Archive for April, 2010
April 26th, 2010
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Adam isn’t the only one that can kick off The Queue with pictures of good-looking ladies from geeky TV shows. Behold: Christina Hendricks. You may recognize her from shows such as Firefly and Mad Men. I think I’ll let the header image speak for itself and get right into the Q&A.
Pumabackup asked:
“I’ve been wondering about worgen and goblin death knights. How will they explain the story with them?”
Continue reading The Queue: A rebuttal
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
The Queue: A rebuttal originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 26th, 2010
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.
We left off last week with the spec 0/51/0 and already killing boars in Outland. Comments from last week were mostly opposed to my advice to go WF/FT for weapon imbues, saying that it’s best to wait until more elemental talents are added before leaving WF/WF behind. I can see their point, but can’t imagine that either way is going to make a significant impact in terms of time lost due to deaths or slower kills. My rationale for WF/FT is that its likely you’re facing off against higher level mobs than your current level which may take a bit more to whack down. This means more DoT ticks from Flame Shock, more Maelstrom Weapon procs, and more Earth Shocks, and thus a healthier balance between physical and magical damage.
Regardless of you off-hand imbue of choice, we’re really in the heart of enhancement right now. After hitting 60 we get spell upgrades every level instead of every other level, but the exciting talents and spells are already in our books so there’s not much new and fun stuff happening.
Continue reading Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70 originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 25th, 2010
Usually when we talk about getting too attached to a character, we’re talking about getting too attached to one’s own character. Heck, I’m actually most accustomed to hearing about that kind of thing from other roleplay venues: LARP, tabletop, maybe even PvP MUDs. But WoW roleplay doesn’t usually involve character death, so it’s not usually an issue. So, if we’re talking about getting too attached to a character, what could we possibly mean? We’re talking about getting too attached to someone else’s character; we mean getting obsessed with an in-game partner or wife, to a point where problems can crop up.
The Drama Mamas passed this letter over to me, since it so greatly involves roleplay. I’ve obviously altered the names of those involved. Let’s roleplay that this was a letter to … the Roleplay Drama Papa! (Feel free to insert a “Who’s your daddy?” joke here.)
Continue reading All the World’s a Stage: Getting too attached to a character
Filed under: All the World’s a Stage (Roleplaying)
All the World’s a Stage: Getting too attached to a character originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 25th, 2010
Here at WoW.com we’re on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW related sites.
Today’s TDQ was inspired by the lovely time I had in Warsong Gulch late last night. It was a PUG, not a premade, and yet people were competent, encouraging, communicative and polite. If only all battleground experiences were so pleasant. Perhaps these links from the community will help make this happen more often.
- No matter the battleground, Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual recommends you Fight at the Flag.
- Gnomeageddon stresses that Midfield is not an Objective.
- Cynwise also breaks it down into Simple Battleground Strategies.
- Our Basil Berntsen at Outdps writes about Communication in Battlegrounds.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
The Daily Quest: PvP fun originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 24th, 2010
It’s time again for another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that needs more screenshots. Yes, I’m reminding all of you that I need more pictures of mages to open this column with. They can be any pictures of mages, whether they’re mages killing warlocks, or mages setting warlocks on fire, or mages destroying a warlock’s self-esteem, or a mage stealing a warlock’s lunch money, or a mage sneaking into a warlock’s backyard and salting the earth so that nothing can grow there for a hundred years. Really, any mage screenshot will do. Send them to arcanebrilliancepics@wow.com; put “Mage screenshot” in the subject line, and sign the email with whatever name you want the picture to be credited to. My email’s getting lonely. Seriously, all I get now are fake beta invites and porn. Sometimes in the same email.
Mana Adept concerns me.
I don’t think I’m alone, in my concern, either. In fact, I think it’s safe to assume that a very large percentage of arcane mages, upon reading about the coming mastery bonus for their spec of choice in the recent Cataclysm class preview, let out a collective sigh of deep unease.
The mastery bonuses for fire and frost are fairly straightforward. Fire is getting a powerful DoT component added to all of their direct-damage fire spells. Frost is getting a damage buff applied to all of their damaging spells but Frostbolt. Compare those to the mysteries of Mana Adept:
BashiokWait … what?
Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: Why Mana Adept might not suck
Filed under: Mage, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Arcane Brilliance: Why Mana Adept might not suck originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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April 24th, 2010
Here at WoW.com we’re on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW related sites.
Last night, the Choose My Adventure gang ventured into their first random dungeon groups. Our experience was mixed bag, with really great tanks and healers. There was also a greedy, fear-using, DPS priest guy who ended the night by telling us he loved us, but not in that way. This is why today’s TDQ is all about the Dungeon Finder.
- The Mana Obscura talks about Escaping the Vortex of Suck.
- Forever a Noob chronicles Using the LFD to level.
- Troll Racials are Overpowered is sick of people whining about bad PUGs.
- The Hunter’s Mark complains about How LFD Killed Navigational Awareness and includes a comprehensive, map-filled guide for getting to instances.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
The Daily Quest: Dungeon Finder fun originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 23rd, 2010
Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on US Zangarmarsh-H.
We have Anne Stickney joining us next week as Annephora, the troll warrior. She would like readers to choose her talent tree and professions. Fox Van Allen will also be joining us and wants you to choose just about everything. Michael Gray as Grayfields would like his PvP pet chosen for him, and Matthew Rossi asks you to choose the talent tree for his mage. Otherwise, we will retain our marching orders from previous polls, as we have not yet leveled past them.
Our remaining schedule for this week is:
- Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, his new troll mage: Saturday, 3-4 p.m. EDT
- Michael Gray as Grayfields, the tauren hunter, will be making appearances as he can this week.
- Adam Holisky as Adammentat, the tauren druid, will be making appearances as he can.
The polls for next week are after the break.
Continue reading Choose My Adventure: Polls for week 5
Filed under: It Came from the Blog, Choose My Adventure
Choose My Adventure: Polls for week 5 originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
April 23rd, 2010
Blizzard.comEarly days is right! There’s artwork in the gallery that predates StarCraft and the early Warcraft games. Go check out Blizzard’s concept art gallery, it will be time well spent.
Filed under: Blizzard
Blizzard releases official concept art gallery originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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April 23rd, 2010
The other night I got to DPS in Icecrown Citadel. When we got to Valithria Dreamwalker, I decided to try healing her specced as Retribution but in Holy gear.
The key talent that makes this idea possible is Sheath of Light. You get a really powerful HoT ticking away on Valithria, one that lasts for 12s while you are in the dream world. The other advantage you get is that Sanctified Wrath might let you get off an extra Avenging Wrath.
The raw total was very close to the healing I do as Holy, if not slightly higher. Holy Light did 54% of my healing, while Sheath of Light did 46%.
Of course, my Ret build is not designed for this. It is a regular Retribution build with DPS glyphs. You could do something like 23/5/43 and run Glyph of Seal of Light to completely maximize Dreamwalker healing. But it’s really not necessary. It’s just a fun thought experiment.
The other advantage that the Holy build has is that you can cast Beacon on Valithria and add extra healing to the raid. I’ve found that doing this is valuable at the very end of the fight, keeping the raid from being overrun.
April 23rd, 2010
Holy smoke, it’s been two months since my last post! In that time, the Red Devils have made precious little progress in 25-man ICC. It took us a month to get past the Blood Prince Council, but the real problem has been attendance. Essentially everyone shows up for Tuesday’s raid and we have been starting fresh each week. By the time we get past Festergut and Rotface, our time is up for the night and very few show up for the rest of the week. As a result, we wind up running one or two 10-man groups and these have been much more successful in terms of progression. At least two groups are now working on the Lich King on a regular basis.
So, this week, we decided not to start fresh, reset the lock-out timer and picked up where we left off last week. We ran up and one-shot Festergut, Rotface, skipped Professor Putricide, took out the Blood Prince Council, and then focused on freeing Valithria Dreamwalker and succeeded on our first attempt!
Flush with confidence and full of ourselves having gone wipe-free for the night, we turned our attention back to Putricide. Apparently, our egos were writing checks we couldn’t cash and we proceeded to wipe nine times trying to off the old professor. We got close, by our standards, and hammered him down to 8% on several attempts. The raid damage was just too great for our healers to overcome and we called it a night.
I don’t know if we will continue the raid again next week (more progression), or start fresh (more gear). Many of our raiders are in dire need of the sanctification tokens that drop from Deathbringer Saurfang and he’s on farm status. We haven’t been as strict about those tokens as we have been with similar items in the past. As a result some players have three or more items from the sanctified set, while others of the same class have none. As the raid officer and loot master, this strikes me as a problem for the raid’s performance and unfair to some of our less fortunate raiders.
