Be Excellent To Each Other

I remember that from years ago. Epic stuff.


Deep down, I think the whole internet is really just Eve Online.

Right, swords and hands...

I am a mage, I can use sticks with "two hand" in the description (whilst also having a wand in my off-hand, apparently) and I can use a sword or two described as "one hand". I've now got an "Edged bastard sword of the eagle" and want to hit things with it, but when I go to equip my avatar says "I can't use that yet".

Now, on my spellbook (which is the obvious place for sword skills, right?) I've got illuminated "Sword Specialisation (racial passive)" but when I mouseover it says "requires one handed swords, two handed swords" in red. Then in weapon skills it says I've got one handed swords and mentions nothing of two-handed.

So will I eventually get two-handed swords somehow and should I keep this sword then or flog it?

As a mage, it's probably best you forget about swords and physically hitting stuff entirely; you're a magic class and would be absolutely useless in physical combat.

Your race has specific skills that apply whatever your class is, which is what sword specialisation is. This doesn't mean that each class can get effective use of the racial skills, or even use them at all, it's just the default to start with.

As a mage, you only want to use physical weapons as stats, you never want to get anywhere close enough to hit anything physically

I'm an L20 mage on Terenas, who are you?

Those graphics are shit.

Stuff runs towards me though, can't freeze it all at L20. I tend to find that when something is down to a pixel of health twatting it with my tick is immensely satisfying.

Can you expand on 'use as stats'?

Also, are you perchance in Malevolence for any of your guild stuff on Terenas?

Good question, can't remember! Haven't logged on to them in years...
Let me see if I can find out on the armoury.

L38 Draenei Warrior called Hitit
L63 Draenei Priest called Zizii
L42 Gnome Warlock called Wando
L55 Gnome Death Knight called Gnorbert
L1 Human Warrior called Misspriss (auction house character)
L6 Night Elf Rogue called Proddy

Blimey!

Malevolence?

By all means hit stuff when it does come in range if you don't have any close range spells or AoE to use, but you will never hit very hard.

Use as stats, means just use whatever weapon you can find that has as much intellect and stamina as possible, as that will affect your spells.

Gotcha, makes sense.

You should never resort to hitting. Ideally you would kill everything before it reaches you. It depends what specialisation you have gone really, but the basic idea is the same...
Start at maximum range of your spells. Wind up a big, long range spell. Fireball or Frostbolt probably. (Frostbolt is good as it slows the monster down too). Keep nuking as they get closer, and when they get up close, fire of an instant (fire-blast if you are fire spec, cone of cold for a frost spec. Then ice nova, step back a couple of steps, & fire off a big one again. they should be dead.

If they still have a smidge of health left, then get thee to a auction house, and buy yourself a WAND. This is the mage equivalent of a hitty hitty weapon, and does reasonable dps at low levels.

At higher levels you should kill em before they reach, or use frost nova & blink to get range again & then if ice spec, ice lance FTW!

And get a staff with as much int as you can find

Here's me:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... yva/simple

Wand is the best I've found, ditto staff. Now, to kill an thing, I frostbolt, then lob an arcane barrage if it is a run at you shouting monster or counterspell if it is a do magic on you monster, as arcane barrage is instant and you can cast it whilst backpedalling. Then I've got fire blast if it closes the distance quickly or firebolt if not, as that takes time to charge. Obviously at L20 I've been getting plenty of arcane missiles so I use them when available. I think I'm more or less there with the hang of attacks, and doing things in a sensible order.

Now, how do I know if I'm a fire or ice spec? Is that the talents? I've put my points into arcane so far, and can now, I believe, open one of the other two.

Is there anything wrong with arcane? Can I be arcane spec? Am I breaking my character?

I think you have to choose your specialisation at level 10 - you can only add points to the tree you have specialised in at first.
Arcane spec is ok. The spec doesn't make a huge amount of difference overall, but you should use the spells for that spec mostly, as they are the ones that get the dmg bonuses from your specialisation (for arcane, you get 25% dmg on arcane spells only)

I prefer frost myself for levelling, as the slows you get give you more time to kill em before they reach you & you get a water elemental (that has a ranged frost nova, which is ace). Once you get to level 40, you can add a slow to the arcane spec which will make life easier.

A couple of your items have agility on them, which is an absolute 'nothing' stat for a mage, if you've literally had no other choice from quest rewards or drops off mobs, then fair enough, but basically you want all your items to have INT > STAM > SPIRIT on then. Good secondary stats are hit, critical strike and haste.

It's never a bad idea to have a look on the auction house for suitable items for your character, at low levels they're usually very cheap.

I notice you have alchemy and herbalism as your professions, which complement each other excellently but alchemy is effectively a waste of time until you're at the end game. As it stands, you're going to be using all the herbs you gather to make a big pile of shit with alchemy that no one wants to buy and you can't use to any decent effect either. Your best bet is to pair herbalism with one of the other gathering professions (mining or skinning) and simply sell all the goodies on the auction house, that way you'll start to get a decent sum of gold on your character from an early stage which makes buying items, weapons, training, riding training, mounts etc pretty much a formality when you get to the required level.

Your 'spec' is determined by which talent tree you put your points into, when you dinged Level 10 you'll have been told to specialise in a tree, and from them on it's generally a good idea to put all your talent points into that one tree until you've reached the 'end' talent (that happens at Level 70 if you put them all into the same tree), from there you can either pick desirable talents in one or both of the other two trees, or continue to stack up on the one tree.

Whichever spec you go for, you'll find there are a lot of common spells, for example frostbolt, fireball and arcane barrage are usable by any mage, but the points you put into the respective talent tree will modify the power of those attacks, their cast time, additional effects etc.

As a general rule of thumb if you're a frost mage then frostbolt is you bread and butter attack, fireball for a fire mage, and IIRC arcane barrage/missiles (can't remember) for an arcane mage.

Historically frost was always the best spec for levelling as you get all sorts of nifty freezes and slow effects to use on the enemy, plus a full time 'pet' water elemental at L40 (I think).

But at the end of the day use what works for you If you find you're getting mobs into melee range of you on a regular basis and/or and wanting to 'hit them on the head' with something, then something's gone wrong Mages wear cloth armour and are very squishy and have no meaningful melee attacks, the idea is to kill stuff before it gets close enough to bash you on the head, and if it does, use trickery to get yourself out of range and resume casting at them.

Nowadays, you get the water elemental a tiny bit earlier. As in 'its the iconic ability you get for picking Frost at level 10'

I've added a missile to Arcane barrage and this seems to be dropping shit a lot faster, good for an extra 40 points per impact.

And I've got a cat, which is pointless.

And I've been given a quest called Mastering the Arcane wich should get me a wizard staff with +5 wizardiness on it... but it's in Silverpine Forest and I'm unsure how to get there from Stormwind without going via the burning steppes.


/edit just asked my mate for a lift up to silverpine and he said it would be pointless as I'd be replacing the staff the quest up there would get me in a few levels anyway. Thing is, it's quite a nice bit of kit for a L21 mage...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Staff_of_the_Royal_Wizard

compared to my one:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Parker%27s_Yardstick


I dunno, some people seem to take things too seriously, he's talking to me like an eve player "why do you want to do that?" "I dunno, fun? adventure?"

Makebelieve wizard games: serious business!

That's actually an instance quest, you get the bits you need inside Shadowfang Keep. You can either queue yourself in the dungeon finder (specifically tick the Shadowfang Keep box instead of using the random), or get a friendly high level player to blast you through it.

If you use the dungeon finder you won't have to actually travel there, and since you can only do the quest in a group, you may as well.

As to your last point, yes, sometimes it's satisfying just to do something for the fun/challenge/adventure.

In my recent experience, don't expect to enjoy the process. The instance will be ripped through as fast as possible with no pauses to enjoy or look around a bit!

Groups seem to fall into categories:

1) The no-nonsense seen it all before let's blast through it ASAP group

and

2) The bunch of imbeciles who have no idea whatsoever what they're doing and thus maximum comedy value is assured

I love the squabbling some of the groups descend into, it can get very funny.

Flying around Storm Peaks at the moment, still trying to find bastard bloody rancid stupid spirit beast Skoll to tame for my hunter, oh it's just the most gorgeous music. (And I already have other spirit beasts, so it's not like Skoll will 'do anything' other than look different to my others.)

http://youtu.be/IUtAZaXe3CY?t=1m54s

http://youtu.be/IUtAZaXe3CY?t=5m10s

After a couple of hours of running random 85 heroics (which can get a bit 'busy' with unskilled groups), it's amazing that it's possible to change gear so absolutely and comprehensively, and just fly around looking for a wolf soaking up the atmosphere and music - whilst still playing the same game.

Few other guildies online so we can all chat to each other, it's really most pleasant.

Cheers, is there an in-game conceit for how we're all supposed to suddenly be at this quest or does it just zap you there in a fourth-wall-breaking way?

I've been dungeon-permitted since level 15 but not done one yet as I figured I'd climb a level or three first and enjoy/learn from the experience as opposed to going in one as quickly as possible and grinding it worrying about dying all the way through.

Well there's a bit of a history to instances.

Back in the day instances were really quite an event, there was no dungeon finder, no list of what you could and couldn't do, you just sort of discovered them naturally in the game.

For example the lowest level Alliance instance was (and still is) Deadmines. You'd come across the 'Defias' gangsters in all their various forms from Westfall onwards, you'd be given the story behind them, have to kill a lot of them, go and track down a Defias courier to intercept their communications, all sorts of stuff. Eventually you'd start to get together a list of quests that'd be flagged as 'DUNGEON' in your quest log, and finally you'd be given a quest to retrieve the head of the major Defias dude.

Once you had all the quests stacked up and ready to go, (and getting 'ready' for an instance could literally take hours of questing), your task then was to put a group together, there was none of this cross-realm grouping or shit like that, you either had to get together with four other people you knew on your server to make a viable instance group (this is where guilds were invaluable), or you had to start asking out in the 'Looking For Group' channel in a city, you know - 'Making group for Deadmines, got healer and two DPS, need tank and one DPS' or whatever it was you had and needed.

Eventually you'd get your five intrepid adventurers together, and at least two of you would need to get to the summoning stone near Deadmines, and from there you could summon in the rest of the party.

Then, and only then, could you actually start the instance

And make no mistake, instances were fucking hard.

An instance group comprises of one tank, one healer, and three DPS. The enemies you face in instances generally consist of 'packs' of mobs, none of this killing one thing at a time stuff, and pretty much every single mob in an instance is Elite class (they have that gold crest thing around their level indicator). So whereas when you're out questing you might be killing one 'normal' level 16 mob at a time, in Deadmines you're going to get jumped by three-five 'Elite' level 16 mobs all at once. Elites generally having 5-6 times the health of a normal mob, a load of extra abilities, and hitting like trucks.

Instance roles:

TANK - (Warrior (Protection), Paladin (Protection), Druid (in bear form), Death Knight (Blood)) - Plate wearer melee class (except for bear druids who use 'natural' armour), the tank's job is get 'aggro' on all the mobs, that is, make everything want to hit him instead of the squishy healer or DPS guys. He doesn't do a massive amount of damage, but he soaks it up, and uses all his abilities to taunt/hit/enrage/interrupt/etc all the bad guys in the current 'pull' (a 'pull' is a group of enemies) so that the DPS can do their job. All the time the:

HEALER - (Priest (Holy or Discipline), Druid (in tree form), Paladin (Holy), Shaman (Restoration) - The healer keeps the tank alive, without constant heals from the healer, the tank will die in about five seconds flat. As soon as the tank dies, the mobs 'aggro' goes straight for everyone else, and they'll happily kill the average DPS or healer in about two seconds. (In some cases they'll literally 'one shot' them.) The healer chooses his heals situationally, as all his heals cost mana, and he only has so much mana before he runs out. The healer will also heal up DPS who get aggro, or stand in the shit, or just happen to be in a fight that includes AoE (area of effect) damage that hits everyone. The healer's task is also to dispel/cleanse/cure harmful diseases/spells/curses etc that enemy casters may inflict upon the party. Between them, the tank and healer enable the last class in an instance to do their job.

DPS (Damage) - Every class in the game has a spec that can do damage, some classes are 'pure' DPS and can do nothing else (mages and hunters for example) - The DPS guys are there to take out the bad guys before the healer runs out of mana and the tank dies. Because once the tank dies, it's all over. It's not just as simple as 'pew pew pew' though, each DPS class brings something to the party that they may be required to do. A mage may be asked to use his polymorph spell to 'sheep' an enemy for a minute of a fight to take a particularly dangerous caster out of action whilst the rest of the pack is killed, a hunter can use his traps to the same effect, or use his 'misdirect' ability to transfer aggro to the tank, a druid can hibernate an enemy beast for a minute etc. Mostly DPS use what are collectively referred to as 'crowd control' abilities to reduce the effectiveness of a 'pull', effectively removing one or more enemies from the 'pull' to make it easier to take the pack down.

If a pull goes badly wrong certain classes can temporarily step into a role, a DPS Paladin (Retribution) can chuck out a few heals for example if things are going badly wrong, a DPS Warrior (Arms or Fury) can off-tank a mob or two if aggro is badly split. A mage can 'control' a mob or two with frost nova for a few seconds, that sort of thing.

And this dynamic is maintained for EVERY SINGLE PULL throughout the entire instance. Then you've got the bosses, and they're another bowl of piranhas entirely, which generally require specific tactics from everyone to get past them.

I remember back when we ran instances a few years ago, we were all on Teamspeak, and we'd sometimes talk about a single pull for three or four minutes, discussing where to use crowd control, which mob was likely to start to run at low health and thus try to pull the next pack, who might need extra heals, all that shit. It was immensely challenging but I have to say it was very satisfying when you nailed it, some instances could take three or four hours to complete.

HOWEVER - the good news is that all this is largely in the past Instances have been massively nerfed over the years, and never more so than in Cataclysm, to the extent now that you only need some semblance of a competent group to get through them. Healers can generally heal through abominations of fuck-ups that in the past would have wiped the group harder than Charlie Sheen's girlfriends get punched in the face. Tanks don't even need to be properly tank geared, DPS can shoot at pretty much whatever they want and the healer can cope, it really takes a group of utter fucking retards to get wiped these days.

On top of that, you've got the dungeon finder which just takes you straight to the instance and probably drops a few of the quests into your lap as well. In short, just use the dungeon finder, and dive in, you really can't go too far wrong. On top of that, the item drops in dungeons are waaaayyyyy better than what you'll get out in the open world, even the 'greens' that drop in there are tasty, and each boss drops a 'blue' (i.e. superior quality), and the quest rewards will be blues as well.

For example, here's a quest reward drop that'd be nice for a mage out of Shadowfang Keep - http://www.wowhead.com/item=65910

And of course, once you're out of the dungeon, all your fancy new gear makes your job when questing and killing out by yourself again that much easier, because you've got more mana, your spells hit harder, you've got more health etc.

From 15-60 instances are largely a formality, Outland (Burning Crusade 60-70) ramps it up a bit, Wrath of the Lich King (70-80) ramps it up again, and Cataclysm dungeons (80+) are pretty tough, and then there are the Cataclysm heroics (85+, well geared Level 85 characters only need apply) which aren't quite as brutal as they were at the launch of the expansion (there have been a couple of new tiers of gear since then), but can still wipe an incompetent group in the blink of an eye.

A really good example of a complex 'old-fashioned' pull is in an instance called Throne of the Tides, on heroic 85 level there's a pull that consists of two healer mobs, one caster mob, and two melee mobs. The healers are absolutely ferocious, and will constantly cast massive heals on themselves and their friends. They're so good at this that without crowd control, the pull is literally is impossible, as the goody DPS guys simply can't out-DPS the baddies' heals, so it's basically a stalemate until the goody healer runs out of mana and the tank gets squashed.

If you only crowd control one of the healers, and don't kill the other healer quickly enough, he will cast something called 'rally' that will break the crowd control on his chum, who'll immediately join back in and start healing everyone.

The way to handle this pull is to crowd control BOTH healers (a mage's sheep and a hunter's ice trap for example), and target the caster as the main pull attack target (casters are generally very high damage but low health, a bit like mages), once he's dead kill the melee mobs, then break the crowd control on one healer, kill him, break the crowd control on the other and kill him, pull completed.

Crowd control doesn't last for an infinite amount of time though, so if you don't get the job done in about 60 seconds, the crowd control guy may have to break off from DPS for a few seconds to reapply his crowd control.

All the 'olde worlde' dungeons are listed here - http://www.wowhead.com/zones=2.0#0+2+1

So you can read ahead on what the bosses are, what drops you can look forward to, what quests you might want to pick up ahead of going in there, all that stuff.

Just have a go, stick yourself in the dungeon finder and have a crack. The worst that can happen is you're so crap the group votekicks you out

Today's new pet is 'Ashtail' - a rare spawn fox to be found in Loch Modan. (I have renamed him to 'Mulder'.)

Excellently, he has a bonus ability called 'Play' which 'puts him into a playful state', which translates to him doing a cute dance.

Can't see me using him in instances though, despite him being Ferocity class (i.e. best DPS), his special attack is a shitty tailspin thing that slows down enemies' attack speeds but doesn't actually do any damage, more a raid utility than anything really.

Yay I got him, one of the hardest to find and coolest looking pets in the game And it only took me, erm, quite a lot of active hunting in Storm Peaks.

Still, she looks cool, so it's worth it. (I've decided Skoll can be a girl.)

Cheers for the exhaustive on dungeonsw, that's made it all crystal clear now. How do I rename my cat? Also, if I'm one of 5 people in an instance, and the big special loot gets dropped, do we get the 'staff of whatever' each, or do we have to decide who gets it?

Only hunters can rename their tamed pets (by right-clicking their portrait) and nobody can rename the various little non-combat vanity pets available.

As far as loot, there are various different systems, but you'll rarely run into anything other than ‘Need before Greed’: when something of value drops, a popup appears asking you if you need the item or not — anybody who needs it automatically rolls a number between 1 and 100 and the highest wins; if nobody needs it, the roll goes between everyone else.

Loot drops work on a NEED OR GREED roll system.

Basically, after a boss is killed (each instance contains multiple bosses), one of the players loots him as you would any dead mob, but everyone in the group then sees what the goodies are.

All members of the party then consider if the item is desirable for them or not, and choose from NEED, GREED, or PASS.

NEED rolls take priority over GREED, and a PASS is self-explanatory.

If only one player needs, he gets the item, if more than one player needs, the game assigns each need roll a number between 1 and 100 and displays it on the screen, whoever gets the highest roll gets the item.

Greed rolls work in the same way if there are multiple greeds.

There's also an extra option sometimes which is DISENCHANT. If there is an enchanter in the group, you can roll to disenchant the item, disenchant rolls are weighted the same as greed rolls, but whoever wins the roll gets the results of the items being disenchanted (which can sometimes be quite valuable).

The game is semi-intelligent about who it will let roll NEED on what. For example as a mage you wouldn't be allowed to roll need on a sword with strength and stamina on it as it'd be useless to you, similarly a warrior wouldn't be allowed to roll need on a cloth piece of caster gear.

There are also armour classes to consider, as a mage you can only wear cloth items, so you can't roll need on leather, mail, or plate.

It's a lot more strict than it used to be, in the past players could roll need on anything they could equip, for some items such as trinkets (which are armour class independent), you'd get people rolling need on stuff they clearly didn't want for their main spec, or in the case of BoE (bind on equip) items, were clearly just rolling need on to sell on the auction house.

Nowadays it really has restricted the need rolls as much as it possibly can, but it can still be abused. Rolling need on something you don't actually need is considered a 'ninja' roll and is generally frowned on, and will often get the offender kicked from a group.

There are of course some grey areas, for example priest healers will be after cloth gear with INT>SPIRIT>STAM on them, but as a mage such an item could be a substantial upgrade for you, even if spirit isn't much of a useful stat for mages.

In such situations it is considered polite to ask the healer if he needs the item for himself, and if not you could roll need on it yourself.

You'll find that most rolls are over very quickly, with everyone rolling greed maybe 90% of the time, and arguments about rolls are pretty rare in low level instances. Even if the 'wrong' person wins a roll, items can still be traded between members of the group to rectify a cheeky ninja roll.

Be aware that all boss drops are what is known as BIND ON PICKUP, that is to say that the item becomes soulbound as soon as you win it (with the exception of trading it between party members), so you can't sell it on the auction house, you can only vendor it.

Drops off the trash mobs (usually green item quality) are almost all BIND ON EQUIP, which means you are free to use the item yourself, or stick it on the auction house if you want to try and make some cash.

That's frightfully dumb of them.

I think the idea is that hunters are far more attached to their pets than any other class, and they're like a proper full time companion. Warlocks for example can summon a variety of minions for different situations and they're all a bit generic, it's not like they suit being named really.

It's also a unique selling point for the hunter class (every class is given one or two cool things that's unique to them), and since you have to make a conscious decision what sort of pet you want, go out and tame it, and then it potentially spends the entire game by your side, it makes sense that you'd want to give it a name.

Vanity pets are just that really, and IMO don't really deserve to be given proper names.

If you want your own named pet, roll a hunter

Hunters are taming animals from the wild, and making them pets. Giving them names makes sense. Warlocks are summoning demons from wherever the hell demons come from in hell, probably not the best idea to go 'Hi ZZZ'gtlik, dread demon, you're now Mr Fluffles' This might piss the demon off.

I probably will when I roll a horde character on some other server. Not sure I fancy buffing or tanking until I start on my third really.

The advantage of being a healer or a tank is that they're far more in demand for the random dungeon finder. Partly it's just a question of numbers (one tank and one healer to three DPS), but it's also that they are the more challenging, skilful, and demanding roles.

Healers will usually measure their wait times in terms of a minute or two, tanks are literally grouped up within three seconds, even if they choose a specific dungeon they want to do.

Healing and especially tanking are thankless tasks. If someone dies, then its your fault, no matter what. Knobhead DPSers who are better geared and higher level than the tank,(ie you) will not ever ease back on their rotations, will refuse to attack your target to make aggro management easier, and then blame you when they get torn to shreds.

All those things can be problems, but quite frankly when I'm tanking the group either plays properly or they can piss off.

Ninja pullers, over-aggroers, people who break CC or won't CC what they're told, won't attack the marked targets in the correct order, won't follow tactics etc - get asked politely once, then not so politely, and then I votekick them, explaining to the rest of the group why I am doing so. The other DPS-ers know full well that if the tank decides he's had enough and leaves the group, they'll be twiddling their thumbs for 10 minutes waiting for a new tank, so getting the arsehole kicked is usually a formality.

Now that's not to say I have any problem whatsoever with explaining tactics for a fight to a group, and I appreciate mistakes happen (if a DPS apologises for a mistake I always respond with something like 'np it happens ), and that not everyone is as skilled as everyone else - I'm very tolerant of a wide range of groups and abilities and at the end of the day it's a game and everyone's there to have fun. I'd much rather spend a few minutes explaining tactics or giving someone advice than just flouncing off and leaving them to it.

I will not however tolerate the utter dickfaces who just flat out make the run a miserable experience for everyone else, and totally refuse to listen to anything that anyone else says, so they get fucked off in fairly short order.

Obviously when I'm healing it's a different dynamic as the tank is the natural group leader and the healer isn't, although I have refused to heal idiot DPS plate wearers who try to trick the queue by joining as a tank when they have no gear whatsoever and are thus the world's biggest mana sink and couldn't hold aggro in a bucket, if I can't get a votekick through there I simply leave the group, patiently linking the tank's gear to the rest of the group before I do so. (In those situations you can actually get the tank kicked.)

When I'm DPS-ing it's a different thing again, in a way you just have to suck it up in a bad group and do the best you can, as you're pretty much literally infinitely replaceable. If the group is a total clusterfuck I'll try to advise/help/assist the best I can, but if it's beyond redemption I'll just explain why I'm leaving, and then leave, in the hope that folks might go away and try to understand what they're doing wrong.

The key point is communication, if you explain WHY an individual is a liability to the rest of the group, the rest of the group will almost always fall behind you. There are occasions when you get 2-4 people all in the from the same guild, who seem determined to make the last one or two peoples' lives a misery.

I did once lose my temper in that situation when healing on my priest in Stonecore (85 heroic), there's a really simple mechanic where everyone has to jump on one of the enemy's casts called 'QUAKE', anyone who isn't in mid-air as the cast finishes gets hit for about 3/4 of their health. I specifically asked everyone to jump on the quake before the tank pulled, and no one did for the two times he cast it before he died. So I had a tank and three DPS to heal up from near death twice in the space of a minute, then they all fucking did it again on the next mob who had the same ability and despite me having asked them again before the pull.

Having been out of mana at this point I chucked a lightwell down and did a /yell HEAL YOUR FUCKING SELVES YOU USELESS SHOWER OF TWATS.

Three seconds later I was kicked from the group

All that said there are a lot of good players out there, and in turn, a lot of good groups. Some of the best runs I've ever had through instances have been with randoms, and if you can get a bit of banter going between everyone, they can be really entertaining too.

Just done my first dungeon. Most bewildering and frustrating experience in the history of gaming. I'm going for a fag.

What was the instance? Were the group any good?

Well, we won, so I suppose they were competent at least. More so than I.

OK, from memory:

i was probably picking a bad time as I'm in the middle of odd 12 hour shifts and I get a few hours at random times when I'm half awake and have time to game, having subbed 2 weeks ago I thought I'd better put a couple of hours in.

I was doing Shadowfang Keep, which I remembered from last time I logged on to be in order to get a new staff which gives me +5 int and so on. I thought I had to get the staff of the main baddie. Anyroad, I went to the dungeon finder thingy and signed up as a hitter of things for damage as opposed to a healer or that, what with me being a mage. My intent: Chuck sheepification, freezo-zap and stop baddie-magic at first then when colleagues rush in, twat mobs with my arcane smackdowns until mobs are all dead.

We get a team together, warp into Shadowfang Keep. I Look around and it is quite congested in a little lobby. There's some exposition from NPCs but I'm not ready to take that in yet, just trying to figure out who I'm in there with and what their roles/characters are. I can't really see anything properly so zoom out but instinctively back off from the group a cuple of in-fame feet, as all the avatars, pets, hangers on are clipping one another. I am suddenly back in Stormwind. Have I been kicked? Bug? Crash? What? Eventually I figure out I've walked backwards into a warpy purple blob so find a button to warp me back and there I am. The possee are voting to kick some other guy for being afk, so I vote yes to that. There's not much chatter. Everyone is off and running as son as I return. I follow, and as they progress through the keep I do my best to use my spells intelligently, thinning the numbers and ensheepening mobs and so on, but some of the mobs won't be sheeped. This may be because they are 'undead' which as I recall is generic RPG shorthand for 'fuck you and the character you've skilled in a certain direction, this is now useless because we said so'. I hit them with fire and things until they go away. The first batch is killed. Some are standing around, some running about getting stuff, I don't know what I'm doing here really, can I take this shit on the floor? When a thing is dropped, is it first come first served or will a separate version of each be visible to each person in the party?

I get my answer soon enough - a dialogue comes up which partially explains itself - I can go into a lottery for "Angry Dave's Axe of Sliciness" or I can say I really need it, in which case those who've gone into lucky dip for it bow out autogracefully. But what if me and the next guy both need Angry Dave's Axe of Sliciness? What if it's what we're both in there for? I never got an answer.

Next set of mobs, and the same repeats, we all more or less get on with it, I grab a few bits of loot from bodies, assuming someone will bollock me if I'm doing it wrong. Eventually, I die and am ghostified outside the Keep. I run in, am manifest once agani but back to square one. I run back to the party, getting lost in the bit where it all looks the same for a while, and run into a room what doesn't seem to be on the beaten path, yet is full of pwnage mobs who kill me dead in moments. Back outside again. Eventually I catch up to the party. They're having a good-nature giggle at my expense but we're near the end of the instance. At this stage I'm noticing the following:

1: Voice chat would be really fucking helpful - you can't do types types and fight at the same time
2: It's really fucking hard to target things properly when everything blobs one point on the map.
3: Sometimes, by the time I'm figuring out what needs attacking, looked at it and decided what to hit it with, it's dead and I'm starting that process again.
4: The alternative, twatting everything with anything, is wasteful.
5: I've looked at the quest doobery, apparently I need to get some thingummies and a few whatchamicallits and return them to this guy in Stormwind, who will make me the staff. I remember now. But I've not got quite enough of some of the stuff, I don't think, as I walk into the last battle. So will i need to do it again? I've been picking up what I can.

Eventually Mr Hat Bloke at the end of the instance dies, after waving us all around in the air for a bit and all of us except the guy who is a bear dying. I'd decided I wouldn't bother my arse resurrecting myself and doing all that running again. Someione else resurrected us all and then everyone fucks off. I've got all my quest items, not sure how I came by them. I return to Stormwind and get my staff which pumps my magey skills up by about 5 apiece and has a spinny thing on the end. Nice.

Then I've gone and learned to ride and bought a horsie. There goes my life savings to date - about three gold. My mate Pat reckons he's posting me some more gold as he's got thousands. I'm now in Darkwood. More undead things. Turn into a sheep, damn you!

You can only sheep 'humanoid' and 'animals'. Undead, elementals, demons, & dragonkin are out
(other classes have crowd control, or 'cc' got them)

Loot-wise, anything that is sparkly & you can grab is yours. Anything else is 'need/greed', and you get a little window with the icons for this. As a mage, you should only 'need' if it has int on, if it has spirit - wait to see if the healer presses need. If they do - etiquette dictates you should pass (spirit is next to useless for a mage) I would reccomend getting the addon 'pawn' which tells you if a drop is a good upgrade for you.

Mainly, try and join a guild which accommodates total moons, as guild groups are much more tolerant of mistakes, and will often take the time to explain stuff for you

I thought I was doing crowd control? According to my offical strategy guide, I am.



Righto.



I get guild offers all the time, which I put down to being an sexy redhead. Will find one eventually, just not sure what the advantage of being in one at L23 is yet.

You CC humanoids, which to be fair are one of the most common types of monster. However dungeons are themed, and some will be mainly demons or elementals. the official strategy guides are a bit.. um... wrong mostly The game has evolved so that CC'ing is spread amongst a number of classes depending on the mob type.



Bottom line - socialising. Guild groups is the main advantage. You also get access to people with higher level trade skills than you, and people who randomly find Bind on Equip loot who are altruistic enough to offer it to fellow guildies. You also get a new chat channel to talk to people, especially useful when doing random groups as you can moan about the noobs in your group, and get useful advice, as well as people who will happily cheer you on as you find good loot and level. Even advanced players will often have alts who they can use to help you take on some elite quests or dungeons. You generally want a nice large guild (if you were on Dragonblight I could reccomend a few), which generally WON'T be the ones spamming you with guild invites. Oh, and when you join a guild, you stop being spammed by noobs for invites.

Also (& this is VERY important), you now get guild perks. These include - increased XP gain, increased reputation gains, faster mount speed, more money from monsters, more chance of gaining a +1 tradeskill when you make anything, reduced cost when you die, faster running speed when dead (makes corpse runs easier). See this link

Guilds are good, m'kay. Join a guild.

Mr Dom has pretty much got it all covered there, and yes the official strategy guides are quite badly out of date now, so don't take everything in them as gospel.

Crowd control duties are far more evenly spread out amongst the classes now, partly because Cata dungeon design means you need a lot more of it, but mostly because Blizzard have tried to adjust the game in all regards so that dungeon/raid groups don't 'need' certain classes to fulfil certain roles.

i.e. Back in the day you wanted a paladin healer for tank healing duty in a raid, you'd want mages for crowd control, a shaman to pop heroism at the right time, hunters for a tranquillising shot on specific fights - all that sort of thing.

This was all very well and good but it meant that groups, guild raids etc could get quite frustrating for some folks if they weren't the 'right' class, even though they were correctly geared and specced for tanking/healing/DPS, they wouldn't get asked along.

As such Blizzard have tweaked the game over the years so that pretty much all DPS classes have a viable form of crowd control, all healing classes can group/tank heal (paladins used to be fucking dreadful for group and raid healing, and were just tank healers, plain and simple), and all tanking classes can perform well on all fights, as can the DPS-ers.

That's not to say the preferences have completely gone away, some classes still do better than others in certain situations, but overall Blizzard's publicly stated design strategy is that someone shouldn't be discriminated against because of their class, and that it should be enough to be appropriately geared and specced for the role.

You really should have more gold than that by now, what professions have you got?

Are you selling stuff on the auction house and do you have Auctioneer installed?

I've hardly been playing, in my defence. L23.

I've been to the auction house and had a look, not installed any plugins.

This is pretty much mandatory for any kind of use of the auction house:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addo ... oneer.aspx

You'll need to start making some cash because as you level up things will start costing more money, to the point that the cash you're given for questing and suchlike won't cover your expenses.

So, first time round it took me 13 days to get to 60 on vanilla wow.
I have just stepped through the portal to Outland at L58 in 2 days, 3 hours. I expect to be at 60 in the next couple of hours!

Blimey.

Outland is really quick now, just instance your way through it for maximum speedage.

It's always worth stopping off at 66 to quest Nagrand out though, which is still one of the most gorgeous zones in the game, both visually and aurally.

I'll most likely quest my way through. Instances are fun, but I much prefer hanging out in the world and playing my own way

I did a few rounds of Arathi Basin yesterday, pvp is still as much fun as ever I've never pvp'ed with a hunter before, and they are a bit of a glass cannon, but it was thoroughly good fun in the 50-55 band (or is it 50-54?). A few one shot kills with aimed shot are always a laugh and I managed to come top the leaderboard on my second go.
Then I levelled up to the next band (55-59) and got thoroughly pwned on regular occasions Still good fun though. I was always more of a low level pvp'er in the old days, did countless rounds of WSG at L19 and AB at L29 with my holy priest and arms warrior. I expect i'll be back in the pvp game more and more once I get up to 85...

Hunters are pretty poor overall at PvP, unless you can keep your foes at range you're fucked.

I'm not really into PvP, which makes the fact our guild is on a PvP server a bit odd.

Yup, but if you get the drop on someone, you can do some serious burst damage in the first second or two. If they survive that and it's 1v1 then you are fucked