by Mathew McCurley

Additions to the default user interface come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You’ve got your monumental addon and UI renovations that change almost every aspect of the substance and style of WoW‘s UI. You’ve also got the essentials, pieces of Lua code that change the fundamental nature of your class, like threat meters. Then there are the little guys — utilities that add functionality to pieces of the interface that sort of live in the background.

Today is utilities day. I’ve got three little addons for you that add functionality or just plain help you out with your game play experience. One of the greatest functions of addons is creating this sense of power in the user’s hands, and I think these three little guys prove that point.
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by Fox Van Allen

Rejoice, brethren! Since the Cataclysm, the shadow priesthood is more accepted than ever before. A full 11 of the 12 races can now be priests. (Orcs are the holdout, which is a shame — they have a terrific plus-spellpower racial.) We have a wealth of options when starting a new shadow priest or when dropping some coin on a faction or race change.

There’s no escaping the fact that in WoW, some races are just plain better than others. And some — gnomes — are clearly inferior.

Eventually, our analysis will take a look at all the Horde and Alliance races. For now, though, we’ll focus on Team Blue. Which Alliance race is best? Which gnome recipe is the tastiest? Can I manufacture a reason to reuse that picture of Taylor Lautner staring with lust at John McCain? All questions will be answered … after the jump.
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by Chase Christian

Rogues have a lot to look forward to when patch 4.2 is released. If you spend most of your time in dungeons or raiding, you’ll be happy to hear about the sizable buffs to all three of our talent trees. Unfortunately for rogues that favor PVP, there are some cooldown changes toCloak of Shadows and Combat Readiness that won’t be well-received. While I’m not completely satisfied with the size of our buff when compared to our relative position in the DPS pack, our potency in Firelands still remains to be seen.

In addition to the slew of balance changes, we can start salivating over the new gear that will be available. Our tier 12 set has some very fun bonuses, and also some great crafted gear coming up. Our caster rivals will get access to their first legendary weapon since Atiesh, so we’ll have to do our best to keep up. The duration of Blind in PVE is going up to a full minute, giving us two forms of long-term CC in Sap and Blind. As proof that rogues are designed to be the best at what they do, most other CC effects in the game are going to start mirroring Sap. Polymorph and the rest won’t aggro mobs that they’re used on, which should make it far easier to coordinate CC in a PUG. Plus, even if the group manages to somehow mess up CC and starts combat early, we can just use Blind as a stand-in for Sap anyway.
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by Allison Robert

On the off chance that patch 4.2 hits today (which it probably won’t, but eh), this is a quick and dirty guide to the patch notes that’ll concern you if you play a bear or tree druid. If the patch hits next week, we’ll keep ourselves occupied making daisy chains or something. Or, if the healer Q&A gets published sooner than expected, I’ll write another enraged diatribe for everyone to enjoy.

On a note completely unrelated to druids, the new /map animations are pretty sweet. You’ll also get to see it while you’re opening mail.
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by Joe Perez

This week I thought we would get a bit of a head start and start talking about patch 4.2 and the Firelands. More specifically, I thought we could start talking about the gear and items we can expect to see with the new content.

Before we get started, this is not intended to be a best-in-slot list, as that is something we’ll get into later. Instead we’re just going to look at the options that will be available through reputation and crafting.
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by Daniel Whitcomb

Patch 4.2 has been a surprisingly tumultuous time for death knights. We’ve received a veritable avalanche of nerfs, some of which were just hotfixed right into game after a few days on the PTR. Even as we enter the last few weeks of patch 4.1, Blizzard’s thrown a couple more changes our way, as well as an explanation for the reasoning behind all the class changes.

Whether you agree with Blizzard’s reasoning on them or not (and, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I really don’t), the death knight changes will definitely have impact on how you play and what you do as a DPS death knight in patch 4.2. Let’s take a look at the latest changes and see what type of impact they may have on your play as a DPS death knight.
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by Dawn Moore

Like Romeo searching for love, I am constantly trying to find the perfect guild for me. I’m an incredibly volatile person (in every sense of the word) and in the wrong environment I’m not a particularly happy person. If I’m not happy, I don’t play well, and if I don’t play well then I’m not bringing anything to the raid. Thus I’m always searching, always writing applications, and always redoing my ugly UI every time I crash land on a new server with bright eyes and hopes that I’m finally in the right place.

This month I am once again looking for a new guild and thought I’d let you guys in on the process. So if you’ve ever thought of taking your raids and PVE a little more seriously, I’ve got a lot of good information for you. If you also happen to be a healing priest, I have some specifics on what you’ll need to be mindful of.
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by Tyler Caraway

Let’s be real here, not all warlocks are true warlocks. Sure they may walk like a warlock, talk like a warlock, and summon up demons and hellfire like a warlock, but they’re just imposters. Some of them are even wicked mage spies undoubtedly sent by the no good Pants. In an effort to educate the faithless and to root out the fakes, I’ve created a guide of sorts to warlockery. Let’s share and do some of that learning thing.

And bears, we also teach how to avoid bears. Bears are mean, they’ll eat your face. I like my face.
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by Chase Christian

While I think there’s plenty to dislike, patch days aren’t all bad. With patch 4.2′s release date closing, we can look forward to Firelands and the new quest hub in Hyjal. The introduction of new reputations and raid bosses mean that there are both new challenges to be overcome and new rewards to be obtained.

The good news is that the gear we’ll be seeing in patch 4.2 is much better itemized for holy paladin than what we saw in the first tier of Cataclysm raiding. Holy paladins are the only spec that uses plate gear with intellect on it, and so it’s always a bit interesting to see gear that’s not that good for us. Our potency should improve significantly from both the pure ilvl boost from the new gear, but also due to the better selection of secondary stats.
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