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The making of the Gunship Battle encounter
Last night, Blizzard unveiled a new behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Gunship Battle encounter in Icecrown Citadel. Although it's light on technical details, it's an interesting look at how they reasoned through both the mechanics and lore of the fight. They wanted something epic that allowed for some of the ship-to-ship combat that players have asked for, and it was a great opportunity to integrate the ICC raid with one of Icecrown's most important quest hubs. I've gone on record before saying that this is one of Blizzard's best and most unique fights, and it's particularly fun if you're part of the "away team" making the jumps to and from the enemy ship. That really nails the "controlled chaos" angle they were aiming for. If you're part of the "home team" defending your own ship, I'll grant that the fight feels a little more by-the-numbers. Oddly enough, this is one of the few encounters where the achievement version (I'm On A Boat) actually makes it less engaging, as most raids assign static teams to the ships and either kite Saurfang/Bronzebeard or swap taunts. However, if you've already got the achievement or just aren't worrying about it for the moment, all the joys of a personal explosives pack are yours for the taking. If you're not part of a raiding guild but get a shot at doing ICC, go for it; the first two bosses aren't too tough, and the gunship battle is an absolute hoot.
Shifting Perspectives: Druid healing strats for Icecrown Citadel
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we look at Grid and realize that the dumb buggers are dropping like flies again. Before I write anything else, I want to send a shout-out to Kalon, who is ending the influential feral theorycraft blog ThinkTank. Like many of you, I've been reading ThinkTank for a while and fell in love with both Kalon's analysis and the theorycrafting that he made understandable even to Luddites like myself. To this day I've been experimenting with an idea he suggested concerning Bear DPS (no, really) that I've been planning to devote a column towards for a while, and I now regret not doing it earlier. So, to my druidic colleague -- /hug and /salute. Kalon, you will be greatly missed. For strategy articles, I've gotten into the habit of trying to describe all four roles, and have arrived at the conclusion that it's more efficient to take matters one spec at a time. With all of the Icecrown raid content clocking in at a little more than a month old under the best of circumstances, I'm better off describing the roles I've done personally therein (tanking and healing). Because we've already covered Lord Marrowgar, we're going to take the rest of the bosses necessary for the Storming the Citadel achievement, and cover them from a restoration point of view.
