gundrak
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53 Emblems per day
This is great -- it's probably more WoW playing than I could do in one day, but maybe I'll try it this weekend anyway. loztaylor has designed a heck of an instance run that rolls through thirteen Heroics and will nab you 53 Emblems of Conquest (along with all of the other spoils of war) in one day. Basically, you'll be sweeping across the land of Northrend, hitting every Heroic you come across, and if by some chance you're able to keep the group together the whole time, and keep from passing out from all the WoW playing you're doing, at the end you'll end up with 53 Emblems, more than enough to purchase most of the Emblem gear, and almost enough to pick up a Tier piece.Of course, if you're wearing a rep tabard, you'll also rein in a ton of dungeon rep. And if you hit the new Trial of the Champion, you'll pick up your Champion's Seals as well. And you'll have 13 Frozen Orbs to divvy among the group, a few extra Emblems and gold from doing the daily quests, and if you're good and/or lucky, you might even be able to clear up a few of the achievements or snag that blue proto-drake. Of course, doing this much of anything in the game will probably nab you plenty of rewards. But here's a tuned route to follow all the way around the world of Heroics. If I can find a willing group of suckers guildies, I think I'll give it a shot.
The Queue: Troll'is is
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Dear Alex, l2preamble.Yours,Modern Writing.Peacebone asked..."Why can't we wear tabards to get rep gains from raids? Is there any specific reason?"
The OverAchiever: Return of the Glory of the Hero
Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. -- Firefly, "Our Mrs. Reynolds." Just as a recap, this is what we've covered so far in the OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero series: Part I: Ahn'kahet Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep Having finished the first of the two "troll dungeons" in Wrath, let's head to the second: Gun'drak! Gun'drak is interesting in that it houses both the easiest heroic achievement and (arguably) the most annoying all at once, What the Eck? and Less-rabi respectivey. If you're planning on doing all of these achievements in one go (which may or may not be a good idea depending on group composition), I would recommend taking a group with a Bloodlust/Heroism (you may have seen me make mention of this point before) and several interrupts. A Shaman with Reverberation can be useful on Moorabi. You will also need an off-tank and off-healer for Share The Love. Snakes, Why'd It Have to Be Snakes? As a note, this achievement seems to be individually- rather than group-based; you can get it even if someone else gets wrapped. However, if you're interested in getting multiple people the achievement all at once, there are ways to ensure it doesn't happen at all.
Breakfast Topic: Unintended ownage
I was pretty lazy about heroic achievements at first. Too many people needed frozen orbs for their resist sets, or badges for gear, and the general consensus in most groups (whether they were pugged or guild runs) was that achievements would be great to have, but not really worth going out of our way to get at the time. Why spend 3 miserable hours trying to get Watch Him Die, we reasoned as fresh 80's, when we could finish Azjol-Nerub and do 2 or 3 other heroics in the same time period?With better gear, some free time on our hands, and the siren call of a cherry-red drake, heroic achievements became less an afterthought and more an interesting challenge. The odyssey's been an education on the limits of the otherwise admirable mantra "Bring the player, not the class" (does said player bring Bloodlust?), how much DPS you can squeeze out of your tanks and healers ("Smite harder!"), and the welcome role that luck often plays. I am ashamed to admit that Less-rabi, one of the most difficult and frustrating hurdles of Glory of the Hero, was accomplished because yours truly can't tell the difference between her Maul and Bash hotkeys in the heat of the moment. Accidentally interrupting a 0.4-second cast ability within a tenth of a second is going to go down as one of the great Fortunate Fool moments of my tanking career. My friends, if you're working on heroic or raiding achievements, whether casually or seriously, I wish you that kind of dumb luck.
Two Bosses Enter: King Ymiron vs. Drakkari Colossus
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.Close of the heels of this past week's Keristrasza's clawing of Cyanigosa, we offer up fresh meat to the denizens of WoW Insider: King Ymiron of Utgarde Pinnacle versus Drakkari Colossus from Gundrak. Last season, we instructed readers to ignore the adds that come along with each fight. Here, we're going to allow Drakkari Colossus his elemental, so consider both Drakkari Colossus' golem form and the elemental form. Beyond that, assume that the bosses are of approximately the same level and health and that they're fighting in neutral territory. It's fighting abilities and scale that we're debating here, so don't get caught up in actual game mechanics. Consider the flavor each villainous gladiator brings to bear, and cast your vote for who you think would come out on top.Load up your longboats with mojo and let's see where this goes!
The Queue: Spreading the space plague
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. A bad case of space cancer put me out of commission for the last few days, and for that I apologize. In addition to my apology, I blame the pandas. They caused me to come down with such a horrid plague. I'm back on my feet now though, so the Q&A will continue!jtrain asked...I'm admittedly new to tanking, and I hear people talk about a 'rage dump'. Why would I want to dump rage? I thought the whole idea was to build up a good amount so I don't have to sit there auto-attacking waiting for my abilities to become usable. In Wrath, I never seem to have a problem generating rage and at the end of a fight in which I've pulled several mobs, I usually have quite a bit of rage still available. Am I doing something wrong?
Shifting Perspectives: So. Um, do bears suck?
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we shelve the column we originally intended to run due to a rather pressing matter.OK, folks. I have a confession to make. This week's Shifting Perspectives was originally meant to be a full guide to gearing your Restoration Druid at 80, and I'm still going to post that, either this week or next. A lot of people have (correctly, I think) observed that this column has historically paid more attention to Feral than to Restoration or Balance, and it's my aim to balance (har!) that out a bit. Part of it is just that the people who play Druids on staff here at WoW Insider are usually feral, and part of it is that -- at least as of the last numbers we had on it -- most people playing Druids are also feral. I confess I would love to see the demographics on Druids post-Wrath, because I get the sense that Balance in particular has become markedly more popular.But the Resto post is going to have to wait a few days, not least because my eyes are swimming from so much Wowhead. We found out today that Swipe's threat is getting a significant buff, but over the course of reading the pertinent forum thread and some back-channel discussion here, I ran across a few things concerning bear tanking that really made me sit up after the hell of tanking last night's heroic Old Kingdom and go, "Wait. It's not just me?"Personally whenever I encounter serious problems in a dungeon I tend to chalk it up to the fact that I suck. I find this to be an efficient and typically accurate means of pinpointing the source of an issue. However, my fellow Druids, our problems may actually be more wide-ranging than that.
WoW Insider's guide to the dungeons of Wrath
Still leveling? Looking to do some dungeon runs? Want to know where to go, or where to find your quests? ...No? Oh. Well, okay. You can leave, then. Wait, I think I heard someone say yes! In that case, you might be interested in WoW Insider's guide to the dungeons of Wrath.In the gallery below you'll find a quick guide to all of the 5-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King, in order of the level of the instance. It contains brief descriptions of each dungeon, their level range, and just where to find all of the quests for each of them. I hope it proves useful, and if not, at least some of the pictures are pretty!%Gallery-37974%
Wrath 101: Factions and reputation
Reputation in Wrath of the Lich King works a lot like it did in The Burning Crusade, except refined. Most of your reputation will come from dungeon runs and questing, and not grinding mobs off in some random corner of the world. At the same time, they've thrown in some 'extra' hooks to some of the reputations that make it pretty different from what it used to be, for better or for worse. That's what we'll be digging into here.FactionsThe Horde and the Alliance each get a set of factions: The Horde Expedition and the Alliance Vanguard. These are a bit unusual, because those two primary factions have four other secondary factions. For the most part, those secondary factions don't have any rewards of their own. As you gain reputation with the sub-factions, your overall Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard reputation goes up, and that determines your rewards. Why did they do it that way? I don't know, but they did!
Ask a Beta Tester: Zul'Drak and more
Welcome to yet another edition of Ask a Beta Tester. We're coming to you a little later in the day than we usually do, but I think getting the site's redesign up was worth it! It's sparkly, isn't it? We only have a little under a week of Ask a Beta Tester left, so let's make the best of the time we have and get started!Nick S asked... Is there any lore for the Trolls? I've seen very, very little that's not negative. Where's the Troll lovin'?!? Unfortunately, I'm primarily Alliance and didn't see much from the Horde beyond the first couple of zones, so I'm not really sure about the Darkspear. Zul'Drak has a whole load of Troll content, though. It's an entire Troll zone centered on the last Troll Empire, the Drakkari. There's also the return of the Zandalar Trolls, who are much more friendly. You might have met them back when Zul'Gurub was run frequently. They're there to document the fall of the Drakkari and prevent them from doing something really, really bad.
Wrath boss names revealed in Achievements
Wowhead recently went live with their database of all the Achievements currently in the Wrath beta. Among those Achievements is one for clearing each dungeon and raid currently in Wrath. Each Achievement lists its requirements for completion, so what does that mean? We now know the names of all the dungeon bosses (as well as a little from the raids)! Everything placed after the cut for those who want to avoid spoilers.
