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Know Your Lore: Taran Zhu and the Shado-Pan
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. They are the Watchers on the Wall, the Sword in the Shadows. They are the Shado-Pan, Pandaria's fiercest warriors and arguably its darkest residents. Charged with restraining and controlling the sha -- vile creatures born of negative emotion -- the Shado-Pan have protected Pandaria from destruction for centuries. And although their numbers may be small in comparison to the rest of Pandaria's population, the Shado-Pan have succeeded in that mission ... until now. Taran Zhu, leader of the Shado-Pan, holds the distinction of having what is likely the most tumultuous run as leader of the Shado-Pan -- and a great deal of the troubles he has had to deal with directly involve us. Oddly, Taran Zhu is one of the more contentious of Pandaria's new lore figures -- yet his actions are no different than one would expect, from his place in pandaren society.
The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Terrace of Endless Spring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. Terrace of Endless Spring is a weird conclusion to the joyous majesty of tier 14. We go from one large raid to another large raid, and then the tier caps with chasing a Sha back to his Breakfast Nook of Fear. I suppose, however, you do have to give Blizzard a hand for managing to efficiently cram so many bosses into such a small area. The economy of space in there is very well executed. Nonetheless, all meta discussion aside, from a tanking perspective, Terrace of the Endless Spring is nothing to write home about compared to the rest of the tier. The fights are okay, but don't really require the same engagement that fights in Mogu'shan Vaults, or even the Heart of Fear, demanded. Regardless, it being the last raid of the tier, the damage is higher and the need to keep yourself on two feet is oh-so-pressing. There are definitely some good tricks in your toolbox that will help keep you vertical and the thus the raid from going pear-shaped. Let's explore them.
Totem Talk: Resto fun in the Terrace of Endless Spring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. The raid structure for the current tier has proven to be quite interesting. It is very reminiscent of tier 11 raids. I have gone on record many times saying how much I loved that setup, having multiple zones to go to which added variety and decreased my burnout by quite a bit. Tier 14 mimics that setup in, what is my opinion, the best ways. It offers not only a variety of locations but also a variety of mechanics to test any raid. Terrace of Endless Spring, the last of this tier's set of raids, is one of my favorites in a long time. I love the look of the zone, the lore of the zone and most of all I love healing the zone. Why do I like it so much? It has, in what is my opinion, some of the most shaman healer friendly fights we've had in a while. This is not a healing guide for ToES, that will come later, but rather just my impressions on the zone as a whole through the eyes of a restoration shaman.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution talents and glyphs for Terrace of Endless Spring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! I really like Terrace of Endless Spring. In my eyes, Terrace represents a continuation of the process of experimentation the developers began in Trial of the Crusader, namely that of making raids smaller without holding any actual content back. This experiment was continued in Cataclysm in Throne of the Four Winds, but I feel it wasn't quite a success until Terrace. Shrinking raids is a tricky proposition, but the surface area of this instance is balanced out by the complexity of its encounters. For you regular readers out there, you might have noticed I seem to have skipped right over the second half of Heart of Fear, Nightmare of Shek'zeer. Truth be told, I didn't really find these encounters interesting enough to devote an entire column to tackling them. Don't let my apparent entomophobia hold you back, though -- please do feel free to discuss Wind Lord Mel'Jarak, Amber-Shaper Un'sok, and Grand Empress Shek'zeer in the comments below! Anywho, let's jump right into the encounters for Terrace of Endless Spring. If you're looking for some raid guides for these bosses, Icy Veins has a great set on their site. Protectors of the Endless Similar in many ways to Ulduar's Iron Council, the Protectors can be pulled in a different order to vary not only the difficulty, but the gear drops. As on Iron Council, you will only be attacking one target at a time, a fact that shapes the talents and glyphs we want to use in this encounter.
Lichborne: Terrace of Endless Spring gear for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Terrace of Endless Spring is the last raid of tier 14, but features the same item levels as the Heart of Fear. If you didn't find an upgrade there, chances are you'll find it here. As with previous weeks, we'll be examining the loot on a boss by boss basis, in order to give you a better idea about which bosses to spend your Elder Charms of Good Fortune on. In addition, our analysis will be based primarily on normal gear drops. If you are raiding LFR or heroic tiers, your gear choices may vary a bit based on item levels.
Blood Pact: Looking for loot in tier 14 raids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wishes she has a sorcerer's apprentice to run Simulation Craft over and over again with different reforges. Loot lists are about as boring to write as they are to read, but they're helpful for when you're staring down a 20-second timer on the EPGP window and you're not sure what GP-spending button you'd like to hit. After we get done with the tier 14 gear, we should be set to talk about cooler things, like whether capping hit makes sense or particular boss strategies.
Gamescom Raid Q&A with the Devs: Nerfs, the raid finder and more
You may have spotted Monday's post on how to design a raid, which was the first half of the Gamescom 2012 Raids and Dungeons round table with Ion Hazzikostas and John Lagrave. The second half of the Round Table was a Q&A session in which many interesting questions were asked, shedding light on some hot issues as well as simply providing a little more insight into the Blizzard Encounter Design Team's creative processes. Again, these aren't verbatim quotations from Ion and John, as I simply can't write that fast, but the overall statements are accurate representations of their responses. Are there any encounters Blizzard have had to alter or leave out due to technical constraints? There was a boss leading up to the Lich King who you had to heal (Valithria Dreamwalker), and that was a huge challenge for their existing technology. If you think about it, Ion explained, up to that point, every healing spell in the game was designed to be cast on a friendly target, that is to say, a player. So the devs were faced with the task of reworking every healing spell in the game. They didn't want players to only be able to use certain spells on her, as that would have been bad, so they redid every healing spell. The technical team changed the game's design so that the boss basically became a raid team member. Ion and John explained that it's all about working out creative ways to implement the designers' ideas.
