Posts Tagged Splat’s making lists again

OK, so this is another cop-out post where I simply link to things posted by other people.  Sorry, I’ve been busy getting my goggles of awesomeness (see pic) and all of my flying training in one finances-draining extravaganza.  With that done my next 3 projects (in reverse order of importance) are: Helping my wife get her warrior from 76 to 80, finishing prep for our anniversary (Yes, I’ve started.  Just 2 more things!  OK, maybe 3.), and a job interview at … uh … 10 AM today.  Hm, maybe I should type faster.

• Does your Hunter’s DPS seem a little … under the weather?  Never fear, Dr. Pike will fix you right up!
• The best part about questing in the Borean Tundra is clicking on baby murlocs.  Sure, they grow up, but they sound so cute when they’re little!  Fortunately, there’s a macro to help you relive that moment every time you stop to take a bite to eat.  Should you notice that you are growing an abnormaly large single front tooth, however … you might want to cut back.
• Klinderas of Slow Wolf fame rolled a Dwarf Hunter, then began complaining about how hard the starting area was for them.  Guess playing a Blood Elf and a Death Knight got him a little rusty concerning what a real starting area looks like.  (I kid, I kid.  Welcome to the Alliance, Klin.  And when your “planting the seeds of the downfall of the entire Alliance” plan comes to fruition, could you do us all a favor and visit a certain druid in Darnassus first?)
• Due to its popularity as a site I’ll often avoid linking to anything over on WoW.com, simply because I assume if you’re reading this it’s a given that you read that site, too.  Be that as it may, Brigwyn gave a nice write-up concerning different Hunter talent builds over there.
• Last but not least, this felt pattern has nothing to do with Warcraft … or does it?  I can see how a few simple modifications could make it resemble your favorite WoW character, at least in a “chibi” form.  And my local craft store’s having a sale … um, I’ll get back to you later.

(WoW n00b is the header under which I give advice to players who are new-ish to the game.  It’s not a “get to 80 in a week!” guide, but rather it answers questions and gives advice that newer players might not have known they should have been asking.)

Wow, took me long enough, didn’t it?  In any case, here’s my next installment of my hopefully helpful guide for people getting started in Warcraft.  Last time I covered the gathering professions, so this time let’s focus on what we can do with this stuff besides sell it in the Auction House.

Profession:  Alchemy

What it does: Turns herbs into a wide variety of strange liquids that for some reason people trust us enough to drink, and occasionally metals into other metals.

Goes well with: Players with Herbalism, or you’re going to spend a LOT on materials (A.K.A. mats) while leveling up.  Any class can benefit from being an alchemist, but ones without the ability to self-heal may benefit a little more because they tend to go through healing potions a little more than the rest of us.  (My wife’s warrior is an alchemist for this very reason, though she loves flaunting her potions that let her walk on water whenever she has the chance.  It freaks out the people who think people in plate armor should sink.)

Profession: Blacksmithing

What it does: Turns stone and bars of metal into armor, weapons, keys to open locks, and some materials used by other professions.

Goes well with: Mining, which is the best way to get all that metal out of the ground.  Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights in particular will be able to make the most out of this profession.

Profession: Enchanting

What it does: Imbues armor and weapons with additional bonuses, making them more powerful.  Other than the rare occurrence where you need a blacksmith to make a metal rod for you, this profession is very self-contained.  The materials you need you get by destroying (disenchanting) gear with a name that is colored anything other than gray or white.  Of course this also makes the profession very expensive, because you could be selling that equipment instead of turning it into a mystical dust.

Goes well with: Tailoring, if only because it’s a cheap way to make your own items that are a high enough quality to disenchant.  Any class can benefit from being an enchanter.

Profession: Engineering

What it does: Turns stone and bars of metal into gadgets and explosives.  Also, the insanely cool flying gyrocopter seen at the top of this post.

Goes well with: Mining.  Saronite ore is expensive.  As for what classes … well, I think any class can find cool things about being an engineer, but that point is currently up for debate.  In the endgame if you’re a DPS class/spec you will have a marginally smaller bonus to your “Damage Per Second” compared to the other professions listed in this post.  People who pick engineering do so because the gadgets they can create make the game more fun for them than a small percentage of their total DPS.  (And yes, I’m biased. Splat is maxed out and McSplat’s engineering hit 412/450 last night, if I remember correctly.)

Profession: Inscription

What it does: Turns herbs into scrolls, the occasional trinket or offhand item, and (more importantly) glyphs, which make a character’s spells and special abilities better.

Goes well with: Herbalism.  Any class can benefit from inscription.  Currently my own guild is benefiting from two of its members having alts (short for ALTernate characters) that are leveling inscription, as some glyphs in the Auction House are often insanely expensive.

Profession: Leatherworking

What it does: Turns dead animals into leather armor, mail armor, or “armor kits” that act like enchantments to improve the bonusses your armor gives you.

Goes well with: Skinning.  The classes that will get the most out of leatherworking are all of the ones that start out wearing leather.  Even if they can later on begin wearing chain mail like hunters and shamans, the leatherworking plans for mail armor (yes you read that right) will give you some very nice gear.  If it wasn’t for engineering being so fun (for me), McSplat would be a leatherworker.

Profession: Tailoring

What it does: Turns the scraps of fabric found on almost any humanoid creatures in the game into cloth armor, bags to hold all your stuff, and occasionally other things.

Goes well with: Any class that can benefit from wearing cloth armor.  Enchanters will often pick tailoring as their 2nd primary profession as a quick source for items to disenchant, but the two professions are not as strongly linked together as, say, herbalism and alchemy.

Profession: Jewelcrafting

What it does: Turns precious stones into stones that are more precious, creates rings, necklaces, and some trinkets.

Goes well with: Mining.  You’re going to need a lot of ore for this profession, as one of the ways to increase the ammount of gems you have is to “prospect” the ore, reducing it to garbage while you look to see what cool gems are inside.  Any class can benefit from being a jewelcrafter.

(If you have a question you want answered, leave it in the comments or send email to splat [at] myguildhome.com.)

That’s right, you heard it here first – thanks to some inside information* from one of the best male blood elf holy priests sporting monocles and rockin’ mustaches out there (It’s only a crowded niche because of the copycats…)  we now know that Blizzard will be introducing new talent trees in a future patch or expansion!

Naturally the testing involved while perfecting a fourth talent tree for every class is extensive, so I can only offer some meager guesses as to what these specs will be.  Let’s start with the one we know the most about:

Class: Priest
Talent Tree: Clown
Features: 1 point talent “Clowns Are Scary” AOE Fears any mobs or players 10 levels or more below the caster. This skill is on auto-cast and cannot be disabled.

Can put talent points into “Rodeo Clown.” which gives priest extra Stamina and the ability to transfer damage to the priest so long as a Tauren is within casting range.

Also, for some reason most priests using this spec don’t seem to mind leveling through Outland.

But wait, there’s more!  I used my enormous brainpower** and contacted a few Blizz developers*** to get the scoop on the other classes:

Class: Rogue
Talent Tree: Ninja
Features: Can assume “Ninja Form.” in the same way that priests can assume shadow form.  However, this does not change their physical appearance as much as it makes them appear to be fine upstanding players to the rest of the PUG.  Auto-generated text will compliment PUG members on their prowess and snide comments about the tank not holding aggro (and the ubiquitous “HEALZ!” yelled in /RW) will be blocked.

Can put points into “Phat Lewt,” which adds 5/10/15 points to all need/greed rolls and allows them to pickpocket actual items (nonsoulbound only) out of player bags.

51 point talent allows rogue to change character’s name with a 5 minute cast time.

Class: Mage
Talent Tree: Vending Machine
Features:  Conjured consumables are only created in full stacks.  51 point talent makes conjured consumables buff players as if they were Small Feasts.

Can put points into “Mass Transit,” which makes all portals instant cast, and “Greyhound,” which allows the mage to create a portal to any location with a known flight path.

Class: Paladin
Talent Tree: Leeroy
Features:  Can put points into “Say My Name,” an AOE taunt that automatically crits and has double the range when used against dragonkin.

Can put points into “Conjure Chicken,” which summons a small flock of chickens upon the paladin’s eventual death.  When killed by raid members the chickens become random buff food, but only if the paladin has not released or been rezzed.

Class: Druid
Talent Tree: Wonder Twins
Features: Available only through a program similar to recruit-a-friend, both druids have many more shapeshifting options but only when they shift simultaneously and only if they stay within casting distance of each other.

51 point talent allows “Form of Ice-9,” which crashes the server to avoid embarrassing wipes.

Class: Shaman
Talent Tree: U-Haul
Features: Talent tree has 50 points of blank spaces that give no benefit whatsoever.  51 point talent allows the shaman to equip a shopping cart in their off hand in which they can place all their totems so they become mobile.

Class: Warrior
Talent Tree: Luddite
Features: Talents include “Rage Against the Machine,” where rage is generated at double the normal rate or more against mechanical opponents and players wearing engineering goggles.

Unfortunately further talent development has been put on hold until he dev team can figure out why the Deeprun Tram zone keeps crashing every time a luddite specced warrior enters.

Class: Death Knight
Talent Tree: Dark Knight
Features: 1 point talent has character randomly say “I’m Batman” every 5-120 seconds.

Other options for talent points include “Breathe in space” and “Young Ward,” the later of which replaces the summoned ghoul model with a human child dressed in gold, red, and green.

Class: Hunter
Talent Tree: Ebay
Features: Can put points into “Button Masher,” where so long as the player hits any keys on the top row of the keyboard as fast as the global cooldown allows, their DPS will be only 10%/5%/1% less than the 2nd lowest non-healer in the party.

51 point talent is “Gangsta Hunter,” where ranged weapons are held sideways while bad rap music (Yes I am acknowledging that there is good rap music, which is why I’m making the distinction here) plays in the background.  In addition to the change in graphic the hunter’s hit rating is cut in half.  In spite of this huge penalty it is expected that most hunters using this spec will select this talent.

*I’m almost certain Dueg was inside a building when he typed that.  Barring that, he was inside the Earth’s atmosphere.
** As if.
***I’d like to think they’d laugh if I actually contacted them about this.  Or at least anything other than sending an army of lawyer goons against me.

Here’s some blog posts that I particularly enjoyed recently. If you don’t subscribe to these people, you should.

• Klinderas has a few thoughts about hunter identity, and what makes a good player.
• I normally try to not link to anything on WoW.com, just because they’re so popular you’ve probably already seen it.  That being said, this movie is “annoy my wife by playing it too many times” awesome.
• My own guild had a few bank ninja incidents until we created a probation policy.  I only wish the ninjas had been as … subtle … as this one was in Pike’s guild.  Laugh out loud funny.
• Last but not least, Rilgon has written a post of pure gold.  (This is not to say other posts aren’t also gold, mind you.)  It’s recommended reading for anyone who’s ever wondered “Hey, what exactly is the essence of ‘casual,’ anyway?”  (Spoiler: “Casual” does not equal “bad.”)

It started with this twitter post, complete with a typo so people would know I wasn’t an impostor.

Well, not exactly.  Really this blog entry was posted first, but I read it after the Twitter thing.

In any case, whatever the lore of the next Warcraft expansion ends up being based on there will have to be certain game mechanics that come into play as well.  Here’s my thoughts on the matter:

• Beastmaster hunters will have a talent that allows them to train critters. Skunk pet for PvP!
• Continuing the trend to make things easier and therefore more accessible to the casual gamer, murlocs, naga, and tauren will all become skinnable.  After complaints that tauren have become primary targets for a new kind of farming in PvP, the developers will cave in and make gnomes skinnable as well.  As a result players with maxed Leatherworking on the Horde side will increase by 500%
• Contrary to the widely held opinion that the next hero class will be a healer, Blizzard will introduce the Sapper.  As in the goblin variety.  Finally, a class made specifically for the players whose responsibility it is to wipe the raid … zone.
• To honor one of the more talented machinima artists out there and curb the alarming trend of beggars spammers & gold farmers, anyone reported by enough players in a certain time frame has their character killed by Lt. Colonel Virtue himself.
• Rogues will be nerfed.  Hah!  Just kidding!  Instead they will gain a 1 point talent in all trees called “Pwn n00b.”  This talent will cause the target’s internet connection to encounter a lag spike for 5 seconds, during which the rogue is free to do whatever.
  
• Players will be able to train riding skill at level 1.  When they do so they’ll automatically get a 40% speed horse mount in the mail.  That’s right, boys and girls – Ghostcrawler is finally giving you your pony!  (Now shut up about it.)
• Druids won’t be the only ones with new looks!  Blood elf females will have the option of going to a bakery and eating something.  Anything.
• New dances?  We’ve got’em!  Head to your nearest capitol city and visit the dance studio to learn the chicken dance, rave (with glow sticks), and of course, this smart classic.
  

Ghouls.

We love them. We hate them.  Our unholy spec DKs enjoy running around town with them and our paladins enjoy giving them the smackdown of a lifetime.

In Wrath they were given a new spawning animation where they crawl out from under the ground, rather than just fading in like 99% of the other things in the game.  I for one think this minor detail is a large improvement, as it helps make the game seem a little more “real.”

“Real” being in quotes because any environment where walking deformed rotting corpses crawl out of the ground and try to eat my face better not be real or I’ll have to have a word with the management.

In any case, this got me to pondering what spawning animations could be used to improve other old world creature models in the game.  As I’ve been sick for several days these are all either pure genius or fever-induced ramblings.

Maybe both.

Murlocs: Simple enough, they swim in from whatever body of water is nearby.  For extra flair, they could come in stomping on the ground like Godzilla trampling Tokyo.

Leper Gnomes: They fly or ride in on some form of mechanical device (probably the racial mount or flying machine just to save modeling time), and the device runs off or breaks down (random occurrence) when they dismount.

Goblins: Just like Leper Gnomes, but whatever they ride in on blows up.  They have explosives, you know.

Dragons (and other flying mobs): Swoop straight down from impossible heights in a “death from above” maneuver.  If they spawn directly on top of a player they get a free crit.

Naga: Get dropped off by a Sting Raider.  …. Oh come on!  Tell me I’m not the only one who thought that was funny!  I mean, seriously!  “Cobraaaaaaaa!”

Hogger: Jumps down from the trees causing the ground to shake (Remember what core hound pets were like before they fixed that?), then pounds his chest while something by Rammstein plays in the background.

Ogres: Wander in wearing a smoking jacket and monocle while holding a snifter of brandy.  They finish the brandy, remove the monocle & jacket, then roar.

I could probably think of more, but don’t know if I should.

In our last installment I went over the three Seccondary Professions, Fishing, First Aid, and Cooking, and explained why you should be leveling each of them.  Now we’re moving into territory that makes you think more, because you can’t learn all the Primary Professions – you have to choose, and choose wisely.

Of all the Primary Professions out there, you can only pick two.  You can “unlearn” a profession so you can learn another one, but that will undo a lot of hard work if you’ve spent any time leveling it up, so it’s good to know what you’re getting into.

Again, I’m only going to cover three professions today: Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning.  Each of these is known as a “gathering” profession because while you can’t really make (m)any things with them it will provide you with the raw materials needed for the professions I’ll be discussing in the next WoW n00b installment.  If you have one of those professions, then hey, free materials!  If you don’t, you can sell what you gather in the Auction House and over time make a very decent amount of cash.

Also, each of the gathering professions now gives you an extra bonus when you hit a skill level of 75, and that bonus becomes greater each time you hit a skill level divisible by 75.

Profession:  Skinning

What it does: Allows you, with the aid of a Skinning Knife, to harvest leather from certain dead mobs.  You don’t even have to be the one that kills them, so long as they’ve been looted, but remember not to poach someone else’s kill until you know they don’t have Skinning.

Bonus: Increase in your chance to get a critical strike (extra damage or healing, depending on what you’re doing).

Goes well with: Leatherworking, any class that could use a higher crit rate (Yes that’s pretty much all of them.), Environmentalist hippies who don’t think any part of the animal should go to waste.

Profession:  Mining

What it does: Allows you, with the use of a Mining Pick, to harvest ore from nodes found almost everywhere except Teldrassil.  Sorry, there’s no reason for chunks of rock to be on top of a giant tree that’s actually quite new.  You can take this ore to anywhere with a forge and then smelt it into bars.

Bonus: Stamina increase.

Goes well with: Blacksmithing, Engineering, Tanks, Warlocks (With Life Tap their hit points are a 2nd mana pool), people who want to exploit the nonrenewable resources of the world for fun and profit or just plain hate the planet and want to hit the ground repeatedly with a pick until 5 teenagers recite some poorly written lines and summon a guy in spandex to punch you a lot

Profession:  Herbalism

What it does: Allows you, without the need for any equipment, to harvest herbs found pretty much anywhere.

Bonus: Lifeblood, a skill that when cast will heal you over a period of time.

Goes well with: Alchemy, Inscription, classes that don’t have healing spells, people who like to run around a virtual world picking flowers

Next up: What you can do with all this stuff you’ve gathered!

Short post today, I’ll cover the primary professions in a future post.

Professions are a great way to augment your character, whether it’s for better stats, income, or simply because it gives you something else to do besides hit things.  But which professions are the “best?”  Well, when it comes to secondary professions the answer is “all of them!”

Secondary professions are sweet because unike the primary ones you can level all 3 of them – and you should!  Here’s why:

Profession: First Aid

What it does: Allows you to turn scraps of cloth into bandages, as well as create antivenom.

Why you should have it: Bandages can replace health faster than food, and can be used when in combat.  Even if you’ve got a healing spell or two you should have a full stack of bandages ready to go, because there will be times when you’re out of mana or silenced and have no other way to heal.

Profession: Cooking

What it does: Lets you turn raw ingredients like meat & herbs into a variety of foods.  Some will only restore health while others will restore health and mana, and some will even give you extra buffs.

Why you should have it: If free stat boosts from eating the right foods aren’t enough for you, you can still cook foods that give the best stat increases and sell them in the Auction House.  As you start to cook materials found in Northrend you should be able to make a decent amount of cash from raiders who are too lazy or too busy to cook for themselves.

Profession: Fishing

What it does: Lets you catch fish, provided you have a fishing pole.  When you use the fishing skill a bobber appears and splashes after a little while.  You have to actually click on the bobber after the splash to catch the fish.

Why you should have it: Some quests require you to have the fishing skill, while others are just much easier if you do.  Leveling fishing can help you level cooking at the same time, and even be quite profitable.  If nothing else, take a quick boat or blimp to Northrend and start fishing there.  You’ll catch a lot of junk but you’ll also catch fish that sell for a decent price in the Auction House.

No you didn’t misread that, and despite the title of this blog that wasn’t a typo.  The level 50 cap does not refer to anything enforced by Blizzard.  Rather, it’s enforced by my ADD.

50, like many of the levels with a “0″ in them, is a watershed level.  No more top-of-the-heap in the BGs, new skills, new abilities, and so on.  I thought that at that level my druid would settle down and grow some roots. Instead, I got distracted.  I didn’t mean to leaf her like that (OK, no more resto puns), I just got pulled back to my paladin main.

And this is not the first time it’s happened, either.  Once I leveled Splat to 70 (pre-WotLK) I leveled a priest and mage to 50 as well… and abandoned them both just as fast.

So you might understand why I felt at least some trepidation while my hunter’s levels were ticking through the high 40s.  Sure, I felt comfortable playing him, but I felt that way about my druid, too.  Would this be another situation where once I hit 50 I do a few token quests, then let him sit disgraced on the isle of misfit alts – not played anymore, but not getting deleted because I put too much work into him?

No, for several reasons.

1. Leveling nerfs.  Let’s face it, Blizz made it easier to gain levels.  I don’t even have those fancy shoulder pads that give me XP boosts and I’m still plowing through the content.
2. I’ve got company.  When I was leveling the other 50s my wife (& most of the guild) didn’t have anyone near their levels.  She now has a pally in the low 40s and a DK that just finished the starter quests.  I can help or be helped, but either way that puts the social aspect back into the game.
3. Winterspring.  My word that’s a beautiful zone!  I’m a bit underpowered for parts of it but I’m new to most of the quests there since I skipped them on all my other toons.
4. As a hunter I get twice as many dings – once for me and once for my pet.  Actually, since I’m leveling two pets it’s triple the dings.  I know this doesn’t mean I’m making more actual progress, but it’s able to fool a part of my brain into thinking I am.

At the time I’m writing this McSplat is 54, and by the time you read this he should be at least 55 unless something goes horribly wrong.

Now I just have to worry about the level 70 cap that my DK hit …. <_<

(WoW n00b is the header under which I give advice to players who are new-ish to the game.  It’s not a “get to 80 in a week!” guide, but rather it answers questions and gives advice that newer players might not have known they should have been asking.)

Macro Monday will return, but after a very productive weekend (or unproductive, from a non-player’s perspective) I felt the strong need to release the next part of my WoW n00b series – inspired in part by today’s screen cap.

Any form of communication has certain “dos & don’ts” – certain things that are expected of you if you wish to remain civil with everyone else using that same method of communication.  Letters start with “Dear [insert name here].”  Businessmen shake hands when meeting face to face, and so on.  Some of these have been around longer than any of us, and some, like the internet, are relatively recent inventions.

So here’s how to interact with others in WoW without ending up on everyone’s ignore list.  First the general stuff:

• Tear the capslock off of your keyboard.  Yes, typing in all caps is the internet equivalent of yelling and that will attract attention, but yelling when you don’t need to do so makes everyone around you automatically deduct 50 to 200 IQ points.  Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences aside, that can leave most of us with a negative number.  If you find it was stuck on by accident, you can save some face by apologizing immediately.
• The /y option should be used sparingly, if ever.  It yells out to everyone in that zone.  See above as to why.
• Don’t beg.  Do not ask for gold, runs through instances (note: I mean specifically where players ask a high level player to lead the way through the instance, killing all opposition and leaving the loot for those who are more appropriate levels for that area), or anything else.  The great thing about WoW is anyone can get to 80 and/or make some cash for themselves if they work at it.  Those who worked at it will often feel resentment if approached by those who feel entitled to handouts.  And FYI,  in WoW “just asking” still counts as begging.
• Read before you ask.  Read the text in your Quest Log.  Look up the information on Wowwiki.  (With my notorious spelling abilities I’ll often do a Google search and include “wowwiki” as one of the terms.  I find I get better results that way.)  There will be times when you have to resort to asking in General Chat for something, but 9 times out of 10 you’ll get what you want faster and with fewer troll responses by alt-tabbing (command-tabbing on a mac) over to Firefox.  And on that note…
• Don’t feed the trolls.  Warcraft, like any social system, is full of nice, helpful people who think it’s great that we can all get along.  Like any social system, it also has people who can’t tell the difference between good attention and bad.  They will insult your equipment, play style, class, race, religion, orientation, and genealogy, without knowing anything about you.  Report them if you wish, put them on your ignore list (type /ignore [insert player name here] or use the interface in the social tab) if you must, but don’t respond to them.  That’s like a fish pulling on the hook in its mouth so the fisherman knows when to tug back.
• Ask before you do things.  Unsolicited trade windows (unless you’re handing things out, and sometimes even then), party invites, and especially guild invites are frowned upon by most.
• Don’t be a ninja.  In MMORPGs the term “Ninja” is derogatory in nature and means you take things that arem’t supposed to be yours.  You don’t want that label.  See that guy steadily killing mobs to get close to that ore?  Don’t go in and mine it out from under him until you’re certain he didn’t want it.  I myself have skinning, and won’t skin another player’s kills until they’ve left or until they’ve started killing something else.  This is usually a good indicator that they either don’t have skinning or don’t need the leather from those mobs The same goes for herbs and treasure chests.  If there’s a mob that’s a quest objective nearby and it looks like you’re both working on it, ask if that player wants to form a party.  In most cases quest reward XP will be much larger than the XP for soloing the mobs needed, and you’ll have the added bonus of not dying or needing to wait for a respawn.

In a group:

• Bring what you’ll need for the run.  Think like a Boy Scout.  Hunters need plenty of ammo and food for their pets.  If you have a spell that requires a reagent you’ll need at least a stack of it.  Characters with mana need drinks and mana potions.  Pretty much everyone needs health potions for those “Oh noes!” moments.  If you’re running out of these things and you haven’t had a gajillion wipes, then it was you that didn’t bring enough.  Don’t expect the others to carry you.
• If you know your time is limited, tell the group.  There’s nothing like being 15 minutes into the run and having your tank unexpectedly say “Well it’s time to go to work, see you later!”
• Ask before you click “Need.” It doesn’t matter if it’s most definitely an upgrade for you.  It’s still nice to wait for a verbal cue before pouncing on the loot.
• Don’t “Need” something you can’t use.  “I needed it so I could sell it and get some gold” and “I need it for another character of mine” are not viable excuses, especially for items that are “Bind on pickup,” A.K.A. “BOP.”  There are people who will run an instance 10 or more times for a single piece of gear that will help their character.  If you’re a mage and you roll need on any leather armor with “Defias” in its name, prepare to be called a ninja, booted from the party, and placed on multiple ignore lists.
• Don’t loot while someone’s still fighting.  There can be exceptions for this in some cases, but if the fight isn’t done then you shouldn’t be done either.  You can’t loot and go “Pew pew I kill you!” at the same time.
• Tell people when you need a break.  Whether you’re out of mana, need to reapply buffs, or need to go to the bathroom quick, it’s a good idea to tell the party that you’re indisposed for a little bit.  (BTW, for that last one the agreed way of typing it is “BRB Bio” or “Bio Break.”  Further descriptions are unnecessary.)
• Wait for the party healer.  If their mana bar isn’t full then your  killing spree is on hold unless they tell you otherwise.  If they run out of mana they run out of heals, and you suddenly find out why the tank tolerated them standing in the back and wiggling their fingers all this time.
• Let the tank pull.  It’s their job to be the meat shield.  It’s what they live for.  If you’re the one pulling the mobs then you’ve stepped out from behind that meat shield.  Now you are the meat shield.  I hope you’re not squishy.

I could go on.  Expect a part two … sometime.

(If you have a question you want answered, leave it in the comments or send email to splat [at] myguildhome.com.)