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World of Warcraft
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*****************************************
* Game: World of Warcraft *
* Type: FAQ *
* For: PC *
* Author: Brad Russell "TheGum" *
* Email: lunatic_252000@yahoo.com *
* Web: www.thechaosuniverse.com *
*****************************************
Version 0.5 - basic info ready, could be a little more to finish.
(2/10/09)
Version 1.0 - not sure what would be 100% complete, but here is what I got,
and it's still rough and unorganized.
(5/8/09)
Version 1.4 - updated some stuff, fixed up other stuff, and added new stuff.
(5/25/09)
Version 2.0 - added quite a bit and fixed a lot.
(6/30/09)
Version 2.2 - fixed and added, same deal; such as fixing the first sentence of
the core guide
(8/6/09)
Version 2.4 - fixed up where I saw for the patch, and added quite a few
sections. The full guides will be massive works in progress, so don't expect
them next week or even next month to be honest.
(9/10/09)
Version 2.8 - Wow, three months. I took a one month hiatus in there, but still,
too long I guess. Added for the patch and cleaned up some things.
(12/25/09)
*****************
Table Of Contents
*****************
Use quick find (Ctrl + F) and type in the code or level.
Section: Code:
1. A Brief Foreword
2. Controls ( CON2222 )
3. Starter Tips ( TIPS333 )
4. The Guide ( FAQ4444 )
Realm and Character Info ( REALM12 )
Stats ( STAT123 )
Armory ( ARM1234 )
Options/Interface ( OPT1234 )
Classes ( CLAS123 )
Horde versus Alliance ( HVSA123 )
Travel Plans ( TRAV123 )
Trainers ( TRAI123 )
Professions ( PROF123 )
Secondary Profession Tips ( SEC1234 )
Talents ( TAL1234 )
Colors ( COLO123 )
Items ( ITEM123 )
Item Bindings ( ITBI123 )
Item Management ( ITMA123 )
Mule ( MUL1234 )
Alt-itis ( ALT1234 )
Smart-Character Creations ( SMCC123 )
Guilds ( GUIL123 )
Getting Help ( GETH123 )
Social ( SOC1234 )
Levels ( LEV1234 )
Quests ( QUES123 )
Killing Stuff ( KILL123 )
Smart-Leveling ( SMLE123 )
Economy & Auction House ( ECAH123 )
Level 80 Stuff ( L80S123 )
Northrend Heroics ( NORH123 )
Northrend Raids ( NORAID1 )
Macros ( MAC1010 )
The Art of DPS ( DPS1234 )
The Art of Tanking ( TANK123 )
Healing ( HEAL123 )
5. Classes
Rogue ( ROG1234 )
Hunter ( HUNT123 )
Death Knight ( DK12345 )
Warlock ( LOCK123 )
Druid ( DURID12 )
Paladin ( PAL1234 )
Shaman ( SHAM123 )
Mage ( GAME123 )
Priest ( PRST123 )
Warrior ( WARR123 )
6. PvP
PvP Tips ( PVP1234 )
Counter Class ( COUN123 )
Twinks ( TWIN123 )
BGs & Wintergrasp ( BGWG123 )
7. Leveling Guide *coming soon
8. Economy Guide *coming soon
9. Current Patch Notes
10. Author Info / Copyright
*****************************************************************************
* 1. A Brief Foreword *
*****************************************************************************
Warcraft is a beast. You must seriously consider if you're ready to take it
on as if you were committing to banned substances. Levels, achievements,
heavy multiplayer, many different builds to tinker with, a full economy,
gear with no end, and just tons of things to collect for vanity, you really
have no hope of having any other entertainment if you start playing WoW.
Yes, this game is extremely fun. If you like anything in gaming you will
find something to like in this game, and no one can argue with the strength
of the multiplayer, which is essentially 1/4 of the game unless you just love
running dungeons and raids.
Anyway, as far as this guide, probably the reason why it has taken so long to
get out is not because it's taken this long to make it, it's just that I don't
know where it ends, much in the same way the game does not end.
I will try to update with the major patches, and even then it will take weeks
after to gather and play with the fixes.
TheGum.
*****************************************************************************
* 2. Controls ( CON2222 ) *
*****************************************************************************
Really not much to put here. Your standard WASD controls, and then under
Key Bindings in your options (press ESC) you can move all the tabs and pans
to certain keys.
I will also mention that it is worth thinking about buying a special keyboard
with a game pad, not a controller but just some board with stacked numbers.
I say this because you have about 20 abilities, and on a standard keyboard
you'll only have reasonable use for six of the number keys. Of course you
probably only need to keystroke six, but it's something to think about.
You can mouse-click everything, that works very well. Just add action bars and
set everything in order. Of course mouse-clicks will not cut it in PvP.
*****************************************************************************
* 3. Starter Tips ( TIPS333 ) *
*****************************************************************************
#1. Right clicking stuff in your bag uses them. Such as eating, equipping,
using key items, and so on. It's also how you can track objectives. There are
just a lot I can't think of, so feel free to right click when in doubt...
#2. The shift key and holding the mouse or clicking something usually does
something. Shift + number changes bars, holding shift over an item compares
with what you are wearing, clicking a chat name will display where that
person is, and so forth.
#3. For the fashion crowd, Ctrl clicking something not equipped will display it
on you.
#4. Under options you have many things to change, such as display, user
interface, video, and audio settings. Under display you can set it so you
don't see your helm or cloak. You can also change the number of action bars
to set up your abilities.
#5. Items that have white names are usually useful in some way, enough so that
it may be worth checking what it's for online on thottbot and such. But items
in grey can always be tossed, not picked up, or sold for a small price to
vendors. Grey items are of no use to anyone. Be careful to toss some, some
greys from daily rewards could be worth gold.
#6. No one needs the ammo pouches or quivers anymore thanks to a patch, but
don't think that because you have a gun you need an ammo pouch. Just fill your
bag slots with normal bags and put your ammo in there; if a hunter then you
still don't need an ammo bag because you get the speed bonus without one. You
also don't need to carry special bags that carry certain items, those are
probably best to put in your bank.
#7. Though you may think you can sell anything you aren't using at the moment,
you may find you need those same items later, so to a degree it may be better
to hold onto certain mats for a time. It may even be worth it to set up a bank
alt to send all the stuff you won't want to give up and can't use.
#8. Items of green quality and up will bind to your character once you put
them on. If you are an enchanter then you can disenchant them, but everyone
else can only sell them to vendors once they are replaced.
#9. There are two useful ways to find things without asking other players.
Guards in cities will tell you the locations of certain people and even give
you a map marker for them. Then there is a small tab over your mini map that
you can toggle to locate any number of things, including stuff you can track
if you are a hunter, herbalist, or miner.
#10. Figure out how you want to use your abilities. Aside from knowing how
they work, you have two ways to use them: clicking them on the action bars or
through key bindings. I started on key bindings, but that limited my scope of
thinking how to use all of them. It is nice to have some of your more powerful
and most-used abilities on a few keys, but for most cases you'll use more of
your abilities through clicking them on action bars. Under Options and
Interface you can add action bars all around the screen.
#11. Find out early what direction you want to take your character in. Randomly
buliding your toon early will lead to wasted money and maybe getting buffs for
stats you shouldn't be using. There are differences in leveling specs and end-
game specs, but not by a lot.
#12. Keep an eye out for item bindings and which hand they must go in. A few
items can only be held in the main hand, so never get two of such weapons.
#13. Check the auction house for glyphs for your class of character. Even if
the glyphs are above your level but at a good price, consider picking them up
if you see that ability being useful to you. You put on glyphs in your talent
page and the nodes open as you level.
#14. Be sure to change your video settings so that the game runs smoothly.
Beautiful graphics should give way to smooth frame rates and less lag, both
of which can get monitored on the computer icon on your tool bar.
#15. If you lag, meaning there is a delay in your connection, think about
getting a hunter, caster, or lock so that you don't have to know exactly where
your enemy is or be within 5 yards in order to damage him. A healer with lag is
not wise to be honest. Since I have experience with high latency, it's actually
possible to anticipate most things you need to move for.
#16. Always watch what a new piece of equipment is offering. Sometimes a better
quality item may offer more things, but not always does it boost your base
stats. It's all situational, but I like boosting base stats rather than
special stats like crit, hit, haste, rating and so on. At 80 it's all a great
balancing act. Hit and haste are very important for dps, but your power stat
and critical strike rating can mean much more dps.
#17. If you don't figure it out, you get more abilities by going to a class
trainer. Ask a guard or use the mini map tracking to find them in towns/cities.
On a similar note, not all abilities are essential, and if you really know your
class and your end-game expectations, you could save gold by skipping some.
#18. If you have the Burning Crusade expansion, it may be worth while to quest
in Azuremyst and Bloodmyst isles. These two zones are very circular around the
towns, meaning that unlike every other "starting" zone you don't have to go
far from quest-givers. Not to mention that once you figure out the rotation of
quests, you can zip right through them and not get the same distraction quests
like other zones.
#19. Repairs are essential once beyond 25 or so. Just click the repair option
when you meet a smith before you do anything else. Late in the game repairs
become very expensive, and dying also means loss of gold through repairs. For
this it's nice to ensure your raids and groups are equipped and ready for the
task at hand. If that means you must be more vocal, feel free to help others
help you not die. (of course deaths in hard heroics and raids should be
expected, it's just part of the territory) You can track repair smiths on your
mini map.
#20. If you pick a pally, druid, or shaman, one of the hybrid classes, always
go with the first and best dps option available. Retribution, Cat, and
Enhancement, respectively, are the talent trees for easiest leveling of these
classes. If you really know what you want to do late in the game, it only
costs 1 gold to respec at your trainer the first time.
#21. Speaking of which, if you do respec, remember to look at the buyable
abilities, because several talent abilities can be upgraded. Don't be like me
and get mutilate and wonder why it's so weak (I didn't upgrade it...).
#22. Be careful of what daily quests you pick up. Doing them all is tempting,
even if most seem easy, but you don't want to spend all your time doing
dailies. Especially now with the random dungeons which award money.
#23. However, if there are three dailies to do every day, it's the Tuskarr
dailies in Northrend for rep. They have three dailies, one to each zone:
Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, and Borean Tundra. Aside from Pengu, doing these
will allow access to a powerful fishing pole, which in turn allows for easier
completion of the fishing dailies. Just try to do these as you level in
Northrend, you don't want to put in your rotation of quests at level 80, they
are quite time-consuming, but very easy, and award XP while leveling.
#24. There is an option under Controls in the menu where you can enable two
things that help you at 80: Talent Preview and Equipment Manager. The preview
simply lets you test spending all your talents before setting them in stone.
This will help in the long run because countless times you'll spend just one
talent where you soon realize it shouldn't be and it bugs you enough to respec
again. The manager puts a button in your character tab, and you can save the
sets of equipment you have on. Very useful for dual-specs and pvp sets of
armor.
#25. Cooldowns (CD) all require good timing to maximize their use. Just because
they are ready does not mean you should use them. Save them for big mobs, know
how far you are from bosses, and use them again for bosses only.
#26. There are a number of addons to pickup to help you play. Recount helps
measure dps and healing, prob the only one you need. But there are tons more
for any number of things. curse.com is a good site to pick these up, and
correct installation puts an "addon" button in the character select screen.
Keep in mind some of these may not help, and they all consume some memory and
could put on lag.
#27. Speaking of which, I found reduced lag by turning off some streaming and
memory-using programs on my desktop. Even the invisible processes in your
task manager, if you know which ones are non-essential.
#28. The honor point cap is 75000, but that doesn't mean you should sit on
these points. Once you have full sets of pvp gear from both 80 vendors, you'll
find that the jewelcrafter quartermaster (in the champion's area of SW or Org)
also offers gems for 10000 honor points. It's quite a bankable source of money,
and provides reason to pursue PvP beyond just gearing up.
#29. At 80 there are a few basic things you must fulfill if one of these:
Tank - Need 540 defense cap and 25000HP+
DPS - 1.4k+ dps
Healer - 18000 mana and lots of Mana per 5 seconds
Now you can dip under and hopefully the rest of the group is better at what
they do to cover for you. It's mainly in the DPS, meaning it's possible to
4 man most stuff with two great dps.
#30. One of the best tips I can give is to buy a portal to Dalaran, or get one
from a friend mage, and set a home point there. No matter what your level,
you can use the portals to go to Tanaris and any of your home cities. This
will save a ton of time with traveling.
#31. Be sure to loot quest items. It could mean just stopping for an extra
second to ensure you picked up an elusive objective.
#32. If you lag in Dalaran, there are three ways to leave the city if you have
a fast flyer. The first in the normal flight path, second is the sewer exit,
and finally is the Purple Parlor. The Parlor is reached via a portal in the
Violet Citadel, and from the balcony you can fly away.
#33. When dealing with magic, now that NPCs can resist almost any form of
magic you throw at them. I tell you this just so you don't rely too much on
one spell or two to fire in order to survive.
#34. Many water quests have water bubbles in the areas you must swim to, which
you can breathe.
#35. Just make sure you have your priorities straight at 80. I would say it
goes: random daily, daily quests, WG quests, heroics/raids, and then
leveling alts.
#36. Feel free to be a PvP decoy. Pallies and healer classes can absorb or be
immune to damage, which make for good decoys to distract the other team.
#37. Be sure to master your cooldowns. Know your enemies in case they stun you
and such, but other than that you want to maximize your cooldowns for bosses
so they may be ready twice. And hitting them all at once could provide a huge
dps boost.
#38. For PvE, and some PvP, there is a balance between your mana and health.
Sometimes you would be better served allowing some damage to conserve mana.
Stopping to drink all the time may not seem like a big deal, but it adds up as
pure wasted time.
#39. When you see someone spam a channel, just right click and report them so
you ignore them while logged on. If you see them spam a lot or know you don't
like this person, feel free to just outright ignore them.
#40. The new quest tracking makes things so easy, and the markers can even
adjust to the closest things you need to kill.
*****************************************************************************
* 4. The FAQ ( FAQ4444 ) *
*****************************************************************************
========================
Realm and Character Info ( REALM12 )
========================
Realms
------
The first thing you must do is choose a realm that is right for you. If you
want to just play the game solo for as much as you can or want to, then you
only need a PvE realm on whatever. But factors such as the economy, end-game
raiding progression, social atmosphere, and PvP require much more foresight -
and most likely several re-roles of characters on a few servers.
Here are the four types of realms:
Normal - Only by you engaging in PvP, turning on your flag, or entering an
enemy city can enemy players attack you.
PvP - Once out of the two starting zones for your area, you are fresh meat
at any and all times. And yes, people are sad enough to spend their
entire day attacking lowbies, and they aren't even 80s usually.
Role-Playing (RP) - Strict realms only used by the very mature and veteran
Warcraft players. There are many rules to follow in these realms,
and they are monitored by Blizzard GMs, so don't think you can jump
in and cause long-term trouble or break the rules a lot. You must
pick some non-funny/mocking or crazy name, it must be something that
seems like a "fantasy" name. And finally you need to try and restrict
yourself to /say or /yell chat; basically just rethinking how you
may chat in other realms. It's also possible that you must speak in
your races' language, an option in the chat bubble icon.
RP-PvP - What could be the strictest of realms, only meant for the most
hardcore of players.
Granted, all realms will have the occasional idiot come on and try to cause
trouble, and they do get away with it for longer than you would think. Blizzard
is not fast at all in responding or taking action to such individuals. So RP
realms are kinda always in flux as far as I can tell.
I was lucky in that my realm is of medium population, I found a good guild, the
economy isn't terrible, and the PvP is fairly even.
You are not stuck to one realm (or server), you can hop on as many servers as
you wish. But you're stuck with a limit of 50 toons and no more than 10 on one
server, regardless of faction.
What this means is that so long as you don't mind possibly wasting time
leveling on a server you later realize you dislike, then you can always try
on another or eat the transfer fee (I would encourage you not to though...).
Another thing that may or may not come up is that sometimes servers are down
or you may just get bored with your main toons. For this it may be worth it
taking a small investment in a second or even third server just so all your
eggs are not in one basket. I DO NOT intend for you to take up 3 active
rotation of toons to play everyday on three different servers, no, what I mean
is just at some point you may want to camp a few level 6's on other servers,
that's all.
-----
Here is a link to where you can check the status of each realm to help decide
where you want to play, because high population realms require waiting times
to get in, but low-pop realms could pose different problems, such as one
faction having a big advantage:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php
*NOTE: Of things to keep in mind is that small pop realms usually have higly
inflated economies, one-sided world pvp, and potentially a one-sided battle-
group.*
Here is also the link to check the status of realms during down-time and patch
days:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/
Characters
----------
As far as picking a character, you can make 50, so it's not like you have to
get it right on your first try. But if you don't like your character, be it
looks or skills or play-style of the class, then feel free to get another
fired up. Any toons on the other faction, regardless of server, cannot
receive mail from your other toons on the other faction - so if you get your
main and want other characters on the other faction you can make them on any
server because they are basically on their own anyway.
*NOTE: It's the neutral auction houses that are the only way to transfer money
between factions.*
*NOTE: There was a rule where in PvP servers you could not play both sides.
This seems to have been lifted at of patch 3.2, possibly in preparation for the
faction transfers.*
This game is based around three styles of play: DPS, tanking, and healing.
That is it, nothing else. Here are all 10 classes and what they do:
Warrior - you tank, take damage, and deal damage, but honestly should be for
tanking. I've never seen a warrior do top dps in a raid, though, they
can get deadly in PvP.
Paladin - can do a bit of everything, at the same time. I believe that's
called over-powered.
Mage - spell dps.
Warlocks - spells and minions. Could have heavy micro-management.
Hunter - pet, traps, and faster ranged attack speed.
Rogue - stealth, poisons, burst and sustained damage.
Shaman - hybrid based mostly on magic and healing. Can even do melee to good
effect.
Druid - beast forms and can do everything, just not at the same time.
Priest - healer/protector, but can dish out damage if you wish (shadow priests
can do great dps)
Death Knight - a tank with potential to have a pet or heal itself. It's really
a magic tank, with no shield, that also possess a surprising amount of
range/spell damage.
All classes are limited in what weapons and armor they can use, and some can
use more armor at higher levels. All classes have three branches of talents
to follow which determine how your character will play, and you can even change
these later as well as hold two talent paths to choose from.
Lastly you must choose a race, or firstly, but the last thing I cover. Your
race provides you a few special abilities and perks, and also limit what
class you can choose. One key thing to keep in mind is where you start. Some
zones are more difficult than others, and some will have more players than
others, sometimes by a lot.
*NOTE: Almost not worth mentioning, but I imagine many hardcore players will
fill up all 10 toons on their choosen server, especially if on the same
faction. There are only 7 mat-supported professions, meaning you really only
need 7 toons to have everything available to you. 7 is a good max because if
there are more expansions you should expect more classes and races to choose
from. We're talking about a huge amount of time, but if there is a battle-mage,
don't you want a free spot to have one?*
=====
Stats ( STAT123 )
=====
Also known as attributes, but no matter what you call them they are what the
game boils down to: your gear, leveling, gold, professions, talents, and time,
all intended to help boost these to as high as possible.
They break down to a number of categories, and some boost others and/or do
the same things.
You can look at all your stats in the character pan, and under your nice
profile you can see a few panels you can change.
To test your stats you can either do live sampling in the field using an
addon called recount, or go beat up on a test dummy found throughout cities.
Or just know what you are doing is working for what you want to do.
Base Stats
----------
*NOTE: Pretty much all of these will apply to your pet too, if you have one.*
Strength - Melee attack power. 2 for Warriors, DKs, feral Druids, and Paladins.
1 for everyone else. Improves block value if you can hold a shield,
and boosts DKs' parry rating.
Agility - Attack power, critical rating, armor, and dodge. Ranged attack power
for warriors, hunters, and rogues. Melee attack power for hunters,
rogues, shamans, and cat druids. But everyone gets the crit, armor,
and dodge boosts.
Stamina - 10 health points for each, except the first 20 which only give 1.
Intellect - 15 mana points, the first 20 just give 1. Also improves spell
critical strike. And can be used to quickly level up weapon skills.
Spirit - Increases health and mana regeneration. The graphs of how much it
helps in relation to your level will dip as you level, but even the
caster classes can find some foods and potions to regen much faster.
Meaning that unless you have skills or talents that rely on spirit,
you have no reason to get more.
Skills
------
Weapon - Higher weapon skill means better chance to hit and crit, while
reducing the chance your attack is missed, blocked, dodged, or parried.
And even if you hit with a low skill swing, don't expect a lot of base
damage.
Defense - Decreases crits and hits.
Basically if all 80s have max in both of these skills, there is nothing gained.
It's mostly a way to make players and characters of different levels have
something to show for it.
In PvE this means that no matter how great your lowbie is, he cannot down bad
guys 5-6 levels above him (or her). I believe 4 levels above and you can get
hit with crushing blows for major damage. That is why 8 levels above you the
enemies have skulls over their heads, because you will not defeat them.
And something almost unofficial, you also do less damage to higher level
characters and NPCs. DoTs to higher NPCs will tick for almost nothing.
Melee/Range
-----------
Melee is used by any class that must be next to a target to attack it, but
the stats are almost the same ones for hunters.
*NOTE: With dual-wielders you will often see a "2.30/1.50" on your stats. The
slash means the first number applies to your main hand, the second for your
off-hand. So if that above number was for haste (which it is), then my MH
will swing every 2.3 seconds, while my OH swings ever 1.5 seconds.*
Weapon damage - Simply how much damage a weapon can do, usually a range of
damage from the minimum to the max.
Speed/haste - Speed is how fast a weapon is used, and haste can reduce this
time by a percentage.
Attack Power - Increases you damage done, and contributed to by strength and
agility for hunters, rogues, and cat druids. Same as ranged, just make
sure you are on the ranged tab of stats.
Critical Strike - Your chance to land a more powerful attack, increased with
a better rating and with agility for non-casters. All crits can vary.
Hit - A percentage increase of your attacks that will hit, improved with hit
rating. Must have in the neighborhoord of 280 for most classes.
Armor Penetration - Reduces the opponents armor by a percentage. This is the
only stat where it's effect can be achieved to 100%, meaning if you
can stack about 1200 of this, your opponent is naked.
Expertise - Reduces your chance to be parried/blocked, different than a miss.
You want some of this, but not a lot.
Spell
-----
These are the stats for casters, but all classes have spells.
There can be a misnomer here, with spells being thought of as anything you
click on to do. But these stats are for your magic abilities.
Spell Power - Increases damage and healing done.
Spell Hit - Same as hit rating, increases you spell's chance to hit.
Spell Crit - Same as critical strike rating.
Spell Penetration - How much a spell ignores that resistance, not armor. This
is purely for PvP, since most enemies in the game have zero resistance.
Mana Regen - Regeneration of mana in and out of combat, with out of combat
always being much faster.
Defense
-------
This is mainly for tank specs.
Dodge - Chance to dodge melee attacks, but not ranged.
Parry - Chance to parry a melee attack, turning a hit into a failed attack.
Block - Chance to block a melee or ranged attack with a shield, but only
reducing some damage.
Block Value - Increases how much damage is blocked from a successful block.
Defense Rating - Every so much increases defense. This is like attack power,
while defense is like weapon damage.
Defense - Increases your defense skill.
Armor - Decreases physical damage.
Resistance - Decreases magic damage of that type. Can be seen next to the
profile of your toon on the character window as well.
Resilience - Decreases crit strikes chance against you, and reduces all over-
all damage. Found mostly on PvP gear, because it's only for PvP.
Health Regen - How much health is restored in and out of combat. Much more
out of combat.
Stats By Role
-------------
Here is a quick rundown of what to stack, in what order of priority, for each
of the three roles.
DPS - Your power stat, either attack or spell; Critical strike; Hit until you
reach your cap; Haste; Armor Pen for melee/hunters.
Tank - Defense up to 540 and beyond isn't bad; Dodge caps higher than parry;
Parry; Stamina; Hit; Expertise; Strength; Crit; and then all the other
dps stats.
Heal - Mana per 5 seconds / Spirit; Spell power; Haste; Spell Crit/Crit; Int.
Of course it's not like you can pick and choose all of these with the gear,
which may be a good thing because you want a little bit of all.
Always be wary of when epic gear leaves off a crucial stat. It may still be a
better piece than what you got, but be sure to try and restack that stat
somewhere else.
======
Armory ( ARM1234 )
======
This is really only for level 80 characters or twinks. Everyone else should
just quest and spend the least at the AH for equipment.
Visit www.wowarmory.com and there you can check a ton of stuff. And wow-heroes.
com also has almost the same stuff.
At the armory you can bring up your character and have everything you would
need to know right there for you online. Most useful is the ability to find
upgrades for your gear. Next to all the items you have equipped, if you view
through the armory, you can press the arrow and find all the better gear for
that item slot. Write the ones you think are in reach, research if the location
is not easy to discern, and set out for them. Don't go for the very best, just
for anything better than what you got.
Gearscore
----------
At 80 you will find a lot of people wanting you to be geared, not suck, and/or
have a certain gearscore.
It's true, the rating on your gear caps what kind of content you can possibly
do. It's worth it to know what iLevel gear you have, how good you do what you
do with that gear, adn then find upgrades so you can move on.
The fastest way to gear up is to buy a few pieces of purple gear, try to fill
up your pvp set, and run as many heroics as you can. For heriocs on random or
raiding in lower quality gear, please don't try to be a tank or healer. Gear up
as a DPS, or get carried, plain and simple.
=================
Options/Interface ( OPT1234 )
=================
There are several settings I would suggest changing.
For video settings feel free to adjust to what you will be doing in the game
and your computer. If you plan to just quest, do a dungeon every now and then,
you can probably get away with medium settings. If you plan to do PvP, raid,
and spend any time in the city of Dalaran, set your settings lower.
For your interface I suggest putting up all the actions bars. The right side
bars can be for your professions, about six of your most-used spells, mounts,
and commonly used items like potions or quest items.
There is also a setting to move the objectives panel. The tracked objectives
by default appear to the right, and by selecting to edit it you can drag and
drop it. As of a recent patch, tracked objectives with items will have those
items by the tracking for easy use. Also as of the patch the actual items or
things in the field will display as such when you mouse over them.
You can also set up so that your threat percentage and enemy casting bars are
displayed. They both are near the enemy portrait so you know if you are drawing
aggro on the thing, and if it's casting anything so you can get out of the way
or interrupt it.
Finally, you can also choose to not display your helm and/or cloak. This is
nice for goofy helms, and sometimes your tabard looks better than your cloak.
=======
Classes ( CLAS123 )
=======
We will go into the basics of all the classes, but not too far, just a slightly
deeper look at each class.
Here is a link to check talent trees and see how you may want to build your
character(s):
www.wowarmory.com
Warrior
-------
You play off a "rage" bar where you get more the more you fight. Unlike mana
and energy you build up rage, so it takes time to use abilities, instead of
the abilities ready to go to start.
You play off of three battle stances, can wear all armor eventually, and can
hold shields. Go for gear that buffs your strength and stamina.
Everything is melee, and you have almost no "fun" abilities; it's pure combat.
I say don't start with a warrior, too difficult to master.
Mage
----
Mages specialize in what we call "burst" damage, or "nuking," meaning you cast
a spell for one big hit, rather than getting the same damage out of a ton of
hits. They provide only weak elements of protection, with turning enemies into
sheep and such being the main defense.
You can also create portals for fast travel among cities. Focus on intellect,
spirit, stamina, and anything involving spells. You can only wear cloth, so
if an enemy gets in your face you are most likely going to die unless you have
the abilities to escape.
If you know how to use your abilities, a mage should be your first and best
choice for a toon. Everyone should have a mage.
Rogue
-----
You will be tops in melee combat, as you can dual-wield and create high DPS,
which is damage per second, meaning your output of damage is unmatched in
most cases. So long as you are alive the enemy is losing health.
Your main tool is stealth, meaning you are invisible to same-level enemies
until you come into contact or they are at a much higher level than you.
Through stealth you can choose several methods to begin a fight, as well as
solo much of the game with no outside help.
Your weakness is that your armor is eaten up by damage. But by getting items
to buff your agility and stamina you can stay in a battle for a fair amount of
time, and several of your abilites and talents can ensure survival even in
losing battles.
If you want to play alone for most of the game except instances, go rogue.
Hunter
------
Hunters are the second class to allow for easily playing alone. This is the
only class to use ranged weapons to any effect as they fire much faster. Of
course ranged combat is possible because of a pet, which acts likes a mini-
tank for you.
You need to fish and cook to get food for your pet, unless you are okay buying
the food from select vendors or the auction house. Unhappy pets like to dismiss
and are not effective, content pets give no damage bonus, and well-fed pets
deal 25% more damage. You can see their happiness level under their life bar
and check their diet under the pet tab in the character window.
Against the environment you can rely on your mana pool and ranged attacks as
your pet and abilities can keep the enemies at bay. In player versus player
you could lean more to agility and stamina, just like a rogue, as the other
players will not attack your pet. At level 40 you can use mail armor.
Too many hunters mistakenly think they can level with melee. Just go beast
mastery in talents and level with your pet tanking and you firing.
Druid
-----
Druids allow for shapeshifting of animal forms to determine abilities. For
the most part a druid can do anything: rogue, tank, mage, heal. And of course
choosing talents down one path over the others can allow for being almost the
equal of the appropriate class.
Druids in groups, like all hybrids, can replace a downed component of the
group. You can only wear cloth or leather, but your forms allow for different
stats and rely on different stats.
Level as a cat, which may allow you to easily serve as a tank as well later in
the game.
Paladin
-------
Yet another hybrid class with more emphasis on healing and protection of other
players. Of course there is also the possibility of focusing on melee combat
as well, but you cannot wield ranged weapons at all. You can wear plate armor
at level 40.
Paladins are the best class by the numbers, since a third of each faction are
pallies, and almost everyone has one. Just looking at the basics:
Plate armor, swings a 2-handed weapon, protection abilities, nothing to hold
them in place, possibility of a stun-lock on you, DoTs, casting attacks, you
take damage for striking them, great AoE attacks, and yes, they can heal
themselves. The only thing they don't have is significant ranged ability or
a distance-maker/closer (that doesn't mean they can't ride into battle
though, because they can).
WoW players may call it QQ (cry or some chat command from an old game, some-
thing nerdy like that), and yes, the paladin players will. The facts are
still there. The only result is that paladins are OP (over-powered), so you
should role one.
Level ret and roll your face on the keyboard to kill things, even players.
Priest
------
Yes, your main goal is to keep your group alive. But that doesn't mean you are
helpless, you can wield powerful shadow magic. Focus on stamina, intellect,
spirit, and any spell buffing equipment. Of course you only have cloth armor,
so you have to keep yourself alive through your own spells.
You must watch out for the healing aggro you may pull in PvE.
Disc priests are near impossible to kill. They don't do hardly any dps, but it
takes a lot to kill them, like 10 people or timely silences. You really have to
level in shadow, and it would be odd to dual-spec in disc and holy.
Shaman
------
This class is for the most part Horde-only, as only Draenei can be shamans
for the Alliance. Shamans can focus on melee, magic, or healing depending on
the talent tree progression. You are limited to leather and cloth until 40
where you can wear mail armor.
This is probably the best class in the game, the most balanced at least, while
requiring not a lot of micro-management of abilities. It's possible to level
in elemental, yet stack strength and agility for melee combat.
Warlock
-------
This class can be one of the most powerful if played correctly. Warlocks are
one of the most unique dps classes because they have many choices of ways to
deal damage. Their game does boil down to DoTs, a select few magic spells,
their choice of minion, and a few key survival tactics that come into play
big time for PvP.
You can level in almost any fashion, but make sure you have your voidwalker
serve as your tank.
Death Knight
------------
With Wrath installed and once you get a level 55 character you can create a
Death Knight, or DK, in any race.
The training takes a while to get through, but you emerge with all blue
equipment and are probably a kill or two away from 59 and ready to hit the
battlegrounds (because no one has done that a million times already...).
You have three paths, and all can tank and dps to come capacity - not to
mention you can mix and match for whatever you please. Nice to level in
unholy, dps in blood or unholy, and tank in frost - but you can tank in many
ways.
=====================
Horde versus Alliance ( HVSA123 )
=====================
Summary
-------
Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Draenei are Alliance, or good. Orcs,
Forsaken, Tauren (bulls), Trolls, and Blood Elves are Horde, or bad. Though you
may find it interesting to find out that Tauren and Forsaken are not actually
all-evil, and quite possibly none of the Horde is "evil."
You won't run into this battle of good and evil very often in PvE realms
(player versus environment), but it's more than half the game in PvP realms
(player vs player).
There is no difference in which you choose other than the decor and what kind
of other players you see all the time, but the quests don't vary too much
until about level 30 as the whole world opens up, both continents, and quests
are similar and in the same areas for both factions.
PvP vs PvE
----------
I will say that the background of the horde classifies them as "brute force
with small numbers." It makes sense because I'll bet most WoW players start
with the Alliance and then make a horde character after. But don't be shocked
if you choose a low-medium population realm and find the other faction is
dominant.
For chat you can't understand the other faction.
In PvE it's you and the game, with you deciding when to interact in combat with
the other faction's players. This is the "normal" gameplay if you are just
starting to play Warcraft.
The next step is PvP realms in which you can be attacked at any moment. Since
this is not the start of World of Warcraft there are tons of level 80's
in any realm you choose to play. Basically I'm just warning you that unless
level 80's from your faction are protecting the area you play in, expect to
be attacked. Rogues and druids are probably the best choice in PvP since you
can disappear when needed. But again, I suggest you play on a PvP realm after
you've played on a PvE realm for some time.
*NOTE: Since realms are not connected you can't make a 80 on one and support
a character in a different realm. You also cannot support a character of yours
on the other faction, even in on the same realm. Nor can you befriend the other
side, no matter how much they may help you.*
*NOTE: You're subject to "ganking" in PvP, which means people can feast on low
level characters, camp at graveyards, camp your body, kill quest givers,
rogues can stealth you at any moment, and so on. This is why PvP is basically
like playing WoW on HARD, and why you need to play on the PvE first so your
questing in PvP will take less time. Nevermind you can put WoW on HARDER if
you play the less-popular faction on a PvP realm.*
*NOTE: You are safe from PvP in your faction's controlled territories.*
You can make a DK on any realm once one character is 55 and you have WotLK
installed, you can make level 55 Death Knights on a PvP realm, but of course
that isn't a huge advantage, you just avoid early game PvP.
Universal PvP
-------------
*NOTE: Since a patch, you can queue up in BGs from anywhere through the pvp
tab on your toolbar. But you can only enter WG through a battlemaster or being
in the zone.*
There are battlegrounds in which you basically play multiplayer against the
other faction. There is one you can enter from level 10, Warsong Gulch. These
are all accessible from a "battle room" area in a major city, or in the region
where the battleground is "taking place". They work from groups 1-9, meaning
level 11's and 19's play in one game, 21's and 29's. Of course the 0's play
in the correct group as well, with the exceptions being 60's being the last
level allowed in Alterac and 80's having their own grounds. Basically you want
to be at least near the last accepted level for your grouping to not be a
detriment to your team.
There are also arenas in select areas, or entered like a battleground, in which
you can fight in groups with near-level players. Finding these in the wild
you enter PvA, player versus all, in which it's a free-for-all.
In PvE there can be brief instances of PvP outside battlegrounds. Dueling
is a solo combat with anyone that can be asked and declined by anyone. The
other time is when a group of the other faction storm a town or city, or
even a single character, though rarely. When you see someone of the other
faction with their PvP flagged, meaning their name color is changed, then you
can attack if you wish. Attacking a PvP turns on yours, as well as attacking
NPC's of the other faction.
*NOTE: The honor system rewards more for killing like-level or higher level
characters. You get no honor for killing lowly players.*
*NOTE: Attacking enemy players in neutral settlements will cause NPCs to defend
that player.*
For PvE you'll mainly encounter small bands of enemies entering a city to cause
minor damage, essentially just seeing how long they can go. Rarely, and you'll
want to at least watch these, will a raiding army of the other faction enter
a city and bolt for the king. This is because aside from the fun of it, they
are trying to get the achievement for killing the leaders of the factions.
One last note, if you're on PvE and get killed by another player you can wait
5 minutes in ghost form so that your PvP flag clears.
Balance?
--------
This is concerning the PvP aspect of Warcraft, no matter your realm. Are the
factions balanced in skill, numbers, and classes?
No, and for some obvious reasons, others not so obvious to an Alliance player
such as myself. I can assure you that 10 Horde players can defeat 10 Alliance
players of the same level and skill.
The main reason is that horde players are veterans of WoW, so they know which
classes are best to role, have better tactics that everyone follows, and
they role more healers by default. And at least in my battlegroup, you rarely
see under-geared/non-raid geared horde. Smart players + everyone having
heals + gear = easy mode.
The not-so-obvious reason is that probably most Alliance players are new to
WoW, and while there may be just as many good Alliance as Horde players, the
fact that there are more not so good Alliance players means those players
dilute battlegrounds. It's also reasonable to assume that if people do start
on Alliance, that means that when they do create a Horde toon they will know
their stuff better. Finally, there may be an element of "us against them" with
Horde players. I doubt that, but more likely is that Blizzard employees and GMs
are horde, which could explain all of this.
As far as I know, horde players are more likely to group up and try to control
an alliance-controlled Wintergrasp fort. It's just a snobbiness about them that
I don't respect at all. At least on my server, you'll always see the horde
coming up with new tactics or doing things more intentionally. As the Joker
would say, they are schemers; yet their plans usually just result in them
winning barely or making the game last as long as possible.
Alliance just does stuff and lets things happen, but the horde are deathly
afraid of losing. The horde always play not to lose, when they could probably
just out-right win. And it's usually this kind of overthinking that results in
a horde loss.
*NOTE: And trust me, I don't buy this faction stuff at all, I just know I
have an overall losing record in BGs we rarely have healers.*
-----
I would say have some faction pride, but I would rather say go Alliance, so
I'll say neither.
One interesting thing that bugs me is that these factions must be at war with
each other. In Outland and Northrend you see every camp has a mixture of the
factions and races. Other than betting that paladin is the most broken class,
I would say that at some point you could make any race for either faction.
============
Travel Plans ( TRAV123 )
============
Humans start near Stormwind, and SW is connected to Ironforge by a tram, and
IF is the city of Dwarves and Gnomes. Night Elves are to the west, but they
are reached via the left-most ship in SW Harbor, or SW via the port in
Auberdine for the Elves.
Once in Auberdine humans and little people only need to take the other ship
to reach Rut'theran Village (or Rut for short) and then step into the red light
to reach the Night Elf capital of Darnassus. The Exodar is reached via the
ship at the very end of the dock.
So essentially once you reach the major city of one race you can access all
the others. And you'll want to learn all the weapons you can from each major
city's trainer. All weapon trainers are near weapon shops or areas of the
battlegrounds.
-----
Forsaken start near the Undercity, and a zeppelin will take you to and from
Orgrimmar. Then the only way to get to Thunder Bluff is by a flight path from
the Orc capital or by foot.
*NOTE: I believe there is finally a zep from Org to TB. But I don't care.*
So Horde players actually have to hoof it to and from the bull town, which
takes a while but isn't too dangerous.
-----
Also, all factions have portals by mage trainers to the Blasted Land's Dark
Portal, which takes you to Outland when level 58.
========
Trainers ( TRAI123 )
========
There are trainers for your class and professions. Simply ask a guard and they
can tell you where to find your trainers. There are multiple trainers in the
land and sometimes many in one area.
Class trainers allow you to gain abilities and power them up. Not every level
allows new abilities or ranks, usually every other level.
Profession trainers allow you to maximize your professions and gain new
things to create. They operate in units of fives, tens at the most. You gain
skillup points by using your profession, according to the colors, and then
visit the trainer to make new things.
The trainers for gathering professions only allow your maximum skill level to
increase or some other refining process.
You'll need Burning Crusade with your professions at 300, 375 for Wrath, and to
a max of 450 as of Wrath.
===========
Professions ( PROF123 )
===========
Professions are your way of contributing to the economy of Warcraft, but
are not required in any way. Professions may actually slow your progress more
than you realize, but in the end-game portion they will pay off with highly
useful and high demand items you can make. And if you are just on the
gathering end of the jobs then you only have money to gain, but possibly not
as much and for more time spent.
*NOTE: To use a profession you just click the spellbook icon and then click
the icon of choice. I like to hot bar my professions, potions, and other
seldom-used items to the right. You can add action bars through the options
menu.*
You can have any of two main professions, and everyone can have the same sub-
professions. Here are the material professions, or "mats" for materials used
in the production professions:
Herbalism - collect herbs from plants.
Mining - pick away at deposits.
Skinning - rip the flesh from dead animals.
Here are the producing professions, where you turn the mats into something:
Alchemy - turn plants into potions. At least one extra buff from each.
Blacksmithing - create weapons and armor from ore.
Enchanting - disenchant rare items into things to buff other items. Tailoring
is the best second profession as most of the green items can be made
purely from killing humanoids.
Engineering - make things out of other things. Mainly ore. Mostly a "fun" and
extra ability profession. Not really a huge boost to stats.
Leatherworking - turn skins into leather armor, mail armor later. Also some
armor kits to enhance all armor.
Tailoring - make clothes out of cloths. Cloths are found off dead humanoids,
but to a lesser degree you need some leathers.
Jewelcrafting - turn gems into stuff. Burning Crusade needed. Need ore.
Inscription - create glyphs and buff scrolls. The least popular but probably
the most profitable. Need herbs.
Here are the sub-professions everyone can have:
Fishing - gather fish. Takes a long time to level.
Cooking - make food for buffs and health.
First Aid - the most useful and also most skippable one, since some classes
can heal and it costs cloth which can be sold.
Riding - go faster, a simple and essential element of this game. Going faster
equals less time spent playing.
Obviously the gathering and producing professions go with each other. Like it
would be very difficult to take on alchemy and engineering because you would
have no way to get the mats for either unless you find them in small quantities
from dead enemies or shell out the dough at the auction house or trades. Keep
in mind that mats are always expensive on average, with the rare cheap auction
for high-demand mats.
Only enchanters have no true collecting counterpart, as all you have to do is
find green or higher items like anyone else does. Tailoring also requires none
of the gathering professions, so those two solo professions are made for each
other, as you can sew up items to disenchant!
The only truly useful sub-profession is first aid, where fishing and cooking
require a lot of secondary effort, and first aid can be the only way some
classes can heal themselves consistently, even in end-game boss fights, a
little bit of health can be the difference of death and staying alive long
enough for a heal.
Hunters really must take on fishing and cooking to feed their pet. Of course if
you don't mind, you can just have it live off of found/bought foods.
Early on it's cheap to add professions, so you can pick up a few, see what they
require and drop for whatever you may want instead. It's also possible, early
on, to add the gathering professions and sell on the AH for silver, which is
a lot early in the game, and then later drop for something more serious.
Late in the professions all of them will require the others to advance. This
does not mean you can't advance or need to take them up, it just means you'll
need to rely on other players, the auction house, or your guild to help you
acquire what you need.
-----
A few extra notes on professions, all of them will not naturally advance no
matter how much time it takes you to level in Outland, it will usually take
staying in Outland a little longer to advance these professions to 350, the
minimum to pick up Northrend recipes. So you can consider doing quests for a
bit in Outland, or just hunt down mats, but again, you won't level as fast as
you would in Northrend.
JC has interesting benefits at level 80. I of course recommend doing PvP and WG
to get level 80 epics, despite resilience, but once you have all the PvP gear
you can earn at 80, your honor points will cap at 75000. This meanings you
cannot hoard honor for the next expansion, you may as well keep spending it.
You can do this by spending 10000 points for the gems from the jewercrafting
quartermaster in SW or Org. Aside from JC's, everyone can buy these and sell
them in the AH, just keep in mind some are much more profitable than others.
*NOTE: The latest patch replaced the rare gems with the new epics, which is
instant gold.*
As of patch 3.3, frozen orbs are easy to get, so getting to 450 isn't that
hard.
=========================
Secondary Profession Tips ( SEC1234 )
=========================
Now we will go a bit further into how the professions work. First are lesser
professions because everyone can use those.
First Aid
---------
The reason to get this is to make bandages. You can't use them while taking
damage or moving, you must be still. They allow you to not have to wait
for your health to regain, and put your cloths to good use.
Just like tailoring, making bandages relies on you getting dropped cloth from
enemies, usually humanoids or in chests. And that's it, find the cloth, locate
the first aid trainers, and make bandages. You'll need to find the trainers
to go beyond the base skill max.
Cooking
-------
Cooked food does more than just heal you between battles, some foods can give
you temporary buffs. Cooking is totally optional, but it's a must for
hunters to make food for your pet.
You must be near some source of heat to make food, and there is always one by
the cooking trainers, but you can find others and can make your own fire.
You start by just making bread using the cooking supplies, even through the
yellow colors until bread is a green skill. Don't forget to pick up and use the
few recipes you get so you can turn things like spider legs and meat into
cooked food, which are at least more valuable to sell. It's simple enough to
start cooking, but keeping your skill up requires a little extra work for a
little extra benefit.
*NOTE: Feralas, Felwood, and Tanaris are some of the places to get the late
recipes to reach 300.*
Fishing
-------
Fishing does two things: get fish to cook and sometimes pick up rare items.
You fish by finding a trainer, buying a rod from a vendor, equipping the rod,
and then clicking the fishing icon in your spell book. With the lure in the
water you just wait for it to shake and then right click it to try and catch.
Best to be in a quiet place and the sound turned up, and always have your
finger ready to push at any moment.
As you level up there are more fishing supplies to buy that help you in your
efforts. Remember, to best take advantage of fishing you need to pick up
cooking so you don't eat raw fish.
*NOTE: Hunters need food for their pets. You check the pet tab to see their
diet and then you can know what to focus on. Remember that the better quality
of food the more happiness gained when you feed it.*
Riding
------
Riding allows you to move faster. Most of the time spent in Warcraft is on
getting from one place to the next. So any speed advantage reduces the time
spent to level up and reach end-game content.
To ride you need to be at level 30, then locate your race's trainer, and
finally spend about 40 gold on buying a mount and getting the training. As of
now you can buy any mount from any race.
I believe warlocks and paladins can summon their own mount, and engineers can
make them at higher levels. But the upper level of mounts require hundreds of
gold and level 60.
*NOTE: You can buy spurs to equip to your boots, and find the carrot on a stick
to increase speed. The carrot is obtained by visiting Mirage Raceway in
Thousand Needles, getting the quest to kill the Zilla monster (I forget it's
name), and going into Zul'Farrak and killing him at the pool.*
=======
Talents ( TAL1234 )
=======
Talents are things you can advance into once you are level 10, the icon will be
on your action bar. With every level up you gain a talent point. With this you
can advance up (technically down) any of the three talent trees. All levels of
the tree require 5 spent in the previous levels of the same tree.
All classes have three different talent trees meant to guide your character to
an end where they are better at one talent set than the others. Since you start
at 10 and can end at 80 there are 70 talent points to spread around. Keep in
mind that original end-game talents required 40 points. So now you can get a
decent end skill while advancing fairly high up the other trees. But of course
there are higher level talents added to each tree, but you can still reach the
new ends. It's your choice to go up one tree alone or spread around the points
to get at least a few of the other options.
An example is that as a rogue I started up the stealth tree, but then took to
the combat tree, with only a few points in the finishing move tree. As a DK
I spent 30+ in blood, 10 in unholy, and the rest in frost, and I plan to
focus on blood from here on out with an eye on somehow getting that ghoul from
unholy. As a hunter I have all points in marksmanship, with I believe like two
points in some other tree (not the first one).
Some trees lead to new abilities, and most talents have different ranks.
Usually the ranked talents require multiple points to get complete 100%
effect of the talent, or at least the best of it.
Starting Over
-------------
It's wise to pick abilities wisely to start, but if not then you simply need a
gold to cancel all your talents and get all the points back. You do this by
visiting your class trainer, selecting the unlearn talents option, and then
paying the gold. You get all your points back and can spend them as you wish.
Keep in mind that ranks of your learned abilities through the talent tree will
stay. So if you get the ability you learned in the talent tree back you will
get the ranks you bought from the trainer.
You can unlearn your talents as much as you like, but it gets more and more
expensive, so try to get it right with as few of tries as possible.
Don't forget that purchasing glyphs may also affect how you obtain talents.
======
Colors ( COLO123 )
======
The color scale goes: gray, white, green, yellow, orange, red, blue, purple, or
at least as far as I can tell. This applies to skills, items, and quests.
Skills only operate on the gray, green, yellow, orange scale. Gray means it's
easy and awards you no skillup points. Green means it should be easy so you
will rarely skillup. Yellow gives you a 60% chance to skillup, and oranges will
always skill you up. Your skills usually work in 5's or 10's, meaning you
must get 5 or 10 skill points in order to move onto the next set of things to
do.
*NOTE: weapon skills and lockpicking maxes only move up by five as you level.*
Items go on gray, white, green, blue, purple, and the ultra-rare, end-game
orange items. Gray is broken so you can toss it. White is normal and not very
good. Greens are where you should be at for the most part as they are better
than normal and give nice little buffs. Blues are that next tier but will also
be hard to come by. You get blues either at the auction house, a reward for a
big quest, or very rarely in a drop. Purples are super hard to find but by the
time you get to the end game stuff you will probably get a few. There are also
purples as rewards for battleground success at level 60. Oranges are things I
haven't seen.
*NOTE: Don't forget that if you hit battlegrounds hard, you can visit the
reward house to buy nice items and mounts. This is different from the
quartermasters at the zones of the battles. Like Alterac Valley, you can hit
these places to buy an epic mount at level 60.*
Quests work on a gray, green, yellow, and red scale. Gray means it gives only a
fraction of the experience upon completion. Green means you have only a limited
time until your level is too high and the quest is almost worth dropping, but
you should make an effort to clear your greens. Yellow means you probably can
do the quest on your own, and you get the proper experience for turning it in.
Red means you should not do the quest, but completing it gives more EXP than
normal.
There are also gray, green, yellow, red, skull, and ?? levels of enemies.
Gray means killing that enemy yields no EXP, green a little, yellow the
standard amount, and red more. Skull and ?? enemies probably require a raid
or are just not killable on your own or through normal means.
Gray doesn't mean to toss the item, thing, or not do the skill, it just means
you're not getting the most out of it. Some gray quests should be finished just
so you can keep the quest link going. Gray items can be sold, and at higher
levels they are worth at least a couple of flights worth of silver. And of
course a lot of gray skills will be useful far beyond skilling you up.
=====
Items ( ITEM123 )
=====
There are many different types of items, all with their own usefulness. Of
course you have your equips, such as weapons and armor, but also jewelry
and shirts. Then you have your support items, such as your hearthstone,
skinning knife, poisons, and so on, the things you will keep no matter what.
Next are the foods and waters to replenish health and mana. You'll also collect
mats (materials) of both directly useable items like leather as well as the
stuff you don't need, such as for cooking, other professions, or just gray
items that are meant to be sold for a small amount of coin.
If you hit a dungeon and get blues, for the most part, those will be sold. I
know that very rarely have I even used dungeon drops or even quest rewards
beyond a few levels as sometimes drop are more useful. The first quests in
Hellfire at level 58 and the Northrend quests at level 68 were the only times
I recall rewards being very useful. Even the dungeon drops in Hellfire didn't
last as long as some of the quest rewards.
There are also a lot of quest items you'll gather that will take up space.
These can either be used during the quest or collected items to fulfill the
quest, but since they take up space you will want to hold onto these and get
them finished as soon as possible.
=============
Item Bindings ( ITBI123 )
=============
There are 4 types of item bindings in this game:
None - Usually all white quality items, mats, potions, and poor equipment will
have no restrictions.
Bind On Equip (BoE) - These are usually all greens you find in the wild. Any
BoE can be sold at the AH, given to your guild, or traded. Once you
put it on you cannot put in the AH or give to anyone else. Basically
your only option after you find better equipment is to sell your old
gear, unless maybe you want to hold onto them for options.
Bind On Pickup (BoP) - These are the worst because they are the rewards from
for killing bosses or completing quests and you cannot give them to
anyone else. If you can't use them then all you can do is sell them
to a vendor.
Soulbound - Similar to BoP's, only these are soulbound items from quests or
found in the wild. Usually just unique or quest-specific items. Items
also turn Soulbound once you put on a BoE.
There are also unique items, of which you can only equip one. I believe you
can equip multiple items such as two weapons or two rings of green quality, but
I don't think you can have two blues of the same name equipped, but for sure
you can't equip two of the same uniques.
The purpose of bindings is so that you can't do two things: have a hand-me-
down system for any alternates, and to prevent players from farming boss
drops for gold. All dungeons usually have one boss drop that can be sold and is
always there, but the rest of the assured boss drops are either to be used or
sold to a vendor.
===============
Item Management ( ITMA123 )
===============
Bags
----
Through your early quests you'll get your 6-8 slot bags. One thing to keep in
mind is that only hunters need a quiver or ammo bag. NONE of the other classes
should waste a bag slot on an ammo container.
Early on it may also be cheaper to buy your bags from vendors. And from 10 to
14 slot bags you should be able to get them cheaper from the AH than vendors.
16 slot bags are found rarely in the wild, so you those and up are bought
only at the AH. I depends on your realm the prices of these, but perhaps it
would be cheaper to ask a guildie to make one for you. Sometimes you can pick
up 10+ bags from a guild bank.
Tossing Items
-------------
The general rule of thumb is to sell anything you find that is gray. If in the
field you can just toss it if your bags are full. But if you are collecting
things from enemies and you get a lot of the same items then perhaps it's best
to toss something else so you aren't constantly tossing the same items,
though that may be the best. It's always wise to drop gray equipment before
gray weapons.
Late in the game it may be wise to drop white items, even of your professions
if in small quantities and below what you're using. It may even be good to
drop potions and bandages before anything else.
Sharing the Wealth
------------------
If in a guild then anything white can probably be given to your guild bank,
such as water if you don't need mana, or extra food and potions that no longer
help you. This does not mean white equipment or weapons.
As for green items, or greens or uncommons, those need to be handled much
differently. All greens you collect in the field should make it back to town
with you. Now I'm not saying run to town when you get a green, unless you
somehow get in that position, but when full packs appear you really need to do
all in your power to keep all your greens. The reason is not only to possibly
make fair trades with your guild bank and use yourself, but to also sell at the
auction house. Very rarely is it best to sell a green directly to a vendor. It
is interesting at high levels when the deposit at the AH for items is near the
price you would sell it for, and possibly less than the gold you make with a
vendor.
*NOTE: After level 40 if your item is common and not going for much gold in the
AH, auction house, then perhaps it's going for a respectable sell price with
the vendors.*
Banking It
----------
You will also find your way to the bank in a city where you can store any
items you can. These banks are expensive beyond the default slots because you
must purchase a bag slot and have a spare bag.
A recipe or anything for your profession that you can't use any time soon goes
in the bank. Same with any mats you find that you can't use, such as pulling
some leather from a guild bank for later. If there are things you can use after
a level or two then you should hold onto those. In what can only be described
as a bad idea you can also store items in the bank you just don't want to let
go, although you will never use them.
*NOTE: For those mindful of alternates, consider holding onto all recipes. Of
course this may be costly, but it shouldn't be if you actually have alts to
use or hold those recipes.*
White items not weapons or armors are most likely needed by someone as a mat.
It's very tricky, but most mats can be used by you, if not for a direct
recipe then perhaps as a mat for something you want that someone else can
make, such as an enchanter or alchemist. Anything green that you don't know
what it's used for needs to be kept until you find its use, probably on
the internet.
A bad idea is to store other weapon and armor "options." This is because for
only a few reasons would you need to swap weapons; so it's usually best to just
sell something once you've chosen something else, unless you're unsure which
item benefits you more, then maybe hold onto both.
Maybe tanks need to hold onto extra pieces of gear for dungeons as you will
take a beating. It is nice if all damage dealers keep at least one spare weapon
in case a dungeon drags on forever.
For items you will never use, don't want to sell, don't want to toss, and
things you want to keep probably need to be given to a mule. I like to write
down their names, check the internet, and then decide if it's best to toss
such items.
====
Mule ( MUL1234 )
====
No, I did not title a section by a random mammal. A mule in WoW is a character
you make on a server with the purpose of holding extra items from your main
character. You can make 10 characters on a server, so you can abuse that as
you wish, but I can safely say that for a level 60 main I only needed one
mule, with "needed" being purely subjective.
*NOTE: Upon thinking about it, I think with three characters and knowing what
items I have no use for I don't think I really have a mule, just an enchanter
holding items to disenchant for later and holding tons of runecloth.*
From a gameplay point of view it's wise to get your mule to at least level 15
so you can see how another class or race plays, but if you want to make a
character and run it to a city for muling then that is fine too. This is easier
for humans on Alliance.
All you need is the mule to be in a major city, receive mail sent from your
main character, and then deposit the items in the mule's bank. Of course gold
is used for extra bank space, so bags and gold need to be sent to a mule for
heavy storage.
Another cool thing is if your main is off in the wild and not ready to
return to civilization, but by a mailbox, then it's possible for the mule to
receive money and either buy materials or keep in touch with the auction
house. This is not a very effective way of playing, but a nice option if you
want to keep your main in Northrend or Outland for an extended period with a
home point in that region.
And yes, you can have a level 1 in a one person guild for extra storage, but
that's a little too much abuse for my liking. You also need 100G for a bank
tab anyway. It may be a wise idea once you have a nice collection of toons
and they can all share a guild bank.
I do not encourage you to bypass buying more bags just because you can mule.
You need your own bags and space when entering higher level dungeons, mainly
because the dungeons are long and you will need as much space as possible.
Don't let muling turn into the next disease though.
========
Alt-itis ( ALT1234 )
========
This is a disease you contract when you create many characters but do not play
them beyond so long, while at the same time you have a much higher level main
character.
You'll notice that WoW starts fast, with levels advanced very quickly, you will
hit level 20 in less than a week with no problems, much farther if you know
what you're doing. Even 20-40 is pretty darn fast and exciting.
But then you hit that wall getting to 50, I know I did. At this point not only
do you start a mule, but you'll most likely want to tamper with the different
types of realms. If you played the battlegrounds to failure then you probably
want to get a rogue, hunter, druid so you can rule a battleground at the
maximum level for maximum fun.
I encourage you to play your main character far more than your alternates or
mules. It's not illegal to sign them up for guilds not your main's, but you
also don't want to abuse guild privilages because aside from being uncool your
actions don't go unnoticed.
Maybe give an hour to starting new characters on other realms, not much because
once you start networks of characters on different realms, then you may be
talking about a real-life problem, or less a quality of play across your
characters.
I would say three characters on one realm is a nice number. For me, I needed to
at least start a little on the classes to test them out, but I strongly
encourage you to think about three classes you want and stick to them.
=========================
Smart-Character Creations ( SMCC123 )
=========================
This section is to better help you get an idea of what characters to create.
It may be best to just go with one, but no matter what you'll create at least
three before one character hits 80.
Three Classes
-------------
There are many kinds of characters to have:
DPS - rogue, hunter, casters, and talent specs of other classes.
Tank - warrior, paladin, and DK.
Heal - priest, pally, shaman, or druid.
There are also different play styles to think about:
Melee - rogue, warrior, paladin, DK. Shaman maybe.
Caster - mage, warlock, druid, priest, shaman.
Ranged - hunter, any caster.
ALL classes can have a DPS spec, so any class can cause damage, that is not the
focus of this. If you want DPS then I say either get a rogue or hunter. If
you want a tank, get a warrior or paladin. If you want a healer, get a priest
or druid.
*NOTE: That's not a typo, I did say hunter, because I do know of one that
does 6k dps, and I've seen none higher. I know a shadow priest that pushes
4k, so dps is not a problem to find.*
Here are what I think are the best three classes to play:
DPS - rogue
Tank - warrior
Heal - priest
Not only do those three choices get you a nice stable of character styles,
they also allow you to get three profession types that they can use.
Your rogue can work leather and skin, your warrior can mine and most likely
jewelcrafting, and your priest can gather herbs and mix. All three can
gather to sell at the auction while at the same time advance their professions.
Making Money
------------
Here is a list of where I rank the needs of the creation professions, including
auction house prices and demand:
Jewelcrafting - 40% (per the patch and benefit to yourself)
Enchanting - 30%
Alchemy - 12% (all high level stuff is expensive, but I hear nothing of people
asking for these in chat much, so I am not sure of demand)
Inscription - 6% (could be 10 higher, but no one constantly needs these)
Leatherworking - 5%
Blacksmithing - 5%
Tailoring - 2%
*NOTE: With the increased availability now of Runed and Crusader orbs, the
patterns for crafted mats that use them are now much more usable. I mean I
paid less than 1000 gold for the mats for iLevel 245 tanking bracers.*
Enchanting requires you to almost get it to 450 to become a solid money-maker,
and even then it's not like there is promised money. The biggest knock
against enchanting is that most will offer for free if you have the mats, so
you could end up making no money unless you sell your stuff at the AH. Then
if you want to make mad money you'll have to devote a lot of time selling
your service and running around to the people that need you.
Personally, I would only enchant so I could have someone disenchant items for
me so other enchanters can enchant for me. Or so the enchanter can enchant
AH stuff (which won't help you enchant your level 80's for much).
The three gathering professions, skinning, mining, and herbalism can be used to
make you promised money. Everyone uses these, and everyone will pay for the
materials at any level. The easiest one for money is mining, since you don't
always have to kill things and can track the nodes on your map, and herbing is
the same, but herbs can be almost anywhere.
So if you want to max your money-making potential and guarantee you can always
earn money, pick up jewelcrafting and mining. And JC does great to help you
gem all your gear for all your toons.
The Death Knight
----------------
One interesting thing about your DK is that you can pick up any professions
you want, and in little time that DK can be either a valuable support to your
main or a cash cow.
First you should know that enchanting is hard for a DK because most enchanters
get items from quest rewards, creations, or cheap buys at the AH. So let's be
clear that Enchanting is only for a character you start from scratch, or if
you're ready to do a bunch of low-levels as a DK, defeating the benefit of
starting at level 55. Maybe if you're a tailor as well and hit dungeons, but
this is only if your main(s) don't enchant and you want one badly.
Second you should realize that almost 50% of the people in Outland are DK's,
none of which have professions. So the Outland can be used by your DK to farm
mats without much interruption.
Last is that any profession other than enchanting can be easily farmed in
Azeroth. Mining/herbs are easy to get as a DK because you have a fast
mount and only draw aggro in a few areas, meaning you can ride around mostly
unhindered. Never mind that most of the hardcore mat farmers are in Northrend,
meaning you should have next to no competition.
So it's safe to say that at DK can herb or mine, but not both since you can't
track both - maybe if you have good eyes and don't ride too fast, but most
are tricky to find.
There are only three creation professions a wise DK should pick up: jewel-
crafting, alchemy, and inscription. Leatherworking/skinning both require you
kill beasts, and most LW is best for a rogue or hunter who can use them.
Blacksmithing/engineering also advance smoother as you level. Tailoring for a
DK requires running dungeons, but other than bags you aren't making a ton of
money until then.
Everyone can use glyphs, everyone can drink potions, and jewelcrafting is
easily the most popular profession. Personally, a mining and JC Death
Knight is the smartest option to both make items all your characters can use
and make easy money when you need it.
One thing to consider as a DK is to maybe buy a bunch of bags and just go
around gather mats without stopping for much. And once at 300 of gathering,
then pick up the profession to use those and see how far you can get. It could
cut a lot of time, but you still need to train the gathering profession anyway,
so maybe taking both at the same time will work fine.
The killer is that, like all professions, you'll be held hostage in outland
until you reach 350. JC is very tough, you just have to dedicate more time out
there, nothing else to do unless you have an 80 and can buy out to 350.
-----
No matter what you do in creating a character and picking professions, don't
think that they will all be easy or take little time. Professions require
levels, and all professions draw off each other to advance. Only with three
balance, same-level characters could you expect to pay no money for 98% of
the mats all three would need.
======
Guilds ( GUIL123 )
======
Guilds are the most social aspect of Warcraft, since guild members are willing
to help you more often than others, they are accountable more so than other
strangers, and the guild chat will follow you no matter where you are.
What is a Guild?
----------------
It's simply a group you associate with and should have common ground with, who
will at least help you if in need of something. A guild can be nothing more
than a chat room or access to a guild bank for some.
That title under players in the game enclosed by is their guild.
Size Matters
------------
Joining a small guild usually means there is little chat, little help, and
not much benefit for you other than the title. It may also be better to form
closer bounds and more concrete relationships.
However, large guilds can be unruly and possibly tyrannical with too many
restrictions and rules. But of course a lack of rules could lead to theft of
the bank, spammed chat, and not much help.
It's best to get a good feel of a guild before you join. I would advise you
join a guild looking to "boost our numbers" or waiting to join the guild of
a friend you either know in person or meet in the game. And if you ever find
yourself without a guild, feel free to take your time finding a new guild.
Chat
----
You press 'enter' and type '/g' to enter the guild chat. Your guild chat is
connected to you no matter where everyone is. This means that you'll have
something to do no matter where you are, can ask for help, or can see if
anyone else is doing something of interest to you.
Guild Bank
----------
The guild banks are located by the banks in major cities, or wherever banks
are found.
The guild bank is the most important aspect of a guild because it allows the
transfer of free items from one person to another.
Here are my rules for a GB:
#1. Take only what you can use or need, or can use real soon.
#2. Give back items you can no longer use, such as potions, and mats
you can't use. Items you can't sell at the AH but that are not
complete trash should be given to your guild.
#3. DO NOT give any gray items. Not even white weapons or armor.
#4. If there are items you can no longer use for you profession, and
the bank is getting full, wait a few days or so until you
take those, and only on days when you haven't used your
allowed takes.
#5. It's always nice to trade something for what you take. Most guilds
won't have rules for this, but anything of use should be
traded for something you take.
Some guilds charge fees and taxes, others don't. Some allow for withdrawals
and/or paid repairs, others don't. These things may be the more important
info to learn about a guild.
My guild doesn't ask for money, but also doesn't let me take money or take
money, but that's fine. Just assume that all guilds are more about you getting
and doing things on your own, with the guild bank being a last option or way
to top off what you got.
Guild Meetings/Events
---------------------
If there is a meeting or event, especially if invited, you should attend or
at least say you can't go. Don't laugh or make a mockery of whatever happens,
just go with the flow and stay quiet if things get too nerdy.
Invited/Inviting
----------------
It's not wise to invite any stranger to your guild or accept any invitation.
That seems odd since I accepted a random invitation to what has turned out to
be a large, diverse, and cool guild, but I would still advise against it.
You don't invite people to your guild unless you are the leader. If you want
to invite someone then ask an officer or the leader first. If you don't then
that person may get in the bank, grab what they want, and then leave the
guild. Not cool.
Joining
-------
Joining a guild is done through many ways. My guild requires online
registration, although I was recruited in-game. Usually someone in the game
will announce they are accepting members, and if you meet the requirements
then you can whisper and ask for more.
There are many types of guilds, so be sure you know what you're getting into.
Standard - just a guild of members who have no real goals or specialization.
This is my type of guild with no real rules, just people who can help
when needed. These are usually the larger guilds, with just as many
people as they want.
Twink - Twink guilds are cool with the fact that your character is not your
main, none in the guild are apparently. These should be cool with
giving out nice equipment and possibly allowing for equipment for your
main.
Leveling - This type is more designed for helping each other complete dungeons
and level up when needed, more so than the others. They are also okay
with you leaving once you are leveled up nicely.
Raiding - These guilds either want high level characters or want you to be
one in hurry, and they may help you get there. These are all called
"end-game" guilds as they desire to reach a point of "completion," or
at least finish the hardest instances and content as it's released.
Racial/Class - I have not run into a racial guild, probably best, but for a
class like rogue it may be best to join a class-only guild where all
know the others' needs. Of course effective groups for non-hybrid
classes will be difficult to muster within these guilds.
New - These are either for people who want a single-person guild for storage,
or they are a real new guild. Joining a new guild can be a disaster or
blessing, it all depends on whether the others are near or far above
your level.
Sign-for-Gold - I don't know if this is a popular option, but if you want to
play the game without a guild to stay with, you can look for chat
messages asking for you to sign for a payment. These are usually for
people wanting their own guild to themselves, so they will want to
pay you and then allow you to leave. So you can essentially help these
people out for free gold, since most new players join real guilds
there isn't exactly a constant flow of un-guilded players in any
realm.
*NOTE: I think you must stay signed with one guild until it is formed, then you
can leave or sign with another. I'm not entirely sure when you can sign with
another guild or charter.*
Raiding
-------
I can tell you right now that everyone will want to be in a raiding guild at
level 80. Raiding is after all the vast majority of what this game revolves
around.
On some servers there is even what is called "progression", which has two
meanings: a guild trying to become one of the few top guilds on the server, or
a server that is in the eyes of some only meant to gear you up a little before
you transfer to another server for serious end-game content.
It is worth saying that some servers, maybe just faction on a server, could
be really terrible. Also, Blizzard designs new content with challenge in mind,
more so with the latest content. Maybe you and your guild because good at the
less challenging version of instances, but it takes beasts to tackle the
achievements and very hard modes. So just know that everything is case-by-
case, your experience may vary.
With all that in mind, I would consider it worth the effort to try and join a
raiding guild first. Raiding guilds are not leveling guilds, so while you may
be a noob in need of help, the rest may have 0% concern for you, and they
should because they don't know you and their concern is with raiding.
All I'm saying is think about if you want to have the best gear and all the
content in sight once at 80. If so, then start early looking for a raiding
guild.
Leveling
--------
It's hard for me to talk about leveling guilds because I don't understand them.
Their purpose is to help all their members, but they require almost no
loyalty and do not look harshly upon those that leave.
The leveling guild I joined was full of cool people, but once I and most of
the others around me hit 80, and for about a month after, it was clear to me
that there was no one who really knew what they were doing as far as end-game
content.
I even see ads in chat about guilds who will respond to your every need. This
leads me to believe that leveling guilds are led by people who are just casual
players who are not concerned with progression.
It's really all about you. If you're a jerk then you may have no problem
demanding help until you reach 80 and then just leaving the guild that hepled
you get there. But if you're a good person who gave back what you took, perhaps
leaving won't be so bad.
Theft
-----
Guilds are very aware of what you take, there are logs that keep track of what
each member takes and gives. Nothing can be done if you take stuff at your
level and can use, but if you start taking weapons and items you can't use or
don't need then expect to be either warned against it or kicked. If you are
low on money then it's best to ask a guild member for a small donation,
especially a level 80, rather than take something to sell.
Usually you need to have a good rep and get promoted to access the good stuff
in the guild bank anyway. But if you can trade for anything then that is most
likely fine.
Leaving
-------
You should at least notify someone you are leaving, or mail the leader, if not
provide some notice ahead of time. It's not a crime to just walk away, but it
sorta is if you've taken more than you've given to the guild. Trust me, they
keep records and can spread the word you were not very cool.
Starting Your Own
-----------------
You simply find the guild master in the city and purchase a charter for 10
silver. You then find 9 players to sign it and turn it in to the master to
form the guild.
You need to keep the charter in your backpack due to a bug.
Once you have a guild ready you can design a tabard for 10G, and all tabards
cost 50 S, but usually provided by the guild in the bank. A tabard is of no
benefit other than visual appeal, and if ugly then maybe it's best to tuck
your tabard in your pack.
It costs 9350G for all six guild bank tabs, going from 100, 250, 500, 1000,
2500, and 5000.
The permissions, promotions, icons, design, kicks, and recruits are all under
the control the leader. Don't get any officers or allow any powers to others
that you can't trust fully.
I would say you make a guild once you've hit level 80 and have maxed out your
gear. At that point your guild has nothing to offer you, so you may as well
use your powers for good. If you are impatient or people don't like you then
that is the cue to not make a guild or disband or step down as the leader
This is what happened to me. I outgrew my leveling guild and made my own. From
my experience, people don't read well no matter what you post in chat or
type to them. If you start out raw and don't find enough cool and patient
people, your guild will become a day-care for lowbies wanting free dungeon
runs, items, and gold at all times of the day or they will leave. And worst of
all, you could be helping people just level their alts who will leave your
guild whenever they feel like it.
That is why, and especially at this late point in WoW's growth, that starting
a guild should only be with you and friends, like ten 80s. That or take a
serious look at anyone before you add them. I mean I tend to give noobs the
benefit of the doubt, such as not calling them noobs, but it only takes one to
ruin your new guild.
-----
In the end, unless there is a need on your server for whatever guild you want
to make, it's best to just apply to other guilds and try to get the reading on
whatever it is you want from them while on the outside.
It's all about patience. You can't expect to be a top member of your guild or
create the new top-server guild in a week - just let whatever happens happen.
I believe you cannot get much out of this game alone, but you should want a
guild with more good players than players that don't understand how to play.
============
Getting Help ( GETH123 )
============
There are many ways in which you can get help for playing this game. First is
to use a website like wowwiki.com, thottbot.com, or many others, but I use
wowwiki because I just do.
There are other exterior ways to help. One is by using add-ons, and don't
ask me how to install them or what they are, I just know they exist. Second is
to buy a guide, or use this one! I found an auction on eBay for both a base
game and Burning Crusade guides for just about $5. They aren't walkthroughs
or help with all my problems, but they have maps and some nice info.
For in-game help you have chat. Below I'll outline the many kinds of chat, but
all you need to know is that there is nothing wrong with asking a question to
your fellow gamers. This is half the reason to join a guild, so familiar
players can help you play. Trust me, at level 80 I was still learning lots,
and there are many things I still don't know.
Quest logs, tutorials, scroll-overs, and guards can also offer help. Quests
will always at least point you in the right direction, although later they
do become less and less helpful. Scroll-overs are when you put your pointer
over something and sometimes text will appear to help you use it. Guards in
most cities and other places can tell you where to find all the major NPC's
you need, such as your trainers, and other locations.
You can also use the tracking button near your mini-map to find certain things
in town. This is the same tracking hunters have to track enemies. Even some
professions like mining allow for tracking of things.
As of 3.3, the game now does all but kill the quest objectives for you. There
is really only outside help needed for specifics on some Azeroth quests. Other
than that, the game is now really stream-lined in questing.
======
Social ( SOC1234 )
======
Friends
-------
Be sure to be picky with who you add to your friends list. It's okay to add
someone nice and helpful after a dungeon or group quest, but most of the
people you add that way will never come into contact with you.
You can add friends by selecting their portrait, opening your social tab, and
selecting add friend, or select add friend and type their name.
Friends will appear to you with light blue name tags when you see them.
Who
---
The Who tab in your social menu is used to find someone who you can't see or
have not seen in chat. This is really only used to find someone that a group
member says to add, or maybe for other obscure reasons.
LFG/LFM
-------
Chat channel /4 is for when you open the group tab and select that you are
looking to run a dungeon. Of course few use this because advertising in trade
or general or guild chat is easier.
*NOTE: I know the dungeon tool is used now, but the chat is still dead.*
Chat
----
You can open chat from social and see who is on a channel, even make your own
channels.
You have different commands to enter to go into different chats, just press
ENTER and the following, then SPACE:
/s - Say, the base chat where you speak to anyone nearby.
/y - Yell, yells your phrase to people with a large area, not always the
entire map.
/1 - General, the chat for the map you are in.
/2 - Trade, for the only channel that connects all your cities, but can only
be entered from within a city.
/3 - LocalDefense, of the zone you're in. Meant for when the other faction is
attacking, but rarely used.
/g - Guild, join your guild's chat channel.
/p - Party, talk to only people in your party.
/bg - Battleground, used when in a PvP battleground.
/raid - Raid, talk within your raid.
Be nice in all chat, don't pick a fight with anyone, trust me, it's much easier
to ignore someone than argue with them.
Whenever speaking, make sure you are not confusing or saying something off-
color, you're speaking to many different kinds people, not just a bunch of
selfish 20-somethings.
One nice tip is that when anyone uses chat you can shift click their name to
find out their level, where they are, class, and what guild they are in.
Useful for getting around having to find things out through asking them.
Trolls/Chat Advice
------------------
No, not the trolls on horde, they don't wear boots so they must suck. I mean
the people that just waste time spamming chat channels with useless garbage.
You got your anals, Obamas, and bros, but you also have people that say
something intended to cause you to respond. Doesn't matter what it is, how
sacred it is to you, or how 100% wrong they are, just don't bother wasting
your time.
If you're not looking for money, something to buy, a group, offering help,
or saying something neutral, probably best to not say it. Also, the longer
your post the less you should post it.
Ignore trolls, report gold sellers, and report people you never heard before
who spam.
Party
-----
A party is formed by right clicking on someone's portrait or their name in
chat and selecting "Invite". You can have five players in one party, and
with a group you can beat any quest. With a party of 3 DPS, 1 tank, and 1
healer you can clear any dungeon - of course your levels must match whatever
you are doing.
Groups are temporary and disband shortly after the quest is done. If a party
breaks up before then someone has not been a good team-player.
Always check the looting of a group, and keep your eye out for people that try
to take all the rewards.
Raid
----
You won't these much until you raid the other faction's cities or attack the
end-game dungeons. The raids in Azeroth and Outland are out-dated and not
required or wise other than for achievements, rep, and the experience of
doing them (not XP however).
Raids can be 10, 25, or 40 large, and you can only complete "RAID" quests while
in a raid.
It's best to join a raiding guild, or if your guild will lead a raid. Joining
random raids is not wise because they tend to not form, fall apart upon
formation, or someone will be a loot ninja or not follow directions and ruin
the whole raid.
You have a raid tab in your social menu, and this will help you see who is
in your raid and see if you're raid is balanced.
Looting
-------
Group looting is the base looting system, where everyone gets a turn to loot
a corpse alone. Once you open and close the corpse without taking all the loot
it will become open to anyone.
Loot Master requires someone of trust and honesty, so it's not seen very
often. With a master looter that person decides who gets what. This is mostly
best in raids when people may NEED things they can't use, so that master can
determine who gets what, usually by rolling manually (the /roll command).
Free-for-all is not wise because then you allow someone to skip fighting and
go loot. It's also bad for anyone with laggy connections. Ffa looting should
only be done when it's a two-person party and one person needs none of the
loot. Even with 3 people, someone may get left out.
======
Levels ( LEV1234 )
======
There is a bar over your standard action bar that measures your experience, or
EXP, until you advance. You can mouse over this bar to see how much you have to
go. Staying in a city, town, or safe area will turn this bar blue and you will
enter a state of "rested" in which you gain double EXP. Basically if you don't
play a character for a period of time then you are rested for much longer.
This is a way to reward you for not playing the game constantly. Your "rested"
amount depletes with kills, not by turning in quests.
Of course killing monsters is the main way to gain EXP, but you also gain a
large share by completing quests. Completion EXP is near the amount of how
much you gain by killing a similar amount of enemies, or close to it. A
standard "fetch" quest nets probably a unit of your EXP bar, while killing a
dungeon boss is closer to two or three units.
You also gain small amounts of EXP through exploration. These are not meant as
much early, but late you can fill many units on your EXP bar through finishing
your maps.
Your level determines what abilities you can train, equipment you can wear and
use, quests and areas you can enter safely, battlegrounds you can enter,
profession skills, and given talent points.
======
Quests ( QUES123 )
======
The game is based on you finishing quests in order to gain experience, explore,
earn coin, and get new items. You find quests by finding the NPC's on your
mini-map or by just finding those who have exclamation marks over their heads.
You round up to 25 quests and then go out and complete them. There is a
single button to bring up your quest log and by following the ones in your path
or nearby you can maximize your leveling potentional much faster than most.
A very key tip to finishing quests faster is to round up all the quests that
take place in one area. Knowledge of the land is key if your log is fairly
full, but if not then you can just get them all and head to the area where the
most take place, which is usually in an area with lots of things happening.
And if you end up in a place with lots of activity and have no quests then
there is probably some town with quests to pick up.
*NOTE: I prefer to tackle the "easier" ones in an area, turn them in, see if
the new ones are connected to the others, and then go out. It's unwise to go
into a dungeon with only a handful of quests. For dungeons I suggest using
an internet source so you can find if not most at least the ones easiest to
obtain, then go into the dungeon.*
When you have a quest and don't feel up to reading, then here is the guide to
dissecting a quest file. There is a who, why, and what part, and it's the what
part that you need because it tells you what you need to do. And if you don't
pick it up from the top where there is usually a number required, then find
the what part to learn what you must do. Although some quests are tricky in
that you must also find the where part, and there may be two wheres. One that
tells you where to go first and another for where you end.
There are three types of quests: go, report, and collect. The vast majority are
collection quests in which you either find stuff or kill things to get the
stuff, also called "fetch" quests. Go quests mean you just get to one area,
usually with the intentions of leading you to more quests. Report quests mean
you find something and then report back, usually not requiring any direct
fighting.
Pay attention to the quest color. You don't want to let green quests go grey,
but you also don't want to drop all low quests. If a quest goes grey then
perhaps you need to quickly finish it to see if the completion leads to
another.
It's also not wise to take on too many quests in the other races' areas as you
want to build rep with your race and area. Of course you can do all the quests
of your faction, and most lead to the same ends, but if you make multiple
characters then just stay to your areas so you can play the game from all
angles.
Lastly, beware some quests. Mostly the quests that are meant to send you off
to other zones, even though you may not be done where you are. Early in the
game you may also get seriously held up by some quests that require mats. For
quick leveling you don't want to go far from where you are. Just try to get
quests that take you nearby and see how long those last you until you have
to move on. Travel can only hold you up.
Dungeon quests are optional, quests that ask for gold are red flags to avoid,
and any quest you get in a zone that asks you to get something in another zone
can also be highly optional.
BIG CAUTION to some class quests. Not only are many still in the game that are
no longer required, but some just require too much for a temporary upgrade.
If nothing else, write the names of those quests and look it up on the net.
=============
Killing Stuff ( KILL123 )
=============
Otherwise known as combat or fighting, is the main point of this game. You
kill stuff, get money, rewards, and XP to level up. But there are a few more
things to keep in mind other than just attacking something.
Aggro/Threat
------------
This is the concept upon which this and many other MMO's are based. Aggro is
basically an invisible circle under your feet and under all the enemies in the
game. If the circles touch, then you draw aggro.
This circle grows in relation with your level to the enemy's. If you are lower
than something then your circle is bigger. If you are higher than them then
your circle is smaller.
Threat is the same as aggro, but for during combat with many players against
NPCs. Threat is just the calculation of which player is the biggest threat to
the enemy.
You can increase your threat by three ways: attacking, healing, or using a
threat increasing skill. There are no reasons to worry yourself of aggro
when fighting one-on-one, it's when in a group or raid when aggro becomes key
to not dying.
A tank draws aggro by increasing threat and giving honest damage so that the
monsters stay on the tank. If someone is putting more DPS on the same monster
then it won't take long for the monster to attack someone other than the
tank. Healing too much will also draw an enemy. Healing aggro mainly affects
when a lower level is healed, which makes sense so players couldn't do some
quests with just a high level healer at their side.
One thing about threat is you have to be at 100% to grab the enemy. But two
players can't be at 100% one the same target, so you can be at 99% and that
is fine. Think of it as a bar graph, the tank should have a big lead and the
rest should not be gaining too fast of ground or someone is doing something
wrong.
Group Dynamic
-------------
Don't mistake a 5-man heroic as being all about the tank and healer. It's the
job of everyone in the group to let the tank tank and ensure he doesn't die.
If he does massive damage and great AoE attacks, and can taunt quickly, he can
hold aggro on his own. Rogues and hunters can help him keep aggro. Rogues can
Tricks of the Trade and hunters can Misdirect onto him to boost his aggro
lead.
If you draw aggro, it's your fault, period. Don't say someone can't do
something, only you have yourself to blame for doing too much damage than the
tank can cover. Healers only draw aggro when new enemy adds enter a battle.
As a dps, if you are doing too much and can't drop your aggro, just stop
doing damage, or do less.
Crowd Control
-------------
This means that you will reduce the amount of things attacking you or your
group. Sap from rogues and polymorph from mages are a form of CC which can
turn a 4 enemy mob of elites into 2. There are other ways of CC while fighting,
such as Blind and Fear.
Almost every class has a CC, and if your group is struggling with trash, it's
on you to speak up, announce that you will be using your CC, and do it for the
benefit of the group.
In PvP, CCs are hard to use, and even harder to set up during combat.
Level
-----
No reason to attack stuff higher level, because with just their base stats they
can put up a fight with any twink. Eight levels below yours and the thing
should die easily, quickly, and without much effort. A couple of levels above
you and it will require max effort to survive.
Of course the more low levels you face the more likely you will fail. You
would be surprised how easily a level 60 can solo a mob of 20s and take little
damage, but that same 60 would die to three or four 50's if not careful.
Elites
------
Elites are either boss enemies or stronger mobs. An elite, non-boss is the
same as a normal enemy level plus eight. So a level 40 elite is like a level
48 normal enemy, but you can hit the elite at normal damage.
Boss elites are just super-strong, huge health enemies that require more than
one of you to kill. Bosses can vary greatly, it all depends on how much health
one has.
Different Worlds
----------------
There have been two expansions to a base Warcraft game, so there are some
differences with the enemies in each "world". The best example of this is that
a level 80 could solo probably every Azeroth dungeon, mabye some potions and
scrolls for a few. Certainly there is no wild Elite that a level 70 or 80
couldn't handle.
It's a matter of gear, where Burning Crusade gear is so much better than
"Old World" gear, and Northend Gear is even better than the best BC gear. Only
purples from one world to the other may last you five levels into the next
world, but blues from one world will be less than greens from the next.
Trust me, don't try to max out gear at levels 58-60 in Azeroth and levels 68-70
in Outland.
==============
Smart-Leveling ( SMLE123 )
==============
Basics
------
ALWAYS level in a damage spec. It may be fun and easier for groups and
dungeons to heal or tank, but you can probably give tanking a go with just
some tank gear in a dps spec. Hell, hunter pets can tank some instances
before Outland.
There are only two ways to choose to level: doing more low level stuff or
fewer same level stuff.
Attacking green monsters and doing green quests does not reduce much the XP
you get, and they are always easy to complete. You can do a ton of these for
half the effort and the same result as fewere yellow quests. The catch is that
you must travel for all quests, so use discretion. I just choose yellows, but
it's up to you and your gear and how well you play your class.
By doing yellow quests it's unclear if they will be simple. Sometimes they are
if your gear is good and the quest is simple. But if you don't know what to
do or the quest is just one of those oddly tough quests, it could prove a
real time killer.
It's not really worth the time to complete red quests, especially if they are
out of the way. But if you have gear or help, feel free to try a red or orange
quest.
*NOTE: Also be aware that you can skip some training as you level, as some
abilities may never be used for your leveling spec.*
Finally, if you have an 80, feel free to run heroics or raids to earn
emblems for heirlooms, or stone keeper shards to buy equipment with resilience
from the Wintergrasp vendor. Heirlooms stay to one faction on one server
(though that should change in the future). They level with your toon, and the
chest and shoulder 10% XP increase do stack with each other. Currently there
are only shoulder, chest, weapon, and trinket items to help your lowbies
level faster.
*NOTE: Rest from not playing provides twice the XP as normal, so leveling
toons takes less game time spent if you don't play that toon for a time.*
Just be sure to always use your and others' professions to help gear your
toons. Almost always it's cheaper to get the mats for something than to
buy it, even if you tip the crafter. If you have a leatherworker, blacksmith,
tailor, and JC on your own roster, hopefully you can blow unused mats on
helping to gear your lowbies.
Focused
-------
58 and 68 are crucial levels because the next world is open for you. Not
only do the next worlds always give more gold and XP than the last, they
also give much better and easy gear. They of course require each expansion
pack installed.
Azeroth
-------
Where the quests are scatter-brain, some are traps and time-wasters, and you
can end up travelling for little reason.
*ALLIANCE: I can safely say that if not a rogue or warlock, feel free to level
in the Draenei zones, I love those places. You don't need a rogue or lock
anyway! Rogues could even just go to Darnassus every other level.*
*HORDE: Haven't tried, but something tells me the Blood Elf place is probably
more focused than the rest of their other things'.*
1-6 - all done in your starting area.
6-20 - all races have two second zones, but at this point you can mix and
match going to the next zone of another race's city zone.
20-30 - you'll finish in the second zone of choice, then you'll probably
start into one of the many "contested territories" in which Horde and
Alliance share.
30-40 - Stranglethorn Vale and the areas lower than it. Arathi and it's
neighbors are good too.
40-50 - Finish STV, then go to Searing Gorge or areas near Tanaris.
50-55 - Tanaris, few Azshara quests, Un'Goro Crater for sure, or maybe
Searing Gorge. Felwood and Burning Steppes are options too.
*You may now create a Death Knight*
55-58 - Winterspring and Felwood quests for Timbermaw, Alterac Valley quests
and the XP from the rounds you play, a few of the easy ones in Western
Plaueulands, and maybe finish in Eastern Plaguelands or with some AVs.
Outland
-------
All of these are usually for ALL the quests you can find in the zone.
58-62.5 - Get your butt through the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands and start
questing in Hellfire Pennisula. At least a Ramps and Blood Furnace
run in there, more if you like.
62.5-65.8 - Zangarmarsh. (dungeons optional)
65.8-67.4 - Nagrand (all but the ring of blood quests).
67.4-68 - Stonetalon is faster than Shadowmoon, and in Stonetalon you can
tackle the Cenarion Expedition quests for their rep (even seek out
their quests in Terrokar)
Northrend
---------
These are not for all quests, but are really meant for certain quest lines.
In the future I may point those out.
68-72 - Use the boat at the SW Harbor to reach the Borean Tundra, or the
boat at Menethil Harbor to reach the Howling Fjord. I believe they
have zeppelins at Org and UC, not sure though. Do both of these
"starter" zones.
72-74 - Dragonblight, the Naxxramas and Wrathgate stuff.
74-76 - Zul'Drak, or start with the Drakkuru quests in Grizzly Hills, then
go to ZD.
76-77 - Sholazar Basin, optional to go to 78 here.
78 - Storm Peaks, starts some quests on the ground, but need your cold weather
flying to go further; otherwise stay in Sholazar. Could also start with
some battleground XP with the blue, crafted PvP gear available now;
also not a bad idea to jump start on getting honor for 80 PvP gear.
79-80 - Storm Peaks and Icecrown quests only reached via flight. Some of the
blues will suffice for starting you with 80 gear.
*NOTE: As of the patch, Alterac Valley provides still a good amount of XP.
Not as much as the first BG XP gave, but still good if you like to PvP.*
Azeroth Raids and Quel'Thalas are areas meant for the end of base WoW and BC
respectively. The rewards from Azeroth raids are just not worth the time. You
may as well level alone and move on to Outland, same for Outland and the
Shattered Sun Offensive and all of their factions.
For Northrend, the starting quests in the Fjord and Tundra offer nice rewards,
and could allow you a nice pool of weapons if you do both at the same time.
And unlike Outland, you'll most likely need nearly all the zones in Northrend
to reach 80 (Grizzly Hills is the easiest to skip, none of my four 80s have
seen all of the quests there).
Solo vs Groups
--------------
An interesting note is that while dungeon and group rewards are much better
than solo rewards, usually, it will take less time and effort to do solo
quests than to do groups, be it groups for quest or dungeon. So you could level
faster by doing only solo quests, and there are enough at all levels to level
up.
Group quests should be done by asking on the local chat, asking if anyone
needs those to. NEVER stop questing to wait for a group to form, that is not
time efficeint.
The new LFG tool does allow you to more easily find dungeons groups for the
Northrend dungeons. But the raid browser is only for your server.
Dungeons should be tackled with your guild, or when you see someone saying
they need your type to help. Waiting so you can complete and dungeon is not
wise either.
Raids should be done with your guild or when you see someone ask. Of course,
you don't NEED any raids until you reach 80, so all the rest are of no concern;
that isn't to say if a group of 80s are raiding around your level and you could
jump in for XP, money, loot, and epic gear that is most likely better than gear
in the next world, like the Black Temple, still fairly popular with bored 80s.
=======================
Economy & Auction House ( ECAH123 )
=======================
The Golden Rule
---------------
SAVE YOUR MONEY!
That's all really.
No need to buy gear as you level, probably not when you're 80 either as of
now. I do say buying mats to craft gear for less than 1000 gold is probably
okay once or twice. It's such a waste for any other gear over 1000 gold.
Only mats to buy should be to finish off your crafting-profession items for
skillups.
There is not one quest thing that asks for money that I can think is a
good idea to complete.
And plenty of training, both professions and class, can be skipped. Of
course you would know which ones you don't if you know where you are going.
Such as not training off-spec skills and avoiding expensive crafts if you
won't use them or they are too hard to get mats for when something else is
of the same skill level and much easier to acquire the mats and move on.
1-5 gold is tempting to buy something, and could only be worth it if you
know there is not upgrade for a few levels.
Economy
-------
The economy of WoW is constantly in flux. There are only two sources of gold
from the game: drops and rewards. You can both get dropped gold or items from
things, and you can get rewarded gold or items to sell to vendors for gold.
These are the only ways to get gold on your own.
Then there is circulated gold, which is all the gold of the players on your
server. There are many ways to get gold from other players: given, trades, or
from the Auction House. Players can give you gold through trades or through
mail, of course they either need a ton so they can spare some or they must
really like you. Trades are either trades or tips for services, such as
enchanting or any other work that has no set price. And the auction house is
a beast all its own.
Undercutting in the AH is so bad, at some point you just hold onto whatever it
is you wish to sell.
It's interesting what items you should vendor, meaning you sell to any selling
NPC, and what items you can put in the AH. Late in the game you could possibly
make more money from a vendor than trying and failing to sell something at the
AH. It really takes a knowledge of what may or may not sell - supply and
demand of course. Due to AH listing fees, you may benefit more just storing
something in your bank than trying to sell it no matter what.
Auction House
-------------
Buying - you select from the tabs to narrow your search using any number of
listings, you can set what level range, and then search; or type in the exact
name of the item; or shift click the item if you have one.
Bid - you enter the current bid amount, which leaves open the chance
for someone to outbid you. The time left is a big factor in whether
or not you win the item. Short means you'll probably get it, medium
is iffy, and long or very long means you should hope the item is not
in high demand.
Buyout - you select the buyout price and you get the item with no
waiting. This is usually a higher price than the bid, but if you don't
need the item that badly you should bid instead.
Bidding On - there is a tab for all your bids, where you can bid
again. Keep in mind you cannot cancel a bid.
Winning - when you win an item it will immediately appear in your
mailbox.
Gear? - sometimes you may want to replace your gear with better gear,
and short of researching quest rewards online, you may want to just
replace gear that is three or more levels below what you currently
have. You'll have much less money later in the game if you keep buying
new gear for every level.
Blue vs Green - always make sure you aren't paying too much for a green
item when you could pay a little more for a blue. 20gold for a green
item is never a good idea, you may as well spend a little more for a
blue if you want better gear that badly.
Twink Gear - 19, 29, 39, 49, 59, 69, 79, and 80 are levels to be
cautious of because many players want the best gear for battlegrounds.
Rarely do you find gear at this level for a low price, but if you do
you could make money by selling it yourself, and if you find gear at
these levels someone will buy it for a higher price than you think.
Change of Worlds - at level 56-60 you should not buy new gear, same for
66-70. This is because your first quests in Outland and Northrend will
gear you up. If you do buy gear at these ranges you need to make sure
you're getting the set from the next world, it's always better.
Dungeons? - it may be worth it to check the dungeons at your level
online, research the quests, and see if those rewards would be better
than spending money for gear. It's the least you could do.
Selling - there is an art to selling items in the AH. 50% of items you can
sell are not going to sell. Enchanters always want cheap gear to DE, but the
price they would pay is most likely less than the vendor price for most high-
level items.
Deposit Fee - this is the most important thing about the AH, that
all items you want to sell have a fee. High level gear has a very
hefty fee, and you don't get the fee back if you item does not sell.
Early in the game you can get away with putting everything on the AH
because the fees are not so bad, just one sold item can cover all your
fees. But late in the game, where items are sought after less and less,
you may be costing yourself some serious gold by putting everything on
the AH block. If your item does sell however, you get the fee back, but
the AH takes a cut anyway.
Starting Bid - there is a base bid set by default, so your starting
bid should not be lower, if it is or if the market is set lower than
that, consider vendoring it. It's always nice to set the starting bid
a little higher, maybe round up to the next gold amount.
Buyout - should never be unreasonable because people want to get the
item now, they do not want to wait. If you set it near your starting
bid then you will most likely sell it. You set it higher above if you
know it's in higher demand and if there is little supply. And you set
it 10's of gold higher if you know some twink will pick it up or you
have the only item on the market. However, you don't have to set a
buyout, sometimes it could be better to let people bid for it, or you
may get less, there are no rules for what to not give a buyout.
Undercutting? - It's cool if you price a few silver under the lowest
price, but too much and you may be lowering the market price for that
item, and at the very least making less money than you could. If you
just want to sell one item for a reasonable price, that may not be
too bad. Undercutting 1 copper is just low, and I know I never buy
from people that do that.
Know the Classes - I won't summarize every class in the game, but you
should know who each piece of gear and weapon is used by.
People Got Cash - most low levels on a realm are in fact people with
80's, so with that in mind you can set the buyouts for some items
much higher than the starting bid.
Don't forget the little guy - Even with the last point in mind, don't
set the buyouts for some items too high. You like buying low level
gear for cheap, pass it on to a degree.
Materials - or mats, are always in demand. Only overpriced mats will
not sell. For selling mats you could consider not being the lowest
price because of the higher demand, someone will buy the cheaper ones
first, and eventually should place yours as the cheapest. Also, most
fees for mats are cheap.
Trade Chat
----------
Using /2 chat for selling and buying is a harsh monster. Not only do you limit
your selling power to who is on now, they must be in a city, and so must you.
Not even using a town mule can get around the time required to sell items by
hand.
WTS - this is the abbreviation for selling something, "Want To Sell."
Then you shift click the item, maybe press enter, and your ad is put
on trade chat. A simple message may look like: WTS [Your Momma] 1g.
Don't be surprised if no one is interested. Things that sell in the AH
may have only be demanded by two or three people, so the odds are not
good that those people are on when you are, or if they see the message.
WTB - "Want To Buy" means just that. You can again shift click if you
have the item and send a message just like WTS.
WTT - "Want To Trade" is a seldom seen message meaning you don't want
to buy something, you instead want to do an even trade. When you
respond to these, please ask which way the items are going.
==============
Level 80 Stuff ( L80S123 )
==============
At level 80 the game becomes very different from the questing and profession
advancement of the 79 previous levels. You have only seven things you can do
with a level 80:
PvP
Heroics
Reputation
Raids
Get gold
Max professions
Earn achievements
That's it. The other option is to make more toons, which you will, but of
course your 80 only allows more gold for them.
PvP
---
*NOTE: With each patch the gear seems to bump up to whatever was an arena
set. Basically, if you don't arena then you have to wait to get that gear.
The VoA bosses drop PvP gear too.*
This is my first option because this is the best way you can get purple gear.
In you faction's capitol is a place to purchase PvP gear at level 80 for
your class. 31000-49000 honor points will buy you a piece of gear. Two pieces
of the same set nets a bonus, and four give an even better perk. Nearby of the
base gear vendor is a guy who will sell trinkets, rings, capes, and necklaces.
Another nice way to get purple gear is to help your faction's fight for
Wintergrasp. The quartermaster there sells a few base pieces of gear, as well
as some trinkets. No, the heirlooms he sells won't help your level 80 for long,
they are meant for your other toons on the server. The 80 equipment requires
your WG marks of honor, but you must kill 15 players (or be around them) and
win each match to get 3.
Before a recent patch you could really farm Wintergrasp for honor with at least
the daily quests, but now those quests are weekly.
I say Alterac Valley is the best option for honor, a win in which all the
towers/bunkers fell and you put in some killing of your own nets about 1600
honor a pop, and even losses can get 600 honor, which is almost as much as
winning the other BGs. Arathi matches are usually quick too. Feel free to
rotate all the BGs, and do the daily quest. If you rotate enough you can spend
your marks from all five BGs, one of each, at a battlemaster for the quest
Conserted Efforts for honor, or buy mounts.
Once you've done all you can for the Wintergrasp marks of honor and once you
have all the heirlooms, you can start spending those on honor from the WG
quartermaster. You can even spend the Stone Keeper Shards on the honor if you
know you won't need some of the heirlooms, but you may want to hesitate before
you do that. The WG marks of honor run out of use quicker than the SK Shards.
HOWEVER, you must know that resilience is just for PvP, not PvE. Yes, PvP gear
is a good way to become geared up for heroics when you just hit 80, but rep
gains, crafted equipment, and even blue 80 gear will usually do more for you
than PvP gear with resilience. Of course these sets are only for dps toons.
Heroics
-------
All dungeons from Outland and Northrend have heroic options. I believe most of
the Outland options require keys to unlock them (that may have since changed),
but no one really cares about those at 80.
There are only a handful of Northrend dungeons. The purpose of running these
are for gear, emblems of whatever, and random daily. The gear is obvious,
just whatever the bosses or mobs drop, with only the final drop being something
really worth while.
I mention this option second because it takes a group of five players with all
good gear in order to hope for non-wipage. Ironically, only the end-boss
purple drop from heroic dungeons will help, but you need a group of players
with gear that is on that level to kill the end boss, easily at least. Ideally
you will group with four other players that already have raid gear, and you
can basically tag along and hopefully get a few good drops, or get the
emblems. You can spend the emblems at an emblem quartermaster in Dalaran.
Each patch thus far as upgraded the emblem drops from heroics. As of now, only
grab the Valor ring and maybe the cape. Only trade down to Heroism for the
leveling heirlooms. The Conquest gear is pretty cheap, so it's not bad to get
those before the Triumphs. And if there is another emblem set after Frost, just
know never to trade down from the top type unless you're only spending a few or
the previous types are no longer attainable.
Here is what each type of play style needs to shoot for:
DPS - 1.5k is the minimum. 2k is the standard, and more is raid ready.
Tank - 540 defense and around 25k health; 30k and up is raid ready.
Heal - not sure really, I guess around 18k mana and lots of MP5 (mana per 5
seconds).
It goes without saying, but knowing your class, maybe asking around or looking
on the net for tips for your class, always helps improve whatever it is you do.
With the new random dungeon tool, please only declare tank or healer if you are
at mostly iLevel 226 gear. This is because you can get a bad group, tough
dungeon, and people will always look to both of these first in a wipe. I know
tanks and heals find groups quicker, but please only go as one if you can
handle all the heriocs available.
There is no shame in declaring a random reg, or just leaving from a dungeon you
are not ready for.
Reputation
----------
There are of course many factions thoughout the game in which raise rep with.
Most require you to just kill stuff to raise rep. But in Northrend there are
three ways to raise rep: either wear their tabard and kill stuff in heroics,
do their daily quests, or spend emblems on their faction tokens from the emblem
quartermaster in Dalaran.
Only spend emblems once you've gotten everything of use, and only as a last
resort.
There are four main factions to get rep with who have tabards:
Kirin Tor - Quartermaster in Violet Hold, in the corner of Dalaran.
Argent Crusade - Quartermaster in their base in southeastern Icecrown, north
of Dal. He is by the flight master.
Wymrest Accord - Quartermaster at the top of temple in Dragonblight.
Ebon Hold - Must do quest chain to make the Shadow Vault in Icecrown a
friendly place, then you can visit the quartermaster inside.
Simply get their tabard, do their daily quests, and you will earn exalted rank
with them in not too long. Make sure to browse each faction's goods to see
which ones offer you the best items, but most do the dragons first since they
have a mount.
There are also a number of other factions, which have several quests and
ways to get rep:
Kalu'ak - Quartermasters in both Moa'ki in Dragonblight and Kamagua in the
Howling Fjord. Basically for a great fishing pole and pet.
Alliance/Horde groups - 80 dungeon kills without wearing a tabard gives rep
toward these, and both quartermasters are in Howling Fjord and
Borean Tundra.
Sons of Hodir - Lillehoff is in Storm Peaks, but only becomes neutral through
quests that start in K3.
Oracles/Frenzyheart - Both warring factions in Scholozar. It's actually
possible and worth an achievement if you can grind it out and get
exalted with both. If you want one over the other, choose the Oracles
because they give an egg that has a very low chance to drop a flying
mount (with a 7 day duration for each egg means it might not matter
who you side with). Both just have one exalted item, a trinket, so it
in all honesty doesn't matter which one you pick if any, but for
2 gold a week you may as well get to revered for the egg.
All factions in Northrend provide at least one epic item worth the trouble,
but depending on what you got and what you need some factions could be useless
to you.
Raids
-----
Raids are the step above heroics, but depending on the raid group and their
gear, mainly of the tanks and healers, perhaps any scrub 80 can jump into a
raid group and not make it a fail.
The heroic standards can be around the same, but it always helps to have the
43k health tank and 3.5k dps in the group here and there.
*NOTE: To set a 10 man vs 25 man, just have that number or less in the raid
as you enter. All raids have the same two settings, I think.*
There are 10 man and 25 man raids in Northrend. ALL raids require that every-
one in the raid know the bosses, very few bosses are just tank-and-spank, or
near that. 10's are intended to be easier than 25's, but lesser-quality players
can hide in 25's better if the others are great. Also, for the most part you
can just do the heroic versions of raids, unless no one has raided before and
everyone's gear is blue.
Vault of Archavon - Located in Wintergrasp Keep to the winning side, this
raid varies, and even though one boss can probably be 10-manned on the
25 version, you still need to be up-to-date on gear to be in one of
these raids.
Obsidian Sanctum - Located underneath Wymrest Temple in Dragonblight, this
raid has a few mobs, 3 sub-bosses, and really just the one main
boss in the middle. You really should clear everyone around the main
boss or they all help if you engage him. However, I believe you can
clear all the trash, but leave two drakes alive for some improved loot
and increased difficulty.
Naxxramas - Located in eastern Dragonblight, Naxxramas is only reachable
with a flying mount or being summoned. Naxx is "main" raid of Northrend
in that it has four wings, tons of trash mobs, and one final boss.
You probably need to raid the other two raids instances a few times
before you're ready to down Naxx. Feel free to do this one on normal
difficulty. *Now you can do Saph and KT from the start.
Eye of Eternity - Located as the third part of The Nexus in Borean Tundra,
this is the fourth raid because you must acquire the key from a boss
drop in Naxx, the second-to-last boss Sapphiron (the reg version gives
the reg key and the heroic drops the heroic key, and the heroic key
can open both). EoE is a one boss raid, and not to be taken lightly,
it's not something you just get a raid together and down like that.
Ulduar - As of a recent patch, and then after the patch after that, Ulduar
is still a top raid, but it isn't the hardest. There are five
bosses that shouldn't be too tough for Naxx-geared players: FL, XT,
Razorscale, Kolo, and the cat lady. Beyond that is the more
"hardcore" raiding content.
Trial of the Crusader - Still almost an end-game raid with all the modes to
play. It's nothing to take lightly at all.
Icecrown Citadel - The wings of this final raid will open with time. Top-gear
players only need apply.
The point of raiding is for the boss drops, but also the drops that allow you
to buy tier loot from a quartermaster in Dalaran. I believe you can even
spend dungeon emblems for some tier gear. Again, most of us will only hit
up OS or VoA. To down Naxx and Ulduar it's really a week-long process, and
hopefully you and the raid leaders are willing to meet up and the same times
every day, or the scheduled days, to tackle these long areas. This is
standard in raiding guilds of course.
The notable bosses in these raids drops tokens, which are at several levels
of quality. They are all for multiple classes, so even being the only one in
a raid, you'll still have to roll for them. If you are lucky enough to get one,
or you buy one from the Dalaran quartermasters, you turn them in to the vendors
in shops who will give you the gear in exchange. So please don't sell raid
tokens, they are important.
Gold
----
It's very simple, either quest or work the AH/trade. There are almost
hundreds of dailies dotting Northrend that drop 12-14 gold a pop, on top
of the many normal quests that drop just as much gold in Icecrown and
Storm Peaks. Normal people won't be able to do 25 dailies but you can at least
hit the Argent Tournament, Sons of Hodir,and Ebon Blade dailies, and maybe
the randomw dungeon and profession dailies from Dalaran, depending on your
toon. There's always the PvP daily of a random battleground and the weekly
Wintergrasp quests.
Other than the dailies you can also do normal quests. Assuming you did almost
everything in Borean, Howling, Dragonblight, and Zul'drak to reach 80, that
will leave Icecrown, Scholazar, and the Storm Peaks for normal quests. There
are quite a few, but they will dry up quickly. All of these quests net about
12-13 gold a pop, and with great gear you can do these very quickly and sell
the gear rewards for 3-14 gold on when you get 'em.
The AH/trade for gold option is either using your professions or stuff you
farm/find. Professions are hit and miss, what with the cost of the orbs and
other mats you may not make much profit, just depends. You'll be far better off
farming mats and selling them, however, the amount of time spent farming may
be more than it seems.
*NOTE: Save your drops to either sell or disenchant. Then save your enchanting
mats for yourself, because you'll need them.*
Basically I'm just saying to do the dailies and quest for gold, it's the
easiest option for the time put in. Here are the dailies I speak of:
Dalaran - Cooking, fishing, weekly raid, and BG.
Jewelcrafters, get that skill up and get the hell to Dalaran for the
daily ASAP!
Argent Tournament (Northern Icecrown) - Target dummies and kill 8 scourge.
Shadow Vault (clear the quest chain to open it up) - shoot down 15 drakes,
burn 8 buildings in a drake, and plant banners in 15 corpses.
Sons of Hodir - The spear quest is the only one worth skipping.
There are more dailies, all over Northrend, and even the fishing and cooking
dailies in Shat, which are essential for those profession titles.
You can see that the Dalaran dailies require effort in your other areas,
including at least secondary professions.
Professions
-----------
You may think I mean max your main professions, which is good, but I mean you
need to get your cooking and fishing up ASAP to get in on those dailies ASAP.
Cooking is not too hard to max up. Start by travelling the few towns below
level 40-ish for recipes, then hit up Tanaris, it's port, Feralas, and Felwood;
feel free to pick up doubles of each and sell them for 5 gold in the AH too,
hint hint. Then you basically just need the buzzard recipe in Hellfire and
then the ones in Nagrand. I had enough meats saved from questing that I just
had to go all out and I was open to train in Dalaran for the final leg of
cooking.
Fishing is a much different story. There's a +3 fishing rod in Auberdine and a
+20 rod from a kid in Shattrath. You can also get several worms and other baits
to increase your skill for a short time, and it does help. As of a patch you
can now fish anywhere, but you increase your chance to get stuff if your skill
is close to the level of the area you are in. Just keep fishing, really nothing
else to do. Don't pick up the crap of course, and keep all but the lowest of
fish. The skillup rate of fishing decreases as you level. One fish at a time
will skill you up at first, then 5 for a time, and as high as 10 casts just to
skillup near 300. Needless to say, it takes a lot of time to level this up.
But as I said, your skill can be inflated and all it does is increase your
chances of catching stuff, it's not a restrictive skill.
I should also mention riding, but it's really more about gold. Almost all
gold you earn would go toward buying fast flying. But you must buy all the
other levels of riding.
*NOTE: I personally don't think it's too important. I would rather dual-spec
and gear up for raids and heroics than get fast flying.*
And yeah, your main professions are very important too. Gathering professions
are guaranteed gold. Creation professions require Frozen Orbs, which drop from
heroic end-bosses, bought with 10 emblems of heroism, or bought from someone
else (should be 20-30 gold now). It is not easy to max out any of your
professions, but it can net you nice gold and in most cases powerful buffs.
*NOTE: I believe all crafting professions except JC have extra recipes to
buy in Dalaran, the 78 gear and epics, but ALL professions have rep and vendor
recipes to go grab, use the rest of the internet to find those.*
Achievements
------------
Yep, just like those stupid things from the Xbox 360, these are pointless and
offer no real bonus to you. Some offer titles, one I know of offers a mount,
but they are really no more than official declarations of your progression.
*NOTE: Yes, the mounts could actually help you, but that takes quite a bit of
work and help from many others, not to mention buying a fast mount should
happen before you get one of the achievement ones.*
You can open up the shield icon on your toolbar to see all the achievements
in the game. Most server-first achievements get wiped off the books, so don't
be surprised if only a few people walk around with certain titles you can't
get.
Titles and achievements can be tracked by shift-clicking them just like
objectives. Not all achievements for a set are required for some titles, I
can't stress that enough.
Titles:
Holidays - usually not all the achievements for that holiday, should just be
a select few that net you the title. Be sure to check your calendar
from time to time to see these coming, or of course just pay attention
to chat.
Jenkins - I just recently found out why this is a title. It was because of a
popular vid on youtube. Some will find it sad I just found this out,
but I beg to differ, it means there's hope for me yet.
the Explorer - Just explore every place listed for that region. I say that
you should get all the Azeroth places as you are in them questing.
Not the same for all of Outland, as only Zangarmarsh can be explored
without a flying mount. Not only that, you must also have cold weather
flying to fully explore Northrend. There is just one high up spot in
Scholazar, while Storm Peaks and Icecrown are almost completely left
to flight.
Ambassador - This one is simple once you realize you can do the starting
quests for good rep. Each faction has 5 races, but two are tied
together; meaning you really only need to raise rep with the four
starting zones to hit each race. If you played to level 60 in Azeroth
then you'll have at least two maxed out with little effort, while the
others just require a few trips into their starting zone quests. Yes,
one-shotting level 1 and 5 rats is a little embarassing, but once you
get the title it may be the only one you need.
Patient - Just use the random dungeon tool until you get this, easy.
Black War Bear - This really depends on your server, your faction, the time of
day, and of course the quality of the raid. The achievement is "For
the Alliance/Horde", and all you do is raid each major city of the
other faction and kill the boss/leader. Part of it is also just knowing
who you are killing and where they are. There are sometimes a few
boss level NPCs in a city. Kill all four of the bosses on the list and
in the mail you get your free mount; there is a creative way to
make this your first swift mount, by riding in a motorcycle during.
=================
Northrend Heroics ( NORH123 )
=================
Heroics are only for level 80 characters. They are just all the dungeons in
Northrend, but set to level 80 skill. They have better loot, drop Emblems of
whatever, which are currency turned in at Dalaran, drop one Frozen Orb, and
can yield lots of Stone Keeper Shards if your faction controls WG. They also
give rep to the faction whose tabard you are wearing (there are four, and
they are worth getting rep).
Not all are created equal. Some are extremely tough and take many deaths
and/or raid-equipped players. There are only a handful of differences to the
layout and boss numbers from the normal versions. Expect to die at least once
for every heroic you attempt.
To start on the easy ones, just try to get all 80 blue gear, and the PvP gear
isn't too bad either.
We're going to take a deeper look at the instances in Northrend, maybe at
some point covering the other instances in WoW too. This will be a simple
rating and brief summary of them all.
To tackle these you at least need all 80 gear, hopefully you know your class
and spec, and please get a good rotation of skills down; just don't noob it up,
don't waste other's time and money by wiping because of you, please.
-----
Key:
------
Difficulty: stars measure how likely you are to die
Bosses: number of bosses
Zone: where to go
-----
Utgarde Keep
------------
Difficulty: *
Bosses: 3
Zone: Howling Fjord
Far from Dal, but by far the easiest Heroic. Other than the drake trash clear,
the mobs are pretty simple. An easy clear of this leads to a challenge of
the Pinnacle, a nearby heroic as well.
Prince Keleseth - Just have everyone near the table, this is so that when
someone is frozen, a dps can quickly free them, especially a tank or
healer. Then it's just making sure the tank can pick up the adds.
Skarvald/Dalronn - Start on Dalronn and burn him down to around 10-20%, then
switch to burning Skarvald. If you kill Dalronn he will become a crazy-
casting ghost, so keep him alive and try to kill both at around the
same time.
Ingvar - Phase 1: just have the tank turn him away from everyone else to eat
his smash, and just burn him; DO NOT burn cds here. Phase 2: Between
phases hide behind a pillar to avoid the first shout. Now burn your
cds and dps him down. The roar will hit everyone for big damage, and
if not downed fast enough he will toss a spinning sword that needs to
be avoided.
The Nexus
---------
Difficulty: *
Bosses: 5
Zone: Borean Tundra
Pretty deep dungeon, but none of the trash is too nasty, just the tree part
requires everyone on their game on approach to the boss.
Kolurg/Stoutbeard - Same dude, just different name depending on what faction
you are. Kill his priests first, usually by CCing one and then someone
besides tank aggroing the other; dps both down before dpsing the boss.
He must be brought to the hall behind you so his fear does not send you
into the other mobs. Also get away from his spin. If you lag, just
back away until his spin stops. Because the tank and heal can live
for a long time, just stay alive to help burn him down.
Grand Magus Telestra - Resistances, interrupts, and good dps is key here. She
is a pure caster. She has two abilities of note: yo-yo and clones. The
yo-yo happens once before each clone appearance, and all it does is
fling you around the air, stopping dps; so make sure to burn or save
your cds accordingly, probably for the clones. At about 70 and 30% of
her health she will disappear and you must fight 3 clones of her. The
order is purple, blue, red, and you can CC them as much as you wish.
If you can survive the clones, it's a pretty easy fight.
Anomalus - Mostly just a heal-check, nothing too difficult here. He will spawn
rifts that spit out adds and cause constant nature damage. It's not
essential to down the first rift you see, it may even be best to send
your lowest dps after these weak rifts. It's when the chaotic rifts
appear that everyone should be on them because the boss is immune with
these up. And that's it, the fight gets bigger as time goes on, but
you can really just dps if the heal is good.
Ormorok - A tank and spank, just stand under him in the center and you won't
get hit by the spikes. Ranged just needs to avoid them. Burn cds at
at his enrage towards his death.
Keristrasza - The only true challenge in this dungeon. Always be moving, or
even better just jump up and down throughout. Staying still stacks a
debuff which hurts badly, but moving wipes it off, so always jump.
She will try to freeze you down, so hopefully someone can clear it for
you or you have a few ways to free yourself. Casters just stick to
quick casts and dots, melee stand at the direct sides of her belly.
Anyone in the front or back will take huge hits, so only the tank is
at her front. And that's it, burn your cds at her enrage and just
burn her.
The Culling of Stratholme
-------------------------
Difficulty: *
Bosses: 4 or 5
Zone: Tanaris Desert, via Violet Citadel in Dalaran and the Caverns of Time
The only real test is if you can do this in less than 25 minutes, and if not
then if you can overcome the first boss. The timed CoS run is a run where
you approach the last boss, don't talk to the prince, and take a left to
fight a dragonkin who will drop a flying mount. Just watch out not to stand
where the mobs in the first part may spawn.
Meathook - Tank and spank, with the least threatening person getting
stunned from a move. This is actually hard if the zombies swarm the
healer, that's all.
Salramm - A tank and spank on a magic-user, that's it.
Epoch - Same, only he can flash around and hit everyone once or twice.
Infinite Corruptor - When the prince stops, don't talk to him and follow the
road to this boss before the 25 minute timer expires and anyone
without it can roll for the amber drake mount.
Mal'Ganis - A tank and spank with a few things to keep in mind. Dispel his
debuff, watch for sleep, and heal through the AoE damage.
Violet Hold
-----------
Difficulty: ** to *****
Bosses: 3
Zone: Dalaran
The unique, in-city dungeon which all the best groups will tackle easily, but
everyone is usually willing to go. The reason why the difficulty varies is
because weak groups can get away with tank and spank if lucky while better
groups could struggle with certain bosses. You get any 2 of a possible 6 first
bosses, then the same end boss. You clear a set number of mobs, and the
objective is to prevent them from downing the door to 0%, but that never
factors into a non-wiped group.
The trash clear can also pose problems, not because of a non-wipe run, but
because if you die at any point, you'll have to clear any bosses you already
defeated, so it is best to take in a solid group, not just any pug. Remember,
it's just 2 of these 6 bosses:
Erekem - The arakkoa to the left, he brings two guards, but DO NOT kill the
adds, doing so will kill the tank, so just hold aggro on them while
you burn the boss, then take them out, easy.
Moragg - Simple tank and spank. Just keep peeps near him for his Optic Link
can kill you if too far away.
Lavanthor - Yet another tank and spank. Tank should turn him away from everyone
else though.
Ichoron - A heal check. Tank her near the entrance, this is because when she
disappears the adds from the other sides of the room will have farther
to travel. Once her bubble pops she will disappear and adds will move
to her position, and if they reach they will restore her health a bit.
Don't have to kill all, but it helps. Melee should just kill one unless
the heal is good because popping the adds causes damage. You can use
the crystals on the sides of the room to take out the adds, but if
players are near them you could wipe the group. Just get her to a
quarter health where she enrages and it's just tank and spank.
Xervozz - A tank check. The tank needs to kite this guy across the balcony and
everyone must follow. This is because if he's near his orbs he will
be extremely powerful, and if he can see the orbs he could teleport
people there for much damage. Just kite and dps on the move, not too
bad.
Zuramat - He checks if your group can watch for debuffs. During the fight there
are adds in another dimension sending out shadow bolts. One player, at
random, will be void-shifted to this dimension where they can see the
adds. Tanks and heals should ignore this debuff, there's nothing you
can do about it. If a dps gets it they must take out the adds to
greatly reduce a wipe. Ignoring the adds is possible, but weak groups
will die if so.
Cyanigosa - Basically a tank and spank, with only the tank in front of her.
Dispel the energy, make sure the tank will taunt after the teleport,
and it's pretty easy.
Drak'Tharon Keep
----------------
Difficulty: **
Bosses: 4
Zone: Zul'Drak
Two stars for the trash clear, which is pretty tough, especially some of the
early ones which will lead to un-prepared groups wiping easily. The bosses,
however, are not too hard.
Trollgore - Simple tank and spank, just make sure to pick up the adds.
Novos - Clear the adds on the stairs, from both ends. Once they are cleared
everyone just burns the boss. Anti-magic spells reduce stress on the
healer.
King Dred - Just pick off the first couple of ratpors in the pen, then pull him
back out of the pen. If done right, his fear won't send anyone into
other mobs. And then it's just tank and spank.
Tharon'ja - Other than burning him, he will turn you into skeletons throughout,
but dots and pets will keep fighting through this. When you are a
skeleton, only the tank will taunt, everyone will throw up a bone
shield, everyone spams attack, and you heal with the 4th attack.
Gundrak
-------
Difficulty: **
Bosses: 5
Zone: Zul'drak
Two stars for the trash and the two early bosses that can be impossible for
bad groups.
*NOTE: You can skip the cave trolls by running across the water.*
Slad'ran - You have two things to watch out for: poison nova and the adds. The
adds are not powerful, but in bulk they can eat the healer and wipe
your group. Next is nova, which is 20 yard range and inflicts a bleed
effect. If you can heal through this, great, you'll have no problems,
but if not then it's a dps race and you'll need to burn any cds to
remove a bleed. Aside from dps and aggroing as many snakes as you can,
the best alternative is to tank him in the room of the Colossus. This
will buy much time to dps the boss and just worry about a nova or two.
Colossus - A dps check, it's not possible to survive too long from his second
"enraged" water form. Durning the stone form he will spit a few
poison slicks over the ground, so just move away from those. Once his
health hits a point he will turn into a water form. Now you have a ton
of slicks and he will jet-stream into casters. The tank just moves him
around and the dps tries to burn this form away. It's back to the stone
after time, and then one more water encounter. Now is when you burn
your cds and get off the slicks. Any nature resist helps.
Moorabi - A tank and spank, with really the only extra thing to do is try to
interrupt his transformation for the achievement. Need high dps for
that too.
Eck - Heroic only boss found behind the Moorabi room. A somewhat difficult
tank and spank, just watch the dots he spits on you. And if you get the
Eck poison, try to keep it on you for the next boss kill (dying wipes
it off of course).
Gal'darah - A tank and healer alone can survive a long time on this guy, so
it's just about having some dps throughout. Melee dps stay away from
the whirlwind, it will kill you, that's pretty much it.
Azjol-Nerub
-----------
Difficulty: ***
Bosses: 3
Zone: Dragonblight
The smallest trash clear of any heroics, it's basically just 3 bosses and
done. However, the bosses will easily wipe bad groups.
Krik'thir - The 3 mobs before him are part of this boss. Target the skirmishers
first because they can enrage and kill random players, not to mention
turning your back to a skirmisher leads to a backstab. And watch for
web wraps during all 3. The actual boss is basically tank and spank,
being sure to AoE the tiny adds off the healer.
Hadronox - An event here too, just kill the adds up top, and when the big
spider is on your level, just let him kill his adds before engaging.
Dps his sides, stay out of poison spots, heal the poisons he sends
out, and it's just tank and spank.
Anub'arak - Tank him away from the group at ALL TIMES. If you are turning him
during he will pound in the direction he was facing at the start of
the cast, not where he ends up, and anyone except the tank will die.
It's mostly a heal check, because when he burrows you must engage
elite adds and anyone caught by the spikes will take huge damage. Other
then that it's burning.
*NOTE: Make sure everyone gets in the ring at the start to not get locked out.
and watch for glitched adds during the burrow; if they are stuck outside the
ring just die by the spikes.*
Old Kingdom
-----------
Difficulty: ****
Bosses: 5
Zone: Dragonblight
Right next to AN, this dungeon is one of the last you'll finish. Just watch
the aggro range of the trash and you can clear it without much grief. It's the
bosses that give this one such a high rating.
Nadox - He is a dps check. Throughout he will summon adds that can seemingly be
ignored, but once a guardian spawns, both Nadox and the bugs will be
immune. The idea is to burn a few adds down before the immunity, and
when the guardian appears just burn him down, then resume on the boss.
It's just about pulling the adds on the healer and killing them.
Prince Taldram - Two things to keep in mind: flame spheres and drain. 3 spheres
move over the platform, so just run as far away as you can. When he
drains a player of health, all you can do is dps him to free the
guy. It's best to stack up when he vanishes, and you can't heal the
player who is caught.
Jedoga - There are two options to getting around her enrage from eating the
sacrificed minion. The first is to kill the chosen minion, which is a
dps race before he/she gets to the middle - put all pets on aggressive
for this and lay down any AoE. The second option is to do what you can,
but if the minion is eaten everyone should spread out around the
platform and try to taunt Jedoga so the enrage buff just wears off.
You can even disarm her during this too.
Amanitar - To the left area of the Jedoga room. Feel free to AoE a tanking area
of mushrooms, trying to keep a few healthy ones in place. During the
fight the tank needs to watch for the debuff Mini, then go kill a
healthy mushroom. Feel free to kill any poison mushrooms, and don't
stand by them, but eating a healthy mushroom grants a 100% increased
damage buff.
Herald Volazj - The only problem here is living through the Insanity spell.
There are ways to increase your chances of success, including: having
just one healing class in your group, unequiping weapons before the
insanity, sending in someone to die first, and casting any damage
reducing spells for your clone to inherit. Beyond those suggestions,
just stun and dps the healer clone first, then move down the dps chain
if you know it, and finally kill the tank.
Halls of Lightning
------------------
Difficulty: ****
Bosses: 4
Zone: Storm Peaks
Some of the most difficult trash clears, and two easily-wipable bosses. For the
second-to-last room, make sure you all are targeting the runeshapers.
General Bjarngrim - Pretty simple, especially if you got time to clear the all
the mobs first. Just clear a tanking area, wait for his electricity to
go away, and tank him when he reaches a platform, but before he can
recharge. Pro groups can get him through the charge. Just kill his
guards and burn him down; watch the early spin.
Volkhan - Mostly a tank and spank, with some add issues. He will summon adds,
but you can either not kill them (meaning tank also picks them up)
or you move away from dead golems when he stomps. If they shatter
near you you take damage, more if their are more of them.
Ionar - A heal check, but also can easily kill one player, if not more if they
do not fall back as soon as Disperse starts casting. They go at fixed
amounts of health, so when quarters or so of his health are gone you
can just fall back, but it's easy to cause more damage through one
and as a result the next happens almost as soon as you get back on him.
It's a nice graveyard for melee dps, basically.
Loken - There are two ways to tackle this. The first is a pro group with a
solid heal just all standing under him and burning him through the
novas. The second is tanking him on the circle under his throne, and
when nova is cast run to the bottom of the first steps from you; then
go back and forth until death. It's time-consuming, but protects your
group - honestly, you still need a good group for this too. The farther
away you are from him the more damage you take from his aura.
Halls of Stone
--------------
Difficulty: ****
Bosses: 4
Zone: Storm Peaks
Trash is not too hard, though there is one hard pull at the fork.
Krystallus - The only thing to do is spread out after you are tossed, and
with distance from other players you won't take much damage when the
petrify shatters. If you are all stacked up then you will die from
this, plain and simple.
Tribunal of Ages - Basically a survival of trash waves that kicks up late
into the encounter. Watch out for the beams from above, and one strat
is to hide from the beams on the stairs. Just keep everyone healed up
and protect Brann.
Maiden of Grief - Casters and range stand in the center while she is kite-d
around the wall of the room. Try to interrupt Pillar of Woe, and if
the tank wants to jump in a void zone the Shock of Sorrow effect can
be stopped; warriors can use Berserking Rage. Just make sure you kite
so the melees aren't killed by the zones.
Sjonnir - It helps to have some way to dispel the Lightning Shield debuff or
the heal will be under siege. It's best if the dps pick up all the
non-elite adds, maybe with the best dps on the boss. When the oozes
show up, burn as many down as you can. If you can kill them before they
turn elite, it helps because shortly after you will get allies to help
finish the fight. If anything, you can just survive to this. If he
was a mile from the entrance, he would earn this dungeon a 5th star.
Utgarde Pinnacle
----------------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 4
Zone: Howling Fjord
Almost all trash mobs have wipe-ability, and only one easy boss.
*NOTE: For some reason, Ymiron seems to send out the magic orbs less, so
perhaps this is just a 4 star instance, but Skadi is still the toughest
heroic boss.*
Svala - Make sure everyone is in view of the healer, don't LoS die for this.
When someone is bound, have everyone focus on just one of the banshees
at a time, and hopefully you can use as few offensive spells as
possible on these because each spell will put a debuff on you that
can stack 10 times and kill you. Finally, any ranged attack can hit
the boss who is above the sword ritual.
Gortok - Him and his 4 sub-bosses are essentially tank and spank.
Skadi - The hardest boss of the instance. On approach there are harpooners
along the path that need to be killed and someone in the group needs
to pick up the harpoons they drop. As you move up, watch out from
which side Skadi lines up when above the guns: if he's left, move right
and vice versa or else you will die. Once 6 harpoons are used when he's
in range of the guns, the boss will land and start. It's essential the
melee dps run from the spin or they die. It's another boss where just
staying alive will equal success, and if killed early it's entirely
possible to run all the way back.
King Ymiron - Not too bad, there are just two attacks to avoid. Bane and the
orbs are the only attacks that pose a real threat. If orbs are spawned
you need to run away or you will die. Bane gets worse as the battle
goes on, so with high dps it won't be too much of an issue, and one
may never trigger.
The Oculus
----------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 4
Zone: Borean Tundra
People think this is a very bad instance, but it's a fairly simple 4-badge
dungeon that could go on farm. It is still worth all 5 stars just for the
fact that I WOULD NEVER PUG this thing. Either jump in with a pro group or
go with good guildies only. Multi-target heals is best.
This is also the only vehicle instance that is not Ulduar, where you use one
of three drakes to move to the bosses and only use to fight the last boss.
These do scale to your gear, so better geared players are a priority.
Drakos - So long as your healer and/or dps are great, this is a simple tank
and spank, should be able to heal through it all. There is a pull
attack and a bomb debuff if that person wants to move away.
Varos - Clear the 10 constructs to pop the bubble, and you should kill the
drakes above him because you may pull them too. Just spread out a bit
to avoid the lasers, and hopefully you can heal through everything to
make this a tank and spank.
Urom - Chase him around the hunks of rings and then engage in the middle
ring. The normal strat is to kite him around the ring, always be
about 10 feet away from cover, and hide during the explosions when
he teleports. The best way to do this is to have good dps and heals
and simply tank and spank. Always tank him 10-20 feet from cover, but
not behind it because you don't want frost under you when you hide.
Eregos - 1 red, 1 green, and 3 amber drakes is the normal setup (with only
the all-amber setup as a possible second option if your group can
handle the cooridation). Just tank with red, time-stop after the
tank takes good damage (knowing who does it in what order), ambers
keep their channel and fires a lance as well as after each time
stop, and the healer just keeps its stacks on the boss and heals
the tank. Only twice will Eregos fade and send orbs after you, so
just have everyone go left or right together and resume when the orbs
blow up. The adds should die from the tank's attacks.
Trial of the Champion
---------------------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 3
Zone: Icecrown
Basically an instance for raiders, with maybe one scrub DPS to tag along,
but that's it. Feel free to run the normal version all day long.
Mount the horses to start, clear the trash jousters, then focus one at a time
on the mounted bosses, but for them you must trample them while they are
down or they can remount as much as you let them to about 25% health. Thanks
to bugginess, which Blizzard probably won't fix, you can dismount at almost
any time and should run for the door. Usually any bug is fixed by running out
the door.
Magical Horsey Encounter - I kid you not, and if the GM was pulling my leg
on this bugged-to-hell fight, oh well, it's a cool name anyway.
You can have 3 of 5 bosses: a mage, a shaman healer, a rogue,
a warrior, and a hunter - with only once have I not seen the
warrior. Unlike reg, you target the healer if present first, then
the warrior, then finish off whoever.
Eadric/Paletress - Eadric is the easier one, almost just tank and spank, with
careful attention to the hammer if you get it, throw it back. Paletress
summons a memory who must be dps-ed down fast, because she will be
immune but keep casting spells. Through this immune you can send her
interrupts to help the healer and stop her heals. She is the more
dps-heavy boss of the two.
The Black Knight - broken up into three phases:
Phase 1: Burn him and his minion before it explodes.
Phase 2: He pops Army of the Dead and you need to burn them all
down or you could get one-shotted.
Phase 3: Pure dps race, as his debuff and bolts will hit harder the
longer he stays alive.
Forge of Souls
--------------
Difficulty: ***
Bosses: 2
Zone: Icecrown
All three of the ICC 5-mans are for Ulduar-geared players and up, maybe with
one scrub in this dungeon, but not the other two.
This one is easy if geared for it, just kill the caster trash first, and don't
turn your back on the little sickle guys.
Bronjahm - Just watch when he channels and the tank needs to kite him away from
the soul while it's burned down or else it will heal Mr. Jahm. For the
final phase during the vortex, just be ready to shake the fear and get
close to the boss.
Devourer of Souls - Mostly a burn. Watch for his Mirrored Souls, that is when
dps needs to stop for a time, or just auto-attack or you'll kill his
target. Stay out of the purple stuff, and when you are warned about the
wailing souls attack, just stand behind him and everyone needs to stay
out of his 90 degree sweeping path.
Pit of Saron
------------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 3
Zone: Icecrown, must have completed the quest in the Forge of Souls
Only the trash pulls before the cave are hard, in which you may want to CC one
of the casters. Other than that the trash is not hard. In the cave, just pick
up everything to the middle, burn it all, and do so again to reach the end;
you're just stopping twice.
Garfrost - Burn him and his trash, hide behind the saronite when he stuns you,
and if the healer is good you can just burn him. No one but tank in
front of him to avoid the chilling wave conal attack.
Krick and Ick - Basically a mini-raid all in one for this guy. By far the
hardest heroic boss to date; be sure to clear the trash before the
boss. Stay out of the acid, run away when he targets you, run 15 yards
away during the Nova cast, and for the Barrage just run in a circle
to avoid the explosions from the ground. Other than all that, it's a
fairly simple tank and spank...
Tyrannus - Don't waste anything when he's talking. Tank will kite him when he
enrages by using the ice slicks. Hold back dps when he links to a
player and run from everyone when the dragon targets you for an ice
attack or you'll get others.
Halls of Reflection
-------------------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 3
Zone: Icecrown, must have completed the quests in the Pit of Saron
Essentially a huge trash onslaught. After 4 waves at first, Falric is the first
boss, 4 more for the next, and the last boss is just waves of enemies to fight.
Stand behind both bosses to aggro the mobs as they come in, and target either
the rogue or priests first or they will end you group.
Falric - Recover from his fear, dispel his curse, and save CDs for the last
20% of his life as his aura hurts you with the less health he has.
Marwyn - Dispelling his magic effect splits the massive damage among everyone,
else the targetted player will need huge heals. Careful when he cuts
everyones health in half, and move out of the void zones of course.
The Lich King - It's just an escape through waves of trash. This is your dps
check, because if the King reaches you he has a ticking damage aura
and will pretty much kill you in melee range. Just burn down the adds
he summons as you run through the ice passage. Tank should still pick
them up, but other than that, just survive and advance through four
walls to win.
===============
Northrend Raids ( NORAID1 )
===============
Raiding is the "end-game" portion of Warcraft, but by no means is raiding the
last thing to do, or even required, it's just the last thing you can and should
tackle.
To enter a raid you need either 10 or 25 players. Normal versions of raids are
with 10, and heroics are with 25. No PvP gear (maybe one), and you need a lot
of purple gear, either from rep with factions, the AH, or heroic dungeon drops.
These go from Tuesday to Tuesday, a whole week with one raid ID, which you can
check on your calendar.
You can run 10 and 25 raids during a week, they are seperate. 10 mans drop good
loot, but 25's are better. If you don't get the loot, there are tokens to roll
for that you turn in at Dalaran for equipment.
If you start a raid, make sure the most trusted member is the loot master.
You don't want anyone to steal the best loot, or roll when they don't need it.
A loot master should let everyone can can use it roll, check their items and
talents, and if no one needs or can use then you go to dual-specs and then
DE.
-----
Key:
------
Difficulty: stars measure how likely you are to die
Bosses: number of bosses
Zone: where to go
-----
Vault of Archavon
------------------
Difficulty: * to *****
Bosses: 2
Zone: Wintergrasp, must control the keep
There are basically different raids and requirements depending on which
bosses you want to down. You don't have to go in for all three, but you
can't expect to pug a group that only wants to carry you through Archavon,
so it could be a one-boss only pug, but it's most likely a raid for all
three these days.
Archavon - Everyone needs to be off the stairs. It's very simple, the tank just
needs to move Arch's butt off the clouds he spawns, and everyone in a
cloud must move away or they will die. That's pretty much it, it's just
a dps race to beat his enrage timer (six minutes I think), so burn
cds early, middle, and late.
Emalon - Again, well-geared players only. Both tanks must be scratching 40k
health. The off-tank runs in, drawing all the enemies, while the main
tank runs in and taunts Emalon. OT goes left, MT goes right. What is
happening is the OT is holding the enraged adds to one side and no
one is dpsing the adds, everyone is on Emalon. Ranged and heals are
far from each other because chain lightning gets stronger by
jumping to players (10 yards). At some point Ema will cast Lightning
Nova, and if anyone is wihtin 20 yards of him they will take a huge
hit, instant death with 15k health or less, so all melee must run
away or throw up a magic resist ability (cloak of shadows). Finally,
after nova he will enrage one add, who will grow very large and start
stacking a buff. Once the buff ticks 10 times your raid is dead, so
this means you have about 10 seconds for EVERY dps to burn this add
down. And that's it, it's not too bad a fight, but everyone needs to be
good and doing their job throughout. Poor heals and bad tanks will
doom a raid. It's not that difficult, you just need a good group.
Koralon - If you can "stay out of the f***ing fire" you can do this. Of
course go in with above Naxx gear, and it's just tank and spank.
2 tanks and get the hell out of the fire under your feet. His
stacking debuff is a soft enrage, so dps should be really good, and
a second tank is okay for the frontal cleave where the two tanks
can split the damage.
Obsidian Sanctum
----------------
Difficulty: ***
Bosses: 1 to 4
Zone: Dragonblight
It's under Wyrmrest Temple, and you can see the place-holders around the portal
which will be called "Chamber of Aspects"; this is just the only one open at
this time.
There is quite a bit of trash, and 3 sub-bosses, but only the middle boss gives
up and loot (the rest do drop emblems though). There are a few achievements and
better loot for leaving some of these drakes alive, but you only need to kill
them and all the trash to leave one fight with the boss.
The drakes listed go clockwise from the entrance. EVERY boss should be tanked
away from the raid. It's possible to leave drakes up by hugging the walls to
clear the trash, because any trash left will join the fight.
Vesperon - Not essential to enter the portal here, but some should. It's
possible to burn him down without the portal. 25% less health debuff
if left alive.
Tenebron - His portal just lays eggs, which can be ignored, and should be.
The eggs will spit out whelps, but you can just AoE them. 100% shadow
damage debuff taken if left alive.
Shadron - All the dps into the portal with just the MT and heal left outside
as the group inside burns the add. 100% fire damage taken debuff if
left alive.
Sartharion - First, no dps behind or in front of him due to the cleave and
tail sweep (the sweep will stun you). All dps to the sides of his
belly. Other than that, just two things to look out for: off-tanking
the adds and avoiding the flame waves. There is a warning that waves
are forming, so a second after that look to both sides to see where
they are coming and move to avoid them. There are more elaborate
patterns and movements for this to ensure waves are avoided, but just
keep your eyes open. You can de-rage any adds that get hit by the waves
or just keep them out of the fire too. At it's core, this can be just
a dps race if everyone isn't stupid.
Naxxramas
---------
Difficulty: ****
Bosses: 15
Zone: Dragonblight
Too much trash to cover, watch out for Frogger, and by now someone in every
raid needs to know of all the special stuff between bosses. I'm not covering
all of that here.
Spider Quarter
Anub'Rekhan - Off-tank the adds, burn the tiny adds, all but tank run away from
insect swarm, and all healers and casters stand in middle.
Faerlina - You can cut off her enrage by mind-controlling her Worshippers, but
it's easier to just play through it. Be sure to dispel the volley.
Maexxna - Free people on the wall with range, burn down the adds, and keep
the tank up through the stun.
Plauge Quarter
Noth - Burn, off-tank the adds while he's up, and be sure to reduce dps when
he blinks on 25-man. When he teleports, just bring the adds to the
middle and burn them all. Be sure to dispel his curses.
Heigan - The infamous Heigan dance. I just found the borders of the four zones
the ooze spews from, the trick is not lagging and losing track of the
steps during the dance. Casters stay on the platform, but must leave
while the dance winds up or they die. The dance should have you moving
into the zone where the ooze just came from, but you can't move
without stopping. And that's about it here.
Loatheb - A heal check. Don't let the spores hit the tank, burn them before
that and dps inside of where they pop, and healers only have a brief
window to cast until all healing is negated. Not too hard if the
heals are on their game.
Construct Quarter
Patchwerk - A huge dps race with a need for several tanks or the melee will
get destroyed. Must give the tanks a good 5 full seconds to start
before melee jumps in.
Grobbulus - A kiting fight, off-tank the adds or burn them, and NO ONE stand
in front of him but the tank. When you are infected, run directly
behind him and to the wall until your poison goes off, and if dispelled
the poison goes right down where you are.
Gluth - Need hunters, mages, and some plates to off-tank the zombies in the
back because you can't kill them from full health. When decimate hits,
be sure to slow the zombies and burn them or they will heal Gluth for
full health. Also, two tanks to avoid taking too much of his debuff.
Thaddius - The two sub-bosses must die at nearly the same time. Make the jump
to the other side and everyone group up under Thad. From the start of
this room, negative is left, positive is right of Thad. When you see
polarity shift, watch the debuff you have and in about three seconds
you need to get on the correct side or else you'll die and damage your
allies. His hit box is big, so melee can and tanks can stand a good
deal away from his feet. When you have another shift, if your debuff
changes then go in a counter-clockwise circle to the other side. The
biggest mistakes are not changing in time and standing too close to
players on the other side.
Military Quarter
Razuvious - On 10-man you have orbs to control the two minions. They will be
your tanks as Raz hits very hard. They need to taunt off each other,
refresh their bone shields, and refresh their channeling of the goons.
Other than that, a dps race, watch for his debuff dagger, and don't
let the minions die or else your tank will have to have a go. On 25-
man you must use two priests to cast mind control.
Gothik - A fun fight. Either split up or stay on the living side, the left side
for the fight. With a good tank and ranged dps, you can stay on one
side and just burn the undead adds when the gates open, but not at
melee range. If you do split up, all dead adds from the left will turn
into undead adds on the right side. Pallies are valuable on the dead
side with them being undead, while rogues and other CC can help on the
living side. After a time, the gates open and Gothik comes down for
the tanking and spanking.
Four Horsemen - Split into four groups. A healer and tank pair up in all four
corners. Up front have your dps in the lower left side, and a few on
the lower right. The dps group will burn their dude, then the lower
corners will switch bosses after a bit. The dps groups burns the second
guy down, another switch, and then another until both front bosses are
down. In the back you need to split up the dps and watch your debuffs,
don't let them stack to 3 for each boss by being close to them, so
after a time switch sides. Watch the void zones, alternate, and this
fight isn't too hard.
Frostwyrm Lair
Sapphiron - Mostly tank and spank, only tank in front and no one behind him.
Watch the blizzard and hopefully your healers are strong for this
fight. When Saph goes into the air, everyone spread out to along the
perimeter, toward the front of the room, and stand behind the guys
that get frozen to survive the frost bomb. It's really just a heal
check.
Kel'thuzad - More healers the better, and the less melee the better. The first
phase is just killing adds from the middle. Once they are down KT
activates. Melee need to spread out and stand away from the tank, and
everyone spreads out as well. People who are frozen must be healed,
and CC anyone who is mind-controlled. Near the end he summons guardians
but you only need to off-tank them. It's a heal check, but fairly easy.
Eye of Eternity
---------------
Difficulty: *****
Bosses: 1
Zone: Borean Tundra
Quite a tough raid for just one boss. Please only go in with a raiding
guild or beyond solid pug. The following summary is probably not nearly
enough to know the fight.
Malygos - Three phases:
Phase 1: Tank and spank, try to not let him eat the sparks that come
from space, and you can death grip and snare these sparks over
the ranged group in one spot for a powerful buff.
Phase 2: Hop the anti-magic bubbles, bring down the mages on the
discs and put the melee dps on those to go up and kill the rest of
the flying dudes.
Phase 3: Everyone stack, move after an orb is made, put up a shield
if you are targeted, and stay 30 yards away from him. DPS spam the
spike then engulf to use the points built up, heals put up the HoTs
and AoE heals, and use the speed whenever.
Ulduar
------
Difficulty: ******
Bosses: 14
Zone: Storm Peaks
soon
Trial of the Crusader
---------------------
Difficulty: *******
Bosses: 5
Zone: Icecrown
not soon, though it's really not that long or hard to explain
Icecrown Citadel
----------------
Difficulty: ********
Bosses:
Zone: Icecrown
maybe by next ex-pack
======
Macros ( MAC1010 )
======
Enter "/macro" into a chat bubble to open your macro menu.
First, make a macro named "Macro" and give it any icon you probably won't
use for anything. In the command box just type in "/macro" again and you've
made a macro to open this menu! Put the icon and others on one of your action
bars for easy use.
Make sure this macro and all other commonly-used macros are in the everyone
tab, not the character-specific tab or all your toons will have their own
entries for the same stuff.
When you enter a macro, it's either goes out as a chat command or has a
slash in front to make it an in-game command, such as a cast. So if you just
type "You suck", it will say "You suck" in whatever is your current chat
box. But if you enter "/s You suck" then it will only pop up in a say, not
in guild chat.
Also great for emotes, which you can find on wowwiki.com. /golfclap for
when 10 horde come to kill you, /ready for telling your party you are
ready, and /wave are just some of the common emotes to macro and put on your
side bars.
As for combat, I will defer to wowwiki.com again for the more advanced stuff,
and probably hackers go even further, but most ability-macros will use these
two entries on a line:
#showtooltip Suicidekaratechop
/cast Suicidekaratechop
The tooltip entry is to display your current highest rank of that spell when
you mouse over the icon, and the second line is to cast it.
/shoot, /throw, and /startattack are really my only macros for those pesky
spells that don't begin my auto-attack, also /petattack to send my pets if I
don't want to start attacking.
More advanced macros look to cast two spells at once, or one after the
other, or include non-global cooldown spells into attacks, such as a tanking
Death Knight's Rune Strike.
==============
The Art of DPS ( DPS1234 )
==============
Raid dps is about two things only: simple rotation and watching your threat
level. Enable your threat display from the options menu, and read up all
over the internets for your class and spec's prime rotation, or at least
something in the ballpark.
Any talent, ability, and whatever you can find to pass aggro onto the tank
or keep it off you is a must. Yeah yeah, you may be terrible now, but if you
do find yourself as top dps in your group you want it to be easy to take
that aggro off you.
Rotations usually share a few things in common: put on all your DoTs, cast
anything that benefits from those dots, then cast your most powerful stuff,
and deploy any cooldowns during the first open stretch of a boss encounter.
On trash your AoEs will cause the most damage, but also the most threat, so
just be sure to use them sparingly. Winning the dps chart is fine, but not if
you keep pulling mobs off the tank. If you're so much better, perhaps just
single-attack the same as the tank is attacking.
Single-target dps will always burn that add faster than AoE damage, it's that
the AoE may kill all the enemies at once. Bosses and single enemies should
take the DoTs and your 30 second - 2 minute cooldowns.
A lot of your strongest spells could have 4-10 second CDs. Sometimes it's
best to throw these up first, such as a marksman hunter's Chimera Shot, so
that when you run your dots and such, the first spell will be off CD and
ready to use.
What you learn from and witness first hand through use is that the best dps
rotations use your most simple spells, not always your most powerful,
and especially not your strongest at the start (unless you have something
like Tricks of the Trade and Killing Spree for rogues where you want to
use that immediately on a boss).
Even though your toon may have a ton of abilities, not all will be used at
all. And depending on your spec, some of your easy abilities may be
skippable too.
Don't forget about the glyphs. Anything that increases the time of a DoT
also increases the damage, so always scoop those up. And if you see one for
a simple move that doesn't seem to offer much, think twice and double-check
if that little bonus is actually a big deal.
If you want further hints on your correct dps, scope out your tiered gear
and check their benefits. For your spec, those benefits almost always nail
exactly what you should be doing.
Feel free to test out some bold specs and rotations, all classes and their
dps potential can be wildly different. Bottom-line: keep it simple.
Heck, wanding for leveling clothies doesn't max out dps, but it sure does
save mana and keep aggro off you.
One final tip, for some abilities, right click the tank and select "Set
Focus" so you can easily apply your treat-siphon onto the tank, rather
than looking to different spots for him (or her).
==================
The Art of Tanking ( TANK123 )
==================
Only four classes can tank: Warriors, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights.
Warriors and paladins use shields, feral druids stack only agility since
a talent takes away critical hits against them allowing for stacking of
other stats, and DKs are the best anti-magic tanks. DKs are the only class
that can tank in almost any spec. In fact, so long as you push enemy crits
off the table, it's possible to tank with a pure dps spec - you just lack
the "saving" and other tanking stuff.
Tanking is all about inflating your threat and putting up decent dps.
Reducing/avoiding damage and inflating your health are the next things to
think about - meaning pure armor and HP are not as critical as how much
threat you can put up.
This is why not always should you choose every "tanking" thing over a dps
thing. Hit and expertise mean a lot to tanks because you don't generate
threat if you don't hit the enemies.
DKs should tank with a two handed weapon, as the other plates will use
shields. Bears do not need parry or defense rating. And all tanks can use
agility, since it buffs your crits, dodge, and armor, but not your dps so it's
only a "if there's nothing else" stat to grab.
The defense cap is 540 defense skill, which is the same as about 690
defense rating. You can check both numbers under the "Defenses" tab under
your character portrait in the character pane. Everyone can get to 400
defense skill on their own at 80. This means that you must find gear, gems,
and enchants to increase this.
Defense skill reduces crits and increases your chance to avoid attacks.
Reaching the cap is important to push boss critical strikes off the table, or
else things could go good and then you get one-shot.
And for further stats, be sure to go with dodge over parry if you have a
choice, since dodge caps almost two-times more than parry. Here are all the
caps for DKs, which could vary for other tanks, but not by a lot:
Defense Rating: 690 (DKs are a little lower with Stoneskin rune)
Dodge: 88%
Parry: 47% (again, useless for a druid)
Hit: 8%
Expertise: 6.5%
Try your best to reach these, then go all out for dps.
As far as during combat, always use your AoE attacks and then just anything
to increase threat. Depending on dps/heal dynamics, your avoidance and
mitigation abilities may not need be used. And you can quite often find that
single-targets and bosses are easier to tank than some trash.
Finally, glyphs and enchants should lean more to threat than avoidance/
mitigation because you won't always use your cooldowns, but increased threat
is always on.
=======
Healing ( HEAL123 )
=======
I have not healed anything but myself with my pally, so I am not speaking
from experience here.
I do know that unless you have some outside interface or add-on, you need to
learn how to drag and pull character unit frames. Always set a focus by
right-clicking that toon, most likely the tank, and setting him as the focus
because he is the most important - just don't confuse that frame with
another.
*NOTE: In a 5 party group the units only appear on the left side of the
screen. In raids just open the social tab, click Raid, and you can drag and
drop the units, though it would suck to raid heal in this way, but probably
possible.*
Stats to grab are:
Haste
Spell Crit
Spell Power
Intellect
Spirit
and MP5
MP5 is Mana Per 5 seconds, which is buffed through items, gems, and
enchants. 10 out of 18,000 mana per five seconds with spells costing 300
a pop doesn't sound like much on its own, but combined with others, spirit,
and your own stuff adds up to what could be a never-ending supply of mana
even under constant healing.
That's about as far as I'll go, I'm not much the guru of healing, but as
far as I can tell, if it's cloth, it's for you. I would think haste and
mana regeneration are your top priorities for raids, but other than that I
would think any cloth is usable.
*****************************************************************************
* 5. Classes ( CLAS555 ) *
*****************************************************************************
=====
Rogue ( ROG1234 )
=====
Summary
-------
This is the class I know the most about, so naturally I'll give all the
advice I can. You have three options to pursue as a rogue: stealth, combat, or
assassination (burst damage).
You can have all weapons except anything two-handed, polearms, and staves. You
can only have cloth and leather armor. Early on you want "of the Monkey" items,
then "of the Bandit" if you want, and at 80 all your gear has agi/stam, attack
power, and then some combination, in order, of hit, haste, crit, armor pen, and
expertise. However, unlike some classes that can dip to lower armor classes to
great effect, there are no cloth items in the game with agility or strength, so
rogue's only armor choice is leather.
Your weapons are key, and they depend on your talent build. If going into
assassination, get daggers, same for subtlety. But with combat you want any
kind of slow weapon in the main hand and a dagger or whatever is fast in the
off-hand. I'll explain more later.
At level 20 you can purchase poisons from the poison vendors, usually near the
rogue trainers. And these poisons level at certain points, so keep an eye on
those as you train.
Aside from using Energy, a rogue also relies on combo points to use their more
powerful attacks. These are finishing moves, the assassination part of your
talents, and they provide a benefit relative to the number of combo points
you've put on the enemy, up to 5. You can put these on through your instant
abilities and through talents you've chosen.
Dual-Talent Specialization? - I say no, but if you want to give it a try you
have a few options. PvP has two options: all out subtlety or combat with some
subtlety to make use of killing spree. PvE of course has the two following
builds, and since it's not hard to get two epic daggers before two epic and
correct whatever, it could be an option to main mutilate daggers until you find
a slow mace, sword, axe, or fist.
PvE Builds
----------
There are two base rogue builds for raiding and heroics: Mutilate Daggers and
Combat Spec.
Both will use rutpure and slice and dice, as well as a few talents that all
should grab: Malice, Ruthlessness, Blood Spatter, Lethality, Dual Wield Spec,
and Relentless Strikes.
Combat is the easier leveling spec since mutilate isn't around, and for
leveling you should focus on using Eviscerate. Not to mention you can pick up
all the avoidance talents in combat for soloing.
*NOTE: Here is the poison section from below, put here because poisons for a
rogue are worth stating twice.*
Poisons - There are really only four you use, two for PvE, two for PvP.
I say crippling and wound are PvP, while instant is you main hand poison while
deadly is our off hand in PvE. Mind-numbing is trash, and the rage one really
only has a few PvE uses and there aren't that many rage classes you need to
engage in PvP.
Wound Poison is a better option at level 80 against bosses because it is a
DoT, but level with instant to get faster damage.
The following two sections delve into the level 80 builds for each.
Mutilate
--------
For this of course just get two daggers, with the slightly slower one in
your main hand. You just spam mutilate, use your cooldowns when you can, and
rotate slice, rupture, and eviscerate/envenom. I would take a 52/12/7 build.
Here is the rundown of talents I would grab:
*NOTE: That is a build for envenom to replace eviscerate, since with daggers
your eviscerate is not as strong, Envenom is full nature damage. The problem
with me is that missed finishers are a killer. It's up to you to move around
Vigor, Quick Recover, and Precision to find extra energy.*
Assassination: (here are the ones to avoid) Eviscerate, Remorseless, Ruthless,
Expose, Kidney, Fleet, Recovery, Nerves, Brew, and Master/Tables, with full
points in all the other talents. It's a toss-up between Master and TtT, but
I would go tables. If you choose vigor, that will mean only 2 in CQC.
Combat: (back to talents you should grab) Dual Wield, Precision, and 3 in CQC.
Subtlety: Relentless and Opportunity.
Combat
------
Combat can use maces, swords, fists, or axes. At 80, you can buy two daggers
from the AH, a slow sword is a bitch to find, you can get both fists off of
heroics, and there are no epic axes for us pre-Ulduar. Maces are easy to
get, with the Titansteel Bonecrusher being a slow crafted weapon and several
fast ones, such as off Patchwork in 25 Naxx and off the last boss in the
spider quarter in 10 Naxx.
For all you need a slow (about 2.4-2.8 sec) weapon in the main hand and a
fast off-hand. The idea is you spam sinister strike and rotate off of
slice, rupture, and eviscerate, burning your cooldowns at the right times.
Talent builds can differ in many ways, mostly with the extra and non-dps
talents which could move around depending on if you're still leveling or
whatnot. But a 15/51/5 build works:
Assassination: Malice, Blood Spatter, Lethality, and Ruthlessness.
Combat: (the ones not used) Gouge, Deflection, Kick, Sprint, Nerves, Throwing,
and Unfair. Endurance gets one point. Of course you can use fists, swords/axes,
or maces (two of each), just switch the same 5 talents between their spec
talents.
Subtlety: Relentless Strikes. If you don't want this, feel free to get the
increased poison damage talent from Assassination.
*NOTE: I repeat, do NOT attempt daggers with combat. Hell, even the Titansteel
Bonecrusher with the sword spec does more dps. But a dagger for an off-hand
is okay for any spec to get you by.*
Glyphs
------
Feel free to pick up the following glyphs:
Minor - Blurred Speed and Safe Fall, then whatever, there are only 4.
Major - Sinister Strike, Killing Spree, Vigor, Fan of Knives, Rupture,
Mutilate, and Slice.
Don't need the Slice and Dice, but all PvE builds can use Vigor and Rupture.
Mutilate and Sinister Strike are for Dagger and Sword builds respectively.
Killing Spree and FoK are for PvP builds. Hunger For Blood could replace
Vigor for mutilate builds.
*NOTE: It's sorta for all classese, but the basic glyphs that don't seem to do
a lot turn out to help more than some of the flashier ones.*
Stats and Buffs
---------------
You need not look to any intellect or spirit buffs as you run off a fixed bar
of 100 energy. Anything you get with INT should be discarded or replaced with
anything else if possible, because even spirit may help as you'll be in
stealth when not in combat.
You can have strength, but it's best to look for "of the Monkey" items because
you want both agility and stamina to not be a damage-dealing weakling. PvP
seems to favor a mix of agility and stamina. So it makes sense to have stamina,
agility, and strength buffs, but you want to get as much agility as you can.
Later in the game, around level 58, you will want to pursue "of the Bandit"
items which do not buff stamina and agility as much as "of the Monkey" does,
but it makes up for it with pure attack power. Still, more agility is key, so
I would stick with monkey items, but bandit items are okay as well. Just know
that usually attack power is stronger than strength and agility for dps, it's
just that atk pwr only helps in raids and dungeons.
*NOTE: Agility adds to attack and also gives a small chance to dodge. More
importantly, it also adds to critical hit rating. Pure attack power does not
mean it adds that much damage, so don't think it's adding a ton to your DPS.*
PvP rogues can do a number of builds. At 80 you have resilience to helps
reduce crits and damage. At all other levels it's up to you how much pure DPS
you want. Agility, hit rating, haste could be replaced with strength or attack
power for pure DPS, as you won't be around long in large fights, and in most
one-on-one people will escape unless you kill them fast. Once a rogue is pinned
down, a rogue is dead.
Abilities
---------
Here are the abilities of note, with the rest being instanst strikes.
Stealth - Your main ability, basically letting you turn invisible to all other
NPC's and those of the other faction so long as you are not too below their
level. If you want to stop a patrolling NPC use the Distract ability to hold
them in one spot for a short time for you to plan your move.
*NOTE: In stealth your first action bar will switch to an alternate, which
allows you to hot key your stealth abilities. For this I like to put distract
in one, unstealth in two, and then have my stealth attacks follow.*
Poisons - There are really only four you use, two for PvE, two for PvP.
I say crippling and wound are PvP, while instant is you main hand poison while
deadly is our off hand in PvE. Mind-numbing is trash, and the rage one really
only has a few PvE uses and there aren't that many rage classes you need to
engage in PvP.
*NOTE: I like to keep all my poisons in my main bag, and keep them at 20. Yes,
you can track poison vendors in your mini map.*
Sap - Combined with sprint and distract, you can greatly help CC difficult
mobs, as well as annoy other players.
Sprint - Your only form of increased foot-speed, which could take two minutes
to cooldown. It's essential for fleeing, but at all other times it just lets
you get to places faster. In PvP it's used to stay behind an enemy and make it
harder for anyone to target you, or to flee, or to cover distance to an
enemy.
Blind - This move makes one enemy run in circles for a short time so long as
they are not damaged. This is nice if you are attacked by two enemies, just
blind one and hopefully you can kill the other in under 10 seconds. It's your
only CC in live combat, just hope everyone else knows you blinded him.
Cheap Shot/Kidney Shot - Cheap shot is a sneak attack to give you 2 combo
points and stuns the enemy for a time, with Kidney Shot using your points to
stun the enemy for a time while in combat. The reason to stun an enemy in
PvE is to reduce damage taken, or as a form of crowd control, but it's
possibly better to use a finisher instead on a near-dead enemy. Kidney can be
used to disrupt casting of enemies, even for just a second. In PvP or mobs
these are best used because they control the crowd numbers and reduce damage
taken, or possibly just to stall for time. Trust me, a lot of players will
drop whatever they are doing to attack a rogue that just cheap-shotted them,
even if they could win by attacking something else.
Sinister Strike / Mutilate - Your primary combo point ability, depending on
your talents.
Slice and Dice - In mobs this is your best ability to speed up your DPS, since
that is all you are doing. Combine with Blade Flurry and you can eat up two
enemies at once, or leaving the second with little health.
Eviscerate - This is your splash/burst finisher, and your move of choice in PvE
against single enemies. If there are more enemies in the fight, feel free to
use slice instead.
Envenom - Assassination rogues can grab almost all the poison talents and
essentially replace eviscerate with this move. The reason why is because with
full stacks of deadly poison and this move buffed up, it completely ignores
the enemy's armor and inflict nature damage, essentially a nature spell.
Rupture/Garrote - Rupture uses combo points, Garrote is a stealth attack with a
weak silence. Both cause damage over time that ignore armor. In PvE rupture
is a great way of adding to your DPS on a boss. In PvP Garrote can help get the
jump on a caster, possibly throwing them off their game. Both can be applied
at the same time in PvE, and you could go crazy by vanishing in PvE to apply
more garrotes.
Shiv - Instantly apply your off hand poison. Great for putting that crippling
in PvP. Due to non-crits, it's terrible for PvE unless you are using an
Envenom build, but even then you should stack enough deadlies through your
auto-attacks.
Lockpicking - This falls into a category of profession/key-bypass. As a
pseudo-profession you can answer the calls of any player who needs a lockbox
opened, or offer it as a service in trade like any other craft. It depends
on how much you charge for a pick. I like to leave the tip optional of whoever
needs a pick, especially if you are wanting to use it to level.
Of course there are several doors and chests in the game that you can open,
but of course you must be able to pick them and even then there are only so
many dungeons in which to use your talent.
*NOTE: To level it you start by going to 50 or so where you first pick up the
skill. Usually there is a place nearby that with more locks, such as the
bottom of the lake in Redridge. Then a rogue trainer can start telling you
where to go for further advancement. Refer to wowwiki.com about good
spots for lockpicking.*
*NOTE: This is a big note for those of you who don't pick this up on your
own. You can only skill-up beyond your max by leveling up. For example,
it takes until level 65 until you can open 325 lockboxes. That's 65 times 5, as
the skill max goes up by 5 with each level. It's the same as weapons and such.*
Pickpocket - This is how you can get many of the lockboxes to level up your
lockpicking. However, if you don't mind, you can use this at higher levels to
squeeze as much gold out of your enemies as possible. And there may be some
nice stuff to find in boxes as well... like a 1% chance to get a slow
sword.
Talent Trees
------------
The first two are your main PvE talents. I guess if you have not enough money
to dual-spec you could main Subtlety, but it's really just for PvP.
Assassination - This is the tree for those who want to cause as many critical
strikes and the most burst damage possible. Malice from the start improves
crit, but beyond that you are basically going Mutilate or bust. Mutilate is
your ONLY ability, you will basically spam that as much as you can along with
your other cooldowns of course. If you get this, get two daggers. Gets worse
and worse as a PvP build do to resilience.
Combat - Combat helps you fight and somewhat avoid damage. Your main ability
is Sinister Strike, with Killing Spree used whenever you can. Blade Flurry,
Adrenaline Rush, and Slice N Dice are your next abilities of note to greatly
add to that DPS. Sword Specialization should be picked up no matter what and
planned around for the future. It's also not bad to go to Killing Spree and
then halfway into Subtlety for PvP.
Subtlety - Purely for PvP, with the many tricks you can use for CC. This is
great for you 80s that can dual-spec. Energy and crits are not that important
in PvP, the main thing is just using your cooldowns to close that space
between you and the clothie of choice. Multiple vanishings and shadow dances
will help you become worth a dang in PvP. As a PvE option, it's not (especially
with an oncoming patch), but it can be okay for leveling and questing.
All rogues need the crit talent from assassination, the off-hand increaser from
combat, and relentless strikes from subtlety; all in the first tier.
======
Hunter ( HUNT123 )
======
Summary
-------
You are a ranged, non-magic DPS machine who has a pet which acts as a DoT or
tank. You use bows, guns, and crossbows as your main weapons, with your melee
attack as your last resort. I know you can focus on melee damage, but come on,
you'll be a laughed-at hunter if you do.
You have shots and stings which rely on your mana pool. You also have traps
to fit your situation and you can heal your pet. Your Hunter's Mark in most
cases should be standard on every enemy you need killed.
That's about it, your gameplan isn't hard to follow.
The best tip I can give that applies to leveling is to hit oncoming enemies
with a concussive shot to slow them and hope you burn them down.
When in a party, be sure to turn off your pet's growl.
Pet
---
You can only have as many as your stable master can hold, which gets expensive
the more you want to keep. You can only bring one with you though. By right-
clicking on their portrait you can rename them or let them go. At 80 you can
call on the stable every 30 minutes.
Pets have their own talents and get points about every five levels. They level
up separately of you as well.
There are different kinds of pets, almost any beast in the wild, but they
all eat different things, have different abilities, and different talents.
Refer to a website if you want to better understand what kind you want.
You can make interesting combos with pets, such as the ones that can go
stealth. For these you may have to micromanage, but you can use the Attack
command and then you attack when they are close to the target. These pets
benefit once they gain a talent point from the Dash ability, then you don't
have to micromanage as much. Ctrl + 1 is the attack command to send your pet
ahead right before you attack for maximum distance.
Also keep in mind you can stable pets, but more space becomes very expensive.
If you want the best dps pets, pick up a wolf, their howl provides the most
dps overall. Cats and ravagers are next. Devilsaurs are max dps for beast
mastery hunters.
You can catch all pets by laying an ice trap, you keep channeling while they
are frozen.
Lastly, be sure to grab your pet talents, and you can put four of its spells
on his action bar, such as growl and many others you may want more control
over. These can be right-clicked to have your pet auto-control them.
Ammo
----
Always keep track of your ammo, even if you have to grab lower level ammo. It's
better to have more than less. And at certain levels the ammo will upgrade,
so research or keep your eyes open for that. Possibly enlist the help of
engineers to make your ammo, and maybe even your scopes.
Finally, you have three weapons you'll change throughout the game: guns, bows,
and crossbows. Arrows and bullets do not level with each other, so it can make
sense to change as the ammo levels, so keep an eye out for the levels of
weapons and ammo, especially crafted ammo.
*NOTE: I believe at 40+ you can exchange thorium ammo from a guy in the Iron-
forge inn.*
Abilities
---------
Your shots and stings can be fired while moving, but of course all ranged
attacks require at least 5 yards of distance to fire.
Stings - only one of each, and though your serpent sting may be the most-used,
it's a matter of knowing your opponent that will determine the use of your
others.
Shots - early on your really only have the Arcane Shot to cause instant damage,
but all shots cause damage, and you can gain Aimed Shot through talents.
Concussive Shot is used on just about every enemy you face, especially if you
draw aggro away from your pet, or to slow fleeing enemies. Some shots do
share cooldowns with each other.
Traps - the trap to use relies purely on your enemies. Ice trap is a great
way to CC enemies, snake trap puts up almost all the rogues poisons to
nearby enemies, and the fire traps give a lot of damage (though they share
a cooldown with Survival Hunters' Black Arrow). As of a patch, you can now
lay down one ice, snake, and one fire trap all at once.
Aspects - I bind these to the number keys because you'll change these more
often than you would think. Hawk is your base aspect, viper to regain mana,
beast to finish off close enemies, monkey to avoid attacks, cheetah to move
faster when not under attack, and so on. With Dragonhawk being the hawk and
moneky combined for level 80s. You will usually have dragonhawk while
attacking, switch to viper after, then switch back before the next one. Just
a juggling act that should become natural, as should tracking if you get
the talent for it.
Tracking - you get a small perk for tracking the type you're attacking if you
got the survival talent for it, but other than that it's just to see a type
of enemy. If you do have that talent, be sure to check the tooltip for at
least every boss you encounter to max dps. Track hidden is maybe a decent
pvp track, but an ice trap or flare can do just as good.
Misdirection - a strong raiding tool at 70+ that allows you 3 free attacks
to divert aggro to the target. Yes, can even target your pet, making this
allow you to respec to a true dps spec once you have it.
Multi-Shot/Aimed Shot - Same thing really, as they have the same CD. You
use multi with more enmies, aimed with one, that simple. I know aimed is a
talent ability, but all hunters should have it - if you don't just use multi
all the time.
Volley - made very strong in the marksman tree, this is your main aoe
attack, so be sure to throw up a misdirection before using one.
Deterrence, Feign Death, Disengage - all your "dancing" and avoidance stuff,
with FD being an aggro dump on all up raid bosses.
Talents
-------
It's pretty clear, start with Beast Mastery, switch to Survival when you have
Misdirection at 70, and once geared pick up Marksmanship at 80.
Beast Mastery - the obvious leveling spec because your pet can tank and keep
aggro off you much better. Grab a gorilla, then a devilsaur and you may not
have the highest dps, but you level with ease, no dancing around to create
distance. However, a poor dps spec at 80, due to almost all your dps being in
your pet.
Survival - the best spec for non-Ulduar geared 80s. It's also a great spec
for pvp and to grab once you gain misdirection. One extra CC shot, the
Black Arrow which is like and shares the cooldowns of fire traps, and the
best shot, Explosive Shot. It's a very strong talent tree late, so nothing to
level on, just something to respec into at 70.
Marksmanship - the highest dps spec, but requires a lot of micro-managing of
all your cooldowns. This is why survival is the easier tree to start raiding
with. Careful when moving up this tree, lot of bad talents in there.
============
Death Knight ( DK12345 )
============
Summary
-------
With Wrath of the Lich King installed and with a level 55 character you can
create DK's on any server. They are level 55 heroic characters who go through
a very unique campaign to get geared and learn a little backstory behind the
Scourge and Lich King. Sadly, you can only have one per server, so think before
you make one and before you decide what you will do with it.
The training takes place over different periods of time in a little area which
is in the eastern are of the Eastern Plaguelands; I say this because during the
game you should notice how the area is now abandoned. You can drop any of the
papers you find from drops, and you can use the Crusader Skulls to make free
potions before you leave. You also cannot leave the areas until you complete
all the quests, and you want to because each quest rewards you with a blue
item to go into each item slot, as well as talent points.
You learn that DK's use Runes to limit abilities. You have two of each rune
type: blood, frost, and plague. Using a rune or two sets off about a 5 second
or so cooldown. So basically the runes just mean you can't spam one move over
and over. By focusing in one type or the other you essentially cut your
effectiveness down to the two runes of that type, but it's not like abilities
don't split runes either.
DK's are heroic tanks that can dual-wield, use 2H swords or axes, but cannot
use ranged weapons or shields. You can also hold a sigil to provide some
benefit. Of course there are better tank classes, but DK's can avoid a lot of
attacks and only lack the ability to hold a shield, though most DK's will
choose to focus on DPS and self-healing. Lastly, you have the ability to give
your weapons a rune, this is called Runeforging and is basically your self-
enchants.
DK's are based in Ebon Hold, a floating platform over the Eastern Plaguelands.
You use your deathgate power to get there. From here you can buy corpse dust
for ghouls and forge runes on your weapons, as well as seek training. And you
can also set up camp with the Ebon Blade in Icecrown for the same benefits.
There are two glyphs of choice for ghouls. One minor glyph lets you summon
ghouls without a body or dust. Another will give your ghoul a 40% boost in
health and strength. The free ghoul glyph can be used by anyone, even for the
two minute ghouls.
For all leveling DKs, all 22 of those levels, you should pick up the glyph
of Death Grip to make its cooldown zero after you kill something. This
speeds up your killing a ton.
Combat
------
As mentioned, you have two runes of each type, meaning you can use up both
of one then start using a few others until your runes of choice are ready to
go. Be careful not to get twisted by the abilities that use one of two kinds of
runes, if you think before you use these you may allow better combos.
Icy Touch and Plague Strike both cause diseases. These cause damage and effects
but also can feed some of your abilities. The Pestilence and Blood Boil combo
allows you to spread the diseases and then explode them for a nice area of
effect damage. Death and Decay is your only other AoE spell early on.
No matter how you choose to fight, death grip, chains of ice, and death coil
are your main abilities. Death grip is your only true ranged attack, but it
only brings enemies closer. Chains of ice can be used to trap fleeing enemies
and mainly in PvP to stop someone from moving around. Death coil is used either
to heal or as a ranged attack. It's easy to overlook, but the coil is one
of only a few abilities to use your runic power, so use whenever you can.
You have three talent trees: Unholy, Blood, and Frost. Everyone chooses blood
because you heal yourself. Unholy is the next popular choice because not only
can you have a pet, you also move faster. I however like Frost because I think
the abilities are easier to use, and a you have more runic power.
If you want to focus on one tree, here are things you need to know about the
start of each:
Unholy - 5 for better dodge, and on the second tier you can reduce the cooldown
of your Death Grip. If you don't want that, consider getting the grip glyph
which will erase the cooldown upon a XP or honor kill.
Blood - you mainly want the Rune Tap ability, which costs 11 points to get to.
if you go all in for the other trees, you'll still have enough to pick this
up by 80.
Frost - must get the extra max runic power, then maybe some of the frost damage
abilities if you're partial to Icy Touch and Chains of Ice.
Last thing I'll say is that Icy Touch and CoI are nice ranged abilities, and
both can cause damage if you buy the CoI glyph. There is also a
Pestilence glyph which makes that ability a little more useful, especially
when you consider that some of your abilities require diseases. Also don't
forget your non-damage glyphs which put nice effects on you.
Talents
-------
Blood - The dps/healing spec, but the heals are not for others, just yourself.
Yes, this makes the plate-wearing DK with high dps very popular in
PvP and PvE.
Frost - The best tanking spec, but not by a lot. All the specs can tank
decently, but frost does it even better. Not to mention you get some
nice damage abilities, and the best snare in the game (think of
freezing a turtle in AV). The dps spec of dual-wielding has grown
in popularity.
Unholy - A growing spec with the realization that you can have better range,
diseases, a full-time pet, and more anti-magic abilities. You can't go
wrong picking this for PvP to eat casters alive.
=======
Warlock ( LOCK123 )
=======
Summary
-------
Half mage and mostly damage over time (DoT) DPS, with special attention payed
to their Fear abilities. Damage over time means they will cast a spell and
the affliction will do the damage to the target. With your DoT spells on the
target you can then use Fear to chase them away from you, or against the
environment you can use other spells for more damage.
You can also specialize in your minion or your pure casting spells. Through
your Life Tap you can convert health into mana, so rather than go all in for
intellect you can just get stamina.
Talents
-------
Affliction - Enhances all your DoT spells. An easy leveling and PvP spec.
Demonology - Increases the power of your demons, health, and conjured items.
it also enhances your survivability, but isn't the best end-game spec.
Destruction - Makes your casting spells much better. Combined with a few
points in affliction, this is a solid dps build.
PvP is probably best for affliction, because you can just hit them with three
afflictions, fear, and they will not last long. Demons and destruct are best
for PvE, but it seems like no matter what you'll fall back to using mostly your
DoTs on enemies, regardless of spec. That means you should get a little into
the affliction tree in all specs.
*NOTE: Immolate is a destruction spell. Basically if it's fire, it's for
destruction.*
From experience, affliction is the easiest to level early in the game. Demo
warlocks struggle from causing very high aggro and the pets just not being
that effective. Destruct locks of course suffer from empty mana bars very
quickly, but they are the strongest. With improved life tap, several talents to
help your channeling spells, and certain glyphs, you'll most likely work the
channel spells into your combat rotations.
I strongly recommend affliction for early locks, use a voidwalker and its
glyph and just dot dot dot, wand, and level.
=====
Druid ( DURID12 )
=====
My druid is a lowbie, but I've seen and grouped with enough druids to under-
stand how the class and its many specs work. On a light note, here is a link
to something you'll really like: http://www.wowwiki.com/Alamo .
Summary
-------
Druid is a hybrid class capable of filling any role in the game. They just
change shapes and they can do something new, with Mark of the Wild needing
humanoid form to cast. Here is a basic list of what each form can do:
Bear - tank, turning leather to mail; with Dire form turning to plate. They
use rage just like warriors.
Cat - melee dps and can stealth, basically a rogue with fewer options. They
too use energy.
Moonkin - requires 31 points in the Balanced talent tree, and can cast
balanced spells; basically a spellcasting form.
Tree - 41 points in Resto talents, a healing class that can only cast healing
spells.
There are several other forms:
Aquatic - 50% faster move speed in water and water-breathing.
Cheetah - run 40% faster outdoors.
Flight - replaces flying mounts, but you still need the training.
Talents
-------
Feral - by far the best spec for leveling, because you can tank or use the
cat form. A few talents in Resto help this spec too.
Balanced - leaves your options open to do a little bit of everything, but
mainly just to be a spell-caster.
Restoration - for healers. Basically if you want to be a healer you'll have to
respec later in the game, because even though you could try to keep
yourself healed from start to finished, the other talents speed up
killing stuff.
=======
Paladin ( PAL1234 )
=======
This is the most cookie-cutter class in the game, and if you want to make
Warcraft not a difficult game at all, go ret pally and it will take a bit to
kill you.
So far and with so many patches, Blizzard seems to have no plans to nerf
pallies.
Summary
-------
Paladins are another hybrid class in that they can tank, dps, and even heal.
But honestly the only specs that matter are tanking and dps. You can look up
the stats yourself, but there are roughly twice as many paladins as all other
classes together.
One big advantage of end-game holy pallies is they can wear any kind of armor,
meaning if no other class needs that healer stuff, it should be all yours.
Pallys use holy magics with all their attacks, but they are not a spellcasting
class, it's just added damage. They are a pure melee dps class with only a
few ranged attacks, with one attack not useable in PvP.
If I were betting on the next class to be greatly nerfed in the near future,
it's retribution paladins. Too often does it take 3 or more players to kill
just one. A ret pally can cause high dps, wears plate armor, causes damage
when YOU attack it, has high AoE damage, and for the kicker can become fully
immune to damage or heal when almost dead - big nerf, now you can only heal or
be immune, not both anymore...
Aside from PvP domination and easy dps, tanking pallys are some of the best
I've seen. And as if you can call it a disadvantage, pally healers are the
hardest to make better than the other healers, but you can dual-spec it if you
want.
Talents
-------
Retribution - As stated, the cookie-cutter "best" spec in the game. You deal
high dps and punish those that attack you. And of course you have all
the same heals, just a small mana pool.
Protection - The tanking spec, and by what I've seen the best tanks in the
game, probably because of such an arsenal of abilities.
Holy - Really the weakest healers in the game, but it's worth a try if your
server/guild doesn't have many heals. Good for tank heals at least.
======
Shaman ( SHAM123 )
======
Summary
-------
Shamans are very common for horde, and extremely rare on alliance. Shamans can
heal, melee, and cast, and their powers are amplified through totems. They
lack a true stun, and don't have much escapability. They are the only class
that can do both melee and ranged dps, as well as heal.
Talents
-------
Elemental - The standard casting talents of a shaman. The only caster class in
mail.
Enhancement - The melee spec, and best used for leveling, but dedication to
this late in the game can yield good dps. But it's probably better
for grouping to dual-spec casting and healing.
Restoration - The healing talents, and for a lot of groups it's sometimes
better to have a shammy heal. This is because Chain Heal hits more
than one target.
====
Mage ( GAME123 )
====
Summary
-------
This is the standard casting class, with no other way to inflict damage. You
can only wear cloth, but don't be fooled, you can have powerful armor spells,
many tricks to avoid melee damage, and you can disappear.
You absolutely must level in Frost and you will cast about a billion
Frostbolts just to reach 80. And though Arcane is the true dps spec, you will
find frost can dps as well.
For leveling, it's frostbolt x2-3, freeze them in place, blink, and resume
the bolts. With a pet, makes it that much easier.
Talents
-------
Frost - This is your PvP spec, due to a pet and snares. However, you lack the
same dps output that the other trees offer.
Arcane - A solid dps build, you can't go wrong at 80 with this spec.
Fire - A dps built around crits, meaning it's not PvP worthy, but has potential
to out-dps arcane.
======
Priest ( PRST123 )
======
Summary
-------
Your standard healing class. Unlike other hybrid classes, priests really should
make healing a priority late in the game. You level off a shadow or disc build
and you can almost guarantee that at 80 you'll find many groups as a healing
preist. It's simple, if you want a healer, level off a shadow build and then
dual spec with anything and make holy your tree of choice. DPS are a dime a
dozen, your faction needs you healing.
Talents
-------
Holy - The group healing build which is the best healing spec in the game.
Discipline - The PvP build in which you excel at keeping one player alive and
helping to extend everyone else through buffs. It's not the strongest
group healing build, but could do great in single-tank healing
situations in PvE. But in PvP it's near impossible to kill a disc
priest.
Shadow - The dps spec that can rival any other dps build. Use this to level.
=======
Warrior ( WARR123 )
=======
Summary
-------
Finally, the standard class of the game, the "you can't go wrong" class - but
there is more to this class than you may think. No, warriors are not just
fighters, they are generally considered the best tanking class in the game.
What this means is you should be fine leveling off of dps, but you should
greatly consider becoming a tank at 80.
Warriors use rage, similar to DK's runic power in that it builds as they
get hit.
Warriors have some nice dps abilities, such as the whirlwind and holding two
two-handed weapons. But yeah, as far as PvP, warriors are basic in that they
can take a lot of hits, but can't heal or make range.
Talents
-------
Arms - Bleed damage and whirlwind, and better use of rage. The main PvP build.
Fury - The high-dps, low-armor build, best for PvE, where you can hold two
two-handed weapons.
Protection - The best tanking spec in the game, and has powerful stuns and
AoE. However, in PvP others can just ignore you and you'll not be much
of a factor since you must be hit. Not a huge disadvantage, because
few will notice, but it will be your problem.
*****************************************************************************
* 6. PvP (PVP6666 ) *
*****************************************************************************
========
PvP Tips ( PVP1234 )
========
Almost all of PvP boils down to stunning, fearing, or freezing someone. Once
you do these to a player they are almost certainly dead. Only healers can
stay alive for very long, while paladins can stay alive for any amount of
time and cause lots of damage, so go figure.
Everyone has a way to break these effects using the trinkets sold by PvP
vendors in your faction's capitol where you buy the other gear.
The main idea in PvP is to not take on a losing fight. Sometimes you just don't
know how dangerous a fight is, but you never want to take on more enemies
than you are bringing. It's a bad idea to think that just because you see
enemies you should attack them. BUT of course this does not apply to pallys,
as they can stay alive and hold 4 players on them, all by themselves for a
good amount of time.
Part of PvP is the art of decoying/baiting. Just as you don't want to engage in
a losing battle, players are also a bit to anxious to chase down a single
enemy with four players. If there are 10 players in a line casting or fighting
enemies in front of them, and you ride your mount straight through that line,
I promise that over half of the group will turn around and either focus on
you or if they can't stop you they will chase you. Most Arathi, SotA, and AV
turtlings can be helped by just not fighting and breaking enemy focus by
just spreading out.
*NOTE: Turtle means when one team is stuck in one spot, it means that team has
lost 99.99% of the time. 0.01% of the time all the turtling players will
realize that spreading out and not engaging the attackers head on is the only
way to take the enemy off of you.*
There is a hard-to-explain key to battlegrounds, and that is one team's overall
focus. Take Arathi Basin for example. The horde team may be better (aka they
have more pallys), but if their best players are roaming in one large group
and hording to one node while the best ally players are spread out, then the
horde team will lose because while they may have more kills, they are not
defending. While conversely, if they are spread out and failing to solo a
node and dying in the process, then their team will be behind a lot for it.
Take 3 rogues for example trying to solo nodes and failing, they are making it
12 vs 15 for the rest of the map. Basically, all nodes really need equal
amounts defenders and attackers, and whichever side wins more battles, that
team will win quickly.
And all the BGs will say this, but defense is the key. All nodes, which are
areas fought over, should not be left unguarded, even if it's just one player
to stall the enemy from a capture. However, 3 players defending a node
either squashes solo attempts, or has the other team ask for more attackers.
If 5 players attack 3 players at one node, sure, the 5 will win, but for the
rest of the map it's 10 on 12.
One final note is for level 80s. Once at 80 you should have a set of gear for
dungeons, quests, and raids, and also a set for PvP. All the PvP comes from
PvP vendors and sometimes from raid drops. But if you use these for PvE, at
some point they will be replaced with true PvE gear. This means you should put
resilience enchants and gems on all your PvP gear; even if they already have
good stuff, you need resilience. Of course there is a great balance between
res and stuff for tanking/dps/healing, which is to have at least 600-800 res
and then go all out for whatever; with crits being not so important for PvP.
And finally, you have Elixirs of Ironskin and Lesser Flasks of Toughness for
added res.
=============
Counter Class ( COUN123 )
=============
This section is meant to briefly explain how each class is used in PvP to
increase the odds of killing. One note is that not EVERY level is taken into
account, so lower levels may lack some abilities explained.
Also keep in mind that I don't know exactly some of the higher level abilities
used, I don't really have every class to level 80.
*NOTE: A common link is that all classes can DoT and stun you. DoTs are damage
over time attacks, and stuns can be anything that causes loss of control or
slowed movement of your toon. Using a human rogue as an example, you can use
the human spell "Every Man for Himself" to clear and stun, and with your rogue
spell "Cloak of Shadows" you can clear any DoTs on you. DoTs are different from
bleed effects.*
Paladin
-------
Of course we're always talking about ret pallys. Even tanking or healing pallys
would make their first priority to dual-spec in retribution.
It's tempting to burn your stuns and cooldowns early in a pally fight, but
they must be saved to around 20% of the pally's health or else he will just
bubble and heal to restart the fight, except you have much less health or
allies.
Melee classes not a pally that fight a pally are doomed to death for lack of
healing. It's basically a class meant only for casters and hunters to destroy.
This is because pallys lack range, but the kicker is that they can free
themselves from almost anything you use to halt them.
DoTs are best to put on a pally, which ignore their plate armor and will force
them to heal a bit more than usual.
In the end a paladin will last as long as his mana stays, and in 99% of cases,
unless you are a paladin, you don't have a great chance to win one-on-one.
Bring ur friends.
Warriors
--------
Warrior combat is very simple, they melee and spin. With a healer there is
almost no way to stop a warrior. Their charge gives them more range than
paladins, but they too are just as weak to range as a pally. Unlike a pally,
they can't heal or bubble themselves, so this is the class where range and
casters can easily tear them apart.
Death Knight
------------
There are vastly different kinds of DKs: tanking frosts, unholy with pets, and
pure melee blood. Do to some anti-magic abilities they aren't as simple as
the other plate-wearers to just simply kill with range.
They possess some range, but they are one of the easier plates to kill with
melee combat. Just like all plates, bring ur friends, or for DKs, bring a
pally.
Shaman
------
There are different kinds of shamans, but up close this is the only class
that has the least ways in which to create distance from you. They have a
grounding totem to slow you down as they run away and cast lighting on you.
I've never seen a melee shaman in PvP, but only once in PvE, so not much to
worry about there.
While lacking in escapability, they make up for it by creating their "totem
zone" in which they are protected and fueled in many ways that doesn't really
cause reason to move.
Hunter
------
Killing these boils down to surviving their first disengage, and then hooking
up with them again. An ice trap doesn't help them much so long as you have at
least one breaking spell.
As for playing hunter, one of the bigger mistakes when facing a plate-wearer
is to keep drifting away from your allies. Your only chance to survive is to
hope your friends can help you, so even though you may not last as long, it's
a far better option to fall back into the heart of battle.
Druid
-----
It's really just about out-numbering these guys. The hardest thing to kill is
a fleeing druid who can heal on the run and escape any stun by shape-shifting.
No matter what form they start fighting in, they will always resort to
changing once their health is dipping. It's actually best if they are a healer,
they get swarmed, and they then have to heal themselves and others; just hope
your side is winning.
Rogue
-----
Rogues are the biggest target in PvP. If you are spotted, everyone will try to
kill you. The only true PvP rogue spec is subtlety, which increases the
duration and reduces the cooldowns of a rogue's tricks. Subtlety is the only
spec that allows you any chance to escape being pinned down and mobbed.
Rogues can only target casters in big fights. Rogues have NO chance being the
main target of a full-health plate-y. When engaging casters they will
immediately burn their escape ability. Locks will send you running away and
DoT you, same with priests, and mages will most likely freeze, blink, and
frostbolt you. A rogue can only free themselves and either vanish or sprint to
cover the distance.
If there is a line of enemy casters and a single rogue pops up on one of them,
the entire line will target the rogue, and even nearby non-casters will want
a piece of a rogue. So aside from suicidal decoys, rogues are best left for
single combat against anything but a plate. Rogues really are just a suicide
class because without healing they will die in big combat, always.
Hunters are the best at finding rogues, both with the ability to track hidden
and with flares - to a lesser extent traps, but rogues in stealth can easily
disarm these. Other than that, the only way to find a rogue is to use AoE,
the only thing that spells instant death to a rogue.
Mage
----
Frost mages are the only kind for PvP. Their rotation is very simple: you
get close to them, they freeze you in place, they blink away, they turn, and
then they spam frostbolt, maybe with some water elementals at their side.
Their last resort is to turn to ice for about eight seconds, and they hope that
once it's up they have a split second to freeze and blink away once more. Their
frost armor discourages you from charging in, but it's the only way for melee
classes to confront them.
If a mage disappers your best hope is to hide as well, because they can't see
you while out of sight.
Warlock
-------
Possibly the most over-powered PvP class, locks can DoT the entire enemy team
and then fear them if they get close. Hopefully you have your "clear debuff"
spell ready because you'll take on 2-3 DoTs once in range of a lock.
Range really is the best way to take on a lock, because most do not spec in
casting, they are easy to out-gun. Range is also the only way to repel their
channel attacks, by simply moving away.
Locks are basically the most annoying thing to kill, but most over-looked
when facing a whole team of other classes. Locks are probably easier to handle
when you ignore them, because once you decide to target them they can change
the tide of a massive battle with ease.
Priest
------
When there is a priest you must target that priest, period. Avoiding a priest
means you're essentially fighting twice as many of the other enemy characters.
But by targeting a priest, even with your weakest link, it will force the
priest to at least try to heal itself, or keep more of an eye on its own
health. When you do this, you then even the enemy numbers out, it's that
simple. They possess a fear too, but don't let that prevent you from keeping
pressure on them.
======
Twinks ( TWIN123 )
======
A twink is any character who is used purely as a source of PvP fun. You can
twink at levels 19, 29, 39, 49, 59, 69, and I think 79. I think all battle-
grounds go from the 0 level to the 9 level, but I believe Alterac Valley just
takes anything from 0 to 0. This means that it's possible to twink at 60 and
70 for the only purpose of playing Alterac Valley, which may be a very fun
option depending on your battlegroup.
Battlegroups
------------
You can check the battlegroupings of the realms via the World of Warcraft
website, but that is of little use unless you really get into your battle-
grounds and test them out yourself. I'm not saying to take on the faction in
a group that is favored, I'm just saying to avoid being heavily outnumbered.
Perhaps I'm just more into AV than you may be, but if a battlegroup is not
balanced at one level, it probably isn't at any.
To Twink, or not to Twink
-------------------------
Your battlegroup and what you plan to twink for will determine if you twink or
not. The purpose of a twink is purely for PvP, with only questing, professions,
and gold making up to the twinking level. Some twinks can even do a few quests
or dungeons for better gear, but really you can't go over 75% of your XP bar
or else you may be pushing it.
*NOTE: It's supposed to be in patch 3.2 that twinks can pay for XP gains to
stop. This will be huge because you can hit dungeons over and over for gear.*
One factor in twinking is the amount of play at that level. If the wait times
are long and sometimes of day are completely void of players, then it may be
the wrong level or battlegroup to twink in.
Another is your progress in the game and on the server you choose to make a
twink. Trust me, twinking with your second character may cause you to rethink
twinking for a need for a source of professions or just to have another level
80 toon if your main doesn't work out. If you spend a lot of time on your
twink with success you could find that its style of play better suits what your
main may be.
Also keep in mind what options are open to you at the given level. Gear and the
battlegrounds may play in role in what level you choose to twink at. Keep in
mind that the higher up in levels you go, the more expensive the gear at the
auction house and the less you can count on there being more twinks for your
faction.
It was twinking without an 80 that burnt up a lot of money, not to mention time
from my main. For this I require you have an 80 before building twinks.
Building ur Twink
-----------------
Every class can be twinked. From my experience it's the healers, druids,
rogues, and paladins that can have the greatest impact on a fight. Hunters are
the easiest twinks, but please try to be more creative than that... don't look
at me!
You really only need the gathering professions or engineering, depending on
the desired level. Given that you've made several characters from the many
races, you should know the best places to level and get gear quickly. All of
the gathering professions give a nice bonus:
Herbs - self heal
Mine - stamina boost
Skin - critical bonus
Of course since you must level to advance your professions, you are limited in
how much these can help you. And 90% of the good PvP players use engineering,
so take that as it is; it's also the most expensive profession because you
won't earn back quite as much money as with enchanting.
Once you reach your desired level the only thing left is gear. A nice idea is
to consult fellow twinks of your level, you should see them from your server if
you keep playing a lot, or ask if there are any in chat.
Not all twink gear is at the 9 level, some may be as low as in the 7 spot. You
can also search for quests rewards you could solo where you don't earn a ton of
XP.
Aside from raid gear, which would probably require a whole raid meant to help
you in your twinking efforts (raids would start with the 50 bracket and up),
the only other form of gear is dungeon drops and rewards. The art of dungeon
runs for twinks is to go in naked, bring a high level that can revive, and
die a lot until you reach the desired boss; you don't release your soul in
death of course.
Enchanting your gear is less tricky that it was before. Before a recent patch
there were a lot of good enchants for twinks, but now almost all of them have
been wiped. You are left with just a select number of enchants for your gear,
and make sure you get them.
Don't forget to consult which sets of cards net good rewards - basically you'll
either need to be a scribe or buy them, just make sure they are for your level.
Finally, there are PvP vendors who sell blue gear in exchange for your marks of
honor from the battleground of choice. Just find the quartermaster for the BG
in which you've earned multiples of 20 marks, and you can get good gear from
all of them if you play all the available BGs.
===========================
Battlegrounds & Wintergrasp ( BGWG123 )
===========================
Summary
-------
The key to all combat maps is defense. Only in Warsong would all offense have
a chance of winning, but even then it's risky. There are currently 5 battle-
grounds and one battle zone. They open up as you level, and most have a place
in the world where you can go to trade your marks for items.
There are three entry points to the BG's: from the zone they are based in,
from the battle terraces in cities, or by opening the player vs player tab on
your toolbar as of the latest patch (the easiest way).
We will cover them as they open up to you.
-----
Name: Warsong Gulch
Min Level: 10
Team size: 10
Time Limit: 25 minutes
Objective: Capture the flag three times
WSG is the smallest and most competitive map in the game. However, there are
countless strategies to both defend and attack the flags.
There are three base strategies to this map: half and half on offense and
defense, 3 on D 7 on O, and middle control. I exclude all on O because when a
rogue caps the flag and you can't get it back then you will revert to one of
the other strategies.
If you want to win this on easy mode, play on horde because they always twink
this BG at any level and a single blood elf pally can solo a flag at any time.
It's most common to cap a flag with one tank/pally and a healer against a
small defense. But only a huge group of 5 with two heals can expect to cap a
flag against heavy defense.
Once a flag is taken then the flag carrier (FC) must return to their flag room
(FR).
Offense - depends on the enemy defense. If they have heavy defense you need
to think up some strategy to break through. Smashing through and leaving only
works with heals or a twink to grab the flag. Mostly you'll need to clear the
FR first, then run. If your group is good for directions, you could send in
one or two to fake cap the flag and lure the defense away from the flag base,
and when they drop it a second team can swoop in for the true cap and take off
in the other direction.
Defense - there are tons of attack points, but the defense can only work in the
FR. It's best to stay out of sight to avoid warlock and hunter attacks from
the roof or ledge. Hunters should set a frost or ice trap in front of the flag,
but out of reach of a rogue who could disarm it. Healers first, although it's
always best to just keep the guards away from the FC, because if it makes it
into the field then the healers can just rez and get back on the FC. Basically,
if you the FC gets out of the FR, you only have 50 yards to kill the FC or
you'll suffer a cap.
Getting your flag back - if the defense wipes you have to call where the flag
was last seen going, such as the tunnel (tun), ramp, or graveyard (GY). Unless
you have solid players in the enemy base, your only hope to get the flag back
is while it's in the field. If there are healers or casters, chances are you
won't get the flag to drop if you attack the FC only. Slow effects should be
poured on the FC but hard DPS must be applied to the healers. Outnumbered there
is not much chance to get the flag back, you really need either all the help
to fall off the FC or some to keep the FC in place. When it drops, get it
quickly or another player may grab it.
Capturing the flag - as the FC you can't stealth, use a mount, or use several
other tricks (really depends on your class), and hopefully the ones around you
know to not cast powerful spells on you. Getting out of the enemy keep usually
requires your teammates' help no matter what. This is either by them holding
the enemies at bay or having guards and heals.
Hiding the flag - when both flags are in their bases there are a number of
places to go. The graveyard is a safe place because players rez there and you
can bail onto the field and have all the attackers still in the base. The roof
or the ramp to the roof are the only places with one entry point, and you can
bail into the FR. Finally is the FR where you can hide in any number of places,
all of which will allow multiple attack points. The only advantage of being in
the FR over the others is that at the other points you may not make it back to
cap the flag if a player caps your flag. After a while the FC's will become
weak, and even weaker after a time, so once this happens you can pour all
damage onto the FC and force a healer to pick up the flag.
This is the BG I've had the most failure at. There will always be a BE pally or
twink on the horde side, so again, if you want to play this on easy, go horde.
-----
Name: Arathi Basin
Min Level: 20
Team size: 15
Objective: Control nodes until you amass 1600 points
AB is the most even of the BGs because one player cannot determine the outcome.
There are five nodes, one near each base, two on the sides, and one in the
middle. Usually you just need to control three to win, but once you can
consistently control four then you can try for the fifth, and with all five you
will win the game in a matter of seconds.
Nodes create 10 points about every five seconds, but not while contested so
until a flag is under one side's control should it be fought for or defended.
Offense - it's never wise for everyone to be on offense, but if the other side
has all on offense then you can do single-player caps of nodes. Rogues and
druids can excel at AB because they can sneak around and cap nodes once they
are left alone. Even more so when a flag is fought for, if the defense moves
off the flag then a rogue can sneak around and cap behind them. If the fight is
at the flag then you want to try to cap it. Attempting to cap the flag will if
nothing else pull the enemies on you and hopefully left the others attack. And
there is no limit to how far five horde players will chase one player, so feel
free to lure others away (I guess alliance do it too). Also the strategy of
attacking a node from one side while others slip in from the other also works,
but is seldom used.
Defense - with more nodes you can just keep one on un-contested flags, but
of course heavily defend nodes under constant attack. It really depends on how
well the other team is. If they can't seem to hold any flags then you can
probably go for the five node cap. But if your teams keep swapping nodes and
the other team is solid, just bank on holding three nodes and defending them
with three players.
Golden Rule - if you aren't fighting to cap or fighting near a flag, then you
are not playing the battleground. This applies to all BGs, but more so in this
one because of the possibility someone can cap behind you.
"At least we have the stables" - yes, a guild name, but it's true. The number
one way teams lose is when only one node is left under your control and every-
one tries to defend the last node. Sorry to tell you, but no matter how hard
you fight for one node you are not going to win the game if you don't get
more. However, the opposite is true. If the other team converges on one node
then only a few need to slip through and cap all the other nodes, or if
anything else pull the attackers away and let your noob pals free.
-----
Name: Alterac Valley
Min Level: 51
Team size: 40
Objective: Deplete the other team of 600 reinforcements, or kill their boss
There is a lot going on here. First is the fighting, and usually the more
powerful team will win. More so than other BGs, pure power can win this map
90% of the time; meaning 10% of the time can superior strategy beat better
power.
Towers/Bunkers - There are two outside of each teams base. These provide
powerful buffs to the boss, so they must be capped. Aside from GY's,
these are usually left alone after a cap, so they are almost always
easy to cap with four players. If you cap them, be sure to ask for
help. Four players can hold a node most of the time. You must hold them
until they burn, or recap them if they are yours.
Captains - There is Galv for the horde and Balinda for the alliance. Galv is
farther south while Balinda is nearer the middle. These guys provide
support for the boss as well, so kill them. Usually easy with just five
or so players and no enemy players near.
Graveyards - Easy to overlook control of these, but if all are capped then
everyone goes back to their starting cave. Your starting blitz will be
for nothing if you hold no graves and the other players stop you.
Quests - There are quests you can get from the staging area, and then more
from your base. Quests from the staging area ask you to enter a cave
to get a flag so you can get a trinket, and others ask you to attack
the nodes and such. Quests from your base require you gather supplies
from fallen players to equip your NPCs and some more that require a
lot of effort, but I've never seen them used, so I won't even mention
them. Refer to wowwiki.com for info on those quests, you'll be the
only one doing them if you do.
Base - Each team's base has a graveyard, two towers/bunkers, and the boss.
Once you cap the base's GY you probably need anywhere from 10-20
players to attack the last boss and hold the base. Beware rogue caps
of the nodes, they are quite common.
Boss - The boss is the most common way to win. He has guards equal to all of
his team's nodes, and buffs for some nodes. The boss will not last
against a solid group of healers and DPS, even with some buffs and
guards. But ideally you want all four bunkers/towers destroyed before
you go all in.
There are many ways to go about this map, tons. You could blitz and hope enough
of the other team get stuck fighting you, you could play more defense and
bleed out a win, or you could do any number of things where holding the nodes
will help you win. Above all, it's still about defending the flags you have and
the ones you capture until they burn.
Advanced tips includ quickly capturing and defending the graveyard in the
enemy's base, which ensures your attack on the boss will have a nearby zerg-
point, or allow more players to appear here for the final push.
Another is making sure you kill enemies early on. The reason is that if they
were on the attack, they will appear in a defensive graveyard and not be a part
of the attack. Combine with this solid efforts at holding and defending all
the nodes you can will severely stretch the other team's forces.
It's very interesting to see both sides just let each other run to the other
team's base. What's happens is the same as always, the team that defends one
node, recaps one bunker, takes back just one tower, usually means they will
win.
-----
Name: Eye of the Storm
Min Level: 61
Team size: 15
Objective: Amass 1600 points from flag captures and controlling nodes
This BG is Warsong and Arathi in one. You have two options to get points,
take the flag from the middle and capture it at your nodes, or simply hold
nodes. This BG is more about NOT fighting on the roads more than others because
you hold nodes simply by standing on them. It's very common for teams to keep
swapping nodes four nodes back and forth, and that's where the flag comes into
play.
The flag is open for either team to take in the middle, and it takes a while
to pick it up, so there are usually big fights for the control of the narrow
area the flag is on.
The nodes are more important than the flag, and if you abandon the flag and
control all four nodes then you will win in no time. The flag is simply a
way to unbalance games with even teams. Besides, you can't cap a flag if you
have no nodes.
Ideally you can hold three nodes and not defend the middle one. No matter what,
both sides will be in constant battle for many different things and hopefully
you fight for the right things.
-----
Name: Strand of the Ancients
Min Level: 71
Team size: 15
Objective: Touch the orb in the relic chamber
This map is almost the same as Wintergrasp, almost. The difference is that up
until the final wall there are two lanes to attack. The attackers have the
advantage because they can spread out or focus on one side, and if the
defenders do not fall back with the attackers then the game is basically
over.
The defenders have the advantage when they fall back to the third wall in
time. If the third wall is defended and the attackers are not that strong,
there is almost no way to break through.
Rules for winning SotA:
*Vehicles are for attacking gates, nothing else; if you use them to
only attack players then you will lose.
*Turrets will eat tanks, but don't stay on them when your gate is
broken.
*Graveyards are very important to keep the pressure on high.
*Shops open beyond the first wall after the graveyards are captured.
*Rogues and everyone else can grab bombs and run them to gates, place
them, get out of the way, and cause a decent amount of damage. This
helps when that third wall is defended. Bombs are at the sides of
each gate, far to the sides.
*If your intial attack focuses on one side and the defense does not
pick it up, you will win.
*Run bombs if you have stealth, you don't even need to dismount to
pick them up. Just run up to the gate, plant, and go get more. This
is best when at the final gate and it's a stalemate.
*For the touch of the relic, either send in a pally or run with a
rogue, anything really.
-----
Name: Wintergrasp
Min Level: 55 (80s get priority in queue)
Team size: 100 each
Objective: Defend or reach the relic chamber
As of a patch, you now queue for this battle either 15 minutes before while
at any battlemaster in a city, or while being in the zone. If you decline
you are sent out, and if you were in the queue then you teleport inside the
zone if you accept.
This is set in the world of Northrend, an actual zone you can fly in and out
of at any time. There are 2 hours between battles, and the faction defending
is the faction that won the last battle. However, there are four things to
keep track of during the fight.
1. Your rank. I say this because you can sit in WG and do nothing for a single
mark of honor. If you win and you're at full rank, you will get three. However,
the more important thing is that your rank determines what vehicles you can
build at the shops. You advance in rank by killing five enemies, then 10 for
the final rank. You don't need to cause 15 killing blows really, just be
"around" enemy deaths if they aren't NPCs.
Rank 1: Catapults only, just used against players, or in bulk with
tenacity on walls.
Rank 2: Demolishers and Siege Engines. Demos can hit from farther
away and move faster than sieges, but are much weaker. Sieges are
very strong, but slow.
2. Control of shops. You cannot build vehicles without shops. Each shop allows
you a total of four vehicles, but only the defenders can hold all six with
two being in the keep. Shops can be captured by standing at them with more
players. There are other reasons to hold the shops, such as the next point...
3. The southern towers. If you are attacking the keep, then you must defend
these three towers. If you are defending the keep, you must destroy them. Aside
from a tower bonus, which is 5% for each one, the game is shortened by 10
minutes if all three are down. The bonus transfers to the defenders if they
take them down. Near these towers are two shops, so if the defenders control
those and the attackers do not make an effort to reclaim the south, then there
is little the attackers can do to prevent the towers' destruction.
4. The keep. This is the least important thing because you should get a high
rank before making vehicles, the total vehicles from the shops determines who
will win, and losing the south will give way to losing one of the forward shops
and having a huge force attacking the attackers. But for those that start
attacking the keep, which is not wise, or if you do get to attacking then you
should attack at least in two places. It requires a superior team and more
of the other factors in order to push through the front. You break down one
wall, another, and then the relic chamber gate. Once a wall is broken then
all the defenders should fall back to the courtyard, but if they don't need to
fall back then they have the advantage.
Basically the map is meant to force players to spread out, not just focus on
the keep. Defenders lose if they don't have enough and are sitting behind the
keep. Attackers lose if they neglect to defend their towers and lose control
of the shops.
From my experience, this map is horrible because of a number of factors. One
is that most players do not know the map. Two is that there is a Tenacity
buff for the outnumbered side, which is supposed to account for the lack of
players, but not all players in WG are playing, some are fishing or collecting
mats (such as bots). Tenacity does not win a match, but if the outnumbered
side moves as one then they could be horribly overpowered and completely
unstoppable.
Rewards:
*Vault of Archavon raid opens inside the chamber.
*Collection of Stone Keeper Shards from all bosses in Northrend. Helps
buy stuff in WG.
*WG quartermaster sells stuff for WG marks of honor and SK shards.
Weekly Quests, from various NPC's either at your camp or in the keep, they
award honor, SK shards, and gold:
*Win
*Kill 10 players and/or NPCs
*Destroy 3 vehicles (be "in the area")
*Destory a southern tower (don't have to witness it now)
*Defend or pilot vehicles that destroys structures ("in the area")
*Several collection quests in designated zones of WG
Lake Wintergrasp is a great place for profession advancement, if you don't mind
death every now and again. It's just another zone of PvP realms.
-----
Name: Isle of Conquest
Min Level: 71
Team size: 40
Objective: Deplete their reinforcements or kill their boss
Love new BGs? Eh. This map does not offer the same honor reward as AV, so
from that view it's sorta a waste of time.
Best way to win: grab the hangar, drop like 20 guys into their keep and they
run bombs to destroy a gate from the inside, and the rest defend your keep and
fight for the other nodes that aren't the factory.
Best way to lose: all stay in the keep, get in a war for the factory, ignore
the corner resources without having the factory, and letting the dock
vehicles tear you up.
There are three key nodes:
Hangar - teleport to an airship flying over the enemy keep, where you can
man some cannons and jump off to slow-fall to the ground, hopefully landing
behind enemy walls. From there you grab the bombs by the keep to start on
the gates from within.
Factory - in the center of the map that makes tanks. Just start beating on
the enemy gates if you can get the tanks there.
Dock - holds catapults and glaive throwers. The cats can shoot you over the
enemy walls. The glaives hit very hard, but die fairly quickly.
There are also two resources in each corner that provide a 5% damage buff
to tanks. This means that yielding the docks and factory as well as the
resources is sure to put the game on an invisible timer to your loss. But
if you fight for the docks and resources but give them the factory, you
give yourself a chance to win.
This map provides the least-solid measure of whether your team is winning,
simply because there is no solid progression other than gates down and keep
is lost, and even then two players guarding the boss can do some damage.
*****************************************************************************
* 7. Leveling Guide *
*****************************************************************************
This will be a more in-depth look at leveling from 1-80. There is a "Smart
Leveling" section in this guide, but this section will specify the the best
zones for your level, quests, and anything else for the least amount of
movement.
As of now, this is just a copy and paste from the section above, but I do
want to expand upon this at some point.
I'm glad I did not in depth before patch 3.3 becaue the game really does
point you exactly where you need to go for most quests, it doesn't pinpoint
single objectives, but it's better than my explaining where to go.
My dream for this section is to list the quests in order, and which ones, but
no longer do I need to explain what to do for them.
Azeroth
-------
Where the quests are scatter-brain, some are traps and time-wasters, and you
can end up travelling for little reason.
*ALLIANCE: I can safely say that if not a rogue or warlock, feel free to level
in the Draenei zones, I love those places. You don't need a rogue or lock
anyway! Rogues could even just go to Darnassus every other level.*
*HORDE: Haven't tried, but something tells me the Blood Elf place is probably
more focused than the rest of their other things'.*
1-6 - all done in your starting area.
6-20 - all races have two second zones, but at this point you can mix and
match going to the next zone of another race's city zone.
20-30 - you'll finish in the second zone of choice, then you'll probably
start into one of the many "contested territories" in which Horde and
Alliance share.
30-40 - Stranglethorn Vale and the areas lower than it. Arathi and it's
neighbors are good too.
40-50 - Finish STV, then go to Searing Gorge or areas near Tanaris.
50-55 - Tanaris, few Azshara quests, Un'Goro Crater for sure, or maybe
Searing Gorge. Felwood and Burning Steppes are options too.
*You may now create a Death Knight*
55-58 - Winterspring and Felwood quests for Timbermaw, Alterac Valley quests
and the XP from the rounds you play, a few of the easy ones in Western
Plaueulands, and maybe finish in Eastern Plaguelands or with some AVs.
Outland
-------
All of these are usually for ALL the quests you can find in the zone.
58-62.5 - Get your butt through the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands and start
questing in Hellfire Pennisula. At least a Ramps and Blood Furnace
run in there, more if you like.
62.5-65.8 - Zangarmarsh. (dungeons optional)
65.8-67.4 - Nagrand (all but the ring of blood quests).
67.4-68 - Stonetalon is faster than Shadowmoon, and in Stonetalon you can
tackle the Cenarion Expedition quests for their rep (even seek out
their quests in Terrokar)
Northrend
---------
These are not for all quests, but are really meant for certain quest lines.
In the future I may point those out.
68-72 - Use the boat at the SW Harbor to reach the Borean Tundra, or the
boat at Menethil Harbor to reach the Howling Fjord. I believe they
have zeppelins at Org and UC, not sure though. Do both of these
"starter" zones.
72-74 - Dragonblight, the Naxxramas and Wrathgate stuff.
74-76 - Zul'Drak, or start with the Drakkuru quests in Grizzly Hills, then
go to ZD.
76-77 - Sholazar Basin, optional to go to 78 here.
78 - Storm Peaks, starts some quests on the ground, but need your cold weather
flying to go further; otherwise stay in Sholazar. Could also start with
some battleground XP with the blue, crafted PvP gear available now;
also not a bad idea to jump start on getting honor for 80 PvP gear.
79-80 - Storm Peaks and Icecrown quests only reached via flight. Some of the
blues will suffice for starting you with 80 gear.
*NOTE: As of the patch, Alterac Valley provides still a good amount of XP.
Not as much as the first BG XP gave, but still good if you like to PvP.*
*****************************************************************************
* 8. Economy Guide *
*****************************************************************************
Perhaps more of a chore than the leveling guide, this will try to maximize
gold production at 80, and account for all professions and where to find the
mats.
Again, just a placeholder for now.
======
Mining
======
Easily the most popular gathering profession, and with finite numbers of nodes
for ore it could be a very stressful profession to manage. Not hard to level
at all, but once you reach end-game, good luck.
=======
Herbing
=======
A little harder to level thanks to herbs of different tiers being in the same
zone. If not careful you could out-level this profession and have to back-
track to catch up.
========
Skinning
========
By far the easiest to level, and easiest to catch up on if you pick it up way
late. But on the flip side it's the hardest to level if you don't find any
dead beasts, because this is the only gathering profession that requires time
taken to kill creatures - hopefully you can level it off other players' kills.
=========
Tailoring
=========
Not too hard to level, but the end-game for all three phases of this game are
very rough. Luckily you could just use this to make bags for all your toons,
that is the biggest advantage. Most recipes need enchanting mats anyway, so
it's really advised to pick up enchanting too.
We'll also cover where to find the cloths.
==========
Enchanting
==========
A very uneven profession to level, but everyone needs enchants. And even if
your enchanter can't help all your toons, you can at least have your own supply
of enchanting mats - and with vellums from inscription you can enchant your
own gear on all your toons.
=============
Jewelcrafting
=============
Easily the most profitable and beneficial profession. Gems are always in
demand and you can even fit yourself with even stronger gems. Plus, you get
an extra daily. And if you charge a fee for end-game cuts this could be one
of the easier professions to shop on trade.
===========
Inscription
===========
Not the sexiest pick at all, and indeed it could prove a little worthless for
a long time. But you constantly have a supply of temporary buffs and later
into it you can create powerful trinkets.
=======
Alchemy
=======
The most bankable profession, since everyone can and wants to flask up for
raids and/or pvp. Even though gems and enchants move fast, all alchemy buffs
only last an hour or two, or less. Average players won't spend much for the
more costly potions, but there are plenty or rich players more than willing to
give up 20+ gold for one flask to help them raid.
==============
Leatherworking
==============
One of the least-desired professions, but really easy to level, especially if
you keep your eyes open and find lots of kills to skin.
=============
Blacksmithing
=============
One of the more difficult crafting professions to level, especially without
the aid of an end-game miner on your roster. One of the reasons is most likely
due to jewelcrafters also needing a great deal of ore.
==========
Elementals
==========
There are several tiers of elementals to gather, and all of them are needed for
the higher quality creations of all the professions.
Even if you think you will never need a certain elemental, save it for future
toons. And keep almost all the ones you find for end game content.
Here are the locations of all the elementals, either the best places to find
them and/or optional locations.
=======
Trading
=======
Relic of Ulduar -
Cooldown -
Profession -
Gear -
Runs -
=======
Dailies
=======
We'll cover a few of the Outland dailies, but our focus here is on maxing out
gold potential with the quickest and easiest dailies to do in Northrend.
I would not expect any player to do all 25 dailies they can in one day, that's
easily three hours just on the quests, never mind the travel. Maybe if you want
to grind out for a few days to reach a goal, but doing 10+ dailies and day
could really hurt your chances of not becoming a WoW addict.
*****************************************************************************
* 9. Current Patch Notes *
*****************************************************************************
Patch Notes for 3.3, Fall of the Lich King
First wing of Icecrown Citadel opens.
Three 5-man dungeons on the west side of the fortress.
New dungeon finder tool, no more daily quest, and a weekly raid
quest.
All raids and heroics drop Emblems of Triumph.
Re-tooled pets and permanent for mages.
Levels 1-20 get it easier.
New quest tracking and map interface.
10 Heavy Borean Leathers can be traded for an Arctic Fur.
No need to clear all of Naxx to reach Saph and KT, you can go right to
them.
Mainly cooldowns are just 10 minutes, but those are usually excluded
from arenas.
New Northrend fishing derby on Saturdays, which can replace the STV
fishing derby for the "Salty" achievement.
Oculus made a little easier.
Meeting Stones have no level limit, but do have minimum of 15.
Tail sweeps no longer affect pets.
Patch Notes for 3.2, Call of the Crusade
New 5 man instance, Trial of the Champion.
New 10 and 25 raids, Trial of the Crusader (normal) and Trial of the
Grand Crusader (heroic)
New BG, Isle of Conquest
New arena season
Upgraded pvp rewards from capital cities, from Hateful to Deadly,
and the new epic gems for honor rather than the previous gems
Shortened BGs
XP from BGs, and the ability to disable this for a seperate division
Wintergrasp queue up to 100
New chest heirlooms from heirloom vendor in Dalaran, and a cold
weather flying heirloom for your level 70 toons
Ability to trade dungeon and raid drops with party members within
two hours
ALL non-ToC heroic and raid instances in Northrend drop Emblems of
Conquest, which can be traded down
Raid and dungeon IDs can be extended for another week, for the whole
week, and as many times as desired
Riding learned at level 20 for 4 gold, at 40 for 50 gold, slow
flying for 600 gold at level 60
Can display item level from the interface
New epic JC recipes for 4 tokens apiece, as well as Titanium Ore
being prospectable for token currency and epic gems
Something new and/or improved for all professions
*****************************************************************************
* 10. Author Info / Copyright *
*****************************************************************************
-------
Links
woWwiki.com - for basically half of what I've learned
thottbot.com - for finding almost everything in the game, just not
in-depth info.
wowarmory.com - where you can find a ton of info on in-game characters,
items, guilds, and upgrades.
maxdps.com - a decent way to look up dps upgrades for 80s, just the gear
and enchants.
wow-heroes.com - a ranking system for servers, guilds, and players.
elitistjerks.com - not the best info, but if you can find the thread for
you on the forums, it's gold (it's also horde... grrrrr)
-----
----------
My Motivation
I write these guides to help gamers avoid the dumb mistakes I made.
That's really all it is about. I'm not trying to give 100% detail about the
game, help you up your leaderboard rankings, help you pwn noobs so you can
lol, or hold your hand as you play.
My guides are really meant for single-player games only, with the multiplayer
ignored, and you are supposed to read it as you play. I also cringe at
most extra stuff, like achievements or challenge modes or insane "play the
same segment 10 times to move on" hard modes. These things are just pure
"filler" that are so easy for the devs to make and so many of you suckers fall
for thinking these things are legit gaming experiences... ugh. They are just
time-wasters, but I do try to cover some of them.
I hope you can learn to find things in this guide if you must (ctrl + F) and
hopefully the table of contents points you where you need to go. If you jump
into the guide not from the start, it's on you if you are off my order of
events or you missed some early setup.
-----
-----------
Please contact me if you need any help, if you want to thank me, if you want
to talk, or if you want to ask a question. Efforts to get in a guide need to
be exceptional.
The golden rule: keep it short. If I see a wall of text I'm probably moving
on. I've gotten real bad with emails lately. And flamers don't even bother, it
won't work.
My email: lunatic_252000@yahoo.com
Title of your email should be: WoW
PS - To GameFAQ's users, if you like the guide, click "recommend" at the top
of the guide, but only if you like it.
PPS - I cannot fix bugs, glitches, or achievements/trophies not hitting.
-----
-----------
I have other guides floating around too. They are:
Resident Evil 4
Dead Rising
Gears of War
Lost Planet
Crackdown
GRAW 2
Rainbow Six Vegas
TES IV: Oblivion
Shivering Isles
Knights of the Nine
The Darkness
BioShock
Halo 3
Half-Life 2
HL2: Episode One
HL2: Episode Two
Call of Duty 4
Assassin's Creed
Mass Effect
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
Perseus Mandate
Sam & Max Episode 203
Devil May Cry 4
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Okami
Grand Theft Auto 4
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Metal Gear Solid 4
Alone in the Dark (360)
NCAA Football 09
Madden 09
Dead Space
Gears of War 2
Prince of Persia (2008)
Call of Duty: World at War
FEAR 2
Resident Evil 5
GTA IV: TBOGT
Modern Warfare 2
Assassin's Creed 2
--------------
---------------
I've also been published in GamePro magazine, June 2007. Pretty cool if you ask
me, and all because I write these little guides.
Also, I am in the October issue as well, which should be out at the time of
this guide's release. At least I ain't a one hit wonder.
In a nice surprise, I didn't even know I was in the March 2008 issue of
GamePro, but I am. Maybe I'll be in more I don't know about...
Look to Gamerhelp.com for a slew of other articles written by me in the
featured article section.
----------------
----------------
Here is my list of sites:
GameFAQs (main host site)
GameSpot
IGN
OCModShop.com
chaptercheats.com
GamersTemple (http://www.gamerstemple.com/)
TheGameReviews
wiredgamingcommunity.com
neoseeker
gametower.org
SuperCheats
GamesRadar
CheatPlanet
CheatCodeCentral (cheatcc.com)
My360.com.au
gamerevolution.com
cheatingdome.com
unlimitedgamer.net
and more here and there, too many to keep up with
and even a few foreign ones too!
*NOTE: There are many more with single guides, and then others with a few, and
some that I just don't keep track of.*
All other sites must ask permission if they want this. All I ask is that the
guide be ad-free and in this text format.
And if you want to make a donation at my site for hosting a guide, that is
fine too.
-------------------
--------------
Here is my website:
www.thechaosuniverse.com
You'll find all my other guides here too and perhaps something else you may
like.
-------------
-------------
I only ask for a donation because their aren't many people that do this
stuff for free. Even in a text-only format, you've gotten hopefully some
nice info for free and enjoyed me enough to just maybe repay all the time
spent making this guide.
You can give whatever you want, all of it helps.
http://www.thechaosuniverse.com/donationcenter
-----
---------
COPYRIGHT
---------
This guide may not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal,
private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed
publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web
site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation
of copyright.
All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their
respective trademark and copyright holders.
Copyright 2009 Brad Russell
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