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Lichborne: Icecrown 5-man gear for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's weekly look into the world of the death knight. This week, we're mostly waiting for the cold front to come in, but we got some other stuff we can talk about for sure. While we've all been waiting for Patch 3.3.3 to drop so we can decide if we're respeccing frost or not, It's become a pretty slow time in the death knight world. Debates continue on the best frost specs, whether Will of the Necropolis is worth getting now or even makes Blood the best tank spec, and so on and so forth, of course, so it's not completely quiet, but I've said my two cents on most of that before. It occurs to me, though, that I haven't really taken a good look at the Icecrown 5-mans for loot and opportunities for death knights. So for all my more casual and upcoming death knight friends, this one's for you.
Two Bosses Enter: Tyrannus tyrannizes Krick and Ick; Falric faces Paletress
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. It's a brand new season and a brand new format, introducing judges from WoW.com and the WoW community at large -- and of course, your votes. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble! The Thunderdome's no Bartertown, Krick and Ick are no Master Blaster ... and as many expected, Scourgelord Tyrannus dominated this week's Two Bosses fantasy deathmatch. More than three-quarters of the spectators anointed the Scourgelord with the victor's crown. The judges tied it up for Tyrannus as well, leaving the path clear for what's shaping up to be an intriguing match, Falric vs. Argent Confessor Paletress. (By the way, if you're a fan of the cage match genre, check out last week's match on Suvudu: Jaime Lannister vs. Hermione Granger -- yeah, it's so one-sided it's just mean, but sometimes those are the train wrecks we love to watch go down. George R.R. Martin himself weighs in, too; get back to writing, bud. ) Join us after the break for the judges' decisions, plus your chance to vote in Falric vs. Paletress. For in the words of Dr. Dealgood: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here."
Two Bosses Enter: Garfrost gets Devoured, Krick and Ick face Tyrannus
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. It's a brand new season and a brand new format, introducing judges from WoW.com and the WoW community at large -- and of course, your votes. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble! Despite heaving all the saronite he could muster at the Devourer of Souls, Forgemaster Garfrost found himself devoured whole in this week's cage match. Three out of four Thunderdome judges handed the match to the Devourer, bolstered by 55.5% of the spectators. Judge Sky Paladin bore the banner for the dissenters, with a spirited account of the two bosses' meeting that delights (despite perhaps not actually swaying the vote). Join us after the break for the judges' decisions, plus your chance to vote in the next battle of the season: Krick and Ick vs. Scourgelord Tyrannus. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.
The Queue: Why won't you move, Mr. Bubbles?
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Before I get to your questions today, I have a question for all of you. What kind of dirty monster do you need to be to harvest the Little Sisters in Bioshock? My word, they're adorable. I mean, I have no problem playing jerky characters in games, but I physically could not hit the K key while looking at one of those poor little things. You people running around murdering them willy nilly should be ashamed of yourselves. You know who you are. I'm watching you. And now we actually discuss the game this blog is named for. Fancy that. Radioted asked... "Is there any word on who does the voice for Krick? Every time I run PoS, I can't help but hear Wallace Shawn in the role."
Ready Check: Icecrown Citadel introduction quests
It's not technically an attunement, but there is a series of quests that guide you through the introductory 5 Player Dungeons surrounding Icecrown Citadel. You don't have to do these dungeons to get into the normal versions of Icecrown, but it sure brings a lot to the experience. I guess, in a sense, you can think of it as a simplified attunement. Additionally, the gear that drops from these first three instances will go a long way towards catching up people to the ICC raid. In my raid, we call this "bootstrapping." There's a bunch of reasons you might need to bootstrap folks: a tank rotation, new people, meteor crashing into the planet, what have you. As you do the quest, you'll enter (and do battle in): The Forge of Souls The Pit of Saron, and The Halls of Reflection So, let's take a look at these three instances and how to blur through them.
Blizzard releases Bosstiary for the Frozen Halls
Following up on their neat entry for Ulduar, Blizzard has released their newest Bosstiary, this time for The Frozen Halls, the collection of new Icecrown 5-man dungeons coming with Patch 3.3. The site serves as an encyclopedia of information on the many and varied bosses of the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection. The Bosstiaries often have information that the dungeons never really give you; for example, who knew that Auriaya was the Titans' librarian? Nobody, that's who. We just wondered why the heck she was wandering around Ulduar with a bunch of cats and a bad attitude. But now you can go into the Frozen Halls and know exactly who you're fighting and why, replete with marks on the map indicating the position of the bosses and the instance entrance. The Forge of Souls sees us freeing the souls of innocents from Arthas' Soul Grinder machines, run by Bronjahm, Godfather of Souls. Guarding the machines and preventing souls from escaping is the Devourer of Souls. The Pit of Saron is Arthas' saronite mining operation; Krick, a leper gnome, oversees the operation from atop his abomination, Ick. Forgemaster Garfrost shapes the saronite into weapons of destruction under Arthas' command, and Scourgelord Tyrannus lords over the pit with his fearsome Scourge powers. The Halls of Reflection are Arthas' private quarters, guarded by his lieutenants in life, Falric and Marwyn. Inside, Arthas himself keeps Frostmourne locked away from those who would try to use it against him. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Patch 3.3 PTR: The Pit of Saron in motion
As you might have read, a few members of the WoW.com crew hit the PTR over the weekend and took a few runs through the Pit of Saron, one of the new 5-man dungeons in Patch 3.3. It's also the only one currently available for testing. We didn't walk away from it with only our impressions posts for you, oh no. We also have screenshots and video.Above you'll find our video of Forgemaster Garfrost, the first boss of the instance. Behind the cut below, you'll find the other two bosses (Krick and Scourgelord Tyrannus) and something a little... special. All of the videos are edited to make sure none of the story moments of the instance are included, so the narrative won't be spoiled for you at all. Enjoy!%Gallery-74549%
Patch 3.3 PTR: Pit of Saron first impressions
Welcome to WoW.com's two part piece on our first impressions of the Pit of Saron, one of the three new 5-man dungeons in the upcoming Patch 3.3. First up is Matthew Rossi from the point of view of a tank, followed by Matt Low with a healer's take.Okay, first off we're going to try and keep all spoilers after the cut. If you're interested in them, you go ahead and look, but please be warned. Today, your intrepid WoW.com team assembled in the super justice fortress and set forth to brave the Pit of Saron, the currently accessible dungeon on the PTR.We were a stalwart group consisting of myself, Alex Ziebart, Matt Low and Tristan from The Elitists podcast. Since there was a bug where some non-premade characters were unable to see the instance due to phasing issues, we played premades (except for Tristan, but his gear was at about that level as well): Myself as a gnome warrior tanking, Matt on a human priest and Alex on a dwarf ret paladin. While my human's DPS gear is about as good as the premade, my tanking set has more T8 in it, so the gnome felt even more OP than usual for a level 80 instance. We did bosses on both normal and heroic and the general consensus is, heroic seemed undertuned or perhaps not even tuned yet at all. We saw no major differences between our normal and heroic fights.As was mentioned in the official Blizzard page about the Pit of Saron and Patch 3.3, there are two bosses before you can access the final challenge of the instance. Since we were an Alliance group, we had Jaina Proudmoore helping us (sort of) along the way.
