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.

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.

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.

It’s time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves nothing more than to gaze down upon the whole of Northrend from one of the floating chunks of stone around Dalaran and realize that at some point, a mage has probably killed every living thing down there. At least the targetable ones, anyway. And the ones you can’t target? I’m sure more than one mage has certainly tried.

So I’m officially nominating patch 3.3 for “best patch ever” status. Here’s a short list of the highlights of this patch:

• Three highly challenging, fun, lore-filled 5-man instances, full of sweet loot
• A massive new raid, with four gated sections, 12 bosses, and the promise of eventually being able to shove a Fireball up the Lich King’s tailpipe
• The incredible, game-changing Dungeon Finder Tool, which is responsible for peace in the Middle East, has brought an end to the recession, and has cured cancer
• A few choice mage buffs, including a PvE viable Frost spec
• Quest Tracking without the need for an addon
• Quel’delar and Shadowmourne
• A swiftly approaching new Arena Season
• Weekly raid quests
• The Kalu’ak Fishing Derby
• Perky the Pug
• A host of little changes for low level characters
• Rocket bare

Not shabby, right? And best of all, Blizzard has managed to deploy the majority of this new content without also deploying a host of bugs, glitches, and instability, or otherwise making the game unplayable for awhile as we’ve come to expect from patches this large. There were some log-in issues and bugginess on day one, but by day two, everything was running relatively smoothly by day two. I’m being relatively conservative when I say that Blizzard, in my personal opinion, has hit this one out of the park.

As we discussed last week, perhaps no single change in the history of the game has altered WoW’s landscape so fundamentally as the Dungeon Finder Tool. Bridging the gap between a fresh level 80 character and a completely raid-worthy character has never been easier, or more fun, to accomplish. The options are myriad. Even those of you who have been raiding consistently with your mages prior to 3.3 will likely find a host of new ways to plug holes in your gear set through this new tool.

So let’s look at our new options:

Gearing from scratch

Once upon a time (and not very long ago at all), hitting 80 was a milestone that ushered in a new weeks-long period of desperately trying to span the gulf between your mismatched greens and blues and the epicness you saw all around you. It required expensive profession mats, reputation grinding, and hours of waiting for instance groups to form. It took, as I mentioned earlier, weeks.

Now you can make more progress in an afternoon.

As I see it, there are two excellent options for a fresh level 80 mage, depending upon the resources available to you. If you have a group of friends or guildies to play with who are willing to carry you a bit at first, your single most efficient path is to head directly for normal Trial of the Champion and then farm it. Item-level 200 epics drop from every boss there, and you’ll find you can fill up a great many slots with quality gear in very little time without ever leaving that instance. It isn’t terribly difficult for even moderately geared characters on normal mode, and after a few runs, if the drops go your way, you’ll find you aren’t a liability anymore.

The other option, for those without access to that kind of in-game support structure, or those who simply wish not to be carried even for a short while, is to immediately begin queuing for random Lich King dungeons in the Dungeon Finder. Not the heroics…you aren’t ready for that. Just hit the normal versions of the level 80 Lich King dungeons, and start upgrading your gear to blue-quality and picking up Emblems of Triumph. Now, the problem with this is that you will likely get thrown into some random Trial of the Champion groups, or even more likely, some random Icecrown Citadel 5-man groups. The Icecrown 5-mans, especially, are a bit beyond your abilities at this point. Blizzard has implemented a hidden minimum gear-score requirement for entry into these instances, but in my experience, it doesn’t always work.

If you get one of these instances, you have two choices: leave and wait out the 15 minute debuff, or stick around and risk being kicked. I’m not telling you what to choose here. If you leave, there’s still a very good chance you’ll get thrown into another of these four tough instances the next time you queue anyway. If you’re confident in your skills, and you feel you can make up for your low DPS by not dragging down your group in other ways, then by all means give these instances a shot. If your group is forgiving, they may not care about your subpar DPS. If the group is struggling, you may need to discretely excuse yourself to provide them the opportunity to find a more seasoned DPS. One place I’d absolutely avoid until you get better gear is the final Icecrown 5-man instance, Halls of Reflection. The wave-style opening encounter can be harsh for even strong groups, and the final flight from the Lich King is such a massive DPS race that you risk crippling your group and causing a wipe if you’re not putting out solid damage.

Of course, you can solve all of these problems by queuing only for specific instances, but by doing so, you eliminate the ability to start collecting Emblems of Triumph. The bottom line here is to start hitting instances right away, learning your role within the group, and collecting gear upgrades as swiftly as possible. When you feel ready (and it really shouldn’t take very long at all), you can again choose from one of two paths.

1. Random Heroics

You should find it even faster to find groups for these, as everybody and their grandma is farming heroics for Emblems right now, and I don’t see that popularity tapering off anytime soon. It’s important that you be relatively well-geared before hitting the heroics, so that you aren’t the proverbial turd in your group’s punchbowl while running these potentially challenging instances. Once you’re ready, though, there may be no single more efficient way to gear yourself up than by farming random heroics.

Your gear upgrade options here are legion. There are the drops themselves, which will all be item-level 200 rare or epic-quality and can swiftly provide upgrades for the gear you got in the normal versions of these instances. In addition, you will be gaining two Emblems of Frost a day, and more Emblems of Triumph than you can keep track of. In a matter of hours, you can have enough to begin purchasing pieces of your tier 9 set from the emblem vendors at the Argent Tournament. I want you to take a brief look at one of these pieces to give you some idea of how massive these upgrades will be:

Sunstrider’s Shoulderpads of Conquest

Yup. And it’ll cost you 30 Emblems of Triumph to purchase that. That’ll take you an hour or two, if you get in some decent groups. In fact, with some efficient heroic-running, you could easily have the entire set in a matter of days. Then you can start farming up Emblems for some of the other choice items available at the vendors in Dalaran, like this trinket:

Talisman of Resurgence

Now again, though the gear-score requirements should keep you out of them early on in your heroic-running, you may find yourself thrown into a random Heroic ToC or one of the Icecrown 5-mans, any of which may very well be a bit beyond your capabilities at this point. If you can stick around and not kill your group or get yourself kicked from it, then by all means do so. The gear you get there is potentially very nice. But as with the normal versions, if you’re going to be a liability, leaving is always an option. Only you can make this decision.

Which leads to the second option:

2. Trial of the Champion/Icecrown 5-mans

Once you’re ready, you may instead choose to gear up by running these instances exclusively, farming all the gear from them that you want, then moving on to the heroic versions. This is an especially efficient options if you have an already established group to run them with.

The normal version of ToC nets you item-level 200 epics (the trinket is especially nice), and the heroic item-level 219 epics. If you want a more detailed run-down, see my ToC gear guide here. The normal versions of the three Icecrown instances provide you with item level 219 epics on par with those from heroic ToC, and the heroics throw item-level 232 epics at you. These can easily fill open slots in even an experience raider’s gear sets.

Here’s the full list of mage gear from these three instances:

Normal Forge of Souls

• Cold Sweat Grips – Hands
• Coil of Missing Gems – Neck
• Essence of Anger – Waist
• Mantle of Tattered Feathers – Shoulder
• Blood Boil Lancet – Staff
• Coffin Nail – Wand

Normal Pit of Saron

• Ice-Steeped Sandals – Feet
• Palebone Robes – Chest
• Rimewoven Silks – Legs
• Wristguards of Subterranean Moss – Wrist
• Unspeakable Secret – Staff

Normal Halls of Reflection

• Frayed Abomination Stitching Shoulders – Shoulder
• Marwyn’s Macabre Fingertips – Hands
• Tattered Glacial-Woven Hood – Head
• Chilled Heart of the Glacier – Dagger
• Splintered Icecrown Parapet – Sword

Heroic Forge of Souls

• Very Fashionable Shoulders – Shoulder
• Arcane Loops of Anger – Neck
• Mord’rethar Robes – Chest
• Seethe – Sword

Heroic Pit of Saron

• Ancient Polar Bear Hide – Chest
• Braid of Salt and Fire – Waist
• Prelate’s Snowshoes – Feet
• Engraved Gargoyle Femur – Staff
• Nevermelting Ice Crystal – Trinket

Heroic Halls of Reflection

• Sightless Crown of Ulmaas – Head
• Bracer of Worn Molars – Wrist
• Suspiciously Soft Gloves – Hands
• Strip of Remorse – Waist
• Shriveled Heart – Off-hand Frill
• Soulsplinter – Wand

There are a few other possible upgrades in there, but they all have mana-per-5 on them, which means that they go to the healer unless the healer passes. If they’re upgrades for you, and the healer doesn’t need them, by all means take them.

Bottom line here? You can very easily gear your mage up in full epics in a very short amount of time. No more grind. Most of the old stop-gaps (expensive profession epics, BoE world drop epics, faction rewards, PvP gear for PvE) have fallen into the realm of obsolescence. It’s too easy, too fast, and too much fun not to gear up through the new instances and the Dungeon Finder these days.

One final tip, before you embark upon your great random 5-man adventure: As soon as you can, buy up all of the various faction tabards. You can purchase them from the various faction quartermasters at Friendly, and by equipping them while running these random dungeons, you’ll find you hit exalted with the various factions with amazing speed. I’m not even kidding, it’s ridiculous. And though the gear these factions offer is no longer worthwhile, the head enchants totally are. Start with the Kirin Tor, since they’ve got the one for mages. You’re already running the dungeons, right? Might as well get the rep while you’re there.

And make friends with a Jewelcrafter and an Enchanter. You’re gonna need lots of both. Oh, and a disclaimer: You’re a DPS, which means finding groups might take a bit longer than you’re used to if you’ve tried to find groups as a tank or healer before. As with all things that annoy me, I blame this particular problem on warlocks. They’re all over the place. Like cockroaches. Stealing our DPS spots. And generally just smelling up the place. When I’m mayor of Dalaran, I’ll fix this, I promise. I have a whole new Warlock-Population-Counter-Measure program ready to go before congress. It involves trading in warlocks for a used car. I call it Trash for Clunkers.

Belt in 2010! Yes we can!

Zach is a Battlegrounds freak. Even if he doesn’t raid or quest or sell things at the auction house, he’ll make sure to get a small dose of Battlegrounds PvP to brighten up his day. You should, too. They’re like vitamins. Bloody, face-melting, honor-gaining, sword-clashing vitamins.

This little thing called patch 3.3 came out some time back, maybe you’d heard. I had planned it to be my return from an unintentionally self-imposed hiatus from hardcore play, considering that all the tools would now be in place to allow all players of all gear levels to catch up the the penultimate level of content. It was a good plan, except that a few things here and there kept me from jumping right into it when the Fall of the Lich King went live.

The new Dungeon Finder system is getting rave reviews from everyone who’s tried it. I think it’s an awesome tool — quite possibly one of the best things to happen to the game. The coolest thing about it for me is that the concept stemmed from the Battlegrounds! That’s right… the Battlegroup-wide grouping system is inspired by the way Battlegrounds get players from various realms from way back since Patch 1.12 in 2006. Who’d have thunk it, right? The rest of the PvE population getting something good — something really, really good — from the PvP aspect of the game.

Blizzard has been cleverly trying to sprinkle PvP elements into the PvE side of the game, such as the Princess Delrissa encounter in Magisters’ Terrace, and its more recent, scaled-up version, the Faction Champions in the Trial of the Crusader. If the message isn’t already clear, Blizzard is trying to make you like PvP. At any rate, this whole new PUG craze is a happy byproduct of the cross-realm Battleground system. The only difference is, in Battlegrounds, group composition isn’t as important.

This is why I was a little apprehensive trying to play again. The thing is, I’d practically retired from raiding midway through Ulduar, sometime back in July. I stopped playing regularly and only logged in on my main for the occasional game of Wintergrasp or a string of Battleground matches. I had gone from raider to slacker over the course of a few months. Essentially, my raiding skills eroded significantly. Admittedly, my PvP game slacked off, too, and I was a little surprised to be clashing head on against players with significantly more health, a reminder of how far behind one can fall when going on a hiatus.

A lot of things can erode with a loss of playing time, and a lot of things in the game can definitely change after five months. For one thing, the DPS rotations on my death knight aren’t quite how I remember them at all. The good news is that there’s always WoW.com to keep me up to speed on things (it’s never a bad thing to plug your blog), which is how I knew — aside from logging in a bit of playtime on the PTR — that the new Dungeon Finder System is the bee’s knees.

Here’s the dilemma: I’m rusty. And I mean so rusty that when I logged my death knight back on to unlearn my talents and get a new build, I asked a city guard to direct me to a class trainer. If you don’t have a death knight, you probably won’t see the problem. On the other hand, a lot of players will snicker at that display of newbness — death knights have a lifetime membership and free pass to that exclusive club in the sky, Ebon Hold. Yup, so rusty that I forgot even that.

So rusty, in fact, that when I logged on my hunter to explore Icecrown for a little reference research, my first instinct when I got Abomination aggro was to run. Sure, I threw a trap — a Frost Trap instead of the Freezing Trap I originally intended (they’re both ice icons, cut me a little slack!) — but I also forgot that it had been so long since I’d played that lovable troll that there was a talent reset somewhere along the way. I eventually escaped that undead monstrosity after finally figuring out what hotkey I’d bound Feign Death to, and only after my troll got dangerously close to actual death.

Now you can probably understand my apprehension. Amazing as the new LFG tool is, I’d degraded to the kind of player I would’ve voted to kick out of a group five months ago. From kicking pre-nerf Mimiron butt to getting my own butt kicked by slippage. So what’s the solution? Blizzard designed the new LFG tool precisely for casuals like myself to be able to catch up on the newest content. I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not exactly in the best shape to socialize. And I don’t think I want to spend $10 on name changes just so people don’t recognize the horrendous player they’d just grouped with.

So what’s the solution? Well, interestingly, it comes back to the Battlegrounds. More than any other instanced content in the game, Battlegrounds are friendly to players of all skill levels. It’s also precisely why some so-called ‘hardcore’ PvP players hate them — they’re so accommodating to newbies.

In truth, the unrated Battlegrounds are the last bastion of true casuals. You are free from the scrutiny of the dreaded Gearscore, something that I have grumbling words for but in the same breath acknowledge as a partially useful and relevant tool (that merits a post in itself, actually, but that’s for another time). So here I was, formerly hardcore raider fretting — no, staining my shorts at the thought of being put under the microscope for having gear two patches old. Let’s not even mention that I was still getting my Plague Strikes and Scourge Strikes in the wrong order sometimes (disparate opening and subsequent rotations can be a pain in the butt!).

Just as the Battlegrounds are the have of casual players, they’re the greatest training grounds for newbies and a fantastic refresher on how to play. Sure, most players will use different skill sets, but for the most part you’ll be able to refresh your muscle memory and re-train your responses with very little consequence. Dying in the Battlegrounds inflict no durability loss, and failing to play things right won’t result in your group wiping. You won’t get pinpointed for blame half as much as you would if you were in one of those newfangled cross-realm PUGs.

The Battlegrounds are the next step after getting your rotations down pat with a training dummy. My point is that before you buckle down to abuse the new Dungeon Finder system, why don’t you give the Battlegrounds a whirl? The new daily quest also awards a fairly modest 25 Arena points, too, so even the most casual of casuals will get some Arena incentives, too (we’ll conveniently ignore the fact that you’ll need ratings for most items).

The Battlegrounds as a training grounds for players who’ve just hit max level and ready to explore all that rich endgame content. It’s excellent training for players who want to dust off those cobwebs. It’s an excellent primer for those who are just itching to use the new Dungeon Finder but are wary (and justly so!) of getting the collective boot! It allows players to reacquaint themselves with their characters without fear of aggroing stray abominations. Heck, if all hell breaks loose, hide in some corner and look for where your keybound that PvP trinket.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated the Battlegrounds more. As friendly as the new system is, you just don’t go into it willy-nilly. As 20% of a group, you’re accountable for a lot more than just guarding the farm flag. The Battlegrounds is an excellent place to — I hate to say it — be a little out of sorts. I mean, more than most content in the game (even more than soloing random mobs, which can go all sorts of wrong and cost you gold), the Battlegrounds are very forgiving.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for organized, learned play. I love hardcore PvP. And I definitely want Battleground matches to go the right way. Just like a lot of other people, I hated it when players mucked around “my” Battleground like headless chickens. But oh, how our fortunes change. I see it from the other side of the fence now. And it’s not so bad. When I finally get my groove back, I think I’ll just chuckle a little when players mount up while carrying the flag or stand aimlessly for a while (they might be looking for that special spell, after all). It’s all good, it’s all for fun. No need to pop a vein, these aren’t Arenas.

Of course, I’m saying this now because of the catch-up quagmire I’m in. Check back on me in a few weeks after I’ve ground all my characters shiny new pieces of Tier 9 and sexy, last-season Furious Gladiator gear (which can be conveniently purchased with Emblems of Triumph)… if I’ve got my asshat face on, please slap me silly and remind me of my roots.

If ever there were a boss just begging to be turned into a totally Camaro-awesome tattoo, it’s Lord Marrowgar. Like an epic, multi-skulled skeleton made of bone and skulls and spikes, Marrowgar is hands down one of the coolest looking mobs in the game.
While the sophomoric “Dude, he’s a bone guy with a bone axe!” revelation has me only a little ashamed, I nonetheless get a certain thrill up my spine each time I see him.

Lord Marrowgar is not a complex fight, although there’s a few things about it that are going to be counter-intuitive. I think that slight change-up in normalized behavior is probably the biggest challenge of this fight. It’s kind of a clever design that way, but otherwise, you should expect Marrowgar to be your first, solid gear check in Icecrown Citadel.

The fight with Lord Marrowgar seems incredibly straightforward, since he really only has four or five abilities. Basically, two tanks start the fight. He shoots lines of fire, which your raid should not stand in. (You’ve got the “don’t stand in fire” trick down at this point, right?)

Periodically, Lord Marrowgar will impale a member of your raid on a bone spike. Kill that spike to free your raid member before that member dies. Lastly, Marrowgar does a whirlwind. That’s where the counter-intuitive piece comes in, since you really don’t need to run around like a herd of panicked cats to avoid the damage.

I mean, not taking the damage is great if you can avoid it, but the whirlwind doesn’t hurt so bad that you should range your healers. But, ultimately, the whirlwind damage isn’t all that deadly if you’ve got a potion, or if your healers are on their game. I’ve seen more raids die trying to get back together after the whirlwind than raids that die during the whirlwind itself.

Okay, all that being said, let’s take a look at Marrowgar’s actual abilities.

Abilities

Saber Lash: Saber Lash is one of Marrowgar’s more iconic abilities. It is a massive hit that is split evenly between the tank (technically, Marrowgar’s target) and the target’s two closest allies. This is, therefore, also the ability that requires you to have two or three tanks. (Two in 10-man, three in 25-man.) If you don’t have someone else to help soak the damage, this ability will make pretty quick work of your tank.

Coldflame: Coldflame will target a random member of your raid, and then draw a blue, burning line of fire on the ground between Marrowgar and that raid member. Your raid should simply sidestep out of the flame.

Bone Spike Graveyard: This hurls a massive bone at someone. Whoever gets in the way will get impaled. It really sounds like you can avoid it, but I’ve never seen a spike happen without someone getting impaled. As soon as a raid member is impaled on the spike, though, all possible DPS should be dedicated to freeing them. If you leave your raid buddy impaled on the spike, they will die from the periodic damage.

Bonestorm: The ability known as Bonestorm actually looks like a big spinning whirlwind melee attack. Most raiders — especially melee raiders — are very well trained to not stand in whirlwinds. They instinctively pull away from the whirlwind, so as not to get simply turned into jelly as soon as the ability happens.

This whirlwind, however, doesn’t actually do a vast amount of melee damage. If you can somehow manage to avoid it without completely leaving your raid miles away behind you, go for it. Otherwise, just try and sidestep the worst of the hits. Marrowgar will Bonestorm in four different corners, and then return back to his tank.

What makes Bonestorm really dangerous isn’t the melee attacks — it’s the additional Coldflame lines of fire he puts on the ground when the attack occurs. Just like Coldflame itself, you should avoid standing in it. It’s just as deadly as the regular ability.

So, ultimately, if you can manage those four different abilities, you can handle Marrowgar. It’s a gear check — mostly for your tanks, admittedly — to be sure you’re ready for the rest of the Icecrown Citadel.

Achievements

Boned is the only boss-specific achievement for Lord Marrowgar. You achieve Boned by not leaving any raid members on their bone spike for longer than 8 seconds. That’s not a very tough achievement, but it’s made easier with the use of a handy “/target bone” macro. Pulling off Boned will probably rely on your ranged DPS characters more than your melee ones, since it’d take a few second for them to get into position.

Summary

So, the final summary of fighting Lord Marrowgar is pretty simple. Don’t stand in the fire. When he whirlwinds, avoid it if you can, but don’t lose your head trying to dodge it. When Bone Spike Graveyard happens, free your raid members as quickly as possible. Make sure you have two tanks soaking the Saber Lash.

The most difficult part of this fight, again, is fighting the urge to completely scatter while trying to avoid the Bonestorm.

Good luck!

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.

Sometimes you’d like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Is Fallen Earth our answer to a Wild West MMO? I grew up on Clint Eastwood movies. I grew up on Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings songs about cowboy career prevention. Gunsmoke, A Fistful of Dollars and anything else by Sergio Leone are what helped mold my appreciation for what we refer to as the American Wild West.
	Age of Conan offer unlimited free trial With the Age of Conan expansion Rise of the Godslayer approaching, opportunities for new and returning players to explore the game (or revisit it) have been more frequent than usual these days. The latest offer comes via FilePlanet. If you’re a FilePlanet subscriber, you can play the first part of the game for free in an unlimited trial.
	Nearly three-fifths of users buy items in free-to-play games There’s a strong sense in most free-to-play games that the playerbase consists of two people: those who refuse to pay any money unless absolutely necessary, and those who will happily part with their income on a voluntary basis. This is largely true. What’s apparently less true is the notion which goes hand-in-hand, that there are a decided minority of players forking over cash for in-game perks.
	Runic Games talks Torchlight, the upcoming MMO, Diablo comparisons, more Can’t wait for Diablo III? Try Torchlight. The single-player action-RPG, available for just 20 bucks via digital distribution, has got PC gamers talking. But why should Massively readers care, you ask? Because eventually, in about two years or so, developer Runic Games will make it a full-fleged MMO.

	Warhammer Online drops 1.3.3 patch to live servers Rumors of the death of Warhammer Online have been greatly exaggerated. The game is continuing to put out updates on a steady basis — at an accelerated rate, even, despite the recent bout of layoffs.
	Sith Inquisitor class page open for business The final Star Wars: The Old Republic class page is up and features the Sith Inquisitor. We’re pretty certain BioWare has a winner here, because it’s difficult to go wrong with a person that can cast copious amounts of force lightning. If you weren’t aware of that fact, the new screenshots released alongside the class page will correct that problem quite immediately.
	The Digital Continuum: Revitalized Nowadays it seems like a newly released MMO has an estimated lifespan the length of a bag of chips left open overnight. That doesn’t leave much hope for older MMOs, right? It appears that way, but games like EverQuest and EVE Online are doing well enough and they’ve been around for years. Sure, they may not be massive subscription behemoths, but they play home to thriving communities — which is a lot more than I can say for the sunset titles of yesteryear.
	MMOrigins: Life’s funny like that We all got started gaming somewhere. For a lot of people, it was the Sega Mega-drive, the Atari 2600 or the NES that signaled their first steps into gaming. For me, it was the Commodore Amiga, a machine that was more a complete home computer than a games console. It was on the Amiga that groups like Team 17, Ocean, Electronic Arts and Blizzard first really made their mark on gaming and it was a great time of innovation in the industry.
	Funcom unveils SweetRobot, announces Pets vs Monsters When most parents think of children’s MMOs, nobody would likely think of a studio like Funcom. After all, Funcom is the company that brought us Age of Conan, an MMO rife with boobs, blood, and beheading. Quite possibly the absolute last place you’d let your kiddies romp around, really.
	Looking For Group: An expo for MMOers If you don’t have Minneapolis on your places to visit list, you might want to add it now. The city will play host to the first annual “Looking For Group Expo,” a convention dedicated solely to MMOs and everything that surrounds them.
	Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment reveals Stargate shooter instead of MMO After over two years of work on Stargate Worlds and an increasingly dubious outlook, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment launched a website revealing Stargate Resistance. The game defines itself as a third-person shooter, and is scheduled for a release very soon — Q1 2010.

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don’t want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I’m not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money.

The new Dungeon Finder that was added in Patch 3.3 has been garnering a lot of attention lately – and for good reason! But did you know that you could use it to make money?

Step One: Maximizing your speed.
If you spend too much time in each instance, or waiting in the queues, the amount of gold that you make per hour will decline significantly. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to to help ensure that your dungeon runs go as smoothly as possible.

• You can queue from anywhere, so choose a location that will allow you to do some farming on the side should you need to wait in a queue. Why not try a favorite fishing locale? Don’t wander too far away from a vendor, though, unless you have peculiarly empty bags.
• Don’t be choosy. Sign up for a random dungeon, because you are more likely to find a match more quickly.
• To avoid queues almost entirely, sign up as a healer or tank if you can. Don’t do this to trick your group mates, however. Many people are selecting tank or healer and then showing up in green sets expecting someone else to agree to switch specs. This is not only idiotic, it will take more time in the end.
• Queue prepared. This means snacks, drinks, in-game buff food and water, glyphs, enchants, scrolls, flasks, reagents, and whatever else you might spontaneously want.
• Use the teleport feature! On the way into or out of each dungeon, simply click on the little green eye around your mini-map and select teleport. This is also handy if you do have to go back to town in the middle of the dungeon.
• Sell and restock! Between groups, hit up a vendor.
• Keep a good group member! Once you meet up with a good group member, remember that you can keep them! Ask them if they would like to continue playing with you, and make sure that no one degroups between queues. Polite, competent, geared group members will not only make the experience more enjoyable, it will also speed it up significantly, and minimize dying.That last part is important because, aside from the lost time, repairs will cut into your profits.

Step Two: ???
No, I’m just kidding. Step two is the bread and butter! There are some wonderful features and changes that you might not have noticed yet, as well as some generic tips to help you earn big. To begin with, you will want to use a level 80 character if possible, and queue for Heroic Northrend dungeons.

• Right off the bat, you’ll get some goodies. The first successful run each day using the Dungeon Finder tool will net you 26 gold 46 silver and 2 Emblems of Frost. Each subsequent run in the same day will net you half of the gold (13 gold 23 silver), and 2 Emblems of Triumph.These awards are in addition to everything that you get from bosses, including the last boss.
• When something drops that can be rolled for, notice that there is an extra button next to Need and Greed when you have an enchanter in your party, called Disenchant. When you click this, if you win the roll, you will automatically get the disenchanted materials instead of the item. This is a great way to make money. Although the prices of Infinite Dust are down on many servers because the drop rate has been increased, on many servers, they are still selling for 2-2.5g a piece, and you’re likely to get 5-7. It is also a helpful way to get your own Dream Shards, Abyss Crystals, and if you get lucky, Greater Cosmic Essences. The price for the essences has risen wildly on many servers, so be smart with how you auction your new goodies!
• To gamble, or not to gamble? A weapon, whether green or blue, is going to be worth over 10 gold most likely. In fact, you can check the exact amount simply by hovering over the tooltip! As such, the vendors will pay you more for it. Of course, they also award more, or better, disenchanted materials.
• Pick up everything. From food and water to greys and up, don’t pass on or ignore any piece of loot. Keep in mind that you will need some bag space, and take heed of my advice to hit up a vendor at every chance you get. Otherwise, you’re simply throwing away several gold per mob that you were able to loot. If you can skin, mine, or herbalize, politely ask if you can harvest the nodes that you encounter.

Step Three: Profit!
This is the fun part. You can vendor plenty of items in between queues, but you can also funnel auctionables to your bank alts via the mail. If you don’t have anything pressing to purchase using your badges, remember that you can always buy heirloom for alts or even epic gems, which you can either use or resell for a profit.

So how many times per day can you exploit this? As many times as you can stand to before beginning to pull out your hair. As long as you are using the Random feature, the completion of a Heroic will not give you a lock-out. In fact, even if you are locked out for the day, if the Random feature selects that dungeon, you will still be able to go. Happy dungeoning!

If you’re new to dungeoning, why not head over and check out WoW Rookie’s Grouping With Others collection of articles and guides?