by Christian Belt

This week, we’re going a step farther. Already pimped out in full tier 9 and sporting an Abyssal Rune/Talisman of Resurgence combo? Looking over the Lich King’s loot table with a critical eye? In a guild that routinely tackles hard-modes? Let’s look at some of the trinkets for which you should be on the hunt.

Nevermelting Ice Crystal

How good is it?

Some of you mentioned this after last week’s column, and it definitely deserves a mention, if only because you could potentially make a warlock very very sad by out-rolling him on it. At first glance, this trinket doesn’t look all that great for a mage. The flat spellpower is nice, but the on-use effect is odd. It gives you a huge initial crit boost (that confusing jumble of numbers, asterisks, and parentheses actually translates to 920 crit rating), but reduces on each successive non-periodic crit. The loss is 184 per crit, meaning that the bonus lasts for 5 crits, and gets smaller each time. For an arcane or frost mage, this bonus isn’t anything earth-shattering. It’s a decent crit boost for a few casts that will be gone too quickly to really make the thing shine. There are worse trinkets out there, but there are certainly better too.
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by Zuggy

Leatherworking goes perfectly with skinning, but you’ll really be able to power-level your leatherworking skill quickly if you buy all your materials on the auction house.  However, some items cost less to make or offer bigger returns on the auction house as you level your leatherworking.

Here’s a quick 1-450 leatherworking leveling guide to show you the best items to make as you’re leveling leatherworking.

Leatherworking Leveling Guide: Levels 1-55

• Visit the leatherworking trainer to learn Apprentice Leatherworking.
• Levels 1-20: Light Leather (3 Ruined Leather Scraps each)
• Levels 20-30: Light Armor Kit (1 Light Leather)
• Levels 30-55: Cured Light Hide (Light Hide and Salt)
• Go back to the trainer to learn Journeyman Leatherworking.

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by Basil Berntsen

Blacksmithing is a crafting profession that has made me a lot of money. Today, we’ll talk about how you can use blacksmithing as something more than a couple of extra gem slots for your main, and actually make gold! Many people with crafting skills invariably have tried linking their profession in trade and saying “tips appreciated.” Has that worked for you? Me either. If you want to make money with any crafting skill, the true profits are from acquiring the mats yourself, crafting, and selling your wares over the long term. As I mentioned in my previous post, the default UI won’t cut it for our purposes, so let’s get cracking and set you up with a proper crafting UI.

Tools of the trade

To start with, you absolutely must have auctioneer installed. There are other addons that would work, but auctioneer is what I use, and it’s widely supported with other addons we’ll need. I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to use it for now, but you should download and install it. Once it’s working, go to an auction house and click the blue fast forward arrow at the top of your screen. Note: that button really is blue in game
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by Basil Berntsen

Today we’ll be talking about something that many experienced auctioneers have discovered on their own– the stack size you list on the auction house has an effect on your profits and sales volumes. There are many types of things that you’ll find yourself selling as you get more involved in making gold on the AH, and most of them are being bought by people who need more than one, but less than a stack.

The buyers for whatever product you’re marketing are motivated mostly by price, however also by convenience. If a buyer needs a stack of 3, say, Infinite Dusts, unless you provide them with the choice of buying a stack of three, they need to choose between 3 singles or a stack that would leave them with leftovers. If the prices are the same, they’ll typically go for avoiding leftovers. Many will even pay more for singles to they can avoid leftovers. You also have to factor in that many of them use the default AH interface, complete with its horrible sorting, so they may just buy the singles to avoid having to page through to the stack size they want.
How should you use this to make more gold? You can provide the service of pre-packaging your wares in a variety of stack sizes. The skill comes in when you’re trying to decide what sizes to offer, how much of each size you should list, and what prices you should use. Here are some rules of thumb:
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by Zuggy

Leveling Jewelcrafting is very expensive, even if your other profession is mining.  However, Jewelcrafters will have no problem making all that gold back quickly because the items made by jewelcrafting sell for lots of gold on the auction house.

Here’s a quick 1-450 jewelcrafting leveling guide to show you which items to focus on to power-level your jewelcrafting profession.

Jewelcrafting Leveling Guide : Levels 1-50

• Visit a trainer and learn Apprentice Jewelcrafting
• Levels 1-25: Delicate Copper Wire (2 Copper Bars each)
• Levels 25-50: Rough Stone Statue (8 Rough Stones), Tigerseye Band (Tigerseye and Delicate Copper Wire), Malachite Pendant (Malachite and Delicate Copper Wire)
• Go back to the trainer and learn Journeyman Jewelcrafting.

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by Michael Gray

The Blood Princes can be a difficult fight for many raids, forcing a ranged DPS to tank and for your entire raid to pitch in with handling adds. The challenge is that the Council is actuallythree different fights that swap phases according to which of the San’layn are empowered at the time.

The three Princes share a single health pool, but it doesn’t show up on all three characters at the same time. Instead, two of the vampires will be at 1 health point at any given time. Try and ignore that, even though you’ll be tempted to blow your nukiest of nukes and finish them off. The two Princes at 1 health point can not be killed or damaged — your raid will have to focus on the vampire that has the full health pool. The Darkfallen Orb is what determines which of the Princes are currently empowered; which also grants them special power boosts. The buff the Princes gain while under the effects of the Orb is titled Invocation of Blood.

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by Tyler Caraway

this is going to be an introduction to balance PvP. I’ll examine talents, team comps, strategies, and gearing,. This isn’t the end all, be all of how to do balance PvP. There are lots of options, lots of things you can try or experiment with. PvP in and of itself is a very large experiment where you can test what can and cannot work. This may gloss over some topics, but I will try to provide as much information as I can. If you feel that there is anything of glaring importance that I missed, then leave a comment on the issue and I will correct it as soon as I am able to.

1. What is balance PvP?

The balance spec is the druid’s caster DPS tree. In PvP, the tree focuses on dealing damage, some control, and occasional healing.

2. Advantages of balance PvP

• Able to put out high levels of pressure if given the opportunity to free cast.
• Very solid levels of control against various targets, though more so against melee.
• A solid number of debuffs to act as a form of dispel protection.
• Solid synergy with multiple casters.

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by Zuggy

Leveling inscription is cheapest and easiest if your other primary profession is herbalism.  But whether you choose to stockpile your herbs or buy them all on the auction house, power-leveling inscription is a breeze if you know which recipes to focus on to level the fastest.

Here’s a quick 1-450 inscription leveling guide to help you make leveling this profession a lot less complicated.

Inscription Leveling Guide: Levels 1-50

• Go to the inscription trainer and learn Apprentice Inscription.
• Levels 1-15: Ivory Ink— Alabaster Pigment, which comes from milling Earthroot, Peacebloom, or Silverleaf
• Levels 15-30: Scroll of Intellect (Ivory Ink and Light Parchment) or Scroll of Stamina (Ivory Ink and Light Parchment)
• Levels 30-50: Moonglow Ink— 2 Alabaster Pigments
• Go back to the inscription trainer and learn Journeyman Inscription.

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by Zach Yonzon

Ah, Paladins. Otherwise known as the game’s God-class. Paladins, next to hunters, arguably have the lowest skill to success ratio among all classes in the game. This means that many players with low familiarity with the game can pick up a paladin and play the class with relative ease and have moderate success in the battlegrounds. Retribution paladins, in particular, are so easy to play that it can be addicting. Many players easily get the delusion that they’re good. This is what prompted Blizzard to call out the spec, saying that it issuccessful in lower Arena brackets but significantly less so against tougher competition.

Paladins also enjoy a significant psychological edge against a lot of players because of their reputation, giving them an advantage even before the fight begins. Well, today we’re focusing on how to fight paladins in our series of guides aimed at teaching players basic strategies against particular classes. We’ve discussed death knights, druids, hunters, and last week, mages. After the jump, we’ll break down a paladin’s strengths, discuss their frequently used skills, and eventually their weaknesses. As fearsome as paladins can be in combat, they suffer from glaring weaknesses, too. As long as you keep those weaknesses in mind, you should fare better against them on the battlefield.
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