Paladin Guide By Rampage (Grant Newby) In game known as MorningLord (Shadowsong Server) Contents: 1 . Introduction 2 . Version History 3 . FAQ 4 . Why a Paladin? 5 . Why Not a Paladin? 6 . Which Race? 7 . Your first few days 8 . Skills and Talents 9 . Professions 10. Equipment 11. General Tips and Hints 12. Mini Instance Guide 13. Battlegrounds 14. Thank You's 15. Legal Mumbo Jumbo --------------- 1. Introduction --------------- Hi there. I've only been playing World Of Warcraft for about a month now, but I can honestly say it is one of the single best games I have ever played, and I've played a lot of games. I mean this game would be brilliant as a single player game, but as an MMORPG it is superb. The classes complement each other very well and none are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to dishing out the damage. The graphics look beautiful and the world is incredibly well realised. If you've ever played a Warcraft game before you'll instantly recognize the look, the slighty cartoony graphics complement the world brilliantly and make you feel like you've been press ganged into some higher beings game of Warcraft 3. If you've never played a Warcraft game before, go out and buy the lot. You won't be disappointed. Of course, if you totally refuse to play any of Blizzards previous outings you won't be confused. A working knowledge of the world is great fun, because you can explore places you've only seen from above before. Wandering around the human capital Stormwind having seen it in a previous game is a wonderful experience. But, like I said, its not essential. Anyway, with this in mind, I can honestly say, that if your mind isn't made up yet you should just go out and buy the game. At only £8.99 a month its an absolute bargain. Down my way thats about the same as 3 pints and a pack of crisps, and for a months entertainment, you can't say fairer than that. My E-mail address is grantnewby88@hotmail.com, and feel free to e-Mail me with any comments, corrections or other tips you might want to share with me and the world. I should point out that most of this guide is based on my opinions and there will be people out there who think I'm dead wrong, and thats their right. Feel free to e-Mail me explaining your grievance and what you think, but if its a matter of contention about a minor matter, don't expect to see it in the guide. The swords vs maces arguement is old news, and there is no right answer. ------------------ 2. Version History ------------------ 28/06/05 23:55 Suddenly decided I wanted to write a walkthrough for WOW. I'm watching Top Gear on the telly. Life is good. Just started. Wrote the introduction, but not sure how far I'm going to get tonight. 28/06/05 01:10 Made a start on the FAQ section, without realizing how much there is to this game. My eyes hurt and there's nothing on telly so I'm going to bed. 01/07/05 15:34 Got bored so I finished off the FAQ's section and watched Countdown. Shame about Richard Whitely, he seemed like a nice bloke really. Oh well, we're here for a good time, not a long time. 03/07/05 16:30 Having just helped my mate move house, I am now bed ridden. I feel like I've been mauled by Jesus. If I could have my back removed I would. On the plus side, I get time to write this and listen to music. Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Jimmy Eat World rule. Fact. Done the Why a Paladin? section and some other bits and bobs. 04/07/05 00:10 I have been typing for ages. My neck is killing me. I managed to do the Why not a Paladin, Which Race and Your First Day chapters, as well as making a good start on the Skills and Talents. If I never see notepad ever again, it'll be too damn soon. It might be a while before I add anymore, as I have my second Paladin quest to do at some point, and that involves going down BlackFathom Deeps amongst other places. This may involve a large amount of dying. I'll let you know. 05/07/05 11:55 TV really has taken a turn for the worse these days. I mean, why in the name of santas butt hole would I want to watch a group of morons sleep for 3 hours on Big Brother Live. I'd rather fist myself. Still at least I'm working on this again. Gonna try and finish the Skills and Talents section tonight, and maybe do some work on the Professions section. Whether I will or not remains to be seen. 06/07/05 02:10 Yawn. I should probably go to bed now. My mate wants a hand painting his flat tommorrow, so I might pretend to be ill and play WoW for 12 hours straight. Finished the Professions section pretty much, though I forgot most of what I was gonna write for the Skills and Talents section, so I'll polish that off another time. Probably. I'm still only lvl 26 in game, so its not like I've even seen all the skills. Oh well. Level 26+ Paladins probably won't be reading this anyhow. Night y'all. 06/07/05 23:19 Not a bad day at all today. Played a lot of WoW, got on a bit with my Paladin quest. London won the Olympics, and somewhat sweeter we beat the french. Yay. I managed to finish off the Equipment, Thank You's and Legal Mumbo Jumbo sections, so I guess thats it, until I get massive piles of mail from people telling me how wrong I am. Oh well. You Live and Learn. Well you live anyway. 11/07/05 22:44 I haven't written for a few days, as I was in London when the bombs went off. Luckily, I was nowhere near them at the time, but that doesn't take anything away from a cowardly and callous act by a bunch of insane zealots. This is why I'm an atheist. Anyway, I decided to write up my current Paladin quest under the Your First Days Section. 12/07/05 22:29 The lesson for today is remember to talk to everyone about your quest. I forgot to talk to an Elf in Auberdine, and then I went down Blackfathom Depths. Unfortunately, if you don't talk to him, the Naga don't drop the corrupted Kor gems you need. What a Bastard, because lets face it, its not a short walk. Oh well. Wrote a load of new skills and talents in the relevant section. Thats enough for today. I hope finish off my paladin quest tomorrow, so I'll write it up then. Night y'all. 13/07/05 11:56 Went too the cinema tonight and watched Sin City, which is a great film. I suggest you all go and watch it, unless your not a fan of gore in which case you should probably only watch about half of it, and close your eyes for the rest. I wrote up the Blackfathom Deeps part of the next Paladin quest, and plan to do Shadowfang keep tomorrow. 14/07/05 15:41 Late night last night, and I've only just got up, so thought I'd finish off the rest of the next Paladin quest. This is a damn hard place, so be advised don't go by yourself. Anyway, gotta hurry the hell up, gotta by my mate a birthday present (for 10 days ago) and then get ready for the next Harry Potter book to come out. If you don't like it, get bent. 16/07/05 23:14 Finally got to sleep this morining at 11am after reading the entire Harry Potter book the whole way through. That was heavy going. Its a good book, but like most of the Harry Potter books, its a bit depressing at the end. Decided to write a general tips section tonight, just to get my advice about etiquette, looting and whatnot across. 20/07/05 22:55 Made the biggest mistake in the history of mankind. I got a job with longer hours. Full on withdrawal symptons are setting in. I keep looking behind me while I'm walking down the street wandering where Conkers (my mechanical squirrel) has got to. I now call dogs, Gnolls. I may be losing it. Had my first Battleground experience today, and I must say I enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed anything (in game) for a while. It was great fun, I came top of the leaderboard both times I played, and racked up 50 honorable kills in 2 matches. Lost the first one though. Kudos to both teams, for excellent matches. Special mention to the undead rogue player who kept on running away from me. Smartest thing I saw a person do all game. Gonna write a bit about Battlegrounds in the General Tips section. 12/08/05 08:13 First Big update ever on the guide. Like I said before, I (stupidly) went and got a job, so I really don't have much time to do anything to this guide at the moment, though I did just manage an 8 and a half hour session on WoW, at a friends place. Managed to hit level 33 before logging off. Just a few basic things updated, more stuff in the thank you's and new question for all you trivia buffs. Be good, y'all. 16/10/05 14:47 Sorry its been so long, but like I may have said before, the stupid job is kicking my ass. I added a few things mentioned in peoples e-Mails, as well as a few things I already thought I needed to add. Best place to look is the end of the My First Day and Skills and Talents section. 18/10/05 00:10 Hey hey. Decided to add an instance guide to this guide in general. Figured it might come in handy. Only done the Deadmines for now, gonna have to drag myself down the Stockades again soon for practice. Also added an entire section on Battlegrounds, though I still haven't been to Alterac Valley. Anyway, be good y'all. 18/10/05 20:52 Finished off the New Battlegrounds section by writing a bit about Arathi, though I'm no expert on this particular area, so any tactics and advice would be much appreciated. I may even give you credit, unless they're really good ideas, then I'm just gonna nick em ;). Also added a bit more info on engineering in the Professions section and about Divine Shield into the Skills section. Hope you all enjoy it. Peace y'all. 20/11/05 23:14 Finally got around to my "long awaited" update including all the info I got sent by various people. Thanks a lot for all your advice and many thanks for your kind words. It may seem silly, but it means a lot to me when people say they enjoyed my guide and it helped them, even if it was just in a small way. Hope your all well. Laters. ------ 3. FAQ ------ Q. So how does the game work? A. Its really very simple as far as game mechanics go. You gain experience for doing quests and killing monsters that are around your level. Killing monsters 5 levels or 20% of your level (whichever is higher) below your characters level won't net you any experience. So if your level 10, for example, killing anything up to lvl 4 won't get you anything but loot. When you level up you don't have to worry about putting points into different statistics, as this is done for you behind the scenes. In fact your only choices when levelling up are your talents and you don't get them til level 10. Apart from this, every even level you'll get access to new skills. Q. Whats a Skill then? A. In this game, your skills are the things you use in battle, such as healing powers and special attacks. Every time you hit an even numbered level its worth visiting your skill trainer. These are the guys who train you, and are specific to each class, i.e. there are Paladin Trainers, Rogue Trainers, Priest Trainers, etc. Getting new skills and improving your old ones costs money, though at the start the cost is pretty negligble. Q. How does the money work in this game? A. Its very simple. Money comes in 3 flavours, Copper, Silver and Gold. 100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold. For the most part you won't be earning gold, unless your selling high level stuff at the Auction House. Most monsters will only drop copper and silver, though over time this adds up. You can supplement your income by selling stuff you make or collect from your professions. Q. What are professions? A. A profession is a skill you have that allows you to gather materials or create items, and here they are. Gathering Professions: Herbalism, Mining, Skinning. Production Professions: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring. You can only have 2 of these skills at a time, so deciding which ones you want is quite important and will affect your game for quite a while. Here's a quick run down of what the various skills involve, and what they're good for. Herbalism: Allows you to gather plants. Plants are pretty plentiful around the world, but the rarer ones are in the higher level areas. Herbs are used in a lot of professions, but mainly Alchemy, making Herbalism/Alchemy an ideal combonation. Most herbs can sell at the Auction House for a reasonable profit, if you have an excess of them. Mining: Allows you to gather ores from mineral veins and to smelt them down into metals. Again, the rarer metals are located in the higher level areas. Metals are used in mainly in Blacksmithing and Engineering, though occasionally they are used in other professions. Stacks of Ores or Metals usually sell quite well at the Auction House with the Rare Ores and Metals selling for a small fortune. Skinning: Allows you to skin beast class monsters. From these monsters you get a variety of Leathers, which are used for mainly Leatherworking and sometimes in Tailoring and Blacksmithing, as well as the other professions.Leather sells quite well at the Auction House, as it is needed by Tailoring and Blacksmithing, both of which are popular professions. The high level Leathers are vital in certain other professions, and like the Mining and Herbalism, they sell very well. (As an aside, I'm informed by Adam Rees that certain Demons and Humanoids (Yeti's, I think) can be skinned as well). Alchemy: Alchemy is the science of making potions from various ingriedients, mainly herbs. You'll need a decent supply of vials to keep your potions in once you've made them. Once you've made the potions you can use them, give them to friends or sell them at the auction house. Once you get to the really high level potions you can make quite a bit of money flogging impressive potions to other players. Blacksmithing: Blacksmithing is the art of making Weapons and Armour from Metal. When it comes to armour you can only make Mail armour, which is used by Paladins, Warriors and later Hunters, and Plate which is usable by Paladins and Warriors at lvl 40, though weapons can be used by anyone with those skills. Daggers are of course a popular choice because they are used by rogues, mages, warlocks and a variety of other classes. If you are a Warrior or Paladin, its nice to be able to make your own armour and weapons. You can also make various items, such as keys and rods, which enchanters use. Once you reach a high level of Smithing you can choose to branch out into a specific area. You can become an Armoursmith or a Weaponsmith. Later, the Weaponsmith category branches out into Swordsmith, Axesmith and Macesmith. (Thanks again to Adam Rees for reminding me of this). Enchanting: Enchanters break down green and better items into other items. Green items are magical in nature, and when broken down turn into various magical reagents. With these reagents Enchanters can put spells on armour and weapons to improve them. Early on, the various enchantments aren't very good, and as such getting green items to break down is a bit of a money pit. But as you progress, you can start to do various different enchantments that people will pay a mint for. Plus they make your weapon glow, and there isn't a warrior or rogue out there who doesn't want a red glowy sword. Engineering: Engineering is easily the most fun profession in the game, though you'll make a lot less money. As an engineer, you'll mainly be using metals and ores as well as some leather. As an engineer, you can make a variety of headgear, weapon enhancements and other useful items such as bombs, and explosive sheep. The problem with this is that most of the items made by Engineers are only usuable by Engineers, and as such, they can make their own as opposed to buying them. Still, you can make a lot of really cool stuff and you'll be pretty popular in dungeon parties when you whip out your Gnomish Death Ray. Leatherworking: Leatherworkers are skilled at making items from leather, mostly armour. Leather armour is quite popular in WOW being extensively used by Rogues, Hunters (before lvl 40) and other classes. You can also make Leather Armour Patches which are very popular amongst all classes, as they add a certain amount of extra armour to one of your pieces. At the later levels the Armour patches give you an extra 40 armour per each of the 4 slots you can apply them to. For a warrior or paladin this isn't too much of a difference, but for a Mage, Warlock or Priest its an absolute life saver. Bear in mind Leatherworkers also make cloaks, which are used by everybody. Leatherworking can also be branched out towards the higher levels to Dragonscale (Mail armour), Tribal (damage output) and Elemental (Elemental damage and resistance). Thanks to Adam Rees again for this info. He's a walking, talking version of Thottbot. Tailoring: Only the Mage, Priest and Warlock classes use cloth armour, as it is the weakest armour available. However, if its all you got, its all you got, and making your own armour is a great way to help keep yourself alive. Aside from armour, Tailors also make other items such as Bags and various costumes like wedding dresses, tuxedos and kilts. Everyone needs bags, and the best ones will sell for a huge mark up. Tailoring usually goes with Enchanting, as it is usually used by mages and warlocks. There are also 3 Secondary classes, these are: Cooking, Fishing and First Aid. At the moment I haven't really got into the secondary professions, except for fishing which is a great change from the hectic world of melee combat. At the end of the day, its nice to sit down and have a good old fish at the edge of your local river or lake. Q. What are Talents? A. At level 10 you get access to talents. These are class specific and will help your character improve over time. These can vary from improvements to blocking or parrying, all the way up to new skills. I won't go into detail over Talents (except Paladin ones) in this guide as there are literrally hundreds and there are other guides out there. ----------------- 4. Why a Paladin? ----------------- There are many good answers to this. I'm a paladin because I like what they stand for. They a force of good and justice for people who can't get any. They are the kind of goody goody, but really hard, characters i like to play. Good, but dangerous. In game terms Paladins have some great skills. The ability to heal yourself in battle without the use of potions is only usually reserved for Priests and they can't take a good kicking like we can. You also get some excellent buffs and aura's that are useful to both yourself and your party, as well as some handy combat skills. As a warrior/healer, you have a very useful part to play in parties. You can double as a tank and a healer giving the best of both worlds to your party, as well as being able to dish out some impressive damage occasionally. You also specialize in holy skills and anti-undead abilites with both Turn Undead and Excorcize. Please note, these skills don't work against undead players, only undead monsters. The ability to dish out extra holy damage with each hit is very handy especially when your soloing, as are the healing skills. One of the best skills you get is called Lay on Hands. This allows you to heal any friendly character, including yourself, for the amount of your maximum health. This means if you cast it on yourself, you'll heal yourself fully. This is very handy if your about to die, but can still win the fight, if you can survive for a little bit longer. Its also an instant cast spell, which means it can't be interuppted, though it does take an hour to recharge or "cooldown". Aside from these pluses, you also have a Ressurection spell called Redemption, you get it at level 10 - 12 (which is about 3 days play). This is very handy in a party and allows you to be friendly if you see another player die. Stand back, wait for the monster to wander off and ressurect or "rez" the dead man. He'll probably be pretty grateful, and its always nice to be nice. One last piece of good news. Most people have to pay 100 gold for a mount at level 40, 80 gold for the horse/ram/mechastrider and 20 gold for the training to use it. We get both free at level 40 with a Paladin specific quest, in which we recieve a warhorse. Which means you can spend your gold on armour and weapons and fireworks and stuff, and not have to worry about saving your money for a mount later. --------------------- 5. Why Not a Paladin? --------------------- Theres a bit of a set back with Paladins. As you specialize in a couple of different things, your not as good at them as some. You'll never be as good a tank as a warrior with the same skill level. Equally, you'll never be as good a healer as a priest of a similar level. Because of this some groups won't take you, over a priest or warrior, because they want the best they can get, not a combonation of both. Don't hate them for it, their just making their game time easier. Another minor problem with the paladin is your damage potential. Over time you'll do a similar amount of damage to a mage or rogue, but in short bursts you simply won't be able to match them. Your strong point is longevity, not explosive damage. If you want someone who can really kick ass for about 30 seconds at a time, choose a mage or rogue. If you want someone who can fight well for hours at a time, choose a paladin. -------------- 6. Which Race? -------------- When it comes to Paladins, their are only 2 choices. You can be Human, or you can be Dwarf. Here's a quick rundown of the 2 races. Note: Skills noted as Passive are always on, and don't need to be activated. ------- Dwarves ------- Frost Resistance: Gives +10 to frost resistance (passive) Gun Specialization: Gives +5 to Guns skill (passive) Stoneform: Makes you immune to all poisons, diseases and bleed, and gives a 5% armour bonus. Lasts 20 secs and has a 3 minute cooldown. Treasure Finding: Shows all treasure chests on the map when activated. Stays on until cancelled or replaced. Okay, first things first. Paladins can't use guns, no ranged weapons allowed. In light of this, Gun specialization is really not much use. In fact, it's useless. Oh well. Frost resistance is always good. Quite a few monsters use frost magic, not to mention PC (player Character) mages. However, +10 isn't a massive advantage, but any damage resistance is always good. Stoneform is surprisingly handy, but not often used. The 3 minute cooldown is a bit off putting, and I swear reading somewhere that it slows you down, though i could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. (I've just had this confirmed by Bob McForman, who tells me that your speed is reduced to 70% of its original value. Thanks Bob). Treasure finding is a bit of a mixed blessing, being able to find chests is handy, though if you've chosen Mining or Herbalism it will replace your find minerals/herbs skill, which is a bit of a pain. ------ Humans ------ Diplomacy: Gives a 10% bonus to all Faction point gains. (passive) Human Spirit: Gives a 5% bonus to spirit. (passive) Mace Specialization: Gives +5 to all Mace skills. (passive) Sword Specialization: Gives +5 to all Sword skills. (passive) Perception: Increases the detection of stealthed enemies and players. Lasts 20 secs and has a 3 minute cooldown. Well, I must admit, most of these skills are pretty useful. Gaining faction points decreases the amount of money things from that faction cost you. Its always nice to get a discount from people, though its not vital, and it doesn't take to long to get the discount without it. Also, if you reach exalted status with a faction, you can then purchase their racial mount. This means if you hit Exalted with the Night Elves (their faction is called Darnassus, all the factions are named after their capital cities, and there are a few more besides) then you can purchase a cool tiger to ride around on. Any bonus to stats is always handy, and spirit especially so. Spirit increases the regeneration speed of your health and mana in and out of combat, so its pretty useful. Towards the higher levels your spirit will be pushing 100-150, so the extra 5 to 7 points isn't going to be that much, but still useful. Mace and Sword Specializations are both very useful. The first weapons you'll likey use, will be swords and maces, and being one step ahead of the competition is always a good thing. Again though, +5 is not a huge bonus. Every level your maximum learnable skill increases by 5 anyway, but just remember, if someones the same level as you, and you've both been keeping up with your weapon training, your gonna be 5 higher than him. Feel free to scorn him. I'm not a great fan of perception, it doesn't have that many uses. The number of stealthed enemies in this game is minute, and the problem with player rogues is that you can't see them until its too late, and then you can't use the skill. Handy if your duelling a rogue, someone claims they saw one or one of them vanishes and tries to run from you in PVP, but still not great. Apart from these differences, there are of course the stat differences. These are not huge as it is, and towards the end of the game will make a negligible amount of difference. The humans have a slighty better build for Paladins, but only very slightly. The way I see it, if you want to be a dwarf paladin, go right ahead. If your anything like me, you'd rather have fun than be the hardest thing on the face of your server. Remember, some people actually buy in games items for real money. Feel free to scorn such people as obsessive and scary (not to mention stupid). Have fun first, be the best later, and besides if you intend to have a life based in reality then your probably not ever gonna be the best player on your server. Just remember, there are people out there who are shockingly obsessive about this sort of game, and your unlikely to better them. Take some consolation that they probably pee in a cup and haven't seen another real person for weeks. ---------------------- 7. Your First Few Days ---------------------- Right, you've now been dumped into the game with just a pair of raggedy looking pants and a weapon which probably started life as a meat tenderizer, and has never hit anything harder than a nail. If you chose to be a Human, your now standing near Northshire Abbey, in Elwynn Forest, looking somewhat skint. If you chose to be Dwarf, your now freezing your nips off in Anvilmar, a small town in Dun Morogh, but luckily you've probably got a beard to keep you warm. I'm not gonna go on about specific quests in this guide, it'll just be general advice, which applies equally to both races. First off, have a wander around your general area. None of the monsters will attack you, even if you go up to them and insinuate their mothers were not of good breeding. All the monsters within a couple of minutes walk of your start are neutral. This means they won't attack you unless you attack them first. The way to tell this is to put your mouse over them, and look at the tool tip in the bottom right hand corner. If the name of the monster is in Yellow, then they're neutral and won't attack you. If its Red, then they're aggressive, and if you get too close they'll likely come over and try to seperate your head from your shoulders, or something equally unpleasent. Throughout the game you'll find most enemies are aggressive, except for the more sedate types of nature, such as Boars and other such grazing animals, who tend to be neutral. Just remember, just because the wolves in your start area are reasonably friendly, doesn't mean they're gonna be nice in other places. Right, time to get questing. The people with yellow exclamation marks (!) over there heads are quest givers. These people will happily give you nice little jobs to do, that vary from "Go to see someone" to "Kill everything unfriendly within a 6 mile radius" ;). Most likely, your first real job will be to kill some really easy piggies or wolves or whatever. First thing to do is check your quickbar. All your starting skills are listed here (not your Racial ones, if you want to use these you'll have to put them on yourself, more on how to do this later). You start with 2 skills, Seal of Righteousness and Holy Light. Seal of Righteousness adds extra holy damage to your next attack and should be used as much as possible without draining too much mana. Holy light is your bread and butter healing spell, it heals a fair amount of health, though it has a casting time. This means it not only takes 3 seconds (ish) to cast, but if your attacked while your casting it, it'll take even longer every time your hit. This means if you've got 3 monsters wailing on you it's unlikely to work unless your very lucky or you can dodge like a coked-up rabbit. Now you know what your skills do, go out and mercilessly slay whichever poor creature your being paid to kill. If you see another player having trouble feel free to heal them or wade in and help them. As long as they have hit the creature first you won't get any of their EXP or loot. Its almost impossible to offend people doing this and most will actively thank you. However, be careful about going after creatures someone else is lining up to hit, as this is a sure way to piss off other players. Once your done killing harmless animals, head back to the guy who asked you to do it and demand money from him, if your lucky he might even give you something. If you have a choice between armour types always go for the mail armour, as you can use it, it has the best armour rating and if it does have any stat bonuses, they're likely to complement your needed stats which are mainly Strength, Stamina and Intellect. This will likely apply throughout the game, or at least until you start going to find specific items and start using Plate. (You learn this skill at lvl 40). Once your done with this fella, continue to knock around doing quests until you get a quest asking you to go see your trainer. You'll find him knocking around your start area somewhere, the Human one is in Northshire Abbey, though I can't remember where. You'll find him. At this point you should be about level 4 so you can purchase your first skill. You'll get a couple of skills at this point the best one being Divine Protection which gives you 6 seconds of immunity, though you can't attack. This is great if you get in trouble and have to leg it. Cast it and run like hell until the monsters stop following you. You also get Devotion Aura, a great spell that adds armour to your character and all people in your party. Very handy. At some point soon you'll have finished all the quests in your starting area, and will have a quest asking you to go somewhere else (Kharanos for the Dwarves, Goldshire for the Humans). Head off down here and make sure you find your trainer, he will be able to offer you more skills than the previous trainer. The next quests are easy to find, just make sure you explore everywhere you can, every building, every clearing, and you should get all the available quests. If someone has a quest you can't yet do, the ! over there head will be gray. After you level up, go back and see them, and see if they're interested. You should have easily hit level 6 by now, so heres a quick run down of the skills you can expect to see at your trainer. You will get Holy Light Rank 2. As this is a new skill, you'll need to replace your old Holy Light skill. To do this, drag the old Holy Light spell off the toolbar and click on the screen somewhere to get rid of it. Then open your spellbook, and drag the new Holy Light skill onto your toolbar. This also applies to new spells, though you'll want to drag them into empty spaces. You will also get Purify which is a great skill, but not quite yet. At the moment, if you get poisoned it tends to last no more than 5 - 10 seconds, and as such theres little point in curing it. Give it time though and you'll soon find creatures that can poison or disease you for ages and then its very handy. No one wants their stats reduced for 5 mins or to take 800 damage over 2 mins, so get purifying when you start getting the serious poisons and diseases. You'll probably hit level 7 on your first day, as levelling up is really quite quick at the start. This will slow down when you hit level 8 and it'll only get slower as you go. Some levels will go quickly as you hand in a whole bunch of quests all at once, and some will take ages as you only get EXP from killing monsters. You should be getting the hang of questing now, and you may have even ganged up with some other players to do quests. If your having real trouble with a quest, don't be afraid to ask for help, or to ask for a group. If you type /4 into the chat window, you'll type into the Looking For Group channel, where you should put someting along the lines of "LFG to do Hogger. I'm a lvl 9 Paladin." Remember to include the name of your quest, and preferably your lvl and class. Incidentally, Hogger is a quest in Elwynn Forest that is typically popular for groups as he is an Elite monster. Being an Elite means he has nearly triple the hit points of the usual monster of that level and maybe even some special moves. Hogger for example is a lvl 11 Elite Gnoll, and is very hard even for a lvl 11 character, because he almost certainly will have a few of his lesser gnoll mates with him. So, take a few friends. It'll set you in good stead for later in the game. You get some interesting new skills at level 8, most particularly Parry. This gives you a chance to block all the damage an enemy does for 1 hit, and is always worth having. You also pick up the second rank of Holy Strike, doing more holy damage per hit, and a skill called Blessing of Protection. This allows you to cast divine protection on another player in your group. I have actually never used this skill because, like I said, when it comes to running away, its every man for himslef. Plus some members of your group may have useful abilites to slow down or stop the enemies chasing you, and Blessing of Protection stops the use of certain skills. This ones a candidate for being left, but frankly it doesn't cost very much and priests might be able to use it and heal at the same time. E-mail me if anyones tested this or has any bright ideas about what to do with this skill that I've missed. Sooner or later, you'll hit level 10 and get some new skills and your first class quest. First, the new skills. First your Devotion Aura gets an update, giving you and anyone in your party even more armour. You also get a new seal, called Crusader Strike. This improves your attack rating and the speed of your attacks, though you'll do less damage per hit, but more damage over time. It lasts for 30 secs, so you'll have to cast it every other fight at least. You also get Hammer of Justice, a very handy spell as it causes a stun effect on your target for 4 secs. This is great for spellcasters as if they're casting a spell, hitting them with this will cancel the spell and stun them too. The other skill you get is Lay On Hands. This is your hardcore healing spell, for use in the emergency situations. It will use all your mana and will heal the target for an amount equal to your maximum health. This means if you cast it on yourself, you'll instantly return to full health, but with no mana. Be careful using this spell. Having full health doesn't make it easier to run away from a large group of monsters, and the major downside is that this spell has a 1 hour long cooldown. This means if you use it, you then can't use it again for at least an hour. ******* Correction ******* You get this quest at lvl 12, not lvl 10, don't know where I got this idea from, but a couple of people have written to me saying they thought it was 10, but its in fact 12. Maybe its been changed since we started. Thanks to Miguel for this info. Anyway, back to the class quest. I only know for sure what the human paladin quest involves, but I reckon the dwarf one will be at least similar in length and content. You can start this quest at level 10, but it might be an idea to let it wait for a couple of levels, unless your feeling quite sneaky or you've got a friend who'll come with you for the second half. Anyway, on to the quest. Your trainer will give it to you, and you'll need to visit a chap in Stormwind (bear in mind the dwarf quest will probably tell you to go to Ironforge, but I'm telling this from the Human point of view). When you visit him, he'll tell you to do something good for someone. This will involve going into town and visiting the lady who owns the orphanage. She's over near the front gates. She will want you to get some linen for her, which you can get by killing most humanoids, such as Defias, Gnolls or Murlocs. If your reading this ahead of time, remember to hold on to some of your linen for this moment. Once you've got the linen (I think you need 6 pieces) head back to her and then back to the Cathredral, where you got the quest. Right, that was easy, the next part is a bit more difficult. When you get back to the cathedral, the quest giver will send you to see an injured dwarf. His friend got himself killed by some defias over at Stone Cairn Lake, its in the very North East corner of the Elwynn Forest map, just north of the Murloc village near Eastvale Logging Camp, and he wants you to go and ressurect him. He'll give you an item that allows you a one shot ressurection. If you mess this up, you can go back and get another one from the chap in Stormwind. The dead dwarf is on the west side of the island on a small hill. Unfortunately, the island is absolutely covered in Defias wizards, and a couple of them can really put a dent in your chances of surviving. There are 2 ways to do this quest really. You can either head north from the large murloc village and kill the defias wizards one at a time, until you get to the west of the island, or you can do it the way I did it, and follow the mountains along the Northern border, until you get to the edge of the river over to the island. Then just swim across, kill a couple of the defias wizards and find the dwarf with little hassle. Use the item to ressurect him, have a quick chat, and then head back to Stormwind and go to the Cathedral. Here you will be given the skill Redemption, which is a ressurection power. This will make you quite popular as you can save a lot of people a fair bit of time doing corpse runs by rezzing them on the spot. Unfortunately, you can't use it on yourself, as your dead, but use it on other people as they'll be grateful to be back so quick and who knows, one day you might need their help. Also, if your the only rezzer in a party, its in peoples best interests to keep you alive, especially if your miles from a graveyard, or your down an instance. Right, that concludes the first couple of days section. When you hit level 12, you'll probably be off to a new area (Westfall for the Humans, Loch Modan for the Dwarves). Here you'll find new quests and new challenges. Every even level, go back to your trainer and see what new skills he's offering for you, read the description and decide which ones you need most. If you've got plenty of money, buy them all and keep doing so. If your a bit shorter on money, decide which skills your gonna use most and put your money into them. Best of Luck, Paladin. May the Light Bless You. ------------------ Other Class Quests ------------------ This section is about other important Paladin quests. You have to bear in mind that I've been playing as a Human Paladin, so the Dwarf quests might be different. I can't say for sure, they might be the same, but I just don't know. The second paladin quest is given by the chap in the Cathredral of Light who gave you the last Paladin quest. He will start a series of quests called The Tome of Valor. Your job here is to head off to Westfall and protect a lady named Daphne. You'll find her in the south-west corner, just outside her house in the garden. You will most likely need friends for this bit. First, you will be attacked by 3 Defias (approx lvl 18). Daphne will shoot at them from the back but she won't be a great deal of help. After you finish these fools, 4 more will attack you, then 5 of them. This is why you'll need help. They will go straight for you as opposed to Daphne, so having 5 people beat on you isn't much fun. Like I said, bring a friend. I personally teamed up with another Paladin (level 23, I think, and thinking about it he was a dwarf). Its a lot easier with a couple of friends. I was about level 23 when I did this, but I think the minimum level is 20. Best of luck. When your done head back to the Cathedral of Light and recieve the Sense Undead skill, and a cool shield called the [Bastion of Stormwind]. This is an excellent shield and if your using a one-handed weapon, it should probably be your shield unless you've come across one thats better, or have been given one, but if you've not got a load of money or some high-level friends your unlikely to have better. The chap (Dunthorian, I think his name was), will then send you to Ironforge to tell Daphne's husband that she's alright. So get on the tram, or gryphon if you've got the flight plan. The chap your looking for is conveniently placed just outside IronForge, so he's not to hard to find. He will thank you and offer to make you a weapon. A great weapon, the two-handed mace [Verigan's Fist]. This does about 25 DPS, so its most likely gonna be quite a bit better than your current weapon. Unfortunately, there is some stuff you have to do to get it. Quite a lot of stuff, in fact. And most of it isn't terribly easy either. There are 4 items to collect in this quest. Here they are in order of ease along with a quick description of how to get them. First off is Whitestone Oak Lumber. This is dropped by the Goblins who work in the Deadmines, in Westfall. This is in the instance however, and quite far down, so you'll need to get a posse together, because you won't be able to get down there yourself. Once you hit the goblins, you should get your lumber on the first drop. Next up is, an ore shipment, stolen by the ogres in Loch Modan. Before heading off over there, you'll need to talk to a dwarf in Thelsamar, though I forget what his name is. He'll send you over to the Ogres to get his Ore back. If you head over there, you can most likely do it by yourself, unless you want to head deep into the camp on another quest, I know for a fact the leader of the Ogre's is called Chok'sul and he's a quest objective, and quite a hard one. If you want to do this, take a group of mates, or local players who will doubtless be glad of your leadership. The Ore shipment is in pretty much the middle of the outside section of the Ogre camp, and they usually wander around in ones and can be easily done over by themselves without the need for help from others. Play it by ear. The next place I went was BlackFathom Deeps. At this point, you have to remember to talk to Thundris in Auberdine. If you don't, the gem won't drop from the Naga. This is highly annoying. I should point out I did these last 2 items at about level 29. Blackfathom is located in the Northwest corner of Ashenvale which is south of Darkshore. To get here you'll have to go to Menethil Harbour in the Wetlands, which is north of Loch Modan, and then get a boat to the other continent Kalimdor. Convieniently, the boat will drop you off in Auberdine, so you can see Thundris, and then make your way to BlackFathom. I just about managed to solo the evil bastards who live down BlackFathom Deeps at this level, so if your trying this earlier than that you may want to take some friends. There are 2 types of enemy down here, the Satyrs and the Naga. The Satyrs are demons with the traditional horns and what not, and come in fighter and rogue flavours. They are level 19 - 21 elites, so if you are soloing, try to take them on their own. If you get into trouble, whack on Divine Protection and leggit back to the water where you came in. The Naga are kind of corrupt mermaid types, like the ones just outside BlackFathom, but harder, these are approx. the same level as the Satyrs, so try and take em individually, or if not, kill one of em, DP (Divine Protection) and run. They mainly use frost magic, but they also have heals, so save your Hammer of Justice for when they start to do their healing spells (look for the yellow light on their hands). These are the enemies who drop the gem your after, though I had to kill 6 or 7 of them before I got the drop. Also, the enemies respawn in this place, so be careful not to get done over from behind. When you've got the gem, head back to Auberdine and give it to Thundris, who'll fix it for you, and get a boat back to Menethil. Next stop Shadowfang Keep, in Silverpine Forest. Bring some friends. Preferably a few of them. Right, Shadowfang keep is located in Silverpine Forest, which is just south of the undead capital of Undercity. If you haven't explored much (like me) then you most likely nearest place you've been will be the Wetlands. From here, head north into the Arathi Highlands, remembering to stop at Refuge Pointe to get the flighpath from the Gryphon master. From here follow the road west into the Hillsbrad foothills. Here you'll want to stop at Southshore to pick up the flight path, and then continue west into Silverpine forest. Thankfully, when you get there Shadowfang keep is nicely signposted all the way, so just follow the signs. As a side note, if your on a PvP server, this may end up being a bloody hard journey for you. All the places you have just been through are contested territories, and Silverpine is absolutely full of Undead players, so do it late at night or early in the morning to avoid most players. When you reach Shadowfang keep you'll notice that there is no before section to the instance, its straight into the glowy portal. Now, I tried this at level 29 and the first time round I made it a fair distance, but there's a problem. At one point in the level you'll need to be able to kill 3 level 18-19 elites as well as a level 20 elite who's their boss. Now if your doing this alone, your gonna have to be pretty high level, and then your reward isn't going to be as good if you've already got a better weapon. So get some mates together, and head there. The instance is a very linear affair, follow the stairs, kill the jailor, free the sorcerer, get him to unlock the door to the courtyard, head for the stables. The courtyard is absolutely crawling with various types of bad elite monsters, so be careful not to pull loads of them and get your party killed. At the far end of the courtyard is a stable (filled with bloody meat) and inside you'll find Jordan's Smithing Hammer on top of a crate. Grab it, thank your friends and head for the exit, or use your hearthstone to get out of there. You've got everything, so head for the gates of Ironforge and give Jordan the ingreidients and wait for him to make you your hammer. Depending on what level you get this will depend on how good it is, but I got it at nearly lvl 30 and its still easily the best weapon. Best of luck, fellow Paladins. May the light be with you. ------------ Further Tips ------------ When I hit about level 35 I ground to a bit of a halt, I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to be questing. At this point I was wandering around the Arathi Highlands with a whole bunch of level 38-39 quests, involving elites, and anytime me and a friend tried it we got a bloody good kicking. It was clearly time to find somewhere else to do some questing. You have a couple of choices at this point, the best of which is to head to StrangleThorn Vale. This place is south of the Duskwood and is full of 30 - 40 enemies. Great place to quest, its absolutely choc-a-bloc with quest givers, and it even has its own mixed faction town, Booty Bay at the far south of the map. Between the Rebel Camp in the north, Nesingways Expedition slighty to the south and Booty Bay, you should be able to fill your quest log up with worthwhile quests. You may notice that many of the humanoid enemies in this place drop pages from a book called "The Green Hills of Stranglethorn". Keep hold of these you have to collect 15 different pages for one of the quests in Nesingways expedition, and you can sell replica pages to other players for a decent wedge of cash. If you have trouble finding a certain page, then I recommend a trip to the auction house in IF and pick up the offending pages there. They should only cost you about 10s each, and the quest reward included a pair of plate boots for me, and they were well worth getting. Your other option is too bum around Arathi grinding and looking to get into a higher level group to get your quests done, or you could head to the Badlands. Some of the wildlife here is only level 36-37, so you should be able to take them, and there are a few people around offering reasonably low level quests. Be warned, If your on a PvP server, there are plenty of both Horde and Alliance players here, its where the Uldaman dungeon is located, as well as being one of the better places to get items for Darkmoon Faire quests, so be careful. At level 40 you'll learn how to use plate armour and you'll get a free mount. The free mount is a good thing, because chances are you'll only have maybe 1 piece of plate, and the next few bits are pretty few and far between. If you've got about 10 gold to spare (you should have by now), then nip to the nearest AH and go on a bit of a spending spree. Remember to only buy plate around the 40/41 area, otherwise you'll be ages before you can use it. I'm level 41 now, and with an armour rating of 4500, I can take a hell of a kicking. Most of the plate will have similar stats to your mail, unless you've gone out of your way to collect a cracking set of mail armour like the Scarlet Crusade Armour, in which case it might be an idea to wait a few levels before migrating to plate. If not, then go snap some up at your local AH, and see if you can get at least a reasonable matching set. If you've been working hard on your blacksmithing, then you might even be able to make yourself some stuff. I had a friend called Llobo make me a set Ornate Mithril Pants, and they're excellent, and I'm told they can come as a set. So, make your decision based on what you have to play with, and get hard. As for your free mount, there isn't even a quest involved, you just have to go to your local Paladin quest giver and he'll give you your free horsey. Feel free to lord it over the level 38 - 39 players and the level 40's who are saving hard, just so they can get a horse without any barding. The fools. --------------------- 8. Skills and Talents --------------------- I'm not gonna reproduce the reams of info on the net in this guide, but I will tell you a few of my favourite skills and talents and why I like them. They've been pretty good for me, and I hope they work for you too. You have to bear in mind that I'm only level 30, so I haven't seen all the skills, so I'll update this as I go. ------ Skills ------ Blessing of Might This is my standard 5 minute blessing that i usually use. It adds a fair amount to your attack power and if you plan to be spending most of your time hitting people, thats a good thing. In a party, if your the primary healer you might want to give yourself Blessing of Wisdom to beef up your mana, but until you get the Blessing of Kings, this will be an excellent staple blessing for you and your party. Always cast it on other warrior's, rogues's and other melee characters, including Hunter's pets. They'll love you for it. Blessing of Wisdom Not a great skill for you, but brilliant if your in a party that has magic users. It adds 10 mana every 5 seconds making the mana regeneration rate for whoever has it cast on them much better. Give it to Warlocks, Priests, Mages and Druids who are casting. They'll be very happy and will most likely keep you buffed in return. Hammer of Justice I love this skill for 3 reasons, its instant cast, which means it'll go off straight away, even in the middle of a fight. It stops the casting of spells, so if you see an enemy spell caster trying to cast something, run up to them and slap em with this bad boy. Not only does their spell fail, but they're stunned for a number of seconds. Thirdly, its a great way to get away from a fight going badly, or buy yourself some time. Say 2 monsters are wailing on you, and your having trouble getting your Holy Light spell off. Stun one of them and your bound to get it cast. Or say you got into a fight with an enemy who's giving you a good kicking. Stun him, turn around and leggit to safety. Then come back with mates, and give him a damn good pasting. Devotion Aura This is by far the best aura I have at the moment. It gives me and everyone else in my party 275 extra armour (its on Rank 3, I think). If your soloing, then this is easily the best aura to keep you alive. If theres more than one Paladin in a group, work out which of you has the best devotion aura and have him use it. Then use another aura. Aura of Retribution is always a good choice (it deals 5 holy damage to any monster that hits any member of your party), or if you have a large amount of spellcasters in your group then Aura of Concentration is a fairly safe bet (it reduces the chance of a spell being interrupted by 35%). Holy Light Easily the best healing spell you'll ever have. It takes a little while to cast, but it heals an awful lot of health when you first get it, though when you near the next rank you'll find its not healing as much health as it used to. This is because as you level up, the skill doesn't, therefore as your health increases the amount healed by the spell doesn't. But, as soon as you get a new rank of this, all is forgiven as you can heal yourself from nearly empty to nearly full in 3.5 secs. Brill. Seal of Command The single best seal in the entire game, no contest, and if you use your talents sensibly you can have it at lvl 20, as well. Like I said, you get this skill by spending talent points and you have to put 10 of them into the Retribution, before you can get this one. On the plus side, it puts your damage potential through the roof. Basically, it gives you an oppurtunity to deal double damage. In my experience, it hits once every 3 or 4 times, but when it does, woah! At the moment, I tend to hit for 90 - 110 damage per hit with my one handed sword, the [Cruel Barb]. When this thing comes off I can hit for 130 - 150 (thats 260 - 300 on a critical) and then straight after a similar amount of Holy damage. Thats nearly 600 damage. The best I remember hitting is when i hit for 220 regular and 306 holy damage. The amount of killing you can do with this, is just shocking, so get it and be a happy defender of the peace. There is nothing better in this game than when 2 or 3 of these come off in a row. People will look at you in a whole new way. You'll be plodding along happily slaying people, and then suddenly everyone within a few feet of you will be dead. This works especially well in PvP when you suddenly hit for 4 times your normal damage and your opponent starts to panic. Purify Purify is a very handy skill when you hit the Westfall/ Loch Modan type area. In these places you can get some serious diseases and poisons, that can do a lot of damage or give you a lot of downtime while you wait to get your stats back up. With Purify you'll never have this problem, and you'll be able to help others out as well. Its always useful to have in a group, as you want your groupmates working at full capacity. It also costs practically no mana, which is handy. Unfortunately it doesn't cure ressurection sickness. Redemption You get this as a reward for your first class quest. It is of course a ressurection spell, and even though you'll never use it on yourself, it is a very handy spell. As a rezzer, you earn yourself a special place in the group, because if you die, and theres no other rezzer in the group, then they're screwed, especially if your in an instance. Because of this, special precautions will usually be taken to prevent your death, including getting soulstones from the warlock and other characters taking aggro for you, so you can swing away and not die. Make sure your good with it though, if there are still enemies around rez your tank first, this will usually be a warrior, so he can protect you while you rez the rest of the group safely. Seal of Justice There is a skill out there called Seal of Justice, and whilst the affect of the actual seal escapes me, the affect of the judement is very handy. If you don't know, a judgement incurs a penalty on the enemy based on what seal your using when you choose to judge them. They all do different things, I think SoC causes 48 damage everytime an enemy is stunned, but Seal of Justice has a very handy effect. When used as a judgement, it prevents enemies from running away for 30 secs. As you can imagine, in a very busy place this is pretty handy, especially if you don't want some damn fool enemy running backwards and aggroing 6 of his mates. This kind of thing causes wipes, so keep a special place on your quickbar for Seal of Justice, and Judgement, and make sure to put your SoC back on afterwards. Divine Protection This skill will make you invulnerable for a number of seconds depending on the rank. It has quite a cooldown on it (5 mins, I think), and you can't hit people while using it. So what use is it? Best thing to do, is cast it, and then heal yourself a couple of times. This is one of the most infuriating things that can happen in PVP and you'll likely get a lot of crap from horde players. Feel free to tell them where to shove it, as you stove their heads in for the Light. Watch out for experienced players though. They'll use this oppurtunity to debuff you or cast fear on you so you can't cast your heals, and many will take this oppurtunity to heal themselves or run away if their in trouble. Consecration Finally, a AoE spell (Area of Effect). This will hit everyone within about 10 ft for 120 Holy damage over 8 seconds. It is also easily your prettiest spell so far, so use it to impress new players. If you get ganged up on by a group of monsters this is very handy, as it does a reasonable amount of damage, and you don't even have to hit people to get it. The cooldown is only 8 secs, which is useful, though the problem is the amount of mana it uses, 235. This is about a quarter of my mana at the moment, so I don't use it that often in a single fight. You'll need to put 20 talent points into the Retribution tree to get this skill (much like Seal of Command), but it is well worth it. Just be careful not to aggro extra monsters when using it, especially if your in a crowd of neutral monsters and you only plan on fighting them one at a time. This is also a good spell to use in a party, wander up to your front line and fire it off a couple of times to increase the damage speed. Again, be careful not to get too much aggro on yourself. Blessing Of Protection First things first, you can use blessing of protection on yourself. It'll replace your current blessing, and it will also only block against physical damage, NOT magical damage, so its no use if your taking a kicking from a spellcaster. As for stuff you can do whilst under the influence, you can cast all your usual spells, on yourself and allies, but you can't hit people or cast offensive spells. You'll also lose all your aggro, so look out for the enemies running off to hit your cloth wearers if your in a group. At my level of the spell it lasts for 10 seconds which is plenty of time to get off a couple of holy lights, which should put you back to near enough full health. Have fun! Thanks to Jeff and various others for this info. Divine Shield Divine Shield is a lot like Divine Protection, but its a lot better, its even on the same timer, so as soon as you get it, you should replace your use of Divine Protection with this bad boy. For a start it lasts 10 secs, which is longer than DP, and you can hit people and cast offensive spells whilst its on. These 2 things make it the best invulnerability spell you've got and it should definitely be used whenever its needed. You also have plenty of time to knock off a couple of Holy Lights if you need healing so have fun with this. ------ Talents ------- Improved Blessing of Might This improves the attack bonus you get from your blessing of might. If you put 5 points into it you get a 20% bonus, which isn't to be sneezed at, especially as you'll use this blessing quite a lot. Even at 4% a point its a pretty good deal, bearing in mind that this will help you deal a fair amount of extra damage. As a bonus, its on the retribution tree in the talents, so it counts towards the 10 points you have to put in it to get Seal of Command. Woooo. Two Handed Weapon Specialization This add 1% per point to the damage of your 2-handed weapons. This doesn't sound like much, but when you hit 5% you can see it making a difference. 2-handed weapons are very handy throughout the game, especially when you get your specialist weapon, [Verigans Fist] from one of your Paladin quest. This is even more useful when you start to get towards the end of the game, and your doing more damage, and therefore getting a bigger bonus. Spiritual Focus This isn't in the Retribution tree, but it is still a very handy talent once you've got your Seal of Command. Basically, each time you put a point in it, you get a chance not to be interrupted by an enemy hitting you when you use Holy Light or Flash of Light (Like Holy Light, but quicker and less potent). Once you stick 5 points in it you'll get a 70% chance not to be delayed when casting. This means 7 out of 10 hits aren't gonna slow up your healing, which is handy. Improved Devotion Aura Each point invested in this will give a 5% cumulative bonus to the amount of armour your Devotion Aura gives you and your party. This is, of course, quite handy as it is your staple aura for soloing and very useful for party play. My Devotion Aura gives me 275 armour at the moment, but if I sank 5 points into this it would be up to 344 armour. Which is nice. Vengeance This is a personal favourite of mine. With 5 points in it, it gives you a 15% bonus to your physical and holy damage, after you deal a critical hit. If you start off a fight with a crit, this means for the next 8 secs, you do 15% more damage on both your hits if your using Seal of Command. Thats an extra 30% damage, which is an extra hit every 3 strikes. Which is bloody useful. Conviction Each point in this skill gives you an extra 1% chance of getting a critical hit, so with 5 points in it you get an extra 5%. This doesn't sound like much, but its an extra crit every 20 hits or so. So if you usually hit 2 crits per 20 hits this will bump it up to 3. Again this doesn't sound like very much, but its pretty handy. Aside from this, you'll need to have 5 points in Vengeance to get this, so you'll want as many critical hits as you can get. Critical hits equal more damage. More crits equals more damage. More crits equals good. Work it out from that. -------------- 9. Professions -------------- The Obvious Choice The way I see it, there are only 2 professions worth going for. Mining and Blacksmithing. The ability to make reasonable sets of mail armour at the start of the game is a godsend. While the others are wandering around wearing a vivid mix of leather, mail, cloth and lycra, you'll look pretty dashing in your matching set of copper gear, if a little orange. As you progress through the game you'll eventually find better stuff, dropped from monsters or as quest rewards. This is a fact of life, just because you made something doesn't make it too special, though in fairness, certain items will last you an age. I made my [Ironforge Breastplate] ages ago, but I'm still wearing it. But, equally I got my [Chausses of Westfall] pants ages ago as a quest item and I'm just getting good enough to consider replacing them with something homemade. As you make more stuff, your smithing skill will improve over time, and you'll be able to head back to your trainer and learn new stuff to make, as well as some of the rarer plans being dropped by hard monsters. Before a huge amount of time, you'll be able to make some decent quality stuff and flog it in the auction house to all the foolish people who went out and became enchanters. You'll find you have to make quite a lot of stuff to reach a high level of blacksmithing, and your best off flogging your early efforts to vendors as no one will buy them at the AH. But as soon as you start hitting the Ironforge Breastplate area consider going to the Ah to sell your wares. Your first concern though, should always be to level up your smithing skill by making new and difficult to make items. You'll soon find that you start needing more than just metal to make armour, before long you'll need various types of stone (you'll find these as you mine, and can convert them to grinding stones on your smithing screen), flux (you can buy this from trade vendors, its the only place you can get it, but its cheap), leather (trade with a leatherworker for a weapon or something, or failing that pick some up at the AH), and the worst to find, gems. Gems are rare drops on monsters and you can rarely get them from mining. Most likely, you'll probably have to buy them from the AH if you need a few, but a full on mining session can net you quite a few, though this could take hours. A quick word on mining. All you need to mine is a pick and a rock to hit it with. These rocks look, well, like rocks, but with chunks of ore sticking out of them. The first ones you'll see are the copper ones, so look for rocks with copper chunks sticking out. With your find ore skill, this is much easier as they appear on your mini-map as gold dots. Best place to look, fairly obviously, is down mines and caves. Whenever you get a chance, have a crack at them, as they'll increase your mining skill and provide you with raw materials. Be careful of monsters while mining though. If you see someone fighting monsters near an ore vein, they might be clearing the area to do some mining, so ask them if thats what they're doing, and if they are go off and find another vein. Stealing other peoples ore is frowned upon and a bad reputation can really screw you up later when you need to get in a group, and everyone thinks your a twat. There will be times, when your skill levels grind to a halt. At this point, its time for a large mining push. This basically involves putting aside a couple of hours, and going down some lower level mines and beating the hell outta some rocks. The problem here is you don't get copper in high level areas, just like you don't get mithril in low level areas. This means you may well have to go back to another area, and almost certainly earn no EXP for your monster killing efforts. I usually find this is a good time to help out new players. Say your back in Elwynn forest to get some copper. You've moved on to Redridge, and your well into the level 20 - 22 area. Killing level 6 - 8 Kobolds isn't going to be even a little bit challenging and the loot is going to be crap. Go onto the General or LookingForGroup channels and say your going mining and if anyone has any quests down any of the mines that they're welcome to join you. Mention your high level. Tell them the only catch is, they've got to let you have all the ore. If they agree, great have a blast killing really easy monsters and collecting ore. The warm fuzzy feeling you get from helping people is nice too. Remember a game is only as good as its community. If you don't believe me, try Neocron 2. What a bunch of bastards. Other Professions ----------------- Okay, so your not typical eh? Wanna buck the trend? You could make leather armour or cloth armour even, though you'd have practically no use for it. If you don't want to be a Miner/Smithy, there are a couple of other reasonable paths. You could take up Alchemy/Herbalism and make potions for yourself, though I've never tried this, it could be good. Personally, I'm not very big on potions, though I know some players who swear by them. There is one choice that does make some sense, not only to your stuff, but to your playing style. If you pick Engineering, you'll suddenly find yourself with a ranged attack at last. Thats right, if you take up engineering you'll find yourself able to lob some dynamite around, though I've only just started experimenting with Engineering with my Gnome Rogue but as soon as I can make some more stuff, I'll let you know what it does and if its any good. You'll also probably wanna take Mining with Engineering as it needs quite a lot of metal parts, and more importantly rock parts, and they are very hard to obtain outside mining, as no-one really drops em, and people don't bother selling them on the AH, especially the earlier ones. Your other obvious choice is to go the path of the almighty gold. Make money, lots of money. Take a couple of gathering professions, say Skinning and Herbalism, and skin every beast, and pick every plant, then flog the lot at the AH. You will net a fortune doing this, but you'll probably end up using it all to buy new armour and weapons. The other problem is with Skinning specifically. Most of the time, especially at the start of the game, you'll be skinning [Ruined Leather Scraps]. You can turn 3 of these into 1 [Light Leather], but unfortunately, only if you've got Leatherworking. So, if you really want to make a killing, take Herbalism and Mining. I know I would, if I was a soulless capatalist (I am working on becoming one, but I'm too nice ;)). ------------- 10. Equipment ------------- ------ Armour ------ For the first 40 levels you'll be using mainly mail armour. It is that much better than leather and cloth, and early on in the game there's no good reason to wear a piece of cloth armour over a piece of mail armour. Even if the other armour offers a stat or other bonus, you'll be much better off with the mail armour. As you go on, you'll find the different types of armour will crop up as drops at about the same rate, so you should never feel a piece of cloth or leather armour is better than your current piece of mail. When you hit level 40, you'll be able to purchase the plate skill. This will allow you to wear plate armour, which is of course the single best type of armour in the game. However, I'm pretty sure its dropped by only the highest level monsters, but you can buy yourself a set, either from a vendor or from the auction house. It will however, be worth it, as plate armour is well hard. Use the money you save on buying a mount to finance your plate needs, so don't go wasting your money and remember to save a bit at least. ------- Weapons ------- Well here is where your real choice lies. If your going for tradition then the obvious choice is the two-handed hammer, the symbol of the Paladin and the Order of Light. They also hit pretty hard, and look pretty cool. You can of course, go off to Stormwind and learn to fight with both types of Swords and Axes. In my opinion, its worth learning all the weapon styles, and keeping them up to date in training, because you never know when your gonna come across a bloody brilliant 2-handed axe, and then find you can't use it. Bearing this in mind, save up some money, go to Stormwind and train yourself up. You'll find your new skill will be pretty woeful, so don't expect to go straight back to what you were doing before, head back to your starting area and help some noobs while getting your skill up. When your about 20 below your maximum skill level (thats about 4 actual levels below), you should be getting back to the point where you can do enough damage to head back to your previous callings, remember if you get in big trouble you can always switch back to your old weapon. Remember to keep training your skills every level, or you'll end up finding a great sword and hitting like a pansy because your skill is too low. ------- Shields ------- When tanking the shield will be your best friend, as it adds a huge amount to your armour class. The balance here is the difference in damage between 1-handed and 2-handed varients of weapons. To use a shield, you can only have a 1-handed weapon equppied, so you'll be doing much less damage. Fortunately, I have a great one handed sword, the [Cruel Barb] which does 15.5 DPS, whereas my current 2-handed sword [Executioners Blade] only does 15.9 DPS, which ain't a huge amount more. With this in mind I almost always use my 1-handed sword and my shield [Bastion of Stormwind]. The only time I currently use my 2-handed sword is when I want to train it, though it still hits plenty hard, so I don't have to go back to easier enemies to train. So in conclusion, go with whatever you feel is your best weapon. Hammers are traditional and at level 20, you get a quest for a superb 25.9 DPS 2-handed hammer called [Verigans Fist]. Bear this in mind when your training your skills. But equally, if you really want to use a sword, then no-ones gonna hold it against you. As a side note, bear in mind that you can't learn any ranged weapons, as the Order of Light consider ranged combat to be without honour. The first ranged skill you get is Exorcise at level 20, and that only works on the undead. Don't worry about this too much, ranged weapons only cause trouble anyway. -------------------------- 11. General Tips and Hints -------------------------- Well, this section is about general in game stuff. Just some things, useful to all classes, that I've picked up whilst playing this stupidly brilliant game. 1. Talk to everyone, and I mean everyone, you can. Quests for places in some zones have to be gotten from other places. Good examples are the Deadmines, because their are 2 quests for this place in Stormwind, an Inn in the Dwarf Quarter to be precise. The quests for the Stockades are spread all over the damn place, including Redridge and Darkshire. 2. Join a guild as soon as you can. Having a ready source of info about the game world, professions, and everything else is really very handy. If you decide the guild isn't for you, you're free to leave at any time, by typing /gquit into the chat bar. If you do leave, don't just suddenly go missing. Thank whoevers online for their help and say goodbye to everybody, and explain your reasons for quitting. If its something they've done, I'm sure they'll appreciate knowing why you don't want to be a member anymore. Plus, if you part on good terms and come across them later in your WoW life they'll be more willing to help you if you didn't tell them to fist themselves a couple of weeks previously. 3. Etiquette is very, very important. There is nothing more annoying than a player who doesn't play fair when it comes to looting and working in a party. First things first, Party Dynamics. Your party leader should be a combonation of your fastest typer and your most experienced member. This is not necessarily the highest level player, as you could have a lower level player with 3 level 60 alts, who knows a lot more about the game and the area you are in than you do. Once you've decided on your party leader, pay attention to him. Let him decide the puller, healer and damage dealers of the group. If you disagree with something he says, then tell him, but be prepared to justify your arguement. If he says stop, then stop. If you are the group leader, then be prepared to lay down the law. When people are doing well, tell them. A little praise goes a long way. In the same vain, if someone is doing something wrong, tell them and ask them not too. If they persist, tell them they have one last chance before you kick them from the group. If they still don't stop, then kick them and ignore them if they bitch. You warned them already, they should have listened. There is also a case for kicking people immediately, if they do something grossly silly. I remember one case when me and a group were down the deadmines, and our parties warlock suddenly sent her VoidWalker (a large dark blue blob of nastiness that sometimes follow Warlocks around) straight across the floor of the Foundry (an area filled with goblins) picking up about 10 other gobbos and getting the whole party wiped out.This is patently stupid behaviour and she deserved to be kicked off the group. Other points if your the group leader is to give clear instructions. Don't give all your instructions in anagrams (OOM = Out of Mana, INC = Incoming!, etc) if some of the group don't understand them. If you absolutely have to speak in code, make sure everyone knows what that means, and more importantly, what it means to them. If you use a healing anagram, (such as INH which stands for I Need Healing) make sure your priest/paladin/druid knows what your talking about. Another point is to know whats coming. If your down the deadmines, for instance, you should know that every time you kill a mini boss, a patrol of 3 elite defias will spawn some distance behind you and make their way down. This is a right pain in the ass, especially if everyones running around looting, trading, doing train impressions and telling jokes. The last thing you need is for your priest to get mobbed by 3 defias and killed, leaving you with no rezzer. Right, looting rules. When it comes to looting, you've got 3 real options, and here they are. A. Group loot. Everyone takes it in turns and when a magic item comes up people are allowed to roll for it. Rolling for it involves the computer coming up with a random number between 1 - 100. The person with the highest number wins the item. Now this is a fairly good way of deciding who gets what, but it does have its setbacks. For a start, if everyone rolls on everything, you'll get a lot of mages getting mail armour and warriors getting cloth armour they have no intention of using. This is where the "v and n" rule comes in. When you find a magic item, check the details. If you need the item (i.e. it will increase your armour or weapon damage or stats) then type n. Bear in mind that people can check your equipment, using the inspect command, so they can tell if you have no intention of using the items you say you need. So if you don't need it, don't say that you do. This is a surefire way of getting kicked from a group and getting a bad reputation. One last point, if your an enchanter, and you plan to disenchant an item, that doesn't count as needing it. If you don't need the item or you plan to disenchant it type v. This stands for Vendor, as you intend to sell it, give it away or disenchant it. Once everyone has typed "v or n" then its time to roll. If one or more people have typed n then let them roll, and you should pass on the item. If you don't need it, but someone else does, don't roll. If you do this, you'll get a lot of respect back when you find you need something. If everyone types v for it, then all roll for it. This way, people get what they need, and everyone gets a fair share of the loot that no one really needs. If you have a load of money and your adventuring with a bunch of lower level characters, it might be worth passing on some items, as the lower level players will need them more. Just try to be courteous and nice to people. If you happen to be going to a dungeon on the plan of picking up a specific item then let your group know. If your straight up about going down the deadmines to pick up part of the Blackened Defias set of armour for your alt, then your group are gonna be a lot more understanding than if you tell them when you get there. Be prepared to make concessions to the leather wearers in the group if this is the case. B. Round Robin. Everyone takes it in turns to loot a corpse and they get to keep whatever is on the corpse. This is easily the fairest method of distributing loot, but people rarely get what they want. If your planning on just going down an instance to get money then this is probably your best bet for a fair distribution of the loot. Otherwise, stick to group loot and hope people are honest. C. Need Before Greed. This is a strange one really. Under this set of rules, you can only roll on stuff you can use. So, for example, you can only roll on one handed swords if you have the one handed sword skill. While this seems very sensible, there is a bit of a setback. For a start, while mages can only roll for cloth armour, Warriors, Paladins and other classes, can roll for any pieces of armour as they can use them all. As long as eveyone is sensible, this isn't too bad, but if you plan on distributing the loot evenly, especially the stuff that isn't needed by anyone, then this isn't going to cut it. Its not fair if most of the classes can't roll on mail armour even if no-one else needs it. This is okay, if you've got a ninja looter type spellcaster who is always rolling for mail items even if he doesn't need them and other people do. So basically, A is the best method of looting for most people, especially when using the "v and n" rules. The other methods have they're place, but they just simply aren't as good in a fair group. 4. Okay, heres an important one. Be nice to people. If you ask a question on the general channel don't say something like "Is Kor gem group drop", take some time to type it properly like "Does anyone know if the Kor Gem is a group drop or a single drop?" The little extra effort will mean your question is more likely to be answered. If people do answer you, make sure to say thank you to each of them. Feel free to buff anyone who happens to pass you. If someone needs a hand, help them. Take some time to go to the Newbie areas and help new players out if they're having problems. If you need a reason to help them consider doing some mining or whatever while your there. Just generally be nice to people. If someone wants help, considerhelping them, even if your busy. You can make your server a better place to play, and your example will certianly inspire others. 5. Murlocs are evil bastard fish things and should be killed as much as possible. 6. Don't expect to people to help you if you don't ask nicely. Higher level players are trying to level up too, and if you say "You, help me now" don't expect a reply let alone any help. Ask nicely, and you've got a much better chance of help, or at the very least an apology and reason why they can't help you. 7. If you can't find the info you need in game, try the net. Gamefaqs.com has a variety of good guides (including this one) and failing that www.thottbot.com will certainly be able to help. Thottbot is an internet search page devoted entirely to World of Warcraft. If you need to know anything about any quest or item, then head there and you'll find a variety of info taken directly from the game and also a discussion page on every item and quest. Most of these are full of morons arguing over whether Horde or Alliance are better, but there's also plenty of handy info, so skip past the fools who write such things and find the sensible info. A good rule is, iF iTs WrItTEn LiKE tHiS, its probably a pile of crap, so don't read it. 8. Take up Duelling. Duelling is fun and there is nothing to lose when doing so, so knock yourself out. Only ask for and accept duels from people within 5 levels of you. If a level 25 player challenges you at level 15, don't bother fighting him, you won't win, and he's just looking to make you feel stupid. Of course, if a player a lot lower than you challenges you, feel free to wail on him, though you may want to ask him if he's sure he wants to do this. Me and my guild are planning to start holding regular duelling contests in Goldshire with prizes and everything. Such things should be encouraged, as they foster a sense fun and community. If someone gets pissy with you because you won a duel, just ignore them or comment on their poor losing qualities. 9. Have fun. This is the most important rule. ----------------------- 12. Mini Instance Guide ----------------------- Okay, time to write some stuff about instances. First off, some advice. Pay attention now. At level 40 you will be able to solo the Deadmines, but until then your gonna need a group. If you can, try and get a group of people you've enjoyed working with before. There's nothing like a good group who know what they're doing. Next thing, know your role. Not a catchphrase from a crap wrestling series, but an excellent piece of advice. If your group is heavy on warriors and rogues, your gonna need to be the healer, whereas if your group is big on Cloth wearers, your gonna have to be the tank for them. Obviously feel free to freelance a bit when required, but if you need to be a healer, then don't go wasting your mana on consecrating every few seconds. Your other main concern should be keeping your entire party buffed, Wisdom on the Mages, Warlocks, Priests and maybe the Druids, as long as there not being a Bear or Cat, in which case give them Might like the rest. The Deadmines are a fairly straightforward instance, you start at one end, kill everything you see, and you come out the other end. Here's a few tips to help you through. Make sure you don't pull too many enemies at once. As I discovered 6 enemies can be pretty close to deadly, even to a level 40 character if you end up with all of them at once. Leave the pulling to someone with a ranged attack, preferably a warrior with a gun or bow. If you know your gonna get a load of enemies, have a rogue sap one or the mage polymorph one, or both if you need it. These 2 enemies will be out of the fight for the next 25-30 seconds as long as you don't damage them in any way. This should be plenty of time to take the other enemies and then get onto the unconcious ones. Using this method should easily get you most of the way through the mines. There are a few things to watch out for. After each boss, there is a small patrol of people who come from behind you, numbering around the 2 or 3 area they are elites, so be careful of these and don't just run on after each boss fight, or these people will catch up with you, and give you 3 more elite things to worry about. So be Careful. The first boss is an ogre called Rhank'Zor. He's you standard hit people until they die type character, so just get his aggro onto a warrior, and have everyone lay into him and he'll go down easy, just make sure your healer is paying attention to the health of whoever he's wailing on. If you pull him from outside the room, your much less likely to aggro his friends, so have someone shoot him when he's furthest from his friends, and then deal with them when your finished with him. The next boss is Sneed's Shredder. As opposed to dealing with him first, you'll be wanting to deal with all the goblins in the room first. Be careful not to accidentally pull the shredder, as he'll most likely bring all the goblins with him and your probably not gonna survive that. As soon as your done with the goblins, lay into the Shredder with everything you've got and bear in mind, when the shredder is dead, Sneed jumps out and has a go at you too. Neither of them should be a problem for a well organised party, remember the patrol coming from behind though. The next area is the foundry and a bad pull here can be a total wipe for the group, so be very careful, and make sure you kill off the goblins before they have a chance to run from you. When you reach the bottom, do your best to thin out the goblin numbers with well placed pulls before you face Gilnid the Smelter and his two goblin friends. He shouldn't be too much hassle. Again, he's just a straightforward beat you up kinda guy. Again, watch for the patrol, but it takes them much longer to reach you as they have to walk down the foundry. There is a forge and anvil here as well, so if you need it, feel free to smelt your ore and make anything needed for the group. I remember having to make some dipstick some armour because he forgot to repair his armour before he came, and it broke half way down, the dumbass. After all the pirates, and what not you'll finally reach a chest and Mr.Smite the first mate. Now, this is quite a challenging fight for most people. Smite comes with 2 friends who are stealthed near the ramp to the ship. The most important thing in this fight is too kill the 2 rogue type enemies first, because twice in the fight, Smite will stun your entire party, while he changes his weaponry, and the last thing you need is 2 people beating on you with impunity whilst you stand there like a lemon. So kill them first and then lay into Smite with all you got. Keep an eye on everyones health, and you'll be fine. Onto the ship and the number of pirates per square inch increases, so be careful not to get a bad pull and have loads of them after you. There's a murloc on one side of the boat who drops a sweet one handed mace, or a wand, and sometimes a cat which is nice. His name is Cookie, and as long as you don't get any of the sailors involved at the same time he'll be a push over. Heading up the ship, you'll soon find a Captain Greenskin, who patrols the decks with a couple of pirates, so pull him when he's nearest to the ramp onto the boat, so to make sure he doesn't completely kick your ass by getting Van Cleef at the same time. After you finish off the captain its on to the main event. If you've found it pretty straightforward up to now, then you've got a pretty good chance of success, but if you struggled to get this far, its suddenly gonna get a lot harder. Van Cleef is not an easy fight, and to make matters worse, he comes with 2 friends, like Smite's and he calls 2 more when he's down to half health. With this in mind, its important to kill his 2 friends first, preferably while one of the group takes all of Van Cleefs aggro. Keep an eye on this chaps health, as Van Cleef hits pretty hard and often. Once your done with the first set of friends, wail on Van Cleef, with the designated healer keeping an eye on the health of whoevers getting the aggro. When the next 2 appear have most of the group peel off and deal with them, leaving the tank to take Van Cleef's aggro and the healer keeping a close eye on his health. The other 3 people should have no trouble wiping out the other 2 rogue types, and as soon as they have, have everyone jump back on Van Cleef. Once he's dead, make off with his stuff, get his head and make a dash for the exit. Deadmines done. Congratulations. ----------------- 13. Battlegrounds ----------------- Okay, y'all. This section is all about Battlegrounds. To those of you playing on PvP servers, you'll be well versed in beating each other up if your above level 20, though if your on a PvE server the most you've probably done is hurled some insults at some horde/alliance and thats about it. Thats where Battlegrounds come in. Its a place where Alliance and Horde can come to beat each other up and there's usually a pretty good reward for doing it. The other good side of Battlegrounds and PvP in General is Honour. Every time you kill a member of the opposite faction, who's around your level, you get an Honourable Kill. You get a number of honour points for your honourable kills, depending on your level, and the level of your victim. You don't have to strike the final blow, but you do have to be generally involved in the kill, though this can include healing one of the fighters, so don't worry if your a priest. Capturing flags, control points, and a variety of other activites can also accrue you Honour points. The more honour points you have, the higher your rank, which determines stuff you can buy from certain vendors around the world. The highest level lets you buy the best stuff, so its worth getting a good amount of honour points together, and besides, PvP is actually pretty fun when your not getting ganked by a level 60 when your only level 20. Battlegrounds (BG's from now on) are arranged into level tiers, so that both teams have similar level players on the field. In a recent patch Blizzard added a lower tier, so now levels 10-19 can have some fun along with the other tiers, that go up by 10 levels at a time. The tiers used to run 21-30, 31-40, etc, but they don't anymore, so don't get to level 30 then go, or you'll be fodder for the higher level players. Warsong Gulch ------------- Warsong Gulch is likely to be the first BG you go too, though you do have a choice, I would go here first. Its the easiest BG to do, as far as I know, and its a good place to start slaying the horde/alliance. This BG follows the basic rules of Capture the Flag, the popular FPS team based game type where you have to steal the other teams flag and bring it back to your base. Your flag has to be at your base to score a point, and you can return your flag by killing the man carrying the flag and right clicking on it. Players on the other team can pick it up as well, though this takes a touch longer, so you have a better chance of returning it than grabbing it, especially if the person killed was nearby their killer. The game runs to the first to 3 captures, and the winner gets an item from the BG which they can redeem for EXP and cash. Warsong is a 10 man a side match. The basic layout of Warsong is simple. There is a base at each end, one alliance and one horde, and there is a fairly large middle area in between the two which has to be negotiated. Basically, whoever controls the middle area has the best chance of winning. They have the best chance of stopping an enemy flag carrier, and the best chance of defending their own on the way back to their base. Here's a quick breakdown of, in my humble opinion, the best way to win Warsong. First things first. Get everyone on the side to get into a raid group. This makes communication much easier, and you can easily co-ordinate attacks and defense with your other team mates. Next thing, you should split up into 3 groups, 2 groups of 3 and 1 of 4. The first group of 3 should be the attack group. This should doubtless include a rogue, who is easily the best way to steal the flag. With the 2 skills, Sprint and Evasion, they have the best chance of getting the flag. Basically, they stealth in, wait for for their friends to start the fight, then steal the flag and hit these 2 skills. This lets them run faster and dodge better, which prevents them being wounded, and more importantly, slowed. An important point to make is that you can stealth whilst running with the flag, BUT you will be forced to drop it, so don't unless your miles from the nearest enemy and your going to give it to a fellow player, possibly one with more health, for a safer run back to your base. Another good choice for the attack team is a mage, because you want someone who can snare most of the opposition, tying them down, whilst your rogue friend runs like hell back to your base. Mages are perfect for this, as with the spell Frost Nova they can stop most, if not all the opposition from following the flag carrier. Another good plan is to have the mage Polymorph one of the opposition and maybe, if your feeling hopeful you can have a rogue Sap one of them too. If this is the Flag grabbing rogue, he will likely be spotted, so be careful to co-ordinate your attack carefully. If your on the Horde side, there is no better choice for your flag carrier than a Shaman. With their ghost wolf spell, they can turn stealthy and quick, and keep hold of the flag making them the obvious choice for the flag runs, even over any rogues you may have going spare. Other good choices for the attack team are Priests (Power Word: Shield is always handy when running for it), Paladins (ditto, Blessing of Protection), and Hunters especially if they can set up some well placed Freeze traps. Next 3 man team is the defense team. This should be made up of people who are good at escaping stuns (like Paladins) and any Gnomes, using their racial skill, Escape artist. You should also have people who can dish out plenty of their own stuns. Rogues with gouge are good for this, or hiding near the exits ready to use kidney punch. Other good examples are again Mages, Paladins (Hammer of Justice has a pretty long range for a melee skill), and Druids are excellent for running down escaping flag carriers with their Cat form. The defense team should always follow the flag, the idea being to trap the enemy flag carrier between the defenders and the middle group. The 4 man group should be the middle group, who can be made up of anyone and everyone. This group will be doing a lot of fighting, and ideally they should stick together and should certainly have a healer with them to keep them fighting fit most of the time. Their job is to intercept attacks before they hit the defense team and if not totally stop them, then certainly slow them down, provide a warning, including numbers and classes coming and thin out the numbers for the defense team. If there's a choice then they should target the most effective flag carriers, i.e. Rogues and Shamans, first and then the healers. Druids are also reasonable flag carriers, so feel free to smack them around a bit as well. If you have Rogues and Mages, remember to use Sap and Poly if you can, as the less people in the fight the more likely you are to win and the quicker you can finish it. Arathi Basin ------------ Arathi is a bit different to Warsong, mainly in game type. This map is more like the Battlefield series of games, or possibly the domination game type from the Unreal series of games. Your basic job is too capture control points on the map and hold them for as long as possible. The longer you hold them, the more resource points you get the quicker you win. The objective of this map is too reach 2000 resource points. There are 5 control points and to hold them you have to go up to the flags and right click on them. It takes a little while to capture the point, so some kind of defense is going to be needed, even if the enemy are a while away, as this process takes about a minute. Please note, you only have to start the process, you can fight whilst its going on and you don't have too stand still next to the flag for the whole minute, that would just suck. Both teams have a base at each end of the map, and the 5 control points are in the middle area. All the control points have their own graveyards, so you'll respawn at your nearest control point, and failing that back at your base. Arathi is a 20 man a side match. I remain somewhat torn about the tactics to use on Arathi. Many people swear the best thing to do is head straight for the Blacksmith (the middle control point) and then try and run things from there, and in fairness it is a good plan. Certainly it gives you an excellent base for launching your attacks and a good place for everyone to respawn if push comes to shove. The danger of this approach, is that the enemy know exactly where to find you once they see the Blacksmith control point turn your color. A massed attack has a very good chance of dislodging you, especially if you've sent half your team off to capture the other control points. I find the better tactic is to have your entire team roll over the map taking what they can and leaving a couple of people in defense to act as a warning system and to slow up any attacks on your bases until the rest of your team can get there. This way, you will almost always have the benefit of numbers and thats the surest way to win a fight. If anyone has any tactics relating to Arathi, please feel free to mail em to me, as I've only played this map with the one character. --------------- 14. Thank You's --------------- First, thank you to Blizzard for not only this game, but their many others. Diablo 2 is still one of the best RPG's available on the PC, and this game only furthers their reputation as a great developer. Bravo. Second, Thank you to everyone in my Guild, Light of Dawn, on the Shadowsong server. You know who you are. ***LoD is now gone. RIP.*** I'd like to thank my new guild, the Red Army. They haven't been any help on the guide, but they are a nice bunch. Also many thanks to Jason Tong who wrote the Talent and Race FAQ's on GameFAQs.com which I referenced whilst writing this guide. Nice job mate. Next up, thanks to my mate Bert who lent me his laptop to write this on. Find him in game as a player called Tepik (Shadowsong Server, as well) and give him some gold. He'll need it, he doesn't get a free mount at lvl 40. HAHAHA. Thanks much to my mate Pete who lets me play WoW on his computer when mine packs in. This is a fairly regular occurence. Also find him on the Shadowsong server as a Night Elf Rogue called Paetre. Give him money, he deserves some. Thanks to all the people on my friends list in game for their input and help on this guide. Llobo in particular, for being no help at all, but amusing all the same. Bob McForman for info regarding Stoneform, Holy Strikes new name, and a few other bits and bobs. (No pun intended). Adam Rees for a big long list of stuff on Professions. Nice one mate, very good job. Dupre of Terenas for a few pieces of info. He's also a pally, so he's clearly smart and handsome. Probably. Miguel who sent me a long list of various pointers that were very handy if not particularly relevant. Good job mate. Heres a list of people who got my question right (though any quiz that involves using the internet is probably not gonna be too hard). Colton Shott Tylor Speas-Norgard Krzysztof Seliga Shadowolf of Eonar Tigerpaw Dustin Hotz Miguel Gromal of Staghelm Dave Stage Rix Dragan Benji --------------------- 15. Legal Mumbo Jumbo --------------------- This document is copyrighted by me Grant Newby as of 06/07/05. Blizzard, World of Warcraft and any associated trademarks are registered trademarks of the Blizzard corporation. This guide is for personal use only, and any other use is a breach of copyright. So no putting it on public display in the Louvre. Anyone wanting to host a copy of this will need to seek my permission (my e-Mail is grantnewby88@hotmail.com), and must agree to host the whole thing in its intirety, and unedited. Except for the spelling mistakes. Sites which have permission to use this guide: www.Gamefaqs.com www.onlinegametrader.net/wow/ www.gamesxtreme.net www.DLH.net www.Gamershell.com www.GamersTemple.com If you see any other sites using this guide, let me know, so I can sue them. A lot. Peace out. Thank you all, and good night. ------------------------------ Extra Special Quiz Section!!!! ------------------------------ Special mention in the guide to those who answer the question right. Q. What is the name of the expansion pack for Diablo 2? Okay, so many people got this question right, I've decided to write another, and this time its not so easy. Q. I have a friend who plays under the alias CMOTDibbler. What is this a reference too? Best of luck.