Comparing the three WoW's, Part 2: Raiding and Leveling

I have already compared the parallel structures of cooperative PvE and PvP, so today I shall compare the parallel structures of leveling and cooperative PvE and see what conclusions can be drawn from them. If you haven't read part one of this post, please do, for I will be writing with the assumption that you already have, so I don't have to repeat myself.

One thing that makes the two parts of leveling different from the two parts of cooperative PvE and PvP is that there is no objective line between pre-level-cap content and level-cap content. Sure, by the time you reach the Storm Peaks, you'll probably be level 80, or at least very close, so that zone and Icecrown could perhaps be objectively considered level-cap content, but even that is a difficult call to make. After all, you are eligible for all of the quests in Storm Peaks at level 77, and ditto for the vast majority of quests in Icecrown (excluding the Quel'Delar quest chain and a few Argent Tournament quests, exactly three to be exact). And even though you are very likely to be level 80 by the time you enter Icecrown, the fact that nothing in either of those zones requires you to be level 80 means the distinction is blurred, to say the least.

Another interesting point of note is that, aside from the chestpieces awarded by the Icecrown quest Battle at Valhalas: Final Challenge, the best gear you will get from quests that don't require you to enter an instance is ilevel 174 (and the quest above only rewards gear that is ilevel 183). For comparison, gear dropped by the normal version of the original level 80 5-mans (Culling of Stratholme, The Oculus, Halls of Lightning, and Utgarde Pinnacle) is ilevel 187, while the rare-quality gear that drops from the original heroics is ilevel 200. That's 13 ilevels of difference between those three areas of the game, a steady increase. Thus we can see these three areas of the game as pre-raiding tiers, with out-of-instance quests being tier 1, normal mode 5-mans being tier 2, and heroics being tier 3.

Of course, with the inclusion of craftable epic gear and reputation rewards, it is possible to skip normal mode dungeons, and even heroics if you know what you were doing, and go right into Naxxramas. I suppose those craftable epics and reputation rewards could be seen as similar to the current system by which heroics drop the second best emblem in the game, while the daily heroic awards the first; they allow you to skip to the interesting stuff, the stuff that everyone else is doing, without needing to go through old content to get there. They allow you to get to the cutting edge without people needing to drag you through old content to gear you up.

But wait! This is the start of the expansion pack that we are talking about. This is when nothing was "old content", not the normals, the heroics, nor the raids. And yet, these measures (craftable epics and reputation rewards) were put in place from the beginning to allow people to skip normal modes and go right into heroics or into raids, just like how the current emblem system allows people to skip all of the previous tiers of raiding and go right into the most current tier of content. Something isn't right here; similar measures were implemented in both cases, yet the circumstances that necessitated them in the second case didn't exist in the first case. What I mean by that is that the new emblem system was implemented so that people could enter the raiding scene if they got in a bit late and missed the chance to gear up while everyone else was running the lower-tier content, but craftable epics and reputation rewards allowed people to skip new content that everyone would have been running if Blizzard hadn't implemented those epics or those reputation rewards. What gives?

I suppose one explanation is that Blizzard didn't want to force people to run 5-mans if they really didn't want to, but even this explanation is difficult to accept. After all, the amount of time it would take to fully gear a character up for Naxxramas without entering any 5-mans would probably be similar to the amount of time it would take to gear up that character using normal modes and eventually heroic modes. The only difference is that the player could move at their own pace and play at their own convenience while using the former method, while gearing up in five mans would force the player to play not only for themselves but also for those they group up with, and they wouldn't be able to just drop out whenever they feel like it, like they could when they are out solo-ing. But the thing is, those differences are also exactly what differentiate raiding from solo-ing, and those differences only get more pronounced in the raiding scene. 5-mans are like a mini preparation for the demands of raiding, so to want to skip them to get into raiding is like skipping learning how to walk because you want to start running. As such, a player who would chose to gear up for Naxx through solo ventures rather than 5-mans would likely be doing so for reasons that would show that he, as a player, isn't ready for raiding, no matter how good his gear may be.

So who were these craftable epics and reputation reward made for? It looks like they were made for the mysterious brand of player that enjoys solo-ing more than 5-mans but still ultimately enjoys raiding more than either. Or perhaps they were made for those players who have the necessary grouping skills to raid and want to get into raids without bothering with that 5-man nonsense. This is certainly a feasible possibility, but heroics in those days weren't like heroics now. In the days before the Dungeon Finder, it was common for guild members to run heroics together for gear and badges, which would negate the one aspect of heroics that could make them less enjoyable than raids: the fact that they were usually PUG'ed. I suppose these craftable epics and reputation rewards could also provide a source of back-up gear, like that provided by emblems, gear that you could use to gear up if the RNG gods decided to deny you a certain drop over and over again.

But could these craftable epics and reputation rewards also have been made for us, the soloists? We players may say that gear is just a nice consolation prize for the grander experience of playing the game, and we may look down upon those who openly admit to playing for the gear, but gear is still an important factor in all parts of this game. As I have said before, gear doesn't only serve as a gatekeeper to keep us from steamrolling through content; it also serves as a representation of our achievements, of the effort we put in to obtain that gear. Crafted gear represents the time we put in to farm the mats and/or earn the money to buy them off of the auction house, while reputation gear represents the time we put in to reach exalted with the faction that rewards it. So is this gear for us?

Honestly, I doubt it. Crafted gear and reputation rewards were integral to entering heroics and raiding back when Wrath first came out, meaning that obtaining them was simply another step on the path to raiding. After all, raiders had to obtain this gear first, then move on to raiding to obtain better gear, so I really couldn't see Blizzard putting this gear in the game to give us soloists something to work for. To say that those rewards were put in for soloists would be like saying that the first few levels in a single-player game were put in for the people who aren't skilled enough to beat the latter levels. It doesn't work that way; those first few levels (and the craftable epics and reputation rewards) are the stepping stones through which a player moves on to more difficult and more rewarding content, not something put in to stand on its own.

It's the fact that this gear serves as a stepping stone into cooperative PvE that convinces me that Blizzard didn't want Wrath's solo content to be viable, to be able to stand on its own as a unique part of the game; they only want it to facilitate players' entry into raids. Astute readers will notice that I have come to this conclusion before through very similar reasoning, but hey, at least I'm consistent, right? In the previously linked post, I concluded that in the same way PvP (and the entire game, really) was balanced around class performance in arenas, PvE has been balanced around raiding to make getting into raids easier. This fact, coupled with everything I have said up to now, leads me to only one conclusion: the three WoW's aren't solo-ing, cooperative PvE, and PvP, with content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap, heroics and raiding, and battlegrounds and arenas as their respective sub-areas. The three WoW's are, instead, leveling, level-cap PvE, and PvP, with level-cap PvE split into three areas: soloing, heroics, and raids.

So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It means I can take the conclusion of my previously linked post a step further: WoW's level-cap solo content isn't just a stepping stone into cooperative PvE content; it exists only to facilitate the transition from leveling to heroics and raiding. Wrath's solo content was, quite simply, not designed to be viable, to stand on its own, which explains all of the points I brought up in On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content. And yes, I think that the lack of viability of WoW's solo content is a bad thing. So I wait for Cataclysm with bated breath, to see if the game will go further in this direction, or if it will reverse it. Only time will tell.

Why have solo content in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game?

Whenever I talk about solo content in WoW, if I ever lament the sad state of it these days (whether it be on this blog, in the comments section of WoW.com, or anywhere else), I frequently get reactions that sound something like this: "WoW is a massively multiplayer online RPG. Why worry about the solo content?" I think we can all agree that WoW needs some solo content. The question is, how extensive should that solo content be? Should we expect Blizzard to deliver engaging solo content to us players on a regular basis, or should we greet extensive solo content with a surprised, "Solo content? In my MMO?"

Picture is unrelated.

It's pretty obvious why an MMO needs any solo content at all: when players are just starting out, it's a pretty big challenge for them to try to get a hold of all the new game mechanics that WoW throws at them; needing to learn group mechanics would make it even more difficult. Solo content allows people to become familiar with the game and get a feeling for the way their class plays. It allows them to push their class to its limits without the risk of letting other people down if the fail. Solo content is, if nothing else, a training ground for new players to get them comfortable with the game before they enter group play. There is a risk in that set-up, though. Blizzard could, if they so desired, make sub-par solo content to try to motivate people to move into group play, but if they did that, no one would stick around to see the group content, no matter how awesome it may be. Blizzard needs to make WoW's solo content fun and engaging to draw players in, so they do. This is where the trouble starts.

Though WoW may be a MMO, it is really the solo content that gets people hooked. However, people respond differently to the solo content: some say, "If playing alone is this fun, I bet playing with other people must be even more fun!" These people end up being raiders. Some say, "If the game is this fun fighting computer-controlled enemies, fighting other players must be even more fun!" These people end up fighting in battlegrounds or competing in the arena. Then you have the players like me. Players like me go into raids and say, "Ack, this is too much of a time commitment/too much pressure/etc." Players like me go into battlegrounds and say, "Ack, this is too much of a variable experience, and I play this game to relax. " Or maybe we just don't PvP as a matter of principle. Either way, we don't enjoy the group content that WoW seems to be geared towards getting us to play, so we are quite content with playing the part of the game we enjoy, the part that drew us in in the first place: the solo content.

This leaves Blizzard in a tight spot. They designed WoW to be, at its core, a group game. Ghostcrawler has even said explicitly that their goal is to get PvE'ers into raids. The solo content was meant to draw us in so we could move on to bigger and supposedly better things; to paraphrase one of my commenters, "If I want to play a solo-RPG, I'll play Dragon Age or Mass Effect." However, if the poll on the side of my blog is anything to go on, a fair amount of us prefer to stick with the solo content, in spite of the greater challenges to be had by grouping up.

It seems Blizzard doesn't mind that fact, though, or if they do, they have at least resigned themselves to designing solo content in spite of their larger goals for WoW players. Why else would they release solo content with each expansions pack and with many of the patches? In spite of Ghostcrawler's statement, it seems Blizzard has made it their goal to satisfy all WoW player, including those of us who are quite happy to chuckle at Ghostcrawler's sentiment and keep on solo-ing.

Why is he smiling? That can't be a good sign.

That could, however, all be an illusion. As I said in my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, solo content in Wrath of the Lich King has been streamlined to make it more straightforward and make the road from solo-ing to heroics to raiding a smoother one, and the road is only going to become smoother. One of the major promises of Cataclysm is that the old world will be made over to make leveling from 1 to 60 more fun and more like leveling through Outland or Northrend, i.e., smoother. After all, one of the biggest obstacles to getting to level 80 is vanilla Azeroth, which wasn't designed for fast leveling, but that's going to change. Come Cataclysm, the road to the level cap will have even fewer roadblocks than it does now, and the road to raiding will be similarly affected, assuming Blizzard sticks with their current design for solo content. What am I trying to get at here? It seems to me that Blizzard is designing their solo content to make it easier for people to get into heroics and raids, rather than as its own stand-alone content. Solo content in WoW is merely a stepping stone to bigger things, and they are making those steps even smaller.

I know that's a tough contention to prove. After all, why would Blizzard add two extra zones (Icecrown and Storm Peaks) of quests to do after hitting level 80 if they wanted to get us into raids as soon as possible? Well, those quests certainly provided a large chunk of cash, cash we needed to get some basic gear upgrades before starting heroics. (Hell, if you put in enough gold and effort, you could get your gear to the point where it was good enough for starting Naxx-10 without ever entering a heroic; I did. It wasn't advisable, but it was possible.) They also provided the back-story and starting points to the plots of the various heroics and raids those zones contained or would eventually contain, plots we could only see the conclusions of by running those heroics and raids. I think you get what I'm trying to say.

Now, I'm not saying that this design is a bad thing. There are plenty of people who just want to get into the group play, but without solo content, those heroics and raids would have no back story, and there would be no motivation to run them. Solo content also allows those who didn't get good gear in the last expansion to get on even ground with those who did, which prevents people from being locked out of raiding because they arrived at the party late (metaphorically speaking). Solo content is a good thing, even for people who prefer group content. The question is, how far should this smoothing of the path from solo-ing to heroics and raids go? When solo content is designed for the people who hope to surpass it, those who are quite content to stay within it are left behind.

I think Blizzard owes it to us soloists to not leave us out in the dust with their solo content. They drew us in with the solo content, and though they might want us to move on to bigger and supposedly better things, we would rather not. We like where we are, and that isn't going to change any time soon without a big change to the way raiding or PvP works. Now, granted, solo content shouldn't hinder people who want to go right into raiding or PvP, so where can a happy medium be found? Long-term goals. Burning Crusade had reputations like the Consortium and Sporeggar that gave solo-ists something they could work for that couldn't be steam-roled by grouping. The closest thing we have to them in Wrath of the Lich King is the Kalu'ak, and I hit exalted with them a week after hitting 80. What we need is more solo content that takes a large commitment of time to complete and provides appropriate rewards for that commitment. Supposedly, the Path of the Titans will be along the lines of what I am thinking of; let's hope Blizzard does it well.

How to tank as a druid (or any class), Part 4

I realized recently that my last few posts on how to tank as a druid had no advice for people just starting with the roll of tanking. There are certain things we tanks know that we take for granted, but there is no way for a newer player to find them out. As such, I will post about them now. These are pieces of advice that apply to all tanks, not just druids.

1. Know how to do an LoS pull
LoS stands for line of sight. If there is something standing in between you and an enemy (like a wall or a corner, for instance), then your and their LoS is obstructed. You won't be able to attack them, they won't be able to attack you. This is key, though. You see, melee enemies, when pulled, will run right up to you. Enemies that mostly attack with ranged attacks and magic, however, will stand where they are and attack you. This makes it really difficult to pull them together into a group, which you need to do to effectively tank them. However, if you pull an enemy and then move to obstruct his LoS, he'll run towards you until he can attack you again.

What does this mean for you? It means that if your next pull contains enemies that use magic or ranged attacks, you'll want to do an LoS pull. How do you pull that off? Start by identifying a corner you can run behind. If you aren't sure if something will block your LoS, try hiding behind it and pulling the group. If you can't attack them, it will work. Next, get within pulling range of the group or enemy while staying as close to the enemy as you can. Pull them (bears should use Faerie Fire (Feral)), and then run behind your corner. The ranged and magic fighters will try to attack you and not be able to, so they will run to you, allowing you to make the group more compact and easier to manage. Note that the ranged/magic using enemies will not run farther than they need to in order to see you, so don't run too far beyond the corner. Also, melee fighters will get to you before the magic fighters, so be ready to pick them up when the show up.

2. Face the enemies/bosses you are tanking away from the group
This is applies to almost every fight you will ever engage in. Even if the boss has no frontal area-of-effect attacks, I can't think of a singe boss fight where you need to face the boss towards your group-mates. As such, unless you know that the boss must face your group as part of the strategy for defeating him, place the boss/enemies between yourself and your group. Do this by running around to their backside, since they won't move on their own.

3. You set the pace of the run
Tanks determine how fast a run goes. They are the ones who pull the enemies, so they decide how quickly the group progresses through the dungeon. As such, you want to find the perfect speed for your run. Go too slow, and your group will lose interest and the run will take too long. Go too fast, and your DPS and healers will run out of mana. Generally, you want to use your healer's mana as the gauge of how fast you should go. It's generally ok to pull trash enemies (those between the bosses) when the healer has half of his mana, but for bosses, you'll want the healer and everyone else to have full mana.

4. You will most likely be group leader, so know how to mark your enemies
This won't be as relevant once patch 3.3 is released and everyone will be able to mark, but even then, I suspect that people will still look to you to decide the kill order. If you and everyone else in your group outgears the instance, you may wish to eschew kill order entirely and just AoE everything down. Otherwise, you should mark a kill order. Enemies that do heavy damage need to die first, so its helpful to look up an instance on WoWWiki and see if any of the trash in the instance do major damage. Otherwise, it generally wise to kill healing enemies first, then offensive casters, then ranged attackers, then DPS. As a good rule of thumb, anything with a mana bar should die first.

To mark your enemies, click on the enemy first, then right click their profile and you'll see the option. Generally, skull marks the enemy that needs to die first, followed by X. It's ok to not mark the last enemy in the kill order, since people should assume that if they are not marked, they should die last. If you need to use more than skull or X, then it's likely the pull is big enough that it doesn't need a killer order, but if that is not the case, then be sure to tell your group the kill order. I generally start with skull, then go through the rest of the symbols in order of color (red X, orange circle, yellow start, etc.) Finally, though this may not be as common as I think, I usually see people mark a patrolling enemy with a green triangle so that people know to stay away from him, and if an enemy should not be attacked at all, I usually see people use a moon to mark him.

The case for solo raid instances

Back when I started playing WoW and began to understand what raiding was, I came to grips with the fact that I would never be able raid seriously. I just don't have the time to dedicate to it, and as much as I would love to be able to see the new content that Blizzard puts so much time into making, I probably never will. It's a shame, because the vast majority of Blizzard's development time for patches is spent developing raid content, and yet so many players like me will never be able to see it. Then the idea hit me: what if each raid dungeon had a version where all of the trash and bosses were non-elite, regular level 80-something enemies? That way, players who don't have the time to raid with others could still experience the same content and do so on their own time.

I know many people's knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion will be that it is a bad idea, but maybe the details of my idea will placate them a bit. Let me start by explaining the lore behind my idea. The gnomes and goblins are known for their engineering marvels, so they would make virtual reality machines to match the raid experience, though toned down to make it accessible to single adventurers. Their practical reason for doing so would be to allow the adventurers of the world to be more prepared when they enter a raid instance. However, because these engineers would need to gather information from people who actually enter the raid in order to make their simulations accurate, each solo raid would not become available until some time after the actual raid has been implemented. Perhaps they would have weekly quests that would ask players to finish the actual raid itself and report back with their findings. When enough people have completed these weekly quests, the solo raid would be unlocked.

Because these solo raids would be virtual reality, they would not award any money, gear, or tangible rewards of any kind. Let me reiterate that, since I feel it is one of my most important points: there would be no real reward for running these raids, so people would still be motivated to run actual raids. The solo raids would probably not cause any durability damage to gear either, since the player won't be taking any actual damage. The trash enemies would range from level 79 to 82, depending on how tough they are in the actual raid. The bosses themselves would range from level 81 to 83, with earlier bosses being 81 and later ones being 83, in order to make them suitably challenging for players. Obviously, some boss fights would loose much of their challenge due to the fact that the player is alone, but perhaps the engineers running the simulation would chime in with quips about how being in a raid would affect the boss fight.

I'm sure one of the first objections people will have against this idea is that it would remove one motivating factor that keeps people raiding: seeing the content. If solo raids were implemented in the way I am suggesting then players will still definitely want to run regular raids, for if a player didn't go into actual raids, he'd be forced to see the content later than everyone else (I think a one to two month delay is sufficient), he wouldn't get any gear to show for his efforts, and his only reward would be seeing the lore behind these instances, meaning people probably wouldn't take advantage of them more than once. If players need even more motivation to run actual raids in lieu of running these replications, we could add durability damage to them, meaning the player would actually lose money by running them. Still, I don't think we need to revert to such drastic measures.

Some may also say that they would rather Blizzard spend their time balancing the actual raid content than spend any of it balancing some bootleg solo content, but how long would it really take to balance the solo content? Even if, in their first iteration, the raids were too difficult or just unbalanced, the fact that players are going in on their own means that problems with the fights would become apparent very quickly and fixes could be implemented just as quickly. Because players will be fighting alone, Blizzard will know that any problems players have will not be due to lack of raid synergy or raids not bringing the right combination of classes. If 1v1 arenas were possible, it would bring the state of PvP class balance into sharp focus. Why? Because so few people are involved. Thus, if you only have one person involved in a situation, any balancing issues with the solo raids should be clear as day and easy to fix, thus won't take up much of the developers' time.

Considering how much time Blizzard spends on developing raid content and how much they have been catering to the casuals recently, I find it surprising that they haven't mentioned any ideas like this yet. I hope they do implement something like this, for I am just as eager to see the end of the Lich King storyline when patch 3.3 comes out as everyone else is. If you have any other objections to my idea that I haven't brought up, leave them in the comment section and I'll give you my response.

How to tank as a druid, Part 3

And now for the meat of druid tanking: how to do it. As you should know, the purpose of tanking as a druid is keeping enemies attacking you, and thus the main focus of this post is generating as much threat as possible. Make sure to read part 1 so you aren't lost when I mention which abilities to use, since I won't put links to each ability when I mention them. With that said, let's talk about tanking tactics. I'll split this into two sections: trash and bosses.

Trash
1 enemy
Since swipe causes more instant damage than lacerate, it's perfectly acceptable to simply use mangle every time it is off of its cooldown and use swipe when it isn't, using maul when you have extra rage (more than 50), but this method won't cause optimal threat. It's good to use lacerate on single-enemy trash pulls (unless the enemy isn't particularly powerful and will thus die too quickly to make lacerate's bleed effect worth it), but the only way you can cause more threat using lacerate than you can using swipe is if you let lacerate tick. Thus you need to be able to use a rotation where you only use lacerate every three seconds, thus allowing it to tick once before you apply it again. Assuming you have improved mangle, here is a rotation you can use until you get to five stacks: mangle, lacerate, swipe, mangle, swipe, lacerate, etc. This allows for six or three seconds between each application of lacerate, allowing it to tick and making it useful. If the enemy isn't dead by the time you get five lacerates on him, just use mangle when it is off of its cooldown, swipe when it isn't, maul when you have extra rage, and lacerate when it is within five seconds of running out.

2-4 enemies
If the enemies are going to die fast (as the likely will) then swipe with mangle should be enough assuming you have a kill order and use mangle on the one you are killing first. Glyphed maul helps quite a bit with these pulls. Just make sure that you are always targeting the enemy that is highest on the kill order so that you cause the most threat to them. Use mangle when it is off of its cooldown, swipe when it isn't, and maul when you have extra rage. If your pull is limited to two or three enemies, try using berserk with mangle. It will make your job a good deal easier.

5 enemies or more
Swipe. That's it. Maul when you have extra rage, but aside from that, swipe.

Bosses
1 boss
You will want to use mangle whenever it is off of its cooldown while keeping a full stack of lacerate on the boss. I usually use mangle, lacerate, lacerate, mangle, lacerate, lacerate, mangle, lacerate, lacerate again if one missed. After that, I use the following thought process for deciding which ability to use:

















After you use each ability, start at the beginning again, and use maul when you have extra rage (above 50). Congratulations! You're tanking a boss!

2 bosses
There are some fights where you will need to tank two bosses by yourself. It's a good idea to start these fights with Berserk and mangle, which will give you some nice starter threat. After that, I recommend switching between the two bosses (the tab key works for this) and using mangle when it is off of its cooldown, lacerate when it isn't, and maul when you have extra rage (glyph of maul helps greatly for two bosses). Thus you will do the following:
Mangle boss one
Lacerate boss two
Lacerate boss one
Mangle boss two
Lacerate boss one
Lacerate boss two
etc.
This has the added benefit of allowing lacerate to tick, causing even more threat. It takes a bit of practice, but it works wonders when done well. If you can't pull that off, then just spam swipe while using mangle on the first boss that needs to go down. It won't cause as much threat, but it's better to cause some threat than no threat.

I don't think any boss fights require you to keep aggro on more than two bosses for an extended period of time, but if they did, I would use the same strategy as I use for medium-sized trash pulls. If you need to keep aggro on a boss and his adds, use swipe when mangle isn't off its cooldown and mangle when it is.

So there you go. Now go get geared up and do the druid class proud!

How to tank as a druid, Part 2

Here's the link to the first post, in which discusses abilities, talents, and gear. Without any further ado, let's continue on to the important issue of key bindings.

Key Bindings
I myself use the in-game action bars to bind my abilities, so if you want to bind them to specific keys on your keyboard, I can't help you there. If you choose to bind to the in-game action bars, you will definitely want to enable more than just one bar. Go to the Game Menu, then Interface, then Action Bars, and at least check off the bottom left bar. I use all of them except for one bar on the right.

Main Action Bar
Because this bar changes with your forms, you'll want to put abilities that are specific to bear form here. Here are the bindings I use. If you think something different would work better for you, then use a different configuration. The main idea behind this binding system is to put your most important abilities close to the WASD keys, since you will need to use them more than the others, and putting them close to your left hand allows you to use them with your left hand while still being able to use your mouse to select targets or even click abilities (the great sin of tanking, I know; but I still do it, and you don't see my group-mates complaining).

1 - Feral Charge (Bear)
Because of the nature of this ability, you will want to keep it within easy reach, so that you can use it the moment you need it. That said, you won't use it as frequently and Growl, which is why I put it first; it's important that you be able to use this ability instantly, but not so much as using growl instantly.

2 - Growl
The essence of the tanking role is keeping enemies attacking you, and that is exactly what this ability does. Because clothies, be they DPS or healers, can probably be killed in a few hits if they draw an enemy's attention, you'll want to be able to use this ability to get an enemy's attention before he gets to them. That's why I put it right above my middle finger; that's the easiest place to reach it.

3 - Mangle (Bear)
With few exceptions, you should always use this ability when it is off of its cooldown, which is why I put it so close to the WASD keys. The 3 key is pretty much as reachable as the 2 key, and since this ability is as important as growl, it is a good one to put on the 3 binding.

4 - Lacerate
Another ability that is used frequently by bears, but the fact that it's use is less imperative than Mangle is why I bind it to the 4 key. What do I mean by that? Like I said, Mangle should be used whenever it is off of its cooldown, so you need to be able to use it at the drop of a hat. Lacerate does not need to be used with the same urgency.

5 - Maul
When you use this ability, you will want to be able to spam it, which is why I put it relatively close to the WASD keys. This allows you to hit the ability whenever you have excess rage. However, because I don't use maul spam very frequently, and because maul only needs to be hit once before each of your attacks (which gives you a 2.5 second window to hit it if you don't have any haste on your gear), I put if after Mangle and Lacerate.

6 - Swipe
When you use this ability, you will probably want to be able to spam it. That said, unlike Maul, you won't be spamming this ability while using other abilities (with the exception of Maul), which is why it can be off on its own. Because I rarely need to target a specific enemy while maul spamming, I usually reach up with my right hand to use this ability while also using Maul when I have the rage for it.

7 - Bash
While I do sometimes need to use this in a pinch, I don't use Bash very frequently, which is why I put in after my more frequently-used abilities. You'll usually have a pretty good window of time to use it for interrupting a caster or stopping a runner, so you can usually click it rather than hitting the key is it bound to.

8 - Demoralizing Roar
If you use this ability at all, you'll have enough time to click it. It can be used frequently, though, which is why I put it here, before the emergency use abilities.

9 - Enrage
I usually put my emergency abilities after my frequently used abilities since I usually know when I am going to us them and thus have enough time to click them. I put Enrage and the next two abilities on the action bar because they have no use outside of bear form. I put Enrage before the other two abilities because I use it more than the other two.

10 - Frenzied Regeneration
This is a pretty useful emergency ability, but it is used a good deal less frequently than Enrage, which is why I put it after Enrage.

11 - Challenging Roar
I rarely use this ability, but I still keep it on the bar for the few times when I do need it. You could argue that, because this is basically a taunt ability, you would want to have it within easy reach of your hand so that you can use it quickly. Well, I tend to only use it in maybe one run in every five of ten, so it's hardly worth putting in a prominent position on the action bar.

12 - Runic Healing Potion
I tend to not use healing potions, but if I ever did, I wouldn't want to go looking through my bags to use it. Why do I bind healing potions on the bear bar and not on the additional bar? Because the only time I would ever need to use my potions is while I'm tanking.

Additional Bar
I tend to put spells that I can use in multiple/all forms or that are used before the battle, when time is not of the essence, on the additional bar. The order isn't as important here. Though I put my more frequently used abilities closer to the left, you can do whatever you are comfortable with. That said, here are the abilities I keep on my additional action bar in the order I keep them in.

Barkskin
Because of this ability's short cooldown, I find myself using it frequently, which is why I put it first.

(Lifeblood)
Not everyone has this ability, but I do, and I put it next because I use it pretty frequently. Why? Because it gives me healing in a pinch when I need it, so I like to be able to use it quickly. If I had Survival Instincts, I would probably put it here too, since it serves a similar function.

Trinkets
As a tank, your trinket should be defensive in nature, and they should be on-use trinkets so that you can save them for when you need them. As such, you'll want to be able to use them without needing to look for them, so you should bind them to your bars somewhere within easy reach of your mouse.

Berserk
Because this ability is offensive in nature, rather than defensive, it's not as important to be able to activate it immediately, which is why I put it after the defensive ones. If you use Berserk, you will probably plan it in advance anyways, meaning you won't need to be able to move the mouse immediately.

Faerie Fire (Feral)
This is really nothing more than a pulling ability which you will only use at the beginning of the fight, which is why I put it so far to the right.

Moonfire
Sometimes you will find yourself in caster form. It is during these times that you will want to start the fight with Moonfire and then switch to Bear Form to take advantage of Furor. This is because Moonfire causes more damage and threat than the damage of FFF. That said, you'll probably have time to apply FFF to your target before you get in melee range, and you should do so.

So there you go. Due to time constraints and the unexpected amount of space needed to explain keybindings, I'll need to put off going over strategies for different kinds of pulls until next week. See you then, same time, same place.

How to tank as a druid, Part 1

I know I said I wouldn't include many specific posts in my advice section, but one can only write about generalities for so long. As such, I decided to write a post about tanking as a druid, something I'm quite familiar with. This post will refer to tanking at level 80, and thus leveling druids will want to look elsewhere. This guide also assume that you understand the basic elements of the game's mechanics and are just new to tanking or druid tanking. With that said, let's begin.

Abilities
Because of the hybrid nature of our class, we may not have as many abilities available to us as other tanks, but that means fewer abilities for you to memorize and adjust to.

Mangle: This is our single greatest single-target threat-causing ability, and the bleed damage increase it applies makes it great when used in conjunction with Lacerate. Unless you are fighting four enemies or more, use it whenever it is off of its cooldown.

Lacerate: Sunder Armor for druids; this ability is useful, but only for the bleed effect. Swipe causes more instant damage than Lacerate, so Lacerate is only worth using if the target will live long enough for the bleed to cause damage. As such, it is worth using on bosses and trash that takes a long time to kill, but otherwise, it's hardly worth using more than once or twice.

Maul: Heroic Strike for druids, and an interesting ability, this; it increases the damage (and thus threat) caused by your next regular melee attack, while also preventing that attack from generating rage. It's good to use when you have extra rage, but if your rage falls bellow thirty, stop using it so that you can guarantee that you will have rage for your other abilities. Otherwise, spam the hell out of it. Any druid tank worth his salt will want to glyph this ability, which will make it great for holding threat against two enemies at once.

Swipe: This ability is simple enough; it causes damage to everyone around you. It's thus most useful when you are facing a large crowd of enemies, though it's also good for when you have five full stacks of lacerate on the target and Mangle is on its cooldown. Swipe causes about a fourth of the damage of Mangle, so if you are facing four targets or more, you'll want to simply spam this ability.

Growl: The spell's description is simple enough, but I'll elaborate. This spell not only forces the target to attack you for a little while, but if someone has caused more threat than you, you will instantly cause the difference in threat. If you have 2000 threat against an enemy and your mage somehow has 10,000 threat, this ability will cause 8000 threat. Also note that this spell is not subject to the global cooldown, so you can use it any time it is off of its own cooldown. It's worth repeating that this will be next to useless if your target is already attacking you. I say next to useless because, in order for someone other than you to catch a mob's attention, they need to cause 110% more threat than you if they are in melee range or 130% if they are farther away (forgive me if my numbers are wrong). Thus it's worth it to use this ability if you have threat meters and your rogue is hovering around 108% threat or your warlock is hovering around 128%. Also note that many bosses are immune to this ability, but it's still worth using if someone else draws aggro, just in case the boss is not immune. Finally, because this has a thirty-yard range, you can use it on an enemy that runs off to attack a party member when you don't want to rush over to help them, due to positioning or something like that.

Feral Charge - Bear: This ability causes you to rush your target, while also stopping them from casting any spell they are casting and making them unable to move for a short while. If one of your enemies runs off towards a party member, this stops them dead in their tracks and gives you some time to build up threat or use Growl. If no one in your party can interrupt spells and you are facing a boss whose spells need to be interrupted (and Bash is on its cooldown), keep in mind that you can use this ability as a last resort. Just back up and charge back in. You'll loose threat from not being in melee range, but those are the sacrifices we make.

Bash: Stuns the target for four seconds, making them unable to move, attack, or do anything, really. I often use this on trash by stunning a target when he is about three or four seconds away from death while moving on to another target to start causing threat. Most bosses are immune to the stun effect, but you can still use this to interrupt their spellcasting. Keep that in mind if they have a spell that causes large amounts of damage.

Faerie Fire (Feral): This does decrease the targets armor, but it's really not worth using too frequently. It's a good ability for pulling an enemy because it causes some damage and thus gets their attention, but the extra damage caused by the decrease of armor is only really worthwhile on bosses, so once you are in combat, don't bother to use this ability unless you are fighting a boss and it has run out.

Demoralizing Roar: This makes enemies cause less damage to you (about 30 less damage every second, if the AP conversion rate is the same for mobs as it is for players.) The thing is, the damage reduction is often negligible (1800 over one minute), so it's only really worth using on large crowds when it will make a bigger difference. Otherwise you're just wasting time that could be spent causing threat.

Enrage: This ability does exactly what is says it does, though I have found the armor reduction to be not worth worrying about. This ability is more useful at lower levels, but considering that most trash pulls in high-level dungeons allow you to go from zero to 100 rage in ten seconds, it becomes situational at the level cap. It's good to use before a pull when you have very little rage to start with, and it's also good to use in conjunction with Frenzied Regeneration, which will eat up your rage. If you have less than 20 rage before going into a fight, use this.

Barkskin: A useful spell for all druids, but as a tank, it's main use is as our only no-strings-attached defensive cooldown. It may only reduce damage by 20%, but for a one minute cooldown, that's pretty good. I usually use it at the beginning of trash pulls when the most mobs are alive, but I also sometime wait until we are facing a particularly difficult pull to use it. During a boss fight that requires you to use your defensive cooldowns at a specific time, save this ability for that time.

Challenging Roar: This works like an AoE taunt, but unlike Growl, it causes no extra threat, so it only really gives you a six-second window to catch up with your DPSs' threat. That said, it's useful if an entire group of mobs has gone after the healer and you don't want to take any chances.

Berserk: Remember how awesome Mangle is? How would you like to use it without a cooldown? And have it his three targets? For fifteen seconds? For multi-target pulls with no more than three mobs, this really shines, and it's a good way to start a boss fight where you are facing two or three bosses at once since it lets you build up a large amount of threat on up to three people. It also makes you immune to fear effects and dispells any fear effects already on you, so if you are facing a boss with a fear effect, save this ability for when the boss uses it's fear and use Berserk immediately afterward. That increases the chance it will last until the boss does it a second time. It's one flaw is that it activates the global cooldown, so if you are going to use it for it's multi-mangle capabilities (as you always should, even if you intend to use it to break a fear effect) use it about a second before you intend to launch your first attack.

Frenzied Regeneration: It's unfortunate that this ability is our most potent emergency ability, because it isn't a perfect one. You should only use it when you have full or near full rage and you are somehow generating more, since it needs to consume ten rage with each of its ten ticks in order to be most effective. I have generally found that I can usually keep using swipe, mangle, and/or lacerate with FR up with no problem, but maul spamming with FR up will usually cause you to run out of rage, so don't use maul with FR up. As long as you follow those guidelines, FR should serve you well when your healer lapses or you take some heavy damage and you need some emergency self-healing. Dedicated tanks will want to glyph this ability.

Survival Instincts: I personally don't use this ability, but that's because I mostly run heroic 5-mans, where burst damage is rare. This ability is only useful on a boss that causes easily-healable damage normally and simply causes high damage every once in a while, since if the boss is causing consistently high damage, that damage you take after 20 seconds will only make it more difficult for your healer. If you do use this ability, you will probably want to glyph it.

Savage Defense: This is technically a passive ability, but it's still worth mentioning. This ability makes crit rating worth getting on our gear, and also makes swipe-spamming even more worthwhile, since swipe hits multiple targets, and each of those hits has a chance to crit, and a crit means a mini-shield.

Talents
If spells make the class, then talents make the role, so you'll want to choose a good spec for your tanking druid. This build contains all of the necessary tanking talents with a few points left over for you to play around with. You can put those in talents to further improve the nuances of the tanking role or talents to help you while solo-ing. The decision is yours. This is the build I use, though if you copy it, you'll probably want to take a point out of Brutal Impact and put it in Survival Instincts. It's intended use is to have all of the necessary tanking talents while still having some talents useful for solo-ing, thus making it a tank build and a solo build.

Gear
As leather wearers, we druids need to share armor with rogues, but we can still wear tank gear in the form of our cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets. Because of that, there are basically two sets of guidelines you need to follow for gearing up: one for armor, and one for the rest.

Armor:
We druids share itemization with rogues, so you'll be choosing among DPS armor for your tank set. You'll want to look for pieces with more stamina than agility and with hit, expertise, or crit.
Haste and armor penetration aren't completely useless for a druid, but they don't have as much use for a tank as they do for a DPS'er, so look for pieces with at least one of the three above-mentioned stats. Two is ideal, but you can't always get what you want.

The Rest: Tank pieces are pieces with strength, rather than agility. Thus you will want to look for cloaks, rings, and amulets with strength on them, and the rest will generally be stats you need. There are, however, some DPS pieces with strength on them, but you can usually tell the strength pieces apart because they will have defensive stats and much more stamina than strength. Just avoid pieces with parry rating, block rating, or block value, all of which have no use for a druid. As for trinkets, just take what you can get, and try to avoid the chance-on-hit or chance-when-hit trinkets, since as a tank, you'll want to save your trinkets for when you need them. Extra armor used to be an important druid stat, but now extra armor is only really useful on cloaks, since they will get the 370% bonus from Dire Bear Form. As such, look for cloaks with armor quantities in green, but treat armor on rings, amulets, and trinkets like you would any other defensive stats.

Weapons: There are very few two-handed weapons with tank stats, so look for weapons with a lot of stamina and with hit rating or expertise. It's also a good idea to look for weapons with agility on them, rather than or in addition to strength, since agility increases your dodge chance, and is thus a defensive stat as well as an offensive one.

Next week: Strategies and placing abilities on your action bars.

How to level Northrend reputations without championing

As I mentioned in my last advice post, it is possible to get exalted with all of the Northrend factions without entering an instance. The easiest way to gain reputation with many of these factions is championing, wherein you where the tabard of the faction you are championing in a level-80 5-man instance and gain reputation with them as a result. However, this approach requires to you have good gear (the main purpose of raising your reputations) and be subjected to PUGs, which are really hit and miss. This guide is concerned with getting exalted with each of the Northrend reputations, including the ones that can be championed, without resorting to championing. Some are harder than others, but it is possible to get exalted with all of these factions without entering an instance, and that's what this post concerns.

Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition
These two are pretty easy. The Silver Covenant/Sunreavers dailies that you get from the Argent Tournament are one way to raise your rep. You can also do the dailies on your faction's floating ship in Icecrown, The Skybreaker and Orgrim's Hammer, respectively. That should be enough for you to get exalted in a timely manor.

Argent Crusade
This faction used to be much harder to reach exalted with without championing, but it's easier now. Before, the only repeatable way to get Argent Crusade rep was the daily Troll Patrol, but now the Argent Tournament quests also give Argent Crusade rep, making this grind much easier. If you are a Death Knight, however, then the Argent Tournament quests with give you rep with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, leaving Troll Patrol as your only option.

Frenzyheart Tribe/The Oracles
Nothing special here; just do the dailies.

Kirin Tor
Whoo-boy! This is not an easy faction to get exalted with without championing. Make sure you use wowhead to find all of their one-time quests so you can make this grind as short as possible. Once you have exhausted that option, you have only three left to you:
1. Fishing dailies (given by the Dalaran fishing trainer)
2. Cooking dailies (given by the Dalaran cooking trainers)
3. Jewelcrafting dailies (given by the Dalaran jewelcrafting trainer)
If you ever needed an excuse to level your cooking and fishing, here it is. You can also watch the auction house for a Sealed Vial of Poison, which can be turned in for 250 rep, but it is really expensive (at least on my server) and uncommon, so don't count on buying a lot of these for easy rep.

Knights of the Ebon Blade
Once you complete their Icecrown questlines, the Knights of the Ebon Blade will have two areas with dailies for them. Three dailies can be found in the Shadow Vault in northern Icecrown. Three more can be found on Death's Rise, a little ledge part-way down the cliff southwest of Jotunheim. Doing all of them will net you 1500 rep a day. If you are a Death Knight, then the Argent Tournament quests will also net you Ebon Blade rep, making this grind much faster.

The Kalu'ak
This little faction does have some nice goodies to reward those who get exalted with it. They have quests in Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, and Dragonblight, and each area has a Kalu'ak daily quest, each of which gives you 500 rep. The daily quests are unlocked as you complete the questline in each area. You can use the turtle boats to shuttle between the three areas if you don't want to spend the money to fly there.

The Sons of Hodir
In order to even start gaining rep with these guys, you need to do a long quest chain starting with They Took Our Men! Once you finish the quest chain, you can do dailies to get rep with the Sons of Hodir, and you unlock more as your rep gets higher. Individual quests will unlock similar dailies, so make sure you do all of the one-time quests they offer. You can also look for Everfrost Chips in The Storm Peaks, which can be turned in for Sons of Hodir rep, as can Relics of Ulduar, which can be bought on the Auction House.

The Wyrmrest Accord
Aside from their one-time quests, these guys have three dailies you can do. Two are in Coldarra in Borean Tundra, and one is in Dragonblight. The two low-level ones are unlocked after quests, but the level-80 one can be started almost immediately. They are Drake Hunt, Defending Wyrmrest Temple, and Aces High!
Note: Aces High! starts with the quest Corastrasza, which is started in the Transitus Shield, the same area where you start Drake Hunt.

There you have it! Some factions are easier than others to gain rep with without championing, but only the Kirin Tor is really difficult. Good luck!

Should raiders be angry about the Emblem of Conquest change?

Disclaimer: Everything I say in this post in my own opinion, and though I make sweeping generalizations about raiders in this post, I am not making an assault on your own character with this post. In other words, don't take what I say personally.

The last major patch brought a pretty big change to the game: emblems of conquest now drop from heroic instances. Many raiders who got these emblems the hard way through Ulduar were not happy about this change, as they saw it as trivializing the gear they had worked so hard to obtain. Were they justified? It's a difficult question, but it begs an even bigger one, in my opinion: what is the purpose of gear? After all, the purpose that gear serves is fundamental to how valuable it is.

The way I see it, the only practical application of gear is to make encounters easier and thus allow the player to see more of the game. However, if that were the gear's only purpose, then the Uduar raiders wouldn't feel as indignant about non-raiders sharing their gear. They may feel that Blizzard's making good gear easier to get makes the encounters easier and thus trivialized their achievements, but as Windwalkêrs's recent downing of Yogg-Saron in only blues shows, gear only plays a small role in raid success, and thus making good gear available to more players does little to make the encounters themselves easier. Thus, this could not be the reason that raiders are so indignant about the emblem change.

So, what's the purpose of the gear? Since skill is really more important than gear in determining a player's usefulness to a raid than gear, the only reason left is one that's pretty obvious: the gear is the best way for raiders to show off that they raid and that they raid successfully. Achievements do serve the same function, but they are inferior to gear as a way to show off successful raiding. It's easier for a player to admire his gear than his achievements, and gear is much easier to show off to other players than achievements.

Of course, the idea that gear can be used to show off raiding achievements begs the question of why raiders should want to brag about their conquests at all. This is an easy one to answer; anything that a person puts a lot of work into, that person is going to feel proud of, and pride generally leads to a person wanting to some how show off what they have achieved. Still, many a wise man will tell you that genuine pride results in humility, and only hubristic pride leads to bragging. In fact, those who brag often do so because they have doubt in themselves and need to reaffirm their baseless self-esteem. Whether this theory applies to WoW, I'm not qualified to say, but my suspicion is that it does.

Bringing that all together, are the raiders who want to keep raid gear to themselves selfish? No, they're probably just insecure about their achievements and fear that their gear (which symbolizes their success in raids) becoming more common will somehow trivialize what they have accomplished. Will it? Not really, because gear has nothing to do with what you have achieved. It may symbolize it to you, but that's your own thinking, not that of the player-base as a whole.

How to avoid those "What do I do now?" moments

When I started playing WoW, I had one goal: to get to the level cap. I didn't think about why that was my goal or what I would do when I got there; all I knew was that was what I had to do. When I did get there, I had a moment I dreaded having: I thought to myself, "What do I do now?" After messing around in Outland for a while, I decided to make getting epic flight skill my next goal. Getting the Ogri'la dailies made that significantly easier, and though it took a while, I saved up that 5,000 gold. I knew I was going to have another WDIDN moment if I didn't think of something else to do after getting my epic flying skill, so I decided to go for exalted with Netherwing. I thought their mounts were really cool, and I had always heard people talking about how much money one could make with their dailies, so I figured it was a good goal. Well, when I did finally get my Netherwing drake, I had another WDIDN moment. I won't bore you with the continuation of my story. To sum it up, I've had quite a few of those moments where you complete a goal and realize you don't know what to do next. This post is about avoiding them.

The key to preventing a WDIDN moment is rather simple: always have a goal. It helps to have both short term and long term goals, since you may not have enough patience to see your long-term goals to the end if you don't try other things. You could make your long term goal making enough money to buy epic flight or getting one of the meta achievements. With the advent of achievements, nearly everything that you do in the game has a reward. Pet and mount collecters have their own achievements, cooks and fishers get their own titles, and even raiders and PvP'ers can get in on the action. These meta achievements often have their own rewards that make them worth doing, but just doing them is really what makes the game fun.

So, once you have decided on a long-term goal, you need a short-term goal to keep you entertained while trying to achieve that long-term one. These goals could be getting exalted with a certain faction or grinding the materials for a certain item or just doing dailies for money. It helps if your short-term goals help your long term goals. For example, if your goal is to save up enough money for epic flight, you could make a short term goal out of getting exalted with Ebon Blade or the Alliance Vanguard, both of which have dailies that reward a good amount of money. You could also make your short-term goals completely unrelated to your long-term goals if you just need a break. If you are tired of grinding reputation for 40 Exalted Reputations, you could try running a heroic instance for a specific item or doing the daily instance for extra emblems to buy something with those.

Raids and PvP are also good options for things to do. They both give you cooperative experiences that are rarely the same and give good gear to boot, although the gear is really just a side reward. In fact, if you are raiding or PvP'ing on a regular basis, you are much less likely to have a WDIDN moment, so you probably don't need to worry about it. People who mostly do solo content are the ones who are likely to have those moments, so it's them that need to keep goals in mind.

To give you an example of the goal mindset, I'll give you my current goals. I want to eventually save up enough money for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. My main method of doing this is dailies, but just to keep me from being bored as I do those dailies, I'm also saving up Champion's Seals. I was collecting them for the pets at first (I did use them to upgrade my weapons, so the pets were my secondary goal), since I am an avid pet collector, but with the promise of new items for people with the crusader rank in patch 3.2, I decided to save them up instead. I'm also doing the fishing dailies in hopes of getting the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat. I enjoy fishing a lot, especially now that it is a great source of raid food, so the hat would be a big help.

As you can see, for some, goals are really about biding your time between raids or battleground or arena battles. They give you something to do when you aren't working toward a common goal with other people. And if you don't enjoy any of the above activities, then goals are really what it's all about for you. After all, if you aren't helping others succeed, you'll only find satisfaction in your own success, so you need to create that feeling of success.

On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content

If Burning Crusade was Blizzard's attempt to homogenize World of Warcraft in some way, Wrath of the Lich King was their success. We could see the beginnings of homogenization in BC: all elemental items were now primal [element], which were obtained by combining motes; starter gear could be obtained from badges of justice, gotten from any heroic instance; and many reputation grinds were done in instances, not by grinding various mobs. (There were exceptions, of course.) We also saw the advent of dailies, a reliable, albeit repetitive way to make money. Class balance was brought into sharper focus and actually attempted by Blizzard, and most classes had something unique to bring to the raid. Profession balance also become a concern, and Blizzard tried to give every profession something special to make it different from the rest and worth taking.

The problem with Blizzard's design philosophy during BC was that it was near impossible to keep all these things balanced. Some reputation grinds were immensely harder than others with worse rewards, some classes were more useless than others in raids (although, as I discussed here, I think that was a mistaken assumption), and some professions were much more useful to the crafter than others. Despite their best intentions, Blizzard wasn't able to balance everything in BC, but it was certainly a start.

Wrath of the Lich King changed all that. "Bring the player, not the class" became Blizzard's new design philosophy. Their goal was to make each class equally viable so that raids would choose to bring people based on the player's skills, not their class and spec. It was a noble pursuit, and for the most part, it was successful. Frost mages still fall behind in DPS and ret paladins were overpowered for some time, but most classes were on equal footing. Not only were the classes now performing more or less equally, but they were also given new abilities that had been exclusive to other classes for the longest time. For example, Leader of the Pack was one of the main draws of bringing a feral druid to raids. With the release of Wrath, however, warriors were given the same ability. This was one of many examples of class exclusive buffs being given to other classes. With these new buffs was added a new buff mechanic: identical buffs no longer stack. If you bring a feral druid with LotP and a fury warrior with Rampage, your raid members will only get a 5% bonus to their melee crit chance, not a 10% chance. Since buffs like these were also made raid-wide, there was no longer a benefit to bring multiple members of the same class to give the same buffs to different groups in your raid. Thus many classes lost the unique things they had previously brought to raids, and these buffs became viewed as mandatory, rather than a nice bonus to bringing along an atypical DPS'er to your raids.

Blizzard wasn't done there, though. They made reputation grinds more similar as well. Most factions now have their own dailies which grant rep, and for some you can also don their tabard and gain rep from any heroic or level 80 instances you enter. Compared to the old days where only certain instances gave rep with certain factions, this gives players much more flexibility in how they gain rep. I have bad memories of grinding Steamvaults to get rep for my Earthwarden. It was not a fun instance, and the only thing that kept in bearable was the fact that it dropped two pieces of the hunter dungeon set, as well as two pieces of the mage set, so I had a constant supply of DPS. With the advent of Warth, you can now run any instance you like and gain rep, allowing you to choose to run easy ones or ones which drop gear you want. All these changes makes grinding reputation easier, and as a result, the rewards from reputation grinds are less remarkable. Still pretty good, but not as remarkable.

It was worth it, though.

Speaking of dailies, they became a lot more prevalent in Wrath. Once the exclusive right of those with flying mounts, these repeatable quests were revered for the amount of money you could make with them. (120g was a lot back in those days) With patch 2.4, new dailies were added with the Isle of Quel'Danas, as well as the cooking, fishing, and PvP dailies, all of which did not require a flying mount. There were now dailies for everyone, but they were still a distinct, separate part of the game.

Nowadays, dailies are everywhere. Almost every faction has daily quests now, and most of what you do at level 80 that doesn't involve a group involves daily quests. Trouble is, there are only really two rewards from daily quests: rep and money. Once you have gotten your rep as high as you can with the various factions, the only reason to do dailies is for the money. (With the exception of the Argent Tournament dailies, that is, which also reward Champion's Seals, but those are incredibly boring. Patch 3.2 can't come soon enough.) The problem with this is that the different sets of dailies award vastly different amounts of money, so unless you have a lot of time to spend on them, you're only going to spend your time doing the ones that reward the most money. Thus you spend your time doing the same dailies over and over and over again, and unfortunately, they haven't got any more fun since Burning Crusade. Since there weren't as many dailies in Burning Crusade, they didn't need to be as fun and varied, and yet Blizzard still put in the effort to make them interesting. Now we have more dailies than we could ever have dreamed of, and yet Blizzard hasn't tried too many new things with them. I'd even go as far as saying they are less fun than they were before. Perhaps I just have rose-tinted glasses, but I miss the days of Bomb Them Again! and Disrupt the Greengill Coast. The only daily that really compares is Thrusting Hodir's Spear, though it is a pretty awesome quest.

Yes, that dwarf is in the dragon's mouth. This quest is a far better reward for getting honored with the Sons of Hodir than those shoulder enchantments are.

Burning Crusade also brought a lot of changes to professions that made them more viable and useful. However, this caused a lot of players to take professions only for their own self benefit and drop them when they were no longer useful. (Case in point: tailoring and leatherwoking had good starter armor for raiding that only the crafter could equip, but this armor was quickly made obsolete by raid drops.) When Wrath was released, the crafter only benefits were radically changed. There was no more starter-set BoP crafter armor and many of the old exclusive benefits were removed or made less useful (Example: with the advent of potion sickness, which prevents people from using more than one potion per battle, the Alchemist's Stone and its upgrades lost much of their appeal.) New items were added to most of the professions that gave stat bonuses that were exclusive to the crafter. They weren't that exclusive, though, in that with the exception of tailoring and engineering, they all give more or less the same stat benefits. The only thing that differs is how those benefits are conferred; enchanters get exclusive ring enchantments, leatherworkers get bracer enchantments that are better than the equivalent enchantments, jewelcrafters get gems which are better than the gems they can give to everyone else, alchemists gain improved effects from their elixirs and flasks, blacksmiths get to add extra gems to their gear, and inscribers get shoulder enchantments that are better than their Sons of Hodir counterparts. And unlike in the days of BC, these effects no longer apply to you if you drop the profession, so you can't level up each profession and then drop them to get all of their buffs on your gear, which most min-max'ers did back in the day.

What this means is that, with the exception of tailoring's cloak enchants and all of the engineering benefits being added in 3.2, professions are now less about what they give you and more about what you can give others. The unfortunate part of this is that some professions just aren't as useful as others. Alchemy sees a lot more use than leatherworking, and ditto for enchanting compared with tailoring. More importantly, the professions are all much more similar now. That's really the point I am getting at with this post: everything is much more similar in Wrath of the Lich King. Everything has been streamlined, simplified, and almost dumbed down.

How you acquire your profession's recipes is a perfect example of this change. With rare exception, all recipes for all of the professions are either obtained from a trainer or obtained from another NPC by trading for them with some sort of token or material you usually use. New research mechanics have also been added, but these are guaranteed to give you a new recipe, unlike the days of BC when you could discover a new recipe every time you made something. Gone are the days of checking wowhead to see which vendors strewn over the land sell recipes or plans that you need to buy. Factions also play less of a role in our professions. Maybe I feel that more than others because I am an enchanter and we get no recipes from faction quartermasters, but I find it a bit disappointing that getting all of our recipes is so simple and... well, boring.

That's really my main problem with the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King. Everything is more boring now. I still find raiding and instances to be fun, but all of the nuances of solo-ing have been lost. I find this especially ironic since this expansion was supposed to be the one for the casuals. From all of the changes made, I'd wager that Blizzard's intention was really to get casuals into instances as soon as possible, rather than improve their old stomping grounds. After all, the sooner we start raiding, the less time we spend on our own, and the less time Bizzard needs to spend on developing solo content.

In fact, all of these changes can really be traced back to Blizzard trying to get people to raid more. All classes were made raid viable, so no players can blame their class for not raiding. Reputations were made easier to get exalted with, so players can spend less time getting their raid starter gear and get into raids sooner. Dailies became more prevalent so that we would always have something to do to make a bit of money for the repair bills. Professions were homogenized so that players could pick a profession they liked rather than one that would have a positive impact on their raiding. It seems to me that all of these changes were made for the raiders, and not us solo-ers.

I see a parallel between these changes and the arena fiasco. When arenas were released, they brought class balance into sharper focus. Previously, the classes' individual strengths and weaknesses in PvP were glossed over by the fact that battlegrounds were so huge that players' individual contribution or lack thereof weren't easily perceivable. With arenas, however, classes were pitted against each other in a very direct way, and the sad state of class balance was brought into sharp focus. Because of this, Blizzard began to balance classes around their performance in arenas. This became a problem as classes that were perfectly balanced for raids were nerfed because they were doing too well in arenas (such as resto druids). This also applied to battlegrounds, where the battles are more objective based and longer, and thus emphasize survival rather than rapid killing. Because of this difference, some classes lost effectiveness in battlegrounds because they were too good in arenas.

This kind of thing still goes on, and what makes the situation ironic is that arenas are the part of the game with lowest player participation. There are even many die-hard battleground fans who hate them. Arenas used to be more popular when they were a source of easy epics, but now that all arena gear requires good ratings, those days are gone.

In the same way that PvP was balanced around arenas, I think that PvE content has been balanced around raiders. While this could be seen as a good thing for players who want to get into raids as soon as possible, those of us who don't are left more or less in the dust. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy raiding, but some people just don't have the time for it, and it is those people who suffer the most from these changes to PvE. Solo end-game is dying. I would like to think that the new Argent Tournament dailies we are getting in patch 3.2 will change that, but even if they do, it's such a shame that they will only be available to people with the Crusader title, which will force players to play inferior content in order to get to good content. If these new dailies disappoint like the last ones did, we solo players will just have to go back to levelling alts; there's just nothing fun left to do.

Edit: Patch 3.2 has been released, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed with the new dailies. With the exception of Get Kraken!, they are all typical, predictable, and boring. Come on, Blizz! Challenge your quest designers. Give us something new!

How to pick an item to grind for money

I'd just like to state off the bat that this post will mostly apply to people already at the level cap, although you may be able to use this advice bellow level 80. So, suppose you are tired of the grind of dailies and you want to try to make some money some other way. How can you do it? To give you a hint, the answer was in the second sentence of this post. Yes, grinding. It may not be very appealing to you, but it's really your other option aside from playing the auction house, and I know that that method does not work for me. I'll warn you know that this post won't cover the act of grinding itself; just how to choose where to grind.

Before you start, you may want to get a base line of how much money you wish to make per hour. To get that base line for myself, I did all of the Ebon Blade dailies excluding Intelligence Gathering (it takes too damn long) and all of the solo Alliance dailies in Icecrown on the Bombardment excluding That's Abominable! (again, takes too damn long), since those sets of dailies have the highest amount of gold per hour. I then recorded how much gold I made and how much I made per hour.

Ebon Blade:
75 gold (+15 gold in herbs), 17 minutes, 270 (318 with herbs) gold/hour
Bombardment:
110 gold (+10 gold in herbs and cloth), 30 minutes, 220 (240 with herbs and cloth) gold/hour

This means that my baseline is 250-300 gold per hour for my farming. The reason I picked that base line for myself is that, if I'm not making more than that, then I'll make more with dailies than by farming. Of course, if you want to use farming to break up the monotony of dailies, then you don't really need to worry about a baseline based on dailies. In fact, most of you probably won't want to worry about a baseline at all, so if you don't want to, then don't.

Now for the instructions. One big mistake people make with farming or with any kind of money-making method is not being flexible. They pick one item to farm (or one method for making money) and farm that every time. However, if you want to make the big bucks, you need to be a bit more flexible then that. Start by seeing what sells well on your server. Auctioneer can help with this, but it isn't necessary. Don't dismiss anything in your search for a good thing to farm. Meat may not seem like a worth-while thing to farm, but there may be a dearth of Chunk o' Mammoth on your realm's AH that you could take advantage of. If you need a place to start, Eternal Air and Fire usually sell well. Fishing can also make you a good bit of money. In my experience, the only high-end fish worth fishing for money are Musselback Sculpin, Glacial Salmon, and Dragonfin Angelfish, and it's infinitely better to fish in pools than in open water. You should also look into using your gathering professions to make money. Ore and herbs usually sell well. I can't speak for miners, but as an herbalist, I know that Adder's Tongue, Lichbloom, and Icethorn are my best sellers.

As a note about Adder's Tongue, the reason it sells well is that it is fairly low level for a high-end herb, and thus doesn't get picked a lot. What this means for you is that you can look into low level markets with low supply but high demand and take advantage of them. Low level enchanting supplies can make you money in this way, as can low level ores and herbs. I haven't tried this kind of venture myself, so all I can say is keep your eyes open for opportunities.

The other key to making money with farming is knowing how many of a particular item you can farm in a certain amount of time. If item A is selling for 10 gold and item B is selling for 20 gold, but you can get 30 of item A in an hour and 10 of item B, you'll want to go for item A. It's also a good idea to see if you can farm for different things at the same time. At the lake in Borean Tundra, I can farm Tiger Lily and fish for Musselback Sculpin at the same time. Depending on the market, I can make quite a bit of money there by farming both things at once. If you need a macro to switch between your various tracking skills, here's the one I use.

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nocombat] find fish, find herbs

This allows me to see both schools and herbs by switching between the two. You can switch what I put in there with your own tracking skills or add more if you wish too.

Now for the money making part. This is where Auctioneer will really come in handy. Before you start farming, check the AH to see what is selling for high prices that night. (Having a dedicated auction alt also helps for this part) I once checked the AH and saw that Glacial Salmon was selling for 150% of it's usual price. I pounced that opportunity and starting flying over the rivers of Grizzly Hills. Within a half hour, I had four stacks of Salmon, which I sold at 40 gold each. All four sold quickly, and I ended up making 160 gold. That's 320 gold and hour. It may not seem like much, but it's more than I could make with dailies.

Don't expect to see too many opportunities like this, though. Most items that sell for high prices have a lot of people farming them, meaning their supply is fairly stable, so the price is too. Of course, the market place is just as unpredictable as the real one, so you never know. Just look for markets that reliably sell well and you will be all set.

To summarize all that, watch for markets that typically sell high, know how many items you can typically get in a certain amount of time, and use that to make money. With a tad bit of luck, you could become quite rich, and the fact that you won't be doing the same thing every day (*cough* dailies *cough*) means you won't get bored as quickly.

Why you should not rush to the level cap

This is an issue that is close to my heart. When I first started playing, I rarely did quests since I didn't want to move around from area to area until I had leveled past the area I was in. Thus I did a lot of grinding, since vanilla WoW was not made for efficient leveling. Grinding gets boring when you do it that much, so I found leveling to be a chore. That was until I bought a leveling guide that showed me how to level quickly by moving between areas and always doing quests, and leveling became fun again, since the levels were coming in faster than they ever had before. I realize now, however, that I was really misguided in trying to level quickly, because once I got to 70, I had one of those horrible "What do I do now?" moments. I realize now it would have been more enjoyable if I had tried to see more while I was leveling, rather than rushing to the top.

Though Ghostcrawler (the lead system designer for WoW) has gone on the record as saying that the level cap is where it's at, I disagree. I have nothing against high end content per se, but I feel it's wrong to assume that end-game is better than leveling and that one should get there as fast as he can. There is a lot of joy to be found in leveling, and since it is a necessity anyways, you may as well savor it rather than viewing it as a necessary evil.

There are a few things in my mind that stand out as making leveling enjoyable. One is simply learning new moves and adjusting your playing habits to incorporate them into your gameplay. Though some of the abilities you will learn are somewhat useless, most of them add a unique facet to your combat, and this makes learning each new ability a unique joy.

More important, though, is the sheer amount of content to be found during the leveling process, especially in vanilla WoW. Once you reach the level cap, there are some more quests that you can do in Icecrown and Storm Peak, but everything after that is just running instances and raids while doing the same daily quests over and over and over again and waiting for Blizzard to add more content. While you are leveling, however, the content is already there for you, and there is plenty of it. Some of my best memories of leveling are quests I did in my trek from 1 to 60, including the Nesingwary series of quests in Stranglethorn.

Some of you may view questing just a way to speed up the leveling process, helping you gain more experience points and thus making leveling easier, but it is so much more than than. When you start the game, the intro cinematic gives you your general motivation. For me as a Night Elf, it was to defend Teldrassil. However, once you leave your starting zone, that initial motivation no longer applies. The question is, then, why do you fight? The answer can be found in your quests. From helping random civilians to doing a job for the King of Ironforge, quests keep you motivated to continue fighting, and thus continue playing.

More importantly, quests also provide a lot of back story for the game. If you never complete the Defias Brotherhood quest series, you'll never know what your motivation is for entering the Deadmines and killing Van Cleef, or why he rebelled against Stormwind in the first place. If you don't complete the quest that starts at the end of Uldaman, you'll never learn the origin of the Dwarves. And if you don't complete Big Game Hunter and the quests that lead up to it, you won't get the reference when you do their equivalent quests in Outland and Northrend.

What I'm trying to say is that questing is fun, and it's one of the main reasons to play that game. Once you reach end-game, you get one or two zones of level 80 quests, and then you are limited to the repeatable daily quests. The same ones. Over and over again. And while killing ten Defias thugs for one quest isn't that different from killing ten scourge zombies for another quest, doing it over and over again on the same enemies gets repetitive.

So when you do reach end-game, you have three choices of things to do: solo-ing, PvP, and raiding. Because Wrath of the Lich King homogenized the process of reputation gains and making money through dailies (more on this in another post; edit: this post can be found here), solo-ing in Wrath is pretty boring. Gone is the variety found in Vanilla and BC. All of your recipes for professions come from one or two sources; all of your reputations are increases through dailies and/or instance runs; all of your income comes from dailies now, since farming isn't as lucrative as it used to be. Along with their other forms of homogenization, Blizzard reduced the number of items used by high-level characters by a great deal, meaning there isn't much of a fortune to be made in farming. After all, with few items to farm, more people are farming the same items. High supply = low price.

Contrast end-game solo-ing with leveling and the choice of which is better is pretty clear. While leveling, you rarely do the same quest twice, and never over and over again, which keeps them interesting. And since not a lot of people are leveling characters these days, you'll find items which people still need, for leveling their professions and such, that aren't in constant supply. Admittedly, the demand isn't consistent either, but that's what keeps it interesting. You also always have a reason to fight, whereas solo-ers who reach end-game will finish their quests and have little reason left to keep fighting.

As for PvP, there is nothing to prevent you from PvP'ing as a low level character. You may not be in fair level brackets, but like I said, that's what keeps it interesting. Besides, those unfair deaths at level 21 fuel the anger which lets you kill lowbies at level 28. Good times, eh? I'll admit that I don't know much about PvP, but I know a lot of PvP'ers who says that resilience ruined PvP. Well, guess what? Up to level 60, you will find no resilience on your gear. There is arena, which you can't really do unless you are at the maximum level, but if you play WoW mainly for arena, you are better off rolling a character on an arena realm anyways.

The only remaining facet of end-game content that I have not touched upon is raiding. I will admit, this is the only case where end-game has leveling beat. Instances up to end-game (at least the ones worth doing) are limited to five people. If you seek more of a challenge and more of a social experience than that, then end-game is your only option. If you also raid in order to overcome the challenges of it, then you won't find much satisfaction in low level instances. "Progression" no longer exists anywhere other than level 80, so if you enjoy the progressively difficulty of raids, you will find little satisfaction is the dungeons of yore.

If, however, you run raids just for the phat loot, then I can't tell you that you will have more fun at 80 than on the way there. Instances are the best source of loot from PvE no matter what your level, and though you may use the argument "Oh, you'll just outgrow any instance gear you get while leveling," the same can be applied to the gear you get at level 80. Even if you deck yourself out in best-in-slot gear, another raid instance will be released a few months later, and your gear will become obsolete again. It's the same cycle either way:

run instances -> get good gear -> new content is released/becomse available -> gear becomes obsolete -> run new instances -> repeat ad infinitum

So what makes that cycle more enjoyable during leveling than raiding? Nothing really; it's just less work. You may think that you'll get less satisfaction out of your phat loot if it's easier to get, but really, how much satisfaction do you actually get out of your purples? In the end, gear itself is a bad reason to run instances. At least while you are leveling, you can use the excuse that it makes your leveling easier. Conversely, any gear you get while raiding only go towards making raiding easier; you are basically raiding so that you can raid more. The only excuse to do this is if you enjoy raids for themselves, and if you do, then gear is really a non-issue.

Thus concludes my thoughts on leveling. When you role your first character, take it slow, breath it all it, try some instances, and keep questing! That's how you keep the game interesting. If you already have a level 80 character and you steam-rolled your way there, try rolling an alt to see all the content you missed; there's a lot of it in this game, and it would be a shame to not see it; it was designed for you, after all.