DING! 80

Ok, here is the back story, I had a mage and rogue hovering and the 70's for a really long time accumulating millions worth of double exp, so I decided to level my mage as I already had an enhancement shaman to for melee.

So, now that you have the story, here is the point. 80 hurts! Getting to 80 is easy but can be costly if your like me and try avoid quest grinds. So when I dinged I realized I was 80, with no hit no spell no stamina and by god no gear ( all relative to what I should have of course). Foo helped out with some moonshroud gear, and I have grinded heroics day and night to get 3/5th's of my Tier 9 set. I have spent more time in the BG's as I have found honor can be faster to gain and is easier to get into a BG than a heroic queuing alone. So I have some PVP gear mixed with PVE, but hey who cares the stats where better and until I can suitably replace them they will stay. Now granted I will not be walking into ICC laden in PVP gear, however for heroics I think the Odd piece simply because it has better stats than a PVE counterpart you are able to use, is ok.

Maybe I am wrong, but my shaman started healing Heroics in the 78 PVP set, no one noticed or cared. Now my mage uses some hard earned honor to bolster his gear where I cannot find a tank or healer to chain with me to get the preferred items. So is this acceptable for a new 80? Is it ok to use PVP gear to help with stats while you chain heroics in the effort to get the right piece?

As far as I am concerned PVP gear only carries one useless stat in the form of resilience and maybe the abundant health, which in a raid is of negligible use. However as many are aware there is PVP style fights in raids today. For example the faction champs of Trial of the Champion are a PVP battle and I know that people bring there PVP sets to this fight. ICC also has some PVP battles (correct me if I am wrong but it is what I have been told by raid leaders) and yet PVP gear has no place in a PVE raid environment in many peoples eyes. While I do not believe taking a full pvp set rings/trinks and all to ICC is a great idea, there are times where it has some merit, or atleast a hint of usefulness. So for 80 as a DPS it is much easier and quicker for me to farm honor than triumph, unless I get a tank or healer I mite as well Quest for the 15 minutes I will wait.

If anyone has a view on this please let us all know...

Can PVP gear be used for stats in heroics?
Can PVP gear be used in any PVE raids?

The cost of Alts?

Have you ever sent gold to an alt? Bags, potions, materials for professions? Do you consistently find your alts are taking all the gold off your main, as you swear that leveling your first toon didn't cost this much?

Well, it didn't, you simply have the ability now to make your alts life "easy" and it's costing you. You can level an alt without any help, like gold or bags, and its easy to do, hell how did you get there the first time? Can't remember a time before you had bags of gold? Before you where striding around in epics? Me either, and to be honest I cannot work out how I managed to level with no 80 to supply me, but I did and now my alts are Dependant on that 80.

So what I ask is, how come we can no longer survive on alts without an 80 to power feed gold, and other goodies to us, and yet we have done it before perfectly fine. When you make an alt, who starts with a 100gold care package and a stack of bags? Most of you will send bags and cash in some amount, whether its enough to afford the start area training in the form of 50silver (which is still excessive) or you pay there way to 80 we all do it.

Yet, when we started we had to work our tiny leveling buts off to make ends meat and now, we quest, we spend, we buy Auctions like there going out of fashion and when the well runs dry, we log over and top it off. Our dependency is now firmly in place, but has anyone thought what the cost to level that toon up is going be? what proffs? Whether or not they can pay there own way?

I reckon that is a firm "NO" and the reason is we have done that grind before and now we can make it somewhat less of a burden on ourselves, and why shouldn't we? Have we not earned this from the countless hours of raiding, farming, swearing at the stupid rogue that keeps ganking my mage!! Anyway, regardless of how you spent your time you still have paved the way for your alts, and they level being pampered, but remember to pamper them you have to first make that money to hand down, or farm for them to level proffs.

So next time you level an alt, remember its upwards of 6k for flying alone, 1k-4k per proff (depends on server and proff, specifically crafting) then talents, gear, enchants, mounts, FP, repairs etc etc etc. You cannot pamper them all there life's, but at least through the Azeroth grind, and in Outland they can look after them selves.

I don't know who I am anymore, to many alts.

Guide to Tanking

Ok, it's Egamad again except this time no shaman nonsense, no gem dribble, and no stat to stat on stats.

This is my opinion of tanking, from 15-20 (so far).

Is tanking easy? Well tanking never was hard, get things to hit you by attacking them, seems simple enough. Keep them off the healer, also should never be an issue. Keep them off the DPS, now we get down to the problem I dare to say most tanks will have.

Now I'm not an expert, and this shouldn't be seen as gospel, but I HATE DPS. Yes, yes a bit harsh I know, however in my level range most of them are content to GOGOGO (as Foo says) even when healer is OOM. I have had a pally 4 levels lower start tanking, I've had warlocks and hunters chain pulling mobs, even though healers and other mana users are OOM. Now the dungeons are easy enough, there not hard lets be honest, and with the BOA gear scaling a lot of DPS think they can effectively chain pull to go at there pace and that healers and tanks should work around them.

As Foo mentioned in a gloriously high number of posts, the DPS, the guys on your team are the ones that make the run harder more times than the actual mobs in the dungeon. Now I can hold aggro, its easy enough being a warrior tank, and I have some survival talents already at 20, but for the love of Warcraft I'm not a paladin, I don't start with full resources I need to build them or use a minute cooldown to get them after each OOM healer break. I would love to chain pull and have RAGE in the bank at all times, but alas I have to wait, and the DPS should respect this.

My concern right now, is the fact that these DPS, have limited or no AOE attacks yet, so when the inevitable "I would rather AOE that group than burn a single target" happens, my life will be a blur of panicked button mashing. My point although lost now in the mess of typo's and grammatical errors is that despite the relative ease of the lower dungeons, Dead mines/Ragefire chasm, is that I'M THE TANK! Aggro is mine, leave it alone. I decide what to pull next, and the healer determines the pace/amount per pull. The DPS are there to make there death faster, THAT'S ALL, all DPS should do is kill the targets I have aggro on, and stop when they catch up or take over my Aggro count. You do not need to pull the next mob, or scream to hurry up, the healer needs mana we will wait, its much faster to do it smoothly than make the healer OOM every pull, the tank struggle to pick up the extras you wanted to invite, and then call us "Noobs" because you effectively wiped us.

Now, please guys remember we are not 80, not geared to the teeth, do not have all our magical talents, and have high cost low return spells, and a lack of resources at low levels. I like to tank and I like to heal, I am good at, I can DPS effectively to but rarely get the option. We have our roles, Tank takes the damage and uses aggro to manage mobs, the healer makes sure the tank survives long enough for the DPS to kill the mobs, can we please stick to this method. On that note pets from warlocks and hunters that have Taunt set on are just...Annoying really.

My hope is that my experience from 20 on, is much more focused on the tank being just that a tank, not being a taunt machine from the DPS that pull.

Egamad, now a warrior tank, a shaman healer, and a very bored PVP mage

Gearing up in Dungeon finder

Gear in the dungeon finder is a great way to be "set for life".

You will find as you progress as a healer you will be able to get a large amount of virtually un-beatable gear. As you can (hopefully) see from the above I have gear that is 1 to 2 levels above me for my head, neck, off hand (including a shield) a cloak and after this was taken I got new legs.

Totems: who, what, when, where, why?

Egamad here again now with a guide to totems!

Totems: the who, what, when, where and why of all totems.

As a shaman you will find totems a blessing and a curse: yes they give good buffs, but are they useful? Is it worth my mana? How long will we be in range?

I will run through my totem layout for the "Call of the....." totem sets you get as you progress. Also what you should have hot-keyed as you will need them but they may not be the one you dropped.

Nexus normal as shammy heals

This what you want to see, when you and the tank form an understanding and feed each other what you need to keep the party moving.

This was a nexus run, to get this remark from the tank it simply involved keeping him alive. However we did wipe once, in a very common place for the nexus, ...

The Resto Shaman and Dungeon Finder.

Guest post by Egamad


Dungeon finder is the best thing to happen to Wow since conjured bread.
Now don’t let that fool you it is not perfect, it doesn’t take skill into account, you could have a 5 year old playing patty cake with the keyboard as a tank and still be expected to keep the group up. It does happen.

This is what you need to know so that you can carry your team no matter there skill, after all healer is 34% tank 33% and each DPS is 11%. What you have been given, when to use it, and general tips from a leveling Resto shaman.

Levelling via LFG as DPS

Ok.  The good news. DPS are likely to level quicker by LFG than by questing.  The bad news is you will be waiting much longer than either a Tank or a Healer between instances.
How to turn this into gold?

Levelling via LFG

Getting to 80 quickly - plan B.

The Looking for group option provides a really quick way to level - but works best if you sign up as 'tank' or 'healer'. In fact it is too quick to level your standard gathering skills.

So what to do?

Addons & levelling

While levelling, I like to enjoy the world I play in.  This meant that on my first toon - foosecond (I had another toon - foobarfoo - but that was on a relative's account), I ran it without any addons, and did my own thing.  I did break down and occasionally group with someone that had an addon that told them where to go, and used both wowwiki and thottbot to read up on advice for various quests.  Would I do it again - Yes. However, once I hit 80, questhelper found its way to my account and made questing much easier.

How do I use addons (part 1)?