I've just rejoined an endgame guild (my Hunter just recently hit 70), and while I used to run Heroics pretty often on my Shaman with my old guild, my new guild is much smaller -- while I like them a lot, they aren't as much into running instances as I am, so endgame instance runs are few and far between with them.

So I'm left to PuG Heroics on my own, and I'm having the same problem deviate_delight is: getting into PuG Heroic groups isn't proving to be easy. I'm a good player, and my gear is pretty good (OK, to be truthful, it's probably a little low, and I just need to keep running non-Heroic stuff a little more until I get luckier with loot drops), but for some reason, I'm having a tough time making my way into Heroic groups.

So let's put the question out to you readers: any advice for players like me and d_d on how to start Heroic dungeons without guildies to run with? Anyone have a strategy for getting a good, regular Heroic group together, or how to make it so that Heroic runners seek you out when they need a DPS (or tank or healer or whatever you are)? Heroics are great places, full of good loot and badges and all kinds of things that can help immensely with the endgame, but with the wrong people, they can really ruin your day. How can we get a group that works?

Previously on Ask WoW Insider...

Wait, there's an actual reason to go to Mauradon and do a Princess run?

Name: Blade of Eternal Darkness (Wowhead, Thottbot, Goblin Workshop)
Type: Epic One-hand Dagger
Damage/Speed: 33-70/1.50 (34.3 DPS)
Abilities:

• It's only got one: landing a direct damage spell has a chance to deal 100 Shadow damage and restore 100 mana to you. So basically every time you hit with a DD spell (not a DoT), you have a chance to do damage and restore mana. Pretty awesome.
• There's no apparent cooldown on the proc. As mentioned, it doesn't work on DoT tics, but it sometimes does work on AoE, and it does work with spells like Lightning Shield (though it doesn't work with totems). So depending on your situation, the dagger might be worth keeping around even into the higher levels. Until downranking is killed off, it might be a way to build back up some mana.
• Oh, and the minimum level is 49, which makes this definitely a twink item -- while it's great for leveling, it's most likely twinks who are going to be asking for Princess runs to grab this one.
• Trivia: For a long time, this was the first non-World epic item in the game. As of 2.3.0, Blizzard redid the loot for a lot of lower level instances, and now it's a ring in Scarlet Monastery. But this is the original Epic drop, baby!

How to Get It: Yes, you've got to go in and kill the Princess in Maraudon (which is probably my favorite, pre-BC instance, though Dire Maul is a good one, too). As you probably know, there are really three parts of Mara -- there are two paths that go through the instance (one full of orange crystals and one purple), and then they meet up in the middle for a third section that leads to the main boss of the instance, the extremely ugly Princess Theradras. If you've done the quest for both sides of the instance, you can get the scepter that will let you use the portal at the beginning of the instance to warp right to the last part. Doing just the last part is called a Princess Run, and that's what you'll need to do to get this item.

It drops from the lovely lady at a rate of about 2%, so it's definitely a rare drop to come by. But twinks have proved that it's farmable, so if you really, really want it, you can get a higher level to run you up to the Princess and drop her a few dozen times, and you'll probably see it. If not, keep farming -- a coin has to fall tails sometime, right?

Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 4g 67s 96c (which isn't a lot at 70, but is a whole lot of money at level 49). Disenchants into a Small Brilliant Shard.

Tank Talk is WoW Insider's tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column is rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish.

This week's Tank Talk is a little bit of a public service. Recently huddled around the ticker-tapes of WoW Insider, we came to realize that your intrepid Insider lacked a particular resource: a basic guide to aggro.

Certainly, this most important of subjects is old hat to us meatshields ... but maybe not quite so much to everyone around us. And gosh, who better to talk about this subject than your devoted Tank Talk tanks!

And, really. If your team doesn't know aggro, then you're going to have a hell of a time as a tank. So, let's Tank Talk about aggro. What it is, where it comes from, why you want it, and why they don't want it.

I'm resisting the urge to post more about downranking and shamans because I want to let it shake out a little bit more. However, since the change to downranking and the XP change happened at the same time in the beta, it's made my attempt to explore various specs a little harder to do: in order to see what all the new abilities can really do, I need to burn my way to 77 as fast as I can. Having done that on my warrior, I now move to leveling my horde shaman as fast as I can, and for that, there's still one spec that's the best in my opinion. So I took my resto/elemental geared orc shaman and started gearing him up in quest drops as an enhancement shaman.

I've deliberately been avoiding the Alliance side as my mains nowadays are in that faction, so I'm in part using the beta to catch up with old friends (and it helps that my Horde toons have worse gear, as it allows me to evaluate if you can get good enough gear questing to get through the zones) and I have to say I'm liking the Horde's quests and settlements, it's all tied together very nicely. Borean Tundra has lots of flavor quests that work well with a shaman, there's plenty of decent gear to help give you a leg up (in the picture above the only piece of gear that shaman is wearing that didn't come from Northrend quests are his shoulders) and the mobs, while not totally weak pushovers, aren't especially daunting for you if you're not geared to the teeth.

The spell power changes (I've been admonished not to detail how spell damage or damage/healing converts as it has been covered too many times already by commenter Mizatt) has had some interesting consequences: I've taken a trinket that has crit strike and spell damage on it as the crit works for both my melee and magical attacks, and as I've commented before you get a lot more out of your shocks and spells now with the addition of Malestrom Weapon.

Chilton and Brack are just all kinds of talkative at the Leipzig Games Convention this year -- in addition to chatting with the buffed.de folks, they also sat down with Jeff Kaplan and Eurogamer, and the results of that conversation are now up on their site.

They start out by talking about the changes with 10 and 25 man raiding, and Kaplan says plainly that the Burning Crusade endgame was just too plain hard: "We just had: 'OK, welcome to level 70, here's a brick wall. Maybe you can climb it.'" There will still be a hardcore endgame in Wrath, but it'll be later on, near the very end of the raiding ladder. They also describe Wrath as a "coming home" moment -- after an "exploratory" period in Outland, Wrath will be a return to Warcraft's tradition and lore. And perhaps most surprising, Brack actually lends a lot of credence to a question about a graphical overhaul "from the ground up." He says that by the next expansion they'll "probably" have to look at updating the graphics system completely.

And finally, Blizzard believes that yes, even though it doesn't seem like it now, eventually there'll be something bigger than World of Warcraft. Brack's last word is an interesting look at the future: "Something will come along and WoW will be like EverQuest: a great game I played back in the day."

[via WorldofWar.net]

Here's a nice tidbit from the Games convention at Leipzig, Germany in the form a bundle of Wrath news. Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack gave a pair of interviews to Getbuffed.de and Gamona.de. In the Getbuffed interview embedded above, they discuss the future of the lore and raids, most notably Icecrown Glacier, the home of Arthas.

It hasn't shown up on the Beta servers yet, but it's probably still one of the most eagerly anticipated instances of Wrath of the Lich King, especially for us old timers. I'm talking, of course, about The Culling of Stratholme in the Caverns of Time.

The nice thing about the Caverns of Time is that you can do stuff like this, sending people back to visit pivotal places, people, and things in the past without creating a whole new game. Despite the stumble in Mount Hyjal, when we appeared to go as tourists instead of agents of the Bronze Dragonflight to combat the Infinite Dragonflight, the Caverns of Time has been solid and well-liked, with 5-man instances that allow you to experience some important and intriguing lore and give you a definite story to follow in the instance, one that can be done in well under an hour.

Certainly, this model has lead to a lot of fans, and a lot of people hoping we'll see many more CoT dungeons to come. There's even rumors (or wishful thinking) that we'll get another Caverns of Time raid for Wrath, possibly The War of the Shifting Sands.

Whether it's true or not, I can't say, but the caverns definitely have room to expand. As the custodians themselves explain, passageways to new times could open up without warning, sending us off on new adventures. What times, places, and people would you like to visit via the caverns?

Dark Haven on Baelgun actually killed our buddy Illy D this week, but we liked this picture on their website better. Yes, they're coming for you, Defiler.

This week's Guildwatch is chock full, as always, of drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. If you've got some to share with us, about your guild or anyone else's, feel free to send it along to wowguildwatch@gmail.com. Click the link below to see what's going on this week in guild news.

You may recall a while back that we covered the problem with bear tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. In short, the new shared gear itemization between Rogues and Feral Druids is leaving bear Druids incredibly starved for armor and stamina. Extra stamina and armor is wasted on rogues, but is mandatory for Bears. Bears, therefore, have suffered.

Ghostcrawler has now let us know that the dev team has noticed the problem. The justification, of course, is as usual: They want less useless stuff to drop. Ideally, itemization should be tight enough that there is a high chance of people getting stuff they can use off a boss, even if that means 12 other people in the raid can use it as well.

The current Wrath of the Lich King beta has had a lot of ups and downs. At present, since you can't say any class is finished and talents and abilities are subject to change at a moment's notice, all that can really be done is to evaluate what's currently the situation with the class. (As a warning, everything beyond this sentence will most likely be full of spoilers.)

My general overview would be 'flawed, but with a good deal of potential'. I've covered my favorite talent to death, and the situation remains the same as it did last week, so I'm not going to belabor that particular deceased equine. I should point out that I'm still using the talent in my current build at level 75, and doing very good DPS in instances, tanking, and soloing with it too. I try and respec every day and have that day be dedicated to testing out talents and abilities, but when I decide to push for the next level, I always go back to a heavy fury TG spec. The burst damage potential of TG itself is half of the equation, but the other half is how wildly improved Bloodthirst is. To put it succinctly, I can now regain about 1000 health every 6 seconds. Sometimes, I actually end fights healed from when I went into them. Mortal Strike will probably remain the king of PvP, but for leveling I cannot imagine not taking bloodthirst now. You will bandage maybe one fight in ten. You will eat to get a food buff. It's that good.

I'm going to try and go over as many comments from last week and answer what I can, and when I can't answer them I'll try and be up front and say so. I've not had a chance to do everything: I'm trying to level a shaman and a warrior to 77 as fast as possible and that's while still MTing for my guild for a full raid schedule.

So, recently we learned that Blizzard would be doing everything they could to reward achievements retroactively. Besides the obvious rewards for exploring, they will also look at your quest logs and gear and give retroactive rewards out for dungeons and raids based on what they find.

Still have your Stormrage Legguards tucked in a corner of the bank? Congratulations, you'll get the Molten Core achievement. Turned in Hard to Kill 2 days after the dungeon went live? You'll automatically have the Magister's Terrace achievement come Wrath.

It's a pretty cool idea that'll help us old vets feel like we've accomplished something with these years in the game, and I'm all for it. It's also been sort of fun to look at my transferred characters on the Beta servers and see what I have and haven't run, or what I have run but am not credited for.

What's occurred to me though is that I could go back to the live servers, run a few dungeons, finish a few quests, tuck a few pieces of random loot away, and come out of the gate on Wrath release day with a whole bunch more shiny achievement points. You know, if I could actually tear myself away from the Beta servers.

But anyway, the idea is tempting, if only because it's a constructive thing to do with my characters before Wrath hits and the grind to 80 starts for real. After all, no matter how often they up the level cap and add new dungeons, they'll never take the Slave Pens achievement away from me.

Are any of you out there working at racking up what achievements you can preemptively? If not, are you considering it?

I was all set to tell you that I'd had a couple of interesting PuG runs in the beta testing out restoration spec, and that all was relatively well. The new spells are interesting and even powerful, at least at the five man level, I was about to say. I would have told you about successful and unsuccessful runs in both Utgarde Keep and the Nexus. All of this would have been what I wrote about today.

However, for most of yesterday the beta was inaccessible and when it finally came up again, it was patched, and that patch kicked me in the metaphorical testicles. I don't think I've been as shocked by a change to the game, especially one that's apparently intended like this one is. My first thought was that I'm not going to be using rank 1 healing wave to stack healing way on a tank before a pull anymore. In fact, several of the pieces of advice I gave back last September (wow, it's really been over a year) on beginning to heal as a shaman are now outdated.

I understand that this change isn't just aimed at Resto shamans nor does it just affect them, but it's a big change for at least how I heal, so I'm going to discuss it along with other aspects of the class that I've observed. Note that most of these are from before patch 8788 but they should still be valid... well, as valid as any observations about a patch on a beta server can be.

Tanking has been getting a good, long look from the developers for Wrath of the Lich King. And about time, too – I'd say the number one issue right now in the group PvE game is a lack of tanks. Introducing another tank class is going to help, of course, especially when it's one as cool as the Death Knight, but that's not all that's being done.

Ghostcrawler, beta forum CM extraordinaire, has recently posted a big (well, big for a blue post) overview of some of the goals and decisions for tanking in the new expansion. It goes something like this:

• All four tanking classes should be viable.
• Tanking should be "a little more fun."
• Most characters in tanking classes (Warriors, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights) should be able to tank a normal five-man just fine, with heal specs (for Druids and Paladins) being the exception.
• Heroics and raids will require investment in tanking talents, but all tanking classes should be able to tank them if appropriately specced. Ghostcrawler notes that this is a change of strategy for Blizz; previously, for instance, feral druids were positioned by the devs as being better off-tanks than main tanks. Now, he says, "if nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed."

Now that the scramble for tickets is over, it remains for the wounded and battered veterans of the battle against the Fail Murloc to gird themselves and march forward, looking for succor where they can get it.

Luckily, a list of panels for BlizzCon 2008 has been released, giving us something awesome to look forward to as we count down the days. For those of you who can't make it, be sure to check WoW Insider. We'll have liveblogs and notes from each WoW panel so you'll know exactly what was said and how it will affect your gameplaying experience. For the Diablo III and Starcraft II stuff, you'll be able to get the same treatment from our sister site, Joystiq.

Check after the break for a complete list of panel titles.