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Raise the horns for Anthrax and Killswitch Engage in VR tonight
There really isn't anything like being on the floor during a heavy metal show. The smell of sweat, spilled beer and, ahem, greener substances combine to form one of the more unique aromas in live music. But as enticing as that may be, sometimes you just can't make it to a concert for one reason or another. If you're a fan of thrash, Live Nation and NextVR have something right up your alley planned for 9pm Eastern tonight: an interactive broadcast of Anthrax and Killswitch Engage's show from the House of Blues in Texas.
Shifting Perspectives: Bear and resto druid changes ahead for patch 4.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we look at the patch 4.1 PTR and, when so inclined, drink heavily. Hail, druids. We've got another exciting patch coming up, and this week I wanted to take a look at the changes currently in store for both bear and tree druids (with a few notes that inevitably touch on cats as well, as some feral changes are pretty general). And far be it from me to omit the most important change: Zarhym Prowl has a new icon. source Well, thank God for that.
Lichborne: Guys and Ghouls
Welcome to Lichborne, where we ask the tough questions: Will Death Knights be ready for launch? Will they really have 3 trees that can tank and DPS? And what kind of a ghoul name is Eyeslobber? Ghouls have been one of my most beloved features of the Death Knight for some now. I like having an undead squire by my side, and they can be pretty useful for some extra dps and even some lifesaving interference in a pinch. However, they also felt like one of the least firmed up aspects of a Death Knight for some time now, with abilities coming and going on a patchly basis, and bugs that kept the ghoul from being summoned or allowed to summon a massive army of ghouls in no time flat. Still, they have their uses, and despite still being incredibly flimsy healthwise, do offer a decent amount of extra damage when they're up. The drawback is that 50 silver is a lot for a pet that lasts less than 5 minutes, and without points in the Unholy tree, the Ghoul is completely uncontrollable, and may have a tendency to run into suicidal situations without listening to a word you say. As far as perfecting the Ghoul and deciding on its place in the class, there seems to be two schools of thought. The first, mostly made of Unholy specced Death Knights, sees the Ghoul as a fun and useful part of the class, and wants to see it tweaked to have good survivability, good dps, and generally be worth keeping out. The other class see Ghouls as mostly a novelty, a thing to be bought out occasionally, and such a pain to upkeep that they don't really want to have to deal with it as a pillar of the class. They'd rather be able to forget it exists when they want to. Both positions have their passionate supporters, but Blizzard seems to have found a rather ingenious way to give both sides what they want: Talents. Recent talent changes provide a lot of buffs, and if you collect them all, you should have a much easier time using your ghoul to your hearts content.
Lichborne: PvP, grinding, the Unholy tree, and you
Every weekend in Lichborne, Daniel Whitcomb will take you through the ever-changing (Beta) world of World of Warcraft's first hero class, the Death Knight. With a new Beta Build on the test servers, Death Knights have received a massive amount of talent changes. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons, and I've covered much of them in last week's Lichborne. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice's Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here. Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. In fact, I'd have to say that the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP. As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.
Rock Band Weekly: The Earache Thrash Pack
You'd be advised to buy some throat lozenges before you attempt to sing along to any of this week's Rock Band downloadable tracks. Behold the thrash pack, which in three songs manages to overpower twice as many Grateful Dead tunes.Earache Thrash Pack (440 Microsoft Points / $5.49) Blinded By Fear - At the Gates (master) (160 MS Points / $2) Thrasher - Evile (160 MS Points / $2) D.O.A. - The Haunted (160 MS Points / $2) Videos for this week's Rock Band DLC can be found after the break. As usual, the songs should be available Tuesday for Xbox 360 and Thursday for PS3.
