The 80s are over, and the fine art of making a mixed tape isn't quite the same as it used to be. Oh, sure, the roleplaying kids nowadays tell me they have their fancy-schmancy character playlists. They scratch down the name "Dudeguy McDudicus" across the top of their iTunes, and call that their mixed tape. It seems to my aged, patrician soul that the character playlist lacks the same validity as a hand-recorded tape or Compact Disc. That could just be me channeling High Fidelity, though.

Regardless of the media you use to keep track of the actual songs, I'm pretty sure that the idea of a character soundtrack has been around since Gygax first rolled some D&D dice. I've heard them also referred to as a character tape, playlist, CD, and even "character sketch."

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Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that is the only place I know of where a gnome in a dress with glowing hands hanging out in the middle of the forest isn't so much creepy as it is socially acceptable.

Since I see a growing trend among the other class columnists, and because I crave the approval of my peers, I bring you Arcane 101. This is intended to be a relatively basic overview of the spec; I won't be delving into much in the way of the more complex mechanics here. This will also be a PvE-centric column. We'll revisit arcane PvP at some future point, but sadly not today. So without further ado:

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Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

I'm the fish girl.

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I'm going to assume that if you're still reading this past the title, you're interested in talking about tank gearing for your level 80 and that you've presumably used the Dungeon Finder to level him or her as a tank, but you're certainly not rocking full T9 yet. It's generally accepted that you'll be saving up emblems for that, and of course filling the gaps for rings and trinkets and such as you can. You also may be a DPS player who wants to switch over to tanking but don't have the gear yet.

First off, please, don't pass on tanking gear just because it's blue or dropped in a normal or heroic. Just because it's not iLevel 232+ doesn't mean it's not good. You should be collecting and using upgrades as they drop, even if they won't immediately put you at 35K health. Please remember also that a lot of people ran these instances and heroics back when Wrath first released with 22k or so health: despite what speed obsessed or hyper geared players will tell you, it is indeed possible to tank all the original Wrath heroics in blues.

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Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the basics of a holy paladin, from gems and enchants to talents and spell usage.

I have always been of the belief that the paladin is a healer at heart, with their hybrid nature simply an extension of their healing capability. In vanilla WoW, paladins were the Alliance's healing all-star, with our tier sets and raid utility focusing on the restorative arts. Retribution and protection both have abilities that heal in some way, and their talent trees even have pro-healing options. If you want to experience the purest distilled essence of the paladin class, you have to try holy.

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Patch 3.3.2 this week - Recap
Patch 3.3.2 should be deployed on live servers this week, the really interesting stuff probably won't be available before the patch day because I need to get my hands on the files to start digging. (Mostly for the Lich King ending cinematic)

Patch 3.3.2 General Information

• Patch 3.3.2 Patch Notes
• Season 8 Armor Sets and Weapon Models
• Patch 3.3.2 Tier 10 Tank Armor Changes

Icecrown Citadel

• Valithria Dreamwalker
• Sindragosa
• Lich King Preview (Spoiler)

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Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Some of us had a little trouble focusing on the topics at hand this past week. It seems we were, ahh, a wee bit distracted by the puppies.

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Ladies and gentlemen, and all those with paws/hooves, etc, I think we might just be entering a new phase of the Sunday Morning Funnies. Why? Because this week's list is pretty long too.

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What's the proper term for a gathering of warlocks? A conclave? A summoning? A coven? Ah, yes -- a hellraising. Michael wrote in to inform us of such a meeting, which occurred last night in the bowels of Karazhan on the Moon Guard server. "Warlocks of every race were there, as well as a few gate-crashers of a nonwarlock type in disguise," he writes. "This is a picture of us surrounding a pit of infernal fire, basking in our vileness. Afterwards, there was a fearsomeness pageant and storytelling around the campfire."

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I discovered that many of the regular players in It came from the Blog, WoW.com's event guild, are using it as a getaway guild. Some of them lead or are regular raiders in progression guilds on other servers, but come to Zangarmarsh to get away from it all.

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