This week's image takes us way back to before Cataclysm when that nasty dragon Deathwing decided to wreak havoc across Azeroth including defacing one of the Wonders of Azeroth, the Stonewrought Dam.

The dam was named after the method of construction "invented" by Franclorn Forgewright, architect of the Dark Iron dwarves. In addition to the dam, he also designed the Stonewrought Pass linking Loch Modan to Searing Gorge and the dwarven fortress inside Blackrock Mountain, where Farnclorn's Tomb is located and his ghost can be seen standing there, if you're dead.

Prior to its destruction in Cataclysm this was one of my favorite locations in game purely for the breath taking view and the three dwarven heads spouting water. While I doubt that we will ever see the dam rebuilt, I live in hope.

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It has been too long since I did a non themed blog post. Today I am going to break that pattern. I have moaned and whined about the game for too long and think I can do a better job than Blizzard and that Greg Street dude. So today I'm going to imagine that I have been given the role of Blizzard's Lead Systems Designer and have the power to fix three things that are wrong with Warcraft.

The three things that I would fix are heirlooms, instance loot and reputation grinds. My fixes are my own personal opinion, I don't expect everyone to agree. In fact I don't expect anyone to agree but it would be great if you did. Either way I'd like your thoughts on my "solutions".

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Remember when the Dwarven District looked like this? Shoni the Shilent is about all that remains in place now. The old Guild Hall never did see a use before being turned into the bank. Damn you Deathwing! more »

Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making. You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict. The question I am covering today is:

Pets - Did you used to do the Vendor pet sales? How have pet battles changed things for you?

Pet battles really hasn't changed my pet selling strategy much because I never bothered with selling them as a defined plan.

Sure if I ran into Lil' Timmy I would mug the White Kitten from him and slap it on the AH but beyond the I'm in the area I'll buy pets I never tried hard although I did trade a Mekgineer's Chopper for the Hyacinth Macaw a few months before Mists launched in the hope of making a killing but despite pricing between 16000 and 40000 gold never got anyone wanting to buy it so I ended up adding it to my pet list just before Christmas, maybe I'll level it to 24 and then try to sell it again.

I tried selling pets at the beginning of the expansion but the market was really flooded at the time and nothing sold so I abandoned it. I have considered leveling pets to 24 and selling them so people can easily get them to 25 and add to their collections, but as leveling a pet is real easy once you have one at level 25 and you now also get XP I'm not sure how successful that will be. I guess only time will tell. more »

OK OK its Thursday now. Better late than never :) This one is just a random image from my rogue’s screenshot folder and one I made for the Exhumed screenshot competition it didn't win but no fear gnome lovers the winning screenshot did still include a gnome!
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Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making. You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict. The question I am covering today is:

Flipping! Do you flip stuff regularly or sometimes? Big ticket items or smaller high volume stuff?

Flipping is something that I have done almost continually during my warcraft life. I have never really had a strategy but rather simply bought items that are way below market value when I myself am trying to list the same item.

Most of the time this is low cost high volume goods like enchanting materials, ore, herbs and transmog items. I will sometimes venture into higher price goods but am always a bit cautious not to get caught out. I have recently been tempted to try flipping some of the ridiculously cheap Jewelled Onyx Panther mounts that are being offered up for 30-40k gold, which is less than the cost of the materials but am concerned that these may be duped items or from hacked accounts and don't want to get caught up in any fallout and have therefore always refrained from buying them.

Most of the time flipping is a winner but I have made many mistakes, my most recent one being purchasing greater cosmic essences at the end of Cata when they were regularly selling for 10-15g and seeing them as an opportunity when they dropped to 7g. I bought them in bulk and I bought a lot of them as the price continued to rop in the last few weeks of Cata with the hope of flipping them in Mists. Today they selling for 2-3g I maybe sold 5% of what I bought, I trashed the vast majority of the rest and today I try to sell the remaining 30 stacks at rices between 2-5g depending on supply at the time I list them but I am frequently violently undercut, so I guess I'm not the only one that had the same idea. but auction house pvp is a game with risks, if it were not it wouldn't be as much fun or as rewarding. 

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Nothing fancy here just a funny screenshot I found in my folder taken while I was gearing up my paladin, Eusebian, just after dinging 90. Quite what the boomkin was wanting to do with the cat elune only knows! more »

Horridon is a messy fight but when broken down into the basics and attention paid to the kill order of the adds becomes a lot easier to understand.

The fight consists of fighting the boss and a variety of adds that spawn from a number of doors around teh arena or from the area above.

We start by pulling Horridon, a big dinosaur who needs to be tanked throughout the encounter. Like most bosses he has 3 main abilities:

1. Triple Puncture applies a stacking debuff that increases the damage taken by Triple Puncture by 10% which forces a tank swap.
2. Double Swipe is a 35-yard conal attack with a 2.5 second cast time that deals damage in front of and behind him. To avoid Double Swipe, players (inc the tanks) should always stay on Horridon's side.
3. Horridon will occassionally charge a raid member and perform a Double Swipe once he reaches them. To ensure the raid don't take damage from the Double Swipe players targeted by Charge should move away to a location from which will require the raid to move as little as possible to avoid Double Swipe.

Before we get to the doors, we'll just take a look at a recurring add, the Zandalari Dinomancer, who will join the fight 1 minute after each door has been opened.

When he joins the fight, he becomes the number 1 DPS priority and needs to be tanked by the OT. While he is above 50% HP, he will try to channel Dino-Mending on Horridon. This MUST be interupted or Horridon is healed for 1% health every second.

When the Dinomancer reaches 50% health, he drops his Orb of Control which needs to be clicked to take control of Horridon and force him to slam into the currently opened Troll door.

40 seconds later the next door will open and a new set of adds spawn.

The Farraki Door

The main things of note here are:

• Switch tanks to allow Triple Puncture stacks to drop off;
• Avoid the sand traps;
• Dispel the magic debuffs;
• Group up so the tank can easily pickup aggro on all adds and enable splash damage to raise DPS;

DPS Priority: Zandalari Dinomancer > Sul'lithuz Stonegazers > Farraki Wastewalkers > Farraki Skirmishers > Horridon

The Gurubashi Door

Main things of note here are:

• Switch tanks to allow Triple Puncture stacks to drop off;
• Avoid the poison pools;
• Interupt the Venom Bolt Volleys cast by the Gurubashi Venom Priest;
• Dispel people with high stacks of the Venom Bolt Volley debuff;
• Group up so the tank can easily pickup aggro on all adds and enable splash damage to raise DPS;

DPS Priority: Venomous Effusions > Zandalari Dinomancer > Gurubashi Venom Priests > Gurubashi Bloodlords > Horridon

The Drakkari Door

• Main things of note here are:
• Switch tanks to allow Triple Puncture stacks to drop off;
• Avoid the Frozen Orbs;
• Dispel people with high stacks of Deadly Plague;
• Group up so the tank can easily pickup aggro on all adds and enable splash damage to raise DPS;

DPS Priority: Zandalari Dinomancer > Drakkari Frozen Warlords > Risen Drakkari Warriors > Risen Drakkari Champions > Horridon (unless he is nearing 30% health)

The Amani Door

Main things of note here are:

• Switch tanks to allow Triple Puncture stacks to drop off;
• Avoid Lightning Nova Totems;
• Amani'shi Flame Caster's Fireball should be interrupted;
• Players need to spread out 5 yards to prevent Chain Lightning from jumping;
• Hex of Confusion should be dispelled;
• Group up (but stay 5 yards apart) so the tank can easily pickup aggro on all adds and enable splash damage to raise DPS;

DPS Priority: Zandalari Dinomancer > Amani'shi Beast Shamans > Amani Warbears > Amani'shi Protectors and Amani'shi Flame Casters > Horridon (unless he is nearing 30% health)

Jalak and Burn Phase

40 seconds after the Amani Door is destroyed, War-God Jalak jumps down into the arena and needs to be off tanked and becomes the focus of all DPS. Jalak should be tanked on Horridon's side and cooldowns used to burn Jalak down fast. As there is high, raid wide damage during this phase, all players excpet the Horridon tank should stack up and if targeted by charge, run to the tank.

After Jalak dies, swap tanks if the stacks of Triple Puncture have dropped off Jalak's tank. and then burn an enraged Horridon who will still do his 3 main abilities.

Priest Tips
As a disc priest the Glyph of Smite is a must here and for both disc and holy Glyph of Mass Dispel is fantstic as it prevents a tick of Blazing Sunlight.

For disc priests atonement healing will give you awesome returns as Horridon takesincreased damage Smite, Power Word: Solace, and Penance spells give you increased damage and bigger heals. 

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This a single-phase, single-target fight and the bosses trademark abitity is called Conductive Water. During the fight, Jin'rokh will summon these void zones one at a time and each one will eventually cover one quarter of the room and so act as an enrage timer.

Standing in Conductive Water will increasing damage done, damage taken and healing received until Jin'rokh changes it into Electrified Waters when it will deal constant damage to anyone standing it. The spawn point of the pools is possibly controllable but the strategies seem unpredictable at present but the pools are placed at the landing position of the victim of Thundering Throw, an ability that Jin'rokh casts at tank 30 seconds into the fight, and every 90 seconds after that.

Every 15 seconds he casts Focused Lightning on a random player which creates an orb of lightning which fixates and moves towards them. When it reaches its target it explodes and deals damage to all players within 8 yards and this damage is increased if standing in Conductive Water so it needs to be kited away from the group and out of the Conductive Water.

Static Burst is an attack that Jin'rokh regularly casts which causes the raid to take a moderate amount of Nature damage, and also applies Static Wound to the current tank. Static Wound causes the victim of Jin'rohk's melee attacks to take increased damage AND third of the damage is also taken by EACH raid member. So tanks must switch when one of them has Static Wound.

Every 90 seconds Jin'rohk casts Lightning Storm a channeled spell that lasts 15 seconds which deals Nature damage to the whole raid. After casting Lighting Storm Jin'rokh turns Conductive Water into Electrified Waters which deals damage to all players who stand in it, so players should hug up for AoE heals and not be in the water.

The fight is not complicated and can be summarised as:

• DPS and healers stand in Conductive Waters
• Tanks switch on Static Wounds
• Kite Focused Lightning Balls away from the raid
• Hug up out of Conductive Waters for Lightning Storm
• Do NOT stand in Electrified Waters

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Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making. You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict. The question I am covering today is:

Professions - do you have all of them, some or none? Which is your favorite for goldmaking?

As an OCD completionist I have had all primary professions on each of my characters maxed out since before I was interested in making gold as a subset of my WoW focused activities. I do have at least one of each primary profession and have always tried to RP a little with professions so each class has a profession that fits the nature of the class although I do have one odd ball, my rogue. The secondary professions are the bane of my life, each of my characters has a minimum of 525 fishing, cooking and first aid and only archaeology eludes me as a profession I am keen to level up on all characters (coming in Mists I promise).

My primary professions by class are:

• Deathknight: Miner and Skinner.
• Druid: Miner and Herbalist.
• Hunter: Herbalist and Skinner.
• Mage: Alchemist (potions) and Tailor.
• Monk: Herbalist and Miner.
• Paladin: Scribe and Miner.
• Priest: Alchemist (transmute) and Enchanter.
• Rogue: Blacksmith and Leatherworker.
• Shaman: Alchemist (flask) and Herbalist.
• Warlock: Engineer and Jeweller.
• Warroir: Miner and Skinner.

So as you can see all the bases are covered. My favourite profession is fishing because it is the most relaxing and can be done easily while chatting with guildies on vent. It is also the best profession to actively farm on as you can stay in a small area and simply fish pools or if you're after no fish in particular you can stand in one spot and not move for weeks! Wrath was great for this when fishing for feasts in Wintergrasp.

The best profession for making gold is jewelcrafting. Alkways a demand and the predictable weekly patterns of cheap mats at the weekend followed by high demand (and high prices) midweek when all the raiding happens is just perfect.

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Not my first screenshot ever that has sadly been butchered and hacked about to show only Evlyxx but this is certainly my first death to a raid boss and I'm sure that myself and Falynn (hi Andy if you're still reading this) could have done with a few more friends before tackling Lethon at level 40. Scary looking at the old base UI and how little Blizz have changed it.

Anyway hoping to make this a regular feature, maybe even weekly and hopefully it won't end up a failed project like my Backstory Shorts series which I managed to do 3 of in a 6 month period....

Oh and that first screenshot? See below:

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5.2 is here and we've all had time to absorb the changes to our classes, the new raid, the new dailies and the whole host of other features the patch brought. Sadly, I've been working since the patch dropped so my playtime has been rather limited. 

That said I have still managed to get a good feel for the patches highlights. My first experience was literally the raid as after arriving home from work, patching up and updating all my addons I was already 5 minutes late and after logging in was summoned straight into the instance. The first set of trash is rather nondescript but there isn't much (unlike Heart of Fear) before the first boss. Despite hitting him almost unprepared, and being rather worried that my 2 minutes reading the icy-veins strat led me to believe there was a major DPS race ahead we had the bugger down to 27% on pull no 1 and had him dead in 4 mins 34 seconds on only our 6th pull. The next trash was interesting to say the least and will be a killer in LFR.

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Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making. You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict. The question I am covering today is:

How much of your playtime is devoted to gold making? Do you raid/pvp/pet battle too or is the AH your main playtime?

As regular readers will know, not all of my playtime is devoted to gold making, in fact a relatively small proportion of my playtime is centered around gold making because to be honest I'm having too much fun with everything else.

On an average day I spend 30 minutes of my time centred around gold making, but I do play way too much. Some days I spend a lot more but this tends to be afk crafting while I'm doing other things around the house or on the PC, in fact I've probably afk for as much as 30-50% of my /played time since Wrath.

However, I am still active a lot which allows me to level alts, raid, feed my personal transmog and achievement addiction as well as the new pet battle thing which is far too addictive for someone like me to play casually (damn you Blizzard!).

Warcraft is such a vast and varied game that anyone can find a niche playstyle within it and there truly is something for everyone. Likewise even for the OCD completionist like me there is always that one part that doesn't appeal and for me that is PVP because I suck at PVP and really find it no fun unless running with friends/guildies.

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Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making. You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict. The question I am covering today is:

What was your biggest 'Yay!' moment?

This was a real tough one to choose as I have not had one outstanding moment of gold making joy but many.

My first 1000g was good, my first 1000g profit was better, my first big flip was not bad either. Purchasing my Tundra Mammoth in the first weeks of Wrath, getting all my alts 310% flight as they logged on in Cataclysm, my Grand Expedition Yak in the first few days of MoP were all bloody good moments too.

The biggest 'yay!' moment that generated a lot of gold though has to be discovering the WoW gold community. Prior to discovering this I was soloing the gold game and blissfully unaware of many of the techniques, espeically the Saronite Shuffle.

My initial source was Just My Two Copper which at the time was an awesome source of information and had a great author who was a great character. Sadly he no longer runs the site and has left the Warcraft community as he is now involved in the Diablo 3 community. It was through this site that I discovered all of the blogs and the Consortium. 

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