.

Warlock buffs in 2.3:

There is a change for Ritual of Souls which will significantly reduce the time to cast and complete it.
Banish may no longer be cast on targets tapped by other players
That's it!

Now, I'm not saying other classes weren't nerfed over time - they were, some even more than warlocks. But don't you dare saying how locks never get nerfed! I'm pretty sure I even missed some nerfs while looking at the patch notes, for example Insignia of the Alliance/Horde was changed a few patches back, which gave warriors and rogues another way to remove fear effects, even Death Coil. There's also dozens of undocumented changes.

I admit it, Warlocks are very strong in PvP, even overpowered vs. some classes/setups. But Rogues and Warriors don't have much problems killing Warlocks now, so they are the last ones who need buffs. Every single class is getting buffs except Warlocks, and it's been going on for the last few patches.
Shadowpriest/Lock combo was too strong in 2v2 arenas, so they got nerfed by resilience in patch 2.2. Now, locks are considered generally overpowered, especially SL/SL specs (siphon life/soul link), but is that really the case? What option do I have when fighting melee classes other than DoT + Drain Life spam? Casting Shadow Bolt with 0% pushback resist? It literally takes ages, and in the end it will get Kicked or Pummeled.
You're saying Death Coil is imbalanced - what about Cloak of Shadows; you're complaining about paladin's bubble which can now even be dispelled.

Let's see, I play arenas with a Holy paladin, +1700 bonus healing. We enter the arena, and for the sake of argument, our opponents are Holy paladin and MS (of course) warrior. My usuall routine is Curse of Tongues on pala, and damaging DoTs on warrior. I need 6-7 seconds for that, maybe more. Casting Fear on pala, get Pummeled. Cast fear again, pala dispells with trinket. All my DoTs are getting cleansed in the process. Only damage I did was with Curse of Agony on warrior. Meanwhile, my teammate is struggling to heal me with Mortal Strike debuff on me, wasting precious mana while the opposing team's paladin can pretty much go AFK. What options do I have besides Drain Life on warrior or Drain Mana on paladin? Warrior just keeps smashing me with his sword without breaking a sweat, while me and my pala try to keep me alive, and while I try doing some damage.
It's even worse vs. rogues: cheap shot, kidney shot, gouge, blind... I can't even Drain Life properly while getting all the interrupts, my teammate can't heal while being CC'ed for half of the fight. Rogue has much more interrupts, while a paladin has one bubble and one Insignia. After I place some DoTs on the rogue, he simply uses Cloak of Shadows and removes them all. If he's close do dying, he can even Vanish and go bandage somewhere.

Let's snap back to dueling a rogue for a moment. You think Fear is annoying - how about rogue's stuns/CC? Duel starts, Cheap Shot, Backstab, Backstab, Kidney Shot... I use my Insignia, run away a bit, get Crippling Poison, try casting Fear - Kick, cast Fear again, he uses Insignia. If there's some distance between us and I start casting some spell, I won't do much against his Deadly Throw and PvP/Arena gloves equip bonus (spell interrupt and 3 sec silence) unless I fakecast - even if I do, my movement speed is still reduced and I won't get far. Oh wait I have Death Coil, lets cast it. Oh snap, he used CLoS. So much about my imba Coil. Since I used all my cooldowns so far, Drain Life is the only thing keeping me alive while he's feared and my DoTs tick. That is, if I'm not already dead. If I run out of mana and have to Life Tap, I'm almost doing him a favor. Don't forget, he still didn't use Blind or Gouge.
Fighting a warrior is easy - cast Siphon Life, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Immolate, and hope your Drain Life can keep you alive while DoT's do some damage. Don't bother using Fear, warriors are almost Fear immune with all the abilities available to them. Even if you do Fear, it won't last long. Coil is pretty much the only thing that can save you; unless it gets reflected - watch out!

There was once this arena match, where I died, along with shaman from the opposing team. My pala had about 3k mana, while the other team's mage was out. He kept polymorphing my teammate and ran away from him for 4 minutes, till his mana regenerated and his cooldowns were gone (evocation, water elemental). He even bandaged from 2k hp to full. Of course, the mage won. Balance?

I'm not angry because warlocks are getting nerfed (ok I am a bit but that is not the point) - I'm frustrated because I will be running away from every noob or halfskilled rogue or warrior I bump into in battlegrounds because soon I will have no chance of defeating them, even if they have worse items than me or no skill. I'm mad because I feel like I wasted all these months getting arena points and honor to buy some good items, and now when I have 11.7k hp and 360 resilience - decent PvP gear - I can finally beat the crap out of someone. Until 2.3 comes. You will see me picking up armor scraps in Alterac Valley, killing rams and do other PvE stuff, because I'll be too afraid to run into a warrior or a rogue (or even a hunter, if they get Mortal Strike).
Time to get honor on my druid I guess.

> Warlock Nerfs

Addon Profiler: Auctioneer

2007-10-01T00:22:00.001+02:00

Auctioneer is an addon that allows you to view information about an item that may be useful in helping you determine what it's worth.

Straight out of the box, Auctioneer knows much about many items in the game, and will tell you many additional things about the item in the tooltip:

item cost when buying/selling to vendor
how many of the item can be stacked
what professions or quests need the item

It can be difficult to select the correct pricing points for your item at the auction house. Sometimes the prices and value of your items can be different from vendor price due to many factors, the value of items that can be made from your item, the use of a particular item in a quest, the suitability of a particular weapon or armor to specific classes, and the disenchantability of an item to enchanters.

You can use the Auctioneer's Scan Auction feature to record how much items are being priced at on your realm's Auction House (AH), so the next time you mouse over them in your inventory, it will show the price of the item on Auction. For the first couple of weeks try to scan the AH once per day, after that once or twice per week will be enough - by then Auctioneer should have a good look at your realm's economy. Scanning process takes usually from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the number of auctions listed at that time, so it's a good time to go make yourself a cup of coffee.

If auctioneer has enough data, when you try to put an auction up for sale, it will attempt to provide you with intelligent pricing points based upon the market data it has accumulated through scanning.
When you drag your item from your inventory window into the Create Auction item slot (or use Alt+click on item), Auctioneer will set a minimum price, a buyout price and display relevant data about it's decision making process underneath in the market analysis pane, as well as telling you how it arrived at it's prices.

Auctioneer also comes with more useful features, such as Enchantrix.
Enchantrix will show you what a particular item will disenchant into, so you can easily see whether the particular item is more worth disenchanting or selling to a vendor. Also, people often put green, and even blue items on AH for a lot less than the shard is worth. You can make a nice profit just by buying those items and reselling shards (or dust or essences).
For example, I often find Heavy Clefthoof Boots for 10-12g bid. Since there aren't many druid tanks out there, the demand is not very high so the prices for this item are really low. The mentioned boots will disenchant into Large Prismatic Shard, which I can sell for 15-18g. Imbued Netherweave items also tend to be cheap, especially chest (see screenshot). Almost all rare (blue) items level 65 and above will disenchant into Large Prismatic Shards. Although rare, there are exceptions, such as Dreamer's Shoulderpads, so make sure you know what you're buying. I learned it the hard way.

Auctioneer has more features which I haven't covered here, you can read more about it on auctioneeraddon.com. You will get addicted to the addon right after your first scan of the AH and never look back.

I plan to write more about making gold in WoW, and Auctioneer plays a big part in most of my methods, mostly because it saves me a bunch of time. Searching Wowhead for item prices is history, Auctioneer is the tool I can't live without anymore.
So the next time you're jumping around in Orgrimmar not knowing what to do, check the Auction House - scan it, search for some underpriced items, make money. There's gold to be made, and you got the right tool!

Download Auctioneer @ auctioneeraddon.com

Other addons:
Proximo 2,
Reslack,
Afflicted,
Proximo,
Advanced Tradeskill Window,
Posessions,
Doublewide & Lightheaded,
Auctioneer

Level 29 Enhancement Shaman Twink Guide

2007-09-30T01:09:00.002+02:00

Most people tend to pick rogues as their preferred twink class. Noob class. So are hunters.
When I started playing my shaman, I didn't think about twinking him, however over time I realized how incredibly powerful they are at lower levels, especially 29 or 39 brackets.
Of course, don't expect to one shot mages or warlocks like rogues do, but do expect much more survivability and options.

You need level 40 to wear mail armor, so that is obviously not an option here. You will want as many leather items as possible, due to higher armor values, and stats that suit you. I prefer agility over strength, but it's up to you. I don't slack on intellect either - shocks and totems play an important role to beating any class you face, and healing yourself (or sometimes others) is usefull as well.
I'll be talking here about the best or second best items possible; some are gained from quests, others from instances, and some with honor points. It will take some time to get the honor required for certain items, but you will be doing battlegrounds anyway.

Head:
Enduring Cap
Leather
Stats: +16 intellect, +7 spirit; 88 armor
How to get it: don't bother faming it, it's a BOE (bind on equip) world drop so auction house is your best friend here. It will cost anywhere between 20g - 100g, depending on your realm's economy and demand.
Enchant: 100 HP (Libram of Constitution), 10-20g on auction house + you have to do a few higher level quests to get it. You can't enchant other people's items with this so try not to make your head soulbound before you enchant it.
Alternative: there are plenty of green items with +agility and/or +stamina, but I prefer this hat due to its high +intellect bonus.

Neck
River Pride Choker
Stats: +4 strength, +9 stamina
How to get it: another world drop, meaning you will have to visit the auction house again, and pay somewhere between 20 and 50 gold for this one.
Alternative: Scout's Medallion (or Sentinel's Medallion for Alliance). You will be using River Pride Choker for some time, since you will need honor for rings and trinkets first, so it's not a bad investment.

Shoulders
Watchman Pauldrons
Stats: +3 strength, +11 stamina, +4 spirit; 80 armor
How to get it: auction house again, 30-50g.
Alternative: Forest Tracker Epaulets or Mantle of Thieves. Both world drops. Forest Tracker Epaulets don't look that good so try to avoid it :p
Note: Aldor/Scryer or similar reputation gained enchants make the item soulbound, so don't expect any enchants for your shoulders.

Back
Tigerstrike Mantle
Stats: +8 agility, +7 stamina; 25 armor
How to get it: auction house; this tends to be more expensive on my realm, up to 100g
Alternative: Battle Healer's Cloak (Caretaker's Cape for Alliance), you can get it cheap (95 honor and 10 Warsong Gulch Marks) and they are pretty darn good also, +13 healing is a lot.

Chest
Raptor Hunter Tunic
Stats: +4 strength, +3 agility, +16 stamina; 117 armor
How to get it: Raptor Mastery quest chain in Stranglethorn Vale
Alternative: Beguiler Robes, BoE. I had that one because I couldn't afford the experience gained from doing quests. You can't put Burning Crusade enchants on this one though.
Enchant: Major Stats (+6 all stats), or Major Resilience (+15 resilience)

Bracers
Barbaric Bracers
Leather
Stats: +4 agility, +6 stamina, +4 spirit; 47 armor
How to get it: crafted with leatherworking; 5-10g on AH
Alternative: it's too cheap to bother with other items
Enchant: Superior Stamina (+9 stamina), Superior strength (+9 strength), Healing (+24 healing spells)

Hands
Wolfclaw Gloves
Leather
Stats: +6 agility, +6 stamina, +5 strength; 61 armor
How to get it: auction house, ranging between 50g and 100g usually
Alternative: Toughened Leather Gloves (crafted, 5-10g), Brawler Gloves (AH, 15-30g)
Enchant: Superior Agility (+15 agility) - not sure if it works on items below level 35; if not, you're stuck with +7 agility

Waist
Defilers Chain Girdle
Leather
Stats: +5 stamina, +24 attack power; 61 armor
How to get it: 175 honor and 20 Arathi Basin Mark of Honor
Alternative: Defiler's Padded Girdle

Legs
Troll's Bane Leggings
Leather
Stats: +14 agility, +4 stamina, +4 spirit; 90 armor
How to get it: Auction house, 50-100g.
Alternative: Petrospill Leggings
Enchant: make sure not to equip the item before you put Clefthide Leg Armor on them (50-70g). You need to be Level 60 to use enchant the pants, however they do not become soulbound.

Feet
Defiler's Chain Greaves
Leather
Stats: +8 agility, +8 stamina; 74 armor; equip bonus: +8% run speed
Alternative: none
Enchant: Greater Agility (+7 agility) or Greater Stamina (+7 stamina)

Rings
Legionnaire's Band (Horde) or Protector's Band (alliance)
Stats: +6 strength, +6 agility, +4 stamina
How to get it: 95 honor points and 20 WSG Marks of Honor

Thunderbrow Ring
Stats: +8 strength, +3 agility
How to get it: auction house - 20-30g
Alternative: Plains Ring (+8 stamina, +3 intellect), averaging 50g on AH

Trinkets
Insignia of the Horde / Insignia of the Alliance
Use: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. 5 minute cooldown.
How to get it: 2805 honor points - it's hard to get on that level, but well worth it
Alternative: there is no alternative, however you can use Rune of Perfection till you get your insignia (118 honor, 30 WSG Marks of Honor)

Defiler's Talisman (Horde) / Talisman of Arathor (Alliance)
Use: Absorbs 248 to 302 physical damage. Lasts 15 sec. 3 minute cooldown.
How to get it: 175 honor and 30 Arathi Basin Mark of Honor.
Alternative: none

Weapon
Thermaplugg's Left Arm
Two hand axe; 70-106 damage, speed 2.70
Stats: +18 strength, +7 stamina
How to get it: Mekgineer Thermaplugg in Gnomeregan, 18% according to Wowhead.

Corpsemaker
Two hand axe; 88 - 132 damage, speed 3.80
Stats: +15 strength, +8 stamina
How to get it: drops from Overlord Ramtusk in Razorfen Kraul, 31% chance. It took me 5 runs to get it, but even if it took 20 I would still try.
Alternative: Cobalt Crusher, no stats but nice proc. About 50g on AH.
Enchant: Crusader

It's usefull to equip a shield and one hand weapon when carrying the flag in WSG, so you might want to get these as well:

One hand weapon
Scout's Blade (Horde) / Sentinel's Blade (Alliance)
One hand dagger
Stats: +7 agility, +3 stamina
How to get it: 316 honor points, 30 Warsong Marks of Honor
Alternative: Vendetta, Headsplitter (Headsplitter is usually much cheaper)

Shield
Vile Protector
Stats: 1051 Armor, 17 Block, +4 Strength, and an interesting equip proc!
How to get it: I hope you're horde: Compendium of the Fallen quest. Combine that with +18 stamina enchant and you're on a roll.

Marbled Buckler
Stats: +5 strength, +5 agility, +5 stamina, +5 spirit; 775 armor, 17 block
How to get it: a quest in Razorfen Kraul: A Vengeful Fate for Horde, The Crone of the Kraul for Alliance. You need to be level 29 to pick up this quest, so make sure you don't get too much xp and ding 30.
Alternative: Resplendent Guardian or Shield of Thorsen
Enchant: Greater Stamina (+7 stamina) or Resistance (+5 all resistances)

Talent points
0/20/0

Tier 1: Ancestral Knowledge vs. Shield Specialization - 5% more mana isn't much, but you won't be using shield much anyway so Ancestral knowledge is more usefull.

Tier 2: Thundering Strikes - 5% more crits means more damage and more Flurry procs. Improved Ghost Wolf - reduces Ghost Wolf Cast time to 1 second. I find it usefull when chasing players. 3 second cast time is just too much if you ask me, this shouldn't even be a talent. Guardian Totems talent makes no sense, Stoneskin is rarely used, and you don't even have Windwall and Grounding Totem at level 29.
Improved Lightning Shield: although I often use it, I rather put 3 points into something more usefull.

Tier 3: Enhancing Totems - You get Grace of Air totem at level 42, so you would be improving only strength of Earth by 16%... I don't think so.
Two handed Axes and Maces is a must have talent. Will be replaced with a different talent in 2.3, but till then you have to keep it.
Since we have to put 2 points somewhere now, I choose Anticipation rather then Improved Lightning Shield, however you may want to choose the latter.

Tier 4: We only have 5 points to spend now, and Flurry seems like the best choice. Toughness is great, but we ain't fightin' melee classes all the time.

Link to the talent build on Wowhead!

Professions

Most of the professions don't have any of the good stuff at level 29; if you need any items crafted they won't be BOP like later in the game.
Engineering on the other hand, has its uses. There are no cool devices or trinkets yet, but you will have access to Iron Grenades, which I find extremely usefull in certain situations. These grenades have a 1 minute cooldown, and take 1 second to cast (you can move while casting). Great for finishing or stopping players, or interrupting spellcasts.

Basic tips for shaman

Although Enhancement shaman are probably the easiest class to master (if there even is anything to master), here's a few tips that might help you if you're new to the class.

If you defend a node in Arathi Basin or flag in Warsong, drop totems
Use earthbind to slow down players if you have WSG flag (duh!)
Use Rank 1 Earth Shock to interrupt spell casting
Use Searing and Magma totems when fighting with more opponents
Have Lightning Shield on you when possible. It procs on damaging spells you receive also.
Heal others when necesarry. Especially if he's carrying a flag. Most of the time you won't smash people fast enough so heals will give you that time.
Use bandages. Defiler's Silk Bandag e and Warsong Gulch Silk Bandage are incredibly cheap. So is the food. If you can waste 1.000g and more for items and enchants, then you can afford a few bandages.
Don't bother casting Lightning Bolt. Make Elemental shaman if you want Lightning Bolts. There are exceptions though, like players running away on low health, but your main tool is your ~~Corpsemaker~~ Thermaplugg's Left Arm.

It will take awhile to get all these items. Find someone (high level) who can help you run instances so you don't end up almost level 30 before you get the necessary items. Also, don't forget about xp gain for discovering new areas.
Making a twink is not cheap, you will spend more than 1000 gold for all of this. Items are not so expensive, but enchants can be. If you have a level 70 alt, grinding gold shouldn't be a problem.
Is it worth spending all that money? I'd say yes. If you're into twinking and wanna melt some faces, go for it!

*post edited to include some items changed in patch 2.3.

> Level 29 Enhancement shaman twink guide

So here I am...

2007-09-27T10:30:00.001+02:00

I was thinking about making this blog for some time now, but I've been lazy lately and don't even know where to start.

I was reading WoW forums yesterday and saw all these changes coming in 2.3 patch, some good, but most bad - unless you play a rogue. Basically, I'm pissed. Rogues get buffs, warlocks get nerfs - nothing new, however it can't stop to amaze me how I hate these patches. One day you're a strong class, and then you get some incomprehensive nerf. Ok, you learn to live with it (or play with it) and move on. Until next patch, when something else is nerfed. Where does it end?

I want Wrath of The Lich King. Today! Burning Crusade ain't that bad, but its already boring. I've seen all the 5 mans a gazillion times already, did some PvP, arenas, saw Karazhan, farmed my epic flying mount, did pretty much all the quests. All that on two characters. I'd go level my shaman but to what end - by the time I finish leveling and get decent gear, they will probably be nerfed also.
I want another expansion so I can start over. Maybe even give up on PvP and start raiding. You know what to expect from PvE, you're the reason why you fail, or if you win. That used to be the case in PvP, but since classes are now being balanced for 2v2/3v3 arenas, it will get only worse.

There's one thing to remember about PvP: whenever you feel like you can finally beat someone, your class will be nerfed next patch. Don't bother posting on forums - all you'll get is l2p noob.

> So here I am...