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Arcane Brilliance: Mage leveling guide: getting started
Welcome to another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that believes leveling a Mage is a noble endeavor, worthy of praise, tax breaks, and probably some kind of discount at Denny's. Arcane Brilliance also believes leveling a Warlock means you're going to Hell. So, you may think I'm doing things backwards. You're right. I totally am. I spent the last two weeks blathering on about gearing up for raiding. This week, we're talking about the first twenty levels of the game. It makes no sense. Feel free to mock me in the comments. I'm freely admitting I'm a sad, confused individual, with little to no sense of journalistic etiquette. Also, bite me. In any event, the last round of Mage leveling guides are growing decidedly long in the tooth, having been written sometime around the same time as the Carter administration. Back then, Mages were still the "Kings of AoE," 2v2 was still a viable Arena configuration, and crowd control was still something Mages were expected to actually do in instances. Remember all that? Me either. It's a whole new World of Warcraft out there these days, but it's the only World of Warcraft we've got. Let's get out there and nuke the living crap out of it, shall we?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Old Mechanics
This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors looks back at the legacy of the Warrior class through the original game and two expansions. Matthew Rossi remembers when Taunt cost rage. Remember that? Makes you shudder, doesn't it? I don't mean crotchety guys in stained overalls working on your car. No, what I'm talking about is the foundation of the warrior class itself, those abilities that are holdovers from the very beginning of the game. It's hard to remember sometimes, with a game that changes and flows with time the way WoW has, that things were once very, very different... I still remember when they fixed the bug that kept dodges, parries and blocked attacks from generating any rage, hoo boy was that one a killer for warriors... and some of our abilities date back to the very beginning of the game or shortly after it. (Pummel was removed in patch 1.1.0, for instance, and returned in patch 1.2.0, when Maraudon was introduced.) I personally have a very hard time remembering not having Pummel, which is probably because I didn't use Berserker Stance enough before that patch went live. It's even more interesting to note that before patch 1.2.0 Berserker Stance granted a flat 10% melee haste instead of 3% crit, the kind of stat that probably would have had me scratching my head in confusion back then. (I don't scratch my head now, I just kind of grunt softly and bang on the monolith with a bone.)
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 3
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding the final boss of Trial of the Crusader.Azjol'nerub was merely a setback for the final boss we face in the Trial of the Crusader. Anub'arak (too many apostrophes in the Nerubian language, I say) decides to crash the party and Arthas' powerful shockwave drops you right into his lair. We're put face-to-face with the Traitor King himself, even though we've already bested him once in Northrend.This is one of the simpler fights in terms of mechanics, compared to a very long and drawn out encounter like Yogg-Saron or Mimiron. It's by no means easy, however, and Anub'Arak's heroic 25-man version has only been conquered by a handful of guilds worldwide. Between several new fight mechanics and very distinct phases, the encounter is fast-paced and very fun from a Rogue's perspective. After the cut, I'll talk about the specific details you can use to help your raid group conquer this over-sized beetle.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 61-70
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we gain all of the abilities that went live during Burning Crusade and wonder why the hell Lacerate can't be trained earlier than level 66, because the Bear spends 16 levels Mangling things it can't actually put a bleed on. Weird.Only one more leveling guide after this, and then we'll be heading into an array of new articles I've been planning for a while, and a Druid perspective on tanking issues raised by Matt Rossi's article. I will probably be turning some of this material into just plain Druid posts rather than Shifting Perspectives columns, though, as otherwise it'll take longer than I'd like to get them all posted.LEVEL 61In Outland and Northrend, you'll be training new ranks each level as opposed to every other level, so don't forget to hit your trainer promptly with each level-up. Shred, rank 6: standard upgrade. Wrath, rank 9: standard upgrade.
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the Northrend Beasts
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How To Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps out with the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown on the weekends. This week, he takes a look at tanking the fantastic and terrible beasts that the Argent Crusade has collected for their Trial of the Crusader event.The Argent Crusade has assembled a number of trials for champions, crusaders, and grand crusaders alike to fight through as they decide what forces they will take in their assault against Icecrown Citadel itself. Today, we'll take a look at the first of the events in Trial of the Crusader which is the Northrend Beasts encounter. They've assembled Magnataur, Jormungars, and Yeti (Oh My!) to test the mettle of those wishing to compete. We'll take a look at tanking each of these beasts after the break.
Spiritual Guidance: What's up Shadow Priests?
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Get ready for something you'll thought you'll have never read! Sorry healing Priests, it's your week off today. I've never written much about Shadow Priests at all mostly because I don't play one extensively enough to confidently write about them. I can tell you basic stats to shoot for like the amount of hit necessary and that crit is an excellent secondary stat. But full in-depth guides for what to do on bosses? Nope, sorry. Anyway, this week's post isn't about that. I wanted to write this post from the perspective of a raid leader instead of a person playing a Shadow Priest. We're going to take a look at Shadow DPS as a whole.
Blood Pact: A new Lock in town
A lone shadowed figure approaches the village as it settles down for the approaching night. A hush falls with his passing and all eyes turn to follow. Who can say what has brought him here but there's no mistaking his calling; there's a Warlock in town.With more than seven weeks since the last Blood Pact column there was bound to be a few things that weren't covered. Not too much though, right? It's not like anything major happened in those weeks. Did it?I'm kidding of course; the last couple of months have seen huge changes and awesome announcements. There's simply no way I can cover them all, and do justice to any of them, in one article. That said these things can't be left on the shelf to moulder. So I'm going to do a quick run-down of what's been going on in Blood Pact's absence and then we can start plunging into their dark and squishy innards going forward.
Totem Talk: Return of the Orc
This week, Totem Talk talks about leveling a shaman through PvP. That's right, I said leveling a shaman through PvP. Matthew Rossi has discovered the joys of returning to the Horde this weekend with a level grinding AV blitz that even he doesn't really understand.Before we even get started: I'm working on a post about the change to Glyph of Flame Shock and the Earthen Power changes. It will be its own post, it probably won't be a Totem Talk all by itself. It's one of those "Enough to give it some focus, not enough for a full column" changes. For now, here's a relevant forum thread with blue feedback on the issue.Alterac Valley's transformation into The Great Level Grinding Gulch (apologies to Warsong Gulch) has had one significant benefit to my Horde shaman: it's gotten me to dust him off and start playing. What's even more amazing is, it's been fun to play an enhancement shaman in PvP again! I think I may have suffered some subtle form of head injury, but there it is. This experiment was initially inspired by my desire to get back to my Horde roots without repeating all the content in Northrend for a sixth time. You know, it's well designed, and I do expect I'll go run Zul'Drak again for the Ampitheatre quests, but I wanted a shortcut and Alterac Valley has provided one. At present I honestly think any leveling guide should recommend a daily dose of AV to help speed the process up.Oh, I die a lot. Pretty much any time I don't have Feral Spirit up, I die. I die if the Alliance Rogues sneeze on me, which they do often, and with great relish, often snickering at my Zul'Aman enhancement gear and my poor green offhand. It does its best! But even with all the dying (to the point where the Orc death animation is sort of soothing to me now and if I go too long without having two rogues making me the meat in a stabbing sandwich I sort of miss it) I'm sort of impressed with how much I can actually do as an underlevel, completely undergeared Shaman leveling up purely through AV.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 2
Welcome to the latest Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that believes there's no such thing as a wrong time to turn something into a sheep. Unless it was already a sheep to begin with. Then it would probably have been better to turn it into a pig or a rabbit or something. Or maybe just hit it with a Pyroblast. Mmmm. Lamb chops. What were we talking about again? If you missed last week, here's a link to click on so you can catch up. If you can't be bothered to read the first part of this column, let me summarize the idea here: we're discussing ways to get your Mage all decked out in epic, raid-worthy gear without ever actually entering a raid instance. Now, more than ever before, we have so many options for obtaining raid-quality gear that actually raiding for it seems almost...old-fashioned. Last week we talked about 5-mans in both their normal and heroic varieties, focusing on Trial of the Champion, because duh. But maybe you don't want to do 5-mans. Maybe your guildies aren't on, and maybe you hate pugs. Maybe you are a Mage, and because there are eighty-four DPSers looking for group for every one tank or healer, you threw your hands up after an hour of trying to get a group and went off to do dailies. Well good news, everyone! Doing those dailies can get you epics too! Yes, it is entirely possible--even if you happen to be the guy on your server who ninjas gear in pugs and sucks at everything to the point that nobody invites you to groups anymore--to fill just every slot of your gear with sparkly purples without doing any instances of any kind. Isn't that wonderful? It tends to take a bit longer, overall, but these alternative methods for obtaining gear can be perfect for those of us who simply don't have a lot of time to commit to a group. Simply log in, craft an epic cloak, do a daily quest or two, blast out a couple Arena matches, and then repeat for a few weeks, and eventually you'll have epics too. Anyway, nice talking to you, see you next week! Wait...what's that? You want details? Oh fine. Clicky clicky.
Scattered Shots: So you want to be a Hunter - Part 4 Levels 21-30
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, So you want to be a Hunter series. This guide is intended to help new Hunters better understand how to play the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from the Hunting Lodge as we explore the ins and out of how to be a Hunter. Howdy gang! Glad you decided to come back and join in on another week of So you want to be a Hunter. This week we work our way up to level 30 on our quest to becoming ready to raid the endgame content.Now that I think about it, there seems to be an ever increasing push to just quickly level and hit the end game content. But really, there's a lot of fun and interesting stuff in the game that we won't get to see any more after the next expansion. Maybe I'm a bit sentimental, but honestly considering that many of the zones all of you will decide to go off and level today either won't exist in Cataclysm or will be radically different than they are today. Here's a bit of advice for you as you level up. Take some pictures. Get a group together of players at the same level and run through some of the instances like Razorfen Kraul, Stockades, or even the ever hated Gnomeregan. In the meantime, we'll continue onward with Part 4 of So you want to be a Hunter.Just a quick recap of what we've covered so far:
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Some Thoughts About Tanking
This week The Care and Feeding of Warriors has some thoughts on tanking as it currently exists in the game. While these are general thoughts, we will of course make an effort to approach them from a warrior standpoint. Because that's kind of the whole point of the column.I make no pretense of being a raid tank nowadays: I mostly DPS in raids, and only switch to tank when we're down one for whatever reason (real life issues, connection problems) or a fight demands more than three tanks (Auriaya, sometimes Mimiron if cooldowns are a concern, psuedo-tanking the Faction Champions, adds on Anub'arak). Most of the tanking I do, I do in 5 mans and 10 mans where we just go with whoever is on. (I also do a fair amount of tanking on my DK alt, including 10 mans and 25 man PuG raids, but this is a Warrior column, not a "holy heck my DK is ridiculously OP" column.) However, recent discussions about tanking here at the WoW.com orbital defense platform HQ, combined with a recent very interesting thread on the forums with lots of Ghostcrawler input, have me thinking about where tanking is, and where it's going.One of the things I see in tanking presently is that the general tendency inherited from Legacy content is at an all time high: tanking is currently two entirely separate games, one at the 5 man level and another at the raid level, and that tendency is exacerbating as raiding itself splits into 10 and 25 man (and their respective hard modes). At present, the 10 man raid experience is in fact undergoing a series of shifts that moves it away from the 5 man but also away from 25 man, simply due to the amount of responsibility that can and must be shared in each kind of raiding. In short (too freaking late, Rossi, too freaking late) 10 man raiding cannot afford the luxury of 25 man raiding's potential of tanking if it actually wants to kill anything.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 2
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding the third and fourth bosses in the Trial of the Crusader.Not even a full week had passed, and already not one, but two guilds were able to clear their way through the heroic version of Trial of the Grand Crusader. While it may have been due to soulstone exploits or spamming Holy Wrath, either way, one of the Lich King's most powerful warriors and oldest companions died to the might of the Horde (or maybe some Alliance cowards got lucky).I've had the luxury of fighting my way through and also defeating Anub'arak, though only on normal difficulty so far. This week, I'll cover some of the tips and tricks that I've picked up in my clearings of the Trial of the Crusader, with a focus on the next 2 encounters in the instance.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 51-60
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we haul ourselves to Outland and are shocked to discover that +spellpower sometimes comes on leather.The above video is the result of an idle question I was asked recently by a friend: "So how much damage would you guys do in caster form meleeing?" I started to answer and then realized I had no idea. The notion of actually hitting something with a weapon is utterly foreign to the class. We have claws and a can of celestial pain for that nonsense if provoked, but still, the question was pretty interesting, particularly because after seeing Prinnygod's comment from last week I started to wonder about all the different ways you could level as a Druid if you deliberately avoided Cat and Moonkin. Sure, you'd be a gibbering wreck at the level cap, but that's beside the point. Blizzard once had a talent called Weapon Balance in the Balance tree that improved our melee damage with weapons by 10% -- they were expecting us to hit things. I wondered how that would have worked out if Druid talent trees had never been overhauled.So I took my main to the mobs outside the Argent Tournament and smacked stuff while running a stopwatch. What you'll see here is a level 79 Frostbrood Whelp with 12,600 health which took me 34.4 seconds to kill, with two global cooldowns devoted to casting a Rejuvenation and then a Lifebloom. I'm currently on a Feral (Bear) spec and thus wearing gear that does help one's melee damage, mind you, but that still works out to a godawful 366.28 DPS. The moral of our little story can be found at the end of the video. Master of Arms is going to be a real trip.
Lichborne: The future of Death Knight lore in Cataclysm
With Patch 3.2 now live, and Death Knights probably the most extensively changed class, at least in terms of the Frost and Unholy trees, we've all been waited with bated breath to see exactly how things are shaking down. The answer from my point of view, is simply that life goes on. Death Knight tanks are still tanking, Death Knight DPSers are still DPSing. Anecdotally, I've been having great success and have been churning out respectable DPS as Unholy on a few heroic dungeon marathons since the path dropped, and while I definitely miss Unholy Blight, I've adjusted to tanking without it too. We may need a few more weeks and a few more parses to see where things truly sit, but I stand by most of what I've written on the subject lately. We could use a few tweaks (I'm still wondering if we'll see a Scourge Strike buff before Cataclysm, but I'm hopeful), but we'll be fine. That said, since we'll still be waiting a few weeks, I thought it might be fun to do some speculation about the next expansion. And I don't mean new talents, new levels, new skills, that sort of thing. What I've been thinking about lately is the lore.
Totem Talk: The Future Soon
Totem Talk resumes our discussion of Shamans in the upcoming expansion as Matthew Rossi puts on his wizard hat and immediately gets Earth Shocked for wearing the wrong hat. Also, I lobe the Machinima I stole the title of this post from, although that's not germane to the discussion.We were interrupted by BlizzCon announcements last week when discussing starting a new Shaman (or resuming an old one). Frankly, the list of changes incoming in Cataclysm makes me leery of discussing the current leveling experience too much, because it's going to be radically altered. Two new shaman races! A complete reworking of gear and statistics! A new profession we'll all have access to in Archaeology, entirely reworked talent trees, a new max level progression option in Path of the Titans, and last but not least (to me) new totem skins!Seriously, you have no idea how long I've wanted this. I expect the current 'default Horde' totems will remain the Orc totems of choice, but I'm very hopeful for Tauren and Trolls and Goblins and Dwarves to all get their own unique totem skins. Frankly, I want Tauren totems to resemble the giant beating pole Cairne Bloodhoof carries around.Despite what I posted about my warrior, I plan on faction transferring my Draenei Shaman to Tauren fairly soon and moving him to my Horde server. I may or may not race change him to Goblin when they become available for race change (might be more fun just to level one, we'll see) but the idea of finally getting totems that match other races just fills me with glee. Trolls with weird voodoo looking sticks! Goblins with... I have no idea!
Spiritual Guidance: 12 Reasons why you don't want to play a Priest
You know, I'm normally a huge proponent of my class. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dwarf Priest. There's all these great healing spells we have at our disposal. No one's ever going to turn down a Priest from joining a raid or a guild. I have to admit, we have it pretty easy. I'm used to giving newer players advice about Priests and reasons for selecting that class. Every once in a while, I get extremely bitter about being a Priest. For those of you that want to roll a Priest, let me introduce some second thoughts.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 1
Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that asks all the tough questions, and then Ice Blocks before the tough answers one-shot it. A little while after Wrath hit, Arcane Brilliance posted a column on how to gear your Mage up for Naxx. Several things have changed since then: Pretty much everything I wrote then is now wrong. You don't really gear for Naxx anymore. Naxx is now a place you go in order to gear up for other places. Trial of the Champion. Knowing these things, I thought an updated gearing column might be in order. So if you're raising a fledgling Mage, and level 80 is about to hit you like a truckload of Death Knights, and you're looking for the quickest way to turn green and blue into purple, look no farther. Well maybe a little farther. The column's not over yet.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Call To Arms
The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes this week to explore Arms. Matthew Rossi has been Bladestorm crazy all week, it's really rather disturbing.The last time I dedicated a column to Arms, it was April. It seems overdue for discussion again.Part of the problem was, I didn't have an axe or polearm. Heck, I didn't even have a mace. Swords? Yeah, I had swords up the wazoo. Unfortunately, swords are not good for Arms. This is because Sword Specialization is just plain inferior to Poleaxe Specialization. Sad but true, the once might Sword Spec is now hampered by an internal cooldown that prevents the ability from proccing twice in close succession, meaning that at most you'll get an extra attack that might be a crit and then nothing for 45 seconds. Compare that to Poleaxe's 5% crit bonus and 5% more damage from each crit, with no messy hidden cooldown so that the more crit you have, the more chances you have to do more damage with each crit. Sword spec is so bad it's getting buffed in the 3.2.2 patch, and yet even doubling the chance for an extra hit doesn't seem to excite most dyed in the wool arms players. Although Justicebringer still won't drop for us I did manage to snag myself an axe this week and decided to play around with Arms again.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 41-50
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, Mangle, Barkskin, and an enraged pack of mobile woodland things are headed our way. We advise stealthing.Hail, Druids. This week, we continue the long march through levels 41 to 50. Due to some recent RL events I haven't had much time to get on the 3.2.2 PTR, but when I do, I'll try to see how Druids are shaping up on the revamped Onyxia fight and how much use the new Predatory Instincts is getting.Without further ado:
Scattered Shots: So you want to be a Hunter - Part 3 Levels 10-20
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, So you want to be a Hunter series. This guide is intended to help new Hunters better understand how to play the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from the Hunting Lodge as we explore the ins and out of how to be a Hunter. Welcome back my Hunter compadres! We've made it to Part 3 of So you want to be a Hunter. I know we have had lot's of things happening of late with BlizzCon and Cataclysm, so it's probably a good time to give a quick recap on what we've done so far. Part 1: We reviewed racials and their impact on the Hunter class. Going over each of the factions races and what the benefits were of each racial. For now we haven't talked about the new races that will be added to the Hunter class in Cataclysm (Worgen and Goblins). We'll have to address that when the new expansion is released. Part 2: We discussed each of the Hunter talent trees and their basic playstyle. We talked about Beast Mastery being the partnership between Hunter and pet. We also reviewed the Marksmanship and Survival trees and how they are more about the individual Hunter, their offensive power, utility and flexibility. We also discussed what stats you will want to consider as you level. Though this might seem a bit out of place, knowing what to expect early on will hopefully help you make better decisions later on. However you shouldn't worry, we'll make sure to give a refresher course later on. Now we are in Part 3 of our weekly series. We will continue reviewing leveling your Hunter from level 10-20. We'll talk about taming your first pet. We'll also review some of the more interesting pets and where they can be found. Having a unique is one of the perks of being a Hunter. We'll also talk about placing those first talent points. Building on the lessons we learned last week. We'll be able to make a decision on how to craft a solid leveling talent build. One that will offer us enough power to down mobs, but also enough bonuses to help protect and keep our pet alive as it plays the role of tank. As a reminder, here's some guidelines for using this guide. So you want to be a Hunter is for the new player and/or a new Hunter. This guide is not a "How-to get to 80 in less than 3 days" leveling guide. It's more of a "What to expect as you level" guide. Except where highlighted, this guide does not take into account Recruit a Friend or heirloom bonuses. Since most players tend to level by themselves, all talent build suggestions will focus on a solo leveling/grinding build. This guide focuses on the leveling the PvE Hunter. We will discuss PvP and raiding in other guides. One of the joys of being a Hunter is being able to run around with your best friend right by your side. And believe me, your pet is truly your best friend. I can't tell you the number of times that my turtle FatElvis has charged back and rounded up several elite mobs giving me the crucial few moments I needed to survive. The only drawback to having a pet is you can't tame one until level 10. What's up with that Blizzard?
