The Queue: Suicide Mission
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.
I have to admit, I think about the suicide mission from Mass Effect 2 a lot when I go through the Dark Portal for Khadgar. I kind of wish there was a way to have an iconic in-game rendered cinematic, like the one for the Wrathgate, when you step through except instead of featuring some NPC (even an awesome pair like Bolvar and Saurfang Jr.) it featured your character giving a rousing Shepard speech, gathering up all of Azeroth's defenders (under your banner, no less) and charging through with that awesome Jack Wall music playing in the background. Sadly, since I don't think that's possible, you'll have to settle for listening to the music above and daydreaming about it.
In my version, I go paragon, just in case that matters.
alkalineheat asks:
Q4tQ: blizzard has expressed they have no plans to make 2hand maces viable agian for enhancement shamans in Wod. Exactly who are they still viable for? It seems like I havent seen many equipped or even droped in ages.
Arms and fury warriors, all DK's, retribution paladins and to a lesser extent feral and guardian druids. I used Gar'tok, Strength of the Faithful for a while even though it wasn't optimal for warriors.
DaEvilGenius asks:
Q4TQ: I have nothing to use my lvl 90 boost on. Is it possible to save this boost for a future expansion, maybe they announced another class or race?
You can sit on it indefinitely if you like. Still haven't used mine.
MichaelVakian asks:
Q4tQ (multipronged attack style-best risk strategy): Will Blizzard announce a date for the pre-launch event or will they ambush us with it? Do you think the event will go on PTR before the assault...er pre-launch? Is Nethergarde Keep the worst investment the Alliance ever put gold into?
They're likely to announce the pre-launch event around the time that patch 6.0 is going to go live, kind of a head's up deal. Expect it about a month before the release of Warlords. I'm pretty sure the event will be on the PTR soon, if it's not already - it's on the beta right now. And Nethergarde Keep kept the Iron Horde from marching north and attacking Stormwind, so it served its purpose. Seems like a pretty good investment to me.
kjf76 asks:
Do you think Blizzard will ever attempt a system/tactic to deal with the more poisonous players in the game? I know we are smack in the thick of a long wait to WoD, so players can be cranky, but I wonder if anything could ever truly be done. Had one of those LFD runs today where I was placed in a group with 3 players from a guild. Without going into the details, it got ugly. I kept it civil on my end and finished out the run. I have a pretty thick skin for that sort of thing but when you go a while without running in the caustic players, it rattles you a bit. Just wanted to pick up my valor and move on.
I won't ever say never to anything when it comes to Blizzard. But honestly, I really don't see how we can do much about players being awful people. Any system they design for this needs to do the following things:
It needs to be robust enough to deal with the really egregious players.
It needs to be flexible enough to allow for some player abuse (in other words, it has to be able to deal with players using the system to grief other players)
It needs to be able to tell the difference between actual bad behavior, a little grousing and kvetching, and abuse of itself by players (and that abuse needs to be considered negative and punished by the system as well)
This is a lot to ask. Is it possible Blizzard has a system in mind for all this? Absolutely. But I don't know what it is.
gazaa07 asks:
Q4Rossi (and the Queue as well): If we ever manage to clone Dinosaurs "Jurassic Park" style out of Fossils and Blood sucking Bugs stuck in Amber and discover the T-Rex never existed and that it actually was a Dragon (resembling Nozdormu for description purposes), would you Love it or Hate it?
That's absurd. Dinosaurs couldn't talk, or fly, or alter time, and they're certainly not among us right now pretending to write about World of Warcraft while secretly monitoring human society to keep the talking apes too busy with their own pastimes to ever band together and discover the easily grasped time travel mechanism linked to sapience.
No, that's absolutely not happening. Keep playing your video game. It's not a training simulator for those few humans capable of grasping the nature of alternate time paths so they can be recruited to the Time Breakers.
aldristavan asks:
Q4tQ: will the child NPC models be updated for WoD? Would be really odd to see old child models next to new adult models. Children's Week would be *awkward*....
Children's Week already is pretty awkward, man. You drag an orphan all around Azeroth, walk right up to faction leaders with said orphan, take it into battlegrounds for dubious achievements to get a violet drake... just weird all the way around, man. Ugly kids are the least of that whole boondoggle. That being said, it'd be nice down the road but I don't see it being a focus of their attention right now.
grungepunk1022 states:
Let's be real. Ruby Sanctum wasn't JUST filler content. Ruby Sanctum was crap and people absolutely HATED it, and at least on MY server, the community spent their time ripping into Blizz for the "lazy" way that Ruby Sanctum was presented to us and it having no importance. People now are ripping into Blizz for having NO filler content.
Blizz is damned in they do, damned if they don't when it comes to xpac launches.
Honestly, I didn't think Ruby Sanctum was a particularly bad raid. The trash was pretty hard even for ICC geared players, the actual miniboss fights were adequately hard, and Halion himself was reasonably challenging. Nothing I'd get choked up about remembering it, but not terrible. But I agree with your main point, which is that people hated it.
People can be difficult to please.
LuxMordacai states:
Much more likely that Warcraft RTS will be implemented as a metagame within World of Warcraft than a stand-alone product. Garrisons are a step in that direction.
On that note, I've been using the down time to go back and play through the RTS campaigns. The thing that really comes across to me: Night elves lost a huge amount of their flavor when they lost (virtually) all of their Ancients and sacrificed all those wisps to Kill-Jaeden. There is simply too much reliance on architecture in the night elf zones. I'd really like to see them bring back the Ancients in force.
Another 'not really a question' question, but I agree with it, so here it is - the truth is that the night elves from Warcraft III beat only passing similarity to the night elves we get in WoW. Tyrande seems incapable of the kind of brutal bloody-mindedness we see in that game, Malfurion is almost completely ineffective, Shandris hasn't been active at all really, Maiev made one in game appearance and was then farmed off to novels to play the antagonist. We need some good old fashioned night elf savagery back. These are the people who were so aggressive that Grom Hellscream got scared and had to go drink more demon blood just to stand up to them. We need that back.
Also I'd love to see an exploration of night elves as a matriarchal society. Not that you shouldn't be able to play a dude night elf as a warrior or a woman as a druid, but have there be some comments from quest givers and trainers and so on. Night elf warrior trainers could be condescending to men, or could be men that warn the player that they'll have to fight twice as hard to be considered as good as the female sentinels, etc.
This next question is huge and heavily warrior centric. If you don't care about that, then you might as well consider the Queue done. Have a nice weekend and say hi to Anne. If, however, you're down for warrior talk, stick around. Consider it bonus content.
Skyward asks:
QftQ (for Rossi specifically):
I've only been playing WoW since late in Cataclysm; but since then, I've leveled a Warrior, Death Knight, Rogue, Paladin, Shaman, Monk, Hunter and Warlock to max level and Warriors are my favorite class to play. I've enjoyed playing Arms in MoP, but I've always wanted to play Fury (TG of course). The problem I've had with Fury is that it has seemed slow and cumbersome to me. I've been reading the beta patch notes updates and changes for Warriors and I've seen that Blizzard has said they want Arms to feel like a spec that uses infrequent but powerful hits while Fury should be, the spec that has less powerful but more frequent attacks. From my point of view, this is how the two specs should feel. So my questions are:
1.How does Fury feel at the moment, has Blizzard been successful in making Fury feel like the crazed berserker that it should be? I'm worried that because Fury still has Colossus Smash, that it will still feel slower than you'd expect a berserker type fighter to be. Or are there enough variations in the talents to where you can make Fury feel 'fast and furious' if you'd like and not have to rely on the CS 'window'?
2.How do the drastic and sweeping changes to Arms impact the playability of the spec? I understand Blizzard's need to revamp Arms because it doesn't currently fit into the slow and calculated but powerful fighter that Blizzard envisions. Do you feel that Blizzard is delivering on their stated vision for Arms also?
PS – I really loved (and miss) your Warrior columns, they were such a big help to me as a new Warrior and player to WoW in general. It's unfortunate that you're not able to continue them in the same capacity.
Hello, Skyward. Since you asked a lot of questions let me get started on answering them. Before I do, your other question about Titan's Grip for Prot Warriors? Don't expect it any time soon - Celestalon has said it's not something likely to happen.
At the moment, fury feels different depending on talent choice. The level 45 talent tier really changes up what you're doing based on what you take - do you want to be hitting Bloodthirst almost constantly because it has no cooldown? Take Unquenchable Thirst? Would you rather hit Wild Strike a lot more as a rage dump? Furious Strikes is for you. And Sudden Death allows you to work Execute into your rotation if you prefer that. Combine that with potentially glyphing Colossus Smash so that it extends the duration to 20 seconds but reduces the effect to 40% armor reduction, and you can really customize fury right now. I'm sure someone has already done the math to tell you what the absolutely optimal play style for fury is, but it still ends up feeling like a lot of choice ends up in your hands.
As for arms, I'm still not in love with it. I miss Overpower a lot - it felt like a strike that did a lot of work for the spec, even if it wasn't a terribly powerful attack all things considered. As things stand right now, Slam feels required to me - you can't really take Sudden Death or Taste for Blood. Rend just feels arbitrary - we took Rend out of arms to keep us from having to keep hitting it, and now it's back and that's exactly what we're doing with it again. Did we need another attack to keep up a debuff? Arms is playable - in face, I'm running around the beta using it right now - but it's not making me love it.
Frankly the standout for me is a prot warrior using Gladiator Stance. Holy heck is that fun. I recommend all warriors give that a shot as soon as they hit level 100.
As to the warrior column, thank you. I miss writing it too. I'm hoping to start up my blog again once life gets less insane.
That's the Queue from me this week. Be nice to Anne, if you read this far, and ask lots of rogue questions so she can answer them.
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!
