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The evolution of zerg dungeon farming
When one considers how dungeons and heroic dungeons will work in Cataclysm, one of the first elements to consider is the way that dungeons have functioned since World of Warcraft's release. I find it illuminating to consider that one of the most complained-about aspects of dungeon running in Wrath of the Lich King seems to my eyes to be a consequence of a successful series of design changes. We've all heard the complaints about groups treating the dungeons and heroics of the Wrath era as chores, five- to 15-minute frenzied runs through the place, annihilating everything in the path of five silent, grim harbingers of death. No nuance, no subtlety, and no strategy. Crowd control? Crowds are controlled by their own grim, horrible demises. When considered in this light, these dungeons seem less like adventures and more like unfortunate victims of beings who invade and despoil. However, the reason for this is fairly simple. In Wrath, dungeons have been wildly successful at two very difficult tasks.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 3
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon an entire flight of black dragons. First up, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Secondly, this is it. We're almost done. We're finishing our final installment of how to gear your new level 80 protection paladin. If you've been reading our previous weeks of this guide, you know that we talked over reputation and profession gear as well as all of the various dungeon gear you can nab. This week we're going to be taking advantage of all of that dungeon running and spending our badges with a look at all of the badges from Frost to Heroism (and yes there are exactly 7 useful items that you can trade Emblems of Triumph down to Emblems of Heroism for ... and 6 of them are epic gems).
Growing Pains: How to approach gearing up your tank
I'm going to assume that if you're still reading this past the title, you're interested in talking about tank gearing for your level 80 and that you've presumably used the Dungeon Finder to level him or her as a tank, but you're certainly not rocking full T9 yet. It's generally accepted that you'll be saving up emblems for that, and of course filling the gaps for rings and trinkets and such as you can. You also may be a DPS player who wants to switch over to tanking but don't have the gear yet. First off, please, don't pass on tanking gear just because it's blue or dropped in a normal or heroic. Just because it's not iLevel 232+ doesn't mean it's not good. You should be collecting and using upgrades as they drop, even if they won't immediately put you at 35K health. Please remember also that a lot of people ran these instances and heroics back when Wrath first released with 22k or so health: despite what speed obsessed or hyper geared players will tell you, it is indeed possible to tank all the original Wrath heroics in blues. Take the Nerubian Shield Ring, for example. If this drops and you don't have better, roll need on it. Don't worry that people will lose their shard, don't let people give you grief on gear not being up to some ridiculous standard, just take the ring. It has armor, defense and stamina. If you're there as DPS but you want to build a tank set? Roll need if you don't have better. Just ignore people who give you grief over it, clearly they don't understand how important every possible upgrade is while building a tanking set.
Time Is Money: Putting your emblems to work
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. If you're like me, you have a lot of excess emblems sitting around. Maybe you never got around to spending them before the next tier came out, or maybe the badge gear just never quite compared to your raid drops. Whatever the case, there is no sense letting them go to waste when you could put them to work and earn some gold! First, here is a quick breakdown of the current badge system, from most recent and difficult to acquire on down: Emblem of Frost: These can be acquired primarily by raiding Icecrown, completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly," or by completing one WotLK heroic dungeon per day using the Random tool. Emblem of Triumph: Most raids now drop these badges, as well as heroics. You will also be awarded these for doing any number of WotLK heroic dungeons past your first one per day using the Random tool. You will also get some by completing your first normal WotLK dungeon per day using the Random tool, as well as completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly." Also of note: If you get Heroic Oculus using the random tool, don't drop group! Not only has it been nerfed like crazy, but when you defeat the end boss, every player will receive a loot bag that will contain these badges and more, plus a chance at getting the super rare Reigns of the Blue Drake, which used to be available only by killing Malygos, who now drops his 25-man version (Azure) in both 10 and 25-man. Emblem of Conquest: Originally, these were acquired by running 10-man Coliseum, or 25-man Ulduar. Emblem of Valor: Originally these dropped from Ulduar 10-man and Naxxramas 25-man. Emblem of Heroism: These were among the first WotLK badges, and dropped from Naxxramas 10-man and heroic dungeons.
Patch 3.3: Emblems of Triumph to be the new base emblems
The floor is being raised again. Bornakk has stated that for the time being, the intent is to have everything that drops Emblems of Conquest drop Emblems of Triumph in patch 3.3. This will certainly players allow easier access to tier 9 level gear. Players who may not be at the upper tier of raiding will still gain access to the gear and weapons that will offer them a fighting chance against Arthas. Along with this change, quests like the heroic daily will drop the all new Emblem of Frost which will be the highest level emblem in the game. There are two other methods to obtain these emblems. The obvious route will be to take down Icecrown's raid bosses. The final method is to complete the new weekly raid quests that offer 10 Emblems as a reward for defeating a certain raid boss. Hooray for accessibility! Again, be advised that things may change and these aren't finalized. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Patch 3.2.2: Timear Foresees Sons of Hodir reputation in your future!
A new build hit the Patch 3.2.2 PTR very recently, revealing a very convenient little detail: The dungeon daily quest now gives you the option of choosing and Sons of Hodir Commendation Badge, in addition to the ones that have been there all along for the Kirin Tor, the Ebon Blade, the Argent Crusade and Wyrmrest Accord.I've already completed the Sons of Hodir rep grind on my main, so this isn't particularly helpful there. However, I'm going to love it on my alts. I shined enough spears or whatever to last me a lifetime, and any way to avoid it that doesn't involve buying thousands of Relics of Ulduar is fine by me. I'm glad to see these quests get a little bit of love too, because I've been throwing away all sorts of commendations for the last few months simply because I'm already exalted with everything. Yes, even on my alt. It's really not hard if you remember to wear your tabard! Throwing away all of those commendations felt a little like flushing time down the toilet, so hopefully this will alleviate that a little and make it so the Emblem of Conquest isn't the only draw these quests have anymore.
Every kind of player's guide to Patch 3.2
If you've been hiding under a rock these past few months (and who doesn't do that every now and then, really?) you might have only just noticed that Patch 3.2 recently went live. For some of you, it's as good an excuse as any to log back into the game while for others, it might've been a surprise to find yourself suddenly downloading upwards of 300Mb of content. If you fall under the category of surprised, lost, or surprised and lost, have no fear! WoW.com is here to hold your hand and guide you through the wild and wacky wonders of the Call of the Crusade. Let's take a look at what the latest patch holds for you - and there's something for you no matter what kind of player you are - after the jump.
The Queue: Snape, snape
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.In celebration of the recent release of the new Harry Potter movie, I've decided to expose the two of you out there that have never seen the above video to... well, the above video. I'll say no more, folks. Watch it, then read on! Probably in beat with a metronome!Mannas asked..."With the new feature to switch factions, will we finally have a way to "mail" items across factions by making a toon, sending the item there, switching factions and then mailing on? Or will they somehow limit this?"
Patch 3.2 changes the tiered Emblem system
There are a lot of things in the patch 3.2 test realm notes that jumped out at me, but the changes to the Emblem system seem like an especially big deal. The developers made it quite clear that they wanted a tiered token system in Wrath of the Lich King, they didn't want players just farming Heroics all day and night to get the best possible gear. In patch 3.2, it looks like they're backing off on that pretty heavily, likely an attempt to reignite interest in running Heroics. If you haven't seen the patch notes, here are the points I'm referring to: Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism. Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph. The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph. The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
Patch 3.1 Secrets of Ulduar round up
We've talked a whole lot about Ulduar in the last few months, and a lot of great Ulduar-related resources have cropped up. So you don't need to dig through our entire site to find what you're looking for this fine Tuesday morning, I've tried to collect the most useful pieces of our current Ulduar content into one nice list for you. Enjoy! Ulduar Mania kicked off with this preview of Ulduar from the official EU community site. And then this video! You can listen to this song by Summergale and Cranius titled 'Ulduar' while you read this insanely long list! To be sure you'll never be lost in Ulduar, we've covered a few sites with maps of the zone. Check out an early iteration of the Ulduar achievements. Most of them have remained the same, but note that some of the numbers in the post were placeholders and have since been updated.
Blizzard did the wrong thing with Ulduar-10 emblems
As we posted yesterday, it has been made very clear at this point that Emblems of Valor are the emblems that are going to drop in the 10-man version of Ulduar, while the 25-man version will drop the entirely new Emblems of Conquest. Nothing is being added to the EoV vendors aside from the relics that drop in Naxx-25. In other words, 10-man raids are basically getting glossed over, and 25-man raiders are getting all the new shinies. Where 25-man raiders get an entirely new quartermaster with access to gear on par with normal-mode Uld-25 drops (ilvl 226), as well as two of their tier 8.5 tokens, we get recycled EoV gear that was originally meant for Naxx-25 raiders. This is gear that is half a tier worse than the gear that drops in Uld-10 normal mode (ilvl 213 vs 219), and there is no way for us to buy our tier 8.0 gear with emblems, at all.
Vaneras clarifies Ulduar emblems
There has been a certain amount of confusion about what exactly is going on with emblems in Ulduar. We've known for a while that Emblems of Valor, which currently drop from 25-man Naxxramas, are going to drop in 10-man Ulduar, and that Ulduar-25 is going to drop a new badge: Emblem of Conquest. However, there were some rumors that the EoVs from Uld-10 would be a different "color" than the EoVs from Naxx-25, enabling purchase of some gear for the new EoVs that would not be buyable with the Naxx-25 EoVs. There have also been various theories about whether Tier 8 tokens would be buyable with emblems, like some of the T7 tokens are now. Vaneras has gone and clarified these questions and more, in a FAQ post on the European forums. I'll try to distill the information that I found useful into a few bullet points. The EoVs in Uld-10 are the same as the ones from Naxx-25, and let you buy the same rewards. Relics from Naxx-25 are being added to the EoV quartermasters; nothing else is being added to them at this time. Tier 8.5 gear tokens (chest and helm) will be buyable with EoCs (from Uld-25). Tier 8.0 gear tokens will not be buyable in any way. There will be a new EoC quartermaster with the two 8.5 tokens and additional ilvl 226 gear for purchase. The justification for T8.0 not being buyable for tokens is that they didn't want current Naxx-25 raiders stockpiling huge numbers of EoVs to buy stuff on the 3.1 release. This does make some sense, although there are other routes they could have gone with it. Anyway, it's good to have clarification.
Spiritual Guidance: PTR loot and hymns that will never be seen in game
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week, Matt checks out some of the PTR loot along and a suggestion of Hymns that we will never see in game. Have you checked out some of the drops from the PTR yet? There's a great staff from Iron Council that I'm definitely eyeing. I know a lot of spellcasters favour main hands and off hands. I always had a soft spot for staves (because of their looks). But most staves just could not compete with their main hand and off hand counterparts. Rapture will be an upgrade I'll be eyeing. There's also the Ironmender which is an offhand complement for Priests. I haven't seen any spellpower main hands yet but I'm sure there will be some popping up soon enough.
The Queue: Hawaiian Pizza edition
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.Today, in addition to all of the questions I'm answering for you, I need all of you to answer a question for me. Hawaiian Pizza: Delicious, or Crazy Delicious? This is an important question, my friends. I need each and every one of you to contribute. It's for the good of mankind. Also, to prove my girlfriend wrong. It rules, does it not?%Poll-26965%Evaline asked...Are there any Ulduar achievements currently on the PTR? I'm guessing they aren't there yet, because we would have heard something about them if there were. Another question if I may, do the bosses on the PTR currently drop loot? Again probably not, for the same reason as above, but can't hurt to ask.
