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Previous tier of raid content is meant to be pugged, says Bashiok
After patch 4.2 released, the previous tier of raiding content was hit with a huge swathe of nerfs and changes designed to make the content that much easier for raiders now just able to experience it. With tier 11 valor point gear now purchasable with justice points, Blizzard fully intends for the previous tier of content to be pugged by server populations. Blizzard's Bashiok took to the forums to discuss just that intention. Bashiok does say that servers will take a bit to gain the momentum and general fluency with the encounters, but that it is entirely able to be pugged. Further, he says that from here on out, Blizzard has adopted the mantra of one cutting-edge tier, with the previous raids nerfed to allow players an easier time to complete them. Personally, I am a huge fan of this type of content shift, and I think we've reached a pretty good compromise with regards to content accessibility and raid design. Raiders get their challenge while the content is relevant, hard modes are still skill-based encounters that do not get the nerf bat, and the previous tier of normal mode content is much more accessible to more casual raiders. Much as Ulduar drakes still presented a challenge in execution during Wrath even though we outgeared them, hard modes in Cataclysm are the execution challenges that will still prove to be tricky for meta achievements. Count me in.
WoW Rookie: Emblem gear for the fresh level 80
New around here? We've got your back! See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. Emblems of this, emblems of that ... What are all these emblems that everyone swears you simply must have once you hit level 80? WoW Rookie's got your back with the basics. An advanced, comprehensive path to the best gear for your class and spec to raid in? No, not really. A down-and-dirty orientation to which of these currencies matters most to you as a new level 80? Absolutely. First, understand this: There's more to gearing at level 80 than emblem gear. Questing, instance drops, reputation gear, BoEs from the auction house and crafted pieces all play a role in your evolving gear set. Get your feet wet with our fresh 80's guide to getting started in 5-mans. If you especially enjoy digging your way through and savoring all the content, if you're a completist or if you're making your way toward raiding at something less than today's typically breakneck pace, you'll want to explore all of these options as you build your character. If you're headed straight for end-game raiding, you'll want to focus on emblem gear. Emblems are probably the single most important tool for vaulting yourself to raid readiness. That's not to say that the other options are without merit; you'll definitely want to shore up your kit with non-emblem items. But emblem gear offers a clear, reliable, seamless path from level 80 right into raiding. Let's see how it all comes together.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 3
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon an entire flight of black dragons. First up, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Secondly, this is it. We're almost done. We're finishing our final installment of how to gear your new level 80 protection paladin. If you've been reading our previous weeks of this guide, you know that we talked over reputation and profession gear as well as all of the various dungeon gear you can nab. This week we're going to be taking advantage of all of that dungeon running and spending our badges with a look at all of the badges from Frost to Heroism (and yes there are exactly 7 useful items that you can trade Emblems of Triumph down to Emblems of Heroism for ... and 6 of them are epic gems).
Blood Pact: Emblem upgrades
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest, brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "We will never be without power! I have secured our future! Bask in my glory!" -- Gul'dan I recently turned my attention back to one of my 'locks that I had pretty much stopped playing after Trial of the (Grand) Crusader. This means that his gear isn't bad by any means but that there are quite a few upgrades I can get for him without even having to get him raiding again. Pretty much all of these items come from spending Emblems of Frost. Emblems of Frost can be collected a number of ways, the easiest being the random heroic. Completing a random Lich King heroic dungeon (using the dungeon finder tool -- /LFD) for the first time each day will earn you two Emblems of Frost, so that's 14 each week. Do note that the random element of this tool is the dungeon; feel free to form your own party before using it. You can also do the weekly raid quest for another 5 emblems. Toravon the Ice Watcher is holding a couple more for you, so if you can kill him on 10- and 25-man modes, then you can bag another four from him. To collect any more in a week you need to raid Icecrown Citadel, where if you clear it and do the ICC quest, you can get up to 60 more. After the break, we'll see what we can spend them on.
The Queue: The dating game
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today's edition of The Queue is one part off-topic and two parts on-topic, but each and every part is worth it. Trust me on that one. Oh, and there's a couple more bad words than usual. You have been warned. I hope none of you are too scandalized by it. Windswept asked... "There is this girl I like that works at the mall, I want to ask her out but I don't know how. What would YOU do?"
The Light and How to Swing It: The truth about Lightsworn Garb
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the holy paladin Tier 10 set and its bonuses. As my guild and I have been conquering Icecrown Citadel, I find myself with a glut of Emblems of Frost. While my rogue is diligently saving up for some of the sweet rewards, my holy paladin can't even find a use for the new libram. While I did stop for a minute to consider picking up some off spec gear, I also couldn't bring myself to part with these hard-earned Emblems for a non-holy piece. What are we to do with all of the excess? I decided to investigate our Tier 10 4-piece bonus, considering that I was already halfway there with my two current pieces. However, I was also skeptical about how valuable the 4-piece bonus could be, considering that cast time reductions and haste interact in interesting ways. Well, there's that, and the fact that our tier set was itemized by someone who clearly enjoyed watching us squirm. With a complete lack of a haste/MP5 piece and two crit/MP5 pieces, our 4-piece bonus had better be really amazing to convince me to drop my off set pieces. Read on to find out what I decided.
Scattered Shots: Hunter set bonuses
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. For me, responding to my email is kind of like working out. As long as I do it every day, it's not so bad. It's just habit. But skip a few days and it starts to pile up and gets easier and easier to put it off. And of course the longer I put it off the worse it gets, until going through it all can seem like an insurmountable task. I've been slacking off lately and letting the email pile up. The one interesting benefit of this, however, is that it makes it a lot easier to see patterns in the questions. A huge percentage of the emails I've been getting lately are about the hunter set bonuses. Should we go for the 4-piece tier 10? Only go for two pieces and get better itemized pieces for the rest of the slots? Keep the 2-piece tier 9? So today we're going to run down the advantages of the tier 9 and tier 10 hunter set bonuses for each of the three hunter specs, and suggest which way you should gear your hunter.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Priest healing tier 10 4-piece bonus changed
The voices of thousands of priests who didn't spend their badges on tier just cried out in anguish. Zarhym -- PTR Patch 3.3.3 Notes Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%. source Priests all over have been ragging on the strength and utility of our Tier-10 4-piece bonus for months, and now our pleas have finally been answered in the latest PTR patch notes for patch 3.3.3. The bonus just got stupidly effortlessly easy to use if this goes to live. I'm a bit disappointed myself, since I actually liked the 4-set bonus and thought all it needed was a percentage buff to the proc. There were many priests who didn't like how the bonus only applied to certain types of play, but that is a pretty typical trend in history. Still, the buff is exceptionally good. The only problem with it is that so many priests who turned their back on the tier gear for other badge items (such as shadow's tier gear) with better itemization are now going to be screaming bloody murder.
Toravon: Strategy for the latest Wintergrasp boss
Toravon is the latest boss to appear within the Vault of Archavon, however we're not quite sure if he is the last of the VoA bosses to be seen in this expansion. The boss is fairly simple conceptually, but don't take him too lightly. I'll walk you through what you need to know to get score some sweet tier 10 PvE gear and equivilent PvP gear. Gear Drops He drops tier 10 level gloves and legs along with PvP gear (like belt and boots). Unlike his brothers, he drops 3 items on 25 instead of 2. And yes, he does drop Emblems of Frost. Its a fairly simple encounter for an equipped raid group. There aren't any fires to stay out of or anything. You'll need 2 tanks and at least 4-5 healers (on 10 man, you can get away with 2). Tanks Tanks will need to switch off of each other to shake the Frostbite debuff. It can stack up to 100 times and each application places a DoT which hits for about 1000 every couple of seconds. Your tanks can switch when they feel the debuff is getting high.
Spiritual Guidance: ICC-25 gear guide for holy and discipline priests
Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. As promised, today I will be discussing 25-man Icecrown Citadel loot in a special edition of Spiritual Guidance. Additionally, I will be giving my assessments on tier 10 set bonuses for those of you who are still deciding how to spend your badges. Finally, I'll be offering up the counter arguments that readers left for the 'who to gear first' debate from Sunday's column. We have a lot of things to discuss, so let's jump right into it!
Upcoming tier 10 tank armor stat changes
With Icecrown Citadel's unpopular Chill of the Throne debuff, or as we like to call it, "Getting out of Dodge," tanks have had to re-prioritize in terms of avoidance and mitigation stats to the point where tier 10 gear might not be as desirable as Blizzard intended. Thankfully, they appear to have realized this, and change is coming! To tier 10 tank gear, anyway. Blizzard CM Zarhym posted a note on the official forums announcing their plans for said gear: "We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they're provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces." He also noted that Emblem gear will continue to be comparable to the tier gear in terms of stats and, for those concerned about Feral tanks, they'll be keeping an eye on gear scaling on druid tank gear as well.
Spiritual Guidance: Playing catch up with shadow priests
Fox Van Allen steps out of the shadows every Wednesday to take control of Spiritual Guidance, telling you all you need to know to melt faces with expert precision. The era of patch 3.2 held some dark days for a shadow priest. The fights in Trial of the Crusader were definitely not built for shadow priests, especially in heroic mode. We scaled terribly with new gear. Our tier 9 gear was questionably designed. Every class has their own problems, but the problems that besieged shadow priests were bad enough to negatively effect raid performance. It wasn't hard for shadow priests to get left behind. Patch 3.3, though -- this is our time. The changes to the spec have already been detailed: buffs to our glyphs, talents, and haste-affected DoTs gave us a ten-to-twenty percent boost to our damage right off the bat. Our tier 10 gear gives powerful two- and four-piece bonuses. And best yet, the fights in the new Icecrown Citadel five-man dungeons and raids seem as if they were built for us. We add tremendous value to an ICC raid in almost every fight. Actually seeing those fights, though -- that can be a challenge. Patch 3.2 did a lot of damage to the shadow priest class's reputation. An increased emphasis on "gear score" in the game can (unfairly) get an average-geared shadow priest written off. We can't just take playing for granted -- past problems with the spec means there's a higher bar for us. If you got left behind in the last patch or even if you're a newly minted level 80, don't worry -- you can catch up quick. Here's how.
Scattered Shots: It's all hunter loot in ICC, part 1
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Okay, maybe it's not all hunter loot -- certainly there are some useless plate pieces and decorative maces in there -- but our ICC loot shopping list is delightful and vast, and even impacts the balance of hunter specs. This is the end game loot folks. The last major raid instance with the coolest and shiniest and bestest toys we're gonna get (and some bows). In fact, there's just so darned much hunter loot delight that it won't all fit into one post! So join me after the cut as we start to plan our ICC loot lists with a look at our itemization, tier 10 armor, Emblem of Frost options, and craftable loot.
Lichborne: Emblem of Frost gear for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight column. This week, Daniel Whitcomb is really regretting turning on his boombox in Acherus at the new year's party. By now, I assume a good portion of you have managed to get on your daily heroics at least a couple times a week, maybe even have an ICC raid or three under your belt. If so, you're starting to amass enough Emblems of Frost to maybe possibly think about buying a piece of gear. Of course, the problem with Emblem of Frost gear is that it's a little bit more expensive than, say, Emblem of Triumph gear. You're not going to get away with gearing up quite as fast, at least not until all of ICC is open and you have a good group for the place. No 25-emblem tier gear here. So that also makes it important, especially for the more casual player, to pick what you buy carefully. Let's take a look at the various options.
Elemental Shaman Tier 10 bug causes 7-day lockout
A nasty bug with the 2-piece Tier 10 bonus for Elemental Shamans reared its ugly head recently when a player attempted to use Elemental Mastery. The bonus, which is supposed to reduce the cooldown on Elemental Mastery by 2 seconds each time Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning is used, instead puts the 31-point Elemental talent on a whopping seven day cooldown. This is akin to the bug found with the Hunter ability Call Stabled Pet, which puts the ability on an even more staggering 25-day cooldown. Ghostcrawler immediately responded to the concern as raised on the official forums, stating that the problem happens only in cross-server instances and that raiding shouldn't be affected. Elemental Shamans sporting two pieces from the Frost Witch's Regalia would probably do well not to activate Elemental Mastery while in a dungeon using the Dungeon Finder until a fix is found. Ghostcrawler stated that Blizzard is working on the issue.
The Queue: A vote has been initiated to kick your dog
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Patch 3.3, the Fall of the Lich King, is finally here, and you know what that means! Well, I mean, hopefully it means questions for the Queue that haven't been asked a million times before, or questions about new content. Haha, just kidding. Today's Queue, like most other Queues, has nearly nothing to do with current events. Khrono asked... Why is it that my Paladin can wield a two handed and one handed sword, but for some reason he can't hold a dagger? Is there some lore out there that tells the tale of a Knight of the Silver Hand that insulted the dagger gods, so now we can't use daggers? Cause there are some nicely itemized casting daggers out there I wouldn't mind getting my hand on. It's all about flavor.
The Queue: Picking favorites
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Like Adam, I am most pleased that this is a new week. Things are so boring around the WoWiverse lately. Pilgrims Bounty was fun (really fun, I thought) but it was only around for a little while. I need excitement! Adventure! There is a void that needs to be filled! I guess answering your various questions will fulfill that need for now. Jason asked... "Since the Battle.net change has occurred, is it now possible for me to log on to WoW in Europe (like at an Internet café) with my American account? Or are they still separate like they were before?"
Patch 3.3 PTR: The new tier 10 purchasing model
The latest patch 3.3 build on the PTR has yielded tier 10 purchasing information. When players were purchasing tier 9, they had to to use badges to pick up the item level 232 iterations. But to get the next rank up, they needed badges and a token. When purchasing tier 8, all you needed was a class specific token which dropped from different bosses. That will not be the case here. Tier 10 purchasing has been streamlined further, and I think this is the best solution as it contains elements of both tier 8 and tier 9 models. Now when you want to buy tier 10, you have to use Emblems of Frost to purchase the item level 251 variants. This is the lowest version of tier 10 you can get. In order to get the next level which is item level 264, you'll need to get a class specific token which presumably drops from Icecrown Citadel on 25. It could drop from Icecrown Citadel 10 after taking down Arthas or doing some heroic versions of bosses. We have no idea yet.
Tier 10 armor set gallery
Blizzard finally released the last of its Tier 10 sneak peeks, the long-awaited shaman set, and it did not disappoint. Now that all of the waiting is over -- at least, the waiting for sneak peeks -- we've assembled a gallery of the Tier 10 sets for all classes. It looks like Blizzard really took their time on these sets. Some I may not like as much as others, design-wise, but they all have top-notch texture work and attention to detail. Check out the wool pattern on the shaman set, or the fiery brands on the warrior set, or the two-toed hunter boots. A lot of the sets are adorned with moving parts, too, like the druid shoulders, which snap and bite periodically. And most of them follow a very cohesive theme -- "stuff we've seen in Wrath up to this point." The warrior set should immediately remind you of King Ymiron, the rogue set is, well, a geist, and the death knight set might as well be called "Arthas Jr." So, check out what you've got coming in Patch 3.3. With the new Dungeon System, a week or so of heroics will get you a full set of Tier 9 gear and get you all set to face Arthas, if you're up for it. %Gallery-77820% Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Shaman Tier 10
Just off the official preview page from Blizzard comes the Shaman tier 10 armor set, which will be released in patch 3.3. And we all haven't been waiting for this set long enough, have we? The Shaman tier 10 set is called the Frost Witch, and this definitely fits with that motif. After looking closely at the image, Sacco and I think the horns of ice on the head and shoulders do not appeared to be textured, so that's something we have to look forward to being completed in the future. The shoulders also feature what appears to be a two ghost-animals jutting out of them, very likely a periodic effect that we've previously seen in the BC warlock set. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
