Probably the most popular post on this site to date is the Minimum Stats for Karazhan post, re-posted from World of Matticus, which aims to suggest minimum stats that people should be aiming for before entering Karazhan. I started expanding the post to also include links to suggested gear that can be accumulated (without raiding) to help achieve these stats.

The entire post has started to become a little cluttered, especially for classes like druids with multiple specs, so I’ve decided to divide it into two separate posts. The minimum stats will remain in the previous post, whilst this new post will link to suggested gear-lists that you can aim for to help achieve those stats. As always if you have any suggestions to add to the list, please let me know in the comments and I will add to the list. At the moment where I have gaps I’ve included links to Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists

The links below should all refer to gear that can be obtained before entering Karazhan. To get an idea of equipment you can be hoping to obtain in Karazhan, along with a view on which class has ‘first dibs’ on particular drops, check out Kaliban’s Karazhan Loot List

• Warrior
  • Tank: Gearing your Warrior from The Care and Feeding of Warriors @ WoW Insider
  • Tank: Polar’s Easy Pre-Karazhan Tank Gear List from TankSpot
  • Tank: Pre-Karazhan Warrior Gear Checklist from WiredAfterMidnight.com
• Druid
  • Bear-Tank: BigBearButt’s guide on Druid Tank Starter Gear
  • Bear-Tank: Adventure’s in Azeroth’s guides for Bear Gear
  • Cat-DPS: Adventure’s in Azeroth’s guides for Cat Gear
  • Feral (Bear / Cat): Full gear selection lists for gearing feral druids @ gurgleblaster.net
• Rogue
  • Rogue Pre-Karazhan Gear @ Parry, Dodge, Spin
  • Wow Forum thread on Gearing your rogue at 70
• Priest
  • Healer: Gearing your holy priest
  • Healer: Galadria’s Holy Priest Raiding Guide - scroll down to section E for the Gear guide
  • Healer: A Dwarf Priest - Best Casual PvE Healing Gear - ranked gear list including pre-raid, heroic, crafted, kara, gruul, mag, zul drops - very helpful
  • Shadow: Shadow Priest Gear - from ShadowPriest.com
• Hunter
  • World of Matticus’ Gearing your hunter
  • BigRedKitty’s Gear up for Karazhan
• Shaman
  • Healer: World of Matticus’ Gearing your resto Shaman
  • sample shaman gear at Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists
• Mage
  • sample mage gear at Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists
  • Mage Level 70 Pre-raid Gear from WoW EU Mage Forum
• Paladin
  • sample paladin gear at Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists
  • Healer: Paladin Healing Gear at Mystic Chicanery
  • DPS: WoW Insider gearing your Retadin Guide
• Warlock
  • sample warlock gear at Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists
  • Affliction Warlock Gear at Mystic Chicanery

Lately, there have been a number of posts detailing account hack horrors, most notably BRK’s guild bank being cleared out twice in the same day and a similarly traumatic account hack incident for Gun Loving Dwarf Chick’s guild.

So in the spirit of new years resolutions and all that, it is probably a good time to highlight Altitis’ guide to improving your account security. I don’t fully agree with all of the points, but if you read the post and also the comments below and apply some common-sense all should be well with the world.

In particular, I’d expand on step 7, that installing addons is generally fine, so long as you download the .zip file and extract it to the addons directory (as per the Lords site addon instructions). Running .exe files or installers can be dangerous and you’re advised to be confident of the origin of the package before running these. People do use WowAce updater and I’ve suggested the use of WUU previously, but just be careful and apply some common sense.

Other points Altitis makes are essential for anyone who owns a PC connected to the internet regardless of whether they play World of Warcraft or not, most notably:

• Get a firewall e.g. Free ZoneAlarm
• Get antivirus software e.g. Free AVG
• Get an ad-ware cleaner e.g. Free Ad-Aware

[If anyone else wants to post class guides on here from things they're picking up in Karazhan and would like to share with the guild, drop me a message on the forum and we can sort it out :)]

Well we visited Karazhan last night and it was my first time. It quickly became clear that I have to work for a living now; no more just standing at the back and healing. I have crowd control duties now, as the place is crawling with undead. I’ve never really used the shackle undead spell before, so had to get learning very quickly. I’d already setup a macro (which I’ll come back to later), which was a big help once I got going.

What I learnt as we went along is that I can’t wait for the shackle to break and then reshackle, as then chaos ensues! So every 10 seconds or so, once the tanks were topped up and with renews ticking I’d quickly reshackle my mob to prevent it from breaking. Seemed to work ok for the most part doing it that way - the macro helped a lot with that as well. I picked up the following macro, which cleverly means that once I have shackled something, I can keep the tank targetted, and repressing the shackle macro button will reshackle, without taking my target away from the tank. Very handy.

/clearfocus [modifier:alt][target=focus,dead][target=focus,help][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus]Shackle Undead

Egotistical Priest has a great post all about shackle undead which is well worth a read, for priests and non-priests alike. The Ego version of the macro is slightly different but I think does pretty much the same thing, I may have to try it out later:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift]
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead

Ego’s note to other classes is also worth a mention:

If we have been assigned a mob to shackle, please do not break the shackle. Do not hit, stun, AOE near, or even spit on its foot (assuming it has a foot). We?ve got this one covered. If we miscalculate and shackle breaks early, remember that we have no way of knowing WHEN it will break. It could break one second into being shackled. One thing we can promise is that if shackle breaks early and we’re not in the middle of a heal, we’ll be reshackling that mob as quickly as we can. Don’t touch it, and for the love of all that is holy, do not DoT it. If you cast a DoT on my shackled mob, I will be quite wroth with you.

Also I mostly forgot to take screenshots, but here’s one below that I managed to grab of our intrepid adventurers (click for larger version).

Arathi Basin was my battleground of choice for the first time last weekend (well it was honour weekend after all). Over the course of several games I began to pick-up the strategy and ways that I could best help my team. And then this week I found this Arathi Basin Guide on Wow-Insider that summarised most of the things I’d figured out (fighting on a node, shouting early to notify about incoming etc.), along with several things I hadn’t (e.g. holding 3 nodes close together if possible and watching people’s debuffs to see what they are being attacked by). All in all a nice guide. I just wish I’d found it earlier