Peter's Blog

This is a summary of all my World of Warcraft noob tips, based on playing my characters.

I'm primarily a solo player so there aren't any raiding tips and the PvP tips are mainly aimed at avoiding it.

If any of this seems noobie and obvious then that's great, you are definitely not a noob and can save your precious time by going elsewhere. If you don't know what a noob is then you had better read on.

General

• If someone tells you they have a spell that will raise you ten levels then ignore them, they are trying to con you.
• If you are about to start a major trip against lots of monsters with big loot, make sure there is space in your inventory! You don't want to be deciding what to destroy when deep in the enemy lair.
• If you are wondering why some characters have a cool glow on their weapons it is because the weapons have been enchanted. An enchant may, for example, permanently increase the amount of damage the weapons does. If you want this then either talk to an enchanter or become one yourself. Some enchanters will enchant weapons for free if you supply the materials as it helps them increase their enchanting skill without the hastle/expense of getting the materials.
• If you have a locked box that needs opening either:
  • ask a rogue player to open it
  • ask a blacksmith to open it with a skeleton key. If they try the key and it says 'failed attempt' then try a few more times. If the key is not suitable for the lock the game will tell you that you don't have the skill.
    • A silver key is good for a bronze locked box
    • A gold key is good for an iron or steel locked box
  • an enginner might be able to blow it open with a seaforium charge but don't quote me
• If you see someone dealing with an animal, don't always assume they are trying to kill it. It may be a hunter trying to train it and they will be very annoyed if you intervene and kill it. You can tell if the player is a hunter but there's no sign of a pet and there are little hearts flying around.
• The European servers are often down for maintenance every other Wednesday morning so you get at least six hours break a fortnight.
• You can only play if your copy of the game has the latest patch installed. The patch will download automatically when you start the game but it can be very slow, it can take all night to download a major patch. If you are installing the game from CD, it is quite likely that you won't be playing till the next day.
• Microsoft's slogan for Windows Vista is "The Wow Starts Now". This has nothing to do with World of Warcraft which runs fine on Windows XP. The hardware requirements of the game are not high and it will run on a laptop.
• You can install the game on as many pc's as you like. However you can only log in on your account on one pc at a time so if you want to play as two characters at the same time you will need to open two accounts. All the game information like the state of your characters, the layout of your action bars and keyboard bindings is stored on the server and will be the same on each pc you play on.
• The combat log is very useful for analysing how effectively you are fighting. It will tell you how much damage each of your effects is doing, what damage you are taking and how good your armour is. If someone whispers you while the combat log is open the chat tab will flash.
• Want cheap bank space? Create a new character, move him to the nearest bank, mail him some stuff that needs storing and let him hold it in his bank account. It costs 30 copper to send mail so you need to plan carefully here. You can call the character Natt West or Lloyd Teasby (geddit?).
• Mining farming spots:
  • Copper: Dun Murogh (sp?), Loch Modan
  • Tin: Loch Modan
  • Iron: Arathi, Badlands
  • Mithril: Arathi, Badlands
  • Truesilver: Badlands
  • Thorium: Winterspring (many rich veins)

Paladin

• For levelling PvE there are two strategies that can be followed:
  1. mainly retribution spec, two handed weapon, preferably a slow swinging high damage blue. This is combined with the Seal of Command for high damage.
  2. protection spec, fast one handed weapon, shield, Seal of Light, Blessing of Salvation, Reckoning, Holy Shield. With this spec you can take on at least four or five enemies at a time at your level in mele. Currently this is my preference, retribution is very mana intensive and you can only hit one enemy at a time. My recommendation would be to start off with retribution for the firepower until you get to around level 35 and then switch to the protection spec for the goodies that heal you while dealing damage to multiple attackers with much smaller cost in mana. Ok you don't kill individuals as quickly but it is great fun fighting three or four monsters at a time and finishing with half health left.
• One hand vs two handed conundrum:

  one hand

  best with protection spec

  • can hold a shield for about 40% more armour so you die less often
  • with a very fast one-handed weapon (less than two seconds per swing) the Seal of Light judged and Seal of Crusader you get healing with every hit so the more often you hit the more healing you get. This is the slowest way to kill anything but your health declines very slowly: this is the way to tackle multiple enemies, you prevail through attrition.
  • I didn't try this till level 60 where it works nicely but a slow one hander (2.5 sec swing) with a shield gives a nice compromise between killing speed (kill most non-elites up to level 60 in less than 30 seconds) and the amount of health and mana left after a fight (i.e. avoiding health/mana break downtime).
    • Seal of Crusader
    • Judge
    • Seal of Righteousness
  • At level 60 I am mainly using either a fast one-hander with multiple mobs or a slow one-hander for faster health/mana efficient kills. It is easy to switch one-handers and seals if you get adds in a fight or to despatch the last opponent quickly.
  • Sharpening Stones or Weightstones are useful for increasing your dps: 8 more damage on a weapon that hits every second means 8 more dps. 8 more damage on a weapon that hits every four seconds is two more dps so these stones on a two-hander are not so effective.

  two hand

  best with retribution spec

  • more power kills baddies faster
  • with Seal of Command can hit very hard
  • better for PvP

• It took me some time to realise that you can heal yourself in the Divine Protection Bubble. Fundamental Paladin tactic. You can also heal yourself after stunning an opponent. This way you can save your Divine Protection for emergencies. The Concentration Aura is reasonably effective if you are only fighting one enemy.
• The Blessing of Protection is almost as good as the Divine Protection/Divine Shield bubble but doesn't stop spells. However, against mele you can use it first and then use the Divine whatever a minute later when things are getting really desperate.
• Divine Shield, Divine Protection and Blessing of Protection have seperate cooldowns so in one long fight you can use all three, although you have to wait a minute between each one or you will get an 'Immune' message.
• If you feel like jumping off a cliff Divine Shield can be used to survive hitting the ground.
• The paladin gets a summon warhorse spell at level 40. Just go see a paladin trainer and buy the spell for 90 silver. There is no extra training to pay for, you automatically get 75/75 riding skill. If you like you can muy another mount (e.g. as a dwarf I could buy a ram) and use the free riding skill. The regular mounts take the same three seconds to summon, use up a bag slot but don't use any mana). At level 60 the paladin must run some unpopular high level dungeons to complete the epic horse quest. I saved up 600g to just buy one. My epic mount isn't as exclusive as the paladin mount and I can't call myself a real paladin so that's my credibility blown. Reader Sarah says that the Paladin epic mount quest isn't as difficult as some sites make out but I think it depends largely on whether you can get the groups together to do the raids.
• I took up mining and blacksmithing to complement my paladin mele skills. At player level 40 and blacksmith level 200 there is a quest that rewards you with an epic one-handed weapon which is ideal for a protection spec paladin. To get it you need 120 mithril bars and some other stuff, it's not a fighting quest but a farming and money making quest. The quest starts from 'Hank the Hammer' in the dwarf district of Stormwind.
• Paladin's can heal themselves but it is still worth learning first aid and using bandages because:
  • it saves mana. In a fight mana is everything, bandaging in the bubble will help conserve it.
  • it is quicker than eating food: eight seconds to bandage, twenty to eat.
  • instead of carrying around half a dozen different types of food, you only need one or two stacks of bandages.

Hunter

• The fundamentals of playing a hunter are being able to control the pet. The idea of the Hunter/Pet partnership is that while the pet fights a monster the monster is too busy to attack you and you are free to shoot at it. The pet is tough and can take damage, you are weak but can deal damage. The skill in playing a hunter involves making sure the pet gets the attention from the monsters and that they don't come running to you. If they do reach you then you will find your melee skills aren't really strong enough to deal with them. If, for example, one monster is fighting you and another is fighting your pet it is much easier to shoot the monster that's on your pet so the pet is free to help you.
• Beast Mastery is generally accepted as the best tree for solo levelling, Marksmanship is better for pvp or end-game raiding. This page has an excellent table of where to spend your talent points at each level.
• I'm not sure there is much to choose between guns, bows or crossbows as weapons unless you are a dwarf, for example, and have the +5 racial skill bonus for guns. What is more important is the firing rate:
  • a high firing rate (e.g. every 1.8 seconds) means that each arrow deals less damage but you fire more arrows and get the same average damage or dps. Because each arrow deals less damage you are less likely to draw agro from the victim. If the victim is a caster then a high hit rate is more likely to interrupt any spells they are casting.
  • a low firing rate (e.g. every 2.8 seconds) means that your ammo will last much longer (over 50% longer) and that each hit will cause more damage. If the hit crits then the burst damage from that hit will be proportionally higher.
  • A simple solution: carry two weapons, high and low firing rate. If one is a gun and the other a bow then you are twice as likely to find a suitable ammo vendor (nobody sells arrows to alliance in Thousand Needles).
• Hunters have problems with inventory space as they have to carry ammo, pet food and because they kill so quickly that they get lots of loot. The hunter is born with a six slot ammo pouch or quiver (which can be upgraded to one with more slots) but you don't have to use it, you can swap it for a normal bag. This has advantages and disadvantages:
  • ammo bags and quivers give a faster firing rate and so more dps, maybe 10% more
  • ammo bags can only hold bullets and quivers can only hold arrows which restricts you even more
  • normal bags can hold either and as you use up your ammo you get more space for carrying loot
  • moral: use normal bag for grinding, ammo bag/quiver for optimum dps such as when raiding/pvp
• There are various species of beasts that can be tamed and each have different talents. Some talents can be learned from one species and tought to another but there are limitations in what talents a species can learn: bears cannot learn 'Gore' for example.
• The topic of best pet is hotly debated but overall a boar is probably best as it is a good tank and only boars can have the 'Charge' talent that enables them to charge the enemy, stunning it for a second and generating huge agro. This is a time saver as you don't have to wait long for the boar to reach the target. For more dps I have heard that a ravager is best as it has the 'Gore' ability. I use a boar for a tank and a Ghost Sabre for dps, although to be honest there isn't much in it. All the beasts in the same species will have the same attributes: every cat is the same as every other. There is an elite tiger in Stranglthorn Vale, King Bangalash, that has a unique attack speed talent but the 2.1 patch will make that available to all pets. The only real difference between the animals in a species are what it looks like.
• My hunter is also a fisherman and the fish makes great pet food, especially when cooked (cooking can make it four times more nutritious). Boars and Bears eat anything, Cats like fish and meat. Some of the more fussy animals may eat only meat for example.
• The pet gets its own toolbar to control it. Some of the abilities on this toobar can be performed automatically by the pet. If you right click one of the actions the icon may flash around its edges and this means the pet is on automatic. With some talents such as 'Claw' this may cause the pet to use up its 'focus' very quickly which means it won't be able to do anothing more than basic fighting until it regeneres more. 'Bite' is more efficient than 'Claw' and is better suited to be automated. 'Growl' is essential to have the pet attract and hold agro and life is a lot easier if this is done automatically.

Dwarf

• Dwarves have a natural racial advantage to using guns. If you choose to be a Dwarf Paladin like me then you are wasting this ability as paladins cannot use guns. You will see the gun advantage in you spell book but it is totally wasted. However, dwarf hunters can make use of this skill and the treasure tracking ability complements the hunters other tracking abilities.
• Activating the Dwarfs Stoneform spell seems to break things like stun effects and can help when running away from a fight. As you start to run you invariably get hit by something that slows your movement speed. Throw down stoneform and you're away. It's probably more useful for this than the 10% armour boost it gives. A good companion for this is a swig of swiftness potion, a 50% speed boost for 15 seconds. Stoneform is also good for curing diseases, poison or whatever you may be sufferring from (not curses though).
• Dwarves are resistant to frost spells. If an enemy is lobbing fireballs and frost at you, use the Fire Aura and let your natural resistance handle the frost.

PvP (and how to avoid it)

• If players names above their heads are

  magenta

  they are safe.

  green

  they are PvP enabled but they are on your side

  red

  they are PvP enabled and they are your enemy but you if you are not PvP you are still safe as they cannot attack you. If you attack them your PvP will be turned on and they can fight. Sometimes friendly players will have pets with red names. I don't know why this is but the pets never seem to attack.

  yellow

  they are neutral

• Be careful what faction another player plays for. When I first got my resurrection spell I tried it out on a corpse I found outside Ironforge. Turns out this was a dead Horde and all I achieved was to activate my PvP flag, making me vulnerable to attack. It is possible that a Horde could have an Alliance mate who will try to trick you into going PvP and make you ripe for ganking (i.e. killing). This way they 1) help each other earn honor points 2) can boast about pwning you.
• If a horde member spits on you ignore them. Imagine how damp his keyboard is.

User Interface

• shift-b opens or closes all bags
• shift-click on a stack of items allows you to say how many items you want to move from the stack.
• press left and right mouse buttons together to run.
• middle-click mouse to toggle auto-run
• the options include a setting where you can right click on something in the world to automatically run up to it and interact with it
  • when running up to a monster, for me the monster always takes two steps through me and fights from behind. When I fight back the game says 'You are facing the wrong way'. Make sure your man is positioned right or he will stand there being beaten
  • when you right click on ore when mining, be careful that there is ore still there. When the last of the ore disappears it is highly entertaining when you right click on the empty space and take a step off a steep cliff. Something similar can happen when fishing except you fall into a lake.
• You can press tab to select a nearby monster and T to start fighting with it. However T toggles so if you are not careful your man will stop fighting and stand there like a lemon.
• If you click on another player and right click on their picture you can choose the 'inspect' option and admire the details of their armour, weapons and suchlike. Be careful to click 'Inspect' and not 'Invite'.

Making Money

• If you are selling things to vendors and all the slots for selling become full you may still be able to click on items to sell them. I haven't checked this myself, I used to think you had to wait an hour for all the items to disappear from the Buy Back tab but I have since been corrected on that.
• The Auction House is a good place to sell things. It is worth checking to see what the going rate is first as some things are on offer for such inflated prices that it is easy to undercut and still make money. Some people undervalue their wares through ignorance: if most people are selling something for five gold but one person has it on sale for one gold then put it up for 4 gold 50: the cheap one will sell quick but then yours will be cheapest (or even buy the cheap one and sell it on for a quick 3 gold 50 profit).
• When you buy something from an auction you will receive it in the mail. it doesn't just appear in your bag, look for a mail box. The same applies if the Auction Item doesn't sell, it is returned in the mail.
• If you make a bid for something in an auction you have to pay the money up front. It will be mailed back to you if you are outbid. You don't lose anything.
• Remember: it isn't ebay:
  • What you buy is exactly what it says.
  • Everyone has to pay up front
  • The exact time when an auction will end is kept secret so you cannot be outbid by one penny in the last second
  • You pay in WoW money so don't give anyone your credit card details
• Some people put a buyout price of 99 gold for something worth one gold. This just makes you look greedy. You may as well leave the buyout price blank, nobody will ever just throw 99 gold at you, you're only likely to gain if they click the buyout button instead of bid.
• I always put things on auction for 24 hours. The deposit is higher so you lose more money if the item does not sell but more people will see it in 24 hours. If you only want something up for eight hours, don't put it on sale at 11pm unless you think your fellow insomniacs will be unable to resist (e.g. sleep potion).
• The value of something is reflected in the colour of it's name:

  Grey

  probably only worth selling to vendors. It depends on how much space you have in your bags but you might not want to bother picking these up.

  White

  may sell in the Auction House, best to check if anyone else is selling them.

  Green

  desirable and good to auction. Not guaranteed to sell.

  Blue

  very desirable, good for ten gold but don't get greedy

  Magenta

  utterly desirable, be greedy, prices start at 100 gold.

• Generally the loot is better from humanoid monsters than beasts. You do occasionally get good things from beasts but normally grotty body parts to sell to vendors. Humanoids give you cash and linen/wool/silk/mageweave but not body parts (except for the occasional decapitation). The cloths sell nicely in the auction house or you can make bandages.
• There are some scams regarding Cash on Delivery mail items so if someone mails you something be careful that you are sure what it is before you pay up. The email may try to mislead you into thinking you are buying twenty of something when in fact there is only one. Someone sent me an unsolicited ring for 15g Cash on Delivery. If I had pressed the wrong button I would have been down 15g. Press the 'Return' button!
• Keep your eyes open for easy money making opportunities. If most people are selling something for over 10 gold and you see one on sale for seven gold, think about buying the cheap one and instantly selling it on for 9 gold 50. Be sure to know your market though, it helps if you know what the item is used for and who is buying it. Does a particular profession need masses of this item for some reason? You don't want to be snapping up something that nobody wants. Better still is to do this with something that you can use yourself should you be unable to sell it, maybe something that you are toying with buying anyway.
• Keep an eye on the rare weapons that are available. People will often sell these maybe 10g less than what they could get for them. Easiest way to earn 10g but try to understand the market. Polearms are cheaper than other blue weapons because they are not as popular: don't expect two-handed sword prices for polearms.
• Another moneymaking tip: if you are an enchanter (or have an alt who is one) you can buy up cheap green items, disenchant them and sell the disenchanted stuff for more than the greens cost. Try the Auctioneer and Enchantrix add-on's from here which will give you some idea of how much an item is worth if it is disenchanted. As a rule of thumb, if weapons or armour would cost you twenty silver or less, you will make money by disenchanting them and selling the produce.

Professions

• My take on the professions:

  Herbalism

  profitable, best combined with Alchemy

  Mining

  ok if combined with engineering and blacksmithing. Metals sell for silly money on my realm.

  Skinning

  easy to get lots of skins but market may become saturated

  Alchemy

  this seems to be quite lucrative: everyone wants those potions

  Enchanting

  apparently this is very expensive to get to a high level because you need to disenchant mildly valuble items to get your raw materials. It may be best to level up with a cheaper profession and then switch to this when you are regularly raiding stuff that can be disenchanted. I managed to get an alt to level 75 enchanting with a 2g startup fund, just by disenchanting cheap green items and auctioning the produce. At around level 55 switch to enchanting bracers using strange dust.

  Blacksmithing

  I find this good for a paladin as I can use what I make. At Armoursmith level (260) you can make yourself nice blue armour items.

  • warning with the Burning Crusade expansion you do not need to do the armoursmithing quests which involve gathering over 200 bars of mithril. Just talk to the armoursmith when you get to player level 40 and blacksmithing 215 or thereabouts. Becoming an armoursmith only means that you can make nice armour for yourself: it's bind on pickup and you cannot sell it. You may still want to go on the quest for the epic hammer, for this will need 120 mithril bars and it will also give you three lots of plans. For the next stage you need over 100 more mithril and you'll get three lots of plans and a trinket that will temporarily boost your armour. My advise is to save your mithril.
  • The blacksmith levelling 260-295 is a grind: you make more money selling the materials than the items you can make from them. Use the money to buy the stuff the other blacksmiths are offloading. Levelling from 260-300 involves making lots of Imperial Plate Armour: the amount of thorium needed to make this was more than halved when the Burning Crusade was brought out so it's about 12 thorium for Bracers and 18 thorium for boots. While the bracers are only good for vendoring there is good money to be made from auctioning the higher level items: from 295-300 I made five Imperial Plate Helms which I sold for 100g.

  Engineering

  most of the things you make are useless gimmicks. I found the explosives fairly pathetic but I abandoned this at level 170. I don't miss any of my engineering skills. If you are a hunter and want nice guns then this may be for you. My hunter is a herbalist/alchemist.

  Tailoring

  I think this is so-so, make bags and cloth armour, bags can sell for good money in auction.

  Leatherworking

  all the free lederhosen you want.

  Jewelcrafting

  don't know anything about this but my guess is that the high level players will come by the gems more easily and can use them in their socketed items. It may be a profession to switch to when you are over level 60 but that is just my guess. Jewelcrafters are knocking out cheap rings with vague descriptions as to what they do.

• Secondary Professions

  First Aid

  useful for bandaging and saves on healing potions and mana.

  Cooking

  as a paladin with self-healing spells and bandages I find I pick up more than enough food to top up my health after a big fight and I don't need to cook any more. As a Hunter I find the cooked food is better for feeding the pet, it allows you to turn unpalatable meat into something the pet will enjoy and that is more nutricious. Some cooked foods give extra buffs like fifteen minutes of +spirit and +stamina. Yum yum.

  Fishing

  for a long time I thought this was very boring and only for people who enjoyed staring at the screen without blinking. Then I tried it properly with my Hunter and found myself enjoying it. It's a nice way to get free stuff. The fish can be fed to your pet or can be used in your alchemy potions (e.g. Oily Blackmouth fish are used in underwater breathing potion). You sometimes fish up treasure boxes with goodies in. The secret in fishing is to do a ten minute session when you are in the mood. Also keep a look out for schools of fish and floating debris: fishing these is more rewarding. From level 1 to 100 you go up a skill level whenever you catch a fish so in ten minutes you can go up twenty levels.

Groups

• use /p to talk to your party
• use /g to talk to your guild
• use /s to say something to the people around you if you can't easily click on whoever it is you want to talk to.
• use /r to reply to whoever has spoken to you. However, sometimes it seems to reply to someone who whispered you an hour ago, not to the guy who just joined your party. To avoid embarrassment, be specific.
• use /rw for a 'raid warning': puts a big message in the middle of the screen of your party members.
• a group made up of random passers by is known as a PuG or Picked up group. They can and will:
  • hearth out when they have what they want
  • kick you out a group in a dungeon and not help you
  • suddenly decide to have their tea and go afk.
  • fight like noobs.
  • accuse you of being a noob
• if you invite someone to a group, take time to tell them what you are planning to do and what you need. This can save time spent looking at each other, waiting for the other guy to do something.
• loot grabbing protocol: I think the first time anyone joins a group they tend to breech protocols that they are unaware of. What normally happens is that the looting system is set up by the group leader such that items that are looted from bodies that are of green quality or better are 'rolled for': a dice will appear on screen with two buttons, 'need' and 'greed'. If you 'need' an item because it is suitable for your character and will be of big help to you then press the 'need' button. If you only want the item to sell then press the 'greed' button. Press the X in the corner to pass it up completely. The game will decide randomly who gets the item with players who chose 'need' getting priority. There are other kinds of looting rules in the game: look for the tag 'Master Loot: uncommon' in the chat box when you join the group and be wary of a group leader who chooses anything different.
• treasure chests are not covered by these rules: if someone spots a treasure chest they are free to open it and take all the loot themselves. This is considered a social faux pas and the culprit will be labelled a 'ninja'. Normally the group members will use the /roll command to decide who should open the treasure chest.

Chat

• If you see items mentioned in chat in square brackets:
  WTS [Pants of Might] /w me
  you can click on the item name to see a description of it. Normally it is for a level 63 and of no interest. A full translation of that message is "I would like to sell my Pants of Might. If you happen to be interested, please use the chat facility to whisper me for more information".
• If you are composing a message you can shift-click on an item to put a link to its description in your message. You have to remember to open your bags before you start typing as shift-B will just type a capital B.
• If someone talks in chat, you can click on their name and reply or ignore them (if they are advertising wowgold).
• If the wowgold whispers annoy you then, er, tough. You might try /dnd for "do not disturb" but this will hide all messages. You can ignore the wowgolder but within five minutes they will be back with a different character on a new account.
• Use:

  /1

  to talk on the general channel and ask silly questions

  /2

  to talk on the trade channel and advertise your wares

  /3

  to tell everyone you've seen a horde and you think people might care

• WoW chat crib sheet:
  • ty: thank you for that buff/helping kill that monster
  • np: no problem
  • yw: you're welcome
  • lol: that was highly amusing
  • mob: aka monster, enemy, baddie, creep, thing
  • add: you are happily fighting a monster/enemy/baddie/creep/thing when an additional monster wants to join in.
  • zomg pwned: Sir I bow down to your superior playing skills, even though I am only 12.
  • WTB: Want to buy
  • WTS: Want to sell
  • WTF: not what you'd think
  • noob: you've only been playing for three weeks, I've been playing for four.
  • Gank: to kill a lower level player because
    1. you can
    2. it will spoil their day.
  • teh: I'm a rebel and an anarchist and spelling words correctly just isn't for me
  • nerf pallys: I cannot beat the average paladin player so I implore the games creators to handicap them in some highly frustrating way. Do they really need weapons?
  • imba: class skills are imbalanced (sic) so nerf pallys.
  • dude ur a noob: I am a moron and struggle to form sentences.

Web Sites

• WoW Wiki A WoW encyclopedia
• ThottBot a database of all items in the game and comments about how people have pwned other people with them. lol.
• Paladin Guide a detailed analysis of Paladin Play. Interesting use of Judgement of Light and Judgement of Wisdom in a raid.
• Jame's Levelling Guide a cheatsheet/walkthrough to save you the trouble of finding your way around yourself: except it only starts at level 30.
• Geld's Revised Paladin Guide: How to be a paladin. The link is to a google search because it is a forum posting and the link there is ridiculously long.
• Paladin AoE Strategy: how to fight five monsters at a time.
• I have inspired a Mage to start blogging. Read about it here. Find the answer to the age old mystery of why heterosexual men play as female characters.
• The Ardent Defender, a blog by reader/commenter Urban.
• Hunter Guide a wiki that collates hunter related forum postings.