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One of the questions we get most often from readers is, “What is the most profitable gem/enchant/glyph?” It is impossible to give a definitive answer to this problem since it depends largely on how cheaply you as an individual can attain the materials and how efficiently (and at what price) you can sell the crafted enhancement. Thus, we don’t even attempt to answer this question since it is impossible to quantify. We can tell you what our enchanter says are his most profitable vellums (Boots- Icewalker, Chest- Super Stats and Cloak- Titanweave) or what our Jewelcrafter says are his best sellers (Runed Scarlet Ruby, Brilliant Autumn’s Glow and Solid Sky Saphire), but again, the variance in how cheaply you can attain the materials and how well these specific enhancements sell on your server (not to mention how much competition you have) is too wide to make a general judgment call for all crafters.
This is to say, that we can’t effectively figure out what will work best for you. Nor, can we suggest what is best to use as an enhancement overall. We can, however, determine what people think is best and is, thus, most popular. In determining what items are most in-demand to the general population, you can then make your own judgment calls as to what you should be selling based on how cheaply you can attain the materials vs. how much competition/how efficiently you can sell the crafted item.
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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
Utgarde Keep duo Dalronn the Controller and Skarvald the Constructor went down in flames (or Whirlwinds) in last week's Two Bosses Enter matchup, but we're not convinced that all UK bosses are whining nincompoops. This week's deathmatch pits another Utgarde Keep pair, Ingvar the Plunderer and Annhylde the Caller, against Azjol-Nerub's Krik'thir the Gatewatcher. While this duo seems almost as argumentative as the Dalronn/Skarvald duo, their teamwork seems a little more smooth. Will it be enough to overcome Krik'thir and his minions?
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Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we're going to look at a specific tactic for speeding your success through each encounter -- cooldown management.
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An interesting thread popped up on the forums regarding Arena representation, noting class disparity and how it might be possible to rate performance based on a player's class. Balancing all the classes is an ongoing struggle and has been one of Blizzard's greatest headaches in PvP design. In Season 5, Holy Paladins and Death Knights dominated the Arenas, with Warriors getting the very short end of the stick and having the lowest number of Season 5 Gladiators. The original poster points out Blizzard's continual, active revision of the Arena ratings system and suggests that the system itself might be flawed. Because the rating system is "blind" to class or even classes in team compositions, for that matter, players using an "OP" class have an advantage.
The poster goes on to suggest that rankings be based on the class, rather than overall Arena population. This means that the percentile used to determine end-of-season rewards will be applied on a per class basis, thereby granting all classes conceptually equal representation. Ghostcrawler gives the suggestion some merit, even going so far as to say Blizzard isn't "above iteration on the design" of the Arena system as evidenced by their proactive adjustments to it.
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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Todays edition of The Queue should be read while playing Boom Boom Pow in the background. It's completely irrelevant to WoW or anything discussed today, but I haven't been able to stop playing the song for about a week now and it's really starting to drive me crazy. If I can't stop listening to it, I'll just make other people listen to it. Schadenfreude is just as good as a cure.
Jfofla asked...
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We pretty much knew this to be the case, given that it's exactly what happened two weeks ago, but yes, just in case you haven't been paying attention, the second and final round of BlizzCon tickets is going on sale this Saturday, and Neth confirms it'll start at 10a.m. PST again. You'll have to be ready on the ticket page to jump into the queue at the right time, and then hope they don't sell out before you've gotten a chance to grab yours. The good news is that things probably won't break down, but the bad news is that they'll probably go really, really fast, so you'll have to be lucky to get in line before they close the doors.[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]
Iamfivebears @wowinsider "Thanks for the summoooooooooooooon...." the rogue yelled up the cliff.
kryptongirl @wowinsider The druid turned into a dog tree. He barked.
MsJenni @wowinsider We entered Deadmines nude, voting who came out best dressed.
TheCorruptOne @wowinsider Armor drops from a clear desert sky. Incoming gnomish engineer!
threeparts @wowinsider How many edge of winter's does this damn dryad -have?-
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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
Aww, come on, you knew this was going to happen ... Yup, Skadi the Ruthless spared nothing for poor Dalronn and Skarvald of Utgarde Keep. It was a landslide victory for the PuG-intimidating boss -- although a few readers did think the matchup could offer a few twists. "I'm going to give it to D/S here," nodded Nizari. "Dalronn would eat it from the adds, being the squishier one, and Skarvald makes it to Skadi. Skar has two stuns to Skadi's one, and remember that even after Dalronn goes down, he still can use all his abilities. So the summoned skellies eat the whirlwind, and more importantly, Debilitate nerfs Skadi's DPS."
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In a discussion of tanking mechanics on the forums, Ghostcrawler made a long and in depth post about various subjects that helped consolidate one of the real problems with block and block value in Wrath of the Lich King. Not only is blocking something that only two of the four tanking classes do, but it's a pretty lackluster stat for boss tanking.- Block as a mechanic is somewhere between avoidance and mitigation. Ideally it removes a fair amount of damage (vs. all damage) reasonably often (vs. rarely). If block is up 100% of the time it just becomes armor that you improve through a different stat. We have let block chances creep up frankly because the amount blocked is pretty trivial when bosses are hitting for 40% of your health pool every swing. If this still strikes you as too RNG, imagine abilities like Shield Block and Holy Shield that could guarantee 100% chance to block for a short period of time.
- We don't think block is cutting it as a mechanic, but the direction we are likely to take it is probably more of a change than you are considering.
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Since 3.1, DPS warriors (including myself) have been complaining about a lack of rage. To the point where Ghostcrawler himself chimed in recently (in a discussion of the nerf to Titan's Grip and the effect it had on warrior DPS) to inform us that the claim that warrior rage generation was hurt by the changes was a myth created by warriors upset with the nerf.
Now we have the following post by Landsoul. I freely admit this is the kind of math that makes my eyes cross and roll up into my head. But Landsoul's well known as a contributor to the EJ forums and frankly, his math-fu's good enough for me. (I should also mention Hellord, the original poster who saw things were hinky.) What this means is, while it's very possible that yes, the developers took Titan's Grip's decreased damage into account when they were making the changes, there was somehow another change made that cost warriors some rage generation. 25% of it, to be precise.
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Wowhead, along with APC (makers of UPSes and such), is running a contest over the next few weeks, with a drawing every day until June 18th. June 17th is the last day to enter; all you need to do is fill in your contact details on the contest page, and you're automatically entered for every drawing. Sadly, this contest is only open to US residents age 18 and older ("we know it sucks," Wowhead says).
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How To: Flame Leviathan showed up in today's WoW Moviewatch via a roundabout method.The video has been posted on The Daily Quest, but it was just also featured over at Swiftmend. With that level of exposure, we wanted to make sure to give the video its due right on Moviewatch. It's a video from those awesome Yogscast guys, and it shows you how to fight Flame Leviathan. (Kind of.)
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This forum thread is full of great advice and tips for the Wrecking Ball achievement, in which you've got to get 20 killing blows without dying in a battleground. The key here seems to be to find a place with lots and lots of folks to kill (a spawn point, like the graveyard in WSG, works great, or you can hide behind the big groups in AV), and then just hanging out there as far out of the way as you can get. Having a pocket healer won't hurt either, and playing fair isn't really part of this one -- you want to duck in when you're sure to win the fight, and run like crazy when things even threaten to go against you.[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

Rawrshach of <Shindu Belore> on Deathwing writes, "While trying to rid New Avalon of its Scarlet Crusade taint, Rawrshach finds himself surrounded by an unusually high concentration of ghouls. Not exactly his idea of a party, but when you're an undead cow, you kind of have to take what you can get." Come on now, tauren make the best death knights. Where do you think the concept of tainted beef comes from? *rimshot*
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Some people who play World of Warcraft really closely identify with one of the two factions, the Horde and the Alliance. They care about the ongoing lore of the divide, they argue back and forth about which side is in the wrong and who is doing what, or when which side committed a particular wrong or another. Now, we here at wow.com are no different in that regard, as you saw when you followed those links. We're passionate about the game, and that includes the lore.
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World of Fighter (yes there's been a name change), the newest game from The9, the former publisher of WoW in China, is not going to be a WoW clone, or a Warhammer ripoff. Rather it seems to embody most of the characters from Capcom's flagship title Street Fighter and a few of the companies other IPs.
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The Most Profitable Gems, Enchants and Glyphs