So one of the skills I’ve got on my priest is Inscribing. Am I wasting my time (and my Druid’s herbs) with it, or is it a marketable skill in the same vein as Enchanting?
Incidentally, since I hit 24, my priest is badass (well, compared to the magic of a druid of equal level at any rate). Granted, it takes half a bar of mana, but I can just use like 7 different keys and nuke the crap outta almost any baddie my level before my bubble expires. Way different than what it was like with my druid. 
timid wave Noob speaking. I broke down and installed the trial of WoW after a so-called friend gave me a pass.
Two days later, I texted him a dire promise of PAIN. LOTS OF PAIN.
I didn’t know WTF I was doing, still don’t. So I’ve been soloing my troll hunter while I try to cram on WoWWiki, Ten Ton Hammer, and others. All y’all have a whole new language on top of everything else. :eek:
I am having fun so far, though. I liked the trolls (Pansy humans! ), plus DPS’ing seemed like the best route to go given I’m mostly soloing. I grouped a couple times on quests, plus one pug for Ragefire Chasm that had an excellent leader.
One of the questions on my mind though is whether I should go guild or not? I can’t use vent, and I’m also really shy IRL.
I think guilds are a great place for shy people, assuming you’ve chosen a respectful, mature guild. I’m pretty sure this whole game is great for shy people, and is a big part of why many people play. Vent isn’t necessary to belong in a meaningful way to a guild.
QuestHelper causes my computer to crash, too, so I use an addon called Carbonite. It’s like QuestHelper + Cartographer combined, so it’s pretty heavy on the memory usage (but you can get rid of Cartographer if you use it) plus a ton of other features. There’s a paid subscription version with even more features, but I find the free version is more than enough for me.
Other addons I use:
Atlas + Atlasloot – maps of all the dungeons and where each boss is, plus what possible loot is dropped along with percentages for each piece of loot. You can also use AtlasLoot to browse gear you can earn through the various reputations and the rep level required. PVP/Arena gear is also included.
RatingBuster – breaks out what all the stat points on each piece of gear mean for my character and compares equipment so I know what I’m gaining/losing for every possible replacement I look at.
Prat – color codes my chat box so I know the class and level of the person speaking in chat
Scrolling Combat Text – a lot more display and font options than the in-game combat text
IceHUD – I just like HUDs – no more staring at the upper left corner during fights, all the info I need is right there around my character, allowing me to be more aware of other things going on
Gatherer – tracks every resource node I find (and group/raid members, and guild members – you can even share data with people)
Auctioneer – remembers every auction you ever see, then gives you median prices so you have an idea of what things are worth when you find them. Can also search auctions for really good deals, and even breaks out stacks of items into cost-per-unit
Linkerator – allows me to generate a linked item in chat just by typing it out, without having the item on me to shift-click
Advanced Trade Skill Window – more sorting/filtering options for your tradeskill windows, plus tracks required materials in your bags, bank, and alts. Can queue up multiple items – and if an item requires subcomponents to be crafted first, it’ll queue those up, too. If you queue up a bunch of stuff that uses vendor-bought mats, you can click one single button to buy all those mats at once.
BankStatement – lets me view the contents of my bank and bank bags anywhere, on any character, on any server
CT Mod – mostly for the unit frames, but it’s got a lot of other nice features (and it’s modular!)
Deadly Boss Mods – I use it mostly for BattleGround events (visual timer on flags and such), but it’s also useful in raids and instances. Will warn you in large, friendly letters when a boss is about to use a special ability and can even announce it to raid/party for you.
TitanBar – just puts a ton of info up on a small bar across the top/bottom of my screen so I don’t have to go hunting through UI windows to find it. Things like my latency, FPS, gold, XP to level, durability status of my gear, honor gained, time, current coordinates. I can mouse over an information blurb to get more details as a tooltip.
Swindler Preventer – in an extended tooltip, will show you the Vendor Buy value for any items, if it knows (choice from 3 quest rewards you can’t use? pick the one worth the most to vendor). Also, when mousing over recipes/items found in the AH, will show you who sells it, in what zone, and for how much, if it’s a vendor-sold recipe/item – so you can decide if it’s worth paying the inflated premium on the AH or to go hunt it down yourself.
Yeah, I’m a mod freak. It’s a very memory-intensive setup, but fortunately, I built my computer out of spare Harley Davidson parts I had lying around, so it works quite well.
If you’re going to get more than a couple of addons, then WoWmatrix is an absolutely must. It’s a program that you run on your computer (it supports both Windows and Mac) that references a central addon database. Run it, and it checks all of your addons to see if they’re up-to-date. You can use it to load new ones, uninstall old ones, and so forth. It only takes a few minutes. I use it at least weekly. After a big patch, I use it daily.
I’ll modify that slightly: Good healers.
There are an awful lot of healers that haven’t taken the time to learn their roles and set up their hotkeys, and they generally don’t get invited back a second time.
If you’re new at it, tell everybody beforehand. They’ll be more careful, and possibly bring along a backup in case you need help.
Here’s where a good guild helps. They can put together a slightly overpowered group with a good healer in it, and bring you along as a “trainee.”
Anecdote: I’m in my current guild because a friend of my GF wanted her to play a healer as the guild was severely short on them for raiding. She likes the role anyway, so that works out. I came along to help out, both to fill out the guild ranks and to speed her along with the Recruit-A-Friend bonuses (while we’re grouped, we get triple XP. We made it to 40 in less than a week. If she hadn’t needed to take a break, we’d be at 70 two to three weeks after starting). The other day I asked in guildchat what I should spec my Pally into at 80, and I was immediately overwhelmed with “HOLY” from damn near everyone logged in. 
Here’s another anecdote about priests (I can’t remember if I’ve told this one here…):
We did a fascinating run with three priests (2 shadow, 1 holy) and a warrior. We were slightly overlevel, so we figured we could do the five-man instance with four players. The holy priest was lower-level, so I did DPS and backup heals on my shadow priest and the other shadow priest did straight DPS.
The warrior did NOT understand that we needed mana to operate. He kept charging into battle while we were still drinking–and being rude about it. I finally told him, “you do that again and you do it alone.”
He told me that he knew how to play his damned class and did another pull. All three priests hearthed out and left him there.
Today at work I decided to compose some WoW poetry. Here’s my first effort, composed in my head while grilling chicken breasts.
The Fragile Herbalist’s Lament
(A Haiku)
Murloc blue and green
Always guarding stranglekelp
Go away murloc
From the “You know you’re an addict when” department:
'Twas Brill (ick!), and the slimy ghouls
did “Hraaaaamn” and slobber in the wood.
All giggly were the undead gnolls,
and the Forsaken stoutly stood.
“Beware the damp murlocs, my son!
The scales that gleam, the claws that catch!
Avoid the scurrilous Scarlet Friar,
and the bugged-up rushed-out patch!”
This story made my day!
Thanks for the encouraging words, wonderlust. I may try guilding once I have more confidence in my gameplay. 
As it is, I’m playing with my hunter’s rotation and practicing with my pet (whoozagood raptor? yis! yis! you is!) to figure out how to get the most efficient combat out of us.
Great user name, WOW pet combo.
Ack, UI question!
My toolbar, she is squished. At least on my Mac, the toolbar doesn’t quite reach to the edges of the screen. I don’t use a toolbar addon but I do have QH, Carbonite, and Gatherer. I tried to monkey around with the video settings but no dice.
Halp! This is messing up my combo sequences. QQ
There’s a checkbox in the video options labeled ‘Use UI Scale’. If you check that you can use the slider to make your UI take up more or less of your screen.
Three healers in one party of four? No wonder no-one else can get a healer to save their lives.
Not a question, more of chest beating. I promise myself to have some payback when I hit 60. I purposely went to grom gol and scoured the area for alliance players and executed them without mercy. (one guy I killed 3 times). It was a dick move, I agree. My targets were way under me in level, but that did not stop the allies form ganking me even when I made it obvious that I was not a threat. So yeah, I’m a ganker now.
I’m going to gank a few more before bed time.
I tried this and it didn’t affect the scale at all.
Not three healers: 2 dps and one healer. A shadow priest can toss heals or use the “finger” spells to assist healing, but saying that they’re healers is like saying that her Gnomish Knife turns my hunter into a healer (she can rez, when the stupid thing works!)
That’s strange, it works fine for me. Make sure you’re clicking ‘Apply’ after you move the slider; the game won’t update anything until you save your changes.