Again, if you’re in BDL, Awsmpallytnk by now has most but not all of the glyph recipes; check there first if there’s something you need.
I have no idea what glyphs are or do. I have no idea about enchanting - I know it’s a profession and for some reason one of the recent patches will let me hit Disenchant sometimes even thought I’m not an Enchanter.
I knew this is where I’d get frustrated. I’ve seen my glyph screen and a Glyph Vendor, but beyond that, the game has never told me anything about glyphs, why I want them, etc. Disenchanting something turns it into materials, I think, but I don’t know how that helps me. This is a character not on BDL, my guildmates love spellcasting classes so they only Tailor.
For gems, I understand I try to find the best one for my colour socket. But I get the same upgrade (+4 Agility in this case) for any gem colour in each piece of intro gear (the first tier you can buy at the Argent Tournament). So why are there different gem colours?
I wish the game would explain this stuff to you. They lead you by the hand up to around level 15 and give a lot of mercy when you start using the RDF. But suddenly once I ding 80 I’m supposed to know everything. I have to look at guides just to figure out how to use things, whether or not what is the BEST thing, which makes me feel like I’m one step away from the people who have to keep spreadsheets just to play EVE Online at all.
flails Okay, I just looked up the places above. It never even occurred to me that 10-man raids should come before 5-man Heroics. I’ve never done a raid before.
Now I know why people say hitting 80 isn’t the endgame, it’s just the beginning. I feel like a total newbie all over again.
None of those are 10 man raids.
Sorry, that’s overly terse. They’re labeled Icecrown Citadel, but they’re 5-man level 80 dungeons.
Curious. When my draenei mage hit level 80, she was able to get right into Heroics, wearing mostly quest greens except for the BoA robe and shoulders. I had never run a single “normal” dungeon with her.
I’m trying to figure out what’s up with all the Horde attacks on Goldshire on Argent Dawn, my RP server. I can hardly travel through or fly over Elwynn Forest, day or night, without seeing “Goldshire is under attack!” Seriously, it’s worse than the Alliance “raids” on The Crossroads. It’s almost nonstop. One group of Horde finishes up with their “fun”, and ten minutes later another gang of them shows up. All I can figure is non-roleplayers trying to grief the RP (such as it is) in Goldshire. It’s not like Argent Dawn’s Goldshire is anything like Moon Guard’s.
It does give me a roleplaying idea, though: roll a blood elf who is a history buff, and who has rejected his own culture because he longs for the time before his people became “blood elves”. Cast out of Silvermoon, he has resettled in Goldshire, where he makes it his business to lecture any Horde who show up. He’ll be the only Goldshire resident who can speak Orcish! The only difficulty, of course, would be getting a low-level blood elf to Goldshire in the first place. I suppose if I could get him to Ratchet, he could boat to Booty Bay and then swim up the coast to Westfall, get past the murlocs and the Defias, and then sneak across the Westfall/Elwynn border. Does simply entering Goldshire automatically flag a Horde character for PvP? Cuz he’d obviously be unable to explain his presence to the Alliance characters there.
Not if you don’t go into Stormwind. On the other hand, the guards might want a word or two with you.
Another way to get there if you level up a bit first is to queue for Deadmines or Stormwind Stockades, kill yourself (there are usually some stray monsters to play with, and in Deadmines there’s enough high places to jump off of if you can hurt yourself a bit first; play a warlock and that part is easy), and res at the spirit healer.
Oh, and a question:
What the heck is the / command to leave a group? I’d used IceHUD to hide the default portraits in the upper-left corner of my screen, and after I did Direbrew on my main (my first “dungeon” since I started using IceHUD), I was totally unable to leave the group. I’d always right-clicked my portrait and selected “Leave group” from the popup menu. Without that, I couldn’t figure out how to leave the group and was stuck until the group finally removed me (the rest of the group was sticking around to kill Direbrew over and over; 5 times was enough for me).
I had the same problem a while back, before IceHUD, when my wireless mouse batteries died right at the beginning of an Oculus run, and I couldn’t leave the group and had to ask them to kick me. I swear somebody here said the command was “/leave”, but that wasn’t doing the trick last night. “/quit” didn’t work either.
/script LeaveParty()
Hmm. I’m remembering one of my Alliance toons getting flagged for getting too close to Razor Hill during one of the holiday things, even though she never aggro’d any guards.
As for rezzing at a spirit healer, now that I think about it, if I get killed in Elwynn as Horde I’ll get sent to the GY way out at Eastvale Logging Camp, so I wouldn’t need to get near SW…
Thanks 
Derp. Confused with Trial of the Crusader.
Also not a 10-man. Although it is confusing, I’ll grant that. Trial of the Crusader is the 10-man; Trial of the Champion is the 5-man.
There aren’t any raids below max level nor that are easier than heroics. Everything heroic and below is 5-man, and if it’s not heroic, you should be able to participate. The only exceptions might be Trial of the Champion and the Icecrown 5-mans, as they’re tougher than the other normal dungeons and are on par with older heroics.
Glyphs provide a constant buff to a particular spell or ability. At level 80 you can have 3 major glyphs and 3 minor glyphs. You buy them once, and learn them by right-clicking and then clicking an open glyph slot in your talent window’s glyph tab. As examples, the ones that Shin Kell recommended (which, as a hunter main, I can second if you are Marksmanship specced) do the following:
Serpent Sting: Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 secs
Kill Shot: Reduces the cooldown on your Kill Shot by 6 secs
Steady Shot: Increases Steady Shot damage by 10% on targets with Serpent Sting on them
etc… They are generally decent DPS upgrades, and should be rather cheap if you can find a scribe to make them for you.
If there is an enchanter in your group Disenchant will be an option. This was added because it was typical to have the enchanter DE (disenchant) the unwanted gear for enchanting material, and then have party members roll for them at the end. The new DE button automates this process.
From these materials Enchanters can create gear enhancements. Some enchantments also come from other professions, or from vendors. In particular, since you have purchases 232 shoulders, you should attempt to buy the shoulder enchant from the Sons of Hodir (if you have reputation with them).
Browsing other hunters you know will give you a good idea what the optimal enchantments are for your gear. Alternatively, you can check out my hunter (World of Warcraft): it’s pretty much optimal for MM (the only things you might change are gloves or boots if you need more +hit).
Yes, the game is shockingly lacking in directing players towards useful glyphs, enchants, gems, or even what stats to focus on. Cata is improving some of this (talent trees in particular), making it harder to be horribly wrong. As GC (one of the Blizzard devs) recently said, it’s gotten to the point where it’s considered more damning to be misinformed than to be bad, which is not how a game should be.
Gems are even more confusing, because of the color issue. Basically, you can put any gem you want into any socket you want. Many pieces of gear, however, will have a “socket bonus”. You only get this bonus if you put gems of the correct color in the correct socket. Prismatic gems (Nightmare Tear, for example) “match” any socket. Prismatic sockets (Belt Buckles, for example) “match” any gem.
Sometimes it is worth “matching” the socket, and sometimes it isn’t - it depends on the bonus, and whether it is “good enough” for you. For example, a STAMINA bonus on hunter gear (which doesn’t exist, but it’s just an example) would not be worth matching a blue socket, because our best gems (AGI, ARP, HIT, Crit) are red and yellow. For the majority of hunter gear these days it’s pretty safe to just use one Nightmare Tear (to activate a meta gem… no time to go into that now), and then just put +20 AGI everywhere else (actually, +16 AGI till you get “good” gear - the 20 AGI gems are at least 100g per).
Hope some of this helps…
ETA: If you’re looking at Jagaya’s gear you’ll see a lot of Armor Pen gems. Replace those with Agility at your gear levels. Armor Pen is only worthwhile in very large quantities. Since it is going away in Cata I would recommend just ignoring it for now.
Glyphs are items that scribes/inscriptionists (let’s not get into the debate over what to call people who have inscription as a profession 
) make. These glyphs are class specific, and the glyphs for each class are further divided into Majors and Minors.
Major glyphs typically have a very noticeable effect on your DPS or CC abilities (for PVP), for example, and are considered key to have.
Minor glyphs are less useful, but may have nice perks. For example, some minor glyphs might let you use a spell without needing the reagent for it or reduce the mana cost of the spell/ability. Others are for decoration, such as the minor mage glyph for changing the default polymorph skin into a penguin. (Polymorph is the reason I want to roll a mage someday!)
If you go to the AH and look in the glyph section, you’ll see scads of glyphs.
I’m going to counter Shin and Jas and argue that the Glyph of Kill Shot is only really useful if you’re a raider. This is because Kill Shot only becomes an option if the mob is below 20% health and has a noticeable cooldown period. As such, raiding is where the situation of having a boss be below 20% for an extended period comes up; in other situations things just die too fast for KS to be used more than once or MAYBE twice. If you’re questing and running dungeons, I suspect the Glyph of the Hawkwould be a better increase for your DPS.
Regarding gems, it sounds like you’re looking at the socket bonus on the gear, not the gem itself. You have two things to look at: the stats on the gem, and the socket color/bonus on the gear.
The socket bonus comes into play if you match the gem color to the socket, but isn’t a requirement. The important thing is what the gem gives you – epic gems (purples) will have a bigger stat increase than rare gems (blues).
For example, a Delicate Cardinal Ruby (epic) has +20 AGI, whereas a Delicate Scarlet Ruby (rare) has +16 AGI. If you put a delicate scarlet ruby in gear that had a red or orange socket, you would get the socket bonus in addition to the native stat increase that the gem gives you. OTOH, if you put that gem in a blue socket, you’ll still get the stat increase but not the socket bonus.
Different gem colors have different stat foci – hybrid colors will have two stat increases whereas pure colors have only one. A Deadly Ametrine is an orange gem, and provides +10 AGI/ +10 CRIT, frex.
Oh, and meta gems are in a class by themselves – only get one if your helm has a “meta” socket. Meta gems will have a requirement that you have so many of a given gem color in your gear in order to activate the meta and get what is known as the “meta bonus”. This bonus is all kinds of awesomesauce.
This siteis all kinds of awesome for finding gems if you’re wondering what’s out there as it’s very easy to sort and filter by any attribute you want to get a nice glanceable list.
(Also, nuts to Jas for typing faster 
)
Undeniably true, and something I almost mentioned. But my post was already long enough. 
In the end it’s all moot, because glyphs are being entirely re-worked for Cataclysm as well. If you wanna run a few heroics until then go ahead and get Hawk, or Aimed Shot, or even Trueshot Aura as your third glyph. None of them are that different for you, DPS-wise (certainly not nearly as much as getting your gear upgraded will be).
And people with the Inscription profession are, and always will be, called Scribes!
Glyphs are being re-worked? I hadn’t heard that, and I don’t mind, but they’ll have to pry away my Glyph of Levitate from my cold, undead hands!
Entirely, yes. No longer consumable. Three tiers (Prime, Major, and Minor, I think). It’s not clear how Scribes will make any money… perhaps more craftable off-hands or something.
Glyph of Levitate is currently still around (causes Levitate to not need a reagent), as a Minor Glyph.
You guys are sooooo awesome. Jas09, Skammer, ShotFromGuns, lizardling, Bosstone, thanks to all of you for helping me figure this stuff out!
kushiel, if you’re the kind of person who likes researching on your own, the following resources will be great for you:
WoWWiki: A WoW encyclopedia. Great for any kind of information that isn’t just lists–professions, lore, factions, features like glyphs, etc.
Wowhead: A database full of information on gear, abilities, Talents, recipes, boss drops, consumables, quests etc.
WoW Insider: A blog written by a bunch of people who know a lot about WoW, with a lot of regular columns. Has articles to appeal to everyone from ubernubs to hardcore raiders.
Glyphs are a feature introduced with WotLK. They’re a way to alter or improve on various class abilities and Talents. Currently, a max-level character will have three Major glyph slots and three Minor. Major glyphs are used for things like increasing ability damage or utility, while Minor ones generally make cosmetic changes, reduce reagent costs, etc.
For example, one of my Major glyphs increases the chance for my Taunt to hit by 8% (meaning that I can reach the 17% spell hit cap that it requires when everything else I use is at the 8% melee cap), while one of my Minor glyphs increases the duration of my Commanding Shout buff by two minutes.
There are no vendors for glyphs–they’re all made by players. You can find them on the Auction House or ask a friend with Inscription to make them. To see what a glyph does, just mouseover it.
To apply a glyph:
1.) Open your glyph interface (hit “n” to bring up the Talent screen, and then move to the glyph tab).
2.) Right-click the glyph in your bags.
3.) Click the glyph slot that you wish to place the glyph in. If there is already a glyph in that slot, you will get a warning message, because placing a new glyph will delete the old one (just like with gems).
Disenchanting as an option on loot rolls is a recent new feature, and you’ll see it any time you’re in a group with an Enchanter. As a profession, Enchanters add bonus stats to items. For example, on my boots, I have Tuskarr’s Vitality, an enchant that gives me extra Stamina and lets me run a little bit faster.
Because you can give those materials to an Enchanter and have them enchant your gear, or you can sell those materials on the Auction House.
Actually, you should generally ignore the color of the socket and just use whatever gem is the best for your class and spec. Once you get a number of pieces with gem slots, here’s the way you want to do it:
1.) Figure out which meta gem is best for your class and spec. You can ask here, or there are guides that can help you.
2.) Look at what gems the meta requires. For any that are not your typical best color, find a good alternative. Then, put those gem(s) in the sockets where they will activate the best bonuses.
3.) Once your meta has been activated, fill every other slot with your best gems. Usually this will be Hit to cap, and then some other primary stat.
Practical example:
I use the meta gem that gives me Stamina plus a 2% bonus to Armor. That’s activated with one red and two blue gems. Outside of my meta, I gem solid Stam, so that will take care of the blues I need. For the red, I use an Expertise/Stamina cut, which is purple, so it counts both as red and blue. I find the red socket with the largest Stam bonus, and I put it there. Then, I fill everything else with Stamina gems.
Each stat has a different color associated with it. Stamina gems are always blue; Strength gems are always red; Hit gems are always yellow; etc. Your sockets have Agility bonuses because that is a very good stat for Hunters. However, most of the time it won’t be worth using a gem of another color just to get that bonus. The point is to make you strategize–do you want to use a solid-color gem in the socket with the best stat for you, but lose the bonus amount of that stat, or do you want to use a mixed-color gem that’s less powerful on its own but that activates the bonus?
On a PvE server, there are exactly three ways to be flagged for PvP combat:
1.) Manually set your PvP flag.
2.) Engage in PvP activities with a flagged character or NPC. (This can be attacking a hostile character or assisting a friendly one–where assistance means healing or buffing.)
3.) Enter a capital city of the opposing faction.
PvP serves add a fourth way:
4.) Enter a zone that is contested or unfriendly territory.
If you’re on a PvP server, Elwynn Forest is Alliance territory and just entering it will flag you. On a PvE server, though, you’ll be safe. There are probably guards in the town that will attack you, though, and they’ll flag you if you attack back.
Did they up the drop rate on the Battered Hilt? I just ran H HoR and H FoS and a hilt dropped in both runs, maybe I was just lucky, but I’ve been seeing them drop more and more. I ended up winning the Battered Hilt in the HoR run and then spent the rest of the run trying not to strangle the tree healer who would not stop crying about how much he needed that hilt and how horrible it was that he didn’t win. Not in party chat mind you, in whispers, towards the end he had me feeling bad about winning.
Fairly productive day for me so far. Earned Brewmaster on the rest of my 80 characters, had 3 Kodo’s drop for me in the kegs today (Don’t hurt me Skammer!), upgraded my hunters belt to the 264 badge one.
LK attempts last night… I know there’s a Phase 2, but we never saw it. I think I’m officially done with it now. I’ll run if I feel like it, but I’ve thrown my face against that wall too many times, I need to let my wounds heal before Cata.