faction-champions
Latest
Two Bosses Enter: Tyrannus tyrannizes ToC faction champs for the season title
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Your votes, along with the decisions of our distinguished judges (representing WoW.com staff and readers), determine who makes it out alive. The Icecrown Citadel/Trial of the Champion 5-Man season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves came to a smoking finale in a burst of multi-gladiatorial action this week, leaving Scourgelord Tyrannus implacably flapping on Rimefang above the bloody arena floor as the dust settled. Tyrannus claimed the season victory in a frantic skirmish with the ToC faction champs, claiming 57.4% of the vote to the champ crew's 37.5%. With the judges panel handing up a split decision before the match, spectators had to work out this deathmatch in the comments and the poll. How did the season arrive at this final matchup? Reader-Judge John Zakour said it best in his own comment: "This whole argument kind of reminds of the old 'Who would win if Hulk fought Superman?' question ... The answer: It depends who's writing it. In this case, it's how you see the fight. Somehow, I just see the PvP champs taking down Tyrann (even if it means the warrior needs to respec). I don't think I've ever wiped on Tyrann, even pugging. I have wiped a few times on the PvP champs, and that's with just three of 'em. My 'logic' was five of them would be tough to beat. Ironically, I have probably wiped on Paletress more than any other boss in the game, yet I somehow didn't feel right picking her over Tyrann. Yet, I may have picked her over the PvP champs. It's all just subjective fun." See what other readers had to say about the final match of the season, after the break.
Two Bosses Enter: Tyrannus joins ToC faction champs in season finale
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Your votes, along with the decisions of our distinguished judges (representing WoW.com staff and readers), determine who makes it out alive. It was a close match, but Scourgelord Tyrannus foiled Argent Confessor Paletress' attempt to snatch away a Thunderdome victory and get into the season's finals. It will be the Scourgelord who steps foot into the cage this week to face off against the Trial of the Champion PvP faction champs in the season finals of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves. The vote was 51.5% in favor of Tyrannus, to Paletress' 44.9%; three out of four judges also handed the fight to the intimidating Scourgelord. Now, it's time to clear the field and let the finalists square off: Scourgelord Tyrannus and his mount, Rimefang, versus all five of the Trial of the Champions PvP faction champions. For the final time in this season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
Two Bosses Enter: Faction champs elude LK, Paletress takes on Tyrannus
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Your votes, along with the decisions of our distinguished judges (representing WoW.com staff and readers), determine who makes it out alive. We're down to the second and last match of the semi-finals in the ICC 5-man/Trial of the Champion season of Two Bosses Enter, One Man Leaves. This week, the Trial of the Champion PvP faction champs handily scampered beyond the reach of the Halls of Reflection version of the Lich King, 58.2% to 38.5%). Their victory earns them a berth in the season finals, throwing down inside the Two Bosses Thunderdome against the winner of this week's matchup: Argent Confessor Paletress versus Scourgelord Tyrannus. Two Bosses Enter Semi-Finals The Five-Man Bosses of Icecrown Citadel and Trial of the Champion Match 1: ToC PvP Champions vs. Lich King (Halls of Reflection version) Match 2: Scourgelord Tyrannus 60.7% vs. Argent Confessor Paletress 60.7% As you can see, Paletress and Tyrannus are seeded in identical positions going into this deathmatch. Just as in previous Thunderdome tussles, we'll allow Paletress to front-load her usual supporting cast (after all, Tyrannus has Rimefang to keep him company). Let's see what the judges predict for this matchup, after the break. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
Two Bosses Enter: LK voted back in, stalks ToC faction champs
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Your votes, along with the decisions of our distinguished judges (representing WoW.com staff and readers), determine who makes it out alive. Despite a campaign by Judge John Zakour to bring back Eadric the Pure in last week's vote (offering to give away two Zakour books to readers if Eadric was voted back in), there will be no running away in the Thunderdome again this season. The Lich King stalked predictably back into contention with a lead of just 0.9% -- a mere 21 more votes than Eadric. As Judge Sky Paladin put it, "The difference between victory and defeat was less than a raid group." The spectator decision throws the Lich King back into the Thunderdome today in the first match of the semi-finals. Two Bosses Enter Semi-Finals The Five-Man Bosses of Icecrown Citadel and Trial of the Champion Match 1: ToC PvP Champions 50.1% vs. Lich King (Halls of Reflection version) Match 2: Scourgelord Tyrannus 60.7% vs. Argent Confessor Paletress 60.7% Instead of holding the judges' decisions for after the fight as we have in previous matches, we're going to share their votes with you now, before the reader poll so that you can use their rationales to help you consider your vote. Now, let's settle back for the first match of the semi-finals, the Trial of the Champions PvP Champs versus Lich King (HoR version). Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
Two Bosses Enter: ToC champs edge out Devourer, Black Knight wrangles Paletress
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Your votes, along with the decisions of our distinguished judges (representing WoW.com staff and readers), determine who makes it out alive. It took hard work from all five ToC PvP champs to take down the Devourer of Souls in this week's Thunderdome pit fight -- but take him down they did. Three of our four judges gave the champs the nod, while tournament spectators saw them just squeaking by. Join us after the break for the judges' decisions and final results of ToC PvP champs vs. Devourer of Souls, and then cast your own vote for the next Thunderdome deathmatch: The Black Knight vs. Argent Confessor Paletress. Dr. Dealgood's got the right idea: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
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.
Lichborne: Death Knight tips for Trial of the Crusader, Part I
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly foray into the news, strategy, and zen of being a Death Knight, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb. So. You've conquered Ulduar and Naxxramas. Or maybe you've just collected a lot of badges and got some nice shiny gear. Either way, you're ready to go humor that old codger Fordring and fight and die in his silly little Arena. Even if the whole thing is obviously a waste of good time that could be spent killing the Scourge, the Ebon Blade's agreed to cooperate, so you'd better be ready too, death knight. So today, we'll give you a few tips about surviving the first few bosses of the Trial of the Crusader the death knight way.
Raid Rx: Heroic Faction Champions
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. I finally lived through Faction Champions and now you can too! After surviving defeating Faction Champs in Trial of the Grand Crusader, I've managed to figure out a few tricks healers can use to help themselves. While it's almost impossible to come up with a unified and methodical strategy, I've compiled a list of tips and advice to maximize your survivability and the players around you. Think of it more as guidelines as opposed to solidified rules.
Ghostcrawler cleans up two dev chat questions
As you probably noticed if you watched along with us, yesterday's developer chat (with Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton taking questions from Twitter and answering them on the forums) was a little light to say the least. Rather than answer questions about game balance seriously, the devs chose to make fun of hunters taming druids and do a lot of hinting and winking. Fortunately, we have Ghostcrawler -- he's responded to concerns about two of the questions yesterday over on the forums. The first is in response to some feedback about what the devs yesterday called "binary" hard modes -- they said that instead of providing multiple levels of difficulty (as in Sarth and his drakes), they'd prefer to have a hard mode either on or off (you'll be able to toggle between the two in Icecrown). This relates to what we just said recently, with different types of guilds looking for different types of content to play. GC replies that the "in-betweens" in terms of difficulty will come with later bosses in normal mode -- if you want to play a challenge without stepping into the hard modes, Blizzard will do their best to make sure that the last bosses on normal give you that challenge. Which makes sense -- bosses should ramp up in difficulty as the instance goes along, and no one would suggest, for instance, that Yogg was nearly as easy as Flame Leviathan. And GC also talked about one of my favorite (and missed) game mechanics: crowd control.
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.
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.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 2
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 third and fourth bosses in the Trial of the Crusader.Not even a full week had passed, and already not one, but two guilds were able to clear their way through the heroic version of Trial of the Grand Crusader. While it may have been due to soulstone exploits or spamming Holy Wrath, either way, one of the Lich King's most powerful warriors and oldest companions died to the might of the Horde (or maybe some Alliance cowards got lucky).I've had the luxury of fighting my way through and also defeating Anub'arak, though only on normal difficulty so far. This week, I'll cover some of the tips and tricks that I've picked up in my clearings of the Trial of the Crusader, with a focus on the next 2 encounters in the instance.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 51-60
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we haul ourselves to Outland and are shocked to discover that +spellpower sometimes comes on leather.The above video is the result of an idle question I was asked recently by a friend: "So how much damage would you guys do in caster form meleeing?" I started to answer and then realized I had no idea. The notion of actually hitting something with a weapon is utterly foreign to the class. We have claws and a can of celestial pain for that nonsense if provoked, but still, the question was pretty interesting, particularly because after seeing Prinnygod's comment from last week I started to wonder about all the different ways you could level as a Druid if you deliberately avoided Cat and Moonkin. Sure, you'd be a gibbering wreck at the level cap, but that's beside the point. Blizzard once had a talent called Weapon Balance in the Balance tree that improved our melee damage with weapons by 10% -- they were expecting us to hit things. I wondered how that would have worked out if Druid talent trees had never been overhauled.So I took my main to the mobs outside the Argent Tournament and smacked stuff while running a stopwatch. What you'll see here is a level 79 Frostbrood Whelp with 12,600 health which took me 34.4 seconds to kill, with two global cooldowns devoted to casting a Rejuvenation and then a Lifebloom. I'm currently on a Feral (Bear) spec and thus wearing gear that does help one's melee damage, mind you, but that still works out to a godawful 366.28 DPS. The moral of our little story can be found at the end of the video. Master of Arms is going to be a real trip.
Raid Rx: Really cool Coliseum healing loot
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 new WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. It's time to gear us up some healers! Let's take a look at all the phat loot the coliseum has to offer. The Crusader's Coliseum offers a wide variety of gear and equipment for both new and veteran healers. It's time for us to start equipping ourselves in order to be prepared when Icecrown Citadel hits. While we're not exactly going to be healing Arthas to death, it's a good idea to start working on our stuff now. We'll start with Trial of the Champion for the fresher 80s before we move to Trial of the Crusader where all the good stuff is.
New PTR raid testing schedule
The patch 3.2 PTR went down for maintenance today, but it's scheduled to be coming back up soon (if it isn't already). The 5-man dungeon will be available for testing "shortly after the PTR coming up." The main event for this PTR testing period, the Crusader's Coliseum raid, will have three bosses available for testing in each region (North America and Europe), on the following schedule: North America: Lord Jaraxxus (Normal only): tonight, starting at 7 PM EDT. Northrend Beasts (Normal and Heroic): Friday, July 17, starting at 7 PM EDT. Faction Champions (Normal and Heroic): same as above, Friday, July 17, starting at 7 PM EDT. Europe (all fights available on Normal and Heroic): Val'kyr: Friday, July 17, starting at 19:00 CEST. Lord Jaraxxus: same as above, Friday, July 17, starting at 19:00 CEST. Anub'arak: Saturday, July 18, starting at 19:00 CEST. Tank and DPS Patchwerks will also be back again. Daelo notes that much of the loot does not have its final art yet, and that most of the achievements should now be implemented. Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Updated PTR Crusader's Coliseum testing schedule
Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, a.k.a. Daelo, posted an updated testing schedule for the Crusader's Coliseum on the Patch 3.2 PTR today. The good news is that EU players get to try another set of bosses -- this time the Faction Champions. The bad news is that the US PTR instance servers are still broken following last night's aborted testing attempt. Not good.The updated schedule is as follows, with Daelo's full post after the jump: Here's the current schedule for Trial of the Crusader PTR testing: On the European test realms: Faction Champions - Saturday Night, July 11, starting at 19:00 CEST. The issues that were preventing raid testing on the North American PTRs are still not fully resolved. We're looking into alternative means of enabling testing on these realms. I'll update this thread when I have more information.
