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.

Class Interactions/Changes to Buff Stacking

From the discussion of how Totem of Wrath compares to the Warlock version to the murmurs about the ‘mystery DPS leak‘ being related to our DoT’s not working properly or being affected by another class being nerfed, shamans and the complexity of their various totem buffs were possibly the single class most affected by the change to how buffs work in Wrath of the Lich King. As a shaman, you now have to pay more attention to the make up of your party or raid than ever before to make sure you’re not dropping a totem that duplicates a buff already present (and after a while, you can end up simply running out of totems you can drop without duplicating someone’s efforts) – as an example, you’re probably going to drop Totem of Wrath in your raid (as an elemental shaman) even if you have a Ret Paladin providing the same debuff to the boss with Heart of the Crusader, or a demo lock surpassing the spellpower benefit of the totem with his pet, depending on the situation. (You may well drop a Magma Totem and spam glyphed Improved Fire Nova on a big trash pull, of course. You can hit that bad boy six times before the totem despawns, not that I’ve been doing this and making tanks cry or anything.)

I’d definitely put the changes to how buffs stack down as a big change to shamans in this expansion so far, and frankly, all too often the shaman version of a buff or debuff loses out to some other class’s. I get that our totems stand in one place and provide their buffs as an aura, meaning that if the other class’ buff wasn’t superior our totems would just overwrite them and we’d have to rebuff people who were going to leave the totem’s area, but there has to be a way around this that favors the shaman once in a while.

Dual Talent Specialization

Seriously this should be in just about any class’ list of “Big Things of 2009″. I’ve seen Elemental/Resto, Enhancement/Elemental, Elemental/Elemental (PvP/PvE), Resto/Resto (both PvE specs, just focused differently)… Dual Talent Specialization gives players the chance to customize and channel their characters to succeed at an aspect of the game without immediately locking themselves out of other aspects. Healers want to grind? Boom, here’s your DPS grinding spec. DPS want to help out the raid when a bit of extra healing is needed? You can have a healing spec ready to go. Want to PvP as elemental but still enjoy raiding as enhance? We have you covered.

Totem Bar Interface

Honestly, this was an idea that took so long to come to fruition (how many of us had various totem addons to try and automate the process out a little before patch 3.2) and was such a nice change it really deserves to be celebrated. The Call of the Elements, Call of the Ancestors and Call of the Spirits spells allowing shamans to pre-select four totems and drop them as a group is simple and made a process that was irritating (run after the group, drop totems one at a time wasting globals) and could even be deleterious (a resto shaman trying to get the totems down in between casting healing spells, for instance) into something easy to use. You can even change the call spells on the fly via a very easy to use tab system, so you don’t have to keep dropping Strength of Earth in your Call of the Ancestors set if you have a DK in the group without having to use an entirely different Call if you don’t want to. (I like Call of the Spirits to be my PvP set of totems.)

Patch 3.1 and 3.2 both redesign shamans

Shamans saw a lot of design changes in both patch 3.1 and 3.2. Bloodlust/Heroism saw a shorter cooldown with a longer debuff (adjusted so that raids that wiped could use B/H on their next attempt), Flametongue Weapon was changed to benefit a slower weapon, both elemental totems were buffed, Earth Shock lost its spell interrupt and gained an attack speed slowing effect, Wind Shock was renamed Wind Shear and was taken off of the shock cooldowns, Fire Nova Totem was replaced with the Fire Nova talent, Restoration got a significant overhaul. (Resto’s overhaul was one of the minor success stories of 3.2 in my opinion, as healing on my shaman got significantly more fun for me after that.)

Frozen Power was introduced to help enhancement out in PvP, our poison and disease cleansing spells and totems were rolled into one, Spirit Weapons, Improved Stormstrike, Chain Heal, Shamanistic Rage, Elemental Mastery, Lightning Overload… the list of talents and abilities that saw redesign in one of these two patches is pretty significant. Booming Echoes was introduced for elemental (Shamanism, an even more significant talent for elemental scaling, was actually added in 3.0.8). Even things like base health were adjusted this year. It’s really safe to say that shamans have been one of, if not the, most highly adjusted and redesigned classes of this expansion. (Patch 3.3 continued this trend with the introduction of Fire Nova, or as I like to call it, “Lookit me, I’m Arthur Brown! I’m sorry, Mister Tank.”)

It’s been a really astonishing year of changes and re-changes for shamans. Between itemization and scaling issues, buff controversies, and nigh-continuous redesigns, it’s a wonder we can still recognize the class, but shamans keep on dropping totems. (Even if those totems look really different now.) Here’s to another year of dropping sticks in the ground and setting everything on fire, or healing everything. Whichever you prefer.

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.

Titan’s Grip

Yes, even a year and a month later, Titan’s Grip has changed how warrior’s DPS forever. It’s not just fury that it changed, either: the rather radical design elements included in the arms tree are testament to the difficulty inherent in trying to balance a tree that DPS’ with one 2h weapon against a tree that sees that one 2h and raises it another one.

Titan’s Grip didn’t just cause design problems for arms, however: the talent itself required a lot of adjustment until it reached its current state. It’s no secret that I disliked the hit penalty when it was originally introduced, chortled in glee when it was removed, and then wept bitter black tears when the talent instead gained a flat 10% damage penalty to offset the benefit of having all the stats of two two-handers. I’m still not thrilled about that penalty, or the idea that in order to match any other hybrid DPS who uses a two hander I have to spend DKP on another one and then eat that penalty on top of it, but I can’t deny the evidence of my senses: as gear improves even penalized Titan’s Grip just gets better and better and better. (Hey, when a tanking warrior can go DPS for one fight, throw on his DPS gear and switch to his old DPS raiding spec and hit 9.5k DPS, even the most bitter curmudgeon in existence has to admit he was wrong.)

Titan’s Grip is a problematic talent, to be sure. I expect it will require further adjustment as we go into Cataclysm and see five more levels, with the redesigned talent trees and even more powerful gear. But it does what it was intended to do and moves fury DPS away into a unique and iconic level.

Dual Talent Specialization

Was anything as directly and immediately class changing for every single class in the game as Dual Talent Specialization? Perhaps it wasn’t as big a deal for the so called ‘pure’ classes, but for classes who can perform two or more roles, this was an absolute revelation. As long as you can keep your gear, glyphs and specs current, you now have the ability to (as just one example) tank and have a DPS spec, or PvP and PvE. The customization and flexibility this offers is simply astonishing, and it’s a feature I’m so glad they decided to put into the game.

Armor Penetration

Until patch 3.1 dropped, no one was really thinking all that much about Armor Pen. It had its moment back in BC with enchants like Executioner and weapons like Cataclysm’s Edge, but people were generally of the opinion that ArP was a confusing and really awkward stat. But 3.1 made ArP indispensable to the DPS warrior. So much so that there was wonkiness with the stat and has been ever since: we quickly saw it capped so it couldn’t reduce armor to below zero, there was much discussion of how the stat was calculated at all (to the point where devs actually explained it, something they rarely do) and the amount of ArP rating you needed to actually reduce armor was increased in patch 3.2.2 to address it’s runaway popularity among physical DPSers.

Since warriors are pretty close to being a purely physical DPS class (we have a few bleeds and bleed effects) ArP is one of those stats that, of all plate wearers, benefits us the most. While it’s gone back and forth ever since it came roaring back with Ulduar, you simply cannot ignore ArP if you want to DPS as a warrior.

Block

It’s been a roller coaster of a year for us block tanks. We talked about block back in May, and while the basic idea of block hasn’t changed (you have two stats, block rating, which determines how often you block, and block value, which determines how much damage you block when you do) block itself has had its ups and downs this year. The changes to Block in 3.2 didn’t magically fix all of its issues. Even Blizzard itself said in the Q&A series that block will eventually move to a pure percentage system where the amount you block will not be a static number but rather a certain percentage of a blocked hit. This will make the stat less godly on big trash pulls (in some instances a high block tank can simply ignore trash because their individual hits will never get over his block value, especially with talents like Critical Block) while making it more effective against a boss who hits for 30k or more. (Depending on the percentages blocked, of course… too low and it’s just a nerf across the board, too high and block becomes the only stat anyone cares about.)

Part of the issue for warriors and block and the reason we saw so much tuning when block value from items was increased (and also the reason the amount of block value we get from strength wasn’t) is that we use block as a threat stat as well as a damage reduction stat. Right now you can go play arenas and see, possibly for the first time, prot warriors in high strength or strength/BV sets running around Shield Slamming as an offensive strategy. This is subject to diminishing returns (this was put in place in patch 3.2) -

Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player’s level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player’s level.

What this means is that when you hit Shield Block, the amount of block value you get from the talent doesn’t just scale directly to Shield Slam damage, which while a clunky solution is certainly more elegant than the ‘Shield Block just adds threat to your Shield Slam, no damage’ solution that was the original goal. While the doubling of block value on gear and the diminishing returns on block value for Shield Slam damage is not ideal, it’s definitely better than rolling back to pre-WOTLK days.

Gear Scaling, Rage Generation and Rumblings of the Future

Warriors have forever been the class that scales the most… interestingly… with gear. We’ve seen rage normalization attempt to fix this back when BC came out (and fail spectacularly, too, I might have added at the time oh look I did) and it’s been an issue ever since. The mantra is as it has always been: a warrior leveling has the most downtime, has to stop and eat while out grinding and soloing, and is weaker in relatively equal gear than almost any other class. Then, as the warrior gets better and better gear, his or her relative strength increases out of kilter with how other classes scale because as the gear improves, rage starvation goes from a real liability to a complete nonissue, giving the warrior effectively a red mana bar that starts low and then shoots up, never going empty.

Meanwhile, the tanking warrior finds herself or himself walking an entirely different tightrope. The gear he or she uses to tank absolute cutting edge fights, the best of the best for survival against massive spike damage from huge, powerful bosses, is a liability tanking anywhere else. Your best gear? Don’t wear it to heroics. Oh, I know the DPS will be wearing all of their best gear, the same level and quality of gear as your best stuff, earned in the same dungeons and raids. But you can’t do that. Strap on that older gear with worse stats, or gear to stack a threat stat or two over health even if it means wearing stuff you abandoned two tiers of content ago. It’s not crippling, but it is irritating: I know I dislike losing 3k health to tank a heroic.

These aspects of the class… the wonky nature of rage generation and how the class scales… have had profound impact on how the class has been designed, and how it will be designed. The Warrior Q&A we saw this year showed us that an awareness of this issue is still foremost in Blizzard’s look to future design. And the Cataclysm preview we saw at BlizzCon 2009 showed us that the changes will most likely be baked right into our talents and the Mastery ability, meaning that we are coming to the end of the time where a warrior uses stats like defense to determine the tanking viability of an item.

Make no mistake: warriors are still absolutely the class that scales best with gear. Bad gear is almost crippling to a warrior, and the better suited gear is to a role the more powerful the warrior is. Tanking is still heavily dependent on rage from damage taken, not dealt, and that is most likely going to change, and we first heard about it at BlizzCon.

Also, that class Q&A said Arms Warriors maybe will get to tank with 2h weapons, which is pretty sweet and I wanted to mention it again.

Arms goes round and round and round

It’s hard, looking back now, to remember that there was a time where fury warriors wore tons of leather and mail and used 2 1h weapons like discount rogues, and arms warriors were the undisputed kings of two handed weapon fighting among the clanky rage class. All through Burning Crusade, Arms was feared for its Mace Specialization Stuns (especially when combined with a Stormherald) and of course Mortal Strike. Arms was regarded as a PvE DPS debuff spec, able to put out respectable numbers while also granting Blood Frenzy to the raid.

Frankly, when Wrath was in beta, I wasn’t terribly impressed with arms. The new ability Bladestorm felt weak, arms felt kitable, and MS just didn’t seem all that impressive anymore. Fury was over there dual wielding 2h and I was trying out arms and feeling like a tool. Frankly, I really missed paying attention to arms’ new abilities like Taste for Blood, Wrecking Crew and Sudden Death. Obscured by my own obsession with Titan’s Grip I missed as the developers moved arms as a spec into the ;disciplined and solider-like’ spec they had in mind for it.

This past year has seen a lot of up and down for arms. There was the creation of Juggernaut, followed hard upon by the nerf to Juggernaut (but not to macros yelling catchphrases from last year’s internet memes) which did help give arms much needed comabt mobility in both PvP and in movement heavy fights like Ulduar. In the hands of a skilled player, arms is capable of solid DPS and is a threat again on the PvP battlefield (the sheer volume of people complaining about Bladestorm proves that arms is no longer seen as the free kill it was at the beginning of the year). Part of this is also the change to Battle Stance adding ArP and the buffing of Sword Spec to where it’s actually a useful ability and you won’t reject a sword out of hand for the spec. Arms is solid now. Although even at this late date we can find issues to fix, apparently.

There’s a lot more to discuss, of course (holy crap the Dungeon Finder alone), there always is. But here’s to 2009, and looking forward to 2010.

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.

Mr Shinra asked…

This probably is a bit presumptuous to ask at this point in time, but the 5-level question has me wondering: Since Deathwing’s been built up to be all big bad and with a very high power level (+9k), what are the estimated chances that the (eventual) fight against him, will be a return to the old-style 40-person raids that the game hasn’t seen since the days of Ahn’Qiraj?

Considering that the mere act of him ENTERING THE WORLD caused half the world to explode, I don’t think 25 people will be enough; and that’s assuming he would fight a bunch of tiny mortal insects (from his point of view) alone.

Blizzard recently stated that there would likely never be a return to the 40-man style of raiding, and I for one sincerely appreciate that. 40-man raids were just like 25-man raids except 15 people weren’t pulling their weight.

At least in my opinion, and in Blizzard’s, it doesn’t matter how many people are participating in the encounter so long as the “epic” feel is still there.

Metatron asked…

Are there any plans of expanding the WoW enterprise to other consoles such as Playstation, X-Box. I’ve heard that Warcraft 2 was made avaiable for PS, but I don’t think any other Warcraft game had it. If there aren’t any plans like this is there any particular reason Blizzard doesn’t want to move into this lucrative market?

Blizzard’s console division, which was working on StarCraft: Ghost, closed down back when I first started working there — 2006 — and every interview since then has stated that their particular development model doesn’t lend itself well to console games. Thus, they’re unlikely to ever produce for consoles.

Can you imagine the headaches involved with trying to get an emergency maintenance patch for WoW over XBox Live? It took something like two months for a patch to get deployed that fixed a crippling bug with Castle Crashers.

Sead asked…

Does the “Raid Browser” Tool work in the same way the new Dungeon Finder Tool work? i.e. can you port into the raid directly?

Nope, the Raid Browser is just a browser. It’s a retooled version of the old LFG pane. It doesn’t assemble groups or allow porting.

Daniel asked…

Since Cataclysm was announced, one new feature has stood out to me, the Path of the Titan, basically a glyph system on top of the existing one from what I can tell. What I was wondering is, will it focus more on class skills like increased crit damage on a warrior’s MS, or more passive bonus like increased overall damage by 2%?

It’ll give broad, class-unspecific bonuses. Examples are -5% bleed damage taken, +10% bandage healing, +1% haste, etc. You won’t see any damage increases for Fireball or anything like that.

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!

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): This weekend I’ll be online treking amongst the stars.
• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): Another hour on Algalon, and even more heroics for badges. I’m down to one heroic per 80, just for the Frost Emblems. I needs my Primordial Saronite, you know.
• Allison Robert: Last-minute Christmas shopping, probably some 10-man stuff with the guildies.
• C. Christian Moore (@thearenaguy): alts are 70 right now. Hitting 80 in a day or two from well, let’s say “creative leveling,” in Icecrown and Zul’drak. And by “creative leveling” of course, I mean going to a spot where respawns are <15 seconds and looping around killing stuff with my 80 for them. About an hour a level isn’t bad. They should be 80 by Monday — just in time to get arena points for the week.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Decorating our Christmas tree (years behind, I know) and buying a few last-minute gifts. In game, my guild is shooting for our first Tribute to Insanity run, after a mistake last week forced us to accept a 49 attempt kill.
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): Continuing to chain-run random heroics with the Dungeon Finder on my holy pally. The groups come super-quick because he’s a healer, and I’ve almost finished scooping up a full set of tier 9 for him. Gearing up alts is so ridiculously easy now… come on Blizzard! What happened to the grind? Where’s the timesink? Everybody knows it’s not an MMO without a massive timesink!
• Dan O’Halloran: Working the WoW Dungeon Finder tool not only with my 80 moonkin druid, but also with my 32 mage. Also getting back into Skirmishes in LotRO, this time duo’ing with a friend. I think there may be 2-3 holiday parties sprinkled throughout the weekend as well. Hope they’re scheduled between Icecrown runs…
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Mostly I will be scrambling to get Christmas shopping and other associated chores done, but if I can fit it in, I’d like to finish farming badges for my tanking offspec set for my death knight and start focusing on gearing up my druid for healing.
• Gregg Reece (@slicertool): Going to see Avatar, dinner with the in-laws, and trying to figure out what to roll up for my Eberron character for an upcoming D&D campaign. Oh, and since I’ve already got my proto-drake, I’m ignoring the Winter’s Veil activities just because I can. Plus I think I’m scheduled for something involving a large citadel in the vicinity of Icecrown.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Heading out of town tonight to see my Dad and stepmum for Channukah/Christmas/whatever. Free food! Also – Byron, and hopefully sum Grizzly Hillz.
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Avatar. Holiday baking. Leveling a newbie. Wine. Gift wrapping. Celebrating the solstice.
• Matt Low (@matticus): Yes, I managed to get my twitter name back. Couple of early holiday parties to go to. Hopefully I can squeeze in some more dungeon running on my shaman and paladin.
• Matthew Rossi (@MatthewWRossi): Since the shaman’s gotten some decent gear, the DK may see some random PUG action. Or maybe I’ll just run the warriors some more. God, DPS warriors are still fun to play.
• Michael Gray (@writegray): Dungeon Finder. Hopefully making it up to a group for whom I tanked after a bit of overindulgence.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Planning, plotting, possibly scheming.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): Dungeon Finder with the level 33 priestess. How did I ever level without it?

Now it’s your turn! We want to know what you’re doing in-game this weekend. Are you as enamoured of the dungeon finder as we are? Or have you, too, been torn away from the computer and into the real-life holiday season that’s befallen us? Inquiring minds want to know!

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.

The crafter-specific bonus of being a blacksmith is that you get two additional sockets. If we examine the red gem for attack power, we can easily see how it conforms to the normal bonus for a crafter. Since the Bright Cardinal Ruby is worth +40 Attack Power, you’ll get a total of +80 Attack Power from being a blacksmith. That is completely in line for the normal profession bonus.

However, not all classes value Attack Power over other stats. Notably, plate-wearing melee DPS all prefer the Strength equivalent. Swapping over to the Bold Cardinal Ruby achieves a profession bonus of +40 Strength. When you focus that through a talent like Divine Strength, the profession bonus becomes +46 Strength. That 6 Strength difference is worth 12 Attack Power, before any additional raid buffs or the like which could affect it. While 12 Attack Power isn’t a huge deal, this still reflects why the customization offered by blacksmithing is superior to a flat +80 Attack Power bonus.

Hit Rating could be doubled up as far as +40 Hit Rating thanks to gems like the Rigid King’s Amber. Almost any combination of stats can be found by choosing the right gems, of course. Properly socketing your gems has become almost an art form. Sites like Elitist Jerks do a great job of telling you which gems you’ll get the most from, and being a blacksmith allows you to get the most gems.

Jewelcrafting provides even further benefit. The jewelcrafter-restricted Dragon’s Eye gems provide stat bonuses above and beyond the available stats from epic gems. Recently updated in patch 3.2, Dragon’s Eye gems are nearly a half-gem better than even their epic counterparts.

To go back to our Attack Power example, a Bright Dragon’s Eye provides +68 Attack Power. You may equip up to three Dragon’s Eye gems, providing a total difference of +84 Attack Power. While 4 Attack Power is truly a very tiny difference from the normal profession bonus, it’s notable that the difference is in favor of the jewelcrafter.

Dragon’s Eye gems have the same wide variety of available stats as normal gems. You can pick up almost anything you need, including Strength, Hit Rating, crit, and even Resilience. As you should expect from our Attack Power example, every time there’s a fractional difference between Jewelcrafting and other professions, the favor seems to be slightly toward the Jewelcrafter. A Runed Cardinal Ruby, the “standard” epic red, provides +23 Spell Power per gem. The Runed Dragon’s Eye provides +39 Spell Power. If you’re combining three Runed Cardinal Rubies, you’re therefore picking up a bonus of +48 Spell Power. (This is where we all stop, and think to ourselves, “Wow! An entire 1 Spell Power!”) That’s a pretty small difference, but it continues to show how Jewelcrafting ever so slightly manages to be a little tiny bit better on an itemization point basis.

So, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting each tend to provide a more customizable profession bonus than their counterparts. There’s a slight benefit to jewelcrafting, but it’s really so minor that I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. It’s really that flexibility that makes it so awesome. If you want to buff up your Resilience, for example, it’s really only blacksmithing and jewelcrafting that will get you there.

As a small historical note, jewelcrafting used to be even better. Once upon a time (which is to say, before patch 3.2), Dragon’s Eye gems were known as “Prismatic Gems.” There were two benefits to the prismatic gems. First, Dragon’s Eyes were able to fulfill the requirement of any socket bonus. If your pants had a blue socket, and you preferred what is traditionally a red stat, you could drop a Dragon’s Eye gem in that slot and still get your socket bonus. Secondly, having three prismatic gems almost always meant you’d fulfill your metagem’s color requirements. These bonuses proved to be a little too good for an otherwise equally balanced profession. Thus, the nerf.

Ultimately, the truly powerful combination in achieving the most laser-precise bonus you want is blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. This means that you can pick out the exact stat that gives you the most bang for your buck. If you’re someone who gets a Strength or Intelligence multiplier, for example, then you can pick up those items.

Obviously, for the dedicated PvPer, you can get a Resilience bonus from blacksmithing and jewelcrafting.

It will be interesting to me to see if the blacksmith and jewelcrafting dominance (in terms of profession bonuses) continues into Cataclysm. If all you’re interested is the Attack Power, Spell Power, or Stamina trifecta, then the other professions are just fine. However, any time you go outside that box, you are immediately into BS and JC territory.

Blacksmithing would be the hardest to fix if it continues with the current bonus gem-socket paradigm. If the developers do decide to restrict blacksmithing to the same stats as other professions, then we might see something like “Attack Power Belt Buckles.” The current bonus sockets would simply be restricted to characters less than level 81, similar to what happened with the Riding Crops and other speed enhancing items.

Jewlecrafting could be restricted by simply only making the Dragon’s Eye gems available in the form of Attack Power, Spell Power, and Stamina. Maybe they’d be called Worgen’s Eye or something. But the point is that if stats do scale past 80 , which seems pretty reasonable, then Blizzard could simply restrict the bonus.

We do know that stats are going to be simplified in the expansion, so it’s entirely possible this problem will mostly go away. We don’t have any idea what gems are going to look like once Deathwing finishes his hissy fit, so we’re just going to have to hold tight and see what happens.

In the mean time, if you want more options than just Attack Power, Spell Power, and Stamina, then you want to be a blacksmith or a jewelcrafter.