The 2.3 release seems to have all the improvements I could have hoped for.  Warrior talents have been changed enough to make Arms/Protection an adequate if less than perfect raiding build.  Jahira, my L48 Arms/Prot warrior is no longer destined to be a toothless meat shield.  The Pali Retribution tree has been changed so as to make a retribution build viable for DPSing in end game raids.   I may be able to avoid the expense involved in tanking and the boredom involved in healing when Paladrina makes it to L70.  She is currently at L42 and great fun to play.

My NElf Druid and Priest are at L34 and the changes in Dustwallow Marsh are most welcome.  Improved loot in lower to mid-level dungeons is a blessing.  Voice chat, faster leveling, UI improvements and more are removing speed bumps and annoyances right and left.  This is an amazing patch and it gets better and better as new information is gained from forum responses and player experiences on the PTR.  I will return to a much better game than the one I left.

I will soon free up a character slot by deleted Varonna, my L26 BElf ret pali.  This is my only Horde character.  She served to introduce me to Horde content including lower level instances more convenient for Horde toons.  I liked paying her so much that I will reroll her on another server where she will be joined by other newly rolled toons:  Orc warrior, Troll hunter, Tauren Druid and Undead priest.  The slot she vacates will be given to a new female dwarf hunter.  But I already have an L61 NElf hunter so why roll another?  The new hunters will be used to develop a class guide for low to intermediate level players and serve as a supplement to the superb guidance furnished by Daniel Howell at Big Red Kitty.

Although I haven't played WoW for several months, that famine will end in a few weeks.  Although I haven't played the game in quite some time, I have studied it in excruciating depth, evaluated my toons and planned for some significant changes.  One of the first things I will do is delete Vassa, my L40 human rogue and replace her with a female Night Elf rogue.  Why throw away hundreds of gold spent on a mount and first class gear only to begin the leveling grind again?

I don't like the name I selected.  I was careless because Vassa was to be a bank alt that never strayed far from a mailbox and Auction House.  Bad move on my part because curiousity got the better of me and I couldn't resist trying her out.  So it was for eight of my nine alts.

I don't like the way Vassa looks.  Her short, blond, butch haircut puts me off.  I don't like the way she looks in her gear and I don't like the way she runs.  Oddly enough, I very much like my human warrior, mage, warlock and pali look and move. 

I also find that I prefer playing eight other classes more than rogue.  Nevertheless, color Vassa gone. 

First Aid is one of the most important skills a player can learn and advance. That holds true for healers as well as other classes. The use of bandages to recover health between fights is nevertheless remarkably rare in my experience. Too often I have seen players munching on some form of food to recover health when they could have recovered it far more quickly through bandaging.

My L59 hunter has harvested large amounts of Runecloth in the Plaguelands and made it into Runecloth and Heavy Runecloth bandages. Much of this is then mailed to 7 other characters who are all at 225/225 in first aid. Lower level characters make Mageweave and Heavy Silk bandages and distribute them as needed. When they start harvesting Runecloth I'll run them through the First Aid quest in Theremore.

This has been expensive because all cloth gathered has been used for making bandages rather than being sold at the AH. 20 Heavy Runecloth bandages require about 2.8g worth of Runecloth on my server. Equipping eight characters with ample supplies of bandages with additional stacks in storage has used 15-20g worth of materials. It was worth it.

Using bandages during combat conserves mana. If my pali is in desperate enough condition to cast Divine Shield she will use a Runecloth bandage to recover her health and preserve her mana for continuing the fight. My priest will cast Powerword Shield and do the same. My mage will cast Mana Shield and do the same. My Warlock will cast fear and bandage up during a fight. My rogue will Vanish, sprint, bandage and return to battle. It takes 8 seconds to fully recover health with the proper bandage.

Overbandaging can work wonders during combat. A Runecloth bandage will restore 1,360 health in 8 seconds. A Heavy Runecloth bandage will restore 2,000 health. My L40 rogue has 1,630 health. If she drops out of combat when she falls below 40% health she can use the heavy bandage to recover 1,000 health in four seconds and be back to 100% health. A Gouge or Kidney Shot with five combo points can buy enough time to recover at least 600 health. A Blind is good for 8 seconds and that is more than enough time to recover full health. Between fights I use the lowest level bandage that will restore full health or very nearly so.

My characters are all equipped with the best health potions they can use at their level. If bandaging is interrupted during a fight the remaining amount of healing can be achieved with a potion. Bandaging has a one minute cooldown while potions have a two minute cooldown. Bandaging is faster and cheaper than potions. Healing potions should be last ditch survival tools. Using one or the other or both consumables at the right time is often the difference between a close win and certain defeat.

Bandages play an essential role when my hunter deals with adds and duos. When attacking a pair of mobs at or above her level she will dispatch her pet, finish one mob quickly with special shots, drop a Freeze trap and set her pet to passive. The remaining mob then chases the pet back and gets rooted. A Heavy Runecloth bandage is then applied to return her pet to full health and the second mob is dealt with. She once handled two adds this way on one occasion. Blindsided by the first, she dropped a Freeze trap and took it out of action. After finishing her target she then attacked the first add who was still rooted. Her pet was down to 15% or so health by the time she finished it off. She then got blindsided by a second add. She Freeze trapped it, bandaged her pet back to full health in 8 seconds and finished off the third mob. This was preferable to feigning death, reviving her pet and feeding it 40s or more in Roast Quail to make it happy again. I have never seen another hunter do this drill.

During an unsuccessful attempt to complete a quest at the Orc fort of Zeth'Gor in the Hellfire Peninsula my L60 huntress and her L59 warrior partner took a good beating in one fight.  To my amazement the warrior sat down to eat food to restore health when mobs were respawning around us.  I slapped a heavy Netherweave bandage on my pet, slapped another on the warriorand had a drink of water to restore mana. 

Bandages dramatically reduce down time during grinds and any character capable of using higher level bandages can heal others in a party between fights and occasionally during them. First Aid is an essential skill for all classes and ignored by most players. So it goes. A lot of people, perhaps most, who like playing the game aren't very good at it.

Faralorn, my Night Elf huntress, and her beloved Swamp Jaguar Kira entered Outland when they were at L59.  They quickly and fairly easily polished off enough noob quests in the Hellfire Peninsula to replace Faralorn's weapons and much of her armor with very nice quest rewards.  It was then off to nearby Orc fort called Zeth'Gor to mark four guard towers with smoke canisters that would facilitate Alliance aerial bombardment.

On the way to Zeth'Gor Faralorn encountered an L59 warrior who suggested that they group in order to complete quests in or around the fort.  It seemed like a good idea at the time and Faralorn agreed to the proposition.  The duo got wiped four times before the warrior bailed and Faralorn hearthed out repair.  She then returned and cleared much of the fort twice in the course of completing two quests.  She did so without a trip to the GY.  What went wrong in the first attempt?  Why relatively easy success in subsequent attempts?

Faralorn is very good at picking groups of mobs apart in solo play.  Using hunter radar and careful scouting she carefully studies the tactical problem, classifies it, formulates a plan of action and then executes it with appropriate tactics.  Tactical problems created by scenario designers almost always fall into one of the following categories:

Stationary Singles.   This is the easiest problem as you needn't concern yourself with adds. 

Stationary Groups.   Hunters above L20 can easily deal with pairs of mobs but trios can be difficult.

Overlapping Patrols.  Mobs in Hillsbrad and Ashzara are frequently found in groups of three each of which has a patrol pattern that overlaps the patrol patterns of the other two.  This insures one or two adds if you simply launch your pet and fire away.  The solution entails pulling the mobs out of their patrol pattern and away from the patrol patterns of the other two mobs.

Stationary Singles or Groups with Perimeter Patrols.  The best solution usually entails pulling the perimeter patrol when it is in a location where reinforcements won't be pulled along with it.  Once the perimeter patrol or patrols are eliminated, polish off the stationary mobs.  Two Troll pallisades in the Hinterlands are good examples as are some Gnoll encampments in Westfall.

Once Faralorn has defined the tactical problem she then works on a plan of action aimed at finding the best point of entry to an area guarded by a large group of mobs.  This sometimes involves planning not only the first but several subsequent fights.  The easiest starting point may not be the best.  She then systematically massacres the entire swarm of mobs. 

On her first attempt at Zeth'Gor, Faralorn dispensed with her usually careful recon and planning.  She and her warrior partner simply waltzed up to the front entrance of Zeth'Gor and attempted to fight their way to their objectives without a well-designed plan of action and what should have been ridiculously easy became impossibly difficult. The second and third shots at Zeth'Gor led to some tough fights and a kitty death or two but careful recon, planning and tactical execution did the trick.   A side entrance provided the best point of entry and fixed pairs with a single patroller the basic problem.

The lesson to be learned here is that the whole can be less than the sum of the parts in a group situation. 

I have spent a great deal of time reading various class guides available on the Web.  Some are almost complete garbage.  Those available from TenTonHammer.com are amongst the worst.  Some were clearly written by people who have never played the class for which they purport to offer guidance.  You will find a superficial analysis of skills and talents along with a list class-specific quests and tier sets.  All will recommend one or more crafting professions that will keep you poor.  Finally, they will offer a variety of  "cookie cutter" talent builds that will differ in major respects from those available in other guides.  They offer little or nothing in the way of tactics and strategy.

There are, in fact, no generally accepted cookie cutter builds.  The author of The Build Mine has mined data from over 2 million builds that can be found at The Armory and his statistical analysis shows enormous variation and nothing that would pass as a standard build for any talent tree.  What to do?  Who to believe?

Sound builds vary depending on character level and play style.  For any given level and style of play there are competing builds that are pretty much six of one or a half-dozen of the other.  They are functionally equivalent and there is no clear winner or best build.   If end-game raiding is your thing you can find viable variations optimized for your class role.  Some of those builds will seriously gimp you in solo PvE play or PvP combat. 

Perhaps the best place to look for highly successful end game raiding builds can be found in the L70 records of the members of Death & Taxes on Kargath.  This is the most successful raiding guild hosted by U.S. servers.   A typical L70 spec for one of its paladins looks like this. Six out of seven active palis are Holy with one holdout being Retribution. Palis are the preferred healers. It is pretty much all they are good for. But what do their L70 priests do? DPS. About half their L70 priest builds look like this. This is as shadowy as priests get. The other half is extremely Holy. No tankadins in this guild.

Warriors still tank for the guild with most putting at least 48 points in the protection tree to get 5/5 points into Vitality. They don't put one more point into the protection tree to get Devastate, an extremely powerful attack with a 2h weapon. Warriors hold aggro and absorb a great deal of damage without dealing as much damage as other classes as they are confined to 1h weapon and shield. They are punching bags. Some of the L70 warriors are arms/fury and are very likely built for PvP and maybe off-tanking.

The guild currently has twelve L70 hunters. Two are beast masters, one is survival and the remaining nine are marksmanship. The raiding marksmanship spec is also a sound solo spec. Hunters make out.

The seven L70 druids are evenly be divided between resto and feral with the odd man out going with a balance-heavy hybrid.  All but one of the guild's mages were deep Fire with one Frost holdout the last time I looked.

L70 warlocks are mostly Affliction with two Demonologists accounting for the rest. The destruction tree is largely ignored. The Affliction build is excellent for solo play. Warlocks make out.

The three active L70 shaman are resto. The druids are pretty much evenly divided between feral and resto. The guild is not hurting for high level healers. It can field about fifteen at L70 and even more if they go down an exp level or two.

There is a tilt toward combat rogues with a few assassination and hybrid builds that add some diversity. I can't draw a conclusion from the distribution and character of the L70 rogue builds.

This is well and good for those who can use the same build for leveling, end game solo PvE and raiding:  Shadow Priests, Feral Druids, Affliction Warlocks, Fire Mages, Marksmanship or Beastmaster Hunters, Combat/Dagger or Combat/Swords Rogues.  Resto Shaman, Holy Priests, Holy Palis and Protection Warriors are horribly gimped in solo PvE play.   For them, farming gold, mats or rep is extremely difficult and leveling a dreadful grind.

Dedicated raiding guilds are quite strict in demanding certain builds for admission to raiding parties.  More casual guilds will tolerate some deviation from optimized builds.  PUGs will often take what they can get and try to make the most of it.

There are some builds that work quite well for leveling up to a point.  Retribution Paladins are quite effective as tanks or off-tanks up to about L45 or so.  Arms/Fury and Arms/Protection warriors can tank or off-tank to L50 plus.  Arcane/Fire mages are very effective up to L50 plus.  Enhancement or Elemental shaman are fine until they find themselves excluded from groups in the mid fifties or so.  There are lots of viable builds that will work well for the first 60-75% of the game.

Given the large number of builds that work quite well up to a certain level it make sense to shop build recommendations, study carefully the three talent trees available to your class and use a build that gives you the most bang for your buck for your level and style of play.  And don't take any alleged "cookie cutter" build at face value.

Although I am an adult male all of my WoW characters are female.  This is in part accidental.  Beginning with Duke Nukem I played only male characters in various games until I started Blizzard's original Diablo.  I began the game with a male warrior. I bashed my to Diablo's lair and after many unsuccessful attempts managed to slay him.   I loved the game but didn't much enjoy the character.  I then then switched to the female rogue -- the game didn't allow a player to choose the gender of characters.   Using bow and arrows my fragile rogue pulled and kited her way through the game five times to kill Diablo.

As the only character in Diablo II with a ranged weapon was the Amazon I once again found myself selecting a female character for game play.  I stuck with female toons through Neverwinter Nights, Dark Age of Camelot and have rolled ten of them so far in WoW.   Why?

For some players, characters are, in effect, action-figure toys that they identify with in much the same way a child will identify with Barbi or G.I. Joe.  However, the last time I played with an action figure was more than a half-century ago.  Nevertheless, I can understand why very young players might find gender switching incomprehensible. 

My emotional relationship with my WoW characters has more in common with a male coach of an all female athletic team.   I am also by nature chivalrous and protective towards women.   The voices and appearances of women are to my eye and ear more pleasing to me than those of men.  I enjoy looking at female WoW toons more than I like looking at male toons.  I get more of a sense of achievement in winning fights with a female character than I would get in playing a male character.  I can't imagine watching a male character's backside for 70 levels of fighting and questing.

I am particularly fond of Night Elf females.  I like their voices and am delighted by their girlish body language and awkward, gangling running animation.  Watching my NElf huntress running forward to loot yet another corpse has frequently brought a smile to my face.  My BElf Pali has great body language, feline grace in landing after a jump and is beautiful to behold.  Unfortunately, her battle cry is an annoying screech similar to that of Draenei females.

I will in time create more female toons as I want to enjoy all of the L1-20 starting zones.  My L26 BElf pali will get transferred to another normal server to make space for a newly rolled Dwarf Huntress.  On that server I will roll Troll, Tauren, Forsaken and Orc female characters representing my favorite classes:  Druid, Hunter, Warrior and either a Warlock or Priest.

There is a downside.  My female characters sometimes get a "Want to be my GF?" query from the brain dead.  Childish group leaders sometimes assume that I am female and I get fewer group invitations than I might otherwise.  Using the new voice chat option will dispel some of the RP illusion.  I can live with that.

I am a WoW addict who will not be able to play the game for another three months or so.  I can, however, use this hiatus to do the research I need to improve my play.  As I play all nine current classes with Alliance toons and have a BElf Pali as well this entails a lot of reading.   As a good deal of WoW guidance found on the Web is false, incomplete, contradictory or some combination thereof, weighing evidence to establish an approximation of the truth of any given matter is absolutely necessary.  As other bloggers have helped me improve my knowledge of and skill at playing WoW, sharing the results of my research seems the right thing to do.   Ergo, this blog.