deaths
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How bad is raiding for melee?
It's no secret, I raid as melee DPS right now. It's also no secret I tend to die a lot. Despite constantly rotating in Enraged Regeneration, Shield Wall, Die by the Sword and the draenei racial Gift of the Naaru, I tend to explode. I'm hardly unique in this, either. I see dead melee in pretty much every successful kill, but some fights are really bad. Fights like Kor'kron Dark Shaman especially seem designed and engineered to annihilate melee players, or keep them too busy running away to actually hit anything. I was talking to Joe "Lodur" Perez about the tendency of melee characters to die on Twitter the other day, and he made some good points about how healers are conditioned to let DPS die. It made sense but it left me wondering if it's more or less of a problem in a particular raid size, if it's universal, if some groups run heavy melee and love it or if it's always better to run high ranged and if so, what can/should be done about it. I don't have a lot of answers for it, but I do think it's a question worth asking. Do raid leaders stack ranged preferentially over melee? Do healers prefer to see a high ranged count in the roster? What are your experiences with the subject as players?
Our favorite ways to die in World of Warcraft
It's safe to say that we've been around the block in World of Warcraft. We've been witness to epic events, scenic vistas, and many, many untimely deaths. Mostly our own. But of those many deaths, some were more memorable than others. Some we've stored away in the recesses of our memory to be revisited and laughed over at a later date. So just what are our favorite WoW deaths? We consulted the WoW Insider team as well as some of our extended network of friends and compiled the best answers into this list. You might want to look before you leap WoW can be so beautiful that sometimes we forget it's a game. A game that can kill you. And so sometimes we find ourselves exploring, wandering, or accidentally autorunning to our doom. Oops. Many -- most, in fact -- of our so-called "favorite" deaths seem to involve untimely falls. Sarah Pine: My favorite way of having died was when I first made it to Hellfire Peninsula at 60, running around on my mount exploring (flying was at 70 at that time!), I leaped over a little hill only to find that there was no more land on the other side, because that was the edge of the continent. You fall for a while off of Hellfire before you actually die, I found out. Anne Stickney: Once I decided to see if Outland had invisible walls around the edges. Um, for the record, it does NOT. Brian Wood: I still have fond memories of a multitude of deaths from failing the shortcut jump to get to the Molten Core entrance in vanilla. Had lots and lots of opportunity to practice during ghost runs. Michael Sacco: I liked going to the top of the Temple of Storms and leaping off. @DoctorOddfellow: Well, #1 has to be tree-diving from Teldrassil, right? @hestiahdruid: Shadow Step, Heroic Leap, or the Druid version behind a boss to fall to your doom. @screwlewse: Falling into the lava where Magmaw stands.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing the Madness of Deathwing and heroic Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. This is it -- the last priest healing boss guide of the expansion! (After this, it's pandas or bust, baby!) Are you excited? You should be, because the last boss fight of Cataclysm is a loot piñata that's actually easier than the second to last fight a lot of fun! Hopefully, you all remember the drill from last week ... You want to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of this fight before progressing further into this guide. LearnToRaid.com has a nice video guide for Madness of Deathwing, and Icy Veins has an excellent written guide. Priests of either spec should know that cooldown management is the key to succeeding in this encounter as a priest. The encounter as a whole is not particularly difficult, but using your regen cooldowns at the right time will pave the way for you to hold onto just enough mana from start to finish. I recommend using your first Shadowfiend after the Mutated Corruption dies on the first platform, and your first Hymn of Hope just after jumping over to the second platform. Your second Shadowfiend should be used as soon as it becomes available, which will allow you to pair your third Shadowfiend and second Hymn of Hope together (just like we used to always do it in Wrath -- cast Shadowfiend, then immediately follow it up with Hymn of Hope). From there, use everything on cooldown, and you should be sitting pretty for mana the whole fight.
Raid Rx: Adapting to healer deaths without combat resurrection
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. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading on the Matticast. Just a quick heads up for healers: If you haven't visited Plus Heal in a while, do check it out, as it has undergone a facelift. If you've registered there in the past, you'll need to re-register, because user information was not able to be transferred. On to this week's post. This is a classic case study for healing leaders and handling player deaths -- healer deaths, to be specific. In this case, I goofed up big time. We were tackling the heroic version of Atramedes. There are two ways that this encounter can be done: Option 1: Move everyone together as a single unit. Option 2: Split the raid in half and assault Atramedes on both sides. We went for the second option. I split the healers up, four in one direction and three in the other. Somehow I ended up with three priests on one side and a mix of shaman, druids and paladins on the other. I wasn't thinking properly; for Leap of Faith reasons, I wanted at least two priests on that one side. So what else happened?
A series of unfortunate demises: classic arcade game deaths compiled into a tender tribute video
Whatever your flavor of old school gaming, whether you were a future-loving RoboCop killer or a skeleton-slaying Golden Axe swinger, there's a little slice of nostalgia here for you. The guys from BoingBoing have lovingly compiled some of the most memorable death scenes from the games of yore into a video tribute, and they've been nice enough to leave out the names of all the games featured. There's no Pokémon action in there, but still, can you guess 'em all?
Another death at Foxconn, CEO makes statement
Looks like Foxconn's troubles are far from over -- hiring an exorcist must not have worked, because another worker jumped to their death last week. That's the 10th such employee death at the plant where many of Apple's parts are manufactured. Foxconn's CEO made a statement earlier this week saying that "we are not a sweatshop," and promising that the company will "soon be able to stabilize this situation." The company has also starting hanging nets around factories to try and save jumpers (that's pretty grisly), and they've asked all employees to sign a pledge to help stop the problem, which Gawker has obtained. The pledge asks workers to seek help before doing something to harm themselves, and to help those around them who need it. Foxconn claims it's not a sweatshop, but reports say the company is asking employees to work 60 hours of overtime a month (far over the legal limit of 36 hours of overtime), and paying only about $132 a month. Clearly something is wrong at the company that Apple depends on for much of its manufacturing labor.
Achieved: Level 1 to 80 with no deaths
There are a few accomplishments in this game that truly amaze me anymore. Leveling characters is routine now, and having an army of high level alts at your disposal isn't something super uncommon anymore. However I have been amazed by this:Cautious, a Warrior, leveled to 80 without dying.She had no deaths. None. Nada. Zilch.There is no achievement for doing this, however I wouldn't blame Blizzard one bit if they went in and retroactively added one just for Cautious. Lord of the Rings Online has a no-death achievement, but only up through level 20. I got to level 18 without dying on LotRO on a recent attempt, however I perished when some "really really super awesome person" trained a bunch of mobs near me just as I executed an AoE attack. "Really really super awesome person" is what I called him too. Honest.A few months ago in The Queue a reader asked if there would ever be (or is) such an achievement for WoW, and my response at the time was no, there is not one now and probably would not be one later. I reasoned that including such an achievement would just present undue psychological damage on the player if they died at 79 from an unforeseen circumstance. I still don't think there will be one, but it's pretty awesome someone managed to do it sans in-game achievement. There are some interesting statistics Cautious had upon reaching level 80 without deaths. You can check out a lot of them on her armory profile, but those are inflated just a tad since she has played since reaching 80. Some of her key stats upon reaching level 80 include:
The Immortal clarifications by Bornakk
This was hinted at the other day when the idea of an "Immortal" achievement for Ulduar was thrown around, but Bornakk has stepped up to clear up exactly what's supposed to be happening with Naxx's ultimate "flawless victory" achievement.He clears up all the questions that people have asked. To get the achievement, you only have to be present for Kel'thuzad, as long as no one has died on any of the other bosses. And "dying" on the other bosses means any deaths at all -- including wipes, or any other deaths while bosses are engadged. Deaths on trash are apparently fine, and will not lose you the achievement, but if anyone dies on a boss, the raid ID is lost for the week and you've got to start over again next time (of course, you can still go through and get all of the loot and other rewards, so it's not a total wash).It's tough, no question, but remember that this is an achievement, not a part of normal progress. It's designed to really push your guild (or at least show you've got some good gear). While most of Naxx won't give an experienced, well-geared guild much trouble, achievements like this one can and should be more of a challenge.
Paperboy, Metroid Prime programmer dies at 43
You probably don't know the name Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, but you've almost certainly been entertained by one of the games he helped to create. From Paperboy and Zombies Ate My Neighbors to a series of Star Wars titles like Dark Forces and Rebel Assault, his career has spanned several years and several genres. Sadly, the programmer died on Tuesday after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 43 years old.Perhaps the part of Haigh-Hutchinson's legacy that will be familiar to most of you though is his work with the Metroid Prime series, for which he served as senior engineer and helped to create the game's camera system. Besides his gaming legacy, he leaves behind him a wife and two daughters.[Thanks, Donald]
Breakfast Topic: Worst Death
While you may think that no death is a good death, some are definitely worse than others. I can pinpoint my least favorite immediately - it was a full party of mid-40s players running through Jintha'Alor to finish making Zul'Ferrak mallets. The final pulls as we approached our goal were level 51 elites, and quite challenging for our under-leveled group. We finished and started heading out, to be met with respawns. I, a cloth wearer, was taken out pretty quickly, while the rest of the group managed to run, and keep running, to safety. I must say that extracting myself from this temple, swarming with angry trolls, was quite interesting. But there are still other scenes that come to mind - instance runs gone wrong and particularly underhanded PvP tactics. What about you? Do you have a least favorite encounter with your friend the spirit healer?
