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Players have long avoided the Cooking profession, not necessarily because of a lack of materials, but moreso because of the preponderance of different materials. Whereas blacksmiths can go off mining for a few days and cart their accumulated bronze, iron, and whatnot to the forge, working with a narrow but deep pool of materials, cooks are forced to buy recipes that incorporate hog haunches, spider legs, stringy wolf meat, boar intestines and whatever other animal parts. A cook's gamut of materials is incredibly wide, but shallow. Since a recipe for hot dogs is not yet in the game, this approach doesn't make for good skill grind sessions, unless you have a lot of spare cash and can buy inflated stacks of wolf's meat when they appear on the auction from time to time.
Quite simply, I'll give you a method for raising your cooking skills from 0 to 150 by fishing for recipe ingredients, thus raising your fishing skill from 0 to 150 at the same time. While it will be a productive two hours, I don't promise a fun two hours; your eyes must be on the screen most of the time. For those of you not cut from the traditional MMOG cloth, this might be your first experience at true skill grinding. There is a method to the madness, and the best part is: when you're done, you'll be able to feed yourself well into your 30s!
What You Need...

Besides the obvious (patched WoW account in good standing, duh), you need 12 inventory slots, 20 spare silver (you should recoup more than half if you sell back your components at the end), and a low-latency connection (fishing while lagging will fray your nerves faster than a 4am phone call). You should be at least level 10-- you won't be in any real danger, but level 10 is required for Journeyman Cooking and Fishing - and have "opened' the flight path between Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff. Also, make sure you've learned fishing and cooking from the appropriate trainers. You should also know how to fish- there's a tad bit of skill to it.
The Lake behind (just East of) Goldshire (the level 6-12 town just South of Stormwind City). I believe most of the fish-cooking recipes are available from the fishing supplier next to the fishing trainer on a dock in Stormwind City. After you’ve caught and cooked enough Brilliant Smallfish and Longjaw Mud Snappers from Goldshire, head back North up the road to Stormwind City to fish in the canals for Bristle Whisker Catfish.
Dwarves and Gnomes can get there easily by travelling to Ironforge, finding the tram station in Tinkertown, and taking it to Stormwind City (free trip). Don’t forget to visit the flightmaster in Stormwind to pick up the flight point for later. It’s easy to get lost in Stormwind City. You can ask a guard for directions to the guildmaster – His office is just inside the main gates. Then head South down the road to Goldshire and East behind the inn to the lake.
Night Elves have it harder. They will have to travel to Darnassus to learn how to fish, then return to Dolanaar to catch low-level fish in one of the two lakes. You can probably buy shiny baubles at the trade vendor upstairs in the northern building in Dolanaar if you forgot to buy them in Darnassus. The cooking vendor in Dolanaar sells at least one or two of the fish-cooking recipes. As mentioned in the article, you can take the boat to Auberdine (after passing through the portal behind the bank in Darnassus) and go under the dock to get a fishing quest, the reward for which a +3 fishing pole and a +25 lure. You can get two more fishing quests from the Gnome engineer upstairs in the Auberdine Inn. He rewards you with a stack of 20 +50 fishing lures. From Auberdine, take the other boat to Menethil Harbor. A vendor on the dock sells another fish-cooking recipe. Menethil is also the best place to fish for Oily Blackmouth, a fish needed by alchemists and worth some money at the auction house.
Other ways to make money from fishing: Fish up Oily Blackmouth and Firefin Snappers on the coasts. Alchemists need the former to make waterbreathing and swim speed potions and the latter to improve their alchemy skill. (Firefin Snappers make Fire Oil, which is essentially worthless now that enchanters can make Lesser Wizard Oil.) Once your skill passes 200 and you’re level 35 or so, you can fish for Stonescale Eel in Feralas and the Hinterlands. These are used by alchemists to make Elixir of Superior Defense and sell at auction for almost 1 gold each on most servers. The best time to catch them is at night. You can also make money by looking for “piles of floating wreckage” and small whirlpools of Sagefish Schools. If you catch a “bloated” fish of any kind, keep it. Right-click on it in your bag to get what it swallowed, sometimes very valuable. You will also occasionally fish up a chest or other random treasure. Finally, after level 30, you can go to Stranglethorn Vale on Sundays between 2 and 4 p.m. for the fishing extravaganza. All along the coast, you’ll find whirlpools from which you can catch Tastyfish and other special fish. Take them to Booty Bay before 5 p.m. to trade for silver or special fishing items. They will spoil if you keep them longer than that....

Pallys
Posted: 17-Jun-07 02:31pm
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Tanking in an Instance
Paladins are capable of tanking in an instance (or other PvE situation). This is true because the computer controlled mobs choose their targets based on mathematical calculations of threat. This threat calculation is based on damage output, player level, healing output, and maybe a few other things.


Paladins are not good at putting out a lot of damage relative to other classes. Good paladins know this. Bad paladins think that they are different from other paladins and are in fact good at putting out a lot of damage. Paladins are also not the best healers; priests have them there. So you might wonder how a paladin is going to tank if they can’t generate the most damage aggro or the most healing aggro. The answer is that paladins have two spells that fudge the math in their favor. Paladins have Righteous Fury which increases the threat generated by their holy spells. They also have Blessing of Salvation which they can cast on members of their group to reduce the threat that the target member generates. So, my 48 paladin can cast Righteous Fury on himself and Blessing of Salvation on a 48 or 49 mage and even though the mage will deal much more damage, my paladin can hold aggro on the mob (if the mage is higher level he will have to be careful in his damage output for this to stay true).


Tanking in a PvP Raid
Paladins are only capable of tanking in PvP raids if the other side is stupid. Being a punching bag doesn’t work against human controlled enemies because they have no reason to hit the punching bag unless they are too dumb to know better. They will normally run right past you, so they can get to the squishies. Righteous Fury and Blessing of Salvation do not work on human controlled enemies. The only threat paladins pose in PvP raids is as a healer. If a paladin is only fighting, and not healing in a raid, then he/she is doing exactly what the other side wants. The previous statement is true regardless of the paladin’s spec. All things being equal, a rogue, warrior, warlock, hunter, and shadow spec priest will always put out more damage than a paladin.



Now, if a paladin is doing a lot of healing in a raid and keeping the team’s high level players alive, he/she will suddenly get a lot of attention from the Horde. Smart players will realize that the reason the level 70 hunter isn’t dying when they gang up on him is because the level 48 paladin keeps healing him. As a 48 paladin I can output far more damage by keeping Interook (a 66 warrior) or Nitesaber (a 70 hunter) alive than I can by beating on people myself. I also get credit for the kills they make while I am healing them. A paladin that actively heals during a raid will get more kills than one that only fights.

I am working on a post to make sure that our healers know how to use the raid tools available to them to improve their viewing/healing of the whole raid party. I have to get pictures first though.

Welcome!
Posted: 15-May-07 01:39pm
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Welcome to SteelHeart Knights!

The private forum, player roster and ranking system have been created.