Posts with tag tactics

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Camping and stalking are two different things, and I got an email from someone facing both asking for help.

I was wondering if you had any advice on discouraging less palatable AH competition? I'm speaking in particular about obsessive AH campers and their stalking tendencies.

I know it's pretty standard for competitors to add each other to their friends (or enemies) list in order to keep an eye on when they're around, but over this expansion I've encountered some behaviours which seem to be pushing the boundaries of what is and isn't OK. Earlier in the year I had one competitor follow me across Stormwind, then to Darnassus, then to the Exodar, and finally to Shattrath where I eventually logged because it was getting beyond creepy to cut a gem and then moments later see this guy targeting me and cutting the same thing.

I'm not an AH camper, but when I am on I'm happy to list/relist against the guys that are – this one following me now seems to be the dominant one on the server (or the most persistent), but I wanted to know if you had any advice on how to discourage this?

Recognize the little guy in the top left corner? Yup, that's Crabby! He's back to help guide you and your party through the various encounters found in Azeroth. Who would have guessed a simple crustacean had so much to offer?

If you don't want to spoil yourself for any specific lore reasons, you may wish to avoid using the encounter journal until you at least get to the encounter itself. A recent patch 4.2 build had enabled it, and already I can see this being a huge asset to players who wish to dive into dungeons or raids.

The encounter journal effectively tells you three things:

• Loot drops
• Boss abilities
• Notable phases

Some of the journal entries also provide a little lore background into the areas you're invading. If you're a person like me who doesn't read quest text much and just hits "Next" on everything, you might sometimes wonder why you're going into some dark part of the world to take down some villain. At least now we have some idea as to why.

What the journal won't tell you is how to take down bosses. You get a full list of boss abilities and mechanics, but it's entirely up to the raid to determine what tactics should be used to respond to said boss abilities.

Warning: Partial encounter spoiler ahead.

Looking for the best approach to a certain boss? How about gearing guides for all flavors of 85s, whether you just hit the level cap, are working your way through rep rewards and heroics, or are already digging into raiding? What if you're just getting around to figuring out best practices for your newly 85 alt?

WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm has you covered! We add fresh links every week to keep you up to date with the latest tips, tricks and strategies for the Cataclysm era. Here's what's new from the most recent weeks:

Best class tips

• Cataclysm tanking for warriors, part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4
• Blood DK Tanking 101
• Protection Paladin 101
• Shadow Priest 101

Best gear

• Pre-raid gear for resto shaman
• Gear your tankadin for heroics
• Gear your tankadin for raids
• Raid-level gear for DKs

Best raid tactics

• Raiding Blackwing Descent as a shadow priest, part 1 / part 2 / part 3
• Raiding strategies for feral cats, part 1 / part 2 / part 3
• Priest healing strategies
  • Ascendant Council
  • Cho'gall
  • Maloriak and Nefarian
  • Chimaeron and Atramedes
• Holy paladin healing strategies for Bastion of Twilight, part 1 / part 2
• The enhancement shaman guide to Nefarian
• Best practices for healing heroic Chimaeron
• A Blackwing Descent healing playbook
• Healing heroic Halfus

More

• Blackwing Descent and the Prestor legacy

There's much, much more where this came from -- get the whole scoop on WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm!

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

Looking for the best approach to a certain boss? How about gearing guides for all your level-capped characters at their various levels of play: new 85s, heroic instancing and raiding? What if you're just getting around to figuring out best practices for your newly 85 alt?

WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm has you covered! We add fresh links every week to keep you up to date with the latest tips, tricks and strategies for the Cataclysm era. Here's what's new from the most recent weeks:

• Blizzard's Tom Chilton discusses Cataclysm design, talent and zone revamps
• Bear weapons, trinkets and relics
• Datamining Cataclysm's legendary staff
• Entering the Bastion of Twilight as a balance druid
• Top 10 trinkets for the pre-raiding shadow priest
• Warlock strategies for Cho'gall
• Gearing your feral cat for raiding, part 3 and part 2
• Balance druid strategies for the Twilight Ascendant Council
• Level 85 shadow priest gear
• Warlock strategies for the Twilight Ascendant Council
• Holy paladins tips for healing Chimaeron
• Balance druid strategies for Cho'gall

Read WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Make no mistake: Early Cataclysm dungeons are not the faceroll that we experienced at the end of Wrath. Not only have everyone's gear levels dropped dramatically relative to the content, but Blizzard has returned to a more BC-style design philosophy wherein crowd control really matters and one live mob can make the difference between an easy pull and a very difficult one.

Of course, the ideal solution is to read up on the dungeons beforehand and make sure you're prepared for them, but we don't live in an ideal world. Sometimes, you'll wind up in a random dungeon that you weren't expecting, and you haven't had time to research. Additionally, dungeon guides don't always give tips for trash, and trash pulls now require some coordination. Luckily, instance design does not expect you to have an encyclopedia in your head. An alert dungeoneer can succeed on the fly by following a few simple tips.

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Icecrown Citadel has been out for eightmonths now, and with the availability of i264 emblem gear and the 30 percent zone buff, it's become accessible to raiders with a wide range of experience. Some players have downed the bosses 100+ times on various alts, and other players may be just starting out.

Regardless of your experience level, there are always interesting tricks about the fights that people learn over the course of time. Here are 32 of them.

• Warlocks, time your Seed of Corruption to hit as Bone Spike cast ends, and if everyone's stacked correctly in melee range, you'll be top damage on Bone Spikes.
• During Bone Storm casts, tanks should run to be farthest away from center of raid. Some 90 percent of the time, he'll target the farthest person away to move to.
• Any time you have to split your DPS into two groups (whether it's Thaddius or adds on Lady D or Valithria), an easy way to get balance is to go through Recount by damage done and put Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 on damage done on one side and the rest on the other side.
• Spellsteal or Purge the Vampiric Might on fanatics.
• Boomkin rooting for Darnavan works especially well, but note that he's immune to Cyclone.

I was never one for these tabletop strategy games or D&D but thanks to WoW I have become quite a tactician. Tactics are so integrated in the game that they come into play figuring out how to down Hogger without aggroing too many of his numerous minions, to sneaking through hostile territory and avoiding NPCs who want to kill you all the way to confronting KT in Naxx or Ignis in Ulduar. The latter is especially true, Ignis is a nightmare where a knowledge of tactics is life or death. When your raid leader asks if everyone knows the tactics and you all nod heads and mutter yes, it's not actually courtesy, he or she is trying to figure out how many people will survive long enough to down the giant er ... giant.

Once upon a time all you had to do to learn the tactics was play. Wiping on bosses and the depression of death, failure and repair bills can be a great motivator. At the same time, there are few unique boss fights in WoW. They all follow some kind of pattern and sometimes phases are even borrowed from other mobs. Others, such as Shade of Aran's Flame Wreath go down in lore and legend, even getting their own ever-so-catchy (nay beautiful) theme tune. I challenge anyone to move after having heard that (I even have that in iTunes and would play it just in case my raid forgot. No one ever did.).

So I wonder, constant readers, how do you learn tactics? I can read WoWwiki, for example, until I'm blue in the face but because of the weird way my brain is wired (don't ask), the only was I can truly learn tactics is in the fight itself. Yes, there's YouTube, there's the pre-boss-fight sit down where the raid leader does a run though the fight because no one bothered to take ten minutes to do some reading up. What methods do you use?

I am definitely an advocate of the fast instance or raid -- when I played a tank, I pulled pulled pulled (according to the healer's mana, of course), and even now, mostly as a Hunter, I still get impatient. When the healer's mana is full and the tank is not /afk, I sometimes just throw a Misdirect up and go. That's probably why I really liked Naissa's tips for speedy raiding -- she lays out a few really practical things you can do to get your raid moving faster, from only marking skull and X when necessary to only worrying about the healer's mana. It's not the end of the world if the Mage or Hunter has to drink for a second after the pull. While you should always get back to full before a boss pull (and as she says, that's a perfect time to break down the basics, only the basics, of the fight), usually as long as you've got the tank and healer ready, a quick pull will give you time for aggro to settle down as well.

I don't completely agree with her DPS meter remarks -- I do think that beating the raid is much more important than trying to win the DPS meters, but as a DPS player, I like viewing the meters as good feedback on where I should be. If I'm super low in the meters, it's time to look at my gear and rotations and try to figure out why so I can get better, and I think it's valuable for DPS, as long as they can keep their attention on the raid, to do the same thing.

But all of the other tips are great, and in general, "pull pull pull" should be the order of the day. Some groups are better at rolling through content than others, obviously, but as long as you've got a solid tank and healer in play who know the instance and know how to handle what comes, most raids and groups can move through the content pretty quickly.

As predicted, the WoW Minis game from Upper Deck has launched -- starter packs and booster sets are now available at a collectible store near you. I got to play the game with one of its designers at BlizzCon, and I actually found it a lot of fun -- it's very much like a turn-based Arena match, though there are fewer abilities to choose from, and if your characters are killed, they actually come back, as the victory is points-based, not just a deathmatch. But it's very similar to Arena matches in that you spend points on abilities, terrain can help or hurt, and each class has its own counters and tactics.

I found it to be a lot of fun, and probably would get involved in it if I had a friend I could also sucker into it, but no dice so far. Plus, it's two hobbies in one -- not only do you get a fun strategy game (that's surprisingly versatile -- you can play with more than two players if you like, and your victory points requirements are based on your characters, not the opposing sides', so you can play with whatever characters you like), but you also get to collect some cool minature reproductions of some of Warcraft's most famous faces. Good deal. Have you checked the game out yet, or is it something you're interested in?

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Last week, we talked to Ryzer, who is a member of an unorthodox 3v3 Arena team. In that bracket, it's not uncommon to see Warlocks and it's not uncommon to Druids. What is much less common, however, is the Two Warlock, One Druid makeup of SUPER CUTIE FEAR SQUAD. (The caps are theirs, not mine.) In a bracket of Arena often reserved for Rogue-teams (including the feared Rogue-Mage-Priest composition), the over-time based gladiators have achieved the 10th ranking on their battlegroup.

After Ryzer's interview, several folks dropped me a line wanting to know more about this team. The good news is that Apox was also able to interview with your intrepid WoW Insider staff. Check out what he had to say behind the cut.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into duelling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

You may have heard of him. Jeff "Aelli" Ware of the Reckoning battlegroup has been rocking battlegrounds and the Arena, scoring a Gladiator rank in Season 3 during the last week of play. And as Amanda told us at the beginning of the season, Aelli planned to do even better in Season 4. And now, he's succeeded at doing just that -- Lookin for Sponsor, Aelli's team, has hit the #1 spot on the Reckoning 5v5 ladder. What's the big deal?

Not only has Lookin for Sponsor achieved something pretty cool -- they've done it with only two people. Aelli pilots the team's four Shaman all by his lonesome. He's what's known as a "quad-boxer" or "multi-boxer," and controls four of the team's five characters. We were fortunate enough that Aelli was willing to do an interview with your intrepid WoW Insider team, and share some thoughts on both his unique playstyle, and the Arena as a whole. The interview is after the cut.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, Michael Gray fills in for John Patricelli, to discuss more about mobility for healing Arena Druids.

Allison Robert wrote a pretty solid summary of a Druid's life in PvP as a moving target. This week in Shifting Perspectives, I'm focused on a specific aspect of your life as that moving target. I'm talking about one of the most quintessential Resto-Druid skills in small-group Arena play: Poledancing.

Recently, Kenjiwing of Korgath brought this phenomenon to the attention of the official forums. There is currently no penalty for a team that fails to join an arena battle once the queue pops. The team that actually does show receives no reward and the match is recoded as a draw, which does not count toward the requisite games for the week. They are left to wait for another battle in hopes that the other team will show.

I have a confession to make. I love doing Alterac Valley, but I hate being stuck babysitting flags. I am not a defender- neither at a flag nor at the general's end of the map. As I mentioned on the WoW Insider Show, my main is a Resto Shaman. On Cyclone Battlegroup there seems to be a race to get away from the flag once it's been taken. The last one left is the "defender." Being a healer often times I drink after a taking a flag while everyone else dashes off. I win the right to watch the flag. I stay there and call out incomings. I will not leave a flag undefended, but if there's any way I can scoot out of there, I will.

Resto or Holy (depending on class) defending a flag is a terrible waste of healing. I'm more of a speed bump than a defender. I don't kill much as Resto. I do my best, and I can stay up for a while. Hopefully some DPS will show up before I drop. I would much rather be on the front lines, healing the assault forces. I prefer to rush forward and facilitate forward momentum with my heals.

I've recently started spending much of my day in that eternal WoW timesink -- the battleground queue. Fed up of terrible random groups, I've joined a casual PvP team in search of honour, glory and extreme violence towards the Horde. With something of a druid shortage on my server, I'm often the only one in the group, and thus the chief flagrunner.

Having partaken of the odd PvP game since I was in my mid-forties (not to mention playing games other than WoW which involve flags, teams and death) I'm no stranger to the concept of flag running, but I've found my ability as a flag carrier has vastly increased since getting into a good group. Not only have I become much faster at shifting between shapeshift forms in PvP, setting up easily-accessible keybinds for the various forms has helped me in PvE as well -- I'm developing a reflex for shifting into bearform when I start taking damage, which is useful in tricky aggro situations.

However, there's one common theme to my flag carrying; one thing I spend most of my time doing, and I'm not ashamed of the fact. My chief activity is running away, and staying alive. I make a lot of mistakes -- I run away from healers, I hit Dash and sprint off into the middle of several cows with big pointy swords -- but I'm learning, and enjoying it. The druid class makes a perfect flag runner in my (extremely biased) opinion, and with the right support a match can be over in a few minutes. Here's to more victories, and losses that help me learn.