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"Inside Higher Ed" compares raiding and teaching
Inside Higher Ed was pretty much the last place I ever expected to see a serious article on World of Warcraft. The study of MMORPG's isn't really part of mainstream academia (...yet), so imagine my surprise at finding an article comparing effective raid leading to teaching. Alex Golub, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii, contributed an article on his guild's attempts to kill Kael'thas pre-patch.
World of WarCrafts: Custom Bows
Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.While World of Warcraft may be a MMORPG primarily played by men, there are a few of us made of sugar and spice and all that's nice, who fancy frilly things such as ribbons and bows.Today's craft is courtesy of SugarPopRibbons, a shop I recently perused and from which purchased an adorable set of custom warlock bows. The ordering process was simple. I sent in an image of a Tier 5 warlock illustration I did and the colors of ribbons I'd like to use. The shop owner was courteous enough to send me a preview of the bow and upon my approval, crafted and shipped them.The shipping was fast. The quality is superb. The ribbons are very sturdy and SugarPop definitely has an eye for mixing and matching different styles of ribbon.
Maximum stamina
If you want to live through any boss fight as a tank, the one thing that you need above all else is health. Stamina, which gives ten health for every one point of stamina, is by far the most important stat that a tank needs in order to do their job well. No matter if you have reached the armor and defense cap, or if you're producing more threat than your DPS can keep up with, you won't live for a lick if you don't have enough health.Defining minimum health is an important concept in end game raiding and groups. For most instances, a minimum of 10,000 to 11,000 unbuffed is needed. This will at least let you take a few blows from a boss before dying, hopefully enough blows that the healer will be able to get off a few heals on you. For more entry level raiding environments, it's necessary to have unbuffed health between 11,000 and 12,000. If you've got 11,500 hit points going into Kara, you'll probably be able to reach 13,000 health fully raid buffed. This will let you survive a good portion of Kara, which means you can get more gear, which begets more health in the long run.
Five is the new eight
Bornakk has pretty much laid down the law. Eight piece armor sets are dead as we know them. Despite Claymore from Medivh's call to bring them back, Blizzard is happy with the way the five piece tier sets are working out, and that's the way they're planning to keep it.Kind of a shame, because as Claymore says, seeing someone with a full eight piece set was pretty epic. It took a lot to pick up every since piece, and some of the eight piece bonuses were pretty cool for their time. But just like the 40 man raids, there were lots of problems with eight piece sets as well. I never completed mine, just because my guild had moved on from where the gear was dropping before I was able to pick all the pieces up. And five piece sets give a lot more options as to customization-- with the extra, non-set pieces, players can choose to focus on a certain stat over others, which couldn't be done with the full eight piece sets.So in general, it's a good move-- bigger is not always better. Nostalgics may long for the days of Bloodfang and Giantstalker, but five piece armor sets are here to stay.
MMO Champion's Armor Showroom is out
Here's another cool tool from our buddy Boubouille over at MMO Champion-- he's put together a little viewing room of all the hottest armor in the World of Warcraft.There's nothing really new here-- we've seen all of this armor before, and it's all currently available in the game. But in case you wanted to check out how hot that Cyclone set is (and it is hot) or see where the pieces drop, or check the prices and stats of that PvP gear you're hoping for, this is a great little tool to do it with.And Bou's still planning on updating it some more-- as he says, it's a little strange to see a Human wearing the Shaman and Hunter sets, so he's eventually planning on putting in support for all the races. But if you wanted to get a good upclose look at the armor set you've been drooling over, here it is.
PTR: Screenshots of the 'Tier 5' weapons
Screenshots were posted early this morning showing off the new weapons meant to go with the Tier 5 sets. Now before anyone thinks that they've changed the set bonuses to include weapons; they haven't to my knowledge. These just happen to be weapons that continue the theme and colors of the Tier 5 armor sets. (Which means there are some wicked cool looking weapons in the group!) At the moment, the exact drop locations haven't been listed, beyond the Paladin-set match Hammer of Atonement, which dropped for Impervious the other day on the PTR. I suspect we'll be seeing some more stats before long, especially with the Devs focusing the testing on newer bosses lately. [via MMO Champion]
Nihilum downs Vashj
We knew it was coming. And now it's happened: Lady Vashj is down at the hands of Nihilum.And just as Eliah suspected the other day, the Fang of Vashj dropped with her-- at 92.8 DPS, it is now the highest DPS one-handed anyone-can-use weapon in the entire game (the weaponsmithing weapons are a little better, but only for specialized blacksmiths). Healing Pally gloves also dropped (Plate +20 spell crit and +48 healing), as well as a few vials from the Well of Eternity (which might actually be one of the most powerful items ever given to players, if you think about it), two of those elusive Nether Vortexes, and a Tier 5 helm token for Warriors, Priests, or Druids.The picture on Nihilum's site shows her respawning right over her corpse, so it looks like, as they say, "tuning is needed." But grats to Nihilum on downing Lady Vashj for a world first. Next up: Kael?[ via MMO-Champion ]
Tier sets: Who chooses, guilds or players?
What classes should have priority on what gear in raiding instances has been a topic of debate for a long time. Tier 4 and 5 -- with their options of tank, DPS and healing sets for hybrid classes -- looked like they might help solve this problem. Feral druids can get their DPS sets, resto shamans can get their healer sets, and protection paladins can get their tank sets, and everyone will finally be happy and stop arguing with the master looter. This looked pretty good until someone on the Raids and Dungeons forum posed a nasty dilemma. Let's say that you're a paladin officer in a raiding guild at 70 that's hoping to progress through content quickly. You have a couple paladins that are protection specced for tanking, maybe one paladin who's retribution specced because he has the gear for it, and a bunch of pallies who are specced to heal. Paul the paladin heals in raids and seems to enjoy his role. One day, Paul wins his first Tier 5 token, and goes and gets ... the Crystalforge Battlegear. "What the heck, Paul!" you say when you inspect him. "You're holy specced! I thought you liked healing! This retribution gear won't help you in raids! How are we going to kill Illidan if people don't upgrade their healing gear?" "I do like healing in raids," says Paul, "and I'll keep doing it, but I need to solo too so I chose the DPS set. I know I won't wear it in raids, but in the end, it's my gear, isn't it? I earned it." This situation is tough. On one hand, the guild helped Paul get that Tier 5 under the expectation that he'd use it to fulfill his primary raiding role, and thus help the guild progress. If everyone picks DPS sets for farming, the guild probably won't be able to handle some fights. On the other hand, it is Paul's gear, and Paul's got to farm sometime. As long as his healing is adequate, shouldn't Paul get to choose which set he wants when it's just him, the token and the gear vendor? I'm glad that as a rogue, I won't have to face this choice. (Should I take the damage set or ... the damage set?) In theory, it would be nice if everyone took the set that they would use in raids, but that's not necessarily going to happen all the time. For those of you who are officers or hybrid classes, I ask: What should our fictional guild do about Paul the paladin? Should guilds have any influence on which sets their hybrid classes pick?
Tier 5 stats from the BC beta
It appears the vendor for the Tier 5 armor has appeared on the beta (like Naxx, Tier 5 will be distributed via a token system), and I gotta say it looks cool. I found all the pictures here (a few classes are still missing at the moment), but I've hosted them here as well in case that resource disappears for whatever reason: Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock.As a point of reference, I see a lot of** damage and healing* on one of the Priest sets (the Tier 3 set has +483), and that's not counting all the pluses to spell crits, hits, and so on (not to mention filled jewel sockets, of which none of these currently have). The set bonuses are nice as well-- particularly the Hunter's, where only a two piece set bonus gives every pet attack a chance to heal the pet for a small amount. Finally, it looks like the sets are made up of only five pieces each, which means it'll be that much easier to get those bonuses in place (and combine them with other sets that may happen to show up).So what do you think? I'm not blown away by the stats completely, but there's no question these are extremely nice upgrades, even from Tier 3. And I still think that the Warlock, Mage, and Rogue sets look freakin' sweet.*Update: Druid dude insightfully points out what I missed: the Priest bonus is for damage and healing, not just healing. I might take back what I said about not being blown away-- that's awesome.**Update2: My math skills FTL. For specific numbers on how the new sets' +dmg and +healing compare to old sets, see the comments below.
Breakfast Topic: Best Looking Tier Set
We saw the tier 5 video yesterday, and it got me thinking...which of the tier sets look the best? I will admit to being partial to the tier 2 paladin set, simply because it looks positively awesome...less so when some pally is bubble hearthing in front of me, but awesome nonetheless.Another set that I find rather interesting is the warlock tier 3 set. Sure, it makes warlocks look a little like Sand People, but there is something about it that makes me want to look at it. Whether I want to look at it because I like it, or because I am fascinated by it's lameness, I am not entirely sure.What do you guys think? What is the best looking tier set out there?
