How to gear up a druid at level 85 without entering an instance

Way back in the days of Wrath of the Lich King, I wrote a post about how to gear up a druid without entering an instance due to my own aversion to dungeons and my hesitance to rely on random drops to gear up. Well, now that Cataclysm has gotten underway, I thought I'd write a similar post for this expansion pack. This post is a collection your options for gearing up a Druid before you set foot in any 5-mans. Keep in mind that some slots don't have very good options, and you are probably better served getting gear for those slots from 5-mans themselves, but I included your options for those slots here just for completion's sake. Like last time, I will give you multiple options for each slot so you can pick the one that best suits you. Since balance druids can dip into resto's sections'for spirit pieces with the talent Balance of Power and the two feral druids share many pieces, I tried to avoid redundancy when there are actually different options for each one. In those cases, if you don't like any of the suggestions for your spec, check your corresponding partner spec's section for other options.

Weapon(s):
Balance: Beak of Julak-Doom (drop from a specific rare mob, most likely to be found on the AH), Insidious Staff (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Elementium Spellblade (blacksmithing), Very Manly Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands) Staff of Solemn Secrecy (world drop)
Feral (tank): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop, most likely to be found on the AH), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Elementium Hammer (blacksmithing), Shimmering Morningstar (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Gurgthock's Garish Gorebat (quest in Twilight Highlands), Mace of Apotheosis (world drop)

Off-hand:
Balance: Dungeoneering Guide (inscription), Skyflight Beacon/Air Raid Beacon (quest in Twilight Highlands) Book of Origination (dungeon drop, look on AH)
Resto: Heartbound Tome (world drop), Divine Companion (inscription) Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key (world drop)

Idol:
Balance: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)
Feral (tank): Halted Clock (world drop), Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Feral (DPS): Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Resto: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)

Head:
Balance: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Hood of Lost Solitude (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Wax-Filled Hood/Mechano-Assembler Headguard (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Neck:
Balance: Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Charm of the Muse (dungeon drop), Eye of Many Deaths (jewelcrafting)
Feral (tank): Elementium Guardian (jewelcrafting), Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (DPS): Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered), Barnacle Pendant (dungeon drop), Brazen Elementium Medallion or Entwined Elementium Choker (jewelcrafting), Nightrend Choker (world drop), Pendant of Victorious Fury (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Acanthia's Lost Pendant (dungeon drop), Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring, honored)

Shoulders:
Balance: Spaulders of Rolling Incineration (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Mantle of Wild Feathers/Spaulders of the Endless Plains (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored)

Back:
Balance: Ritssyn's Ruminous Drape (world drop), Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (tank): Zom's Electrostatic Cloak (world drop), Twilight Dragonscale Cloak (leatherworking), Shroud of Dark Memories (dungeon drop)
Feral (DPS): Razor-Edged Cloak (leatherworking)
Resto: Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)

Chest:
Balance: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking)
Feral (tank): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (DPS): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Resto: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking), Robes of the Loving Ursine (world drop), Wrap of the Fallen City (quest in Uldum)

Wrist:
Balance: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Flarefire Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Whirlpool Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Flarefire Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Hands:
Balance: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (tank): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)

Waist:
Balance: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)
Feral (tank): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)

Legs:
Balance: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (tank): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)

Feet:
Balance: Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)
Feral (tank): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Tarvus's Poison-Scarred Boots (drop from a specific rare mob), Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)

Rings:
Balance: Band of Singing Grass/Band of Lamentation (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, revered), Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane, revered), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting), Abandoned Dark Iron Ring (dungeon drop)
Feral (tank): Felsen's Ring of Resolve (Therazane, revered), Red Rock Band (Ramkahen, revered), Elementium Moebius Band (jewelcrafting)
Feral (DPS): Terrath's Signet of Balance (Therazane, revered), Band of Blades and/or Elementium Destroyer's Ring (jewelcrafting)
Resto: Ring of the Great Whale (dungeon drop), Ammunae's Blessing (Ramkahen, honored), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting)

Trinkets:
Balance: Stump of Time (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Volcano (completing the Volcanic Deck), Talisman of Sinister Order (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Mirror of Broken Images (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Earthquake (completing the Earthquake Deck)
Feral (DPS): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Impatience of Youth (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Hurricane (completing the Hurricane Deck) Schnotzz's Medallion of Command (quest in Uldum)
Resto: Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Tsunami (completing the Tsunami Deck), Rainsong (dungeon drop)

The sad state of illustrious grand master enchanting

I haven't been very happy with the state of enchanting going into Cataclysm. Yes, archeology may have it bad, and that's an issue that affects more players than are affected by the problems with enchanting (assumedly), but that's why I wrote about it first, and now its time for my primary profession to take the spotlight.

You see, enchanting is in a rough spot right now. For those with no experience with enchanting other than having others enchant their gear, enchanting is both a gathering profession and a crafting profession. We "gather" materials by disenchanting green-quality or better weapons and armor, which destroys the armor and awards us with the materials we need to do our enchantments. The steadiest supply of green-quality or better armor is quests, and thus the best way to level enchanting is to gather materials by disenchanting weapons and armor awarded by the quests we do as we level up. This applies at all levels, from level 10 to the level range we find ourselves in now.

Now, once upon a time, an enchanter could disenchant any piece of gear, regardless of its ilevel, but in Burning Crusade, most gear was given a minimum enchanting skill that would be required to disenchant the gear. Gear awarded by quests in Vashj'ir, Mount Hyjal, and Deeopholm require 425 enchanting to disenchant (except a few of the rares, which require 500 skill), which is good and all, but upon entering Uldum, we are greeted with an ugly surprise. The quest rewards in Uldum, including the simple greens that we so depend on to obtain our basic mats, require 475 skill to disenchant. This is problematic, because there's no guarantee that an enchanter will reach 475 skill by the time he reaches Uldum. I myself just barely made it to 475 with the materials I obtained by disenchanting quest rewards from Hyjal and Deepholm, and I had a ten skill-point head start with my leftover materials from Wrath of the Lich King. In other words, I was only able to level enchanting 15 to 20 skill points with the materials I obtained from questing in Hyjal and Deepholm, and I was lucky enough to have the 25 skill point head start thanks to advanced Wrath of the Lich King recipes (enchanting becomes very costly to level with Wrath of the Lich King recipes around 425). Someone who didn't get that head start would be even more likely found himself unable to disenchant his quest rewards. He'd probably have to go back to whichever 80-82 zone he hasn't already completed so he can obtain more materials, which I found myself doing, so even that might not be enough to push him to the 475 level. In other words, enchanting has the potential to flat out break for someone trying to level it along side a typical leveling pattern. Enchanting has never been an easy profession to level by any stretch of the imagination, but this is just not acceptable.

How to fix this issue? Well, lowering the minimum required skill to disenchant Cataclysm greens would be a start. The lowest skill required to start learning recipes that use Cataclysm-era materials is 425, so it seems a bit of an unreasonable jump for lowly greens to go from requiring 425 skill to 475 skill, since that's fifty skill points the enchanter could potentially need to earn with only two zones' worth of materials. If that number were lowered to 450, this issue could be solved easily and with minimal effort.

That's the main issue I have with illustrious grand master enchanting as it is, but there is a more minor one that has taken up my thoughts, too: currently, all Cataclysm enchantments are restricted to ilevel-300 gear, and I find that just plain unjustified. The highest ilevel of gear anyone can obtain from Wrath of the Lich King content is 284 (from heroic 25-man Lich King and Ruby Sanctum), and while Hyjal and Vashj'ir quest rewards have a lower ilevel than that, Deepholm's quest rewards don't, and is it that unreasonable for players to want to enchant their Cataclysm gear with Cataclysm enchants? It would be just as easy for Blizzard to restrict the Cataclysm enchants to ilevel 285 and above; it would have the same effect of preventing Cataclysm enchants from being used on Wrath gear, and it would allow enchanters to start using their new and exciting toys earlier.

In fact, why not just lower the minimum ilevel for Cataclysm enchants to 270? 272 is the lowest ilevel of Cataclysm gear, so this minimum would allow enchanters to use their new toys as soon as they entered Cataclysms content. Yes, this cutoff would include some Wrath of the Lich King gear, but it would only include gear obtained from the hardest of raid instances. And though I may be wrong, I was always under the impression that these minimum ilevel restrictions were put in to prevent high-level enchants from being put on low-level gear, so you couldn't add 130 agility to the Alarmbringer's Mace. But now that the era of Wrath of the Lich King is over, the only gear over ilevel 270 that anyone can reasonably expect to get is Cataclysm gear, and considering that Wrath of the Lich King raid gear that is over ilevel 270 is better than Cataclysm quest greens of the same ilevel, I don't imagine that allowing Cataclysm enchantments on such gear would create a stat imbalance at all.

Now, one might say that stat imbalances are exactly why these seemingly-unreasonably high minimums are required. Take at look at the Beakless Polearm, for example. It's a quest reward from Vashj'ir, one of the two lowest-level zones in Cataclysm. If one were to enchant it with the Mighty Agility enchantment, the amount of agility it provides would be almost doubled, and that could be considered an imbalance in terms of how much of an effect enchantments are supposed to have. But it all balances out in the end, because as a green-quality quest reward, the Beakless Polearm won't remain the player's weapon of choice for very long. It will soon be replaced, and a player will go through materials very quickly if he tries to keep all of his replacement weapons enchanted. Thus, though the benefit of applying such a powerful enchantment to such a low-level weapon might be high, the amount of time that the player will use that weapon is comparatively low, and thus the total benefit he gets out of that enchantment will be about the same it would be if he had enchanted a higher-level weapon.

You might be wondering, why is this even an issue? After all, no player in their right mind would enchant gear they plan on replacing soon, so who would put an enchantment on a green-quality weapon? No player who isn't an enchanter, that is. We enchanters are the only ones who would have access to a steady enough stream of materials that we'd be comfortable enchanting green-quality gear, so it's not unheard of for us to do just that. If it weren't for the fact that I have materials to spare due to disenchanting all of my quest rewards, I would never have put 50 haste rating on my Bloodcult Handwraps, yet because I have dusts and essences to spare, I did just that. Of course, given the choice, I would have put that enchantment on my Corecrusher Gloves, too, but they were too low level for me to do so.

Since enchanting is the only profession I have any experience with in the illustrious grand master range (other than herbalism, which is doing just fine, thankfully), I now put out this question to my readers: are other professions suffering similarly? Do you find yourself unable to properly level up your primary professions whilst leveling up normally? Or is enchanting the only profession suffering from these kinds of issues?

Potential improvements to archeology

Let me say from the outset that I really enjoy archeology. Having leveled this secondary skill into the master range, I can say with certainty that it is one of my favorite additions made to the game in Cataclysm. I'm something of a text addict--that is to say I eagerly read every little bit of text that developers put into a game (Metroid Prime took me a very long time to complete for that reason)--so I quite enjoy reading the little text blurbs that come along with each artifact. The fact that I don't have to compete with other players for dig sites is also a much-appreciated aspect of the profession, and one of the reasons I have progressed so far with it; flying to and excavating my own dig sites is much less stressful than competing for quest objectives when the realm is full.

With that said, archeology isn't perfect, and there are some things I believe could be done to improve the profession. Some are minor issues I have with it, issues which I by no means assume are universal qualms which everyone has with the profession:

-I find that knowing which artifact I am crafting ahead of time takes away from the sense of discovery one would think would accompany digging up unknown relics from ages past. Sure, all we get is an icon and a name, but that's enough that the less-than-detailed text blurbs become an underwhelming reward for completing the artifact. That sense of solving a mystery could perhaps be recovered if the icon were revealed bit by bit with each fragment recovered, with the name not being known until the artifact is completed.

-Searching through the list of completed artifacts for one you have just completed just to read the text gets tedious fast. If that text could somehow be copied and become yellow flavor-text for the artifact when it is in your inventory, that would be much more convenient.

-Getting artifacts that sell for five silver at level 85 is pretty underwhelming, especially when one has leveled archeology well beyond the initial stages, where it's understandable for the artifacts to not be worth much (we can't let level 20 players get artifacts which sell for dozens of gold, after all). I think it would stand to reason that as we get better at archeology, we get better at putting together artifacts, and thus the artifacts that we put together could become more valuable. Now, it would be no fun if all artifacts sold for the same amount, so perhaps, instead, the value of the vendor trash artifacts could increase as our archeology skill increases (if Blizzard needed to keep it simple, they could make the value scale just with whether we are journeymen, experts, artisans, etc. in archeology). Under this system, an artifact that currently sells for five silver would sell for less than one that currently sells for twenty, no matter what, but it would still be worth something to a level 85 character with Illustrious Grand Master Archeology.

But there is something more fundamental to the profession that just feels off to me, and that something is the way that we find the fragments for our artifacts. I'm talking about the Survey ability. In its current form, finding fragments with survey feels more like running around following signs than actually searching a dig site. It feels more like we are being lead to the artifact than actually finding it. Now, being that I didn't follow archeology in beta, it could be that this was the best way of finding fragments that Blizzard could come up with, and that they went through many iterations before settling on this one. However, I still believe that one simple change could make finding artifact fragments a more satisfying experience.

I propose that Survey be split into two abilities. One would retain the Survey name and would still spawn the telescope mechanism that survey spawns when you aren't right next to an artifact. However, it would not automatically excavate an artifact once you get close enough to it. To do that, you would need to use the "Excavate" ability, which would collect archeological fragments if you are close enough to them to collect them. Excavate would have a five second cast time, to make the choice to use it more consequential, which would also lead to finding those artifacts being more satisfying. Because it would be serving fewer purposes, the cooldown of Survey could be reduced. This would make pinpointing the exact location of the artifact fragments easier and get rid of that annoying wait during the final stage of looking for an artifact, when you are in the green zone and know you don't have to move far to get closer to the artifact fragments, so you spend much of your time just waiting for Survey to come off of its cooldown.

The reason I think this will make archeology more satisfying, and thus more enjoyable, is that it will bring some strategy into the profession. As I mentioned before, finding artifact fragments with archeology now feels like following arrows until we get to our destination, and we don't know with each survey whether we'll just get another arrow, or whether we'll actually find the artifact fragments. With this set-up, we would have to figure out where the fragment is before digging (in order to avoid wasting time casting Excavate), and that would bring some thought into the excavation process. Now, if this ended up making fragments take longer to find, then the numbers could be changed to balance that out; there could be more fragments per find, or fewer finds per dig-site (which each find giving more fragments).

Now, I by no means think that every player would enjoy this kind of change, which is why I'm posting it here and not of the official forums. With that said, do you think that this kind of change would make archeology more fun and/or satisfying? Or do I just have unreasonably high standards for how challenging the solo content should be?

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.

Should all crafting professions have related gathering professions?

Monday's Breakfast Topic on WoW.com got me thinking about tailoring and enchanting, two crafting professions that don't have a gathering profession associated with them. (Tailoring once used leather for some of its patterns, but that practice petered out after the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and though enchanting uses some materials that can be gathered with mining, it's hardly enough to make pairing the two a foregone conclusion.) All of the other crafting professions have some gathering profession associated with them: blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting have mining; leatherworking has skinning; and alchemy and inscription have herbalism. This makes tailoring and enchanting a couple of black sheep in the professions world. Though it used to be common practice to pair the two, considering that they were nicely self-contained, as far as I know, this practice is less common today. I myself am an enchanter who took herbalism as his second profession, partly to make some money on the side and partly because I love Lifeblood (especially as a tank, though I may switch to mining at some point in the future--probably not until I have a max-level alt with herbalism).

But that's beside the point. Considering that these two professions are outside of the norm, in that they are self-contained in both the gathering of their materials and the crafting of their items, should they have an associated gathering profession? At this point in the game, it's probably too late to make a such a drastic change to the profession system, but one can still consider whether we are better off with this system or whether it would have been better to associate those two professions with a gathering profession.

I use the word "would" because with the system as it is, it is perfectly justifiable for tailoring and enchanting to be self-contained professions. For starters, Enchanting is expensive to level up and use. If you level enchanting as you level your character, you lose out on the money you would have made selling your extra quest rewards and green items. (blues are usually worth enough that if a blue item is BoE, it's better to sell the item and use that money buy shards if need be than to disenchant the item.) Having enchanting as an independent profession allows the enchanter to take a gathering profession, allowing them to gather items to sell on the auction house to offset the cost of leveling enchanting. The same reasoning applies even when the enchanter reaches the skill cap. They still lose out on the money they could have gotten by selling BoE greens (I disenchant them, at least), but by having a gathering profession, they can offset that cost.

Tailoring, as it is, is also justified in being a stand-alone profession. Tailoring stands out to me as the most limited of the crafting professions. Alchemy makes potions that everyone uses, blacksmithing makes armor for three of the classes in the game and weapons for everyone, engineering is just all kinds of fun, everyone needs their armor enchanted, jewelcrafting makes jewelry for everyone and gems that are not only for all classes but also for all gear levels, inscription makes glyphs for everyone, and leatherwoking makes armor for four classes. Tailoring is the most limited profession after leatherwoking, making armor for only three classes and nothing else*. With such a limited objective market, it's reasonable for tailors to be allowed an additional profession slot with which to add some more utility to their character.

Now we move from the realm of the here-and-now to the realm of the what-could-have-been. Suppose Blizzard had made tailoring a more expansive profession and made enchanting linked to mats that don't deny the player a source of income; would they have been justified in linking both of them to a gathering profession? If we ignore the logistics of how they would have done this when we consider this issue, then there seems to be no logic against it. However, the logistics are where the idea falls apart. Skinning would have been the logical choice to pair with tailoring (it needs the love; it has no use outside of leatherwoking and minor use in some other professions), but how to make cloth out of leather? Perhaps there could have been a gathering profession that allows tailors to gather cloth somehow (perhaps from the clothes of their enemies), but enchanting would need to be linked to that one as well to prevent it from becoming a second one-crafting-profession gathering profession (skinning being the first). I could conceive of cloth being the base material for enchanting; it could be used to apply patches to gear, patches that have been infused with various materials gathered by the enchanter. However, this would leave no way for people to gather cloth to make bandages with first aid. Some other way for them to make bandages would need to be implemented, but no other commonly available reagent would work from a realistic point of view. Thus Blizzard would need to add some sort of specific reagent to first aid, but that would create an orphan reagent that is useless for all other purposes, or else they could add a way for players with first aid to also gather cloth for their own purposes only and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

Yeah, it's a logistical nightmare. I'm glad Blizzard chose to make enchanting and tailoring the way they are.

*I realize that tailors can make two different cloaks that all classes can use (though only caster classes would use), but leatherworkers can also make two cloaks that all classes can use, as well as armor for four classes. My only point was the tailors have the most limited market in terms of what they can make, and their two cloaks don't change this fact.

Reflections on leveling a shadow priest

Having grown bored with all that end-game has to offer my druid and having temporarily lost interest in my long-suffering shaman alt (I'll find him interesting again at some point; my interest in him ebbs and wains) I have turned to the dark side, rolled a priest, and spec'ed him shadow for leveling (get it?). I rolled him simply because I was getting bored with healing as a tree and I wanted to try a new healing style. Neither the shaman nor the paladin healing style particularly appealed to me, so the priest was the logical decision. In leveling my priest, I have learned a few things that I thought I would share with you.

Leveling an alt is easier when you have goals for that alt and they are reasonable.
What surprised me the most was how dedicated I was to this alt. Most of my alts never get past level 25 (my shaman being the notable exception, currently at 62), but my priest is currently level 30 and still going strong. In fact, he is the first character I have leveled mostly without any rested state. What made him different? Probably my goals with him. I rolled my shaman mostly with the intent to have fun, which is why I have stuck with him. I rolled all of my other alts out of class envy and leveled them with the intent of using them in group-play in the back of my mind. However, that was such a far off goal I never stuck with those alts. With my priest, my goal was to get him to 40, buy dual specs, make his other spec holy, and start healing dungeons. A much more reasonable goal, aye? Since my end-goal for my priest isn't as far off as my goals for my other alts were, I was more motivated to level him. The larger lesson is that if you role an alt for fun, focusing on how you will use him at end-game will make you less motivated to play it.

Leveling an alt is more fun when you take two gathering professions.
My priest has skinning and herbalism, but if he actually reaches a higher level, I'll drop skinning and power-level alchemy. Why herbalism and not mining? For Lifeblood, of course; that ability has saved me quite a few times. Why not level alchemy now and save myself the hassle? A few reasons.
1. Selling all those herbs and all that leather on the auction house makes my alt filthy rich and able to stand on his own without injections of money from my main.
2. Leveling alchemy would just be another thing to do and would distract me from questings and leveling in general.
3. Leveling a profession now so I don't need to do it later causes me to think about the future too much, and though having reasonable goals for an alt makes him easier to level (as I said before), the easiest way to stick with an alt is to focus on the here-and-now and not think about the future.

Shadow is not a very attractive leveling tree.
Now, when I say that shadow isn't attractive for leveling, I don't mean that it isn't viable or fun; it is both of those things. However, when a priest first starts out, he can cause more damage with Smite and Holy Fire than he can with Mind Flay and Mind Blast. Throw in the DoTs for added damage and leveling holy seems like a good idea. Thing is, Mind Flay and Mind Blast have many talents that improve their damage and mana-efficiency, but Smite and Holy Fire don't have as many, and priests that spec holy won't take talents that improve those abilities. Smite and Holy Fire are supposed to allow healing priests to be able to fend for themselves, so they need to have high damage to be viable. However, that means that at low levels, shadow doesn't do as much damage as holy, which is just not right. Perhaps increasing the damage of low ranks of Mind Flay and Mind Blast (and increasing the damage they cause at lower levels once ranks are removed) could solve this problem. Speaking of which...

Ability ranks need to go, now.
Ability ranks are going away with Cataclysm, but they need to go out the door right now. As it stands, all ranks of spells cost the same amount of mana. This means that as you level, each spell gets less and less mana efficient until you can purchase the next rank. On my priest, this resulted in Mind Flay, which is supposed to be the pinnacle of mana efficiency, being my least mana-efficient ability during the few levels before its upgrade. It also caused the least amount of damage, so I had no reason to use it at all. Having all ranks of spells cost the same while still requiring that their damage be upgraded every few levels simply doesn't work; it needs to end now, before Cataclysm comes out. It can't be that difficult to implement, so why delay such a necessary fix?

Have you learned any other interesting lessons by leveling alts?

What can you do at 80 without a group?

As someone who doesn't have time to raid and who doesn't enjoy PvP, heroics are the only way I can engage in group play at the level cap. However, with the addition of the dungeon finder and the heroic chain-run binge it brought about in me, I have since grown tired of heroics. Having gotten all that I can out of the fishing dailies, cooking dailies, and all that I care to get out of the Argent Tournament (seriously, I really don't like that place), I have been pondering; what is there that is left for me to do? As I said in my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, most of what there is to do at level 80 is split into five categories: 5-mans, raiding, battlegrounds, arenas, and dailies. I have been growing more and more tired of dailies, but I suppose that is because I am no longer working towards a meaningful goal. I used to do the dailies for the reputation, then I did them for the money in saving up for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. Now, when I do them, it is simply as something to do, and they aren't that enjoyable in that way.

So, that brings us to our topic: what can one do at level 80 that doesn't involve groups? In writing this list, I am excluding the Argent Tournament and doing dailies for the sake of making money.

Finish any quests you never did
I am, of course, referring to the one-time quests, not the dailies. I personally hit 80 in Sholazar Basin, so that left two whole zones of quests for me to do. If you haven't finished off the one-time quests in Northrend, do them. They give you gold and are quite fun, as well.

Work on your reputations
There are quite a few factions in Northrend, and you can try to get exalted with them if you need something to do. Sadly, the only way to get exalted with most of them is through dailies and heroics, but if you do dailies while working toward a goal, they aren't so bad. The main benefit of doing this is that eventually you'll be able to talk to anyone when you want to repair your gear and you'll be able to get the repairs at the lowest possible price. If you decide to work on your reputations, see my post on how to level Northrend reputations without championing, which goes over how to get exalted with the Northrend factions without grouping.

Level your professions
There's a chance you didn't get your professions to 450 on the way to 80. I know that as an enchanter, getting to 450 was very difficult and took a lot of time, so your professions may be lying in your spellbook, waiting to reach their full potential. If so, max them out. It will make leveling them easier when Cataclysm hits.

Level your secondary skills
Granted, if you are starting from scratch, cooking and first aid will require doing more than just grinding in Northrend, but you can level fishing anywhere now, so your only concern in that case is overcoming the boredom you will inevitably feel while doing it. Cooking is a no-brainer to level now, and I imagine first aid isn't much more difficult (as a druid, I don't really have any use for first aid, so I haven't leveled it to Northrend levels).

Go out and farm stuff
Collect things with your gathering professions. Go and fish somewhere. Grind some elementals for some motes. Grind some beasts for some meat. Go to Storm Peaks and grind some Relics of Ulduar. Go out and grind the materials for some high end crafted epics, or just sell the stuff you get. Ironically, the monotony of farming can really break up the monotony of chain-running heroics quite well. It may not be the most efficient way to make money, but when you are bored with the best way (dailies), the second best begins to look even better.

Explore
Northrend is an amazing continent. It is really well designed and looks just beautiful. Why not get on your flying mount and just go out and explore? Find some little nook or cranny you missed while leveling up. Fly to the top of a really high mountain. Do something with no mind for the reward. You just might get an achievement for it as well.

Sadly, because of Blizzard's homogenization efforts, there isn't much to do at level 80 that doesn't involve dailies or groups. If you don't like any of the ideas above, your only choice is to go back to old content. Next week, I'll write a post about things you can do in the old world if you are bored with Northrend's end-game.

Should enchanters be indignant about the new disenchant option in the loot window?

Whenever a post on WoW.com mentions the new looting system added with patch 3.3, the comment section invariably gets filled with enchanters complaining about the new option to disenchant loot automatically. For those of you not familiar with the new system, I'll explain it. If there is an enchanter in the party, then on the loot window, next to the greed option, is a disenchant option. If someone picks this option, they roll against other people who picked disenchant and greed, and if they win, the item is automatically disenchanted for them and they receive the resulting mats.

When this system was first announced, I for one, was excited. I had always found it to be an incredible pain to roll greed on items that dropped, hoping no one else would roll greed because they missed me telling them not to, disenchanting the items, having everyone else roll on the shards, and passing them out. It took too long and there was too much room for misunderstanding. After a while, I stopped telling people I was an enchanter and just rolled greed with everyone else, disenchanting an item if I won. With this new system, it is all automatic. It's painless, easy, and in my own personal opinion better.

Still, the naysayers still exist, and some arguments seem to come up consistently. For example...

This new system takes away our choice!
Think for just a minute; what was our choice before 3.3 came out? We could choose between two options.
1. Take all of the items, disenchant them, pass out the shards
2. Do nothing and only disenchant the items we get, so we are the only one who get shards
These days, this is our only choice: Let others roll on shards from all gear that drops. If you ask me, it combines the best of both of the previous choices. After all, we are just as likely to receive shards through this new system, and it allows others to receive shards as well, but it is just as painless as the second former option. I suppose from the sole perspective of the enchanter, the new system is just as good as the second former option, since he'll likely get the same number of shards regardless, but we need to think about other people as well. The fact is that other people need shards so that they can get enchantments, and this new system affords them an easy way of doing so without creating an inconvenience for us.

The market is going to be flooded with enchanting mats, lowering the prices!
Again, we need to think of more people than ourselves. Sure, we'll be making less money off of the enchanting mats we sell (personally, I keep all of my mats so that I can enchant new gear, but I am starting to have a lot of them laying around), but we need to think about the people getting those enchantments. They need the enchantments so that they can perform at their best, so in a way, enchanting helps raid progression. If enchantments are easier to get, then perhaps raid progression will be easier as well. Not a very convincing argument, I know, but these days, dailies are the best way to make money, anyways.

I shouldn't even bother leveling enchanting now!
This is a flat-out lie. I can tell you that there are still great benefits to enchanting, even if we can't personally disenchant drops (was that ever a benefit?).
1. There needs to be an enchanter in the party for the disenchant option to appear. This new system isn't replacing us; it's streamlining what we used to do.
2. We are still needed to perform those enchantments. It's not like people can apply enchantments themselves if they have the necessary mats.
3. You can still enchant your own gear. In a world where so much emphasis is placed on enchantments, I see this as the biggest benefit of enchanting. When a new piece of gear drops and we win it, we can put an enchantment on it there and then. We don't need to go through the hassle of buying the mats or running heroics and hoping to collect them through the new disenchant option, and we don't have to go through the hassle of finding an enchanter and tipping him afterward. I'm amazed at how easily enchanters forget that simple fact, for it is the one reason why I am still an enchanter.

In short, to my fellow enchanters, calm the heck down. This new system benefits everyone, even you.

How to gear up for two roles at once

As a druid who is both a tank and a healer (I gave up on being competitive at DPS a long time ago), I know how difficult it is to keep an adequate set of gear for two roles. By trying to stay competitive at two roles at once, you need to dedicate more time to gearing up just because you are keeping two sets of gear updated at once, whereas people who focus on one role don't need to do that. When your resources are spread that thin, you need to make ends meet however you can. That is what this post is about: tips to help you keep two sets of gear updated at once.

1. Take advantage of unneeded epics
This piece of advice applies more to people who are trying to start a second set of gear, but rolling on gear that drops in raids that other people don't need is a great way to keep two sets of gear up-to-date. This may be difficult if you guild uses a loot system that doesn't allow for people to role on gear for offsets without serious detriments to themselves, but if you take advantage of both sets of gear in raids, they'll probably understand and make some sort of accommodation.

2. Use your emblems intelligently
The various emblems that drop from instances are a great way to upgrade your gear when you may not be able to otherwise, but don't spend you emblems on something you may be able to get an upgrade for in an instance. If you are running 10-man Trial of the Crusader and you need a healing offhand item, you should spend your emblems on that since none drop in there, but if you need a DPS offhand, you may want to wait for the one that drops in there. Likewise, if you are a Death Knight, Druid, Shaman, or Paladin, you should focus on upgrading the item in your relic slot first, since no relics drop from TotC. More generally, you should look on wowhead to see what gear the raid your are running drops so that you know which items you won't be able to get. Those are the slots you should get gear for first using emblems. Aside from that, if you are interested in keeping both sets up-to-date, just update whichever item is in most dire need of an update, no matter which set it is from.

3. BoE/crafted items are your friend
No one said keeping two sets updated was easy, or cheap. Because you will need to split your drops/emblems between your two sets, anything you can do outside of an instance to make gearing up easier is a good thing. If you are starting a new set from scratch, use a combination of reputation rewards, BoE drops, items from the Argent Tournament, and crafted items to get yourself started. That should get you geared enough to do the daily heroic quests, which will be a good source of emblems.

4. Consider taking up enchanting
As an enchanter, I can't lie to you; if you aren't leveling it up as you yourself level up, enchanting is a pain and a half to level, and incredibly expensive too. It's not as lucrative as it used to be ever since rare enchants like crusader went the way of the shaman tank, so what's the main draw of it? Mainly, you can enchant your own gear the minute you get it. If you win an item in an instance, just put an enchant on it right there. It takes the hassle out of getting new gear enchanted (which you will need to do a lot if you don't have it, considering you will be going after twice as much gear) and gives you that much of an edge if you have difficulty staying ahead when it comes to gear.

Keeping two sets of gear is difficult, but the reward is that you will be able to fill two roles in any groups you join and any raids you do with your guild, making you a more flexible player and increasing the chance that you will get an instance group. I can tell you from personal experience that it is incredibly rewarding, so go to it!

New professions as the embodiments of each expansion pack

One thing I have noticed about both Jewelcrafting and Inscription is that they both embodied significant aspects of their respective expansion pack. I will go over each one in time, but this got me thinking: if this is true of the previous professions, then what can we gleam about Cataclysm from the new profession that is slated to be included, Archaeology? Let's find out.

Burning Crusade was a partial deviation from many of the ways Blizzard did things. Factions were emphasized much more, and Jewelcrafting reflected this by having many of its patterns for gem cuts (of which there were many) come from reputations. Burning Crusade also brought the advent of heroics, many of which dropped Jewelcrafting plans, encouraging jewelcrafters to run them. BC also had something for both new players and players at the level cap (with the inclusion of two new races and the new continent, respectively), but it was mostly focused on the level cap. This was reflected in jewelcrafting, which finally allowed for the creation of useful BoE jewelry for people who were still leveling up, but mostly found its niche in the the creation of gems to put in high-level players' gear. Because of all of these facets (pun not intended) of Jewelcrafting, Jewelcrafting reflected the spirit of BC: varied and with something for everyone.

Inscription, of the other hand, really reflected Blizzard's push for homogenization in Wrath of the Lich King (see my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content if you haven't already). Blizzard pushed for a more straight forward way of players acquiring their recipes for professions, which Inscription definitely reflects, for all of Inscription's recipes are gained from either trainers or discovery, with the one exception of Technique: Rituals of the New Moon (seriously, that is the only exception). Wrath also made it much easier to level up professions, as anyone who leveled a profession to Grand Master level can attest. Inscription followed this pattern, with all herbs the scribe found being turned into ink, meaning that it didn't matter what herbs you found; as long as they were the right level, you would get the ink you needed to level the profession. Inscription also focused mostly on high-end content, since that is when the profession is at its most useful (with the third major glyph slot being unlocked at 80) and glyphs were really expensive when the profession was first implemented, so they couldn't be accessed by low level players. Thus the products in inscription were only available to those close to the level cap, like all of the new content in Wrath. Of course, glyphs have since come down to a reasonable price now that everyone has glyphs and the demand has shrunk.

So, what can we infer about Cataclysm by looking at Archeology? Let's take a look, going point by point on all of the information WoWWiki has on the new secondary skill.

-It will be a secondary profession.
This means it will be available to everyone. Considering that Cataclysm will change Azeroth to make leveling easier and also include new end-game content, it really will be an expansion for everyone, so this fits.

-Focused on locating artifacts unearthed by the cataclysm.
So the cataclysm itself will be an important part of the expansion pack. No surprises there. Perhaps Cataclysm will also result in us finding out something about Warcraft's past that we had no idea of before.

-Artifacts will go into a new artifact journal instead of your inventory.
Blizzard has put more emphasis on clearing bag space by making more things not take up space in bags (pets, mounts, emblems, non-monetary currency, etc.), so this is no surprise either. Perhaps Cataclysm will result in even more things going somewhere aside from our bags. Tabards, please?

-Placing an artifact in your journal will allow you to "study" it and progressively unlock new rewards.
Perhaps this points to a larger theme of going back to the same place multiple times. Obviously we will be doing that by going back to Azeroth, but perhaps Blizzard will also have us running dungeons multiple times in order to advance the dungeon's story, getting better rewards each time.

-Unlocks unique rewards such as vanity pets.
If Archaeology will not be just about the epic loot and the "useful" rewards, perhaps Cataclysm will be the same way. As a pet collector and a casual player, this pleases me.

-Unlocks paths in the Paths of the Titans system. This will give players a tool to change their characters even more than regular talents.
Path of the Titans, as far as I know, is slated to be a way for player to improve their character at the level cap without raiding or PvP'ing. It's basically end-game for solo-ers. We know that Azeroth's make-over will certainly be something for the solo-ers, but perhaps Cataclysm's end-game will also be more geared towards solo-ers.

If these predictions are accurate, they certainly make me excited for Cataclysm. Let's hope they are.

Are group members in an instance group entitled to the disenchanter's services?

With the announcement of the way the new loot system will work in patch 3.3, the wow.com comment section was in a flurry of people debating whether groups are entitled to an enchanter disenchanting their blues. As an enchanter, I can personally relate to this issue: enchanting is not a cheap profession to level, and because enchanting recipes aren't rare these days, we can't charge what we used to be able to charge for them. As such, the main use of our profession becomes making shards out of the unwanted blues in heroics. Many enchanters feel this is unfair, for herbalists aren't expect to share the herbs they gather from herb nodes within dungeons, and ditto for miners with nodes and skinners with bodies. Is this fair? That is the question I want to consider today.

It is important to remember that, unlike the gathering professions, enchanters are taking items that players could otherwise use. If you have a group with no herbalists and you pass by an herb in a dungeon, it makes no difference to your group that it is there at all. If, however, you do a dungeon run with no enchanters, you can sell the blues for a few quick gold. (It's not much, but this ring sells for about five gold, for example) As such, when an enchanter rolls greed on every BoP drop in an instance (as most do to make the process easier), he is denying the other members of the group potential gain, something that does not happen when an herbalist takes an herb. As such, if the disenchanter gives everyone in the group the same chance to gain the item as him by rolling greed along with them, then they have no claim to any shards he gets from disenchanting the items. However, by greeding on the pieces for the purpose of DE'ing them, the disenchanter does in fact owe it to the group to give them back the shards. (Of course, since I tend to get the lowest role, I am always considering keeping a shard for myself, no matter what the roles are. But I digress.)

Still, I have not considered the question of whether the group is entitled to the enchanter's services. Does the enchanter owe it to the group to disenchant its unused BoP items into shards to give back to them? From a purely practical standpoint, he certainly does. Dream shards sell for abut 10 or 15 gold on my realm, much more than a player can get by selling the gear to a vendor (except in rare cases, like 2H weapons). Of course, there is the issue of simply taking the effort to disenchant the item, but this won't be a concern after patch 3.3.

That said, one issue I saw brought up a lot in the comments on the wow.com post was that the inclusion of the new disenchant option on the new loot interface took away the enchanter's choice. Enchanters will no longer have a choice as to whether their profession is taken advantage of, and many enchanters in the comments section of the post were quite indignant that the widespread taken-for-granted-ness of our profession, one that is incredibly expensive to level, is now being institutionalized. To this I say, so what? Yes, disenchanting is probably the most under-appreciated profession-related job in the game, but we aren't going to change that by being stingy with our services.

To those angry enchanters, try to think about it this way: when you enchant someone's gear, how frequently do you do so with your own mats? How frequently do you do with theirs? The fact is that most of our business is done with people who buy their mats off of the AH, and where do they get their mats? Us. Even if you withhold your disenchanting services out of hope to raising the prices of dream shards, other enchanters will gladly disenchant stuff for people, keeping the market flooded. Point is, there is no point in withholding disenchanting services, and though we won't have a choice after patch 3.3, there is no point in doing it now.

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 1: Professions

We have all had some time to think about what we would like to see in the new expansion, and I especially have high hopes for this one. Because Cataclysm will remake Azeroth completely, it will basically be WoW 2. This means that Blizzard has many opportunities to do things over and improve the game in a vast number of ways, and I hope they take advantage of those opportunities. I'd like to discuss some specific ways I hope the game is improved, starting with an aspect of the game that I think has become particularly bland since the release of the last expansion: professions.

As I went over in my post on the homogonization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, professions have become simplified, streamlined, and boring. Perhaps I feel this the most because I am an enchanter, and we get all of our recipes (excluding the odd raid drop) from trainers and the shard vender. That is an incredibly boring way to get recipes, and it quickly grows grindy. As it stands now, almost all professions get the majority of their recipes from some kind of currency vendor or from reputations. Alchemy and Inscription add some variety with their research mechanics, but I want more.

Now granted, I'm not going to attempt to glorify the days of limited quantity recipes in Burning Crusade, where you needed to visit Wowhead, look for all recipes sold by vendors, and fly around to visit all of them, and ditto for recipes that dropped from mobs. I would like a little more transparency in my recipe acquirement, but the current system takes it too far. What I would like is some sort of happy medium. Profession-specific quests are out of the question, for Blizzard has expressed a big aversion to quests that a limited part of the player population can see. But what if we had quests for professions that offered a recipe for whatever crafting profession(s) you have? After your trainer has taught you all they can, they can send you off to some artisan who you help in a way that would vary based on your profession (the only thing that would vary between the quests would be the specific items that would be the goals of the quest, such as a specific potion or enchanting a piece of the artisan's armor, so it wouldn't be that difficult to make different versions of the quests for each profession). The quest text could be very vague to allow for this kind of variation. For example, the artisan could say, "I seek to understand the more benevolent forces of this world. Can you help me with that?" An alchemist could make a spirit potion, a blacksmith could make a blue healadin armor piece, an enchanter could enchant one of the artisan's pieces for spirit, a scribe could make a few glyphs for healing spells, etc. He could also send you out to collect quest items to help him in his research. You would then turn in the quest and get a recipe as a reward. Perhaps an MP5 flask for alchemy, an epic healadin set for blacksmiths, an upgraded mooncloth set for tailors, jumper cables for engineers, etc. This could make acquiring recipes more of a challenge without making it difficult, and it would certainly make being able to craft said item more satisfying.

Another issue I have with professions as they are now is the lack of exclusive benefits for the crafter. I know that balancing these benefits was an issue in Burning Crusade, but as it stands now, every profession with the exception of Engineering and Tailoring gives the exact same stat benefits to the crafter, but it just gives them in different ways. Scroll down to the seventh paragraph in my homogenization post to see an example. While this makes balancing easier, the fact is that it's not enough. Crafter-specific benefits have been simplified to the point of irrelevance, and that makes professions suffer.

But what can be done without throwing the crafting system into imbalance? Many of the simplifications resulted from failed crafter-only benefits, such as potion chugging when combined with an alchemist's stone and BoP crafter armor. While we need simple benefits like the ones in the game right now, we also need benefits that will make the professions more interesting and make choosing a profession a more consequential choice. I'm talking about bringing back that fourth glyph slot for scribes. I'm talking about make the alchemist's stone a worthwhile trinket worth wearing into raids. I'm talking about bringing profession-dependent set bonuses back to crafted BoE starter gear (such as that on the heavy clefthoof set from BC). Yes, these kinds of things are difficult to balance, but when the alternative is homogenization on such a level that it makes professions almost irrelevant to the game, I think it's worth it.

So those are my thoughts on professions. I hope to go over some other aspects of the game I hope to see improved, such as solo-content. Until then, what changes would you like to see to professions in Cataclysm?

How to gear up a druid at level 80 without ever entering an instance

One of the things that many guides for gearing up a druid assume is that you are willing to run heroics to get gear. Nothing against 5-mans, but I'm not ready to depend on a chance drop for gearing up. That's why I give you this guide. It gives you ways to gear up your druid without ever needing to run an instance. In other words, you can do do it all alone (with the exception of crafted items). I'll also give you multiple options for a specific slot when your best choice is either expensive or takes a long time to get.

Disclaimer: Some of these items are difficult to get if you don't enter an instance, as it will be more difficult for you to get the associated reputation. It is possible, though, to get exalted with the associated factions without running an instance, and that's the point. If you need help on getting exalted with those hard-to-level factions, check out my guide on said topic here.

Weapon(s):
Balance: Titansteel Guardian or Titansteel Spellblade* (Blacksmithing), Flameheart Spell Scalpel (Kirin Tor, revered), Gavel of the Brewing Storm (Wyrmrest Accord, revered)
Feral (tank): Silvery Sylvan Stave/Staff of Feral Furies (Argent Tournament), Whale-Stick Harpoon (Kalu'ak, revered)
Feral (DPS): Silvery Sylvan Stave/Staff of Feral Furies (Argent Tournament), Titansteel Destroyer (Blacksmithing), Argent Skeletal Crusher (Argent Crusade, revered)
Resto: Dagger of Lunar Purity/Scalpel of the Royal Apothecary (Argent Tournament), Titansteel Guardian (Blacksmithing), Gavel of the Brewing Storm (Wyrmrest Accord, revered)

Off-hand:
Balance: Faces of Doom (Inscription), Prison Manifesto (BoE)
Resto: Faces of Doom (Inscription), Prison Manifesto (BoE)

Idol:
Balance: Idol of Arcane Terror (Grizzly Hills PvP)
Feral (tank): Idol of Perspicacious Attacks (Grizzly Hills PvP), Idol of the Plainstalker (Borean Tundra quests)
Feral (DPS): Idol of the Plainstalker (Borean Tundra quests)
Resto: Idol of Pure Thoughts (Grizzly Hills PvP)

Head:
Balance: Helm of the Majestic Stag (Kirin Tor, honored)
Feral (tank): Helm of the Avenging Protector (Scholazar Basin quests)
Feral (DPS): Helm of the Avenging Protector (Scholazar Basin quests)
Resto: Helm of the Majestic Stag (Kirin Tor, honored)

Neck:
Balance: Chain of Latent Energies (BoE), Titanium Spellshock Necklace (Jewelcrafting), Choker of Spiral Focus/Necklace of Stolen Skulls (Argent Tournament)
Feral (tank): Titanium Earthguard Chain (Jewelcrafting)
Feral (DPS): Titanium Impact Choker (Jewelcrafting), Choker of Feral Furies (Argent Tournament)
Resto: Titanium Spellshock Necklace (Jewelcrafting), Necklace of Valiant Blood/Pendent of Emerald Crusader (Argent Tournament), Dragon Prow Amulet (BoE)

Shoulders:
Balance: Dark Runic Mantle (BoE), Purehorn Spaulders (Leatherworking)
Feral (tank): Trollwoven Spaulders (Leatherworking)
Feral (DPS): Spaulders of Egotism (BoE), Trollwoven Spaulders (Leatherworking), Spaulders of Frozen Knives (Sons of Hodir, honored)
Resto: Runecaster's Mantle (BoE)

Back:
Balance: Deathchill Cloak (Tailoring), Dark Soldier Cape (Knights of the Ebon Blade, honored)
Feral (tank): Durable Nerubhide Cloak (Leatherworking), Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions (Wyrmrest Accord, honored)
Feral (DPS): Ice Striker's Cloak (Leatherworking), Cloak of Holy Extermination (Argent Crusade, honored)
Resto: Whispcloak (Tailoring), Reanimator's Cloak (BoE), Shroud of Dedicated Research (Kirin Tor, honored)

Chest:
Balance: Ebonweave Robe (Tailoring), Robes of Crackling Flame (Kirin Tor, exalted), Black Duskweave Robe (Tailoring)
Feral (tank): Exotic Leather Tunic (Utgarde Pinnacle quests)
Feral (DPS): Darkheart Chestguard (Knights of the Ebon Blade, exalted)
Resto: Moonshroud Robe (Tailoring) Robes of Crackling Flame (Kirin Tor, exalted), Ymirjar Physician's Robe (BoE)

Wrist:
Balance: Wraps of the Astral Traveler (BoE), Wound-Binder's Wristguards (Knights of the Ebon Blade, revered)
Feral (tank): Drake-Champion's Bracers (BoE)
Feral (DPS): Dragonfriend Bracers (Wyrmrest Accord, exalted) Drake-Champion's Bracers (BoE)
Resto: Bands of the Great Tree (BoE), Wound-Binder's Wristguards (Knights of the Ebon Blade, revered)

Hands:
Balance: Ebonweave Gloves (Tailoring), Awakened Handguards (BoE)
Feral (tank): Seafoam Gauntlets (Leatherworking)
Feral (DPS): Seafoam Gauntlets (Leatherworking)
Resto: Moonshroud Gloves (Tailoring), Sterile Flesh-Handling Gloves (Ebon Blade, revered) Awakened Handguards (BoE)

Waist:
Balance: Ghostflicker Waistband (Kirin Tor, exalted), Wrap of the Everliving Tree/Wasteguard of Equine Fury (Argent Tournament)
Feral (tank): Trollwoven Girdle (Leatherworking)
Feral (DPS): Trollwoven Girdle (Leatherworking)
Resto: Sash of Jordan (BoE), Belt of Dark Mending (Knights of the Ebon Blade, exalted)

Legs:
Balance: Windripper Leggings (Leatherworking), Giant Friend Kilt (Sons of Hodir, revered)
Feral (tank): Chain Gang Legguards (BoE)
Feral (DPS): Chain Gang Legguards (BoE)
Resto: Earthgiving Legguards (Leatherworking), Giant Friend Kilt (Sons of Hodir, revered)

Feet:
Balance: Windripper Boots (Leatherworking), Sandles of Crimson Fury (Wyrmrest Accord, exalted)
Feral (tank): Boots of the Neverending Path (Argent Crusade, exalted), Treds of Nimble Evasion/Treads of the Earnest Squire (Argent Tournament)
Feral (DPS): Boots of the Neverending Path (Argent Crusade, exalted), Treds of Nimble Evasion/Treads of the Earnest Squire (Argent Tournament)
Resto: Earthgiving Boots (Leatherworking), Sandles of Crimson Fury (Wyrmrest Accord, exalted)

Rings:
Balance: Titanium Spellshock Ring (Jewelcrafting), Signet of Hopeful Light (Argent Crusade, exalted), Ring of Northern Tears (Jewelcrafting)
Feral (tank): Titanium Earthguard Ring (Jewelcrafting), Ring of Earthen Might (Jewelcrafting)
Feral (DPS): Titanium Impact Band (Jewelcrafting), Stained-Glass Shard Ring (BoE), Ring of Scarlet Shadows (Jewelcrafting)
Resto: Signet of Hopeful Light (Argent Crusade, exalted), Titanium Spellshock Ring (Jewelcrafting)

Trinkets:
Balance:** Cannoneer's Fuselighter (Icecrown Quests), Jouster's Fury (Argent Tournament)
Feral (tank): (If you have any trinkets from BC, use those. Otherwise...) Medallion of Heroism (Dragonblight quests), Crusader's Locket (Icecrown Quests)
Feral (DPS)**: Fezzik's Pocketwatch (Icecrown Quests), Jouster's Fury (Argent Tournament)
Resto:** Cannoneer's Moral (Icecrown Quests)

*If you can get hit-capped with your other gear, take the Guardian; otherwise, take the Spellblade.
**Check this list for green-quality trinkets you may have missed while leveling up. Use it if you don't have enough trinkets to fill your two slots.

How to most effectively level your crafting professions

I recently had the experience of power-leveling jewelcrafting twice; once with my shaman, and once with my death knight. It taught me a few lessons about power-leveling that I think can be applied to any profession you wish to power-level. Please note that the tips I provide here are based on the assumption that you are farming the materials yourself. If you wish to power-level your profession by buying stuff from the AH, then use these power-leveling guides. They are also really good for leveling your gathering professions, although you will sometimes need to do your own research on wowhead to see which zones are truly best for leveling your herbalism/mining based on the density of spawn points. Anyways, on to the guide.

The way I went about leveling jewelcrafting is that I looked for an area that was good for farming the general material I needed. For jewelcrafting/blacksmithing/engineering, this means farming copper/tin/iron etc. ore. For leatherworking, this would mean killing beasts to skin. For alchemy/inscription, this would mean farming herbs. Farming herbs for the specific purpose of leveling alchemy gets complicated, but if you are leveling herbalism along with alchemy, just use the herbs you obtain. A good farming area should have spawn points that are really close to each other or create a path you can follow for maximum yield. It's also a good idea to look for an area big enough that you won't need to wait for your mining nodes/beasts/herbs to respawn. An example of an ideal area is Mulgore for mining copper. The route is a simple circle, and the zone is big enough that you shouldn't have a problem with respawns.

Just a few extra notes. Mining nodes will only appear on rocky slopes. This usually means the edges of zones and any mountains, and also means you won't find many in flat zones. Some herbs will only appear on a flat area, while others only appear next to trees, and some only appear on rocky slopes. Respectively, those herbs tend to look like flowers, leaves, or roots.

Once I had a plethora of materials, I went back to my profession trainer and used my materials to make stuff next to them. Every time I increased my skill by five, I checked to see if a new recipe was available for training. The key to this method is how you use the materials at your disposal to level your profession of choice. It's good to create a priority list for which recipes and which materials you will use first. The idea is to use your materials as efficiently as possible while using as many as possible. Materials become less useful as you level a profession, so you will want to use your materials in such a way that none go to waste. For example, in leatherworking, there is a recipe that allows you to turn ruined leather scraps into light leather. There is also a recipe that allows you to turn light leather in light armor kits. Both are very efficient ways of leveling leatherworking when you are at a skill level of one. Also, the first recipe is the only one that uses leather scraps. So, suppose you have a bunch of light leather and a bunch of ruined leather scraps. If you use the scraps first, you can still use your light leather for more advanced recipies later on, allowing you to get some skill ups out of both materials. If you make the armor kits first, however, and skill up that way, you will have lost the opportunity to use the scraps for skill-ups. Thus you will not have leveled as efficiently as you could have.

As should be clear now, efficiency is not only about using as few materials as possible in each recipe, but it is also about getting as many skill-ups as you can out of your pool of materials. Thus it is important to make a priority order of which materials you will use when. Some professions may not allow for that kind of flexibility, but just do what you can. Here's my priority order for power-leveling professions.

1. Recipes that use materials that don't have any other use
These include the recipe I mentioned above by which scraps can be turned into light leather. I also encountered a similar situation while leveling jewelcrafting. While farming ore for jewelcrafting, I got a lot of stones that had no use other than making statues. Thus I used the stones first and crafted as many statues and I could before moving on the using the ore. That way I used less ore to level jewelcrafting than I would have if I used the ore first, and the stones did not go to waste.

2. Recipes that make items you will use in later recipes
The professions are full of these. Alchemy has you making oils out of fish, blacksmithing has you making grinding stones that are used in other recipes, engineering has a plethora of such parts, as does jewelcrafting, and leatherworking allows you to combine pieces of leather to crate the next teir of leather. Be careful that you don't make too many of these parts, however. Some recipes require both the parts you make and the materials you make them from, such as the engineering recipe for a rough copper bomb. This recipe requires both a copper bar and a handful of copper bolts, which are made from copper bars. Thus, if you used all of your copper to make bolts, you'll be out of luck. A good guideline is to try not to have more of the crafted material than the original material. If you have, say, 40 copper bars, you wouldn't want to make more than 20 bolts. This would leave you with 20 of each. If you use them all and end up needing more bolts while needing the bars less than you thought you would, you'll be able to make more. If you end up not needing that many bolts, you'll still have gotten the skill-ups with wasting too many of the bars. You should also just look ahead to see whether or not you will use a certain part. Still, making parts is often the most efficient way to level a profession, so don't worry too much about going overboard.

Once you have gone through these two options, you'll want to use the recipes that use the fewest materials. It's important to also look to see what your trainer will be able to teach you in the future so you can plan which recipes you use. For example, let's say you are leveling jewelcrafting. If you have some shadowgems and some malachite, you'll want to use the recipes that use the malachite first. Why? Because shadowgems are used in higher-level recipes than malachite, so they stay useful for longer. You won't encounter too many situations like this, you should keep an eye out for them.

Aside form that, just use the recipes that use the fewest materials possible. Also, it's worth mentioning that if you are a higher level than you would normally be if you were leveling your profession while leveling in general, recipes that are yellow will almost always give you skill-ups. If you have a skill level of 50 at level 60, yellow recipes will probably give you a skill up. If you have a skill level of 50 at level 10, this probably will not be the case. Thus, don't be afraid to use a recipe that is yellow if it uses less materials than an orange recipe (as it probably will) out of fear of not getting a skill up.