Great links. Thanks.
New question: How important is hit rating? What is a good target figure for it?
At the moment, I look at spell power (1358 currently) as my most important stat. Beyond that, I like crit chance and haste (17.56% and 155 respectively, at the moment.). Mana regen is 128, which can be a little tricky on long fights. My hit rating is only 69. I get the idea that is kinda low, but I don’t really miss very often, so…
Sorry, I’ve forgotten what class you are. If you’re a caster DPS, your hit cap is 17% for raid bosses, which is somewhere north of 400 (I forget the exact number–446, I think). Depending on your class you almost certainly have things that will drop that number down. On heroics it doesn’t need to be that high. Your fellow party members might have talents that will drop that too–for example, a shadow priest or moonkin druid will drop it 3%, and if you’re Alliance, a Dranei in the party will drop it another 1%.
Prior to 80 you don’t need to worry much about it.
Hit rating is, supposedly, the most important stat up until you get it “capped”, at which point any more becomes useless. I am taking the word of people who have fancy equations and seem to know what’s what.
Just note that the hit rating on your “character sheet” (hit C in default key settings) does not display any bonuses you get from your talents, only from your gear. So if you have a talent that gives you, say, +3% hit, remember that part and only go up to 14% hit from gear as displayed on the character sheet.
Hmmm. Well, an 80 mage with only 69 hit rating has some work to do, then. It seems that hit rating is a lot more important to the PVE stuff. PVPers are more into crit chance, last I heard.
It’s looking more and more like I’m going to have to maintain two sets of gear. That’s annoying…and expensive. Oh well, it gives me something to work towards. PVP gear is easy to get. Just hafta grind out the BGs, and with the random BG finder bonus honor, it adds up pretty quickly.
On edit, checking my Armory, I see my hit percentage is a dismal 2.63% from gear at the moment. Not sure if I get any bonus from talents, or not.
As a mage, your hit requirement will vary based on your spec. Arcane mages get 6% Hit from their talents, so you only need to go to 11%. Fire and Frost either have 3% from talents (if they take Precision) or 0 (if they don’t). So Fire and Frost both require significantly more Hit rating than Arcane does.
There’s a 264 trinket you can buy that has a ton of Hit on it (it’s not a great trinket per se, but if you need a lot of hit in a hurry it’s something to consider). There’s also a good hit trinket that drops in Naxx (where you should overgear the place enough that your current lack of hit shouldn’t be a huge detriment). Remember that ilevel on trinkets is somewhat irrelevant–in some cases, the best in slot trinket is an ilevel much lower than the current gear max.
PvP mages gear SP and haste. 69 isn’t enough for PvP, you need a little more.
I’d like to ask you guys for some Warrior weapon advice.
I have this axe:
This sword:
This dagger:
I’m a 32 warrior. I should be using the axe, right? Or should I be dual wielding?
I would say definitely the axe. I don’t know what level warriors get dual wielding for 2 handers, but I don’t think it’s that low, right?
Level 32 warriors should use the whirlwind axe from the level 30 quest. Use the Corpsemaker to do the quest, then switch. Whirlwind is the best for a while, so put something nice on it, like Savagery or Crusader.
Woohoo! Finished up the very fun grind, and now Jabloo has his Venomhide Ravasaur mount!
Here’s a shot of Jabloo with his lizard friends, getting ready to head out for the final round of hatchling feeding:
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/jabloos_dinos.jpg
That’s Sobloo the devilsaur, and Zabloo the venomhide ravasaur hatchling.
And here’s little Zabloo, all grown up and ready to ride:
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/jabloo_venomhide.jpg
Like I said, the grind was fun. Unlike the Alliance-side Winterspring Frostsaber grind. My Alliance main did that grinding quest maybe twice before I said, “Um, no.”
I’d just never had a toon get to a training level and have nothing at all to learn.
I think the most irritating mob sound in the whole game is actually troggs. The murloc noise sounds like a ferocious battle cry compared to that pathetic, whiny noise troggs make.
I’ve noticed the snobolds in NR must be a bit smarter than the old world kobolds. When you’re doing that “Gormok Wants His Snobolds” daily for the Argent Tournament, they say, “You no take … me!”
Quilboars make a rather annoying sound 
Correction: T9 gear costs 30 Triumphs for hands and shoulders, 50 for each of the other pieces.
If you can find a tank to tag along with, you can probably run between one and four Heroics per hour. More than that, if you luck out and get one or more in-progress runs. The biggest time suck for DPS (and, to a lesser extent, healers) is just sitting in queue. If you find a tank, that takes your queue time to five seconds or less.
My four-to-seven-badges per run total included the bonus badges: which are Frost for your first run of the day and Triumph for every run after that.
Are you sure you aren’t further down those chains? It’s possible you got the items while leveling, started the quests, and then abandoned them partway.
You get new spells/abilities or new ranks of them on the even levels from 1 to 60. Because some of these are new ranks of Talents, it’s possible to hit a level where you have nothing new to learn. After 60, there are new things to train at every level.
The Devilsaurs still stay relatively big for a Hunter pet, though. (Look at one next to a Raptor some time.)
Oh, that’s just cruel.
Hahahahaaaaaaaaa, I’m so glad I’m not the only person who did that. (And grats on the beta key!)
Mankrik’s wife?
On my Mage, I always create a table (Ritual of Refreshment) at the entrance when we first buff.
FWIW, Blizzard is only worthwhile on three or more targets.
What’s your spec?
Frost: Save them for Frost badge gear, or use them to buy Primordial Saronite, which you can then sell to finance BOE gear. You can trade them down, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Triumph: Exchange them for T9 and ilvl 245 badge gear.
Frost > Triumph > Conqueror’s (I think? Something with “C”) > Valor > Honor
Only the first two can be obtained anymore; the rest are from previous tiers of content. Any badge can be downgraded to the previous tier. To downgrade multiple badges at once, shift-click on the badge in the vendor’s inventory, then enter the amount you wish to convert.
I strongly advise that you exhaust all possible upgrades from a given tier of badges before downgrading to the next level.
Stonekeeper’s Shards can only be swapped for PvP gear and enchants, so you’re not missing out on a *whole *lot for PvE.
Shrug. It’s a PvP problem with a PvP solution–get some other people together to fly up to where he’s sitting and kick his ass.
Hit is the single most important statistic for any DPS class, up to the cap for their particular spec. Point for point, you will get more DPS out of Hit than any other statistic, until you get enough of it that you your special attacks no longer miss.
Melee hit needs to be 8% to avoid missing a raid boss (level 83). Caster hit needs to be 17%. This excludes any talents. As a Mage, there are two talents that affect your hit. One is in the Frost tree (I think it’s called Precision) and it gives you an extra 3% chance to hit with all spells, so that lowers your requirement to 14% if you take it. If you’re an Arcane Mage, there’s a talent in that tree that gives you several more percent, but only for Arcane spells, so it will only be useful if you spec primarily into that tree.
For PvE, after your Hit reaches the cap, IIRC you should focus on Spellpower. Unless you’re trying to activate a meta gem (you should use the SP/increased crit damage one), or there’s a really good socket bonus you’re trying to activate,* you should gem for straight Spellpower. When you need to go with hybrid gems to activate metas or sockets, other okay stats are Haste, Crit, and Spirit.
*This will almost never be the case, unless you’re using Rare gems instead of Epic ones. The only time it might be worthwhile is with a huge Spellpower bonus, and you can usually fill that socket while you’re activating your helm’s meta gem.
It’s been a while since I looked up all this info. You may want to check the Mage column on WoW Insider and the Mage forum on Elitist Jerks for more details as to specs, stats, and rotations, as well as to verify that I’m actually giving you accurate info for the current patch. 
“Where is Mankrik’s wife?!?!?” (and Barrens chat in general) might count.
…
You can buy a murloc toy in the Dalaran toy store?! OMG. I am so logging in just to get this tonight.
I know I’ve told this story before, but what the heck - I was helping an outside company’s tech fix and calibrate a piece of equipment in our department at the medical center. My part of it involved sitting in near-total darkness for 20 minutes to dark-adapt my eyes, so she could have a test subject for the machine to examine. She said she’d sit in there with me for the process; it helps to have someone to talk to so you don’t fall asleep. So we were politely chatting about work-related stuff, when I heard a murloc.
This bothered me, for obvious reasons.
Then I heard her fumbling for something, and again, a murloc sound. Apparently this was her cell phone’s text message alert.
I said, “… a murloc?” There was a pause from her, and then, “No one’s ever recognized that before.” Another pause. “OK, let’s do this - what server, what side?” Turns out she was Alliance and not my server, but we had a great conversation. 
It’s been awhile (I think this got mentioned way back in the bowels of the previous WoW mega-thread), so I’m going to take this opportunity to recommend “You Awaken in Razor Hill,” an absolutely hilarious multi-part epic written by a guy named Dusk (and yes, it is relevant to the topic at hand). If you have not read this yet and you love WoW, do it. Do it now. You will hurt yourself laughing.
And once you read it, take a look at this screenshot from Cataclysm beta. This is made of win.
No, I don’t think you can. But you can buy a real murloc toy. I have one myself. You squeeze its lower jaw and it "MMMMRRRGGLLL"s at you.
:eek:
Decisions, decisions… would this freak the rabbits out too much? Hmm…
Yep. I have QuestHistory (since well before my DK even thought of doing old world quests) and neither one is on it as either incomplete or complete, so I haven’t run across the start items yet at all.
Now, I DID do that with the Scholomance key quest on my Alliance DK and spent about two days trying to figure out why I didn’t have the key AND couldn’t get the quest for it from the alchemist at the Argent Dawn Alli camp in WPL. Turns out I had given the mold parts to the goblin in Gadgetzan but never picked them back up from him…
Here’s my armory: Kahbueme
Lately, I’m staying to the arcane/fire spec. I like playing around with the frost spec, but it just doesn’t seem to put out the same damage, and for PVP it doesn’t have the extra instant I get with Arcane Barrage.
I’m thinking about trying an arcane/frost alternate build. I’d give up the PoM/Pyro combo that is so near and dear to my Gnomish heart, but I could go PoM/Arcane Blast or PoM/Frostfire Bolt instead, pick up precision for that 3% hit, + the 6% from arcane talents…that would make me semi-respectable and improving as I gear up…
On the table before dungeon thing–I don’t mind doing that, but in the ones I do, nobody is waiting for much of anything. We enter the instance, the tank pulls something, and we might slow down after the first boss. I think I’ve been lucky about hitting groups with people that greatly outgear heroic content. They treat it about the way I’d go through Deadmines. Grouped with a rogue that was cranking out 5K dps average, even when he’d take a fight off to make banadages or whatever else he was doing.
Yah, Sobloo is still taller than my troll.
I do that on my mage as well. And on my paladin, I always drop a Fish Feast. Why? So everybody will stand the hell still so I can “Kings” everybody! There are invariably one or two in a group who take off the instant everybody zones in, and I can’t Kings them because they’ve run out of range before I can even click on their portrait. Dropping a Fish Feast brings then running right back.
(This actually makes me wonder how many people out there simply don’t carry their own buff food. Despite providing Fish Feasts to her random groups, my paladin never eats them herself - she eats her Dragonfin Filet.)
As a Fire mage, I cast Flame Strike first, to get the benefit of its DoT, then cast Blizzard while FS’s DoT does its work. I’ve found it’s worthwhile to alternate between the two spells until everything falls over, or the group gets down to 1 or 2 targets, then I single-target them with Frostfire Bolt.
On Lightbringer, we had a Horde mage who was somehow getting inside WG Fortress while the Alliance controlled it, and then somehow getting up on the stone ring above the central platform. That allowed him to sit up there and snipe people as they teleported into the room or came out through the portal from VoA. Nobody expects to be attacked in there, especially when the big main door is closed, so he was able to keep killing people while they were still going, “WTF is going on?” and trying to figure out where the attacks were coming from. Alliance melee couldn’t get up there where he was to attack him, and all he had to do to avoid casters was change his position slightly to remove line-of-sight. That got reported, mainly because he had clearly used some kind of exploit to get up there.
And I can’t believe I forgot to mention it earlier, but I ran into a bit of extreme coolness last night while playing my (now-level-18) dwarf warrior. She was in SW, and a naked female dwarf came up and whispered, “Free gold - I’m quitting.” This other dwarf then handed me 450 gold!
And I have to say that Ensyld is looking mighty cute in her War Paint mail"set"
