On Tips and Tricks

a few random tricks I've learned over the years:

- you can't be sapped by a rogue when you're in any kind of animal form (druid's bear, cat, seal and cheetah forms, shaman's ghost wolf); handy in the opening moments of arena matches or when defending a node in bgs

- if you're a NE or rogue, you can eat and drink while stealthed; click the eat/drink buttons first, then click stealth

- if your group has a shaman in it, fight close to her totems whenever possible. some totem effects trigger on each tic and if you're forced out of range, you won't get their benefits. tremor totem is a prime example of this; if you're on the edge of it's effective radius and you get feared you may end up running out of range before it tics again.

- you can cast non-damaging debuffs on cc'd targets without breaking cc. for example, you can cast curse of shadows, vampiric embrace, etc. on a sheep and it won't break.

- shaman's disease and poison cleansing totems cost less mana than their corresponding single-target spells.

- if a rogue opens up on you with cheap shot (stun) and you have your pvp trinket equipped, it's often best to wait until he follows up with kidney shot before you use eit or you'll just be stunned again right after you break the first stun.

- if a player kills you in pvp, you don't take durability loss. however, if you're being attacked by both a player and a mob and you die it depends on who delivers the killing blow. if the player got you, no loss. if the mob got you, say hello to your new repair bill. for this reason, I usually try to kill whatever mob I'm fighting when someone tries to gank me unless I think I stand a good chance of taking them both.

- charge mechanics (feral charge for druids, charge and intercept for warriors, etc) can often be used to travel over terrain that players normally can't traverse. for example, you can often charge up the side of a hill to a mob that you wouldn't otherwise be able to run up.

- terrain that is an obstacle for you generally isn't an obstacle for mobs. mobs will run right through fences, poles, rock formations, etc. whereas you have to either jump over them or go around. something to keep in mind when you're running away from that 5-pack of mobs you face pulled.

- when you agro mobs in an instance, they will chase you all the way to the entrance. you can't run away from them like you can in the rest of the world (some boss encounters are exceptions, but they're rare). you can, however, run out of the instance completely and they will usually reset after a minute or two. if you feigned death, used invisibility or vanished keep in mind that even though you've dropped agro, the rest of your party may not have. wait until the entire party is out of combat (or dead) before you stop feigning/hiding or you may end up with agro again.

- when someone resurrects you, you will come back to life standing on the spot where the resurrection spell was cast - not where you died, not where the resurrection caster happens to be standing now, but right on the spot where the actual spell was cast. this is especially important to remember when druids use their battle rez as wipe protection. if the druid was standing near a mob when he cast the spell, the recipient is going to rez right on top of that mob and have a less than ideal life-after-death experience.