As many of you may well know, the maximum amount of gold a character can hold is 214,748g 36s 46c. There are ways to surpass this amount of total gold using personal guild banks or spreading them across alts.

A blue post recently stated that they are aware many players may be able to attain the maximum amount of gold (especially this late in the expansion) and are looking into possibly raising the gold cap limit in Cataclysm.

Direct quote:

To answer your question though, increasing the gold cap is a definite possibility for Cataclysm — though nothing is set in stone yet.

source

This would make gold hoarding more convenient for us gold makers and the other benefit is when you’re buying Mount runs for 150k gold and IC BoE’s for 25K you want a little more room to play with. However it does make me wonder, does blizzard “expect” a lot more players to be surpassing the gold cap one cataclysm comes out?

Inflation

The only way for players to gain more gold is if the “value” of gold drops, but we all know that thing like BoE drops, arena rating buys, paid guild runs for achievements or mounts are all set by the “market” and what people consider worth it, to charge the most they can or to pay what they are willing to for the value offered.

The other costs though seem to be going down, such as the recent frozen orbs change that has allowed an item considered at the end of 3.2.2 worthless to suddenly have a 20-30g value again. It is as if Blizzard dumped gold into the pockets of players who’ve held onto these and added an extra amount of gold received when running heroics or dumping older emblems into orbs.

Removing cooldowns brings down the price of goods, adding dailies and weekly quests into our everyday playing lives also brings a lot more gold into the economy.

The only thing that is keeping gold from inflating in cataclysm is when all old items we have on us from Northrend suddenly lose pretty much all their value and then players want the new stuff that we can go out to farm. There might not be that much new stones/herbs and other trade goods however since the level cap will only rise by 5 levels. It isn’t work speculating now before the test servers are available.

Gold Sinks, Epic Flyer Costs, Consumables

The other major economic factors that will determine how much gold players accumulate is whether we’re going to have to buy another “epic” flying ability, like maybe the ability to fly in the old world on an epic mount will cost 10,000g?

The existence of having to constantly but enchants, gems, glyphs and flasks and the way the materials are sourced and supplied will determine the inflation rate in the next expansion.

Time will only tell, all I know is that I’m going to gain as much gold as possible before the expansion comes out so I can purchase all the materials needed to get realm first max professions and craft/buy any end game gear right away or the cool gold sinks blizzard is bound to include in the game, maybe 50k+ gold sinks this time?

One of the main reasons I enjoy MMORPG’s and WoW is the fact that your effort and time spent in the game builds on your previous days, weeks and months of achievements. You are constantly improving in different areas of the game such as your gear, gold amount, achievements, reputations and so forth. With other games such as an FPS you play for a brief period but have nothing to show after months of playing except improvements in skill.

However, an FPS player could devote only 10 hours/week of practice and matches and remain much better than another player who plays 30+ hours in the week, because the game is based on pure skill alone.

WoW is different, it’s a progressive game where the more time you put into the game, the farther ahead you will get from other players,  if you run an extra raid a week than them you will get greater chances at gear upgrades and thus most likely have better healing/damage/tanking ability if you are around relative skill.

On a larger scale, you could say that WoW is a game of relativity, meaning that while you are improving your gear and reaching milestones, it depends upon the speed and rate you are achieveing them compared to the average players on your server and the rate that Blizzard releases new content. You can think of it as a realese of a new tier – item level of 258 is really a (subtract -13 item levels from your current gear)

So what is the best way to not only keep up, but maximize your playing time to stay ahead of the pact.

One of my passions in the game and mission of this site is to research the most efficient routes to each goal achievable in WoW, whether its making the most gold an hour, leveling the fastest, gearing up as fast as possible or other goals.

A great way to stay ahead is to prioritize your play. Blizzard has slowly been releasing features in the game that can be done only once a day/week which provide a much larger incentive then a similar activity in comparison, and also sets “limits” on the rate of progression players can achieve in certain areas of the game.

Incentives

- Double Experience for Rested (earned during logged off time in a city/inn)

The first feature Blizzard released to help casuals keep up with hardcore players. While a hardcore player is free to continue leveling hours on end/day, a casuals invested time and effort is multiplied (ex. A casual player can invest 3 hours in a day and get a level, or a hardcore player can invest 3 hours, get a level, then invest another 6 hours and get another level, but at a much more diminished rate, slowing their progression)

- Heroics Dailies

Doing the heroic daily not only gives you the chance of receiving loot and the usual badges, but awards 2 Emblems of Triumph,

- Wintergrasp Quests

Since changing over to the weekly quest format instead of daily, this has become even more casual friendly only requiring you to invest 1 attack and 1 defend to finish all the “WG Dailies”

- Vault of Archavon (Emalon, Koralon)

Another casual friendly feature, You get a shot at pretty much the best gloves and legs currently available for a 15 minute time investment. And collect the best emblems too.

- Raid lockouts

Imagine if a hardcore raid guild could do ToC 25 man every day, anytime they wanted? Hardcore players would love this but the disparity it would create between hardcore and casual players gear wise would be HUGE. It would make a casuals gear and efforts look very tiny in comparison.

Raid lockouts are also a way to prevent a hardcore guild from blasting through content within a week then getting bored and waiting for the next content release.

- Fishing, Jewelcrafting and Cooking Dailies

- Normal Dailies

Prioritize

With the list of incentives, you can prioritize things to do dailiy/weekly for the most return on time spent playing, ensuring you complete the top components before moving down the list or logging off:

1. Post on Auction House Craftables, Items for sale (Gold)

2.  Complete Vault of Archavon before Tuesday Resets (PvE/PvP)

3. Complete WG Dailies as soon as they become available (PvP)

4. Trial of the Crusader before Tuesday Reset (PvE)

5. 10 games of Arena for points before Tuesday (PvP)

6. Heroic Daily (PvE)

7. Daily BG quest (PvP)

8. Fishing, Jewelcrafting and Cooking Dailies (Gold)

9. Argent Tournament Dailies (Gold/Rep)

10. Ulduar, Naxx  before Tuesday (Badges, PvE)

11. Heroic Dungeons

12. Dailies

13. After you are locked out of all dailies/raids, you are open to BG, Gather for Professions or play an ALT.

You can further prioritize your playing time by focusing on a certain aspect of the game, choosing to only do PvE, PvP or Gold making activities from the list to remain the most competitive in those areas, I enjoy Gold Making and PvP the most so I rarely do Heroic Dailies or all my lockouts in a week, but VoA and WG Dailies are very important to me.

This was all I could think of, what is your “priority” list when you log on?  Do you ever feel bad when you log off but forgot to hand in the heroic daily or a week went by and you never did your VoA reset for the week?

In this video I go through 8 of the Argent Tournament Daily Quests to see how fast they are at making gold, which require you to be a champion of at least one of the factions.

So far we’ve done the following Daily Routes:

8 Grizzly Hills Dailies (video here) done in 23 minutes = 208g/hr

5 Zul’Drak Dailies (video here) done in 12 minutes = 247 gold/hour.

8 Argent Tournament Dailies done in 40 minutes = 406g/hour

In the next part we will add in the Sunreaver dailies and the Crusader dailies.

This is the 3rd video in our search to find the 25 most profitable fastest daily quests that make you the most gold an hour. Also be sure to check out Luke’s Guide he shows you many other ways to make gold that are more efficent and higher gold/hour than this daily route.

How to Get These Dailies

In order to get access to these dailies you must:

Do the Argent Tournament Quest line and The Black Knight chain (no requirements)

A great summary of all these quests is available at WoWWiki.com

1. Do The Argent Tournament which gives you access to
2. Mastery Of Melee, Mastery Of The Charge and Mastery Of The Shield-Breaker
3. After completing those, you will then receive Up To The Challenge
4. This will let you begin doing the dailies for Aspirant’s Dailies:
Training In The Field, Learning The Reins and randomly one of (A Blade Fit For A Champion, The Edge Of Winter, or A Worthy Weapon)
you need 15 Aspirant’s Seals (you get 5 seals a day = 3 days) to move to the next level which is Valiant Dailies.
5. You hand in Up To The Challenge once you get 15 seals, and then do The Aspirant’s Challenge
6. You will then be able to work to become a “Valiant” of your faction ex: A Valiant Of Orgrimmar
7. You get the quest The Valiant’s Charge and then get 4 quests (the ones you see me doing in the video):
The Grand Melee, A Valiant’s Field Training, At The Enemy’s Gates and A Worthy Weapon
To work towards 25 Valiant’s Seals. (25/5 a day = 5 days to complete)

Once you get 25 Valiant Seals, you turn in the quest The Valiant’s Charge and you are now eligible for the Champion dailies and able to do the exact route I do in the video! You can Champion other factions (which give you all the Valiant Dailies again) at the same time as doing the Champion Dailies.

Champion Dailies

1. After finishing the Valiant Quests, you get access to A Champion Rises
2. The Scourgebane – This opens up all the Champion Dailies (I do these in the video)
Taking Battle To The Enemy, Battle Before The Citadel, Among the Champions, and Threat From Above – This daily becomes available after you’ve finished The Black Knight chain.

Results

Argent Tournament Dailies Gives us:

4 Valiant Dailies = 52g 92s
4 Champion Dailies = 52g 92s
+ 5 Champion Seals = 125g (40 buy a pet you can sell for 1,000g making each worth 25g)
and the option of a Champion’s Writ (+250 rep for any faction)
or a Champion’s Purse (10g each) = 40g

Total of 270.84g (if you select the Purse)
Made in 40 minutes, which equals 406g/hr Our highest yet of all the daily zones.

There are still 5 more Daily quests that involve the argent tournament, The Sunreaver Dailies and the Crusader Dailies, I will be doing up a video of that route when I get access and we’ll find out how profitable that route is.

Be sure to subscribe to my RSS and my youtube page to know when that is coming out, also be sure to check out Luke’s Guide he shows you many other ways to make gold that are more efficent and higher gold/hour than this daily route.

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!

First, here are the results I had from my first day buying/selling with only 35g

As you can see, I made the following profit:
Serpent Slicer
Bought: 7g 54s Sold: 47g 28s Profit: 39g 74s = 627% profit
Refined Ore Gloves
Bought: 15g 92s Sold: 71g 81s Profit: 55g 89s = 451% profit
Reticulated Bone Gauntlets
Bought: 1g 87s Sold: 28g 33s Profit: 26g 46s = 1,515% profit
2x Glyph of Fear
Bought: 85s Sold: 14g 2s Profit: 13g 17s = 1,671% profit

I started with 35g to show you don’t need a lot to start with. I went from 35g to 170g from 15 minutes of farming the auction house, a 485% return on investment. If I had more gold to invest, say 500g, I am confident I could be up to 2,000g from an hour of buying. I will track the results for each day. This is one of the main ways I make gold, but I make the most using WoW School’s guide.

In this article I will share with you my strategy at buying and selling on the auction house and track my progress at making a profit so you can see exactly which items are being bought and sold. Check out my Youtube Video showing how I buy and sell using Auctioneer.

Before you continue with this guide, if you do not currently have auctioneer or are new to it, go back and read Auctioneer Guide Part 1.

Set Up

1. you must first have at least a week of data mining (scanning) of the auction house to ensure your data and prices are up to date.
2. Go to the Auction Search UI (See image) and then click realtime (under options) and ensure “Search While Browsing” and “Resale” are checked (See image below)
3. Set you “Resale” settings to 5g minimum profit, and 70% Min Discount. You can change this setting once you get more comfortable. This will make it so only items that have a profit margin of more than 5g and the item is priced 70% below its value (ex. item selling for 2g 40s but really worth 8g would give you 5g 60s profit)

Buying Low

You are now ready to make some gold, here is where we find the deals on the auction house to invest in.

Click on Real Time Search, then Scan.

As the scanning starts, a new window will pop up and start displaying items based on your “Resale” criteria.

A Description of the headers

Item – Item name

Pct – Percent that the item is of its actual real value. So 15% means that the item is priced at 15% of its worth this indicates a 666% Return. (ex. Item priced at 15g could sell for 100g)

Profit – The amount of profit (Sale price – Buy Out price) that this auction will give you.

Buyout – Current buy out price.

Bid – The Current bid price

Left – Time left until the tion ends

Deciding What To Buy

As you can see in the image above there are a lot of items that show up, however not everything that comes through in your criteria is worthy and you’ll have to sift through the incorrect data or people trying to scam auctioneer.

This is where Auctioneer data comes into play, here are the main things to look for in the stats:

• StdDev – Confidence – This is the main stat I look at, it is a percentage depending on how much the price of the item fluxuates when they are put up. An item that auctioneer has seen put up between 45-55g multiple times for days will have a really high confidence rating, like 90%… however an item that auctioneer has seen put up for 5g, then 5c, then 500g, will have a really horrible confidence rating. This goes to show that if the item you are looking to buy has a high confidence rating, but this one item is low priced, that must mean it is an error on the posters price.
• Wowhead – If the confidence is good, I will search the item if I am unaware of it on wowhead. Check the current comments from the latest patch as a change might have happened to the item and it is no longer in demand. You will get a feel if the item is a good buy if people are commenting “OMG I NEVER FIND THIS ON THE AH”
• Purchased Price – This stat will list at what prices auctioneer has seen the item BOUGHT for, very useful stat.

The rest comes from experience and knowledge, some twink items sell for large amounts, and the auction house has a lot of fluxtuations depending on the day of the week or the time, certain days are better to sell and other days are better to buy.

I am now at 170g and will invest that into new items tonight. I will continue to track my auction house buying and selling and share the results with you. To receive alerts be sure to subscribe to the rss feed!

This is one of the main ways I make gold, the other is by using WoW School’s guide, be sure to check it out.

I have a Death Knight alt (doesn’t everyone?) that I’ve been working on gearing up, and I’ve been surprised how easy it was to get an initial set of gear.  My Death Knight is a tank, and within 3 hours of hitting 80 I was defense-capped with over 26k unbuffed HP without ever setting foot in a dungeon.  These stats aren’t great, of course - but they are perfectly passable to start doing heroics and maybe even 10-man raids.

So, if a death knight can do it, a mage can too, right?  Below is a list of items that mages who just hit 80 or who haven’t had good luck with heroics or getting into raids.

Keep in mind that this list includes NO items which comes from dungeons, raids, or emblems of heroism.

All that matters is that you have the gold  - and no matter how good or experienced a player you are, you can ALWAYS make gold.  Whether you want to do daily quests (which have the side benefit of helping your reputation) or just grind for hours, the only thing required to make a lot of gold is effort, or investing in this gold guide which is the fastest way I make gold.  That said, I’m not recommending anything here that should cost you a HUGE amount of gold (like the Kirin Tor rings).

So, without further ado, let’s look at some quality starter items that you can get without ever setting foot into a dungeon:

Head
Titan Forged Hood of Dominance or
Titan Forged Hood of Salvation

Cost:  40 Marks of Wintergrasp

Whether or not you’re a big PvP fan, playing in Wintergrasp is pretty painless.  You can just sit in a corner if you want, and you’re guaranteed at least 1 mark, win or lose.  Plus, you can play a bunch of times each day!  Just ignore the resilience on these helms – they’ve got a very solid amount of spellpower, a nice amount of hit (if you need it) or haste, and a meta socket, which is crucial for mages.  They are both straight-up upgrades over Hat of Wintry Doom, which you can have easily tailored for you if you are completely allergic to any and all PvP.

Neck
Chain of Latent Energies

Cost:  Depends on your server, but likely a 4-digit number.

A super nice BOE necklace that you should be able to find on your local AH.  On my server, the price varies from about 1,000g up to 1,700g.  Pretty reasonable for an item of this quality.  You can also find a jewelcrafter to make you a Titanium Spellshock Necklace, which, depending on the cost of Dragon’s Eyes on your server, may be quite a bit cheaper.

Shoulders
Dark Runic Mantle

Cost:  Probably 100g or so, depending on your server

A BOE drop from Halls of Stone.  The price on your server will likely be lowest on days in which HoS is the daily heroic, because (at least for me) this seems to drop at least once per run.  Very nice stats for a mage, including the nifty red socket.  Quite frankly, it gives essentially the same benefit to you as Mantle of the Extensive Mind, which would probably cost about 20 times as much.

Back
Deathchill Cloak

Cost:  Probably in the 400-700g range for mats

The mats are a tad on the expensive side, but this cloak is the real deal if you’re interested in pure DPS (and you’re a mage, so you should be!).  It can even last you into Ulduar.

Chest
Ebonweave Robe or
Spellweave Robe

Cost:  A few hundred gold for the mats.

Choose one based on whether you need the hit rating or not (hint:  if you’re a frostfire/fire mage, you probably do; if you’re an arcane mage, you probably don’t).  It’ll probably be significantly cheaper  just to buy the materials and find a tailor to make you one of these, but if you’re lazy and wealthy you can just buy one off the AH directly.

Wrists
Wraps of the Astral Traveler

Cost:  Hopefully under 1K gold on your server

This is a tough slot to fill, but these are probably your best option if your wealthy.  Raiders with excess Emblems of Valor will put these on the auction house fairly regularly, and at least on my server they’re cheaper than the other bracers.  If you can’t find them for under 1K gold, or if you’re having money issues, then Ancestral Sinew Wristwraps are decent if you put a red SP gem in them, and require you only be revered with the Wyrmrest Accord.

Hands
Ebonweave Gloves or
Spellweave Gloves

Cost:  Probably in the 200-500g range

Like the robe, find yourself a tailor and figure out whether you need the hit rating or not.  The material requirements for these are not bad, making them an easily-acquirable early upgrade.

Waist
Belt of Dark Mending

Cost:  Requires you be Exalted with Knights of the Ebon Blade

Knights of the Ebon Blade has 6 daily quests and a ton of non-repeatable quests, so you can easily get exalted with them in a relatively short period of time without ever wearing their tabard in a dungeon.  The belt itself is certainly nice enough to take into raids.

Legs
Black Duskweave Leggings

Cost:  Cheap

Very few good options for this slot.  These pants are good enough for for what they are, though, and they can be had for relatively cheap materials.

Feet
Sandals of Crimson Fury

Cost:  Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord

These are awesome boots that you can take well into your raiding experience.  Unfortunately, Wyrmrest only has three daily quests, so unless you’re running heroics they might take a little while to acquire (make sure you do all the non-repeatable Wyrmrest quests in Dragonblight!).  If you need something temporary until you hit exalted, Silky Iceshard Boots are reasonable.

Rings
Titanium Spellshock Ring

Cost:  Probably under 1K gold, depending on server.

An easy choice – Jewelcrafters make these and the mats are not killer.  You can pop a +19 spellpower gem into this and take it into Ulduar!

Signet of Hopeful Light

Cost:  Exalted with Argent Crusade

The Argent Crusade have a few dailies and a lot of non-repeatable quests in Zul’Drak and Icecrown to help you get your rep up.  Ring of Northern Tears is a nice, cheap option until you get exalted.

Trinkets
Darkmoon Card:  Illusion

Cost:  Hopefully under 1K gold, depending on server

You can now buy these off the AH!  Not an ideal item, but a ton of spellpower makes it attractive, especially as a starter trinket.  The price seems to vary widely, at least on my server.

Cannoneer’s Fuselighter from the quest The Last Line of Defense or
Rune of Infinite Power from the quest Mystery of the Infinite, Redux

These are quest rewards – there aren’t a lot of good options for trinkets until you’ve got the 40 emblems to buy Sundial of the Exiled.

Weapon
Gnomeragen Bonechopper (there is also a Horde version of the same weapon)

Cost:  25 Champion’s Seals from the Argent Tournament

Argent Tournament dailies are easy, quick, profitable, and can lead to this item!  It’s a great weapon to start raiding with and very comparable to 10-man Naxx drops.

Off-Hand
Faces of Doom

Cost:  Probably a few hundred gold on your AH

Inscribers make this – the mat cost isn’t terrible and the stats are very nice.  You can probably find a few on your AH at any time!

Wand
Shinygem Rod

Cost:  Revered with the Oracles

No great options here – if you choose the Oracles, this wand is just fine for the mage just starting out.  You can also pick up Iceshrieker’s Touch from a quest in Storm Peaks.

So there you go!  With some effort and gold, you can put together a pretty decent set of starter gear without ever setting foot in any kind of dungeon!

Priests are one of the pure healing classes in World of Warcraft and have experienced a huge surge in PvP representation amongst the top Arena teams when teamed up with a Rogue.

The purpose of this leveling spec is to take all talents which increase damage, reduce downtime and improve solo questing/killing ability whether it is in the form of utility talents or straight out damage.

The only other way to increase your level speed is to follow a leveling guide that shows you the most efficient routes and quests to do in Northrend, I’ve found Zygor’s Guide to be the most useful and it is all done with an in-game interface.

Priest Leveling Spec

While some people will pick Holy to level from 1-50 it is mostly due to the fact that they want the option of healing in instances while they are leveling.

However the fastest leveling spec with the least downtime is Shadow Spec (14/0/57)

Here is what makes this build efficient:
Meditation – This stacks with Spirit Tap to get up to 80% mana regeneration. The amount has been buffed from 30% to 50%. Definitely one of the best mana management talents.

Spirit Tap – Gaining mana back after every kill? Yes please. Stacks with Meditation.

Shadowform – Pretty much what makes this build, increasing your dmg output and making you less squishy. The 15% more shadow dmg also applies to shadow wands.

Rotation

Vampiric Touch > Vampiric Embrace > Mind Blast > Mind Flay

Gearing Up for Leveling

Focus on getting the highest DPS wand for your level as this will be a major way to do damage while you are regening mana.  Load up on +spirit gear to reduce downtime as it compliments shadow talents.

Glyphs

Glyph of Mind Flay

Glyph of Shadow

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

Combine this with a leveling guide to get to 80 the fastest, Zygor’s Guide is the best if you have a little money to spend, since the guide is all done in game with a complete interface to guide you, you get what you pay for.

PvP in World of Warcraft is very challenging and has a high learning curve to become better at, especially if you are so used to the PvE elements and just starting out with Battlegrounds or Arena’s.

Fortunately there are a lot of different ways you can increase your skill in PvP, and this article will focus on doing so by utilizing the best add-ons.

Add-ons are a set of tools used to provide you with data and information so that you can make an intelligent split second decision. The reason why some players are more skilled than others is due to the fact that they utilize all their classes abilities at the right times, saving their survivability skills until they are completely necessary and their most offensive damaging or CC abilities when the enemy is most vulnerable. Add-ons are able to show you when this can occur.

Here is a list of the most essential add-ons any PvPer and Arena player should have:

1. Gladius

Gladius is a window pretty much exactly like Proximo for those who have used that. It starts off empty at the beginning of an arena match and when the gates open it detects who your opponents are and lists them in the window, showing an icon for their class, and the amount of health/mana they have.
This is extremely useful for a few reasons. You can make your strategy and coordinate your CC target and main target right away, you can tell what spec some classes are by the amount of mana they have, and if for some reason you lose your target (hunter Feign Deaths, or mage Mirror Images) you can click on their name in the window and it will target them again instead of you trying to click their character.
Note: Rogues and Druids (sometimes Mages) will start off stealthed/invis so gladius won’t pick them up until they come out, a good way to tell who someones partner is in a 2v2 arena or 3v3 is by their buffs. If you see a Mage and a (blank) but you notice the mage has Mark of the Wild buff on, it is pretty safe to say his partner is a druid.

2. Parrot

I would have to say out of any add-on I’ve used, this has increased my PvP skill and level of play the most.

Parrot is a floating combat text add-on that is highly customizable to show you pretty much any event that occurs between you, your target and your focus target. You set what abilities or conditions you want it to recognize as the trigger, set what you want it to do when that condition happens (play a sound, show text in a certain color, in a specific area on your monitor)

So for example, say you want to know the second a paladin bubbles, you just set the trigger as Abilitiy Divine Shield, make it display the text “Paladin is IMMUNE don’t attack!”  and play a sound at the same time (from a list of 10 different sounds built in). Then you can make a separate trigger for when the Divine Shield fades! “Paladin is vulnerable  attack!” Here are a list of some abilities and conditions I’ve set parrot to notice:

- Rogue Shadowstep, Mage Ice Block, Hunter Feign Death, Deterrance,

-Target Counterspelled/kicked

- Ice Barrier Fades (Set it to know when your essential buffs or abilities wear off)

- Water Elemental Pet, Evocation available (Set it to notify you when the cooldown is finished on important abilities so you can use it as soon as possible)

And so on, if there is enough interest I will make my parrot config available here for download since it takes a while to get every ability set up the way you want it to. When you get it set up properly this gives you a huge advantage to use your clutch abilities as soon as they become available and instantly react to any game turning abilitites your opponents use and instantly know when they become vulnerable again.

3. Natur Enemy Cast Bar

This add-on keeps track of all abilities/buffs used by yourself and your target in a castbar type of display. I have found this very useful for tracking diminishing returns (I’ll wait out the full 10 seconds betfore sheeping a target again so it lasts the full duration) and also NECB tells you when an opponents important abilities are ready to be used again, so you know that a mages counterspell is on cooldown but will be available in 10 seconds so get off that big heal now!

Those are the three major add-ons I suggest you get for PvP, are there any other add-ons you use strictly for pvp that has improved your skill?

The following article is a WoW Confidential readers guest submission, I’d like to thank Karch for this fantastic guide on PvE raiding for Mages, you can visit his new blog at http://magekarch.wordpress.com/ which is a site devoted to mage PvE discussion.

The two guides below are designed to help mages who are just getting into raiding, or who feel like they’re seriously under-performing.

How to Play Frostfire Mage

Currently, as of the date of this posting, there are only three viable raiding specs for mages:  Frostfire, Arcane, and Fire (with enough points in arcane for torment of the weak).  Right now I’m only planning to do write-ups for Frostfire and Arcane – even though deep fire can compete with both, my experience is that not a whole lot of people play it.  As someone who raided as deep fire for quite a while at level 70, let me tell you:  fire is boring as hell.  It’s like frostfire but without the big crits.  If you play it, then more power to you, I just think frostfire and arcane cover all your raiding needs.

So without further ado, let’s talk about Frostfire!

Spec

There’s not a whole lot of variation here; if you’re going to play Frostfire, you’re going to be using something very similar to this 0/53/18 spec.

Sure you can debate a couple talent points – but the bottom line is that if you use the above spec, you will be set up just fine for raiding.

Glyphs

Don’t forget your glyphs!  If you’re serious about raiding, you’re pretty much locked in to the following three major glyphs:

• Glyph of Frostfire Bolt (2% damage and 2% crit to your Frostfire Bolt)
• Glyph of Improved Scorch (Each scorch stacks the scorch debuff 3 times)
• Glyph of Molten Armor (2% more crit to your molten armor)

For all practical purposes, there’s really no reason to use anything else.

Rotation

This is what separates good mages from the many, many, MANY bad ones.  An enormous number of players simply have no concept of a “spell rotation” – they just cast what they feel like, and figure that the damage will take care of itself.

This, of course, is stupid.

With frostfire, there’s really only one rotation you need to use.  From the very beginning of every boss fight (we’re only worried about raid boss fights in this blog), you are using this same rotation, applying the same concepts, and rarely making any modifications.  So let’s get right to the rotation:

1. When the fight starts, cast Living Bomb on the boss.  This is a damage-over-time spell which does no initial damage, and therefore causes negligible threat.  This works nicely at the start of fights, because there’s very little risk that you pull aggro off the tank (whereas if you just started spamming frostfire bolts you probably would).
2. Cast Scorch twice.  Assuming you have the Glyph of Improved Scorch, this will stack the scorch debuff 5 times, giving all casters in the raid, including yourself, a bonus 10% crit on the boss.
3. Spam Frostfire Bolt.  This is your primary nuke.  When in doubt, cast frostfire bolt.  Over and over and over again.  Most of your damage is going to come from this, so you want to be casting it as much as possible.  Of course, you’ll also want to use your “cooldowns” as early as possible (more on this a couple paragraphs down; we’re keeping it basic for now).
4. Pyroblast is not castable unless the “Hot Streak” buff procs from getting two consecutive crits.  This temporary buff will make your next pyroblast an instant cast, and therefore it’s your top priority to cast it when it comes up.

That’s it.  Those are your four spells, and all you’ve got to do is manage them.  What do I mean by “manage”?  Well, let’s go to the three key concepts:

1. You need to keep the scorch debuff active.  Though it takes two scorch casts to apply it initially, each future application only takes one scorch cast, provided you didn’t let the debuff go away.  And you should NEVER, EVER let it go away.  Once you cast your two initial scorches, watch the debuff under the boss’ health bar – it lasts for 30 seconds, and when it’s getting close to running out, just stop casting frostfire bolt for a second to throw in a scorch to refresh it.  You can use an add-on like Scorchio (get it from curse.com) if you have trouble seeing the debuff.
2. Living bomb needs to be re-applied as soon as possible.  When you cast living bomb, it will tick for 12 seconds, doing minor damage – then it will explode for a significant amount of damage.  Once it explodes, you need to cast it again as soon as possible, and repeat that until the boss is dead.  A lot of mages think living bomb isn’t worth casting, but it will consistently account for 10-12% of your overall damage – you’re telling me that’s not worth it?
3. Hit Pyroblast any time the “Hot Streak” buff comes up.  It takes a little (but not much) practice to see the Hot Streak buff (you can also listen for it, or get an add-on), but you’ll pick it up soon enough.  Your next pyroblast will be an instant cast when hot streak comes up, and in general there’s little downside to hitting it as soon as possible.

It really is that simple.  We’ll just touch on one more thing:  Cooldowns.  “Cooldowns” are spells that you can use every couple minutes that provide you with a temporary buff of some kind.   As a Frostfire mage, here are the ones you have:

1. Combustion:  Increases your crit chance 10% per cast until you crit 3 times.  You can use this every 3 minutes.
2. Icy Veins:  Increases your cast speed 20% for 15 seconds.  With the talent build above, you can use this every 2.4 minutes.
3. Mirror Image:  Creates 3 mini-yous that do a small but sorta non-negligible amount of damage.  These guys will also effectively prevent you from pulling aggro for 30 seconds (your attacks will still generate threat, but it won’t be applied to you until the 30 seconds is up).
4. Any trinkets you have that have a “Use”.   Some trinkets will increase your spell power, haste, etc. for a limited amount of time when you use them.  These usually have a 2-3 minute cooldown.

In general, you want to use your cooldowns at the same time, to get the most ‘bang for your buck.’  Putting them in a macro works well – just type /macro to bring up the interface, create a macro, and type the following:

/cast icy veins
/cast combustion
/use [name of your trinket, if you have one]
/cast mirror image

Then put that button somewhere convenient, and you’re good to go.  Just hit that after you’ve cast your living bomb and scorchx2, and you can really go crazy with frostfire bolts right off the start of boss fights.  By the time your mirror image runs out of time, the tank should have plenty of threat so you don’t pull aggro.  If the fight lasts long enough for you to use your cooldowns a second time, use them when the boss is under 35% health so your cooldowns benefit from the 12% damage you’re getting from the Molten Fury talent.  This is also the ideal time for a shaman in your raid to use Heroism/Bloodlust.

So let’s do a quick review of how the standard boss fight should go:

1. Start boss fights by applying living bomb, then casting two scorches.  When living bomb explodes 12 seconds later, cast it again.  When the scorch debuff has nearly run out, cast it again.  Repeat this until the boss is dead.
2. Hit all your cooldowns and start spamming frostfire bolt.
3. Only stop casting frostfire bolts to cast an instant pyroblast when hot streak procs, to reapply scorch, to reapply living bomb, or to use a mana gem.

Well, that’s about it!  It really isn’t that complicated, and with a week of practice you too can be topping the damage charts even if you don’t have the best gear!

How to Play Arcane Mage

In deciding whether to play frostfire or arcane, there are a couple key factors to consider:

• Frostfire scales very well with crit, arcane does not.  Frostfire crits gain a huge damage bonus (over 300%) and can proc hot streak.  Arcane crits have about half that damage bonus, and can’t proc anything.
• Likewise, arcane scales well with intellect (and, potentially, spirit), frostfire does not.
• Mana is a very real issue with arcane.  You can easily burn through 25k mana is 30 seconds if you want to.  On the other hand, it would take you 7 or 8 minutes to burn that much mana with frostfire.  Think of the specs like cars:  arcane has about 5 gears that you must shift between, frostfire has 1 and only 1 gear.
• And because of that, arcane is a much more “involved” spec.  You can ramp up your damage when needed (for example, when you’re standing in two damage buffs on Malygos), and scale down to recover mana.  This makes the spec more fun, but also more dangerous.  If you are arcane spec’d, there is a VERY REAL possibility that you will end up having to wand a boss, if you’re not careful.

So, if you’re just starting out raiding, I recommend beginning with frostfire.  The playstyle is easy to figure out with a little practice, and if you are geared at the same level as the other dps in your raid, you should be at or near the top of the damage meters on boss fights (if you follow the guide in the post below).

But if you stay frostfire a while, you will probably get bored.  The fights do tend to get monotonous, and it’s also frustrating because your damage on any given fight largely depends on factors largely out of your control (how many times you crit consecutively to proc hot streak, for example).

Before you re-spec, however, remember that Frostfire provides 10% crit to all dps casters in your raid, whereas Arcane provides no such utility.  Therefore, for 25-mans or dps caster-heavy 10-mans, you are doing your guild a disservice if you respec to arcane unless you regularly run with a frostfire mage.  Just keep that in mind.

For those of you still ready to take on Arcane, let’s get right into it!

Spec

Unlike Frostfire, there is plenty of room for debate when it comes to the ‘best’ arcane spec.  No spec involving scorch (or pyroblast) is really viable for raiding, so forget about that.  The most popular distribution of talents is 57/3/11, though which exact arcane talents you take is up for debate.  Here is an example build that should serve you just fine.  The only flexible talents in the arcane tree are the three top-level ones:

• Arcane Focus (depending on how much hit rating you have, you can lose a point or two)
• Arcane Stability (I like the pushback protection because there are a number of raid fights where damage pushback will screw you up, but it’s your call.  This talent will not help you at all on, say, Patchwerk)
• Arcane Subtlety (you could reasonably run with only one point here if you manage your threat well)

You can mix and match points in those, and if you’ve got a couple leftover you could invest in Magic Attunement, Student of the Mind, Incanter’s Absorption, Slow, or another peripheral talent.

Glyphs

A few viable choices here, let’s list them:

• Glyph of Arcane Blast:  Required.
• Glyph of Mage Armor/Glyph of Molten Armor:  Depending on which one you use, or you could glyph both.  It’s up to you to determine whether you want to raid with the 5% crit from glyphed molten armor, or the extra mp5 from glyphed mage armor.  I switch my armor depending on the expected fight length and group composition, so I run with both glyphs.
• Glyph of Arcane Power:  Gives you an extra 3 seconds of arcane power, which is nice, but not necessary.  If you feel like you’re always going to be running with either molten or mage armor, this would be the choice for your third major glyph slot.

Note that Glyph of Mana Gem and Glyph of Arcane Missiles might seem a little tempting, but they’re both weak choices.

Rotation

Here’s where it gets interesting.  The general idea of arcane is as follows:

1. Arcane Blast is your bread-and-butter spell.  Casting it increases the damage your arcane spells do by 15% (18% with glyph), but also increases the mana cost of arcane blast itself.  You can stack it up to three times, which gives you a massive damage buff – but at that point arcane blast costs over 1,000 mana to cast!
2. The way you “dump” the buff is by casting another arcane spell (arcane barrage or arcane missiles).  This spell will benefit from the stacks of the arcane blast buff you have, and then clear the buff itself.
3. Ideally, you want to stack Arcane Blast three times before casting another spell.

Think of it as “charging up.”  You “charge up” by casting arcane blast up to 3 times, then you dump the charge by casting either arcane barrage or arcane missiles.  How do you know which one to use?  Well…

• All of your arcane spells have a chance to proc “Missile Barrage,” which makes your next arcane missiles cast super fast.  If, after stacking your three arcane blasts, you DO proc missile barrage, then you should cast arcane missiles immediately followed by arcane barrage.
• If missile barrage does NOT proc while stacking your three arcane blasts, you should just cast arcane barrage.
• Regardless of what you cast, you should immediately go back to stacking three more arcane blasts, and repeat the process until the boss is dead.

So why is this more complicated than frostfire?  Well, try it and see just how quick you run out of mana.  Between the stacked arcane blasts and the hugely expensive arcane missiles, you’re going to be blowing through your mana very fast.  How do you counter this?   A few ways:

• Mana gems:  Use them aggressively, and aim to use all three every boss fight.  I generally use one within the first 15 seconds of any fight, as soon as I’ve burned enough mana to warrant it.  Do not wait until you are low on mana to use one.
• Evocation: While frostfire mages rarely if ever have to evocate, arcane mages may find themselves evocating three times during a boss fight!  Thanks to the 2-minute cooldown from talents, evocation can and should be used aggressively to restore your mana pool.  If you can time it to where you start casting it in the final second of icy veins, then all the better.
• Runic Mana Potions:  You only get one per fight, so make it count.
• Mage Armor:  If you’re having serious mana issues, consider switching from molten to glyphed mage armor.

And finally, if you’re still finding yourself having to resort to wanding on boss fights:

• Change your rotation.  If you start stacking arcane blast twice instead of three times, the spec is much, MUCH more mana efficient.  Of course this seriously hurts your dps, so you want to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes you can’t.  The essence of playing arcane is to know when to hit hard and to know when to scale back.  This depends on too many factors to count:  your gear, the raid you’re in, the fight itself, whether you get an innervate, etc.  Therefore, it’s impossible to generalize about this stuff – it just takes experience.

Let’s talk about cooldown management.  The cooldowns you’ll have available are:

• Icy Veins:  20% cast speed increase, no spell pushback for 20 seconds.  Can use every 2.4 mins with talents.
• Arcane Power:  Increases your damage 30%, but also increases the mana cost of spells 30%, for 15 seconds (18 with glyph).
• Presence of Mind:  Makes your next spell an instant cast, and (with talents) increases it’s chance to crit by 30%.  You want to use this with arcane blast.
• Mirror Image:  Creates three mini-yous who do a little damage, and ensure that you don’t pull aggro for 30 seconds.  When they go away, the threat you accumulated while they were up is given back to you.
• Any trinkets you have with a “Use”.

As with frostfire, you usually want to use these early in the fight, and all at the same time.  The macro I have is:

/cast icy veins
/cast arcane power
/cast presence of mind
/use [name of your useable trinket, if you have one]
/cast mirror image

I just hit that right off the bat of boss fights and go crazy.  The earlier you use your first mana gem and evocation, the earlier you can use them a second time – so it’s generally to your benefit to burn your mana early if you can safely recover it.

What arcane does is give you the ability to control the rate at which you convert your mana into damage.   Your goal in boss fights is for you to always have enough mana to fully dps the boss when he’s alive, and to have as close to zero mana as possible when the boss dies.  This means that, if the boss is down to 10% and you have a near-full mana bar (after an evocate, for example), you can go into full-on kick ass mode and just spam arcane blast, ignoring other spells.  You’ll just be chain casting super powerful, super expensive arcane blasts – which should drain your mana nice and fast, and give you a pretty sweet dps boost.  Just make sure to time it so you don’t run out of mana before the boss dies!

Alright, let’s get to the summary:

• Your standard high-dps rotation is three arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (only if missile barrage procs), followed by arcane barrage.
• Use your mana gems and evocation aggressively, and don’t be afraid to switch to mage armor if you continually struggle with your mana.
• Arcane often requires you to “switch gears.”  If you are worried about your mana, start casting two arcane blasts rather than three.  If the fight is almost over or you need to do a lot of dps in a little bit of time , consider just chain casting arcane blasts.

That’s about it!  Good luck out there.

How is your arena team doing so far in WOTLK? Aside from gearing up for PvP and picking the right PvP talents the only other element (and most important) you can change to get the highest rating is choosing the right arena partner.

With the way WoW balances classes it is a given that some classes will have better synergy with certain other classes. While it is great to just pick an arena partner based on friends and whoever you’d like to play with, this can really limit the potential you can achieve rating wise (Imagine a warrior/warrior team? yikes)

Keep reading to find out the Highest Rated Arena Teams

Take this with a grain of salt right now, PvP is currently unbalanced because it’s early and blizzard can not start the balancing act until it sees the results in the arena and can do further testing to bring everything into line.

However, this resource will always be the best place to see who the current top 100 rated arena teams are in every division (2v2, 3v3, 5v5).

How To Find The Highest Rated Arena Teams

Go over to http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/ and you will have a very powerful tool at your disposal.

This database takes data from the WoW Armory and extracts the top 100 rated players, teams for each division and also the pvp specs each class from those teams use!

Here are some interesting pieces of data I found from my research:

Highest Rated 2v2 Arena Teams

Paladin/Death Knight (40.8%) – That is huge… shows this team has a huge advantage over any other team regardless of their gear or other factors.
Rogue/Priest (10.2%)
Paladin/Hunter (8.2%)
Paladin/Druid (6.1%)
Death Knight/Mage (5.1%)

As we can see from the top 4, these teams utilize a strong DPS class, such as a ret paladin, rogue and hunter while bringing on a utility/healer. Double DPS teams will have a hard time bursting down any paladin since they have their bubble and can heal their team mate at the same time. Ret paladin and healers are a deadly team for double DPS as well since Ret Pallies can deal out large dmg and heal their partner if it’s really needed.

Highest Rated 3v3 Arena Teams

Rogue/Priest/Mage (19.2%) – Combine great CC (sap/sheep) and a priest who can not only heal but has mana drains, power word shield, and you’ve got yourself a tough team… The only Top 8 Popular team without a Paladin.
Paladin/Hunter/Death Knight ( 11.1%)
Paladin/Rogue/Death Knight (9.1%)
Paladin/Warrior/Death Knight (7.1%)
Paladin/Warrior/Druid (6.1%)

Paladins seem to dominate the 3v3 arena while interesting enough the highest team composition doesn’t have one, Paladins ability to survive while his team mates deal ridiculous amounts of damage gives this team a huge advantage.

Highest Rated 5v5 Arena Teams

Paladin/Hunter/Priest/Death Knight/ Mage (5%)
Paladin/Rogue/Shaman/Mage/Druid (5%)
Paladin/Warrior/Death Knight/Shaman/Mage (4%)
Paladin/Warrior/Hunter/Priest/Mage (3%)
Paladin/Warrior/Priest/Death Knight/Druid (3%)

So, you NEED to have a paladin in your team if you are hoping to get above 2,000 rating. they are in EVERY team. Very interesting thing to find out if you are a part of a struggling 5v5 arena team without a paladin.

This resource has been very valuable to me when I am looking at current trends in the arena and I’m sure blizzard collects stats like this when considering how to balance classes.

Almost every team will have a possibility to get into the top 100 but it’s definitely an uphill battle compared to picking teammates which compliment each other very well from a game balance standpoint.

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