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Lichborne: Level 90 primary professions for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. This week, we'll cover the personal benefits of the primary professions for death knights at level 90. Many of the perks and benefits are the same as they've been at levels 85 and 90, but there's stronger versions, of course, and a couple other changes that are worth covering. This guide will focus primarily on the self-buffs and bind on pickup rewards, though many professions will, of course, have its own BoE things that all death knights will want to make use of, so consider that when you pick your professions.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Goblin Glider proves engineering is still the best profession
My love of engineering is no secret. Engineering is the best profession in WoW, period, as measured by the only scale that matters: awesome points. We've seen some new head pieces coming in Mists of Pandaria, but there really has not been a huge amount of engineering news. Well, that's all changed now that the Goblin Glider engineering enchant has been introduced. What's the Goblin Glider? This new enchant attaches the Mists of Pandaria version of the Flexweave Underlay (whose update was oddly missing from Cataclysm) that looks to only use a handful of easily obtainable materials. The real kicker with this new slow-fall cloak is that it's got a built-in Nitro Boost that periodically pushes the player forward through the air. What this means is that you've got periodic forward momentum for 30 seconds of slow fall with the ability to steer your character 360 degrees. Not only is this the coolest new escape tool for engineers, it makes WoW base jumping about 900 times cooler. I am really excited to get my hands on the new engineering stuff, and it's great to see the best profession in the game getting some love. Let's see more, Blizz! It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Encrypted Text: My ganking toolbox
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. I love being prepared. I always like having the right tool for the job. My desk at the office is covered with spare parts and manuals, and my junk drawer at home is filled with cables and loose screws. And when I say junk drawer, I mean junk cabinet. I won't throw away something that could be useful later, which has me worried that my next TV appearance will be on Hoarders. Luckily, I can't be judged for all of the goodies that I keep in my rogue's bags. One of my favorite threads on the official rogue forums is the Ganker's Kit of Ganking. It's a very robust list of items in WoW that can help you kill your targets and avoid being killed yourself. I find that we're usually so focused on our normal gear that we forget about all of the other items in our inventory that can make playing a rogue fun.
Encrypted Text: How to deftly swap targets
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. There are a lot of names for a simple raid encounter in WoW: tank and spank, churn and burn, rush down, the Raid Finder. In a rogue's perfect world, every raid boss we face would simply be Patchwerk (or two Patchwerks, if you play combat). It's our prerogative to deal the maximum possible damage, and we perform at our best when we can tunnel-vision and focus solely on managing our own energy, abilities, and cooldowns. In spite of our preferences, bosses in WoW are rarely that simple. No two bosses are exactly alike, and even as we see the developers reusing ideas or abilities, each new fight is different from the last. One of the most common mechanics we deal with in a raid encounter is the addition of extra enemies, or adds. Any time a rogue switches targets, they lose some of their overall damage output. Redirect and Sprint are our two tools to minimize any lost damage, and yet they're woefully underutilized.
Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 keeps getting better
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.I love it when a content patch includes some professions love. As the details keep surfacing, patch 3.2 is looking better than ever. In fact, with the upcoming patch, Engineers will finally be able to drop their Gnomish and/or Goblin specialties ("for a fee")! This has been one of those issues, like ugly and buggy cat forms, that has dragged on and on. The materials for Jeeves have also been updated (get the schematic!). If you're wondering just what you should be saving, hop on through the break for that and other patch 3.2 news!
Insider Trader: Profession-specific buffs part 2
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Last week, Insider Trader discussed the profession-only bonuses associated with Inscription, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting. This week, I'm going to walk you through the rest of them, and include a final summary and comparison at the end. Tailoring Perks Tailors have the ability to enchant their own cloaks. Other players can get cloak enchants from Enchanters, although the Tailoring ones are superior in many cases. Darkglow Embroidery: Chance to restore 300 mana on spell cast. There seems to be a 60 second internal cooldown, with a proc rate of 35%, which is equal to 25 mp5. Lightweave Embroidery: Chance on spell cast to increase your spellpower by 250 for 15 seconds. Swordguard Embroidery: Chance for melee and ranged attacks to sometimes increase your attack power by 300 for 15 seconds. There seems to be a 45 second internal cooldown on Lightweave and Swordguard, meaning that for 15 seconds out of every 45 seconds (+, if you don't proc it on the next hit, but they do seem to proc within a hit or three), you have the effect. This averages out to 83 SP, and 100 AP respectively, in ideal conditions. Depending on your luck with procs, the average decreases the longer it takes you to proc it again.For example, after 45 seconds, each spell has a chance to proc the effect. If you managed it at the 50 second mark, the average becomes +75 SP. Casters who are not Tailors can currently choose between Enchant Cloak - Wisdom and Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed. Wisdom grants you a measly 10 spirit, as well as a now obsolete 2% threat reduction. The +23 haste rating is nice, but provides neither mana nor spellpower. Enchant Cloak - Major Agility grants you +22 agility to cloak. Agility is inefficient to everyone except rogues, hunters, shamans and druid cats, who would get +22 AP from it as well as the crit/dodge/armor. In terms of attack power alone, the Swordguard enchant is the clear winner.
The Daily Quest: Go go gadget rocket boots
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Graylo of Gray Matter talks stat weights and spell priorities for the second in a pair of Moonkin builds. Rogue-Rogue reacts to the Nitro Boots stealth nerf from patch 3.1.2. Shields Up! pulls together a few essential macros for Shaman of all flavors. Hunter DPS has changed significantly since The Burning Crusade, shifting from a shot rotation to more of a shot priority system. If you're not sure what that means, you should probably read this. Do you have something you'd like to blog about, but you weren't sure where to say it? Make use of WoW.com's new blogging system! It's free, and we'd love to see what all of you can do with it. Silly or serious, we want to hear about it! Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The state of Engineering in 3.1
In case you missed the memo, the short list of changes to the Engineering profession that have been posted for patch 3.1 are all you are going to get come patch day, like it or not. Bornakk confirmed that Blizzard feels that the "perks work out" compared to what other professions offer, and that they "have no changes planned at this time."The relevant forum thread has grown to over 1300 replies and more than 50,000 views, suggesting that while Blizz might be satisfied, much of the Engineering community is not. In fact, many are threatening to drop the profession and take up Jewelcrafting, which is something I hear about a lot. Of course, if your profession is really, honestly inferior to all others, then why is everyone trading up to the same one? Pass through the break for a list of the upcoming changes, the major gripes, and a comparison of Engineering to other professions in order to put this all into perspective.
Insider Trader: Northern Engineering highlights
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Engineering has seen many changes over the past year, and Wrath of the Lich King brought even more. Today, Insider Trader is taking a look at some of the highlights of the profession to help you set goals and plan ahead with your leveling. This by no means covers every schematic, and instead looks at the big ticket items and new innovations, including stylish, if somewhat controversial, new modes of transportation, consolidations to save bag space, and more.
