deconstructor
Latest
Raid Rx: 2009 Boss healing awards
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. Welcome to the 2009 healing awards where we look back on some of the craziest healing encounters introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. Which fights frustrated healers the most? Which ones involved a ridiculous amount of healing? Which boss went directly against our role as healers? The judging panel should have consisted entirely of gnomes, but Wilfred Fizzlebang was unable to make it at the last minute and I was asked to step in at the last minute to help finalize the results.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution tips and tricks in Ulduar
I know, it's another Retribution post, but since we got hit with the nerf bat again (ever so slightly) I decided to devote one last column to the spec before I rotate back to Protection. Besides, my past month or so has been spent raiding Ulduar as Retribution (with the first few forays as Holy) so I think that's what I'll talk about for now. Rather than talk about specific boss strategies, we'll talk about the little things we can do to perform at our best in Ulduar. Flame Leviathan First up is Flame Leviathan. Obviously, none of the usual strategies will apply here but one key point players should remember is that the vehicles scale with gear. This means having to prepare an outfit set optimized for the encounter. One thing to note about vehicle scaling is that it doesn't look at stats, just iLevel. Optimizing a gear set for this means putting the highest iLevel item you have in every slot. For "pure" classes, this is usually their normal set-up, but for Paladins who keep several sets of gear, an iLevel-optimized outfit can be composed of healing items, a few tank items, some DPS items, and even PvP gear. Players can use AddOns such as RatingBuster to determine an item's iLevel and outfit managers such as Outfitter or Blizzard's new in-game equipment manager to quickly swap gear.
Guildwatch: When GMs go bad
Ah yes, the sinking feeling you get when you see that someone has ninja'ed your guild bank... and it's your guildmaster. Never a good thing, for the guildies, the GM, or the guild. Actually, it's a great thing for the GM -- they get to walk away with thousands of gold (and most of them, through some twisted logic, even think they deserve it). That's why I recommend you do what I do: pack all of your ingame stuff in a virtual mattress somewhere. Sure, your guild might not appreciate a lack of bank contributions, but at least it'll be safe, right?The story of the picture above and much more drama, downed and recruiting news all in this week's GW. Click the link below to read on, and if you've got news for us (everything but recruiting, please -- we are uber full on that one lately), hit us up at guildwatch@wow.com.
Spiritual Guidance: Disc Priest gives Arcane Mages 600+ spellpower
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI blog for all classes. Today, Matt teams up with Arcane Mages to deliver some serious pain! It's not very often I write posts about DPS. It becomes even more rare when I write about Mages. My only wish out of Mages is for them to learn another rank of Conjurable food and water.It's at the point now where I need to consume two of them to get a full mana bar back nearly.
Friday's in-game fixes
Self: "Self, I wonder if there's any more in-game fixes for today."Self: "I don't know Self, let me go look."Self looks around.Self: "Why look at that self, there is!"It's not weird that I'm talking to myself in a disconnected third person voice, is it? Perhaps all these fixes are getting to my head.The changes announced late last night are not as prevalent as other days, but are still important none the less. Some of the more interesting fixes for today include: The damage of XT-002 Deconstructor's Gravity Bomb ability has been reduced. The trash mobs before XT-002 Deconstructor have gone through additional changes that should make them a little easier to get through. The Rogue talent Savage Combat should now properly be removed after leaving an arena match. The full list of changes after the break.
Shifting Perspectives: An Ulduar class preview, part 2
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we watch the Ulduar trailer again and ask ourselves over and over why Jaina Proudmoore couldn't have been a Druid. The obvious answer is that she just wasn't cool enough, but this is the source of much cognitive dissonance at the moment. I'm going to take a quick moment from the rest of the column and just write, in case any of the people who made it are reading this, that the Ulduar trailer was so stuffed with win that pieces of win are dribbling out of it into little win puddles and spilling over into the Sewer of Awesome. And, as NaitFury on the MMO Champion thread points out, "Those of you who say it is boring should probably go back to watching another Undead Rogue 1-shot people with Linkin Park in the background." Amen!We're one week into Ulduar (and by "we" I mean "other people," because the game has become virtually unplayable for me post-patch, and having the game crash my computer every 5 minutes is forcing the Sewer of Awesome to run to the Vast Delta of Self-Pity), so let's pick up where we left off and tackle the Deconstructor, the Iron Council, and Kologarn.
Spiritual Guidance: Handling Incoming AoE as Discipline
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt's got awesome raid healing tips to share as Discipline along with some thoughts for dual spec! The first week of Ulduar is almost done! For those in there, how far have you managed to go? I've found it to be a test and a challenge for not only myself, but for the crew I raid with. Thank goodness for dual spec as it's saved me both time and money for switching between different roles. I wanted to share a few tip I picked up in my experience so far as a raiding Discipline Priest.
How to activate Ulduar's hard modes
You may have heard that a number of guilds have cleared Ulduar to Yogg-Saron already, which to me is perfectly fine. I like to think that a lot of good, properly-coordinated guilds will kill Yoggy this week, and the Blues agree with me. Of course, this week's Yoggy kills were on the easiest possible difficulty, so world first or not, it doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of fame and fortune.This is the beauty of Ulduar -- if you want prestige (and the best gear), you have to earn it by flexing your raiding muscle and beating encounters on their respective hard modes. If you don't have the chops or the time for the highest difficulty content, then you can still beat the instance and see every encounter.But, of course, you want those 239-level items.So you should probably read after the jump and find out how to activate each boss' hard mode, yeah?
