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Tank Talk: The irresistible fight
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. Since Tank Talk began, we've gotten a few questions from people about raid fights that require tanks to use resist gear. With all of Burning Crusade's raid attunements now removed, and with lots of guilds testing the waters in Tier 5 and Tier 6 before Wrath hits, I figure now's as good a time as any to discuss what resist sets you're going to want if your guild is intent on progression. The resist gear issue is nowhere near as dire as it was in vanilla WoW (Molten Core, anyone?) and in general the raid as a whole rarely needs to worry.Tanks are special. But you knew that already, didn't you?This guide covers all of the existing 10-man and 25-man content in the game outside of Sunwell Plateau:
Evade me no longer
For some reason, the first evade bug moment I remember happened in Zul'Farrak. We were clearing the basilisk pulls before attempting Antu'sul (why is it that the optional bosses always have a couple of sweet warrior drops?) and the mage in the group wanted to skip the whole thing. Impatient, he decided to start nuking away from atop one of the hills surrounding the area and managed to pull aggro, but the basilisk couldn't path up to him (and to be honest I'm not sure how he got up there) and promptly went evade. He wouldn't come down because he rightly knew the mob would hit him, and so it took us a solid ten minutes of arguing before he finally came into the monster's reach so that I could taunt it.I'm thinking about this because of the Isle of Quel'Danas dailies, specifically the quest Crush the Dawnblade. For some reason whenever I do this quest I run into Dawnblade Summoners who are evading. This puzzles me because I can't understand why a ranged mob is evading: it doesn't have to path to anything to hit it, just get into range. Is there some way a hunter or some other ranged class can shoot them but stay out of their range?
Get your bear mount before Wrath
You know that awesome Amani War Bear? The one that has been sold for 20,000 gold? Well, you'd better work on getting it as soon as possible if you want one, because when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, it will no longer be attainable. Currently you get it as a reward for a time-based challenge in the ten-man raid Zul'Aman: free all four prisoners in time, get bear. Tigole just posted in the official forums that upon Wrath's release, the bear will be replaced with "a very good, epic item," basically to preserve the prestige of having gotten the bear at its intended difficult level. He says they plan on doing a similar thing with the "Hand of A'dal" and "Champion of the Naaru" titles as well. I can understand this move -- it would probably be trivial to get the bear with a raid full of level 80s. And there is still a fair amount of time before Wrath comes out.However, it makes me sad to see something become impossible to get. I think it would be a better solution if they made it so the bear could only be attained by a raid containing no members above level 70, personally. As Zach pointed out to me, the change that they're proposing now means that no Death Knight will ever be on a bear mount, and that's just sad. Unless, that is, they introduce a polar bear mount in Northrend -- did somebody say panserbjørne?If this is one of your goals before Wrath, don't forget to check out WoW Insider's complete guide on how to get your own Amani War Bear.Update: Chances look good for a bear in Northrend. Tigole said: "Polar Bear sound cool?"
Breakfast Topic: Scam or service?
A couple months ago, Daniel Whitcomb wrote a great post about maximizing your bag space which included how to get a 20 slot bag from Budd Nedreck (pictured above). In it he explained exactly where to go in a cleared Zul'Aman to complete Budd's Promises, Promises quest.Zzmorriss wrote in to say that he was offering in the Trade Channel to run people through his guild's cleared ZA instance in order to complete that quest. He charged 10 gold to join the raid and be guided to the place to get the item for Budd. He then charged another 10 gold a person to run them through again to do Budd's follow up quest. He made a total of 180 gold for 15 minutes of work and then ran through 6 or 7 more groups before the reset.
Shifting Perspectives: 2.4 Badge-A-Palooza, Druid style
Every week, Shifting Perspectives is written by someone who is not me. Except for that one time. Rather an addictive experience, stealing this column. Does anyone even read the italicized portion at the top? Hello? Nobody? I'm just gonna sing. "My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, my baloney has a [censored over copyright infringement] (ed. just do the column, please).While I sincerely hope the rumors about the patch hitting soon aren't true because I'm sitting on all of 43 badges of justice right now (g@^#(*% mother-expletive piece of $%^@ fire resistance set), I am forced to admit that the times may possibly have caught up with me. I confess that for a long time I hadn't even looked at the new badge loot that will become available ingame, partly because things have gotten markedly busier with my guild of late and partly because I'd planned my 2.3 badge acquisitions very carefully and wondered if I could get away with keeping myself somewhat unspoiled for 2.4. That lasted until I found out just how expensive the 2.4 gear is actually going to be ("150 badges for a new weapon, Zach? Are you @*(#&#% kidding me?"). Noble effort while it lasted, though. Well, no more. If 2.4 does hit next week, I'm going to be ready to stand in front of the badge vendor and know exactly what I can't afford to buy for all three specs.This treatment looks exclusively at the new leather gear offerings available in 2.4 and assumes that you won't have access, or at least immediate access, to the new 25-man raid Sunwell Plateau. For my part I am still using six -- count 'em, six -- pieces of badge gear for various tanking purposes in Tier 6 content, which either says a great deal about the general quality of badge gear or says a great deal about how bad feral itemization is in endgame content. I'll be magnanimous today and say it's both.
Are raiders becoming obsolete?
At first glance, I didn't really think there was much out of the ordinary about a post made by one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, Neg. A number of raiding guilds have complained strenuously about the presence of easy-to-obtain epics in the game, but any post entitled, "Does Blizzard Hate Raiders?" is typically going to get a scoff and little else. I had read the article shortly before zoning into Black Temple for the third time ever, and for the first time with the ingame sound on. My guild had recently killed both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus, and while the Karabor Sewers portion of the instance is interesting to look at, it pales in comparison to what you'll see once you're offered a teleport to a different floor by a member of the Ashtongue Deathsworn. My guildies and I were really just there to farm Hearts of Darkness for resist gear and to explore a little bit, with nothing really important on our minds. Nevertheless, what we saw that night was beautiful. The floor you're ported to has a tiny, friendly area with the Ashtongue Quartermaster, but beyond that lie a number of sinister things. The ceiling is pillared by giant statues much like those that guard the portal into Outland, and rogues lurk in pairs seemingly all around you. Not infrequently you find yourself turning around to shouts on vent to see them rapidly killing off members of the raid; we finally hit upon the strategy of sending our own rogues off to sniff out the presence of danger while the raid itself was ringed and guarded on all sides by the tanks. Once another set of rogues was found, our hunters set up Flares to flush them out of hiding, marked them, and pulled carefully. You were only really safe if you were in the middle portion of the raid; wandering off to go explore on your own was unthinkable.The music is lovely, the atmosphere is stellar, and for the first time ever in a raid I felt the real sense of a dangerous place with violent, unpredictable creatures that didn't want us there. It was one of the few times that we've actually had to use real strategy as a raid outside of a boss fight. Black Temple makes it abundantly obvious that you are a small, embattled group struggling to survive against overwhelming odds. Most raids are pretty straightforward - learn the tricks to the trash, pull the trash, clear the trash, ask "What's the respawn timer?", and then kill the boss. Tempest Keep is a pretty cold and sterile environment; Serpentshrine Cavern is more interesting visually but the trash is, in many cases, just pull after pull after pull of the exact same stuff (weirdly enough, Karazhan and Zul'Aman seem to come a little closer to the Black Temple raid mentality than their Tier 5 brothers). But there is so much obvious care and attention lavished on the endgame raids, I said to myself (while taking tons of screenshots and turning the sound up), that I just don't buy the argument that Blizzard doesn't give a hoot about raiders. But Neg isn't really writing about the conflict between raiders and the rest of us, which has been a pretty thoroughly discussed in one form or another. It's his contention that the raiding world - what I saw on Thursday and what Nihilum practically does professionally - is becoming obsolete in this, the Age of Purple.
Breakfast Topic: The Zul'Aman speed bump
Zul'Aman. Heard of it? Noticed a lot of folks trading in their Kara gear for some rickety pieces of wood held together with twine? ZA has been live for some time now and most of us have had the chance to check out Blizzard's latest 10-man offerings. So here's the question: Is Zul'Aman worth the trouble? Sure, it's fun. The bosses are nifty and whatnot. But is it progression? A number of guilds have graduated from Karazhan in the last month or so, but instead of moving into 25-man content, the majority are turning to our new favorite troll town. Of course some of them are dabbling in Gruul's Lair but I dare say Lady Vashj isn't getting as much company as she used to. There is definitely something to be said about the fact that ZA is 10-man content. If you have a great Kara guild but not enough numbers to move up, ZA is a blessing to say the least. But is that a good thing? Ultimately, if you want to see Black Temple, you're running out of time, and postponing 25-man content is not helping your cause. The expansion will arrive sooner or later and when it does, people will not be interested in killing Illidan anymore. They'll want to see Northrend. If you've tried to put together a Naxx run lately, you know what I'm talking about. So what do you think? Is ZA helping people get the gear they need to succeed? Or is it keeping them away from the prize?
GM saves player from accidental Season 3 purchase
Once upon a time, November 13th to be exact, someone very close to me traveled to the Arena vendor in Area 52 to buy his first Season 3 gear. He had been saving up his Arena points and was excited about getting gauntlets for his resto speced Shammy. Now, he didn't have to go to Area 52. There are new Arena vendors in Blade's Edge, Nagrand and Gadgetzan, but he traveled to Area 52 to be AoE'd with everyone else. (Also, he's got one of those nifty pirate hats, so he's KOS in Gadgetzan.)After being feared a couple times, he bought his new gauntlets, only to find out that instead of being the coveted resto gloves, he had accidentally purchased enhancement ones.
Exploring Zul'Aman
We're a couple of weeks out from patch 2.3 which introduced World of Warcraft's newest dungeon, the Troll-filled Zul'Aman. Have you had a chance to venture in yet? If not, there's no need to fear, because we're got a gallery of screenshots from the dungeon that will allow you to enjoy the environment vicariously. It's nearly as much fun as being there and you save a lot of gold in repair bills! Do you have a great shot taken inside Zul'Aman that you'd like to share with the rest of the world? An especially good boss kill story? Send it to us and we'll put it in our gallery with your name and story attached!%Gallery-11080%
Progressing through Zul'Aman
Zul'Aman was released with the rest of patch 2.3 two weeks ago today. Due to its place in the progression chain, many guilds were able to burn through it on the first day it was released. Downing Zul'jin is nothing when you're raiding in Hyjal and Black Temple, apparently. Of course, the intended audience for this dungeon seems to be those raiding groups that hadn't seen much action past Karazhan.My own guild has had some success in ZA. While most of us have at least one or two pieces of tier 5 quality loot, we're not up to Vashj or Kael yet, so ZA still holds some challenges for us. We are still dedicated to pushing through the twenty-five player raids, so we haven't spent a lot of time in ZA, but we've been able to take down three bosses without much difficulty. It's a nice change of pace to face encounters where there is a learning curve, but still a lot of room for error. We haven't had much luck at all with the timed aspect of the dungeon, often with silly mistakes costing us those precious few minutes we needed to rescue the prisoner.
PTR Notes: New Discipline talent, PvP item tweaks
Yesterday a new build of patch 2.3 went live on the PTRs, and while the blues don't seem to have updated the patch notes, World of Raids has the full scoop on the changes. Here's what's new: 5 new PvP trinkets, available for 30k honor plus 40 AV marks from the honor vendors, or for 75 Badges of Justice from G'eras (man, that guy's item list is getting long). A new Priest talent in Discipline, called Focused Will (see screenshot). It sits right next to Power Infusion, and has no specific prerequisite. The Retribution Paladin season 3 arena set, Gladiator's Vindication, has had its spell damage stats replaced with physical damage stats. The Restoration Druid season 3 arena set, Gladiator's Refuge, has had its recently-added spirit reverted back to mp5. "The new pvp daily quest now rewards 11g99s and 4192 honor (up from about 2000) Edit: this was a typo, apparently on Blizzard's part. The actual reward is 400 honor, but it no longer rewards marks of honor." Zul'Aman's starting event "improved" It is no longer possible to have both a PvP title and a PvE title at the same time. The fish-tracking manual has been found (fished up), as well as an item that starts a (currently bugged) fishing quest. Many ZA weapons and armor pieces have been recolored. For more details on all of this, bounce on over to World of Raids. What do you guys think of Focused Will? It looks a little weak to me for being that deep in the tree (not to mention its name is distractingly similar to Force of Will). Obviously a PvP talent. Arena fiends, will you be taking it?
Zul'Aman and Scarlet Monastery becoming safer for Alliance
Level 70 Elite Tauren guards (not to be confused with L70ETC) have been stationed outside Zul'Aman on the test server. I agree with Elizabeth that the race choice makes no sense, but according to CM Nethaera, the guards (in some form) are there to stay. This is, of course, in response to the overwhelming complaints from Alliance players that have to go to Horde territory in order to try out the new instance.Nethaera also says that they will be implementing a Contested Area around Zul'Aman to further alleviate the unbridled ganking currently occuring there. She says that in the past, they could only flag entire zones as contested, but now they have the ability to change the PvP status of just an area within a zone. This change will be implemented on the PTR first before coming to live servers.They are also going to be surrounding other instances with contested areas, such as the Scarlet Monastery. Unfortunately for the Alliance players currently trying to farm the Headless Horseman, this change will come a bit late. But maybe it will be implemented in time for next year's event.Players have been voicing concerns about changing the areas in lowbie zones to contested. How will it affect the level 10s trying to quest around these new contested areas?
WarCry on Zul'Aman and "logical loot"
The Zul'Aman preview information just doesn't stop. WarCry has a fairly in-depth rundown of the place which contains the following information of note that I haven't seen elsewhere: Largely or entirely outdoors Each of the first four bosses should take 45 minutes to an hour to complete, making the raid very modular in terms of time -- spend an hour, down a boss, stop for the night if you want. This makes casual raiding much more of a possibility. The last two bosses, the Witch Doctor and Zul'Jin, have to be done at once, though. No associated faction; instead, faster boss kills will yield better rewards. "Blizzard fully expects this to become a competitive sport." In non-Zul'Aman-related news, there has been a loot table design decision over in Irvine:We were also told about a philosophical change at Blizzard, namely logical loot. Previously, the loot tables were somewhat random. They're not going back and fixing years of content, but now, players can expect creatures to drop things that one would expect. If that bad guy is holding a big, shiny axe, then odds are his loot is a big shiny axe.This is pretty interesting. There have been some steps in that direction from the very beginning, with animal-type mobs carrying body-part vendor trash instead of coins, for instance, but I'm glad to see more attempts to make the game world coherent.
Mega Man ZX videos blast your eye sockets
For those of you looking to get your bot-blasting on with the blue bomber himself (we assume that is everyone, naturally), set your gaze to two new videos over at Game Trailers. One is the intro to the game, the second being a longer, more mouth-watering look at the title's gameplay. As is the norm, continue on to check out the two trailers embedded into the post.
Xbox 360 invades South Africa next month
Better late than never news now, as Microsoft sends out word that the Xbox 360 will be launching in South Africa this September. After gifting upon the world Nelson Mandela, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charlize Theron, Dave Matthews and frequently delicious koeksusters, it seems only fair to reward the third-world country with a shiny new games console. Local marketing manager, Cindy White, explains that South African gamers are a hungry bunch: "South Africa is a country where the appetite for console gaming is growing in leaps and bounds – expanding to Africa allows us to build a successful business ecosystem for our partners, and to bring more gamers amazing next-generation gaming and entertainment experiences."What she fails to mention, however, is that the entertainment experience arrives with a significant bite taken out of it. According to the online variant of NAG, a local gaming magazine, Xbox Live will not be "officially" supported within the first 12 months of the system's arrival. Stopping short of physically removing one of the analog sticks on the 360 controller, this move seems to leave quite a significant gap in the console's appeal. Live itself will still function -- the hardcore group of currently connected South Africans can attest to that -- but it will likely be impossible to purchase Live subscriptions from stores or perform marketplace transactions in South African currency.Both the normal and core editions of the Xbox 360 will launch on 29 September for R3,699 ($519) and R2,699 ($378) respectively. Until then, South Africans can enjoy reading irksome generalizations and ignorant remarks ("You wont ear people talking thats for sure , all you will ear is clicking sounds , cant wait to play againts Shaka Zulu") on the official Xbox forums. After the break: This entire post written...in the Afrikaans language!
