From time to time it occurs to me that my character, were I a better roleplayer, has actually been to a whole lot of places. He’s seen a ridiculous amount of things and would have a really hard time settling down on a farm somewhere on Azeroth or whatever it is old adventurers do when they’re tired of killing old gods, elemental monstrosities, Dragon Aspects, ancient liches, and Illidan Stormrage, to name just a few.

It really occurred to me on a visit to Darnassus, in fact, to turn in the quest “A Cautious Return” that I should be able to do more than just hand the dude a note. I mean, I killed Illidan! I’ve kicked Kil’Jaeden’s butt back down the Sunwell myself! I went back in time and fought Archimonde. (By the way, Tyrande, thanks for the slow fall item and all.) Lore wise, I’ve pretty much seen everything at this point and soon, I’ll be running off to fight Arthas. You’d think I could say “hey, take it easy” to that Sentinel for the poor guy.

When you think about all our characters have seen (even new characters leveled from 1 to 80 with this expansion have traveled to an alien world and then to a frozen wasteland stuffed with titan relics and undead like the worst pizza crust ever) these are some really experienced folks (hence that bar on your interface, I guess) and I find myself wondering what kind of stories they’d tell. So now I ask you, what stories would your character tell? What lore moments were the ones you think he or she would be more moved by, impressed by, or pleased to have been a part of? For that matter, which ones were the best for you as a player?

2009 has been a year of almost continuous changes for shamans. It seems that not a patch has gone by without some changes to the class, some major, some not so severe. The class has seen mysterious DPS shortfalls, a minor controversy about health in PvP that then carried over into PvE content with the high levels of AoE damage in Ulduar with patch 3.1. Flametongue Weapon saw changes to prevent enhancement shamans from using caster weapons. Resto got a fairly substantial review and some significant tweaks. Elemental also saw some talents redesigned.

While all of this was going on, shamans also saw some controversy about itemization, gear scaling and having to share caster mail between two specs that value different stats, as well as the constant battle with holy paladins to keep their grubby, grasping mitts off of our mail. Yeah, we know you don’t want that MP5 plate, but since you’re the only ones who can possibly get anything out of it, go away and leave our precious alone. (Cue the pages of discussion on why it’s perfectly acceptable for holy paladins to take caster mail and explanations in detail of why I’m an inhuman monster who drowns fish. Yes, fish, That’s how evil I am.)

Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way (remind me to tell you the story of the year my mom beat Santa Claus up in front of the extended family) we move on to shamans in 2009.

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Ah! There it is… the holy grail of Christmas gifts! The Red Ryder 200 shot ranged model air rifle… What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun.

In a nod to the holiday classic A Christmas Story, this year’s WoW in-game Christmas gift is your very own Red Rider Air Rifle. You get it from the Winter Veil Gift underneath the Winter Veil Tree.

You use it to cast the spell Pelted! which expands one of the 200 charges the Red Rider Air Rifle has. You’ll want to fire off the gun to the faction leaders first to get your BB King achievement (Alliance version, Horde version). You can miss with the gun, so do the achievement before blowing the rest of the charges.

For additional information on all the Winter Veil achievements, check out our Over Achiever’s Guide to Winter Veil. This gift is active on the EU servers, and as of 8:00 a.m. EST, the gift now appears active on the US/North American servers as well.

The druids of Moonglade have always been close …. too close. After a couple glasses of eggnog and under the influence of mistletoe, these two bashful shapeshifters shifted into being something more than just friends. The next day, they pretended that it never happened, but when a few horrendously ugly furry purple babies show up nine months from now, there’s going to be a lot of unanswered questions in the Cenarion Circle. (Thanks to Jack for the screenshot!)

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Wow, that was a year, huh? From the dizzying highs of fury spec in Naxxramas to the somewhat less dizzying highs of Ulduar, arms’ constant evolution and protection spec’s astonishing makeover as the expansion launched, 2009 was a year that saw warriors sway from top DPS and solid tanks as if in some kind of gale force wind. Armor Penetration went from a stat we’d take if we had to and is now one of our top DPS stats, Block got a makeover that led to changes in how abilities like Shield Block and Shield Slam calculate, and in general we saw the effects of stat inflation on gear really have an effect on us and how we stack up to other classes as tanks and DPS. If you were a tanking warrior in Naxx on January 1st. 2009, for example, you may have had upwards of 35k health. (To be honest, it’s hard for me to remember, it may have gotten up to 38k if you stacked stamina.) Now, a geared TotGC tank walking into ICC can pretty easily hit 54 to 55k health fully raid buffed.

And it’s only going up from here. Icecrown Citadel promises much improved itemization as well as crazy old school procs that should have warriors, be they DPS or tanks, salivating.

Warriors have definitely had their ups and downs this year, but I think we can say we’re ending the year on a fairly high note. Fury DPS has managed to get back to a competitive place with the new weapons, arms still lags behind but has solid PvP and PvE uses, and protection is quite possibly the single strongest tanking class by virtue of sheer flexibility: other tanks may have more health, more armor, or more AoE threat, but protection’s suite of abilities includes standouts like Shockwave, Vigilance, Spell Reflection and Warbringer, making it possibly #2 in every single tanking category when no class can claim to be #1 in them all. Let’s look at some changes and how they shook out for warriors.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

For no discernable reason, the WoW.com Twitter account is asking who would win in a three-way grand melee between the Queue writers — Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, and me, the inimitable Mike Sacco. Whoever wins has to face Matthew Rossi in single combat, which, of course, means that they lose. So whoever wins, Rossi wins.

Before we all fall to the cruel burly forearms of Rossi, though, we can probably answer some reader questions. Or at least I can, given that it’s my day to do it.

Edge asked…

When a cross realm group wipes and has to get back to the instance from outside, which version of the “outside” are we in? What I mean is, outside the instance, are we all together on one of the servers, or does each person go back out to their own servers “outside” area, and then come back into the same instance? Or is this a whole new area just for these 5 particular people?

When you zone out of a cross-realm instance, the “outside” is your particular realm.

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Even the dungeons are getting into the spirit of the holiday season — as proven by this screenshot from Nexmors of <The Elites> on Nagrand (EU). So… what? How? Why? Well, I think I’ll just let Nexmors explain:

“When encountering Svala Sorrowgrave she bugged after the speech which meant no fighting could commence so we decided to take advantage of this by taking a festive screenshot.”

And, really, a nice cool, dark dungeon? It’s bound to be the perfect place to keep your snowmen safely frozen. Why we don’t see more snowmen dungeon crawling year ’round is quite the mystery.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

The dungeon finder tool that rolled out in Patch 3.3 has been a game-changer for most — if not all! — of us. Instead of waiting around to find the dungeon group you need, an ample supply of players eager to run the instance you need is only a few clicks away. With this new-found freedom to run any dungeon any time, a lot of the WoW.com team is out running dungeons all the time: gearing up, collecting gold, leveling alts, collecting tier 9, stocking up on emblems… Well, safe to say that no one’s quite sure how they lived without it. And looking forward to another weekend of chain-running dungeons, I don’t think anyone wants to find out, either.

For more of our exploits — and yours — in game this weekend, read on!

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We talked a few weeks ago about the ability bonuses exclusive to each profession. The idea behind this, of course, is that the majority of these bonuses are relatively equal to one another. If you’re a master of your profession, you can expect to receive about 80 Attack Power or 47 Spell Power. You could also pick up an additional 60 Stamina if you’re an Enchanter or a Miner.

These are the most common bonuses available to all the professions. However, there are a lot more stats in the game than just Spell Power, Attack Power, and Stamina. (Although, it’s a fairly reasonable argument that these are three “sexiest” stats in the game, since they tend to be the centerpiece of many e-peen arguments.)

Especially when you’re coming up in the ranks as a new character, there are other stats that are even more important. For example, Hit Rating is frequently regarded as a must have stat. If you’re not at the appropriate hit cap for your class, you can never achieve your maximum damage.

This is one of the ways Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting really shine. These two stats have the ability to laser-focus manage exactly how your crafting bonus will buff your character. Let’s take a look behind the cut and start breaking down these two crafting abilities.

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