What should i farm?

The answer to this is a bit longer then most people might hope. Its more of what should you farm on that 1 specific character, and how to do it.

Guidelines for farming

• Profession farming
• If you decide to farm with a gathering profession make sure you use something useful such as mist piercing goggles when you are mining or herbing
• Pair up professions so that you can farm 2 things at once, kill 2 birds with one stone. For example i noticed when i herb i had a lot of beast attacking me so i learned skinning. I would normally have to kill them anyway and being a worgen the skinning takes less then 1 extra second.
• Use a character with a faster flight speed, or a special benefit such as worgen skinning boost, druids herbing while mounted in flight form, etc
• Plan a route, the first time this may take a while but after that it is easy and becomes second nature, i recommend using an addon like gatherer, these 2 links are gatherer home page and gatherer from curse client. Both are the same addon take your pick on how you wish to install it.
• Farming mobs
• Make sure to take a powerful character, don't go killing something on a healer when you have a dps character better equipped for the job.
• Use something to gain a bonus like Potion of luck for pandaria or Potion of treasure finding for cataclysm, utilize the time the potions are active wisely don't waste it.
• Set enough bag space aside so you can farm without constantly emptying your bags every 2 minuets.
• If you will be farming beast take a skinner, if your farming in an area with lots of humanoids take a tailor, take a character that yields a bonus for farming those creatures.
• It is helpful to have an addon to quickly sell things such as the Sell Junk which will allow you to open a vendor and it will sell all unnecessary items so you can save time picking what to sell and spend more time killing.
• Group with a friend who isn't busy (maybe even an enchanter!). You don't have to kill things with your friend but if they are an enchanter or you are an enchanter and your in the same group when you pick up an armor you can disenchant it saving time farming and saving bag space.

Pick a method that's right for you you can use addons like Titan panel to keep track of gold per hour, or you can type /timer and just time your farm and subtract the gold you have now from gold you started with. Also keep in mind the value of items. I recomend using the auction house to gain an idea of price for all items you farm, act as if you sold them and treat them as gold. This allows you to act as if your farming gold and only gold even if you farm something you don't want. For example if you find your farming lots of cloth you don't and the cloth is selling for 1 gold 50 silver each you got 100 cloth, but when you farm ore that you need the ore is worth 2 gold each but you only got 60 ore, the cloth is worth 150 gold and the ore is worth 120 gold, farm the cloth, sell the cloth buy the ore. Just made 30 gold and got what you wanted anyway.

Which is more important? Gear vs Sill

Everything is important, its that simple.
Gear - Limits numerically the best your character can possibly do.
Skill - Determines how close you can get to your maximum dps depending upon your gear.
Basically, your skill means you can do a certain % dps that your gear numerically allows. For example if your gear allows you to do a maximum of 100k dps, and your skill allows 100% potential then your doing 100k dps, If your gear allows for 200k dps and your at only 50% potential because of your skill then your doing around 100k. Great players can make use of low gear, you may be 30 Item levels lower then someone pulling more dps because you have a higher skill level.

When is it more appropriate to work on gear vs skill? - You may be a player who only has a very limited time to play outside of your 2 day a week raid so when should you work on skill vs gear? Well the answer is quite simple, you may use realistic vs maximum dps rankings and compare them to how much you are doing. From personal experience i can tell you 100% is extremely hard to achieve, even very skilled players may only achieve 95% maximum. Try this, check what kind of dps your doing and get a general idea on how high your dps is compared to what it should be, if your below the 75% mark you should work on your skill right away. Groups will inspect your gear and if they notice your doing significantly less hen what you should be you may be removed.

I have seen plenty of people in my experience do less dps and hps in end content raiding gear then beginning content dungeon gear and i can tell you, it is embarrassing to be in that position, we were all their once including myself, remember to never be afraid to take advice or ask for help.

Raid looting Systems

Their are 3 main types of looting systems in raiding, each have their own advantage and disadvantages.

• Free roll (pure random)
• Pros
• Friendly loot
• Random distribution
• Promotes trust within raid
• Allows main spec and off spec gearing, even transmog rolls
• Cons
• Allows side upgrades of same quality to occur while others may need the item more
• Allows one person the random ability to win more pieces then everyone else combined

• DKP ("currency")
• Pros
• Rewards for Participation
• Ensures 1 person cant take it all
• Prevents people joining for a month and leaving with all the gear
• Will result in extra enchanting supply's and a slight increase in guild and personal wealth
• No arguments on if the decision was correct or not
• Cons
• DKP hording for specific bosses
• Unwilling to spend DKP for tiny upgrade can result in item being disenchanted or vendored hindering progression
• Disenchanting take priority over off specs that are unused in raid but may be used in game

• Loot Council (assigned loot by guild leaders)
• Pros
• Ensures the best person to help progression gets loot
• Increases rate of progression
• Cons
• Must trust your loot masters 100% to make the best decision
• May assist new players in gearing at which they may not necessarily stay in raid
• May have disagreements between raid members on the loot masters decision

If your group is a friends and family group where their is no fights or arguments, go with free roll or loot council depending on if your priority is fun or raid progression. If you are in a guild that is not full of friends and family you may want to consider DKP system, however variations of free roll may work as well. If your group is looking for straight progression regardless consider loot council, more loot, more progression. My personal preference is free roll because i enjoy friendly groups, i have tried DKP and it didn't work out, i have not tried loot council but as long as i trust the looter i would be willing to.

Obtaining gear

Some quick tips on obtaining gear, keep in mind this is not a 1 day you have everything process.

1. Get a raid group. If you don't have a group get one, raiding gar is the best gear to have for PVE, if your a PVP player get an arena team. You will want to do this of course because they have the best gear
2. Max professions. Crafting professions can craft gear, it may not be the best gear but it is still good gear and even if you choose a gathering profession you can still obtain gear that way as well by selling what you gathered and buying the gear.
3. Valor Cap. Now this has been changing, gear use to be easily valor obtainable then changed to limited obtain-ability but you can upgrade gear with it and soon it will probably change again, but one thing is for sure valor is important and will play some role in gear.
4. Do your LFR's an Flex'es as long as theirs upgrades. It doesn't matter that say 2 of 14 bosses in LFR or Flex difficulty drop gear, if you want gear go after it don't wait for everything in normal, besides if you get that gear it will help your raid group, if everyone in the group does that progression speeds up and guess what! Soon your doing heroics or in 6.0 the new mythic difficulty getting even better gear!
5. This is not a single player game, ask for help. This does not mean go to a random person and say hay buy me gear, no, this means grab your friends say hay i got this upgrade in LFR would you like to come, even if you don't have an upgrade you could get valor. Or say your leveling a 2nd character who is a leather wearer but you don't have a leather worker but your friend does. Talk to them about it, you might not have all maxed professions but this is an MMO theirs millions of players, thousands per server, make friends, have fun, help each other.
6. Don't give up. I often see people play a patch for 3 weeks then say well i have only gotten 1 piece or 2 pieces of gear i'm done better luck in 6 months next patch. You wont get everything fast, and it happens, yes some people are lucky and get a 4 piece set bonus in 1-2 weeks, yes some people by the 1 month mark have everything in normal and some heroic gear, but most people don't the fact is gear on average takes a while, give it time, even me, i raid every week ive killed some bosses over 30 times between LFR, Flex and normal and i'm still wearing 3 pieces i cant upgrade from last patch (at the time of this post) but i still try, because when i finally  do get those pieces it will be worth it, and while other people are complaining their gear never drops when they out gear me ill be able to say look, put effort out just because your gear is higher doesn't make it the best, epics and legendary's are not handed to you, i have 1 legendary from cataclysm, 3 from pandaria about to get my 4th, don't complain you don't have one if you don't try

Auction house tips

Videos on youtube listing easy gold in 15 minuets, how i made 50,000 gold per hour, what to buy and sell in the auction house. Yes they work for those people and they work for other but they may not work for you. This will help give you an idea of what is worth selling in the auction house if anything is worth selling, some servers are amazing for this some or very bad for this.

1. Always check the prices of items before buying or crafting. Sometimes buying a flask is better sometimes you'll find buying the herbs and crafting it is better, use knowing this to know if you should sell your herbs and buy your flasks or just craft. Always check, sometimes you may be supprised.
2. Start small. Don't go in and buy 10,000 gold of items and test your luck by crafting and selling, just because an item is in the auction house does not mean it will sell, some items take days, weeks, even months to sell.
3. Don't be afraid to take risks. This does not mean go out and pay 50,000 gold on a mount and try to resell it for 80,000. This means as your working your way up from small to big you may notice some items that appear worth it, keep in mind that you wont make gold fast selling herbs or cloth, you will eventually need to move up to mounts, pets, gear and larger things. Take that jump every once in a while, if it doesn't work out then you learned a lesson.
4. Maybe not now but in a year it could be worth it? This goes both ways, in a year your items could be worthless like gear, materials and such. Or if you play your cards right things like mounts become valuable, a mount worth 20,000 gold now but you only make a 500 gold profit might be worth 30,000 gold next year. I have seen mounts very as much as 125,000 gold in the course of a year, that is a HUGE profit margin so don't rush out to use all your materials not to craft everything, consider how large the profit is now and maybe try it next expansion. Not all will fluctuate that much but remember as demand for items goes low, supply goes lower, eventually no one is crafting them and it will be worth making.
5. Use addons. Although not required they are highly recommended, when you first start off you may be buying 1,000 gold in items that cost 50 silver, i know i did and buying listing mailbox buying listing mailbox took forever. Use an auction house addon, mailbox addon, vendor addon and what ever else you may need for your auction needs. Auction addons will allow you to place an item into the sell box and it automatically undercuts by a predefined amount of your choosing (i do undercut by 1 copper), so rather then search price and post and change all setting you can click item into sell box and post. Mailbox addons to auto retrieve all mail, no more clicking, 1 button open all! And an addon to sell junk to a vendor where as soon as you open the vendor there goes all grey items!
6. Search for other auction house players. You will notice a lot you will find one person whos posting gems, enchants, pets, mounts, ore, herbs, flasks, etc etc etc and their not farming it all, chances are they are playing the auction house also. This can be good or bad so be cautious, you can either A.) sell similar items and undercut them by a small amount, however it is their market so they will fight back and undercut you, chances are they have more gold to do so with as well. Or B.) Find like items to sell, recognize that they dominate that market, let them and look for another item that you can dominate. Option A has a higher payoff if successful, however option B has less risk involved.

Simple tips to improve

1. Never think you know it all. This will be an important tip to push your dps, that extra 5%, top dps or not it does make a difference. Once you assume you know it all you stop researching, you stop trying to improve, you stop fine tuning yourself and when this happens that 5% you may be missing might turn into 10%, 15% and you will have no idea because you don't know where you should be. Just because your top dps or hps in your group does not mean you are the best, different classes, specs, and gear make it difficult sometimes to know who really is better.
2. Don't always believe what you see or hear. Someone may provide you with an insane number for dps or hps for a fight, it might be true or false, either way lots of factors are involved in this. Shorter fights = higher dps, groups who have classes that shield for heals will falsify numbers for non shielding healers. tanks who are off tanks will take less damage then main tanks, and so on.
3. Get an average comparison for bosses. This does not mean use the overall setting on your recount or skada, this means take a record of your dps/hps per boss, boss kill times and the item levels as well as those numbers from others the same class/spec as yourself. You wont always be consistent but you can eventually form a trend and gain an idea of where you are compared to others with similar gear.
4. Just because your top, doesn't mean your the top. This one may be a bit confusing but often i find in all difficulties you will see that person in 2nd place on the meters, 3rd place, even lower sometimes and think they are not as good as that person in 1st, check again, they could have lower gear, improper spec, or both and for what they have they may be doing great, fine tune some things and they might be highest.
5. Don't be scared to ask for and/or take advice. Sometimes people refuse advice, that advice could be from another random player, a friend, guildie, etc. The point is when someone says use this talent not that one or follow this stat priority, or why is this spell your top damage or healing spell. Don't always assume they are being mean, sometimes they are being a troll but sometimes that may be just what you need to tune your skill.
6. Compete! This does not mean every boss link your damage or healing meters, this does not mean show off and be a jerk. This means find someone who does similar dps/hps or damage mitigation as you or sometimes even a little better and say to them, hay wanna have a dps/hps race? When someone knows your competing they tend to try harder, test yourself, this may help motivate you to improve, i personally have 2 people i compete with on a constant basis, and in the past had others however using the tips i give its no longer a competition and i had to find newer challenges. If you find that person you compete with no longer holds up to your numbers or completely slaughters you, find someone else, equal playing field.
7. Don't overwork yourself. The tips i give may seem overwhelming however they are simple, don't be a know it all, look at your meters, other meters and compare, compete and more in my advanced tips to improve section. They can be done in a short amount of time, very quick and if you find yourself spending an hour wondering if one piece of gear is better then another then your trying to hard, look at it, and either try it our and hack up the gold to reforge and gem and hit the target dummy's or think out loud to friends, or even just give it a day or 2, your character will be there tomorrow, go enjoy the game its not a job, but don't hold back respect for yourself and your group when it comes to raid time. Remember the raid isnt there to gear you, they are their to progress and have fun, respect it and work towards being a part of the solution not the problem.

Which stats to choose and why???

When choosing a stat for your class such as haste, crit, mastery etc their are a few things to keep in mind that make it simple and a few ways.

1. First thing you should do is to check Claywarlock (here), Ask Mr. Robot, Noxxic, Icy-Veins or whatever you prefer to see how they spec, generally they will be identical with few exceptions.
2. You should know the value of your stats, for all specs listed on Claywarlock i post how many points give you 1% so you know how easy it is for that 1% to be obtained. In short with no special bonuses 1% Crit or 1% Haste = 1% dps/hps increase, special mana gain bonuses, dps procs, etc change that but its a good start.
3. Play close attention to your types of spells, dot's and hot's hints at haste, extra ticks can be potentially better then your best stat (crit/mastery)
4. Never think you know it all, once you think you know it all you stop searching and you stop improving, something may change or their may be something you don't even know yet.