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WoW Rookie: Slotting your sockets with gems
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.You're over level 60 now, and you're pretty hot stuff. You've ridden through the Dark Portal the old-fashioned way, swaggering into The Burning Crusade content in style. You'd done your reading; you knew these mobs were going to hit a lot harder, and you came prepared. You ran a few last dungeons before you shipped out, and you're respectably outfitted in BRD and URBS blues, along with a heady mix of new gear that appears to be dropping like candy.And then you looted a piece of armor with crazy-hot good looks but an odd, blank box among its stats – and the stats, strangely enough, appear to leave something to be desired. Nonetheless, your groupmates applauded your luck and seemed genuinely pleased for you. What in Outland have you gotten into now?My dear WoW rookie, you've just looted your first socketed item. Sockets allow you to truly customize your gear to either augment your strengths or brace up your weaknesses (or both). Whether you just want to get down the road with a decent set of gear or you enjoy endlessly tweaking your armor's performance, we'll help you fill your first sockets and make your character stronger than ever.
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.
Insider Trader: Assessing the gear-crafting trades
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.In the World of Warcraft, there are three types of craftspeople: those that gather, those that enhance, and those that create gear. They are not mutually exclusive. For example, Scribes can create off-hand weaponry in addition to glyphs and Jewelcrafters can prospect gems from raw materials. Gathering professions are known to be money-makers, and in addition, when asked, many players will also list the enhancement professions as well: Inscription, although it is currently suffering from a lack of demand created by the introduction of dual-specs with patch 3.1. Jewelcrafting is on the list, not because of its ability to create gear such as rings, but mainly because of the Prospecting and gems, cut or raw. Enchanting is often stated, not only because of the enchants that can be created and even auctioned, but also because of the Disenchanting ability. To balance this out, one would assume that the gear-crafting professions of Leatherworking, Tailoring and Blacksmithing must be incredibly useful, if not lucrative. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. This week, Insider Trader will be discussing the state of these professions. For a similar assessment of Engineering, check out The state of Engineering in 3.1.I am especially interested in reader input and brainstorming, so don't forget to read through the comments section at the end of the article!
The Queue: WoW Insider Mobile and more
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Ah, Monday afternoon! Does it get any better than this? ...Actually yes. Yes it does. Someone throw me off of a cliff, please. I want to go back to bed. Yes, I know it's almost 4 PM. I don't care.Thander asked...When you pay for the dual specialization do you also get separate gem slots?
Insider Trader: Patch 3.1, profits and preparation
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Patch 3.1 is looming ever closer, and things are about to change in a big way. Today I'll be discussing how the patch is going to affect your professions, and how you can take advantage of this by maximizing your profits on the Auction House. Players have become increasingly bored with raiding because the content that was released with the expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was too quickly conquered. Across the board, players are showing up to raids on an inconsistent basis, and many people now spend much of their time on the Public Test Realm playing through Ulduar. This has contributed to falling prices on the Auction House for raiding materials and consumables, because not only have many people stopped raiding, many others have decided to save their gold and raid without being buffed to the gills. What should you do in these tight times? Aside from the things for which you are currently saving, the patch will bring with it a 1000g bill to learn how to dual spec, costs to fund raid wipes, bring new consumables, and enchant and gem new gear. By learning what to sell and purchase and when, you can minimize your post-patch costs and make some gold while you're at it.
Scattered Shots: A PvE gem and enchant guide for Hunters
Welcome to this week's edition of Scattered Shots, which is dedicated to shiny things and dust.So by now you've seen our normal dungeon gear guide, our heroic dungeon gear guide, our reputation gear guide, and our holiday gift guide. Between all of them, you should be able to put together a nice solid set of gear that should let you tackle 10-man Naxxramas pretty easily. But grabbing the gear is the easy part. To go the extra mile, you need to grab those gems and enchantments. Let's look at some of the best gems and enchantments you can take along to secure your place in the DPS charts in Naxxramas.
Lichborne: Gearing up to tank Naxxramas
Welcome to Lichborne, The weekly Death Knight column, where your host is recruiting only the most pro critters for his raiding team. So by now, I'm sure many of you Death Knights have managed to follow our last tanking gear guide and have put together a pretty decent tank set that's gotten them through a few heroics, but now it's time for the next step: Getting ready to tank Naxxramas. You'll find that while a lot of your gear is probably "good enough," you'll still want to look for a few important upgrades to kick you up another notch so you can be at your best coming into Naxxramas to tank. Let's look at a few heroic upgrades that you can grab to be the best tank you can be heading into 10 man Naxxramas content.Before we start, there's two things you should remember: One, I'm pretty much following the logic I laid down in the Death Knight statistics primer a few weeks back, so if you want to know why I picked a certain item, the answer is probably there, and two, whatever you do, remember to hit 540 defense skill. You'll need that to survive against the bosses.
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.
Insider Trader: Highlights of Wrath crafting part one
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Wrath of the Lich King has added some wonderful crafting changes, from new abilities to better, more efficient systems. Blizzard's intention is to move us away from feeling that we have no real choice when selecting a profession. 'I am a cloth-wearer, therefore I must take up tailoring' is a thing of the past. Each profession has bulked up its profession-only benefits, as well as fun items and marketable goods, to the point that your choice can be more properly swayed by what you would like to do. While you are leveling your chosen fields, you will notice many interesting recipes popping up at fairly regular intervals, giving you small goals to look forward to and work towards. This week, I will be showcasing the highlights of Leatherworking and Blacksmithing, including when you can train these recipes, which factions have what you need, and what it is that makes you unique and important.
The Queue: Can't get enough sockets
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Just a few questions today, because slow weekends are slow. Who wants to ask questions when you can be playing? Certainly not me. I will still answer questions, however. Let's jump right in with ender's question... What, in your own opinion, is the easiest faction to start to grind on for rep as a new level 80? I know there is the "championing" but with dailies etc, what seems to be the easiest?
Ask a Beta Tester: The Alchemist
Apologies to Paulo Coelho fans for borrowing his title, but we have two Alchemy-related questions to start us off today, in addition to questions on Blacksmithing, cinematics, and dailies: Horizons asks... Do the alchemy specializations in wrath still work the same way as they do now in BC? For example, will I still have a chance of getting 5 wrath potions even when I'm leveling starting at 375 such as Wrath Elixirs or Icy mana potions? And will transmute spec ever be fixed? Yup, alchemy specializations work the exact same way in Wrath. As a potions master, I've already procced a few, but don't expect to see the Runic Mana or Runic Healing potion recipes until...I want to say it's 410 Alchemy. You'll skill up on the array of new elixirs like Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Elixir of Mighty Agility until then, but do save mats for the new Alchemy trinkets that become available at (I think) 400, like Mighty Alchemist's Stone. We'll have more information soon on materials you'll start getting in Northrend that you'll want to set aside for crafting.
