Resource Site Spotlight: Elitist Jerks

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elitist jerks

Today’s resource site spotlight will be going over the theory-crafting den that we all love, elitistjerks.com.

It is a few things, but publicly, and most importantly, it is a forum for theorycrafters to share and develop information about how the game works. This site is the de-facto standard for information, however it’s not for the faint of heart. The site is moderated by a group of players who have a very strict set of rules designed to prevent the place from looking too much like the official forums and keep the signal to noise ratio very high.

Every time you break a rule, someone will report your post to the mods, and they will give you an “infraction”, which prevents you from posting. If you get enough of these infraction points, you will be permanently banned.

To participate, click on the forums link on the top of the page. Find the forum that concerns you, and then get ready to read. Each forum has a wealth of information stored in threads on various topics. New accounts are not allowed to create threads until they have 10 posts that did not earn infractions (and posting something trivial to increase your post count will get you an infraction).

Generally, the first post in a thread is where all the info you need is, however if it is out of date (god knows mine need a bit of update love), you will have to piece together the information you need by reading through the thread. These are often 50+ pages. If you read the last few pages, you’ll have a pretty good idea about how things work, however if the mechanic you want to learn about is not discussed there, work backwards to ensure that you get the most recent information first.

Do not, under any circumstances, post asking a question that has been answered. Even if the answer was 3 months and 20 pages ago, you’re expected to know already. Unfortunately, their search bar is not very intelligent and limits you from searching for short terms, however you can always search a forum by going to google and searching something like “hit cap site:http://elitistjerks.com/f74/” which will give you fairly good search results for the hunter hit cap.

Do not, under any circumstances, start a post by saying “first time poster”, because even if you proceed to write the best post in the history of the site, you will get an infraction.

Once you’re comfortable with the site rules and maybe you’ve taken a look at their list of comments that got infractions to see the type of thing they don’t want, you can start participating.

They value original research more than speculation, and because of this, many of the bits of knowledge floating around the internet that we take for granted were tested on elitist jerks first. Just don’t poke the bear.

The resource site spotlight (aka wiki tiki utility posts) should happen every week, but is written by Euripides from outdps.com, and endeavors to fill your favorites bar with an unmanageably large quantity of WOW resource sites. So much knowledge that it hurts. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

4 comments to Resource Site Spotlight: Elitist Jerks

  • There are only two things I dislike about EJ:
    1. They’re elitist
    2. They’re (generally) jerks

    Otherwise…I’d prefer to read people who play in game rather than in Excel.

  • I’d prefer all kinds of things, but the reality is that since I started playing this game, all the good info seems to have been discovered there. I’d add “unignorable” to that list 🙂

  • Adonik

    Sifting through the Banhammer forum is good fun. This has been the site I refer to for talent builds and pretty much anything related to character stats.

  • Stupid Mage

    I hate going there. Call me lazy if you like, but sifting through 50 pages worth of mostly outdated material tries my patience and taxes my time.