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So if most of you are like me, your weekly

Mysterious Unhatched Egg give you lots and lots of baby cobras but no Reins of the Green Proto Drake, and getting the meta achievement What a long strage trip its been is just to damn hard to get for your Reins of the Violet Proto Drake that pretty much leaves us with one remaining option…Grinding the hell out of Stormpeaks in hopes of catching a very rare mob for Reins of the Time Lost Proto Drake.  Indeed this is the only proto drake mount in northrend that drops from a rare spawn mob.  No achievements required, no slaying bosses, no epic achievement grinding for a year, just find and kill  the rare spawn mob Time-Lost Proto Drake which spawns somewhere in Stormpeaks.  Now I have researched the hell out of this mount hoping to find a quick way to get it my self, but I have found one thing to be true.  Its not easy, its luck  I have read that it can have everything from a 1 day to one week cool down on the spawn rate, and even then, the mount its self is only a 65% drop rate, so its no guarantee if you kill the rare drake.

Take heart though there is one other rare spawn mob that has a chance to drop the reins, and I have even killed him myself once, his name is Dirkee and he roams random areas of Stormpeaks as well, and has a 56% chance drop on the proto drake mount.   Although his spawn timer is random as well and can have a cool down anywhere from 12 hours to 7 days, so good luck finding and killing him as well, but he does exist, I swear I have seen and killed him, just no drop yet.  Best I can recommend is to built two macros one /target Dirkee and the other /target Time-Lost take your epic flyer and make circles around Stormpeaks and hope for the best.  Happy Hunting.

The following is an article fromWow.com I thought I would share.

by Daniel Whitcomb Jan 12th 2010 at 2:00PM

Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly death knight column. This week, your host is in a bit of a tanking mood. Those Emblems of Frost don’t earn themselves!
So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel.

Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I’ve heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy.

Now technically, this is how it’s almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we’ve had a taste of true power, I’m sure we’re all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank.

Whether you’re a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column’s for you.

Talents and Specs

The death knight tanking spec in itself is a mysterious concept to many. There’s those who hold on to the outmoded pre-Beta idea that Frost is the only viable tanking tree. There’s those who assume that “DKs can tank in any tree” means they can tank in any spec. We know the truth. You can tank in any tree, but you really need a specific spec to tank.Luckily, dual speccing makes it much less painful for most of us to tank on a tanking spec (Sorry PvP and PvE DPS specced death knights, though, you need to make a choice).

The start to a good death knight tank spec is 5/5/5. That’s Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. These are three basic defense skills that will start you off on the right foot to survival. Sure, every once in a while someone will put forth some esoteric spec that skips one or more of them for some strange reason, but those builds almost never last more than a patch, if at all. Besides, we’re just trying to get in shape to tank 5-man PUGs, not reinvent DK tanking, so let’s stick with the basics and start with 5/5/5.

Once you got that in place, move up the tree of your choice, grabbing the defensive talents and cool downs. Don’t forget a few DPS talents too, you’ll need to be able to hold threat. Of course, while basic tank builds, from my way of thinking, are pretty intuitive, it doesn’t hurt to spell it out too. Here’s a look at 3 possible builds, one for each tree.

This Blood tank spec gives you most of the bells and whistles of Blood, while also delving into Frost and Unholy for some extra slowing power on Icy Touch and a cool down reduction for Death and Decay. With this build, you’ll have solid single target threat, and Spell Deflection will let you laugh in the face of casters. You’ll be slightly weaker at AoE threat than the other two trees, but your Blood Boil and Death and Decay will still be potent. You’ll also have extra self-healing from using Death Strike as your main Frost/Unholy strike, which will help if you drew a lackluster healer. Of course, in return, you won’t have as much purely reactive damage soaking ability as the other two trees. Even Vampiric Blood requires you to be healed to reap the full benefits.

This Unholy spec starts by delving into Blood for some extra threat help and Frost for the extra Icy Touch debuff. Building up the Unholy tree, we focus mostly on getting AE threat tools, grabbing the requisite defensive cool downs as well. I ignored Reaping just because you’ll be using those Blood runes for Death and Decay, Pestilence, and Blood Boil. Some would argue that one should clear points out of Desecration and Wandering Plague and finish out Desolation instead. Admittedly, there’s a lot to be said for this argument at the raid level. That said, I do like having the extra debuff of Desecration at a 5 man level to wrangle in runners, since you won’t always be able to trust your DPS to take care of them, and you may have a hard time keeping Blood Strike in your AoE rotation to keep the Desolation buff up anyway.

Unholy has slightly less pure defensive power than the other groups at lower gear levels, although Bone Shield gets a lot more powerful the more avoidance you get. It also has some amazing AE threat, and Ebon Plaguebringer will make any smart caster DPS you pick up love you forever, especially since you can spread it to multiple targets so easily.

For 2-handed Frost Tanking, try this build. Frost is actually a pretty amazingly nice build for absorbing damage, between things like Frigid Dreadplate and Improved Frost Presence, you’ll absorb a lot of extra damage without even trying. Hungering Cold is great emergency snap threat and crowd control, and Howling Blast adds another nice bit of AE threat gathering. The downside to this build is that you don’t bring as much group utility as Blood and Unholy. But then again, most PUG groups are just going to be happy there’s a tank around.

Now, I honestly would caution against trying to do dual wield tanking until you are very well geared, but if you insist, you can take points out of Morbidity, Two-Handed Weapon specialization, and Merciless Combat to grab Threat of Thassarian and Nerves of Cold Steel pretty easily.

As far glyphs go, I’ve added glyphs to all three links above, so you can get a general idea of what to chose from those links. I should note that while I gave every spec the Death and Decay glyph, a lot of death knights at higher gear levels will pass on that one, especially since it’s less than useful on single-target fights. I’ve included it in these builds because we’re talking PUG 5-man tanking, which presumes you’ll be mostly AEing down all your trash. In that case, that extra 20% damage on your main AE threat ability is a very nice buffer when you’re starting out as a tank.

Gear

Once you have your spec figured out, you’ll need to get geared up. The first rule of tank gearing, at least until Cataclysm comes out, is pretty simple: Get 540 defense skill. This will get you immune to all critical strikes at level 80. Now admittedly, you only strictly need 535 Defense skill to get to uncrittable in heroic dungeons, but getting to 540 is good practice for raid tanking (If nothing else, you may want to move on to PUG Vault of Archavon raids somewhere down the line, right?), and the extra defense skill still provides dodge and parry.

Most of the gearing advice you need for starting out in heroic dungeon running you can find in back issues of Lichborne, so I’ll go ahead and summarize what to look for in those articles here. You should be able to pick out gear from these articles that’ll get you started on heroic tanking easily enough:

* This article summarizes basic defense gear for the fresh level 80 Death Knight tank. It should be useful to find some quick and dirty upgrades as you start your tank career, although some of them will be a bit low powered for the harder heroics.
* This article discussed pre-raid defense gearing back before Patch 3.2, but it’s still a handy list for what to look out for in heroics.
* Both of the above articles were written before Patch 3.2 and the Crusader’s Coliseum, so you’ll want to check out our Crusader’s Coliseum death knight tank gearing guide, since that stuff will almost always be superior to the gear mentioned in the two articles above.

Don’t forget to get enchantments and gems too. As a rule of thumb, use Thick gems to get to 540 defense, then Solid gems to buff up your health – it’s a little bit simple, but it’ll work for heroic 5-man tanking. The Austere Earthsiege Diamond should work fine for your metagem — You can grab a Resolute or Stalwart gem to get the red gem requirement.

As far as what quality of gem to use, it depends on the gear. Once you’re grabbing Emblem of Triumph and t9 tank gear, I’d strongly recommend investing in epic gems, but anything lower than that, you can get away with blue, maybe even green if you expect you’ll upgrade it once or twice more before replacing it with t9 or a raid drop. Rotation Basics

As a PUG 5-man tank, you’ll find that just about any group just wants to blast groups over as quickly as possible, willy nilly. Therefore, it’s going to be to your best interest to establish AE threat as soon as possible.

First things first: lay down Death and Decay. Yes, even you, Unholy death knights. I know you want to get your Ebon Plaguedown first, but the fact is, your DPS is not going to hold back. They’re going to start unloading on whatever target they please, and you’ll want to have the threat to keep aggro right off the bat. Use the high threat move first, then spread your diseases. In other words, your first set of runes should be spent something like this:

Death and Decay->Icy Touch->Plague Strike->Pestilence.

You’ll now be doing continuous damage to the entire group, enough that you should at least have locked down against incidental damage and light healing. With your next set of runes, you can bring it all home. If you can manage to do it without losing threat, tab over to a new target. Hit your Frost/Unholy Strike (Scourge Strike for Unholy, Death Strike for Blood, Howling Blast for Frost), hit a Blood Boil, then hit a pestilence to spread the diseases again. Since you tabbed to a new target, you’ll have refreshed the diseases on your original target as well.

The basic rotation above will get through pretty much every AE battle. Then you just need to learn to weave in basic defensive cool downs and runic power dumps, and you’re set. Your basic single target DPS rotation should work fine against bosses.

Other Tips

Of course, part of being a tank is staying aware and adapting to circumstances so you can keep your group members alive, so it’s good keep on your toes. The first thing you should do upon zoning into a new dungeon as a tank is to make sure your Frost Presence is on. I know that seems sort of like newbie stuff there, but you’d be surprised how often you might forget, especially if you are switching between DPS and Tank specs a lot. Frost Presence makes up a good portion of your survivability and threat, and if you don’t have it up, your group will suffer, if not outright wipe.

Beyond that, learn to adapt and use positioning to your advantage otherwise. If you’re still running as a DPS, observe where other successful tanks are pulling and positioning stuff. Chances are, that spot might be a good spot to pull stuff when it’s your turn to tank. When deciding on a pull, try to position your Death and Decay such that it hits as much of the group as possible to better establish initial aggro. If there’s a caster in the group, LOS him or use Death Grip or Strangulate to pull him right onto the Death and Decay. Have Blood Tap handy in case you need an emergency Death Rune for your major tanking cool down.

Also, don’t be afraid to lead. Even if you aren’t technically assigned the leader slot, chances are you’ll be the defacto leader, setting the pace of the pulls and whatnot. If you see a way to make things more efficient, put it into effect. If you’re having trouble keeping aggro or staying alive because DPS is all scattered willy-nilly, start marking targets and setting kill orders.

Once you have all of this together, I also might encourage you to try a few test runs with patient guildies or even on a normal dungeon in dungeon finder. That way you can practice your new tanking skills in a friendlier environment, or at least one where it’s easier to recover if you lose control for a second. It takes a little preparation, but if you can pull all this off, the emblems will roll in that much faster.

One last tip: Don’t believe the hype. Death Knights are good, solid tanks right now. Yes, we take a little bit more damage in 5 mans because of lack of block, but it’s far from unmanageable. Yes, there’s bad Death Knight tanks out there, but no more or less than any other tanking class. I think my worse tank in a Dungeon Finder PUG thus far as has been a paladin, with the best being an Unholy death knight. Still, we’re the new kids on the block, even if we are over a year old as a class. For that reason alone, you’ll probably meet some people who are inclined to dislike death knight tanks. Look at it as an opportunity to prove them wrong.

Ive seen the following article floating around alot of the main Wow sites, and I have researched it up a bit but can’t really find any more information than whats already given here, so if you haven’t read this yet, read, enjoy and let me know what you think.

While this was originally reported by IncGamers four days ago after seeing a WoW-Europe forum thread, there weren’t yet enough reports of this to really justify a followup news post.  However, today WoW.com also posted on it, and there’s a WoW-NA forum thread backing up the previous thread.  It looks like patch 3.3 started the Cataclysm pre-launch event, though for now it’s only minor earthquakes… but who knows where it will go from here.

With Kalgan mentioning a possible post-3.3 but pre-Cataclysm raid, it could tie in to the world event similar to how Tenris Mirkblood popped up in Karazhan during the Wrath of the Lich King pre-launch event.  It’s certainly interesting to see the event starting this early, no matter what the magnitude of in-game activities surrounding it, since Cataclysm’s alpha hasn’t even started yet.  But it could be that, after Blizzard was happy with Wrath’s pre-launch, they wanted to make something epic and memorable, but also accessible for a longer period of time, and thus have planned it out to run for quite a while.

For those curious, the earthquakes are being triggered by [DND] Shaker and [DND] Shaker – Small.  Regardless of where it goes from here, it should be a fun ride leading up to Cataclysm’s launch — and hopefully and eventful one.  What would you like to see take place in the pre-launch event aside from earthquakes?  How about something like last year’s zombie plague, but more themed toward’s Deathwing’s doings rather than the Scourge and undead?

Article Provided by Curse.com

As a new year rolls around and we are stuck looking at all the clothes we got for christmas that we will never wear, I suggest getting yourself something that you will love. Both SwagDog and J!nx are having special New Years sales. SwagDog is offering free shipping on all US orders and reduced the price of their guild logo shirts from $24.99 to $19.99 now. Also J!nx has selected World of Warcraft shirts on sale for only $10. And finaly never forget that right here at World of Weirdcraft we have our own T-Shirts as well!

Sadly its true, druid tanks have fallen on some hard times.  The funny thing about it is that it has nothing to do with a druids ability to tank either.  Its simply a result of their very class, and the heavy demand for the other more party friendly abilities of druids.  Be honest when you go looking for a druid to join your group, the first thought that comes to mind is that you want a druid healer for your group, beyond that, you want a feral or boomkin druid because of the high dps and the great damage buffs they provide.  Its not very often that someone gets it in their head to go and look for a druid tank,  but I might add that druid tanks currently have the highest hit points in the game.  With a good druid tank equipped in tier 10 gear a life bar of over 55k is not hard to come by, I challenge you to find a paladin with that kind of hp.

In short, blizzard seems to have it happy for Paladins in the game for some reason, and pallys are always the first to be called when it comes to taking, but I will remind, that despite the nerfs, Death Knights still make excellent anti magic tanks, Warrior Tanks still have the most damage mitigation, and druid tanks have the most hit points, so please people, be considerate of other class tanks next time you go LFG.

So I have been going over some of the ways that I have learned to make money in the game and thought I would share one of my secrets I have been using for some time now and found to be reliable.  Its a simple auction scan addon called Sly Profits.  To break it down into the simplest terms possible, it adds another tab into your auction window, go to the window, default setting will search the auction house auctions by your professions and determine what items you could craft, and what profit, if any could be made from them.  Its really just that simple.  Since my main character is an herbalist/alchemist  it searches through auctions for the current prices of elixers and flasks as well as how much the raw materials to make them currently cost.  If the buyout cost of mats is lower than the buyout cost of the finished product it will give you an estimate of how much you can make per item or stack if the items are bought out.

Example in the image flask of endless rage, buyout each is 37g thats current auction house price.  total cost to buyout 20x flask of endless rage is 741g but the total cost in mats to make 20 flask of endless rage is only 589g that means if you buy out the needed mats, make 20 and post them for auction at 37g each you stand to profit 105g if all of your flasks sell.   So…if you take the 5 minutes to buyout the needed materials, make the items and post them, you could make 100g in 5 minutes.  Not a bad idea huh.  Of course this is all dependent on the current stat of your auction house.  Sometimes mats cost more so no profit to be made.  Also I have found that the best time do do this is  on a Friday and Saturday, those being the most popular raiding days of the week and thus there is the largest demand for Flasks.  I recommenced buying up your mats on a Wednesday when auction house prices are typically lowest in the week, craft your flasks and later in the day, 6 or 7 server  when raids are forming and there is a big demand for those flasks and prices are up, post your auctions, if you match the current lowest price in auction (considering the prices is still more than you payed in total for mats) you will always make money.

Note this is not a technique that will make you a gold millionaire, obviously there is a limited demand for flasks and at best you may sell 30 a day on a good day, so profits are going to be limited to maybe a few hundred gold a day at best on weekends, but this is a reliable, easy, legitimate and free way to make some extra gold with no grinding required. Follow this link for Sly Profits download on Curse.com

Authors Note:  I am assuming that you are using some form of dps meter such as Recount or Skada.

Training Dummies, do you use them?  I know a lot of you guys have never passed a second thought to them, sure you see them, and while traveling through a city you may see someone beating away at one, but why?  Well let me ask you a question.  How important is topping the DPS chart to you?  What do you do personally to get the best damage out of your character?  Se those guys that are beating away on those dummies are their for a reason.  They have made a decision that they are gonna test their characters and find what works for them.  Testing damage rotations, spells, different gear configurations, all of this can be done with training dummies.  As I have commented before in other posts, gearscore does not make a great player.  Knowing your character, knowing the best hit rotation, and most importantly, the best spec is what makes a good player.  A great player takes the time to beat a dummie untill they they know their rotation inside and out.

For a second, think of this in football terms.  ICC heroic being the Superbowl.  Naxx and Ulduar were regular season, TOC was the playoffs and now its time for the big game, but you don’t just run into  the big game, you take it to the practice field first, you lay out a game plan, you find your strengths, practice them and prepare for game time.  I got a new tier piece which gives me a new set bonus, should I work in an extra Heart Strike to my rotation to take advantage of this new set bonus?  Game time is not the time to think about this, thats what practice dummies are for.

So in short, next time your in a major city running by the training dummies, stop for a minute and practice your rotation and see how high you can get your numbers. Always remember, good dps is a constant learning experience and practice makes perfect.