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The Queue: Shaders

Michael Sacco
Updated ·4 min read

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.


Did anyone else notice the neat shader effect Blizzard's using for Ragnaros and some other mobs in the Firelands? It makes it so they have a bright contour outline no matter what direction they're facing.

Rubicon asked:

I stopped playing WOW for several months about a month after Cataclysm dropped because I could barely complete a heroic instance without 5 hours zoned in and several wipes. It got so frustrating that myself and my fiancee left the game. Well, patch 4.2 has drawn me back with the promises of new quests and a nerfed T11, which excites me. My question is this, has pugging heroics gotten any easier? Specifically the boss fights? I am only back about a week and I am intimidated to LFG because I don't want to start that headache all over again. I understand my need to know the bosses mechanics, and I hope the new journal helps others, but I was just wondering your views on current heroic pugging?

Aside from a fairly broad set of nerfs to the dungeons a few weeks/months after release, a player coming back to the game will also benefit from two other major additions to the heroic pool: gear and knowledge. The average person doing heroics right now has a much higher average gear level than someone in January would have, and because so many characters in heroics now are someone's alt, chances are good they also know the way that the dungeons work.

At least for me, no matter my gear level, pugging a non-troll heroic is like a day at the spa compared to pugging a troll heroic.



dms614 asked:

Q for the Q: Is it still possible to collect all of the pieces (or at least the main pieces that make up the look) for every tier set? I'd LOVE to do this but it seems like since old content has been moved/removed/re-done pieces might be missing...

Dungeon set 1, with sets like Valor and Arcanist, is no longer available as of Cataclysm. Dungeon set 2, the upgraded version of dungeon set 1, is also unavailable, for obvious reasons. The only other completely unavailable armor tier is tier 3, which disappeared when Naxxramas moved.

Brouck asked:

With the race to open the new vendors being such a big ordeal, will Blizz punish/fix/do something about the people who used an exploit for extra marks of the world tree?

I'm not really convinced that "world-first vendor unlock!" is really something people care about and especially not that it's something Blizzard cares about. Besides, how would you determine who exploited it on purpose and who didn't?

Calaf asked:

What happened to the Blue dragonflight quests in northrend? Are they there (ive been too busy to check) there are no breadcrumb quests that i have seen.

Those are for the Dragonwrath quest line, which can only be acquired by staff-using spellcasters who've either killed the three main tier 11 bosses or killed a Molten Lord in the Firelands.

Erndawg asked:

Why are Sub Rogues hated so much in PvE?

Subtlety was for the longest time considered "the PVP rogue spec," even by Blizzard, so it never really performed that well in PVE. And by "didn't perform well," I mean it was one of the worst-performing DPS specs in the entire game, if not the absolute worst. This changed very, very briefly with Wrath, when Honor Among Thieves was incredibly broken and a bunch of people switched to subtlety for it. Of course, it got nerfed into the ground shortly thereafter, and subtlety went back to being the spec no one played. It got a little better with Cataclysm, but ... who cares?

Basically, the issue is that the spec has been so bad in PVE for so long that it's almost not worth Blizzard's time to try to make it work. No one wants to play it.

Morgatho asked:

Question, what is up with the wind elemental in the new Thrall quest line calling Thrall the "Orc Father" and "Earthbinder"?

Earthbinder is a common shaman title; as for Orcfather, well, he led the orcs to their destiny and was the Warchief of the Horde for quite a while.

asbj0rnbendtsen asked:

I think balance is very important in a game like WoW. Thats why this bothers me: Why are there so few Trolls and Worgen druids in Hyjal/Molten Front? They are equaly members of The Cenarion Circle. I have seen 1 troll and 1 worgen so far.

Trolls and worgen are very new to the Cenarion Circle, so it makes sense that their numbers would be far smaller than the night elves and tauren.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!