Whether you need a refresher or just haven’t been keeping up with it, Blizzard has put up a full post detailing every nook and cranny of the upcoming content patch. Despite my current disappointment with the state of World of Warcraft, I can’t deny the fact that packing 4.1 with new features at least partially redeems the lack of a new raid dungeon (it certainly shows they’ve been working on something). Here’s a quick summary of what to expect, with the full notes on Blizzard’s site:

Rise of the Zandalari

The days when great troll empires stretched across ancient Kalimdor are long past. Millennia of war and internal strife have stripped these nations of their power, lands, and glory. As Azeroth recovers from the destruction of the Cataclysm, the world’s divided troll populations face a bleak future. These dark times have spurred the trolls of the Zandalar, the historically wise and scholarly tribe from which all trolls originated, to take drastic action. They have embarked on a bold crusade to save their race by uniting trolls into a single mighty empire. With the Zandalari’s aid, the fallen capitals of the Gurubashi and Amani nations—Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman—are already rebuilding, replenishing their forces for a bloody campaign to expand their territories.

Yet Vol’jin and his Darkspear trolls are not aligned with the Zandalari. They have sworn to stand with their Horde comrades—and even work with the Alliance—should the trolls ignite a new war on Azeroth. Soon, Vol’jin might be forced to act on his promise, for if the Gurubashi and Amani are left to their own devices, the world will know the legendary strength and savagery of the ancient troll empires once again.

Guild Challenges

Built into the Info panel of the guild user interface, Guild Challenges are weekly tasks guild groups can tackle for additional guild experience, achievements, and gold. At the top of the guild user interface Info pane, a new Guild Challenges section is displayed and broken into three categories: Dungeons, Raids, and Rated Battlegrounds. Any guild group will qualify for Guild Challenges credit and there is a set number of times each challenge can be completed per week.

Guild Finder

Guild Finder is a new system designed to enable easier and faster guild recruitment. Guild leaders and players who are looking for a guild to call home will use the Guild Finder to meet one another and begin communications that can lead to a prosperous membership. Whether you’re a guild leader looking to fill your ranks or a player looking for a guild that meets your strictest requirements, the Guild Finder provides an easy way to make new friends!

Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms

A new system intended to lower queue times, Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms offers additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you’ll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/potion, a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount

Clearly the most important thing, though, is that this is a good indication Blizzard is ready to release the patch itself. There is a high chance we will see “Rise of the Zandalari” this coming Tuesday.

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

Update: As of Patch 4.0.6, players will no longer be required to find a dungeon’s location in order to queue for it. Why? Take a look at our analysis of the subject for more. Until then, scroll on for our handy dandy dungeon location guide.

In the latest expansion of World of Warcraft, Blizzard changed how queuing up for dungeons work. You have to discover the entrance to be able to queue up from anywhere using the Looking For Dungeon tool. This threw many people for a loop, not knowing where an instance entrance is. That’s where Lore Hound plays their helping hand. Below is a compiled list of the new Cataclysm 5-mans with screen-shots of the location, the level range, and a short description of the instance.

Hope this helps!

Blackrock Caverns (80-83)

• Location: Blackrock Mountain, Searing Gorge/Burning Steppes. Head towards the Blackrock Spire entrance portal, and take a right. Follow the hallway and take the first left. Follow this path until there’s a fork going left down a walkway, and straight upwards. Take a right down the path (or jump, for those daredevils out there) and take another right. Voila. Alternatively, take the Mole Machine from Finkle.
• Description: It is a series of tunnels created by Twilight’s Hammer clan in order to gather the remaining Ragnaros’ minions and transport them back and forth to Mount Hyjal, as well as to perform horrific experiments conducted by the nihilistic cult in order to use the essence of the dragon in order to transform the worthy into dragonspawn.

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