When you first created your character, you probably thought, “Why the hell would I ever want to cook?” I know I did. Levelling up, it is a fairly useless skill. At the end game, though, cooking up raw meat will open up a variety of useful buffs to boost your effectiveness in raids.

There are several of types of food buffs that you can receive. Tanks will generally choose stamina buffs. Healers can get plus healing and spellcasters can get plus spell damage. You’ll also find strength boosts, agility boosts, and some mana regen. In this article, I’ll give an overview of the different food you can farm to get stamina buffs. In a later article, I’ll return to the foods that are most useful for non-tanking classes.

The stamina food available can be divided into three categories - +20 Stamina/+20 Spirit, +20 Stamina/+8mp5, and +30 Stamina/+20 Spirit.

First, let’s look at the most common buff - +20 Stamina/+20 Spirit.

There a number of different foods that will give you this buff, including…

• Buzzard Bites
• Feltail Delight
• Clam Bar
• Talbuk Steak
• Mok’nathal Shortribs

Each of these five foods will give you the same buff, so you should pick up the recipe for each and cook them if you come across the materials. However, the most commonly used ones are Feltail Delight and Talbuk Steak. If you are a fisherman, you will come across a decent amount of Spotted Feltail. Rather than vendor it for 8 copper per fish, you might as well cook it up and use it yourself or sell it on the Auction House to tanks. If you are not a fisherman, Talbuk Steak is probably the easiest food to farm. All of the talbuks in Nagrand will drop the meat necessary to make this food. They are densely populated, and it will not take long for you to gather a stack.

Now for the next category - +20 Stamina/+8mp5.

There’s only one food that gives this buff and, although any healer or spellcaster could technically benefit from it, it seems to be geared mostly toward a Paladin Tank. Tankadins will not benefit much from spirit, but the 8mp5 will help them maintain a full enough mana pool to generate threat.

In order to make Blackened Sporefish you will need to fish in Zangarmarsh and catch Zangarian Sporefish. They aren’t too rare, and you’ll probably come up about a stack of food after an hour of farming. It isn’t the most efficient way to get food, but if you want mana regen for your Tankadin it’s the only way to go.

This brings us to the final category - the coveted +30 Stamina/+20 Spirit buff.

There are currently two foods that give this buff. In order to get either one, you need to be a fisherman and you need to be very patient.

In order to make Spicy Crawdad you will need to fish in Highland Mixed Schools of fish and catch some Furious Crawdad. It’s not very common, and the most dedicated fisherman might only be able to get 15-20 per hour. If you’re determined to try it out, check out El’s Extreme Anglin’ Guide, which will give you the best strategy for catching Crawdad.

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