Coolest Mage Spec: A guide to 5.0.4 Frost Mages

Oh Frost spec. You and I have done our dance for a long time now and we’ve seen many highs and many more lows throughout our WoW love affair. We have been mocked for choosing each other but those people never understood the power of Frost. They didn’t let us raid with them and it was ok, because you and I were better than them and we knew it. We were once the top dog in Vanilla but when BC came out, we were left behind by the other two specs. It was ok because we had our water elemental (Aquamus Prime)and we were still feared in pvp. In Wrath we were given more fight control talents but our dps was miles behind most other classes. Our new ability, deep freeze, only froze things in place for a few seconds and on mobs that were immune to it, it was wasted. Eventually it was made to do damage on immune mobs and seeing high crits on bosses was nice but we were still a rare sight in raids.

When leveling, many mages went frost because it made leveling a lot easier to have a damage shield and plenty of crowd controllability. As soon as most frost mages hit level cap, they’d usually pick a different spec. Why bother playing a class that you enjoy if it can’t bring the dps you need in raids? Because of the high number of leveling frost mages who didn’t understand the class or how to play it right, most people assumed that frost was a lost cause and that only baddies played frost at level cap.

PUG Etiquette

As a smallish 10 man casual raiding guild, my guild tends to find itself having to pug a person or two for our raids when we don't have enough people sign up/show up for our raids. Now this doesn't mean that we are a horribad guild that couldn't down hogger or anything. It just means that recruitment has not brought in enough people who can show up to a raid. A normal raid night this expansion will often see us with eight or nine guildees online and ready to raid.

This situation leads us to pug a spot or two so that we can raid on raid nights. Sometimes I have a friend on my friends list that I can ask to come to the raid and when this happens, it's not really pugging as you are pulling in someone you know and not a complete stranger. But sadly there are times when our friends list fails us and we are stuck having to resort to asking for people in trade chat. This is not something that we enjoy doing but sometimes it's either pug or not raid.

For the Bloggers

Today I think I will talk about blogging. So if you only read my blog (and let’s face it...no one reads my blog) for only WoW stuff you may want to amuse yourself in other ways which I may or may not want to know about. Hmm dirty humor in the second sentence of a post...right on schedule. I think this will be the first in a series of helpful blogging tips so enjoy the first post and eventually I’ll get around to posting more.

So how do you rise to levels of blog fame where people flock to your blog posts in the thousands and hang on your every word? Well the first step is the easiest: start a blog! Once you have a blog you need to do three things: Find a subject to write about, write something, and get your name out there.

SWTOR Advanced Classes and You

I created this quick explanation for my guild and posted it on our forum and I decided that I might as well make it a blog post since I'm sure at least one or two of you people out in the interwebs may benefit from this post. So enjoy this quick explanation of what Advanced Classes in SWTOR are and what you should know before picking yours.


First off, there are 4 basic classes: Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler/Imperial agent, Trooper/Bounty Hunter. Three of the four can tank(Warrior/Inquisitor/BH) and three of the four can heal(Inquisitor/BH/Agent), provided you select the right advanced class. Two of the four can use lightsabers(Knight/Warrior and Consular/Inquisitor) and the other two use blasters rifles/pistols.(Smuggler/Agent and Trooper/BH)

You start the game as one of these four basic classes and at level 10 you decide which advanced class you want to be. Now picking your advanced classes is not the same as picking your spec tree. What you are picking is whether you want to specialize in and once you do that, you can pick your talent spec. It sound confusing but it breaks down like this: lets say you roll a Sith Warrior and you want to be a tank for endgame.

Well when you finish your class quest on the starter world(usually around 9-10) you take a shuttle to the imperial fleet and get a quest to talk to a guy about advanced classes. The info the guy gives you about the two AC choices you have is kind of vague and not that helpful. But you are given two choices Sith Juggernaut or Sith Marauder.

The Sith Juggernaut can do one of two things: DPS or Tank. The Sith Marauder can do one thing: DPS. The choice for Marauders is how you dps with dots or with fast acrobatic dps.(think feral cat or a rogue) Once you pick your advanced class you put your talent point into the tree that corresponds to what you want to do; for our example of a tanking Warrior, you'd put your points into the Immortal talent tree. Now once you pick your advanced class and are feeling all bad ass about it, you should check your inventory because your trainer will give you a bag with items related to your AC. Juggernauts attack with a 1h lightsaber so you get two generators for your offhand, you can only use one at a time in your offhand but you get two because one is for dps and one is for tanking.

The tank one will have Shield %/Absorbtion % on it and the DPS one will only have the necessary dps stats. Kind of obvious which you should be using for your desired spec. I mention this because most people dont realize that they now have this bag in their inventory so they miss out on things like the generators for the Jugger and a second lightsaber for the Marauder to Dual Wield.

Now a very important thing to remember is that ONCE YOU PICK YOUR ADVANCED CLASS YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT! You can choose to respec your talents in your Advanced Class but you can't change the Advanced Class itself. So if you decide that you don't want to be a tank, you can respec your points and go into the dps tree. You can't just go to a trainer and choose to be a Marauder instead. You are stuck with the Advanced Class you chose, so choose wisely!

There is a good breakdown over at Reddit of the AC/Specs that also tells you what WoW class each will feel like. It's a good summary so you should totally check it out if you are not sure what AC you want to go with.

Things to do to prepare for raiding

I was doing some thinking lately about raiding, more specifically raiding in the new 4.3 raid. With a new raid and new heroics to get gear from, 4.3 is looking to be full of cool things. It is also the perfect time for someone who is leveling at the moment and is interested in raiding to prepare themselves to do so. Between crafted gear, VP/JP gear, BoE epics, and the new heroic gear, someone can go from a freshly dinged 85 wearing greens and quest blues to a nicely geared ready to raid 85.

But getting the gear is only the first step to get yourself ready to raid like a pro. In fact getting gear is usually one of the easier things you can do. My warlock hit 85 on a saturday and couldn't even run regular heroics. So I got to work and between JP gear, BoE epics, and crafting gear, he was only a few points of shy of running trollroics which would up his item level/stats enough so that if I choose to take him into a raid, I can pull my own weight. After some luck with heroic drops he was ready for trollroics!

I know several people are in this boat, finally 85 and wanting to raid in 4.3 so I decided to come up with a few things to do to prepare themselves to raid.

How to succeed at Cataclysm Heroics

So I was thinking about my previous post about how much bad luck I was having running heroics at the time and like usual my mind started wandering all over the place. I eventually thought up a few things that puggers can do to ensure that their group succeeds or at least so that their run doesn't end in total failure. Keep reading after the break to find out how you too can succeed in heroics!

Cataclysm Dungeons/Raids and You!

So...I'd like to start out by apologizing to all of my faithful blog readers for the long, long, long absence. Work has been beating me up so hard that by the time I get home I usually make it to my chair before falling asleep and when I do wake up I barely have the energy to even log on to WoW let alone to write a blog post. :( But anyway I am able to write something now so enjoy!

So by now everyone has heard how hard heroics are in the cataclysm beta and how cc will be king and all that. Well there are more changes to running heroics at 85 then just that so I figured I would write a little for you guys who aren't in the beta or aren't as in the know as others. In the current expansion you ding 80 and start running heroics right off the bat for badges and maybe a piece or two of gear so that you can start raiding. After you hit 80 you don't ever queue for a regular instance because the gear is not as great as anything that drops from heroics and you don't get any justice points/badges in them after doing the daily regular dungeon.

In cataclysm things are not like this at all. Yes the gear from heroics is still better then what you are going to be getting from regulars and it'll be tons better then what you are wearing at 85. So what's different you may ask? Well first off each instance has a minimum average gear level requirement and if you aren't at or above that number then you can't queue for those dungeons. The first two dungeons that you can actually queue for at 80 are going to be Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Neither of these has a minimum gear requirement so you can start queuing for them after you run to each instance entrance and "discover" the entrance area. Each instance in cata requires you to have run to the entrance and discover it before you can queue for it. I guess blizz got tired of people complaining about others who would die in an instance and release just to get lost trying to get back to the instance. Anyway back on topic, since these two dungeons have no gear level requirement you can run them over and over until you ding.

At 81 you can keep on queueing for these two instances and you unlock two new ones, the Vortex Pinnacle and the Stonecore. Now these two instances require you to have an average gear level. At 80 in full ICC10 gear you'll be sitting in the 251ish range and in full ICC25 gear you'll be around 270ish. You can check out what your gear level is now ingame since they added it on to your character screen in 4.0.1 so you don't need an addon to find out what your average gear ilevel is. If I remember correctly VP and Stonecore require a 272 score so you will have to start replacing at least a few pieces of gear with new cata gear to get in to these. Why the hell did they do this average ilevel crap? Well I guess it is because they don't want people to have grinded up to 85 and then attempt to run heroics in ICC gear that they started the expansion with.

When you unlock the next set of instances, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir, they require 305 ilevel score. There is no way that you can get to 305 with all of your level 80 gear so expect to either run a lot of instances before this or to do A LOT of quests for gear rewards. Now if you do nothing but run intances...you have a chance of getting your gear level score to where it needs to be but I recommend mixing in some questing for gear as well as money.

Now you hit 85 and you are ready to queue for heroics...well just wait a second there. Heroics also have a minimum gear level...329. Now to get your gear level to this number you will have to farm regular instances to up your score. When raids were first opened on the beta servers new premades were released as well. The gear level for those premades was 350. This means that after running heroics and full heroic gear you will have a 350 gear level. You can probably start running raids slightly before this I am sure so I would say that mid 340s would probably be passable for raids. Once Cata comes along we'll know for sure what we'll need to raid. I hope this post helps at least one person prepare for Cata instancing. I am pretty sure my math is right but if someone has correct information please feel free to post it. =D

A brief history of my guild or how I learned to stop worrying and love my guild

Not that long ago a guildee asked me "Is it worth it to lead a guild?" At the time it took me a few minutes to come up with some pros and cons to that question. Most of the cons were pretty obvious: lots of work, huge time sink, gotta be able to take a lot of flak from people and the pros were also equally obvious: chance of succeeding and seeing your hard work pay off, doing things your way, and you get to see things from a different perspective. Now this seemed to be enough for the guildee so they thanked me for answering their question and went off to do something else. I have been thinking about it for a while now and I have been asking myself...how the hell does a lazy, anti-social, unmotivated slacker such as myself end up in charge...and how has it not all unraveled at any time in the last 5 years?

Well...I think that I've lasted as long as I have because I like to do things my way. It also helps that I'm a stubborn bastard who doesn't like to back down. Both of which cause my fiance several headaches when it comes time to pick a movie to watch. ;-) But how have I managed to not only gather people to my banner but also to succeed and grow? Well that is a good question to which I still have no answer to. I have been in two guilds in two other MMO's Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy 11. Due to the amount of text I will be breaking this post into two parts with the first one posted today and the second part later. So prepare yourself to step back into the wayback machine and read on if you dare! Lot of text incoming, you've been warned...

Guildmates and You!

So if you're playing WoW(and I assume you either are currently playing or have played it at some point since you're reading this blog) then you have probably been in a guild at some point. It doesn't matter the type of guild, whether it be a leveling, a social, a raiding, a PvP, or even a guild that does all of it. I believe that being in a guild of some kind is a huge part of experiencing the game and those that have never been in one are missing out on a huge part of the game. My guild is a mainly PvE guild as we are focused on PvE content but we're not a bunch of care bears, the horde we camped until they cried politely explained the errors of being a horde on a PvP server the other night can testify. Why am I listing my guild credentials you may ask? Well because today's topic is going to be about Guilds and what they can mean for their members.

For whom the totem tolls

So...Rhommel is finally 80!!!! ZOMG! I know it's about time that I finally posted something about my shaman since I've been so busy with school, wow, job seeking, considering selling stuff on ebay, planning landscaping stuff for our backyard, proving that .9999 does in fact equal 1, solving crime part-time, coming up with excuses for not posting sooner, etc. I believe it took me about a month or so to level from 1 to 80 and looking back on it, there was never any period where I was bored or lost interest in my shaman. He has been fun since day one. Well it has been a rough few weeks while I was grinding out the levels on my little enhancement shaman and I am glad that now I can grind out gear on him to get him to be the ultimate killing machine that I know he can be.

So now I have to figure out:
1. What stats I should aim for first. What I mean by this is what finding out what hit rating I need, what expertise I need, what is my stat priority once these two stats are reached.
2. What should my spec be for maximized damage and what glyphs should I be using for that spec.
3. What is my rotation at 80.
4. What gear do I need and where can I get it.

I should hopefully be done with that list and post it sometime this weekend once I'm sure of the information out there so keep an eye out for it.

On other but just as awesome news...MMO-Champion has started releasing info about the beta including a talent calculator! So far only a few classes have been updated with new and awesome talents but resto shaman and druids have a few sexy goodies waiting for them, spriests and boomkins also have some awesome talents listed. Sadly mages and paladins don't have anything updated yet but I am sure that will be corrected soon enough!

Jed's Top 10 tips for Guild Leaders

Well the other day I mentioned that I had been both raid and guild leader since I created my guild the second day that the Ursin server was launched. (Stupid people not signing my charter keeping me from being open for business the first day!) Ursin was opened for character creation on July 22, 2005, which means that my guild has been around for almost 5 years now.(woo hoo) In that time we've been raiding, we have raided in Molten Core, Onyxia, Karazhan, Gruul, Naxxramas, and finally Icecrown Citadel, with a few other random raids in between. We've had our ups and downs and have held together, in part because I am too stubborn to give up as well as the fact that I strive to create a fun atmosphere for people to play the game in.

Would I consider myself an expert in leading a guild? I would loudly answer NO! But I think I could offer a few tips for anyone looking to start a guild or even someone who is currently leading a guild. So without further ado, here are 10 tips that all guild leaders should know, I'll list them out and after the break I'll go into more depth for each tip:

1. Have a clear goal
2. Be confident
3. Don't be afraid to be picky
4. Be fair
5. Be patient
6. Delegation is your friend
7. Know your limits
8. Study up
9. Be willing to change
10. Relax

ICC Raiding Tips

So ICC has been out a while now and people have been finding out all sorts of little tips and tricks to get it cleared. From all the reading I've done and my own personal experience I've decided to share some of these fun little tips for ICC! Some are known already and some may be new but for anyone who is just now getting into the raid, they will hopefully all be helpful.

Oh and a quick note, I am trying out a new thing in my blogs: breaking them up a little so readers don't have to scroll through a wall of text to read past blogs. I will also be trying to mess with the graphic part of the blog but that might take me a little bit longer lol. If anyone has any feed back please be sure to leave some.

Tanking Tips and You!

Pretty soon I will have a full deck. What I mean by this is that my hunter is currently 79 and once I ding 80 on him I will have an 80 of every class (and a second pally.) Because of this I've had the pleasure of tanking on three out of four tanking classes, sorry druids but feral just never interested me. Now some of these tanking alts started out life as dps only and were moved to a tanking offspec(warrior) and some were always meant to be tanks(paladin/death knight) with a dps or healing offspec. Now I've tanked every instance/raid possible between my three tanks and I'd like to think that I picked up a few helpful hints for other tanks looking for some help with threat management, tps, or even abilities.

Shaman healing is more then just chain healing.

Flashback to the night The Burning Crusade was released, I had just gotten home from Walmart and installed the expansion while taunting my guild mates in vent who hadn't gotten the game yet. I decided to make a shaman and run him around Stormwind instead of leveling him just because I could and because everyone else who had a shaman was busy actually leveling in the starting zone for the Draenei. Clearly being the first shaman in SW, Westfall, Redridge, and Darkshire was more important then actually leveling. I leveled as enhancement until 60 when I switched him to resto and raided for the rest of the expansion as a chain healing shaman. With this new expansion and dual specializations I decided to level my shammy to 80 as elemental and switch to resto for raiding. Now with the introduction of the Icecrown Citadel raid, I've had the luck of being able to get into several ICC pugs and been even luckier to get gear from these instances. Now as a resto shaman player, I see so many other shaman doing things that just make me shake my head and wonder why they are doing it wrong.

So I think this entry will be half rant about nub shamans and half helpful tips to reduce these bad habits people form. Will it work??? Don't know, but I suppose we'll see.

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part 3

And after two weeks it’s all finally almost over! The long awaited part 3 of my guide to affliction warlocks! In case anyone missed the previous two parts, you should read part one and part two and hopefully you'll enjoy this last part.

6. Farming like it’s going out of style

So after dinging 80 I was faced with the fun challenge of trying to decide what gear I needed to replace first and once that was figured out, what instances I was going to hit up first. With introduction of the Icecrown Citadel instances, farming for gear has become seriously easy. You can get armor, weapon/offhand, and even trinkets from these instances alone. Running them in regular mode also still rewards emblems of triumph so I would seriously recommend doing so.

When I dinged 80 I needed badges badly, so many badge rewards that were giant upgrades from my instance blues. Since this is just a quick guide I am only going to list some upgrades for weapons and trinkets since to me they are the hardest pieces to upgrade. I would say that priority should be upgrading your weapon since chances are you're either going to be wielding the boa one or one with under 300 spell power. Your options are going to be the following:
Non Heroic
1. Flameheart Spell Scalpel Revered with Kirin Tor - Highly recommend this weapon.
2. Jeweled Coronation Sword - King Ymiron Utgarde Pinnacle
3. Sempiternal Staff - Chrono Lord Epoch Culling of Stratholme

Heroic:
1. Seethe - Devourer of Souls Heroic Forge Of Souls - Best Weapon Pre-raid
2. Surgeon's Needle - Forgemaster Garfrost - Heroic Pit of Saron
3. Spectral Kris - The Black Knight Heroic Trial of the Champion

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part 2

Well that was a fun little break but now to get down to business...finishing this guide! I attribute lack of posting to dinging 80 on my warrior and gearing him up from heroic badge farming.

Incase you somehow missed the first part of this guide you can read it here.

On today’s agenda we have glyphs and gear upgrades.

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part One

Today’s blog is going to be about warlocks and how to play them as affliction. So having recently dinged my sexy gnome lock 80, I went about the fun task of both gearing him and fine-tuning his spec for optimal dps. I have been affliction on him since vanilla WoW and throughout BC, I decided to keep him as affliction with some points in destro.

After reading through a few blogs and forum posts about warlock dps I came up with a list of things I needed to do to make my lock the ultimate lock badass. This is the list:

1. Get hit capped
2. Up my spell power
3. Get a good dot timer
4. Check which glyphs are better at 80 then what I currently have for leveling.
5. Replace my mix of crappy quest greens and sub 80 instance gear with the new sexy triumph gear.
6. Prioritize the list of instances I need to farm for non badge gear(weapons, trinkets, etc)
7. Work out a good spell rotation