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Guildwatch: "A premier raiding guild"
Edhristwo just got /gkicked in the shot above -- he and a friend got caught playing around in the Arena on a raiding night, and the guild's GM didn't take kindly to it. Which is fine -- if you join a guild, they can ask you to be around for raids, and /gkick you when you do something else. But the "premier raiding guild" is the funny part -- they're up to one drake Sartharion, and they've appeared in our drama section before. Hey, if Ed wants to do Arena, we'd say take the Tier 7 and run.That drama and more (including downed and recruiting notices from around the realms) in this week's GW, which starts right after the break.
WoW Insider's gearing up in Northrend guides
We probably have at least an hour (or seven) of maintenance and downtime before realms start coming back up, so this is as good a time as any to make a nice list of the Wrath of the Lich King gear guides we've done so far. Not every class and spec is complete, but progress is progress, right?If you don't see the spec/role you're looking for in our list below, never fear! Our columnists are always working on these things, and the best inspiration for all of our writers is knowing what everyone is looking for. Don't see what you're looking for? Just let us know. Don't be afraid to look at guides for similar classes, either. They might just have the information you need. For example, the Shadow Priest spell hit guide will work for most casters.But enough talk, on with the show!
Blizzard polls for the toughest Heroic instance
Blizzard has posted a poll on the forums asking what players think is the toughest Heroic dungeon in the game. Unfortunately, they don't say much else besides that, so guessing the reason why will be up to us and our commenters. They want to make sure Ulduar is tougher than Heroics? They want to look for particularly tough mechanics for future instances? They just enjoy seeing players have a tough time of it? Your guess is as good as ours.Loken is notorious as a tough boss in Heroic mode, but his Halls of Lightning only makes second place, right above Ahn'kahet and its tough fights of Jedoga Shadowseeker and the insanity-inducing Herald Volaj. And it's worth noting that as of this writing, Drak'theron, The Nexus, Utgarde Keep and Violet Hold have a total of zero votes among them -- apparently everyone agrees they're easy as-is. But right there on top sits everyone's least favorite drake-riding instance -- The Oculus, with all of its drakey goodness.Unfortunately, this may not help Blizzard -- I doubt many players would be really excited if they re-used the "drakes" mechanic in a lot of future dungeons, as the difficulty there lies in playing a completely different game rather than using the abilities of your character that you're used to. But It's an interesting poll anyway. What instance are you finding the toughest in Heroic mode?
"Gotta Go" getting easier
I like the heroic dungeon achievements a lot. They give you something to strive for if you're bored if the instance, or just want an extra challenge. I recently had a great time getting Zombiefest! in what would have otherwise been a pedestrian CoS clear (not enough DPS to try for the timed boss; we were running with some fresh 80s and a Holy paladin DPSing). However, some of the achievements are currently though to be near-impossible. One that is often talked about is Gotta Go!; typically, it's Anub'arak's burrowing that throws attempts off. Good news to those of you working towards your Red Proto-Drake: the time limit on Gotta Go! is being doubled to four minutes in 3.0.8. Many groups were getting quite close to two minutes before, so this change ought to make it relatively easy.
Heroics as a fresh 80: Don't be that guy
Back in the beginning of Burning Crusade, when heroic instances were originally introduced, you had to get to Revered standing with a dungeon's associated faction to buy a key that would let you into heroic mode. Later, that requirement was relaxed to Honored. This was taken one step further in Wrath of the Lich King, where there is, technically, no requirement to enter a heroic besides being level 80. However, this doesn't mean you're ready for heroics (and Naxxramas-10, which is about the same difficulty) the moment you ding 80 and go train. This is something I found out on my own first 80, when I scratched and clawed my way through healing a heroic Old Kingdom in mid-70s dungeon and quest gear (we never did get the last boss down). I was told that I was rather undergeared for heroics, and to go do some normal-mode level 80 dungeons first (Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnacle, Oculus, Culling of Stratholme). This was some of the best advice I ever got in WoW. I ran each of the L80 normal-mode dungeons once, and my gear level improved by about 50% in the space of a day or two. There are some extremely serviceable quest rewards in all of these dungeons, not to mention drops and rep gains. There is also some excellent crafted gear out there, if you have some any spare change or mats kicking around. And from that moment on I wasn't that guy trying to tank heroics with 20,000 HP, or the DPS doing 1,000 in Naxxramas. Please, don't be that guy: run some normal-mode level 80s, and maybe pick up a bit of crafted gear or rep rewards, before you try to do heroics or raids.
Breakfast Topic: Are you an insomniac WoW player?
World of Warcraft lends itself to the night owl. The game is detailed enough where if you want to be effective at it you need to concentrate a little bit, and that usually means not having distractions around you like kids, a significant other, or your pets. The best time I find that I can get distraction free is in the late evening and early morning hours.I'm a night owl, if you will. In fact I'm sitting here typing this up at 2:15 a.m. CST. Quite late for most of my WoW friends even (however at least a few WoW Insider writers are still up and working on things).This leads me to ask for today's breakfast topic, what kind of player are you? Take a stab at the poll too and let us know. %Poll-24899%One of the best parts about playing late at night is a certain attitude that I find hits around three in the morning. It's the phenomenon when everyone is tired, nearly falling over on their keyboard, and suddenly somebody says over vent "Let's just do one more heroic."
Fix for unintentional instance lockouts in the works
One of the more annoying things that has come about in Wrath of the Lich King is the ease at which you can be saved to an instance. It used to be that you were saved to a heroic or raid instance whenever you killed a boss or got loot. Now if you more or less step in the place, you end up being saved to it.This can cause a problem if someone in your group forgot that they already ran the instance or raid during the lockout period (a day for heroic instances, a week for all current raids). That person loads an already completed version of the instance. The place has all the trash, all the quirks, except for the bosses. You'll spend a half hour clearing to the first boss, only to discover that he's not there – he's already been killed. And oops, you're saved to the instance too."Epic fail," as has been yelled out on my vent when this happens.
Officers' Quarters: Waiting at 80
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Lately I've gotten a lot of e-mail from readers with a similar theme. People ask me, "Should I stick with my guild even though we aren't raiding yet?" They say, "We just lost five members because we haven't cleared Naxx." They tell me, "I hate PUGs, but I can't even run a Heroic with my guild because only two people are 80."They ask me to weigh their guild against their desire to run group content. And the fact of the matter is this: I can't answer that question for you. And I'll tell you why.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Raiding Gear
This will most likey be a multi-part series. I know next week we'll be talking about the Warrior 2008 year in review, discussing talent changes and so much more, so it may be an interrupted series. With the new raiding system (normal and heroic raids), tier gear, emblem gear and non-affiliated drops, there's a lot of gear to talk about in the raid game. Lately, in fact, I've noticed that 10 and 25 man raiding seems to flow back and forth into each other. I can be DPS in a 25 man Sarth run, then the run breaks up into two 10 mans and I'm asked to tank in one, then we recombine for a Vault of Archavon 25 man and split up again for two 10 mans. To be fair, we often do 25 man content with less than 25 people, possibly because it's Decemeber and a lot of folks are away for the holidays, which may be encouraging our raid swapping behavior. Or maybe we're just trying to get as much loot for people as we can.My intention is to cover a raid in normal and heroic before moving on to the next raid, and then to cover Emblem of Herois and Valor rewards at a later date, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
WoW Insider Show Episode 69: Azeroth's Next Top Models
This week on the podcast we welcomed back BRK to talk about some things that didn't involve Hunters, including (but not limited to) Winter's Veil and how to take down heroic Loken, and Amanda Dean also joined us to talk about why she's Scrooge-y on the Winter's Veil stuff (I am too, though I am excited about the presents we're going to get on Thursday) and why people may or may not be civil when PuGging. And we talked about the Sons of Hodir quest chain, answered some questions from the email, and just had a great time talking about World of Warcraft.It was a nice, relaxed show, and hopefully you'll enjoy it -- you can listen below, or use one of the myriad ways that we have to listen, including subscribing to the show in iTunes (and reviewing us if you do head over there -- some of the reviews on our listing are a little old).We'll be back next weekend after the holiday, and if you are handy with a mic and a computer, we've got a little favor to ask after the break -- check it out if you want to try to get your voice on our show.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[Ustream] Listen to the unedited recording in Ustream.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
[1:Local]: Perspectives on WoW past, present and future
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk. We don't miss that at allThis Breakfast Topic, which looked back at the little annoyances we're not sorry have gone the way of the dodo, included plenty of nostalgia for the epic-length Alterac Valleys of old. Players claimed to have hated them back then – but they seem to miss them now that they're a thing of the past. A number of readers pegged a different annoyance that early WoW players remember with chagrin. "One of the things I remember with the least amount of fondness is unconnected flight paths," noted lightningjynx. "There wasn't the clicking a destination halfway across the world and going to do something productive while you waited. No, you had to stare at your character flying to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, unless you had all the flight path times memorized and played that way." "Wow, yeah, I had forgotten about that," agreed MadScientist17. "Had to try to remember which flight points went where." We agree, too – but ultimately, we think Veil has the pointiest point: "Definitely don't miss old Andorhal. That place was an f'ing death trap."
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.
Forum post of the day: A Rogue without a cause
Maximogu of Firetree posed the question "Why bring a Rogue to an 80 heroic?" in the general forums. He claimed that at this point there CC is unnecessary for most tanks that rely on AOE. Most of the trash pulls are handled by AOE classes now, making the Rogue's single target focus obsolete. He argued that Rogues are best suited with Druid tanks that do not handle multiple mobs as well as other tanking classes do.Here are some of the reasons given for bringing a rogue along:Anushka of Kel'Thuzad: There's a lot of nasty things that can be interrupted in most heroics. Though I wouldn't take more than one rogue.Khadros of Frostwolf: To listen to the sound of theirs daggers going schlick schlick schlick.Morgrimm of Korgath: Because one of my friends is a rogue.Owari of Frostwolf: To DPS, of course.Mypetgoat of Bladefist: It's one expendible DPS that won't roll on my gear.Madia of Maelstrom: They need loot and stuff too.
Spiritual Guidance: Reacting to the Circle of Nerfing
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. Today Matticus will examine the Circle of Healing nerf. In case you've missed the news, it's been announced that Circle of Healing would be getting a 6 second cooldown. I had a feeling the nerf would be happening and I can't say I'm surprised. It does make me cry a little bit on the inside. Is it justified? How can we adapt? Read on!
Forum post of the day: No really, you are not prepared
Khanagi of Maelstrom sent out a plea in the official forums for players to be prepared when they group up for a heroic instance. His main complains is that as a Warrior Tank, he is often out DPSing the DPS. He feels that everyone in the group has a job to do, and many are falling short of their appointed task. His sentiment was met with considerable agreement from responders, who pointed out that AOE tanks will often have high DPS. This does not excuse the DPS from their responsibilities.Back in the day, when Burning Crusade was launched, one had to be revered to get their heroic instance keys. This meant you had to grind out reputation with a particular faction to get the heroic key, usually through the highest level instance. This changed in Patch 2.3.0, which lowered the requirement to honored. At that time, there was much rejoicing. Honored reputation with a faction can easily be achieved with leveling quests. You no longer have to cross the threshold of a dungeon to meet this requirement.
Encrypted Text: I roll on caster loot
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll be talking about hit rating and the seeming lack thereof in Northrend gear.After a few all-nighters in a row and a lot of showing up to work very tired, I finally reached level 80 this weekend. After a few victory laps in Dalaran to celebrate my victory over experience points and blue bubbles and Hemet Nesingwary (not for long, I'm sure); the looming realization of level-cap responsibilities started to enter my mind. Reputations, heroics, arena points, and honor – I had a lot of work to do. So, I took my own advice and decided to start some heroics, but not before spec'ing into my PvP mutilate build. I thought about trying out the truly insane DPS of Honor Amongst Thieves builds, but decided to postpone that until I've got some more gear to give it a real trial. Read on to see what I discovered on the way to my first Emblem of Heroism.
Ghostcrawler on dual specs and loot tied to achievements
So sayeth the Ghostcrawler and so we shall listen. He spoke today regarding a few issues that are of prime importance to many players. However instead of long rants or detailed analysis on the issues of raiding difficulty, dual specs, and achievements he presented them in bullet points.First dual specs, a topic hot on everyone's mind. He provided some new insight into how things will work. In particular he said that "It will be trivial to do in town. You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially." This is new information and should make everyone tingle with gleeful anticipation at how trivial it might be to switch specs while in Dalaran.He also makes mention of things we already knew. They are aiming to allow people to swap glyphs and action bars with the dual spec feature, and that it should be along ideally in the next major content patch.That patch cannot come soon enough.In addition to the dual spec information, Ghostcrawler went into some points on raid difficulty. While there isn't any really new in terms of how difficult the raiding environment is (or isn't) and what may lie in store for the future (a harder Ulduar raid zone), there is some new news about loot tied to achievements.
Spiritual Guidance: Hitting the cap
Welcome to Spiritual Guidance, usually brought to you by Matt Low of World of Matticus. This week, resident Shadow Priest Alex Ziebart steps in to make your day a little darker. We're getting to the point in Wrath where more than just the hardcorest of the hardcore are raiding. Not everyone is there (and not everyone is interested), but the time will come. On the way there, you're going to have to visit an old friend: The hit cap.In Wrath of the Lich King, the hit cap has moved from the original 16% to 17% hit. Why? Prior to this expansion, there was a baseline 1% chance to miss with spells that you could not remove. No matter how much hit rating you had, you were stuck with a 1% chance to miss. In Wrath, that's gone. It can be overcome.
Breakfast Topic: Should raid progression even be tracked anymore?
With the ease of Wrath of the Lich King raiding we're seeing guilds kill boss after boss at an alarming rate. And I'm not just talking about 5-man heroic bosses (those seem a bit hard, actually). I'm not even talking about 10-man bosses (easy cake). I'm talking about the big bad sorry excuse for a boss that is 25-man raiding.Some guilds can roll their face over the keyboard and kill something.Others just have their cat play with the mouse and keyboard for a couple hours.Still others are hiring 25 monkeys to sit in a room together clapping their hands while throwing feces at the screen. The occasional flick of their tail hits the keyboard and presses any of the numerous iWin buttons currently in game that automatically kills a level 83 mob. While the monkeys are doing this and other disgusting acts, they're also writing Shakespearian dramas, fixing the economy, bailing out the auto industry and homeowners, and ending all wars through creating world peace.This is what 25-man raiding has become. It's so easy a caveman monkey could do it!Do boss kills even count for anything anymore? Not really, no.
Wrath's Violet Hold takes us down memory lane
I'll admit it: I liked Arcatraz. I know, I know! It's supposed to be awful, how could I like it!? Well, while I didn 't necessarily like the layout of the dungeon and some of the trash (ethereal room, I'm looking at you), I like how it brought a lot of nostalgia from WoW Classic with it. A few of the trash mobs were pulled straight out of level 60 raids, though toned down a bit, and the last boss was like the "Best of Level 60 Raiding." Flamewakers? Qiraji? Awesome!This is why I love the upcoming Violet Hold, too. Dalaran's Violet Hold in Wrath of the Lich King is a throwback to everything we've done so far. To the people who have been raiding since the beginning, this dungeon is going to prompt a great big, "Man, do you remember when..." moment. For the people who haven't been raiding since the beginning, this dungeon will show off a lot of fun mechanics they've never seen before.
