Let's Talk Gold

More and more people are singing up to play World of Warcraft every day. The game provides players will and fun and social environment and keeps them entertained for years on end. WoW gives you the chance to avoid the reality of everyday life – a nice escapist break! Relax and earn a little gold to kill the time, or just have fun with your guild mates - not a bad way to spend an evening if you ask me. It’s better than spending countless hours roaming Facebook, Haha. Anyway, while you’re playing you’ll naturally build up a sizeable portion of gold.

However, not all of us are that lucky. Some of us are just bad with gold. There are items that can cost up to 20,000 gold! Ridiculous. Most people don’t like to endless grind for gold (I sure don’t), so it’s probably a good idea to have some sort of ‘system’ in place that lets you amass gold quickly and efficiently.

Establishing a System

What kind of system you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked because I’m about to tell you! Haha. Dallies are a great way to make some gold, but there is a certain way to go about doing them. You probably already know that the daily quests give a sizable gold reward. In World of Warcraft, items don’t start getting expensive until you start reaching the level cap. In the end, everything seems very expensive; especially everything your character needs to compete! If you have a game plan, you’ll have a great head start on getting everything your character needs, and some cool extras.

 
What’s your Gold per Hour?

If you’re trying to get the most gold possible as quickly as possible, you’ll have to change your ways slightly – focus on what is the most time efficient way to make gold. Like I mentioned previously, dallies are a great way to make gold every day. You complete the quest and get the gold. It’s very important, however, to pay attention to how much gold you are getting per quest. Try to pay attention to which quests are giving the most gold, and which take the least amount of time to complete. Say you make 250 gold, but you spent 5 hours doing it! This is an example of poor time management. To make the most gold per hour spent in game, you need a system to follow.

I’ll share with you the exact system I follow - Zygor's Dailies & Events Guide. Your time is important people! Check out Zygor Guides by clicking here. I realize some people may disagree with using Zygor’s approach, but I definitely think it’s worth checking out!

Mage - Frost Leveling Spec

Hey everyone, I know leveling can be a pain sometimes, so in order to make your life a little bit easier, I’ve compiled a little guide to show you what you should be spending your talent points in! It is the best leveling spec for a mage I could find.

This mage leveling spec breaks down what you should be spending your talent points on by level:

Levels 10-17

2/2 Early Frost

2/2 Shatter

1/3 Piercing Ice

Super exciting, right? You should be getting Shatter simply because it synergizes beautifully with Improved Cone of Cold which you will be picking up shortly.

Levels 19-27

3/3 Piercing Ice

2/2 Improved Cone of Cold

1/3 Icy Floes

Piercing Ice, Shatter, and Improved Cone of Cold go together great. You can use Cone of Cold on a target, then cast a Frostbolt to deal bonus damage and have a very good chance of scoring a critical strike!

Keep in mind, Frost Nova also freezes targets, so you’ll be able to alternate between Cone of Cold and Frost Nova – allowing you to keep your target permanently frozen!

Levels 29-37

1/1 Icy Veins

3/3 Icy Floes

2/3 Fingers of Frost

Icy Veins is a must have! Combine this with your Water Elemental for some high damage attacks. Icy Floes is also quite helpful, as you’ll be using Cone of Cold quite a bit while leveling.

Fingers of Frost is great because everytime it procs, it allows you to do some big damage with Ice Lance, and since Frost Bolt and Cone of Cold are both "chill" effects, you can expect it to proc quite a bit.

Levels 39-47

3/3 Brain Freeze

3/3 Fingers of Frost

1/3 Improved Freeze

Brain Freeze is useful because it give you a 15% chance to instant-cast (at no mana-cost) a Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt.

When Fingers of Frost is active, Frostfire Bolt can be used as an instant-cast spell which pretends that the target is frozen. Basically, the insta-cast Frostfire bolt deals 20% bonus damage and gives a good chance to score a critical strike.

Levels 49-57

1/1 Ice Barrier

2/2 Shattered Barrier

3/3 Improved Freeze

By now, I hope you’re really enjoying your Frost mage and beginning to see why frost is the best Mage leveling spec. Things are finally getting interesting!

It’s also time to finish off Improved Freeze. This talent will increases your burst damage and proves to be quite valuable.

Ice Barrier and Shattered Barrier will help increase your survivability and as an added bonus, freeze your targets when the barrier is destroyed.

Levels 59-69

2/2 Frostfire Orb

1/1 Cold Snap

2/3 Permafrost

1/1 Deep Freeze

Frostfire Orb is awesome! It makes Flame Orb spell reminiscent of the Frozen Orb from Diablo 2. I miss that game. L

Permafrost is pretty so-so, but there isn’t a whole lot else to put points in right now. Cold Snap can be useful, but the cool down is quite long!

Finally, a point into Deep Freeze gives us access to a great ability and the other two talent trees! (Fire, Arcane) But, we won't be getting into the other two trees as this guide is a mage frost leveling spec.

Levels 70-85

2/2 Improved Counterspell

3/3 Netherwind Presence

2/2 Improved Blink

3/3 Permafrost

2/2 Piercing Chill

The final 10 points are basically just finishing off the Frost talent tree, and gaining a few more useful talents from Arcane. At this point, you are probably either going to be respeccing to another build to enjoy PvE raid content, or maybe even for PvP, whichever is more your style.


Below is what your mage talent build should look like:

What's the Deal with Mages?

Hello everyone, I love playing my Frost mage and I wanted to write a little post to get people familiar with what mages are all about. If you're an experienced WoW veteran, you'll find this post a little.... noobish! Anyway, for the rest of you, hope you enjoy!

Basics

As a mage, you will be able to manage all aspects of World of Warcraft controls. You can show great skill by controlling both single and multi-target encounters. All of your attacks will enable you to engage enemies at range, and do incredible damage to unsuspecting prey.

Grouping
You are endowed with the ability to help to the people around them. The possibilities do not stop there! Harness the power to create portals anywhere in Azeroth. These portals can be used by anyone. Also, you can summon large amounts of food and drink, and provide a constant supply of health and mana to yourself and your group. Because of these benefits, we often see mages in PvP or raid groups.

Enemies
Enemies are smart and many have resistance to magic. But, you have a wide range of combat skills, so in reality there is always something that is not resistant to the enemy. This is useful when dealing with multiple enemy types. You will always be able to find a spell that will do the most damage possible in any given situation. Combined with strong area-of-effect attacks, you will often find yourself a great asset in raids.

Armor
With the ability to only access cloth armor, you may find yourself unprotected at times. If you have someone with you to protect you while you’re busy nuking away at the enemy, you’ll have a much better chance at survival. 

Weapons
You have access to staves, wands, and daggers, but these will almost never be used in combat. Mages find themselves constantly using skills and spells to achieve their ends. Even though you will always have something equip, you will almost never use a weapon to attack. Because you never use your weapon, you’ll find the stats provided from weapons much more valuable than the weapons themselves.

Specialization
Mages are all about damage-per-second (DPS). They can maximize damage potential through different talent tree specializations. You are given a choice of three different paths, Frost, Arcane, and Fire, which gives you a lot of choice in customization and personalization of your individual talent tree! Each talent tree is good for different reasons, feel free to experiment and decide which you like best.

If you decide that you want to raid, usually Fire is the preferred talent tree. But if you decide you want to PvP, I recommend that you use Frost as it gives you a lot of crowd control and subsequently survivability. Arcane is currently a little underpowered, but it does have its uses in certain situations.

I think that about covers it, more to come!