One of the many exciting changes announced at BlizzCon was that free Spell Damage would be added to healing gear. The purpose of the change is to make it easier for healers to enjoy the solo PvE content in the uber gear they have picked up in groups and raids. Too many healers change to lesser geared alts after raids are over, for example, instead of being able to quest in their +Healing epics.

It was confirmed last week that the change will occur in Patch 2.3 and the extra Spell Damage will equal 1/3 of the +Healing stat on gear. So, for example, an item with +75 Healing will have +25 Spell Damage added to it without reducing any other stats.

Some confusion has occurred, however, about just how generous Blizzard was going to be with the free Spell Damage. Forum poster Bridge requested a link to prove that "this includes enchants, gems and set bonuses".

We've covered many different aspects the world of Roguecraft has to offer thus far -- from class quests to gear to number crunching. However, one of the things I've heard from people who are new to Rogues is the question of what trade skills are useful to take up and why. As such, this week's edition of Encrypted Text will contain some of my views on what each trade skill can offer a Rogue. Obviously, short of starting a wiki -- this is not going to be a fully comprehensive version of all that Trade skills can offer. But hopefully between my experience of bouncing between many, many trade skills, and comments from the seasoned Rogues in the WoW Insider crowd, we'll be able to de-mystify one of the earliest choices facing the new Rogue.

We are back at our happy little camp of the power source spot in the press area to liveblog the WoW Professions and Items panel with Tom Chilton, Travis Day and Jon LeCraft.

Updated: This post has been cleaned up and extensively added to after it was partially eaten by a technical error.

Liveblog after the jump.

Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

This week, Insider Trader offers up two insider tips, one for frustrated fishers and another for level 29 PvPers searching for the strongest possible gear.

Fishing means chilling with some good music, a tall drink and a chat window full of the latest guild gossip -- or at least, it used to. As of patch 2.1, fishers were transported back into twitch-gaming mode if they hoped to snag catches at the end of the fishing timer. It's all about the splash; when you hear a splash while fishing, you've hooked a fish and can click to either loot or "miss" it. It used to be that you could reach the end of the fishing timer with no splash/hook. You could look away from your fishing timer while fishing, as long as you were quick about getting back to the bobber when you heard the splash. If there was no splash, you most likely lost a little time until you noticed you hadn't heard anything and looked back over to re-cast ... But no lost fish. No harm, no foul.

Post-2.1, there's always a splash at the end of the timer. Sounds great, right? Always a splash, always a hook and an opportunity for a catch? Unfortunately, there's now no time for a catch on end-of-timer hooks unless you click the bobber at exactly the same moment as the splash – requiring you to watch that timer like a hawk and click right on time. The bobber vanishes simultaneously with the splash, instead of fading out and giving you time to react to the splash. While it's still possible to catch (or miss) the fish with a perfectly timed click, frustration seems just as common. And the it sure ruins the peaceful, laid-back aspect of fishing.

No word on whether or not the grace period for fishing will be reinstated. For now, if you're dead-set on catching every available fish, bring your game face and prepare to keep your eye glued to the timer bar.

Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.


Laugh all you like – for a sizable population of WoW players, an enchant's not worth the mats it takes unless it creates a cool glow. A long-time enchanter, I've made my share of snarky remarks in guild chat about dorky customers bringing me mats for completely inappropriate enchants on completely inappropriate weapons ... But then again, back in the day (ok -- way back in the day), I also made sure to equip an alternate staff enchanted with Demonslaying every time I zoned into town. Watch the peons swarm to see what the Great and Powerful Enchanter (TM) is wielding!

You'd probably be pretty surprised to learn that there is, in fact, an entire web site devoted to helping enchanters and players figure out which enchants make the coolest glows. GlowChart.com, the brainchild of Cordana of the Detheroc realm, offers screenshots of specific glows, lists of available enchants and their effects, and news on newly updated Burning Crusade-era glows.

Read more about glows after the jump, as well as an Insider Trader tip for miners trying to track elusive greyed-out "ghost nodes."

If you thought the item stats tweaking was over, think again. When players were amazed that the new Tankatronic Goggles saw a nice buff (that could actually compete with Tier 6), Kalgan showed up with a firebomb: the current build on the PTRs only has about a third of the item changes coming down. He says "nearly every level 70 epic item in the game is in the process of being updated."

Curse has a few of the changes already-- blacksmithing weapons and armor have been boosted, arena weapons saw a buff, and (most exciting for me, since I'm not a blacksmith or a good PvPer), the Badge of Justice stuff has been improved a bit. So expect a lot of changes (for the better, so far) whenever the patch does come out. In fact, with all these buffs, I'm wondering if something is going to give. Hopefully, the devs decided to buff the high end stuff, rather than nerf the more obscure items.

Oh, and the look of the Mongoose enchant has changed yet again. I'm glad that whoever's job it is to design that enchant is really taking the time to make sure it's exactly right.

Curse has the news that the 2.1 PTR has been updated, and the biggest change is that Spellfire and Frozen Shadoweave cloth armor has been tweaked a bit. Basically, they've nerfed the spell damage, but they gave a nice buff to the stats on each piece (you can see a piece of each above, and MMO-Champion has deets on all the changes). Doesn't seen like too bad a nerf to me, but I don't play a mage that can actually make this stuff-- if you're unhappy, feel free to register your rage in the comments below.

PvP epic gems have had their honor costs reduced, so if you're saving up points for an Inscribed Ornate Topaz, you'll be happy to hear that it now only costs 10k honor points (and the disappointment of only one of your children when you're too busy PvPing to go play catch with them in this Spring weather).

And finally, the Mongoose enchant (which adds a chance-on-hit agility and attack speed buff) has had its look changed. Video of the new, really strange, spiky look after the jump. The old one was apparently too glowsticky. RAVE ON!

Update: Apparently word from Eyonix on the forums is that the changes will be reverted before 2.1 goes live (thanks, Greg!)

Ratherbrute sent this to us (he saw it in a signature on the forums), and I love his description of it. It's a profile of a level one twink, and Ratherbrute calls it "an existential WoW exercise." Basically someone out there, either in this profile or in the game (this character doesn't show up on the Armory, but the only character with this name shows that characters under level 10 aren't profiled on Blizzard's database), has pimped out a level one character.

It's definitely a fascinating idea, though. What's here mostly consists of enchants-- health and stamina chants on the armor give this level one paladin 453 health. For comparison, I went and rolled a level 1 myself-- an unplayed level one blood elf paladin starts with about 38 health. There's also a bit of extra damage on the weapon (untouched paladins hit for 7-10, and the twink hits for 13-17) and a little extra armor.

The Unadorned set used here is from a vendor in the Ghostlands-- it does seem to be the highest armor set available from a drop or a vendor. There is better level one armor out there (note that the armor is level 10, but level 10 is not required to wear it) from quests, but I'd imagine that actually completing any quest that pushes you past level one would defeat the purpose. Same deal with the weapon-- there are better swords around, but they're all quest swords, so it'd be tough to find something better while still remaining level one.

Of course, while Ratherbrute says this is all just existentialism, I'll still ask the central question here: just why would you want to twink a level 1? What is this pally planning on fighting, anyway?

Pup of Cho'gall asks a very sensible question on the WoW General Forums: since the enchants for one-handed and two-handed weapons are often different, and since you can enchant shields, why can't casters enchant their offhands?

Tseric responds by saying that offhands are a pretty broad category, and that there would have to be a lot of different enchants to give casters all the options they might want in that slot. That seems like a pretty weak excuse to me, and most of the forum posters seem to agree, noting that they'd be happy to get some of the enchants available for shields on their offhands. Stamina and intellect are particularly useful to caster classes, and it wouldn't be too hard to make a +damage enchant for shields or offhands.

Someone else suggests later in the thread that offhands aren't enchantable because their ilevel budget doesn't factor in enchants, which would make a lot more sense than the official explanation. I'd compare the stats between an ilevel appropriate 2-hander and a one-hander plus offhand, but I'm sadly not a caster and would probably muck it up. It's also true that most of the decent end-game caster enchants just specify a "melee weapon," not a one-hander or two-hander. Still, it's an interesting debate.

Several casters I know use mostly two-handed weapons just because they're sick of getting an offhand or a one-handed weapon, waiting for an appropriate item to use in the other slot, and then having limited enchantments. Admittedly, offhands have the postive of usually looking really cool, but they're still kind of a pain compared to the big clunky two-handers.

Do you think shield enchants should be expanded to include offhands? What kind of enchants would you like to see on offhand items?

Mystic Worlds (who just changed the color scheme on her blog) has an interesting idea: give every single class in the game the chance to have a flash heal all for themselves.

To a certain extent, things already seem to be going in that direction-- the Gift of the Naaru is pretty much exactly what she's talking about, except that it's only for Draenei. And Blood Elves, with Mana Tap and Arcane Torrent, have what you might call a "flash mana heal." Additionally, lots of high end gear is showing up with a chance to heal on it-- there's even an enchant now that periodically heals the whole party. Mobs are hitting harder than ever, but there's also more ways to recover from it.

But MW wants a "heal yourself, nub" heal-- for rogues or casters who don't manage aggro, or warriors who don't wait for mana. That idea I'm not thrilled about-- one way to "train" a caster not to pull aggro is to simply let them die. If we gave casters all kinds of outs, there's lowered incentive for them to do their job right in the first place. Of course, MW does say that each class would be required to spec a certain way for the heal, so it wouldn't exactly be free-- players who could play their class right could spec a different way and take the bonuses that came along with it, and players who wanted things to be a little easier could spec for the flash heal.

Then again, by the end of MW's piece, you can tell she's just ranting about being told to heal. That I can identify with-- if I'm main healing an instance, you don't have to tell me to heal you. If I'm supposed to heal you, and I can heal you, I'm healing you. Whether every class has a flash heal or not, if you're not the warrior and we're all doing things right, you probably shouldn't be getting hit in the first place.

It's that wonderful time of the year when grey skies turn blue, brown trees turn green, and blue items turn purple. As more mid-level guilds step into Karazhan and heroic instances and the top guilds head for the 25-mans, people are beginning to get items that could be described as "end-game." Unfortunately, with end-game gear comes the responsibility to maximize your gear -- which means enchantments, high-quality gems, and other enhancements.

Before Burning Crusade, it was pretty easy to decide when to get serious about enhancing your gear. Unless you joined an AQ40 raiding guild while still in greens, you got the best gear enchants as your items became epic, since you were probably going to be using that gear for a while. You knew that you were going to get your Tier 1, Tier 2, and then so on, and since you had to split the loot with 40 other people, it was probably best to just enchant everything. (Although not everyone did this -- I knew a rogue who used a Vis'kag with a Lifestealing enchant on it for most of BWL because he refused to get Crusader until the Chromatically Tempered Sword dropped for him.)

But now the alternate routes of gear progression means you have to make certain choices. Should you enchant the epics you're getting from heroics, or wait for Karazhan or your tier gear? What about your crafted epics, or very good blues? Fully tricking out a piece of gear -- including enchants, gems, spellthread/leg armor for pants and purchased enhancements for head and shoulders -- can run into many hundreds of gold.

Currently, I'm getting minor/free enchants and cheap gems for my blue items, and springing for the slightly better stuff for my small collection of epics. When my schedule opens up to permit more raiding, I'll probably start enchanting everything. What is your threshold for really tricking out your gear?

So you've saved up some gold & are looking to get a nice enchantment put on your weapon? Sure, the extra damage is nice, but what's really important is that super-keen glowing effect, right? Well, before you plunk down your hard-earned money, consult GlowChart; a handy webpage that lists all the weapon enchantments available, along with their visual representations. Make sure you find the right one that goes with your new pair of shoes...