With the Wrath of the Lich King beta upon us, we now have a plethora of new information about where shamans are going in the expansion, and one thing is clear: totems are changing. And for some folks, those changes may be seen as pretty bad. If you're a DPS warrior, you're not going to like the change to Windfury Totem.

"Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified."

The up side for shamans is that our own Windfury Weapon ability seems to be unaffected, according to MMO-Champion. In fact, there's no reason that the two efffects couldn't co-exist, meaning that an enhancement shaman could get the benefit of Strength of Earth (with its new strength and agility benefits), Windfury Totem (with the flat melee haste) and Windfury Weapon allowing for the damage of two extra attacks with increased attack power.

We can talk more about the changes inside, shall we?

We still don't have a release date for Wrath of the Lich king, but I suspect we will in the very near future. From what I've seen any folks are chomping at the bit to get started on their Death Knights. Blizzard's been handing out tidbits of information on the class. Many players have been dreaming about the gender and race combinations they'll select for the Death Knight, or even how to play the class. Aside from that, what can we do to be ready for our first heroic class?

Rizelle of Gurubashi is already preparing herself for the arrival. In a thread entitled "I'm already playing my Death Knight," she described the actions she's taking:

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One of my favorite things about World of Warcraft is the wide variety of sharp, pointy objects and projectiles at my disposal for beating on my foes (and occasionally my friends). At times I find myself overwhelmed by the number of options for each class, and I've always wanted a handy guide to what I can use and where to get it. Since I couldn't find such a guide, I've decided to create one. Hopefully you will all find it useful also.

We've covered the IBM/Seriosity study before -- that's the one that said players who are able to organize and lead guilds can use those same skills to succeed in the workplace. Just recently, Computerworld sat down to chat with Seriosity co-founder Byron Reeves, who's since used his research to actually develop ways for companies to use MMO-style gameplay in the workplace, including creating a currency system to develop and manage interactions between employees.

It's very interesting stuff. Reeves says that MMO games and the leaders in them are a prime example of the environment creating the leader, not necessarily the talents of the person themselves -- when a game gives you the tools and influences necessary to have you leading a guild, you'll do a good job at it. He also says that the speed of online games can be a huge benefit to workers -- when you need to organize groups fast ingame, those skills will directly translate to running groups in real life.

Not everything is the same -- Reeves admits that the risks are much smaller when running around a virtual world (no one loses their livelihood if you don't down a boss), and there's a lot more transparency in games -- you can know characters' levels and specs, but you can't really know exactly how much experience your employees have or what they're really good at just by looking them up in the Armory. The interview is definitely an interesting read for anyone who's ever lead a guild or a workplace -- it's becoming more and more apparently that there are many lessons to be learned across both.

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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.

Everybody's favorite pet database/hunter resource Petopia has been made ready for 2.3 a day early (and it's because Mania is going to take an AFK-- I hope it's for something relaxing, because she deserves it!). The closest thing we have to a changelist is a running tally of 2.3 news over on Mania's blog, but there are definitely new pets (including this hot obsidian raptor above), skill updates, and lots of other new information in the database.

I'm especially excited because I've purposely left my BE hunter at about level 29 since all these 2.3 changes were announced, so his eyes are the ones I'm going to be seeing patch 2.3, the new Dustwallow Marsh, and all the updated pre-60 instances through. Petopia is a great guide for all Hunters, but I'm especially excited to use it for myself.

A few hours ago, Eyonix posted on the WoW forums regarding another change to the Hunter skill Aimed Shot in patch 2.3. The ability, which has already gained a healing debuff akin to Mortal Strike, will now also have a reduced cast time. The shot will now take a flat 3 seconds to perform, which is a half a second drop from its previous time of 3.5 seconds. In addition, Eyonix also mentioned that the developers are monitoring the ability's effectiveness and may further reduce the cast time after 2.3 goes live.

As is often the case on the WoW forums, there is a rather large outcry over this change, the latest in a series of buffs to hunters. In discussing and defending the change, Eyonix suggests that the developers are trying to make this skill more appealing to the class in addition to helping them be more viable in PvP overall. What are your thoughts on the subject?

Yesterday a player on the WoW forums pointed out that the Warrior skill Demoralizing Shout would be interesting to see in action. According to Undamian's interpretation, essentially, the skill involves insulting your opponents to throw them off balance in combat. Taunt, Challenging Shout, Piercing Howl and Intimidating Shout could also be viewed in a like manner. Unlike similar skills in other classes, warriors aren't considered magic users, so they must have an extensive vocabulary and a lot of creativity in order to affect their foes with mere words and body language.

The original poster's idea, of course, led to a slew of suggestions as to what it is that warrior's actually say when they use these abilities. Community Manager Nethaera even proffered a suggestion, and as the thread progressed, other skills, such as Commanding and Battle Shout were included. Some players even posted catch phrases that they have bound to their abilities in game via macros. What do you imagine your character would say when using these skills? Please keep it clean.

One of the things I like about WoW is finding new, unusual ways to use old skills. For instance, I recently observed a bear druid using Feral Faerie Fire on critters. When I asked him why, he responded that it keeps him in combat, preventing rage decay. It's a very clever tactic, and one I'll be using once I get my druid high enough for it (then again, I'll probably be in cat form most of the time by then). Another classic off-schedule use is Detect Magic as a marker ("attack this mob" or whatever), though that's largely been eclipsed by raid markers. And speaking of raid markers, they're quite useful even when solo, since you can see them through walls.

What are you favorite unusual uses for skills or features?

I had to smack my forehead last night when I realized that my level 55 warrior was still carrying around nothing bigger than 10 slot bags. It seems so obvious that I'd have upgraded those by now, but inbetween all of the PVPing, questing, instance running, and grinding, it just plain slipped my mind. Herewith, five things that seem really obvious to remember, but a lot of players end up missing.

1. Upgrade that equipment! My forgetfulness is your gain. Bags are important to upgrade (because even if it costs you all your gold, you'll make it back quickly with the extra carrying capacity), but it helps to check all of your equipment every time you ding. A guildie of mine had to laugh when he hit level 46 on his hunter-- he realized he was still wearing a leather chestplate, despite having trained to wear mail six levels ago.

2. Train those skills. It's happened to all of us. You ding, head back to the trainer to train up, and you find that there's a ton of new skills sitting there for you. You forgot to train last time! Blizzard should have a little optional icon on the UI when there's a new skill for you to go get (or maybe this is a job for a plugin...).

3. Professions, too. Professions have even more skills and recipes to train up than the regular levels, so it seems like people forget them all the time. And for some reason, when I'm looking for herbs or mining, I always forget to turn the little tracking marker on after I die (Gatherer helps out a little with this one).

4. Repair, repair, repair! There's nothing worse than heading into an instance after LFG for half an hour, only to wipe once and have your gear turn yellow (or, even worse, red). By now, I'm repairing every single time I land from a griffon ride. Every time I enter a new town, the blacksmith is the first person I talk to.

5. LRN2PLAY. Of course, this is what all those hardcore players will tell us forgetful types, but this time, they're actually right: studying up on a class's strengths, weaknesses, skills and abilities will make things much, much easier. If you're a priest, don't use Shield-- use Renew, and less mana. If you're a Shaman, use Rockbiter (until you get Windfury, at least). If you're a Warrior, make sure to keep Battle Shout up 24/7.

Of course, all this stuff will seem obvious-- until you realize you've forgotten something. But in this game, as in everything, the devil is in the details.

Whether playing WoW while intoxicated, tired or simply under the weather, we all make mistakes. We vendor items we didn't mean to vendor, we destroy quest items thinking they're trash; it happens to everyone, sooner or later.

One of my least favourite things to do is accidental disenchantment. It sounds hard - after all, you have to click on the Disenchant skill, then an item you're probably wearing - but after disenchanting several items in a row and then deciding to enchant a worn item, it's all too easy to click Disenchant by mistake. This happened to me, yesterday, for the second time; I disenchanted my tier 0.5 bracers rather than giving them a stamina enchant.

Should this happen to you, don't worry -- it's not the end of the world. You can get the item restored, though the European GM I spoke to warned me that this process was only available once per account. Knowing that I'll be getting some better gear very soon, I decided not to choose this option, but since the tier 0.5 quests are non-repeatable I'm stuck in tier 0 for the time being. I'm happy it was only the bracers, which are blue, and not any of my epic items -- I'd have a hard time deciding whether epics today were more or less valuable than epics I might get tomorrow.

Have you ever danced the disenchant tango? Had any other moments of regret? All I've learnt from this story is to install a "safe disenchanter" addon, and to be doubly careful when playing late at night.

The fishing and cooking guide posted earlier is really useful, although the Horde focus means that Alliance players may have to follow a slightly different route. As it happens, I've recently taken advantage of the war effort quests to improve my skills in fishing, cooking, first aid and also my primary profession, enchanting. Here are a few sites I found useful in my quest for self-improvement, to add to the earlier guide:

Overall
WorldOfWar.net has a great overview of all the tradeskills, including useful information such as trainer locations.  Optimising your skills so you spend the least amount of money possible to maximise them is not a trivial task, so good luck!

Cooking
I'd basically neglected cooking since my earlier levels, so I used this "skill up in 2 hours" guide from Allakhazam, bemusing baby Night Elves as
I ran around Darkshore slaughtering crabs and then the Wetlands slaughtering Bluegill murlocs. Farming for raptor meat in STV, I then used the  Roast Raptor recipe at skill 175 to get my skill well over 200, as well as the Rainbow Fin Albacore recipe (at lower levels) and the Spotted Yellowtail recipe.

Fishing
Draznar's Fishing FAQ was reasonably useful, and I used the AutoLoot tip (shift and right click your fishing pole) as well as the FishingBuddy tool. As many guides pointed out, levelling fishing is time-consuming but works well in conjunction with cooking, as you can train in recipes to cook the fish. By far the most useful part of the guide was the PDF reference which lists the most common fish for an area, and the corresponding recipes.

First Aid
There's not really much to say about First Aid, apart from that it's a terribly useful skill to have. If you learn it early, and use the cloth you find to make bandages, your skill should be about 250-300 by your mid forties (if not earlier). Obtaining the book for Expert Level involves a trip to the Arathi Highlands or Dustwallow Marsh (Alliance or Horde respectively) and it's easier to buy it from the Auction House, even with the markup.

To get to Artisan level (225-300), you will get a Trauma quest from your trainer, sending you to Hammerfall (Horde) or Theramore Isle (Alliance) for a special Triage mission. Further bandages (including runecloth) can be learnt here -- take enough materials to get to 260 and then make runecloth bandages for your guildmates' AQ turn-ins to get up to 300.

Enchanting
The tactic I used for most of my enchanting training before really focusing on it was "if money's not a problem, disenchant soulbound quest rewards and hoard the materials". This worked for a few levels, but not spectacularly. Giving out low-level enchants for free to newbies is one way to avoid the grind of giving your bracers 3 stamina again and again, but most people are surprisingly suspicious of getting something for nothing, so you may well be staring at your own items a lot.

This is the guide I used for most of my skilling up, and it seems to work nicely, although you do reach the stage where you may prefer to sell higher-level enchants rather than "grind" your way to 300/300. It really depends if you have money to burn.