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Where does he get those wonderful toys? Pandaren rares and loot
If there is one thing I have perfected in eight years of playing this game, it is filling my bags with useless stuff. I'm not talking about armor bits and pieces for transmog, or weapons with pretty glows, or bags full of crafting material like cloth or leather. No, I'm talking random baubles that will make you look like your neighbor. Or fling you in the air, without worry of what happens when you eventually hit the ground. You know, stuff. Everybody likes stuff. And who has the best stuff in Pandaria? Rare mobs, of course! But which rares have the good stuff? Which ones will let you summon a fleet of angered puppies in party hats to fight at your side? Or inexplicably get you ready for a day at the beach in the middle of a raid? Or turn you into a statue with no apparent purpose other than sitting there pretending to be a statue? You want useless stuff? Oh we've got all kinds of useless stuff for you, sorted by category.
How to defeat the hozen rare spawns
There's just something about the hozen that makes me so happy. It's probably their bizarre dialect where nearly every word is some variation of ook or grook or dook, or perhaps their propensity for scatological haikus. Either way, you can imagine my apprehension whenever I came across one of these pinnacles of hozenhood. Clearly it had to die -- if only for a shot at the plentiful gold, experience, and perhaps a rare item that it might be holding -- but boy did it hurt to ook that grookin' hozen in the dooker. Like the pandaren, jinyu, yaungol, and other rare spawns, no matter how slight one of these adversaries may look, you still want to approach them with caution. The hozen rare spawns possess several punishing abilities that make it a threat to anyone with lead feet. Likewise, this is not a boss you want to fight in close confines. These abilities are: Bananarang: The hozen throws a banana, which spins out in a line away from him, and then returns. If it connects, the target takes 45% of their maximum health as physical damage. Yee-ouch. Going Bananas: Flipping his lid, the hozen bounces around and does physical damage to anyone he lands on. No much you can do other than run around and attempt to evade any landings. Though, admittedly, this will be pretty easy if there's enough room for you move around. Toss Filth: Puts a debuff on the target, increasing damage taken by 11%. Can stack, and each stack lasts 30 seconds. Basically makes the fight a race against the clock. Basically, the best way to approach these is to constantly be on the move. Get your licks in, don't get hit by the banana when it goes out, and try to avoid getting stomped on. Not much you can do about Toss Filth, so just focus on getting the hozen down before it stacks too high, or kite if that's possible with your class. Cooldowns are a must as the fight draws on, if you have too many stacks of the debuff.
The Queue: Internal strife
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I don't know what Adam's war on the Tillers is all about, but he's pushing us dangerously close to civil war. I'm pro-Tillers myself and will not be content until I own the biggest farm on Pandaria. Though I suppose eradicating the Tillers and taking their land for myself might actually help that along. I'll have to think about this. Sara asked: Is there a difference in battle pet performance according to common, uncommon, etc?
Mists of Pandaria rare spawns offer unique challenges
Mists of Pandaria asks the ambiguous question, "What are we fighting for?" In the case of most players, it's loot and gold. There's a lot of fighting to be found in Mists, but in the case of Pandaria's rares, they offer something along with the gold and loot, something far more valuable -- experience. Not experience points, although you'll get it if you're in the process of leveling. No, the rares of Pandaria offer experience playing your individual class, and playing it well. There are several different types of rare champions scattered all over Pandaria -- hozen, jinyu, mantid, mogu, saurok, yaungol and pandaren. But these champions aren't like any rares you've seen on Azeroth. Rather than allowing players to simply stand there and beat the stuffing out of them, these rares have unique abilities that require tactics and skill to counter. Are they impossible to beat? Absolutely not, once you've figured out how to counter their bag of tricks. But you cannot simply stand and beat them up anymore. Movement is absolutely key, and so are stuns, interrupts, and other abilities that define a class. Rather than allowing you to just spam your main attack, you're forced to practice moving out of the way of attacks, which are clearly defined on the ground. You can't let them cast every spell, or you'll certainly die. And kiting is definitely helpful in most cases as well.
Video series highlights the history of Pandaria's races
Sure, we know about the pandaren coming up in Mists of Pandaria, but there are many more races in the world. What about the hozen? The jinyu? Or how about the mantid and the mogu? YouTube user Mastus has put together a delightful series of videos that highlight the history behind the various races of Pandaria and how they fold together to create the history of Mists of Pandaria. Considering 10,000 years of no contact with any of the races wandering Pandaria's vast landscape, these video guides help fill in just what happened centuries ago. And in the case of the mantid and the mogu, the videos help explain what these mysterious races are up to -- and why we should be worried. Please note that these do contain things that could be called spoiler content for the new expansion; however, for players looking for a brief primer on Pandaria, these videos are definitely a good way to get caught up. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Know Your Lore: As new lore emerges
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. There will be spoilers for Mists of Pandaria in this post. So there's no other way to say this: I am enjoying the heck out of the stories I am being presented with in the Mists of Pandaria beta. I'm actually reading quest text. (To be fair, I do that a lot anyway -- lore nerd and all.) Frankly, as Anne pointed out this weekend, one of the things that's best about this expansion is that everything we experience is new to us. Mists of Pandaria isn't just the story of the pandaren. In fact, while the pandaren are very cool, I find myself absolutely drawn to explore everything else up on the buffet table. The Mogu and their astonishing ruins, the mantid threat in the Dread Wastes, the entirely foreign threat of the Sha -- these are all compelling and fascinating to me. Better still, I'm being presented all new ways to explore these story options. More so than any expansion in the history of World of Warcraft, the Mists of Pandaria are parting to show us an entirely new world, one we know very little about. If you're an old codger like me, that in and of itself is an interesting departure. But it's being backed up by all the innovations and discoveries of the past seven years of quest and zone design. Frankly, this first post-Cataclysm expansion owes a lot to the teachable moments of the massive zone redesign effort made in the previous expansion. The fruits planted then are being harvested now, and the results are in places stunning.
Mists of Pandaria: Dungeons and challenge mode
Mists of Pandaria will launch with nine heroic dungeons, four of which were previewed to one extent or another at last week's press event: Temple of the Jade Serpent, the Stormstout Brewery, the updated Scholomance, and the updated Scarlet Monastery. Temple of the Jade Serpent Blizzard is taking a new approach with its introductory dungeon of the expansion. Rather than starting you off in instances that are entirely secondary to the expansion's story arc and saving the dungeons that tie closest to the plot of the expansion for the level cap, the very first dungeon you run in Mists of Pandaria will set the story's tone. The Temple of the Jade Serpent will display the expansion's villainy right up front. The sha, as you've heard by now, are the core external villains in the land of Pandaria. They are the manifestation of negative emotion. The Temple of the Jade Serpent will be your introduction to the sha. The Temple is where, once upon a time, an old emperor of Pandaria beat down the Sha of Doubt and saved the entire empire. Unfortunately, the war that the Horde and the Alliance have brought to Pandaria's shores has rekindled the Sha of Doubt and the temple has fallen under its influence. We did get to tackle the Temple hands-on at the press event, so we can provide a few concrete details about the bosses within and their abilities.
