Arms Warriors Provide the Big Smash in the World of Warcraft

The Arms warrior in WoW typically carries a big axe (or sword) and excels at generating massive damage to crush opponents. The opposition goes down quickly to the Arms Warrior's high level of "burst damage," and if they have a healer behind them? Well, they're pretty nearly unstoppable.

An Arms Warrior sizing up the Opposition

Prior to the release of Cataclysm, for the current 3.3 patch series, Arms is the build of choice for PvP, with Fury falling a bit behind. Arms also makes a very good DPS build for raiding and light tanking and if you're not yet at the level cap it's a pretty good choice for leveling. All in all, the Arms Warrior has a lot of versitility.
For raiding DPS some say that Fury is superior to Arms. Others differ, saying that the two are comparable. Most agree that Arms DPS requires a lot more attention than Fury to generate comparable numbers.
After playing a Fury warrior (perhaps while leveling) for a long time it can be refreshing to play something that requires a little more skill. It's refreshing to move to the more difficult Arms after playing Fury for a while. Also, as mentioned above, Arms rewards that higher level of involvement with a great deal of versatility. That it hits really hard is no small bonus.

Your Mortal Strike (MS) ability will become your Bread and Butterstrike . MSs healing debuff makes it especially useful in PvP. Arms specializes somewhat in burst damage and with the healing debuff from MS you might be able to put your opponent down, regardless of his healing.

When laying out your Arms Warrior's talents, especially if you're going to be PvPing, stick with the Arms tree so that you can get into Mortal Strike ASAP. Bladestorm is a good reason to stick with the Arms tree, after which you can branch out into the other trees as necessary. Once you have MS your generic attack rotation will then be something like charge > MS > Hamstring. Use Overpower, Sudden Death, or Bloodsurge if they proc, otherwise use Heroic Strike inbetween your MSs.

When the Cataclysm expansion arrives there will be two big changes to the talent system, besides a complete reworking of the talents. Well Ok, that's two after the reworking of the talents. One is that you're locked into one tree until you hit the top talent. Only after that can you branch out. Then there's the Mastery system. "Mastery" of the Arms tree gives you a chance for free attacks after each of your normal melee attacks.   So this will simultaneouisly give players incentive to stick with one tree while also forcing players to... stick with one tree.

Your trainer can teach you the Mastery ability, after you grab the last Arms talent, Bladestorm. Your Mastery ability can be enhanced by the Various pieces of Cataclysm gear which will have Mastery rating.   This allows your Mastery ability to improve as your gear does (just like Crit or Hit rating does.) With lots of high level gear the Arms Warriors should be generating some nice DPS with all those extra attacks.

Basic Steps to Earning Gold in WoW

Despite the complaints you may hear from some, in the World of Warcraft game it's easy to earn extra cash. Spend some effort, work at it a bit, and you'll have plenty of gold to spend on your items. Most of the basic stuff you can do while leveling or exploring and this basic stuff applies whether you're leveling to 85 in (the upcoming) Cataclysm or just playing Classic WoW.

First off, there are only a couple of ways to earn money in the entire game. You sell services or stuff to someone (whether a player or not) and/or you complete quests for the rewards. (If you're a Rogue you can open locked boxes or pick pockets to earn a little more.) Selling stuff to vendors is small change, but it adds up in the long run. At higher level the cash rewards for completing quests become pretty good.  Advanced players will often have a routine where they complete a number of the Daily Quests in an hour or two and make 200 to 300 gold.

But selling stuff to other players is the best way to go and the Auction House (AH,) is how most people sell their stuff although some will do it in trade chat. (Selling your skills for tips is another good way to go.) The only trick is where to get the stuff to sell and discovering which stuff is worth the effort.

So where to start? Make a level 1 character and run that character straight to the big city. I like Ironforge on the Alliance side and Orgrimmar on the horde side. This character will be your designated banker/buyer/seller. Everything that your main characters want to sell will be mailed to your banker for posting on the Auction House. This means that your characters do not have to go to all the way to the big city every time they want to sell their loot, which saves you lots of time. Just visit the nearest mailbox, mail your stuff, get rid of the vendor junk, turn in your quests, and get back to the game.

Grab skinning as your first skill. You're going to be killing a lot of skinnable critters as you level up and some of those skins sell for good money, even as a a low level character. Next pick up either mining or herbalism, that way you can be detecting herbs or ores while skinning things. Just gather stuff and skin everything and spend a bit of time, if necessary, to make sure your gathering skills are high enough for the next zone.

If you're higher level you can do pretty much the same thing. You're going to start in the low level areas and level your skills until they're high enough for the next area. If you're high enough level, and you're on a PvP server, you'll also be in position to help out your side if the other side is harassing them. PvP can be a nice bit of recreation, even though it won't help your gold stash.

As you gather loot from your kills keep anything that isn't gray and sell it. All the gray stuff will go straight to the vendor to sell. Anything that's white or better, and that you're not going to use, goes to the banker. (By the way, pay attention to current AH prices so that you don't over or under price your stuff.)

You can also run your higher level character through the low level dungeons. Cloth, sellable items, and lots of vendor junk are yours for the keeping in these instances. Bring large, empty bags, as you'll fill them with just a couple of instance runs. If you're lucky you may even find a blue item which can be sold for a pretty penny.

These tips will keep you in gear and mounts as you level, if you apply them. Some people, though, are more ambitious. If you want to earn a lot more gold then there are a lot of advanced strategies to follow, and you can find a great number of these strategies in a book titled, "Warcraft Millionaire." Whether you just want enough gold to keep your characters in good gear or you want to hit the gold cap (a bit over 200k gold) this book has you covered. Read this review of the WoW Millionaire and see if it won't massively increase your gold stash.

How to Level Faster in WoW

The World of Warcraft (WoW) is a huge virtual world, bigger than most all of the other Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMO.) What this means for you is that   you won't see all of it if you take just one character from level one to the level cap (which will be 85 with the Cataclysm expansion.) With that size comes lots of things to do, plus arenas, battlegrounds, raids and dungeons, thousands of quests, and more.

If you want to level up as quickly as possible, maybe to join your friends at higher level or get to the end-game content sooner, you might find the number of quests and objectives to be daunting. If you follow a few rules, though, you can greatly speed up your leveling, regardless of class or faction. The fastest way to get leveled, of course, is with a professionally created product, like Zygor's Guide, but that's only for the people who really need to get to max level ASAP.

First off, realize what the time killers are. PvP is great fun (for many of us,) but it doesn't help you get leveled. Shopping is also fun, especially if you have a full wallet, but it doesn't get you leveled faster. Hanging out on the inn's doorstep, lying about your exploits with your pals, spreading nasty rumors about the other faction, won't get you to 80 or 85 any sooner. Not that you shouldn't slaughter them at every opportunity or inform your associates about just how slimey the other side really is, just be aware of how much time you spend doing that.

There are a couple of ways to gain experience faster than the normal way. There's "rest XP," for one. Log out in an Inn and when you come back to that character you will get the bonus XP. The longer you stay in the Inn then the longer the XP lasts. The other is Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend program.   Your partner's and your accounts will be linked and when you fight together you will pick up XP at 3x the normal rate.

Besides the faster XP from Recruit a Friend, teaming will speed your leveling because, even though the basic XP gain is smaller, you will kill things much faster and have a lot less downtime. This gives you a net gain in XP/hour over going solo. Of course, to make this teaming thing work, you do have to have a compatible partner.

Skip the crafting professions, for now, since they'll slow you down. If you have adequate gold then skip the gathering professions. Really, you want to control anything that slows you down. marketing your loot is another time waster, but you have to do it. Make an Auction House Alt, which will live at the Auction House (AH.) When your bags are full of loot you just stop by the nearest mailbox instead of making the trip to the big city. Log into the banker when you're done and post your stuff on the AH. You'll also want to have the biggest bags you can afford. If you're making it a point to loot things then the big bags will allow you to collect a lot more loot before having to return to the mailbox.

Be aware of what skills are coming up next (you can go to Thottbot.com for a list) and skip that trip to town to train if there's nothing interesting coming up. Don't buy new stuff all the time. It's fine to wait a few levels before upgrading your gear. Certain classes are, of course, a little more gear dependent than others, but even the most dependent can wait three or four levels between upgrades.

Grinding isn't nearly as fast as questing, if you group your quests properly. When you hit a new area grab all the quests you want and then group them by area. Several of the quests will take you "over there" so do all of those at the same time. Try to always have more than one quest in any area that you're working in, whether it's the dungeon or the city. The worst way to go is to do one quest that takes you all over the place, then hand it in and do another which hits the same areas.

Just by organizing your time and following a few easy steps you will greatly improve your leveling speed. An expert leveling guide will really speed things up, but you'll be a lot faster than most of the competition and you'll have fun doing it. And isn't that the point?

WoW Gold Tip #37: Grinding Mobs and AH Pricing

In the World of Warcraft one of the time tested methods or earning gold is by grinding Elementals. They are all over the game world and come in a variety of types: fire, earth, air, etc. They all drop some form of elemental part appropriate to their types, such as air elementals dropping "Breath of Air" or "Crystallized Air."

Having so many recipes demanding the various elemental bits insures that there is always a market for those parts. You can also combine motes, and crystallized elements, ten at a time, into the primal/eternal version of that element. High level recipes use a lot of these primals/eternals to keep an eye on that market. Check the Action House to see what's keeping the high prices, then go farm that item.

The same will likely be true with the new Cataclysm areas. Gather the bits from the assorted elementals and then sell them "as is" or combine them and then sell. (Keep in mind that if you're in a PvP area, such as Wintergrasp, your farming might be more entertaining than otherwise.)

Find them in Thottbot

How do you find the Elementals that you're looking for? Well, if you're pretty high level you probably can already think of a few places, otherwise go tto Thottbot.com, seach for Elementals, then click "creatures." You will be able to sort the list by level, maps, and so on.

As with any gathering run, take large bags, stock up on sodas, rations, and tunes, and go farm some elementals.Take a buddy and make it a contest to see who gets the most, the fastest. Or kill everything, sit down and swap lies while waiting for the respawn, and then see if you can kill everything faster than before. Next, come up with a plan to sell your loot.

Some tips on posting stuff to the Auction House

Ok, you have your elemental bits, or whatever you've gathered, here's how to get rid of your stuff.

The Two Types of Items

Basically there are two types of items on the Auction House (AH.) The first group consists of items that people will only buy one of; such as glyphs, weapons, armor, enchants, etc. Unless someone is buying for resale, or supplying his buddies, no one will buy several glyphs of any one type. The next group is stuff the people will buy a lot of and may well buy repeatedly. A Scribe will buy tons of herbs for her glyph making, a leatherworker will buy tons of skins, and so on. And they all want your bits at some point in their work.
The same is true of the elemental bits. While people usually won't buy tons of primals/eternals at the same time, chances are they will be repeat buyers.

Understanding these two groups of items (and people) is important since it determines how you pick your prices. If you're selling one-off items, such as glyphs, those green/blue weapons you found, etc., you want to have the lowest price. You don't have to undercut by a lot, but the lowest price says that your stuff will go first.

With the other group you don't have to be the lowest price. You do not need to undercut everyone else. If my scribe is buying a ton of herbs for Inscription then she'll buy the lowest price stuff, then the next higher, then the next... and so on until she has enough. The same is true with skins, ores, and your elemental bits.
Ok, you understand that. Now you're off to the AH with your load of motes/crystallized whatever.

Always Check the Going Price

Check the prices on motes/crystals and do the same with primals/eternals. Post yours in the form that will get you the best prices. For example - motes of life are selling for 1g each, but primal life is selling for 15g each (and rapidly climbs to 23.) Makes your motes into primals (10 motes to a primal) and post the primals somewhat above the lowest price. Let's not get silly with this, though. If the low price is 400g per bit, then I'd suggest undercutting. By a lot. :)

Buy Out the Cheap Stuff

By the way, if some other seller (call him "Igntaz, the farmer") has posted a pile of bits at well under everone elses prices, feel free to buy all of his underpriced stuff and resell it at a better price. If he's selling Eternal bits for 3 gold, and you know they'll fly off the shelves at 15, then buy all the low priced bits. Do not post them all at once. Post them over time, some will sell and then you post a few more.

In summary, all the elemental bits sell well and you don't need to sell them at the lowest price. If you do sell them way under market that's fine, someone will by them, and chances are it will be me, or someone of a similarly greedy mind. You sell yours for 3g each, while doing all the work, and I'll buy you out and sell yours for 15g each. That's fair, right? ;) 

You could also just hand the lot to your guild crafter, but that's hardly the point of this article. Now get to work!

Need more? GotWarcraft has a lot more useful WoW Gold Tips, so check it out.