The Light and How to Swing It: Holy
Powah! + wow gold
Great beauty,great stength,and
great riches,are really and truly
of no great use;a right heart
exceeds all.
cheap wow gold
his article ha
Shifting Perspectives: Pulling 101: Assessing the group + wow gold
don't put off till tomorrow what should be done today. cheap wow gold
For a long time, I've been kicking an article around on the art of the 5-man pull. Knowing how and when to pull is arguably the foundation of a smooth dungeon run, and it's certainly among the first skills that any tank needs to develop. While a
not-insignificant portion of one's ability to pull cleanly only arrives courtesy of experience with a wide variety of players, there are a few rules that approach universal status. Moreover, I expect them to be equally useful when I hit the new
Cataclysm dungeons and have to figure out how to tank for a group safely in a new environment with new mobs. cheap wow gold
The more I wrote on pulling, the more I realized that the subject can be divided into two very distinct categories: what happens before you pull, and what happens while you're pulling. This week's column addresses the former. Everything I am about to
tell you in this column is something that you, as an experienced tank, will eventually do in the space of a second without even realizing you're doing it. aion kinah
Who's in your group? As soon as you zone in, run a quick mental tally on your fellow players. xyjjgioerjgmer With what classes are you going to be dealing? Who is your healer? Is there anyone there with an advanced PvE or PvP title suggesting that
the player has a lot of experience? aion kinah
What's their gear like? I despise GearScore and the behavior it encourages, but there's something to be said for having a decent grasp of what your group's overall gear is like before you pull. You can download GearScore or Elitist Group if you
really want, but most of the time you'll have a pretty good handle on what the group's gear is like simply by looking at them. Even if you're not familiar with what constitutes good gear for various classes, it's generally obvious if someone's
rocking a four-piece tier set or a really impressive weapon. wow gold
What mobs will you be pulling? Ahn'kahar Spell Flingers have a 6-second cast attack that will hit you for 80% of your health. Twilight Worshippers and Ring-Lord Sorceresses can wreck your group with a well-placed Flamestrike. Anub'ar Skirmishers drop
aggro and can't be taunted back. Wretched Belchers have both a cone attack and a cleave that can kill a melee DPS low on health. Shadowy Mercenaries have a particular talent for Shadowstepping behind and poisoning your healers. wow power leveling cheap wow gold
As DPS, you don't really need to know about any of this. As a healer, you'll be asked to compensate for it if the group can't or won't avoid the damage. As a tank, you are fantastic if you whisk a group through these pulls with a minimum amount of
trouble from the more dangerous mobs. Know in advance what they do and spend abilities like Bash and Feral Charge wisely. wow power leveling
What walls or features allow you to break line of sight? We're the only tank without a ranged silence, and even a silence doesn't help on any pull where you want the mobs away from a nearby patrol. Know in advance where you should move if you have to
force a caster or ranged mob to come to you. If you're worried about making a clean pull, practice with the dungeon on normal mode first, many of which are soloable at 80. Or, better yet, practice with a BC heroic once you're keyed. The 70 heroics
are generally trickier to pull than their counterparts in Wrath. wow gold xyj.
Whose threat do you need to be most worried about? + wow gold
early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. buy wow gold
Any player who significantly outgears you is likely to be an aggro whore unless they're exceptionally sensitive to the issue of pulling off the tank or they do the dungeon half-naked to cripple their damage. The latter is amusing, but sadly, I don't
see it much. buy wow gold
Five-mans are still my favorite part of the game, and I've run them for the better part of three years as both a ludicrously undergeared and ludicrously overgeared tank. This is what I've seen so far whenever threat's been a concern (and anyone with
Cataclysm beta experience, please feel free to chime in on how the classes have changed in 5-mans there): aion gold
Death knights are generally a non-issue as long as they're not in Frost Presence. xyjjgioerjgmer Well-geared unholy knights can be problematic early in a pull. wow power leveling
Our fellow druids vary, but moonkin tend to be more troublesome than cats due to the uneven nature of Eclipse procs. wow power leveling
Hunters are a crapshoot. The experienced ones have almost always macroed Misdirection into their rotations and will quietly transfer a ton of free threat to you without fanfare. By contrast, inexperienced or bad hunters are champions at yanking aggro
and sending a pull into disarray by Feigning Death only when a mob is already beating on them. Runescape gold buy wow gold
Mage threat varies by spec, but well-geared mages are pretty good at producing a buttload of threat quickly. Fire tends to be the worst with inconvenient Hot Streak procs. wow gold
Retribution paladins in good gear with a high-end weapon rocking the two-piece tier 10 bonus are hell. At equal levels of gear, they're about the same as death knights. wow gold xyj.
She didn't wonder if she was doing it right. She didn't worry about forgetting something. Just kill, kill, kill and love every second of it.The new spells and abilities were so spaced out between levels for paladins that she had plenty of time to
master the first skill before having another attack inserted into her rotation.
Well-geared warriors are absolute nightmares + wow gold
every man has his hobbyhorse. buy wow gold
Priests are generally a non-issue, I suspect because shadow often fares poorly on trash. wow power leveling
Modern rogues are generally good about managing threat and, like hunters, usually macro Tricks of the Trade into their rotation. Rogues with two-piece tier 10 are virtually guaranteed to have done so. wow power leveling
DPS shaman threat seems to have calmed down considerably since The Burning Crusade. They're not usually a problem these days. aion power leveling
Well-geared warriors are absolute nightmares. xyjjgioerjgmer I sincerely apologize to our fellow rage-using brethren, but you are the least appealing party member for an undergeared tank. aion power leveling
Warlocks are hit-or-miss, but are easier to tank for since the demise of BC destruction spec. You're more likely to get an affliction or demonology 'lock in 5-mans these days, and neither spec has the soul-killing threat spikes of the BC destro
warlock. rs gold buy wow gold
Next week we'll discuss what you should expect while you're actually pulling, but the above is a pretty thorough guide (I hope) to what flickers through an experienced tank's brain in the moment he/she takes to assess a dungeon group. buy wow gold
Finally, alchemy will have the same kind of stat-buffing potions we have in Wrath. I didn't delve into them because they're stat buffs. And while numbers are fun and exciting, they don't have a lot of context yet. We'll revisit the stat buff potions
a little later in the beta. wow gold xyj.
Flash forward five months later, and now she's a level 61, dualspecialized retribution/holy paladin who complains that my death knight is a squishy tank. (I love you too, honey.)Now that I've seen first hand how easily a new player was able to learn
to play a paladin and how quickly she got comfortable with it, I would personally recommend it as the default starter class for any new players.
Insider Trader: Alchemy in Cataclysm + wow power leveling
The sting of a reproach,is the truth of it. wow power leveling
So, alchemy in Cataclysm is starting to look pretty damned good. (Granted, all of the trade skills are looking good in Cataclysm, but I'm writing about alchemy this week.) Alchemy is one of the most stable crafts between expansions, though. You have
your standard potions -- intellect, damage, healing, mana, health, stuff like that -- as well as your alchemist-only items like alchemist's stones. wow power leveling
Things get a little more exciting in Cataclysm, though. One of the most interesting potions I've seen so far is the Potion of Deephome. On use, it teleports the user to Deephome. It's a pretty neat effect, but it definitely makes me curious about
Deephome. The dungeon finder tool is incredibly effective for teleporting players inside dungeons, so I don't see why your acerage alchemist would have to use the potion. Still, for sheer flavor, it's fun to see potions doing more than just buffing
stats. I think that's a nice little side effect that's been a long time coming. aion power leveling
Shadowspirit Diamond The big gem transmute this time around is the shadowspirit diamond. xyjjgioerjgmer The shadowspirit diamond can be cut about a dozen different ways to suit your metagem needs. (But that's for a different post.) The diamond itself
doesn't seem all that difficult to make -- if you've got a dozen other gems just sitting around. aion power leveling
To create a shadowspirit diamond, you currently need: 3 alicite 3 nightstone 3 zephyrite 3 carnelian 3 hessonite 3 jasper wow power leveling
These seem to be the green-quality gems for Cataclysm, though, and those do tend to stack up once the epic versions become available. Much like Wrath of the Lich King, the materials will be a little tough to come by, I think, at the opening of the
expansion. Give it a few content patches, though, and you'll be happy to upgrade 18 green gems to a single metagem. aion kina wow power leveling
Metal transmutes The two metal transmutations for Cataclysm are Pyrium Bar and Krovalian Gold. Pyrium uses four elementium bars and 8 volatile earth. Krovalian gold takes eight pyrium bars. So, to get that into perspective, it would take 24
elementium bars and 64 volatile earth. Pyrium bars are also sought after for blacksmithing, and each blacksmithing recipe tends to take between 10 and 20 of the bars. aion kina
Krovalian gold, however, exists in a more rarified air. Krovalian gold is the essential reagent for engineer's killshades. Each set of killshades require two bars of krovalion gold. We don't know of any other trade skill that requires the gold for
anything, but I imagine something else must by the end of the expansion. Still, that means that krovalion gold bars will be fairly expensive on the auction house, but won't always have a consistent demand. I kind of expect it to become a trade chat
item, that way. Engineers will gather their own materials and offer to pay for the transmute on the trade channel. wow power leveling xyj.
Now I ask you: What do you think is the easiest class for a new player to start and why?A friend of mine and I were once playing Rock Band (don't worry, I will relate this to WoW soon), and he complained that he wasn't doing so well.
- 
