What we want to do, is to buy cheap leather, convert them to Pristine Hides for teh profit ! And If this is not possible we still got possibilites for profil..

So…

On my server this is the prices:

Savage leather scraps (5x = 1 savage leather) = ~ 10g/stack
Savage Leather (5x = 1 Heavy savage leather) = ~ 55-60g/stack
Heavy savage leather (10x = 1 Pristine hide) = ~ 20g/piece , ~400g/stack
Pristine Hide = ~300g/piece

… By now you should already get teh picture..

Buy scraps, convert em to Savage leathers, convert them to Heavy savage leathers, buy pristine hide and enjoy profit – Now if, for some reason, the pristine hides are so cheap on AH that its not profitable you can just convert teh scraps to heavy leathers instead. Again; Profit. And should this not be possible either, you turn em into savage leathers.. Profit^^ – When out of scraps, you just get savage leathers, convert them up to pristines instead.. Profit.. It’s so easy its unbelievable that every single leatherworker aint doing it…

Atm I’m on a (more than) full server and I make gold off this every single day. Actually, lately I see myself spending all my in-game time at ah/leather trader just to keep my profit going.. (I always SUCKED at making gold.. REALLY sucked)
—

To do the maths with the prices from my server

1. I buy lets say 25 stacks of savage leather scraps – ~ 250g
2. I convert em to Savage leather: 100 leathers (AH Value: 275-300g) <— profitz alrdy^^
3. Instead of selling for profit, now I:
4. Convert the savage leathers to heavys: 20 Heavy Savage leathers (AH Value: ~400g) GOOD profitz
5. Instead of selling for profit, now I:
6. Buy pristine hides for teh heavy leathers (20heavys = 2 hides) = ~600g HUGE PWN PROFIT 

(Rinse, repeat)

Now we just made 350g from something that took less time to actually do, than it prolly took to read this..

Note: If theres no scraps , or they are too expensive, you just skip number 1 and go straight to buying number two (Savage leathers), same if number two is too expensive buy number 4 (Heavy savage leather).

You can do this everyday all the time all your life grats Common sence one might say but judging from my income, it’s not.
———————-
TL;DR

Buy Savage leather scraps, turn em into Savage leather, heavy savage leather or most important, if possible, Pristine Hides. For free profit requires close to NO work.
You can also buy Savage leathers –> Heavy/Pristine
or
Heavy savage leather –> Pristine … You got the picture.

In the Swamps directly to the west of Bardin Hold (cant miss it) there are large numbers of Crocalisks that have to be killed and looted for a daily. Well lo and behold not only are they skinning for 1-2 Savage leather, but when its right after a Tol Barad there are mountains of these being laid to waste rapidly and there was no-one skinning them. Since they respawn hyper fast you can easily get several stacks of leather with little to no work in a few minutes.

This swamp is also a decent place for whip tail if you are encountering too much competition in Uldum.

GearScore is an add-on that assigns a value to items. Theoretically, the better item gets the better score. When a player tells you they have 5000GS, they are referring to the total value of all their items.

Many criticize the add-on, including myself, for being overly simplistic. The ‘lower’ item is not always going to be the worst item (namely with trinkets): use it with caution. It is, however, useful as a general guide in comparing items and players, and useful as a basis on whether you are in the range of gear for a particular instance or not.

If you haven’t already realized it, you’re going to have to increase your GS to get into PUGs (Picked Up Group) and non-guild raids. For this reason, a lot of this guide is focused on increasing your GearScore, which feels dirty as we should really be talking about stats, but GearScore is what the kids look for these days.

When forming a raid, no one cares about your stats anymore, they only want to know your GS. That is why I seem to talk a lot about improving your GS in this guide, even though I don’t like the add-on all that much. But remember: GS will get you into a raid, but you need the stats to perform well!

The other thing I want to point out for the newer 80s out there is Item Level. You want to make sure you have this turned on, as it is a great basis of telling what item is in a higher “tier” if you aren’t as great at reading specific stats. Go into Interface settings, Display, and check the box that says “Show Item Levels”. Now when you mouse over an item in your inventory (or someone else’s) it will display the Item level on it as well, Example would be “Item Level 232″ which is T9.

Item Level Guide
200- T7
213- T7.5
219- T8
226- T8.5
232- T9
245- T9.5
251- T10
264- T10.5
277- T10.5 Heroic

THERE ARE OTHER ITEM LEVELS IN THE GAME AS WELL, FOR CERTAIN HEROIC/HARD MODES ETC, BUT THAT CHART WILL GIVE YOU THE BASICS ON WHAT EACH ITEM LEVEL IS EQUIVALENT TO. Also note that an item level 232 for example, is not necessarily part of the T9 SET.. it is just of an equivalent item level

TALENT BUILDS
I simply don’t have the time or in-depth knowledge to list a perfect spec for every class and every role out there in the game today. But what I am going to do is link a site for each class below that has a lot of wonderful information on the speccing and glyphing of each corresponding class.

Clicking the links below will take you to my favorite page for each of the following classes.

WARRIOR BUILD GUIDE
PALADIN BUILD GUIDE
HUNTER BUILD GUIDE
ROGUE BUILD GUIDE
PRIEST BUILD GUIDE
DEATH KNIGHT BUILD GUIDE 1
DEATH KNIGHT BUILD GUIDE 2
SHAMAN BUILD GUIDE
MAGE BUILD GUIDE
WARLOCK BUILD GUIDE
DRUID BUILD GUIDE

Know Your Rotation
Prior to level 80, you can get away with simply casting whatever spell or ability seems good to you and that is all fine and great for leveling, But for raiding you need to establish a “Rotation” which is a sequence of spells or abilities that you use over and over again in order to maximize DPS output. This is mostly crucial for DPS classes, and tanks use them as well. Healers aren’t so much into the rotation as they use whatever spell they need to get the proper amount of healing and mana use for the situation.

The sites about that I have provided you for guides on class specific builds have the rotation listed with the build as well. Make sure you are using the proper rotation for the spec you have chosen, failing to use a rotation will get you kicked from a pug faster than you can say “clicker”, because your DPS output will suffer greatly. KNOW YOUR ROTATION, USE IT and enjoy your chart topping dps.

PRO TIP!!
Hit your spell cast (or melee attack) button about 1/2 second before it is off global cooldown…this will increase DPS a bit as it compensates for latency

Bind your Keys
You may have gotten away with clicking your abilities prior to level 80, and many people still do at level 80. However, it requires a much greater deal of effort in most cases to use the mouse to conduct your rotation over and over.

The best way to combat this is to go into your “Key Bindings” settings panel in WoW, within there it will give you the option to chose which keyboard button uses which square on the action bar (and therefore the corresponding spell). This is going to make your life 10000% simpler during a raid. For example on my death knight all I have to do to put out chart-topping DPS is hit 1,2,3,3,4,5,4,3,3,3,3 and repeat. That would be a lot of mouse moving and clicking if I didn’t have my keys bound. So it is my advice that you do this as soon as you start raiding to prevent tendonitis LOL.

Getting the Achievement
The other frustration new 80s encounter when trying to get into raids is that they don’t have the achievement. Here are some ways around that…

1. Guild. If – and only if – you have exhausted all means of gearing yourself up WITHOUT OTHERS CARRYING YOU, and the only way to progress with gear is to get that damn achievement, ask the guild. They might organize a run, or we might join PUGs with you (a raid is going to be more likely to take a lower geared player if they get a higher geared player to make up for it).

2. Be Brave and Ask. YouTube has many video guides, with which you can learn how to fight a particular raid. If you can tell a raid leader that you know the fights, they might be nice and include you.

3. The Ol’ Switcheroo. This is a bit naughty, but it’s what I did ^^. Fact: 90% of people are idiots. So many raid leaders don’t even check achievements when they ask you to link them. So just link the blank achievement and wait for your invite. I figure, if the raid leader is enough of an idiot not to check achievements, he’s fair game. Note: it will be awkward when you earn the achievement in the raid. This method may, however, get you onto a few ignore lists.

4. Also a bit devious (but people deserve it for requiring GS and achievements rather than skill IMO). Overachiever, or Allene’s Fake Achievement are both add-ons that I have used. What you do is you link a blank achievement with a command behind it (For AFA it would be /AFA [The Fall Of Naxxrammas] 2009-01-19, or whatever date you want in there). There is other add-ons out there as well and most of them can be found at curse.com

Gearing Up

Hit Rating – The most valuable stat for ALL dps classes

Completely uninformed players ignore hit when, in fact, hit rating is THE MOST IMPORTANT STAT FOR ALL DPS CLASSES. Don’t even try to argue with me on this point, because you’re wrong.

Hit rating reduces your chance to miss. At level 80, 32.79 hit reduces your chance to miss by 1%. Several classes have abilities and talents which also reduce their chance to miss.

You NEED to reach hit cap, which is when you have sufficient hit rating that your attacks will never miss.

By the time you’re raiding ICC, you’re going to want most or all your hit rating coming from gear as gear is the most efficient source of hit. While you’re gearing up, though, you can use gems and enchants to improve your hit rating.

Of course, once you’ve reached hit cap, additional hit does absolutely nothing for you.

The following is the hit rating required to never miss against a level 83 (i.e. a raid level boss):

Warrior
262.32
(163.95 with 3/3 precision)

Paladin
262.32
(131.16 with 2/2 enlightened judgment)

Hunter
262.32
(163.95 with 3/3 focused aim)

Rogue
262.32
(98.37 with 5/5 precision)

Priest
445.94
(367.25 with 3/3 shadow focus)
(367.25 with misery)
(288.55 with 3/3 shadow focus and misery)

Death Knight
262.32
(163.95 with 3/3 nerves of cold steal when dual wielding)

Death Coil, Icy Touch, Howling Blast
445.91
(Don’t try to get capped in this, but for Dual Wield frost Knights you want to have a bit more hit than with a 2 handed weapon)

Shaman
Spells: 445.94
(367.25 with 3/3 elemental precision)

Melee: 262.32
(65.58 with dual wield specialization when dual wielding)

Mage
445.94
(367.25 with 3/3 precision)
(267.25 for arcane only with 3/3 arcane focus)
(288.55 for arcane only with arcane focus and precision)

Warlock
445.94
(367.25 with 3/3 suppression)

Druid
Spell: 445.94
(341.02 with 2/2 balance of power)
(367.25 with improved faerie fire)
(262.32 with 2/2 balance of power and improved faerie fire)

Melee: 262.32

On the subject of Hit rating, with the hit rating caps I posted above, a player will still miss against raid bosses (melee, and hunters) but a caster will not. It is probably worth mentioning that those hit caps are the “yellow” hit caps, and only ensure that your abilities can’t miss. It is probably also worth mentioning that missing and being dodged/parried are different. Even if you are hit capped you can still be dodged or parried.

Another point on hit, might be to include what you need to reach with/without the Draenie hit buff and/or Misery or the Improved Faerie Fire.

For rogues, they also care about spell hit, as their poisons do not use melee hit values, but spell, so for a Mutilate specced rogue they actually want 315 hit (assuming 5/5 precision) so that their poisons (which they spec into) never miss. For a combat rogue, spell hit is slightly less valuable, but is still better than any other stat until you are approaching the Armor Penetration hard cap, which requires at least full 264, and thus is not relevant for this guide. That said, combat rogues too should be trying for the spell cap, but they (as well as Death Knights) get full bonuses for their “spells” from the other hit buffs:

The white hit cap is clearly not worth reaching, and all the modeling supports this, but at least for rogues the poison hit cap is super important, and deserves mention.

Tier Sets – Get Tier 9 (or 10!) as a priority before ICC

Tier sets are amazing as they give set bonuses. These set bonuses are very valuable. For example, when ICC came out, a lot of people didn’t even replace their Tier 9 items with Tier 10 until they had enough for at least the 2-item bonus.

5 items make up a set, but you only need 4 of them to get the bonuses. My recommendation is to have at least 4 of them equipped always, even if you have another item with better stats, as the bonuses are so sexy.

Get your tier 9 as a priority before entering ICC.

The Pre-Raid Grind – Part One of Gearing Up

The first part of gearing up is farming heroics. It sucks horribly. But once it’s done, it’s done.

Every day you should do the following heroics, as the gear that drops in them is quite good: TOC, FoS, PoS, and HoR. Then just do random heroics for the triumphs.

Triumphs can be converted down to lesser emblems, if necessary, to buy additional items: 1 Triumph = 1 Conquest = 1 Valor = 1 Heroism. With these emblems, you can buy the following equipment to ‘fill in the blanks’ of your pre-raid gear:

Head – Triumph (tier vendor)
Neck – Conquest
Shoulder – Triumphs (tier vendor)
Back – Valor
Chest – Triumph (tier vendor)
Wrist – Valor
Hands – Triumph (tier vendor)
Waist – Conquest
Legs – Triumph (tier vendor)
Feet – Valor
Ring 1 – Triumph
Ring 2 – Valor
Trinket 1 – Triumph
Trinket 2 – Triumph
Main Hand – Sorry, nothing available from emblems. Find the best you can in a heroic (hint: ICC drops the battered hilt which starts a pro quest, but it’s very rare)!
Off Hand – Heroism
Ranged – Triumph

Between the heroics I’ve listed above and the gear that can be bought with emblems, you should be able to hit about 4.5k GearScore. Look at what drops in the heroics I listed, and also what is available to your class for which emblems, decide what the best pre-raid item you can get is… and go get it!

WowWiki has information on what drops in the heroics I listed, and you can go look at what the vendors offer in Dalaran. Spend a few minutes, have a think, make a shopping list.

Phase two: Starter Raids – ToC, Onyxia, and the others

So, you’ve gotten absolutely every last item you can from farming triumphs and running the better heroics. You now have around 4.7k GS and are sufficiently geared to raid TOC and Onyxia, which is where the real upgrades are. Keep doing these, week in and week out, until you reach about 5k GS.

Get into other raids, if you can, as well. Naxxrammas, Ulduar, OS, and Eye of Eternity will most likely all contain upgrades (even though they may only be minor upgrades). WowWiki.com is an easy to use source of information about what loot drops where. Unfortunately, people tend to neglect these ‘other’ raids nowadays. If an item increases your GS by 20, that’s still going to make it easier to get into a PUG.

YouTube has many guides on the bosses you will encounter in all raids, and I recommend highly watching these videos before attempting a boss for the first time.

Importantly, you are now sufficiently gear to not have a hard time getting invited to the Weekly Raid Quests, which will grant you additional Frost emblems, putting you on the road to tier 10 items.

Phase three: ICC!

So you’ve reach 5k GS! Grats! There are probably still upgrades in ToC and Onyxia for you, and keep trying to get them, but start trying to join ICC raids now as well to accelerate your gear up.

RAIDING GUILDS
One of the best ways to get a good experience in endgame content is to join a raiding guild. There is many of these out there ranging from more casual players all the way up to committed heroic mode core guilds. It is in your best interest to try and get into a raid guild if you have the time and you plan to make raiding a more serious endeavor. Here are some hints on how to get yourself into a raiding guild and move up to a core spot as quickly as possible.

- Many of these guilds require you to apply on their Website in order to join. When applying for a guild on the site it is important to use proper grammar and act somewhat “professional” as this gives them the confirmation that you will act in a mature and collected way in their vent server as well as guild chat.

- A good place to start out in your quest to find a raiding guild is to go to the official World of Warcraft Realm forums.. located HERE. Many guilds advertise here and also should have a link to their guild page on it as well.

-Make sure that when you have an application pending you have your character gemmed and enchanted properly, and that you are logging out every night with your main spec (the one you plan to raid with) activated and your main spec gear on your character. The reason for this is that whatever gear you log out wearing is the gear that the recruiter will see when you looks into the armory link you have provided.

- Most guilds are more than happy to assist the “right” player in obtaining better base gear to fulfill their raiding needs. That being said however it is important to have the correct gems and enchantments on any piece of gear you are wearing on the armory (even if it’s a crappy piece). This shows that you know your class role and how to gear it properly, but just haven’t had the opportunity to obtain the proper piece of gear yet, and they will be much more likely to help you do this.

-When you join a raiding guild you are almost certainly going to be put into a “trial” or “standby” rank. Guilds do this for a couple of reasons. First reason being that they may not have a spot in their core group for you just yet, second reason being that they want to monitor you for a week or two to make sure you are the man for the job. During this trial period it is absolutely crucial that you show up to any raids that you sign up for, and also make sure that you spend some time running heroics and raids with them whenever you are online and you see a guildie looking for someone to join their group for a pug or whatever. This will give you a good standing with the members and they will be more likely to give you a good word if an officer asks them how you are performing.

-Always show up to any raid with the proper flasks and consumables (buff food, potions, elixirs, etc). This shows that you are willing to go that extra mile and get the maximum output from your character whenever possible.

-Know your role and know the fights. A raid leader is going to be more likely to keep you on the team if you aren’t constantly asking questions about the fight that could easily be answered by using your resources. That isn’t to say it’s not ok to ask questions, but beforehand you should have done a substantial amount of research on your own. Tankspot.com, wow.zuggaming.com, and youtube.com are excellent places to go to learn about each boss fight. Watch a video of each fight more than once, and read about it as well- this will give you the upper edge when raiding and make you look like a pro.

Learning More

This guide is obviously very general and is only intended to take you up to the gates of ICC.

Advanced information can be found in the class forums of ElitistJerks.com. In these forums, you will find guides detailing advanced mechanics of your class. A thorough understanding of your class is necessary to maximize performance. Intuition and experience is valuable, but some math-craft and theory-craft give you an edge over other players.

Further, you can learn a lot about boss encounters in raids to prepare for ICC (and other raids) on YouTube or on the Tankspot forums.

Add-ons
THE ORANGE NAME OF EACH ADDON IS A LINK TO ITS DOWNLOAD PAGE, AND TO GET MORE INFORMATION

REQUIRED ADDONS
Deadly Boss Mods gives you warnings when bosses use special abilities or when something funky is going on
Omen: lets you know how much threat you are generating, so that the boss doesn’t attack you
GearScore:I am not the biggest fan of this add-on, but the fact is that everyone’s using it, so you should be able to tell someone your GearScore if asked. This add-on will tell you what it is.
AtlasLoot enhanced: A great add-on for knowing what gear drops in what instance, a must have for finding upgrades in my opinion.

ADDITIONAL ADDONS THAT MIGHT HELP
Pally Power: Awesome add-on for paladins to get buffs sorted out
Bartender: This is a helpful add-on for most classes if you have problems with, or don’t care for the stock UI. This add-on allows you to move any of your action bars to anyplace you want anywhere on the screen, it also makes them a bit more compact and adds some other very helpful options. It takes a while to set up properly but can be well worth it in the end for many players.
Grid: A great add-on for healers that includes status indicators for health, mana, incoming heals, aggro/threat, buffs and debuffs, range, and ready checks- as well as many different indicators, including: center text, center icon, frame border, frame opacity, and colored squares in each of the four corners.
Carbonite: Provides a number of very helpful things in game. Detailed maps of every zone and instance in the game, information on completing quests, a small map that appears on your screen that you can move around (I usually remove this during raids though) and many other things as well.
Outfitter: Provides simple, 1-click wardrobe changes. This can come in very handy for people that have 2 different specs that they raid with (IE a druid who has a healing set and a tanking set). You can also program it to automatically change your outfit whenever you change specs, or go into a different stance or presence.
Allene’s Fake Achievement: I am listing this add-on ONLY for its proper use in my opinion, which is to help you get into pug raids when you have sufficient gear and you know the fights inside and out. Some PUG raid leaders out there are absolutely ridiculous when it comes to requiring an overly high GearScore and an achievement for anyone and any raid. This can also be handy if you have done something on a main character but simply haven’t done it yet on your alt. NEVER USE THIS ON GUIDIES- its bad policy

There are many many more add-ons out there, but those are the basics and its best to run those when starting out, but also don’t get carried away and run too many add-ons either as they can become confusing as well as cause lag in the long run- and that isn’t what you should be focusing on during your first raids!

If you have any more suggestions for additional Add-Ons that should be listed here please let me know. I am not that pro on the add-on department as I only use a couple of them myself (the ones listed primarily)

Something to note before I start:
1) Firstly this guide is not for the fain-of-heart readers. It is an in-depth guide that I have formatted as much as possible to try keep it readable.
2) Secondly this actual goal is not for the faint-of-heart in general. In fact it can be very dangerous feat to try and achieve in terms of real life health and safety problems. If you are seriously going to consider attempting this, I would highly recommend that you consult with your local Doctor etc before doing so.

With Cataclysm just around the corner, excitement is mounting and people are beginning to plan and plot alike. Even on MMOwned there have been several guides about how to prepare for Cataclysm, how to make profit before Cataclysm hits, what to stockpile in order to make a profit when Cataclysm does hit, etc.

There are several topics about how to attain realm firsts on several different forums, however they are all heavily plagued by ignorant people giving the wrong advice, trolls saying things simply like “you must have no life” and other saying “you have to be Asian to do it”. – all of these things are wrong and I am here to clear up any doubt and give you a straight forward, well planned and success guaranteed action plan. Yes it is over the top from what most will do when trying to attain this, but others don’t realize how much effort and time and even money people put into attaining this feat of strength.

In-game Support Requirements:

First off you MUST have a support team of dedicated players out there to help you if you truly want to consider the possibility of being World/Realm/Faction/Class first level 85. You also need to keep in mind that those helping you won’t be able to be online/available for the ENTIRE 48-72 hours (give or take) that you will be attempting this. Therefore you MUST have 2-4 backup players who you can rely on – work out a shift system where you all get a chance to have a break while someone else takes over.

You must have: (Please note, you should ONLY group with the people listed below when it is necessary – such as you aren’t killing anything – otherwise you loose xp)
A warlock – This is necessary at all times, I would highly recommend having several. You are going to want to have 1 (with 2 others assisting) to go ahead and summon you to all the flight points when necessary. If necessary you can have a warlock go to the FP, logout and hop on another level 80 to help you with the rest of the roles listed below, and then hop onto their warlock when it is needed. You also want a warlock (with 2 others assisting) to go ahead of you to all the main major quest locations or quest objectives so that you can get to each of your destinations ASAP.
A mage – This is a good idea for the class buffs, (int, slowfall, dampen magic, etc) but also for Portals to major cities where you can train spells – yes warlock would be faster but it required 2 MORE assistants, this should only be used when you absolutely need to train spells. A key concept here though is to utilize your time. If you MUST train spells, get a RL friend to hop on your character and train while you go to the bathroom, stretch or eat.
As many classes as possible – that can give you out-of-group buffs. Make sure you have a healer who can heal and ress – you should NEVER EVER die at all, but your team must ONLY help you by healing/dpsing the mob if you will DEFINITELY die without their help, otherwise you loose xp from that mob.
A 3 person mount – so that when you need to travel somewhere you can hop on and go take a bathroom/food/stretch break while your friends transport you to your next location where you have to hand in a quest or kill a mob.
A mount with a vendor – You are going to want to keep your bags as clear as possible.
An all-purpose support team – players who can clear unnecessary mobs out the way. If you need to collect 10 Crates and 10 Crates only, you join a group with 5 people and while they clear all the mobs around the Crates you look the Crates. When done you leave group again.

Real-Life Support Requirements:

The ideal setup would be to have 7 Real Life friends + you who know each other’s character inside out, including keybindings, UI, button placement, etc – so that they can take turns playing each others characters while 1-2 of them sleep/rest for a bit. These 8 Real Life friends would take the place of some of (or even all) of the in-game “support team”.

It’s highly recommended to have at least 2 Real Life friends + you + in-game guild support or w/e when you attempt this. With this kind of rotation you will do:
1 of you 3 playing the character you want to get to level 85 ASAP.
1 of you 3 assisting that person in real life by doing everything from looking up quest/mob/npc location and information, to passing them food and drink, slapping you in the face to help concentrate (lol) or taking over from you to do the spell training and distance traveling while you go to the bathroom or stretch.
1 of you 3 sleeping/resting – you can create shifts so that you all get to sleep a certain amount. I would recommend have the person who works the best under stress start first, and then also have him finish the last leve – as those two parts are the times where it is very intense.
A BIG thing here, that not many do, is have that extra person there to assist you with information on quests/npc locations and such. I will talk about how this can be so beneficial a bit later down.

Beta Testing Preparation:

As you all know, Blizzard have sent out several Beta testing invites to random players, as well as specific players and groups of players (such as communities and guilds). There are several Beta keys for sale on the market – yes many are scams but it’s still obtainable.

First off you need to choose the class that you are most comfortable with and know will level fast with. I’m not going to tell you what class / spec you should play because of the ongoing changes to all classes, as well as any class would do well if you really try, though for simplicity’s sake and other reasons I’m going to recommend a Retribution Paladin with Tanking offspec. (Self heals, Self buffs, High survivability – you MUST NOT DIE, High damage output, Good AOE and having a tank offspec will allow you to get into dungeon groups or solo hard quests when if you don’t have an in-game support team).

I’m going to break down what you need to do once in the Beta testing into several stages:

Observations and Learning:
Level your first character from 80-85 slowly. Don’t rush it and make sure that when you are leveling you are concentrating 100%. Don’t watch a movie at the same time, don’t talk to friends, don’t keep alt tabbing to look at forums or watch porn (no seriously lol).
You MUST have Fraps or another good Game Footage Recording program running where you basically document every single part of your leveling experience.
Once done go back and edit out all the useless footage and cut the footage into different zone folders and then into different quest hub folder or how ever you want to organize it. Just make sure it is easy to find what you are looking for.
I recommend you then watch the entire video and document everything that you do in a Notepad file or something (Step 1 – pick up x, y and z quests at x-quest hub location. Step 2 – kill x mob for x quest at y-location. Step 3 – turn in x quest at x-location.). I know it sounds like a lot of work – it is, but here is how it helps: when the real time comes and you get stuck or can’t remember 100%, your assistant then does a quick word search in the file for the specific quest name or quest mob, he/she finds exactly which folder and video file it is in, watches the video and shows you exactly where to go.
Learn the dungeons well as you level. Note when and where you get dungeon quests and take note of when you you have them ALL. Because once you have them all, that is when you want to do the dungeon ONCE when the time comes to proper leveling in order to minimize downtime and maximize experience.
Make sure that you take note of all the places where you get stuck, highly confused, go the wrong way and end up needing to backpeddle, etc.
Try do better:
Put your recording program on again
Once you have reached level 85 on your first character, you have edited all your footage and gone through your notes of where you went wrong the first time etc, now it’s time to do it AGAIN – still at a slow, relaxed pace – but this time try and do it as differently as possible. Be adventurous, think outside the box. Look for faster ways to do things, or adjust your questing order (to maximize quests done with least amount of traveling possible)
Repeat the steps above listed in the first stage of your Cataclysm Beta Testing Preparation, document, record, edit, consult on how to do it better etc.
Put your experience to the test:
Now is when you put yourself to the test and see how quickly you can go from 80-85 AGAIN this time at top speed, taking all the shortcuts you can think of.
However something to note: Do not necessarily do this in one long session like you would do so when the real time came. Rather go for minimal amount of /played time (without cheating by logging out when ever you need to check up on something or when ever a certain mob isn’t spawned – cheating in the end only cheats yourself).
This is now where you can evaluate how well you work under pressure, you tests your concentration levels and so on and so fourth.

In-Game Preparation:
I’m going to try keep the rest of the sections as short as possible because they are very self explanatory.
Food Buffs – get your cooking to max level so that you can make fish feasts. Get your in-game support team to stock up on cooking mats so that they can level their cooking and provide you with even better food buffs.
25 Quests – this is optional, some say it works wonders some say it’s a waste of time. Complete high level quests in as close an areas as possible so that when the expansion is released you can quickly hand them in for a nice quick bonus. Though do keep in mine this can set you back a bit in terms of starting areas getting too crowded too quickly.
Flask – need I say more, have a nice supply of flasks, focus mainly on flasks with high dmg output buffs and survivability or less downtime. Keep a few tanking flasks (hp boosts, etc) handy in case of tight situations and soloing group quests, same goes for healing flasks if your class supports it or you need that bit of Mp5.
Health Pots / Mana Pots / Bandages – needless to say, get as many as you can.
Bag Space – This will be eternally helpful. You know the deal, time to fork out some cash for 4X [Portable Hole].
Enchanting Scrolls – a big reason why people often don’t upgrade their say Tier 1/Tier 2 or Tier 5/Tier 6 when leveling isn’t always because they can’t find upgrades, very much not true. It’s more because they don’t want to spend time/money on enchanting and gemming their new gear. The only real thing you should be worrying about when upgrading gear is set bonuses. Therefore have 3 full sets of Enchanting Scrolls for different pieces of gear ready. Meaning you can replace an item 3 times while leveling.
Gems – same thing goes for gems as it does for Enchanting Scrolls. Have enough gems to re-gem your entire set 2-3 times.
Gear – look this is a difficult one, you can’t prepare materials to make Cataclysm profession items because A) people need to level up their profs to get them and B) people need to farm and sell the mats for them. However if there are certain items that you can prepare yourself for making (this is where beta comes in handy) then do so.

Must have potions – Now these are what really make a HUGE difference:

Stat Boosters:
[Destruction Potion] – Use: Increases spell critical chance by 2% and spell power by 120 for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Indestructable Potion] – Use: Increases armor by 3500 for 2 min. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Potion of Speed] – Use: Increases haste rating by 500 (31.71% @ L70) for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Potion of Wild Magic] – Use: Increases critical rating by 200 (9.06% @ L70) and spell power by 200 for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Heroic Potion] – Use: Increases Strength by 70 and temporarily increases health by 700 for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)

Utility Potions:
[Shrouding Potion] – Use: Shrouds you from nearby enemies so you seem less threatening to them. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Invisibility Potion] – Use: Gives the imbiber invisibility for 18 sec. (10 Min Cooldown)
[Free Action Potion] – Use: Makes you immune to Stun and Movement Impairing effects for the next 30 sec. Does not remove effects already on the imbiber. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Swim Speed Potion] – Use: Increases swim speed by 100% for 20 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)
[Swiftness Potion] – Use: Increases run speed by 50% for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)

And last but not least, a trusty 2-3 stacks of
[Stratholme Holy Water] – Use: Inflicts between 438 and 562 damage to Undead in a 10 yard radius. (1 Min Cooldown)

Best 5 man setup for dungeon grinding:
Well as I mentioned earlier, only once you have all the quests for a specific dungeon, you then do the dungeon. Therefore you also want to complete this dungeon as quick as possible with as little hassle as possible so here is a recommended group setup based on current class dynamics – yes there are hundreds of more combinations too but this is recommended:
Druid – Feral
Shaman – Resto
Warrior – Fury
Paladin – Retribution
Rogue – Combat
Make sure one of the dps is a Draenei.

Avoiding the Crowds:
Of course when Cataclysm is released, there is going to be an enormous amount of people online checking out the new content, leveling like mad or just generally trying to grief other players. Here are some tips:
Low Population Server – less competition
Low Population Battlegroup – slightly less ‘server lag’ and less chance of there being problems
PvE Server – no ganking, although if you have a full 5-10 man in-game support team you could argue that a PvP server would be better since you can simply remove any opposing faction competition from existence. I suppose a RP server would be ok too, you might actually get more support there.
Problematic Battlegroups/server – research which battlegroups and servers in your WoW Region are the most, or have been in the past, unstable and stay away from those.
Have a backup plan! – Have two servers / battlegroup choices with an 80 + team ready to switch to that server if your main server goes down right at the beginning. If it goes down like an hour or so after you have started leveling there is no point in switching servers, you would be too far behind. so use that time to stretch, eat, bathroom, but never loose focus. You can still use it to your advantage by being one of the first to long and get ahead of everyone else. If you can remember what quests you were on or which ones were coming up, go do more research on them or remind yourself what needs to be done.
Don’t always follow the zones in their obvious progression. For example in Outlands it was Hellfire > Zangarmash > Terokkar > Nagrand etc as the obvious progression line. That is where everyone is going to be. In WOTLK one of the realm first achievers did Howling Fjor first, then went to Dragonblight. Then during 3am and 9am they went back to Borean Tundra because if was an offpeak time for most and would be less crowded.

General Macros:
Accept All Macro, this macro will do the following:
Accept invitations to join a group and will close the dialog
Accept shared quests
Accept joining escort quests
Accept trades
Accept resurrection at corpse
Accept resurrection offers
Confirm a /readycheck
Accept Dungeon Finder requests
Teleport in/out of a LFD dungeon
This macro is basically very handy for interacting with your support groups, if you getting to a sticky situation they invite you to group and you quickly tap the macro to accept the invite.
Code:
/run AcceptGroup();
/run AcceptQuest();
/run AcceptTrade();
/run RetrieveCorpse();
/run RepopMe();
/run ConfirmAcceptQuest();
/run AcceptResurrect();
/run StaticPopup_Hide(“QUEST_ACCEPT”);
/run ConfirmReadyCheck(1);
/click LFDRoleCheckPopupAcceptButton
/click LFDDungeonReadyDialogEnterDungeonButton
/run LFGTeleport(IsInLFGDungeon())
Auto-Accept Quest/Auto-hand in Quest Macro, this macro will basically automatically turn in any quest that you have completed and automatically accepting the first quest reward available on the list. Sometimes this macro bugs a bit if you have multiple options (such as set hearthstone + view good + hand in quest at an Inn Keeper). Anyways this is an absolutely MUST have macro. What I do is I have Interact with NPC bound to a certain key, and then this macro bound to the same key with an Alt modifier so that as I’m running past the quest give, I tap my interact button and then spam the accept/hand in quest macro and I get my quest done without even stoping.
Code:
/run SelectGossipAvailableQuest(1)
/run SelectGossipActiveQuest(1)
/run CompleteQuest()
/run SelectGossipOption(1)
/run AcceptQuest()
/run GetQuestReward(1)
Switch to Dual-spec Macro, will do as it says, it swaps between your primary and secondary specs instead of you needing to press N for talents and choose the right tab and then click “Activate These Talents”.
Code:
/run if( GetActiveTalentGroup() == 1 ) then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(“Spec1…”);SetActiveTalentGroup(2) else DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(“Spec2…”);SetActiveTalentGroup(1) end
/in 6 /equipset [spec:2]Eq1;Eq2
Learn all Spells from a Trainer Macro, is VERY handy for learning both class spells and profession goodies. You have to click the macro a second time to stop learning the spells again.
Code:
/run LoadAddOn”Blizzard_TrainerUI” f=ClassTrainerTrainButton f.e = 0 if f:GetScript”OnUpdate” then f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”, nil)else f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”, function(f,e) f.e=f.e+e if f.e>.01 then f.e=0 f:Click() end end)end
Sell all grey items Macro, for those that don’t have an addon which does this for you.
Code:
/run LoadAddOn”Blizzard_TrainerUI” f=ClassTrainerTrainButton f.e = 0 if f:GetScript”OnUpdate” then f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”, nil)else f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”, function(f,e) f.e=f.e+e if f.e>.01 then f.e=0 f:Click() end end)end
Most of these macros can be found on Wowiki.com or on Dual-boxing.com, and there are of course many other macros (and addons that are useful).
With that said I’m not going to go into addons because I’m an absolute addon freak, I use way too many but I would recommend looking for addons that help with quets, auto repair, notify you of procs, addons like atlasloot, and so on and so fourth.

Food and Drink, Exercise etc:
When you think of long gaming sessions like this, most people automatically think lots of Caffeine and Energy Drinks. This is wrong for this sort of thing because in the end they leave you dehydrated and even more tired or just unable to concentrate – yes they do work initially but not a good idea in the long run.
I don’t have much time left to go into details here so I would recommend consulting a nutrition expert or a doctor on this, they will be able to provide you with endless information on what to eat and what not to eat.

Detox – do a full body detox a week long body detox before the expansion – google has good information on this.

Green Tea – start Drinking a lot of Green Tea (it really isn’t as bad as everyone thinks, I drink 3-4 cups daily) every day for 2 weeks before the release, and keep drinking Green Tea through your leveling session. It has a small caffeine content which will keep you coffee addicts vaguely satisfied while going so long without coffee. The benefits of green tea are endless, just to quote a few websites off the top of google’s list at a glance:
It is used to treat multiple sclerosis.
It is used for treatment and prevention of cancer.
It is used to stop Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
It is used to raise the metabolism and increase fat oxidation.
It reduces the risk of heart diseases and heart attacks by reducing the risk of trombosis.
It reduces the risk of esophageal cancer.
Drinking green tea inhibits the growth of certain cancer cells, reduces the level of cholesterol in blood, improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.
It is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular diseases
It is used to treat impaired immune function. .
Some researches show that, drinking green tea regularly may help prevent tooth decay by killing the bacteria which causes the dental plaque.
helps against formation of cancer
controls diabetes
helps prevent heart disease
makes your complexion acne-free, healthier
aids in weight loss regimen
retards the aging process
calms your digestion
helps with your bowel problems
excellent and safe during pregnancy because it provides you with a mild stimulating effect.
Again it’s endless, spend some time reading it and really give it a go, it helps a lot.

Easy Access, hassle free, HEATHY foods – seriously, don’t eat junk food it will just slow you down. Some people say just each hot pockets or pizza or chicken fingers or what ever is easy. My recommendation is keep your diet as balanced as possible. The strategy I have given you lets you afford to have breaks to eat properly.

Don’t go to the toilet – No really WTF, I’ve seen so many people say hold it in as long as possible, don’t eat a lot so you don’t need to go to the toilet, don’t drink too much else you need to piss. That is really bad in both the short term and long term. You should ALWAYS keep yourself hydrated with WATER only – no Coca Cola crap. Really, don’t be worried about going to the toilet, though I would recommend try to flush out your system a bit before the release (the detox will help a lot with that).

Don’t get drunk / high – It’s pretty obvious but I’m saying it for the sake of saying it, don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke weed, don’t take drugs (EVER – ok well moderate alcohol is fine for every day life ^.^ but yeah especially during this leveling session stay away from that stuff.)

Exercise and stretching – you should be doing exercise everyday, but even if you are or are not, you need to do some form of exercise now and then while leveling just to help your blood flow etc. Every 20 minutes you should do an “in the chair stretch” where you do stretches such as twist your back a bit so you are looking behind yourself while keeping your legs facing forwards, move your arms, legs, back neck, feet around again to help with blood circulation and energy levels.
Something which I have found awesome, is having something called a Rebounder (which is basically a mini trampoline which actually has enormous health benefits. Every 30-40 minutes get up and take a quick walk around your room, do some full body stretches and jump on the Rebounder for 30-60 seconds.

So I was fishing in Dalaran and i put fishing to my mousewheel just for fun – and fishing blubbers started popping up everywhere – I thought “Cool!”

Then make a macro like this :

/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing
/cast fishing

And so on, as many as the spaces allow you to add.

Bound it to your mousewheel and spam it like crazy! The entire city will lag, sometimes a big chunk of the continent too.

1. Fish up 38 Tastyfish during the contest.
2. Split them up into 2 stacks of 19.
3. Delete them.
4. Ticket a GM, say you accidentally deleted them and wanted to turn them in for gold.
5. DO NOT retrieve them yet.
6. The next week, fish up 2 tastyfish, and seperate them into 2 stacks of 1.
7. Take the 2 stacks out of the mailbox, they will merge with your current stacks (if you did not do step 6 they will simply disappear from the duration timer.).
8. Hand them in, enjoy the achievement and reward!

Now before the patch, the armor would get updated if you changed talent spec.
Today in ICC, this was not a fact. I still retained the extra spellpower from the talent, even though I havent specced for it for destro.

So this is how it goes:
1. Use the Fel armor buff in a spec with the Demonic Aegis talent
2. Switch to the spec without the talent and ta-da!

An easy way to test this is by the message you receive when you try to buff yourself with Fel Armor:
“A more powerful spell is already active”

It will probably get hot fixed soon, so use it while you can!

Then get someone with 425 cooking to put it down by you or if your 80 has cooking get both characters to the same spot

Invite someone on your low level character that will stay in the group (low first because you don’t waste a feast if the person is afk or doesn’t invite your character in time) then get him to invite your 80 to drop the feast log back on and free buff!

the 2 set effect says -g rants 1 energy every time your deadly poison deals damage-

Now, we look at a fight that has a lot of adds – such as Onyxia 10 and especially 25 man.

When phase 2 starts, whelps spawn at each side. Tanks gather it up, you run inside, you use Fan of Knives, ALOT of whelps will get poisoned by your deadly poison. Each time it ticks, it grants you 1 energy per whelp that is poisoned.

The idea behind this is, you have pretty much unlimited energy once you have poisoned all whelps with your FoK and they all have dots ticking. I was able to reach up to 30k DPS spamming FOK like crazy together with Evasion on. The only thing I had to wait on was the global CD of FOK itself.