Patch 2.4 is coming soon. The test patch notes are now available, revealing some of what is on the way (all subject to change of course). Summarised below are the main features at this point:

• Sunwell Isle which includes a new level 70 five man instance and a 25 man raid.
• New daily quests as part of the attack on the Isle of Quel’Danas, to confront Kael’thas and the Legion at the Sunwell.
• Keepers of Time npc in Shattrath providing easy access to the Caverns of Time
• When you repec your talent tree you no longer have to relearn trainable ranks of talent-granted spells
• Mana regen changed so that as intellect rises, more mana is regenerated per spirit point
• Spell haste reduces global cooldown on spells to a 1 second minimum
• Warlock’s Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances (that they match the level requirements for)
• In battlegrounds, diminishing returns on honour for kills is being removed - honour will now be calculated correctly straightaway.
• Bad news for fans of the Fires of Skettis daily quest: Monstrous Kaliri have learned how to chase players going straight up.

Two guild firsts were achieved with kills of both Maiden and Moroes on Saturday. This was preceded by a warm-up on Maiden on Friday, Attumen down on Thursday and an encouraging first look at Opera on Sunday. All in all a great team effort from all the guildees who were able to come along over the entire weekend’s raiding.

Special congratualations to Arvariena, Ragnesis and Bestiarius who got drops of [Shard of the Virtuous], [Barbed Choker of Discipline] and [Emerald Ripper] respectively

And for posterity, here are a couple of pictures of our happy faces post-boss fights - click the image for link to larger versions.

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

The Hit rating stat affects your chance to hit or miss on a particular attack. When soloing this isn’t so much of an issue, but against raid bosses the effect becomes significant (as bosses are considered level 73) and increasing +hit can significantly improve DPS.

There is a level of +hit at which you no longer miss and stacking +hit beyond this point is a waste. Handily, Blessing of Kings have a breakdown of class specific levels of +hit to aim for, whilst taking the effects of talents into effect.

Season 3 of the arena has arrived, bringing bigger and better rewards. One upshot of this is that the rewards from season 1 are now available for purchase with honour and battleground tokens.

I’ve summarised below the rewards and honor / marks needed. This was sourced from MMO Champion, check out their post on arena rewards for full details.

Season 1 Item	Price
Gladiator’s Armor Breastplate	14500 30x
Gladiator’s Armor Gauntlets	10500 20x
Gladiator’s Armor Helm	14500 30x
Gladiator’s Armor Leggings	14500 30x
Gladiator’s Armor Shoulders	11250 20x
[Gladiator's Bonecracker]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Bonegrinder]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Cleaver]	18000 20x
[Gladiator's Decapitator]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Endgame]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Gavel]	25200 20x
[Gladiator's Greatsword]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Hacker]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Idol of Resolve]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Idol of Steadfastness]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Idol of Tenacity]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Left Ripper]	9000 20x
<[Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Libram of Justice]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Libram of Vengeance]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Maul]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Painsaw]	27000 40x
[Gladiator's Pummeler]	18000 20x
[Gladiator's Quickblade]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Reprieve]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Right Ripper]	18000 20x
[Gladiator's Salvation]	25200 20x
[Gladiator's Shanker]	18000 20x
[Gladiator's Shield Wall]	15000 20x
[Gladiator's Shiv]	9000 20x
[Gladiator's Slicer]	18000 20x
[Gladiator's Spellblade]	25200 20x
[Gladiator's Totem of Indomitability]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Totem of Survival]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Totem of the Third Wind]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's Touch of Defeat]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's War Edge]	8000 10x
[Gladiator's War Staff]	27000 40x
[Veteran's Chain Bracers]	9435 20x
[Veteran's Chain Girdle]	14280 40x
[Veteran's Chain Sabatons]	14280 40x
[Veteran's Band of Dominance]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Band of Salvation]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Band of Triumph]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Pendant of Conquest]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Pendant of Dominance]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Pendant of Salvation]	11934 10x
[Veteran's Pendant of Triumph]	11934 10x

WoW Web Stats (WWS) has been experimented with and discussed quite a bit recently in guild.

To help with anyone getting started, there are several WWS guides out there to pick from: I’ve listed a couple below that looked particularly helpful to me.

(The ubiquitous (in a good way )) BRK covers getting started and thoughts on measuring DPS.

For a more healing, less pew-pew view, Priestly Endeavours (one of my favourite Priest blogs) has a first look at WWS along with WWS for holy priests (which I think should help other healing classes too).

Whilst we’re on the subject of technical type stuff, Priestly Endeavours also has an introduction to writing macros, which is very timely hot on the heels of our (well, Bob’s) detailed mage macros post from the weekend.

A guide to mage macros was posted on our forum courtesy of guildee BobTheWorm. It looks pretty handy to me, so I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting here. There’s also a Mage Macro section at WoW-Wiki that is worth checking out. Enjoy:

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Kind of obvious what it does, but for those who have never used macros before, it will stop whatever spell you’re currently casting and cast counterspell. Very useful for pvp.

#showtooltip Pyroblast
/cast Presence of Mind
/stopcasting
/cast Arcane Power
/stopcasting
/use Vengeance of the Illidari
/stopcasting
/cast Pyroblast

Hehe, the IWIN macro While standing still pressing the macro button once will do everything and cast your pyroblast (virtually instantly). If you are moving you will need to press the button twice to cast your pyroblast.

An alternative is to replace the “/use Vengeance of the Illidari” line with “/use 13″ or “/use 14″. Can include either/both of these lines here depending on which trinket slot you want to activate.

#showtooltip Polymorph
/cast [modifier:shift, target=focus] Polymorph; Polymorph
/focus [nomodifier:alt]

It was very hard to get a nice precise macro to do exactly what I wanted here, but I believe I finally found it, and it works well! Quite simply it will sheep whoever you cast it on. And if you want to resheep the same mob press whatever the modifier is when you cast it. ie. in this case hold shift while you press the button. This also works if you have it on a hot-key. The modifier can be changed to “ctrl” or “alt” if prefered. This means that you won’t have to retarget the sheeped mob to resheep him making life that little bit easier.

#showtooltip Slow Fall
/dismount [mounted]
/cast Slow Fall

Not entirely sure if this is already built into the game now after the last patch, but it is quite useful. This macro allows you to feather (and hence slow-fall) even when mounted… It has saved my life a couple of times! And as a little trick, if you run jump off a big cliff on your mount and use this, you’ll float along at the same speed as when mounted. So in Arathi Basin you can run and jump off the Lumber Camp hill and land at the Blacksmith flag for a nice aerial assult!