With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. This week he's trying to help those of you crazy enough to tank Gnomergon when it's still a level appropriate instance.

We're doing a much longer than expected series of articles on the low level dungeon runners now that the new cross-realm Dungeon Finder is up and running. This is part two of our series on the low level tank. Last week we talked about the basics of threat, avoidance, mitigation, and what stats to be on the lookout for when choosing gear.

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Totem Talk is the column for shamans,. Matthew Rossi ran ICC twice this week and will probably run it on 10 man twice more, and yet managed to take possibly the worst screenshot of all time, which he shares with you above,. Can you find the three shamans, including himself, in it? He sure as heck couldn't. But it's got a skunk bear up front. That's nice.

It's been an interesting week all told. The new five mans and new raid are out (well, first four bosses of new raid, anyway... having both tanked and been melee DPS on Deathbringer Saurfang, I have to say, it's an interesting mechanic but I'm already heartily sick of Blood Power, and I don't look forward to healing it) and we're seeing a couple of new mechanics and a new set of shorter cooldowns. I have to say, so far I really like the reduced cooldowns on our elemental totems. Now all they need is a pet bar, and not to die in two hits from any mob in sight. (I exaggerate slightly. Very slightly.)

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When we last talked about this on the podcast, I said we'd basically have to wait and see how it all worked, but now that players have had their hands on the Dungeon Finder out on the live realms for a while, they're learning a few more tricks and tips about how to use it. As Rohan brings up over on the WoW Ladies LJ, it's easy enough to keep a good player once you've found them through the system: as long as none of you drop group once you're done with an instance, you can go back in and run as many as you want. Unfortunately, you can't friend them yet (hopefully that will show up whenever Battle.net functionality does), but the comments on that post point out that if you both sign up for an unpopular instance at the same time, chances are good you'll end up in the same group together (of course, that requires coordination, but maybe you can set up a time out of game).

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The Elwynn Extravaganza is today! It came from the Blog will be meeting at Orgrimmar and running to Elwynn Forest for the festivities. Here is the basic info:

• When: Saturday, December 12th, 5pm EST (2pm PST, 3pm Server)
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar on Zangarmarsh (U.S.)
• Who: Any level Horde character
• How: Just send a tell to Robinator or any It came from the Blog Lurker for a guild invite.

Not familiar with the WoW.com guild? Then please read our FAQ. The events are fun and you are all invited. So after you finish listening to the WoW Insider Show, please join us for some in-game fun.

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Our podcast is live on the virtual air today at 3:30pm Eastern (8:30pm GMT) over on Ustream, and it's an all-star show for sure. We'll have Michael "Belfaire" Sacco, Matthew W. Rossi, and Adam Holisky all on the show with us, so I don't expect to have to say anything. Maybe I'll just shout out something like "patch 3.3" and see what evolves from there. But Turpster and I will still be on, and if we can corral these guys, we'll be talking about how big a change the Dungeon Finder really is, Corehound Pups in the mail for Authenticator users, and this patch in general. Should be quite a show.

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After defeating Kil'Jaeden, Bumdee of <Civil Warcraft> on Shattered Hand wanted to take another peek at the restored Sunwell. So once he left the instance, he used Far Sight to look back into the demon lord's former sanctum. To his surprise, he found Lady Liadrin still kneeling at the Sunwell. Is she paying respect to her former prisoner, M'uru, or is she getting high off the huge amount of arcane residue in the area?

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Okay, the best part of running random dungeons on my tauren is getting to hang out with Sylvanas.

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Ah, patch 3.3! Between Icecrown Citadel and the Dungeon Finder Tool, most of the team is too busy chain running dungeons to bother to let us know what they're playing this weekend. But at least some of our stalwart crew of WoW-playing adventurers managed to get their heads out of the game for long enough to let us know what they're up to -- and, no surprise, most of them are hanging out in Icecrown and collecting loot using the Dungeon Finder. The suspense lies only in the details -- which you may read on to see for yourself.

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Since I've geared my paladin tank up in two nights, I'm going to be gearing my hunter and rogue up next. Seriously, Blizzard just made an addicting game more addicting. 20 minutes of nothing to do? Hey, how about a quick heroic and some badges.
• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): Gearing up pretty much every single one of my alts via spamming the LFG tool. Also, relearning how to eat and drink after my latest adventure in dentistry.
• Allison Robert: Probably healing a Rusted drake run for guild alts, possibly an ICC-10, and continuing to enjoy the new LFG!
• C. Christian Moore (@TheArenaGuy): Quad-boxing. Yep. They're 65 right now. Hopefully they'll be 70+ by the end of the weekend, and 80 soon after that.
• Dan O'Halloran: Running Icecrown 5-man Forge of Souls in WoW on Friday night with my usual crew of misfits. BTW, "let's keep throwing our corpses at the boss until our armor turns red" is not a viable tactic.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Running the new 5-man heroics every day until I get my battered hilt, then random dungeon running my ass off to get more t9 for my off-spec on my death knight. Or I may random dungeon with my 79 Druid instead to get him geared up to heal raids and heroics. I also still need to get a Noth group together for the weekly raid quest. That's right baby, I got my WoW groove back.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Trying out a new kitteh build from a Twitter friend, drawing comics, a birthday party, and frantically starting/finished Christmas shopping. T__T
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Still patiently leveling my paladin through the middle levels, sweetly oblivious to the slammin' speed-run commotion elsewhere in the game...
• Matthew Rossi: All shaman, all the time until he's fully geared to heal 10 man ICC.
• Matt Low (@mattycus): Like the rest, making repeated use of the LFG tool to get some healing gear for my alts. Cleared out ICC on my mains and now it's time to do it on my other characters.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Getting my alts their well-deserved Tier 9 and my main his Perky Pug.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): We're having actual weather right now in Los Angeles and it's made me feel rather icky. So, I'll be cuddled up in a comfy chair, with a blanket, some tea, a lap kitty or two and some dailies.
• Zach Yonzon (@battlemasters): Back with a vengeance! The game seems fresh again after a long, unintended hiatus from consistent play. My gameplay for the most part has rusted considerably. New realm, new name, new race, new guild... and a new class to master. Uh, so who's that Arthas fellow again?


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Icecrown Loot Table - (Almost) Final Version
It's time for a big update of the Icecrown loot table! 95% of the items from the Icecrown Citadel are now discovered and the only items missing from the list the ones dropped by the Lich King.

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There's been a lull of Cataclysm info recently, so we're getting repeats tenfold of the kind of emails we used to get before Wrath's official release date was announced -- emails saying that Amazon or Gamestop or other retailers have release dates listed for the new expansion already.

Here's the rub. Blizzard hasn't yet divulged a release date for Cataclysm, probably because they have no earthly idea when it's coming out yet. Until they do, any release dates from stores are, at best, speculation or, at worst, outright lies.

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