I received a question over the tip line from an armorsmith this morning who is considering switching to weaponsmith because he is dissatisfied with his profession.

Player regrets surrounding a chosen specialization, or even profession, are common and happen to almost everyone at one time or another.

JDT writes that he is "extremely disappointed" with armorsmithing and what he is able to make, and that one of his reasons for possibly switching to weaponsmithing is that he theorizes it would be helpful to be able to pass down weapons to his alts that cannot wear plate.

Unfortunately JDT, anything that you craft as either a weaponsmith or an armorsmith is not only bind on pick-up, but it also requires you to have that specialization in order to wield/wear it.

That being said, there are blacksmithing plans for weapons and armor floating around that are bind on equip and can be passed along, but those can be made by any blacksmith regardless of specialization.

This week I will begin comparing the various armorsmith and weaponsmith pieces to the first non-crafted upgrades in order to illustrate the value of each item and help each class and spec come to an informed decision when it comes time to choose blacksmithing specialties.

Next week I'll finish out the comparison, as there is more than I can fit into this week's edition!

Decent healing is often a key factor in determining victory and defeat in a battle ground. Resto and Holy specced characters have quite the job set out for them. Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans regularly face a healing quandary. Is it better to spend time and man healing another player or continuing to do as much damage as possible. Zanhart of Medivh believes that any character than can heal in the battlegrounds, should heal. He finds it particularly insulting when a player heals him or herself while comrades die around them.

Some agreed with him that anyone who can heal should, but most people dissented. There were several themes to the responses:

• Paying a subscription fee allows any player the right to play however they like.
• DPSers in substandard gear are a waste of heals and mana.
• Non-healing specs often have such poor healing abilities that the battleground is better off with them continuing to dps.
• Some people just don't find healing to be fun.

It's often been said that druids are the three-in-one class: we can mimic warriors, priests, rogues (and even mages), but can't fulfill their respective roles as well as they themselves can. While in recent times druids have been able to gear up and perform as well as their parent classes in many respects, we are far from "warriors with stealth" or "rogues that can heal" or "priests that can off-tank in a pinch."

Our problem as druids is that we cannot but neglect the full breadth of our abilities when we must specialize in only one aspect of our class. Of course, any class works best in situations where most or all their abilities might be needed to succeed, sometimes even in the course of a single fight -- it's just that for druids these abilities include tanking, damage, and healing all together.

If you're playing with an experienced group, each player is likely specialized to one of these three roles, and his or her whole purpose is to minimize the chance that backup tanks, healers, and damage-dealers will be needed. That leaves druids trying to compete with warriors, rogues and priests (and mages), trying to do just as well at the same task, but with fewer abilities to call upon in the fight. Locked into these smaller roles, we must gear up and spend our talents in such a way that even if we were to shift out of our main role into another when the need arose, we wouldn't be able to do very well at it at all.

This brings me to the adventure at hand: Today we will go on an journey of the imagination together, exploring the potential future of druids, considering how this problem of specialization versus versatility might be approached. Indeed, as I gaze into my crystal-ball-shaped paper-weight, I see two possible futures: one, called "The Path of the Pandering Pedant," seeks nit-picky perfection in a class designed for breadth and scope, while the other, "the Way of the Multitudinous Master" brings the full manifest of all our abilities into harmonious use with one another.

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.

Today I made my first two pieces of Shadowcloth. It's quite an accomplishment for my level 62 warlock, with the somewhat dangerous trek out to the Altar of Shadows. As I was feeling the roaring winds of the air elementals snap at my behind as I rode, I began to wonder if I shouldn't have chosen one of the other two paths instead.

It's a lot of work to jog on out to the Altar, and you take your life into your hands every time you do. Somehow the three disciplines seem somewhat uneven. Had I chosen Mooncloth tailoring, my travel time would include a small jaunt out to the Cenarian Refuge and a dip in the Moonwell.