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CIA 'Ninja bomb' replaces explosives with six long blades
The US apparently has a unique approach to minimizing bystander casualties from drone strikes: replace the warhead with old-fashioned knives. The Wall Street Journal has learned that both the CIA and the Pentagon have been using a variant of the Hellfire air-to-ground missile, the R9X (aka "Ninja bomb"), that deploys six blades moments before impact to cut through virtually anything in its path, including buildings and cars. The idea is to take out a terrorist leader or a similarly prominent target without risking the lives of nearby civilians.
Hearthstone: Arachnid Quarter guide
Curse of Naxxramas' initial wing launched on Tuesday, much to the delight of eager fans. The Arachnid Quarter features exactly what Warcraft veterans should expect, that being a lot of spiders. Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina and Maexxna serve as the first trials thrown at adventurers looking to fight their way to the nefarious lich Kel'thuzad. Today, we'll go over a bit about what these baddies do, and how best to crush them. Anub'Rekhan The Traitor King boasts a couple of unique mechanics that are worth making note of. His hero power Skitter allows him to summon a 3/1 Nerubian for two mana. On heroic mode, it's a 4/4 Nerubian for two, which is pretty brutal. Anub'Rekhan also has access to a unique card called Anub'ar Swarm, which can really just ruin your day if you don't expect it. It costs a whopping seven mana, but does three damage to all of your minions and heals Anub'Rekhan for three health. Definitely prepare yourself for that, come turn seven. Beyond that, this fight's not too difficult. Anub'Rekhan has access to the rogue specific Curse of Naxxramas card Anub'ar Ambusher, and while 5/5's nothing to scoff at, destroying it will force another random minion on the board back into his hand, assuming there's anything he has anything else in play. It doesn't permanently deal with the threat, but it does buy you time to develop your board in response. Also of note, expect a strange blend of warlock and mage spells, specifically Shadow Bolt, Mortal Coil and Frostbolt.
Blood Pact: Demonology 101 at 90 in the end of Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finishes out with demon form. You just boosted your warlock to 90, and now we have all basic warlock at 90 laid out for you: General warlock 101 Affliction 101 Demonology 101, which is this article Destruction 101 Long-time readers will know that demonology AKA "demo" isn't my favorite warlock spec, but as I admitted to a friend recently, I can't recall seeing a "bad" demo warlock in organized raid. Demo 'locks are such well-oiled machines that once it clicks in your mind how to play, it's hard to not rock the meters.
Blood Pact: Multitarget DPS and situational awareness
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill discusses how to handle one, some, or many whelps. Before BlizzCon, I left off with the beginnings of how to put together your UI. While it would be easy to generate a post of macros and Weak Auras import strings, that wasn't my intent. User interfaces in WoW are varied and can be unique to the player, so I think it's a greater lesson to learn how you can design your UI to help you, rather than to help patchwork import settings together for you. So while the setup of unit frames may have seemed incredibly basic to some readers, knowing where some set frames are helps you take control of how your targets are presented to you. Much like healers considering a raid frames grid to be a central part of a healing UI, having damage targets at the ready is a central if often subconscious part of a DPS UI. Today is another basic topic, but it too has a subtle effect on how a proper UI setup can aid in DPS.
Patch 5.4 PTR: More spell changes to facilitate warlock talent nerfs
Warlocks around the world have been weeping at the Patch 5.4 PTR intended nerf to Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury. Blizzard Community Manager Lore had already posted an explanation for the tier 6 talent nerfs and some unseen PTR mechanics that were not in the patch notes to help aid warlocks in recovering DPS lost to movement. CM Lore is back tonight with another post of spell changes in the next build for warlocks in the continuing discussion of the Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury talent nerfs. After the break, you may read about a minor note about Rain of Fire generating less embers (specifics currently unknown), so that the developers can further discourage use of the spell in single-target situations. Fel Flame is being reworked entirely: it will no longer extended DoTs and it has a 1.5 second cast time instead of being instant-cast. In return, Fel Flame will be castable while moving and has received a small damage buff. Haunt, in return, will go back to being interrupted by movement. Affliction is being further compensated for the loss of Malefic Grasp while moving by expectedly moving the damage done power back into Haunt and the three DoTs. Finally, Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury are both on a 1 minute cooldown (down from 1.5 minutes) but also a lowered duration of 10 seconds (down from 15 seconds). Mannoroth's Fury applies to only the main AoEs but it provides a 100% damage increase to the specific AoE spells as well as the expanded area.
Blood Pact: Inner demons in our talent selection
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks it's too difficult to convey moving while casting in a static screenshot, so, instead, have the Scholomance potion guy in front of a Demonic Gateway. We covered Karazhan's pets, mounts, and fun last week, so this week, we'll cover Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep in the continuing quest to colle-- No. Sorry. If you really thought I was going to skip this past week's bombshell of warlock PTR patch notes for collecting pets from retro raids, I will scold you later for having no faith in me. Let's talk level 90 talent problems.
Blood Pact: Karazhan and its abyssal depths of fun
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill . Karazhan: the most beloved of retro raids. Players may put on the rose-colored glasses when they talk of how limited raiding was back in the Vanilla days, but Karazhan is often talked of with fondness. Going back is a pleasure, not a painful memory. It's with good reason -- the place is built like a castle tower, going up and up forever, and it's full of memorable mobs and scenery. Karazhan also has some of the tier 4 Voidheart Raiment for warlocks, as well as a mount and now pets for everyone, so it's a weekly favorite of mine to visit.
WoW Archivist: Burned by Hellfire Peninsula
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? When Mists of Pandaria goes live later this month, players will all begin leveling in the same zone for the first time since 2006. In Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard gave us two zones to choose from at the beginning of our adventures. Wrath split players up on either side of Northrend with Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Cataclysm's starting zones put players on different sides of the planet with Mount Hyjal and the less popular but unique underwater saga of Vashj'ir. In contrast, The Burning Crusade's Hellfire Peninsula put us all on opposite sides of the street. That is not a joke. It is literally true -- see the image above! As you can guess, this led to problems. Let's look back at the Hellfire experience and try to gauge what we're in for when we arrive at the Jade Forest shortly after midnight on September 25.
Blood Pact: Share the love of dead mobs with MoP AoE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill enjoys exploding things, whether by smashing mobs to gore splats as a Diablo III barbarian or by chaining together multiple Seed explosions. A bugged Nightfall won't stop me from enjoying the new Seed of Corruption. I am completely willing to channel Drain Soul on full-health trash just so I can get a 'burned Seed and 'burned Curse combo off on the next pack. Chaining Seeds together is too much fun to pass up. With this new beta build, Mannoroth's Fury received a little nerf, and I thought about all the new AoE abilities for warlocks. Every spec has multiple AoE options now, both small-scale and large-scale. Even better, no spec feels like a mindless spamming anymore. Even affliction's constant casting of Seed requires a little setup.
Breakfast Topic: Back to Hellfire
So I'm back on Outland, leveling up a blood DK on Hellfire Peninsula. Why? Well, partially because that's how I learn how classes work. I haven't played blood this expansion, and it's easier for me to grasp how the spec has changed by leveling up with it rather than just picking up one of my other DKs and starting at 80 or 85. I even deleted a DK to roll this one. But another reason is because I really like Hellfire Peninsula, now that I can fly around on it. I enjoy the Hellfire Citadel instances (tanked two today), and I go without heirlooms just so I can actually get upgrades from them. I even like seeking out and finding little quest hubs here and there, scattered about the zone. Now, I didn't like Hellfire when I first went there in 2007. And I didn't like taking alts there during Wrath of the Lich King. But time has mellowed me on the zone. For one thing, it's some of the oldest questing content left in the game, and nostalgia has painted it with a rosy patina. I like catching up with Arator or seeing what Nazgrel is up to. And also, there's a touch of revenge in there now that I can easily solo Overlord. (I did actually manage to solo Arazzius on a level 63 DK when Wrath first came out, but now it's easy.) Plus, with transmog, you can't tell what a clown suit I'm wearing in that picture. It's awesome, really. So how about you? Any zone you like against the consensus of the playerbase and perhaps all common sense? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
Barrens Chat: Dead ringer
I don't have much to say with this comic this week, thank goodness. With a two page reaction paper due tomorrow, and two exams Friday, I greatly enjoyed the time I took from my week to sit down and do this comic. With that said, I would like to send out a sincere "I'm sorry for your loss" to the five of you whom have recently (read as: within the last month) experienced something similar with a very different piece of hardware. At least that made one of you turn your World of Warcraft subscription back on.Anyways, have you ever wondered what it would be like if things in Word of Warcraft worked the way they did in real life? Like if for instance some large corporation made your Mechanostrider instead of that nice little Milli Featherwhistle? You could be minding your own business, enjoying a nice breeze from running through Nagrand when, Bam!What do you think? Have you ever just thought about something like that? Standing there one day being shocked back to life and thinking "Gee, what if these jumper cables malfunctioned?" Maybe it's just me, but when I see my Engineering friend zooming around in his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine while I'm stuck on my poor, unflying kodo, I sometimes giggle at the thought of him crashing.At least he's not our healer. Barrens Chat is being devious this week, while the author enjoys picking fun at those unfortunate enough to experience the one of the many rings men (and women) fear most. Past victims have been shockingly few, however not all innocents were spared. Come back next week for a new comic!
Report Card: Phase 3 quests
Phase 3 is now in full swing on many servers, including mine, and this time, we're working on taking the Sun's Reach Harbor as well as opening up the long awaited badge loot vendor. How do the quests stack up this time around? Does the near flawless run for great dailies from Quel'danas continue? I've had a few days to try out the runs, and I have to say that there's a few rough spots, but you can continue to grow your list of dailies with confidence as the new phases come on.
25 Easter eggs of the Burning Crusade
We at WoW Insider felt that, in honor of Easter/Noblegarden, we'd go looking for some of the best Easter eggs in Burning Crusade. This is by no means an exhaustive gallery of all the little nods you can find in BC; it's really almost impossible to go anywhere without running into a programmer's sly joke. I had to limit my gallery to things that could be seen by toons who'd outleveled some of the really good quest-related ones ("How To Serve Goblins" was great) or who had ready access to the Blood Elf/Draenei starter areas. Enjoy your trawl through a feast of cleverly-placed pop-culture references, and you can visit BlizzPlanet for an exhaustive list of Burning Crusade Easter eggs if these whet your appetite for more! Don't forget that with our new gallery functions, you can hit the "Hi Res" button at the top right of the page if you want to see a photo in more detail.%Gallery-18980%
All the World's a Stage: Class is in session
All the World's a Stage is skipping class (gasp!), and playing with roles every Sunday evening.Our spells are shiny and bright, well worth using in more than just combat situations! Last time we talked a bit about this idea, as well as how druids, hunters, and mages could use their spells to entertain their friends. Today we turn to the remaining classes: priests, paladins, rogues, shamans, warlocks and warriors. Each roleplayer would do well to sit down and examine his or her action bar to pick out those spells which can be used outside of combat, and think of whatever opportunities imaginable to make good use of them. Chances are, if you put your mind to it, you can come up with some really creative ideas.Buffing, for instance: You've got these beautiful abilities that can benefit anyone around you, no matter what class or level they are. If you're going to bless them with such a neat thing, why not say something about it while you do so? You can say, "<Deity Name> guide you, sir!" or, "you look pretty dumb -- have some extra intellect!" or whatever expression sounds right for your character.
Around Azeroth: From Hellfire to Zangarmarsh
Saintstryfe sends in this shot showing off the boarder between Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh in Outland. On one side, the harsh, baked red soil of Hellfire -- on the other the lush blue/green landscape of Zangarmarsh. Outland must have some interesting weather patterns to cause such a drastic shift in the environment. Any Outland meteorologists care to explain this climate change for us? (Global warming?)Do you have any incredible scenery just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see your idea of the best looking instance on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!%Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: Dreaming Glory in odd places.
Reader Sphingx sends in this interesting screenshot all the way from Hellfire Peninsula to you. What are we looking at? Well, this is a specimen of the herb Dreaming Glory, and while, most often you find them growing out of the ground rather than mid-air... Of its unusual positioning, Sphingx comments, "like some abstract artist's composition that I took a shot of it against the Hellfire Peninsula." Have you managed to snap a screenshot of the impossible in the World of Warcraft? We'd like to see it on Around Azeroth! All you have to do is e-mail aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your screenshot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could find your pictures and story featured next!%Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: At the Dark Portal
The first thing most of us noticed when running into Outland for the first time was the immense size difference between the Dark Portal on the Azeroth side and the Outland side. But it's been so long since most of us, I'd imagine, have visited the portal on either side that this odd quirk of Outland may have been forgotten -- right up until the point that you ran into this shot sent in by reader Casters, at least.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: The Demoniac Scryer
Laptantidel of Dethecus (EU) sends us this shot taken while completing the Demoniac Scryer quest in Hellfire Peninsula in Outland. In this quest-chain, you attempt to uncover the magic at work behind the Fel Orcs of Hellfire Citadel. The Demoniac Scryer, which we see in this screenshot, can attune itself to Fel magic and tell us what's going on -- but only at the cost of souls.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: Looking over the Pools of Aggonar
Reader Dekulink sends in a lovely image of a terrible spot. We're looking out over the Pools of Aggonar, right above Aggonar's bones. But in the foreground of this troublesome scene is the the lovely golden glow of the herb Dreaming Glory, which maintains its brilliance despite the dreary surroundings.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
Those evil, evil Warlocks
I'm not quite sure if I buy this assessment from Mystic Worlds: She says that Warlocks are the new villians of WoW. Just like everyone used to hate Paladins (wait, we stopped hating Paladins?), Warlocks are the new class people love to hate and consider extremely OP.She says, insightfully, that the reason for this is that Warlocks have just tons of annoying abilities. Fear is probably foremost among them-- with a skilled Warlock, your character spends half the fight out of your control. Soul Link and Felguards are just plain evil (it's like having a Warrior tank for you), and with all those DoTs, a lock is hellfire on wheels (and ten locks in WSG are even worse). Not to mention that since locks love to load up on Stamina, they're tough to kill, too.It's just MW's timing that I don't agree with-- people have hated Warlocks for a long time now, and I'd say in general that so many classes have been buffed lately that people have moved on. Personally, Hunters are the class that drives me nuts in PvP now-- they still have that very exploitable dead zone, but in a big melee, one Hunter can lay down DoTs and CC and turn the tide of battle. Plus, those NE Hunters in Tier armor just look so smug! A Warlock is still trouble, but my shadow Priest can fear and DoT, too, and no one's bothered by him. It's Hunters that really bug me.
