(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

Well, patch 3.2 is here, and all mages should be familiar with the significant changes that have been made.  Depending on what you believe, Arcane now theorycrafts equal or better than deep fire, and you’ll be seeing a whole lot more arcane mages in raid groups.

As evidenced by many, many prior posts in the blog, I’m a longtime Arcane mage and someone who made it work even when it was ‘inferior’ to deep fire.  Now that the spec has come back into vogue, I’ve got mixed feelings – but I’ll spare you those and get right to the good stuff.

This is my Arcane Mage Guide, updated for Patch 3.2.2.

Motto: “Now more dangerous to bosses, and less dangerous to your mana pool!”

It’s rare that you see a spec get its biggest weakness so unequivocally fixed, but that’s exactly what patch 3.2.2 did for arcane mages.  The trick to the spec has always been mana management, and one ill-timed broken evocation could ruin an entire fight.  But no longer!  Now, with only average luck you can last even medium-length fights without a single evocation, and oh by the way you’ll be putting up ridiculous DPS the entire time.   Here’s quick summary of the changes that make this so:

-Arcane Blast now stacks to 4 instead of 3, with each stack increasing its cost 175% as opposed to 225%.
-Using Missile Barrage’d Arcane Missiles no longer costs any mana and does not consume clearcasting.

Other than the obvious mana-saving implications, this also means that you will be hitting harder.  Each arcane blast stack still increases the damage of your next arcane spell by 18% (with the glyph), so with four stacks you’ll be working with a massive 72% damage increase.  This further increases the spec’s already-prodigious short-term burn ability (in just a couple nights of raiding I’m seeing 30k crits during burn phases), as well as overall DPS.

Spec/Talents

57/3/11 is your only option, though you have a tiny bit of flexibility within the “57″ part.

First, let’s just square away the fire and frost points, for anyone who wants to try to get tricky.  You need 3 points in Incineration (6% crit to your main nuke) and you need Icy Veins (essentially, 20% more damage when you pop your cooldowns).  These aren’t up for debate if you’re actually trying to put up the best numbers you can.

Second, there are some fights that Incanter’s Absorption is ridiculously good for (Twin Val’kyrs in particular) – but there are some fights where it doesn’t help at all.  Therefore, if you want an Incanter’s Absorption spec, I suggest devoting your dual spec to it.  Having it in your main arcane spec will hurt your DPS on many fights because you’re pulling points away from important talents.

So with that said, the most basic possible 57/3/11 Arcane Spec would look like this:

Arcane Mage Spec

This hits all the vital talents, and stays as safe as possible with the discretionary choices.  With this basic spec, you will get yourself the most possible threat reduction, highest possible hit chance bonus, and nearly-full pushback protection even if for some reason you aren’t near a pally with Concentration Aura.

Now, you’re certainly not locked into the above choices, and you can (and arguably, should) move some points around at your discretion.  The three “flexible” talents  you can pull points from are:

–Arcane Subtlety: If you feel comfortable in managing your threat, you can drop a point.  Dropping both is very dangerous but still possible.

–Arcane Focus: If you’ve got excess hit rating, you can drop points from here.

–Arcane Concentration: Pushback is not a serious issue in a lot of fights, so if you can live with it from time to time you can drop some or even all points from here.

Points would be moved into Student of the Mind (a flat spirit increase per point), Magic Attunement (3 yard range increase per point – some people swear by this and it does tend to make your life easier), or the aforementioned Incanter’s Absorption,

Armor/Glyphs/Focus Magic

-Armor: Thanks to the increase of spirit on our gear, the T9 2-piece set bonus, and the glyph, Molten Armor is the only choice for any raiding mage.

-Glyphs – Pretty simple here as well:  Glyph of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Arcane Missiles, and Glyph of Molten Armor.  The minor glyphs don’t really matter.

-Focus Magic – Place it on another mage, and have another mage place it on you.  There’s no real reason for anyone to be Frostfire anymore, so every mage in your raid should have Focus Magic and you should all be able to buff each other.

Rotation

Now we’re to the good stuff – although the arcane rotation is a lot simpler now and the spec plays more like Fire.  In my last Arcane Guide, I wrote that the spec was like a car, where you’d constantly have to shift gears to make it to the end of the fight.  Now, it’s like a really fast car with an automatic transmission.

You can probably guess the ideal rotation based on the patch changes, but here it is:

-Always start with FOUR Arcane Blasts (this stacks the damage buff to full.
-IF Missile Barrage DOES proc, cast Arcane Missiles.
-IF Missile Barrage DOES NOT proc, continue casting Arcane Blast until it does, THEN cast Arcane Missiles.

Now…

A few things here.  First, Missile Barrage now has a 40% chance to proc on any arcane cast, meaning 9 out of 10 times you’ll be able to do the simple Arcane Blast x 4 -> Arcane Missiles rotation.  When you get unlucky and it doesn’t proc, your mana should be flexible enough to continue casting Arcane Blast until it does.  If you are concerned about your mana pool, however, you should just pop Arcane Barrage and start the rotation over.  You should not cast Arcane Missiles without the Missile Barrage buff.

-Evocation: No longer an integral part of an arcane mage’s life.  On longer fights you should still use it, of course, if you’re below 40% mana and there is still plenty of fight left.  But the days of getting off six evocations during Mimiron Hard Mode (which I swear I did) are long gone.

-Burn Phases: Spam arcane blast.  A lot of people, especially those new to the spec, wonder why you would ever spam arcane blast at the ridiculous mana cost when a fully-charged arcane missiles does just about as much (if not more) than a fully-charged arcane blast.  The key is that arcane missiles clears the arcane blast buff, meaning your next four arcane blasts will be considerably weaker than they would have been had you kept the buff.  Make sure you understand this concept – over the course of a 30-45 second burn, just hammering arcane blast will do way, way more total damage than sticking to the standard rotation.

-Mana Gems:  Use early and often, same as always.

-Cooldowns: If you’re Arcane, you have the following:  Icy Veins, Arcane Power, Mirror Image, any on-use trinkets, and Presence of Mind.  I recommend macro’ing everything except Presence of Mind together and using them at the start of fights:

/cast arcane power
/cast icy veins
/use 13
/use 14
/cast mirror image

Then, create a separate macro for your POM’d arcane blast:

/cast presence of mind
/cast arcane blast

And use that as the fourth arcane blast in any rotation.  Arcane is still about burst damage (though not as much as before), so you want to time your cooldowns with heroism and use them as often as possible during the fight.

And that’s about it!  Good luck to all the arcane mages out there, new and old, who should very much enjoy leading the charts again for the short time until Blizzard nerfs us!

 Table of Contents:

1 – Stats.
2 – Gems & Enchants.
3 – Specs and Glyphs.
            3.1 – Combat.

            3.2 – Assassination.

            3.3 – Subtlety.

4 – General tips and Rotation.

1 – Stats:

Rogues have 4 key stats for DPS:

1 – Hit: you can’t do any damage if you don’t hit anything, so this stat should be your priority till you get it up to ~340. You need 220 hit rating to be hit capped with your special attacks, 346 hit rating to be hit capped with poisons, and ~600 to be hit capped for white/normal melee attacks. You shouldn’t try to go above 350 hit rating because at that point you are giving up other valuable stats for a very small DPS increase.

2 – Agility: this is the most useful stat after hit, as it gives you attack power, and crit.

3 – Attack Power and Crit: personally, I like attack power over crit rating because I like my non critical hits to hit hard, rather than have spiky unreliable damage.

2.1 – Gems:

Delicate Cardinal Ruby

Delicate Scarlet Ruby

Deadly Amertine

Deadly Monarch topaz

Balanced Dreadstone

Balanced Twilight Opal

Rigid King’s Amber

Rigid Autumn’s Glow.

Nightmare Tear

 These 9 gems are all you should ever need. If you need hit rating, it is better to go all out hit rather than get a mix of stats. Nightmare Tear is a good addition to a Blue slot, as it is slightly more beneficial than the Balanced Dreadstone.

2.2 – Enchants:

50 Attack Power to Bracers

20 Agility to gloves

23 Agility to cloak

12 hit, 12 crit

+10 all stats

Berserking

 75 AP, 22 crit

40 AP, 15 crit

50 AP, 20 crit

Eternal Belt Buckle

 Enchanting only:

40 AP to ring

 Engineering only:

24 crit rating

Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 haste rating every minute).

1600 – 2000 damage every 45 seconds

 Leatherworking only:

130 AP to bracers

3.1 – Combat

 15/51/5 – Combat spec

 This build is centered around Sinister Strike, and it augments this ability through several talents, such as Improved Sinister Strike, Aggression, and Blade Twisting. There are also a few other talents that affect this ability indirectly, such as Lightning Reflexes, Weapon Expertise, Vitality, Savage Combat, Relentless Strikes, Malice, and Lethality. With Blood Spatter, this build also increases the damage done by your rupture by 30%. All of which are passive bonuses, i.e. you do not have to push a button for them to become active.

This build has only 3 moves that require precise timing to use effectively, Adrenaline rush, Blade Flurry, and Killing Spree. The use of these three moves is situational, and does not have a massive impact on your DPS.

This spec is designed for axe/sword specialization, and those 5 points can be placed in any of the other weapon specializations to suit your weapons.

The optimal choice for glyphs for this spec is Sinister Strike, Rupture, and Killing Spree. As for minor glyphs, the only one that would help your survival is Vanish.

3.2 – Assassination

51/13/7 – Assassination spec

 This build is centered around Mutilate, and has a few abilities increasing its potency, such as Opportunity, Puncturing Wounds and Find Weakness. There are also a few talents that affect this ability indirectly, such as Malice, Lethality, Focused Attacks, Relentless Strikes, and Close quarters combat. With Blood Spatter, this build also increases the damage done by your rupture by 30%, and Improved Poisons. All of which are passive bonuses, i.e. you do not have to push a button for them to become active.

 To use this build to its maximum potential, you have to learn to cope with the random number generator, so you can maximize the benefits from, Turn the Tables, Cut to the Chase, and the combo points generated from Seal Fate.

 The optimal glyphs for this spec are, Mutilate, Rupture, and Hunger for Blood. As for minor glyphs, the only one that would help your survival is Vanish.

 Combat and Assassination roughly do the same amount of damage, so it’s really based on preference. Combat is the fast paced tree, mainly because the main attack only 40 energy and the Combat Potency talent. Assassination is a bit slower than Combat, mainly because its main attack needs 60 energy, 55 energy with the glyph.

3.3 – Subtlety

If you are planning to use this spec, you should know that it is completely based on utility, and utility doesn’t show up on the meters.

 9/10/52 – Subtlety spec

 This build is centered around Hemorrhage, which is more of a “utility”, i.e. increasing the damage output of your fellow raiders, than your own damage. There are two abilities that directly increase the potency of Hemorrhage, and that is Slaughter from the Shadows and Sinister Calling. It also has a few abilities that increase its damage indirectly, such as Serrated Blades, Deadliness, Precision and Malice. This build passively increases the potency of rupture, and also, your attack power and agility.

 The main objective of the subtlety tree is survival and utility, damage is a secondary concern. There are a vast number of tools available to you for survival, such as Sleight of Hand, Preparation, Ghostly Strike, Elusiveness. Although there is a bit of randomness due to Honor Among Thieves, you would hardly notice it, and may be considered as a passive buff.

4 – General Tips and Rotations:

 As a Rogue, there should be only two things that stops you from dpsing, and that is your energy regeneration, and the chance of you dying if you don’t stop dpsing.

 When your DPS reaches that alarming rate where you pull aggro off the tank, rather than stopping, simply vanish and use Tricks of the Trade on the tank, and open even harder, this does several things, by using vanish, you reduce the risk of pulling aggro, by using Tricks of the Trade on the tank and opening even harder than before, you are setting a cushion for the other DPS, and they can DPS harder as well.

 Here is a rotation I use in the combat spec:

 Garrote > Adrenaline Rush > Sinister Strike till you get 5 points > Rupture > Sinister Strike till you get 5 points > Eviscerate, or Envenom if you have 5 deadly poison stacks > Killing Spree > Blade Flurry > Slice and Dice > Sinister Strike till you get 5 points, rinse and repeat till the boss is dead.

 The basic idea of this rotation is to keep up Rupture and Slice and Dice up at all times, and follow up an Envenom with a Killing Spree when possible.  Chaining Envenom and Killing Spree increases your damage dramatically, because of Envenom’s after effect, which increases the application of Deadly Poison by 75%, this lasts 1 second for each combo point used.

 Here is a rotation I use in the assassination spec:

 Garrote > Mutilate till 5 points > Rupture > Mutilate > Slice and Dice > Mutilate till you get 5 points > Eviscerate/Envenom (Envenom if you have 5 Deadly Poison stacks), rinse repeat.

 The basic idea of this rotation is to keep up Slice and Dice by utilizing the Cut to the Chase talent, and keep up rupture up at all times.

 After looking at all three specs, I hope you realize the pros and cons of each spec, and also realize the value of passive talents.

 Here is a rotation I use in the subtlety spec:

 Garrote > Hemorrhage till you have 5 points > Rupture > Hemorrhage till 2-3 points > Slice and Dice > Hemorrhage till 5 points > Shadowstep > Eviscerate > Hemorrhage till 2 points > Slice and Dice, rinse repeat.

 The basic idea about this rotation is to keep up Rupture up at all times, as that is where the majority of your damage is going to come from, as it’s effect is increased by 60%, thanks to Serrated Blades and Blood Spatter. You should also combine Shadowstep with your Eviscerates as it increases the damage of your next ability by 20%.

 Lastly, the easiest way to increase your DPS is by “chaining” your cooldowns, i.e. using them one after another in quick succession, rather than using them all at once, and use your cooldowns as often as you can. This does two things, first, gives you sustained DPS over a period of time, and second, by using your bigger cooldowns first, you can get them to be up again faster. For example: if you are combat spec, you have Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry and Killing Spree. There is a right way and a wrong way to use these cooldowns:

 Wrong way: Using Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry at the same time, and follow it with Killing Spree. Doing this will put your Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry on cooldown at the same time, and they wont be up for another 3 minutes. A lot of people think that their DPS will increase by using them both at the same time, because blade flurry increases your haste by 20%, but what some don’t realize is that Adrenaline Rush makes your Sinister Strikes’ instant, so Blade Flurry is wasted.

 Right way: Using Adrenaline Rush, then Blade Flurry, then Killing Spree. By simply using them one after another, you can greatly increase your DPS. What this does is use your biggest cooldown first, so when you use Blade Flurry and Killing Spree, and you can use Adrenaline Rush roughly 40 seconds sooner, because it has been cooling off while you were using it and the other cooldowns, and when you do that, you can use your other cooldowns faster too.

(Written by Sudhee) (Write for us!)

“DK’s can tank in all 3 specs.” Tired of hearing that without knowing why? Well, read on…

1. Starter DK tanking gear for heroics.
2. Tanking stats.
3. Blood tanking spec.
4. Frost 2h tanking spec.
5. Frost DW tanking spec.
6. Unholy tanking spec.

Starter DK tanking gear for heroics:

Tempered Titansteel Helm (BOE – epic) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41387

Crusader’s Square Pauldrons (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37115

Tempered Saronite Breastplate(BOE- rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40672

Tempered Saronite Bracers (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41116

Waistguard of the Risen Knight (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37801

Daunting Legplates (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41345

Daunting handguards (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357

Tempered Saronite Boots (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40671

Durable Nerubhide Cape (BOE – epic) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43565

Ring of Earthen Might (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43250

Titanium Earthguard Ring (BOE – epic) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42643

Torta’s Oversized Choker (BOE – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37794

Titansteel Destroyer (BOE – epic) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41257

Essence of Gossamer (BOP – rare) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37220

The Black Heart (BOP – epic) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47216

There are no sigils before level 80, so you need to do heroics to get a decent sigil.

Enchants to get:

Stoneskin Gargoyle – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41257

Enchant Chest – Greater Defense – http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47766

Enchant Cloak – Titanweave – http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=44591

Austere Earthsiege Diamond – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41380

3x Thick Autumn’s Glow – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40015

I have purposefully left out the head and shoulder enchants, as they need faction reputation, but, you can get:

Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Head enchant) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40015

Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (Shoulder enchant) – http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44136

One trip to the Auction House, and you will be able to buy everything but the trinkets. With all the BOE armor, enchants and gems, you will hit exactly 537 defense rating, which is what you need to tank heroics, and 10 man Naxxramas, but anything beyond that, will be troublesome.

Tanking stats:

Till you get 540 defense, its defense > stamina > parry/dodge > strength/agility

After you get 540 defense, its stamina > parry/dodge > strength/agility

540 is the defense cap where you can no longer be crit, so it is unnecessary to go over that, and your time would be better spent going for stamina.

Strength is used for Attack Power as well as Parry rating, because Forceful Deflection gives you parry rating equal to 25% of your total strength. So it helps generate threat as well as help you tank.

Agility is used for Crit and Dodge, but since you have very little crit as a tank, it is almost negligible, and in most cases it is better to go for strength.

Blood Tanking spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EGVh0Icbofsox0xZ0gh0xz:iGd

At a glance: Blood mainly deals with single target threat generation and health regeneration with Death Strike.

Rotation: Keep up Icy Touch and Plague Strike up on all targets at all times, use Heart Strike before Death Strike, so you can benefit from the Death Strike glyph.

The main tanking talents you need to get for this spec are Blade Barrier, Veteran of the Third War, Improved Death Strike, Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis, Toughness and Anticipation.

The main threat generating talents in this spec are, Bladed Armor, Scent of Blood, Dark Conviction, Bloody Strikes, Bloody Vengeance, Abomination’s Might, Sudden Doom, Heart Strike, Morbidity, and Necrosis.

After getting these talents, you can play around with the spec, to see what suits you best.

The spec given above is designed to generate massive amounts of threat rather than survivability, but it is an excellent spec to tank heroics.

Frost 2H Tanking spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcxZhxxxAbIoc0buzAo0th:sadVMm

At a glance: Frost is geared towards tanking melee, because of the haste debuffs you can put on your targets, and the talents that increase the chance for melee attacks to miss you.

Rotation: Keep up Icy Touch and Plague Strike on all targets at, all times, and rotate with Howling blast (whenever it’s up), Obliterate (for threat generation) and Blood Strike (to keep up the Blade Barrier talent).

The main tanking talents to get for this spec are Blade Barrier, Toughness, Icy Talons, Frigid Dreadplate, Annihilation, Improved Frost Presence, Unbreakable Armor, and Anticipation.

The main threat generating talents in this spec are Killing Machine, Deathchill, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, and Morbidity.

After getting these talents, you can play around with the spec, to see what suits you best.

The given spec is based on getting snap aggro on a number of mobs, and survivability, more than single target threat generation.

Frost DW Tanking spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcxhZhxe0NbI0c0fuzAo0xb:adsVMm

This spec will be more viable after patch 3.2.2, when they let Threat of Thassarian affect Rune Strike.

At a glance: Frost is geared towards tanking melee, because of the haste debuffs you can put on your targets, and the talents that increase the chance for melee attacks to miss you.

Rotation: Keep up Icy Touch and Plague Strike on all targets at, all times, and rotate with Howling blast (whenever it’s up), Obliterate (for threat generation) and Blood Strike (to keep up the Blade Barrier talent).

The main tanking talents to get for this spec are Blade Barrier, Toughness, Annihilation, Icy Talons, Nerves of Cold Steel, Threat of Thassarian, Frigid Dreadplate, Improved Frost Presence, Unbreakable Armor, and Anticipation.

The main threat generating talents in this spec are Killing Machine, Deathchill, Frost Strike, Scent of Blood, Howling Blast, and Morbidity.

After getting these talents, you can play around with the spec, to see what suits you best.

The given spec is based on getting snap aggro on a number of mobs, and survivability, more than single target threat generation.

Unholy Tanking spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcxhMZ0xZbxhIx0zg0hx0uIq:rMomVM

At a glance: The Unholy tree is based around dealing magic damage, this spec is very potent when you have around 50% avoidance, because that makes your Bone Shield last longer.

Rotation: Keep up Icy Touch, and Plague Strike on all targets at all times, then rotate between Blood Strikes and Scourge Strikes as you see fit.

The main Tanking talents to get for this spec are, Blade Barrier, Toughness, Anticipation, Bone Shield, and Rage of Rivendare.

The main threat generating talents in this tree are, Subversion (after 3.2.2, when it affects Scourge Strike), Scent of Blood, Dark Conviction, Vicious Strikes, Morbidity, Outbreak, Necrosis, Ravenous Dead, Impurity, Desolation, Ebon Plaguebringer, and Wandering Plague.

After getting these talents, you can play around with the spec, to see what suits you best.

As you may have noticed, there are a lot more threat generating talents than there are tanking talents in this tree, and a lot of those talents do AOE damage, so it is very suitable for AOE tanking, as well as excellent single target threat generation as well, second only to Blood.

To conclude, I hope you have learned something useful about Death Knight tanks, hope you enjoy tanking!

*Please Note: This was all accurate as of the 3.2 Patch On Live as of the date written. (09-15-09)-JC

(Written by Jason Cox) (Write for us!)

Most people think that healing as a Restoration Shaman is nothing more than spamming chain heal which is incorrect. Chain heal actually only should be accounting for depending on the fight around 50-60% of your total healing. I’ll touch on this a bit more later.

1. Basic Healing Information:

Healing as a shaman is not as difficult as many may imagine. One of the most difficult parts I have personally found is high mobility fights as we are turret healers. Meaning we need to be standing still to do any healing other than riptide, which even with the T9 bonuses still isn’t the greatest.

Healing in high mobility fights is one of the biggest challenges you will face healing as a shaman as the only instant heals we have are Gift of the Naaru on a 3 minute cooldown and Riptide on a six second cooldown of which generally is not enough to keep someone alive by itself. Make sure to keep your tanks at full life along with as many others as you can. The basic strategy for high mobility fights tend to be difficult to explain as the fights will vary tremendously. Just make sure to listen to your raid leader and just make sure you know the bosses. You want to make sure this is done before you actually go into a raid where you will be fighting them for your first time.

1. Gear Choices:

You are able to get multiple high end pieces just from heroics so this would be the best place to start. With that in mind you actually can get two pieces of Tier 8-Item Level 226 gear directly from the badges. The cost is 58 badges of Conquest each, this includes the helm and chest. The set bonuses themselves for Tier 8 are not all that (Two pieces gets you a 1 second reduction on your Riptide cool down) great but when coupled with 2 pieces of Tier 8 and two pieces of Tier 9 (20% increased effects of Riptide) it becomes much more effective.

Your primary stats as a healer are:

Spell Power: This is what will determine the amount of each heal. This is also known as SP

MP5: This is very important as well as this is how much mana you will regen both in and out of combat every 5 seconds.

Haste: Just as important as others will speed up your cast time of your spells. This will be much more useful in later Tiers of raid content.

Intellect: Increases your max mana pool,this is abbreviated as Int or Intell

Critical Strike Rating: However one of the lower stats however the passive heals you will give due to the talent Ancestral Awakening. This is also known as Crit. Crit will also allow the ability to proc your water shield and returning mana to you.

Stamina: Increases your life, you do not want to die to a mass area of effect that you would have lived through had you had the appropriate amount of life to sustain the damage. This is abbreviated as Int.

1. Recommended Enchants:

• Head: Arcanum Of Blissful Mending: 30 SP/ 10 Mp5 (Wyrmrest Accord Revered is required.)

• Shoulder: Greater Inscription Of The Crag-24 SP/8 Mp5 (Sons Of Hodir Exalted is required.)

• Back: Enchant Cloak-Greater Speed: Provides +23 haste.

• Gloves: Enchant Gloves-Exceptional Spell power: +28 SP

• Chest: Either of these enchants are fine.

  • • Greater Mana Restoration: 10 Mp5

    • Powerful Stats: +10 To All Stats (Some like and dislike this however consider also it will increase your total max health and mana pools which will help out when you begin into ToTC where that extra mana and health will actually play a key in your survival and ability to not go totally out of mana.
      

• Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle Provides An Extra Gem Slot. This will allow you the use of an additional gem slot known as prismatic.

• Legs: Sapphire Spellthread: 50 SP/30 Sta.

• Boots: Enchant Boots-Greater Vitality: 7 Mp5/ 5 Hp5

• Weapon: Enchant Weapon-Exceptional Spellpower: +50 SP

• Offhand: Enchant Shield-Greater Intellect: +25 Intellect

1. Glyphs:

The recommended glyphs that should be used by any raiding Restro Shaman are:

• Glyph Of Earth Shield: This actually accounts for more of your overall healing than you may expect.

• Glyph Of Chain Heal: Since the recent patch changes this actually has a lower reduction per jump with an increase in how far it can jump per target making the extra jump worth it.

• Glyph Of Lesser Healing Wave,or Glyph of Riptide, Or Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. All are good totems, Lesser Healing Wave is nice as it adds 10% to your heals if your target has earth shield on it. This is great for 5 mans. For Raiding however your best bet will be to stick with healing stream or riptide either is fine and each have their own unique benefits.

1. Talent Distribution:

Here is the general cookie cutter Resto Shaman Build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#f9wAjXVnDIz52,-RtOHR,10433

There are a few variations in which you could use as some prefer the spell knock back however this is still one of the most viable and useful raid specs to date.

1. Healing Priority:

This is not something all healers do although they should be. Healing Priority meaning your a raid healer and you see a healer and a dps about to die. You have to prioritize and heal the healer first as an example..The order in which I would put priority on is:

• Tanks

• Healers

• Special Roles: IE someone assigned to spell steal or purge and with out could cause a wipe

• DPS

Healing In High Mobility Fights: Recommended Mods:

The only recommended mods some of which is recommended for all classes. One of these mods you will want being a healer. The links listed below are from a very well trusted site called Curse which I would say provides most every WoW user with the Mods he or she may need. You can find them at http://www.curse.com

• Healbot: One of the most important Mods a healer can have. It has the ability to click a persons name in a box and perform a heal with the combo of left click,middle click,right click. You also can set it perform other spells with Shift+ Ones listed above and Alt+ ones listed above. It will show you many buffs when they wear off on you or a tank, show threat and many other features you will want as a healer. This is the ultimate healing mod. 10 man content you can get away without this but when you start doing 25 man I would say its almost a required mod for a healer.

  http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heal-bot-continued.aspx

• Deadlyboss Mods: This will aid you by showing you timers on special boss abilities which are vital to know so as to avoid them if possible.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/deadly-boss-mods.aspx

• Omen Threat Meter: You do not want to surpass the tank in threat however rare since the threat reworking blizzard did in WOTLK it is still possible. This is also good to have so that if you have a dps who may surpass a tanks threat your able to prepare to heal them or HOT them up to keep them alive if they do end up pulling threat.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx

1. Conclusion:

Being a healer is a very demanding and a very stressful job however it has many rewards of its own. Some enjoy healing while others do not. Generally if your good as a healer you will be invited by many people for other raids outside your guild along with other heroics and such which aids in attaining your gearing faster and becoming more experienced.

For the purpose of gaining experience in being a raid healer prior to entering a raid I would highly suggest spending a couple days in Battle Grounds with your healbot. This or Wintergrasp will work also. Doing a little PVP will provide you invaluable raid healing experience where as raid healing is a bit different with coordinated fights and such it will at least provide you the basic feeling of what it is like to be a raid healer. It will also aid you in fine tuning your spell rotations to maximize your healing per second (HPS).

Article Written By Jason Cox-Kaynwinters/Dalaran

Addons

Specific paladin addons, in my experience, are not really a necessity until your reach 80.

For the purposes of leveling a paladin, one addon I do recommend if you are aiming to level quickly, is Carbonite Quest, also check out Zygor’s leveling guide for in-game step by step level walkthrough for the most efficient questing. This is an invaluable tool for showing you where to go for quests. As an addon, it is not as useful if you want to enjoy the game more, by exploring and such like.

Even in this circumstance it has its uses if you are lost in a particular quest chain and need assistance, but overall I would say it’s more useful to somebody who is leveling an alt. I use it all the time for my alts now and it speeds up my progress considerably.

Other general addons which may help leveling, but are equally of use at 80 is Atlas and Atlasloot. These provide assistance by showing maps of dungeons and boss locations within them. They provide the full loot drops for all dungeons in the game and the percentage chance of an item dropping. This allows you to find the dungeons which drop the most useful gear and run them, while avoiding the dungeons which don’t have much of use.

Also included is full pvp maps and some useful additions which allow you to see how long flight times are, how long till a location is captured in pvp battles etc.

When you reach 80 and are starting to think about raiding (Prot Pally Raiding Guide here) the following addons are a must for paladin tanks.

1. Deadly Boss Mods(DBM)/Bigwigs

This provides warnings about specific boss abilities that players must be aware of during a fight. For example Flame walls in the Obsidian Sanctum. They also provide warnings if you are being affected by a specific ability, i.e. if you are standing in a void zone etc. This gives you the information you need to stay alive in these encounters.

Be warned though, you still need to know the tactics before hand, these are not a replacement for studying the encounters(I haven’t personally used Bigwigs, as DBM has always suited me, but I would encourage people to try out both and see if they have any preference).

2. Omen Threat meter

Know simply as Omen by most players, this provides a threat display, allowing you to keep an eye on your overall threat on any one target. This is obviously very important for tanks to make sure you are at the top of the aggro list, and it will also show you when you are in danger of being overaggroed by a dps. In this situation you should be aware that you have some responsibility to try and help the raid by using HoS for example.

While the dps should be watching their own aggro with Omen, sometimes crits happen at the wrong time, especially in the case of warlocks and fire mage’s. This is where you should be helping them if at all possible by using HoS before they overaggro. If in doubt use it, better to be wrong and not need it than lose a dps unnecessarily. This is especially important in dps races, i.e. XT 002 on hard mode in Ulduar.

3. Pally Power

This is a very useful buffing addon which allows you to setup which buffs you are giving each class. It co-ordinates with other paladins in the raid, assuming they have it also. This allows you to give the necessary buffs to all raid members quickly and efficiently, and reduces time spent between encounters.

4. TankPoints 2.0

I would say this is more useful as you progress in raids. It provides information on tanking equipment and compares drops to your existing gear. I have used it occasionally though I can usually determine gear upgrades without it based on my own knowledge. It is an optional addon in my opinion, though if you are going for different gear sets it will be invaluable to determine the best combination for use in certain situations.

Other addons which are options are Recount, and any addon which allows you to monitor cooldowns. Recount is used for measuring your dps mainly, but it also gives information on a wide range of stats, i.e. healing done, damage taken etc.

I have never felt the need to use a cooldown monitor as I can see clearly which abilities to use and when with the blizzard ui. If you are having problems checking which cooldowns are ready it may be an idea to find an addon suitable for this task. The main site for all addons is wow.curse.com, and has a section for specific class addons which provide a range of functions. It is well worth your time, if you are having problems with a certain aspect of game play, checking this out for addons which will make you more efficient.

Macros

Macros in my experience, are mostly about situations. They can be set up for communications in raids, specific actions for certain bosses, and a range of other functions.

One of the most common macros you will probably use, especially when just starting tanking, is a trinket macro. So, to clarify exactly what I mean by this let me show an example.

/use trinket
/cast Avenging Wrath

This macro would then use your avenging wrath spell at the exact same time as your trinket. You simply put your trinket’s name after the /use command. This saves time as you don’t have to activate your spell then your trinket independently. You put your macro in an action bar, the same way you would with a spell, then simply use it as with any other ability.

The other advantage to this is that you get the full use of both in combination, whereas if you clicked the 2 separately you would lose a couple of seconds on the 2nd spell. This also may have a knock on effect depending on the cooldown for each.

For example, you have 2 spells/abilities with a 2min cooldown, each lasts 15secs and gives a damage increase, for every 2secs you lose clicking them, then you would only get 13secs of combined damage increase, then 11 etc. If you need burst at a particular point you need both combined for maximum effect.

While some might argue that you still get an overall damage increase, as a tank there are some situations where that extra burst will prove crucial. A boss that resets aggro for example, a maximum burst helps ensure that you regain it as fast as possible, and don’t lose it to a high burst dps.

The use of macros also improves your overall efficiency as you can plan exactly when to use your cooldowns and not have to worry about clicking, or pressing, too many buttons one after the other.

Another situation when it is important to use macros is for specific encounters. Lets take Grobbulus as an example from Naxx. You can set up a macro for targeting specific enemies. In this case I’ll assume your are off-tanking the slimes. You can make a macro as follows:

/target fallout slime

This ensures as soon as a slime spawns that you target it directly, and you can safely taunt it to you. The trouble with targeting using the mouse or Tab button is that you can and will make mistakes from time to time, and pull the boss instead. This can cause chaos if the MT doesn’t react quickly enough and result in a wipe.

Macros can also be used for communication in raids. One I use quite often is at the start of a boss pull.

/rw Pulling

This is a very simple macro which alerts the raid I am pulling and will ensure that every knows exactly when the action is starting.

Another example of when macros are useful is when you need to keep switching tanks. For example on Kologarn in Ulduar 25man, you need to switch between tanks due to an armour debuff. I created a simple macro for this.

/rw Taunt!

This clearly states you need the other tank to taunt the boss, and keeps things simple and concise.

The communication macros can be very useful to make things clear and give information quickly. If you are using Ventrilo or Teamspeak, then they are of less use as you should be constantly communicating over your mics. As as backup in case of problems with either program they can be the difference between wiping and killing a boss.

Macros should be custom made for the scenarios you find yourself in. This is, I feel, the best use for them. They are not absolutely necessary all the time but to improve your overall efficiency and give yourself the best possible chances they will prove a great asset in many situations.

Be sure to check out Zygors Leveling guide for the best leveling addon and walkthrough combined.

(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

For mages looking to improve their DPS, there are 3 basic questions you should ask:

1)      Are you spec’d right?

2)      Are you geared/gemmed/enchanted right?

3)      Are you using the right rotation?

Today we’re dealing with the first of those questions.  While there are a handful of proper PvE builds and mages can debate which one is best for them, a few misplaced talent points can sabotage even skilled mages.

So, let’s list the “acceptable” talent builds for raiding mages, explain why these are the most popular (and best), and identify some places where new raiding mages get tripped up.  Note that recommended glyphs are also included.

Frostfire

(0/53/18):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#oZfVcbRhIhVubhctbIccoc:IiLo0m

Explanation:   The basic Frostfire build that’s been around since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.  Note that you have the ability here to stack the scorch debuff, but the glyph setup assumes that you’re not regularly being asked to do so.  If you are, then you should replace either the living bomb or molten armor glyph with the glyph of improved scorch.  If you know you are not going to ever need to stack scorch, you can always move those three points over to Improved Blizzard in the frost tree.

Where people get tripped up: The fire talents are pretty straightforward, but I’ve seen a fair share of frostfire mages with their frost trees messed up.  It’s important to remember that the talents Piercing Ice and Ice Shards both affect your frostfire bolt, and therefore are absolutely crucial talents to frostfire mages.  You are not, as some people believe, just trying to get to Icy Veins here.  Additionally, the mana cost reduction from Frost Channeling is a big reason why frostfire mages are so mana efficient.

Deep Fire

(19/52/0):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vck0sZ0EcbRhIhVhbhct:ViLo0m

Explanation:  With deep fire (unlike frostfire and arcane), you’ve got a few talent points that can be moved around depending on your preference – there are perfectly acceptable 18/53/0 and 20/51/0 deep fire builds as well.  Specifically, the single points in Student of the Mind and Arcane Meditation could be moved to Magic Absorption if you so desire.  You could also use one for Combustion in the fire tree if your crit is a little low (although well-geared deep fire mages don’t need Combustion).  As with frostfire, you are capable of stacking the scorch debuff with this spec, although if you are asked to do so regularly you should really get the scorch glyph.

Where people get tripped up:  This spec is a little complicated (primarily because you have to spend 5 talent points on useless talents in the first level of the arcane tree), and you could go a lot of different ways with it.  Just remember that any deep fire spec absolutely requires Spell Impact, Focus Magic, and Torment of the Weak in the arcane tree, and no points whatsoever in the frost tree.

Arcane

(57/3/11):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ofhVsz0IzxGuMxedcZbGc0o

Explanation:  You can switch a few points around, but if you’re seriously playing arcane, you’re going to have a 57/3/11 point distribution.  The main source of moveable points is the first row of the arcane tree (you can mix and match those talents based on preference, hit rating, threat sensitivity, etc.), Magic Attunement, and Student of the Mind.  The rest of the talents are basically required.

Note that there is a viable Magic Absorption build that really works well on some Ulduar fights, but since I’m writing for mages that are relatively new to raiding, I’m not going to confuse anyone with a situational build that relies heavily upon priests putting shields on you and you intentionally taking damage.

Where people get tripped up:  I can’t stress enough how important the 3 points in fire and 11 in frost are.  The arcane tree has a ton of interesting talents and it’s tempting to leech some points from the other trees to get them, but you really don’t want to do this.  The fire tree gives you 6% crit on your main nuke – uh, yes please.  The frost tree not only lowers your hit cap, but gives you Icy Veins, which is vital to a spec that relies heavily on burst damage.

(Written by Nicholas) (Write for us!)

This guide will provide a general overview of how to best use a paladin tank, and the gear requirements and stats that you require to tank successfully in the level 80 raids.

1.Gear Requirements

A paladin tank needs to have gear with a minimum of 540 defence rating for Naxx and subsequent raids, and 535 defence rating for heroics. This is the  minimum level at which you cannot be critically hit by bosses. This can be accomplished fairly easily between crafted items and drops from various dungeons. Also, assuming you have the reputation, you can get items from the various faction quartermasters.

Rather than go into the exact gear required and where to get it from I will explain what the mechanics are and what you need from your gear. This gives you the basis to make your own choice in gear and allows you to adapt to any given situation.

Defence should be your first priority for tanking, and you will find as you gear up that you will need to have a selection of gear to ensure you stay above the 540 threshold. Sometimes you’ll get a piece of gear with more dodge and less defence for example, so quite often you need to use different combinations to keep that level. With that in mind it’s a good idea to keep the gear you collect from dungeons to ensure you can switch as needed until it no longer becomes an issue.

In terms of mitigation stats the priority after defence is dodge – parry- block.
Dodge is the most important stat overall as it provides complete mitigation from a blow that could hit for a few thousand damage.

Parry is similar, but as you gain more points in dodge and parry, both are subject to diminishing returns. This means that it takes more points in each stat per 1% of mitigation. Dodge provides the best ratio of points/1%, hence it is better to stack dodge.

Shield block is less useful against bosses as it only mitigates a certain amount of the damage, never the full amount. It does have its uses in aoe tanking against trash etc, but it is less useful than either of the other two stats if you are MT in a raid due to the large damage output of most of the bosses.

In terms of aggro generation, the most important stat is strength. This has changed from spell power since the BC days, due to different game mechanics. Suffice it to say that you don’t need spell power on any gear now, including weapons. A paladin’s gear should be similar to a warriors in terms of stats.

The next important stat is Hit, this is not so important at the heroic level and it can be hard to find items with enough until you get into Naxx 10man’s and above. Realistically you need to be near capped in this which is 263assuming you have no other hit modifiers in your raid. I would advise having at least 100+ in hit rating going into Naxx, preferably more. Enchants and gems can help provide this, IE Precision on gloves(+20) and using a titanium weapon chain to start with is a must on your weapon. I did tank in Naxx with just over 100 hit rating without too many problems with aggro from the dps, but the sooner you can get it up the less problems you will have.

Stamina is a dual use spec now as it provides the obvious high hit points a tank needs to survive, but also provides your spell power for aggro generation. In general terms you are aiming for around 23-25k hp for heroics and 26k upwards for 10/25man raids unbuffed.

Expertise provides a little extra hit rating and can be useful against bosses who parry and dodge, but as most of a paladins threat comes from spell damage it is not as useful for paladins as for warriors. Some expertise helps, but it is not as important as strength and hit.

Agility does have some use as it improves your mitigation from your armour value, and gives a small amount to avoidance and crit chance and if you are aiming for avoidance over mitigation then enchanting your cloak or weapon can be useful. This will probably not be an option when you start tanking as I found all my enchants were in defence or hit rating. As you improve your gear it is an option worth looking at.

The other stats such as crit, intellect, spirit and haste are all pretty much useless for doing anything positive for a tank. There are always other more effective ways to improve your mitigation and threat generation.

2.Talents

A protection paladin should have the following kind of build as a basis.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZV0tAbuMusIufdxo

This build provides the main abilities you need to tank successfully. I’ll explain each of the chosen talents in more detail and the options for each, then explain the other options available from each tree assuming this build.

Protection Tree

Divine Strength – Fairly obvious choice to increase your threat and mitigation through shield block.

Anticipation – Gives an extra 5% dodge rating which is a must, and is not subject to diminishing returns unlike that dodge on gear.

Toughness – This provides more mitigation from armour and the lesser duration on movement effects can be useful.

Righteous Fury – Provides 6% mitigation from all damage, again a necessity.

Divine Sacrifice – This is probably a more optional talent based on what your raid is doing and what part you are playing in the raid. It can be a raid saver on certain bosses, i.e. Sapphiron in Naxx or Malygos in the Eye of Eternity when the whole raid is taking damage. It should only be used in conjunction with Divine Protection for obvious reasons(i.e. you die otherwise).

Improved Devotion Aura – This gives an extra 6% healing for the raid, which takes some pressure off the healers and helps generally. When you are just starting tanking it’s a good idea to use the devotion aura for the increased mitigation, but as you progress you can use Retribution aura, or any of the elemental resistance aura’s as the situation requires.

Blessing of Sanctuary – Provides mitigation for the tank, as well as some mana regeneration. It is the main blessing for a paladin tank and it is the best choice at the start of a tanks raiding.

Sacred Duty – With and 8% stamina increase for 2points this is a no brainer.

One Handed Weapon Specialization – This is again about threat generation and overall dps. While tanking is not about damage output, it still helps if the tank can do as much as possible.

Spiritual Attunement – This provides mana to the tank from healing which is no bad thing. If you are finding your mana pool running low then put 2 points in this. When I started tanking I had 2 points in this at all times and never had a problem with mana regen.

Holy Shield – Provides extra block rating while active and extra threat generation due to holy damage, thus a necessity for tanking.

Ardent Defender – This talent provides an extra fail safe when things go wrong. It can be bypassed by a large amount of damage, i.e. 35%-0% in one hit, but it can and does let you take an extra hit when healers may be just out of range and need a second to get to you.

Combat Expertise – The 6% stamina on its own makes this a necessity. The expertise and critical strike increase make this an excellent talent to have.

Redoubt – The block value  provides damage mitigation and is a great talent when tanking multiple trash mobs if your holy shield charges are used up.

Touched by the Light – This is where your main threat will come from, and while the healing aspect is not much use it can help in situations where you have just finished off tanking a mob and you need an extra heal, or a healer needs help.

Avenger’s Shield – The prime pulling spell for a protection paladin, its required without exception.

Guarded by the Light – This gives damage mitigation against spells which helps in a lot of situations where armour is useless. The additional effect of renewing Divine Plea after hitting an enemy makes this vital.

Shield of the Templar – This is about damage mitigation again, with the advantage of being able to silence casters on the initial pull.

Judgements of the Just – The main advantage to this is the slowing of melee attack speed. Less attacks = less damage. The HoJ reduced cool down is less useful in pve than pvp, but of you need to control mobs it has its uses.

Hammer of the Righteous – This is simply a must have for tanks, tanking trash you can hold aggro on 3 targets at once with no problems.

Retribution Tree

Deflection – This, like anticipation in the prot tree, is a necessity. Again it is not affected by diminishing returns, thus it gives a full 5% parry.

Improved Judgements – The point in this gives your Judgements a 9 sec cool down, which is useful if you use the spell rotation I will describe later.

Optional Talents

With the remaining 12 points you have a choice. In the Holy tree the only talent I personally put points into is Seals of the Pure. It increases damage of your judgements and their seals. It is not a huge damage increase but until you are Naxx 25 geared or better it can give a boost. After you are well enough geared 5 points in Conviction from the Retribution tree is slightly better dps overall.

The Retribution tree provides a few more options, Heart of the Crusader helps your group overall with and extra 3% crit chance on the enemy, which if you don’t have a retri paladin can be useful.

Benediction is of little use as you get mana from 3 different sources, so it is of limited benefit getting a 10% reduction on spell costs.

Improved Blessing of Might can be useful if you are buffing a raid group, again I personally raid with retri paladins so it is of limited use for me. Your group composition should dictate whether this is useful or not.

Conviction is a talent which I have usually got maxed out to improve my dps overall. It is a useful way to increase damage, but not to be used as a substitute for steady high threat generation. Make sure you are not relying on crits to build your threat quickly, this is a bad idea and can go wrong quickly.

Vindication and Seal of Command are pvp talents as your normal seal will be Seal of Vengence/Corruption, and bosses are immune to vindication.

Pursuit of justice I personally don’t use, but it can be useful for moving targets more quickly into a position. My own feeling is that it is better suited for pvp.

Sanctity of Battle and Crusade can both have points in them, the extra damage from Crusade can be 6% depending what enemies you are facing and quite often is the full amount. The crit chance from SoB is useful and the extra damage on exorcism can help if you need to do burst damage quickly on a mob.

There is a lot to take in regarding your talents and the options within them, but when you understand them and how they can help in various situations it allows you to vary your style as necessary.

3.Spells/Abilities

There are many spells in a paladins arsenal, some of which you will use frequently, some rarely. I will present a general overview of these and their various uses in tanking.

There are 5 main spells you will be using – Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement, Consecration and Shield of the Righteous. These should be used in such a way that maximises threat and minimizes wasted cooldowns. For this we have a spell rotation, i.e. a set of spells which used properly should be being used throughout the fight one after another.

The initial pull should be done with your Avenger’s shield, which gives threat on the target immediately. When you engage in melee combat the following rotation of spells is typically used-

1)Shield of the Righteous(6sec cd)
2)Holy Shield(9sec cd)
3)Hammer of the Righteous(6sec cd)
4)Consecration(9sec cd)
5)Shield of the Righteous(6sec cd)
6)Judgement(9sec cd)
7)Repeat ad infinitum(till boss is down)

This is the basic rotation of spells which a paladin tank will use to generate threat on the mob. The cooldowns(cd’s) on each spell are not exact here, i.e. consecration has an 8 sec cd as does holy shield, but the overall importance is that the pattern can continue in a smooth way without gaps where you are not generating threat.

This is the normal pattern but there may be reasons to change it, i.e. perhaps you have to let another tank taunt the boss off you due to a stacking debuff. It is best not to be using this sequence then as you may overaggro the other tank, especially if you are better geared than the tank in question.

The other spells which you will use a lot consist of your taunts, damage instants and Seals/Judgements.

The judgement I normally choose is Judgement of Wisdom(JoW) to keep my mana pool up. Judgement of Light(JoL) and Judgement of the Just(JotJ) can be used depending on the circumstances, thought JotJ is mainly for pvp usage.

The Seal of Vengence/Corruption(SoV/C) is the seal of choice for a tank, the other seals I very rarely use. That being said there are reasons to use them.

Seal of Blood(SoB) can be used when your gear surpasses the instance you are in to help mana regeneration from healing. For example if I’m tanking Violet Hold heroic I simply don’t take enough damage with my gear, so using this seal helps stop my mana from becoming too low.

Seal of Light/Wisdom(SoL/SoW) I use if I am running solo and I need a little healing/mana, i.e. in 70heroics or an old school raid.

Seal of Righteousness(SoR) gives more burst threat at the start but lacks the constant threat generation of SoV/C.

Seal of Justice(SoJ) in my opinion is mainly a pvp seal though against caster mobs it could be useful to interrupt casts.

Your taunts consist of Hand of Reckoning(HoR) and Righteous Defence(RD). The HoR is a one target taunt which I usually find is my taunt of choice for pulling enemies. RD pulls three mobs which can be useful in situations where a healer has aggro from adds, but bear in mind it can be a nightmare if you a get a pull wrong. I have made mistakes with this on Sartharion with many adds and pulled a drake by mistake, and likewise on Grobbulus when we had more than one slime and I accidentally pulled the boss of the main tank. It is useful but be very careful what you pull, it might just bite a little too hard .

Another possibility for using as a taunt would be your Exorcism spell. It can only be used as an initial pull, but it does add another option to your abilities if your Avenger’s shield would cause problems or is on cool down

 As your main tanking blessing I would always use Blessing of Sanctuary(BS). Blessing of Kings(BoK) does give a nice stamina boost to tanks and if you need to soak up a lot of damage this can be useful, though in my experience there are usually other paladins to give this buff anyway.

Blessing of Wisdom(BoW) and Blessing of Might(BoM) are given to buff others. There is no reason a tank would use either of these in any situation where they are tanking. With regard to the blessings I usually ask which people prefer, as some priests for example prefer BoK, other BoW.

The final set of spells you will use are the various protection spells.

Cleanse can be used to remove a debuff of poison, disease or magic and comes in useful against bosses like Heigan and Maexnna in Naxx.

Divine Shield is only used if you are not the main tank and you want to prevent all damage.

Hand of protection(HoP) is similar to divine shield but only prevents physical damage. Neither of these abilities can be used if you are tanking at the time as you will loose aggro immediately. However in combination with Hand of Sacrifice or Divine sacrifice, which redirect some damage to you they can help reduce individual or raid wide damage in a situation where you are not tanking a boss or adds.

For example against Sapphiron in Naxx you could use this ability while he is in the air if a healer gets iceblocked and a blizzard is nearly on top of a group, thus giving more chance that everyone will survive it.

Divine Protection is a good spell to use if you are in trouble. It reduces damage by 50% and is my spell of choice if I am getting into problems. It can also be used when a boss soft enrages, i.e. damage increases, this can give the healers time to adjust if they weren’t quite ready for the enrage.

Lay on Hands like Divine Protection I use if my health bar is dangerously low and I feel that I could die. It should be saved for emergencies but its your call to make if you think things are going wrong, better to use it and be wrong, than not use it and be right.

Hand of salvation(HoS) I have very rarely found time to use when tanking as I have to keep my threat high and concentrate on the boss, however it can help if only 1 dps is going too high on threat. The main problem I have found is targeting the player in question in a 25man raid. I have managed it once or twice but generally the dps should be able to manage their own aggro.

Hand of Freedom(HoF) is another spell I have not really had much reason to use. In the right situation it can be used on yourself and other players, and has the advantage of making them immune to movement reducing effects for 10 seconds.

Righteous Fury is your main threat generation spell and as such should be on all the time to increase your holy damage threat. Rebuff it often so that you don’t lose it in the middle of a fight, it is disastrous if this happens, trust me!

The other spell of note is your Divine Plea which should be activated just before you pull and with the appropriate glyph provides a 3% damage mitigation and a constant stream of mana as long as you are hitting something(preferably the boss:P).

4.Glyphs

The 3 main glyphs a paladin tank should be using are as follows-

1.Glyph of Divine Plea
2.Glyph of Seal of Vengeance
3.Glyph of Righteous Defense

The 1st Glyph is a necessity, the other 2 are more a personal choice. There are a few major glyphs which do not make good choices.

The Glyph of Consecration and the Glyph of Spiritual Attunement aren’t that useful. The first puts your 69696 rotation out of sync which isn’t ideal and the second simply won’t make enough of a difference to your mana regeneration.

The Glyph of Exorcism isn’t useful as this is not a generally used spell for a protection paladin. The Glyph of Seal of Righteousness and Turn Evil have a similar problem to Exorcism, they are simply not used enough by a protection paladin.

In terms of minor glyphs my own choice would be -

        1.  Glyph of Sense Undead
        2.  Glyph of Lay on Hands
        3.  Glyph of Blessing of Kings

These provide small but useful enhancements to each of the spells/abilities. The other minor glyphs are not really worth getting at this time.

Tanking Strategies

So with all the above your probably thinking that tanking is quite complicated and requires a lot of thinking. Well, it is and it does. To be competent requires a great deal of versatility and a real understanding of how to best apply your abilities in any any given situation.

That being said you can’t learn exactly how to react in a given situation unless you are in said situation. The key to learning how to tank well is to simply to get on with tanking. After each dungeon or raid analyse what you did well and what didn’t work. If you wiped a lot try and be constructive in dealing with it. Try not to blame anybody, it never helps a raids’ morale when someone is being critical.

So with the above in mind let me give a few examples of situations where things go wrong and how to think about them.

1.You are in Violet Hold heroic. You are tanking Xevozz, the captured Ethereal with a pug group. You start kiting him from the bottom of the stairs and pulling him up to follow your usual path around the room. You find your health suddenly takes a hit and no healing seems to be happening just as you go around the corner at the top of the stairs. Then you take another hit 2 secs later and die. The group wipes and you have to start over again.

Now typically in this situation you get a load of grumbling about the healer and/or tank and usually if you don’t do it first try people leave. So what went wrong?  The main problem here is lack of communication, which is quite often the case with pug’s(random groups found through the looking for group channel). You need to explain before the boss starts where you are going so the healer doesn’t loose line of sight(los). Also you could have used Lay on Hands and divine shield to give your healer time to get in to a better position. Don’t assume just because you know what your plan is, that everyone does. Any fight like this where there is a lot of movement requires planning to ensure that everyone knows what their role is, and where to be at any given moment.

2.You are off-tanking Grobbulus in Naxx, picking up the slimes as the spawn. Suddenly 3 slimes spawn due to the boss turning as he does his slime spray. You use Righteous Defence on one of the slimes and end up pulling the boss which the MT fails to taunt back in time, you end up being killed and the group wipes.

This situation happens a lot in this fight. It is not necessarily any one persons fault, but the key to dealing with it is being aware it exists. The biggest reason most guilds fail at certain points is because the members blame each other for mistakes. Again the key to this is being aware of your abilities and the MTs’ abilities. Don’t panic when this sort of situation occurs. If you and the MT have talked before the fight then he knows this can happen and simply to taunt the boss back at this time. On your end this is a time to use HoR, to pull the slimes individually, if you can. The Mt can take a few extra hits and will have a couple of healers on him so let him take the aggro for a few secs until you can taunt the slimes to you. When you have them you should be using your Divine protection to help the healers as you will take a fair hit in damage. The main point is – Do Not Panic – difficult to do if you are trying to do things well, but when you learn to deal with things logically and realise that no run is going to be completely smooth then you will find you improve and your overall enjoyment of the game improves.

3.You are doing the Obsidium Sanctum in a 25man with 3 Drakes up. Your normal warrior tank who is on the fire elemental adds is unavailable so you have been asked to do this in his stead. On your first try you lose aggro to dps and healers and feel as if your letting the side down. After several more attempts you are getting criticized by some of the members as you can’t do this job as well as they think you should.

The key to this is the fact that this is the hardest job for any tank, controlling adds, especially in this fight. Do Not let peoples criticism get you down. I have done this fight and it is nigh impossible for a paladin tank to do this as his consecration just doesn’t generate aggro quickly enough and you are running about a lot in this fight. Yes you have to do the best you can, but realise that this is not your strongest point, and that in this particular fight a warrior is far superior to a paladin because of his instant burst aggro abilities. Any raid leader with experience knows this and should realise that this is not the best raid setup for the task. Unfortunately you are always going to get those who criticize and you have to try and be as constructive as possible with them. A whisper to the raid leader may help, as they can rearrange things and possibly talk to the critical members of the group.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to think about the situation you are going into before it happens, as the above examples show it makes everyones gaming experience easier and hopefully more enjoyable. That being said you will wipe many times in raids and it is part of how you learn to improve.

General Raid Guidelines

1.Always make sure you have studied the tactics of any raid you are going into, ideally watch videos which are available on wowwiki.com, or a site you know and prefer. This is always my preference as it shows exactly what is happening and if you get a narrated video it can be extremely helpful to understand the fights in the raid.
2.Always bring along any flasks and food you need, for tanks this is Strength/Stamina food and Stoneblood Flasks. Don’t rely on others to provide you with them. Part of raiding is being self sufficient. It is expected that you have everything you need with you.
3.Don’t criticize others or slag others off because they make mistakes, you will make mistakes as well, and it is much more fun to play in a relaxed atmosphere.
4.In most guilds there are addon’s which are required for raiding. The following are my addon’s and help immensely with any raid.

        Deadly Boss Mod’s(DBM) – Alerts you when specific abilities are     going to happen.
        Omen threat Meter – Shows your threat in comparison to the raid.
        Pally Power – Helps give the various blessings to the raid members.
       
These are the 3 main addon’s most guilds use. There are others out there so you will have to see if you have any preference for some of the other options available to you, ie BigWigs – Similar function to DBM, but not one I have used.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has proved useful to readers in understanding how to play a paladin tank. It is complicated but take it one stage at a time and through a combination of practical experience and the theory you will improve and become an asset to any raid or guild you are a part of.

(Written by Ryan S.) (Write for us!)

This guide covers how to max out everything possible to have the highest stats and killing power in the level 29 battlegrounds as a Rogue. If you want to get to 29 as quick as possible you should check out Zygor’s in-game leveling add-on walkthrough showing you the most efficient questing routes.

Index

1.      Gear

2.      Enchants

3.      Talents

4.      Glyphs

5.      Your job in the battlegrounds

6.      Warsong Gulch

7.      Arathi Basin

8.      Some friendly advice

1.      Gear

Head

Humbert’s Helm -Cheap, easy to get, and not bad at all.

Scaled Leather Headband of the monkey -better then Humbert’s but is a rare drop and can cost you a fortune.

Pathfinder Hat of the Monkey- Very Rare, but is definitely the best twink headpiece, even a 8/9, 9/8 will go for 100+ gold on my server and the 9/9 of the monkey goes for 1000 gold. The best twinks will have this item.

Neck

Wolfpack Medallion – great to use while you are getting the marks/honor for the WSG necklace, easily farmable too.

Scout’s/Sentinel’s Medallion The best necklace by far, costs 95 honor, and 20 WSG marks of honor.

Shoulders

BoA shoulders- Best choice in my opinion, but not all twinks have an 80, or access to these.

Mantle of thieves- very good shoulders as well, but very rare expect to pay 100+ gold on these.

Watchman Pauldrons -in my opinion these are not all that good and should only be used if u are a Flag carrier, or are lacking stamina.

Cutthroat’s Mantle of the monkey- Best looking shoulders by far, I would use these rather than watchman Pauldrons.

Cloak

Parachute cloak- definitely the best option, but it requires 225 engineering, it’s the best because it can be enchanted with +12 agility.

Tigerstrike Mantle- Also a very good option, but is not ilvl 35+ so cannot be enchanted with BC chants

Chest

Raptor Hunter Tunic- The only option for a twink can be given BC chants making it even better. Requires you to do a 4 quest chain that you should start at level 28, and you will need help from a higher level friend.

Tabard

Your Tabard doesn’t matter at all, but 2 really cool looking pvp tabards are

Private’s/Scout’s Tabard both costing 3 WSG marks and 3 AB marks.

Bracers

Barbaric Bracers- Very good, and very cheap, Second best twink option.

Emissary cuffs of the monkey- The best twink bracers, though very rare, they are definitely worth trying a few gnomeregan runs for.

Hands

Razzeric’s Racing Grips- the best gloves you can get, although you can put +26 attack power on them, +15 agility is much better for rogues.

Headhunter’s Mitts of the monkey- also a very good choice, in my eyes these are better than Wolfclaw gloves, but it is debatable.

Wolfclaw gloves- Another good choice these are the easiest of these gloves to obtain.

Waist

Defiler’s/Highlander’s leather girdle- The best 29 twink rogue belt, cost 175 honor points, and 20 AB marks.

Deftkin Belt-the best belt to use while waiting to get the AB belt

Ghostwalker Belt of the monkey- also a very good belt to use while waiting for the AB belt, but very rare.

Legs

Triprunner Dungarees- The only choice of legs if you are planning on making a serious twink.

Feet

Defiler’s/Highlander’s Leather boots-the best boots for a 29 twink, cost 175 honor and 20 AB marks.

Insignia boots- very good temporary pair of boots, almost always a pair or two on the auction house.

Harbringer boots- Best Stamina boots in the 29 bracket, buy a pair if u plan on being a flag carrier.

Rings

Deadman’s Hand- the best ring in my opinion, I farmed 43 runs to get this ring, and I think it is very much worth it.

Charged gear of the monkey, or of the tiger- hard to farm, but these are definitely worth it.

Legionnaire’s/protector’s Band- it’s a matter of preference in this over charged gear, but either way this is a very good ring too, costs 95 honor and 20 WSG marks.

Signet of Argas- Easily obtained through a quest, is worth getting while you are farming for the other rings.

Trinkets

Inherited Signet of the Horde/Alliance- is a must have, if u can’t get this then get the normal insignia of the alliance/horde.

Rune of Duty-a very good trinket, these 2 are the only trinkets I have ever wanted. Costs 118 honor and 30 WSG marks

Daggers

Torturing Poker- Absolutely the best dagger in this bracket, should be used in the main hand.

Scout’s/Sentinel’s Blade- Very good Daggers to be used in the offhand, costs 316 honor and 30 WSG marks.

Balanced Heartseeker- very good dagger to use in the main hand or off hand. I personally use it in the offhand with torturing poker in the main hand.

Ranged

Charmed Ancient Bone Bow- Best bow by far, can be traded for the BOA gun if you would like some more resilience.

Naga Heartpiercer-Best non-BoA Bow for a rogue in my opinion.

NightStalker bow- Another great bow, I would only use it if it dropped in a RFK and you didn’t want to run BFD.

2.      Enchants

Cloak-+3agi/+12agi (only if you used parachute cloak)

Chest-+6 stats, or +150 hp

Bracers- +9 stam

Gloves- +15agi

Legs- +32 armor

Boots- +7agi

Weapons- +15agi on both weapons

Ranged- +3 dmg scope

3.      Talents

Ambush Spec

Crit strike rating

Flag carrier build

4.      Glyphs

Glyph of Ambush

Glyph of Sinister Strike

Glyph of Vanish

When choosing glyphs it is really just preference whether you want glyph of Ambush, or Glyph of Sinister Strike. I use Glyph of Ambush because when I get an ambush crit for 1100 damage it makes a fight.

5.      Your job in the battlegrounds.

A rogue’s job in the battleground is to provide support, keep the enemy dead. It isn’t always best to get in combat. Use Sap a lot, especially on hunters, then distract people away from your flag carrier.

When you are carrying the flag make sure that you use your cooldowns, and make sure to communicate with your teammates, you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been going for the last cap and a huge group of enemies is coming up the tunnel only 3 seconds after a teammate said it was safe.

6.      Warsong Gulch

A very basic Battleground where you try to capture the opponent’s flag, while protecting your own from being captured. Teamwork will be very important if you are planning on winning many of these. If you can get in a Twink guild your best choice is to run Pre-made WSG so that you might be able to win a warsong in 10 minutes or less. I consider it almost impossible to get the 6 minute WSG victory achievement if you are not using a Pre-made group.

7.      Arathi Basin

My personal favorite Battleground, The objective is to contol as many of the 5 points as possible. To win an AB you have to communicate well with your teammates, call incomings EX. Inc GM would mean incoming gold mine, meaning there are enemies heading toward gold mine and it would be wise to have some of your team head over there.

8.      General Tips

1.      As an ambush specced rogue most of your damage will come from ambush of course, so if you see hunters coming stealth as soon an you can to avoid getting hunter’s mark.

2.      Don’t aim for the most damage in a battleground, try to have a good balance of flag caps, damage, and flag returns. The game isn’t only about stats, so if u have a bad game, but you still won give yourself a pat on the back, you must have been doing something right.

3.      Avoid hunters as best as you can, Hunters are the only class that I really have much of a problem on.

4.      Distract/sap people who are attacking your flag carrier.

5.      Distract will be a huge help when you are trying to catch up to that guy who is 10 yards ahead of you.

6.      Focus on teamwork, not how well you are doing.

7.      Sap hunters

8.      Have fun, If you keep losing take a break then come back, owning isn’t worth it if you aren’t having fun.

9.      Finally. Good Luck!

(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

Back before the last patch, when all we had to run were Naxx, Maly, and OS, gearing questions for mages were a lot simpler.  Regardless of spec, the Tier-7 4-piece set bonus was powerful enough to overcome any minor stat differences between tier gear and non-tier gear.  Basically, every raiding mage aimed to have four pieces of the tier 7 set, leaving room for one “off-set” piece.  And given the relative ease of that content, most raiding mages achieved it.

But those days are long gone now.  Not only has the much more challenging Ulduar brought Tier-8 gear (and a pair of new set bonuses), but Tier 9 is on the very near horizon.

Given this explosion of new gear, it can be difficult to know what exactly different kinds of mages should be aiming for.  So, let’s take a walk through the Tier 7, 8, and even 9 (courtesy of www.mmo-champion.com) set bonuses to break down their benefits.

Note:  As always, this is not designed for hardcore raiding mages who are min/maxing their gear and looking for specific numbers.  Elitist Jerks (www.elitistjerks.com) is the best place for that kind of discussion.

Tier 7

2-piece bonus: You gain 40% more mana when you use a mana gem.  In addition, using a mana gem grats you 225 spell power for 15 seconds.

Comments:  While the spellpower bonus benefits all mage specs roughly equally, the additional mana clearly benefits arcane mages much more heavily than deep fire or frostfire.  Arcane’s strength is its ability to convert mana into damage at a much more controllable rate than fire/frostfire, and with the extra 1200 mana per gem and 3 gems per fight, this works out to be quite a considerable overall damage boost.

4-piece bonus: Your offensive spells gain an additional 5% increased critical strike bonus damage.

Comments:  Remember, this is crit damage, not crit chance.  That means that this scales best with big crits, making it especially useful to frostfire mages, but still very useful to deep fire and arcane mages.  Basically, regardless of what spec you are, the damage you do from critical strikes is going to be a large portion of your overall damage, and therefore this set bonus has obvious value.

Overall Thoughts: The two piece bonus is highly forgettable for deep fire and frostfire mages, who should have no issues with replacing it even if it’s with non-set (but higher quality) gear.  Arcane mages, on the other hand, will have a very difficult time parting with the unique mana increase the two-piece bonus provides, meaning that it should take a considerably large upgrade in gear quality to sacrifice it for.  As for the four piece bonus, it’s nice and certainly not worth breaking for a single piece of gear.  However, if you’re progressed into 25-man Ulduar and you’re passing on gear just to keep this set bonus active, then you are probably doing yourself a disservice.  At the very least, as soon as you have access to two pieces of Tier-8 gear, it is definitely time to break your 4-piece T7 bonus.

Tier 8

2-piece bonus: Your Arcane Blast, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and Fireball spells have a chance to grant you 350 spell power for 15 seconds.

Comments:  Very solid (if not particularly sexy) straight-up increase to your DPS.  The effect has the standard 45-second internal cooldown, and will generally proc very quickly when it’s not on cooldown.  Regardless of your spec, when you factor in the upgrade in terms of gear quality, this is absolutely worth dumping your 4-piece Tier 7 bonus for.

4-piece bonus: You have a chance for the effect of your Missile Barrage, Hot Streak, or Brain Freeze talent not to be consumed when you cast the spells which benefit.

Comments:  Whoa there.  This is definitely the most interesting set bonus, and it has very different implications for the different mage specs.  For deep fire and frostfire, the ability to occasionally hit two consecutive pyroblasts represents a considerable DPS increase.  There’s nothing better than firing off two instant-cast pyroblasts!  But for arcane mages, this set bonus is a major disappointment.  Since casting the first arcane missiles consumes the arcane blast damage buff, the second one (the one that this set bonus provides) is much, much weaker.  In fact, casting arcane missiles without three stacks of arcane blast is simply not worth the mana – therefore, arcane mages basically have to sit on the extra proc until they cast three more arcane blasts (all of which would have a chance to proc missile barrage anyway) before using it.  So basically, this proc works out to being really nothing more than a relatively small increased chance to proc missile barrage.  Not exactly life-changing.

Overall Thoughts:  Deep fire and frostfire mages should set their sights on the Tier-8 4-piece bonus and get their by any means necessary (even if it means taking 10-man gear before the 25-man version is available to them).  The ability to get “two for one” hot streaks is simply too good to pass up.  In fact, until Tier 9 gear is available, fire mages should be aiming for the familiar “four tier pieces + one off-set piece” configuration.  On the other hand, arcane mages should probably forego the 4-set bonus entirely, and should seriously consider keeping two pieces of Tier 7 gear to pair with two pieces of Tier 8 and one off-set piece.  This not only allows arcane mages to capitalize on two super-useful set bonuses, it allows them some freedom to mix and match gear to their liking (maximizing haste and minimizing unnecessary hit rating, for example).

Tier 9

Note:  This is all based on the current public test realm information reported by mmo-champion.com, and as such is subject to change.

2-piece bonus: Increases the armor you gain from Ice Armor by 20%, the mana regeneration you gain from Mage Armor by 10%, and converts an additional 15% of your spirit into critical strike rating when Molten Armor is active.

Comments:  First, just ignore the ice and mage armor aspects of this – raiding mages do not use either of these.  So, on to Molten Armor:  this is a significant increase to your crit chance.  On the original PTR build, the set bonus granted 25% more spirit conversion, which was overpowered to the point that you could be getting as much as 7% crit to all your spells just from this set bonus alone!  Even with the number now down to 15%, you’re still talking about an additional 2-4% crit chance when raid buffed.  This is certainly helpful to all mages, with frostfire getting the most help from it, followed by deep fire, followed by arcane.

4-piece bonus: Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Blast spells by 5%.

Comments:  This certainly isn’t the sexiest set bonus, and it’s interesting that both the two and four piece bonuses involve critical strike chance – but whatever.  The benefit for all specs is clear – 5% more crit on your main nuke!  This alone would seriously favor fire and frostfire mages due primarily to the mechanics of hot streak vs. missile barrage, but Blizzard (smartly) added Arcane Missiles to this set bonus in the latest PTR build, evening things out a bit.

Overall Thoughts:  While nothing conclusive can be said before this goes live, it appears that mages of all types will be gunning for the Tier 9 4-piece set bonus.  While it will be difficult for fire mages to drop their extra pyroblasts from the Tier 8 bonus, the massive amount of extra crit combined with the upgraded gear quality should be more than enough to warrant the switch. For arcane mages, maintaining the much-beloved 2-piece Tier 7 bonus will no longer be worth the now-vast difference in gear quality, and the 2-piece Tier 8 bonus isn’t dynamic enough to be worth it either.

So to summarize:  As of right now, deep fire/frostfire mages should be gunning for the 4-piece Tier 8 bonus plus one off-spec piece, while arcane mages want to maintain their 2-piece Tier 7 bonus to go along with the 2-piece Tier 8 one.  When patch 3.2 hits, all mages will likely be looking to get the 4-piece Tier 9 set bonus.  Of course, like everything in the World of Warcraft, this is subject to change!

How Much Hit Rating Should You Stack? (Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

One of the trickiest things for new raiders to understand is just how much hit rating to run with.  While not a “sexy” stat like, say, critical strike or haste rating are, hit rating has a huge impact on your raid DPS.

The reasons for this are very much apparent, but this article isn’t about WHY your hit rating is important, it’s about HOW MUCH hit rating you should have.  Keep in mind that we are only concerned with raid bosses here, because this blog is about raiding.

Basically, if you’re a mage who’s just getting into raiding, and you’re trying to decide between the fancy spellweave set or the less-fancy ebonweave set, then hopefully you’ll find this helpful.

Note:  I always try to keep the numbers here to a minimum, and these numbers are available in many places around the net – including wowwiki.com, which is what I used.

Starting out:  if you’ve got zero hit rating on your armor and none from talents, you have a base 83% chance to hit a raid boss.  That means that nearly one out of five times, your spells will miss.  This is not good – you want 100%!  Luckily, there are plenty of ways to increase your chance to hit before you even touch your armor.  Let’s take a look at talents first:

• Deep fire mages get no hit rating help from talents – the “Arcane Focus” talent only affects arcane spells, which fire mages of course do not cast.

• Frostfire mages get 3% increased hit from the “Precision” talent in the frost tree.

• Arcane mages get the most help – 3% hit from “Arcane Focus” and 3% from “Precision” for a total of 6% bonus hit.

So to summarize:  If you are a deep fire mage you have a base 83% chance to hit a raid boss; if you’re a frostfire mage you have a base 86% chance to hit a raid boss; and if you’re an arcane mage you have a base 89% chance to hit a raid boss.

That’s still a lot of hit chance to make up, but if you are fighting with a raid boss, then chances are you’re in a raid – which means you get more help!

• Both shadow priests and moonkin druids have debuffs they place on bosses that increase players’ chance to hit them by 3%.  These debuffs do not stack, and hopefully you can count of having one of them in a 25-man environment.

So assuming you’re raiding with a shadow priest or boomkin, your updated chances to hit are as follows:  deep fire mages have an 86% chance to hit, frostfire mages have an 89% chance to hit, and arcane mages have a 92% chance to hit.

And one more thing, if you are a Draenei or you have one in your party (not just your raid – they have to be in your 5-person party), then you get their “Heroic Presence” 1% increased chance to hit.  This should be pretty easy to arrange if you’re an alliance mage, so I’m going to assume that Alliance players can always get in the same group as a Draenei.

So, for Alliance mages, deep fire mages have an 87% chance to hit, frostfire mages have a 90% chance to hit, and arcane mages have a 93% chance to hit.

Unfortunately, that’s all the help you can possibly get – the rest will have to come from your gear.  Note that if you are NOT running with a moonkin or shadow priest, then you’ll have to add 78 to all these totals.

Anyway, let’s assume ideal conditions and go spec-by-spec to see what you need:

Deep fire mages need 342 hit rating to make up the 13% hit if they are alliance, and 368 if they are horde.

Frostfire mages need 263 hit rating to make up the 10% hit if they are alliance, and 289 if they are horde.

Arcane mages need 184 hit rating to make up the 7% hit if they are alliance, and 210 if they are horde.

Again, these numbers assume ideal conditions.  If your guild does not run regularly with a moonkin or shadow priest, then you’ll need 78 more hit rating.

Note that arcane mages might find themselves with excess hit rating (especially with the hit-heavy Ulduar gear), in which case you might consider dropping a point or two from the “Arcane Focus” talent.

Hopefully this helps clear up some questions for you mages!