siege-of-orgrimmar
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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Plunder from the Siege Part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Seven bosses down, six to go. Let's talk about the loot we're going to, well, loot from the Siege of Orgrimmar. As an aside, this is the most I've ever felt like I was actually looting a place. Malkorok Winner of the prestigious "Name that I keep sticking extra A's in for no reason" award, and this raid's Hulk impersonator. What does the big M drop? Besides pain. He drops some pain. But also loot. Let's look at it, shall we? Malkorok's Skullcleaver - solid for either tanking or SMF fury, with hit and critical strike rating and a red socket. It also appears to have a set of tauren horns mounted on the side of it, which is somewhat disturbing. Vial of Living Corruption - tanking trinket, the stam on it is useful (stam is still a solid tanking option, even if it lacks the appeal of hit or mastery or an avoidance stat) but the cooldown reduction is the real draw here. It actually works on both Last Stand and Shield Wall for protection as well as Recklessness, meaning you can get more crit and thus put out more damage/threat (as well as guaranteeing a Shield Slam critical hit to Enrage you). Malkorok's Giant Stompers - tank/DPS boots with expertise, mastery, a blue socket and a crit bonus on that socket. I'd definitely use them for tanking over DPS unless expertise is a significant problem for you, there's better DPS options for boots in the raid as a whole. Malkorok's Tainted Dog Tags - See, this is why it feels like we're really actually looting a place - we're practically rummaging through Malkorok's entire kit of worldly possessions. This necklace is a very solid melee DPS neck for warriors, with critical strike and mastery. Legplates of Willful Doom - On the one hand, very nicely itemized DPS legs with crit, mastery and three sockets. On the other hand, with legs and gloves dropping not just in this raid but from the Celestials on the Timeless Isle (not the Timless Isle, although I have not seen Tim out there yet) it's likely you'll have your 2 piece by the time you fight Malkorok, and thus, these legs won't be of much use to you. Blood Rage Bracers - Parry/Expertise tank bracers, solidly itemized. Good for a warrior tank.
Getting out of your comfort zone
Have you been to the proving grounds yet to try a role you normally don't play? Trial Master Rotun seems awfully lonely in his little corner of the Temple of the White Tiger with everyone so busy collecting Timeless Coins or sieging Orgrimmar. What about flexible raiding? Have you tried taking the step up from raid finder? Blizzard has sent a clear message with patch 5.4: they really want you to get out of your comfort zone.
GuildOx launches Flex Raid ranking
WoW ranking database GuildOx has just announced a new feature -- world-first Flex guild progress ranking for Flex raid groups. According to data gathered by the fine folks at GuildOx, 64% of guilds that have raided Siege of Orgrimmar on normal mode have also completed kills using Flexible Raids as well. Given the popularity of the format, GuildOx decided to create a ranking list for guilds that raid on that difficulty. Flex ranking works the same as the usual raid progress ranking, with guilds being ranked by the number of encounters completed, and the date of their last kill. For players that are diving full-force into Flex raids, the new rankings list should be a nice addition. And for players that haven't delved into Flex raids, it's interesting to see just how many guilds are taking that step, and how far they've gotten in the content. Myself, I'm curious as to how the rankings will be received -- since Flex raids can take any number of people, they're an entirely different animal than 10 or 25 man raiding. With 10 man ranking, you know you're being ranked against other 10 man guilds, and the same applies to 25 man raiding as well. But with Flex, you could be raiding with 12, and another guild with 24. Interesting questions aside, it's nice to see we've got a ranking system in place for Flex raiding enthusiasts. As always, rank listings can be filtered and sorted by region or server. You can check out the full list of ranked guilds and their progress on GuildOx.
Scattered Shots: Siege tips and tricks, part 1
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the finer points of pew pewing in Vale of Eternal Sorrows and Gates of Retribution. With the September 23 hotfixes, all three hunter specs have been brought up to relevance. In simulations, they are all within a couple percent of each other, but the real question is how do they perform for you in a real world setting? After an expansion of beast mastery and survival (which play very similarly), the jump to marksmanship will be tough for some hunters. This week, for my very first hunter column, we're going to look at how you can maximize your damage and survivability in the first two wings of Siege of Orgrimmar. Keep in mind that a lot of these are simply suggestions and that your mileage may vary. What works for me may not work for you, but this will give you an idea of how our abilities can be utilized on the first eight bosses. Stock up on some Tomes of the Clear Mind and let's get started.
Are we getting less tolerant of wipes?
Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera and MVP Crepe have both weighed in on the official forums on the notion of wipe aversion. The jist of Crepe's original post is that they feel the community has become less and less tolerant of wipes. WoW players don't like doing things where their characters die. Crepe gives the specific example of LFR, saying that after a wipe players will just drop group, and that three wipes was the death knell for almost any LFR group. And there's definitely truth to that, why after all did Blizzard introduce the Determination buff if not to try to coax groups to stick together? Alas, it can sometimes work against the group, I've seen players zone in, see three stacks of determination, and immediately drop group again. They weren't even there for the wipes, they have no idea what went wrong or how it happened, and yet they can't take the idea of being in a wiping group. Yet, while players continue to drop group on wipes, the complaints continue that LFR is too easy, that it's sucking the life out of the game, trivializing it at every turn. Blizzard can't win, with LFR at least, it's both too hard and too easy. Every time a new tier comes out, as just happened yesterday, the Community team is besieged with players railing against the difficulty of the new tier. So what's causing us to be less and less tolerant of failure?
Totem Talk: Immersing yourself into the Siege of Orgrimmar
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. I don't know about you, but for the last couple of weeks I've been super excited. I love new content patches, and this one I think is one of my favorites. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I love lore, and this patch is pretty full or some tantalizing story bits. It's made all the cooler, at least for me now being horde and all, seeing all the nifty tie-ins inside and around Orgrimmar. To see the awesomeness that is the Siege of Orgrimmar, well, you're actually going to have to get in there at some point. Be it LFR, Flex raiding or normal raiding, there are so many ways for you to get in and experience what I think is one of the best raid zones to date. To do that, you're going to need to get in and get past the first set of challenges that await you. This is not a full step by step healing guide, instead it is my own observations and the sharing of information that I found useful as a resto shaman in these encounters.
Lichborne: Gates of Retribution raid loot 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. The second tier of Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar, Gates of Retribution, brings us to the Horde capital itself. There are four bosses to kill and much death knight loot to plunder. The disclaimers from last week's loot guide still apply. While best-in-slot guides are all well and good, keep in mind that what is "best" for you will change based on your skill level, talent choices, and your current gear, and that new gear at a higher item level, even if not optimal, may still be an upgrade over what you had before. With that in mind, let's dig in.
Siege of Orgrimmar LFR Wing Two opens
Get ready for the LFR chaos to ramp still higher as wing two opens. This section includes Galakras, Iron Juggernaut, Kor'kron Dark Shaman and General Nazgrim, and we're really getting into the fun stuff now, after the relatively gentle introduction that was wing one. We'll be putting together a guide that details the bosses in five seconds strategy before too long, but in the meantime you can check out our full guides from our PTR testing of the bosses. Which are you most excited about? Which has got you worried? Personally I'm looking forward to Iron Juggernaut. Not because I think it's a particularly excellent fight or anything, but because it's a huge robot scorpion that shoots fire. Frankly I think that's reason enough to be excited about a fight, don't you? And the good news is that, despite the additional difficulty of this wing, we've got two weeks to deal with it and learn the strategies before the next wing of LFR opens on the 8th of October. That one is where it really starts to get crazy, with Malkorok, Spoils of Pandaria and Thok the Bloodthirsty, so get yourself ready for some LFR fun! And be good to each other. We're all new to this.
Bosses in 5 Seconds: Siege of Orgrimmar LFR wing one
Here we are again, people, with the first wing of LFR open for almost a week, more and more people are braving the queue and the eternal tank shortage, and stepping into the Vale of Eternal Sorrows to cleanse some corruption. But what are we all doing in here? Why the heck does this watery dude keep going back to full health? Why am I in this twilight zone? And, more importantly, why am I dead? Please do note that these aren't in-depth strategies that elucidate every nuance of the fights. They're quick'n'dirty rundowns that will arm you with just enough knowledge to get your head around the key mechanics and hopefully make it through the fight alive. And they'll let you seem all clever in raid chat at the start. I'm aiming, simply, to tell you how to make it through. No clever business, nothing fancy. Immerseus Spread out around the boss Carpet your area with sha puddles Run from Swirl Tanks shouldn't stack, and should swap on Corrosive blast. Don't stand on tanks. In phase 2, which starts at 0% health, damage dark blobs and heal pale ones. Stand nearby when they explode for buffs. He dies when his corruption bar reaches 0. You'll pull him down to 0% health several times.
Know Your Lore: Requiem for innocence lost
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. Two households, both alike in dignity (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene), From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. I have to admit it -- Siege of Orgrimmar is one hell of a raid. Not only is it full of epic encounters, but there are little moments of lore sprinkled throughout the raid, for those that pay attention. In this, the final raid of Mists of Pandaria, we see our fair share of loose ends wrapped up, and learn the fates of many of the cast of characters that we've helped throughout our journeys in Pandaria. Of course we have Lorewalker Cho, there for the last raid just as he was there by our sides in the first. And we find out what happened to Taran Zhu after the Siege of Orgrimmar cinematic, in which he confronted Garrosh Hellscream. Yet there are other pandaren involved in Alliance and Horde affairs -- pandaren played by people like you and I, who came from a Wandering Isle, not so long ago. And that story, too, reaches an end of sorts ... and not the kind ending we might have hoped for. Please note: This post contains spoilers for events that take place within the Siege of Orgrimmar raid.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Plunder from the Siege Part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Loot lists. Let me tell you a little secret about them - they're a lot more work than you'd expect. They involve going over each boss to see which plate and strength items he drops, checking them out, looking at their stats and then writing up a brief summary of the items here. There are fourteen bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar. That's a lot of items. And in order for the lists to be useful, I have to prioritize gear that's good for warriors and explain why. So it's not as easy as flipping open the Dungeon Journal and then linking a few items. Which is why I resist doing loot lists every single time a new tier opens, but in the end, we all know I have to do it. So then, let's get started. I'll probably cover the first six or seven bosses this week and move on to the rest of the raid next - there's a lot of gear in Siege of Orgrimmar. I'm not going to link all the LFR, Flex, Warforged, Heroic and Heroic Warforged items, just the normal mode ones - assume any piece I link scales up and down properly depending on the version of the raid you're running.
Escape from Orgrimmar
Spoilers for Siege of Orgrimmar in this post. The whole post, pretty much past this line. I wouldn't keep reading if I wanted to avoid those. Yesterday I wrote a piece I intended as satirical. Besides giving me a big ol' reminder of Poe's Law, I learned the following: What I think is an absolutely ridiculous scenario -- the destruction of Orgrimmar by the Alliance following the Siege -- is not only plausible to some players, it's actually desired by some. Even people who oppose the idea treated it as one that is not ridiculous, or if it is ridiculous, is a real argument made by other players. That is because it is a real argument made by other players. I had managed to miss that. I had read suggestions for a garrison in Orgrimmar, for forcing reparations (the return of seized lands, for example) but I had not actually seen players make an argument for the destruction of Orgrimmar itself. No matter how ridiculous you think your idea is, someone is already surpassing you. While I don't apologize for writing the piece, I am now clearly aware that it didn't work. The problem becomes that I don't see how it could. What could I possibly have suggested that would be so ludicrous that it would be immediately apparent as farcical? Suggesting that the Alliance make stew meat of the Horde, perhaps? I'm not writing this post to bemoan my less than deft hand, however. Instead, since I've discovered that some people really think that the game should have a major faction capital city get destroyed and its population scattered across Kalimdor, I've decided to list all the ways that would be a terrible idea for the game as well as the story.
Know Your Lore: Delenda est Orgrimmar
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. An analysis of the aftermath of the Siege of Orgrimmar by SI:7 operative <name redacted> - contains top secret information about the aftermath of the Siege, including details on the new warchief - read only if you are cleared to know these details Jaina Proudmoore was right. The greatest threat to the people of Azeroth, the greatest obstacle to peace, the greatest impediment to a unified world capable of defeating the Burning Legion is the Horde. The original core of the Horde, the orcs of Draenor, have proved time and again that all they respect is military force and that they prefer to live by theft and conquest rather than trade or diplomacy - whether it be their sacking and burning of Stormwind at the end of the First War, their defeat at Blackrock Mountain at the end of the Second, or their uprising and flight that led to their arrival on Kalimdor, the orcs have always and will always choose conquest and war to achieve their aims. Leaving any and all morality out of the question, it's simply foolish to allow the Horde to continue to exist. Does King Varian Wrynn think Sylvanas Windrunner cares at all about the defeat of Hellscream? Why would she? Why should she? In defeating Garrosh and his Kor'kron, Varian has done her a favor - he's removed the only oversight capable of detecting and halting her more genocidal plans. This is a ruler who has repeatedly displayed that she is able and willing to dump plague on living populations - the writhing oozes of Southshore and the disease clouded streets of Gilneas City stand testament to her aims and means. Are we to believe that the new Warchief will have either the time or the motivation to pull Sylvanas back? It would make more sense from Vol'jin's perspective, as ruler of a weakened Horde, to let Sylvanas draw as much attention away from Kalimdor as she can - to draw Alliance attention away from him, and his crippled Horde. Letting the forsaken do whatever they want will give him time to rebuild and retrench. No, it's clear enough to even the most jaded observer - as long as the Horde exists, it will seek dominion over all the world of Azeroth. The Horde must be stopped. Furthermore, it is my opinion that Orgrimmar must be destroyed.
Lichborne: Vale of Eternal Sorrows raid loot 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. With normal and flex modes in full swing, and Raid Finder due in the coming days, it felt like a good time to start looking at what gear we can pull out of patch 5.4's new raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar. Today, we'll look at the first wing, the Vale of Eternal Sorrows. When gearing up, there are a few things to remember. Note that the item weights described in most guides assume best in slot gear with maximum level play. For example, haste has dropped to the bottom of the 3 major stats for all 3 death knight DPS specs. While some of this is due to bug fixes and changes in itemization, some of it is also a result of gameplay. These sims that returned haste as a low level stat also assumed their user was dressed in heroic warforged gear and using Plague Leech to get 2 death runes every 25-30 seconds and Anti-Magic Shell to gain extra runic power every 45 seconds without fail. If you aren't really in those categories, don't assume a piece of gear is trash for you without the sims to back it up. In a similar vein, that new item level 540 flexible drop is probably going to replace your item level 502 raid finder drop even if it's not optimally itemized for your spec. Also, while the "haste for tanks" craze is still going on in some quarters, I still am not a huge fan of it, especially now that Riposte lets you get at least some threat off of avoidance. I will link normal gear choices, but most of these choices will drop in all 4 difficulties, with the possibility of warforged drops in normal and heroic difficulties.
Siege of Orgrimmar Tier vendors
Patch 5.4's new raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar, has been available on normal and flexible difficulties all week this week, but today's maintenance update heralds the release of the first wing of LFR difficulty. That said ... where the heck does one go to get cash in their tier pieces from Siege? If you've been wondering that very question, the answer is much closer than you'd think -- and a lot easier to handle, this time around. Four new tier vendors have been placed in both the Alliance and Horde shrines in patch 5.4. Each vendor handles a particular difficulty of gear -- LFR, flexible, normal, and heroic. These vendors are all in the same area as the challenge mode gear vendor, making them ridiculously easy to get to. If you have tier tokens from any difficulty, simply visit the appropriate difficulty level vendor and turn them in. I have to say, after an entire expansion of flying back and forth to the far reaches of Pandaria just for some tier gear, it's nice to see these guys are in someplace well and truly immediately accessible. After a day's worth of raiding, the last thing I want to do is travel around hunting for the rewards I'd already obtained. That said, it would be nice if they'd add a vendor that carries all the old tier from this expansion as well -- might as well move everyone in close, now that we're nearing the end of the expansion. Good luck to those intrepid souls stepping into LFR today, and remember -- this time around, your gear is closer than you think.
Breakfast Topic: What do you think of the Siege of Orgrimmar?
Have you been in there yet? Are you waiting for LFR to open, or did you give Flex a shot? Normal mode all the way, or starting heroics this week? What do you think of this, the ultimate raid of Mists of Pandaria? Did you feel bad killing Nazgrim (like I did) or did you steamroll him and move on with your day? What's your favorite fight, or your least favorite? For me my favorite moments aren't even necessarily the fighting parts, although the trash waves with the healing totems was kind of fun for me (so much AoE) - I really almost wish I could tag along the raid and simply look at everything. Making the trek through the Vale, and then into Orgrimmar, there's been a lot to see so far, some really fantastic work has been done to take familiar elements and make them new and distinct for the raid. The hints dropped back at the beginning of Mists about Ragefire Chasm have come to pass, and its pretty amazing to get to see it. So, now it's your turn. What do you think about the Siege?
Know Your Lore: The future of the Horde
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. It's been an interesting couple of expansions for the Horde. Cataclysm saw Warchief Thrall step down from the leadership role that players were accustomed to, and appoint Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief in his stead. Mists of Pandaria saw Hellscream take that leadership role to an extreme that resulted in all-out war between Alliance and Horde, with the pandaren and the continent of Pandaria unceremoniously chucked into the middle of it all. Hellscream's reign has been brought to an end in patch 5.4 -- but where does this leave the Horde? Warchief Hellscream's notorious visions of a new future ended up dividing the Horde, and his caustic treatment of the non-orc races drove a wedge into the faction that ultimately culminated in the events of 5.4. The end of his stint as Warchief brought about a new leader ... but what comes after the dust has settled? Will the Horde recover from the damage done by Hellscream? And what does the future of the Horde hold, now that Hellscream's reign is over? Please note: There are spoilers for patch 5.4 immediately following the break. If you are avoiding spoiler content for the Siege of Orgrimmar, run away!
Siege of Orgrimmar and the world of the idea
Last night while raiding Orgrimmar, specifically while coming into the gates of the city past the Iron Juggernaut, I had this intense feeling of recognition layered with the discontinuity changes bring. It's a similar feeling to when you go back to the city or town you grew up in after a few years. Things have changed, but you still recognize most of it - tiny flashes of memory jump out, saying (in this case) "Hey, remember hovering over Grommash Hold in your flying mount waiting for raid" and then "This was always my favorite Auction House, I wonder if I left anything up before I switched factions" but at the same time the cages and wandering Kor'kron mobs lent a surreal air to the whole experience. I'd spent the whole night distracted anyway by the little touches of the raid so far - the fight with the Fallen Protectors started a chain of thought that stayed with me. These people were dead because, in part, of actions I'd taken while I was playing as Horde. After all, I stood next to Garrosh in the Shrine of Two Moons as he said that he would learn from the mogu. I helped him steal the Divine Bell from Darnassus. I watched him use it on Ichi, discarding a loyal servant like a broken toy when it didn't work. And more of course - I served Hellscream in breaching the Jade Forest, bringing the war that my faction was waging to foreign shores, and disrupted the cycle of rebirth for the Jade Serpent, loosing the Sha upon the forest. I snuck into Theramore and freed the Horde agent who helped keep Alliance civilians in the city for the bomb to destroy. Now of course, I didn't actually do any of those things because it is a game. Garrosh Hellscream is a voice actor's craft and a mass of pixels reading lines written by Blizzard's team of writers. What I find interesting, and overlooked at times by players like myself, is the opportunity to muse on the ideas presented to us by the game. What would it be like to return to Orgrimmar as a soldier invading it? What would it feel like to bear a certain responsibility for the ruin of a peaceful valley, the destruction of people who had only sought to protect their home? To see a beautiful land scarred by a monstrous act, and know that the act couldn't have happened without your assistance, however small, and however deeply you regretted it? For me, part of the fun of playing the game is in thinking differently than I usually do, to explore the ideas presented by the story as I move through it. I mean, at one point we actually have to kill pride. That's the subtext leaping forth from the head of the text, that is.
Dear Jaina Proudmoore
Dear Jaina, I'm not in the habit of writing letters to fictional characters, but in the face of what we've all seen yesterday, it seemed like as good a time as any to start. Look, I realize this is going to be hard to accept, but your fate isn't exactly in your hands. What you want, and what you'll get, are two entirely different things -- and it might not be fair. It might not be particularly right. It certainly isn't going to feel very good, but the influence you hold only goes so far. And in this case, you can't exactly order around a king. But let's look beyond that for a second, all right? Because honestly, you seem to be more than a little irritated, justified or not. And I remember who you used to be, a long time ago. I remember a lady who was a bastion of rational thinking, one who looked before she leapt, made sound judgments, and realized that in this big, wide, crazy world of Azeroth, things aren't always black and white, good and evil. Sometimes, most of the time in fact, they lay somewhere in between. So I'm wondering, Lady Proudmoore -- who are you? This post contains huge spoilers for patch 5.4, including the end cinematic for the Siege of Orgrimmar. Reader beware!
Official tier 16 armor previews
Yesterday, as part of the patch 5.4 round of updates, Blizzard released the official preview for all the tier 16 raid armor sets. There are three color variants for each set: raid finder, flex raid/normal, and heroic. I admit I have mixed feelings about the sets. Heroic paladin tier 16 is perhaps my favorite, not that I'll ever have a chance to earn it, but my personal standard of druid is leaving me with something to be desired. The leaf motif is nice, though. What do you think of the tier 16 armor? What are your favorites? Or are you going to mog that right over with tier 6 again, as soon as you get it?
