Category Archives: Game Info

Inscription Still Not In

I notice I’ve had a lot of hits today from Google searches for Inscription guides – presumably fuelled by today’s announcement that Inscription will be available pre-Wrath Day.

This is just a headsup for you visitors: I’m still planning to write a guide to levelling Inscription once all the information is available. Currently, Inscription still isn’t implemented in the Wrath beta, beyond some basic lowbie abilities (no Glyphs, just stat scrolls).

So, you’ll all be the first to know once I’ve got data to work with, but until then, no-one can give you a meaningful Inscription guide because the information is just not available yet. Watch this space!

Wrath: Jewelcrafting Tokens

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s not hugely “spoilery”.

As a followup from my last post about new jewelcrafting dailies and patterns:

  • Dragon’s Eyes are purchasable from the Dalaran Jewelcrafting vendor, Tiffany Cartier, for one Dalaran Jewelcrafting Token each
  • Twenty-three rare gem cuts I discussed in the last post are now five tokens each, not eight. The eight meta gem cuts are still eight tokens each. This brings the total tokens required to 179 – about six months of daily questing, rather than eight.

Wrath: Jewelcrafting Dailies & Epic Gems

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s not hugely “spoilery”.

In my recent introduction to jewelcrafting in WotLK I noted that there were a few missing stat combinations that we could expect future jewelcrafting cuts to fill. Read more for information on a number of new rare gem cuts, jewelcrafting daily quests and new epic gem cuts in Wrath.

Edit for visitors from Google: I have three more recent posts you might find more useful: a guide to the epic gems in patch 3.2, a quick reference sheet for all WotLK gem cuts, and a guide to the Jewelcrafting daily quests. Hope they’re useful!

Continue reading Wrath: Jewelcrafting Dailies & Epic Gems

Holy Paladin Raiding Consumables – Revised

This is a revision and update of this post, incorporating some items I’d overlooked the first time around (and with thanks to commenters who reminded me about some of them). Thus, I present: the Revised Guide to Holy Paladin Consumables.

Two things to note:

  1. I’m recommending consumables that give you a good balance of stats, where feasible. If you’re very well-geared in one area and need to boost a specific stat, you can make your own choices.
  2. My recommendations are specific for holy paladins. If you’re a priest, all those +Spirit consumables I wrote off are great for you. If you’re a protection paladin trying to heal, anything with spell crit is relatively useless and you’re looking for all the mp5 you can get. Et cetera.

Elixirs: Battle Elixirs

Adept’s Elixir – the increase to spelldamage is irrelevant, but this elixir gives a boost to both throughput and mana restoration. For holy paladins, this one’s a show-stopper.

Elixir of Healing Power – this one’s a good alternative for situations where you just need healing oomph, and nuts to the regen. In other situations, it’s inferior to Adept’s Elixir, but better than nothing.

Elixirs: Guardian Elixirs

Elixir of Major Mageblood – the standout choice for paladins, who tend to suffer over passive in-combat regen.

Mageblood Potion – it may be a pre-TBC recipe using Azerothian mats, but this is surprisingly effective as an emergency replacement for Elixirs of Major Mageblood.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom – inferior to Mageblood elixirs, as paladins derive no benefit from Spirit, but 30 Int is still nothing to sneer at.

Flasks

Flask of Mighty Restoration – again, the standout choice for paladins. Shattrath Flask of Mighty Restoration is a good alternative if you have the relevant rep to buy it (Exalted with Cenarion Expedition, Sha’tar, and Scryer/Aldor) and you’re raiding the appropriate zones.

Flask of Distilled Wisdom – again, inferior to the regen-boosting Restoration flask, but an acceptable alternative for the all-around boost to healing, mana pool and spell crit.

Unstable Flask of the Elder for Gruul’s Lair raids; this is superior for paladins to the Unstable Flask of the Physician, although that’s certainly better than nothing.

Weapon Oils

Brilliant Mana Oil – arguably the best choice, with a balance of mp5 and +heal. Unfortunately it’s an old-world recipe (requiring Zandalar faction). Brilliant Wizard Oil is a good alternative for paladins seeking crit rather than mp5, also requiring Zandalar faction to learn.

Superior Mana Oil – inferior to the Brilliant Mana Oil, but much more readily available. Superior Wizard Oil is also a good option; although the tooltip says “spell damage”, it does apply to healing as well.

Foods

Blackened Sporefish – for mana regen and survivability. The mp5 boost is small enough, though, that this is on-par with:

Golden Fishsticks – which has a really good healing buff. The Spirit is useless for paladins, but 44 +Heal alone is nothing to sneeze at.

Skullfish Soup – slightly weaker for most healadins than the other two buff foods, as it gives less than 1% crit which is weaker than 44 Heal or 8 mp5 unless you’re really into crit-stacking. Still better than nothing, though!

Any stamina food, such as Feltail Delight (which is the one I use most often). The spirit does little for a paladin, but an extra 300 health is always welcome, and 20 Stamina foods are common enough that you should keep this up pretty much all the time unless you need one of the better food buffs for a boss fight.

Potions

I won’t list them all, as one of my earliest blog posts was a guide to mana and healing potion types; however, these are the ones I specifically recommend:

Super Mana Potion, or the stacks-to-20 version, the Mana Potion Injector. Your basic mana potion; you will, at times, drink these like water. You can replace these with any of the alternatives I list in the linked post, of course. And if you’re raiding somewhere specific, don’t forget zone-specific potions like Bottled Nethergon Energy or Blue Ogre Brew as very cheap alternatives.

Super Healing Potion and the Healing Potion Injector. You don’t need to take nearly as many of these to a raid, but you should always have at least some on you for emergencies.

What about Super Rejuvenation Potions, or the Alchemist-only equivalent Mad Alchemist’s Potions? Carry one stack, but don’t use them unless you gotta. Remember that healing received will top up your mana via spiritual attunement, so if you’re healing yourself with a pot, that’s a lost opportunity for mana regen.

Obviously, don’t stint yourself on healing (self-heals, pots and healthstones) at the expense of other healers’ mana pools, but if there’s ambient healing available (Leader of the Pack, Vampiric Embrace, etc) and you’re not likely to take a big spike of damage you’re better off taking advantage of those to restore your health, and taking an ordinary mana potion instead.

Scrolls

These aren’t essential, as they don’t stack with player buffs, but they are handy for situations where rebuffing is unlikely (for instance, after receiving a battle-rez) or where you’re missing a particular buffing class from a raid (not uncommon in 10-mans). You can safely ignore Strength and Spirit scrolls, but scrolls of Intellect are always good for a boost to your mana pool. Scrolls of Stamina, Protection, and Agility can also be useful if you’re expecting to get hit.

Other Items
Note that these all share a cooldown.

Demonic Rune – it’s only a small amount of mana restoration, but it’s enough for 5-8 Flash Heals (and causes you damage, thereby giving you the opportunity to regain mana via Spiritual Attunement). Demonic Runes drop from satyr demons in Azeroth (for instance, in Felwood and Azshara); Dark Runes are a BoE equivalent you can get from Scholo or the AH.

Charged Crystal Focus – available from the AH in their uncharged state, or farmed from mobs around the Ogri’la daily quest hub. Excellent for when you don’t have a healthstone handy; even if you buy it from the AH it’s likely to be cheaper than a repair bill.

Nightmare Seeds are gathered by Herbalists from Nightmare Vine nodes, but can be used by anyone. They’re on a separate 3-minute cooldown, and they’re useful for those moments where you need a health buffer to accommodate a damage spike without dying. Useful if the fight involves spiky raid damage (such as Naj’entus in Black Temple).

There are some profession-specific extras, as well: Fel Blossoms are good for herbalists, as a damage shield isn’t affected by healing reductions (from mortal-strike-y effects); Dense Stone Statues for Jewelcrafters heal you for 1250 healing across 25 ticks, but it counts as healing rather than ‘health restore’, so it does give you a small amount of mana back as well.

Personally?
I carry: 20 Healing Potion Injectors, 20 Mana Potion Injectors, 10 Mad Alchemist’s Potions, 1 stack of each type of elixir, 1 stack of Mighty Restoration flasks, 10 charges of Brilliant Mana Oil, 1 stack of Blackened Sporefish and 1 stack of Stamina food, 2 stacks of Dense Stone Statues and 1 stack of Charged Crystal Foci. Oh, and a stack of Intellect V scrolls.

Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s mostly mechanical and thus not hugely spoilery.

The most recent WotLK beta patch introduced a number of new Jewelcrafting recipes, showing us the Northrend equivalent of some very familiar Outland gems – as well as some new contenders.

Read on for details of Northrend’s new uncommon, rare and meta gems, the many new gem cuts included in the expansion, and a new Jewelcrafter ability: Gem Perfection.
Continue reading Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King

Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King. However, it’s not really ‘spoilers’ as such, and I recommend you read it anyway in the interests of being prepared.

One of the big changes in Wrath of the Lich King is a revamp of gearing and the way gear stats are handled. This is for a number of reasons – such as making hybrids more flexible and making gear pieces more useful – but here’s the basic summary for holy paladins (and, well, all healers and casters).

The Theory

  • Spell crit, spell hit and spell haste ratings are disappearing. Crit, hit and haste ratings now affect both spellcasting and physical abilities.
  • +heal and +dmg/heal ratings are disappearing, and being replaced with spellpower, which affects both spell damage and healing.
  • Existing items with +healing are being translated to spellpower stats instead; it’s not a direct 1:1 translation, so on Wrath Day you’ll end up with a lot less spellpower than your current +heal.
  • This is not a problem, because other mechanics are being revamped to account for it (for instance, healing spells are getting a much bigger boost from spellpower).
  • Existing items with +dmg/heal are being translated to spellpower as well, at close to a 1:1 transition.

The Practice

On Wrath Day, you’ll see a big change in your stats: no longer will you have Spell Crit or Spell Haste, and your giant +Heal will turn into a much smaller Spellpower number.

Let’s take a look at a sample healadin with a fairly standard 42/19/0 build (based off my own character), Here’s a warcrafter.net sandbox showing the paladin in a fully gemmed and enchanted set of Karazhan gear (including some gearing choices I wouldn’t actually make, but I’m sticking to the Kara-only guideline).

Examplia, as we might call her, has the following vitals:

  • Health: 7,717
  • Mana: 10,427
  • Healing: 1734
  • Spell Damage: 703
  • Mana Per 5: 113
  • Spell Crit: 16.34%

On Wrath Day, she’ll have the following:

  • Health, Mana, Mana Per 5: unchanged
  • Spellpower: 1078
  • Crit: 16.34%

So, you can see that her base stats and regen remain unchanged, while her +Healing turns into Spellpower at a ratio of about 1.6 : 1. Her spell damage increases, which means her effectiveness as a shockadin may also increase (depending on how much benefit Seals and Judgements will derive from spellpower, which is still being revised).

(Remember, of course, that Blizzard may revise items differently depending on the gear in question. Examplia is wearing Karazhan gear, which was designed two years ago when The Burning Crusade was being developed; characters in gear from Sunwell Plateau or badge purchases from the Isle of Quel’Danas may see different tweaks, as Blizzard’s developers had eighteen months’ more experience when developing those items.)

The Effect

What does this mean? Well… we don’t entirely know yet. (All that math for nothing!) Blizzard have said that the change of condensation of +dmg and +heal into spellpower won’t reduce healing output; I haven’t seen any equivalent statements about the effect on shockadin DPS, so it could yet be an improvement, reduction or no real change at all.

What we do know, however, is that existing gear will be more versatile, and upcoming gear will be useful to more people.

Compare a couple of items:

Previously a healing shield and its DPS equivalent, in Wrath of the Lich King these items will be all but identical – which means if you only ever got one, now it will do dual-duty. This effect can be seen in a lot of other places as well:

As you can imagine, once healing and spell damage are condensed into Spellpower a lot of DPS caster items suddenly become excellent for holy paladins. Compare the Karazhan rings; all of a sudden the Violet Signet of the Archmage is suddenly better for a holy paladin than the Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer, as it has Crit Rating instead of Spirit.

Obviously, this effect will become less important after Wrath Day as people start doing quests, running instances, and upgrading their gear – new caster/healer gear in Wrath only comes in one flavour, and that’s Spellpower. However, the better your gear is on Wrath Day, the longer you’ll take to upgrade it, and the easier you’ll find questing and instancing in the meantime.

In closing, I note that I expect paladin gearing-up to be bunches of fun at level 80. No more getting stuck with stacking mp5 until you hit Tier 5; now all those caster Crit/Spellpower items will be just as tasty for us!

Inscription Guide

Note: this post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

This is the first of a two-part guide to Inscription, the new tradeskill being introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. The second part will cover specific recipes, required mats, and a recommended path for levelling the skill as efficiently and quickly as possible – however, that’s a fair way off, and won’t be published until the list of recipes is reasonably complete. This post will be updated as more information comes to hand.

Last Update: 30 July; beta build 8681
If you have questions, feel free to contact me.

REVISED Inscription Guide

For the full list of Inscription recipes and the complete Inscription Guide, download the guide as a PDF file here: inscription10.pdf. (The full guide is in PDF form because frankly, it’s almost impossible to format all those tables as a blog post.)

Otherwise: read on for the original post.

Note that I’m calling people with Inscription ‘inscribers’, because ‘inscriptionists’ sounds clunky. If the community standardises on a name I’ll change to that.

Continue reading Inscription Guide

Inscription Is In

Well, Inscription is now available in the current WotLK build, which is good news for those curious about the profession.

I’m just waiting for character copy to be working again so I can copy my herb banker across, and then I’ll be starting work on Inscription over the weekend. Watch the skies for an Inscription levelling guide.