Once smelted can’t ore be used to level blacksmithing?
No, don’t switch DPS, you still have to focus on the 1st drake until it’s dead.
Tenebraun is drake 1
Shadron is drake 2
Shabbadu (I can’t remember his real name) is drake 3
2 drakes is better if you kill Shadron, as the 3 drakes always land at the same programmed time regardless of which ones are still alive. Dead shadron = 100% fire damage debuff.
(I may have my debuffs wrong here, so this may be incorrect)
Tenebraun = HP debuff
Shadron = 100% fire damage debuff
Shabadu = Shadow damage debuff (not a huge problem)
If you kill Shadron before the fight, it’s easier to cope with the fire damage, even with the lower HP while tenebraun is alive.
So, 3 drakes is this.
entrance to the instance is the southern side. Sarth Straight ahead, Tenebraun east
Shabadu west, Shadron north (behind Sartharion)
Kill trash. Hug wall at all times.
Engage Sartharion (we actually avoid doing any DPS at all so that melee and ranged are in position and ready to attack Tenebraun as soon as it’s active).
Tank positions him facing the south west corner. (we use a druid)
t+ 30 seconds Tenebraun lands and becomes active.
Hunter MD’s to second tank (prot warrior) who is situated on the western edge of the platform. DPS go all out. There’s 2 tactics as to when to Bloodlust, either straight away or when the second dragon lands. We use straight away.
Avoid the voids and the lava walls. Anyone dead in this part and it’s almost certainly a wipe.
Ignore Tenebrauns portals, and have a 3rd tank ready to grab the whelps when they appear. (this tank also grabs the lava adds from the waves).
Tenebraun needs to be at about 20% or lower when Shadron lands. Shadron lands on the western edge, making it relatively easy for the tank to pick up. DPS stay focused on Tenebraun. It has to die quickly.
When Tenebraun is dead, the Adds are AoE’d down. The quicker you kill Tenebraun, the less adds, and the quicker they are dead, the sooner you can turn your attention to shadron.
AoE dps stays on the adds until they are dead. Melee and ranged can stop on them if a portal appears. go into the portal (usually a DPS death knight can tank the servants relatively easy) Kill the servants. (watch the timing on this, as it’s possible to get ported out of the twilight zone while there is a lava wave rushing across. This is going to be fixed in the patch).
kill adds, gank Shadron.
If you get to this point with 20 people alive and the healers not panicing, it’s very straight forward from there. Take portals when necessary, dps last drake, kill Sartharion.
It’s really a timing issue. Get your hunters to talk to your the tanks (and the healers) and see when exactly they could do with 12 seconds of 30% less damage after mitigation. We use it on the main tank when the second drake makes the first portal (as it’s a stressful time for the healers).
They’ll be able to tell you best when works for them.
Sure, but Silver in particular has a limited amount of use, and if you’re leveling your tradeskills (that is, going for skill points instead of crafting stuff to use), then there’s far cheaper stuff that will do the job for you. This guide to training blacksmithing on the cheap only has room in it for 5 Silver Bars. They’re expensive, but that’s really not that much.
Silver Bars have more value in Engineering and Jewelcrafting, but again, if you’re leveling, you only need 15 bars for Engineering. Jewelcrafting, at least, isn’t economical at all, and needs quite a bit of Silver. Stupid expensive tradeskill. grumblegrumble
Momma always said to take two gathering skills during leveling. Make money, she said, don’t flush it down the Maelstrom on rings and necklaces, she said. grumblegrumble
Really dumb question (especially from someone who has been playing two years and has a level 80 and goes on raids)
When someone says “What is your DPS” what bleeding number are they really asking for? My base damage? Where do I find that? My damage buffed to the max? What?
So far I’ve done well with “hit things until they fall over dead” and “get better weapons and armor so you can hit harder” but I feel like an idiot when someone asks that question and I go “Duh…”
DPS is damage per second. It’s usually regarded as the be all and end all of the performance of a damage spec (usually by foam fingered spreadsheet lovers). anyone who asks for it and expects a non-qualified answer (i.e. in what situation, what boss, what role, even what instance) usually doesn’t understand the question they ask.
(B.T.W., my answer is “until things are dead” also.)
I’ve played a survival Specced hunter from the beginning of TBC until now. my damage may not be what a BM hunter or a MM hunter can do, but what I bring to the raid helps all the other DPS classes do better.
Damage Per Second. It’s your average damage per attack divided by the speed of the weapon (or cooldown of the spell). Your stats modify the DPS, so the weapon damage is only part of it. If you mouse over the Damage entry in the Melee (or Ranged) section of your stats in your Character Info window, it’ll tell you your DPS. I don’t think it’s wholly accurate, as it doesn’t take misses or bonus damage into account, and I don’t think there’s one for spell DPS, but it’s close enough.
There are addons that will track your raid’s damage and give you a readout of real DPS. I don’t know what they are, but I know they exist, because my guild loves to spam the guild channel with it. 
Yes, there is one for spell DPS - I know that because I’m a casting DPS shaman. But it goes up and down with buffs.
I tend to think flametongue+food buff is my default as I almost always have those up no matter what I’m doing (unless I need something else for a specific task). Instances and raids add onto that, of course.
Yeah, I find that somewhat annoying. My guild officers have banned displaying damage meter stuff until AFTER the raid because of the level of annoyance. A lot of it degenerates into >ahem< length comparisons if you know what I mean. A DPS shaman, for example, is NOT going to outdo the DPS warlocks (or shouldn’t, if the 'locks are competent) because shaman is a hybrid class and we’re also buffing by laying down totems, firing off an occasional heal, and so forth.
Anyhow - not adding add-ons. I’m on a 10 year old computer that already has enough trouble keeping up, add ons (and yes, I’ve tried them) just slow it down further.
I’d say as long as the raid is successful, the numbers don’t mean a thing. The folks that kill themselves over getting an extra 5 DPS when they’re already doing 1300 just amaze me.
And you’re right that hybrids shouldn’t be expected to be as good at DPS or any one thing. It doesn’t get reflected in the DPS totals, but what folks don’t spam as often is the healing done during the raid/fight. There’s been a couple of times when someone’s listed the total DPS, with folks doing 1000-1500 DPS each, and at the bottom is someone with, like, 10 DPS. There’s a few giggles, then the healing will get posted and that person wound up contributing like half the total healing done during the raid.
You can get your dps from using an add-on like recount (which can be a pig), or by taking a combat log and using WoW Web Stats. The WWS reports tend to be more accurate, and the breakdowns have helped me improve my play. The combat log won’t tax your machine nearly as much any add-on.
Your personal dps will vary widely depending on raid comp, fight mechanics, latency, server lag, and so on. When asked I tend to give the number from 25-man Patchwerk, as he is the easist fight to get high single target dps.
The info on your character sheet won’t help you at all, as it only gives you the dps for your auto-attacks. It can’t be measured before hand as when you push what button with which buffs/debuffs is the determining factor.
While rather unfriendly, the information on the forums at Elitist Jerks have all kinds of in-depth information, and even less toleration for counter factual posts than we do.
So my human paladin got the Test of Righteousness quest (where I have to run all over the world gathering materials for a guy in Ironforge to make me a fancy hammer). So I flew to the Wetlands, then from there ran all the way to Shadowfang Keep, only to discover another !@#$% instance. Sigh. Gotta get me some help rounded up, I guess. One of the other parts of that quest takes me into the Deepmines, so now I have two quests sending me in there and even at lvl 25 I still can’t get past that lvl 19 Elite ogre. (Geez - my pally can easily solo a mob* of five lvl 20-21 monsters; why can’t I even make a dent in that ogre?)
Anyway, while I was in Hillsbrad I wandered into the Town Hall there, and while I was inside the local defense channel starts yelling “Hillsbrad is under attack!” I headed outside to see what was going on, and right there in the entryway of the town hall is a lvl 23 tauren fighting with the guards. I said, “Hey, I can take this guy!” and tried to attack him, only to get the message, “You can’t attack that target.” That’s when I realized his name was blue, not yellow. I suppose he must not have been fighting back - he just got jumped by the guards and was trying to get away (he didn’t make it). But I didn’t see any other fighting or any alliance characters with yellow names, so I’m not sure what was going on there.
Has anybody noticed there’s a kill-stealing town guard in Lakeshire? I was fighting those gnolls on the hill behind Lakeshire, and every time I got close to the edge of the cliff there while fighting a gnoll, this guard who stands at the bottom of the cliff would run straight up the sheer cliff and take out the gnoll I was fighting, depriving me of the XP, the ability to loot the corpse, and kill credit for the purpose of the quest I was doing, and then run straight back down again. Didn’t even need to be right at the edge of the cliff - I could be fighting several yards away from the edge and that guard would appear. I wonder if that’s something to bring to Blizzard’s attention.
- Q about the term “mob”. I’ve been assuming (mostly from my Diablo II days) that “mob” refers to a group of enemies. Yet in comments on WowHead.com and other places, I keep seeing people using “mob” to refer to a single enemy. Does “mob” have a different meaning in WoW (or maybe it’s an acronym?), or are these people just morons who don’t know what the word actually means?
“Mob” was short for “mobile something” in the old text-based MUDs, basically referring to monsters - I think it came from what they were called in the code. Anyway, the usage has carried forward.
I think “mob” actually stands for “mobile”, as in an environmental feature that moves (i.e…a creature).
“Mobile object.” This one stymied me for awhile when I first started playing (“Wait…a mob should be multiple baddies!”) but it made more sense when somebody finally explained it to me.
Test of Righteousnous quest.
Ugh.
You’ll have to go into three instances that I can recall: Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps. The reward was a nice twohanded hammer, IIRC.
But since I don’t group much, I skip it.
Thus leading to the phrase “a mob of mobs” that amuses me more than it should.
I like the term. It’s a nice distinction from NPCs, in that NPCs just stand around and sell stuff or offer quests, while mobs are a subset of NPCs that exist only to be killed.
There is a horde quest to go in the inn there to some barrels of ale as well as a quest to go to a grave behind the inn and plant a rod.
At hallows end there is another quest that requires hordies to stand in the middle of the city and throw stink bombs.
Thanks for the “mob” explanations 
From what I read on WowHead, you don’t actually have to enter the Blackfathom Deeps instance - one of the monsters outside will drop the item.
I may go ahead and skip this one, but that brings up another question: will skipping it bring the paladin quest series to a screeching halt? The guy in the Cathedral in SW keeps sending me on these quests, and I’m concerned that he won’t offer me any more quests if I don’t finish this one first.
I don’t think you’ll break any other chains. I think that they are triggered by your reaching the appropriate level.
Nope. As far as I’m aware, it’s entirely optional. Class quests are mostly level-based, I believe.
Verigan’s Fist is a nice weapon, though. I used it all the way to level 43, when I managed to get my hands on a nice polearm. You might want to level up to 24-26 first, though; that should get you past the ogre in Deadmines, and if you’re careful you should be able to make your way to the stables in Shadowfang to get the hammer. You’re correct that you don’t have to enter Blackfathom Deeps, but you do have to go down the hole and under the water into the cave; the nagas on the beach won’t drop the gem you need.
I was lucky and was able to get a level 80 to help me through SFK, but I think a determined level 26 could do it.
Edit: If you’re a soloist, then you’ll probably want Verigan’s Fist. Unless you have a lot of cash to drop on the weapons on the Auction House, nothing better will really be accessible to you until 40 or so.
Actually, that’s Southshore, the “real” Alliance town in Hillsbrad (as opposed to Hillsbrad proper, which is just a quest kill center for Tarren Mill).