Holy - The Holy tree is concerned with healing, Holy damage, and increasing your Mana reserves.
Protection - The Protection tree is used to increase your survivability, help protect other players, and increases threat management.
Retribution - The Retribution tree mostly deals with damage dealing, either by giving new abilities or increasing the effectiveness of skills you already have (with a few notable exceptions).

B. Which tree is the best tree? 

All of them; there is no best tree. Each one offers very good abilities all of which complements the paladin’s play style. A better question to ask yourself would be, “What kind of Paladin do I want to be?”

C. I’m just starting out and am confused! Help! 

If you are beginning a new Paladin, your first five talent points should go into Spiritual Focus. This will help you in every way in your quest to reach level 60, since it allows you to reliably heal in combat (especially so once you receive Concentration Aura). Most Paladin talent builds you encounter will include Spiritual Focus for that very reason. However, from there on your path is entirely your decision.

Many paladins will rush into Retribution to get Seal of Command and Consecration as soon as possible to enhance their damage generation or reduce their required Mana investment in battle, while others will invest another six points into Holy to get the “free heal” every two minutes from Illumination and Divine Favor.
The Protection tree is rather weak for solo play until you have 25 or more points invested (level 39 minimum if you have Spiritual Focus). Thus, unless your major focus is being the main tank in a consistent partnership or group of friends, you would be better off investing your points in Retribution or Holy.

Our power is above average up until level 40 (where our abilities begin to plateau) so talent choices beyond the first five points are not a major issue until then. At that point the 1 gold to redo your talents is easy to obtain, and you can build a paladin that best suits your play style.

D. Should I go with one-handed or two-handed weapons? 

Both would be ideal. A smart paladin knows when it’s time to use a shield, and when it’s time to whip out their war hammer.

E. What Seal and Judgement combinations are best? 

Well, there really is no best Seal combination, but there certainly are a number of combos you may find useful.

Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness - Use of this combo will increase a basic level 60 Seal of Righteousness from 67.5 average damage per proc to 106.7. Your Seal’s pre-avoidance DPS will subsequently increase from 13.5 to 21.3. Certain talents will increase this combination’s effectiveness substantially.

Judgement of Light or Wisdom + Seal of the Crusader - Judgement of Light and Wisdom have a flat chance to proc per swing, rather than most of our abilities that proc a certain number of times per minute. Increasing your swing speed by 40% will also increase the rate at which they heal your Health / Mana by the same, while still maintaining a tolerable DPS.

The Mana regeneration provided by this Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Wisdom - combo is unsurpassed, especially when coupled with Blessing of Wisdom. This generally only gets use when you are trying to solo elites your level or greater, or are burning Mana exceptionally fast in a group. The downside is that you take a good five minutes to kill any single target, making it extremely inefficient for gaining experience or farming for cash. However, if you somehow end up as the last man standing against one target, this could mean the difference between five minutes of downtime and re-clearing an instance.

Judgement of Fury + Seal of Righteousness - Paladins that are their group’s tank will find this combo exceptionally useful. Judgement of Fury greatly amplifies the amount of threat generated by your Holy damage abilities, of which Seal of Righteousness is one. This Seal combination — coupled with Holy damage talents like Consecration, Holy Shield, and Holy Shock (among others) — will all but guarantee you are the person your target is hitting.

Judgement of Justice + Seal of Anything - Judgement of Justice prevents your target from fleeing, which can be invaluable in groups, or when soloing in tight quarters against Humanoids. It’s not really a ‘combo’  per se, but still exceptionally useful. =)

F. What does each of the five stats do? 

Strength - Increases melee attack power and damage blocked with a shield.
1 Strength = 2 Attack Power = ~0.14 DPS
(Shield block formula required!)

Agility - Increases Critical Hit rate, Dodge rate, and Armor.
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = 2 Armor

Stamina - Increases Health.
1 Stamina = 10 Health (Note: Stamina gained at level up does not increase
Health)

Intellect - Increases Mana, and Spell Critical Hit rate.

1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Note: Intellect gained at level up does not increase Mana)
1 Intellect = 0.01% spell critical rate.

Spirit - Increases Health and Mana regeneration rate.
(Formula required for Health and Mana regeneration!)

G. Which stat is the best stat? 

Like talent trees, the best stat combination is one that defines the type of Paladin you want to be. A deep Protection paladin will probably prefer Stamina and Agility to Spirit, while a Holy paladin will jump at the opportunity to pick up more Spirit and Intellect. And neither of those two will care terribly much about Strength, but a Retribution Paladin sure will.

That’s not to say that you should neglect any given stat, but that your priorities will vary depending upon your talent build and play style.

H. What does Skill X do? 

Thottbot and Allakhazam both have excellent information on what each skill does, related websites. However, this guide covers as do several other World of Warcraft-the math behind any skills that are affected by talents.

I. What profession should I be? 

The Profession question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this guide. Most Paladins choose Blacksmithing or Engineering as their Profession, although nothing is stopping you from being a Tailor, for example. More information can be found elsewhere on this forum.

2. Holy Talents 

Improved Lay on Hands
Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 30% bonus to their armor value from items for 1 minute.
When you use lay on hands on someone, it usually means they’re in a very near death situation, so giving them full health plus an armor boost can be a huge lifesaver. This is especially useful when used on the tank, as it gives them a minute of that much less damage, possibly giving healers time to recharge slightly. However, this talent is situational. Because of the long cooldown time on Lay on Hands, this talent will not be used as much as some others. Revelation greatly boosts this talent’s utility.

Spiritual Focus
Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
This talent is almost a must have, no matter what build you make. Being able to heal when monsters are pounding on you no matter what the situation is always a good thing. Some heavy damage builds which assume the paladin will never be the main tank can overlook this talent, but for the most part this is a must have talent.

Improved Holy Light
Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light spell by 12%.
A useful talent, it increases your heal average from 1292 to 1447, an increase of 155 health. Gives your already mana hungry holy light spell a boost to efficiency. A must for healer builds.

Revelation
Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands and Divine Intervention spells by 20 minutes.
In long instances, this can give you one or two more lifesaving heals. In solo play, this means you can be a bit more reckless since you have your “third life” available more often. A good talent for two points, even one point has a big impact.

Illumination
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light or Holy Light spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain Mana equal to the base cost of the spell.
This talent is usually taken only when you are taking Divine Favor as well. Our int values are usually far too low to expect critical heals on a regular basis, unless you are making a point to put a lot of points into intellegence. That being said, a critical heal that takes no mana is an extremely good thing, considering how mana hungry Paladin heals are. With Divine Favor, you are able to be assured of using this ability once every two minutes, which makes this talent absolutely…divine.
Note that this doesn’t make the heal a no-mana cost heal. You still need the mana to cast the heal, as the mana is drained then returned to you. Also note that it does stop your mana regen just like any other spell.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom
Increases the effect of your Blessing of Wisdom by 20%.
At it’s highest rank, Blessing of Wisdom will restore 30 mana every 5 seconds. This talent kicks it up to over 36 mana. This is an additional 72 mana every minute. All caster classes love Blessing of Wisdom, and enjoy this talent even more, and the extra mana per regen isn’t horrible. The question lies in the utility of this blessing. Generally while whittling through normal mobs or normal elite mobs, an unimproved Blessing of Wisdom will serve fine since most of the time the party has time to rest after an encounter. During very long encounters, such as instance bosses, the weak casters want Blessing of Salvation so that the tank can hold aggro better. If there is more than one paladin though, this is not an issue. Healer and mana intensive holy builds will get this talent, other builds generally will not.
Note that this is also a pre-req for Divine Wisdom, one reason many people get this talent.

Divine Favor
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light or Holy Light spell a 100% critical effect chance.
An absolutely divine talent. No healer build should be without this. Works extremely well with illumination. See Illumination’s description for its utility. Some have asked exactly how the talent combo of DF/I works. Illumination is a Passive Talent, Divine Favor is an instant cast spell. To trigger this combo, you cast Divine Favor first, you then get the Divine Favor effect which either lasts for 8 seconds, or until you cast a Holy Light/Flash of Light. If you successfully cast your healing spell in that 8 seconds, then you will gain a critical heal effect. Illumination then steps in (passively) and returns mana that you just used to cast the healing spell.
So Divine Favor works perfectly fine without Illumination, Illum. is just used to give this talen that extra useful kick.

Improved Seal of Righteousness
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness by 15%.
First off, this skill is a pre-req for Holy Shock which makes many people get it automatically, whether they are going to use it or not. Beyond that, a first glance at this skill makes it seem somewhat interesting. Extra holy damage builds more aggro and causes a bit more damage, and this talent affects both the seal and the judgement. If one isn’t going for Holy Shock or Sanctity Aura, then it’s useful to look at how often this skill will be used. The comparison is between Seal of Command and Seal of Righteousness. There are several good posts (add link later) on comparing and showing the two seals, but Theras sums it up nicely: “It would be wiser to suggest that this seal is used more with low damage weapons rather than fast weapons. The testing that has been done in the days since you wrote this guide indicate that Righteousness will fire off at an average of 12 times per minute regardless of weapon speed. Once the damage of your weapon (on the character screen) surpasses an average of approximately 295 it becomes far more effective to use Seal of Command than Righteousness. Some talents may affect the point at which point each skill is more effective, but I find that a good threshold for the average paladin.” So basically figure out of you are going to USE SoR and then decide whether to get this or not. No matter how you look at it, this is still one of my favorite talents since I’m an advocate of Paladins being a holy damage machine.

Improved Flash of Light
Reduces the Mana cost of your Flash of Light spell by 12%
Another must have for healer builds. This talent makes those quick cheap heals even cheaper. Any mana reducing talents are useful since the paladin is constantly using mana for other abilities. Only useful for Healer builds, most builds pass this talent up since there are better places to put talent points in order to be useful.

Improved Concentration Aura
Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 15%
Improves your Concentration Aura to a 50% chance to not be interrupted.
Although the talent increase is quite good, it’s usefulness is questionable. Like most paladin auras, Concentration Aura is situational. If your casters are constantly being hit then this aura is useful so that they can get their spells off…but on the other hand they might want Devotion Aura in order to stay alive longer. Useful when trying to get off a heal, this talent may or may not be useful in your build. As a comment about the Aura itself, Concentration will stack with Spiritual Focus in an additive manner, so that even with an unimproved aura, The bonus for Concentration and a fully specced Spiritual Focus will make it so your Holy Light/Flash of Light are never interrupted. This only prevent interruption from damage, you’re still vulnerable to specific stuns/interrupts.

Divine Wisdom
Increases your total Mana by 10%.
More mana gives more ability to heal or use mana heavy skills. A very good talent, and worth getting for if going for a Healing or a Holy build. A 10% increase to 3000 mana may not seem like a lot, but that extra heal or holy shock can make all the difference.

Sanctity Aura
Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. Players may only have one Aura on them per Paladin at any one time.
A must for Holy damage builds, also a pre-req for getting Holy Shock. Amazingly useful when combined with Exorcism, Seal of Command, Seal of Righteousness, or any other holy damage dealer. In a group of other Paladins and Priests, this talent can increase group DPS significantly (10% increase to ALL holy spells). One will have to think about the tradeoffs with other Auras, but if you are this deep into the Holy tree, you are most likely already dealing heavy holy damage. This Aura can also be turned on briefly, cast a exorcism/holy shock, then turns back off for a quick damage boost.

Improved Seal of Light
Increases the amount healed by your Seal of Light by 15% and the duration of your Judgement of Light by 30 seconds.
As opposed to most talents which increase the effectiveness on both the seal and judgement side, this one has a different effect for each side. Your Seal of Light will heal you for more with each hit you make, allowing you to regenerate your health that much faster, and can be a lifesaver at times. Your Judgement of Light allows the judgement to stay for 60 seconds on your target as opposed to the normal 30 seconds. This allows for mana conservation, or the ability to judge a few seals of righteousness while you continue to attack. Although not mandatory in Holy builds, it is useful and usually a playstyle decision.

Divine Strength
Increases your Strength by 10%.
If you’re this deep into the Holy Tree, you are not specced for physical damage, so purely holy builds may skip this. Comparable to Blessing of Kings since this is passive and does not take up the blessing slot which BoK does, but this only increases one stat. A Holy damage build benefits from this skill since Seal of Command works off physical damage. Higher strength also equals more damage blocked with shields and more ability to keep aggro when attacking monsters. It’s worth noting that this talent appears to add only to base strength and not strength after items, which makes this talent less useful than at first glance. Divine Strength is playstyle talent, and generally obtained unless specced purely healing, or focusing purely on holy damage and not physical attack power; the points may be better off elsewhere.

Holy Shock
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 365 to 395 Holy damage.
This is the ranged attack. This is the reason so many Paladins invest into Holy.
This is a very good PvP skill, and a useful PvE skill. However this damage comes with a low range, high mana cost, and very high cooldown. A slightly overrated ability, one should never make a Holy Build based around this talent, only as a complementary build to this talent. That being said, this ability is great for burst damage, and for surprising your enemy in PvP. It will take down runners (though some people argue this is what Judgement of Justice is for) and it is a great puller.
This ability is the single highest aggro inducer for the Paladin, and combined with a Judgement of Fury, will keep the monsters nipping at your heels.

3. Protection Talents 

Improved Devotion Aura
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 25%.
At early levels, this talent seems excellent, but its usefulness decreases and by the time you hit 60, this talent is very questionable. It gives an additional 183 armor to your devotion aura. With 6000 armor, that’s an extra 0.75% DR. For a mage’s 1000 armor, That could be another 2%DR, so it’s more effective for the cloth classes. Not the best talent in the world, useful only for heavy protection builds or for additional armor in 2-handed builds. Some people say that if your goal is simply to go down the protection tree that Redoubt is better as a first level skill.

Redoubt
Increases your chance to block attacks with your shield by 30% after being the victim of a critical strike. Lasts 10 seconds or 5 blocks.
A good talent for any 1H protection build. The extra blocking you will get from this talent will more than make up for the damage caused to you by the critical hit.
This is a pure 30% addition, not a percentage of your block rate already. A necessary skill for any shield users with protection. Most people believe that if you simply wish to head down the protection tree, this is the better of the two abilities, but in general it depends on your playstyle and if you’re using a 2Hander or not.

Improved Blessing of Protection
Reduces the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection by 120 seconds.
Very useful, since it gives you your physical shield every 3 minutes instead of 5. This can help a great deal in parties with a lot of cloth or leather users who keep getting attacked. Extremely useful in PvP, since it allows you to shield yourself or others that much more often. Just remember that it only  blocks physical damage, not spells. Most protection builds should get this talent, although some prefer to simply not get into situations where this is required and use the points elsewhere.

Toughness
Increases your armor value from items by 10%.
A huge increase in armor. Due to your armor levels at level 60, this will boost your DR about 2.5-3%, which means you gain a large amount defensively. This talent is a must have for all protection builds. This thread explains toughness extremely well. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=87461

Blessing of Sanctuary
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by 24 for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
If you’re going into the protection tree, get this. This reduces ALL sources of damage so that even less gets to you from spells, melee, and other effects.
However this damage reduction is done before other damage reduction is factored in, i.e. before armor is accounted for, so for someone with 50% Damage Reduction, this will only reduce damage by 12 points. Not as useful as a first glance shows, it is still a very good blessing for the main tank in instances, as well as for others to increase their survivability. Rogues and pets are especially good targets for this. This talent is also used in a retribution aura build, where you want a group of monsters to beat on you or someone else constantly, tanking damage and yet dealing piddly damage. Extremely useful in PvP against quick damage dealers like rogues, less useful against slow heavy hitters.

Improved Seal of Fury
Increases the amount of threat generated by your Seal of Fury and Judgement of Fury by 15%.
This increases the effectiveness of your tanking ability. A better Fury will draw better aggro, and a judgemented fury will cause that much more aggro from your holy damage. Believe it or not, the extra 15% DOES make a difference, I have seen it. If your role is as primary tank, get this. Remember that the group as a whole needs to practice good aggro management since even improved talents won’t hold aggro if the mage goes nuke crazy.

Shield Specialization
Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 25%.
A decent skill for all defensive and protection builds. It increases the effectiveness of your blocking, but not by a huge amount. The block has to occur first, which means Holy Shield and Redoubt are necessary to get the most use out of this skill. Also a 25% increase comes to about a 10-15point block. Very useful on fast hitting mobs, not so useful on heavy hitting slow mobs. Also required for Holy Shield. A good strength stat and a good shield helps the effectiveness of this talent since the amount of damage absorbed is based on both of those items.

Improved Blessing of Freedom
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Freedom by 5 seconds.
This skill tends to be more of a PvP skill than a PvE. The additional time to get away or move around can be critical. Many effects have other ways to break free such as equipment or other spells. Although useful in PvP, the paladin still lacks the ability to close with an enemy, however it is useful to keep the enemy from pounding on him. Usefulness is dependant upon your playstyle, but there might be a better place to invest five points.

Improved Seal of Justice
Increases the frequency that your Seal of Justice stuns the opponent by 5 per minute.
A bit more useful than players might state, this skill is still not the best in the world. Both monsters and players become immune to stuns after a three stuns, so all the extra hits are now useless. By increasing the frequency of hitting, you gain a higher chance of actually stunning your target in one or two hits as opposed to four or five, so it is useful in both PvP and PvE. Most people don’t consider it worth investing in unless they’re heading towards Repentance.

Reckoning
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.
Not so useful if all your are interested in is absorbing damage, but extremely useful for adding that bit of extra hatred to the monster so that you keep aggro.
Extra damage is always nice as well, although if you are this far into the protection tree, damage is not your forte. However for fighting fast attacking monsters and players like rogues, this adds that extra umph. Unfortunately this skill seems to be bugged from several reports at the moment, otherwise this would rate higher.

Holy Shield
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 seconds and deals 130 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.
The bread and butter of the defensive paladin. Increased chance to block whenever the paladin wishes. Low cool down time. Damage dealt for every block which increases aggro that much more and keeps the monsters attacking you and not the mage. The only downside is a rather high mana cost, but that’s a small price to pay for such an excellent talent. A must have for every defensive build, when combined with Shield Specialization and Redoubt it makes the paladin quite hearty indeed.

Improved Blessing of Salvation
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Salvation by 10 minutes.
This talent will increase the duration of one of your blessings by 5 minutes per point. Many people opt not for this because of the reasoning that all other blessings have a five minute lifespan still, so since you’re recasting blessings anyways, what’s one or two more? The talent points could be spent elsewhere.
The place where I can see this talent being useful is in extremely long Boss encounters(lasting 5 minutes or more obviously), especially raids, where the paladin wants to salvation a bunch of people and then forget about them. Most of the other blessings aren’t a huge issue if they fade in a fight, but loosing salvation can mean the end of a mage or a rogue.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with one-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Not the most incredible talent in the world. If you proceed this far into the tree you might as well get this since you’ll be using 1H/shield all the time anyways, and extra damage leads to shorter fights and more aggro. Not a massive damage booster though.

Repentance
Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation for up to 6 seconds. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Only works against Humanoids.  Crowd Control at it’s finest. Much more useful in PvP than in PvE. Going 1v1, this can be an extra “shield” for you to toss off an uninterrupted heal. It can also stop a player who is kiting or a rogue who keeps moving. It’s comparable to Gouge or Polymorph, although for a lesser amount of time. There is a large number of usese for this in PvP. In PvE situations, this has much less utility. It can stop runners assuming you forgot to judge justice, and it can interrupt casters as well. Not as useful in PvE but still quite useable. This talent very much worth getting if you have dug this far into the tree.

4. Retribution Talents 

Improved Blessing of Might
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 20%.
Very useful for lower levels, not so useful for higher levels. The dps increase from this attack increase is not that great: 2.3DPS. Although more damage is always nice, unless you’re going for an extreme damage build, it’s worthyness of 5 talent points is questionable. However it still adds more dps than an Improved Judgement of Crusader adds to SoR. A good alternate for a retribution build if one isn’t getting BoK perhaps.

Benediction
Reduces the Mana cost of your Retribution spells by 15%.
Now this is a talent, the 2nd best of all the first tier talents right behind Spiritual Focus. This reduces the cost of your retribution spells across the board. A must have for consecration builds, and extremely useful for all other builds. Remember, Judgement is a retribution spell. Very nice if you are casting Seal of the Crusader, and especially if judging it for extra holy damage. I would pick this over Improved Blessing of Might if you simply want to climb the retribution tree.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Does what it says. Get it if you’re going for heavy damage with two handed weapons, otherwise forget it.

Improved Seal of the Crusader
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Seal of the Crusader and the Holy damage increase of your Judgement of the Crusader by 15%.
More damage, and more holy damage. All holy damage builds will probably have this skill as it increases the power of the judgement that much more. JoCr adds 20% to Seal of Righteousness, so 15% more damage is some, if not a lot. If your goal is pure damage and you don’t use the judgement, Improved Seal of the Crusader and Two-Handed Specialization are about the same in terms of damage increase, it’s you judgement call on which to get, although getting both is still good. For one handed builds this skill helps build aggro and cause damage that much better.

Deflection
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
Oddly enough this is in the retribution tree as opposed to the protection tree. This is quite likely THE best passive defensive talent the paladin has. In general this effectively doubles your chance to parry, which cuts down on the number of times the monsters will hit you. Even better than Toughness in my opinion since not getting hit 5% of the time is even better than taking 2.5% less damage from all hits. All defensive builds must come down this far into the tree to get this talent.
Check the description of Toughness for a link to a useful thread comparing these two skills.

Vengeance
Gives you a 15% bonus to Physical and Holy damage you deal for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike.
First lets look at what it takes for this talent to proc. This talent is useful only if going for a build with high agility and conviction. The Paladin’s chance for a critical hit is 5% base, and will most likely hit 8-10% by level 60 without trying for specific equipment. Conviction will give you another 5%, and if you use the right equipment you can get your critical rate even higher, even over 20%. For a heavy damage build, this is an excellent skill since you’ll be trying to get criticals anyways. And a 15% increase to both your physical and holy damage is great. Some people will use Seal of Crusader until they hit a critical, then switch to a Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command depending upon what weapon they’re using to deal that extra holy damage. Note that ALL holy skills get the holy damage increase, including holy shield, consecration, and retribution aura. A very useful skill across the board, assuming your crit rate is high enough to make use of it.

Seal of Command
Fills the Paladin with the spirit of command for 30 seconds, giving the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to the damage of the Paladin’s weapon. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy for 30 seconds, causing 82 Holy damage any time the enemy becomes stunned. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.
This seal is Seal of Righteousness’s counterpart. Whereas that is used with low damage one handers, this seal shines with high damage two handed weapons (or even the more powerful one handers). The damage from this seal can be increased by Judgement of Crusader, making it even more powerful. This damage “acts like” physical damage in that the holy damage can cause a critical, and be dodged/parried/blocked or just plain miss. Even with all of these issues, Seal of Command is still one of the highest rated damage dealing skills in the Paladin’s armory. The same as I added comments from Theras in SoR, here are comments from him here:
“Again, the speed of your weapon doesn’t really factor into the proc rate, so you can remove that part of the analysis. As mentioned above with Righteousness, I tend to use Command on weapons with an average damage of greater than 295 on the character panel. Before avoidance is calculated, it will proc about 4.8 times per minute. Being pessimistic, I lowered that to 3.8 for comparison purposes against Righteousness (to assume a 15% avoidance rate, and 10% critical hit rate). It is also very important to note that Rank 5 Seal of Command does not generate a higher proc rate or more damage than Rank 1 Seal of Command. Thus if going for straight damage, you only need to expend 110 mana per minute to keep up steady damage, while Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness requires 970 mana per minute to keep up. This frees you up to fire off, say, two Consecrations (and thus adding another 768 damage per target in range). The bottom line is, if you have a very high damage weapon, Seal of Command is the best damage Seal we have.”
Judgement of Command is an interesting effect, one which is not used very often but has it’s place all the same. Since mobs and players become immune to stuns after a certain number, this isn’t as useful as one would usually think and isn’t my first choice for a seal since I could judge Seal of Light or others. This skill comes into play more in PvP where stuns are constant and players go down quickly.

Anticipation
Increases your Defense skill by 10.
A so-so skill, it does do more than meets the eye. It increases block/parry/dodge each by 0.4%, and it also lowers the chance for an opposing monster or player to hit you and cause a critical hit on you. Useful as a defensive skill, but considering there are so many items out there with +Defense on them, there are certainly better skills to spend five talent points on.

Improved Retribution Aura
Increases the damage done by your Retribution Aura by 25%.
If you love your Retribution Aura, then you will love this talent. If you dislike it, then this talent is worthless to you. If you are one of those people who uses Retribution Aura extensively, then an additional point of damage per point of talent is very nice. This talent goes along well with the paladin’s AE retribution aura build. More useful for those who use a shield than two-handers because of the extra damage you’re taking by not using devotion aura. Not so useful in raids or boss encounters, very useful for grinding or fighting many monsters at once.

Consecration
Consecrates the land beneath the Paladin, doing 384 Holy damage over 8 seconds to enemies who enter the area.
The Paladin’s only area effect spell, if you come this far into the into the retribution tree you better get this. A very nice way to cause aggro to a large group of mobs, it also causes a decent amount of damage as long as the monsters stay near you. Not very useful in PvP as most players will run from you. However very effective in large groups of enemies. Holy damage increasing skills will affect this such as vengence and sanctity aura. Useful for most situations.

Precision
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
Not much to say about this. Some people skip this skill in their retribution builds, but a higher chance to strike always equals more damage which equals more threat and faster dead monsters. A good talent.

Conviction
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.
Again, not much to say about this. If you’re this far into the tree, get this skill.
More crits = more damage. Note that this will also cause Vengence to proc more often so you will gain more than a pure 5% critical strike rate.

Blessing of Kings
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

The ultimate blessing? The jury is out on this. Is it the best overall blessing? Sure. If you go far into the retribution tree this skill is certainly worth picking up. When cast on anyone this provides and increase to damage, health, mana, dodge/parry/block, mana regen, crit rate and spell crit rate. Any class with an agl build loves this blessing. However it does all this in relatively small amounts. For a more general class like a Paladin or a Druid this is very useful, but for other classes this is of limited use. Tanks will want Might or Sanctuary. Casters will want Wisdom or Salvation. The main tank will want Light. Blessings are very situational and although this is an excellent blessing for normal grinding and questing, in instances and against bosses, other specialized blessings can be more useful. Like any other blessing, watch the situation

You won’t go far in PvE or PvP without these talents:

Arcane Talents (18 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Improved Arcane Missiles is the best choice for an initial five point investment in arcane, which is necessary to unlock the better parts of the tree. Arcane Missiles is best used off a clearcast or for chasing runners in PvP, since if you start the cast while they are in range, missiles will follow them for the duration of the five second cast time as long as they stay within 50 yards or so. I call ‘em homing missiles.

Arcane Concentration provides you with a 10% chance of getting a clearcast of a damage spell. Very useful in both PvP and PvE. In PvE I tend to Scorch (a 1.5s cast time mana efficent direct damage spell) until I get a clearcast and then I will hit Arcane Missiles. In PvP, if you get a clearcast you can usually !@!#& it out for a Blizzard, saving 1400 mana and getting 1216 damage for free (or more if you’re frost).

Evocation is still worth it, though with its recently nerfed 10 minute timer (it used to be 5 back in stress test 1 days…) it is only really useful for emergencies. At level 60 it gives you back around 50-80% of your mana depending on how heavily you’ve invested in Spirit.

Improved Arcane Explosion is a must have for both PvP and PvE. This makes the spell instant cast, allowing you to cast it while moving and also never have to suffer with casting time delays from getting hit. You won’t get groups in BRD and above without this spell. It’s also great for taking out clumped groups of players in PvP.

Improved Counterspell is a PvP must have. Four seconds of silence is priceless, in addition to locking out an entire school of magic for 10 seconds. You can also use it offensively, before an enemy even starts casting, so that you block any instant spells. Note: Paladins can still divine shield through silence, so don’t waste it on that.

Now that we’ve gotten the Must Haves out of the way, let’s turn the various viable PvP and PvE builds available for mages. We’ll first consider endgame builds and we’ll look at a PvE build and progression at the end.

31 Arcane/20 Fire
The classic mage. Damage, damage, damage. Solo versatility and power. My personal choice.

Arcane Talents (31 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Focus - 2/5 points
Reduces the chance that the opponent can resist your arcane spells by 4%.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.

# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.

# Arcane Power - 1/1 point
When activated, your spells deal 35% more damage while costing 35% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 seconds.

Frost Talents (0 points)

# None

Fire Talents (20 points)

# Improved Fireball - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds.

# Impact - 5/5 points
Gives your fire spells a 10% chance to stun the taget for 2 seconds.

# Ignite - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

# Flame Throwing - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.

# Incinerate - 2/2 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast and Scorch spells by 4%.

# Pyroblast - 1/1 point
Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes 148 to 195 fire damage and an additional 56 damage over 12 seconds.

Arcane Focus is just where I chose to dump points to get to 20 to unlock deeper parts of the tree. It’s somewhat useful but not vital, in my experience.

Improved Mana Shield can be a life safer and can be the death of you at other times. Use with care, since it’s a careful line between staying alive and running out of mana. I like Improved Mana Shield and a +int/sta equipment build for PvP, which lets me use mana shield for emergencies. It’s much easier for mages to get back mana than hp (gems, evocation) so it is worth it to trade off mana for hp sometimes. That said, Mana Shield upgraded with talents absorbs 998 melee damage at the cost of 1996 mana… so be aware your mana pool will take a hit. I don’t run around with mana shield on all the time, saving it for emergencies (usually when melee catches me by surprise). The talent itself isn’t that great, but it is a good place to drop 2 points to unlock deeper parts of the tree and has more utility than just going to 4/5 in Arcane Focus.

Presence of Mind is on a three minute timer, meaning that once every three minutes any spell with less than 10 seconds casting time is instant (i.e. no instant teleports Razz). This wonderful for PvP and is a must have for Arcane/Fire mix PvP builds. It isn’t that useful in PvE.

Arcane Mind is 8% more mana. Can’t go wrong with more mana, and it is worth the points… 8% more of a 6000 mana pool is 480 mana.

Arcane Instability is 3% more damage and 3% greater chance to crit on all damage spells. A wonderful talent, since it affects all your damage spells and not just one line. The 3% chance to crit is pretty big, since 100 int = 1% chance to crit.

Arcane Power is 35% more damage for 35% more mana for 15 seconds. Limited utility in PvE (mostly useful when AEing stuff that needs to die asap) but this ability is wonderful in Solo PvP. You can also use it effectively with instant AE vs. clusters of enemies… it’s a great talent, probably the best top tier talent out of all the trees for PvP.

–

Improved Fireball is 0.5 seconds off a 3.5 second spell, giving you 3.0 second fireballs and increasing your damge per second. It’s a great investment at low levels and is probably the best first place to allocate talent points for Arcane/Fire builds. I am ambiguous on its utility in PvP since I tend to rely on instants and AoE in PvP, but its utility at low levels in PvE cannot be understated.

Impact is a 10% chance to proc a 2 second stun off of any fire damage spell. Insignificant you say? No, not at all. Two seconds is huge in PvP, and stuns interrupt casting… It’s not so great in PvE but is a must-have for Arc/Fire mages in PvP.

Ignite is 40% more damage to your crits, but since your crits are already 50% more damage than a regular hit, Ignite in essence gives you 110% damage crits. Well-worth it.

Pyroblast has two uses. One, vs. a sheeped target when you can afford the 6 second wind-up time. Two, combined with PoM to nail enemies for instant damage. PvE wise it’s a slightly more mana efficent opener, but the spell is a shade of its former self. Not a must-have, but a good place to drop a point.

Incinerate is a relatively new… 4% more crits on Fire Blast is great for PvP and 4% more crits on Scorch is handy for instancing in PvE. Fire Blast’s enhanced crit rate makes this worth it in PvP, in my opinion.

Flame Throwing is more range. More range is good. 41 yds on Fireball and Pyroblast. Get it if you go Arc/Fire.

30 Fire/21 Arcane
Perhaps the most viable Fire mage. Choosing 10% more damage all the time at the cost of 8% more mana and Arcane Power’s 35% more damage some of the time. More reliant on Fire, however, and thus more vulnerable to those dastardly Fire Protection Potions.

Arcane Talents (21 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

Frost Talents (0 points)

# None
Fire Talents (30 points)

# Improved Fireball - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds.

# Impact - 5/5 points
Gives your fire spells a 10% chance to stun the taget for 2 seconds.

# Ignite - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

# Flame Throwing - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.

# Pyroblast - 1/1 point
Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes 148 to 195 fire damage and an additional 56 damage over 12 seconds.

# Improved Flamestrike - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike spell by 15%.

# Blast Wave - 1/1 point
A wave of flame radiates outward from the caster, damaging all enemies caught within the blast
for 160 to 192 fire damage, and dazing them for 6 seconds.

# Critical Mass - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your fire spells by 6%.

# Fire Power - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your fire spells by 10%.

21 points in Arcane following the same pattern as in Arcane/Fire…

Only difference in the Fire tree is no more Incinerate (since you’re getting Critical Mass anyway, and that gives you 4% more damage with 5/5 Fire Power).
Improved Flamestrike is a prerequisite to Blast Wave… but handy for AoEing… or for PoM+Flamestrike.

Blast Wave is a very mana efficient, high damage, AoE fire spell. It also has a 6 second Daze component to it (somewhat buggy last time I tested it, but I’ve since had mobs use it on me and had it work). Great in Combos or stacked with multiple Fire/Arcane Mages to take out zergs. Blast Wave, PoM+Flamestrike, AE spam and the enemy is a world of hurt… Imagine that with 3 or 4 mages… Zergkiller?

Critical Mass is more crits. More crits are good.

Fire Power is 10% more damage all the time. Great in PvE, good in PvP too. Whether it’s as good as Arcane Power and 8% more mana is up to you… and also whether the aforementioned fire protection potions are prevalent on your server.Page 6

Combustion (5 minute timer, next fire spell is guaranteed crit) is passed up in favor of PoM… if you were focused on PvE, I would recommend Combustion instead of PoM, but for PvP being able to instant cast spells is worth far more than a guaranteed crit, in my opinion.

33 Frost/18 Arcane
The ‘full’ frost mage. Trading up damage and instant casts for control… Excellent in group PvP with a good supporting group. Fares poorly solo vs. casters/ranged, whilst completely destroying melee. Just as powerful as Arc/Fire, but in a completely different way with a very different playstyle.

Arcane Talents (18 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Frost Talents (33 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Improved Frost Nova - 2/2 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by ?.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target’s movement speed to 25%
of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Shatter - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your frost spells against frozen targets by 50%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.

# Frostbite - 5/5 points
Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.

# Ice Barrier - 1/1 point
Instantly shields you, absorbing 455 damage. Lasts 1 minute. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.

Fire Talents (0 points)
# None

18 in Arcane as detailed in the Must Haves section.

Improved Frostbolt grants you a 2.5s cast time, increasing dps and making it easier to snare targets. Far better than Permafrost, since you’ll be casting Frostbolt all day long (get used to it, ice has lesser single target spell diversity than fire) and there’s no need for a longer snare because you’ll be continually reapplying the snare with Frostbolt.

Ice Shards gives you 100% frost crits, instead of merely 50%. Well-worth it, considering how other frost talents come into play. Frost is a tree that builds upon itself, as will be seen. Improved Frost Nova is slightly more useful than it once was, but is only gotten because it is a prereq to Shatter.

Shatter raises your chance to crit on Frozen targets by 50%. Well worth it and central to solo Frost Mage damage output. As for groups, frozen has a way of not lasting that long when other people are doing damage to the same target.

Improved Blizzard is a frost must-have. It lowers target speed to 25% of normal _and_ does damage and can proc Frostbite to hold them in place even longer. Excellent zerg control. Blizzard is a huge radius AoE as well. Unfortunately I’ve never seen Blizzard crit, I’ve /bugged it, however.

Cold Snap lets you reset your cold spell cooldowns instantly. Good for when you need to reapply Ice Barrier or need to drop another Nova.

Frost Channeling is another Frost must-have. It makes the line so much more efficent. I’d pick this over 6% more damage (Piercing Ice) any day of the week.

Ice Block is your oh crap spell. Use it to become immune to everything except for a dispel for 10 seconds. Great for getting assist trains off you in PvP or when you draw too much aggro in PvE. Otherwise… it isn’t that great. And yes, it can be dispelled.

Frostbite is a key talent in Frost line, giving all your ice spells (including the Chilled proc from your Ice Armor) a 15% chance to proc Frozen for 5 seconds. Excellent vs. melee. Also… consider this with shatter and you begin to see the stacking power of Frost. However, once again, Frostbite has a tendency to break prematurely when other people are hitting that same target.

Ice Barrier is a power word:shield for mages. Strange timer though, 1 minute duration, 2 minute cooldown. Also can be dispelled, making it somewhat bleh. However, it absorbs all damage, including magic… helps keep Frost Mages alive.

Arctic Reach is vital, because Frostbolt has a base range of 30 yd. With this talent you reach 36 yd, which is a little more tolerable (especially if you’re used to playing fire).

28 Arcane/23 Frost
A variant of Frost/Arcane, lessening dependence on Frost and opening up some of the goodies of Arcane. Shedding Frost Nova/Shatter (limited utility in groups since things are rarely frozen long) in exchange for Arcane Instability, Presence of Mind and Arcane Mind. This is my personal choice if I choose to go Frost.

Arcane Talents (28 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.

# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
Frost Talents (23 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target’s movement speed to ? of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Piercing Ice - 3/3 points
Increases the damage done by your frost spells by 6%.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.
Piercing Ice is a good place to drop three points for 6% more damage to frost. Frostbolt will still be your primary damage spell so you might as well make it more powerful Smile

PvE Talent Progression, Levels 10-50
End-game PvP builds are great for level 60s, but of limited utility for a level 10 mage, freshly talented, whose main focus is getting levels. In that regard, I present what I believe to be an excellent PvE talent progression. Remember, you can respec your talents for merely 1 gold (the first time, 5(n-1) gold for 1<n<10 after which it is always 50g to switch), making levelling up with one set of talents and then switching at high levels very practical.

Fire is simply better dps and Frost’s mana efficency doesn’t kick in until high levels (even then, it still kills slower than Frost on net, based on my testing). Thus Fire is best for PvE. Arcane’s Presence of Mind and Arcane Power are of limited utility in PvE, making deep focus in Fire a key to a successful mage.

Without further ado, a Mage PvE Talent progression for levels 10-50, listed in order:

Levels 10-14: Improved Fireball the best dps increase you can get at this level, since your Rank 3 Fireball has a base 2.5s casting time, this lets you get them off at 2.0s each.

Levels 15-16: Flame Throwing is nice because range is convenient and lets you get in more fireballs when fighting mobs. Also, Ignite can be put off since your Intellect (and thus crit rate) is still pathetically low.

Levels 17-21: Ignite is a raw damage increase for when you crit.

Levels 22-26: Improved Arcane Missiles because it’s time to build Arcane to get Instant Arcane Explosion for use in instances.

Levels 27-31: Arcane Concentration to get clearcasts.

Level 32: Evocation for mana regen once every 10 minutes… at this level it’s going to be around 100% of your mana pool, which is very nice. Be warned, it starts fading away from there around level 40ish and at level 60 you can expect about 50% of your mana pool back from Evoc.

Level 33-37: Improved Arcane Explosion is very good for the instances you’ll be doing at around this level and up — Gnomeregan, Razorfen Downs, Uldaman, Temple and on up really appreciate it.

Level 38-39: Incinerate to make Scorch more useful in Instances, since you’ll now be able to scorch for a clearcast to fire Arcane Missiles on.

Level 40: Pyroblast because it’s the best place to drop a point in Fire and you might as well get it. It’s really not that great… though it is slightly more mana efficent than Fireball but I haven’t done tests to see whether that justifes the extra three seconds it takes to cast it as an opener vs. a mob.

Level 41-45: Improved Scorch because Scorch is very much an PvE Instance spell and this talent makes it all that much more mana efficient. Impact won’t really do that much for you in instances and Blast Wave isn’t worth the points in Flamestrike for its PvE utility.

Level 46-48: Critical Mass for more critical strikes… damage increase. At this point you can either respec to a partial implementation of your final PvP spec and/or continue in Fire, dropping two points somewhere (Impact perhaps has the most utility) and building Fire Power for 10% more damage and Combustion for guaranteed criticals (handy with Flamestrike and Pyroblast).

Other Talents
And the other talents that I didn’t mention in the process of my discussion above…

Arcane Subtlety allows you to reduce threat from offensive arcane spells by 20/30/40%. Not that great, since most of the time I’ve found myself to use arcane as a supplement in instancing (either Scorch or Frostbolt for clearcasted Arcane Missiles, or spam AEing, or fireball/fireblast for DPS) and thus this talent isn’t that great. The only time I found myself using pure arcane was while AEing… and there’s not much that the tank can do in the current aggro system to prevent you from getting aggro from most of the mobs when you AE, and a 40% threat reduction isn’t going to make a difference there. This is a PvE only talent.

Wand Specialization is next to useless, since the only time I ever use wands is killing a mob that has a sliver of life left in PvE, or for killing totems. Wands are also a pain to use as source of dps because there’s no autoshoot, you have to mash the button over and over again…

Improved Dampen Magic isn’t worth the talent points considering the limited utility of the spell itself. I only use Dampen Magic when soloing vs. caster mobs or players, and even then it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Since it reduces healing by twice as much as it reduces magical damage intake, I would never use it in a group. Not worth talent points to make a rarely used spell slightly better.

Arcane Meditation might be useful if it was 15% of your Mana regeneration while casting per talent point. But it’s 15% for five talent points, which is too small to be noticeable… there are better places to drop 5 talent points in Arcane (e.g. get 8% more mana with Arcane Mind and get PoM).

Improved Fire Blast has its uses… but I don’t think the talent point cost is worth it. Fire Blast is a great instacast spell that I use a lot of PvP but the talent will only reduce it by 1.5s (to a 6.5s cooldown :-/) which isn’t worth five talent points in my opinion. You can conceivably drop a point or two in Improved Fire Blast if you wish, but even a point in Pyroblast has more utility than 0.5 seconds less cooldown. For PvE soloing, it’s not that mana efficient though it is good to drop in between fireballs to up DPS. Maybe a point in this talent is worth it (0.5s for a point), but no more than that really.

Burning Soul is a great talent for people new to mages in PvE. It lets you cast your fire spell without spell casting time set backs while you’re taking damage (65% of the time) which is nice for PvE. For PvP there are too many outright spell interrupts to make Burning Soul worth it. It’s handy for PvE but not vital and if you learn to nova properly you can often kill mobs without getting hit at all. I weaned myself off this talent — if I need to do damage output while getting hit in PvE with my nova and cone of cold timers down I’ll use arcane missiles, which are 100% uninterruptable instead of just 65%.

Improved Fire Ward isn’t worth it. I use Fire Ward in PvE vs. fire mobs and in PvP I try to have it up as often as possible to absorb any incoming damage from fire casters. The talent doesn’t let it absorb more, it merely reflects part of the damage back to the original caster. Not really worth it, the applications are too few. I can’t think of a situation where reflecting 35% of 300 absorption back on a caster would contribute to their downfall.

Combustion is a fine PvE talent. The timer is a bit longish, at five minutes, but it’s handy for fighting tough mobs. It doesn’t really stack that well with the rest of the fire tree since the fire tree increases your chance to crit, making combustion less necessary since you already have a higher chance to crit. That said, a Combusted Blast Wave is a very good thing… I just can’t justify giving up PoM in Arcane to get Combustion for any fire build.

Permafrost has little point. If you’re frost, you’re going to be mostly casting frostbolt. Since you’ll be casting frostbolt over and over again, you’ll be continually reapplying the snare. Why then, would you want a talent that makes the snare last longer? It already lasts 9 seconds or so initially at level 60… more than enough time for you to get off another 2.5s cast time frostbolt to reapply the snare. I don’t see the point of this talent.

Winter’s Chill is too little for too much. Three talent points for a 10% extra movement speed reduction is overkill. Maybe this could be useful if you wanted a really nasty Blizzard snare (it would be a 15% speed snare or a 17.5% speed snare, depending on how Winter’s Chill is calculated — I believe it is a flat 10% extra speed decrease however, but haven’t tested) but I’d rather just get Piercing Ice and do 6% more damage. 10% extra snare isn’t going to let you slip in a fifth frostbolt before the mob gets to you either, so it isn’t worth it there. Also with Shatter, you’d want to nova the mob after the third frostbolt so you can get a 50% chance to crit off the frozen… I would recommend against Winter’s Chill.

Improved Frost Ward is a nice improvement to a spell almost never used. Very few mobs use frost magic… there aren’t many frost mages out there… I never find myself casting Frost Ward. 50% of the damage of the max level Frost Ward would be 150 damage… meaning 150 extra mana, not even enough for a frostbolt. This talent isn’t even worth a point’s investment.

Improved Cone of Cold is 35% more damage on Cone of Cold for 3 talent points. I’m not a fan of Cone of Cold because it’s an instant cone spell — which, because it is an AoE of a sort (cone effect) has a high mana cost, making it inefficent for solo mobs. I only really use Cone of Cold for its 50% snare when fighting melee or to snare mobs when I’m AoEing them. I don’t turn to Cone of Cold for AoE damage, preferring arcane explosion instead. However, the talent isn’t bad and if you find yourself using and liking Cone of Cold it could be worth investing in it.

The Mage class is primarily a ranged damage-oriented support class that has three separate schools of magic available to them: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The three different forms of magic schools available to the Mage make it a very flexible class to deal damage to almost any type of creature in the game. The Mage also has the strongest multiple target area of effect (AoE) damaging spells/abilities in the game. Other support functions that a Mage can provide include single target control [Polymorph], and short-term crowd control [Frost Nova/root effects]. The Mage class is also the only class that has the ability to conjure food and drink – This saves a great deal of cash for the Mage and his/her friends. The Mage is very highly sought after class for groups, raids, and instance dungeon crawls.

Although the Mage is a very strong group-role class, it makes a very effective character in soloing many same-level quests and creatures on its own. The general rule is:
-Anything below your level is safe
-Anything one/two levels above your level will cost a good portion of your mana but is usually safe and you should expect resistances at around 10-25%
-Anything three levels above your level will cost you a majority of your mana and a decent supply of your health and you should expect about 50%+ resistances.
-Anything four levels above your level or higher will cost you all of your mana, all of your life, potions/mana gems, and you should expect around 75% or higher resistances. Success is not ensured and may result in an unplanned visit to the Spirit Healer in some cases.

What character stats are most important to my Mage?

How important a stat is to your Mage truly depends on how you wish to play your Mage. It is the general understanding of the Mage community that Intellect and Stamina are the two top priority stats a Mage should focus on: intellect impacts your Mage’s critical strike chance with spells and increases your available mana pool; stamina increases your Mage’s health points. Spirit, although the description states it regenerates your mana and health pools, is largely seen as insignificant by the Mage community simply because of its diminishing returns at higher stat levels and lack of effectiveness during spell casting. Agility and Strength stats primarily affect melee-based characters defensively and offensively. Although these melee stats can affect a Mage’s melee abilities, the benefit from these stats alone will not impact your function in combat as greatly as the others [intellect, stamina, and spirit].

What armor, weapons, and tradeskill professions can a Mage learn?

- Mages start out with proficiency in Cloth armor; Mages cannot learn any other armor types, regardless of their character levels.
- Mages start with the weapon skill Staves. Mages can also learn how to wield Daggers and 1 handed swords in addition to their existing weapon skills.
- New spells become available to Mages on every even-numbered level: 2, 4, 6, etc to 60. Be sure to visit a Mage trainer as soon as you can upon reaching an even-numbered level: you will be finding it more difficult to fight creatures at your level without updated spells.
- Mages have the ability to learn any two of all the available tradeskill professions.

Where can I find more information about tradeskill professions?

The official Blizzard profession guide can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/professions/
The player community has put together an awesome amount of in-depth information [FAQs] regarding all available professions, here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-professions&t=40&p=1&tmp=1#post40

What tradeskill professions should I train into for my Mage?

Tradeskill professions vary in effectiveness on a per-player and per-character basis – There is no one perfect profession that is absolutely best for every Mage; all of us play our Mage differently and have different goals/needs for our characters. It would be strongly advised to read through the above mentioned links to better understand tradeskill professions and decide upon which, if any, you would like to explore with your Mage. It is a general rule of thumb that the gathering professions have the potential to make money without as much effort, time, or money as the crafting professions – gathering professions can sell their items directly on the auction house whereas crafting professions must gather/buy resources, learn how to create the item, create the item, and then sell it. However, the crafting professions do provide your character with the ability to produce useful items for your character without the need to purchase them from someone else.

What are talents and which are available to the Mage class?

All classes obtain the ability to train in class talents upon achieving level 10 with their character. Talents are ability/spell enhancements for your character classes. Once your character reaches level 10, a new icon will be placed on your action bar that allows you to access your class talents allocation page – The keyboard shortcut key is by default the “N” key. Training in your class’ talents requires one talent point per ability/skill/spell ranking you wish to learn. Your character will gain one talent point per level from level 10 through level 60 – 51 talent points in total at level 60. A character cannot move allocated talent points once they have been spent. The only way a character can ‘clear’ their talent point allocations is to visit their class trainer and ask them to reset their talents. Please remember that this will reset ALL your talent points, it is not a selective process and you will be refunded all of your talent points as if you never spent them. This talent reset process is expensive: 1 gold for the first time you reset your talents and the price increases steeply afterwards; try to plan ahead on a talent roadmap if you can.

For a Mage, talents are split into three categories: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. A character can train in any of the three available talent trees [tabs/categories available on the talent allocation page]. As a matter-of-fact, a majority of players train into two or more talent trees because they wish to have spells and abilities within multiple talent trees available to their characters. Remember that just because your Mage trains into one talent tree does not mean that your character cannot use any other schools of magic. For example, if your Mage character has trained extensively into the Frost and Arcane talent trees it does not mean he/she cannot use the Fire-based spells any longer; although you may find it more effective to use those magic schools you have placed talents into.

Where can I find more information about available Mage talents?

An excellent resource for creating a talent roadmap for your character is here:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View&category_select_id=4

What is this 33/18, 30/16, 31/20 talent thing I keep hearing about?

Class talents are broken down into categories, as mentioned previously, and players tend to create what are called ‘talent builds’ for their characters. Talent builds are usually represented in the form of numbers and slashes: numbers representing the number of talent points into a talent tree and the slashes separating different talent trees. For example, if you see a 33/18 Frost/Arcane talent build, you would expect 33 talent points allocated into the Frost talent tree and 18 talent points allocated into the Arcane talent tree.

Alcaras began a thread in the Mage forums whose sole focus is on talent builds and explanations of talents. This excellent guide/thread can be found here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow- mage&t=23&p=1&tmp=1#post23

Most popular talent builds, for all talent trees, can be found here:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Templates.List&class_select_id=Mage

I am having some problems understanding what some of these spells do, help! Do not panic, you are not alone in having a difficult time understanding all your spells. Not only are some of the Mage spell descriptions misleading or very vague, they are sometimes just insufficient in explanations. I will list some of the most popular spell-related questions here:

- Amplify Magic: This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will amplify [increase] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective to cast on tanks when fighting against pure melee targets; increases healing effectiveness. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Dampen Magic: This is the exact opposite of its sister spell Amplify Magic. This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will dampen [lessen] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective against casting targets that deal a majority of their damage via spell/magical damage. This spell also affects damage shields, such as Fire Shields, and in many cases lessens Elemental creature melee damage [because it is considered magical, in nature]. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Arcane Missiles: This is a multiple volley channeling spell which must require your Mage to stand still, facing your target, and not perform any action while casting. This spell has multiple rounds; meaning that Arcane Missiles will launch a magical missile every second, dealing its respective damage each round. Remember, like all channeling spells, if your character is hit during the channeling of Arcane Missiles, it will stop the remaining Arcane Missiles from launching – Unless you place talent points into the Arcane talent tree to become uninterruptible while casting Arcane Missiles. This spell is currently known to be bugged in the game where your character will channel the spell; however, no damage is dealt to the target.

- Polymorph: This spell is the Mage class’ single target control that allows the Mage to place one target out of combat for a period of time. There are some very important side effects of this spell that every Mage must keep in mind: Your target will regenerate their health and mana very quickly while under the effects of Polymorph; you will only be able to Polymorph another player for up to 15 seconds, during PVP combat. A target under the effects of Polymorph will wander around aimlessly in a five yard radius surrounding the spot it first came under the spell’s effects – If you look closely you will even see the Sheep graphic eating grass and blinking its eyes at you. Any damage done to the target, including Damage over Time effects, will cause the target to break out of the Polymorph effect.

-Portals and Teleports: These lines of spells are very rapid methods of transportation for both the Mage and his/her group mates. A Mage will gain his/her first teleport and portal spells beginning at level 20 by finding the Portal Trainers at any of the major capital cities of their respective faction : Undercity, Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Ironforge. At level 30 the Mage will be able to purchase the remaining teleport spells: Thunderbluff and Darnassus. Teleport spells are self-only rapid transportation spells and require a reagent component that is consumed each time the spell is cast – Reagent “Rune of Teleportation” is found on Arcane Goods/Reagent vendors throughout the game and must be purchased in order for the teleport spells to function. Portal spells are group teleportation spells that enables the Mage’s group to travel to a target location very quickly. The locations are the same as the Mage teleport spells, however, unlike the teleport spells group mates must click on the portal to be transported to the destination. Spell availability for locations is identical to the teleport spells, except for the levels required to purchase the spells: level 40, first round and level 50 for the second/final round of locations – Reagent required is “Rune of Portals” .

-Blink: This is an instant spell that propels the Mage forward for 20 yards in the direction he/she is facing – Only exception to this rule is that there must be a clear walkable path 20 yards in front of the Mage, jumping or climbing paths will not work. A major side effect of the Blink spell is its ability to propel the Mage out from many root and stun effects. The casting cost [mana] required for this spell will gradually increase each level your Mage gains after obtaining the spell.

-Slowfall: This spell will allow the Mage to float for 30 seconds, allowing the Mage to not take falling damage while under the spell’s effects. A Mage’s downward momentum will be slowed while under Safefall’s spell effects – read: You will not fall as fast as you would if you did not have the effect cast on you. Safefall is a self-only spell that requires a spell reagent – Light Feather. Youcannot purchase Light feathers from Arcane goods/reagent vendors, you must obtain them either through the auction house [from other players] or kill feathered creatures throughout the game.

What’s with Wands? How the heck can I use one?

Wands are magical ranged attack items that are found throughout the game as dropped items, purchased from vendors, and can be created by enchanters. Wands use the school of magic listed on them to induce their damage to your target. To use a wand simply open your character equipment portrait (keyboard shortcut key is “C” ), drag your wand from your inventory to the Ranged slot on your character. Open your character abilities/spells book and click on the “general” tab, select the “shoot” ability and drag the icon to your action bar. You will now be able to click that action bar icon to perform your new wand ranged attack. Keep in mind, like melee weapons, wands have delays and your ranged attack ability will require it to refresh in order for it to become available again for use; and unlike melee weapons wands will not auto attack your target, you must click the icon in order to perform another attack round.

A good listing of available wands in the game is available here (notice the magic school name next to the damage range, this is the school of magic the particular wand uses to cause damage): http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?s=wand

What is this + damage thing I keep hearing about?

+ damage is a very vague effect that can be found on some armor, weapons, and items within the game that increases the damage caused by a particular school of magic by a certain amount of damage points.

Here is a link for the official answer on + damage:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=785402&p=1&tmp=1#post785402

There are actually two different types of + damage gear in the game. An example of the first “up to…” type would be an item that “increases damage done by Frost spells and effects by up to 10″ . One would think that reading this would mean every Frost spell cast by the item wearer will be granted a flat + 10 damage bonus. However, it has been discovered that the casting time of a spell directly affects how much benefit these + damage effects truly give the wearer. This means if the wearer casts two different Frost-based spells, with different casting times on both spells, the wearer will be granted different + damage bonuses for both of those spells. The damage bonus for all channeled spells (Blizzard and Arcane Missiles are both excellent examples) will apply across the WHOLE spell. This means that if you have a five second channel spell (Arcane Missiles) and obtain a +10 damage bonus item, your Arcane Missiles will have the chance to land +2 damage each round for a total of five rounds.

An example of the second type of + damage gear is the “wrath” series. These pieces of equipment have a straight + xx damage to yy type of magic. You will see these items with the appropriate names, such as “Uber Sword of Fiery Wrath” which will have the description somewhat like, “+ 50 Fire Spell Damage” . This type of + damage modifier is straight to the spell line; meaning + 50 Fire damage to your fire spells. Just like the “up to…” damage gear, the damage bonus for all channeled spells (Blizzard and Arcane Missiles are both excellent examples) will apply across the WHOLE spell. This means that if you have a five second channel spell (Arcane Missiles) and obtain a +10 damage bonus item, your Arcane Missiles will have the chance to land +2 damage each round for a total of five rounds.

Please take note that a majority of + damage items within the game have a serious lack of any stat increases and should cause you to pause for a moment and think about the benefit of the item before accepting it over a stat increase piece of equipment; this is not to say that + damage items are worthless, however, in some cases stat increasing equipment would grant your character a larger benefit and vise versa.

Help! I see spells on my trainer and have the appropriate level; however, I cannot purchase them!

Relax; you have not been kicked out of the Mage community [unless you’ve received a letter from us…]. You are probably referring to the many of the talents that Mages receive in the form of new spells. Talents such as Pyroblast, Blastwave, and Ice Barrier, to name a few, are all rank two spells unavailable on the Mage trainer until you purchase rank one via the appropriate talent tree.

1-20: rough blasting powder
21-30: Rough Dynamite
31-50: Handful of Copper Bolts
51: Arclite Spanner
52-65: Copper Tube
66-75: Copper Modulator
76-90: Coarse Blasting Powder and Coarse Dynamite
91-100: Silver Contact
101-115: Practice Lock(Don’t even bother trying to sell these, they’re absolutely
worthless)
115-130: Flying Tiger Goggles
131-145: Heavy Blasting Powder
146-175: Big Bronze Bomb
176: Gyromatic Micro Asjuster
177-195: Solid Blasting Powder
196-215: Goblin Land Mine(Mithril Tubes if you can’t get the Schem for Landmines)
216-245: Hi-Impact Mithril Slugs
245-260: Mithril Gyro-Shot
261-280: Thorium Widget
281-300: Thorium Tube.

There ya go. This doesn’t require any specialization, but you will need to go to winterspring to pick up some schematics.

I would go Gnomish if I were you, but make a Rogue Alt to level 20 so he can get up to 225 engy, give him Goblin, and make him into your personal Goblin Sapper Charges bitch. I Cannot stress how powerful those are

In this Strat, I considered you are only FRIENDLY with Darnassus…

Requirement:

We will get exhalted with help of a quest you can find in Farelas Country. It’s very simple to complete but, objects you need to have can be long to get… BUT, you can get them to the AH, or buy them to friends! That’s the list:

Get about 13200 Un’goro Soil (you can have them at Un ‘goro, or buy it from friends)

Collect or Create about 6600 MorrowGrain (you can buy it or create with help of an Alchimist

Unfolding:

Like I tell you before, we are going to use a quest… This quest is a reccurent quest (blue interrogation point), and you can do it many times! The NPC who’s giving this quest is

Quintis Jonespyre.

The name of the quest is Jonespyre’s Request:

All you need to do is give him 3 ingredients… I’ve quote 2 of them before, and he normally give you one… and with this quest, you can get easy 33000 reputation points needed to have exalted reputation…

You need to turn in 60 wool, 60 silk, 60 mageweave first to the cloth collector located in the tailor shop in the trade district of darnassus.

The object of this quest which is obtainable at level 50 is the runecloth part, but only after you do the wool, silk and mageweave parts and are at least level 50 first.

Your initial turn in is 60 runecloth for about 6k XP and about 160 rep bonus. But this quest is repeatable at this point for only 20 runecloth each for a bonus of 50 faction rep.

Now the fun part is if your human. you get 55 faction rep.

if you do the math. its 21,000 rep from revered to exalted. at 55 faction a trip, it will take you 382 stacks of runecloth to hit exalted. at roughly 1.5g / stack, your looking at 573g to hit exalted, which should be ALOT cheaper than trying to aquire 13k soil =P

Sorry if your not human. but you got more trips than that, but its still cheaper than collection soil and seeds.

Keep in mind this is only after you turn in the initial 60 wool, silk, mageweave and runecloth.

Also you can do this for EACH faction. Stormwind has a guy in the mage district that takes this, and IF has the dwarven and gnomish collectors also. And the horde has their respective quests for this too.

And if your just in for XP, at 50, when you get this quest. you would need 240 wool, 240 silk, 240 mageweave, and 240 runecloth, you would get roughly 25k XP and 160 faction rep for each faction.

IMO this is a much better way to hit exalted with any of the main factions.

1) You will need: 2 runethread, 4 runecloth bolts, 8 rugged leather. You will need a thorium widget and frost oil if you cant count on your group to not do really stupid stuff.

Your group should consist of at least 1 tank, and at least 1 form of CC. The thing is that if you dont have 2 tanks, you need a hunter to tank the observer, and if you dont have both sap and poly for CC, then you need 2 tanks.

For starters, go in, and kill the lone ogre standing out there. There is a really long patrol of 1 ogre and 2 dogs that goes around that courtyard, but it isnt worth waiting for. Just go in and keep an eye out for it. Now head down the steps. Dont aggro the ogres around the fire. Now stand at the base of the stairs on the right side. There will be a patrol of 3 dogs that will come to you after a short while. Take out those dogs and then move diagonally in between the 2 dog groups on the right side of the courtyard. Take out the group near the big rock. Then climp up the rock and wait there until everyone is ready. Make sure you dismiss your pet.

Have the tank jump from the big rock onto the upper balcony and then have the mage jump up and AoE. Have the healer jump up before they heal so that the aggro doesnt cause the little bugs to scatter every which way trying to go all the way around to get to the priest.

Next head on over towards the drunk, where you find a group of 3 ogres. This is where the routine starts. Either sap and poly 2 of them, or use your 1 form of CC on 1 of them and have the 2 tanks split the remaining 2. Keep an eye out for patrols. Head past the drunk without aggroing him, and take out the 2 ogres in the doorway. Be careful for dog patrols that come from behind them. After those 2 ogres are out of the way, head straight up to the wall, and hug it to the right around the corner. Be sure to dismiss your pet.

You now have 2 more easy AoE bug groups to take care of. Then have either the rogue or the hunter go up the ramp and take the key from the chest in the middle of the courtyard. There are patrols here including a guard, which is why I said rogue for stealth and hunter for emergency feign. Go back down the ramp and head past it and turn left around the corner. Patrols come around this way so watch for them. When you reach a ramp, across from the ramp is a locked door. Use the courtyard key on it. You now are inside, away from patrols. Watch out for wandering eye’s of kilrogg. They arent invisible, but they will quickly spawn 2 netherwalkers, so make sure everyone tries to kill them if they sense your prescence.

You will see up ahead 2 ogres and a doom guard minion. The front ogre can be pulled separately, so do so. Then sap/poly the ogre and kill the doomguard, then kill the ogre. The next group is the same, only there is no single pull, so sap/poly both ogres (or sap/poly 1 and have each tank on 1 of the ogres and doomguard) and take out the doomguard, followed by ogres.

After this is one more group of AoE bugs. Now this next pull is VERY TRICKY. Go foreward and you will see a guard pass by every so often and occaisionally an eye of kilrogg. Also there will be a broken trap on the ground. Up straight ahead in the corner there is a group of 2 doomguards and 2 ogres. Here’s the deal: you need to set that trap using the frost oil and thorium widget, but you cant set it with the group of ogres and doomguards there or else you will agro them. Also, you need to have the gaurd on patrol run into the trap without having it aggroed off course. What you need to do is make sure everyone but you and the mage stay back, FAR BACK. This may be difficult as people in pickup groups tend to be rather stupid. Anyways, you have the mage go foreward, and as soon as the guard passes by, have the mage poly 1 ogre, silence the other, and blink back to the group. As soon as he polys you move foreward and set the trap. Then you go back to the group and help out. Make sure they let the mobs come to them, as they are casters and will stand still casting for a little while before moving. There will be a goblin in the corner where the group you just took out was. Ignore him right now

After this avoid the group in the corner opposite from the group you just took out and hug the inside wall until you see a ramp. Do the usual sap/poly on the group at the base of this ramp, and take them out. Be careful when going up the ramp, because if you go to the top of the ramp the group at the top will aggro. So the rogue if you have one must sap first. Then the mage runs up and polys and everyone fights. There is 1 more group of ogres on this level guarding a box. Take them out like you normally would and open the box and take the OGRE TANIN. A level 59 mob will come down a ramp, but he’s easy.

Head up that ramp and there will be 2 ogres on either side of a doorway to your left, and a group of ogres near a fire to your right. Ignore the ones on your right. Take out the 2 on the left with sap/poly/whatever. The door on the left here is locked and requires the INNER DOOR KEY. Well you get this from killing the very first guard in the first courtyard with dogs, but you cant kill him, can you? So you need a rogue with at least 295 lockpicking to do it for you, or you need a large seaforium charge.

Head in and you will see a group of ogres by the fire. The closest ogre is a single pull. Then take out the remaning 2 ogres + doomguard. After this you will see Krom’Crush. Aside from the fact that he’s harder than the king, DONT TOUCH HIM. Go back down to the first floor where the goblin was. Since you have the TANIN now, you can make the suit. Go back up, use it, and then you can talk to Krom. You can find Krom later on after you kill the king if you want everyone to be able to get the quest he gives. Speak with him after you’ve used the ogre suit and tell him you have prisoners and whatnot. He will run off.

Next, go out of the hallway into this open area. You have a total of 3 groups of ogres, 1 group of dogs, and 1 patrol of dogs. You only have to take out 1 group of ogres. In this open area there will be a group of 3 to your left and a group of 2 to your right. Poly/sap one of the ones to your RIGHT from the group of 2, and PULL THE OTHER OGRE BACK INTO THE HALLWAY WHERE KROM WAS. The gordok captains fear, and getting feared into another group = death.

After this scout for the dog patrol. Sometimes it’s just mixed in with the doge group. So you skip the ogre group to the left. Further ahead there is another ogre group to the right, and before then in the middle there is the group of dogs. Pull them and have your mage AoE them to death. It’s not uncommon for the mage to die at this point, but just throw out a res if they do bite it.

Now you can walk straight to the platform in the middle of the open area. Head up onto the platform from the broken part, and you will see the king and the observer. You cant kill the observer, but he will heal the king if he isnt dealt with. He will go away once the king dies. So here’s the deal.

The main tank and everyone but the person that is tanking the observer is on the king. If your paladin is a main tank, GIVE HIM TIME TO BUILD AGGRO. The king hits hard and the king knocks back, so have the healer heal from the middle of the platform, because if they get knocked off, they wont be in line of sight to heal. If it’s a paladin tanking the observer, then basically the main tank takes the king to the right side of the platform, and the paladin takes the observer to the left side. The paladin just holds the observers aggro, and heals himself while everyone else beats on the king. If a hunter is tanking the observer there are a few preparations. First off, there’s no issue with separating them, because your pet’s growl will hold aggro the whole time. Use aspect of the wild, because the observer uses nature spells. KEEP VIPER STING ON THE OBSERVER AT ALL TIMES. This means that by the time the king gets low enough on health for the observer to heal him, he wont have enough mana to do so even if something goes wrong and you die or your pet dies. So basically dont shoot the observer so you dont pull aggro off your pet, just use viper sting and turn off autoshot. Use mend pet when yout pet gets low (half health to be safe). It’s not a hard job, hunters are better at it than pallys.

Just some useful things to know. If your healer pulls aggro off the tank early on, you’re screwed, it’s a wipe. If the tank dies early on you’re screwed too, but if the tank dies sort of later on, then if you have a rogue, immediately have the rogue grab aggro and turn on evasion. You’d be surprised how well this works and how easily the rogue survives if there’s a healer. The problem is that once it runs out, the rogue drops. Just make sure that if the tank dies and the king is almost dead, just throw everything at the king. I’ve finished the fight with the king where I was the only one alive and an aimed shot crit finished him off when he was almost inside my minimum range.

Big tree mobs will be patrolling by. They hit very very hard. You want to pull them to the corner as they knock you back — better to hit the wall than pull another big guy. You need to take out 2-3 big guys. Don’t bother trying to clear them all.. the repop pretty regular.

After clearing a hole to run across, run to the center of the courtyard, being careful to not pull any of the mobs there or be close enough to pool the big tree patrols. If you are brave, you can clear none of the pats and just run straight to the center.

Now you are in the middle of the courtyard, near the pylon with the elementals. These pylons are the objective of the instance… clear the elementals and the 5 pylons power down, releasing the forcefield around Immol’thar.

The elementals can be pulled 2-3 at a time to clear all around the pylon. Warlock can banish one as necessary. As these guys die, they steal whatever mana you have and inflict damage… be careful! They also get very cast happy the more health they lose. They must be killed as quickly as possible.

Now continue running across the courtyard to far right. This will lead you down a narrow walkway and open to a room of undead on your right. Your goal is to get up the stairs. Kill the farthest right ghost mob, hitting the female ghost first. She inflicts the most dmg via a “bone” something or other aura… it is a melee hard- hitting aura. Cloth/Leather wearers should try to stay back from these ghosts as they inflict crazy dmg.

This next part is up to you. You can keep clearing the first floor and clear the caster bosses (Magister Kalendris and Tsu’zee) for drops. I don’t have much experience with these two, so I won’t offer up any advice. I recall them hitting casters pretty hard for 900hp or so.

If you don’t clear the bottom floor, clear the right-most mob of 3 and sneak past the one ghost by the stairs. Proceed upstairs and you want to head left. You will find a couple casters standing there… nothing special and pretty easy to clear. Continue clearing/running along the left wall towards the pylon (2nd one). Clear the elementals as before, deactivating the pylon. Now you see a bunch of skeletons. Have the tank aggro and AoE away.

Now go right down the bridge/walkway to the quest giver, Shen’dralar Ancient. He gives you “Madness Within”, the quest for killing Immol, the Prince and the deactivating pylons. Continue past him to the next pylon (#3), clear as necessary until it deactivates.

You should now see the next boss, Illyanna Ravenoak just past the pylon, patrolling. She hits very hard via ranged hunter attacks. The bear swipes for 500-800dmg per swing. Sleep/Polymorph/(??Fear??) the bear as necessary while you take her out. She has far range and hits hard… casters be careful of aggro or you will die.

Now run back the way you came to downstairs out by the first courtyard. In the middle (same side as the ghosts) is a downward slope to Tendris Warpwood. He is fairly easy… just slightly harder than the big trees in the beginning.

Go past him and enter the door just to your right using your Crescent Key. Watch for invis ghost mobs down this hall. Proceed until you see the arcane/storm elementals. I recommend clearing one mob but it is up to you. They hit very very hard. Warlock should curse of doom/banish the big guy… his arcane storm cast will wipe your group in just a few seconds. Kill the little guys first (9K hp or so). Then solo big guy.

If you decide to not clear one group, have hunter give you aspect of pack. Run left along the wall until you come to the 4th pylon. Just before the pylon is a stone pillar by the wall… anywhere between this pillar and the pylon/elementals is your safe zone. You are now clear of all storm elementals. Clear the pylon as before.

Now run back the way you came to the hallway. When it is clear, continue running right to the second hallway. You are safe for a while. Proceed along through the library. Talk to whoever you like. Quest endings for the Warlock/Druid/etc books are here… all the quests say “Return to the rightful owner” and give you a nice trinket. They are random DM drop quests. You will also find a NPC to repair/sell items. The prince is in here, but currently neutral. He turns nasty after you clear the last pylon and kill Immol’thar.

Run back to where the arcane/storm elementals are. Now you want to keep running right along the wall to the next pylon. Stay between the pillar and pylon, pulling the elementals til you clear the last and 5th pylon. Now the shield around Immol’thar drops. Run through the pylon to the center of the area, watching for the passing patrols running from your right to left. Don’t worry about aggroing Immol as you have plenty of room in the arena.

Immol is very very tough. He has approx 35K hp or so and hits very very hard for 500-800hp. Casters be very wary of aggro, cause you don’t want him hitting you. Every few seconds a eyeball will drop. These eyeballs focus on you and throw you up in the air, taking damage when you smack the ground hard. One person in group should be dedicated to killing these eyeballs (900hp or so). As you are fighting him and people in your group die, it is imperative to keep moving around. The eyes are less likely to focus on you. A few times I have been the last one standing… Immol had 10K of hp and about 5 eyeballs chasing me. I just kept running in a big circle and casting away at him til he dropped… this strategy will by you an extra 20-30 secs before you die. He will hit you but you can use potions, to keep blasting him.

Now run back to the Prince in the library, clearing as necessary. Main tank should stand in the corner with the other players grouped close by. The tank gets knocked back into the wall, and with the other players closeby he should be able to regain aggro fairly easily.

NOTE: If you are a warlock getting your epic mount, do the following after killing Immol’thar. Read all of this information before starting…

You need approx 14-16 soul shards. The 3 floating items that are part of the ceremony offer up different buffs. You must use your Lodestone to reactivate them when they are clickable (right click when you see the widget/gear). Have other party members help you keep an eye out saying “candle”, “bell”, “clock” to let you know when they go out.

During the ceremony, all party members must stay within the circle to be benefited by the circle buffs.

J’eevee’s Jar starts the ceremony. You should have a imp demon out at this point. This lets everyone in your group start out with extra stamina. You will start seeing a bunch of demon imps running to the center. They hit you for 1hp or so… not a big deal. This keeps happening with the occasional doomguard entering. At some point you want to ditch the imp and enslave one of the doomguards. Always kill doomguards first as the imps hit for little to no damage. The ceremony continues for 5 mins or so (seems like forever) and climaxes with about 4 doomguards at once. If you have a doomguard enslaved, release him and he will disappear (no need to kill).

Everyone in the group should enjoy the trippy blue colors whirling around you AND rest up. No need to hurry… rest completely and take your time. Now you want to summon the Lord and the dreadsteed using your Xorothian Glyphs. After some time of fighting the DreadSteed, a Dreadlord spawns. Continue killing the Steed and then finish the Dreadlord. You only need to kill the steed to complete your quest. If you think you might die, run over and talk to the steed’s spirit to get your new horsey. If you wipe before doing so, ghost run it back and talk to the horse spirit for quest completion

There is really only one way for players under level 20 or so to get rich in WoW, and that’s through picking the right professions. Most professions are money- sinks at the lower levels. Sure, at higher levels some of these are big money- makers. But in general you have to invest a lot of gold to get there. But four professions are money-makers from the start. These are:

Fishing

Mining

Skinning

Herbalism

All players can get Fishing. It is a “secondary” skill or profession (along with Cooking and First Aid). All players can get all three of the secondary skills, so get them as soon as you can (level 5 for fishing). In a nutshell you can at level 10 fish in some fairly high level areas for certain fish that Alchemists need in their potions (possibly for Enchanters, too). Please see my HOW TO FISH guide to learn more. Mining, Skinning and Herbalism are “primaries”, and you can only learn two of them.

PRIMARY SKILLS OR PROFESSIONS

You can only pick two of these. They include:

Alchemy potion making

Blacksmithing armor and weapon making

Enchanting granting magic powers to items

Engineering making bombs plus useful and wacky items

Herbalism* getting herbs for Alchemy (and maybe Enchanting)

Leatherworking make leather armor (and two small bags)

Mining * get metal and gems for Blacksm, Engi, etc.

Skinning* get skins for Leatherworking, Engi, etc.

Tailoring make cloth armor and many kinds of bags

If you’ve already picked yours, don’t panic. You can always ditch them and train again in new ones. To lose skills hit K, select the skill, and hit Cancel. If you ever want to relearn this skill, you can. It’s an inconvenience, but it’s not that big a deal.

You may have read on various sites how players recommend that a Paladin go for Mining and Blacksmithing or a Hunter go for Skinning and Leatherworking, so they can make their own armor. Mages, they say, should try Enchanting and Tailoring – and so on. This sounds good in theory – “Hey, I’ll make my own armor for free.” But in reality, if you’re in an established (i.e. not brand new) server or realm, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Using Fishing and a combination of Mining, Skinning and Herbalsim, you can make so much money that you can just pay for all the armor you need, get enchantments for it, buy bigger bags, buy a pet, and still have money to burn! All around level ten.

Why? On an established server higher level players have lots of money. They mail it to their alts to spend or spend it themselves. Even though they’re high level, they still need basic trade materials: copper, light leather, herbs, oily blackmouths, firefin snappers, and so on. And they’re willing to pay you good money for these things – things you can get before you’re even level ten.

WHICH TWO PRIMARY MONEY-MAKERS TO PICK?

I chose Mining and Skinning, and it has worked very well for me. Herbalism and Skinning would work, too, although I don’t think it makes as much money (you still do okay – and I could be wrong). I don’t recommend Mining and Herbalism for the simple reason that each of these gives you a “detection” skill on your mini- map to help you find resource nodes. It would drive me crazy to have to switch between the two constantly, and if you don’t constantly (and I mean every minute or so) switch you’ll miss nodes. But if you think you can handle it, be my guest.

HOW TO MINE

First you need to train in the skill. If you’re a newbie this means leaving your starting area and going up the road towards the next bigger town (or to your race’s main city). Between the next bigger town and the city are guards (on the road), most of whom will tell you (if you right click them) how to find a trainer.

Click on the bottom option (Profession Training) and then Mining. You get a yellow arrow on your mini-map, and when you get close you get a red flag showing where the trainer is. Easy.

Just right click the trainer and buy the skill (it’s really cheap). Now buy a mining pick. There is always a merchant near the trainer who sells these. You must have it in your backpack or in a bag to be able to mine (not in your bank). Now you need to find a mineral node to mine.

It helps to be at least level five or so to mine copper only because the nodes are in areas where there are lots of monsters, and you need to be able to survive. Note, Skinning is a good combo with Mining because a lot of the things that attack you while you mine are Beasts – and this is precisely what you need to do Skinning: dead beasts.

Copper nodes are scattered all over areas where level five and bigger creatures lurk, like Elwynn Forest, Dun Morogh and Mulgore. They tend to be in hilly or mountainous areas, often around the zone’s edges, but some are underwater (just swim down and mine – you have plenty of air). When you buy the Mining Skill you get several new skill “buttons” in your “book” (one of the buttons in the middle bank of control buttons). Just click on the Detect Minerals button (copper hammer icon) and get that same copper hammer appearing on the corner of your mini-map. Now all copper nodes near you will show up on your mini-map as little yellow dots.

You’ll have to spend some time exploring the lowbie zones to find the copper nodes. Some are impossible – there is one in Elwynn, for instance, that has literally a dozen wolves around it. Forget it. Leave it and move on. Sadly some nodes are “broken”. You mine them and either get nothing or you get error messages. Leave these and move on. Note, this is not the same as a “failure” message. If you get a red “failed attempt” message as you mine, just try again until it works.

To mine all you do is run up to a copper node. They are copper-colored lumps with “crystals”. Right click it, wait, and click on the copper ore, rough stones, and occasional gems that appear on the window. Each node is good for two to four clicks. Then, it vanishes. Note where the node is. It will refresh itself over time – sometimes right away, sometimes in about thirty minutes.

The quarry in the southeast part of Dun Morogh is a great place for copper, as are the kobold mines in Elwynn. Sometimes you’ll see a copper node on the mini-map, but it simply “isn’t there”. Most likely it is underground! See if there is a mine or tunnel entrance nearby. If so and if you can take on the monsters in there, go for it. Excuse me for being obvious, but mines are great places to mine!

HOW TO SMELT

Once you get 20 copper ore you may want to sell it, but first you should Smelt it into copper bars. You increase your Mining skill doing this (which is awesome), and copper bars are what other players want to buy (it’s what they use to make things).

You get a smelting button with the Mining Skill (you may have to click the Next button to see it). Find a forge and stand close to it. If you ask a guard where a Blacksmithing trainer is you will almost always find a forge there. It can be a red, glowing gizmo with an anvil (some forges are small), or it can be “The Great Forge” in the center of Ironforge (just go there and stand to Smelt).

Click the smelting button and then Create All. Go make a sandwich. When you come back you will have made twenty copper bars (if you started with 20 copper ore), and you will have increased your Mining skill a lot! Great. Now you can sell.

WHAT ABOUT THE ROUGH STONES AND GEMS I FOUND?

Rough stones are turned into blasting powder by Engineers. This can be turned into bombs or ammo for guns. If you plan to one day switch and become an Engineer (or if you plan to play up an “alt” or secondary character as an Engi) then save as many stacks of rough stones as you can in your bank. Otherwise sell them to other players (more on this later) or sell them to npc merchants.

Gems are mostly used by Engineers for making things like scopes, goggles, telescopes and so on. Some gems are used by Enchanters. You can sell these to other players, but prices you can get vary a lot. Higher level gems are worth much more. Gems you’ll see at lower levels include Malachite, Tigers Eye, and Shadowgem.

HOW TO SELL MY STACK OF COPPER BARS

Get to your side’s Auction House or AH to sell these, although you can do “/2 twenty copper bars for sale” in any zone to try to sell them in person on the trade channel. I wouldn’t. I’d do the AH. The Alliance AH is in Ironforge, and the Hoard AH is in Ogrimmar. Just right click a guard as you enter the city to get directions. I’ll be giving more advice on selling at the AH toward the end of this guide.

ADVANCED MINING

At Mining skill 50+ and I think adventuring level 10 you can go back to the trainer and learn Journeyman Mining (I think you start as an Apprentice). When you start your Mining skill cap is 75. But when you train as a Journeyman you get the skill cap bumped up to 150.

With a higher skill you can mine and smelt tin. You can smelt copper and tin bars into bronze bars (buy these abilities from the trainer). Want to know what’s crazy? On my server tin sells for about the same price as copper, as does bronze! I’ve never even made bronze because it’s such a waste (you in essence “lose” a copper bar to combine it with tin to make bronze – the price of bronze would have to be more than the price of tin and copper together for the creation of bronze to make sense). I often don’t even bother with tin because it’s so much faster and easier for me to go get 60 copper ores, instead. I know where the copper is, and the monsters around the copper don’t faze me now (tin is a pain to get – maybe I need to work harder to find better deposits – but why should I if the market for it is no better than copper?).

Warning, this is how it is in my server. In three weeks this could all change. I have been seeing copper prices coming down lately. So who knows? Just keep in mind that occasionally you hit skill caps and have to come back to pay the trainer to get to the next “tier” of ability. It gets costly as you level up, so save some money for this.

I’ve just started mining iron. I’ve never mined mithril or thorium, but apparently you can make really good money on those. They require higher skill and high adventuring levels (because these nodes are in some hairy places). If you keep the Mining skill into the higher levels, that’s what you’re going to be doing.

SKINNING

To get Skinning right-click a guard for directions to a trainer, either in your race’s main city or in the village outside your main city. Right click the trainer to buy the skill. Near the trainer you’ll find a merchant selling skinning knives. Buy one. Like with the mining pick, you need to keep this in your backpack or in a bag (not in the bank).

Skinning is much simpler than Mining. There are no fancy buttons that come with it. Simply kill a skinable beast (you can’t skin spiders, and the very low level beasts can’t be skinned), loot it completely, and then hover your pointer over it. You’ll see the pointer change to a “hide”. Right click. If you fail, right click again.

Soon you’ll get a window with “ruined scraps” or “light leather” in it. Save these. Even ruined scraps can be sold for decent money.

You may come across a field where some other player has left three dead boars, two dead bears and a dead snow leopard. If he’s looted them, you can now skin his kills. Cool, huh? If he’s there don’t do it too fast – he may be a skinner, too, and it’s really rude to skin other skinner’s kills.

Save your stacks of scraps and light leather, and put them in the Auction House or AH when you have enough. Scraps don’t always sell well on the AH (if so npc merchants pay well for them), but light leather is always in demand. Hide is a rare drop and sometimes gets more money than light leather. More on AH selling later in this guide.

HERBALISM

Just like with the other skills, right click a town guard and get directions to a trainer. Right click her and buy the skill. You get a button for “herb detection”. Hit it, and you get a little “daisy” icon by your mini-map. Now all nearby herbs will show up as yellow dots on your mini-map.

You can get Peacebloom and Silverleaf right outside Ironforge and Stormwind. They can be anywhere, although Peacebloom tends to be in the sun and Silverleaf in the shade of big trees. Earthroot is in the hills or mountains. Stranglekelp is underwater.

When you find a plant, just right click it. If you fail, right click it again until a window opens. Pick up your herbs. That’s it. Unlike mining, the Herb node only has one “harvest”. But Herb nodes tend to be more plentiful and easier to find than mining nodes. Also fewer players tend to become Herbalists.

As you adventure, you’ll see herbs all over the place. Some of the mining nodes tend to be near clusters of troggs, gnolls or kobolds (and are hard to get), but herb nodes tend to be out in the open and not so well guarded.

Once you have enough herbs, get to the AH and sell. I have a sneaking suspicion that herbs sell better on PvP servers than PvE servers. I can’t prove this, but PvP players aggressively look for every “edge” they can get on other players. Potions are a great way to get this edge. They can literally mean the difference between winning and losing. That said, any smart player who wants to get ahead in the game will want to learn about and use potions.

So there always is a market for potions (and for the herbs needed to make them). I don’t think the market is quite as good as the metals market, but herbs can be sold for good money to other players. But I could be wrong. This isn’t the only guide on the Internet telling players to Mine and Skin to make money in WoW (prices for metals and leather may come down some). It could be that most players are overlooking Herbalism and that in the future there will be a good market for it. If you try it and don’t like it, it’s pretty easy to ditch it and get some other skill (to lose a skill hit K, pick the skill, hit Cancel). More on how to sell at the AH later on in this guide.

BUT I DON’T WANT TO JUST HARVEST STUFF; I WANT TO MAKE THINGS!

I understand. But it’s really frustrating if you’re burning up all the copper you find in your Blacksmithing skill – and no one is buying the armor you make. You have no extra money for bigger bags (this is a huge pain), for potions, for that rare blue item you really want that sometimes appears in the AH, for fluff pets – even for Griffon rides!

There’s always a compromise. Maybe put the Blacksmithing on the back burner a while and sell your copper for cash. If you find your Enchanting skill is eating you alive, cancel it and make some cash. Gain about twenty levels and then go back to Enchanting. At that point you can farm the “green” items you need to up the Enchanting skill like crazy, and you can catch up in a few days. Try fishing. Do what makes sense to you. All I want for you to know is that there are a lot of ways to make money, even at the very lowest levels, and no one in WoW has to be broke. There is nothing more pathetic than some clueless player whining and begging for money when it’s so easy to make!

MAKE YOUR ALTS WORK FOR YOU

Most players don’t just play one character. They have a “main” and an alternate or “alt” character. Most people make an Alt because they get bored being one thing too much. They see some other class having a lot of fun, and they want to try that out.

But you can also make an Alt to be a money-maker for you. Again, you can make really good money in WoW at level ten or below. And it’s pretty easy to play up to level ten. My first day in WoW I got my Hunter to lvl 10 (it was a long day, yes, but I did it). You can leave your Main as a Engineer/Enchanter or whatever and occasionally play your Alt to make money. Mailing the cash to your Main costs only 30 cp.

A Hunter is a great choice for a Skinner because they get track beasts. A Warlock or Hunter is good for any harvester because these classes can use their pets to “take the heat” while running between nodes or while harvesting nodes (Hunters don’t get pets until level ten; Warlocks don’t get a good “tanking” pet that can taunt well and hold agro until level ten). Night Elves start far from the AH in Ironforge, so if you want to play a NE consult my travel guide for getting there fast and easy. For the Hoard it is the Tauren who start far from their side’s AH in Ogrimmar (Undead are connected to Ogrimmar by a fast and easy to access zeppelin that goes to their home city). Again, check my travel guide; it’s not really that bad getting a Tauren to the AH. But if you don’t want to fool with this extra trip, don’t make your “money maker alt” a NE or Tauren.

HOW TO SELL – UNDERSTANDING THE AUCTION HOUSE

Get to either Ironforge (Alliance) or Ogrimmar (Hoard) and find the Auction House or AH. Consult my travel guide for tips to find these cities if necessary. Remember, Stormwind is connected to Ironforge by tram. Undercity is connected to Ogrimmar by zeppelin. Both rides are fast and free. Once in the city, right click any city guard to get directions to the AH.

Press through the other players and right click an Auctioneer. Gnomes may need to use a “high angle” camera view to find the Auctioneer (I’m not kidding!). You get an auction window, and you should be in the Browse part of it.

Type the name of whatever you’re selling and hit Search. Make sure you spell it right. If there is lag it may either take 30 seconds to work, or it may not work at all. The AH can be buggy at times. If it is, go do other things; maybe log out and go get a burger or pizza. Just don’t assume that if it tells you it can’t find what you’re looking for that it’s telling you the truth. At the time of this writing it is often buggy.

Okay, lets say you’re selling a stack of 20 copper bars. Your search for “copper bar” gives you the following information on other players’ auctions (bid and buyout prices in SILVER money):

Akuzo 20 bars bid: 40 buyout: 60

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50

Funkybat 20 bars bid: 45 buyout: 48

Hradakar 20 bars bid: 47 buyout: 55

Hradakar 11 bars bid: 24 buyout: 27

Joebob 10 bars bid: 29 buyout: 30

Joebob 10 bars bid: 29 buyout: 30

Kaolinda 20 bars bid: 42 buyout: 50

Kaolinda 20 bars bid: 42 buyout: 50

Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30

Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30

Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30

Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30

Gah! What does all this mean? Is this good or bad?

PLEASE, MY BRAIN IS BLEEDING – JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO

“I’ve been playing 16 hours straight. I can’t think any more. Just tell me how to sell my dumb copper and let me get to bed!” Okay! I will. Try to find the “average price” in the above numbers. Don’t literally average them. Just eyeball it. It’s fifty silver, right? Or is it 30? No, Joebob is only selling half-stacks, so don’t get fooled by him. Indeed the “average price” is 50 silver.

The no-brainer approach: if the “average” buyout price is 50, set your opening bid for your stack of 20 copper bars at 45 silver and set a buyout price at 49 silver. Click the “auction” tab, put your stack of copper in the little box, and then fill in the numbers. Make sure you’ve done it right. Then set your auction for “long term” and create the auction! If the average buyout price is 40 silver, start your auction at 35 and set your buyout for 39. And so on.

Sometimes it’s literally as easy to find the “average price” as in the example above. Sometimes the “average price” is really more a “cluster,” say a group of sellers with buyouts at 52, 54, 55, and 56. In that case set a buyout of 51 to be safe. You’re not the cheapest guy in the AH, but he’ll get bought out fast. Over the next 24 hours your price will eventually attract a buyer. You will almost certainly sell. Your money will be in the mail tomorrow. Now go get some sleep!

WAIT, I WANT TO KNOW MORE – WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON IN THE AH?

Well, it’s not that hard to figure out, so don’t worry. It works a lot like Ebay. The price is in silver to buy the whole stack – it’s not a price per unit. So the first guy, Akuzo, will sell his stack of 20 copper bars if someone bids 40 silver and then no one else comes along and outbids him or does buyout. The winning bidder gets his stack of copper bars in the mail when the auction expires. At that point Akuzo gets the silver money minus a small fee in the mail. If Akuzo never gets a bid, he gets his copper bars back in the mail, and he can try again. Someone agreeing to pay the buyout ends an auction right there.

But what’s the big deal with “buyout”; what’s that all about? Let’s say a player’s got an Engineering skill of 145, and he really want to get that skill to 150. He’s going to make five “orange” combines (each challenging or “orange colored combine” always nets a skill up). This player needs four copper bars per combine – or 20 bars. He’s most likely going to want to buyout. Why? He wants that copper right now, and if he goes for the buyout option, he gets it in the mail immediately. He wants the cheapest price, so Margar the Orc sells a full stack for the 30 silver buyout price.

Most tradeskillers are going to want to “buyout” the trade supplies you sell. Again, it’s because they don’t want to wait two, six, ten or more hours for the auction to expire. They want it now because they want to do their combines now. Their bank and bags are already full of stuff, and they don’t want to sit on it forever. It’s a supply-chain world in WoW for the skills, so to speak. There will usually be no bidding wars for copper bars.

There may be a bidding war for a rare “blue” magic item. But when selling stuff like copper bars, light leather and earthroot, “buyout is your friend” (I’ve heard several players literally say this – I didn’t make it up).

Okay, looking at those prices in the table above, who is the clever Orc and who is the dumb Orc? Well, Margar has the cheapest price per 20-stack at 30 silver. He’s definitely going to sell all his hard earned copper. Is he the clever Orc?

Maybe, maybe not. Eye-balling it, what is the “average” buyout price? About 50 silver (don’t let Joebob fool you). Are these guys selling at 50 really going to sell, too? Yes, they most likely will. Margar will sell first, then Funkybat at 48 silver. Then Corino and Kaolinda will start selling. Other players may come in with cheaper buyouts and sell before them, but as long as they picked the longest time for their auctions, Corino and Kaolinda will almost certainly sell all their copper at 50 silver a stack.

Why? It’s because every once in a while a rich player will come along and buyout as much copper as he can. He either wants to get his Alt to skill up a ton, or he wants to make scads of bombs, or whatever. He’ll buy six or even a dozen stacks of copper and almost wipe out the AH! He doesn’t care what he pays, either, although he’ll probably buy the cheapest stacks first. After he’s come through, then players with higher-priced buyouts can and will sell… usually.

It’s a small risk. Sometimes buyouts slightly above average work, occasionally they don’t. If they don’t work you lose a little over silver (for the set up fee) and can try again. It’s not that big a deal. But is it really worth it to take the risk for a tad more silver? I can’t say. That’s up to you.

So which player is the really clever Orc in this AH scenario above? Well, it’s certainly not Margar. Margar’s a really dumb Orc. Why? He saw a lot of people selling copper and panicked! He said, “Oh no, too much competition! Must sell cheap!” And he panicked himself into losing close to eighty silver. His impulse to underbid was good. Underbidding helps “guarantee” a sale. But what did Margar the panicky Orc do? He way-underbid and screwed himself out of a big chunk of profit he should have made for all his hard work mining four stacks!

If he’d only taken a moment to think: “who is buying from me? Rich Engineers and Blacksmiths. What do they want? The cheapest buyout” – he would have concluded he only needed to SLIGHTLY undercut the average price. People who come to the AH for copper are going to buy. To sell you don’t have to be ultra- low, just lower than most other players. Had he set his price at 49 silver 75 copper it would have worked. He would have made almost 80 silver more!

So please don’t be a dumb Orc like Margar. If you want to undercut other sellers, do yourself a favor and do it slightly, please.

So, who is the really clever Orc? The clever Orc is the one who bought out Margar’s panic-based low buyouts and resold them for a “proper” price! This Orc will make almost 80 silver off Margar – and for no work to boot! But is there another clever Orc? Yes. Take a look at Joebob and Hradakar. What’s up with them? They are selling stacks not in multiples of 20.

Hradakar had 11 copper bars – an odd lot – leftover, and he just tried to prorate his price down, based on what he’s charging for his full stack. But Joebob is doing something altogether different, isn’t he?

A FINESSE PLAY AT THE AH – SPLIT YOUR STACKS FOR MORE PROFIT

Joebob came to the AH with 20 copper bars but SPLIT them into two equal stacks of ten (hold Shift and click). Each stack is for sale for 30 silver (grand total of 60 silver). What’s his deal? Joebob is trying an AH finesse move. He thinks he can get a lot more silver out of his hard-earned copper if he sells them in smaller stacks. For one thing an impulsive player whose eyes are bleeding from playing 16 hours straight may not bother to notice his stack-size is half the others’. This player may see 30 silver and just buyout, thinking he’s getting a good deal.

So is Joebob a criminal? Maybe not. Maybe other players come to the AH and don’t need a full stack of copper. Maybe a player only needs nine copper bars – and Margar’s cheap full stacks have just been bought out and re-auctioned at 49 silver. So is this player going to pay 49 or 50 silver for a full stack and merchant- dump 11 copper bars? No! He’ll pay 30 silver to Joebob for 10 copper bars and only have to merchant-dump one bar. This player gets what he wants. And Joebob gets what he wants: top buyout price for his copper.

Remember, for most players bag and bank space is limited. No one wants to have to keep copper bars for this reason. They often want to buy and use on demand.

Will Joebob’s stack-splitting finesse always work? I don’t know. I just started it myself, and so far I’ve had mixed results. Once you get established in your WoW business and get some experience with the AH, give it a try. It may work for you!

AH PITFALLS

Read the auctions very carefully. Make sure you’re getting a full stack. Watch out for players who “accidentally” set a stack of copper bars for sale for 40 GOLD instead of 40 silver at buyout. A rich player who actually has 40 gold can lose it fast this way, if he clicks without carefully reading.

If you’re selling, don’t accidentally set your buyout for gold – or you probably won’t sell. If you accidentally set the buyout for copper instead of silver, you will lose a fortune. If you screw up (and notice it) just cancel the auction and reset it.

Don’t set your buyouts for cheaper than what NPC merchants will pay you! Check out what prices are. Write them down on paper if necessary.

Just take your time and do it right every time. That way you’ll be happy!

SELLING OTHER HARVESTED STUFF

Your stacks of herbs, your light leather, your Oily Blackmouth fish and so on – sell them the same way as I outlined for copper. Search the AH, get an idea of what prices are, and set a buyout that feels good to you. Maybe you have three stacks of “ruined scraps” and no one else is selling them. What price should you set? See what the non-player-character or NPC merchant will pay. Do “/1 what should I sell a stack of 20 Ruined Scraps for please?” See what other players say. Then gauge it accordingly. As long as you’re getting better than what an NPC merchant would pay, you’re doing okay (remember to factor in the AH’s fees).

DIRECT SELLING

If you’re a Miner, Skinner, Herbalist or Fisherman, buyout at the AH is your friend. It’s easy and safe. You don’t need to fool with trying to sell directly to other players.

Occasionally you may see someone doing “/2 want to buy stacks of light leather.” What do you do? Well if you happen to have some light leather on you, and if you know what AH prices are, you can safely sell to this person directly. Try to agree on a price. If they wont pay at least AH prices, wish them a good day and move on. If you like their price, arrange to meet them. Right click their “picture” and hit “trade”. You get a trade window.

Put your stack or stacks in the window on your side (look for your picture and name) and wait for them to put in the right amount of money AND to commit (or turn their side of the trade window green). When their side has the proper money and is green, then click Sell.

Don’t click Sell earlier. Scumbag players like Margar the Orc can pull some of the money out and shortchange or rip you off. So if you happen to play on a server that starts with “K” and have an Orc named Margar try to trade with you, do yourself a favor and make a rude gesture at him, instead (and put him on your /ignore list) – he’s a lowlife thief who will pull just this trick on you. This is a real exploit, and players like Margar really exist (on a server that starts with “K”) and really do this. Make a rude gesture at him for me if you see him. And have nothing to do with him and players like him.

OTHER WAYS TO MAKE MONEY

At higher levels one of the best ways to make money is to get rare and highly desirable magic items. Some players make groups specifically to go hunt down bosses for such items. I’ve heard of groups of Rogues with maxed Sneak skills going on “instance raids” – they sneak to the back, kill the bosses, loot em, sneak out, get a new instance (they may have to break up and reform for this), and do it again and again (until their bags are bulging with items). I’ve never tried this myself, but it sounds doable.

Another way to make money is to luck into very rare and highly desirable drops, like a Tiny Crimson Whelpling. This is a little fluff pet, a baby dragon that hovers in the air by your shoulder and looks cute as all heck. Last I looked on my server, the buyout price for one of these was 105 gold! Actually there are three kinds, red, black and green. The red can be hunted starting in the low 20’s in the Wetlands (Eastern Island). More on these on my Pet guide.

MAKING USE OF THE NEUTRAL AUCTION HOUSE IN GADGETZAN

Please see my travel guide on how to get to the goblin’s neutral city, Gadgetzan. There you will find down some steps a “neutral” AH. This is the only place where Hoard and Alliance players can trade objects and money. If you want to start a WoW “smuggling” operation, this is where you do it.

I learned the hard way that you can’t bid on “your own” auction – you can’t bid on auctions set by characters in the same account. But if you can get a friend to help you (or if you own two accounts), you can trade objects (and money) from side to side. And you can make money doing this.

I’ve done some smuggling of Hoard-dropped and Hoard-purchasable items to Alliance side, and if you know what you’re doing you can make good money at this. But it’s a complex subject and requires its own guide (soon to come – look for part of this in my pet guide – and I may have to do a separate smuggling guide).

Be prepared, there are tons of mobs there, they can aggro, but most are not excessively tough and I did fine with my lev 10 mage. Also, they don’t like to chase you and if you run up the hill, there are a group of guards that will kill any that come to far.

So, back inside the quarry, copper veins and earthroot keep reappearing all over the place all the time. Plus, the mobs drop a lot of linen and occasionally nicer items. Keep an eye on the entrance area for the quarry as well, there are a few recurring earthroot spots up there as well. I’ve gotten 40 earthroot in an hour there multiple times.