Although there are certainly changes and tweaks to be made before WotLK is released, one thing seems clear: the Paladin class is getting revamped. One of the major changes involves Blessings - and the fact that many of them no longer exist.

Blessing of Salvation, renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.

What the Heck Is a “Hand”?

Great question. It seems like they’re all of the old blessings that really didn’t deserve to be blessings.

Let’s look at the list. Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, and Blessing of Sacrifice have all been converted to hands. Their new versions operate more or less the same as the old ones, except that they don’t wipe off blessings.

It’s about time. All three of these were temporary buffs, and they never fit into the scheme of a “blessing.” Other blessings - like Might, Wisdom, Kings - are semi-permanent buffs. Sure, you’ve got to refresh them every 10/30 minutes, but they’re intended to be up all the time. Freedom, Protection, and Sacrifice were all intended to be situational buffs, with a brief duration and sometimes a cooldown.

It’s just plain annoying that casting BoP on somebody wipes off their old blessing, and the “Hand” mechanism is a welcome change.

But… What Happened to Salvation?

Blessing of Salvation is the only Blesing-turned-Hand that went through a major reworking.

The old Salvation did fit into the scheme of a Blessing. It was intended to be long term. You always wanted your DPS to have the threat reduction. There was nothing temporary or situational about it.

With the patch, the old Salvation is dead. The new one is very much a “Hand,” like BoP. It’s situational and reactive. Rather than give a person a static reduction in threat, Hand of Salvation allows a Paladin to bitch-slap a DPSer and bring him back down the threat meter.

This radical change begs two questions: will Paladins use Hand of Salvation, and will tanks be able to keep up?

Tanks Best Friend

As a tank, I’m sure I’ll use Hand of Salvation all the time. I constantly watch Omen, and I’m always aware of where I am in relation to the DPS.

I keep such a close eye on it, because it allows me to gauge how hard I need to push to maintain aggro. If I’m well above the DPS on threat, I don’t need to blow all my mana - I can save some for the next fight.

There are certainly times when I wish I could grab a Rogue by the throat and slap his “Vanish,” button. Aggro dumps are great tools to open up your DPS possibilities - but too many people wait too long (or forget entirely) to use them. If you have an aggro dump (Vanish, Invisibility, Soul Shatter, etc), and you ever get close to the tank in threat, it should be on cooldown by the end of every Boss Fight.

The great thing about Hand of Salvation is that it puts me in charge of dropping someone else’s threat. It’s also a nice little threat to them - if they get too close I’ll slap them with the hand and they’ll lose 10% of their damage for 10 seconds. A nice little incentive for the DPS-sensitive Rogues to vanish or feint earlier than usual.

As a healer, on the other hand, I doubt I’ll ever use it. I spend far more time looking at health bars than at Omen, so I wouldn’t realize who to use it on or when to use it. It’d be nice to have in a bind, but I’d use it far less often.

Can Tanks Keep Up?

Another change pending in WotLK seems to be boosting the threat possibilities of tanks.

First, let’s take a look at Warriors. Defensive Stance will now boost threat by 45%, and the old talent required to do so has been replaced by one that increases critical strike chance. Talents have also been modified to increase damage done by Revenge and add threat to Concussive Blow. A new talent grants a chance for a free and instant shield slam. Along with some tweaks to rage generation, I think they’ll be ok.

What about our good Paladins? We’re getting our own version of Shield Slam - Shield of Righteousness. /drool. Another new talent boosts damage and reduces mana cost, and another one gives you a 20% chance on parrying or dodging to cast Consecration at a 50% mana discount. As if that weren’t enough, you can also get a bonus to your spell power equal to 30% of your Stamina.

If I have enough mana, I rarely ever have threat issues. With the new talents improving mana efficiency (I love Guarded by the Light), that should be much less of a problem. With new threat causing maneuvers on top of that, I think we’ll do just fine.

I don’t know enough about Druid tanking to know what’s goin’ on… but I think Paladins will be just fine with threat. Good bye Blessing of Salvation, and good riddence. We don’t need you anymore.

This isn’t a new mechanic. Many spells - for example Judgement and Spellsteal - are already based off “base mana.”

It’s not really something to get up in arms about, but a lot of people are complaining. They seem to think this will make spells more expensive, and make spells cost a static portion of their mana pool - making intellect gear useless. Not so at all.

What Is Base Mana?

First, let’s get the definition of “base mana” out of the way.

Every time you level, you gain a few things - health, mana, stats, and a talent point. Your base mana is the collection of all of the mana that you’ve gained just from leveling. Ignore gear, ignore Intellect, and you’ve got your base mana.

At level 70, the base mana for a Mage is 2241. This is lower than you naked mana pool (4273 Mana for a Human) because even without gear you have Intellect to boost your mana.

At level 60, this amount was lower - 1183.

What Does the Change Mean?

One change noted in the patch notes is that Polymorph will be shifted to 12% of base mana. Before the change, Polymorph (Rank 4) cost 150 mana. So will this change make Polymorph more or less expensive?

It will not make it radically more expensive. I think a lot of people mis-interpreted “base mana” to mean “mana” in general. If my Mage has 10k mana buffed, casting Polymorph will not cost 1200 mana, or 12% of my mana pool. That’s just ridiculous.

At level 60, 12% of base mana would be 142. This ends up being slightly cheaper. At level 70, 12% of base mana would be 269. Somewhat more expensive.

Why the Change?

I would guess that the change is intended to help balance costs more effectively.

If you look at the ranks of Polymorph, you’ll notice a trend. Each is slightly more expensive than the previous one. However, there is no new rank learned from levels 61 to 70.

These new ranks serve two purposes. They increase effectiveness (longer duration) and they balance mana costs. As you increase in level, you’ll tend to use the highest rank - and thus use more mana.

Without a new rank between levels 61 and 70, the base mana cost of Polymorph has dropped off dramatically. It’s gone from roughly 12% of base mana to less than 7% of base mana.

If the cost of Polymorph (and most spells) shifts to a percent of base mana, there’s no need to add extra ranks simply to balance costs. The only purpose of a new rank would be to increase the effectiveness. As you level, the cost of Polymorph (Ranks 1, 2, 3, and 4) will increase and remain balanced.

What About Heals…?

Interestingly, there was no mention of a change for healing spells. This suggests that down-ranking - which I’ve heard people complain is getting the nerf bat - is going to remain in the game.

Blizzard is maintaining variable costs on different ranks of heal spells on purpose, because there are reasons to use varying ranks of those spells. You may want to use a lower rank Flash of Light, because it heals for the appropriate amount and is more cost effective than the highest available rank.

Certain Paladin abilities - Hammer of Justice, Repentance, and Divine Shield - are being converted to a percentage of base mana. There is no mention in the patch notes of Holy Light or Flash of Light being affected. So continue down-ranking.

At the time, we were 4/6 in SSC, and 2/4 in TK. We hoped to get Leo and A’lar down soon, and the leader of the SSC/TK raids planned to do that and move on “by the end of August” to Hyjal. Why wait?

My point, and the reason I raised the issue, is that WotLK is looming large on the horizon. As we get closer, it’ll get tougher to find people still committed to making progress. It’s also a ticking clock - cause once WotLK comes out no one is gonna want to waste time raiding in Hyjal/BT, and there isn’t really a point anyway… when you start leveling.

Moreover, there’s really no need anymore to finish SSC/TK before heading to Hyjal or early BT. There is enough gear available through alternate methods - badges, PVP, Heroic Magisters, ZA, etc - to get you Hyjal/BT ready. With that, I firmly suggested that we head into Hyjal this week. We can simultaneously progress through Hyjal (perhaps with a slightly different core group) and SSC/TK.

So we did. And it was awesome.

Cleaning Up SSC

Before we headed to Hyjal last night, we had our regular SSC run on Saturday night. We’d been 4/6 for a couple weeks, so downing everyone but Leo and Vashj was kind of a fore-gone conclusion. The question was time.

Although we pulled slowly and had a few goofs on trash, we managed to one-shot Hydross, Lurker, and Morogrim. We had one wipe on FLK, but we downed him the second time. We had about 90 minute left in our raid schedule, and it was time to move on to Leo.

That we did. We snuck around, cleared some trash, and engaged. We had some trouble with the Warlock tank. I don’t know if he had maxed out Fire Resist gear… cause at the end of the Demon Phase he was at times getting one-shotted. Maybe he just needed more Stamina. There were some aggro issues on the first two attempts, too, until people learned not to screw things up.

Third times the charm! We went in, lost very few people to the Inner Demons, managed to keep the Warlock tank up for most of the fight, and we got him down. I tossed on my healing set and let a Warrior do the tanking, but hey… it’s all for the team.

So now we’re officially 5/6 of SSC. Woot!

Heading to Hyjal: Rage

Monday night, we proceeded with the Hyjal raid as intended. I filled the role a Paladin was born for - AoE tanking trash in Hyjal. Although I haven’t finished my Block Set, I threw down some badges for a Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600. With that, my blocks absorbed somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 damage. Not obscene, but as it turns out good enough.

To my surprise, we made it through the eight waves of trash on the first try. The sixth wave (6 Ghouls and 6 Abominations) was a bit sketchy. The off tanks weren’t as quick as I’d like to pull the Abominations off, and the healers weren’t as quick as I’d like to react to my near-zero health. However I survived a few close calls and we made it through. In my opinion, it’s the only tough wave in Rage’s trash.

The Ghouls are chumps. Clump them up, and the AoE destroys them. The Crypt Fiends aren’t any more trouble. The Abominations, with their stuns, do need to be pulled off (at least most of them - I can handle 1-2). The Necromancers aren’t too bad, either, as long as a tank picks them up and they don’t Bolt the raid. We sheeped two when there were four Necromancers, but otherwise we single targeted them down.

Rage came out, and chaos ensued. We weren’t quite prepared for how quickly he’d come, and it just didn’t work out. We ran back, set up again, did the trash again, and again chaos on Rage. I pulled with my Shield, it missed, some people ripped aggro, and the healers “forgot” to heal me through a Death and Decay. Whoops!

Again, third time’s the charm. The trash went down like clockwork. Rage came out, I Exorcised, I pulled back towards Jayna, and the DPS went to town. A few people died, but we had more than enough people around to finish Rage off.

The most entertaining part of that pull: one of the Hunters (also one of the raid leaders) had been kiting mobs through the NPCs to engage them. He figured if he could pull aggro on Rage, he could pull the NPCs in and Feign Death… sending Rage back to me. When Rage was at 20-30%, and the Hunter was near the top of Omen, he informed me of the plan.

He then failed to pull aggro. Muahahah! Paladin threat is unstoppable when I get to throw Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of Wrath into the mix. He was above me on the threat list, but he just couldn’t climb high enough to rip aggro.

And the Odd Moment of the Night…

During the sixth wave of trash, on the third attempt, I realized something was wrong. My Holy Shield button grayed out.

Huh? What? I have mana. Why can’t I Block?

Then I looked over to the right side of my screen - where I have the raid pulled out. Behind all the raid nameplates, I noticed a little red icon - my shield. I couldn’t believe it.

I only died twice. I repaired before I came. In all that trash… my shield broke! Zero durability, unuseable, flat out broke. What the hell.

Luckily someone had a Field Repair Bot 110G. I threw on my Fel Barrier which was conveniently in my bags for the rest of the wave, repaired, and went back to business as usual.

So… bring repair bots. Your shield is gonna take a beating. Mileage may vary.

Oh, and I got some loots. Trash drop! Nope, not a hammer. That would have been awesome. Instead I picked up Pepe’s Shroud of Pacification. I won’t use it for everyday tanking, but the Hit Rating is interesting. I’m keeping it around for specialty fights, like A’lar and Nalarokk that require taunts to go off 100% of the time.

However, with my impatience to get him jacked and 70, I can’t just let him sit on the bench altogether. I’ve been spending some time PVPing, both in Alterac Valley and Hellfire Peninsula.

AV is a great way to start banking honor. Although I’m a 61 and I don’t do much, I can still reap the benefits. I’ve also found that I do OK in helping out on defense. I can’t do much alone, but I can still Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot people to help control them while someone else kills them.

For the most part, I’ve focused my efforts on Hellfire - because there are some nice items to be picked up with Marks of Honor Hold.

What To Buy…?

There are three items I’ve been looking at picking up.

First, Mark of Conquest. This is an awesome level 62 trinket. It’s got the highest static AP buff of any trinket before level 70. The random proc is nice, too, and regenerating health is perfect for grinding (i.e. leveling). I don’t see anyway that I’ll replace this until I hit 70.

Terminal Edge is a pretty nice thrown weapon. It’s not as incredibly over-powered as the trinket, but it is better than the quest rewards you’ll get. To get something comparable, you’ll have to get a drop in Blood Furnace (Legion Blunderbuss), Slave Pens (Coilfang Needler), or Underbog (Needle Strike). While these are certainly attainable, I never liked grinding those instances - so I’ll stick with a predictably attainable PVP piece.

Fianlly, Band of the Victor is ok. There are some comparable quest rewards available in Hellfire, so I may skip it. It’s certainly the last on my list, but I might pick it up if I have an extra 15 tokens.

At least I get XP every time I do the Hellfire Fortifications quest. Woot!

Why? The slower the weapon, the higher it’s top-end damage. This is used for calculating the damage of abilities such as Sinister Strike. A slower speed also translates Attack Power (i.e. AP, Str, and Agi) into more raw damage through the use of special abilities.

To me, then, the choice between the Footman’s Longsword and the Shadowrend Longblade seemed simple. Oddly enough, I ran Ramparts with 2 other Rogues… and they passed the drop (Shadowrend Longblade) to me.

Why?

Why Is Speed Important?

As alluded to before, speed is important because it affects the top end damage of a weapon and it alters the damage output of special abilities like Sinister Strike.

To give you an example, let’s look at my Rogue. He currently has roughly 800 AP. Hey, he’s only level 61.

With the slower weapon equipped (Speed 2.6), his top end damage is 327. With the quicker weapon equipped (Speed 2.1), his top end damage is 265. That’s an increase of 62 damage, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%. Yowza!

What does this effect? It alters the damage output of any ability that is based on “Weapon Damage.” Sinister Strike deals Weapon Damage plus a certain amount - so higher top end damage equals more damage output. This would also affect Backstab and Ambush if I wasn’t a Combat Swords Rogue.

So… Why Might the Quicker Weapon Be Better?

One of the Rogues argued thusly. Hit Rating is important to a Sword Rogue. You need to be able to hit in order for Sword Spec and Combat Potency to proc. Therefore, Hit Rating trumps all.

Indeed, the Footman’s Longsword offers 11 Hit Rating. However, I think that the 20% increase to damage caused by Sinister Strike far outweighs the minor contribution that the sword would make to my Hit Rating needs.

Sure, I need Hit Rating. However, while leveling I’m likely to be far short of the cap. Increasing my hit chance by a bit would help my DPS, but drastically increasing the DPS of my Sinster Strike would definitely help matters out.

Ramparts Sword Ftw!

Regardless of the other Rogue’s opinion, I grabbed the Ramparts sword. I think the Shadowrend Longblade is perfect for a Swords Rogue.

Sure, it has no hit rating, but it has a nice high weapon speed - leading to high end weapon damage. This in turn helps boost my abilities and increase my overall DPS. For the next few levels, I would argue that this is the best sword in the game.

However, I still love the Footman’s Longsword. It’s easily available through rep, and I’m using one for my off-hand. It’s not an ideal quick speed, but it is relatively quicker than a slow main hand. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make - since there aren’t a whole lot of slow off-hand swords in the early 60’s.

One of the less enjoyable parts of leveling a Rogue is leveling your lockpicking skill.

There’s something very broken about this. The junkboxes that you collect off mobs have skill levels that are far too wide, so you’ll find yourself needing to grind your lockpicking skill at one point or another. You can either pick a lot of pockets, or find a spot with outdoor chests or doors that you can pick.

From 175 - 250, there is just such a perfect spot - Scarlet Monastery.

Picking the Doors

The wowwiki article on lockpicking suggests that you show up to Scarlet Monastery around level 205. The door actually turns Orange at 175, so I’d suggest going at 175. No sense grinding lockpicking somewhere else, when this is much easier.

Here’s the basic procedure. Scarlet Monastery has two locked doors - Cathedral and Armory. When you walk into the area, you can pick both locks.

Once you pick the locks, there’s some kind of hidden cooldown preventing you from getting a skill-up for another 5 to 10 minutes. There are, however, ways to reset this cooldown.

Method one: Enter part of the Scarlet Monastery instance. Pick three pockets. Leave. This will always reset the timer, such that you can once again pick the two doors and potentially get two more skill ups.

Method two: Unlock a junkbox. According to wowwiki, this has a 50/50 chance to reset the timer - I observed it to be somewhat higher.

With that in mind, here’s what you should do until you hit lockpicking 250.

Pick the doors. Enter the instance, pick three pockets, and leave. Re-pick the doors. If you have any junkboxes on you, open them one at a time and re-pick the doors after each opening.

It helps to use the instance portals in some kind of order. For example, enter Cathedral three times, them Armory three times, then Library. At that point, the Cathedral mobs should have re-set so that you can pick their pockets again.

If you out-level Scarlet Monastery (I went at level 58, but I’d recommend being 40 or so), you won’t have any problems with mobs resisting your pick-pockets. It’ll be easy for you to quickly move in and out, and continue to open the doors.

I was able to grind from 205 to 230 in about a half an hour. It’s a decent time sink, but what are ya gonna do? Need to open locks somehow.

When I leveled my Horde Hunter, I chose to go the Fishing and Cooking route. I think every character should be able to cook, and I wanted to have a Fisherman on the Horde side. In doing this, there is a pretty simple set of cooking recipes that will take you the last stretch of the way to Outlands - from 225 to 300.

Alas, my Rogue is no fisherman. When I decided to pick him back up, he was level 38 and his fishing was around… 15. I already have an Alliance fisherman (my Paladin), so I didn’t see the need to sink 10-12 hours into leveling it up for this new toon.

Cooking, on the other hand, is a must. At the moment he’s a skinner, and he’ll likely be doing some farming of animals… so it would help a lot if he could cook up the food. I already have two Outlands-capable chefs on the Alliance side, but it’s easy enough to level that I want him to have it.

Originally I planned on going to Eastern Plaguelands and fishing up the necessary fish with my Paladin, but in the course of leveling I found another route. It’s possible to get from 225 to 275 without fish, in the course of normal leveling.

What Recipes? Where?

There are two key recipes that you’ll need.

Recipe: Tender Wolf Steak will take you easily from 225 to 250. Juicy Bear Burger (as well as the equivalent level Shish Kabob) will take you from 250 to 275.

The Wolf Steak recipe has been in the game for some time. It is sold to both Horde and Alliance characters in Felwood. It takes Tender Wolf Meat - and you can check Wowhead for specifically where it drops.

I found this to be a pretty convenient recipe to use, since the wolves in Felwood and Western Plaguelands both dropped this type of meat. The Plaguehounds in Eastern Plaguelands also dropped it. This gave me a pretty good shot of scooping up 25 of the meat before I left Azeroth without spending any extra time farming.

The Bear recipe was added in one of the recent patches to help make leveling cooking easier without fishing. What do you know… that’s exactly what I’m doing! The recipe utilizes Bear Flank.

It wasn’t quite as abundant as the Wolf meat, but it drops off bears in both Felwood and Western Plaguelands. I was able to collect 15-20 of them before leaving Azeroth. The Wolf Meat took me a bit over 250, so that was enough to get me to 275.

I skipped Felwood entirely with my Horde Hunter - I liked the idea of doing Feralas with a nice central city. This time around, I did the opposite and skipped Feralas for the most part and used the Felwood quest circuit. If you spend any time here or the Plaguelands, you need to get these recipes. They’ll make leveling cooking possible without fishing.

What About 275 - 300?

Well, that’s the sticky point.

The Bear Flank recipe will only get you to 295 before it Greys out. Outland foods don’t start until 300. Convenient, eh?

There are two recipes that can get you up to 300 without using fish. Somehow I doubt you’ll be making Runn Tum Tuber Surprise, since the reagent is found only in Dire Maul. I also know I will personally never make Smoked Desert Dumplings, since the requisite Sandworm Meat comes from Silithus… and I shan’t be going back there ever again.

That unfortunately leaves fishing. The recipe you’ll be looking for is Baked Salmon, and you’ll need some Raw Whitescale Salmon - probably from Eastern Plaguelands.

Luckily, I managed to find plenty of it on the AH. It cost me 30g to pick up 30 fish… but worth saving me the 30-45 minutes of fishing to get enough.

If you’re not planning on leveling your fishing, but you want your cooking up, I’d suggest you start looking early for this fish or the sandworm meat. If you’re lucky, it’ll be on the Auction House sometime before you hit 58 and head to Outland. Remember - the longer you look for an item on the Auction House, the more likely you are to buy it without paying through the nose.

Cooking 300 and Outland Bound!

At the end of all this, my young Rogue, Padishor, is level 58, his cooking is 300, and he’s just about ready to head to Outland.

Unfortunately, his Mining is a bit lacking… and I’ll have to spend some time running around and leveling that. Doh! I’ll probably wait until after he gets an Epic Mount and make a few circuits of the Plaguelands.

Have you ever thought of donating cloth to the local quartermaster while leveling your alt? If you’re not fully aware of the rewards for this quest chain, you may just pass right by your local cloth quartermaster without a second thought. Or, you may be nice to the quartermaster in your own capital city, but neglect those in others!

Here’s a tip. If you’re leveling an alt, complete all of the cloth donation quests. They’re easy XP, and a lot of it.

The Cloth Donation Quest Chain

In each capital city, there is a Cloth Quartermaster. At level 12, he will have a quest for you - Donation of Wool. This basically requires you to hand over 3 stacks of Wool to the Quartermaster in exchange for some XP (950) and some reputation with his city (350).

As you increase in level, you will find that he has new quests. At level 26, he offers Donation of Silk, which rewards you with 2400 xp. At level 40, he offers Donation of Mageweave, which rewards you with 4750 xp.

Here’s the kicker. If you’ve completed all three donation quests at a quartermaster (Wool, Silk, and Mageweave), he will offer you Donation of Runecloth at level 50. This rewards you with 9550 xp!

If you complete all four cloth donation quests at a given quartermaster, that’s a total of 17650 xp. Why aren’t you donating your cloth?

Where Can I Donate?

Each faction has five cloth quartermasters - one for each race. They are located in the appropriate capital city, with Ironforge housing the Gnome quartermaster and Orgrimmar housing the Troll quartermaster.

For reference, here’s a quick list of them.

Alliance:

• Mistina Steelshield (Ironforge, Dwarf)
• Bubulo Acerbus (Ironforge, Gnome)
• Clavicus Knavingham (Stormwind, Human)
• Raedon Duststriker (Darnassus, Night Elf)
• Dugiru (Exodar, Draenei)

Horde:

• Rashona Straglash (Orgrimmar, Orc)
• Vehena (Orgrimmar, Troll)
• Ralston Farnsley (Undercity, Undead)
• Rumstag Proudstrider (Thunder Bluff, Tauren)
• Sorim Lightsong (Silvermoon City, Blood Elf

Remember, each quartermaster will offer you all four quests. That’s 17,650 xp per quartermaster. If you complete all five quest chains available to you, you’ll receive a total of 88,250 xp. That’s over half a level when you’re in the 50’s.

Be Generous With Your Cloth!

If you’re leveling an alt, this is easy xp. It’s not free, by any means, since you’ll be spending cloth you could sell or otherwise use.

If you’ve got a 70 already, though, then you’ve probably got money to spare. It’s worth spending a bit of cash to get together all of the necessary materials, if it means saving you the time of grinding/questing for 88,000 xp.

You’ll probably get more than enough Wool and Silk while leveling, but chances are you’ll have to buy some of the Mageweave and Runecloth if you want to get these quests done before you head to Outland. It’d be wise to start shopping early - you can usually pick up both clothes pretty cheap if you’re buying at the right time. If you buy at the wrong time (i.e. you wait until level 57 and buy whatever is on the AH), you may be stuck paying 10g a stack… which is no good.

Be prepared, hand in your cloth when you can, and enjoy a nice boost on the way to 70.

Sometimes, I need him to farm herbs. As a Frost Mage, I’ve got it easy farming Talonsworn Forest Ragers. I occasionally patrol around Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley for those rare herbs.

Recently, I’ve found two far more important uses for my Mage: free food and free ports.

Ritual of Refreshment

The Mage Table - Ritual of Refreshment - can be both a blessing and a curse.

It’s awesome for raid night. I used to have to spend 5-10 minutes conjuring tons of food and water before a Kara run - and I could just imagine the quantity of food needed for SSC/TK.

It might not be so awesome for PVP - people expect a table in every BG, and sometimes I don’t feel like shelling out the powder to conjure one. Then I think of the poor Hunters who have to buy bullets/arrows for every battleground and I usually summon a table anyway. At least I don’t have to put up with whispers for food and water.

For the first month or two after I came back, I spent nearly every day running Heroics with my Paladin. He needed a lot of Badges to get all the gear, so I would run them non-stop. Unfortunately, Paladins also use up water… non stop. Unless I wanted to take a long time for each run, I needed to be able to drink until I was half full and then run into combat.

This can get expensive when you pay 50-60s per 5 water. The solution? Conjured water. Unfortunately, there were no Mages in our regular Heroic groups. The two main Mages for our group had now become a Tankadin (me) and a Resto Druid (my healer). Doh!

That’s when we came to the realization that we could summon a table for ourselves!

Here’s what you do. Summon the entire group to the instance. Transfer leader to someone trustworthy and switch over to your Mage.

Have your Trustworthy Leader invite you to the group, get a summon to the instance, and cast Ritual of Refreshment. Log out and switch back to your main. Once you’re invited to the group, you can take food from the table!

It takes a minute or two, but it’s well worth it. Free food and water for you and your healer more than outweighs the 20s cost of two Arcane Powder.

Free Ports? Yeah!

Here’s another great trick I figured out today.

Ever have an Alt that needs ported around the world? I know I have. My Druid was ready to move on to the Wetlands, so I got him ported to Theramore for the boat. My Rogue had to go to Darnassus, so I got him ported there.

You could have a guildy do this, but sometimes no one is around. You could petition a nice Mage to do it in trade, but this can get expensive. As a former Mage, I always tip at least 3g for a port - I wouldn’t waste my time with a stranger for any less. Then again, there may be no generous Mages around.

Today, I was in just such a position. My Rogue wanted to go to Shatt to set his hearth there. No guildies were on. I tried trade, and the only response I got was from a Paladin. He tried to explain to me why I didn’t want to go to Shatt. Apparently it’s busy and there’s no Auction House…

What’s a Rogue to do? I decided to test out an idea.

I positioned my Rogue on the bridge outside the Ironforge Auction House. I then switched over to my Mage, took the Shattrath portal to Ironforge, and positioned myself on the same bridge.

I invited a friend of mine to the group and made him leader. I then cast Teleport: Shattrath and switched back over to my Rogue. My friend invited me, and low and behold… it worked!

I stepped into the portal and I was magically in Shatt.

So, the next time you need a port somewhere, don’t waste someone else’s time. Remember that you can simply do it yourself! All you need is a friend to hold the group for a few seconds while you switch characters.

Don’t Delete Your Mage… He’s Good for Something

So you see, your Mage is still good for something. Some of my friends have this nasty habit of deleting old toons that they don’t play anymore - I don’t believe in that. You never know when you’ll change your mind.

However, if you ever need a reason to keep your Mage around, think of these two reasons - free food and free ports. There’s nothing better in the world.

I came to a sudden realization tonight - Magister’s Terrace is probably the best place in all of BC to make use of Spellsteal. When I first trained Spellsteal, I thought, “Ooh, that’s a nice novelty. When am I going to use that?”

There aren’t that many mobs that have steal-able buffs, outside of special situations, and it mainly has (great) uses in PVP. Today, I realized that the majority of mobs in Magister’s Terrace have a stealable buff… and they are awesome.

With that in mind, here’s a guide to the different mobs and spells that you can look forward to stealing. (Note: I’m unsure if any of these values are different in regular mode, since all my recent experience comes from Heroic MgT)

Sunblade Warlock (Warlock)

These guys have one of the best buffs in the entire instance. Like most Warlocks, they have a form of Fel Armor. Their awesome Fel Armor (Rank 2) offers a straight up buff of 250 Spell Damage!

It also gives you a nice 30% boost to incoming heals. That’s mighty useful considering some of the AoE damage that gets thrown around in MgT. This spell has a long duration (30 Minutes), so it should last for a full 2 minutes after you steal it.

However, Patch 2.4.3 is going to make Mage Armor and Fel Armor undispellable on players. I wonder if that’ll alter the way that magical armors work on NPCs.

Sunblade Magister (Mage)

The Magister casts Enchancement of Spell Haste on himself. Unfortunately, this is not steal-able.

However, each time the Magister casts a spell he gains another great buff - Spell Haste. You can steal this, and it grants you a base 10% increase to spellcasting speed. It stacks each time you re-steal it, and this also resets it to a 30 second timer.

The Magister will refresh his own Spell Haste each time he completes a cast, and sometimes you can see him with 2 or 3 buffs on him. By stealing it, you’re helping improve your groups survivability and you’re giving yourself a nice boost to DPS.

Note that his permanent aura and the temporary buff have the same icon - so it’s only stealable if you see two of those Arcane Blast icons.

Sunblade Blood Knight (Paladin)

The Blood Knight will buff himself with Seal of Wrath fairly often. It only has a duration of 30 seconds, so you won’t get it for very long. However, he does re-buff himself every 30 seconds or so. Be alert, and steal it again.

This is a great damage buff for you. The damage (1131-1269) seems to scale in some way with Spell Damage. If I remember correctly, mine was hitting mobs for an extra 14-1500 (~1000 spell damage).

This is also a really important buff to steal for your tanks survivability. If you leave it up, he’s hitting your tank for an additional 1200 with each swing. Without it, and if Judgement of Wrath is dispelled, he’s pretty puny and you can focus on more dangerous targets if his heal is controlled.

Sunblade Physician (Priest)

I actually don’t remember if the Physician’s buff is steal-able. I’d assume that it is.

The Physician casts Prayer of Mending on another mob. This leads to ~3k healed on various mobs throughout the fight. If you’re quick enough to steal the heal in time, this’ll help shorten the fight for your group. It’ll also help heal you, taking pressure off your healer.

Priestess Delrissa (Third Boss)

Out of all the adds on the third boss, I think that Priestess Delrissa is the only one that has a steal-able buff. I could be wrong… but hers are important to snatch up.

She casts some heals, and like the Ogre Priests in Gruul, you can spellsteal her Renew. In Heroic, this ticks for a total of 3k damage - so it’ll definitely help bring her down quicker if you clear it off of her ASAP.

The key to that fight is quickly killing enough adds to make it manageable, and spellstealing her heal is one way to make it go much quicker. I think you can also spellsteal the Power Word: Shield, but I’m not positive about that.

Watch the Mobs, Steal Anything

There really aren’t any buffs in there that you don’t want to steal. You’ll quickly get used to who has what, but until that point… pay attention to the mobs’ debuff bars and steal anything that pops up!

You’ll be helping your group out, and you’ll be buffing your DPS immensely. Plus, it’s fun to blast things for an extra 1500 Holy Damage with each spell!