The Queue: Zug zug

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

You know what I'm going to play through this weekend (the first weekend I've had off in about a month)? Warcraft III. Forget all these other games, everything else that's got flashy graphics and 80 hours of gameplay. It's time for some good ol' zug zug.

Mar asked:

Previous expacs it was mentioned that pets take a "screencap of your stats" when they're summoned(So you should BL/Heroism before popping a pet CD). Now, however - I'm told - some pets have become dynamic and those that aren't apparently will only benefit from buffs like BL/Heroism AFTER they are summoned. What's correct?

My understanding is all summoned permanent pets now dynamically react to the buffs/debuffs applied to them (like Heroism). The summoned non-permanent pets are the ones that you need to worry about -- thinks like the Warlock's super shoot 'em up with shadowballs demon. Pew pew pew. Summon after haste. Mew mew mew.

Jack asked:

Question for the classes that can provide Bloodlust/Heroism, Time Warp, and Ancient Hysteria:

When multiple people in raid chat, and even occasionally via raid warning, are yelling for LUST and WARP in LFR,why do you only use it five seconds before Lei Shi does Hide?

I've been in LFR groups with as many as seven people who could provide it and NOT be a BM hunter, and getting them to use those spells takes, generally, a miracle. Is it the fact that the other six think "someone else will get it?" Does no one read raid chat in LFR? Even if you don't care about the rest of the raid, it's a personal cooldown. It's almost as if mages and shamans in particular are allergic to casting it.

If you run LFR and don't cast those spells, please, explain WHY?

First, relax... It's not because people are bad players or don't care about the raid. They actually do. It's just a simple situation of group dynamics. Pretend you're in a group of 100 people standing around the side of the road and you see a car crash. What do you do?

You don't call 911, because someone else will. Instead you just stand there and look at the crash.

The same thing happens in raids -- everyone else just assumes that someone will do it, so the group think needs to be overridden somehow. Usually the easiest way to do this is to ask a person politely in tells. That jogs them out of their tunnel vision and a paradigm shift occurs in them -- they'll usually quickly pop it. In fact, I ask in tells all the time, and 99% of the time people hit it right away.

Minstrel asked:

I'd like them to allow one free character re-customization (not race change) for every character when they release new models. That way, you can build your vision of your character based on the new tools available.

I'd be very surprised if Blizzard didn't do this when the new models released. And in fact, if they didn't allow a free re-customization, I can promise you a very strong editorial from most (if not all) of the WoW Insider staff.

You have nothing to worry about though... allow people to re-customzie their characters after a model reset is a no brainer.

Kiwiyaa asked:

Is wow insider ever gonna have enh/ele shaman columnists again? And why does totem talk update so infrequently?

Nope. If we have someone on staff that is able to write for class columns and can do a great job at it -- wonderful. They're welcome to. But as was pointed out in the comments, we're not going out of our way to fill every spec anymore. This is a change from what we were doing six years ago, but hey -- lots of things change in that time.

And before everyone goes nuts, this doesn't mean we're in any trouble or anything, and it's been this way for over a year now. We've even articulated it in the Queue before. I just thought it'd be a good time to remind folks about it.

Also, I like hot chocolate. And because it's snowing, in late April, in Minnesota, I think I'm going to go get some of that hot hawt coco now.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!