Loken
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Blizzard polls for the toughest Heroic instance
Blizzard has posted a poll on the forums asking what players think is the toughest Heroic dungeon in the game. Unfortunately, they don't say much else besides that, so guessing the reason why will be up to us and our commenters. They want to make sure Ulduar is tougher than Heroics? They want to look for particularly tough mechanics for future instances? They just enjoy seeing players have a tough time of it? Your guess is as good as ours.Loken is notorious as a tough boss in Heroic mode, but his Halls of Lightning only makes second place, right above Ahn'kahet and its tough fights of Jedoga Shadowseeker and the insanity-inducing Herald Volaj. And it's worth noting that as of this writing, Drak'theron, The Nexus, Utgarde Keep and Violet Hold have a total of zero votes among them -- apparently everyone agrees they're easy as-is. But right there on top sits everyone's least favorite drake-riding instance -- The Oculus, with all of its drakey goodness.Unfortunately, this may not help Blizzard -- I doubt many players would be really excited if they re-used the "drakes" mechanic in a lot of future dungeons, as the difficulty there lies in playing a completely different game rather than using the abilities of your character that you're used to. But It's an interesting poll anyway. What instance are you finding the toughest in Heroic mode?
Know Your Lore: The Sons of Hodir
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? Leave a comment below! This week, the role of Alex Ziebart will be played by Matthew Rossi.Hi. You may remember me from not finishing the KYL on Thrall. Well, since this week our Alex Ziebart has to take a small breather, I'm filling in for him as part of our "Hey, I finished that post you didn't so you owe me, and also the pictures are back from the developer and I'd hate to have to post them to the website" arrangement. Alex informed me as he handed over the package in that park, just before my trained snipers totally failed me, that this week would be discussing the Sons of Hodir from a lore perspective. Since until such time as Agent Deathwolf tracks him down and retrieves the microfilm I have no choice, that will be the topic of today's post.Since I happen to be exalted twice with these guys, it seems a fair enough question to ask who they are and where they come from. So far, we have fragments of the story, but not the whole picture as yet. If it even needs to be said at this late point, I will be dropping spoilers for Storm Peaks quests like they were remarkably heavy antiques that you asked me to help you move into your new apartment on the 17th floor and I wanted to make sure you never asked again.
Lichborne: Things to do in Azeroth when you're dead and level 80
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight column. Yes, that is yours truly in the above picture, and yes, fellow Alliance Death Knights, you can be jealous.So here you are, a new level 80 Death Knight. You've made your triumphant return to Ebon Hold to train your level 80 skills and hearthed back to Dalaran, and now you're hanging out in front of the bank on your favorite mount. And you have no idea what to do next. No worries, here's a list of goals that should answer that eternal question (eternal in this case being the time to the next expansion), "I'm level 80. Now What?"
WoW Insider Show live this afternoon on Ustream
Yes, our weekly podcast is going live again today, and it should be a great show: BRK is returning to us again (though I promise there won't be nearly as much Hunter talk in the show this week), and our own Amanda Dean will join us on the virtual airwaves. We'll be talking about Winter's Veil, how to take down Loken, good deals gone bad, Blizzard's new ads, and everything else that happened in the World of Warcraft this past week.And as usual we'll be chatting live and answering your emails -- you can send us questions, comments, insights or insanity at theshow@wow.com, and if you send something right now you might even hear it on the show today. It all starts at 3:30pm Eastern over on our Ustream page, or I've embedded the feed right here on this post after the break. And as usual, we'll have a quick aftershow right after we turn off the recording, so if you tune in live, that's about 10% more show to listen to (and that's when we say all the fun stuff).See you this afternoon, and hope you enjoy the show.
Ghostcrawler's tips on Loken
We've known that heroic Loken is currently the hardest mob in the game for a bit now. Alex broke the story a couple weeks ago, and Loken is currently killing approximately 1.8 times as many players as the next hardest boss, Sapphiron. That statistic is skewed a bit too, considering Sapphiron is a 10/25 man fight, and Loken is only a 5 man. One of the chief complaints about Holy Paladins has been their relative lack of AoE heals. This becomes particularly evident when a Paladin attempts to heal Loken in the Halls of Lightning. It should be noted however, as Ghostcrawler does and I can attest to, it can be done with a Paladin healing. It's on this note that Ghostcrawler has provided some tips on the strategy used to defeat heroic Loken. And while these appeared in discussion about Holy Paladins, they apply to any class equally well.
Loken the most dangerous mob in the game
The Top Lists on the official World of Warcraft website are endlessly interesting and fascinating. The last time we looked at them was well before Wrath launched, so we decided to take a look again now that we've been in Northrend for awhile.The first list I looked at was, of course, the Most Dangerous Creatures. What's more fun than seeing what's destroying your fellow players? Nothing. Nothing at all. It looks like Loken of Halls of Lightning is topping the charts right now, followed by Sapphiron of Naxxramas. I can see that. Loken can be pretty deadly, especially on Heroic. Most players will probably wipe to him at least once their first time seeing him, assuming they don't know the strategy ahead of time. Sapphiron is just plain painful.
Scattered Shots: Normal dungeon gear for Hunters in Wrath of the Lich King
Welcome to Scattered Shots, the weekly Hunter column where we could really use a plane to head back to Shattrath and pick up more ammo since we haven't bummed a teleport to Dalaran yet. So. You've breezed past the early 70s. You've checked out the reputation gear for Hunters, and now you're ready to grind. So you've picked up your tabard, and you realize that you still have a question left to answer: Which dungeon should I run? What dungeon has the gear I need to get suited up and ready to run Heroics? Scattered Shots is here to help. We're going to look at some of the best pre-Heroic drops for Hunters in Wrath, and hopefully give you some idea of what way to go when you look for your next dungeon, or at least what drops to cross your fingers for. This guide will focus mostly on normal dungeon drops, although where a quest reward, reputation reward, or relatively easy to craft crafted item is a good option for the slot, we'll highlight it as well. By the end of this guide, the Hunter that didn't quite finish their Karazhan runs during Burning Crusade should hopefully have an idea of where to get a good outlay of gear to prepare them for heroics, and eventually for Naxxramas itself.Good luck on the drops, and good luck winning the rolls over those enhancement shamans!
The Queue: Death Knight jamboree
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Yesterday the topic of profession daily quests came up, and there was a little confusion around it. The way the question was phrased combined with how my response was phrased made it sound like most professions have daily quests in Wrath of the Lich King with a couple of exceptions. That is, unfortunately, not true. Of the primary professions, I believe only Jewelcrafting has daily quests. Of the secondary professions, only Cooking has daily quests. Skinners can sometimes skin an Arctic Fur off of beasties in Northrend, and those are used as tokens to purchase recipes. Enchanters do something similar with Dream Shards. They have no normal daily quests, though.Now with that cleared up, the Q&A! We'll start with Stormscape's question...Does Crusader Aura or On A Pale Horse affect vehicle speed?
Ask a Lore Nerd: What's coming our way?
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.On this very special edition of Ask a Lore Nerd, we're going to look into the future, at what's to come in Wrath of the Lich King. There's a lot on the horizon, and a lot of questions about what's to come. We're going to try to be light on spoilers, but give some idea of what's going down.Yeah yeah, so there's a Troll zone, we learn the origins of Humanity, we meet some Tauren relatives, there's some junk about Dwarven royalty and all of that crap. Who cares? What about the Gnomes? Where's the Gnome lore!?
