The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes a look at gear and the fury warrior this week. Matthew Rossi has been playing with fury on his tauren this week, when not forgetting to re-equip his shield on Kael'thas while playing his human. Sure, the Phaseshift Bulwark is nice, but if you leave the instance it goes away, which I really should have paid attention to. On the up side, it's hilarious to go down in two seconds to a trash mob because you forgot which button is your shield macro. Well, hilarious now. With distance. At the time it was less hilarious and more smashing my face into the keyboard.
Before we get rolling, you should take a look at this thread from the Elitist Jerks forums that gathers up a lot of information on warrior DPS specs and what to look for when gearing. One of the things to keep in mind is that it's not as straightforward as just piling on the stats that help you do damage... much like tanking, where you first stack defense until you reach the target (in the case of tanking you want 490 defense) when assembling fury gear you prioritize hit until you reach 9% chance to hit, and then start stacking crit, attack power and armor penetration.
So what's the hit cap? Well, in general a fury warrior with full precision should look to accumulate hit gear until roughly 96 hit rating, which should put you at about 9% actual bonus hit. Up until 9%, it's generally accepted that hit provides the greatest boost to your damage both from the damage that you actually do with your white hits and from the rage you generate by them, as well as reducing the chance of special attacks like Bloodthirst (not Bloodlust, you can tell I play my shammy too much) and Whirlwind to be missed, which is not only annoying but amazingly does not seem to hurt monsters. Not even their feelings.
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If you have ever rolled a druid, rogue, shaman or hunter, it is quite likely that you ended up choosing leatherworking as one of your professions. Because it can be a valuable source of gear for the leather and mail-wearers, it is a common choice. If this is the case, you are going to want to hit 375 skill in order to make your end-game epics.
If however, you chose leatherworking as a companion to skinning in order to make money, you will only need to reach about 325. Once there, you will be able to convert any type of skin into its available higher form in order to maximize your profits.
Still, leatherworking, like any profession, can be an extremely costly skill to cap. This week, Insider Trader will be taking an in-depth look at some of the best ways to reach 375 from 300. Hop through the break for tips and analysis.
I, like so many others, eagerly logged in to the game last night to survey all the new goodies brought by the Patch 2.3 fairy. Many things were not a surprise, if only because we've been reporting so assiduously on what was coming here on Wow Insider, coupled with the fact that I spent a little time on the PTR myself nosing around. A few things though changed without any formal announcement, and it's these little gems that make patch day a true joy.
First I noticed the changes to the mail system. You can now attach up to seven items to a mail message, making my use of the CT Mail Mod obsolete. Also, when you hover over the mail icon now, it tells you who has sent you that letter waiting for you in the mailbox. I know the new hover icons with NPCs were already on the PTR, but their addition to the game makes navigating cities a delight. Each icon tells you instantly who has a quest, who can repair, and who just wants to chat.
Tons of amazing gems found in the patch 2.3 notes (Art from our /silly comic called this "the patch that keeps on giving). Here's just a few of the UI-slimming things Blizzard is implementing in the next patch:
Auction House categories have been cleaned up-- no more "Plate > Cloak" categories.
"Battle Map" is now available for all zones, not just PvP battlegrounds. Does that mean you can pull up the map and see where all players are at all times? Sounds like it to me.
Game objects that you can interact with now have a glow around them and their name over them. Wow! No more searching for twenty minutes just to find that little switch you have to click on.
We'll be able to send 12 items in a single mail message! Bye bye, CTMailMod.
Monsters that need to be looted by people in your party will now have the name of the would-be looter visible in the tooltip. Bye bye, "LOOT YOUR CORE HOUNDS!" Actually, that one I might miss.
And we've heard that there are big enhancements to the minimap-- bankers, auction house tellers, repair people, and quest givers can now be optionally tracked on the minimap.
Additionally, fishing anglers will be able to track fishing holes-- but only after obtaining a crate that contains a book from fishing.
Wild. The whole thing about interactive items glowing? It's like we're getting "WoW for preschoolers." Don't get me wrong, it'll be a huge help to everyone doing quests, I'm sure, but at what point are we getting a big arrow you can see from halfway across the zone that says "Kill This Mob to Finish Your Quest"? Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Here's a really interesting undocumented note from the latest patch: Angelhunter on LJ says letters (as in saved copies of mailed ingame letters) are now soulbound. And that's a huge deal, apparently, to roleplayers -- they used those little scraps of paper for everything from treasure hunts and "official" documents to invitations and tickets.
Now, I'm not quite sure exactly why this change would be made -- for what possible reason would you want to keep people from trading saved copies of in-game mail? It's not like it would stop anyone's communication -- anything goldsellers could say in these sheets of paper, they could say in in-game chat just as well. And I can't think of any possible way that these saved letters could be used to do something devious like pass secret letters or communicate across factions-- there's no reason to make them soulbound by default.
Of course, it may just be a bug -- that's what someone was told by a GM, so maybe Blizzard will put a fix in, and RPers can have their murder mysteries again. Unfortunately, I can't seeing it justifying a hotfix -- odds are that even if it is just a bug, RPers will be waiting quite a while until they can trade letters again.
Reader Nihil sends in this charming Orgrimmar shot, showing us the results with someone clearly dissatisfied with their postal service. Postal carriers of Azeroth, be warned -- this is the sort of thing that can happen to the bearers of bad news!
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.
In a change that didn't quite make the 2.1.3 patch notes, the behavior of in-game mail has been tweaked in order to help ensure that monetary transactions made via mail are legitimate. To give Blizzard more time to check mail-based money transfers, mail sent with coins attached will now take an hour to arrive (yep, just like all other mail). Now, before you get upset about this, let me add that transfers of both money and items between characters on the same account will remain/become instant. So you can shuffle things around between alts and bank characters faster than ever -- this change only applies if you're sending coin through the mail to other players.
Though I doubt this change will stop in-game gold-selling completely, it's good to see Blizzard continuing to be proactive about the issue.
Lately, I've really been pushing hard to get the 5k gold for my epic riding skill-- as I said on Friday, that Netherwing mount is calling my name. And so, on the advice of a rich guildie, I've finally made it a point to get a fulltime auction house alt. I chose one of my younger, less-played alts, stuck him between an Auction House and a mailbox (it happened to be in Thunder Bluff, but it could have been in any capital city), and made it a point to start scanning the AH every day, posting auctions when I start playing, and sending items to the alt when I'm done playing. That way, the next day when I log in with my bank alt, all those items are sitting in the mailbox, waiting for me to put them on AH-- right after I scan it again.
That's what Amanna at Adventures in Azeroth does as well-- though she goes even farther and looks for deals on gear she has in mind to buy. It would be great to have that kind of know-how, and I'm sure it makes money, but I don't have time to know the approximate costs of every little thing-- I leave that to Auctioneer. (Auctioneer does come with a mod called Bottomscanner (used to be called Bottomfeeder) that is supposed to find deals on high-priced items for you, but I'm not sure that I can get it to work right-- I'm worried that I'll spend a bunch of money on an item I can't sell).
But if nothing else, I do have to agree that the formula works-- check the AH with your alt when you log on, and mail items back to that alt when you're done playing for the night. It's a basic thing to do (and anyone who's been interested in making money before has probably already started doing it). But making money seemed like such a chore before (I'd rather be killing stuff or grouping up then worrying about prices and checking the mail), but it's actually become fun for me to log in every day and check what's sold and how much gold I've earned.
Way back when, I found a post on the forum that suggested that Shaman should get temporary, summoned pets to use, and when I said it'd be a great idea, you guys laughed at me. And yet, come the expansion, we get those fun little Elemental Totems to play around with. So while you might laugh at this suggestion at first, think about it for a second before you say I'm crazy: Let's give Rogues mail!
Guize on Skullcrusher has come up with what I think is a very interesting solution to the problem of endgame survivability for Rogues (we'll put PvP aside for a second and just talk about PvE for now). Currently, as players have said before, Rogues are a liability in most endgame raids-- yes, they can dish out damage, but considering how many endgame bosses pour out AoE, Rogues often end up to be more of a drain on the healers than anything else. I'm sure Cloak of Shadows has helped that a little bit (I haven't got too much experience with it yet, as my Rogue is only 61), but the fact is that while tanks can take it, Rogues take a beating more than any other class (ok, maybe healers take a worse beating, but that's only in a bad party).
Enter Guize's suggestion of a 31-point Combat talent that allows Rogues to wear mail armor (alternately, to avoid having to add tons of new agility mail gear, he says it could just be a talent that bumps up armor from items). That would let PvE Rogues not be so squishy when asked to be right up there on the front lines of melee, and it would help out healers a whole lot, especially on the 25 and even 40 man instances.
Now, in terms of PvP, I have to admit it seems a little unbalanced at first, considering that rogues are basically killing machines. But remember, too, that magic ignores armor-- Warlocks and Priests will still be able to DoT and fear just as much as they did before (and Cloak of Shadows is more of a problem for them anyway, and it's already in the game). There is, of course, the problem that it's really hard to be stealthy when all that mail armor would be clinking around, but if you want to finally give rogues a chance against the endgame AoE bosses, giving them the option to wear mail would definitely do it.
Specifically, the Argent Dawn does not love you enough to send you a gift-wrapped item via in-game mail. This is an old scam, where an enterprising scumbag will roll a character named "Argentdwn" or something, gift-wrap any old arbitrary item (water, say), and send it via Cash on Delivery to anyone whose name they can get their hands on. Apparently this con has come back in a big way right now (though I haven't seen it on Shadow Council-A), so be on the look-out for it. You should probably not accept any CoD wrapped items, since you never know what's in them; and the Argent Dawn is certainly not going to be sending you any. Just delete the mails, but be sure to report the offending character's name via GM ticket (I write them up for verbal harassment); this'll get these things shut down faster.
Fortunately, it looks like we won't have to watch out for this too much longer. Tseric says:
Coming soon in a patch near you, we will be disabling the ability to send wrapped packages by C.O.D., which should stem this particular trend we've been seeing lately.
This is good news; I can't think of any legit reason why someone would want to CoD a wrapped item, since the only reason I can think of to use wrapping in the first place is if you're giving a gift.
Have you had any experiences with this or other scams? What should we be on guard for?
This is a venerable piece of code, having been around WoW at least as long as I have. In general, the sprawling CT universe of AddOns has been remarkably persistent in staying around and staying updated. CT_RaidAssist gets all the glory, but other CT mods can be really handy. I find it crucial to keep an alt to mail things off to, and it would be a huge pain without CT_MailMod. It allows me to send off multiple items with one click, as shown in the screenshot: enter the recipient's name, alt-click all the items you want to send, hit "send", and you're done.
Well we've all seen the gold ads, and Blizzard has warned before about spammers trying to nab your account, but I'm pretty sure this is the first instance of in-game mail fraud we've ever seen. Forumgand from Emerald Dream is reporting on the forums about a piece of in-game mail that showed up in his mailbox from a player named "Blizzard." Inside was an urgent note from Scarlet Commander "Mormon" (?) and an item called Symbol of Kings, offered COD for 35g. The note says that if the Symbol of Kings is brought to LHC, a nice quest reward will be given.
What's the problem with that? As any high-level Pally will tell you, Symbol of Kings is a simple level 60 reagent, available from any reagent vendor for the kingly sum of 30s. But, as Forumgand points out, a lot of Horde may never have heard of this thing, and may think the in-game mail is legit.
Community MVP Palehoof has replied to the post as well, and reminds everyone that Blizzard mail never comes from in-game characters named "Blizzard." It's all special and stuff, and comes on its own custom stationery. Any in-game mail that looks normal but comes from someone named "Blizzard" or "Viviendi," or, as Palehoof points out, level one rogues named "Caydiem," probably isn't legit at all.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Tons of amazing gems found in the 
Lately, I've really been pushing hard to get the 5k gold for my epic riding skill-- as I 
Way back when, I found a post on the forum that suggested that 
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