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Shifting Perspectives: An Ulduar class preview, part 3
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, as other people continue their march through Ulduar, I continue to ask myself if it wouldn't be more cost-effective in the long run just to take my ailing graphics card out behind the woodshed and end its pathetic misery once and for all.Greetings, fellow Druids. There have been a few changes to Ulduar of late which I haven't yet seen play out on the live realms, but most of the changes concerned are nerfs, which should have little impact on overall raid strategy apart from giving you a bit of extra breathing room. Today we're going to address what you can expect from Auriaya and Mimiron. Mimiron in particular was the subject of some concern from feral tanks on the PTR and, well, the mechanic driving that concern is still a problem, but less of one than you might think. I was originally going to include Freya in this installment as well, but noticed that her two erstwhile comrades were starting to consume rather a lot of space. Suffice it to say that trying to describe these two fights is awkward at best, so I'm restricting myself to as much Druid-centric information as possible rather than describing every possible means of handling the fights.Oh well. Batting first for us today is sad spinster Miss Auriaya and her smelly cats, although she's a bit complicated to describe:
How to activate Ulduar's hard modes
You may have heard that a number of guilds have cleared Ulduar to Yogg-Saron already, which to me is perfectly fine. I like to think that a lot of good, properly-coordinated guilds will kill Yoggy this week, and the Blues agree with me. Of course, this week's Yoggy kills were on the easiest possible difficulty, so world first or not, it doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of fame and fortune.This is the beauty of Ulduar -- if you want prestige (and the best gear), you have to earn it by flexing your raiding muscle and beating encounters on their respective hard modes. If you don't have the chops or the time for the highest difficulty content, then you can still beat the instance and see every encounter.But, of course, you want those 239-level items.So you should probably read after the jump and find out how to activate each boss' hard mode, yeah?
Bornakk defends removing the drakes
As you have probably heard, Blizzard will be removing the Plagued and Black Proto-drake mounts from the game as of 3.1. Currently they're available from the meta-raiding achievements, but since Blizzard wants to keep them rare, they've put a limit on the time you have to finish off those achievements before Ulduar gear and higher levels make them too easy. Lots of players are less than happy about this -- we're not in the right place right now to do these achievements, but we still really want a chance at these drakes. But Bornakk defends the decision over on the forums: he says that they didn't want the achievements to be "watered down as patch after patch goes by."One player suggests tweaking them in a little different way: the new Herald of the Titans achievement actually requires you to have a certain iLevel on your gear, so that you can't get it if you're geared out so well it makes the fight trivial. Players want to know why Blizzard can't do that with the Glory of the Raider achievements, so that no matter what new gear we get, the difficulty stays the same.But Bornakk confirms that it's not a matter of difficulty, it's a question of rarity. If players were always able to get the mounts, there would always be more and more of the mounts in the game. They want to cut off the supply, period. The good news is that there will eventually be more rare mounts to go after (and I can't wait until I see that Gnome head flying around). But the proto-drakes' time is almost up.
Live Mimiron testing on the Patch 3.1 PTR
Tonight on the US Patch 3.1 PTR Mimiron will be tested, and we're bringing you the live stream of Alliance guild Symbolic Logic on Area 52. You'll be able to watch them (hopefully) down the boss. Mimiron is a mechanical boss with a slew of abilities for players to deal with. He has two phases: one where he's in his Levianthan MKII tank, and one where he's got a VX-001 Anti-personnel Assault Cannon.While in his tank Mimiron will toss napalm out dealing AoE damage, fire a plasma blast, drop some mines, and chuck about rockets all while causing a blast wave. With his cannon he will deal fire damage to players within 80 yards of him, do some frontal cone damage, and charge up his lasers for a big ol' blast that puts the BFG to shame.You can read more about him at WoWWiki.I should be a fun fight to watch!Edit: Comments are disabled for this post. Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Ulduar testing schedule updated: March 13th-18th
The last couple days of Ulduar testing have been a wash, delays and cancellations cutting things short. As mentioned by the developers when they announced the cancellation of the EU's Auriaya testing, recent tweaks and retuning hadn't yet made it to the PTR, they were contained in a future build that hadn't hit those servers yet. Really, it would be rather pointless to test those bosses. Due to this, they've pushed back all testing and changed up the testing schedule. Testing is now on hold until tomorrow, which means that either this evening or tomorrow morning, we'll be seeing a new build on the PTR.North American realms: Friday, 3/13, 4PM PDT: Mimiron Saturday, 3/14, 4PM PDT: Hodir Sunday, 3/15, 11AM PDT: Flame Leviathan Monday, 3/16, 4PM PDT: Ignis the Furnace Master Tuesday, 3/17, 4PM PDT: XT-002 Deconstructor Wednesday, 3/18, 4PM PDT: Kologarn European realms: Friday, 3/13, 19:00 CET: Mimiron Saturday, 3/14, 19:00 CET: Auriaya Sunday, 3/15, 19:00 CET: Flame Leviathan Monday, 3/16, 19:00 CET: General Vezax Tuesday, 3/17, 19:00 CET: Thorim Wednesday, 3/18, 19:00 CET: Freya Again, this is the new testing schedule for the upcoming week, and the one that was passed around yesterday should be disregarded.
Ulduar testing schedule for March 11th-15th
We dropped the ball a little bit by failing to post about this week's Ulduar testing schedule yesterday when Daelo posted it to the official forums, but that's alright. We didn't miss much. Last night was just more Hodir testing. The rest of the week should prove more interesting, because they're re-testing a couple of bosses that were pretty widely considered much too easy, like Ignis the Furnace Master, which I hear received a little extra testing last night for some reason. Again, both the US and EU realms are getting their own testing schedule.North American realms: Wednesday, 3/11 (today), 4 PM PDT: Mimiron Thursday, 3/12, 4 PM PDT: Ignis the Furnace Master Friday, 3/13, 4 PM PDT: XT-002 Deconstructor Saturday, 3/14, 4PM PDT: Kologarn Sunday, 3/15, 11 AM PDT: Flame Leviathan European realms: Wednesday, 3/11, 19:00 CET: Auriaya Thursday, 3/12, 19:00 CET: Mimiron Friday, 3/13, 19:00 CET: Thorim Saturday, 3/14, 19:00 CET: General Vezax Sunday, 3/15, 19:00 CET: Flame Leviathan I don't believe we've seen anything about Auriaya yet, so that's what I'm looking forward to the most. We haven't seen much of Mimiron either, but we already know he's just another mechagnome. Gotta say, not a fan of the mechagnomes.%Gallery-45995%
