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Scattered Shots: Picking the right hunter loot, part 2
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, where real players are hunters and everyone else is just an avatar. I'm Eddie Carrington, aka Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge and THL Podcast. Each week we discuss ways to help improve your hunter. Welcome back to part 2 of our "Picking the right hunter loot" guide. Where each week we take a look at raid loot from WoTLK and help you understand what makes something hunter loot versus loot hunters can use. Here's what we talked about before: Part 1 – We reviewed what item stats make up hunter gear. Also, we explained why every hunter needs to stack hit and strive for the hit cap. We also explained how agility, attack power, critical strike, and armor penetration work with each of the three hunter specs. This week we're going to start exploring the hunter loot that drops in Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader. I'm sure we'll have some spirited debate over the merits of each item. And, I'm pretty sure we'll see druids mangling their keyboards and rogues will throw in a cheap shot or two over our ability to equip almost anything. In an effort keep the carnage at a minimum let's try to keep a few things in mind. We're only reviewing raid loot and how each item affects your hunter and favorite raiding pet's performance. Which means, we're not going to talk about where else to go and get geared. Nor are we going to debate what is and is not considered "Best in Slot" or not. And if you're looking for PvP alternatives? I promise, we'll tackle all of those later on in a different guide. Now if you're wondering why we're not talking about what's over on the PTR for patch 3.3. We'll make sure and cover all of Icecrown when it's released. Then head on back to the other Northrend raids and finish up where we left off. With that said, let's walk through the swirly portal and head into Trial of the Crusader and it's heroic sibling Trial of the Grand Crusader.
Guildwatch: "You guys raid like little girls"
Ok Blizzard. We give up. Patch 3.3 can come out now, please. Guilds are cleaning up even the Tribute achievements in Trial of the Crusader, and pretty much everybody is just sitting around waiting for Icecrown to drop. Even drama is taking a break -- with plenty of loot to go around and everyone getting what they want, nobody is actually fighting any more. Where's our crazy ninjas and raiding breakups? We need to get some new progression content, and soon! Way too much "good" drama (including a daring emergency Vent call) in this week's Guildwatch, alongside the usual downed and recruiting notices. If you don't see something you like, you can help: send your tips about drama, downed (hopefully we'll see lots of Marrowgar downs next week), and recruiting news to guildwatch@wow.com. Meanwhile, this week's GW is after the break.
Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 2
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the issue of effective health in more depth. We've discussed in the previous column why effective health is important; here, we're going to discuss why it's not as important as you might think if you had nothing beyond the collective opinion of the Tanking forum to go on. While this has something to do with the mob mentality of the forums themselves, it has more to do with how the concept of effective health isn't usually placed in context. Tank death on hard modes is quickly attributed to EH discrepancies, with rather less discussion on encounter mechanics, inappropriate gear, or that great but frequently unacknowledged bugaboo -- player error. It is for this that I say effective health needs to die. What is effective health? I neglected to put some hard numbers on this in the last article, but calculating base effective health is actually pretty simple. It's your health as modified by the damage you'll take after armor contribution (AC), or Health / (1 - AC%). A 50,000 health tank with 25% armor contribution has 66,666.67 effective health (50,000 / 0.75). A 50,000 health tank with 50% armor contribution has 100,000 effective health (50,000 / 0.5). A 50,000 health tank with 75% armor contribution (the maximum functional AC) has 200,000 effective health (50,000 / .25).
Guildwatch: The waiting game
More and more guilds are becoming just like Zen, above -- they're downing Anub in Trial of the Crusader, and then wondering just what's next? The answer, of course, is Icecrown, but even our best estimates have that release a month away still. Not that anyone's blaming Blizzard yet -- quite a few guilds are still working on hard modes, and more people are worried just what'll happen after Icecrown (though I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard still has a few cards up their sleeve for that one). But still, at this point, guilds are reaching their limits, and we're starting to see the calm before the storm of raiding in patch 3.3. That doesn't mean Guildwatch isn't busy -- we've got the usual downed, drama, and recruiting notices from around the realms. And if your guild is still active, be sure to tell us about it: send a tip to guildwatch@wow.com, and you'll see it here in the future. Read on for more.
Ensidia snags world-first Tribute to Immortality
Ensidia, now of Tarren Mill-EU, reported today that they have captured the world-first A Tribute to Immortality. Considered to be one of the most difficult, if not most difficult, raiding achievements currently in the game, A Tribute to Immortality requires a perfect run of heroic Trial of the Crusader-25 with no player deaths and all 50 attempts remaining. The reward for pulling this off is the Crusader's Black Warhorse (Alliance version here), but I wouldn't expect to see too many of these running around in the near future. I'm most impressed that they managed to get through the heroic version of Faction Champs without losing anyone, although -- as Mackzter acknowledges on the news release -- the achievement "involves a bit of luck." Congratulations to Ensidia, and best of luck to all the guilds out there working on this as well!
Breakfast Topic: When I left you, I was but the learner
Interesting weekend for me: My schedule is such that I can't really do weekend raids with my Alliance guild, but with fall coming the crummy weather seems to have led to a renaissance for my Horde side play, and suddenly I found myself running Onyxia and TotC 10 on Malfurion in my finest Tauren warrior self. (Tauren warriors: great race/class combo or the greatest race/class combo? The world may never know.) Since I'm fairly familiar with the fights in both cases, it seemed natural enough to explain them for people who hadn't done them. And then I realized that, without really even paying attention, I'd sort of taken the job over entirely. It just seemed like what I should do: even when I forgot to mention an element of a fight like Gormok's spell lock, I just found myself calmly explaining things in a voice that, frankly, I didn't really even recognize. It was as if I was comfortable telling people what to do. Almost without realizing it I'd started telling people what to do in a raid, and they were doing it. The whole thing was somewhat surreal all told. So how about you? Ever found yourself leading a raid, an instance, or just a charge across AV without really expecting it? Or are you always in charge in WoW? Are you a leader, a follower, or a bit of both?
Ready Check: Anub'arak
Here he is. The big cheese. The final countdown. The last boss (currently) available in raiding progression. Anub'arak is the final encounter in the Trial of the Crusader. If you feel a sense of deja-vu while getting ready to throw down with the big bug, don't worry -- you're not insane. (At least, you're not insane because you think you recognize the boss.) Anub'arak was the final boss in Azjol'Nerub. And while the Trial of the Crusader version is certainly much higher octane, this raid version does share some basic similarities with the previous fight. They both have adds, some kind of burrowing action, and bugs. Lots of bugs. Let's jump behind the cut and see how to get this done.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Just like it used to be
This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors chronicles a turn. After 11 months as fury, Matthew Rossi has changed gears and transitioned his role once more. Sometimes you can go home again.I've given fury up for dead. Not because it actually is dead. You can do good DPS with it if you have best in slot gear in every slot, which is par for the course with fury, really... I'm sure we'll see some nerfs heading into patch 3.3 to soft reset fury DPS to keep it below everyone else the same way we did going into Ulduar. But for me, it's not even the fact that you have to gear with a spreadsheet and compete with every other physical DPS class for those few drops that actually have the stats you want, it's the fact that when you do this, you get to follow the exact same stultifying rotation we've had since forever. Fury may or may not be fine, but frankly, it's gotten boring.Bloodsurge can only make up for so much. At least with an Arms spec, while the DPS is slightly less, you get to do fun things. And so my DPS spec is now arms all the way since I have Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader gear to support it, a honking great 2h sword (and so far I'm liking the retooled sword spec) and plenty of things to swing it at. Arms is active. You're constantly using abilities, and while it's ultimately almost as predictable as fury when you get right down to it, it doesn't feel like it is. Between keeping your Rend active (letting it fall off then reapplying it for maximum Overpowers), hitting Sudden Death Executes and Slam in between MS and Overpower feels less like a clunky, hit this key then that key then this key rotation and more like you're weaving in attacks.
Ready Check: Twin Val'kyr
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. The Twin Val'kyr encounter is the fourth and penultimate battle in the Trial of the Crusader. In this fight, your raid will face down two Val'kyr bosses. They are identical in every way, except for the nature of their attacks. Fjola Lightbane will attack you with the power of the Light. Her sister is Eydis Darkbane attacks you with the power of the Dark.The Twin Val'kyr fight is a confusing one. However, e should be careful not to mix up confusing with difficult. But we should at least be honest and acknowledge that keeping track of the "Stand in Light" and "Attack the Dark" can get pretty mindbending. To sum up, you get light and dark buffs that protect you from your aligned source of damage, and buffs you when you do damage to your opposite. So, while this fight's pretty easy once you get the handful of maneuvers down, it can be confusing to talk about.
Breakfast Topic: A lot of catching up to do
I took quite a break from World of Warcraft. Just as it happens to a lot of people, things in real life get in the way and we put the game aside, either suspending our subscriptions or only having to occasionally log in. Of course, the inevitable happens and we get left behind on gear. Just like fashion in Milan (I wouldn't know, as I've never actually been to Milan), old gear is so last season. Trial of the Crusader gear, as the phrase goes, is the new black.It's not just gear, either. Mostly, I took a break from the game also because our mega-awesome guild leader took a break to prepare for his wedding this October. He left the reins to a decent bloke, but someone who simply wasn't of the same caliber as a guild and raid leader. Fast forward a couple of months later, I log in and things are different. I mean, sure, Patch 3.2 dropped, and suddenly I'm wearing epics more suited for fresh Level 80s running PUG raids. But the guild itself was different... new faces (or names, anyway), and suddenly I'm the one getting the "who's this dude?" raised eyebrow. It's unsettling.Oh yeah, good morning. Since I've got the coolest community of WoW players starting the day off with me, here's something to chew on -- how do you catch up? How do you jump-start your gear? Do you make friends with all these new guild faces? Jump ship (or server)? If you took a long break from the game, how would you come back? It's kind of like a fresh start, and even though Blizzard has made it easier for players to catch up, what would be the first thing you would do? Where would you start? My first instinct is to jump into a Battleground, but then again, that's my first instinct even if I didn't take a break. So you're playing again. Uh... now what?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Lessons from Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader
This week The Care and Feeding of Warriors talks about what the latest 10 and 25 man raid can teach you on its highest difficulty setting. Matthew Rossi has gotten his face pushed into the floor a lot this week. It's okay, he probably needed a touch of humbling.So yeah, turns out the plants inside the Crusader's Coliseum taste awful. Must be all those yeti, worms and magnataurs they let traipse around in there.This week, after our usual clear of Trial of the Crusader we got serious in TotGC, as Matt Low tells me is the proper acronym. After some bad experiences we got the Beasts down with minimal fuss, and Jaraxxus took us a night but eventually died. Faction Champions, on the other hand, just stomped on our heads over and over and over and over again. Eventually they went down, and we called it a night exhausted but glad to be done with the whole thing. Why do I mention this?Because one of the things I've come to realize is that I'd gotten soft, or more accurately, I've grown comfortable in a tunnel vision, spam my rotation and shut up world. Whether tanking or DPS, warriors are notable as a class with a purity of focus... pretty much everything we do is physical in nature, with the exception of a few bleeds thrown in... and yet, a pretty widely varied toolbox to pull out. With Icecrown on the horizon and patch 3.3 on the PTR, it seems like a good time to discuss warriors as a general tacklebox.
Ready Check: Lord Jaraxxus
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Last week, we took a short break so that Matthew Rossi could join us and celebrate the return of Onyxia. Hopefully, everyone's had the opportunity to go re-pwn her by now. If not, don't give up -- I'm confident everyone will be able to get her down eventually.Lord Jaraxxus? Maybe not. Lord Jaraxxus is the first boss fight in the Trial of the Crusader which I felt was a true raid-check. It's not an impossible raid check, mind you. Once you get the hang of the fight, you'll do fine. But getting the dance steps down in the first place will probably give a few raids a migraine headache. Let's take a look at the big demon behind the cut.
Lichborne: Emblem of Triumph Gear for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your look into the issues of the moment for the death knight class. Ah, Emblems of Triumph, the new hotness. Even if you're not running the coliseum, you still have chance to grab them in the heroic daily, and by now, surely most of us have at least had the opportunity to save up enough to buy something. Deciding what to buy, however, is a whole different question. Let's take a look at the badge loot and see what's in it for a death knight.
Blood Pact: Warlock guide to surviving Trial of the Crusader, part 2
Every week Blood Pact serves you up a dish of warlock delight. Chock full of juicy chunks of detail, smothered in lashings of class specific tips all topped off with a sprinkling of hundreds and thousands of mage tears.This week I'm rounding off the Trial of the Crusader guide with the last three bosses; Faction Champions, Twin Val'kir and Anub'arak. A more diverse trio of boss fights you will be hard pressed to find. As with last week I aim to bring you the flavor of the fights with some insight into how they look through a warlock's eyes. Again, I'll be linking only a selection of the loot from the overly complex table. This week the Horde drops for normal mode.Faction Champions This will be one of those fights you either love or hate. If you haven't done it before, and don't know what it's all about, then I suggest you have a look through a full strategy; such as those on WoWWiki or Wowhead. There's a huge amount of detail to the fight most of which is pretty irrelevant when you boil it down to your role. If you are leading the fight for the first time then be ready for a headache in assigning everyone their responsibility. If you're not leading then listen to what you need to do and go for it.
Phat Loot Phriday: Edge of Agony
I finally got my Green Proto-drake today, so I was tempted to do that, but instead today we'll go with the old PLP standby of big scary swords. Alliance, before you go running after this one, make sure to see the note below.Name: Edge of Agony (Wowhead, Thottbot, MMO Champion)Type: Epic Two-Hand SwordDamage/Speed: 651 - 977 / 3.50 (232.6 DPS)Attributes: +112 Agility, +92 Stamina Improves haste by 62, attack power by 183, and armor penetration by 86. Note that these are the stats for the 10-man normal item (Trial of the Crusader drops are pretty confusing actually). The 10-man Heroic version has a better version of this, but with the same name and graphic. %Gallery-33600%
Guildwatch: Beware of tourists
This Guildwatch is running a bit late, and apologies for that -- your narrator is slightly out of pocket lately, and clamboring as quickly as possible to get back in. But the guilds featured in today's GW have no such problems -- they are rolling through content like nobody's business. From Yoggy (above) to all the modes of ToC, it's a downstravaganza in Azeroth lately.Drama and recruiting notices after the break as well. If you want to see your guild (or a sweet forum thread full of drama -- please make sure it's guild-related, no random ninja whining) right here next week, send us an email at guildwatch@wow.com. Hit the link below to read on.
Raid Rx: 14 patch 3.2 trinkets to check out
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. It's been a while since I looked at trinkets. What options are there available since then? Yes, the linked article goes to the Priest column on trinkets. Not every healer's going to use them. But truth be told, there aren't that many new options for healers in the current game since Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader opened up. Let's look at everything available since Malygos. So what do we have to work with?
Breakfast Topic: I miss trash
Before you have me committed, I'll say right now that I was expecting to be thrilled with the lack of trash in the new Coliseum raids. Who wouldn't be? No more endless waves of, say, Death Knights or Spectres or that horrible two-pull on the way to killing Auriaya or what have you. And you know what? I don't miss that stuff. I don't miss any of the trash we've yet seen in Wrath of the Lich King.In fact, what the trashless boss gauntlet that is Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader has done for me is to show me that I've been missing trash, real trash, since after we moved out of Mount Hyjal, and even then it was in slow decline. No, I hate to admit it, but in a blazing moment of honest to Murgatroyd old fogeyism, I came to realize that what I miss was the brutal, punishing trash pulls in Blackwing Lair. Blackwing Spellbinders were harder to deal with than some of the bosses that followed them! You could wipe multiple times before you even had the room cleared enough to pull a drake!Yeah, it sounds ridiculous that I'm nostalgic for that. And to be honest, it's a nostalgia tinged with a certain amount of relief that I don't have to go clear it again any time soon (and if I did, well, I'm level 80 now). But what I miss, and what I feel like we've been moving away from since Hyjal (which may have taken trash pulls to a height so ridiculous that the pendulum had to swing back this way) is trash with personality. Trash that sets the story, that makes you really feel like you're actually raiding an ancient lair of evil. That being said, I'm glad TotC is trashless. Just please, let Icecrown bring back trash that counts.How about you? Never want to see it again? Looking forward to its return? Where do you stand on trash?
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 3
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding the final boss of Trial of the Crusader.Azjol'nerub was merely a setback for the final boss we face in the Trial of the Crusader. Anub'arak (too many apostrophes in the Nerubian language, I say) decides to crash the party and Arthas' powerful shockwave drops you right into his lair. We're put face-to-face with the Traitor King himself, even though we've already bested him once in Northrend.This is one of the simpler fights in terms of mechanics, compared to a very long and drawn out encounter like Yogg-Saron or Mimiron. It's by no means easy, however, and Anub'Arak's heroic 25-man version has only been conquered by a handful of guilds worldwide. Between several new fight mechanics and very distinct phases, the encounter is fast-paced and very fun from a Rogue's perspective. After the cut, I'll talk about the specific details you can use to help your raid group conquer this over-sized beetle.
The Queue: Questions, comments, complaints...
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. Allison Robert is your hostess today.I have absolutely no idea what the hell the above video is about, but have been required to place it there on threat of firing by Alex Ziebart. Questions, comments, complaints? Send them to him!Pyril asks...(On the faction champions fight in Trial of the Crusader): Why would Blizzard force PvE players to basically learn PvP skill sets now, when they've been so good about keeping them seperate to this point? Any chance the encounter will be reworked? GC has said he doesn't want to force raids to bring certain classes, but if you don't to this encounter it's a 3 hour wipe fest.Is the encounter likely to be changed? No, at least not its basic mechanics. Blizzard fielded similar complaints concerning the Priestess Delrissa fight in Magisters' Terrace, which could be an incredibly ugly experience on heroic if you didn't have CC or weren't well-geared. But are aspects of the encounter likely to be nerfed, or at least tweaked? Maybe, maybe not. It'll depend on how much trouble Blizzard sees people having with the fight. What's certain is that the Faction Champs encounter is a very common target for complaints right now. Some of this is the result of players still gearing up, but others are voiced by people who intensely dislike the arenaesque feel of it all, or who run a raid setup that's less-than-ideal for whatever champion comp they get that week. I think you're entirely correct in saying that the fight becomes significantly more difficult (or at least more gear-dependent) if you're running a raid with limited options for purging/dispelling the mobs' buffs or keeping their healers locked down, and it's probably that aspect of it that Blizzard's keeping an eye on.
