Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory!

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related.
Okay, so I completely blew the call last week on druids getting some extra healing spells. Whoops! Now that the paladin changes have been released this week, the healing community has had a chance to digest the new direction we're going in. Actually, come to think of it, it appears that all healing classes are approaching the same direction. A few players quipped if the four healing classes would eventually become clones of each other in the sixth expansion of WoW. The parity is there, no doubt about it. At the same time, I still think that there are enough differences to render each healing style unique. Obviously there is going to be some overlap, but that's mainly to help make life easy for players.
Wait until you listen to this story I have ...
Stop me if you've heard this one before. You might have experienced it or have known someone who has been on the receiving end.
The other day, I'm relaxing on my priest in Dalaran. I made a few changes to my spec and I wanted to try some things out in a raid setting. Coincidentally enough, someone in trade chat pipes up saying that they're looking for a raid healer in Trial of the Crusader (for 25). I message the guy and inform him that I'm a 6,000+ GearScore discipline priest looking to join a raid. Turns out it was partially cleared and that a healer dropped out after they took down faction champions. I show him my achievements and stuff. (And hey, I don't agree with all that GearScore stuff, but sometimes you just have to speak the language.)
Inconceivably, I get shot down. It was a fairly crushing blow to my ego. How often does a 6,000+ Gearscore, Val'anyr-wielding healer get denied from a pickup raid that is looking for healers? All because of the fact that I was a discipline healer and obviously could not raid heal at all. The irony here is that the Val'kyr Twins encounter heavily favors a discipline priest due to the constant damage that the raid takes.
What's the point?
That right there is my story. Did you see the point I was trying to make? I didn't get turned down because of lack of gear or lack of experience. I simply wasn't the "right healer" for the right job. The current conceptions about healers is that there are two kinds: tank healers and raid healers. Tank healers excel at keeping one or two tank targets alive no matter the cost. Raid healers tend to specialize in keeping as many people alive. With Cataclysm steadily creeping up on us, the healing landscape will change so that all healers will have the tools to effectively raid heal or tank heal. I won't deny that we're getting closer to each other in terms of similarity. I personally view it as a positive thing.
Healing parity?
I know a number of healers who have stated that once Cataclysm is live, they're either going to quit the game or quit healing. Why? Well, because the class that will be released then will not be the class they started playing. For example, I know there are druids who play druids simply because they could look like a tree due to the Tree of Life ability. We're supposed to be unique in our own ways! We have our own little healing niches that we fill! This is an attack on the identity of who we are. We're slowly losing the essence of our class. How long will it be before we become carbon copies of each other, right?
I was never one for the slippery slope argument, myself. I can see where the skeptics are coming from. I do think it is blown way too far out of proportion, though.
Could you conceivably have a raid with six holy paladins healing? Well, yes, you could. It would be far from optimal, of course. Gearing them all would be a horrendous undertaking as well. When it comes down to it, we need three things to be successful at healing. We need healing spells that can hit multiple players simultaneously. We need spells that are fast, efficient or really efficient. We need tools to keep players alive through certain situations. It doesn't matter how that is done so long as it is done. What separates us from each other should be the tools we use. For raid healing, discipline priests are gaining Power Word: Barrier. Shamans get Healing Rain. Paladins are also getting additional AoE healing treatment with Healing Hands. Notice that the spells conceptually differ from each other but all accomplish the same goal: protecting or healing multiple players.
We're reaching a point where each healing class should be reasonably equipped to cover some healing role. We shouldn't be reduced to being only good at one thing. Again, this sounds like an increased emphasis of the "bring the player, not the class" philosophy. It just means that each healer will have the theoretical abilities to tank heal or raid heal. Now it boils down to the player itself to see if they have the player skills to make use of their skills. In other words, if your pickup raid needs a raid healer, you won't have to turn down paladins or discipline priests. You have the freedom to pick and choose. Player class won't play that big of a role in your raid composition, since each class can adequately fulfill that role.
Hopefully I won't get shot down the next time I want to heal something because I'm the wrong class for the job. I should be shot down because I'm either:
badly geared just plain bad I have no problems with being denied raiding due to lack of player skill or lack of gear. That's the way it should be.
Still not convinced?
At least wait a bit longer. There is still a long time to go before the expansion. Some abilities might make the cut and others might not. We still have the beta process to go through. The various encounters will also play a role in how we play ours. Give Blizzard time to flesh out and execute their ideas before throwing in the towel.

The rogue class will be like in Cataclysm

As we've been expecting, we now have the first glimpse of what the rogue class will be like in Cataclysm. These changes are straight from Blizzard, and they provide great insight into where the designers want to take things. Please remember that these changes are for the beta and will very likely be modified as the expansion nears release.
Some of the major highlights:
Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue's current target, helping to ensure combo points aren't wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Tanking stat changes in Cataclysm

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown.
Since paladins are last on the list for the upcoming Cataclysm class previews due to how Blizzard ended up doing the development schedule, we've got another week and a half to wait for our details. I'm not picky as long as it gets done, so there's no reason to really grumble other than having to wait an extra week. However, I thought I'd go over some of the things we do know about Cataclysm for tanking.
Blizzard has mentioned that they're going to rethink tanking cooldowns and has previously asked for feedback on some of the abilities we currently have -- but to what end, we're unsure at this time. What they have told us about thus far is how some of the avoidance stats will be working in the coming expansion. Essentially, the only avoidance stat that isn't changing is dodge, with the others either being overhauled or removed. Let's take a look.
Reaching uncrittable in Cataclysm
First off, your defense rating stat is going away completely. That means the annoyance of trying to balance gear, gems and enchants to reach that magical 6% critical strike reduction (currently, 690 defense rating [edit: which is 540 defense skill and yes, 689 defense rating is tossed around as the number, but according to some theorycrafters, you really need 689 and change which means you have an absurdly small chance of being critically hit at just 689 which is why I said 690]) also goes away.
While things aren't completely finalized, Blizzard has said that they will likely just make it so that having Righteous Fury up will automatically make you ready for tanking both dungeons and raids, as far as crits are concerned. Each of the other tanking classes will have a similar, simple mechanic for this. Druids will have it baked into Dire Bear Form instead of the current talent Survival of the Fittest, warriors will likely have it tacked onto Defensive Stance, and death knights will add it into Frost Presence.
Higher health, lower damage, more hits
As far as stat scaling goes for the coming expansion, Ghostcrawler has been letting everyone know that health pools should be a bit higher than expected. That's nice, because bosses are going to hit for less but hit more often, much like some of the bosses in Icecrown Citadel. Oh, and your avoidance stats will be in the toilet compared to what they currently are, to avoid what happened in both Sunwell and Icecrown Citadel.
You'll be doing fewer dodges, parries and blocks than you currently are, as Blizzard has more or less stated that tanking avoidance stats have probably started out too high for the past two expansions. So instead of staying block-capped most of the time, you'll be sitting at a lot less than 102.4% avoidance for most of the expansion. How much less? We're still not sure, as Blizzard has only been hinting at the details of that.
All in all, you'll probably spend more time around 50% health while tanking than you currently are, due to healing's also being reduced drastically. However, you'll be in much less danger of being instantly killed while in that scenario, due to the less-potent boss damage. All in all, it should make things a little more interesting and less of a twitch-gaming scenario.

Cataclysm preview

We're doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we'd go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.
In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.
We'll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change. Cataclysm: Blood will be the only Death Knight tanking tree
In a complete about-face, Ghostcrawler just announced that there will be a dedicated tanking tree in Cataclysm for Death Knights: Blood. Rather than having all three trees try to be good at both DPS and tanking, Blizzard will be taking the tanking talents from the other two trees and adding them with some other changes to the Blood tree. They announced this today, knowing that this news will overshadow the rest of the DK class preview.The complete text is after the break.
Why the about face? We actually thought the "tri tank" experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a "best" tanking tree, because that's the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees. A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it's safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).
It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn't focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, "I look at the Protection tree and I'm jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents." Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.
In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.
This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.

Most recent level 80

To celebrate my most recent level 80, a protection warrior, I was going to use a screenshot of it in the header of today's edition of The Queue. Unfortunately, I'm writing this on my laptop and when I play WoW on this thing the character models... well, let's just say they mutate a little bit. It's not pretty. So instead, I'm using a screenshot of one of Matt Rossi's warriors and we're all going to pretend it's a white-haired female draenei. Sound good? Great. Now let's move on.
Kar On E asked...
"If you could trade out one of the new race/class combinations coming to us in Cataclysm for one that will not be there, which would you trade out? Which would you instead trade in? Why?"
Can I pick a worgen combination? Because if I can, I'd drop one of the worgen caster classes so we could have worgen paladins. Playing a huge badass werewolf that stands behind a bush throwing icicles at his enemies just seems wrong. While a werewolf retribution paladin pummeling his foes with an enormous axe seems so right.
I would also drop tauren paladin and take troll paladins instead. I have no good lore explanation for this, but come on. Troll paladins would be awesome.
Tim asked...
"How does the random name generator work? I know the simple answer is it give you a random name, but the main issue is many of the names are taken. You click random name, then click enter world and boom name taken. Weird right? Seems like this feature is broken. I tested it about 6-7 times. Maybe I was unlucky or something. Thoughts?"
It's not broken, it just has a very limited set of names it offers. The list isn't stored on Blizzard's servers. The random name generator pulls from a list that is in your game files. It won't know something is taken until you try to submit it. In other words, it's working as intended.
It's safe to say every single name on that list is probably taken on your server. Use it as inspiration instead if you're looking for help picking a name. Hit random until you find something that sounds neat, and tinker with it until it's unique. I don't mean just add Zs and Xs to the end, but if it recommends Spartacus then pick out what part of the name you like. If you liked the last syllable, break it off from the rest and use that syllable in a new name.
@evolsoulx asked...
"Has anyone ever attempted to seriously kill Flame Leviathan without vehicles? Any success possible ever?"
Well, Flame Leviathan on his easiest level of difficulty has 23 million health. 70 million on his highest difficulty. The Lich King has less than that. That's an incredibly long time to need to weather Flame Vents, Missile Barrage, and any melee abilities you weren't able to kite from being slow on foot. I think it might be totally impossible without finding some way to cheat it.
@Ndiayne asked...
"Do you think gnomes and goblins will ever merge engineering technologies and end up exploding Azeroth?"
The two races are doing pretty good on their own, I don't think they need to merge. Keep in mind that it was goblins that riveted metal plates to Deathwing to keep him from being torn apart under his own power. And with what's happening in Cataclysm... yeah, the goblins are basically doing it without the gnomes. No merger necessary. Blame them when Azeroth gets torn apart later this year.
Tokkar asked...
"When is the Armory going to work again?"
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and the armory breaks.

In case you missed it

In case you missed it, a few of the staff here at WoW.com are having you choose our adventures. We'll report next week on what we have done so far, but now it's time for you to choose where we will quest next. Many readers have suggested that we should stick to zones that will be changing when Cataclysm comes out. So after consulting what we know so far, I have only listed zones that we think will undergo at least a light change. If we don't think the zone will be touched, it isn't in the poll. This is rather limiting for the Horde, as that leaves out the easy-mode blood elf areas.
Level 8 is an awkward age It's high enough to want to change scenery but too low to quest efficiently in the next zone. So we have two polls for next week's adventuring: one for before level 10, and one for when we graduate to the next zone. Elizabeth Harper and I will also be choosing our talents according to what tree you pick. And Michael Gray wants you to choose his first pet. When voting, think about what fun adventures you would like to hear retold here, rather than how to have us level speedily.

Blood tanking basics

Welcome to blog, your weekly peek at the world of the death knight. This week, Matt Rossi fills in to talk about tanking on a blood death knight. This is not a 101 post, but an even more basic look.
I run heroics and 10 man raids on my death knight. There's simply only so much time in the day and I already raid pretty heavily on my warrior, so when I began seriously leveling a death knight I knew I would probably want to play something I felt very comfortable with. And so my flirtation with blood was born. While frost has seen some love in the most recent patch, I'm still not much for the DW DK style, and I've never really like the pet management of unholy, so I currently have two blood specs on my DK, a DPS spec and a tanking spec.
What I've always loved about blood is its strong self-healing and physical damage based nature. As a blood tank, you end up taking advantage of these aspects of the tree, which provides strong single target threat, good AoE threat and solid cooldowns and survivability. While it doesn't have the snap AoE threat of a Howling Blast or unholy's strong group threat, Blood can still tank a group quite effectively with diseases and Heart Strike, while the recent patch 3.3.3 has greatly buffed single target threat for all DK tanks and made Will of the Necropolis far more attractive for the Blood DK tank.
First off, let's talk spec. There are quite a few options for any DK tank, although most usually get the 5/5/5 triefecta of baseline talents in each spec. The spec I'm currently playing around is this, a spec that goes deeper into unholy than this spec that Daniel recommended in a previous column. You'll also notice that I chose to take talents like Scent of Blood and Rune Tap over Sudden Doom - you could easily move the points around to fit your comfort zone The strength of Blood as a tanking spec is that it has a variety of options to either increase survivability or threat depending on what you feel like you're most in need of.
Talents I really enjoy as a DK tank:
Blade Barrier - I like this ability because it rewards you for being proactive and using your runes. Bladed Armor - You're going to have high armor anyway. Might as well get some threat out of it. Scent of Blood - Some DK tanks feel like they already have plenty of runic power, but for a tanking DK I don't think you can ever really have too much, and Scent of Blood is a nice, reliable way to fill up the gas tank for that Rune Strike spam you know you'll be doing. Death Rune Mastery - Helping free a DK tank from the tyranny of frost and unholy runes, this ability makes rune management (which is a big part of the threat cap for a blood DK tank) much less onerous. Rune Tap - Kind of pricy at the cost of a blood rune, but that's what Death Rune Mastery is for, and 10% health every minute is pretty hot. Spell Deflection - I'm at 20% parry without doing more than getting it on gear, which means I have 20% chance of taking almost half as much damage from direct damage spells. I'm okay with this, even though too many bosses get around it in my opinion. Sudden Doom - If you find yourself absolutely fine on runic power, these free Death Coils generate you threat without costing you anything, and trigger off of abilities you'll be using anyway. Veteran of the Third War - Strength (threat and avoidance), Stamina (health) and Expertise (threat). Pretty cheap, too. Abomination's Might - It's an aura now, but I don't really care about that (although the DPS probably does) - I take it for 2% strength, which is parry and threat. Win/win. Vampiric Blood - This is one of my favorite tanking cooldowns, hands down. Increases health by 15% and increases healing taken by 30%? On a one minute cooldown? Are you seeing a bad side here? Because I'm not. Improved Death Strike - One of the most attractive aspects of blood tanking is the incremental self healing a blood tank can do to make healer's lives easier (we're long past our glory days on Vezax, of course, but it's still pretty good) and Imp DS makes the self heal strike heal for 50& more. It also boosts the damage of the move by 30% and increases its crit strike chance by 6%, increasing its threat, which is pretty necessary for a move that uses up two runes. (Which is one reason why we take Death Rune Mastery, of course.) Heart Strike - Pretty much necessary for any blood DK, but especially useful for AoE tanking. Willl of the Necropolis - Especially now that this ability no longer has an internal cooldown and can be more easily activated, it's very nice. DK's generally have a slight issue with spike damage (it's a common complaint from those healing us) and having the ability to reliably reduce it as we get into the danger zone is pretty bloody nice all told. As mentioned before a blood DK doesn't have the AoE burst threat of a frost DK or the large amount of AoE an unholy tank can spawn. But with Death and Decay, Pestilence, Blood Boil and the proper spread of diseases blood multi-target threat is pretty solid and reliable (especially when using Heart Strike properly) - I personally prefer a D&D pull on groups, followed by an Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Pestilence combo to get diseases ticking on every target. (With the boost to IT threat in 3.3.3, as long as the DPS is being even moderately careful that initial target should stay locked down.) If you're feeling particularly insecure about threat you can use Blood Boil immediately (using either Empower Rune Weapon or more likely, Blood Tap) and by this point should have threat fairly well locked down. Heart Strike, cheap at 1 blood rune, can also really be of great help in these situations.
The biggest issue with blood tanking is making sure to manage your runes. In the example above, D&D is the most expensive ability to use with a three rune cost, which means that if you throw it down, use IT and Plague Strike, and then use Pestilence to spread your diseases on an AoE pull you will have put all your runes on cooldown. This is why I mentioned Emp Rune Weapon/Blood Tap, as they will free up a rune for an immediate Blood Boil. It's important to monitor your runes and to use abilities like Rune Strike and Death Coil to bleed runic power when your runes are on cooldown when tanking as blood.
Single target tanking you'll most likely use IT - Plague Strike and either Heart or Death Strike. Rune Strike you'll use to burn runic power when it lights up just like any other DK tank, no changes there. For single target/boss tanking D&D probably isn't worth it, and Heart Strike is cheaper than Death so you'll only use DS when you expect to take a lot of damage. Remember that you can potentially have Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood and Icebound Fortitude as your cooldowns, giving you a lot of options to reduce or heal incoming damage.
Okay, this covers the most basic basics of blood tanking. It's a fun and powerful tanking tree, so go out and have fun tweaking it for your own use.

Want to get Gold Capped?

This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast, and the Call to Auction podcast.Hi folks, this week we'll be going over jewelcrafting. Making money with jewelcrafting can be a challenge, but it's a rewarding one. In fact, very few professions have as much earning potential as this one does. We'll start with the easy part: if you have a jewelcrafter, where's the low hanging fruit? I like to call this "reactive" profits. Anything where you can get a fixed income sort of profit for minimal effort, but you can't grind falls into this category for me. Alchemy has daily epic gem transmutes, mining used to have a daily Titansteel cooldown, tailoring has a bag cooldown, etc. What does jewelcrafting have?Low hanging fruitAs Michael mentioned in a recent Insider Trader, each and every day, jewelcrafters can do the jewelcrafting daily quest. This will reward them with a Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token, which can be turned in for a variety of recipes or a Dragon's Eye, which is importantly cut by jewelcrafters into their better than average epic gems. This means that, just like regular epic gems, Dragon's Eyes are a raid consumable of sorts, and will be purchased every time a jewelcrafter upgrades certain pieces of gear.If you are looking for easy money, cooldown style, this is the closest it gets. Each jewelcrafting daily, in addition to the smallish amount of gold you get for doing the quest, rewards you with a highly sought after commodity that you can choose to turn into gold immediately. On many servers, Dragon's Eyes sell for hundreds of gold.That fruit at the top of the treeOf course, the alternative is to not use your tokens for gold, but for those recipes I mentioned before. There are pros and cons for each side. If you "take the money and run", you're guaranteeing yourself a decent return on the 10 minutes you spend flying to and hearthing back from the daily quest. If you buy a recipe, however, you could use it to make more than that over the long run! This is "proactive" profiteering. You have to make a conscious effort to squeeze profits from the ability to cut a gem, but there's no artificial limit on your volume, like there is for selling Dragon's Eyes.If you want to know whether there's a recipe that's worth it, you'll need to do some research. Ideally you'd have a clear idea of what you can realistically buy the uncut gems for, an idea of what the cut gem goes for, and some sort of clue about how much demand there is for a cut. If you had all this info, you could make a very well informed decision about whether those tokens are worth more as gold in your hand now, or as the ability to cut a gem. Unfortunately, this information is probably harder to get than it's worth. I don't know of any easy way to export Auctioneer data to a file, and unless you happen to have Market Watcher installed and are storing the historic prices of all the gem cuts you're interested in (which, by the way, would probably be a ridiculous amount of memory and not nearly as helpful as it sounds), you're going to have to guestimate it.Some very useful data about gems can be found at the WoW Gem Finder, a nifty little site that lets you filter gems by basically any statistic, as well as WoW-Popular list of gems. Assume that the most popular gems will be the lowest margin, but if you look at what they're selling for on a Tuesday night, you'll see whether it's worth the competition. Also, some of the lower volume gems (the annoying off color ones we need to socket to activate our meta gems, for example) can sell at very nice margin when your competition forgets to keep theirs for sale on the auction house.Don't forget to look at the meta gems! These days, everyone is so caught up in the trendy high volume epic cuts market that they forget that every time someone gets a helm upgrade, they need to get a meta gem. If you have access to a friendly alchemist (ideally a transmute specialized one), you can transmute uncut meta gems out of base mats. From there, just look at that WoW-Popular link to see what people use.Working the anglesJewelcrafters all start somewhere. Specifically, at 1 skill. Getting from there to where they want to be is a long and, when done incorrectly, expensive prospect. How to do this profitably is another post, but today we'll talk about a big part of jewelcrafting's biggest money maker: Prospecting. This ability is the cornerstone of jewelcrafting, and is the main way that uncut gems enter the marketplace. Since there are a ton of places when you're on the way to 450 skill that you need uncut gems to level, the demand is quite naturally high. The angle is that regardless of the highest level ore you can prospect, there's money to be made prospecting lower level ores. Try out:Adamantite Ore Fel Iron Ore Thorium Ore Mithril Ore Iron Ore Tin Ore Copper Ore These can all be prospected into gems that may or may not sell for more than the ore you bought to make them. Take a look at the prospect tab on the Wowhead.com pages to get an idea of the yields, and then look up your uncut gem prices. If the yields times the gem prices are more than the ore, you're in the money. Some of these used to be so profitable that a single high demand, uncommon uncut gem would pay for the ore on its own, and the rest was all profit. There's a lot of management overhead in this business, however. You need spreadsheets, research, and constant buying and selling of a large quantity of different types of items.As good as your toolsAs always, your ability to play the AH profitably will depend on your tools. Addons and mods make the auctioneer! For this business, Auctioneer is (of course) very handy in that you can automate mass buying and selling of lots of types of product. Your snatch list should have all these ores on it with the threshold set to lower than what you make by selling the uncut gems. You can use appraiser to automatically mass post and price the gems. Don't forget, the demand for these are sporadic, but heavy. Every time a budding jewelcrafter makes their way through the ranks of old world mats, they will have to buy large quantities of gems. Even if your auctions are not the cheapest on the AH, they can still sell.

what are we actually doing?

Something we may not always think about what our spells and abilities actually do in the setting of the game. Sure, for us, the tooltip tells us the basic information and we go on from there, but what are we actually doing? How does Arcane Shot work? Does the hunter just have a special magic arrow they shoot me with? Do they somehow wave the arrow around and it becomes magic, say a few words in Darnassian or Troll or whatever? Some abilities are pretty obviously spells, like almost everything a mage does, but for other classes the border between magic and skill can get pretty blurry... moves like Cloak of Shadows really beggar the imagination to explain in a non magical way.

A recent discussion on the forums about Thunder Clap and its being suppressed by silence effects (it always has, or at least has for so long that I've just accepted it) brings out Ghostcrawler to explain the reasoning. Quite frankly, it's a pretty reasonable explanation: if you're silenced, no one can hear the Thunder Clap going off, and thus, it doesn't do anything.

It's not due to the ability being magical or not, silences prevent spell casting by preventing the spells themselves from being uttered, they're not a dispel, so it makes sense in game that silences also prevent any other ability that needs to be heard from working. I know from tanking Raging Spirits on top of ICC that I also can't taunt when silenced, which makes sense. I can yell all the insulting words I want at the ghost, but he can't hear them. I'm honestly not sure if I can Shockwave in this situation (we have very fast dispellers) but some sources I've checked indicate that yes, Shockwave is also prevented by silence. (I really don't get silenced all that much. I'll run some tests later today.)

I find it very interesting to see the complexities of how abilities and conditions interact in game, and how abilities are changed by in-game world logic. One class obviously uses the Holy Light, while another is just getting by on brute force: the in game distinction creates new complexities.

Activision quietly restructures senior management

An article from the LA Times reports that Activision Blizzard Inc. has quietly made some internal changes to senior management and internal organization. The company has apparently split itself into four units, one focused on the military game Call of Duty, another handling internally owned properties like Guitar Hero and the Tony Hawk series, and a third handling licensed properties.

Why these changes weren't relayed to investors or the press is still unknown, but it's likely due to the fact that they could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Activision has seen flagging sales for two of its former cash-cow franchises, Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, and a recent very public scuffle with Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampanella following their ejection from their positions as heads of Activision's Infinity Ward studio painted the studio in a negative light with gamers. This kind of restructuring could point to turmoil within the company, an image that an industry juggernaut like Activision would want to avoid.

So, what do these changes mean for Blizzard, and for World of Warcraft? Apparently nothing, from what can be gathered -- this is Activision's first major change since they merged with Vivendi in 2008 to create Activision Blizzard. While the new departments are interesting developments, Activision states that the fourth unit, Blizzard Entertainment, remains an independent unit, and as such, these changes don't really affect them directly.

The ghosts of Azeroth

I love ghost stories, and one of the nice things about WoW is that Azeroth is full of them. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that one of the nice things for us is that Azeroth's full of them, because lore-wise it's hard to argue that the existence of any ghost is a happy occurrence. While I could (and probably should) turn this into a giant feature cataloging all the ghosts in the game, I have my personal favorites:Caer DarrowThe inhabitants of Caer Darrow are my favorite ghosts, not least because you can't see them at all until you've done a bit of work on their behalf. The island seems utterly deserted barring the Sarkhoff couple...until you realize that it's not, and that there's an entire town full of people trapped on its "happiest day," going about its business, oblivious to how the world's moved on. That there's a ghostly vendor you can't otherwise talk to without a Spectral Essence is even better.

Guide to The Forge of Souls

The Forge of Souls is the first instance in the group of three that make up the Frozen Halls in Icecrown Citadel. These three new instances were just added in the 3.3 patch that added all of the Icecrown Citadel content to the World of Warcraft. You must complete them in order to open up each of the next two. Once The Forge of Souls has been completed you will be able to move onto the next instance in the Frozen Halls. This is so that you can see and follow the storyline involved in the three instances as it evolves.

The worst of the Devourer of Souls abilities is Mirrored Soul, which is cast quite often, or at least it seems like it. As soon as you see it then all DPS must stop and wait until it expires. A well geared group will kill the affected player in no time flat if they keep DPSing, and no matter how good the healer is they will not have a chance to keep the player alive. Once the effect ends start back in on the boss.

Icecrown Citadel 5-man Attunement Quest Line Walkthrough

Do you need to the basics on how to down the bosses in the new 5-man instances that came with patch 3.3 in World of Warcraft? Want to know where Jaina or Sylvanas is? Our latest walkthrough takes you through the entire attunement quest line that nets you a nice sum of Emblems of Frost, a hefty pocket full of gold, and access to all three new instances. Don't struggle begging general for what to do. Let Ten Ton Hammer take you to the next level with our latest walkthrough!

Krick and Ick are weird, to say the least. Clear the area around Krick and Ick very well because adds will wander into the boss area frequently if you don’t. When you aggro him the fight will become a tank and spank with a little bit of a dance. He’ll throw poison on the ground which you’ll need to move away from and he’ll throw bombs on the ground (magic bombs) that will get bigger and bigger before they explode. They’ll follow your feet.

Guide to the Pit of Saron

The Pit of Saron is the second of three instances that make up the Frozen Halls in Icecrown Citadel. It was added in the recent patch 3.3 which added all of the Icecrown Citadel content to the game. You must complete the three instances in order and until they are done you can not enter the next in the series which happens to be the Halls of Reflection. This is so that you can see and follow the storyline involved in the three instances as it evolves.

Once he has been defeated Krick will beg for mercy from Jaina Proudmoore (if you are Alliance) or Sylvanas Windrunner (if you are Horde). While it looks like they are about to grant it, the Scourgelord is less than pleased with Krick betrayal and silences the Grome for good.

Guide to the Halls of Reflection

The Halls of Reflection is the third and final of the three new instances that make up the Frozen Halls in Icecrown Citadel. The Halls were added in patch 3.3 which added all of the Icecrown Citadel content to the game. You can only enter the Halls of Reflection once you have completed the other two instances: The Forge of Souls and The Pit of Saron. This is so that you see and follow the whole storyline involved with finding the Lich King himself.

Once you have defeated both bosses the door opens up to allow you to follow on to find Arthas. Once there you find that he is too strong and you must flee up the escape tunnel which forms the final fight in the instance. This is another gauntlet type event where you must defeat several waves of undead as your faction champion clears the way up the tunnel allowing you to escape to safety.

Hunter Equipment

You’ve finally completed the long grind to maximum level, and as a level 80 Hunter you feel almost invincible and can hardly wait to start collecting some awesome gear. Regardless of if you prefer PvP, serious raiding, or just plan on doing some five mans you should have a basic idea in advance of what stats to look for, what enchants to put on it, and what gems you should socket your new gear with. This guide will attempt to answer all those questions in the simplest form possible, so when that new piece of gear drops, you know you want it, and once you get it you know exactly what enchant to place on it, or gem to socket it with.

While all Hunters are in the end, Hunters, each of the three available specs require slightly different stats. While this may seem unimportant, let me assure you that being sure you are picking up the best stats for your particular spec will aid you more than you can imagine. Plus, memorizing the basic stats you need to look for is far easier than remembering a long list of even longer item names.

Guide to Ice Crown Citadel

With the launch of Patch 3.3 for the World of Warcraft last week titled Fall of the Lich King, everyone is excited to get into the Lich King’s Citadel. What do you need to know to survive though? What bosses are there, what do you need to watch out for, and how do you avoid looking like a noob? All this is explained by our very own Byron “Messiah” Mudry.

The first fight is a fairly straight forward fight meant to get you into the raid and not scare you off right away. It is defiantly a coordination test for DPS as they need to hold off and let the tanks re-establish threat after a blade storm. If they don’t they will be one shotted as it seems to that his first attack out of a Bone Storm is his big Bone Lash attack. If it hits anyone but a tank (and preferably two stacked in front) they will be killed.

Dungeon Finder Guide

Are you perpetually LFG in World of Warcraft? Well look for group (LFG) no more with patch 3.3's Dungeon Finder. Are you confused by the interface or have some questions like how is loot done, what's the new debuff, is it fair, and other details? Well our Dungeon Finder Guide is here to help.

There is something you should know about random dungeons, specifically heroics. If you are saved to a heroic then the tool could still allow you to replay that heroic you’re locked to. It makes its best attempt not to place you into an instance that you’re not already locked out of, but there will be instances that you’ll rerun the same heroic in the same day.

Guide Portal Relaunch

You don't want to spend forever looking for guides and walkthroughs for World of Warcraft when you want to hurry up and get back into the game. We're relaunching our guides portal with many improvements to help you find the guide you need so you can get back to what really matters, playing the game. So check out our new guide portal and let us help you take your game to the next level.

Popular Mounts and How to Get Them!

Regardless of if you are an avid mount collector, or just desire that one special mount to make your character complete, there is one question that is shared by all. Where can I find that mount? This guide will give the answer to that question for some of the rarest and most sought after mounts in the World of Warcraft.

A player goes rushing by and in that brief second you find you have become sure of one thing; you must have that mount. Whether you’re an avid collector or just an average Joe struck by fancy to , you are willing to go to great lengths to obtain the mount of your dreams. If only you knew where it came from! This guide will attempt to help you collect the mount you so desire but be advised that some mounts will take more dedication than others, and to obtain some will prove nothing short of frustrating.

Mage Equipment Guide

Our Mage Equipment Guide for Mages in World of Warcraft is a sure fire way to make sure your Mage is well equipped. No matter if you're level 1, level 80, or a Night Elf Mohawk, our Mage Equipment Guide will tell you what's best for gearing up, what to gem, what to enchant, and everything else associated with gear.

While leveling up you’re going to want to focus on snagging gear with Intellect. Towards TBC when gear starts branching off between healing (spirit and haste) and damage (intellect and hit) you'll want to go for damage. Both sets have critical strike rating and for the most part neither bit of gear is bad unless you’re running random dungeons and taking the healing specific gear from the healer.

Ashen Verdict Reputation Guide

The Ashen Verdict was forged out of an alliance between the formidable Argent Crusade, led by Highlord Tirion Fordring, and the Knights of the Ebon Blade, led by Highlord Darion Mograine. Reminiscent of the Shattered Sun Offensive these two different organizations have come together for a common purpose, to lead the final assault against the Scourge in Icecrown Citadel and bring about the fall of the Lich King.

The best description of the Ashen Verdict was probably given by Highlord Darion Mograine himself:
“The Ashen Verdict is a select group of the most talented craftsmen in the Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade. Its creation symbolizes the unity of our forces as we mount the final assault on the Lich King and his minions.
It is through the Ashen Verdict's efforts that we have discovered how to bend saronite to our will.”
Reputation
With limited quests available from this faction, your main source of reputation gain is going to be inside the Citadel itself. Inside you will be granted reputation each time you manage to bring down a monster. The reputation you receive will depend on what type of mob you kill. Most normal mobs will grant you 15 reputation, however harder elites, and named mobs will grant you more. Bosses inside Icecrown Citadel will grant you 250 reputation.
There are however a few quests that you can and should do as soon as Icecrown is fully opened. The Ashen Verdict, having learned to bend Primordial Saronite to their will, have set their smiths on an epic task; to repurpose Arthas’s former weapon Light’s Vengeance (discarded once he claimed Frostmourne) to forge a new weapon called Shadowmourne.
You will assist the Verdict’s smiths in forging Shadowmourne in what could be considered one of the most epic quest lines ever seen in game:
The Sacred and the Corrupt
Place Light's Vengeance, 25 Primordial Saronite, Rotface's Acidic Blood, and Festergut's Acidic Blood in Highlord Mograine's runeforge in Icecrown Citadel. (Rotface’s Acidic Blood and Festergut’s Acid may only be obtained in 25 player difficulty)
Shadow’s Edge
Gain Shadow’s Edge (2H Axe) after gathering all the materials from The Sacred and the Corrupt.
A Feast of Souls
Highlord Darion Mograine wants you to use Shadow's Edge to slay 1000 of the Lich King's minions in Icecrown Citadel. Souls can be obtained in 10 or 25 person difficulty.
Unholy Infusion
Highlord Darion Mograine wants you to infuse Shadow's Edge with Unholy power and slay Professor Putricide.
This quest may only be completed in 25 person difficulty of Icecrown Citadel.
Blood Infusion
Highlord Darion Mograine wants you to infuse Shadow's Edge with blood and defeat Queen Lana'thel.
This quest may only be completed in 25 person difficulty of Icecrown Citadel.
Frost Infusion
Highlord Darion Mograine has instructed you to slay Sindragosa after subjecting yourself to 4 of her breath attacks while wielding Shadow's Edge.
This quest may only be completed in 25 person difficulty of Icecrown Citadel.
The Splintered Throne
Highlord Darion Mograine asks you to collect 60 Shadowfrost Shards. Shadowfrost Shards may only be obtained in the 25 person difficulty setting.
Shadowmourne…
Highlord Darion Mograine asks you to bring him Shadow's Edge.
The Lich King’s Last Stand
Highlord Darion Mograine in Icecrown Citadel bids you to kill the Lich King.

How to play a Retribution Paladin

So you want to lay the holy smack down on the enemy? Want to prove that Paladins can dish it out as well as they can take it? Well, you have come to the right place. Retribution Paladins bring a lot of DPS to the table in a group, they also bring a lot of group benefits.

Probably the most important talents are your Crusaders Strike and Divine Storm, since they will form 2 of the 5 main attacks that make up your DPS rotation. For more information on that rotation skip down to the Attack Rotation section of the guide. Crusader's Strike is a single target attack with a short cooldown that will become a staple in all of your rotations, while Divine Storm hits multiple targets and factors in against groups of enemies.

Death Knight Equipment Guide

Death Knights have many options when it comes to gear. This is due to the fact that they can choose to play as a damage dealer or as a tank. Even knowing their role, depending on their talent spec the priorities for gear can shift subtlety. Which gear is best, which stats are best, how about glyphs and enchants?

Tank – Tanking Death Knights need to worry primarily about Defense until they reach the relevant cap, which is 540 for level 80 raids. Beyond that they also need to focus on Hit, Expertise, Dodge and Parry. While many Tanks are tempted to only focus on Stamina to give them as big a health pool as possible, the better method is to balance Stamina with a good bit of avoidance, granted from your Dodge and Parry.

Rogue Equipment Guide

Our World of Warcraft Rogue Guide now has its own equipment page going over how to pick the best gear for your Rogue while gearing up. We've got the best gems, enchants, glyphs, and more so that you don't have to go hunting to see how to properly enhance your Rogue. While you're here be sure to check out our many other class guides, so even if you're not a Rogue, there is something for you here at Ten Ton Hammer.

Let’s talk weapons first, since Mutilate and Combat require two different weapon types. Combat Rogues will want to look for swords or axes which currently have the best talent (Hack and Slash). You’ll be able to easily find swords in heroics, on the vendors, and all over the place. You can do Mace Specialization, but it’s all up to you. Mutilate specs will need daggers, for obvious reasons. In Combat, Rogues will need a slow main hand and a fast offhand weapon, while Mutilate just needs a fast offhand.

Guide to Ice Crown Citadel

This Tuesday Icecrown Citadel is set to expand in the World of Warcraft, as another wing is opened in the Lich Kings lair. This week sees the lab and experimentation area of Professor Putricide called the Plagueworks open up for players. All of the fights in this wing are fairly complicated and being new do you know enough to survive? What bosses are there, what do you need to watch out for, and how do you avoid looking like a noob? All this is explained by our very own Byron “Messiah” Mudry to get you ready for the raid.

Professor Putricide is the last boss in the Plagueworks wing of the Icecrown Citadel. He is the insane Professor that created the two previous bosses and wants to cure us of all our flesh.

While not much is known just yet as the Professor was not officially tested in PTR we do know a few things. One mentioned piece of info is that the fight will require players to drink the various potions on his work bench to interact with things going on in the room.

The Evolution of Raiding 3

What was Blizzard to do? Well, the answer to their dilemma came in the form of hard modes. Other games have them right? You see it in your shooters, platformers, and many other genres, so why not MMORPGs? Blizzard's first foray into the world of MMO hard modes was Sartharion. He has four levels of difficulty. Besides him, there are three mini-bosses in his volcanic domain: Vesperon, Shadron, and Tenebron. You can choose to kill one, two or all three of the mini-bosses before attacking the big dragon himself, or you can clear the trash mobs and attack him with the full force of the three other dragons to contend with. It seemed that Blizzard had found the perfect compromise.
However, with a player base as large as World of Warcraft's, Blizzard can never seem to please everybody. With the next content patch of the expansion came Ulduar, and Blizzard threw in enough hard modes to make any hardcore raider jump for joy. However, people complained about how they were implemented. Some said that Blizzard should have released easy modes first, and then enabled hard modes once the easy modes were cleared for progression purposes. Some said it should have been the other way around. Then with Trial of the Champions, Blizzard used a staggered release system for the five bosses in the instance, and then they enabled hard modes for all bosses with a 50 attempt limit per week. The fewer attempts a guild uses to clear the bosses, the better the loot. However, people still weren't happy with the attempt limit, and criticism abounded once again.

The Evolution of Raiding 4

I can personally attest to being in both camps during my WoW career. For most of The Burning Crusade and the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, I was in a middle of the road guild that cleared most of the encounters in the game at an average or below average pace. I had no complaints in TBC, but when WoTLK came out and we started raiding, we had lost a few key members, and our 25 man raiding team proved to be subpar. I am personally glad for the 10 man 25 man model that Blizzard employs now, because while our 10 man group, which was made up of some of the better players in the guild, blew through content, our 25 man group was sorely lacking. Sadly, even with the super easy raids, our 25 man group never even managed to kill Kel'Thuzad before our main tank/raid leader quit either out of frustration or burnout. After a while, I jumped the sinking ship that was my guild to one of the best guilds on the server. The difference was like night and day. We blew through Naxxramas without trouble, Malygos was only a slight bother, and the only true challenge came in the form of Sartharion with the 3 drakes in tow. But he too, eventually fell to our blades and spells, and we also got server fifth for the Twilight Zone achievement.
After experiencing what it was like to raid in a guild that was more than decent, I could definitely sympathize with the more hardcore guilds. However, I also can't forget the guild that I was with for a large part of my raiding career. As hard of a time as we had Naxxramas, I doubt that we were the only guild in the world who found it to be a bit of a challenge. It is was a wise move on Blizzard's part to account for those who find their raiding content more than a bit challenging, while keeping the option for a bit more challenging experience available for those who want it. In the ever changing landscape that is World of Warcraft raiding, our next foe will be the Lich King himself, the most recognizable figure in the Warcraft franchise. With such a prominent figure being the next one to go down, Blizzard has to promise both an epic and accessible experience. Perhaps they will finally find a raiding format in patch 3.3 that will make everyone happy and that they can stick with for the rest of the game's life. Only time, or maybe the Public Test Realm, will tell.

The Evolution of Raiding 2

So at first, after the most hardcore of the hardcore had downed bosses or after a boss proved nearly invincible, Blizzard would respond with nerfs that lowered the skill level needed to down bosses; however, they remained a formidable challenge for most, and the attunements were still there, as daunting as ever before, to the general gaming populace. Then, shortly after the release of the BlackTemple content patch, Blizzard removed the need for attunements altogether. With the advent of the Sunwell Plateau, Blizzard utilized daily quests to open the gate of the instance. The more people on your server that did the daily quests that were made available on the Isle of Quel'Danas, the quicker the gates were opened, which was a great compromise. However, what awaited you on the other side of that instance portal was perhaps the most diabolically difficult raid that Blizzard has created to date, garnering praise from those who could overcome its challenges and scorn from those who could not get past the first pack of trash mobs, who seemed to be as difficult to overcome as Kael'Thas and his lackeys at the end of Tempest Keep - which we all know was merely a setback for the great leader of the Blood Elves.
Then there was the patch, Echoes of Doom and the 20% health and damage nerf to all Burning Crusade raid bosses in addition the massive buffs to player damage and healing in the pre-expansion patch that, in hindsight, almost seemed to presage the easy mode raid dungeons that the expansion pack would bring upon release. Players jumped at the opportunity to faceroll through every instance in the Burning Crusade, and, when Wrath of the Lich King was launched, all the raid bosses then available in the expansion pack were cleared within three days of release. So previous raids were too hard, and the new raids were too easy.

The Evolution of Raiding 1

No matter what you think about World of Warcraft, few can deny that it is an immersive MMO experience that manages to cover the many aspects of the genre with a level of polish that one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere in one package. Whether you are into PVE, PVP, or RP, you can find it all in WoW at a level that few games are capable of reaching (although, some RPers would adamantly argue that the lack of a housing system is one of the great pitfalls of the game that is yet to be rectified). However, my favorite aspect of the game is PVE; and, further still, raiding. There is nothing like getting together with 9 or 24 guildies - or maybe even a PUG if you are desperate or not willing to be tied down - and downing the great, big baddies that the game has to offer.
As someone who started playing the game during the second expansion, The Burning Crusade, I have only seen some of the evolutionary process that WoW has gone through over the years. However, the one thing that has remained a constant in all my time with the game is the hardcore versus casual raiding debate. This topic has sparked many a flame war in the WoW forums. Casuals believe that they should be able to experience the content that the more hardcore players do because it is part of the game that they are paying for - even if they lack the skill and/or time to commit that the more hardcore players do - and understandably so. During the Burning Crusade, there were long atunement quest chains, nigh insurmountable gear checks, and *gasp* skill - yes, skill - barriers that prevented them from doing so.

Trial of the Crusader 5

Phase 2: Run, Period.
Once underground, the raid needs to get as far away from Anub'arak while keeping a patch of ice between them and him.
Anub'arak once again uses Impale, but he will chase a specified target this time. Players targeted by Anub'arak will have a mark similar to Hunter's Mark above their heads. Anub'arak' spikes speed up the longer they are uninterrupted by a patch of ice. This phase ends after a certain amount of time, not the number of times Anub'arak will have to crash into the ice patches. If you want to practice for hard mode, kite the spikes around.
Throughout this phase, Swarm Scarabs will spawn around the raid. Everyone should attack these adds even if they're not a tank. Swarm Scarabs don't hurt a lot, but they have a stacking damage-over-time effect that really hurts once you reach 3 or 4 stacks.
Once the timer is up, it's back to Phase 1. Kill the Swarm Scarabs before going back to Anub'arak.
If you don't want him to enrage, Anub'arak should only go into this phase twice.
Phase 3: They'll Crawl All Over You
Once Anub'arak reaches 30%, he'll cast Leeching Swarm. There will be no more Nerubian Burrowers for this phase so you won't need the Frost Spheres.
Anub'arak will heal himself for 10% of the current health of each raid every second for this phase until his death, so DPS will need every skill they can muster. If your DPS can't keep up with Anub'arak, let their health drop to 75-50% to reduce the health drained by Anub'arak.
And with Anub'arak down, the Heroic version of your raid is unlocked.

Trial of the Crusade 4

Designations
You'll need two tanks, one for Anub'arak and one for the Nerubian Burrowers.
Assign one ranged DPS or one Death Knight to destroy the Frost Spheres floating above the raid for the duration of the encounter.
Phase 1: Tank-and-Spank
Your designated Sphere Breaker should take down at least 3 Frost Spheres during Phase One. These will create patches of Permafrost which will stop the Nerubian Burrowers from burrowing before the raid can kill them.
The main tank should tank Anub'arak near one of these patches. The off-tank should take the Nerubian Burrowers to the same patch used for Anub'arak.10-man encounters only see one Nerubian Burrower spawn every few seconds, so DPS should focus fire on every second Nerubian Burrower that spawns and then switch to area-of-effect skills to damage the Burrower and Anub'arak.
Anub'arak is a pushover to tank, dealing basic damage and stunning the tank every now and then. He also casts a damage-over-time spell on a few raiders, but it's nothing that can't be outhealed.
Nerubian Burrowers attack at a faster rate when they are near each other. One off-tank is often enough if the DPS can quickly kill those Burrowers.
If you have Deadly Boss Mods, the assigned Sphere Breaker should get to work 20 seconds before Anub'arak burrows.
And Anub'arak will burrow. No puny patch of ice will stop him.

Trial of the Crusader 2

Sphere Collection
As you go through the fight, light and dark spheres will appear at the edges of the arena. This happens before one of the Valkyr Twins casts a spell. Everyone in the raid should collect spheres that match their essence. They will take a little damage, but nothing compared to taking a sphere of the opposing element. If the bosses collect these spheres, it will add to their empowerment and once they've reached a certain number, will soft-enrage and deal considerable damage to the tanks for 15 seconds.
A popular tactic is to assign all ranged DPS to one essence and melee DPS with one healer to the other essence.
Ranged DPS should clump to the point that your character models overlap. During the sphere phase, the healer assigned to the melee DPS should filter any of the spheres that don't match the ranged DPS' essence. Melee DPS should do the same but to protect the tank in charge of their target boss. Ranged DPS will take in any matching spheres that are within 5-10 yards of their assigned position.
Once a player reaches 100 stacks of "Powering Up", they will gain Empowering Light or Empowering Darkness, increasing damage dealt. Any threat-direction skills that they have should be used on the tanks before the massive surge of damage pulls the boss from the tank.

Trial of the Crusader 3

Post-Spheres: Boss Skills
After the Sphere Phase, one of the bosses will cast either a Vortex or Twins' Pact. All players except the tanks should change their essence to match the boss casting the Vortex. Overheal the tank that doesn't have a matching essence. Twins' Pact is a 15-second cast that heals 20% of their total HP and cannot be interrupted until the boss casting it has their shield broken. Breaking the shield DOES NOT stop the cast, so give anyone who can interrupt the time to do so. If your DPS is good, you won't need to change your essence to take down the shield while using the setup mentioned in Sphere Collection.
There is no set pattern for the spells, but the spells cast by the bosses will not repeat until the two Vortexes and two Twins' Pacts have been cast.
Boss Encounter 5: Anub'arak
You can forget about the celebration for beating the first four bosses of the Trials. Just as everyone is about to get their mug of ale, the Lich King crashes the party and nerd rages at Tirion for not inviting him. As payback, he shatters the floor and sends you all plummeting into a pool of water while claiming the rights to your souls. He'd have done a better job if he hadn't forgotten about WoW's water physics.
At least the scenery beats the monotony of the Argent Coliseum. The frozen kingdom of Azjol-Nerub towers before you and at the far end of the frozen walls is Anub'arak, back to redeem himself after being such a mediocre five-man boss.

Trial of the Crusader 1

And it's almost over. The fourth and fifth boss encounters are much more epic than the previous encounters, actually reaching the difficulty of some Ulduar bosses.
Boss Encounter 4: The Twin Val'kyr
Before the bosses enter, designate who will take the Dark Essence or Light Essence buff.
When you start the encounter, the Dark Val'kyr will move south and the Light Val'kyr will move north. They will stop close to the northwestern and southwestern points of the star design on the Coliseum's floor. The essences will be on the northwestern, southwestern, southeastern, and southwestern.
You will need two tanks for these bosses. If you're relying on a Paladin tank, have them tank the Dark Valkyr. Paladin tank skills will have very little effect on the Light Valkyr.
The tanks should pick the essence that is the same color as their target boss to reduce the amount of damage that they take. Classes with threat- Ulduar. Surge of Light and Surge of Darkness will deal raid-wide damage directing skills will need to use those skills for the duration of the encounter.
This fight is healing-intensive, comparable to Ignis the Furnace Master in every two seconds from the very start of the encounter. You can minimize the damage from one of the surges by picking an essence. The damage from the opposing element will increase, but the overall damage is lesser than not picking an essence at all.

Arena Seasons and Special Prizes

One very cool aspect of the Arena System is the introduction of seasons. Each season lasts several months, and at the end of a season, the top ranked teams are rewarded with some unique prizes such as special mounts, titles, or anything else the season's promoters deem worthy of the best gladiators.

The top 0.5% of Arena teams in each battlegroup will receive a Deadly Gladiator's Frostwyrm at the conclusion of the Arena season. This awesome mount travels faster than most normal epic mounts at 310% flight speed!

The current ladder season is Arena Season 6

Previous Arena Seasons

Arena Season 1 (February, 2007 - June, 2007)
Arena Season 2 (June - November, 2007)
Arena Season 3 (November, 2007 - June, 2008)
Arena Season 4 (June, 2008 - November, 2008)
Arena Season 5 (December, 2008 - April, 2009)
Arena Season 6 (April, 2009 - ?)
Seasonal RewardsThe start of every Arena season is accompanied by an all-new set of Arena rewards that are slightly more powerful than those of the previous season. For example, at the start of Arena Season 2, new Arena Season 2 rewards became available for purchase from the Arena vendors. Those who had arena points saved up at the beginning of the season could have purchased some of the new items right away. The previous season's items are still available to purchase at a slight discount. For the onset of Arena Season 4, Season 2's rewards are purchasable with honor points instead of arena points. This trend may continue in future seasons.

The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5-player team rating. Rating requirements from 2-player teams can still be used to purchase the previous season of gear.

Arena Titles At the conclusion of each season, members of highly-ranked teams receive special titles to honor their achievements:

Gladiator (Top 0.5%)
Duelist (Top 0.5% - 3%)
Rival (Top 3% - 10%)
Challenger (Top 10 - 35%)
Beginning with Season 2, special titles are given to the #1 team in each bracket for each battlegroup. The special title was called "Merciless Gladiator" for Season 2.

Arena titles last until the end of the following season, at which time they are removed and redistributed to that season's top teams.

Beginning with season 7, players will no longer have access to the newest season's weapons or shoulder armor and will not qualify for the Gladiator title/rewards with ratings from the 2v2 bracket alone. Ratings obtained through 3v3 and 5v5 game play will be required for these rewards, while the rest of the newest season's items will remain available to players in all brackets (standard rating restrictions still apply).

Enchanting Leveling Guide 1-450

The Ten Ton Hammer staff has been working hard to bring many of our older World of Warcraft guides up to date. This week we proudly reintroduce the Enchanting Leveling Guide which has been revamped and updated for Patch 3.3. The updated guide will help take you from 1-450 in a blink of an eye with as little cost to you as possible.

We’ve found the recipes with the least amount of required materials, and used as many Trainer purchased formulas as possible. As mentioned above, Enchanting is still, really expensive to level, even with a guide like this. You can easily spend several thousand gold to reach max level, so be certain that this really is the profession for you before you begin.

The DPS Guide to Instances and Raids

Doing DPS in World of Warcraft can be a difficult task. Many players are constantly frustrated that even with better gear they're still unable to do the kind of DPS others are. Our latest guide to doing DPS in Instances & Raids provides a generic look at all of the fundamental basics that will make sure you're doing everything and can hit #1 on the DPS charts. Be sure to stay tuned as we provide more guides for tanks, healers, and DPS here at Ten Ton Hammer.

How much DPS does a dead person do? Zero. (the impending zombie apocalypse not withstanding) That’s another key rule to doing DPS. You need to be alive in order to beat something with your stick (or axe or hammer or fiery magic or whatever). How can you stay alive? By not standing in damaging environmental effects, or in front of bosses – in other words, being constantly aware of your surroundings.

Basics and Combat

With all the changes to the Warrior class since the 3.0.2 patch, it's time for a major update to the class guide. So today Byron "Messiah" Mudry starts that update with a revamp to the class basics and combat pages. These pages now explain the new basics to the class and how it is played, including the basic stats, rotations, and abilities.

As a Warrior tank you are able to take quite a beating. With all that heavy plate armour, a shield, and your various skills and abilities you can last a while against anything. Even though you can last though, your party members can't. If they draw aggro from you they will most likely be killed in just a few hits. That makes your tanking rotation extremely important. You want to be able to generate as much threat as you possibly can as quickly as you can.

Profession Rewards

In World of Warcraft there are many different professions and bonuses that they provide. Which one is best for which class though? Which bonuses will make your character the best it can be in the end game? That is what Byron “Messiah” Mudry looks at in this new guide to Profession Rewards.

Blacksmiths get the ability to add two extra gem sockets to their equipment, one to their gloves and one to their bracers. This means that they can further customize their gear as required. This works out to a bonus of +46 Spell Power, +40 Strength, or +60 Stamina due to the extra slots. You could put any number of other bonuses into the slots instead.

Patch. 3.3.3 trace

Patch 3.3.3 is live, and players all over are checking out all the new features -- I myself was busily exchanging battleground marks for honor points on all my various characters when I noticed something... odd. My level 70 pet had a new buff. Not just any buff -- Hellscream's Warsong, the buff from Icecrown Citadel. Upon further investigation, it appears that all player pets are currently running around with this buff -- demons, hunter pets and ghouls are all currently affected, although I didn't get a chance to peek at a mage water elemental. Alliance players are seeing the Alliance counterpart, Strength of Wrynn, also on all pets. While only the 5% version of the buff, players of every level are being affected -- I'm sure the level 42 hunter I saw running around with it was pleased. This is most assuredly a bug that will be fixed at some point in the near future, but pet classes? Enjoy it while you can. I know I will!
Just these!