The WoW community has been abuzz about one of the newly announced additions to the dungeon finder in patch 4.1: Call to Arms. This feature detects when queues are long for level 85 heroics (“more than a few minutes”) (read: always) and offers additional rewards to the roles that need more representation (read: tanks) in an effort to lower queue times for other roles (read: DPS).

The rewards include extra gold, a chance at a flask or elixir, rare gems, and a chance to get some difficult to obtain non-combat pets/mounts that are available through currently soloable means. The examples Blizzard gave for pets include the Razzashi Hatchling (previously dropped in ZG, now a Stranglethorn zone drop), Cockateil (purchasable in Booty Bay), and the Tiny Sporebat (purchased when exalted wtih Sporregar.) The examples for mounts include Reins of the Raven Lord (drops in Heroic Sethekk Halls), Swift White Hawkstrider (drops in heroic Magister’s Terrace), and Deathcharger’s Reins (drops in Stratholme).

Not surprisingly, there was much QQing. Many DPS players complained along the lines “why should tanks get extra loot? All this will do is get bad tanks in the queue. I’m a great player and deserve extra goodies.” Critics of the system also add that Call to Arms can be used as many times as possible per day, while most of the mounts can only be farmed outside of Call to Arms once per day due to the heroic lockout system. They also claims it will give tanks and healers free reign to act egotistical, because Blizzard is favoring their role.

Well, all of these arguments are wrong.
Continue Reading

No longer relegated to a permanent tree form, choosing the right equipment for your Restoration Druid is more important than ever! But you’ll have to wait until you your gear is up to snuff before you start playing dress-up. As with all of our Cataclysm Gear Check guides, we’ve provided you with a variety of ways to hit that elusive 329 ilevel cap required for entrance to Heroic 5-man dungeons.

Remember that while it eventually evens out a bit once you outfit yourself with Heroic and raiding items, initial healing and mana management can be a little tricky in this expansion, even with the pieces shown below.

Stat Priority: Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit

Generally, you are going to want all of your gear to have spirit on it. However, if a piece has a significant abundance of intellect, don’t hesitate grabbing it!

As a Druid, we are gifted with the nifty ability to wear cloth gear. Or more appropriately, we were. We now receive a intellect bonus for wearing all leather, so that is definitely worth going for.

Chances are if you have leveled to 85, you have ran into all of the six new factions this expansion. As it turns out, these guys are real nice and are willing to hand out some (more or less) free blues to get you started. I would recommend checking them out.

• Baradin’s Wardens (Alliance): Shimmering Morningstar ( Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
• Dragonmaw Clan (Horde): Spaulders of the Endless Plains (Honored), Withered Dream belt (Exalted)
• Guardians of Hyjal: Cloak of the Dryads (Honored)
• Hellscream’s Reach (Horde): Shimmering Morningstar ( Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
• Ramkahen: Ammunae’s Blessing (Honored)
• The Earthen Ring: Pendant of Elemental Balance (Honored), Leggings of Clutching Roots (Honored)
• Therazane: Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Honored), Greater Inscription of Charred Lodestone (Exalted)
• Wildhammer Clan (Alliance): Mantle of Wild Feathers (Honored), Belt of the Untamed (Exalted) Continue Reading

Cataclysm has brought on a lot of changes for rogues. Subtlety may again see the light of day as a PvE spec, Hunger for Blood is replaced by Vendetta, and weapon specializations taken away from Combat just to name a few changes. This post will help you determine what gear you will want to go after in the endgame, and what you should be looking for while leveling.

The first thing you want to keep in mind are what stats you are going to want for heroics and raiding. While this doesn’t matter much for questing, if you are leveling in dungeons or preparing to do heroics, you should start looking to build your set while you are leveling.

Stat Weightings

With reforging, you can move some of your gear’s stats around. It’s important to know what stats you are looking for and reforge the stats that aren’t very good for you into better ones.

For Combat, this is what you are looking at:

Agility >> Hit (pre yellow cap) >> Expertise (pre cap) > Haste > Hit > Crit > Mastery

Basically, agility is way better than everything else, hit is way better than other things until the yellow cap, then hit and haste are about equal, but both better than crit and mastery.

Your hit information can be obtained by going into your character stats sheet. At level 85, here are the caps assuming you picked up 3/3 precision:

• Yellow: 241 (2%)
• Spell: 1127 (11%)
• White: 2523 (21%)

Basically, hit rating is really good until the yellow cap, then its about as good as haste and expertise. It stays about that good up until the white hit cap, at which point it is useless. You won’t be anywhere near that number, so don’t worry about it too much. Expertise is capped at 781 for most races; if you have a racial that increases your expertise with your weapons (like Gnomes or Orcs), you are looking at 691.

A note on weapons: You are going to want a slow main hand and a fast offhand. The type of weapon doesn’t matter (unless you have a racial bonus), but the only fast offhands are daggers, so put a 1.4 speed dagger there.

Read on for the full list of gear you will want. Continue Reading

Previously, we looked at some features the Dungeon Finder could benefit from. This time, we’ll muse about how players qualify for queueing for difficult dungeons.

For Cataclysm dungeons, the game calculates an “average item level” (also called iLvl) for your character, and you may not be able certain dungeons unless your gear is powerful enough. Additionally, players must discover the dungeons actual location in the world to be able to queue for them. If players form their own groups, they can enter at will, but they must satisfy these requirements to queue for the dungeons. In Burning Crusade (before the dungeon finder tool existed), players had to complete long quest lines that took them through difficult dungeons and raids in order to access harder ones. Additionally, in order to access the heroic modes of the dungeons, players had to buy “keys” for the dungeon that required high reputation with a linked faction that nigh guaranteed that they had run the dungeon many times on regular mode. Wrath of the Lich King introduced the minimum iLvl idea when the dungeon finder was introduced, making the hardest dungeons require a higher iLvl.

One of the main problems is how the iLvl value is calculated. The system looks at all of your characters equipped items and all of the gear your character is capable of wearing in your bags. From that, it takes the highest iLvl item for each slot and calculates the average. This is the iLvl associated with your character. This system has three major flaws:

1. Players have an incentive to roll on items that aren’t actually better for them that increase their iLvl.
2. Players can “cheat” the system by obtaining BoE items and not equipping them.
3. iLvl is not an accurate representation of a player’s abilities.

The first item needs little explanation. Mages can use daggers, so why wouldn’t a mage roll on a powerful dagger that they won’t ever use, but that would increase their iLvl? Most players would consider it rude to take the dagger if there was a class that could actually benefit from the dagger in the group, but there is a clear benefit for the mage to take it if increases his average iLvl: he can queue for more dungeons. It can be tempting to be a “ninja”; you technically “need” the item in order to queue for better dungeons, right?
Continue Reading