Archavon
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Did you miss in Pandaria?: BFFs with Huggalon
Looking to build toward 150 toys for the Toymaster achievement? There's an easily obtainable toy in Townlong Steppes, but it's quite hidden, and also ... kind of disturbing. In the caves beneath Niuzao Temple lurks an ancient watcher, apparently from the same Titan brand as Archavon. His name is Huggalon the Heart Watcher. He looks just like the Wrath-era raid boss, if you ignore the giant purple bow on his head. And you should. To find him, enter the caves on the west side of the island. Take the first right and follow the right-hand walls. Just before you pass through an entrance lit by glowing beetles, you'll see a small passage up and to the right. At the end of this passage, Huggalon waits. You won't see a rare icon on your map because he is not a rare spawn. He's easily soloable in Siege of Orgrimmar gear, but feel free to bring friends if you might need backup. He does hit hard against cloth and has a decent chunk of health. Or, you can give this lonely giant the hug he yearns for and walk away. If you opt for murder, you'll be rewarded with the B.F.F. Necklace. You can place it in your toybox and then choose a player to be Friends Forever! with once per day. But honestly, who wants to be friends with a cold-blooded killer like you? While you're in the cave, keep an eye out for Fragment of Dread, part of the Riches of Pandaria achievement.
Earth, Wind & Fire video by Mediocrity
The guild Mediocrity from Blackrock (US) is the second guild in the world to complete the Earth, Wind & Fire achievement. While Vanquish was the first guild to accomplish this special kind of kill, Mediocrity gives us all the gift of a video so that we can share in their achievement.You can see how the team split up the tanking duties, keeping one group on Emalon while the other was stacked up on Archavon and Koralon. This is no small feat, and a clear success of coordination and skill. Congratulations![Via MMO-Champion]
Ready Check: Koralon the Flame Watcher
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. If you remember, back when Emalon the Storm Watcher hit the ground, our own Zach Yonzon warned you that Emalon was no loot pinata. While Archavon required only a bare minimum of basic skills, and was really just a DPS race even when he first came out, Emalon to this day requires your group to vaguely pay attention and kill the big, growing add first. With the beginning of the new Arena season, Koralon the FIre Watcher has taken up residence with Emalon and Archavon. He lives to the left of the hall, opposite to where Emalon hangs out. In terms of skill, he's only slightly more difficult than Archavon. In fact, I'd say he's probably easier, if your group's gear can support your ability to kill him. Check out the strategy behind the cut.
The Queue: Cosmetics
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.Nearly 9,000 people voted that anchovies were gross in the last edition of The Queue. I wholeheartedly disagree! However, I know when I'm beat, so consider today's picture an apology. If you think this picture is gross and don't have some sort of allergy that has caused you to form that opinion, well... I can't help you anymore. You are broken. May whatever deity (or non-deity) you believe in have mercy on your soul (or whatever your belief system keeps inside of your squishy bits).Zayd asked..."How long before Blizz let you change your characters race? If we can soon change faction then this seems the next logical step, it's just a cosmetic change when you get down to it..."
Patch 3.2 PTR: Koralon the Flame Watcher impressions
The Public Test Realm for Patch 3.2 is in full swing, and even though the Argent Coliseum isn't available for testing just yet, there's a brand-new wing in Wintergrasp's Vault of Archavon housing a brand-new giant to beat up. Enter Koralon, the Flame Watcher. He's a stout fellow, and you probably recognize his model, which he shares with Volkhan from Halls of Lightning and Ignis from Ulduar, replete with crotch-pot. And as you may have also guessed, he uses fire spells and abilities. He doesn't currently drop loot on the PTR, though I assume the distribution will be much the same as it is with Emalon -- two or so pieces of Tier 9 gear along with a lion's share of PVP items. Impressions and strategy after the jump.
Wintergrasp bug plaguing servers after 3.1.2
We're getting tons of reports in of Wintergrasp behaving a bit oddly today, and I can confirm them to be true on my home server of Cenarion Circle. Wintergrasp battles are lasting, at most, 5-10 minutes with no more than 10 minutes between battles. Good for farming Marks of Honor, not so good for trying to kill Archavon and/or Emalon.If this is how you try to lower the lag Wintergrasp causes on servers, I think the quote "ur doin it wrong" applies. In all seriousness, I'm kidding about that and this is obviously not working as intended. Considering the Mark and Honor gains people are getting from this, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some emergency maintenance and rollbacks soon. I wouldn't get too attached to your gains this afternoon.
The Art of War(craft): Wintergrasp in Patch 3.1 and beyond
I love Wintergrasp. Five months into Wrath and I think it's still one of the most fun things to do in the game. Lag issues aside, I think the zone has been a great success if only by judging through the number of people on my realm who participate in every battle. The general impression that I get from forums, blogs, comments on this site, as well as fellow players is that Blizzard did a good job with Wintergrasp. It's fun, fast, and extremely rewarding -- Honor gain during one game is insane and the items you can purchase with the Wintergrasp Marks of Honor are pretty good (we'll get to that in a moment). Patch 3.1 is going to bring some improvements to the gameplay, as well, so let's take a look at those things first.All players who attack a siege vehicle should now get credit if it is destroyed.Previously this worked similar to tapping a mob, where the player or raid that first tapped the siege vehicle would get credit. This made it harder for multiple raids or ungrouped players to complete Stop the Siege!. This change should solve that problem neatly.Daily quests Slay Them All! (Horde) and No Mercy for the Merciless (Alliance) have had their PvP kill requirements reduced to 10 from 20. NPCs defending the fortress and south towers now count toward these dailies as well.Enemy players have the same tapping mechanic as mobs, so even though a player can get Honor from a tapped enemy, they wouldn't count towards completion of the aforementioned quests. Similar to the vehicle problem, ungrouped players or those in smaller raids would often come up short of the requisite 20 kills during one battle. Obviously, changing the tapping mechanics for players isn't the solution, so Blizzard made the kill requirement lower and included NPCs as valid targets. The latter change is probably aimed at lower population servers or realms where Wintergrasp participation isn't too high, as well as realms where there's a distinct faction imbalance. The number of NPCs defending fortress has been increased.Again, this should make it easier for players to complete the daily quests as well as move up in Rank. The NPC guards don't hit hard and have very low hit points, so they're really just cannon fodder for quest and rank requirements. I'm not a big fan of too many NPCs in a PvP zone, but this change seems to have been necessary. Players on defense often hole up in the fortress, slowing down offense's rank gain. Having more NPCs lowers the effectivity of that delaying tactic.
The Queue: Progression
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.I would have had this written and posted earlier in the day, but I was too busy refreshing the official World of Warcraft site and praying for more news regarding the WoW Mountain Dew. I guess when they say they'll have more information in the 'coming months' they don't mean 'tomorrow afternoon.' Disappointing, really.Taylor asked..."I am just getting back into WoW now that I have a bit of free time. I am trying to get to 80 on a relatively new character of mine. I am around 50 right now and I am wondering how end game will work when I eventually get there? There are heroics and raids and all these things I hear about, but I just don't understand the progression yet. Mainly, I am worried that once Ulduar launches, I will be woefully behind without gear from Naxx. I know the whole "gear doesn't matter" argument, but I can't be in quest blues/greens and keeping up in a raid."
To tank Archavon's buttocks
As a DPS warrior, I've come to hate the very sight of Archavon, especially his hindquarters. You see, Archavon has a terrible tendency to... how do I put this delicately... he tends to fart on the melee DPS.Okay, that wasn't very delicate, but it was accurate enough: Archavon expels a cloud of noxious fumes that does AoE damage and radically reduces the chance to hit for anyone standing in it. Since us melee types tend to try and stab, claw, pummel and otherwise do damage to his posterior I can understand why he might view us with disdain. However, it does lead to an issue. Many tanks when fighting Archavon, especially in PuG's where you might not be used to the mechanic, only pull him so far out of the cloud so that they escape its effects, but leave his butt hanging out in the gas. This means the melee DPS has to choose between standing in the death cloud and taking damage while missing with almost every attack or coming around to give the boss a greater chance to parry.We got a tip today from Jaxtrasi saying that he'd written a visual guide to the fight. While it does lack in stuffed animals, he does a good job of demonstrating to the tank new to this fight how to move the boss out of his nacho-laden death gas. Well, I just assume Archie eats a lot of nachos, he has that kind of look. The only thing it fails to mention is that Archie also likes to lunge the tanks and if the offtank is in that gas cloud his taunt has a huge chance of being resisted, leading to a DPS warrior ending up tanking because he was just outside of it, not that I know anyone who's ever screamed like a 50's sitcom wife seeing a mouse upon realizing that he just lost 18k health in two seconds or anything.I hate you, Archie, because you are dangerously flatulent.
Guildwatch: It's our raid now
This is purely anecdotal, of course (everything is with this column), but it seems to us that there are fewer incidents of drama nowadays after Wrath (probably due to changes with the endgame and the loot), but the few incidents out there are much harsher. Take this pic as exhibit A -- it's an instance ninja, which happens occasionally, but it's a very unrepentant instance ninja. People aren't jerks to each other as much (because presumably they have less opportunity to do so), but people who are jerks... are really big jerks.That's what we've seen anyway -- if you've seen otherwise, let us know: send your drama, downed and recruiting news to wowguildwatch@gmail.com. This week's guild updates after the break, including some awesome TLDR drama, and lots and lots of new guild downs.
Wrath 101: The Vault of Archavon
So you've won Wintergrasp. Now what? Well, the very first thing that most players do when they wrest or maintain control of the zone is head into the Vault of Archavon. The vault is a raid instance accessible only to members of the faction that control Wintergrasp. It is one of the more important reasons why control of Wintergrasp is so important. Archavon the Stone Watcher is an extremely easy raid boss who drops pieces of Tier 7 and Arena gear. In short, he means free epics.While there are no level restrictions to entering Wintergrasp (though if you can't fly you'll either have to take the portal or be summoned), players must be Level 80 and in a raid group in order to enter the Vault of Archavon raid instance. It's a very short raid with exactly four trash mobs who have special abilities, but are essentially tank and spank and prepare the raid for how the boss will be like. Archavon is a DPS race.
Lake Wintergrasp: Balance, badges, bosses, and bling
I have to confess that I haven't spent as much time in Lake Wintergrasp as I thought I would. Even when we got premade Level 80s to fiddle around with in the Wrath Beta, I ended up spending very little time in the zone because it was simply too confusing. It didn't help that every build wiped your talent points, so I'd end up logging in to a crossfire without any abilities on my hotbars. In general, my Beta experience with what still promises to be my favorite zone of all time was rather unfulfilling.The good news is that there's a lot of work being done on the zone and the siege vehicles and buildings do a nice job of blowing up. I also appreciate the return of my favorite guys from Alterac Valley, like my Pusoy Dos buddy Lieutenant Murp. In general, though, Lake Wintergrasp needs a lot of breadcrumb quests and hand-holding just for people to get the basics. Blizzard has big plans for the zone, and they detailed a lot of those in yesterday's PvP panel.The zone is massive. In the Beta, there were areas that felt somewhat abandoned and felt empty. This is certain to happen in live realms, as there are off-hours of play. But Blizzard's aim is clear: they want this place to be all combat all the time, with hundreds of players bombing, killing, attacking and defending. In fact, they prepared their servers to handle such a load. If this happens -- and by the Light, I hope it will -- and hundreds of players do fill the zone for unadulterated combat, I'm going to have one hell of a good time.
Savage, Hateful, and Deadly
Really, who comes up with these names? They're not so bad, though. They just sound funny when you bunch them all together -- like what we're about to do now. You see, more Gladiator gear has popped up on the Beta realms, with a slew of Deadly Gladiator items showing up on Wowhead and previewed on MMO Champion. We've seen Savage Gladiator items, which are blue quality gear for PvP, and I made a quick post about Hateful Gladiator items a week ago. Now comes the Deadly Gladiator pieces, which have been dropping off the Wintergrasp raid boss.Right now it's too early to tell if this is really how PvP loot will be distributed, although a faction-locked raid boss really does provide a good incentive to participate in Lake Wintergrasp. It might simply be a way to quickly distribute Arena PvP gear in Beta for more testing. For one thing, it's highly likely that Archavon will be dropping tokens rather than the pieces themselves. Furthermore, this leaves the Arena system without any rewards left to give -- though Deadly Gladiator weapons have yet to show up. It's pretty safe to assume that the way these items are distributed will change greatly between now and November 13.
