Achievements in flux

Blizzard is in your forum, answering your posts. It seems the achievements currently in beta are still having some wrinkles that need ironing out. Here's a snippet from the topic on the EJ forums. Makes you wonder what other forums they are monitoring, perhaps your guild's too eh? Dashiva came to the realization that certain achievements are proving to be impossible.

Anyone tried to get 65 quests completed in Zangarmarsh? I'm stuck at 63 and i've been searching for hours using quest mods, forums, quest listings and what not.. and I mean hours. Shakes wrote:

I believe they said they haven't tuned the numbers on the zone quest achievements yet, so they may not be possible right now. Tigole answered (Blizzard rep):

These are in a weird state of flux right now. We're still tuning them. There was also a bug that was causing transferred characters to get more quest credit than they should based on quests that shared certain flags. We also need to weed all Daily/Raid/Buried Rep quests. By buried rep quests, I mean things like the Netherwing 1-shots. We're ok with quests buried behind "mainline" reps like Thrallmar/Honor Hold. But not stuff like Ogri'la/Skettis/Netherwing. This wasn't posted on MMOC or WoR yet, so there you go. There have been more responses from blizzard regarding achievements though, you can find them here. Crushing blows You may have heard about it already in passing, but indeed Crushing blows are being removed from raids. Though not entirely removed according to Ghostcrawler. Instead of applying to mobs 3 levels above you, the mechanic will apply to mobs 4 levels above you. This is great news for druid tanks who previously had no real way to avoid crushing blows. Combat Ratings Combat ratings at level 80, brought to you by none other than the author of RatingBuster! Looks like you'll need a bit more than double the current ratings to get the same percentages. Hit rating for example : Lvl 60 (10), Lvl 70 (15.76923275), Lvl 80 (32.78998947). Some misc stuff Deathknight.info has some images of the new glowing blue eyes for deathknights. As well as some other upcoming changes. There's also some more scenic screenshots for the image hungry among you here, they're on page 45. The servants of xyz in blasted lands are apparently no longer able to be used for weapon training. And finally a very cool post showing in detail the deathknight's dungeon gear at spooncraft. Outbrain For those among you wondering WTF outbrain is, check out this post before voting on the poll on the right. It is a post rating system, of which you can find an example here. Linkage

Gnomeageddon, a Gnome Mage with big balls of fire. This gnome has been commenting on the blog pretty regularly, so I felt his blog deserves some lovin'. Have a look.

Fulltime wow addict hasn't been linked in a while, and is writing interesting bits about the beta, worth a look.

QQ PewPew is affected by the slowdown in summer raids mentioned earlier. Sadly this proved too much for another guild.

Kaliope's crafting blog is currently asking for info regarding WotLK. Perhaps you can send some their way.

Progressive WoW has also been sending some new visitors over on a regular basis, and could use some hits as well. Be warned for the big wall of text though. Also check out: Liming in WoW, Nuciek's nook, The good, bad and downright evil, Pugnacious priest and Se7en Samurai if you still have time to kill after reading all the others! For those interested, there's also a constant stream of new WoW blogs being added on the Blog Azeroth forums, as well as the Twisted Nether wiki.

WotLK beta update

A new beta build has been uploaded by blizzard recently, and MMOC as well as WoR and just about any other WoW news site out there has managed to come up with pretty much the same info that's been changed. Read one, and you've read them all, it never ceases to amaze me. At any rate, the interesting bits ye rogue and hunter lovers will want to know is that there's indeed some new stuff for us in this build. Just keep in mind nothing's final and totally subject to change in the near future. Doesn't mean it might change, but chances are extremely high that they will. Regeneration Firstly, the major selling point of this new build is the way energy and mana work. No longer will you need to wait for any silly things such as "ticks" which increase your energy by 20 every 2 seconds, or your mana by 150 (or whatever). The client will now "tick" every 1/10th of a second. Meaning us rogues now gain 1 energy every 1/10th of a second, in real time. Smooth and constant action, no longer having to wait for 2 seconds while you're on 39.9 energy and wanting to use a Sinister Strike. No longer waiting in stealth for your energy meter to tell you that with possible lag etc, if you ambush now, you'll immediately regain 20 energy after. Simply a constant stream of numbers regenerating energy. Yes this affects druids in cat form too. Interrupts Kick, pummel and shield bash no longer do any damage. But above all, are no longer affected by the global cooldown! So we can just continue to bash along (Reliquary of Souls for instance) and press the button when needed. Earth Shock is unaffected by this change. Some other stuff The hunter bear trap is a snare, much like druid roots. Hunters also get a form of "execute" shot. BM Hunters can tame Devilsaurs!! Crushing blow mechanics are being removed completely. Druids cheer! Rogues get to disarm without talents and without having to parry. All aoe healing, shouts and totems work raid-wide. Some buffs still apply to party only though. Shamans get to polymorph. Basically a little summary here. The guys over at the FragBite forums had a really nice mount shot I just had to share with the rest of you. Mind that this is "not" the death knight mount. It's pretty pimp, totally unlike the sad placeholder death knights have right now. Inscription There's a good few Inscription glyphs added in the latest beta build. Easiest to check them out here on MMOC. The majority is druid based. From the list I can pick a few that may correspond closely to rogue skills:

Glyph of Shred - Increases the damage dealt by Shred to stunned and incapacitated targets by 20%.

Glyph of Mangle - Increases the duration of Mangle by 6 sec.

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration - While Frenzied Regeration is active, healing effects on you are 20% more powerful. Looking at the druid glyphs it would seem sensible that we'll be seeing some rogue glyphs like these:

Increases the duration of your slice and dice by 1-3 seconds.

Increases the duration of your garrote by 1-3 seconds.

Increases the duration of your rupture by 1-3 seconds.

Increases the maximum number of hemo charges by 1-4.

Increases the damage done by your backstab to stunned and incapacitated targets by 20%

Healing effects on you are 20% more powerful while evasion is active.

Your blade flurry hits an additional target.

Your deadly throw slows the target by an additional 5%

While sprint is active you have a 20% chance to resist movement imparing effects.

The radius / distance of your distract is increased by 5 yards.

Your pickpocket has 5% less chance to fail.

Your (insert poison here) has 1-2% additional chance to apply. Obviously, there are no rogue glyphs in the beta at the time of writing this yet. But, there will be soon. I'll compare this list to the actual ones and see how close they are. Professions Some may recall that I've written about how professions can buff your raid performance. I figured it may be interesting to see how the WotLK professions are holding up so far. Here's a list gathered on the EJ forums. Alchemy

Crazy Alchemist potion, effect randomly unknown.

Alchemical Blood, increases the effect of elixirs by 14-26%. Elixir of Major Agility (+5 Agi / +5 Crit Rating) : ~14% Elixir of Mastery (gain +4 all Stats) : 26% Elixir of Major Fortitude (+50 health) : 25% Potions and flasks are said to work as well, at some point. Currently they are bugged and do not receive any effect off the blood. Potions also got nerfed as you may be aware, you won't be able to drink more than a single potion per fight and need to remain out of combat for 5 seconds to remove that debuff. Potion sickness it is called. You'll love it, or maybe not. Leatherworking

Drums. 95 haste rating for 30 sec every 120 sec. 95/4 = 23.75. Works on 5 party members, but only a single party member is able to use it due to the tinnitus debuff mentioned earlier. Discuss among your raid who will use it. Counts to up to 5*23.75 = 118.75 stat points.

Wyrmscale Leg Armor and Dragonscale Leg Armor are aparently bind on pickup leg enchants only available to the leatherworker. There was a list earlier which showed : * Nerubian Leg Armor - +60 AP +15 critical strike rating. * Nerubian Leg Chitin - +70 AP +18 critical strike rating. * Protoscale Leg Armor - +100 AP +36 critical strike rating. Aparently the Protoscale leg armor got renamed. The two epic leg armors show a total difference of : 30 AP and 16 Crit rating = 31 Stats. So even if more than one person in your party has leatherworking, and thus the drums are less useful you'd still be getting a pretty heavy 31 stats into the bargain from the leg armor. Skinning Skinning is pretty straightforward and only gives +25 Crit rating. Hardly worth mentioning, but still better than nothing at all. Crit is generally worth a lot less than hit rating as well. Mining Mining gives 35 stamina. Good for tanks, or pvp but pretty small if you look at the big picture. Again only 25 stats. Herbalism Herbalism is somewhat uncertain. Some speculations say herbalism might receive a flat stat bonus like mining and skinning will, spirit would be likely if it does. However, herbalists also get to pick these special plants:

Fire Leaf : 66 AP boost over time, at the cost of your armor.

Fire Seed : 33 Spell damage over time, but you take more spell damage.

Deadnettle : This one's somewhat useful Whether those will offset the 25 stats that skinning and mining get is up to you, but I doubt it. It'll also remain to be seen whether you'll be able to chain these since potions got nerfed, and these plants will likely share a cooldown with health stones. Speaking of which, health stones are now considered unique across all types. So, no longer will you be carrying one of each size health stone. Enchanting

Enchant Ring - Assault : 40 AP

Enchant Ring - Haste : 20 Haste

Enchant Ring - Greater Healing Power (Will be deleted / renamed to spellpower)

Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower : 23 spell power

Several BoP wands, which can probably be replaced easily with raid loot at some point. Two rings, 20 stats each for a total of 40 stats. Enchanting is pretty high on the power ladder. Jewelcrafting Only two BoP gems are known for jewelcrafting so far:

Bright Dragon's Eye

Solid Dragon's Eye 10 stats more than the Epic Gems. It's highly likely there will be more gems added soon, much like there are currently about 10 different TBC gems only available for jewel crafters. For rogues this would mean we'd get a crit gem, a hit gem, and an attack power gem. Far from optimal, but that would give +30 stat points in total. Add in the fact that the BoP gems are multicolor, and thus ensure you don't need to use purple gems to activate your meta slot, you'd free up to an extra 2x 10 stats which would otherwise have been used for stamina. In good faith we could consider there will be some new trinkets available as well, however these will likely be easily replaced by others much like in TBC. I've been wrong before though, so we shall see. Blacksmithing

The option to add a socket to a weapon. This blacksmithing special has not been seen in action on the beta servers yet, but it seems quite likely so far that this will be the unique ability only for blacksmiths. This would make room for up to two epic gems, and thus 2x 20 stats for warriors, rogues, hunters and death knights. It's not certain whether the sockets can be placed in weapons that already have a socket or not, nor is it known whether filling the socket will add +2 stats like most single sockete items currently do. Tailoring Tailoring will likely have leg enchants much like leatherworking. These haven't been implemented yet, but in good faith these will likely resemble a relatively equal stat increase compared to the leatherworking versions. Which would be about +31 stats. Engineering Engineering stuff is still not implemented. Chances are big we'll get a mote extractor again, but other than that, it's anyone's guess. A motor cycle is hardly worth sacrificing extra stats over. Inscription Inscription will gain an extra glyph slots aparently. Not much is known yet about inscription sadly, but an extra major glyph could be quite powerful in itself. It's also uncertain whether glyhps will be swappable or whether there will be any Bind on Pickup versions that only scribes can use. Time shall tell. In summary

Leatherworking : 31-149,75 stats + BoP armor

Enchanting : 40 stats + BoP Wands

Blacksmithing : 40 stats expected + BoP weapons or armor.

Jewelcrafting : 30-50 stats expected + BoP Trinkets

Tailoring : 31 stats expected + BoP Clothing

Mining : 25 stats

Skinning : 25 stats

Alchemy : ~10-20 stats + BoP Trinkets

Inscription : Unknown + Extra glyph

Engineering : Unknown + BoP Goggles? Linkage Anyone sending me links of interesting articles they wrote will (usually) get a link, and today is no exception. While my own mage is still only lvl 68, this little article is still pretty interesting. One of the new mage talents in WotLK will reduce the cast time on your pyroblast when your health is below 35%. Allowing you to reach cast times of 1.5 seconds without haste gear, or 1 second "with" haste gear. I imagine we'll see a world of pain coming from the familiar glass cannons. If you're planning to use this in PvP, expect me to kill you soon. On straightforward boss tank and spank fights with no AoE however this trick may help you do quite a lot of DPS though. Just mind the aggro. If anyone else has links to share send em over.

D3 poll ends

So, the poll question was : Will you play Diablo 3?

Absolutely ! - 147 (63%)

No, I prefer WoW. - 46 (20%)

I might.... - 37 (16%) I suppose I should have also asked "Will you play D3 at the same time as WoW?" Either way, it does appear at least 60% of us are at least going to try out Diablo 3. I suspect WoW will be a very silent place when Diablo is released. Will blizzard be shooting themselves in their virtual feet? Will many be playing Starcraft 2? It is too early to tell for sure, but I suspect D3 will be able to do what Age of Conan could not. If not outright kill a dozen raiding guilds, then at least make it very difficult for them to spend any time in the endgame raids. Recruitment will be a long slow summer for a lot of us. Unless you're playing Diablo 3 that is ;) Another poll then, "Are you in the WotLK beta?" I think this is an interesting question, considdering how ebay has been against virtual item sales at some point. Yet the key is indeed virtual and bids are up as high as 152 Euros!! That's pretty sad guys, seriously. Outbrain Should we add Outbrain star ratings to this blog? See their blog for a demo. Basically we'd have 1-5 star rating options here with which you can vote for each individual post. The highest rated posts would be shown in a widget in the sidebar. Hit your answer on the poll on the right. Rumors Oh, and hey look at that. The rumor was indeed true.

Menu bar

I've been looking around for a bit and eventually found a nice little CSS script which would allow the blog to finally implement a menu bar. I've just implemented a demonstration object in one of my smaller side projects that you can look at here to give you an idea. (Yes, I've been working on two blogs at the same time.)

I could put the "entire" blogroll into a submenu this way, or just the ones who give me a nice back rub. (jk) Anyhow, I'll work on the design for a bit and come up with something. Meanwhile you can request of make suggestions if needed.

Mainly I'd like to ditch the labels widget (does anyone use that?) and clean up the highlights in the topright. I can also use labels more freely instead of trying to keep them to a minimum number of categories without the widget growing out of control.

You can see the design so far up top under the banner.
I think it's pretty sweet so far, and I can even add icons 'n stuff.

Thoughts or suggestions?

Super tiny short post

If you haven't recently visited Petopia or Mania's arcadia, shame on you then! Because there's some very interesting WotLK pet info currently there. I could make this a huge post today with a LOT of information, but mania generally does this better than me. These are the pages you should be looking at: pet talents, pet skills and the new pet Models. Also as of today a WotLK talents FAQ and WotLK pets and families FAQ. I had to share these links today, because wowhead has a functional pet talent calculator up and running. Go play around with it, it's pretty awesome. Don't miss out their pet comparison page either. Vimeo Videos, no more This has been posted in a few places now but some might not be aware of it yet. Vimeo staff has declared that as of recently they will no longer accept gaming videos, and as of September the 1st they will delete all existing gaming videos. (Including WotLK alpha and beta vids) That's pretty lame. ps: That cat image has been my forum avatar for a while now. =^_^= Found it on MyCatHatesYou.com. You too can join the cat avatar forum invasion today! ps2: Aikida is back, whoa!

Pet collectors rejoice!

With the implementation of achievements you'll notice one of the achievements requests you to collect over 75 vanity pets. That's pretty crazy obviously and few other than the totally insane would start such a quest simply for lack of inventory and bank space. However, blizzard has announced that vanity pets and normal mounts will no longer be stored in your inventory as a normal item. Instead, such items will become bound to your character as a sort of spell that you can learn. If you hop over to the Warcraft Pets site, you'll find a nice list of 94 different pets at the time of writing this. More are for sure to be added with the release of WotLK. For myself this change would only save me about 4 extra bank slots and two inventory slots, but all the little bits count! Especially the druid class will enjoy the extra space in their already overly cramped storage. Also, you might be interested in knowing that there might be a token frame (like a key ring), and a quest bag coming up to further remove your bag space limitations. (That's just a rumor for now though.) Blizzard Quote

We’re pleased to announce a convenient upgrade to the way that mounts and vanity pets are handled in Wrath of the Lich King. Players will be able to “learn” a mount or non-combat pet much like learning a spell, recipe, or new ability, and these creatures will then show up on a new Pet tab within the Character Info section of the interface. Players will be able to access and preview their learned mounts and vanity pets through this tab. Once learned, the pet icon or mount icon will no longer appear in bag spaces or bank spaces. This inventory space will be made available once again for other adventuring needs. Pets can still be set to hotkeys by dragging them to the hotkey bar, much like any other spell or ability. Poll ends Another poll has ended and so I present you the results. This one was a multiple choice. What part of WotLK are you looking most forward to?

New Talents - 134 (46%)

New Spells + Abilities - 124 (43%)

Death Knights - 100 (34%)

New Dungeons - 95 (32%)

Arthas - 51 (17%)

Hairstyles - 49 (17%)

More Item and armor choices - 47 (16%)

New battleground - 45 (15%)

Skeletal flying mount - 40 (13%)

New mobs - 30 (10%)

Showing off T1-6 to new players - 28 (9%)

New Arena Season - 17 (5%)

Other - 26 (9%) Talents, spells and abilities, the new deathknight class and dungeons. Arthas takes a lowly 5th place for most people. I'm curious what those 26 votes of "other" entitle though. The achievement system or inscription perhaps? Be sure to vote on the poll about achievements which was started a few days ago. ps: I just added four links to WoW related comics, check them out on the right side.

Beta talents for all

Blizzard has just released the official beta talent trees, find them here. They finally released the Hunter and Paladin end talents as well. As you can see, the talents for most classes are pretty much the same as they were in the alpha release. Here's a nice combat rogue setup. Vile poisons only being 3/3 now instead of the old 5/5, means that you'll have an extra point to spare on improved poisons. I also wonder how good tri-spec would be with the extra talent points, probably not quite that amazing. Or maybe a mutilate spec. Hunters are getting an interesting party buff.

Survival : Hunting Party - Your critical strikes have a 60% chance to restore 2% mana, 10 energy, 4 rage or 10 runic power to all members of your party. The point of no escape talent also mentions a new trap : Bear trap. What on earth will that do I wonder. A form of snake trap, but with bears? Deathknight.info speaks about the Deathknight tree. Vimeo hosting Some sadder news, as of today Vimeo will no longer be accepting gaming videos - source. Machinima vids will still be allowed, but any other gaming vids will be deleted. Existing vids will be removed after september the 1st. It's pretty stupid in my opinion, they had a chance to grow big like youtube, and they had to spoil it by cutting themselves short. R.I.P Vimeo. Quote :

The Vimeo staff has decided that we are no longer going to allow gaming videos on Vimeo. Specifically, we are no longer going to allow game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game. Videos falling into this category will be subject to deletion as of September 1st; new videos of this type will be removed.

Money making professions

Hey look at that, as promised it's part two of this post about professions. And it's a pretty long post at that, so hopefully you understand why it took a while to produce. Comments and feedback are always welcome and will if needed be integrated into the post. Crafting Leatherworkers, blacksmiths, engineers, enchanters, tailors and even alchemists in a way can sell their "ability to craft" something for a small fee. The fee you can ask will generally depend on the rarity of the item, and how much effort or cash you put into raising your skill. Don't craft anything for free, unless something is ridiculously easy to make or you're making the item for friends. A small tip of 1-30g should be quite reasonable in most cases. Time is money after all. Another way to get cash by crafting, is to provide basic materials. Have your customer bring the rare ingredients (primal might or nethers for example) while you bring cloth and other primals. This way you can charge a good price for the bulk of the materials and still seem like a good person by not asking for a tip. Engineering Most useful engineering recipes require the user to have engineering skill. Because of this you'll find it's hard to sell anything that's BoE. Scopes, Mana and health potion injectors are the main things I've been able to craft for others. But the gains are small. Other than for friends or inside the guild, there just isn't a great lot of market an engineer can use. One should probably blame Blizzard in part, if the potion injectors had been useable by everyone from the start there might have been more people wanting to use them still. Even the arrow makers are cool, but at this point in time they simply refuse to sell because blizzard also added bullets and arrows from factions at the same time. Jewelcrafters really did get most of the love in TBC. Enchanting As an Enchanter, your main income is by selling enchants, much to the annoyance of the people in the general trade channel. But screw them, you need cash as much as they do. Just because they can put their stuff on the AH while you can't doesn't mean you don't deserve a quick buck right? Also, Blizzard promised they'd allow enchanters to put some of the more basic enchants on the AH when WotLK is released. The Mongoose enchant scroll for example, and many more. See wow insider for more info on that. Unlike popular belief, enchanting is pretty easy to raise, and not at all that expensive either. It is time consuming though. You should perform "free" enchants whenever able to get your skill maxed out as soon as possible. The real money is up at the top, and especially a stealth class like a druid or rogue will be able to get good money's worth out of this skill by disenchanting stealth run drops. Having an alt with Tailoring or Leatherworking will also be a great boon to obtaining the materials you need. Once your skill reaches about 340 you can make Superior Wizard Oil all the way to 360 and sell the results on the auction house or trade them with guildies for getting more materials as you work. After that, find some green bind on pickup recipes and perform those for "free" (no tip, their mats) in Shattrath. You'll be 375 in no time. Once you manage to get a hold of some enchants like dexterity on boots, sunfire, soulfrost, mongoose, executioner and spellsurge you should be able to get enchanting tips varying between 10-50g per craft. It's a slow process, but there will always be customers aplenty. Especially when a new PvP season starts. Be sure you always have some enchanting materials on the AH, as potential customers will run off to check the most recent prices as soon as you spam the trade channel. Just make sure you use an alt to post the items. Void shattering is currently a reasonable gain, though this will vary per server. Voids going for 30-40g, while large prismatic shards will sell for 20-30g. Expect lots of competition. Also a thing to keep in mind is that the price of void crystals might skyrocket once the new BoP WotLK wands become available. Any useless quest rewards can be disenchanted instead of selling it to the vendors. Especially late level quests will often give you blue items which can be made into shards. Gear upgrades won't go to a loss either, just shard your old gear instead of vendoring it. Tailoring You got several options as a tailor, but none that'll really make you money quick and dirty. More like clean and slow. You can take spellcloth, shadowcloth or mooncloth tailoring when you reach a high enough level. Mooncloth is a good way to get a lot of bags produced. Mind, these prices are for my server, your will likely be somewhat different.

Shadowcloth : ~60g

Spellcloth : ~85g

Primal Mooncloth : ~60g If there's a market on your server for a particular type of cloth, and speccing for that school benefits your class (mage, priest, lock, etc) by all means go for it. I've made my warlock alt a mooncloth vendor however, both because primal water and primal life are ridiculously cheap and easy to get, and to make a constant stream of mooncloth bags for my other characters to use. Individual bags sell for about ~450g on my server, so you'd generally be better off selling the individual cloth. That is, on my server at least. Much like enchanting, if you can manage to get some rare recipes you'll be able to craft items for others with a decent tip. Belts from SSC/TK, bracers from BT/HY and gloves from Sunwell are good money makers with a decent level of demand. Items like spellstrike hood or pants will also work decently, but it's generally not hard for a player to find more than one tailor able to craft those. On top of that you'll be able to make Runic Spellthread or Golden Spellthread depending whether you ally yourself with Scryers or Aldor. These two enchants are a good way to use your badges and turn them into something profitable. Of course, there's always epic gems you can buy for them as well. Leatherworking See tailoring and enchanting regarding rare patterns and tips. The same applies to Leatherworking. On top of that LW is one of the best two professions to have as a raider currently, so it's certainly worth investing in. Leatherworkers can also make Nethercobra Leg Armor and Nethercleft Leg Armor. If you also have an alt capable of skinning then you'll be able to get Thick Clefthoof Leather and Cobra Scales quite easily and for good profit be able to sell leg armor kits. Blacksmithing See tailoring and enchanting regarding rare patterns and tips. The same applies to Blacksmithing. Other than that, there just isn't really anything for a blacksmith to make cash on. I could be wrong though, it doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen from time to time. ;) Alchemy Transmutation is the magic word. Well, one of the words anyway. Once you are high enough in skill, you can do the quest to become a master of elixirs (it's the cheapest way trust me), and then head to netherstorm to pay 150g for becoming a transmutation master. This way will save you having to make 5 Primal Mights for that greedy ethereal bastard. Once that's completed you can start producing a Earthstorm diamonds once every 20 hours. Sometimes you get lucky and get 2-5 as a bonus cash cow. Hand these to a jewelcrafting friend or alt and make Relentless Earthstorm Diamond. These sell for about ~200-250g where I come from. This provides you with a ridiculously good turnover value for just 2 Primal Earth, 2 Primal Water and some green gems. Sadly, you can only transmute once every 20 hours. If slow and easy cash isn't your thing and you have a crazy herbing alt with a lot of time on his hands hands then you could consider sticking to elixir mastery or doing the potion mastery quest instead. If you're a frequent user of potions for raids, or have a goldmine going on at the AH because some mana hungry healers or mages are constantly buying out your stocks, then you may want to considder your other options. (Also see the Gathering - Herbalism section further down) For potion mastery this would mean you'll be making mostly Super Mana potions. These sell often and still rake in a good price even on the bad days. Elixir mastery is able to get procs a lot more often than transmutation mastery, and a lot of raid buffs are elixir based so you're almost guaranteed to have customers. Getting an average of 10-30% extra elixirs such as when making a few stacks of the major agility one will certainly not hurt your bank funds. If you got a cheap source for Fel lotus, you could even make flasks and get a chance to double proc on those. Inscription The details to inscription are still mostly unknown at this time. It'll use herbs to produce inks, and create inscriptions useable as temporary enchants on chests, or permanent enchants on spells. How much of this can be done by another scribe, or whether there will be a lot of inscriptions only available to the scribe remains to be seen. WotLK Wiki has a bit more info than the other sites about this profession at the moment. If you can manage to raise your inscription as one of the first few on the server, there's no question there will be a lot of cash to be made however. Much like Jewelcrafting in the early days. Gathering Gathering is not for everyone, but even the most epic and rich players out there will have done his or her share of work out in the fields. Gathering materials for a certain profession. Hasn't everyone had a character at one point who had skinning, herbalism or mining? Surely yes? Preparation is key, as it is with everything. What do you intend to gather, how much, how long, where is the least competition, what's your gain per hour, what addons can help speed this up, isn't the auction house flooded with this stuff yet? You get the idea. You don't "need" a +280% flying mount, but in order to be competitive it's highly recommended for all gathering professions. If you don't have that, and are stuck with a +100% land speed mount, stay away from netherstorm, blade's edge and nagrand. Those zones are not friendly to land based gatherers. But, first things first. You're going to need a few addons to do this right. Well, "need" is a big word but these addons will improve your efficiency by at least 50%. If you don't have ace2 yet, look here. Once you got that working, you'll need :

GatherMate (ace2) To track plant, mineral or gas nodes.

Routes (ace2) To create a fast and efficient path between your gathering spots.

GatherMate_Data (ace2) Not needed, not even recommended, but it could help you get started faster. You could be one of the people using cartographer or gatherer, but personally I prefer the minimalist approach. These two addons are the main thing you need to get rich with gathering and will give you a definite edge over any competition who isn't using them. Engineering Engineers need a Mote extractor as well as a pair of goggles or whichever is relevant for your class before they can start gathering. See this list to find out which one you need. Once you have that, simply mount up and start running around the nagrand zone you like. That's right, this only works in outland for now. Possibly in WotLK as well, but we can't be sure of that yet.

Motes of air : Nagrand. You'll notice my path also hits the fishing pools for "pure water". Primal water isn't worth a "huge lot", but it's still worth taking along your fishing rod just in case. If you're not interested in those, you can simply skip over the path north of Garadar and continue your round. Also keep in mind that quite silly, there's a lot of gas clouds on top of those sky islands which tend to bug out and mess up your maximum profit per hour by a fair margin.

Motes of water : Zangar Marsh Zangarmarsh is great, usually not as ridiculously populated as Nagrand, and Primal water is generally not all that much worth less than primal air. On average you'll find yourself able to get 4-5 more primal water in the same time that you can farm primal air.

Motes of shadow : Shadowmoon Valley With the opening of Black Temple and Mt.Hyjal there's a lot of guilds in need of Primal shadow. Since these no longer drop from demons an engineer can really rake in some decent cash with this path.

Motes of mana : Netherstorm My Netherstorm path sucks, I know. Netherstorm is a horrible place to farm primal mana at it seems, as I've never really managed to get a "lot" of them, so it's quickly discouraging to continue farming them this way. Mining Mining can be done in pretty much any zone, if you're after adamantite however, I recommend Nagrand, Shadowmoon valley or Netherstorm. You can't really farm eternium or khorium, so just farm rich adamantite as much as you can. Fel iron ore can best be obtained in Hellfire peninsula. There tends to be average competition there though so you may want to consider flying circles around zangarmarsh if you're in dire need for some green. Herbalism You can run around and herb what you or your guildies need, or pick plants that sell good and sell those in stacks at the AH. Here's some commonly used potions and items requiring herbs below.

Super Mana potion : Dreaming Glory (2) + Felweed

Super Healing potion : Netherbloom (2) + Felweed

Mad Alchemist's Potion : Ragveil (2)

Elixir of Major Agility : Terocone + Felweed (2)

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom : Felweed + Terocone

Elixir of Mastery : Terocone (3) + Felweed

Elixir of Major Fortitude : Ragveil (2) + Felweed

Fel Strength Elixir : Terocone + Nightmare Vine (2)

Flask of Pure death : Fel Lotus + Mana Thistle (3) + Nightmare Vine (7)

Superior Wizard Oil : Nightmare Vine

Superior Mana Oil : Netherbloom

Elixir of Demonslaying : Gromsblood + Ghost Mushroom Flasks other than the Pure death one are fairly underused because of the Marks, which tend to be a lot cheaper. So which herbs should you be going after? Well, all of them obviously, but primarily the ones worth the most on the auction house. Such as Terocone and nightmare vine.

Terocone, commonly found in Terrokar forest.

Netherbloom, primarily found in Netherstorm.

Nightmare vine, mainly found in Shadowmoon valley. (and 2-3 plants at the throne in Hellfire)

Ragveil is primarily found in Zangarmarsh.

Felweed can be found in Nagrand, hellfire peninsula, zangarmarsh, terrokar forest and many other zones. It's pretty common all around so you don't really want to specifically look for it.

Dreaming Glory is a common herb like Felweed and can be found in Nagrand and most other zones. Skinning There are two main things you'll want to farm as a skinner. As mentioned earlier this is because of the leg armor kits.

Thick Clefthoof leather, best obtained from Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand.

Cobra Scales, best obtained from Twilight Serpents also in Nagrand. Alternatively you can farm Coilskar cobras and Shadow Serpents in Shadowmoon Valley, but those are a lot fewer in number and have a lot more trash around them that you'd have to take care of. Fishing You might not think it, but yes even fishing can be used to make some money. What few people seem to realize however, is that you need to fish "all" pools in order to get the Pure water pools to spawn more frequently. And not just fly over once an hour in the hope for a pool to spawn. That may work with the pools in Nagrand, but there's possible spawn locations in zangarmarsh and Terrokar forest as well. Fish all pools. There's a fishing daily quests you can do as well, but in the grand scale of things that's such a small amount of cash you gain. It's hardly worth mentioning here. And last but not least Deviate fish. On a pure time = money scale these score pretty low, 50s per fish but still, if I mentioned the daily fishing quest, these can't be left out. Especially since certain guild members eat about a dozen of these per night. In the end If you find any serious typos or got suggestions, just leave a message after the *beep*. ps: I ate cowgirl's bacon sandwich.

Mix n match

Mixing about the ad boxes some bit again. You know me, I like to experiment. Plus, PW seems to actually have some interesting advertisers. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it should straighten itself out in the next few days.

ps: Their customer support should apply for the guinness book of records, it's crazy fast!


Progress

Three posts in one day, am I ill?

On the subject of professions, Part 2 that you were promised earlier this month, is making progress and should be up soon(tm). I'm guessing you'll want my gathering paths to go with it, so I need to make some screenshots for that.

And, in case you checked the blog early this morning, I did a few tweaks to the last two posts as well. Plus there's another poll up on the right, be sure to check it out.

Achieve this

There's a decent list of achievements on MMOC now, possibly more still to be added. So far there are two types.

Counters

Achievements The counter type doesn't really do anything other than count the number of times you've died, been resurrected, used the /lol emote, flasks you drank, kills in pvp, highest strength, highest armor, etc. Nothing other than just mildly interesting for historical purposes or for showing off. The second type however, awards you "achievement points". Completing each task will give you a score varying between 5-100 points. The exact purpose of the points (other than tracking the total) isn't clear yet. Perhaps you'll be able to spend the points at a later time to buy some items or a tabard, time will tell. Counters

Character. Exalted with X factions, highest stats, number of items won, potions drunk, gold gained and spent.

Deaths. Total deaths in each battleground, by the hand of certain bosses, and number of times resurrected by each class.

Feats of Strength. Obtained certain legendary or highly prized rare items.

Kills. PvP kills, PvE kills, critters killed.

Social. Number of groups, guilds, times /lol and more.

Statistics. Damage and healing records and totals, flight time, number of quests completed, times summoned. Achievements + Counter

Player vs. Player. Get 100, 1000, 10.000 kills, arena ratings achieved, killed faction bosses.

Professions. Cap each profession, fish up weird stuff. Total number of items enchanted. Achievements

Dungeons & Raids. Defeat each instance boss in the game.

Exploration. Fully explore each zone.

General. Vanity pets, total gold, bank slots obtained.

Quests. Complete X number of quests, slaughter seals.

Reputation. Exalted with X factions.

World Events. Brewfest, Hallow's eve, Lunar festival, Winter and other seasonal events. Blizzard has stated that anything currently in game will be tracked retroactively. Meaning, total map explored, exalted factions, lifetime honorable kills, total vanity pets, bank slots, legendary items obtained, etc. Stats such as the total times /lol used, number of deaths by boss X, total number of raids, total number of guilds, are not possible to be applied in the same way. You'll be able to start earning these as soon as the 3.0 expansion patch is released. I wouldn't care too much about the counters myself, the achievements should be fun to collect however. I know there'll be at least one person in our guild that'll for sure go out of his way to destroy 1.000.000 Tuskarr, just to get that achievement. He shall remain unnamed for now. But, I doubt there's a single person in our guild who doesn't know the answer to that... Which does give a new idea for a poll.

How many achievements are you aiming for? See deatknight.info, WoR or the the official blizzard page (posted 17th july 2008) for related screenshots and info on achievements.

More Beta Bits

Loot! and Professions, yay! But, more about the loot at a later time. I'd like to get my hands on some of the internal itemlevels. First, the suspect "Tiet 7" DK / Warrior gear that was mentioned earlier, turned out to be Deathknight quest reward gear. Also, a couple of "profession specific" items. Such as bind on pickup crafted gear or enchants. Sadly there still isn't much info about inscription "/shakes fist at Blizzard", other than the fact that you can make scrolls. Like we couldn't guess that. Blacksmithing still doesn't look too interesting yet either. And, a quick look at Alchemy shows us that we'll be seeing "Eternal Life", eternal shadow, eternal air, fire, etc. Also Eternal Might to take the place of the currently known Primal Might.

Healing potions will heal for 2700-4500

Mana potions will give 3240-5400 mana Leatherworking also seems to be much like found earlier in the alpha. And, on a side note Achievements are sort of silly in some parts, but pretty cool in some others. I wonder what the points will be useable for? Enchanting 3 Tiers of Bind on Pickup Wands. Tier 1 creates a 224.6 DPS Wand for 25 void crystals. Tier 1 + another 25 crystals upgrades it to 247.1 DPS The upgraded wand + another 25 crystals makes for a total of 75 void crystals and a 282.8 DPS wand. The wand has either +19 crit +30 spell power, or 30 spell power +15 stam +11 int depending whether you wish to make the Red Death, or Lightstave. Comparing them to a high level wand from sunwell makes them seem somewhat average though. You've already seen most of the enchanting recipes from an earlier post about the alpha. Not much is different, but you can check them out on MMOC again if you feel that makes them more official. Skinning & Mining Interesting :

Skinning all those dead animals has broadened your anatomical knowledge, increasing your critical strike rating by 25.

All your hard work spent mining has made you exceptionally tough, increasing your Stamina by 35. +25 stats basically, with no extra work at it. Could make those professions more useful, but still not quite competitive to the others. I'd still take +2x20 Haste on my rings from enchanting any day over 25 crit rating. Maybe herbalism will give +25 spirit? Jewelcrafting More interesting, are obviously the gems for "everyone". Stats shouldn't be too much of a surprise, however there will be gems with haste and expertise rating. Which is something we didn't have in TBC as melee players. Green level gems seem to have +12 stats. (Str, Agi, etc etc) Blue level gems +16 stats. Epic gems other than the BoP ones haven't made their way to the news yet, but I suspect they'll be +20 stats when they are made available. Nobody cares about the white gems, because you should be buying greens off the AH for 1-2g instead of buying inferior junk from a vendor for 8g anyway. The two BoP gems so far are the Solid Dragon's Eye which gives +45 Stamina, and the Bright Dragon's Eye which gives +50 attack power. Before you run out and spec jewelcrafting, keep in mind that these two gems might very well be quest rewards. The interesting part is that these are prismatic gems however, so you wouldn't need to use blue gems if you don't want to. Potentially saving an extra 10 stats as a rogue. Also, the X times +5 stats one of those gems would give, doesn't beat the +20 stats that a blacksmith could socket into his weapon, or the +24 (or more) that an enchanter could put onto his rings. Not to mention the huge group (raid?) buff that a leatherworker could give with his drums. Though, with the Tinnitus debuff being added LW will be quite substantially nerfed.

WotLK Beta

Is open, or rather closed. It's closed beta, but the NDA has been lifted. So you'll be seeing plenty of beta info pouring in trough the regular channels. This doesn't mean that deathknight.info will stop posting content, on the contrary. Deathknight galore The Beta patch notes have been released and posted in several locations. There's a new logon screen graphic. And even the starting cinematic Deathknights will be using a "relic" in their ranged slot. And they'll have a "death gate" spell which (much like druids) ports them back to their main trainer location. Ebon Hold in this case. Deathknights also get a rune system. No, not the three types of runes you were probably thinking of. A craftable rune which will act as a temporary enchant much like rogue poisons. Patch notes So, about those Patch notes. I'll list some of the interesting highlights.

Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells. Meaning blizzard is indeed further modifying gear to be combined.

Dalaran is a floating city.

+healing and +spell damage are being merged into "spell power". It is unsure whether +frost, +shadow etc are also being affected.

5 Dungeons and their level ranges are open for beta testers : Howling Fjord: Utgarde Keep (70-72), Borean Tundra: The Nexus (70-72), Dragonblight: Azjol-Nerub (72-74), Grizzly Hills: Drak’Tharon Keep (74-76), Storm Peaks: The Halls of Stone (77-79)

Auras and party buffs have been changed to affect the "entire raid" instead of only a single group. This includes battle shout, paladin auras, shaman totems, priest circle of healing and more. Nothing too interesting for Mages in the patch notes other than reduced mana for several spells. So, I'll list the info about the main three classes I've been writing about so far. Rogue

Blade Twisting (Combat) now cause all damaging melee attacks to have a 10% chance to daze for 4/8 seconds.

Deadened Nerves (Assassination) now reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Fleet Footed (Assassination) now reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 25/50% rather than increasing resist chance.

Gouge is now only 1 rank and causes damage based on attack power.

Kick is now only 1 rank and no longer causes damage.

Nerves of Steel (Combat) now reduces the duration of all Stun and Fear effects by 15/30%.

Pick Lock and Disarm Trap no longer require Thieve’s Tools.

Premeditation (Subtlety) duration increased to 20 seconds.

Riposte (Combat) now slows the target’s melee attacks by 20% instead of disarming them.

Setup (Subtlety) chance to gain a combo point increased to 33/66/100%.

Vanish no longer requires the reagent Flash Powder. Saves some inventory space at least.

Vile Poisons (Assassination) reduced to 3 ranks, now increases damage of poisons and Eviscerate by 7/14/20% and increases dispel resistance by 10/20/30%. Druid

Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit.

Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors. Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.

Feral Charge (Feral): is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.

Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.

Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. This should encourage more druids to take it.

Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts. Soothe Animal is now instant cast much like rogue's blind. Hunters A major overhaul has been done on pets, each pet type now gets a unique ability and instead of pet training points pets now have a talent tree of their very own. All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.

Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.

Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.

Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both). Since bite now has no cooldown, it'll remain to be seen what is the best combination now. Most likely none so you can teach your pet more different skills.

Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.

If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath than the hunter’s level, then the pet jumps to five levels beneath than the hunter’s level. AWESOME!

Improved Feign Death (Survival): Now also reduces damage taken during Feign Death by 15/30%.

Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.

Deterrence (Survival) - Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect. Much like the rogue's Cloak of Shadows, just different.

Aspects now no longer cost mana. This means you can switch to cobra aspect as soon as you run out of mana now.

Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into “Improved Tracking”.

New Talent - Improved Tracking (Survival) - Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.

Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use. User Interface

Macros and key bindings are now saved server-side so there is no longer a need to reconfigure them when logging in using another computer.

Shift-clicking to loot mail: You can now hold Shift and click on mail in your inbox to automatically loot any items and gold without opening the mail. Relevant links

WotLK Info -- Part 1 - World of Raids

WotLK Achievement system - WoR

WotLK Loot and more - MMOC

2.4.3 up and running

2.4.3 is up and running now. Patch mirrors on wowwiki. Patch mirrors on wirebrain. 2.4.3 - Highlights

Mounts at lvl 30 instead of lvl 40

Cheat Death nerfed.

Sinister Calling nerfed.

Warlocks buffed.

A small nerf to hunters regarding hunter's mark and invisible players.

Green gems drop from mining nodes again. Rejoice alchemists!

Some fixes to Sunwell, as expected.

A stopwatch has been added to the default interface. You can throw TimerFu away I guess. See the full list here Several new bugs have already been reported on the wow-eu forums regarding this patch... Don't bother using invisibility potions for a while. SezWho Entrecard has partnered with Sezwho. The partnering should increase the number of comments that articles on your blog would receive. I'm sceptical, but I guess it will need to be tested at some point in the near future. Stay tuned for the sudden appearance of a comment "rating" plugin coming up.

Summer Raids

Summer vacations and raiding, every guild seems to slow down as half the regular members are taking a 2-3 week vacation to a random sunny place in the world. The december month is worse, but still. Age of Conan has been around a while now, and just about all who tried it will tell you it isn't worth the bother. Buggy, unfinished, not enough end-game content. So, now that that has passed... Summer vacations have taken over the slowdown bug. One week you've happily got 35 people wanting to join the raid on a wednesday, the next week there's only 21 people in the raid. Some of which are actually alts or casuals. It's a bother, but better to farm at least "some" gear than to not raid at all. Or is it? The frustrations of those who do attend are mounting up higher each time you wipe on what previously were farmable bosses. Incentive to show up drops lower each day without any chance at progress. We've killed Illidan 4-5 times now, and have started taking some trips into sunwell to learn Kalecgos. However, with recent attendance we've had to call off due to a lack of healers. Some on business trips, some on vacations, some forced to go casual due to real life obligations. There isn't anything a guild can do other than recruit new people. But, new recruits are hard to get when your server has a 2.5 - 1 alliance to horde ratio with only 3-5 guilds actually doing endgame content. Not to mention the need to get those players gear and skill. It's like starting over, quite frustrating. I'll be glad when the vacation periods are over. But, how does your guild manage trough summer vacations or christmas? PS: I just uploaded a "Girls of Warcraft" gallery. I'm also open for suggestions on better (and faster) image hosts. Shareapic is free, unlimited space, size and bandwidth. But it's dreadfully slow currently.

Raid Performance Professions

Professions, while to a new player it may seem a rather trivial choice, professions are a large part of the game. in regards to raid optimization and cash flow. A 25 man raid filled with Leatherworkers will produce a giant quantity more DPS than a raid with just blacksmiths and tailors for example. Also, a player with mining and engineering will have a much easier time getting cash than a player with blacksmithing and tailoring. Some of you may wonder, why? Well, let's decide where your leading factor lies on choosing a profession. If you plan to raid, obviously you should aim for optimal performance, and use alternate characters to fund your raiding character. If you're playing the game for fun, pvp, or just casual monster bashing you'll probably care less about how much you'd benefit a group and want as much money with the least amount of effort. Boosting your raid value Leatherworking Leatherworking is currently the lead profession in regards to boosting raid performance. For two very simple reasons.

Drums of Battle

Drums of Restoration However, when WotLK is released the drums will cause a debuff on all affected players equal to the cooldown of the drums. This will render repeat effects useless. Meaning, instead of stacking four people per party with LW right now, you'll only want to use one person per party to have LW when WotLK is released. Blizzard's reasons behind this are fairly obvious, current endgame guilds are noticing more and more the benefits of using drums, and almost every single player will end up as a leatherworker if this is not changed in the expansion. Blizzard has added a large number of pattern drops in the sunwell, for tailors, engineers, blacksmiths, and more. But, since people want / need to be leatherworker to boost their raid's DPS almost nobody wants those patterns and both blizzard as well as the players see this as an unwanted situation. However, they can't implement this "fix" straight away lest they cause a general uproar from the thousands of players who only recently maxed out their leatherworking skill. So, it will be changed in WotLK. There will be new drums in WotLK as I posted earlier. And they will be powerful, but compared to what the profession can do for your raid right now, it'll be less of a requirement for all new raid members. Enchanting Enchanting is a good second for just about any class. 2x+4 to all stats to a rogue, warrior, druid or melee shamans will likely give them a noticeable boost in their DPS. Of course you may think professions such as blacksmithing or leatherworking (if you aren't already one) would give you awesome weapons or armor... Well, sorry to say but ring enchants can be used at any and all level of your game career. Weapons such as the 3 blacksmith tiers provide will only last you so long, and can be thrown away after that. On top of that, most crafted armor has equivalent versions available in one or another dungeon, even sunwell. Hunters are semi-questionable as they don't really gain any benefit from strength. Still it will be hard to find a viable alternative to gaining +8 agi, +8 int, +8 stamina and +8 spirit by any other means. For healers, and caster DPS there are healing and spell damage enchants. 2x12 spell damage, or 2x20 healing bonus. If you are a heavy potion user, you will want to seriously consider looking at alchemy however. Jewelcrafting Jewelcrafting gives you two things, a trinket, and gems of slightly higher quality than most epic gems. Gems which give : 24 AP, 18 stam, 12 spell crit, 12 hit rating, 14 spell damage, 26 healing, 12 spirit, 12 crit rating or 12 defence rating. Basically each gem can give you +2 extra stats in a single gem slot, the gems however are unique so you're only able to use each gem once in your armor. Most classes won't be able to find more than 3 gems which would actually benefit them. Sunwell drops some patterns such as Hard Khorium Choker, however there is a fairly equal drop from brutallus called Clutch of Demise. The hard khorium choker is about a 7.36 DPS increase over the Clutch of demise. Enchanting both rings with +4 stats gives about a 10.89 DPS increase however. Swapping out two Glinting Pyrestones for a 24 and a 12 hit rating gem (the 12 crit one sucks) for a rogue would give 4.19 DPS extra. You may have a hard time getting the sunwell pattern, but it's far from impossible. If you do you'd be looking at a DPS difference of : +7.36 from the neck, and +4.19 from the two gems, versus a +10.89 DPS from two rings enchanted. A total difference of +0,66 DPS as a Rogue jewelcrafter. Results may vary per class. PS : I used Rogue Raidcal for the calculations On overall I'd recommend taking enchanting instead though. 8 more stamina, some dodge extra, and a profession you can use and re-use at any time in TBC and again in WotLK seems like a lot more value for your gold. If the DPS difference was bigger than 2, it might be worth considering. Alchemy Alchemist stones and mad alchemist potions. Unless you're a healer you're not going to get much benefit out of the stones. 40% extra mana is a big boost and will translate to about 60 mp/5 if you're chain chugging potions. If you're looking for some cash then transmutations are a nice way to earn on the side. Blacksmithing With the arrival of the third and fourth arena season the tree "tier" weapon upgrades, as well as the early armorsmith plans are fairly redundant for any class. Sunwell has a few decent patterns for gloves or chest which some classes may be interested in, but for the most part this profession is indeed redundant for boosting your raid performance. Tailoring Frozen Shadowweave, Primal Mooncloth and Spellfire are the main movers in this profession at the lower levels. Mages, priests and warlocks will enjoy the craftable epics for a long time. Sunwell has a few decent chest piece patterns, as well as gloves. Much like blacksmithing and leatherworking however, there's nothing that doesn't have (fairly) equal items dropping from the same instance. My als is a Mooncloth tailor, even though he's a warlock. Good for making bags :) Engineering Engineering nowadays is mostly for making cash by farming primals, some trinkets and cables have the occasional use but otherwise it mostly falls short of expectations. It's a fun profession though. The sunwell head pieces are fairly good, the rogue headpiece is decent, but barely (if at all) better than what Illidan is able to provide you with. If your guild doesn't actively raid Black Temple you may wish to considder it. The pattern currently will cost you over 10k though. Also, Kil'Jaeden will drop a better head piece for pretty much all classes. Inscription Unknown details at the time of writing this. Some incriptions will provide your spells and abilities with slightly reduced cast time, more damage or other modifiers. The inscriptions require crushed herbs / inks and will be available in WotLK. Part deux There's a second part, indeed. Called Money making professions. But it's coming at a later date ;) Stay tuned.