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Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest's guide to Alysrazor
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's steals all your feathers to become a soaring blur of purple. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. Last week, I talked about the gimmickry involved in the Lord Rhyolith fight. It's interesting and unique, but for us shadow priests, largely irrelevant. If only there were a fight with a super-cool gimmick that puts shadow priests on center stage and ... ... oh, wait, there totally is a fight like that: Alysrazor! The fight against Alysrazor is absolutely hectic, but in a fun way. Shadow priests get a stacking haste buff that will have you frantically mashing keys to maximize your DPS. We get a crit buff that guarantees near 100% Shadowfiend uptime. And, oh yeah -- we friggin' fly through the air. That's right, Alysrazor is all about the z-axis. It's time to go grab your Super Nintendo out of the attic, shadow priests, because it's about to get all Pilotwings up in here.
WoW Rookie: A raid rookie's lexicon of raiding language
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. Breaking into the raid scene can be intimidating for a new player, especially one who's not done anything like 10-man or 25-man raiding. We can hope that 5-man dungeons provide a basic idea of the general dynamics: healers heal, tanks tank, and damagers damage. Most experienced raiders use language that a new player won't find in the game interface. Words like "tank" have a relatively obvious meaning, but phrases like "void zone" can be a little tougher to interpret when a new player first encounters them. This raider's lexicon has been built through 6 years of WoW raiding, and decades of MMO playing before Azeroth become an MMO. This guide is intended to help new raiders get an idea what the heck everyone else is talking about. Be warned that most raids also have their own internal lexicon, too; we can't tell you what everyone is saying, but hopefully we'll get you caught up on the most basic stuff.
WoW Rookie: Preparing for your first raid
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. When it comes to advice for new players who want to get into raiding, it sometimes seems there are two schools of thought. The first is exemplified by the members of the Council of Verah Srs Bsns, which is filled with terse guild officers grinding their teeth over loot distribution and old-schoolers who started raiding back when grinding for flask and pot mats took as long as the raid itself. Their pre-raiding checklists tend to be ... long. The other camp, the l33tspeak PugGerZ, sees WoW as a series of pickup raids in which the raid leaders and boss mods issue connect-a-dot instructions on where to go and what to do -- and if that's too confusing, there's always the strat video. On the other monitor. While you're starting the encounter for the first time. As always, the truth about raid prep lies somewhere in between. Yes, more resources to help raiders raid exist than ever before -- and despite that, yes, you still need to come prepared. How to do that? Join us after the break for a whirlwind look at preparing for your first raid.
The Daily Quest: Of class quests, Warcraft music and Big Black Kitties
Patch 3.1 is still burning up the PTR and sending most classes into a tail spin trying to figure out what their new talent builds will be when the patch goes live. Forget the madness of the ever-changing class mechanics for a few minutes to peruse today's WoW-related posts from around the blogosphere. Big Red Kitty shows off what could be the latest Hunter pet models or what could be a texture glitch seen running amok on the Test realm (see pic above.) More on his site. To PTR or not PTR, that is the question explored at Shields Up. They look at both sides of the controversial topic. Tier 8 gear have you interested in raiding for the first time? Check out The Virtues of the Effective Raider, a good primer for people first dipping their toe into WoW raiding. And for those more experienced in raiding, check out our weekly raiding columns, Ready Check and Raid Rx. Though the Echoes of War music was released months ago, Blizzard made an official announcement this week. Next week, they'll be announcing the launch of The Burning Crusade... Hoping for more class-specific quests? You'll have to wait a little longer according to European CM Vaneras. They take time to create and implement. He doesn't specifically say they are making more, but does go into the process involved.
