Cataclysm has brought many new challenges for everyone in the game. The most talked about changes have come from the difficulty of heroics and raiding as the expansion begins. You can’t visit a WoW related site without running across endless chatter over the difficulty of the new endgame. Today, I’m going to give you a simple way to improve your play in every aspect of the game; especially when it comes to being effective in raids.

Cataclysm has given everyone more to be aware of when it comes to raiding. If you’re a DPS, a deep focus on your priority system leads to great damage output but can also make you less aware of the fire you happen to be standing in. Now more than ever, we need to be focused on staying alive and making the lives of those around us easier. But we can’t gimp out damage output either, else we’re letting our group down in other ways. So what we need to do is focus on being able to do damage while moving, while being aware of our surroundings, and utilizing the various utilities our class brings to the table we may often consider “PvP abilities” or not directly useful in PvE situations.

The best way to increase your situational awareness in this game is by participating in PvP. I’ve learned first hand how much more effective you can be in the DPS role by having PvP experience. PvP requires you to react to unscripted sequences, do damage while on the run, and simply think clearly in hectic situations. Simple examples of what I’ve been doing in PvP that have translated well to raiding are; properly utilizing Fel Flame while on the run in Baradin Hold, staying in the fire on Halfus for an extra 0.3 seconds to finish that critical Chaos Bolt cast, holding on to an instant Conflagrate for a half second knowing I’m about to move, timing all of my cooldowns for Bloodlust as if I were doing a hard switch in arenas for the kill, and many other examples.

Recently, I’ve been asked many times by other Warlocks I group with how I’m doing more damage than they are while we’re in the same spec, using the same “rotation”, and so forth. I believe PvP has given me a lot more experience in being resourceful and getting everything I can out of my gear and abilities.

What do you think? Do you feel like PvP experience has given you an edge in PvE content, or has it hurt you in some way? Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Tol Barad has been a hot topic since Cataclysm released in early December. Since the start we’ve seen countless articles written over it’s imbalance and players sharing their discontent for the new zone. I’d like to tell you why Tol Barad doesn’t suck, and quite frankly, why I think it’s a fantastic zone for exciting PvP.

I spend a lot of my time in the game participating in PvP, whether through battlegrounds, arenas, Tol Barad, or dueling outside of Orgrimmar. PvP is a passion of mine and the challenge of facing a real-life opponent is exciting. Some of the best memories I have from my time playing PvP come from exciting and tense moments. I’ve been in Arathi Basin and won 1600-1590. I’ve encountered world PvP situations where I started a fight with 20% of my health, had a wimpy dagger equipped (remember when we had to level individual weapon skills?), my pet on passive, and won. I just recently won an arena match where my partner died, I finished off one enemy from 5% of his life, then finished off the other from 90% of his life, where I was at 10% when my partner died.

It’s those kinds of tense situations that make PvP in general so exciting. Tol Barad has taken some of that tenseness and brought it into organized world PvP.

Most recently, we’ve thought of world PvP, especially on PvE servers, as Wintergrasp. It’s the majority of players exposure to world PvP and so I’ll refer to it as such here. Wintergrasp was a fun experience in my mind, but it lacked the best quality of PvP; excitement. Essentially the strategy was the same each time and the fight played out the same way every time. The difference between battles was likely which side the attackers were coming through. The excitement only started when the interior of the fortress had been breached and by then it was too late for the defenders. Wintergrasp was effectively Strand of the Ancients on steroids.

Tol Barad starts off with tense situations and keeps them going throughout the battle. You may be defending Slagworks and wondering what the situation looks like over at Ironclad Garrison. Should you leave 20 at Slagworks and attack Warden’s Vigil, or are they going to come back to Slagworks right away? Which point is going to get hit next, and by how many? With three main points of interest, something is always going on at one of them, or is imminent. Strategy is a key factor for both attackers and defenders and is simply more important and fluid than it was with Wintergrasp. Understanding the pattern the attackers are following from flag to flag and how you can take advantage of that as a defending unit is the difference between a win and a loss.

The structure of Tol Barad creates impromptu battles on an epic scale many times throughout the battle. That’s what we want from world PvP after all, isn’t it? We’re not primarily focused on taking out vehicles as we were in Wintergrasp. We’re finding ourselves in huge battles, using our CC abilities, and fighting players in true world PvP fashion.

While Tol Barad isn’t the most balanced experience right now, I can appreciate the recent blue post explaining the design ideas behind Tol Barad and the importance put on holding the zone. I was encouraged to hear that response as opposed to hearing how the idea is for us to bounce it back and forth as Wintergrasp turned out to be at the end of Wrath with the many attacking team buffs. I do believe there can be some minor tweaks made to make it slightly easier to capture Tol Barad as an attacker, but don’t want to see it turn into something where the excitement from the battle is gone.

I think we should all be enjoying the epic world PvP experience we have available to us right now. It’s rare and something I’ve never been able to experience before. It’s certainly head and shoulders above what Wintergrasp provided and I would be sad to see the experience go away in any form.

Tell me what you think about Tol Barad in the comments!

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For me personally I am really excited about the Rated Battlegrounds. I enjoy the experience of PvP battles with objectives more than the arena experience where you see who can kill the other guy first and it’s over in two minutes.

Will Rated Battlegrounds be the death of Arenas? No, I don’t think so. Will they lower the amount of people doing Arenas? Yes and No. The people who have been doing Arenas for years will still continue to do so. But the people like me, who want to PvP and want high end PvP rewards will now be able to get them without feeling obligated to try and put together an Arena team only to get destroyed in 90 seconds by an experienced team.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is just around the corner — and that means Rated Battlegrounds will soon be available. While Rated Battlegrounds will only be open to level-85 characters, we know many of you may still have some questions about this new system, so we’ve put together an FAQ to help address some of the more common inquiries we’ve seen.

Q. What are Rated Battlegrounds?

A. Like the Arena system, Rated Battlegrounds are an alternative way for players to battle against opponents of similar skill levels and accrue rating to purchase powerful PvP gear. Instead of competing in a 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 bracket, though, you’ll be testing your mettle in familiar environments like Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm, as well as all-new Battlegrounds set to release in Cataclysm.

Q. How are Rated Battlegrounds structured?

A. Rated Battlegrounds are broken down into two brackets: 10v10 and 15v15. These brackets rotate weekly and can be viewed in-game via the calendar by activating the Battleground holiday filter.

Q. What Battlegrounds are eligible for Rated Battleground matches?

A. Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients, Battle for Gilneas, and Twin Peaks.

Q. What happened to the 25v25 bracket?

A. We decided to remove this bracket. We don’t feel it’s feasible to ask players to coordinate a group of 25 players for Rated Battlegrounds. If any player happens to drop group just before a match begins, the raid group would not be able to enter the battle. We anticipate most players or guilds will stick with fairly dedicated 10-player groups, and making the jump to 15-player groups shouldn’t be too difficult.

Q. How can I queue for a Rated Battleground?

A. Before entering the queue, you must first create a raid with the full number of players required for the weekly bracket (10 or 15). Any level-85 player on your realm and of your faction may participate in the battle regardless of guild association.

Once you have a raid of the appropriate size, simply open up the PvP window, click on the Conquest tab, highlight “Rated Battleground,” and then click “Join Battle.”

Q. Can I queue up solo and just be matched with a Rated Battleground team?

A. No. You will need to first join a raid of the appropriate size and level before you can queue up for a Rated Battleground. Individual queuing will not be available for Rated Battlegrounds.

Q. Do all players in the raid group have to be from the same guild in order to queue for a Rated Battleground?

A. No. So long as the raid group size matches the weekly bracket and is comprised of level-85 players, you can queue up for a Rated Battleground no matter what guild you are in. Guild membership has no effect on the formation of Battleground teams.

Winning a Rated Battleground with a team composed of at least 80% guild members, however, will result in the additional benefit of guild experience gain for that guild.

Q. How can I tell if my Rated Battleground team meets the minimum guild requirement?

A. If you join a Rated Battleground with the minimum number of required guild members, a special guild banner will appear in the upper-left corner of the in-game mini-map. This will let you know if you are eligible for the bonus guild experience.

Q. What are the normal benefits of winning a Rated Battleground?

A. When you win a Rated Battleground, you will be rewarded Conquest points, up to your weekly cap. Weekly caps are individual for each player and are based on your highest single PvP rating from the previous week (the cap resets on Tuesdays). This rating can be derived from your 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 Arena rating or your Rated Battleground rating.

Q. What Rated Battleground rating do players start out with?

A. Players start at zero Rated Battleground rating and progress upward from there. If you lose a battle, your Rated Battleground rating will only be reduced if that rating is currently higher than your Match Making Value (MMV). For the most part, a rating only goes up.

Q. What’s MMV?

A. Match Making Value (or MMV for short) is our best measure of an individual player’s skill. MMV is the skill rating per format (2v2, 3v3, 5v5, Battleground) and per character that is used for matchmaking. It exists to help the matchmaking system create great matches as quickly as possible for all players. It’s generally not a rating we show, with the exception of an average MMV for Arena teams.

Q. Will my MMV go down in the event of a Rated Battleground loss?

A. Yes; however, unlike Arenas, all players in a Rated Battleground team will win or lose the same amount of Rated Battleground rating per match depending on its outcome.

Q. Does MMV for Rated Battlegrounds function the same as it does in Arenas (i.e. does it go up more when you beat a higher-rated team, and go down more when you lose to a lower-rated team)?

A. Yes. Your MMV will go up faster if you defeat a Rated Battleground team with a higher average MMV.

Q. What’s the plan to prevent your Rated Battleground rating from skyrocketing at high win ratios? If your rating only goes down when it is above your MMV, it seems that ratings will just be high on average (compared to Arena).

A. If your Rated Battleground rating gets inflated much beyond your MMV, you’ll only receive a minimal amount of points when you win. Similarly, you’ll lose many more points after a defeat, until your Rated Battleground rating gets back in line with your MMV. This will prevent inflation.

Q. Can consumables and engineering items be used in Rated Battlegrounds?

A.Yes, but they will follow the same rules and restrictions as Arenas.

Q. Will Rated Battleground teams only be matched against other teams in their Battlegroup?

A. No. Rated Battlegrounds will be region-wide, meaning that when you queue for a Rated Battleground, you will have the opportunity to be matched against a team from any of our North American World of Warcraft realms.

Q. Are there any plans to reward players with the highest Rated Battleground rating, similar to Arenas?

A. Epic ground mounts will be rewarded at the end of each season to the top 0.5% of players according to Rated Battleground rating. Titles are also available as you gain rating in the system. The titles are rewarded directly from achievements earned from gaining the required rating.

Original Post.

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Happy Turkey Week!  Jov and Seri are traveling, spending time with friends and family, and preparing for a serious case of food coma.  Special thanks for the guest posts for taking wow posting off our plates, and leaving us with more room for sides…

So you want to run some battlegrounds as a . . . *gasp* PRIEST?  What are you nuts?  Seriously, people can have this reaction.  Our class doesn’t have a great reputation for survivability and that deters many of us from running battleground or ever trying them for that matter.  Fear not!  I am here to guide you through these death mazes and give you some tools to bring the pain to your foes.

The first thing you should expect in Battlegrounds is to die . . . a lot.  How much is a lot?  Picture the Horde and Alliance lined up in the field of strife in Alterac Valley and the enemy all pressed tab at the same time, they would all target you.  Yes it CAN be that bad but it rarely IS that bad.  Battlegrounds (BGs) are not raids or heroics or arenas or even quests.  They are their own unique slice of WoW and it involves dying. A lot. Everyone dies at least once in a BG, release, let go of it, and move on to the next victim.

You got Talent

Many people talk about pvp talent builds but be warned not all of these will benefit you in a BG, most of them are designed for arenas.  You have a great deal more flexibility in your spec for BGs but a dedicated BG spec will make your life a lot easier.  As Priests we have a lot of options for good pvp talents but we will stick mainly with one tree and this decision will rest mostly on your play style.

I WANT TO SURVIVE!: DISC
I WANT TO KILL’EM ALL!: SHADOW
I’M A LUNATIC!: HOLY

All types of priest are viable in a BG and have talents that designed for pvp activity.  You can make your own choices and don’t have to stick with what you raid in.  I am a Holy priest but I run BGs as shadow exclusively because I spend enough stressful time healing dungeons and pvp is a way to blow off steam and melt some Alli faces.  I will not go into great detail about every useful talent for each built but I will point out a few crucial ones.

The Mandatory Disc talents are important here but there are some key differences.  You will want to pick up Unbreakable Will if you find yourself getting snared or stunned a lot.  Imp Inner Fire and Imp PW:F are VERY helpful. Meditation and Inner Focus are less mandatory. The reason being that BGs require a lot of chain casting (healing or killing or both) and I find mana regen impacts my performance since I am usually dead before I run out and I rarely find Inner focus to be worth the point except specific BG scenarios.  Better spent points are Imp PW:S and Soul Warding to enhance protection.  Further in DISC are some pvp essentials like Reflective Shield, Power Infusion, Rapture, Aspiration, Pain Suppression, and all the way to Penance the all purpose heal/nuke.

Shadow has a lot of great pvp talents too.  Mandatory ones for pvp are Imp SW:P, Imp Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Imp Psychic Scream and down to Silence, Shadow Reach, Focused Mind,  and pick up every talent in the Vampiric/Shadow form segments. Take up the all important Imp Devouring Plague(DP) not only because it is increased damage but also it gives DP instant damage which our class lacks a lot of in pvp.  Optionally you can pick up Psychic Horror and I would grab it because there is a use for it and I will tell you shortly. Take Dispersion even if someone tells you it suck, it does but its all we got *sigh*. Its main use is mana regen and a very last ditch escape mechanism. (PRO TIP:You can Disperse even while mounted!)

Holy . . . well it kinda sucks.  You CAN heal a LOT of people VERY effectively in BGs with this spec, but you can’t heal yourself very well with it.  Survivability is key to pvp, the longer you live the less the enemy does.  However, we do get some nice spells here.  Healing Focus (stops pushback), Divine Fury (extra holy damage/healing), Desperate Prayer (instant full health heal or near it), and Body and Soul (an escape mechanism combined with shielding). You could argue there are more important talents in holy but for pvp these are the must haves.

The Tools of DESTRUCTION (mwahahahahaaa . . . ha)

You got the talents and the spells now what do you do when you want to kill someone. Typically you mostly spam SW:P and DP.  I know it’s really sad and you are probably saying “Wow Nic you make BGs sound sooooo exciting!” Firstly, hey shut up!  Sarcasm will not help you kill faster. Secondly, there are two reasons why you will spam your DoTs.  1) Almost no healer will ever remove your DoTs in the BG and 2) They are exceptionally potent and quick cast DoTs.  Seriously, nothing will make you happier to watch a Rogue get DoT’ed up and run around as they desperately try to escape their ever shrinking health bar until they die.  In fact I have yet to meet the rogue that can survive the SW:P and DP combo, even if no one else is attacking them (Sorry Seri). The key to topping the damage charts is getting in damage as quickly as possible before the target dies from other combatants and unfortunately our class dps is more of a steam roller. Takes forever to get moving but can crush anything, assuming it doesn’t quickly step to the side XD. Speaking of DoTs, Vampiric touch is very good too, except the slightly long cast.  If you can get it up do it, but don’t start with it and don’t follow up with MB, its just not worth it (time wise or mana wise).

Our other useful spells are our trusty nuke, Mind Blast. IF you get the chance cast it. Another staple is SW: DEATH!  I know it seems risky as you can actually kill yourself with this spell and probably will several times till you get the hang of it. However, it does crazy instant damage, crits very high, and glyphs can reduce the damage you take.  Mind Flay is great in that it does a decent stream of damage AND cripples your opponent’s movement to a crawl.  It’s bad in that it is basically a giant glowing sign pointing out to your enemy who is killing them slowly and can probably die easily. It’s good to use when others are around to finish off someone. Fear, Horrify, and Silence are all amazingly effective interrupters of casters and can help put distance between you and a charging horde of enemies. It also can be effective in chain silencing/interrupting Warlocks who are the current pvp champs and particularly difficult for priests. Horrify is particularly useful against the dreaded hunter.  While two seconds of doing nothing doesn’t seem like a lot the key is the 10 sec of dropping your main hand and ranged weapon. You can essentially turn a hunter into a gimpy one-handed sucky rogue and own them. (See?  I told you there was a reason for Horrify!)

If you go disc the power of bubbling and Penance cannot be overstated.  Have you ever tried to kill a disc priest? They are, in my opinion, among the hardest to kill in a BG right after Trees and Pallies.  If you are good no single player will be able to kill you, sometimes not even two or three. If you are disc the world of spells is open to you, if you are shadow you will neglect any holy spell as the cost to drop shadow form will be too costly to mana and inevitably health.

Tactics and Closing thoughts

Your job as a shadow priest in a BG changes depending on what you are running.  In IoC sometimes you are most effective running seaforium bombs to the keep walls, in AV you are useful in defending a tower, or sometimes it just comes down to bringing the pain.  In general we have some basic purposes depending on your end goal.  If you want honor run where the action is and cause as much damage as humanly possible from afar and heal/passively heal whenever you get a chance.  The more honorable kills you get and the more objectives you defend the better.  If you want to win BGs, cause as much chaos as you can by slowing down hippity hoppity rogues with mindflay, silencing mages/healers, or sacrificing yourself to plunge into a crowd of enemies and cast fear.  If your goal is to have fun I highly suggest you accomplish the first two goals with a friend or guildy in a party.  Communication is survival and a partner can drive you to the top of the honor chart, damage chart, and heal chart in any BG.  Finally, experience is the best advice I can give.   Learn the layout of each BG, see where the enemy on your Battlegroup likes to attack and counter it.  The goal is to have fun while dying, something you can’t accomplish in any raid or heroic. Happy hunting!

~Nicoran

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So what’s a Paladin to do? I knocked out the Heroic Daily. Many thanks to Blue for helping me put together the group, Donk for agreeing to pew pew, Grim for healing even though he was in PVP spec and Shad for coming along even though it probably cost him the chance to buy his Warlock’s PVP pants from Wintergrasp. (We lost Wintergrasp during the run). I appreciate it guys.

Unplanned PVP

Afterwards, I headed up to the Tournament to work on some quests. While doing the “kill 10 Risen Soldiers” quest, I was attacked by an Alliance Death Knight. I had 6 Risen Soldiers on me, that I was AoEing, when Mr.DK attacked.

I tend to quest in full tank gear/spec. I finished off the Risen Soldiers and turned my attention to the Death Knight. He was at about 80% life from the Consecrates and Hammer of the Righteous, and I was at around 60%. Thanks to the Risen Soldiers procing Blessing of Sanctuary, my mana bar was full. He did that thing that puts you into an ice block and didn’t have a Ghoul out so I’m thinking he was Frost. We started to duke it out, but I could tell he was getting the upper hand. I used Hammer of Justice to get off a heal or two, but Prot spec/Prot gear the heals aren’t anything to write home about. I waited for Ardent Defender to proc and hit Lay on Hands. Hey, its world PVP, and you attacked me while I had 6 mobs on me. I think you’ve lost any right to cry about ‘fair play’. I used Divine Protection instead of Divine Shield since I have my 4pc Tier 9 bonus (90 second cooldown on Bubble Wall). He realized that the tables had turned and hit his rocket boots to try to escape. I nailed him with an Avenger’s Shield to drop him into Hammer of Wrath range, which finished him off.

I can only imagine the unprintable things he was saying about Paladins, either under his breath or in his guild chat.

Luckily those 6 were the last I needed for the quest. I definitely did not want to be in the area when he rezzed, so I mounted up and flew back to the Tournament. That quest gave me my 25th Valiant token and I am now I am once again a Champion. Somehow ‘Of Silvermoon’ just doesn’t excite me the way ‘Of Ironforge’ did. I miss me dwarf.

Trading Plate For Fur

I spent the rest of the evening having a blast on my Druid alt. Each time I’ve taken a toon to 80 (and I’ve got 3), I’ve said ‘Honors, this will be the last toon we take to 80’. I said it when Honors hit 80, I said it when the Hunter hit 80 and I said it when the Warrior hit 80.

Yet, here I am once again, leveling an alt. I guess I’m just one of those strange people that actually likes leveling. My Druid has been especially cool because he’s my first Horde alt to get past 51.I’ve never seen the game from this side. While some quests are repeated from my Alliance experience, some are brand new to me.

One of my favorite things about the Druid is having Stealth. Let me tell you just one story. Coming out of Marshall’s Refuge in Un’goro, I was being chased by a Warrior/Priest combo. I dismounted, switched to cat and went into Stealth. They gave up the chase. I started stalking them. I figured if I could hit the priest then I might have a chance to burst her down and go one on one with the Warrior.

As I’m looking for them, I get knocked out of stealth by one of those huge Elite Devilsaurs that roams around Un’goro. How does something THAT big SNEAK UP on you?

Another really cool thing about the Druid is the talent Predatory Strikes. It gives you a buff that makes your next spell cast instant. It was put in to give Ferals a change to Cyclone in Arena. It may be the most amazing leveling talent in the game. It’s basically kill, kill, instant heal to full, kill, kill again. It’s also amazing for getting you out of tight spots. You can be fighting, instant heal to full, and be right back in Cat fighting again.

So far I’ve done quite a bit on this toon. I tanked Sunken Temple, DPSed in Uldaman and I’ve actually had a chance to heal! It was a Maraudon run. I was experimenting with Balance at the time, but I agreed to try to heal the run. We had a Shaman with us who would help out with Maelstrom Weapon procs if I got into trouble. The crazy thing was I kind of liked it. Healing with HoTs was so much more fun than spamming Flash of Light.

I really enjoy the versatility of a Druid. What I’d really love to do is turn this guy into a Swiss army knife. Basically whatever a group needs, I can do it, whether it’s Tank, DPS, or Heals.

What I’d need to do is find a Feral spec that could both Tank and DPS, and then find a decent Resto spec. I thinking of trying to build to something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGsfrzceRccuVkbA0z for my Feral spec. For Resto, I’m looking to build something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0VG0zZZf0IuiuxiuVhsVo. I’m planning on buying his Dual spec once he hits 60.

These would be for use in Outland and Northrend 5 man normals. I’ll worry about a level 80 heroic spec once/if I get there.

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No, not those twinkies. These Twinkies!

I haven’t had a lot to say on the blog lately because rather than being focused on leveling my characters, I’ve been focused on leveling and gearing new and existing characters to do a little twinking in battle grounds.

Since the paladin that I blogged about for so long is an Enchanter, I decided I would go ahead and start up a few twinks to enjoy low level battle grounds like I used to on my mage. I never bothered doing PvP with Lexington because I just didn’t feel like doing PvP as anything other than dps and my skill with my Ret spec is lacking to say the least.

Lex also happens to be an amazing farming and grinding machine, so farming for specific items is pretty easy with him. That doesn’t mean that the items I am looking for are going to drop any faster or easier for me, but it does mean that I can do the farming itself quickly and with ease.

Belgawrath (Orc Shaman 36)
The first character I wanted to twink was Belgawrath. I have every intention of doing a lot of PvP with him in the 49 bracket when I can dual wield, but I also wanted to try him out in the 39 bracket while he is still using a powerful two handed weapon by already has Windfury to back it up with some insane attack power.

Even at level 36 with very little in the way of actually “twinking” the character, I already end almost every battleground in the Top 3 on the horde side. I have not yet managed to reach #1, though I have been #2 several times and come close to the first slot many times as well.

The most important piece of gear for an Enhancement Shaman is going to be his weapon(s). With dual wield out of the question, that means I had to look for a slow, powerful two handed weapon. So I turned first to WoWHead.com to search their item database for two handed weapons that were in my level range.

The first priority was weapon speed. The slower a weapon is, the more damage Windfury is going to deal. The slowest weapons in the game have a speed of 4.0 and there are only 3. Two of those weapons just happen to be level 39 two handed weapons: The Pacifier and the Pendulum of Doom. Both of those weapons happen to be BoE items, which allows me to farm them with my paladin, with Pacifier dropping from a rare spawn and Pendulum (PoD) dropping from trash mobs inside the Uldaman instance in Badlands. Windfury is the whole reason to be Enhancement, and weapon speed is a multiplier in the formula used to calculate its damage. So a slower weapon with less dps can still do significantly more damage than a faster weapon with higher dps.

The second priority was high damage. The more damage you can do, the faster your enemies are going to fall. You can’t count on Windfury to proc every time you hit, so you need to make sure you’re dishing out decent damage on normal hits as well, and of course the higher your damage the higher your crits. PoD has a higher top end damage as well as dps, but it also requires level 39 to wield it as opposed to 32 for the Pacifier.

After three days of farming The Pacifier I ended up finding two of them. They drop off of a rare spawn that only appears once every 24 hours, so he’s a little hard to catch sometimes. The good thing about that long respawn time though is that if you find him once you know when to look for him again the next day. The first time I killed him he dropped a pair of shoulders I believe, but the second and third time he drop The Pacifier.

After almost two months now of farming for the PoD I still have not seen it. I run this instance almost every day 1-12 times, killing every mob that it has a chance to drop off of. So far the dice have not been in my favor. But, I am going to keep on trying until I either find it or get so tired of looking that I swear to never step foot in the place again.

Here is a table showing some information about the weapons mentioned:

Because of it’s maximum damage the PoD ranks higher in EP Value than The Pacifier, making it a better weapon choice. The Pacifier can actually deal more damage from a Windfury proc than the PoD can, but in general it will do less damage overall. None of that though takes into consideration the Proc ability on PoD to deal 250-350 damage when you hit. When you add that into the mix you will see that the PoD does have more damage potential than The Pacifier.

If you want another way to judge which weapon might be better for you, then look at their average prices on the Auction House. The Pacifier sells for up to 500g, while the PoD sells for 10,000g. While the weapons are very similar in how good they are, the PoD’s ridiculous drop rate and brutal proc ability make it significantly more sought after than The Pacifier.

Initially I enchanted The Pacifier with Fiery Weapon because each hit from the Windfury proc is also able to proc the Fiery Enchant’s extra damage, and each Fiery proc has a chance to crit itself. There were several times that I scored hits with my attack, both WF procs, and three procs of Fiery Weapon in a single attack. Three times I was able to score a full crit (attack crit, both WF crits, and all three Fiery crits) for insane damage for my level. There’s nothing quite like one-shotting a yeti or ogre that’s 3 levels higher than you.

Right now I use The Pacifier with the Crusader enchant on it which gives me a chance to gain +100 Strength (equal to 100 AP) and heal me for 75-125 damage when I hit with it. I don’t want to waste the Mongoose enchant on The Pacifier since I know that I fully intend to leave the 39 bracket and would rather not waste an 800g enchant on a weapon I will discard for good in 4 more levels.

If I ever manage to get my hands on the Pendulum of Doom then I will enchant it with Mongoose for a chance to proc +100 Agility which equates to an equal amount of Attack Power but also increases my chance to Crit.

Silkendeath (Undead Rogue 18)
I still have a lot of work to do on the rogue here, but after getting repeatedly owned in Warsong Gulch earlier this week, I don’t think I’m going to keep him in the level 19 bracket and instead will push him forward either to the 29 or 39 bracket instead.

As I do more with Silk and get a better handle on how to use the class I will give more information on it. As for leveling the rogue, there isn’t a whole lot of advice I can give that’s going to really help.

I cheated a bit in leveling him by buying the two best daggers I could find from regular vendors (3.3 dps, level 3 required) and enchanted them both with Fiery Weapon (chance to deal 40 Fire damage when you hit). So leveling him wasn’t that hard because those weapons proc all the time and often allowed me to kill many of the mobs I faced with just 2-3 hits. The Fiery Weapon proc is also capable of critting, so it often jumped up to 60 Fire damage in addition to the regular damage from the weapon, so things just sort of died when I came in contact with them.

I used those daggers all the way through level 18 and am just now switching to other weapons with just a straight +3 Damage enchant on them until I find his twink weapons.

Hookum (Tauren Hunter 11)
Hookum is a hunter that I started a couple of days ago and plan to do battlegrounds with in the 19 bracket. I do like to have my own little power trips from time to time and after seeing how easily Silk died when he faced 9 Hunters and a Priest in a single battleground I decided it was time to roll my own.

There really isn’t a whole lot that you need to know about leveling a hunter during these levels. Basically just make sure you keep your distance and let your gun/bow do your job for you. Fire, move, fire, move, etc. Kiting is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it, and that’s the only thing you need to do to get to level 10.

Since I’m only level 11 there isn’t a lot to talk about just yet on the Hunter. Pets are great, never being touched in combat is great, and the class can be “easy” to play if you’re fairly new to the game or new to the aspect of playing a dps character.

If you need to learn about playing a hunter, there are a lot of blogs dedicated to teaching you. I suggest you take a look at this series on Aspect of the Hare to start off with, and then there are plenty of resources for finding further information.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Farming, Hunter, PvP, Rogue, Shaman

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Capturable Locations: Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations, each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.
The Oil Derrick, The Cobalt Mine, The Docks, The Airship Hangar, The Siege Workshop, Graveyards.

How cool is it that once you capture The Airship Hangar: “Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above.” Awesome!

Here are the main objectives:

The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within.

The General: Holed up behind the keeps’ massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor.

Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over.

This is going to be very cool. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for patch 3.2.

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