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Should green fire be prestigious?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wishes the mages would stop sending out the bad voodoo vibes to everything she owns so she can buy new fun things for her birthday instead of old replacements. There's plenty to look for through the datamining, but the question on everyone's mind is, "How do I start the questline?" Trust me, when someone finds out, I'm sure the internet will explode about it. It'll probably be on a Monday, during my other job's hours, and right after this column posts, knowing my luck. But before I get into an all-out walkthrough of the questline, I want to discuss one thing: does green fire have to be exclusive? Is exclusivity required for meaningfulness?
The Blue Child returns to Azeroth
Players who were around during classic may remember that Azeroth once had two moons: The large, white moon was called the White Lady, and the smaller, blue moon was called the Blue Child. Lorewise, the White Lady was what the night elves called Elune and the tauren Mu'sha. The Blue Child doesn't seem to have figured quite as prominently in the lore, so I guess it was an auxiliary back-up moon for when Azeroth experienced sudden spikes in moon-related demand. The Blue Child disappeared during patch 1.10.0 before the Burning Crusade. Anne's theory is that, since this coincides with Blizzard's addition of weather effects to the world, it was probably removed due to graphical errors. Whatever the reason, since then there have been only occasional references to its existence within the game: You could see it around the three-dimensional map of Azeroth in Halls of Lightning, and it was briefly visible during the Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest quest line. However, players were delighted to discover that it made a reappearance on the Mists of Pandaria beta, and it looks like patch 5.0.4 has finally restored the Blue Child to the world. Thanks to Jeff Hoskins for the tip and Dawn Moore for the picture!
Legendaries for Everyone: What could it mean?
Our friends over at Wowhead datamined up news that could be a game-changer if it goes live. It seems possible that the Wrathion quests datamined last month offers eight varieties of legendary, including a shield and a gun. This could mean that this will be the first legendary that any class -- and potentially, any spec -- can equip and use. The quests seem to involve multiple tiers of raiding, meaning that you won't be able to get a legendary at the end of the first Mists of Pandaria raids and will have to be in it for the long haul to acquire one. This avoids the problem of early legendaries (such as Dragonwrath or Val'anyr) being adjusted in later patches. However, the very possibility that this will be a legendary that anyone can get means we need to consider the effect it's going to have on your raiding group.
WoW Moviewatch: Dragonwrath: A Legendary Musical
What do you get when you cross Nananea and Sharm? A musical -- but not just any musical. You get Dragonwrath: A Legendary Musical. Set aside some time, kick your feet up, and relax with an awesome machinima that's truly a breath of fresh, beautiful air. The plot's essentially about getting Dragonwrath, so I'm not going to belabor that. I want to focus on the amazing singing, fun lyrics, and awesome storybook style. I'm so happy to see folks revisiting these kind of productions; while I embrace all forms of machinima, this kind of music and story amalgam has always been my favorite. Dragonwrath: A Legendary Musical is an epic video that stands out in the current crop of machinima. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Would removing legendaries be a benefit for the World of Warcraft?
It's very hard to imagine a Cataclysm without legendary items. Despite the fact that it wasn't introduced until six months into the game's existence, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest has become a staple item in every progression raiding guild's repetoire. The Fangs of the Father, Golad and Tiriosh, have only recently started to actually appear in game, but every week from now on will see more and more being finished. Coming hand in hand with these legendary items are the issues of imbalance that they cause. In PvE, terminology has started to crop up that puts legendary and non-legendary DPS into two separate categories of competitiveness. Concepts exist such as "enhancement shaman are currently one of the top non-legendary DPS specs..." -- a category that encompasses only 10 of the 22 DPS classes in the game. In PvP, concerns about burst damage have arisen, which was a big factor in the nerf to DTR that came in 4.3. The issues with legendaries Legendaries cause a balance problem, and that's a problem that's been exacerbated by two things in Cataclysm: a horrifically wide spread of specs that can use them, with 12 specs or five classes in total having access to legendary weapons right now, and incredible ease of access to legendaries (for the heroic raider).
Encrypted Text: How fast can you get Fangs of the Father?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Last week, a rogue obtained the very first pair of legendary daggers, Fangs of the Father. The spelling of the rogue's name is Имбос, and I can only imagine it sounds like the words "borscht" and "gulag" combined, because those are the only two Russian words that I know. You might recognize Имбос's guild, Exorsus, as the guild that achieved the world-first Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider. Thankfully, I can actually pronounce Exorsus. How could one guild win both the Glory achievement and legendary dagger races? In fact, how could any rogue have obtained the Fangs of the Father when they take eight weeks to acquire, at the very least? If you're keeping track, there have been seven raid lockout periods since patch 4.3 and Dragon Soul were released. If you examine Имбос's armory, you'll notice that there are a combined nine kills of Yor'sahj listed (three normal, six heroic). Lockout resetting is a known issue for progression raiders, but since it hasn't been declared an exploit by Blizzard, there's nothing stopping players from spending some cash to get ahead. I'll be waiting to congratulate the first rogue to acquire Fangs of the Father in a mathematically possible timetable.
Totem Talk: Choosing an elemental shaman weapon in Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.) One of my favorite things about Dragon Soul are the weapons off Deathwing, as proc weapons have a long but tenuous history with WoW players. Some fondly remember the Fireball proc from Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, while enhancement shaman look back on Onyxia's Empowered Deathbringer and wonder what Blizzard was thinking. Seriously, the lower-ilevel Calamity's Grasp off the end boss from two patches prior was a better choice. Losing stats in favor of a weapon's proc effect is always a gamble, especially given how incredibly loaded weapons are with stats. Going from a Lightning Rod to a Ti'tahk, the Steps of Time involves giving up a tremendous 300 hit rating and even more haste rating with the hope of the haste proc's paying off in times of great need. Because of this, I was curious about how the weapons in Dragon Soul would stand up when compared to one another, especially since there are multiple non-proc weapons in the instance to compete with the proc ones. So, I took to every elemental shaman's best friend -- Simulation Craft -- and did some simulations with a variety of weapon combinations. The shocking results: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest is still the best weapon in the game. Surprise?
Encrypted Text: Remembering 2011 as the year of the rogue
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here, like how to sneak around wearing a gaudy sweater. With 2010 fading fast, rogues apprehensively looked forward to Cataclysm and how it would shape 2011. We were the crowned kings of Icecrown Citadel, with armor penetration and attack power as our top stats and both assassination and combat battling for first place. Mutilate rogues still tied down by Hunger for Blood, and combat rogues were spamming Blade Flurry on cooldown for the attack speed increase. Looking back, we have grown since Wrath. Each of the rogue specs has evolved and found a niche, and even subtlety can make a reasonable claim for a raid spot now. With the massive talent system revamp, the developers struggled initially to balance each spec against the others. Rogues entered into 2011 and Cataclysm with a whimper, as the loss of armor penetration and the conversion of attack power to agility was not as smooth as Blizzard would have hoped.
Know Your Lore: The top 10 lore reveals of Cataclysm, part 1
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. Spoilers for every single Cataclysm raid and zone to be found here. On the whole, Cataclysm has revealed a great deal of lore for the Warcraft universe. We've been to all four of the elemental planes and destabilized two of them by destroying the elemental lords who were effectively the dictatorial forces of their respective elementals. As of this writing, only Therazane remains as undisputed master of her elemental plane. (Indeed, with the destruction of Deathwing, she's actually in a stronger place than she was.) We've seen the Twilight's Hammer cult rise to world-shaking prominence and played a role in setting them back by destroying Cho'gall. We've finally managed to balk them on the eve of their Old God masters' final triumph by destroying Deathwing just as he was about to unleash an even more destructive assault on Azeroth than his first. The Dragon Aspects lost their immortality just after we discovered that there were actually safeguards in place to appoint new ones. We discovered the secret land of Uldum and its Titanic ruins, and we prevented the activation of the Halls of Origination at Deathwing's behest and discovered the connection between the Qiraji and Uldum. We also saw the war between the Alliance and Horde begin lurching toward a new phase. We discovered the fate of Gilneas and the Gilneans, saw tantalizing hints as to the development of the goblin people and their mysterious kajamite, and even more. It's been an eventful expansion in terms of what it established. For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to talk about where Cataclysm took us and what we discovered.
Player nabs two legendaries in one week
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. It's a good week when you can say you've finally completed a legendary weapon in World of Warcraft -- and for one hard-working player on Spinebreaker (US), it was a very good week indeed. Lucky dog Nasar and his alt Grômp have both completed the legendary staff Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest this week. Even more remarkably, the alt actually beat the main to the punch by a few days. Pulling strings behind the scenes? Nepotism? Cronyism? Hitting the ol' casting couch, even? No, Nasar and Grômp earned their staves the old-fashioned way: dedication to guild and goals. "We have exceptional casters in our guild, and Nasar is one of them," says guildmate Linthiel. "We always knew we wanted to give Nasar a legendary, even though we couldn't give it to him first. Nasar has been leading our guild's GDKP, which enabled our alts to get Firelands gear, and many mains on our server a shot at killing Ragnoras. I've personally been raiding with Nasar for over three years -- we both got our Firelord title last week -- and I am very happy for him. His main and his alt deserve this."
Spiritual Guidance: Through a Glass, Darkly: Getting the legendary, part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration (and say really controversial stuff, apparently). Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. With patch 4.2, our own legendary came at last. The power of the weapon is absolutely unmatched. By virtue of the staff's stats, it's the shadow priest's best-in-slot weapon for patch 4.2 and likely for patch 4.3 as well. Beyond that, though, Dragonwrath is worth thousands of extra DPS by virtue of its spell-duplication proc alone. And did I mention that it can also turn you into a giant friggin' blue dragon? Why wouldn't you want this thing? But like everything worth doing, getting the Dragonwrath doesn't come easy. To score this epic, you need to put in your time in the Firelands, beat down some bosses, and then undergo Through a Glass, Darkly, the hardest solo quest your shadow priest will ever suffer. Are you ready?
Ready Check: How legendaries destroy PVE
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. By now, everyone is familiar with the bitter arguments that follow the release of any legendary weapon. There are always the petty squabbles over who should get it first, which class or spec gains the most benefit from it, even down so much as to who should be allowed to get the item at all. Beyond those things, there is always the riled-up PVP crowd. PVP doesn't offer itemization or choices to mirror or match legendary items by any means, and every legendary item has long been a must-have for any serious PVPer. Basically, you have a legendary, you rock face without even questioning it; without one, well, you just better pray you end up matched on equal footing. Every legendary has done this, and each one has created a new controversy, yet no one ever gives any consideration to the opposing side of the game. Yes, legendaries come from PVE, and any raider can technically get one with dedication, but they have just as of an unbalancing impact on the raiding scene as they do the PVP-verse. This week, we'll be looking into those negative reactions.
Patch 4.3 PTR patch notes updated for Oct. 18
The patch notes for the patch 4.3 PTR have gone through a slight overhaul today. While the changes are not many, they're pretty significant. Some of these changes have already been noted by players, like Hurricane's new visual. Others are more of a surprise. All healing debuffs are now up to 25%, from the current 10% on live. This includes the hunter pet abilities Monstrous Bite and Widow's Venom, rogue Wound Poison, and warrior Mortal Strike and Furious Attacks. Paladins will now see Beacon of Light triggered by Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing. Added a feature to interact with NPCs, game objects (mailbox, mining nodes, etc.), and corpses on left-click as well as right-click. There is now an option under Interface:Controls to turn this feature off. Finally, Dragonwrath users will notice that the chance for its effect to go off has been reduced. Not sure why Blizzard decided to buff healing debuffs at this stage of the expansion or why it reduced Dragonwrath's chance to proc. Am interested in seeing if arms PVP feels better to me now, I will admit. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
World-first Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest completed by Premonition
Big congratulations are in store for Siiz, gnome mage extraordinaire from Premonition, who is the world-first wielder of the newest legendary item, Dragonwrath. Along with completing the legendary staff, Siiz opened up the Lil'Tarecgosa companion pet for his entire guild, as well as the ability to use the staff as a mount to transform into Tarecgosa herself. The unique Tarecgosa model is used as the mount, much like how players transform into a drake using the Vial of the Sands. Tarecgosa cannot carry another player as a passenger, however. From the screenshots, the mount version looks bigger than most drakes, noting its legendary status. Very, very cool. I like the fact that Blizzard has added in something that will let the legendary staff live on beyond its usefulness, as opposed to just looking nice when you equip it. Again, big congratulations to Siiz and Premonition. Even though Siiz is a gnome, we won't hold it against him.
Video of the Delegation and Volcanus the Firelord
Spoiler alert! If you do not want to read or watch anything about the quest for the legendary staff Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest, read and watch no further. Also, the video contains some strong language, but nothing you wouldn't expect from a raid group on Vent. Guilds are finally getting their 25 Eternal Embers from the Firelands and continuing to forge the great legendary staff Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. The next big hurdle in the quest for the staff is the Delegation quest line, requiring raiders to complete a set of four charged fragments from Shannox, Beth'tilac, Rhyolith, and Alysrazor. Each fragment requires the player on the Dragonwrath quest to complete a task during these encounters in order to charge the boss-specific fragment. Once all of the fragments are complete, the raid gains access to The Anvil of Conflagration, where the Branch of Nordrassil is being held.
Arcane Brilliance: Upgrading your mage's gear in patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Other things, too, but none of those things are nearly as important. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Arcane Brilliance is, without a doubt, the single greatest weekly mage column on this website. Period. New patch day has come and gone, and we're all now furiously blasting through the new content, hoping to upgrade our old uber gear for new uber gear. I love the weeks following patch days. It's like the twelve days of Christmas, only instead of turtle doves and french hens we get magical flaming staves and giant angry lava spiders. Sadly, all that new gear doesn't simply come down the chimney and appear below our flaming Christmas trees. We have to earn it, farm for it, slay bosses for it, and quest for it. All of those things take time, a thing I find I have precious little of these days. So where best to allocate our time in order to get the gear we want in the most efficient ways possible?
Ready Check: The quest for Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. There is one thing about WoW that is a constant. No matter what happens in the game, there is one truth that will never change. That is, people get color-crazy. Blue gear, purple gear, orange gear -- people care about the color of the items that you are wearing. When a new legendary is introduced into the game, that becomes the biggest thing on everyone's lips. It is the new hot item, the one thing that everyone wants. Patch 4.2 introduced one such item. Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest is the big deal of this raiding tier, and it is the thing that people want. Last week, I did a little blurb about the staff, but that alone wasn't enough. There've been plenty of emails asking for more information on the specifics of the legendary, so here are your answers. (For those wondering, next week will see the start of the Ready Check raiding guides, so make sure to tune in for those as we go an an adventure of killing all of this tier's big bads. For now, let's talk about a staff.)
Arcane Brilliance: How to be legendary
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. The title of this week's column is a bit misleading. As we all know, mages are, by virtue of their magehood, already legendary. I probably should have called it "How to be more legendary," or "How to be legendarier." Too late now, it's already been typed. Last week, as I neared completion of Arcane Brilliance's mage guide to patch 4.2, I touched upon one of the more exciting aspects of our impending foray into the Firelands: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. Dragonwrath will be the new legendary staff available to casters in this patch. It will be difficult, but not by any means impossible, for a good guild to obtain. It will require a long term commitment to the new Firelands raid content. Most guilds will only obtain the staff once, and even the really high-speed guilds will only be able to pick up this staff for a select few of their caster members. It's an incredible piece of statistical candy. Dragonwrath will be the best-in-slot weapon for every variety of DPS caster the moment it becomes available, by a very large margin, and it will likely remain that way for the rest of this expansion and into a good portion of the next one. If you are able to get your hands on it, you won't be letting go of it any time soon. Absolutely every caster class/spec will want it, including hybrids and classes that use spirit. Take a look at your guild. How many level 85 DPS casters do you raid with? Now look at yourself. How many of you are there? No, your mirror images don't count. Those are your odds. So how do you lower those odds? How do you stack the deck a bit in your favor. My mission this week, ladies and gentlemen, is to help you be the chosen one in your guild who gets to wield this spectacular weapon. No, not you, warlock. My mission, this week as every week, is to see you die in a fire.
Arcane Brilliance: Patch 4.2 changes, clarifications and legendary staves
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we discuss the perils of writing about the PTR, which stands for "Public Test Realm." For a very long time, I thought it stood for "Pirate Taco Restaurant," which I thought sounded more fun, frankly. Yes, it's always a good time when I write something and the testing process immediately renders almost every word of it completely moot. Testing is testing, I guess, and absolutely everything that pops up on the PTR at pretty much any stage of the testing cycle is entirely subject to change. So remember what we talked about last week? The whole tier 12 set bonus thing? No longer true. Well, okay, I guess some of it still holds true, but not the really interesting part. Gone is the moving Arcane Missiles. To me, that was the single most significant bonus being offered by the tier 12 set for mages, but it's been removed entirely in the latest PTR build. The other bonuses remain, in slightly altered form, but mobile missiles is apparently out. Still, I'm not perturbed, other than my simmering rage at having a thousand or so of my words -- wrung from my brain only a week prior, sweat out over a hot (or at least lukewarm, perhaps slightly moist) keyboard, painstakingly arranged into mildly pleasing, competently conjugated sentences -- become instantly irrelevant. You see, I actually think this could end up being a good thing for mages, and I promise that in a minute or two I will tell you why I think that, and the answer will not be "because of all that paint I huffed."
The OverAchiever: New achievements in patch 4.2
Every Thursday, The OverAchiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, pet biscuits make us happy ... for a little while, at least. We're going to take another break from our Mountain O' Mounts series to examine upcoming achievements in patch 4.2. We got an avalanche of news on these last Friday via MMO-Champion's datamining efforts on PTR build 14117, and they all look pretty nifty. There are 16 achievements associated with the new Firelands/Mount Hyjal daily quest area, on which I have very little information right now, so we're going to examine those later. However, that still leaves us with new pet, legendary, dungeon, and anniversary achievements.
