Archive for January, 2010
January 28th, 2010
Gevlon is turning into a real social type of player these days, on a crusade to improve the level of play in instances. Whatever happened to goblinish profit-above-all motives?
Still, I can’t help but think his methods are backfiring. Attempting to kick the lowest DPS resulted in the group kicking him instead. To be honest, that exchange was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
People generally aren’t going to kick someone for underperforming, so long as the performance does not affect success. If success is a bit slower than it could be, that’s okay for most people. However, causing the group to wipe–as Gevlon did–will get you kicked.
In my experience, people are very lenient about trying. As long as the player is not just /afk leaching, people are tolerant of performance, regardless of how good they are actually doing. It’s only when wipes happen, where the lower performance results in actual failure, that the tolerance disappears.
I think the carrot might be a better weapon than the stick, at least in random PuGs. Post the meters, say that X could do better, and then point her to Elitist Jerks. That probably will have a better success rate than attempting to play power games, even if you are the healer or the tank.
January 28th, 2010
Players will be seeing the arena points they had left after season 7 ended be reimbursed in the near (if not immediate) future. Yesterday players logged on after maintenance to discover their points had been wiped, and that season 8 had not yet begun. Area points are only wiped at the beginning of a season, not before and not during the transition between seasons.
Crygil’s full statement on the reimbursement is as follows:
Arena points were wiped during the recent maintenance following the end of the arena season on January 19th. We initially intended to launch the next arena season this week, but it was delayed due to the minor content patch that needs to coincide with the beginning of the season having some last minute issues to resolve.Due to the delay in the arena season we are in the process of reimbursing arena points to all eligible participants. Characters will be returned to the amount they had on Tuesday, January 26th. All arena points will then be wiped when season 8 begins. We apologize for the confusion this caused and appreciate your understanding
Rumors place season 8 beginning next week, although there has been no official announcement. Arena season 8 will begin with the release of patch 3.3.2 — of which we recently discovered translated Korean patch notes.
Filed under: News items, PvP
Arena points being reimbursed… for now originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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January 27th, 2010
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com.
Remember back during the holidays, when we had a nice cozy Breakfast Topic chat about the fellow who’s been spotted schlepping his entire iMac to the local Panera Bread to play WoW? Sharp-eyed reader Paul discovered a followup article at Gizmodo, featuring five questions with the Panera Bread WoW Man. It’s no headline news, but it’s an interesting peek into how a fellow WoW player gets his fix.
Let’s open up The Classifieds …
Continue reading The Classifieds: Buttering up the Panera Bread WoW Man
Filed under: Guilds, The Classifieds
The Classifieds: Buttering up the Panera Bread WoW Man originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
January 27th, 2010
If this outage turns into something more, we’ll update this post.
The realms affected by the maintenance include:
- Antonidas
- Cairne
- Drak’Tharon
- Drenden
- Farstriders
- Garrosh
- Hydraxis
- Mok’Nathal
- Moon Guard
- Nazgrel
- Nordrassil
- Quel’dorei
- Rivendare
- Shandris
- Tortheldrin
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Urgent maintenance for select realms originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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January 27th, 2010
There are are currently two styles of paladin healing builds at endgame: one focusing on Flash of Light, and one focusing on Holy Light.
The Holy Light build is the pretty standard gem-everything-with-Intellect build that we all know and love. It relies on massive amounts of Intellect so that mana regeneration from Replenishment and Divine Plea is maximized.
The Flash of Light build focuses on Spellpower, and relies on the fact that FoL is very efficient to handle mana concerns. The idea is to get enough Haste so that your FoLs cast in 1.0 seconds (about 650 Haste rating), resulting in steady stream of very fast, moderately strong heals. It’s sort of being like a living HoT. You generally need T9-level gear before this style becomes viable.
One thing to note is that neither build uses one spell exclusively. HL builds can use Flash of Light when damage is low to save mana, while FoL builds can still drop Holy Light when the going gets rough.
Holy Light’s advantage is that it has huge raw throughput. Flash of Light’s advantage is that it is “good enough” most of the time, is very steady healing, and you don’t have to worry about using Divine Plea or the -50% healing Divine Plea entails.
My personal preference is Holy Light, because the Holy Light build is a bit more “forgiving” than FoL. Massive amounts of healing makes up for a lot of mistakes. If you use HL when you could have used FoL, oh well, you just wasted some mana. On the other hand, if you use FoL (even a strong FoL) when you should have used HL, someone might die.
January 27th, 2010
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com’s weekly death knight column. This week, your host, Daniel Whitcomb, is busy applying for a slot as one of Arthas’ pall bearers. Do you think I should wear the Ebon Blade Tabard or the Argent Crusade Tabard for that?
Good News Everyone! With the Deathbringer down, you don’t have to wait for some gnome in a frying pan. The Plagueworks are open, and you can go right in. Before we take a look at the Plagueworks boss loot, you might want to go back and read the opening paragraphs of last week’s Lower Spire loot guide. It outlines the basic parameters and stat considerations we death knights use in picking out our best loot. Once you’ve done that, read on for a look at death knight loot from the Plagueworks wing of Icecrown Citadel.
Continue reading Lichborne: Plagueworks loot for death knights
Filed under: Raiding, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Lichborne: Plagueworks loot for death knights originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
January 26th, 2010
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. With the 5 AM to 11 AM pacific downtime coming our way, it’s probably safe to assume we aren’t getting Patch 3.3.2 this week. Luckily, that didn’t stop Blizzard from releasing the 3.3.2 patch notes over on the Korean WoW site. You’ll probably want to give those a look, especially if you’re a shaman, warrior, or warlock. On the bright side, the extra week’s wait means that means you have at least one more week to master the recently opened Crimson Halls. Be sure to check out our raid boss guide for tips and strats.
I’ll be honest though, the big story for me this week was the release of the Invincible music. Seriously, this is some amazing music and I can’t wait to hear it in game. That said, it better not be about the horse. Seriously, Arthas. I love you and all, but that horse is just dumb. You gotta let it go. It was years ago. No-one liked that horse but you. And seriously, naming it Invincible was just thumbing your nose at fate. No, this had better be a plaintive hymn to the fall of Lordaeron, the loss of innocence, and the beloved prince that you once were, played as the Argent Crusaders and the Ebon Blade carry your body off on a bier while Varian, Jaina, Muradin, Thrall, Saurfang, and Bolvar Fordragon watch solemnly.
Yes, I may have put too much thought into this.
Anyhow, you didn’t come to hear me rant, you came to catch up on your WoW news during the downtime. As such, please find our usual summary of the last 7 days or so below the cut!
Continue reading Tuesday Morning Post: Not the horse edition
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Tuesday Morning Post: Not the horse edition originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
January 26th, 2010
One new element in Icecrown Citadel are exponential soft enrages. These are mechanics which start out slow and “speed up” as time goes on. There are currently three fights that use exponential soft enrages: Deathbringer Saurfang; Professor Putricide; and Blood Queen Lana’thel.
In the Deathbringer encounter, Saurfang gains Blood Points when he deals damage to someone. When he reaches 100 Blood Points, he puts a Mark on someone and deals damage to them whenever he hits the tank. That means he generates the next Mark faster, and so on. If a person with a Mark dies, Saurfang heals for 5%.
In Putricide Phase 3, the tank gets a debuff which causes raidwide damage. Each stack increases the raidwide damage by a factor of 3. If the debuff expires for any reason, including tank death, Putricide is healed for a large amount (10% maybe, but P3 starts at 35%, so it’s effectively a third or more of his remaining health.)
In Blood Queen Lana’thel, one person is turned into a vampire allowing them to do more damage. After a short time, they have to bite someone else and turn them into a vampire as well. After another interval, two new vampires have to be created, and so on. If you aren’t able to bite someone, you get Mind Controlled.
One of the most interesting things about these setups is how vulnerable they are to “fiddling” in the early part of the sequence.
For example, in Deathbringer Saurfang, you can let the first Mark die. Saurfang heals for 5% and you lose a DPS, but you effectively reset the soft enrage timer. Let’s say the first Mark comes at 2 min with the second Mark coming at 3 min. Letting the first Mark die means that the first active Mark comes at 4 min, with the second mark at 5 min. You gain a huge amount of time because you were able to reset the sequence, and the fight becomes trivial. The penalty of 5% health and a DPS is not enough to prevent the tactic from working.
In Putricide, the penalty is very high. It’s high enough to make resetting the stack non-viable. However, you can buy a bit of extra time by inserting more tanks into the tank rotation. Each extra tank would give you an extra 40s in P3 while keeping the raidwide damage low. It’s possible that a guild which is having trouble with P3 could drop a healer and put in an extra tank.
For Blood Queen Lana’thel, originally the sequence of 1-2-4-8-16 was less than the hard enrage timer. So people started doing a sequence like 1-2-(4-3)-6-12-24. When you hit four vampires, one vamp would deliberately die to shift the sequence slightly. A small change early in the sequence netted more time, enough that the hard enrage became the limiter. Again, there was no penalty for fiddling with the sequence. Blizzard eventually increased the timer, so the normal sequence would hit the hard enrage timer as well.
So exponential soft enrage timers are a very interesting mechanic introduced in Icecrown. However, they need strong penalties to avoid people tampering with them. An early reset or delay can push back the soft enrage by a large amount. In two of the three fights that use it so far, the penalty wasn’t strong enough.
January 26th, 2010
Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We’ve translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut.
Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We’ll post the official English notes when they’re posted as well.
Dungeons and Raids
Icecrown Citadel
- The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?)
Halls of Stone
- Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he’ll run faster during the escort event.
Forge of Souls
- Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often.
- Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
Continue reading Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site
Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King
Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
January 25th, 2010
Sharm’s I Kissed An Orc was stuck in my head for days after I heard it. I admittedly spammed it on Trade channel, in Wintergrasp, and even in an Icecrown Citadel. Sharm’s outstanding voice and flair for effect parody makes I Kissed An Orc a solid, outstanding WoW song. Sharm’s musical talent is absolutely amazing.
The music video was created by Millinia93. The video does good things for the song, and flows very well with the tempo and lyrics. The only real complaint is that the subtitles could have used a tad more polish, since the apostraphes could be a little distracting. (I’m used to the plural nickname for Alliance being Allies instead of Ally’s, for example.) Still, a lot of that is a stylistic choice, and Millinia’s work was ultimately impressive.
I’ll close with the obvious joke that this parody is likely to become Jaina Proudmoore’s theme song.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
WoW Moviewatch: I Kissed An Orc originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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