How to win friends and influence people,WOW version (A beginner's guide)

Hello everyone, in the past few months since I started playing cata, I noticed that the amount of noo...unskilled players is quite huge. Therefore I hope that by writing this guide, the overall-average skill level of our server will increase and contribute to the enjoyability of everyone.

If you are new to WoW, please read this, it will help you pick up the game faster and also fit into the community. Given the general elitist nature of the servers population, if you do not know much about the game you probably will not get the help you need.
You might feel that this game is just plain boring/uncomfortable/hostile, but if you are bad at many things it makes people shun you in the first place, so you might miss out some nice friends and such. I hope after reading this guide you will be able to be part of our fun community and not one that is avoided and treated like a plague.

Disclaimer: This guide is NOT a strategy guide, nor a money making one; this basically shows you how to not fail in WoW. I am writing this guide for newbs who are new to this server, less-educated people and generally players who makes you do this.
http://i822.photobucket.com/albums/z...psffb4701e.jpg

USE CTRL + F TO FIND THE SPECIFIC SECTION YOU ARE INTERESTED IN.

Content:
1. Gearing up the right way
1.1 Reputation
1.2 Gems
1.3 Enchants

2. Respecting yourself and others

3. DonÔÇÖt make a fool out of yourself
3.1 Healers
3.2 Tanks
3.3 DPS

4. Difference between PVP and PVE

5. Introduction to raids

6. Manners matter

1. Gearing up the right way

1.1 Reputation (NOT WORKING FOR 4.3.4 CURRENTLY)

As we all know, the immense speed of leveling in warmane renders us quite weak at level 85, thus warmane opened us up to WOTLK reputation farms!
Instances such as AK (AhnÔÇÖkaket) and The Nexus are heroic WOTLK dungeons (80), thus a group of 85ÔÇÖs with low gears should be able to manage these instances easily.

What the hell are we doing in low level instances you say?

Well you can get reputation with CATACLYSM reputation factions by killing these WOTLK mobs, awesome? With gears going up to iLVL 359 for every class, everyone should be farming these reputations when they are a new 85. There are a total of 5 different cataclysm reputation factions, namely
Therazane
Wildhammer clan
Earthern Ring
Guardians of Hyjal
Ramkahem

Click on the faction name's to view location of quartermasters.
So just basically you should quest till you are friendly with them (except therazane), buy their tabards and start farming the instances mentioned till you are exalted.

THERAZANE REPUTATION SPECIAL!
Firstly, we do not have to grind for Therazane rep. There is a quest chain that brings us from hated -> exalted.
1) Take 'Imposing Confrontation' from 'Earthmender Norsala'
2) Rocky Relations from Diamant
3) Hatred runs deep from Diamant
4) Violent gale from Diamant
5) Enjoy.

Guide for Violent gale, firstly fly into the crumbling depths (as long as your screen shows 'the crumbling depths' it should be fine). Then go back to Felsen and fly about 20 yards high up around him, fly around till the quest autocompletes and you should be at exalted.

Further gearing guides are available here(Search for 'Guides for new players and gear guides' under cataclysm. I do not intend to make this a comprehensive gearing guide.

1.2 Gems

This is one aspect that infuriates me much more than it should, which is seeing people in raids or RDF HCs full of empty sockets. These stupid people usually reply that they do not have JC (jewelcrafting) or do not have enough gold to buy It from the AH (Auction house).
Hello, one uncommon (green) gem usually costs less than 100g, and by spending 1k+ on these, with the socket bonuses it very wells add up to another piece of gear. It doesnÔÇÖt takes much time either, thus IÔÇÖll have to assume people who leave their gears un-gemmed are either too stupid or too lazy.
Anyone can learn how to gem their classes by reading the various class guides HERE.
For the love of god, do not leave the empty sockets hanging.

This usually also contributes to the low DPS these people are doing. Just to clarify, I am not pissed at the low DPS, I am pissed when I see a toon being played at a scrap of their full potential.

1.3 Enchants

Enchants usually costs much more than gems, therefore I understand the newcomer's shortage of gold, which usually ends in many unenchanted gear. Having a much lesser bonus to gold ratio, I personally don't criticize much on the lack on enchants, BUT if you are actually geared enough to do raids (~iLvl 350), please start looking out on enchants, as it is a much easier way to improve your character than aiming for higher gears.

Just an comparison of a unbuffed gear with a buffed one.
http://i822.photobucket.com/albums/z...pse60b1570.png



2. Respecting yourself and others

'Only by treating others with respect will they respect you back', this is a quote that holds true in many parts of our life, be it working, studying or in our context, WOW.

Therefore, in a MMORPG like this, being a dick generally gets you negative impression. Besides making others feel irritated, it will not get you far*. Too many times I have seen people scolding one another, calling each other noobs etc. which usually results in the disbanding of a party/raid.

This section also includes begging, which is a highly scorned act. While this did not happen in mine, please do not beg people for gold in your guild or ask them to help you rep farm. You can earn your gold and you can look out for rep farms in global chat. Don't be lazy even in a game.

Sure there are always nice guys who exist to help out, but repeatedly begging will generally give the guild a bad impression about you.

*Unless you are Caylaara. No offense here, but he is one guy I see who managed to piss off nearly the entire server but still gets good progression (I think). His skill still speaks for itself.


3. DonÔÇÖt make a fool out of yourself

3.1 Healers (Most stated instances are NOT working for 4.3.4 currently)

Yay you are a healer! You keep people alive, you decide who die and who lives, you are god.

While letting someone die is a easy job, keeping them alive isn't (god's job is hard y'know?). Besides healing their health points, many healers are forgetting that they can dispel too. Several bosses usually places a debuff (bad) on party members, such as
Baradin hold's Argaloth
HoO's Anhuur
Grim batol's Erudax
and many more.

Before you can dispel debuffs, you should learn to actually read debuffs. Thus addons such as Xperl or vuhdo can aid you in noticing debuffs.

Don't give stupid reasons such as "my class don't have dispel", it's gonna make people facepalm at you. EVERY HEALING CLASS HAVE A DISPELL! (Albeit different types)

Shaman - Cleanse spirit
Priests - Dispel magic (duh) and Mass dispel (Preferably glyped)l (Thanks Sufler)
Druids - Nature's cure
Paladins - Cleanse + Sacred Cleansing

Also read up on your healing class guides including rotation/gems/enchants. Going OOM in the middle of a fight is the last thing you want to happen to you. Don't give excuses like 'you guys are taking too much damage', although they might be, chances are you might just be overhealing or spamming the wrong spell. (eg: flash heal, priests!)

3.2 Tanks

Yay you are a tank! You aggro mobs, you take in all the damage that can kill your party, you are god.

However, before tanking, you must ensure you have the health to be a tank. You don't become a tank by just saying you are one, or queuing as a tank in a RDF HC. You will fail terribly.

I shall not elaborate on different classes tanking skills, but bear in mind that every tank will have a skill to help them survive better, by increasing max hp, reducing damg taken, self heals etc. Remember to use them iwhen you are dying n case your healer messes up or when you are too badly geared yourself (although these skills won't help you anyway)

Even though you have a badass pool of health, don't stress your healer by going rambo into every group of mobs or ignoring boss strats. You will fail terribly.

Bosses such as Siamat's thunder clouds will damage you A LOT, so MOVE. Bear in mind that when bosses does AOE's, if you do not kite, melee dpsers will probably be caught in it as well. You all will fail terribly.

Other than that, read up on guides to properly hold aggro, AOE aggro and movement.

3.3 DPS

Yay you are a DPSer, you deal damage, you kill stuff, you prevent them from killing your party, you are god.

That said, many DPSers fails terribly in their job (god's job is hard y'know?), although it is quite commonly caused by the factors mentioned above, one major problem with DPSers failing is the lack of understand of their class.

Although almost everyone can scold other's noob and describe how detailed they screw others moms, many of them lack the ability to understand what are their skills and talents are talking about.

Before you start DPSing with any class, I strongly advise you to read up on your class guides HERE to learn your class's rotation or skill priority. :cool:

From my experience, there are two very distinct and obvious examples of people failing to understand their skills and talents respectively.

Scenario 1:
Priests DPS uses mind spike x3 + mind blast. Repeat

If you ask around, any decent player will tell you priests is a heavy DOT based class, and notice how mind spike describes 'extinguishes your Shadow damage-over-time effects from the target in the process.'?

So you should just stick to your DOTs and stop using this skill completely.
The worst is that when people put up all their DOTs and then USE THIS SKILL.

Therefore to priests who fail to understand their class - THIS IS (more of) A PVP SKILL.

Scenario 2:
Low geared fire mages.

Ever seen mages who fire off pyroblasts like a freaking machine gun and rapes your dps? Maybe you do, maybe you dont. If that is the reason you play a mage, then you are probably heavily mistaken about the core skill of fire mages - This and this

At your puny gear and puny crit, your pyroblast is probably gonna appear once in a blue moon. And for god's sake DON'T CAST PYROBLAST UNLESS HOT STREAK PROCCED. You are better off being a arcane mage for now (seriously).

Some might ask but since this is too stupid and redundant to explain, just remember - FROST IS NOT (that good) FOR PVE.

Therefore, DPSers, read guides, gem up, learn your rotation and (if needed) to read.


4. Difference between PVP and PVE

So you did arenas and floored your enemies, you got enough conquest points to buy you a vicious gladiator gear, yay!

Quick, check this out.
There's probably something in common among all pvp gears you see. If you don't notice it, consider playing runescape.

If you noticed it, resilience! Resil-freaking-ence! Do you know what it does? It is defined, 'Resilience is a character attribute that reduces all damage taken from players and their pets or minions. This is the bread and butter PvP stat. The reduction has no effect on the damage taken from mobs. '

So sporting a full vicious gladiator set, you embarked to take on RDF HCs by telling the entire party you are 360 iLvl and that they are noobs.

Do you know what does resilience helps in you as a dps, healer or tank? Jack Sh*t, it does absolutely nothing in anything PVE related.
Do not be a tard and raid full of pvp gears, you can be a 100k mp priest with full pvp gears and you will still totallyrun out of mana compared to a (properly) PVE geared priest with 80k mp, and he will probably do higher HPS than you.

5. Introduction to raids

So you managed to farm all the valor and justice points to buy awesome cool gear, and killed so many bosses that you are now raid-worthy! Yay!

I am sure you have seen lots of raid organizers in global saying "ACHIEV OR NO INV", which sounds pretty stupid once you consider that you need to actually raid to get an achievement.

Thus you can skip their stupidity and bluff most of them by getting this (not sure if working for 4.3.4)

So you conned your way in, now the big bad boss is staring you down, do you know what to do?

In Chimaeron, what should you do during Massacre, or feud?

If you do not know these questions, please do not join raids no matter how geared you are. You will fail terribly. Every member in a raid plays a vital role towards killing the boss, there is no such thing as dying and waiting for others to kill for you.

DO NOT JOIN RAIDS IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE BOSS TACTICS. Read it up, it isn't hard. There's google.

You should probably know that doing your class job (heal,tank,dps) WHILE following boss strats is a entire different skill to learn.

6. Manners matter

Screw you guys, you suck, quit wow and go cry to your mom.

What do you think about me now? I am probably a prick to you, right?
That's how people will view you if you started whining about how bad they are at playing, how low their DPS is or that their healing suck.

It also helps when people explain to you that you are using the wrong skill and you should be working on improving them.

There was a few times when I told DPSers that they are doing lower dps than the tank, and they replied 'do I look like I care?' After that I quit bothering about their mistakes and let them suck. Please for the love of god, there are always people trying to help (Those who say "LOL NOOB DPS" are not trying to help), let them help you, accept criticism, realize your mistakes and improve.

Lastly, if you have to go AFK due to personal IRL matters or have to go for a urgent pee break, give your party/raid members a notification. This is very important even if you are going AFK for say 2mins, if the tank doesn't know of this, he might charge in without a healer, resulting in a wipe.

While that is probably a worse case scenario, people will be irritated if 1 person is suddenly away, they might think you DCED and not sure if they should replace you or wait. This can be very demoralizing.

Therefore, you should either keep your eyes locked on the screen or tell people of your absence :D


In conclusion, I hope that this guide serves well to introduce new players to WOW and to give them a kick-start in the game. I also wish that this guide will be referred when you are too lazy to explain everything to a newcomer or just someone who is bad at the game. :D

Finally, and for TL;DR : THIS THIS THIS AND STILL THIS.

Cheers and good luck!

Feel free to PM me on the forums should you have any questions about anything!


Changelogs:
1.01
Added in various comments and missing information provided by readers :cool:
1.02
Added Therazane quest chain guide.
1.03
Added some pictures, neatness edits.
1.04
Amagawd colors!
1.05
Updated slightly for 4.3.4