You've raided Icecrown Citadel and killed Arthas. You've got a ranked arena team. Your gear score and achievement score both push 6,000. You're officially elite. Then one day that level 15 gnome rogue you rolled two years ago on a whim starts to call your name. She's got pink pig-tails and the cutest little laugh. Before you know it your little gnome is questing in Outland. Soon you're in Northrend. All of a sudden you're running heroics, and raiding. Now your little gnome is just as leet as your old main.

Back long ago I started a druid for the sole purpose of making leather kits for my guild. At the time I didn't realize that since my main was an enchanter, I made myself redundant because leather kits overwrite enchantments -- but I must have liked my druid. As I leveled that enchanter, a mage, my druid was never far behind. Now both toons are level 80, geared, and at the top of their professions. I honestly don't know which one of them is my main and which is my alt. The only difference is, as a healer, the druid has more utility in raids and heroics.

Have you ever switched mains? What would cause you to switch? Guild needs? Personal preferences? Switching classes? With paid server and faction transfers, a lot of the old reasons for switching toons have gone by the wayside. We want to hear your main switching stories.

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

• And Two Rogues fills us in on Shadowed Unit Frames.
• Flow has a few words about Power Auras for resto shaman.
• Blessing of Fish talks about two popular addons -- Grid and Clique.
• Lastly, Mana Obscura discusses the annoyance of addons, and staying on target.

Filed under: The Daily Quest

Blizzard updated the official community site this evening to supply us with a preview of one of the upcoming 5-man dungeons in Cataclysm. This time around it is Grim Batol, a dwarven-made fortress with a long and twisted past.

Called to action by the red dragonflight in the Twilight Highlands, players will be charged with putting a decisive end to the foul machinations developing within the level-85, 5-player dungeon of Grim Batol. The ferocity of the enemies within should not be underestimated, and with the assistance of brave Red Drakes and a handful of explosives, players can thin the ranks of Grim Batol's occupiers through bombing flights into the ruined city's corridors. Regardless of how successful these attacks might be, General Umbris will not allow his army to fall so quickly. In the end, adventurers will be left to their own devices, venturing into the darkest recesses of the dwarven fortress, where a nightmarish enemy is taking shape. Will you be able to uncover Grim Batol's secrets and emerge unscathed, or will your destiny be sealed within this tortured city, like so many brave heroes before you?

source

For the full zone preview, head over to the official World of Warcraft community site.

Filed under: Cataclysm

"Dude, that's women's underwear," Throgg said. The orc rolled his massive shoulders and furrowed his ungroomed, thick unibrow. Lolegolas couldn't imagine a more perfect look for the death knight. Unibrow, drooling, and hunched over. If it weren't for the gloves Throgg wore, his knuckles would constantly bleed from scraping the ground. "That's for girls."

Lolegolas sighed. "No, Throgg. I'm sorry, I used too many syllables on you at once. I have a brazier. The Brazier of Dancing Flames, actually. It is in no way related to underwear."

"Then, if you're so smart, what does it do?"

"It's actually quite nice," Lolegolas said. "It summons a tiny elemental spirit which will perform the dance of midsummer. If you mimic that behavior, you will momentarily be transformed into a similar -- but larger! -- spirit, to join it in its revelry. It will also bow in return to you, if you bow to it. Things like that."

"What you look like when changed, little blood elf?" Throgg questioned.

"Well," sighed Lolegolas. "A flaming draenei woman, actually."

"Why do you want to look like space goat?"

"Look!" Lolegolas. "It's perfectly okay if someone just wants to feel pretty before entering a raid. And, besides, it's about celebrating Midsummer Fire Festival!"

Name: Brazier of Dancing Flame
Type: Inventory item
Attributes: Place a brazier upon the ground, where the little burning spirit will show up.
How to get it: Complete sufficient Midsummer Fire Festival activities to buy one for 350 Burning Blossoms.
How to get rid of it: You could delete it; but after all that work, you probably won't want to do so.

Filed under: Phat Loot Phriday

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related.

I see a fair number of emails and messages about this topic. Is it possible to heal without using any addons of any sort? Naturally, the default user interface (or UI) includes a limited number of features where this is possible. Is it recommended in dungeons or raid instances? No, not quite. I've seen opinions from some players where they practically insist that healing without addons should be the way to go. Anyone who does use addons is relying on a crutch. I don't think that's quite fair to say. It's not like these addons are scripts or anything that can "think" and heal for you.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)

Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week we are getteing ourselves distracted by all of the pretty colors that balance druids have to offer.

I spend my days dealing with numbers; numbers, spells, talents, and gear. This is the aspect of the game that I enjoy the most, because it is constant; you can pinpoint the mathematical specifics of this game fairly accurately. That appeals to me. It allows for me to feel that I have control over the game to a certain degree; that I can make important choices for my character and succeed or fail because of those choices. WoW is not all numbers, however. The game is driven by numbers, it is constructed by numbers, but, ultimately, it is the player base that makes the game what it is.

Players like many different things about each and every game that they play. As I said, I personally enjoy the math behind games, particularly WoW, but other people prefer the visual side of the game. For some, how their player looks, the animations, and just the overall graphics of a game are a large drawing point for why they play. To this end, it can actually be rather disappointing to play a balance druid; you have to miss out on a lot of things such as weapons, armor, hairstyles and certain emote animations. Despite, or perhaps in spite, these issues, there are still players that enjoy the visual outlook of playing as balance druid -- not just Moonkin Form, though it is a big part of it, but everything else as well.

This week, I'd like to talk about the looks and styles of balance druids. It isn't particularly my cup of tea, but it is for many players out there and their viewpoints should be considered as well, so bear with me on this one if I'm a touch off my game on this one.

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Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, those lovable, squeezable, strokeable bundles of pure joy who seethe with a burning inner fire, a rage that can only be quenched in blood. Matthew Rossi tries quenching it in delicious caffeinated beverages. You'd be surprised how often that works.

So we resume our discussion of leveling from two weeks ago. Since that time I've worked another warrior to 80 as well as chugged along on my orc and leveled a new tauren warrior to 41. One of the great things about playing a warrior is, we don't have to write a lot about how awesome we are or how we do things better than other classes because we're cool with who we are. And when we're not cool with who we are, we slam shields or axes into things until we are.

While we've covered levels 21 through 40 before, things have changed since those days in BC when that post was written. For starters, the big three warrior cooldowns (Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall) are no longer linked and now only take 3 minutes to becomes usable, making them much more active and promoting their use over making the cautious warrior hold onto them for emergencies. While you won't have Recklessness in the 21 - 40 range, you will gain both Shield Wall and Retaliation in these levels, and you won't be forced to pick between them.

Also, you'll get a mount at level 20. Cherish it. When I first leveled a warrior I had to run everywhere until level 40, and at 40 you got the 60% speed mount. Now at level 40 you get an epic! You kids today are spoiled.

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Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors

We've reached the two month mark, a third of the way through the quest [Buff for BlizzCon]. While there is still plenty of time before the big event, getting off to a good start means you've already got your rotations down, you know what you're doing, and you're making progress. Sure, you can still beat the timer if you stumble on the first boss, but it's a lot easier if you don't. And, on the other hand, if things have gotten off to a slower beginning for whatever reason (bad weather, injury, a scathing case of Loremaster-itis), you can mount up and make your way towards your goals all the same.

With that in mind, it's time for me to do my Patchwerk impersonation and perform a DPS check on our team of intrepid writers.

"Staffers come play?"

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Filed under: BlizzCon, Guest Posts

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server.

Sometimes there are good reasons that people don't make the same choices as you do. What you might consider to be a perfectly reasonable rationale for jumping ship and moving to a new guild sometimes holds no water for someone who's rowing a different direction in another dinghy. This week, the Drama Mamas take slightly different tacks with a reader who thinks her friend is lost at sea.

Dear Drama Mamas,

Back in January, I left a guild that I'd been an officer of for years. I left because due to internal personal issues, many of the guild members had grown apart and all that was left was myself, the GL, and one other person. In addition, the GL joined with a raid that one of her friends ran which effectively destroyed our own guild's raids. However, since then I've kept in close contact with the guild members who had left before me even though they don't speak with each other. I'm not concerned with trying to reunite the old gang because some of their issues are just too large for a game to erase.

My issue is this: the old guild leader and I are great friends which has carried over to RL. She still keeps her guild even though it's effectively dead and only has one active member. The people she surrounds herself with in-game are not good for her, however. She raid that she runs with creates a huge amount of stress for her, especially the raid leader that is simply a giant jerk. She's slowly losing her love for the game due to these people that she's begun running with.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas

This year, the Midsummer Fire Festival will go live at 3:00 am server time Monday, June 21st and will run through 3:00 am Sunday, July 4th. While it doesn't outwardly appear to be a very time-intensive holiday -- the meta, awarding the Flame Warden title to Alliance players and Flame Keeper title to Horde players, consists of only six achievements -- three of them will have you trekking all over the world.

We don't believe that the holiday has changed significantly from its 2009 incarnation (if it has, the information hasn't become available yet), but there have been a few changes to how you'll do some of the achievements, and the holiday's boss, Lord Ahune, also has an updated loot table. Consequently, I've updated and expanded our 2009 guide to reflect the changes we're aware of.

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Filed under: Achievements, The Overachiever