Rades’ fabul(or)ous Guide to making your WoW screenshots look great. Always wondered how Rades (and the hopefully-only-temporarily-retired Cynwise - how great is that Deathwing shot) managed to make screen-caps look so good.

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I had trouble finding a ready reference to the ilvl ranges for Mists, so after hunting around all the usual sites came up with the following. I’ll revise this post if the numbers change.

Update 2012.10.03: Revised Heroic iLvl (was i440), JP iLvl (was i450), JP/VP rep requirements (no rep for JP gear, less for some VP gear), and added crafted weapons iLvl.

Source	Requires	Drops	Comment
Quests	n/a	i372
Dungeons	i358	i425-i45
Scenarios	i425	i463
Heroics	i435	i463/i476	i476 final boss only
LFR	i463	i476/i483	T14 tokens i483
Raid (N)	i476	i489/i496	T14 tokens i496
Raid (H)	i489	i502/i509	T14 tokens i509

So progression is pretty clear: Dungeons -> Heroics -> (LFR) -> Raid Normal -> etc.

You can skip LFR by grinding out enough rep and VP to get into norlmal raiding. Rep vendors sell i458 gear for JP (no rep required), and i489 for VP at Honored (neck/ring/cloak/bracers) and Revered.

So planning your reputation priorities will be important. Crafted epics are i476-i496. Crafted weapons are i463.

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It’s been a year since posting here, but with Mists lurking only days away it seems a good time to start posting a few things. A brief catch up first.

I’m undecided about who or what to focus on for Pandaria, but it’s likely to be my Warrior (now christened Angler) or Knive, my Hunter. I played Knive deep into Cataclysm and thanks to LFR saw the end game raid bosses for the first time. LFR was great for me because it allowed me to see the benefit in gearing properly and committing to a toon for a prolonged period. Watching my Recount rank slowly climb into the top 5 was immensely satisfying, as was the slow gear acquisition plan formulated via Ask Mr. Robot. So Knive is an obvious choice.

But I have an unscratched itch to end game tank again. Angler (nee Banehammer) has been in retirement for all of Cataclysm (after a tank cataclysm of my own at the end of WotLK) but it might be time to oil his rusty armour and see what he’s capable of.

I’ve rolled about 8000 alt Paladin, Druid and Warrior tanks in the meantime and loved tanking through the older content. If I had an 85 Paladin I think that would be my first choice, but alt-itis means a lot of low level toons but nothing at max. So, that’s the update. Let’s see what happens. /cracks open the curious crate…

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• 1 thoroughly read copy of “Nat Pagle’s Extreme’ Anglin.”
• 1 Magical Crawdad.
• 1 Dark Herring.
• 1 Lucky Fishing Hat.
• 1 Arcanite Fishing Pole.
• 2 server transfers.
• 40 Speckled Tastyfish.
• 5826 fish caught.
• 3492 other stuff caught.
• 9318 total casts.  

Master Angler of Azeroth.

Accomplished Angler.  

Salty Banehammer.

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Thinking more about how people could learn the game without YouTube or Tankspot, it seems that an Observer mode would be an excellent addition. Some mechanism which allowed you to join a fight in progress as a watcher only, hovering above god-style, kind of like you can hover around when dead and see what’s going on.

I’d love to be able to follow a Warrior tank who was running my chosen bête noire, to learn how they handle the adds and time their cooldowns. Or to hover over a new wing of Naxx once our guild ventures in for the second time. This would allow you to watch and learn fights that are new, or that you’re struggling with. It removes the element of surprise when encountering a new instance or boss, but then very few approach a new fight without first watching a strategy video or reading a debrief. In fact Observer mode would be much more involving than those kind of meta approaches.

You’d probably need some kind of way to allow or disallow observers, so as not to be encumbered with additional stresses or having strangers judge your skills. But given people Livestream their attempts already, I’m sure it would be a pretty popular feature. eSports depend on the ability for an audience to join a game as observers and hence participate in the event like they were at a real sports game. The venerable Quake engine allowed god mode overview for tournament play, Starcraft II will feature some kind of observer mode, as well as replays, so why not offer it in WoW too?

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