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Filed under: Jewelcrafting, Wrath of the Lich King

WoW‘s crafting system has always been relatively straightforward. Collect mats, press button, receive item. This lies in contrast to crafting systems from other games, which may contain mini-games, convoluted learning systems, or varying levels of success in production. In WoW, you can’t even fail at making something; if you can make it at all, every attempt will result in an item, and they’re all the same (aside from some recipes with random enchants. This fits in with WoW being on the simple side for MMOs (simple to learn, that is; often difficult to master).

Jewelcrafting in LK is going to shake that up a little bit. There will be a quest available to jewelcrafters that gives them a chance to craft a “perfect” version of an uncommon-quality gem when cutting it. For the first time, it’s possible to have a critical success from crafting in WoW. It looks like the perfect versions of gems are positioned precisely between the uncommon and rare versions of a cut, in terms of stats. For instance:

• Delicate Bloostone: +12 agility
• Perfect Delicate Bloodstone: +14 agility
• Delicate Scarlet Ruby: +16 agility
• Delicate Cardinal Ruby: +20 agility

So far, Gem Perfection appears to work only on uncommon-level gems, not on rares or epics. I also don’t know what the chance is of cutting a perfect gem instead of a regular one. It’s a nice change, and a little something extra for cutting those buckets of green gems on the way from 375 to 450. Would you like to see more critical successes in other crafting professions?

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If you’ve got a 70 that can help you farm some items and quests, it doesn’t need to be extremely costly to make a budget twink Rogue for the 20-29 bracket. A friend had asked what it took to make IBJammin, and while I am not a true twink, I am still able to kill enemy twinks rather effectively. Knowing how to play your class helps tremendously. I’ve seen extremely well geared twinks drop in a flash, and I’ve seen twinks that have the gear and know how to play well. I’d like to think I provided a challenge to them.

If you wanted to make a 29 twink rogue without spending bucketloads of cash, here’s a good starting point. I chose a Troll for a few reasons including the improved Regeneration and Berserking.

Each race has different advantages. On the Alliance side, Humans have perception — combined with [item]10501[/item] you are great for D. You also have a sword bonus which can be helpful. Dwarves have Stoneform which is nice along with added frost resistance. Night elves have an extra 1% dodge and Shadowmeld. Shadowmeld increases stealth passively. Of all of the Alliance races, Gnomes take the cake if you’re going to level engineering. With Escape Artist you get another way to escape snares, and, you get a 15 point skill bonus to engineering, allowing you to use the [item]10506[/item] which has great stamina and allows underwater breathing. In addition, you get some arcane resistance.

For Horde, you can choose Orc. The axe specialization isn’t really handy, nor is the pet bonus. The 15% resist to stuns is quite nice at times. For a rogue, you would hit hard, but, I believe you lose some of the finer points of the other classes. Undead is quite viable. Undead has extra shadow resistance, which is quite nice, but, has Will of the Forsaken which gets you out of a Fear, Sleep, Seduce, etc without needing a trinket. Undeads are very good warlock killers and the 29 bracket has plenty of warlocks. Trolls have berserking and a passive regen bonus. Berserking increases your attack and casting speed from 10% to 30% depending on how little health you have. The less health, the faster your attack. Combined with Slice and Dice, you can do a lot of damage when you’re about dead and there is no healer around. Blood Elves have a Jewelcrafting bonus, and, a limited range silence effect to add on top of the other spell interruption abilities. I’ve run into a few Blood Elf rogues and I’ve never seen one use Mana Tap, but, I’ve often thought rolling a BE for a Rogue might have been cool.

In any case, here’s a relatively inexpensive starting point for a Rogue. For the Alliance, I believe you would need to find Humbert’s Helm on the neutral Auction House. Its a pretty good helm and is relatively easily farmable for Horde. You can /pray to Rousch which is said to make the item drop more frequently.

Helm:
[item]15339[/item] of the Monkey – Auction House/World Drop
[item]7413[/item] of the Monkey – Auction House/World Drop
[item]4724[/item] Farmable in Dun Garok

Neck:
[item]19537[/item] PVP Reward

Shoulder:
[item]15140[/item] Auction House/World Drop
[item]2278[/item] Auction House/World Drop
[item]7408[/item] Auction House/World Drop

Chest
[item]4119[/item] Quest Chain, Obtained at 28, Raptor Mastery

Waist:
[item]20191[/item] PVP Reward

Legs:
[item]7373[/item] with [item]29534[/item] or [item]29536[/item] Crafted
[item]7414[/item] with [item]29534[/item] or [item]29536[/item] Auction House/World Drop

Feet:
[item]20188[/item] PVP Reward

Wrist:
[item]18948[/item] Crafted

Hands:
[item]6727[/item] Long Quest Chain that starts at 29 – Safety First

Ring:
[item]24118[/item] Quest Chain that starts at level 27 – Never Again!
[item]19513[/item] PVP Reward
[item]34227[/item] (if you can farm it)

Back:
[item]9860[/item] Auction House/World Drop. Almost any cape is fine to start.

Weapons:
[item]19545[/item] PVP Reward
[item]6681[/item] Boss Drop from Razorfen Kraul

Bow:
[item]3078[/item] Boss Drop from Blackfathom Deeps

Your necessities will be the crafted items and the Quest items. You can always try out twinking and decide to buy Bind on Equip gear later on. If you get the easily obtained items, and then fill in the rest of the items with either ‘of stamina’, ‘of the monkey’ or ‘of the bear’ gear, you should be ok. Of the Bear gear is usually pretty cheap for leather gear. The main thing that will make the difference are the legs. Between that and the chest, with the enchant, you’ll have over 450 more hitpoints than the non-twinks in the battleground. That alone is a significant advantage. Once you start stacking on the PVP gear, you’ll feel yourself getting more powerful. Adding enchants to your gear will make a huge difference as well.

There are better weapons if you want to farm them. I’ve seen rogues with two [item]7682[/item] or [item]2912[/item] with [item]7682[/item]. [item]6681[/item] drop 67% of the time and is still not a bad weapon. For a good portion of my career, I ran with [item]15241[/item] of the Tiger as my offhand after getting the [item]19545[/item]. I’ve seen a few dagger rogues with [item]776[/item] main hand.

For a sword rogue, the common combination is [item]8226[/item] and [item]13033[/item]. As for a mace rogue, I’ve not seen too many in the 20-29 bracket, so, I don’t really have any suggestions there.

Hopefully from this you can put together a cost effective rogue twink for the 20-29 battlegrounds. The most expensive part of this build will be the [item]29534[/item] or [item]29536[/item] which are almost a necessity. Over 8000 of my kills were done with the Clefthide kit on the Dusky Leggings and no other enchants. To this day, I still have the Dusky Leggings with the Clefthide, but, in the last two weeks of my membership, finally got Thornspike and put enchants on most of the items. The difference was incredible.

If you want to spend some money, Engineering adds quite a bit to your build. [item]10518[/item] is very helpful for rezzing at BS and dropping down to take or defend mine. With Sprint or [item]10724[/item], you can make it from LM to defend BS rather quickly. You cannot ‘use’ the cloak while stealthed, but, you can use it and then stealth. [item]10721[/item] comes in very handy. In addition to these items, take a look at Toys, Toys, Toys for some other fun engineering gadgets along with some farmable items.

I hope you enjoyed the quick guide.

Filed under: Priest, Expansions, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

A lot of people who read Ask a Beta Tester regularly have been asking about how easy Burning Crusade heroics will be at level 80. Can they be 3 manned? Can they be duo’d? This one’s for you, guys. I decided it’s worth a mention all on its own.

Three players, two Death Knights and a Priest, have recently trio’d almost the entirety of Karazhan, minus only Nightbane due to not having completed the quest needed to summon him. Admittedly both Death Knights were using a deep Unholy build which is tuned a little high now, but they’re not wearing any high end gear, either. The spec that the tank used is a bit unusual for an Unholy Tanking build. They didn’t take Bone Shield, and I suspect Magic Suppression being bugged had something to do with its exclusion, though that may have been fixed and I missed it. A fun little detail they discovered is that Gift of Arthas, which procs a disease, is counted as one of your diseases as a Death Knight and augments abilities that scale depending on how many diseases you have active such as Death Strike.

So there’s your answer, ladies and gentlemen. Karazhan can be 3-manned before any raid gear is available, so Burning Crusade heroics will surely be able to be duo’d if you’re still hoping and praying for Anzu come level 80.

[ via DeathKnight.info ]

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I loved my shadow priest when I was leveling up. So, I created a 29 Shadow Priest after my main turned Holy. While that was fun, we had an army of alts that were all level 20 for transmutes and I decided one day to turn Ibjammin into a twink rogue. The first 7k kills on him were gotten while I was level 28, without the better offhand dagger, and without any enchants. The next 3k kills were a lot of fun, and in the last two weeks of my WoW membership, we leveled up a guildmate’s Blood Elf Warlock, farmed a few items and twinked him. Our last two weeks were a lot of fun — more fun than playing my main. I figured I would rejoin when Wrath of the Lich King comes out so we’ve been preparing a list of items to get for a flexible Shammy that could carry, dps or heal. Shammy’s are one of the few classes that I had trouble with. On Rampage, there was a shammy pair that would just kite me and slow me when I ran solo D in WSG. One on one, no problem, but, if they played smart, they would usually make it out of the flag room, and if they could get past the GY, it was up to the players in midfield.

At that point, I decided to make a shammy twink for the 29 bracket. My guildie was going to make a Pally twink and we decided to make a druid twink for him as well.

Twinking was something that I really hated when I leveled up. I ran battlegrounds in the 20-29 bracket and 30-39 bracket and was completely dominated. I’m sure it was my quest obtained gear or partially that I was following questlines and didn’t learn how to PvP. Other players fight much differently than a pulled mob. But, to get the PvP mount at 60, you have to grind 30 WSG, 30 AB and 30 AV tokens. We figured, since the battlegrounds in those two brackets pop frequently, it would be easier just to slug through 30 games of each. My experience of AV at 59 was just awful. Horde on our battlegroup was steamrolled every time and it was so bad that I vowed never to play AV again. When I hit 70, queue times on Rampage for AV were close to two hours and I didn’t care. When it came time to gear for Kara and the other instances, things changed. I didn’t have the time to do much more than Pug instances, and while our server did have a number of Kara Pugs, to get geared for Kara you needed some battlegrounds gear for healing that were easier to obtain and better than any quest gear/instance gear that could be obtained at that point.

So, I hit the battlegrounds, doing my dailies to get the honor bonuses, Blizzard made a change to AV and all of the sudden, we had 2 minute queues. It took no time at all to get my boots and bracers and I sort of enjoyed it. I never did arena, but, got almost the full S1 gear through honor (my welfare epics) before getting really bored with the honor grind.

But, 70 became a grind. Every day you had to run your dailies to get your marks and honor to buy the next item, and then gear up a little more, then arena gear came out that was a little better and you continued to have to earn points to buy that. I saw an endless honor grind — preform groups were running to eliminate the time factor almost taking things down to a mechanical 12 minute AV win for 630 honor, but that took the fun out of it. Honor weekends had several groups running preforms for the quick honor — steamrolling the other side while everyone was on vent coordinating the mass attack. It wasn’t fun.

I saw an interesting signature on the WoW forums that really hit home.

70’s play the system, twinks play the game

Truer words were never spoken.

My Shadow Priest and Rogue twinks became my salvation. I didn’t really like steamrolling the other side’s weaker players, but, there was a certain honor in doing what most people didn’t want to do. For some reason, in our battlegroup, Horde classes that can heal, even when they are watching their teammates die, will not heal because they are not ‘specced’ for healing. My guildmate was a Shadow Priest running AVs in the 60s and often times topped the healing charts while hitting the upper end of the damage charts. Horde hates to heal, Horde hates to defend. On my shadow priest, I would often outheal and outdps most of the team. Escorting the FC was the same old, renew, bubble, dispel if needed, prep for the incoming attack. When I started my rogue, I figured I would be on the front lines. I found defending the flag room or defending nodes to be much more rewarding. I didn’t top the HKs or damage meters, but, when I ran D, Horde had a tendency to win a little more frequently. I would run O, sometimes carry the flag, but, usually, I would play D.

The one thing Horde lacks in our battlegroup are versatile utility players. We have the hunters that know how to play, know when to take the Free Action Potion, how to kite properly and in general are great at assisting the FC and killing the EFC. I’ve got a 38 Hunter, but, it wasn’t that much fun. I figured, why not pick the one class I had problems with. I have a number of alts so that I could figure out how to play each class and I know how I can best take down each of them because I’ve played those classes in battlegrounds. I watch what other people do, I know how to attack, what to attack – I’ve had rogues that outgeared me by a long shot that would have to call in another teammate to take me down — and I didn’t go down quietly. Often times when I saw a twink down a potion, I was that much more determined to not take a potion. That is when you generate some serious aggro. I’ve had games where their twinks were so focused on me that they completely forgot about the rest of the game. I started to recognize names from time to time — Cogman was one of the few that really had it in for me it seemed.

I was defending Mine one time with my guildmate on his lock. Cogman drops down from BS with his parachute cloak, gets to the ground, I ambush him, nail him, boom, he’s dead. Ok, he won’t try that again, but, here comes a hunter inbound from the sky, he lands, he dies. I don’t know how many times we killed him while he tried to take the mine, but, it was more than a handful. Thank goodness for no diminishing returns.

One on one, cogman was tough. Two on one, cogman was tough. But, the battle generally was very close and a lot of fun. There were a number of notable twinks that we played against somewhat frequently, and it seemed that there was an innate honor for twinks to battle twinks and let the rest of the people run the battleground. I can remember one game where I let our 20 shammy pick up the Alliance flag rather than me carrying it and the gnome rogue twink I had killed to get in there left our FC alone and went after me. I don’t know if he told everyone to ignore us, but, its was a 1v1 duel in the middle of a game. After he killed me, he didn’t /spit, he /bow’ed. Our 20 shammy FC got all 3 caps that game and he loved it. He didn’t have the totems, he didn’t have the gear, he didn’t have the heals to keep up with the damage that was dished out, but, the thanks we got for letting him carry the flag not once, but three times for the win made it all worth while. I find it strange that when its 4v1, the alliance have the audacity to /spit on me after two or three of them are dead and only one or two survive. I’m sure horde do the same thing.

I’m not the kind of twink that goes out just to kill the lowbies. I’ll actually let a lowbie pass and go after the twinks if I’m doing battle. Get near my flag or my node and I’ll kill you dead — twink or not. There isn’t much real honor out there, but, once in a while you do run into it.

I could care less about the tokens or the honor. I love the battles and I love fighting in the face of sure defeat, and somehow, with a trinket or cooldown that I saved for just the right instant turning it around. Maybe I’m dead, but it took three or four of you to take me down — and we just capped the flag while you spent 40% of your team taking me down.

Andy Crowther used to have time to play a lot of computer games. Not any more. At 33, he is now a supermarket manager in North London and has a girlfriend.

Despite the intrusion of real life, Mr Crowther still enjoys slaughtering hordes of monsters and capturing treasure in online games such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. But, like increasing numbers of gamers, he no longer has endless hours to earn the “virtual gold” needed to buy weapons and upgrades which make the game more fun. Luckily for him, 400,000 geeks, mostly in East Asia, are available for hire at the click of a button.

Read the Article here

What do you think? I know plenty of people buy their way into the 70s and have talked with people that have paid real dollars for a 2250 rating. I’ve also seen the farmers on and the GliderBots running around and its frustrating when you’re trying to farm mats for an item or to make some cash. Technically, if you kill a farmer multiple times, you’re griefing. Same if you steal their kills or train mobs over them. Are they creating their own economy by forcing you to buy the gold to get the items that they’ve farmed?

Twinking is all about Engineering. So many times we would just have fun. Seeing the reactions from other players, both on Horde or Alliance, is always quite enjoyable.

Some of our favorite toys:

[item]10518[/item]
[item]10501[/item]
[item]4852[/item]
[item]10716[/item]
[item]10720[/item]
[item]10724[/item]
[item]10721[/item]
[item]4388[/item]
[item]4384[/item]
[item]4397[/item]
[item]10646[/item]
[item]10726[/item]
[item]2091[/item]
[item]4381[/item]
[item]4395[/item]
[item]4397[/item]

Due to a lot of circumstances, I ended my WoW membership in July.  Before I stopped, IBJammin was pretty darn close to 10000 Honorable Kills.  While this game wasn’t particularly noteworthy, I did take a screenshot for posterity.

Cogman, a dwarf hunter was my 10000th kill.  It was always great facing him.

Ibjammin's last game after hitting 10000 kills

A lot of times on Rampage, we’ll get into an AB and the odds will be stacked against us. For some reason, it is very common for us to start being 6-8 players down. Maybe Alliance clicks that ‘Join Battle’ button quicker than Horde — I don’t know, but, very often we start with a serious disadvantage. Usually, we give advice in the channel to send 3 to farm, rest to BS and call out the incs until more players show up. I remember we were 4 capped early in this one, it was deemed a total loss by several players that said, lets just kill and get it over with.

Qwaitxtwo, a recently twinked Blood Elf warlock and I decided to join the rampage doing the 2 man from node to node. We took farm, headed to LM and took that, headed to Stables, took that, headed to mine, took that. We never defended, we did notify the group that we were OMW Stables with Qwait, or OMW Mine with Qwait and we let our team know what we were about to leave. Qwait and I run Capping which is a compact battleground scorekeeper/timer. It doesn’t bark out the status in the channel every time there is a change so, it isn’t annoying to the entire battleground, but, it does give us a good indication of what we need to do, whether we can win or not and whether we need to hold or attack. Sometimes, the game is close enough that all we need to do is stop the counter.

In this game we rolled from one node to the next, and somehow turned it around. At the end of the game, there was a quite a bit of surprise by some of the other players. Its not a strategy that works often, but, the fact that we turned it around from sure defeat sure did feel good.

While I much prefer AB to WSG, I will play whichever Battleground pops first. Unlike many of the players on our battlegroup, WSG is not AB’s waiting room for me. If AB pops while I’m in WSG, I will generally stick around rather than hop. Since I Pug, I’ll quickly size up the group which gives me a general feeling of how it will go.

There’s nothing I love more in WSG than to defend the flag, or, to get the EFC during a turtle. Generally, I will kill most people before they even get the flag and I must believe that there is some shock and dismay when they see an empty flag room and as they get near the flag, bam, they’re dead. Depending on the rest of team, usually the other nine are headed across the field, never communicating and its up to me solo to protect the flag. I usually call out incs so that people rezzing can come in to help. Most of the time, an EFC will never leave the flag room. Engineering is so much fun and gives me a bunch of ways to snare or pursue. I love seeing an EFC come in with the sprint boots only to get sapped until the sprint debuff wears off.

In this game, I recall quite a bit of action for a 29 minute game. The Alliance sent over a huge group at first and the flag was returned midfield, then, Alliance decided to turtle — with a score of 0-0. At that point, they were sending pairs over to get the flag which is a good tactic since Horde never defends on Rampage. Usually, Alliance can roll in with a pair, one will run defense and the other will be the FC. This strategy usually allows me to get a few more flag returns. Qwaitxsix, a guildmate has a screenshot with 13 returns. I’m sure he’s gotten more as we usually run D together.

778 Ambush Crit on my 29 Rogue

After a respec, and before getting my final blades and enchants, I wanted to test an ambush on a very surprised shammy.  778 wasn’t too bad.