The Master Looter

Leveling a tank through dungeon finder is easy. Assuming you know how to tank properly, that is. One click, no waiting in the queue – life is good. As a DPS, it’s a bit tougher. 20 to 30 minute queue times are a pain, and when the tank drops group, waiting for another tank just adds to the frustration. What’s even more upsetting, though, is the drama over DPS that really needs to stop.

Usually I am one of the top 2 DPS in the group – I know how to play my class, and usually don’t stand in bad stuff. What I don’t need is to have the rest of the group constantly scrolling their damage meters in party chat. It’s unnecessary and detracts from the enjoyment of the game. Perhaps if everyone shut off their damage meters and, I don’t know, actually PLAYED THE GAME, we’d all get done faster!

Yesterday there was a DPS Death Knight doing about 500 DPS in regular UK. This is neither an amazing nor horrible amount of DPS. Yet half the time spent in the dungeon was constant bickering about how bad this guy’s DPS was. A shaman that was doing 1,200 DPS intentionally lowered his DPS down to 500 because he didn’t want to “carry the rest of the group”. This is the type of unnecessary drama that I can live without.

Here are three things we could all do to lower the amount of drama in Dungeon Finder:

1. Uninstall your DPS Meter. It isn’t going to make anyone output more DPS, and serves only as an unnecessary distraction. Play your own game, and let everyone else play theirs. IT IS JUST A GAME!

2. Don’t berate new players. We were all noobs once. If you try to be more tolerant, and explain the fights when needed – perhaps you might end up making a new friend instead of turning off someone completely from WoW.

3. No backseat tanking. I will say this every day and twice on Sundays. Do you really want to wait another half hour for a random dungeon? Let the tank do his job. If you know so much more about tanking, and feel the need to correct the tank – perhaps it’s time for you to bring out YOUR tank instead of being a backseat tank!

Let’s forget about who’s doing the most DPS, and have fun playing a computer game! What a refreshing concept.

Dungeons

Since the time I started this blog, a lot has changed in the World of Warcraft. Gone are the days of spending an hour assembling a 5-man dungeon group. Instead, you can just click a button and queue up with people across many realms. This has definitely changed the way we experience 5-man dungeons. The following are a few ways to get the most out of Dungeon Finder, with respect to leveling, obtaining gear upgrades, and your overall game experience.

1. Be Able to Fill Multiple Roles

This rule of thumb hasn’t changed. Even though the dungeon finder queue makes the process simpler and gets you a group faster, it still favors those who can tank or heal. DPS are still a dime a dozen. If you are capable of tanking or healing, you will be rewarded with a faster queue time. Being a tank usually reduces the queue time to close to zero. Healers might wait a minute or two. DPS will need to wait anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. If you absolutely abhor tanking or healing, go to step 2:

2. Work Around the Queue Timer

If you’re a DPS role, take the time to complete a couple of quests while waiting for your dungeon, but be ready to join the group when your queue is ready. This is far more productive than sitting around Dalaran complaining about the woes of being a DPS. Alternatively, your time waiting in the queue is also good for finishing a couple of quick chores around the house! The main point is that it’s an opportunity to use your time productively.

3. Don’t Anger The Tank (or Healer!)

Some tanks require rage to use their abilities (warriors and druids, I’m looking at you!) You want your tank to generate rage from the mobs they are fighting – not from berating them in party chat! Unless you want to wait another ten minutes for a new tank, it’s a good idea from a political standpoint to be nice to your tank. If they’re going slower than you’d like, ask them nicely if they can move faster, but don’t demand it. If they aren’t waiting for the healer to mana up, point it out nicely rather than being hostile. Of course, if they are a “rockstar tank” and don’t care about any of this, there’s no reason to let them take away your enjoyment of the game. Vote kick away!

4. The Little Green Button

See that little green button on your mini-map? It lets you zone in and out of the instance. If your tank drops group, you can zone out and continue questing while you await a replacement. Similarly, it can also be used as a short cut to return to the front of the instance, by zoning out and zoning in again (if you are not in combat). This teleport feature can come in handy in many situations.

5. Solving the DPS Dilemma

Yes, it’s still true – DPS are still a dime a dozen. Most people simply don’t want to tank or heal. Of course, “good” DPS are not a dime a dozen. For most dungeons, average DPS will do, though. If you prefer the damage dealing aspect of the game, you can insta-queue for another dungeon by staying in party with your tank. Always ask your tank if he’s interested in running another dungeon afterward, before dropping party. They won’t always say yes, but if they do, you just saved a bunch of time waiting for your next queue.

Dungeons

#1: DPS meters are a distraction

When you’re in a raid, your attention should be focused on the raid, not who’s doing the most DPS. If you’re paying attention to the meters, you could be missing out on more important things happening on your screen.

#2: DPS meters don’t tell the entire story

Some classes/specs do more DPS on multi-mob packs of trash mobs, and some are more efficient at single target DPS. If someone is doing high DPS but has trouble moving out of blue flames, they may be more of a liability to the raid than someone with average DPS that has higher survivability. A four (or five!) digit number does not provide enough useful information about a player.

#3: World of Warcraft is not a job – it’s just a game!

There’s much more to “winning” at WoW than being at the top of a DPS meter. Enjoying the content, working with guildmates, and making new friends are much more rewarding in the long run than showing off your e-peen. Take the time to smell the flowers!

Raiding

Bad raiders lament, “If only I had better gear then I could do more DPS”.

Good raiders know that no amount of gear will help your DPS if you only spam one button for the entire boss fight.

Bad raiders assume their lack of gear stops them from doing ample DPS, and that they don’t get invited to raids because they aren’t well geared.

Good raiders gear themselves up with ease doing 5-mans, and learn how to play their class properly (hint: reading what your spells do helps immensely). They are invited to raids often because they come prepared, don’t hold up the raid, and carry their weight.

Bad raiders depend on their guild to provide them with every piece of gear and every dungeon run they wish to participate in.

Good raiders use the built-in LFG system, along with any server-specific group forming channels to find groups on their own, and build their social network.

Bad raiders complain that PUGs are full of idiots who are impossible to complete a dungeon with.

Good raiders know that the bad raiders themselves are those idiots.

Bad raiders don’t move out of fire or void zones.

Good raiders know that no matter how easy Blizzard makes it to get the highest tier gear available, the bad raiders will still die to standing in bad stuff.

Dungeons, Raiding

No, this isn’t a sales pitch to buy an e-book! It’s just an easy system anyone can use to make anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand gold per week, by using the Auction House.

Step #1: Create a bank alt. This is where you will store all your items that you are going to sell each week. As your bankroll grows, you can purchase a guild bank with multiple tabs. If you are just getting started, four Netherweave bags and your backpack will do just fine, though.

Step #2: Mail items to your bank alt. While playing your other toons, mail any items you collect (but aren’t using) to your bank alt instead of selling them to vendors. As a general rule, don’t vendor anything that’s not gray; these are items that can be used by other players and may prove to be valuable when sold on the AH. If you are leveling a profession, mail your bank alt the crafted items for later sale. If you have any profitable crafting cooldowns such as alchemy transmutes, titansteel smelting, or tailoring, store mats for several of them on your respective toons and make sure to transmute/smelt/weave daily. Mail them to your bank alt as you make them.

Step #3: List your items on the AH. Once the weekend comes, it’s time to turn all of your creations and random loot into a big pile of cash! The weekend is a great time to sell all the items you’ve been collecting all week long, as more people log on to play. Using an add on such as Auctioneer or AuctionLite will streamline your AH sales by helping you price your items faster. You should look at the unit cost of items being sold, in order to pick a good price for your own items. The unit cost is the amount you are charging per item. Having an auction add-on lets you browse prices looking at this unit cost, to give you a clearer picture of what the market is like. The best advice would be to use common sense when picking prices, and quantities of items to sell. If you have multiples of some items, it may be a good idea to only list one each week, because of the deposit cost. The exception to this rule is enchanting mats as they have no vendor value, and in turn cost nothing to list.

Step #4: Profit! Check back after 48 hours and collect the cash! Anything that didn’t sell you can list again the next week. Toss ‘em in the bank and go back to step 2!

With just a few minutes at the AH each week, you can turn all your unwanted junk into enough gold to pay your repair bills, flasks, and just about anything else you need to buy each week. It’s really that simple!

Gold Making Strategies auction house, making gold

Crafting professions require a lot of materials to level. While there’s not much you can do to reduce the amount of materials necessary, there are certainly a few things you can do to lower the cost of acquiring those materials, and recoup those costs using the Auction House.

Farm your own mats. This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re an Engineer, Blacksmith, or Jewelcrafter, pick up mining as your second profession. If you’re a Scribe or Alchemist, become an herbalist. Skinning goes with Leatherworking. Enchanting is a bit trickier; if you have tailoring you can disenchant the items you make, otherwise it’s often worth finding cheap greens on the AH that you can disenchant. With mining and herbalism, always keep your node tracking active while questing and gather those nodes.

Level your tradeskill while leveling your toon. Don’t wait until level 80 to pick up a profession – especially a gathering profession. It’s a lot less stressful, and often less costly, to level professions slowly. One big benefit of doing this is that you can actually use many of the items that you craft while leveling. If you wait until reaching the level cap, you will miss out on one of the biggest benefits of being able to craft your own gear.

Craft items with the highest demand and resale value. A lot of crafted items are just plain useless. Unless it’s an incredibly cheap way to gain a skill point, avoid them at all costs. Check the AH to see what your crafted items go for, compared to the cost of the mats needed to make them. Knowledge is power!

Don’t unload all your items onto the Auction House at one time. If you list five of one item that’s not of especially high demand, you risk having someone list a single item and undercut you, and having all your items expire without a purchase. This will cost you a lot of AH listing fees in the long run (unless you’re selling enchanting mats, scrolls, or glyphs – of course!) List one of each item at a time, and once it sells you can list another. Keep doing this until all of your items have been sold.

Don’t waste too much time in the trade channel. Depending on your server and what you’re selling, chances are that folks in the trade channel will not be willing to pay anywhere near AH prices. Trying to hawk your wares in Trade is time consuming, and you will have to deal with your fair share of irritating folk. Unless you have something incredibly rare and valuable that you absolutely need to get rid of quickly, it’s probably best to stick to the AH and let the open market work its magic.

Gold Making Strategies, Newbie Guides

In my journey through the end-game of World of Warcraft, I’ve seen many players and guilds struggle, and others progress victoriously. There’s a few misconceptions that often go around about top tier raiding guilds, and why they experience a higher level of success. In this column I hope to debunk these myths.

Myth #1: Raiding guilds require a large time commitment. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sure, some of the top guilds in the world spend seven days a week raiding, and achieve world firsts. But a great deal, if not the majority of raiding guilds, are average people with busy lives. Often the hardcore raiding guilds spend less time raiding than casual guilds do – often as few as three nights per week. They are able to do this by setting a few basic ground rules. Everyone is expected to show up on time for the raid, fully prepared with consumables, reagents, and fully repaired gear. The raid starts on time and ends on time. AFK’s are kept to a minimum and are taken during trash pulls if necessary. The raid keeps moving at all times and boss fight explanations are made as concise as possible. For 25 man raids, DPS, healers, and tanks each have their own chat channels set up to delegate duties during a boss encounter. Raiding guilds do not necessarily spend more time raiding – they simply use their time more efficiently.

Myth #2: Raiding guilds are full of elitist jerks. This may very well be true of some raiding guilds, but it’s also true of many casual guilds. It is human nature for some folks to be jerks. However, this is certainly not the norm for all raiding guilds. Hardcore raiding guilds have members who are knowledgable of their classes and roles, and regularly put in the time and effort to continue to improve their gameplay. Just because you know what you’re doing doesn’t make you a jerk. You can have no clue what you’re doing, and still lack proper behavior. Raiding guilds often have a strict application process to make sure all those who join know what they’re doing, but that is a far cry from making them elitists.

Myth #3: It’s too hard to get into a raiding guild. If you take the time to learn how to play your class/role as best as you can, and prove your worth by completing heroics and gearing yourself up properly, there is a raiding guild out there that will have room for you. You just need to look around. Some good starting points include your realm forums, the guild recruitment channel, trade channel, your friends list, and pick up groups. When you fill out an application, be as descriptive as possible in your answers and avoid simple “yes/no” responses when possible. Don’t be afraid to detail your strengths and weaknesses. It takes far less time to find a raiding guild that’s a good fit for you than it does to wipe several times in a raid!

Raiding

It’s frustrating going into a raid where the tanks can’t hold aggro, the healers don’t know how to heal, the DPS stand in fire or just don’t bring down the boss fast enough to beat an enrage timer. Usually there’s one common factor though – lack of experience. Here’s a few simple ways to overcome this obstacle if you find yourself in one of those situations.

Learn as you level. It’s incredibly easy to solo your way up to level 80. You could get all the way there without grouping up with anyone, in theory. Many people actually do this. The problem with doing this is that level 80 dungeons are a lot tricker than their lower level counterparts. The skills you hone from doing 5-man instances while leveling will prove invaluable when you hit 80 and join your first raid or heroic. If you’re a tank, there’s a lot more room for error if you’re in the Deadmines than in the Halls of Lightning. If you lose aggro on a few mobs in the Deadmines, it may not cause a wipe. But in the Halls, those mobs are going to hit a lot harder and it’s going to be a lot more frustrating for the entire group. Practicing holding threat as you level through 5-mans will pay off when you’re tanking heroics at 80. The same goes for healing, or watching your threat as DPS. If you’re still leveling in Azeroth, you probably don’t need to worry about being specced as a tank or healer to fulfill that role in a dungeon. At level 40, you have the option of dual speccing, which may help out substantially as you reach the higher levels. 1,000 gold isn’t nearly as hard to come by as it used to be, so gold should not an issue.

Use a DPS meter. Recount is one of the most widely used DPS meters, and I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re a DPS class, it’s important to be able to gauge your DPS. While DPS is not the only important factor in a raid, it’s still necessary to monitor. If you’re only doing 1,000 DPS at level 80, that’s a big cause for concern. It’s far less embarassing to find out on your own that you need to pick up your DPS, instead of heading into a raid and finding out the hard way from the rest of the raid! Even if you’re not in a DPS role, it’s a good idea to make sure the rest of the group is performing well. If you are wiping to an enrage timer because of a couple of low DPS, it will help to find out who needs some coaching, and get them some assistance.

Seek out a mentor. If you’re new to healing, find a dedicated healer from your guild and learn from them. Find out which spells you should be using in which situations if you’re not sure. If you can’t find a good mentor in your guild, you can always look outside your guild. Perhaps there was a really good healer in your last PUG that might be able to help answer a few of your questions? The same goes for any class/role.

Stay informed. Whatever your class or role, there are many blogs that can keep you up to speed with all kinds of useful information. Taking the time to read what others have to say about your role, or a specific boss encounter, will better prepare you for your raid. Taking a few minutes a day to read blogs is a great idea for raiders of all skill levels.

Watch the boss fights. You can look up any boss fight on YouTube and watch the video. This is incredibly simple to do and does not need much of an explanation!

Dungeons, Newbie Guides, Raiding

Having a dedicated master looter in your raid can serve two purposes. It can speed up the raid by having one person handle loot while the raid leader continues leading the raid. It can also prevent loot drama that might ensue by letting members Need/Greed using the default roll interface.

To use the Master Looter option, the raid leader can right click his player portrait and set the looting to Master Looter along with a desired threshold of item quality (uncommon, rare, epic). Items of this level or above must be looted manually. Usually a threshold of rare or epic is used. The raid leader can right click anyone’s name in the raid window to assign them this duty. An icon that looks like a bag of money will appear next to their name.

Master looting is a simple process. While viewing the piece of loot you want to distribute, clicking on it will bring up a list of groups. Click on whichever group the person you want to assign the loot to is in, and then click their name. If the item is Bind on Pickup, a confirmation warning will come up.

If the master looter is out of range of the rest of the group, any items that drop for the group will not be master looted, and will simply be rolled upon using the default roll interface. This may happen when items drop off trash mobs between bosses if loot is being distributed. This can be avoided by making sure the group does not get too far ahead while loot is still being rolled for.

Raiding

DPS is Damage Per Second. It’s the most common unit for measuring how much damage you output. While other factors are often just as important, such as situational awareness and threat management, there are a few simple things you can do to make sure those mobs are going down as fast as they should be!

Get a DPS Meter: Using a DPS meter such as Recount is how you’ll be able to gauge your performance. If you don’t know how much DPS you are doing how will you know if you’re improving?

Find a Talent Spec: Some talent specializations are better for leveling or soloing, some are for PVP, and some are built for raids. If you are going to be running heroics or raids, you can benefit greatly from having a talent build that will support maximizing your DPS in those situations.

Get Hit Capped: If you’re going to raid, know what your hit cap is and get as close as you can to it. Hit rating is the single best stat you can have until you reach the cap. It doesn’t matter how much spell power or attack power you’ve got when the boss you are fighting dodges your attack!

Learn Your Rotations: Once you find a good spec, spend some time learning what all of your talents do, so you can see which abilities work together the best. The order in which you use your abilities will make a great difference in your DPS output. For instance, if you are a balance druid, a good rotation might be Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, then a few Starfalls.

Enchants and Glyphs: Get the best glyphs for your class/spec. If you’re not sure which ones they are, do a little research and find out what your options are. Make sure all of your gear has appropriate enchants, leg armor, belt buckle, and gems. Even cheap ones are much better than none, and will help your DPS out significantly.

Get Buffed Up: Elixirs, food buffs, and scrolls can add some extra oomph to your damage output. You don’t need the most expensive ones, anything is better than nothing.

Practice, Practice, Practice: Practicing on a test dummy in a capital city is a great way to tweak your DPS rotation until it’s at peak performance. Once you’ve got your moves down, you’ll be on your way to getting some epic gear!

The most important think you should take away from this article is that it’s a good idea to take some time outside WoW to improve your gameplay if you’re going to raid. The internet is home to an incredible amount of useful information. Searching on Google is still the tried and true method to find out anything you need to know!

Dungeons, Newbie Guides, Raiding