Icecrown-Citadel
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Shifting Perspectives: Tree 1, Arthas 0
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we save the world (of Warcraft). Originally this week's article was going to concern stomping Karazhan from top-to-bottom as a feral/resto druid, and then I got Big Bad Wolf for the opera event. Suffice it to say that the stomping took an abrupt U-turn, and I never got pictures or video of the other Kara fights that I've successfully solo'd on dozens of other occasions (though I grant they were all occasions that did not include humiliating wipes to an overgrown dog). If I weren't in the middle of a time crunch it probably would've been doable, but regrettably I will have to run a feature on how to make 1,000 gold soloing Karazhan on a later date. In the meantime, Alaron's managed to solo Big Bad Wolf successfully, but my main is in the somewhat sticky situation of not being a night elf. With the upcoming Icecrown raid buffs going all the way to 30% damage/healing/health/absorbs eventually, more and more raids are going to find their way to Arthas. Buffs aside, a lot of Arthas' difficulty lies in execution, and I started jotting down a few notes that I hope might be helpful to other druids likely to attempt the fight. We were fortunate to get both the 10- and 25-man version down, and I got astoundingly lucky on one 10-man attempt with back-to-back selections as a Harvest Soul target while I was running a video capture. I've seen a lot of comments online that caster druids aren't well-suited to dealing with this, and that's just not true at all.
Ready Check: To Warsong or not to Warsong
For the first time this week, the Icecrown Citadel raid saw the addition of the "tugboat" buff known as Hellscream's Warsong and the Strength of Wrynn. Essentially, this buff will provide a 5% increase to raiders' damage, healing, and health. Over time, that percentage increase will eventually reach a 30% buff. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to call the buff "the Warsong," because "the Wrynn" just doesn't have the same ring to it. While I won't make the fallacy of trying to guess what the developers were thinking when they created this raiding buff, the Warsong will definitely have the effect of helping every person who wants to see Arthas die get the chance. That's a fantastic goal, and I think this buff is a pretty good way to do it. But it does have a few challenges. If you caught our initial post about these Icecrown Citadel buffs going live, you may have caught some of the argument that instantly sprouted in the comments. Is the Warsong tugboat "fair" for guilds that had been working on content previously? Will we be able to tell if a guild completed content using (or ignoring) the buff? Is there additional loot or Emblems of Frost for people who do the Icecrown content without using the buff? Ultimately, all these questions tend to boil down to pride. Many guilds are now struggling with the question of whether to take advantage of the buff, or whether they should skip it. One can easily consider it a blow to their pride if the cascading buff eventually enables you to conquer content with which you previously struggled. Is it your skill improving, or is it simply the spectre of Warsong hanging over your head? Take a look behind the jump, and let's talk about the dynamics of the Warsong a little further.
In-Game Fixes for March 4th, 2010
Bornakk has announced a handful of in-game hot fixes on the official forums today. They're pretty much all Icecrown Citadel boss ability nerfs and tweaks, and should fixes a few annoyances with some battles, stretching from Marrowgar to Sindragosa. The full list is after the break.
The Daily Quest: Changes and reactions
Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we ought to follow? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Yesterday's hot discussion topic around the web was news of Cataclysm's upcoming stat changes. And today? There's still a lot of chatter, so let's toss out a few more links: Killing 'em Slowly reviews warlock changes. Flame Shock looks at the changes from an enhancement shaman perspective. The Hunter's Mark is here to give us a hunter's perspective. Gray Matter -- as always! -- talks Moonkins. But there's a new hot topic for today: during this morning's maintenance, Blizzard rolled out buffs for players attempting Icecrown Citadel. Everyone loves buffs, right? Wrong. Herding Cats thinks it's too soon. Cannot be Tamed wonders how many guilds will make use of it. BobTurkey thinks that future ICC kills will leave raiders asking "did we push ourselves enough to do it, or did they just nerf it down to our level?"
Icecrown Citadel raid buffs live
If your guild has been struggling throughout the various bosses in Icecrown Citadel, then struggle no more! Icecrown Citadel raid buffs are now live. For the Alliance, it is called Strength of Wrynn and the Horde version of the buff is Hellscream's Warsong. For now, your health, healing done, and damage done are increased by 5%. It looks like it'll eventually cap out and end at 30% but who knows when that will be. All in all, the buffs will definitely help progression raids out. If your raid doesn't need the buffs, you can simply talk to your faction guy and tell him to go away. He'll ask you once just to confirm, but if you are sure, he'll disappear. We've known that the raid wide buffs would appear at some point but not exactly when. Be sure to check out WoW.com's Icecrown Citadel raid strategy and information page!
Officers' Quarters: Verge of collapse
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. If ever there were a time for guild-leader or raid-leader burnout to set in, we are living in it. We are at the end of perhaps the most challenging six months of raiding content in WoW's history -- not in terms of its difficulty, but in its sheer potential for drama and member loss. First we had the half-hearted tier that consisted entirely of Trial of the Crusader, a one-room raid that took all of an hour to clear, and Onyxia, a well-loved but well-worn raid boss that was also a quick, and often boring, clear. Keeping raiders motivated during what felt like an endless four months wasn't easy. Many raid leaders were pulling out their hair trying to fill slots. For the most serious guilds, ToC was an absolute nightmare. Not because the content was itself difficult, but because of the rewards offered for clearing the zone without a single wipe, or even a single player death. Some very good players cracked under this kind of pressure. In a situation where one person's mistake -- not to mention disconnects, lag, or other external factors -- can quickly cause a death or a wipe and cost the entire raid access to loot, offering these achievements seemed to me like Blizzard was going out of their way to cause drama. Icecrown Citadel was supposed to be our savior, but instead it brought new and unanticipated problems.
Spiritual Guidance: Raiding Icecrown Citadel (Part 1), Page 2
The gunship encounter is unlike any other in Icecrown Citadel. Before the battle begins, be sure to talk to the goblin on your ship and pick up a rocket pack. Your main attack is the Cannon Blast (the "1" key), which does siege damage to the enemy ship and that ship's defenders, if you have good aim.
Two Bosses Enter: The ICC-ToC Season
Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. It's a brand new season and a brand new format, introducing judges from WoW.com and the WoW community at large -- and of course, your votes. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble! Welcome, welcome, please take your seats ... We're so glad to see you back in the stands at the Two Bosses Thunderdome! The judges have already taken their seats, down in the covered box -- that's right, the one with the red awning. They imported that monstrosity from Silvermoon, you know. The Consortium was in an uproar when they found out the tournament directors had ordered directly from the Sin'dorei. All that brocade ... Such a shame it'll inevitably be marred with the blood and gore of the gladiators. Oh, yes, the judges will get more than their fill of the messy glory; you didn't think those are their best robes, did you? How positively droll of you to assume -- Oh look, here's Dr. Dealgood now, come along to introduce the judges' panel. Ladies and gentlemen, gnomes and ghouls, welcome to a brand new season inside the Thunderdome ... Where Two Bosses Enter, but only One Boss Leaves! We present for your bloodthirsty pleasure fresh foes from the inner reaches of the five-man instances of Icecrown Citadel, along with seasoned gladiators from the Trial of the Champion. These ferocious combatants will be evaluated by the distinguished panel of judges you see before you, just beneath the blood-red awning in the box below. Let's meet them now.
Lichborne: Frostwing and Lich King loot for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly death knight discussion center. This week, your host is playing it cool in more ways than one, what with the test server shakeups to frost DPS. Before we start into this week's column, I do want to assure any prospective frost DPSers that I fully plan to write a frost DPS 101 guide. In fact, up until a few days ago, I had every intention of writing that as today's column. Then I sat down at the computer on Friday, and we had a nice shiny new PTR with a whole mess of frost DPS buffs. It's probably going to take a bit for us to sort through those buffs, see how they affect speccing and gearing, and whether or not they'll make it live, so for now, we're going to focus on some other topics. This week, the subject is the loot in the final section of Icecrown Citadel, the Frostwing Halls. There's only a few bosses here, but you'll find some great off-spec pieces, a few best in slots items, and some interesting weapon choices. I'll offer my usual disclaimer here and recommend that you go back and review the opening paragraphs of our Lower Spire loot guide, since it lists some basic stat rundowns and philosophies that you should keep in mind as you read these guides. You may also want to review the stat weights discussed in blood DPS 101 and unholy DPS 101 as you pick out your DPS gear from these pages.
The Daily Quest: Icecrown Citadel
Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we ought to follow? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! For those of you who may have been living under a rock and haven't heard of Icecrown Citadel, I'll start simple with the basics: Icecrown Citadel is a winged dungeon with both raid and 5-man content. And right now it's the raid everyone's in as they struggle towards a final, epic encounter with the Lich King. I'm not going to round-up everything that's been said about this dungeon -- because then we'd both be here all day -- but offer you a sampling of recent ICC-related articles from around the web. I am a Paladin talks about healing for Valithria Dreamwalker. (And if you're looking for more info on Valithria, we have a guide for you, too.) Rhidach of Righteous Defense learns the hard way that the Blood Council has a 10 minute enrage timer. Larisa at the Pink Pigtail Inn wonders if the hard mode bosses are going down too easily. Almost Evil offers first thoughts on Sindragosa. Teza at Wowraid has collected a number of ICC hard mode videos for your perusal. Spicytuna talks about the Gunship Battle for frost mages. OutDPS offers advice for hunters fighting Festergut. On WoW.com this week, we covered healing Professor Putricide and taking down the Blood Princes. For more from the blogosphere on [topic redacted], check back tomorrow for another Daily Quest!
Phat Loot Phriday: Abracadaver
Abracadaver isn't just phat loot. It's awesome loot. Not only does Abracadaver have the best name ever, it's got an ability that delivers on that name the way Pizza Hut deliver Pizza. That's because Abracadaver lets you pull a corpse out of your hat. The name isn't just a clever pun -- it's a clever pun with abilities. My favorite use of Abracadaver involves logging into the middle of Dalaran. Pop the Cadaver, and then run around screaming, "I'm a death knight! I'm a death knight!" Noone's fallen for it yet that I know of, but any second now that's going to happen. It could be that the Summoned Cadaver created by the staff doesn't have any kind of special name. Admittedly, the Cadaver doesn't actually do much damage. He swipes for about 200 damage per hit on unarmored characters. While that's not a lot, you may decide his clever animations make up for his low damage. Or you may not. In any case, check out more information about Abracadaver behind the cut.
Raid Rx: Healing through Professor Putricide
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. The professor has a masters degree in potions and a Ph.D in raid wiping. Even the most stalwart of healers will have face a barrage of obstacles that will affect healing ability. This guy is my personal Achilles heel in Icecrown so far. Not more than a few days ago, I went an embarrassing 8 for 8 on Malleable Goo deaths. Talk about my pride being wounded. I'm supposed to be good at dodging stuff that comes flying toward me not running into them or getting drilled in the face by this green exploding goo. Anyway, keep reading for my awesome mistakes and what I learned from them.
Raid Rx: Healing Valithria Dreamwalker
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. Arguably one of the most unique encounters in the entire game, Valithria Dreamwalker is one where the success of the raid rests entirely on the shoulders of healers. After some more practice and attempts, I can pass on several aspects of the fight that I learned onto you.
Crimson and Azure Deathchargers: where do they come from?
Boubouille over at MMO-Champion uncovered two new recolors of the stock deathcharger mount in Patch 3.3.2; one red one, one blue one. There's a summon spell for one of them, the Crimson Deathcharger, corresponding to the red recolored Crimson Deathcharger creature, and while there isn't a spell for the blue one, the files also contain an Azure Deathcharger creature. There's little information on where these come from, and judging from the state of the various spells involved, it's likely that they're simply not fully implemented yet. We can speculate, though! BB notes that Blizzard has said that there'll be at least one more patch before 4.0, and these could be a faction- or quest-based reward involving Icecrown or the Ashen Verdict. I got a little antsy about making the iconic death knight amount available to the general public, if that's even happening, but then my brain turned on and I remembered that the forsaken, human, dwarf, tauren, night elf, blood elf, and troll mounts have been available to other races in one way for a very long time. Of course, no other class can get the paladin charger model, for example, so maybe I'm approaching it all wrong. Either way. We'll likely see these bony ponies pop up again at a later date, and we'll keep you posted.
Clarification on normal mode functionality
Over on the EU forums, Slorkuz has clarified a few questions players may have about the new changes coming to normal mode ICC, namely the removal of limited attempts from the final bosses in each wing. While limited attempts will still be in place on heroic mode, they will no longer be in effect on normal mode as of the end of maintenance this morning. To quote: Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix? A: No. Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal? A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update. Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal? A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more. In other words, raiders attempting the final bosses of these wings on normal difficulty will still see the counter, it simply won't count down if they wipe. More importantly however is the news that players wishing to attempt bosses on Heroic difficulty will need to leave one attempt up if they want to clear the boss on normal mode.
Icecrown Citadel normal modes no longer limited by attempts
Far earlier than any of us had expected, Daelo has announced that the normal modes of Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King will no longer have limited attempts. The heroic modes of these encounters will still have limited attempts, however. To quote: After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode. We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids. A very interesting development, and I'm curious why they decided to lift the attempts system from normal modes entirely. Is it due to a relatively low number of guilds actually killing these bosses right now, or is there some other reason?
Lich King weapon drop changes
Although this probably won't affect too many of us in the near future, Blizzard is already tinkering with many of the stats supplied by the Lich King's weapon drops. A community manager on the Korean site posted about upcoming changes to one Lich King-10 and four Lich King-25 weapons, and Boubouille's posted a translation with help from user Locriani. A lot of raiders had been surprised at the itemization decisions, and as a raiding healer, I've seen a lot of commentary concerning the uninspiring presence of MP5 on the Royal Scepter of Terenas II. Blizzard's specifically addressing these concerns. The following is the list of changes Blizzard's planning to make to Lich King-25 weapons: Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with haste rating. Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: Critical strike rating replaced with haste rating. Heaven's Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies: Armor penetration replaced with haste rating. Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas: Haste rating replaced with armor penetration. And on Lich King-10: Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betrayer: Armor penetration replaced with expertise. We're not sure when these changes are going to go live, but we'll update you when they do. EDIT: The changes have been confirmed by Ancilorn on the EU forums now as well.
Editorial: Thoughts on the Ensidia ban
Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.
Paragon scores world-first legitimate 25-man Lich King kill
GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed. Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!
Ensidia temporarily banned for exploits
It looks like Ensidia's 25-man world first on the Lich King will go down with an asterisk next to it, because they've all just received a three-day ban for "Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." The Ensidia blog post reporting this is down as of this writing due to traffic, but you can still view the Google cache. The story is that Ensidia made use of Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics" (Saronite Bombs and similar items were disabled in a hotfix last night). In addition to the temporary ban, all items and achievements they gained from downing Arthas have been revoked. Before the ban (but after the hotfix), Ensidia put up a post claiming that they didn't think the bombs were an exploit; Blizzard obviously isn't buying it. Meanwhile, Muqq, the Ensidia player who posted about the ban, has taken this as an opportunity to quit WoW (and rant a bit at Blizzard about "half-assed encounters"), saying "to ban people when they do not know what's causing the bugs is just a [expletive] joke." Update: It's worth a mention that the language Muqq used at the end of his post is identical (save places and names) to this post by Tigole (scroll to the bottom -- it's the last thing on the page), written of EverQuest in 2002. Be warned, neither of these are safe for work.
