Once WoW’s most disparaged profession, Fishing has experienced a resurgence in Wrath — and it may get even better in Cataclysm, with developers studying fishing from other games like Animal Crossing in order to make it more fun. As far as I’m concerned, as long as they cook up another distraction like the Dalaran fountain in Cataclysm, I’ll be happy.

Accomplished Angler is a very work- and time-intensive meta-achievement, so I’ve taken the liberty of splitting this guide up. The first set of achievements you’ll need:

Grand Master Fisherman

Sorry, folks, there’s no real way to shorten this one; you’ve just got to keep fishing. One of the nice things about the profession is that you can level it anywhere — the only penalty to leveling it in an area with higher “fishing skill” than you currently have is the amount of junk you’ll catch versus actual fish. But on your way to Grand Master, you’ll have put a lot of work in towards:

1000 Fish

No way to cheese this one either, but fortunately it counts objects as fish too. If you’re starting from scratch, the best way to do it might be to combine 1000 Fish with the following achievement, angling for a fish from a low-level area:

One That Didn’t Get Away

Regrettably, this achievement is wholly a matter of luck — or, more commonly, agonized grinding. All of the fish listed for the achievement have very, very low drop rates (think 0.1% or less — about what you would expect while grinding one of the whelpling pets), and it’s not unusual for players to spend hours trying to land a single catch. To put this in perspective, I’ve caught well in excess of 3,000 items right now trying to get both the Dark Herring and the Sea Turtle and have nothing to show for it. That’s why, if you’re starting to level Fishing from scratch, I recommend combining this achievement with the leveling process. You only need to catch one of the following for the achievement, and they can be found in the following locations:

• 103 Pound Mightfish: Any part of the ocean in Azshara.
• 15 Pound Mud Snapper: This can be found in any of the ponds located in level 5-10 areas — Stillwhisper Pond in Eversong, Crystal Lake next to Goldshire, and Stonebull Lake surrounding Bloodhoof Village. If it’s an inland pool of water in any of the starting towns, you’ll have a shot at catching it there.
• 22 Pound Lobster: Bay of Storms in Azshara — so, yes, you do have a shot at catching either this or the 103 Pound Mightfish if you fish in Azshara.
• 29 Pound Salmon: This can be caught in inland pools of water located in level 50-60 areas (e.g. Winterspring, Eastern Plaguelands).
• 32 Pound Catfish: This can be caught from any inland pool in 10-20 areas or dungeons like Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines.
• 52 Pound Redgill: Anywhere you can catch ordinary Redgill.
• 68 Pound Grouper: Anywhere you can catch ordinary Grouper.
• Dark Herring: The fact that this can be used as a weapon cracks me up. You can fish it up from Fangtooth Herring schools in Howling Fjord, or any inland waters in Grizzly Hills.
• Rockhide Strongfish: Can be caught (very rarely) from Tastyfish schools during the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza each Sunday.
• Steelscale Crushfish: The ocean in Hillsbrad Foothills.

So which one is the easiest or fastest to catch? Frankly, none of them, but commenters at El’s are agreed that, if you want to get two achievements in one go, fishing for a Dark Herring from the Howling Fjord pools is probably your best bet for the following reasons:

1. You can sell the Fangtooth Herrings: This is more lucrative if you’re a chef and can cook Spicy Fried Herring.
2. You can sell the Pygmy Suckerfish: Alchemists use these to make Pygmy Oil, which is both a reagent for several recipes and a fun little item on its own.
3. Fishing from pools gives you a shot at the Sea Turtle mount: And, of course, the Turtles All the Way Down achievement, although it’s not part of the “Salty” meta.

If you’re leveling Fishing from scratch, you might want to pick a low-level area and just go to town on the waters there. Stonebull Lake next to Bloodhoof Village is probably your best bet, as you can catch both the 15 Pound Mud Snapper and the 32 Pound Catfish there.

The Fishing Diplomat

Ugh. It was once possible for Alliance to coast through this achievement by fishing in a phased version of Orgrimmar during the Fate, Up Against Your Will quest in the aftermath of the Wrath Gate battle. Blizzard eighty-sixed that at some point in 2009, so now both Alliance and Horde will need to scurry into the enemy cities to yank a fish out of the waters.

Horde has this a lot easier than their Alliance counterparts, because fishing in Stormwind’s harbor counts. Swim up along the coast until you’re in Stormwind territory, hop a nearby rock (or use an Elixir of Water Walking), cast, yank a fish out — and there’s your achievement.

For Alliance, fishing in Orgrimmar is more troublesome. The two pools of water in Orgrimmar are in the Valley of Spirits and the Valley of Honor. If all you’re after is just that one fish as quickly as possible, your best bet is to ride through the western entrance into the city to the Valley of Spirits and yank a quick fish from the water there. Bear in mind that Horde players port into Orgrimmar from the troll huts in the southeastern end of the Valley, so your timing here may suck for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Fish Don’t Leave Footprints

This one should happen quickly enough once you start fishing from pools anywhere out in the world; the Weather-Beaten Journal that teaches you how to Find Fish drops from crates fished up from “schools” of fish or (more commonly) wreckage pools. You won’t find any of these pools in capital cities or 5-10 zones, but you will start seeing them pop up in world zones after that.

You can and should combine the above achievement with –

The Scavenger

The crates that drop the Journal teaching the Find Fish school are much more likely to drop from the wreckage pools you’ll need for this achievement than an ordinary school of fish. As a gloss on where you can find the following pools:

• Bloodsail Wreckage: Hunt along the southern and eastern coast in Stranglethorn Vale.
• Floating Wreckage: Hunt along the coastlines in Feralas, Azshara, and Tanaris.
• Schooner Wreckage: Hunt along the coastlines in the Hillsbrad Foothills, Wetlands, and the Stonetalon Mountains. “But there aren’t any coasts in Stonetalon,” you point out. So how’d Schooner Wreckage get there? The world may never know. Just check the central pond and the stream running through the Venture Company’s logging operation.
• Steam Pump Flotsam: This one’s easy — all of the Steam Pump Flotsam schools spawn around the lakes in Zangarmarsh.
• Waterlogged Wreckage: The Stranglethorn Vale river, Faldir’s Cove in the Arathi Highlands, the eastern coast of Dustwallow Marsh, Desolace, and the coast of Lordamere Lake in the Alterac Mountains.

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Rogues. Those sneaky little bastards could be anywhere. Out of all the classes in the game, there is perhaps no class no more feared for their PvP prowess than rogues. Rogues gain a fearsome reputation by virtue of the nature of the class alone — they can Stealth. Because of rogues, everyone has to literally watch their backs. No place is safe because a rogue can be lying in lurking in some dark corner waiting to strike at the proper time. Through years of leveling in a PvP server, there is no sound in the game more unsettling than the low humming whoosh of a nearby stealthed rogue. In fact, rogue (and by extension, feral druid) stealth is the single biggest reason why I don’t PvP with music on.

And for rogues, it’s all about timing. In the Battlegrounds, it isn’t uncommon to find rogues preying on the weak, those low on life, the defenseless players eating or drinking. They can’t help it. It’s in their nature. The class encourages foul play through Stealth and a wonderful repertoire of attacks from behind. Rogues are at their best when catching their opponents off guard and are extremely capable of doing so. After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at the basic things to expect when fighting a rogue regardless of their spec.

Stealth

As mentioned, Stealth is a rogue’s defining ability. Learned at Level 1, every rogue learns to sneak around and pounce on an opponent. It’s their single biggest trump card, the ability to remain unseen. In Arena play, it’s critical for the rogue to get the opener, as some of her most powerful attacks require her to be stealthed. Taking a rogue out of stealth removes the element of surprise so it’s important to be on your toes. If you see a rogue from a distance entering stealth, always be on the ready. While it is practically impossible to get the jump on a very good rogue, the good news is that there are quite a lot of mediocre rogues who get too close to an opponent assuming their stealth will keep them undetected.

It will help to keep your game sounds on, and any music, whether in-game or maybe iTunes, low to be able to hear the distinctive sound of stealth. Hearing this sound indicates that you will be able to target them, so keep the Tab key handy. If you detect them, you have a very small opening in which to attack or cast a spell. The best abilities to use are those that don’t require you to be facing the target — a quick DoT or AoE should do the trick. These should work fastest and prevent error message delays.

A rogue’s first few sequences are predicated on the premise that they get the opener, so taking that away from them breaks their rhythm and forces them to change their battle plan. Rogues hate starting a fight out of stealth, so if you manage to break their stealth at the start of a fight, you’ve already got a mental edge. Of course, if you can catch them before they even enter stealth, then all the better. Applying a Hunter’s Mark or Faerie Fire should help here, or even a DoT if they’re within range. Hunter’s Mark has a 100 yard range, so it’s easy to keep a rogue in check from across the battlefield.

Stuns and incapacitate effects

Another reason why rogues are so fearsome in PvP is because of their vaunted stuns. They can keep an opponent stun-locked or incapacitated in a number of ways so as to effectively neutralize a threat if not kill them outright. This control is why rogues have so much synergy with priests and mages in the Arena. Rogues can stun as an opener from stealth with Cheap Shot, which they’ll use mostly against other melee classes. If you can manage it, don’t use a cc-break on this because they can easily follow it up with a Kidney Shot as Cheap Shot already awards 2 combo points from the get go.

Basically, expect a rogue to be able to stun you right out from stealth as well as during combat. For the most bang for the buck, rogues will land a few strikes to generate combo points and will wait for one stun to wear off or nearly wear off before applying another one. Because they can apply so much cc, it becomes discretionary when to use your trinket or other stun prevention or removal ability.

In addition to their stuns, rogues also have a pair of incapacitate effects, Sap and Gouge, which take an opponent out of play for a while. Because Sap can only be used on targets that are not in combat and doesn’t break their stealth, they can use this to incapacitate one opponent and attack another. Quite often, rogues Sap their opponents to unsettle them and is a very common occurence in world PvP even as a prank when rogues don’t necessarily intend to battle their opponents. Sap is a common tool used in the Battlegrounds particularly for capturing the flag against a lone defender. In these cases, it’s usually a good idea to break the Sap with a trinket or, in the case of warriors against clueless rogues, Berserker Rage.

Gouge is an interesting ability. It is a quick way for rogues to escape combat and is employed cleverly as an interrupt in a pinch. It is a 4 second incapacitate effect and is usually not worth breaking because it breaks on damage, anyway. Because it requires that their opponent be facing them, rogues often also use this to maneuver behind their opponent. It has a fairly short, 10-second cooldown, making it an extremely potent tool in controlling the fight. The good news is that it is extremely expensive at 45 Energy, so rogues won’t always be able to use it even when it’s available.

Kick

The reason rogues are a caster’s bane is because they have so many tools at their disposal to prevent spellcasting. Kick doesn’t just interrupt, it also locks casters out of the school for 5 seconds. For a caster, that’s about an eternity. You need to remember two things as a caster — Kick is on a short, 10-second cooldown and it costs 25 Energy. Because of the short cooldown, you should always assume they can use it at any time and it won’t matter too much to track it through AddOns. Keep the Energy cost in mind and always assume that a rogue with about a quarter of her Energy left can use it.

The best way to deal with a Kick is to bait it out of the rogue. This means you’ll need to keep juking your spells. A /stopcasting macro before every spell allows you to keep canceling spells that are currently being cast instead of stacking it. This should also remove the need to move to break a cast, which is less efficient. One trick is to keep juking with a spell from another, less-important school of magic so that if the rogue bites and uses Kick, you’re free to cast spells from another school. Healers have a tougher time here mostly because smart rogues will use Kick on Holy or Nature school spells only.

If a rogue manages to Kick you and you’re locked out of your primary (or in the case of paladins, your only) school, you can go two ways — act as defensively as possible or go all out on offense. When a rogue has locked you out of casting spells, especially heals, they will go all out on damage without even bothering with a stun knowing that you have few options. Fortunately for priests, Psychic Scream is from the Shadow school, so getting Kicked in the middle of a heal means it’s probably a good time to cast it. It’s also a good idea to go on the offensive by accessing attacks from other schools during this time.

Cloak of Shadows

In addition to Kick and their arsenal of stuns and incapacitate effects, rogues are absolute nightmares for casters because of Cloak of Shadows, which makes them considerably more resistant to spell effects for 5 seconds. Rogues can use this to remove DoTs, which would normally prevent them from re-entering stealth. When a rogue activates this, it can only mean one of two things — she wishes to flee or she’s moving in for the kill. In some cases, it’s even both, with the Cloak of Shadows allowing the rogue to re-enter stealth without fear of it breaking and then returning to finish off an opponent from stealth with vicious opening moves. The ability is on a 1.5 minute cooldown, which means rogues won’t be able to use it as often but the best rogues always find the right opportunity to use it and not just blow it on the first few DoTs.

The scary part is that it is considered a removal effect, and not a dispel, so it won’t proc spells with dispel triggers such as Unstable Affliction. Despite their higher resistance through this period, keep casting spells at them, anyway. The chances of landing a spell will vary depending on your spell penetration, so higher Spell penetration Hit should grant you a better chance to hit a rogue with Cloak of Shadows.

Blind

So rogues can stun and incapacitate. Did I mention they can also disorient? Blind is a clutch ability that rogues use to escape, dictate the pace of a battle, stand aside to bandage, or keep a second opponent out of play. It has a long, three minute cooldown but talents can reduce that two. It has since been changed from a poison back in the day to a more difficult to counter physical effect, meaning practically the only things that can break a Blind would be a trinket or paladin immunities. Blind is almost always used defensively because it breaks on damage and rogues can take the opportunity to run and re-stealth after exiting combat.

It is often worth using the trinket on Blind, mostly because it is always used strategically. Rogues never use Blind at random the way they might use any other ability. Rogues who blow their Blind cooldown are either planning something nasty or hoping to flee. In either case, the ability’s long cooldown makes it a prime candidate for the cc-break. That said, trinket use against a rogue is always discretionary considering how many crowd control and lockdown abilities they can employ.

Dismantle

This Wrath ability has become a staple in rogue PvP. Think of it as Kick for melee. Dismantle is on a longer, one minute cooldown, but it allows rogues to handle melee classes which they would otherwise have a harder time with. It helps to keep track of Dismantle through AddOns such as Afflicted 3. Because the abilities and attacks of most melee classes and even hunters rely on their having a weapon, Dismantle effectively keeps them from doing much for a very long ten seconds. A good way to counter this is by using your own crowd control abilities if you have some, such as a stun or fear. Keeping the rogue out of play for a majority of the time you are Dismantled should lessen its impact, allowing you to stay on the offensive.

Vanish

While I could have lumped this in with stealth, Vanish deserves special mention because it’s such a clutch ability. It allows rogues to escape almost any encounter completely, which is vital to rogue strategy. No other class has such a viable option for escape other than, perhaps, a paladin bubble-hearthing her way out of harm’s way. A rogue with Vanish available means that she always has a way out, so even a rogue with a sliver of health can conceivably Vanish and spoil what would’ve been a killing blow. Almost any rogue worth her PvP salt will have it properly glyphed, allowing quick escape from even the most dire situations.

Keep track of Vanish, and always have a DoT applied on the rogue to break their stealth as soon as they enter it. It’s a narrow window, but it’s quite possible to pull off casting and landing a stealth-breaking spell or ability between the time they use Cloak of Shadows and subsequently Vanish. The best rogues won’t be caught, however, because Vanish is off the global cooldown and some can macro it along with Cloak of Shadows to provide instantaneous escape. It has a long three minute cooldown, but the same talents that improve Blind can reduce that to two. The most aggressive rogues — those who fight using burst instead of control — will use Vanish offensively. If a rogue isn’t low on health but Vanishes, you should expect to be dealth a vicious Ambush or if you’re a caster, Garrote. And that reminds me. There’s Garrote, too. Against casters, rogues will use Garrote instead of Cheap Shot or Ambush, using the 3 seconds of silence it grants to deliver even more damage. Garrote should give casters even more reason to keep the rogue from entering or starting the battle in stealth.

Poisons

Rogues can also tailor their fighting style according to their enemy using poisons. Just remember that these debuffs are, obviously, poisons, which gives classes that can remove poisons a bit of an edge against rogues (this should give you an idea why priests dread rogues so much). Paladins can Cleanse, druids can Abolish Poison, and shamans can drop Cleansing Totem. In fact, against a rogue, Cleansing Totem is the water totem a shaman should use.

One of the most common poisons that they use in PvP is Crippling Poison, which hampers movement speed and helps prevent them from being kited. This sees a lot of use in PvP because rogues must do all they can to keep their enemies close. Rogues are practically no threat at long range, so it is in your best interest to keep them at bay unless you’re a melee class. Against healers, rogues can use a potent combination of Mind-Numbing Poison and Wound Poison. Because rogues must take some time to apply the proper poison to their weapons, they are at their best when they have prepared for an opponent, making them the most deadly when they have tailored their preparation to their prey. The most dedicated PvP rogues even have the luxury of extra weapons coated with different poisons allowing them to swap in whatever poison is strategically best with virtually no downtime.

End of part one

Rogues are an interesting study for PvP, and we’ve only just touched the surface! Tomorrow, in the next installment of this introductory guide, we’ll go a little more in-depth about the rogue’s resource, Energy, as well as the combo point system. A deeper understanding of these mechanics will give you greater insight into how a rogue fights and thinks, as well as allow you to counter them. We’ll also talk about their need for mobility, the kinds of rogue fighting styles — pure burst, hit and run, and control — as well as the obligatory spec overview to get a better grasp of the abilities that talent trees give them. Until then, stay safe and watch your back.

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today we’re going to run down the advantages of the tier 9 and tier 10 hunter set bonuses for each of the three hunter specs, and suggest which way you should gear your hunter.

Older Sets

We’re only interested in the tier 9 and tier 10 sets. Anything older isn’t worthwhile for hunters. We don’t even care about the tier 9 4-piece bonus (not even if you’re BM). The only other older set that we’d ever want to hang onto is the tier 5 2-piece (from BC raids) for extreme soloing situations (it lets us automatically heal our pets for 15% of the damage we do).

Before we get into the spec by spec details, lets hit a quick review of our tier 9 and 10 sets.

Tier 9: Windrunner

There are three versions of the hunter tier 9 set:

• Windrunner Battlegear of Conquest: ilvl 232, purchasable with Emblems of Triumph.
• Windrunner Battlegear of Triumph: ilvl 245, purchasable with Emblems of Triumph and a Trophy of the Crusade from TotC 25-man.
• Windrunner Battlegear of Triumph (Herioc): ilvl 258, purchasable with Regalia of the Grand Protector from heroic TotC 25-man.

They all share the same set bonuses, but the higher level versions have better stats. With tier 9 what we really care about is the truly awesome 2-piece set bonus, that lets our Serpent Sting ticks become crits. This is an incredibly strong set bonus. We have close to 100% uptime of Serpent Sting across all specs, and letting this DoT crit more than doubles the effectiveness of Serpent Sting.

Tier 10: Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter

There are three versions of the tier 10 set as well. Unlike the tier 9 set, to get the tier 10 set you must purchase the starting pieces with Emblems of Frost, and then upgrade them with tokens that drop in ICC 25.

• Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear : ilvl 251, purchasable with Emblems of Frost.
• Sanctified Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear: ilvl 264, upgraded with Protector’s Mark of Sanctification from ICC 25.
• Sanctified Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear (Heroic): ilvl 277, upgraded with Protector’s Mark of Sanctification (Heroic) from ICC 25 heroic.

The 2-piece bonus is phenomenal. Though it slightly favors BM and MM, it’s great for all specs. The 4-piece bonus is also good; however, it is not as good as the tier 9 2-piece bonus.

This is where the decisions start to get difficult. We like the tier 9 2-piece bonus better — it’s giving us more DPS — but we know that the tier 10 pieces are going to have much more stats on them. So we’re having to make a call as to when the superior stats are better than the superior set bonus.

Choosing Your Set Pieces

First of all, keep in mind that exactly when to use what gear is never the same for everyone. It doesn’t just depend on your spec, but also on what other gear you currently have. Your playstyle also comes into it — in particular the tier 9 bonus is stronger for hunters who are good at maintaining their Serpent Sting on multiple targets, and other bonuses vary depending on how good you are at movement management. The decision is made more difficult by the fact that we have three versions of each tier of gear.

All of this is by way of saying that these recommendations aren’t always going to be right for everyone. For the sake of simplicity, I’m assuming that you have access to the ilvl 245 (25-man) version of the tier 9 set.

Non-Set Pieces

All three of the set bonuses we’re talking about are very good. You absolutely want to have four pieces of set gear. Do not just get the tier 10 2-piece and non-set for everything else. You want the set bonuses, it’s only a question of which set bonuses you want most.

Beast Mastery

The set situation is simplest for BM hunters. BM gets the least benefit from the tier 9 set with their weaker Serpent Sting and they particularly like the tier 10 set bonuses, as they both help both their pet as well as hunter.

BM hunters want to pursue 4-piece tier 10, and getting to the 2-piece should be the first use of their Emblems of Frost.

Survival

SV hunters like all the set bonuses, and the breakdown really depends on what level of set gear you have access to and your playstyle. SV hunters can really go either way when we’re talking about comparing the ilvl 245 tier 9 vs. the ilvl 251 tier 10. At ilvl 264 tier 10, the tier 10 4-piece is definitely the way to go.

For some fights one way will be better, for other fights the other route will yield more DPS. And some fights it’ll be a toss up.

Marksman

MM hunters have the strongest Serpent Sting with both the best uptime and the ability to preserve percentage damage and crit increases on their Serpent Stings indefinitely. However MM hunters have two different playstyles and the set decisions are different for each.

ArP MM hunters who are pursuing the ArP hard cap (1,400 ArP rating) will want to go for the tier 10 4-piece bonus. In the pursuit of all that ArP they pass by a bunch of AP and crit that could have benefited their Serpent Sting, making the tier 9 bonus a bit less desirable. Tier 10 is also more generous with the ArP rating.

Standard agility MM hunters (who still may have a good chunk of ArP, but just aren’t near the hard cap and aren’t yet gemming ArP) like the tier 9 set bonus more and will want to keep their tier 9 set bonuses longer. They definitely want to keep their tier 9 bonus at least until you have all of the ilvl 264 versions of tier 10, and may want to wait for some of the ilvl 277 version.

Even if the MM hunter only has access to the ilvl 232 tier 9, they probably still want to hold out for the ilvl 264 tier 10.

The Recap:

• All Hunters: Get four set pieces. The set bonuses are worth going for.
• BM: Go for 4-piece tier 10.
• SV: Set bonuses are very close and can go either 2-piece tier 9 & 10, or full 4-piece tier 10.
• MM ArP: If near the hard cap, go for 4-piece tier 10.
• MM agility: Keep your 2-piece tier 9 until you have at least ilvl 264 tier 10 for the 4-piece.

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When it comes to macros, the druid class has seen both extremes. From the classes initial conception, which literally required dozens of macros to effectively operate in both PvP and PvE environments, to the more simplistic druid we see today. After years of tweaking and adjustment this type of mass macro creation is no longer environment (thank God!), as many shifting abilities are now automatic.

Restoration Druid Macros

Nature’s Swiftness Heal
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast Healing Touch

Mouseover Healing Macros
/cast [target=mouseover] Healing Touch

/cast [target=mouseover] Rejuvenation

/cast [target=mouseover] Lifebloom

Simply adjust the spell and you’re good to go. These macros are simply amazing and I’ve used them on my shaman as a raid healer to incredible effectiveness. This allows you to simply hover over frames and pop heals off as fast as your mouse can move to the next raid frame (as opposed to having to click the frame).

This method of raid healing really gets awesome when you take advantage of another user interface mod for raids called grid. Grid is pretty simplistic, but that’s even better for us. It’s simple, it’s easy…simply hover and start dropping heals and HoTs across the raid.

In addition, you could also handle other spells, buffs, etc. in this same manner.

Innervate Protection Macro

/castsequence reset=30 [target=player] Innervate, Thorns(Rank 1), Mark of the Wild(Rank 1), Rejuvenation(Rank 1)

Feral Druid Macros

Taunt + Auto Attack Macro
/startattack
/cast Growl

Mangle + Auto Attack Macro
/startattack
/cast Mangle

This type of macro helps druid’s to overcome one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen while raiding…failure to quickly engage auto attack. Simply putting a one line /startattack line before each of your primary attack abilities will do a world of good…not only for feral DPS, but for feral tanking. Many player’s view these as “unnecessary”, and believe me, those are the players who aren’t topping the DPS charts and are letting other player’s in the raid die due to their tanking failures.

Take Potions in Bear Form Macro
#show Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/use Super Healing Potion
/cast !Dire Bear Form

I really like this macro simply because it’s so damn fast. Even if you are tanking this is a nice macro to have for those panic situations. Simply take a step away from the boss, spam this macro and you’ll be healed to full in a snap.

Replace the master health stone / super healing potion with what ever potions you’d like to consume, or add additional consumables in there. Since the first /use macro will pull you out of bear and take the pot, you consolidate several steps together, making this macro nearly instantaneous.

Mangle Trinket Macro
/startattack
/use Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch
/cast Mangle

Just replace Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch for your current tanking trinket(s). Also, for cat druids check out the macro below.

Feral DPS Trinket Macro
/startattack
/use Bloodlust Brooch
/cast Claw

Same as the above macro, change the trinket name / attack name to those of your choosing. The same will apply to any spec. These are great macros to help put several button combinations together.

General Druid Macros

Totem Sniping Macro
/targetexact Wrath of Air Totem
/targetexact Mana Spring Totem
/targetexact Poison Cleansing Totem
/targetexact Windfury Totem V
/targetexact Mana Tide Totem
/targetexact Grounding Totem
/cast Moonfire(Rank 1)

Hilarious macro to really piss off shamans. Spam this while you’re kiting in PvP situations to really punish a shaman’s totem forest.

Self Druid Buffing Macros
/castsequence [target=player] reset=10 Thorns, Omen of Clarity, Mark of the Wild

Simple Druid Buffs
/castsequence reset=target Mark of the Wild, Thorns

Balance Druid Macros

Trinket + Starfire Bomb
/use Hex Shrunken Head
/cast Starfire

Just change the name of the trinket to your own spell damage trinket.

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As promised, follow me after the break for the shadow priest’s guide to the Icecrown Plagueworks.

Your Mission: Stay alive. Inoculate yourself and others against Festergut’s raid-wide mega-attack. Pull out all the stops to maximize DPS, cause dude needs to die quick. Marvel at the guest appearance of Koffing above your head.

Festergut, especially in 25-man mode, is a pretty brutal DPS check. This means, of course, that your entire raid could do everything right, and you can still find yourself getting wiped by the enrage timer. To add to the challenge, as a ranged player, you’ll find that there’s a lot of movement involved and your DPS will lag behind the melee classes. Still, shadow priests bring more to a raid than just DPS, and it’s that extra utility that lets us shine here.

Positioning

As a ranged DPS caster, you’ll be placed well outside melee range, close to the walls of the room. The raid leader will designate a central location (usually near the doorway) or centrally located player (who won’t move) as a collapsing point for a later phase of the fight. You’ll be moving back and forth between these two points during the fight. Otherwise, you want to be as close to the collapsing point as you can while maintaining a distance of about 10 yards from other players.

The Basics

• Shortly after the fight begins, the room fills up with a cloud of Gaseous Blight, an orange gas. Inhaling orange gas is not the healthiest of endeavors — the raid will suffer constant, low-level shadow damage from it. It’s important to cast Prayer of Shadow Protection before the fight begins to limit the impact of the gas-related damage. Combined with Vampiric Embrace, this will take a lot of pressure off the raid healers.
• Festergut will randomly target ranged members of the raid with Vile Gas, which will cause you to lose control of your character and vomit for about 6 seconds (incapacitating you), deal damage to you, and deal damage to people around you. To limit this damage, cast Power Word: Shield on yourself the moment you’re afflicted with Vile Gas (it takes a moment for you to lose control of your character).
• On a regular basis, Festergut will inhale some of the gas in the room. Whenever he does this, random players in the raid will be afflicted with Gas Spores, which explode after twelve seconds. The basic raid strategy calls for ranged players to collapse in on a single point (as discussed earlier) so that everyone can be hit by the Gas Spore damage. When this happens, you gain a stack of a buff called Inoculated, which reduces the shadow damage you take by 25%. After the spore explodes, return to your original position.
• Inoculations are important, because after casting Gas Spores three times, Festergut will ready a devastating attack called Pungent Blight. Having three stacks limits the damage you take from Pungent Blight to a manageable 10,000 points, two stacks doubles that damage, but is survivable as a shadowpriest. (In fact, having only two stacks is key to the) Anything less than that will require you to use Disperse to survive. Add ons like Deadly Boss Mods will tell you when Pungent Blight is imminent — try to limit the damage you take from it by casting Power Word: Shield on yourself if you can. (Side note: There are a number of disc priests out there who don’t like it when shadow priests cast PW:S on themselves, since it takes away the disc priest’s ability to apply a stronger version to you. If there’s a disc priest in your group, be sure to communicate ahead of time whether or not you’ll be using it during the fight.)
• When it comes to actually damaging the boss, this fight is the time to pull out all the stops and make sure DPS is optimized. This means using a Potion of Speed before the fight begins, popping your Shadowfiend about 10 or 15 seconds into the fight when you’re most likely to have as many procs active on you as possible, and spamming Devouring Plague anytime you have to move (for the 30% upfront damage hit). If possible, time the release of your second Shadowfiend (the enrage timer allows for two castings max per Festergut encounter so there’s no need to rush the second use) for the moment before Bloodlust / Heroism is called. Use another potion immediately after (I prefer using a Potion of Wild Magic with Bloodlust). Keep your DoTs active as much as possible.

The Loot

In 25-man difficulty, keep a keen eye out for the Plague Scientist Boots — they’re your best-in-slot pair of boots. If you need the hit, Plaguebringer’s Stained Pants make a good stand-in until you can get your tier pants. Festergut also drops Lingering Illness, a belt that works well for off-spec heals.

There are a also handful of nice pick ups from Festergut in 10-player mode. With spell power, haste, crit, and three gem slots, the Kilt of Untreated Wounds is a terrific item for shadow priests who focus on ten-man content. If you’re on the lookout for a weapon loaded with hit, you could find some good use out of the Abracadaver (it also comes with a fun-but-useless “pet” proc). The Bloodstained Surgeon’s Shoulderguards aren’t best in slot, but they’re the best shoulders that you’ll see drop in a ten-man raid.

Your mission: Stay alive. Dodge the occasional slime spray. Kite oozes. Wonder why the design for Rotface is so unoriginally similar to Festergut.

Though the Rotface design is little more than a palette shift of Festergut, the fight mechanics and dynamics are quite different. This fight prioritizes situational awareness over raw DPS — it requires more movement and coordination. In other words, don’t take unnecessary risks in this fight for the sake of higher DPS.

Positioning
Most raid leaders ask the ranged players to group up in melee range immediately behind Rotface. This will require constant adjustment as Rotface randomly turns — you’ll need to keep moving and stay aware of where he’s facing.

Basics

• The outer quadrants of the room will periodically flood with green slime. The slime seriously eats away at your health, of course, so stay away from it. The center never floods, so stay close to Rotface when possible.
• At regular intervals, Rotface will spew slime, causing moderate damage to everyone immediately in front of him. Again, it is important to reposition yourself in back of Rotface whenever he turns to cast his Slime Spray.
• The gimmick to this fight is the casting of Mutated Infection. It’s a disease debuff. When removed, a small ooze that does AoE damage will spawn. It’s important to move away from melee range when you get the debuff so the slime hurts as few people as possible when the disease is cleansed. Though we do have access to Cure Disease, it is best to let the assigned healer deal with this — keep yourself focused on moving.
• Throughout the fight, one of the off tanks will be kiting and tanking any spawned oozes on the outer edge of the room. If you get the debuff, head in the tank’s direction. When the ooze finally spawns, it’s your job to get the ooze that’s attacking you close to the ooze that the tank is kiting — they’ll merge into a big ooze and you’ll be free to return to the boss. This part of the fight can get messy when there are pools of slime around the room, and slime has a tendency to slow down your movement speed, so don’t be afraid to use Dispersion to eliminate these issues and mitigate damage if you need to.
• When the big ooze that is being kited absorbs five smaller oozes, Rotface kindly emotes that these oozes are actually “angry” bowel movements with a tendency to explode. Shortly after, an Unstable Ooze Explosion occurs, showering ooze down on three random raid members. Since all the raid members should be centrally located, you avoid damage from this event by running toward the outside of the room — presumably one of the quadrants without deadly slime in it.
• Aside from the above, standard DPS rules apply. Attack Rotface, never the Oozes. Keep your DoTs up, and if you can, spam Devouring Plague while moving. Running out of mana shouldn’t be a huge issue here, especially if you’re Dispersing when merging slimes.

The Loot

The gear from twenty-five man Rotface is, simply put, spectacular for shadow priests. The key, drool-worthy shadow priest drop here is the Dislodged Foreign Object, a trinket that gives you a terrific base amount of haste and a proc that caps out at a 1050 spell power (!) bonus. Good trinkets are painfully hard to find, and this is essentially your best-in-slot piece until you tackle heroic modes. Rotface also drops the Corpse-Impaling Spike, which is your best-in-slot wand. And as if two best-in-slot drops weren’t enough, he also drops the Death Surgeon’s Sleeves, which just happen to be your best-in-slot wrists.

The drops from ten-man Rotface aren’t terribly exciting, especially by comparison. The Ether-Soaked Bracers are a decent enough pick up if you want or need the 40 points of hit attached. The Gloves of Broken Fingers have spirit attached, so they won’t be ideal for you as a shadow priest, but they make an acceptable stand in until you can buy a better piece of gear with tokens. The Choker of Filthy Diamonds is a mediocre piece of shadow gear, but good if you really want it for your healing off-spec.

Your Mission: Stay alive. Kill adds as quickly as possible. For god’s sake, don’t drink anything.

Well, it appears the person responsible for turning the races of Azeroth into undead slaves of the Lich King is a bit of an eccentric. (Pay no mind to the number of times you’ve already defeated other persons responsible for the plague!) In this highly challenging fight, you’ll deal with orange gas, green slime, and a harshly unforgiving soft enrage timer. Because timing of the phase changes is quite important here and based on the percentage of Putricide’s health remaining, I suggest setting Putricide’s health bar to read in percent, and not raw numbers.

Positioning

There are a number of different placement strategies for this fight, but all involve similar principles. There is a tank of orange gas in the room, and a tank of green slime. As ranged DPS, you’re generally going to be clustered at max range from either tank with a multitude of your raid mates.

Phase 1

In the first major phase of the fight, Professor Putricide will have two main ways of distracting you from your job of DPSing him. He’ll create puddles of slowly expanding green slime on the floor — don’t stand in these, of course — and he’ll summon two different types of adds: Volatile Oozes and Gas Clouds.

• The first add Putricide will summon will be the Volatile Ooze, which will spawn under the green tank. Ideally, your tanks will move Putricide away from the tank so everyone is at max range from it when it does. This is important, because shortly after it spawns, it will target a member of the raid, root them with Volatile Ooze Adhesive (which acts as a DoT debuff), and begin charging at them. If you’re chosen, you don’t have much choice but to stay put and get as many of your DoTs active on the Ooze as quickly as you can — Mind Flay is ineffective at slowing its charge here. When the Ooze reaches someone, it will explode for massive damage spread evenly among everyone in range of the explosion. Because of this, if someone else is chosen, you (and others!) will need to be on top of them when the Ooze reaches their position. Avoid collapsing too quickly, as too many people in one place will cause Putricide to spawn a puddle of green slime where you’re standing, and that’s not going to be good for anyone. After the first explosion, the Ooze will continue targeting people with Volatile Ooze Adhesive until you kill it. Always prioritize collapsing on the target to doing damage here, because one bad explosion can cause a raid wipe.
• The second add Putricide will summon will be a Gas Cloud, generated under the orange tank. Once spawned, it will target someone with Gaseous Bloat, a debuff that greatly increases your size and causes constant damage. If you’re targeted, you need to run away, kiting the cloud around the room — if it reaches you too soon after it spawns, it will kill you. There’s not much you can do while running aside from spamming Devouring Plague and making sure Shadow Word: Pain is active. Since you’ll be taking constant damage, using Shadow Word: Death here is a no-no. (Power Word: Shield is good here as damage mitigation, too, subject to the usual caveats.)

Putricide will alternate between spawning Oozes and Gases until you get him to 80% health, at which time he will use Tear Gas, which does little but paralyze you for 20 seconds while he runs over to his table to start drinking his mutating potions. You can’t attack Putricide at all during this time, but you can use Disperse to regain your mana.

Phase 2

This phase is quite similar to Phase 1 in that Putricide will alternate between generating Volatile Oozes and Gas Clouds. He gains two additional abilities that will cause trouble for you — Choking Gas Explosion and Malleable Goo.

• Choking Gas Explosions are primarily a concern for melee attackers, but they can hurt you if you’re not careful. Putricide drops gas bombs (flasks?) on the floor at regular intervals, which will eventually explode. Ranged players should not stand near these bombs under any circumstance.
• Malleable Goo is the main concern for ranged players. Putricide will target one member of your raid with Malleable Goo; when he does, you need to move away from the spot that player was standing immediately. The goo will bounce a few times on the floor before landing, causing splash damage and applying a really nasty 20-second speed debuff when it “explodes.” If you get hit, these can easily kill you outright; if you survive, you’ll be largely useless for the next 20 seconds. Ideally, you won’t get hit, but if you do, do not refresh your DoTs during those 20 seconds, since the debuff will dramatically increase their period and decrease their frequency. Prioritize using Mind Blast and Mind Flay, and reapply your DoTs to Putricide or the adds immediately after the debuff expires. Disperse works well to fill that “useless” time, too.

When you get Putricide down to 35%, he will again cast Tear Gas and move into the final phase. It is absolutely critical that, for this particular phase change, no adds be up. The reason for this is simple — during the first two phases, one of your off tanks will be mutated into an abomination capable of slowing these adds. In the third phase, this slowing effect is unavailable, and a fast moving Ooze/Gas can quickly wipe your raid — or at least kill enough members to guarantee bumping up against the soft enrage timer. Limit the use of DoTs on Putricide when he gets to 37% to avoid “accidentally” pushing him into Phase 3. If you have the ability to Disperse during the Tear Gas event, do so — you’ll need the extra mana.

Phase 3
Good news, everyone: In Phase 3, Putricide stops spawning those damnable Volatile Oozes and Gas Clouds. He’ll still use Choking Gas Explosion and Malleable Goo, so remain vigilant for those. But, uh… bad news, everyone: there are two new deadly aspects to the Phase 3 part of the fight.

• Putricide will apply a stack of Mutated Plague to your tanks. Though it’s a debuff to them, it will actually damage the raid, causing more and more damage to all players as more stacks are applied. It’s pretty light damage at first, but at some point, even a shadow priest with sick DPS won’t be able to survive its wrath.
• In previous phases, you had an abomination up and about, eating the spawning puddles of green slime. In Phase 3, you lose your abomination, so these puddles will continuously spawn and grow until they cover the entire floor. Be aware of where the slime is at all times, and make sure you don’t get trapped. If you do somehow get trapped, you may need to use Disperse to save yourself as you head to dry ground.

In short, you’re in a major DPS race here. It’s time to bring out the big guns. On the start of Phase 3, Bloodlust / Heroism should get called, so drop your Shadowfiend immediately to allow it to benefit from the speed boost too. Use your Potion of Wild Magic during, and spam Devouring Plague whenever you’re forced to move. Try to avoid tunnel vision, though — it’s more important than ever to dodge each Malleable Goo.

The Loot

As the final boss of the Plagueworks, Professor Putricide drops those mouth-wateringly good Conqueror’s Marks of Sanctification in 25-man mode, which upgrade your existing tier pieces. Unfortunately, they’re the only item of value Putricide drops for shadow priests.
In ten-man mode, Putricide drops the Pendant of Split Veins, a neck piece with spellpower, crit, and hit; the Shoulders of Ruinous Senility, which have spell power, haste, and hit; and the Cauterized Cord, the best waist piece you’ll see drop for shadow priests in ten-man raids.

If you made it through to beat Putricide, congratulations — it’s a feat that most players have yet to experience. With him dead and another achievement under our belts, we’ll soon be setting our sights on The Crimson Hall to kill those those little emo vampire boys that… hold on, wait, didn’t we kill these guys already? (I suppose no one ever stays dead for very long in Azeroth, do they?)

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When it comes to the Blood Queen Lana’thel encounter in Icecrown, one of the challenging aspects is to set up vampire bites on players. Some days, the first player that gets bitten by the Queen isn’t always the same one in subsequent attempts.

Well worry no more.

There’s an addon called Blood Queen which manages all that stuff for you. For raid leaders, it becomes a big asset because the process doesn’t have to be micro-managed.

Features

• Auto-assigned bite targets
• Automatic raid icons set
• Takes into account deaths, disconnects, mis-bites and mind control’s

The priority list only needs to be built once and it revolves around your guild members. Keep in mind that this addon will only work if you are the raid leader.

Two priority modes

There are two ways to generate priority lists: From the raid or from the guild. The actual assigning of players can also be done in two ways.

Normal mode: Bites are assigned according to a pre-set list or damage meter data from Recount or Skada. There are check boxes along the bottom.

http://www.nostockui.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bqaddona_thumb.jpg

Dual priority: Two lists are set up based on melee players and ranged players.

http://www.nostockui.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bqaddonb_thumb.jpg

Note: It is also possible to set up opposite DPS priorities. For example, if a ranged player gets it, the addon can instruct them to target a melee player or vice versa. Very useful for tactical DPS reasons to spread the bite chain among the ranged players and the melee players. Check the Reverse first Bite box on the lower left.

Download it now!

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If you do know something about macros then have a read anyway – some of these might be basic to you, but you might pick up something that saves your skin, bark or cow-printed hide.

Paladins

1. Buffs up quicksmart

/castsequence [target=focus] Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield

• This macro will put both of your essential healing buffs up on your focus, which is likely to be the tank.
• TIP: you can use the addon Need To Know in conjunction with this setup. It’ll give you permanent timer bars for those buffs regardless of whom you’re targetting.

2. Easy judging

/cast [target=focustarget] Judgement of Light

• Casts your judgement of light which both does healing and gives you a powerful haste buff
• It won’t cause you to overaggro when casting your judgement as you’re using it on the tank’s target
• Means you don’t have to mess around with tab or mouse targetting a mob to cast it on. You may need to re-target your tank but that’s less trouble than having to target everything manually.
• TIP: you could use the addon Clique, which will allow you to set up mouse and key bindings for anything you could wish. Want to heal the tank? Sure, click the <insert mouse button here> and you needn’t retarget them after using your JoL macro.

3. Catch-all Holy Shock

/cast [mod,target=player] [nogroup,target=player] [target=mouseover,help,nodead] [target=targettarget,help,nodead] [] Holy Shock

• If you have an enemy targetted it will automatically holy shock you
• If you have *anything* else as target and a friendly unit as mouseover (or target) then it will holy shock that friendly unit

Priests – holy and discpline

1. “oh noes” button

/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast [combat,@player] Power Infusion
/cast [combat] Inner Focus
/cast [spec:1,@mouseover] Penance; [spec:2,@mouseover] Greater Heal
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1

• It works for priesties of both healing flavours. Yep, you read right, It’ll work by casting one of the spells, based on whichever spec you’re in. This saves you having two separate macros for holy and discipline
• You could also add commands to pop your trinkets (/use 13 and /use 14) but be careful of the macro character limit.

2. Holy single target “oh noes” button

/cast [target=focus] Guardian Spirit

• For you holy priesties. This is an “oh noes” button if you’ve been focussing on the raid and see that your focus, probably a tank, is wilting a bit and needs help now.

3. Discy Pain Suppression management

/cast [target=mouseover] Pain Suppression
/sw 8
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/say Pain Suppression Up!
/in 8 /s ***Pain Suppression depleted***

• This is most useful for keeping track of PS cooldown and alerting you when it’s ready again – useful in fights where you need to time cooldowns and don’t have time to keep an eye out for them ticking down
• TIP: this one may not work off the bat for you. The ‘in’ command is said to be provided through an addon, possibly the Ace3 library, though various people with various addon setups have got the macro working.

4. Discy raid-healing insta-bomb

#showtooltip Divine Hymn
/cast [target=player] Power Infusion
/cast Inner Focus
/cast Divine Hymn

You’re a discy priest so you’re probably healing tanks most of the time, right? That might be so, but sometimes you’ll be on raid anyway, and sometimes you’ll be on tanks watching the raid take heavy damage – and we all know how comfortable that isn’t. This macro will help you help the raid recover and soak up damage.

• Try to have Borrowed Time proc’ed too for the (extra) haste
• You’ve just given yourself power infusion which both reduces your cast time and mana costs
• Bubbles! Bubbles everywhere! Your increased critical effect chance from inner Focus should mean more chance of divine aegis’ popping up.

Druids

1. Rolling Lifebloom

/target TankName/cast [modifier:shift] Rejuvenation ; [modifier:alt] Regrowth ; Lifebloom

• Make a macro for each tank in the raid and you’ll be able to keep them all rolling on 3 stacks of Lifebloom, lag and catastrophe notwithstanding
• This particular macro also has modifiers which give you flexibility in HoTs. Got a bit of extra time? Throw Tank1 a Rejuv. by pressing shift. Everything refreshed and got a couple of seconds? Stick Regrowth up by holding down alt

2. Quick response to tank death

#showtooltip Rebirth

/castsequence reset=600 Nature’s Swiftness, Rebirth

/run c=”Don’t release! I got ya.”if UnitInRaid(“player”)then SendChatMessage(c, “RAID”)elseif GetNumPartyMembers()>0 then SendChatMessage(c, “PARTY”)end

• This is your “oh noes tank’s dead!” macro
• It’ll immediately get him back on his feet and announce what you’re doing.

2a. Intuitive-res macro

#show Rebirth

/cast [@mouseover, combat, dead] [@target, combat, dead] Rebirth; [@mouseover, dead] [@target, dead] Revive

• This is a similar one for other “oh noes” times – specifically when key people have dropped like lightbulbed flies. If you’re in combat it’ll try to use combat res, if you’re not it’ll use revive
• Just be sure you’re out of combat after a fight’s ended before you use this, for fear of wasting your combat res.

3. Easy poison cleanse

#showtooltip

/cast [target=mouseover, help] [] Abolish Poison

• This is a time saver anywhere there is a lot of poison kicking around. Its utility is simple: it allows you to cleanse your mouseover target without having to target them then retarget your healing target
• TIP: I reckon this one works for all healing classes for their various cleansing duties.

Shaman

1. Earth Shield ease

/cast [target=focus] Earth Shield

• Very, very simple way of refreshing earth shield on the tank, providing that your tank is your focus.
• TIP: you can also get the addon Shaman Friend to support this macro by playing a sound when ES runs down. Alternatively you could have it in place of the macro: it can be setup to provide a focus button for earth shield refreshing, and a box which visually tracks ES stacks so you don’t miss it falling off.

2a. “Oh noes” button version 1

#showtooltip Healing Wave

/cast Nature’s Swiftness

/cast Tidal Force

/cast Healing Wave

• Any resto shaman worth his salt has some form of this macro. Some shamans prefer not to attach a healing spell to it so they can choose whether to fire off a single target spell or a chain heal after nature’s swiftness. You could make both of those options achievable by altering the macro slightly, to this:

2b. “Oh noes” button version 2

#showtooltip Nature’s Swiftness

/stopcasting

/use 13
/use 14

/cast Nature’s Swiftness

/Cast Tidal Force
/cast [mod, help] [mod:shift, target=mouseover, help] Chain Heal; [help] [target=mouseover] Healing Wave

• This version will cast healing wave after blowing your cooldowns or, if you hold down shift, it will cast chain heal. It also uses your trinkets (/use 13 and /use 14) for extra “oh noes” aversion value.

In both of these you could also add a command to tell party chat or a specific target that you’re averting catastrophe this time by blowing all your cooldowns, and so won’t necessarily be able to save the day again. At least for a few minutes.

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1. Typical PvE talent setup
The base talent build we’re going to look at is a very retribution build of 5/5/55 which gives us six points to do with as we wish. Now, there are generally two viewpoints on what you should do with these depending on which type of utility you want to provide. If you want access to Divine Sacrifice then you’d go 5/11/55 with those six points all in protection. However, if you’d rather provide a little debuff to your target’s attack power as well as have a wee bit more survivability, then you’d take Vindication as well as fill out the rest of the retribution tree with 5/5/61.

2. Talent overview
Talents in italics are optional, and you can flex your build to pick up or drop these based on utility you want to provide. If a talent is struck out, avoid it, as it provides little or no benefit to you as a damage dealer. I’ll only be covering the protection and holy talents that are relevant for a ret paladin to pursue.

Holy:

• Seals of the Pure - This ups the damage of your two baseline damage seals, but doesn’t do anything for your Seal of Command. It’s still pretty good as any boost to Seal of Corruption/Vengeance is a good boost.
• Divine Intellect – Yeah, you could reach it if you wanted to, but don’t. We’re fine with mana.

Protection:

• Divine Strength - This is a great talent as it allows us to grab even more power from strength. Absolutely must have talent.
• Divinity – The talent really doesn’t do much for us. It’s only really an option if we’re trying to reach for Divine Sacrifice for utility.
• Anticipation – Okay, I guess you could nab this for PvP, however we’re mainly talking about PvE here and there’s no use in it. You’re better off with Divinity if you’re just using it as a stepping stone to other talents.
• Stoicism – Less time stunned or feared can be helpful to up your DPS in dungeons sometimes, but this is mainly a PvP talent. The dispel protection especially helpful in PvP if you’re using Seal of Vengeance/Corruption.
• Guardian’s Favor – This provides some decent utility, but would be better for PvP. It’s an okay choice for a stepping stone talent.
• Divine Sacrifice – Nicknamed the ‘Raid Wall,’ but has lately been reduced to just the ‘Party Wall’ if you don’t have talents in Divine Guardian. It will redirect 30% of damage dealt to your party at you for up to 200% of your total health. Combined with Divine Shield, this is a really handy ability for reducing AoE damage in certain boss fights. However, please keep in mind that it can kill you if you’re not careful.

Retribution:

• Benediction - Being as all of the spells we’re going to use in combat are instant cast, this will reduce your mana spent by up to 10%. Also, the other talent on this tier to get into the retribution tree is for parry and we don’t parry.
• Deflection – Adds up to 5% parry. We don’t need parry. Leave it alone.
• Improved Judgements – This reduces your judgement cooldown by 2 seconds. This means you get to cast it 20% more often. A definite must have.
• Heart of the Crusader – This is a nice little debuff you get to put on the bad guys by just doing what you were going to do anyways. Your judgements make it easier for everyone critically strike the target by 3%. Handy.
• Improved Blessing of Might - While this is an optional buff, I did include it in the base build. This is because it’s our blessing of choice. However, if you raid with a holy paladin who has picked it up or another retribution paladin, you might see if you can convince one of them to pick it up so you can put talent points elsewhere.
• Vindictation - Yet another debuff we get to apply with no work at all. All you have to do is hit the bad guy and they’ll start doing less damage. Both tanks and healers like it when you do this. If you’ve got a warrior or bear in your regular group, then you might not have to worry about this as their Demoralizing Shout/Roar does the same thing and it doesn’t stack.
• Conviction - A flat boost of 5% to critical strike. Plus, this opens up the ability to nab the talent Vengeance later.
• Seal of Command – This has changed a lot over the years. Currently, it is a sort of cleave type attack that will strike your current target as well as two additional targets. The only downside is that it only works with single-target attacks. However, it is a great leveling seal and does well against groups of mobs at high level.
• Pursuit of Justice – As a melee class, we’re often stuck in the middle of things. This means from time to time we’ve got to move in order to keep doing damage or prevent things doing damage to us. The 15% move speed doesn’t look like much, but you can definitely notice when you don’t have it. Also, it reduces the amount of time you’re disarmed by various effects which means more time you can kill things.
• Eye for an Eye - This causes 10% of the damage against you to return to the person who dealt it. The problem is that in dungeons and raids, you shouldn’t be attacked and most of the stuff that hits you shouldn’t crit. However, for PvP, this is a great skill to have.
• Sanctity of Battle – Another flat crit increase. This one is 3% crit along with Exorcism and Crusader Strike being buffed up by 15%. You can’t say no to free damage buffs.
• Crusade - This bumps up all of your damage by 3% and does even more damage against some of your usual bad guys by another 3%. Humanoids, demons, undead, and elementals beware!
• Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – Allows you to hit harder with two-handers. As it’s a damage buff talent, it’s not one you want to pass up.
• Sanctified Retribution – This allows anyone under the effects of any of your auras to deal 3% more damage. Yes, that even includes Crusader Aura. Oh, it also increases the damage dealt by Retribution Aura by 50%. However, that first part is the important part. Also, this means you can swap your aura to fit the fight. If you’re against a big fire lord, then you can swap over to Fire Resistance Aura and everyone will still get the same 3% damage increase.
• Vengeance - Increases physical and holy damage by 3% every time you crit and stacks up to 3 times. This means that once you get it up and running, it’s a 9% damage increase in just about everything you do. The buff lasts for 30 seconds and refreshes every time you crit. So, make sure you drop a judgement or Hand of Reckoning on any rats, beetles, or squirrels you pass in order to keep it up and running.
• Divine Purpose - This is a utility talent as it adds the ability for your Hand of Freedom spell to remove stuns from people. It also lowers the chance you’re going to be hit by ranged attacks by 4%. Good in PvP as well as lowering extra damage taken in some dungeon fights.
• The Art of War – Another flat damage increase for some of your abilities. Also, when your melee attack crit, Exorcism and Flash of Light become instant casts. However, once you cast one, the buff goes away. If you’re waiting on other cooldowns (including Exorcism) and your health is low, hit yourself with a Flash of Light. The healers will appreciate it.
• Repentance - It’s called ‘ranged Sap‘ by some. It puts your PvE target out of commission for 60 seconds and your PvP target out for 6 seconds. Grabbing this also allows you to pick up the talent Fanaticism later on.
• Judgements of the Wise – This is where we get our mana back from. With full points, it will cause you to gain the Replenishment buff every time you drop a judgement. In addition, you immediately gain back 25% of your base mana (and for us that means all of our mana).
• Fanaticism - Here’s our threat maintenance talent. With three points, it reduces our threat by 30% (unless we have Righteous Fury up). And, as a damage dealer, having threat is bad. In addition, any judgements that can crit, will do so about 18% more.
• Sanctified Wrath – The main thing you want this talent for is the cooldown reduction of Avenging Wrath. This will allow more uptime of the skill and also allow you to use it in more places without worrying you’ll need it later. You’ll also be able to ignore half of any damage shields (like Power Word: Shield) but not things that completely reduce damage (like Divine Shield).
• Swift Retribution – It’s a free 3% haste buff for anyone under the effects of one of your auras. Yes, even Crusader Aura.
• Crusader Strike – Finally, a combat skill. This is going to be one of your bread and butter skills. If you don’t take it, I’ll be very sad and so will the rest of your raid. Besides, you’ll get really bored if you don’t have it.
• Sheath of Light – This talent converts 30% of your attack power to spell power. Being as most of your damage abilities scale off of spellpower as well as attack power, this lets us double-dip into the same stat for our damage. It also adds a little healing bonus in the event you have to hit Holy Light three times before running out of mana. The healing bonus on crit should also apply to Lay on Hands in the event a tank (or sleeping dragon) needs a little health boost.
• Righteous Vengeance – This is a nice little damage of time debuff that occurs whenever one of your main three attacks deal a crit. It deals and additional 30% of that damage as a damage over time effect. Also, if you happen to deal another crit before it’s done, it adds the new damage to the old damage and refreshes the DoT effect.
• Divine Storm - This is an AoE attack that is centered on you and hits four targets around you. Also, some of the damage dealt is converted into extra health for your party/raid members nearby. The extra health isn’t all that much, but it’s a neat little bonus to the skill.

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One of the most important things you can do to become a good death knight is to solidify your damage (or threat) rotation or priority system so that you can consistently keep your runes on cool down and your damage high. That said, it’s far from the only thing that marks a good DPS or tank. Another thing is flexibility.

Death Knights have a wide variety of tools and tricks that can turn the tide of a battle. These tricks can be hard to weave into your existing system without giving up your rotation, but there are tricks to making it easier, and sometimes the benefit outweighs having to mess up your rotation for a few seconds. Let’s take a look at 5 specific buttons that more death knight should be pushing.

Rune Strike

I’ve heard complaints from some death knights that their threat just doesn’t measure up to other tanks. Most of those death knights, I think, probably aren’t make full use of Rune Strike. Rune Strike is, if nothing else, the best way you can spend your runic power if you’re looking to gain threat. To truly maximize your threat, you should pretty much be hitting it every time it’s available (That is, right after a dodge or parry when you have the runic power). Of course, one major problem here is that it’s definitely a pain to remember to press it every time. Luckily, that’s when macros come to the rescue. For all of your major weapon strikes, simply create macros such as this:

#showtooltip
/cast (Ability)
/cast !Rune Strike

This will essentially guarantee that Rune Strike will be queued up every single tine it’s available for use. The downside here is that you may find yourself a bit low on runic power when you need a quick Icebound Fortitude, but it may be worth it anyway if you have trouble remembering to use Rune Strike otherwise.

Anti-Magic Shell

Anti-Magic Shell is probably one of the best kept secrets of the death knight class. Of course, as a tank you should know it well enough, a cool-down that lets you weather the Wrath equivalent of the crushing blow, the high powered spell, and come out nearly unscathed. But here’s the real secret: Pro death knight DPSers generally get a lot of use out of it as well.

One of the first lessons anyone needs to learn to be an effective raid DPSer is “don’t stand in the fire.” One of the lovely things is that AMS, in a limited capacity, completely overrides that rule. Yes, you can stand in the first, at least for around 5 seconds at a time. You can use it to avoid the flame AoEs on Onyxia’s lair guards. If you’re lucky, you can pop it just before Icehowl uses his Arctic Breath on you. Using it when Sindragosa casts Blistering Cold might even mean you can just sort of stay right there in melee range. If you’re still running 5 mans, you’ll find it incredibly useful in the Forge of Souls or against Loken.

That said, as fun as standing in the fire and taunting the other DPS can be, the real reason a DPS death knight wants to learn to use Anti-Magic Shell is the extra runic power. Against a very powerful magical attack or damaging aura, you can easily grab a full bar of runic power, which translates to more Death Coils and Frost Strikes. When you have all your runes on cool down, you generally want to be able to throw out a Death Coil or Frost Strike to keep your damage going, and Anti-Magic Shell makes that happen. Therefore, judicious use of this “tank cool down” can actually raise your overall DPS by keeping you alive and giving you extra runic power.

Strangulate/Mind Freeze

Whether you’re DPS or tank, PvE or PvP, chances are you’ll eventually face a caster, and eventually they’ll try casting a spell that’ll really break your day. When this happens, remember, you’re a death knight. You have multiple tools to ruin their day. Keep these buttons near, because you will use them at just about every level of the game. You’ll want to neutralize the Ahn’Kahar Spell Flingers in Ahn’Kahet for sure, and it can be an integral part of the raid game too, such as interrupting Lord Jaraxxus.

The one downside here is that it’s very hard not to mess up your rotation when using an interrupt since you usually don’t have time to set up a death rune for Strangulate or whatever else, but if it interrupts a significantly powerful spell, it’s still going to be worth it for the overall health of the group or raid. Remember, it’s not always about the damage meters.

Blood Tap

Blood Tap is another one of those skills that a lot of death knights completely glaze over. Since most of us have a rotation or priority system that dictates we must use all of our rune cool downs in a certain way at a certain time, we don’t always think of how Blood Tap can interact with our rotation. The biggest use of Blood Tap is, though, is when you have to hit a rune-powered emergency or burst cool down such as Unbreakable Armor, Bone Shield or Vampiric Touch. Tanks will end up just hitting the emergency button more often, but even DPS should definitely make an attempt to work out the best time to use Blood Tap to activate a cool down that uses a rune.

Let’s use Unbreakable Armor as an example. Unbreakable Armor adds a decent chunk of strength, so you may want to use it to offer a quick burst of power, but you don’t want it to mess up your rotation too badly. The best way to fit Unbreakable Armor into your rotation is to get your blood runes into death runes, then get them back into cool down as blood runes. The process will look something like this:

• You have 2 death runes.
• You use them to cast Obliterate, and they are now on cool down as blood runes.
• Immediately, you cast Blood Tap, which immediately refreshes one as a death rune.
• You use Unbreakable Armor, and you once again have 2 blood runes on cool down. These blood runes should then refresh close enough together that you can put out two quick blood strikes without breaking your rotation or wasting a death rune.

As you can see, this basic idea can be used to refresh Bone Shield for an unholy death knight too. Blood Tap can be hard to master, but once you figure out how to fit it into your rotation, it can be very handy for boosting your DPS, survivability, and versatility.

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Macros for any class are going to be important, but for death knights they are absolutely vital. This death knight macro guide will help you implement key combination macros into your death knight’s arsenal. These macros will help you consolidate keybindings and quicken your overall rotation and hotkey speed. If you have a macro you think should be added to this death knight macro guide please leave a comment below and I’ll add it into the compiled death knight macros list.

Death Grip + Chains of Ice Snare Macro

/startattack
/cast Death Grip
/cast Chains of Ice

Will cast death grip first, if death grip is on cooldown will cast chains of ice instead.

Frost Panic Button

/cast Lichborne
/cast Unbreakable Armor
/cast Icebound Fortitude

Ranged Ghoul Stun

/castsequence Leap, Gnaw

Your ghoul will leap then stun, requires 2 clicks.

Blood DPS Spamable Macro

/startattack
/castsequence reset=6 Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike, Death Coil
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Unholy DPS Spamable Macro

/startattack
/castsequence reset=6/combat/shift Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Death Coil, Scourge Strike, Death Coil, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Death Coil
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Pull Target and Taunt

/cast Death Grip
/cast Dark Command

One Button Sacrifice

/cast [target=pet,exists] Death Pact

Sacrifice your minion in one click to heal yourself.

Rune Strike Macros

/startattack
#show Blood Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Blood Strike

Rune strike followed by Blood Strike.

/startattack
#show Heart Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Heart Strike

Rune strike followed by Heart Strike.

/startattack
#show Scourge Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Scourge Strike

Rune strike followed by Scourge Strike.

/startattack
#show Icy Touch
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Icy Touch

Rune strike followed by icy touch.

/startattack
#show Plague Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Plague Strike

Rune strike followed by Death Strike.

/startattack
#show Death Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Death Strike

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