I can't remember if we've posted about the WoW Gem Finder or not, but the last gem list I posted about has gone missing, so if you've never heard of this one, it's new to you. WoW Gem Finder is a quick web tool that you can to quickly find exactly the gem you're looking for -- just choose the colors, attributes, and/or abilities you want from the checklist on the side, and it'll narrow down exactly the gem you want and where to get it. And all the gems link to Wowhead anyway, so even if the little description isn't enough for you, you can go searching for it elsewhere as well.

Pretty great resource for anyone (like me) just starting to pick up epic gear on their latest character and looking into where the gems are coming from. One thing players might still need help with is when to put which gems on which gear (most people wouldn't throw epic gems in gear you get at 61, I'd think, and I personally usually don't bother with anything but vendor gems until I get an actual epic), but that may be all outside the ken of this finder. As a tool to help you find exactly the gem you want, it's a good one.

The Warcraft Characters app for iPhone that we reported on a while ago has been updated to version 2.0, and with it come a host of terrific improvements. As we were told last time, gear has been added in, so your iPhone can not only show you information about your (or anyone else's) characters, but it can now also show you all of their gear, and even reputation status. And there's good news for non-US users, too: the app now supports characters from any and all realms, not just US and EU, but Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese realms as well. The only thing that's still missing is seeing individual talents -- otherwise, it's as featured an app as you can get. Sure, guild search and stats might be nice, and there's always extra features like be.imba integration, or character comparisons, but as a portable Armory, it works great as is. We're not sure if this is all Rudi's work or a result of a teamup with Omen of Clarity (who's been working on an iPhone web app for a while), but either way, great job.

And there's a shiny new icon, too (and I like it a lot better). Characters is now available on the iPhone's App Store for the low, low price of free.

Every week, Daniel Whitcomb brings you analysis, opinions, and advice on the world of the Death Knight in Lichborne.

The Death Knight, as is expected, is still very much a class in flux. This sometimes makes it difficult to pontificate too much about certain aspects of the Death Knight class, because they may be completely different in the next Beta build.

That said, a lot of aspects of the Death Knight class are solidifying nicely at this point. Itemization, or at least the way Death Knights use stats, is pretty solid, and worth discussing so that you have an idea of what gear upgrades to look for you as you exit the Ebon Hold and head out into the wider world.

Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.

Remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned how if you want to be extra-cautious about preparing for Wrath of the Lich King, you should figure out a calm, easy way to farm gold that won't burn you out? After having hit the current level cap on the beta realms... I still recommend that, if you want to be extra prepared. If you're a very casual, don't worry about it too much, really. It's not that big of a deal. Leveling will get you enough for the bare necessities. If you're the type that wants to start leveling professions and gearing up immediately upon hitting the level cap though, think about going into Wrath with at least a couple thousand in your pocket, which really isn't that hard of a task.

Moving past that, though, a lot of people have asked about gear across all classes, but mostly Hybrids. Hybrids have asked because all of the Healing classes are amongst them, and if you're a Healer you may not necessarily have a set of DPS gear. My first comment on this: Don't worry. Really.

Ever since achievements were announced, the question I've heard the most from players has been about whether what they've already done will count. I attemped to answer this with a little bit of speculation last week, and today Tigole has basically confirmed what we'd already said: that where possible, Blizzard will award achievements retroactively.

As we said last week, things like reputations and quests are easy to track -- other than dailies, you can't do the same quest twice, so it's easy for Blizzard to know, since day one, which quests you've done. And if a quest takes you to kill, say Onyxia, and you've completed it, then obviously you've got the achievement. Where it gets a little fuzzier is if you haven't done that quest, but you have killed Onyxia -- Blizzard probably doesn't even know yet if they'll do things like look for specific loot from certain bosses in a character's history, or if they'll extrapolate things even farther -- if you're Exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords, does that mean you've cleared MC?

But Tigole does say that Blizzard is making a conscious decision to be as inclusive as possible on these old achievements -- whenever they can, they'll reward credit rather than making you go back to redo old content. That's a good choice -- it does mean that a few people will get angry for not getting the achievement because they killed the boss but didn't do the quest, but the alternative, awarding no retroactive achievements at all, would be even more frustrating.

When expansions come to World of Warcraft (well, at least when the last expansion did) people either get Beta invites or they don't, people start fretting about gear resets, new abilities get discussed, alternating doom and gloom and wild, frenzied excitement over new talents rages... but while all that is going on, the game is still being played. My own guild has marched firmly into BT and Hyjal, and we're one boss away from clearing the later, ol' Archie himself. In the process of clearing the other four bosses, gear has started trickling in and with it comes the realization that sometimes, higher tier gear is optimized for the places it drops.

I've been using Shield Block Value as my primary threat stat on my armor. As time has gone on, without really realizing it, I've been moving to a more hit/expertise system which relies less on big shield slams and more on consistent white damage and specials that don't miss and are not dodged or parried. While this has been occurring, armor with higher dodge rating has been steadily dropping, meaning that my avoidance goes up and my rage generation is more and more dependent on not missing or being dodged or parried. T5 content, with the reliance on SBV, allowed me to stack stamina and block value in a way that T6 content does not. I've dropped my block value from around 800 to a little more than 600 lately, while looking to increase my hit and dodge for bosses like Azgalor, who doesn't crush. (He's a nice little preview of the future in that regard.)

My point is two fold: one, especially for a warrior (be he a tank or DPS, I'm just using tanking as my example because it's what I primarily do) gear obsolescence is constant. You're always changing and upgrading your gear as you go through content. (This is true for just about every class, mind you, but I'm talking to warriors.) Furthermore, however, you also become a bit of a packrat, holding on to outdated gear because it has a stat that may be desirable for a specific fight. I still use The Sun Eater if I feel dodge is absolutely essential for a fight, despite having overall better weapons now.

Even without a release date, we can all feel Wrath looming. Whether it's pouring over the new specs as soon as they become available, saving materials for future Death Knights, or leveling up an alt to send as a main character to Northrend, we're all prepping to take our adventures into Northrend. Many wonder how far their gear will carry them toward level 80.

Many players were frustrated that their hard-earned gear was quickly reduced to obsolescence in Burning Crusade, and fear that that will happen again. Manbearppig of Frostwolf wants to know if gearing up a character now will be a good way to spend time. Some point out that better gear earned now will translate into easier leveling in the future. In a similar thread, MVP Faizaniel of Dragonblight stated:
My scrubby non-purple gear is getting replaced pretty fast; high-end gear, not so much. While it's unlikely that you're keeping much from level 70 at level 80, it's really up to you whether the benefits of getting to use the nice gear now, and having it help you level more quickly once Wrath comes out, are worth earning the gear now.

Okay, there's so much happening with Shamans that I don't think we can wait for the next Totem Talk to discuss it all. Between itemization changes, patch notes and new talents, there's a lot to discuss. First off, the new itemization.

In part, the real power of the shift towards granting AP from agility isn't even that it will make agility more attractive on our gear, although it will. The real power is in this move's synergy with the incoming enhancement talent Mental Dexterity. A great deal of the mail currently sneered at as 'hunter mail' has both agility and intellect on it. One example is the Mantle of the Tireless Tracker, an SSC drop. Under current itemization these shoulders grant 64 AP. With the new way items work with shamans, they will grant 86 AP, or 109 AP if you have full Mental Dexterity.

Let's take a short breather from this whole flood of Wrath of the Lich King Beta news for a bit. I know everyone's excited to find out more about what's waiting for us in Northrend, but some of us would actually like to play the game right now, instead of waiting for *cough* a few months. As exciting as the new Paladin changes seem to be, players with fresh Level 70 characters would do well to focus on gearing up for now. After all, it'll make it so much easier to fight the numerous baddies in Northrend.

Previously, we discussed the weapons for a Retribution Paladin only starting to gear up for the ever-popular Karazhan. More than anything -- more than any piece of armor -- a Retadin must find the biggest, baddest 2-handed weapon she can find to strike righteous fear into the hearts of her enemies. Once she has that, everything follows. In this installment of The Light and How to Swing It, let's take a look at the armor pieces that every Karazhan-bound Retadin should be wearing.

Yes, I know 'huntery' isn't a word.

Tipster Korgak sent in a piece of news from the Wrath Shaman forums: shamans now get AP from agility. To quote Blue poster Koraa:

• Sorry about that, it should of been in the patch notes. The idea is for DPS mail (with AGI and AP) to be viable for both Hunters and Shaman. Strength is mostly now only a stat for Death Knights, Warriors and Ret Paladins.

While this won't immediately take shamans out of wearing leather for their enhancement DPS needs, it does make the leather that feral druids wear less attractive. Rogue leather, which tends to have agi, attack power and crit will still be fairly attractive, but now all that mail that has stats for hunters will look a lot more appealing to our melee branch of the best class in the game. One depressing note seems to be that our agility to crit formulas seem to have changed negatively as well, most likely because we're expected to push agility more than currently.

(Thanks again to Korgak for the tip)

Welcome readers to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. It looks like I stumbled upon an addon topic that, judging from your comments, a lot of people view as a cornerstone of their UI and addon experience. This week, thanks to reader feedback, I'm going to extend our look at inventory addons to three parts instead of two so that we can take a look at a couple of fan favorite bag addons that I missed. I did indeed hear your cries of wanting more in the comments, so let's get down to it with a look at ArkInventory and TBag.

I'm sure at some point in time we've all seen epic looting nightmares. More than once I've been hoping for a drop in an instance only to have another party member beat me on a need roll. Usually, though it's something they actually do need, at least as much as I do. Sometimes ninja looting is even an accident, but other times it is not.

Avirisa of Mannoroth is a might miffed that she was outrolled for a Commendation of Kael'Thas ... to a Hunter... for PvP. As a tank, she said he was running the instance to acquire that drop. Most responded that this behavior is part of what gives Hunters a bad name in the game (Huntard). Some blamed the original poster for inviting not only a Hunter, but a Night Elf Hunter to the group.

We've covered sites like this before (Be Imba is probably the one best known), but here's another character comparison/improvement tool for you to use online. WoW Heroes is a site that will look up your character's significant info from the Armory, put it in an easy-to-read format, and then help you check out all your stats, enchants, and gear, and help you find improvements to what you're wearing. It's not as judgemental as Be Imba -- you just get the stats and the facts, not yelled at for not having gems in your sockets (though getting yelled at might be just the motivation you need to get better), but it does provide suggestions in a much gentler way, including what kinds of enchants to use and what kinds of instances to run.

And one fun feature that isn't as easy to do on Be Imba is the comparison tool -- you can put in two characters' names and servers and very easily look at both at the same time, comparing item levels and/or seeing where the gear came from. Neat feature, and very easy to get up and running, no login or signup needed.

There is one drawback -- you can't see any characters in the system that are below level 70, so WoW Heroes is only for people trying to find improvements and options in the endgame -- if you're below 70, you'll have to go elsewhere. But as an endgame character improvement tool, it's another good option to use.

Seska of Ysondre has posed the challenge of twinking to players who hate this style of play. She stated that the joy of playing a twink is in planning how to get gear for the effort. To her twinking proves that gear is more important than skill. To do it right, twinking requires considerable time and effort (not to mention cash from higher level characters), but is a valuable experience. Seska is currently a level 16 Shaman, and plans to keep that character as a twink.

She was met with agreement by some other twinks, but also a lot of resistance and resentment. Some people say that they have tried twinking and gotten bored with it soon afterward, like playing any other video game with cheat codes. This practice can also be frustrating for other players who would like to battleground as they level up but become demoralized by twinks.