It's been brought to my attention that there are rookies of all levels. Recent columns have covered very basic topics such as instance play, group etiquette, and account security. Once you get to level 70, you'll have several options including solo play, PvP, and instance raiding. Raiding is a major part of the game, but can be somewhat overwhelming at first.

Raid instances vary from ten, twenty, twenty-five, and forty players. These instances are similar to five-person dungeons but require considerably more coordination. Ever player must work in concert to bring down challenging bosses, and they are typically rewarded with excellent gear for their efforts.

If you want to live through any boss fight as a tank, the one thing that you need above all else is health. Stamina, which gives ten health for every one point of stamina, is by far the most important stat that a tank needs in order to do their job well. No matter if you have reached the armor and defense cap, or if you're producing more threat than your DPS can keep up with, you won't live for a lick if you don't have enough health.

Defining minimum health is an important concept in end game raiding and groups. For most instances, a minimum of 10,000 to 11,000 unbuffed is needed. This will at least let you take a few blows from a boss before dying, hopefully enough blows that the healer will be able to get off a few heals on you. For more entry level raiding environments, it's necessary to have unbuffed health between 11,000 and 12,000. If you've got 11,500 hit points going into Kara, you'll probably be able to reach 13,000 health fully raid buffed. This will let you survive a good portion of Kara, which means you can get more gear, which begets more health in the long run.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

While alchemy is certainly not the most flashy or popular profession out there, alchemists are an integral part of the game, and any guild worth its salt has at least one, preferably several, working to supply guildmates and fill the guild bank with stacks of consumables and transmuted items.

This week's leveling guide will feature the usual cheapest route, and the most useful, to 375 for solos and casuals.

For those of you who will be working for your guild (and hopefully are also being financed, or supported by herbalists), we'll show you how to reach 375 by making the most useful items. They might cost more, but your guild will be requiring them anyway, so you might as well get your skill points that way, rather than making stacks of items you won't be using.

Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. If you take a looksee at the picture to the right, you'll notice something staggering: +3206 Healing. I've enlarged the number for your viewing pleasure, covering over the 0 Hit Rating in the process.

Yes, gear has a lot to do with such a high +healing number, but lest we forget the impact of consumables. Behind the scenes, our lovely shammy model is sporting the latest in elixir and food chompables, namely [Elixir of Healing Power], [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom], and what I'm guessing to be [Golden Fish Sticks].

And that's what I'm here to talk about today... Healing Consumables: How they work, what they do, and when you should be using them. All of that and maybe a bit more can be found behind the break.

As I was searching the AH yet again the other day, whining to myself about how high prices were getting on Elixirs of Major Agility, it occurred to me to wonder... If they're so high, why don't I just make them myself?

Actually, before the Burning Crusade -- or more specifically, daily quests -- came along, I generally would, or rather, I'd buy the herbs and find a friend to do the combines. Others besides me took it one step further and started an alt character specifically to have someone to gather herbs and make potions for them. But even without herbalism, if you watched the AH and herb prices for a bit, you could buy herbs when they were a bit on the cheap side and get yourself a stockpile of cheap elixirs, potions, and flasks.

Ever since daily quests, however, I've been a lot more lazy. I'll find myself at the Auction House less than an hour before raid time praying that someone has the potions I need for sale at a less than soul-gouging prices. I'll buy them at the soul-gouging prices anyway, of course, because I need them, and I have the extra money from dailies, but I wonder if I should go back to the old way of getting the herbs and stockpiling. It'd lead to fewer last minute buying sprees, at least.

So how do you do your consumables? Do you do the last minute buying spree, do you watch for good deals, or do you just do the herbalism and/or alchemy yourself?

That was quite a big push to the PTR last night. In addition to Primal Nethers and Nether Vortices not being BoP, resilience affecting mana drain (which was buffed for warlocks), five new jewelcrafted trinkets, etc., several of the class sets were also changed:

• [Paladin] Season 1/2 Retribution gear has resilience now (previously added, here for completeness)
• [Paladin] Healing arena sets 4-piece bonus changed to "Increases the healing from your Holy Shock spell by 30%" (was "Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec")
• [Druid] Restoration arena and PvP sets 4-piece bonus changed to "The casting time on your Healing Touch spell is reduced by 0.25 sec" (was 15% increase to the outdoor movement speed)
• [Druid] Balance arena and PvP sets 4-piece bonus changed to "Your Wrath casts have a chance to reduce the cast time on your next Starfire by 1.5 sec" (was 15% increase to the outdoor movement speed)
• [Hunter] Gronnstalker's Bracers: 22 haste rating changed to 22 crit rating
• [Mage] Season 3 arena set 4-piece bonus changed to "Reduces the cooldown of your Blink spell by 2 sec" (was 0.15 sec reduction to Polymorph casting time)
• [Shaman] Elemental Season 3 arena set 4-piece bonus nerfed to 50% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting Lightning Bolt (was 70%)

In addition, Flasks of Pure Death and Flasks of Blinding Light are now purchasable with Marks of the Illidari, Vial of the Sunwell's cooldown has been raised from 1 min to 2 min, and Sunrage Shoulderpads are now Sunrage Treads (boots) instead, with 8 more stamina but no blue socket. Whew, I think that's everything. What do you guys think of the class changes? Buff or nerf? Not you, Shamans, that's clearly a nerf. Sorry I don't have better news to report there.

[via MMO-Champion]

Dear readers,

The time for decisions has arrived! I, an alchemist, have surpassed both level 68 and a skill of 325, and Alchemist Gribble here has informed me that I am eligible to become a Super Special Master of Alchemical Stuff! But the problem is, I have to choose which alchemical stuff to super-specially master.

Now before the Dark Portal opened, I was very happily buying Thorium Bars and Arcane Crystals, and transmuting them into Arcanite Bars for a tidy profit once a day. But now that we have all these newfangled Outland concoctions, I'm a bit confuzzled as to what I should tell Master Gribble. I'm sure some of you have vast depths of experience with which you can advise me and other burgeoning alchemists as to the best choices we could make with our alchemy specializations, whether for profit or just for helping our friends. Focus on transmutations for extra profity goodness? Elixirs for raiding? Potions for making friends?

Please leave us some wisdom in the comments below. If someone has an especially useful suggestion, I shall update this spot in order to feature it for everyone to see!

Answer: Most of our commenters have found that each specialization has its own advantages, and it really depends on what you would personally use most. People who use potions or elixirs most (or make them for their friends) find their respective specializations invaluable. Since I'm a druid, though, I still can't use potions in any of my forms, and my small guild doesn't habitually use lots of elixirs anyway. So it seems that for me the way to go is transmutation after all -- with one caveat: on some servers, primal might, which is the most readily available transmutation, sells for less than the materials needed to transmute it, due to an overflow of other alchemist with similar dreams of uncountable wealth. Getting revered with the Sporeggar will allow you to transmute Primal Earth to Water, though, and that is apparently more reliably profitable.

As recently revealed in the profession revamp preview, Alchemy is getting a pretty major nerf in 2.1: players are only going to be able to have two elixirs up at once, one each of offensive and defensive (the categorization of particular elixirs is yet to be determined, though in most cases it's fairly predictable). There's been some discontent about this among the alchemists, understandably, since it means less demand for their craftables. Now we have a bit more rationale, along with one major piece of new information: Flasks will work in this new system by taking up both the offensive and defensive elixir slots. So if you drink a flask, you can't have any other alchemy buffs up.

The rationale Blizzard gave is along expected lines, and reminds me of the Decursive issue. Basically, since a cornucopia of buffs was theoretically available to raiders, Blizz had to tune boss encounters around having all those consumables on. If the encounters were tuned around few or no consumables, people like Nihilum would blow through all the content in a month, since they'd just flask up and would therefore be "overpowered" from the perspective of raid design. On the other hand, the way it is now has problems too. Since encounters are balanced with an array of flasks and elixirs in mind, they can be very hard if you don't use all those consumables, thus leading to heavy gold requirements for raiding.

I think the solution they've come up with is pretty decent. It basically levels the playing field a certain amount, so that you have a much smaller opportunity to buy more leeway in your raid encounters. This means less gold for raiding. And new encounters are going to be balanced with only a few consumable buffs in mind, so in theory we shouldn't see much of a difference -- we'll be weaker, but so will the bosses. Current content will be rebalanced as necessary, although I imagine at least at first we'll see a stepping up in difficulty, at least those of us who are used to downing flasks and elixirs like so much Gatorade.

Blue post copied after the cut. Oh, and one small ray of sunshine for alchemists: elixirs will now be able to stack with class buffs, so (for instance) an intellect elixir will now be useful, where before it would have not stacked with Arcane Intellect/Brilliance. This will lead to some new recipes being introduced that would previously have been useless. We are also going to be eventually getting some new recipes that might have been overpowered before.