trial-of-the-crusader
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The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the Northrend Beasts
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 helps out with the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown on the weekends. This week, he takes a look at tanking the fantastic and terrible beasts that the Argent Crusade has collected for their Trial of the Crusader event.The Argent Crusade has assembled a number of trials for champions, crusaders, and grand crusaders alike to fight through as they decide what forces they will take in their assault against Icecrown Citadel itself. Today, we'll take a look at the first of the events in Trial of the Crusader which is the Northrend Beasts encounter. They've assembled Magnataur, Jormungars, and Yeti (Oh My!) to test the mettle of those wishing to compete. We'll take a look at tanking each of these beasts after the break.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 2
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding the third and fourth bosses in the Trial of the Crusader.Not even a full week had passed, and already not one, but two guilds were able to clear their way through the heroic version of Trial of the Grand Crusader. While it may have been due to soulstone exploits or spamming Holy Wrath, either way, one of the Lich King's most powerful warriors and oldest companions died to the might of the Horde (or maybe some Alliance cowards got lucky).I've had the luxury of fighting my way through and also defeating Anub'arak, though only on normal difficulty so far. This week, I'll cover some of the tips and tricks that I've picked up in my clearings of the Trial of the Crusader, with a focus on the next 2 encounters in the instance.
Raid Rx: Really cool Coliseum healing loot
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. It's time to gear us up some healers! Let's take a look at all the phat loot the coliseum has to offer. The Crusader's Coliseum offers a wide variety of gear and equipment for both new and veteran healers. It's time for us to start equipping ourselves in order to be prepared when Icecrown Citadel hits. While we're not exactly going to be healing Arthas to death, it's a good idea to start working on our stuff now. We'll start with Trial of the Champion for the fresher 80s before we move to Trial of the Crusader where all the good stuff is.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 1
Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that asks all the tough questions, and then Ice Blocks before the tough answers one-shot it. A little while after Wrath hit, Arcane Brilliance posted a column on how to gear your Mage up for Naxx. Several things have changed since then: Pretty much everything I wrote then is now wrong. You don't really gear for Naxx anymore. Naxx is now a place you go in order to gear up for other places. Trial of the Champion. Knowing these things, I thought an updated gearing column might be in order. So if you're raising a fledgling Mage, and level 80 is about to hit you like a truckload of Death Knights, and you're looking for the quickest way to turn green and blue into purple, look no farther. Well maybe a little farther. The column's not over yet.
Breakfast topic: Has Trial of the Grand Crusader been a reasonable challenge?
My raiding guild suffered from the Anub'Arak soft reset issue where we were unable to reach the floor where the oversized bug was. We wanted to clear him out on normal mode before we switched over to the harder difficulty. But since the floor was intact, we couldn't! (Note: This has since been fixed). Because of this, we decided to toggle on Heroic mode for Trial of the Crusader on 25 just to get a feel for it. Some guilds believe that the Coliseum, even on heroic, is too easy. So I went in wondering what the fuss was all about. I wanted to know how easy the heroic setting would be. But that's when I faced the reality check. Remember, not everyone is in a top 100 guild. We burned through about 10 attempts that night just working on the first encounter alone. That experience helped to ground us and we realized what we needed to do to get through that mountain. In the end, we weren't able to even get past Gormok. We came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to need to coordinate healing and tanking cooldowns to break past the final minute of the first boss. Nonetheless, it was fairly humbling. We'll have to go in next time much more carefully and with a more detailed game plan in mind. It's been several days since Trial of the Grand Crusader has been accessible. Do you feel it has just the right amount of challenge for your raid group? Have you found it too easy or too difficult?
We Have a Tabard: It's not cheating if...
Looking for a guild? Well, you can join ours! We have a tabard and everything! Check back for Amanda Dean talking about guilds and guild leadership in We Have a Tabard.As I've mentioned before I'm not totally against PUGging raids. I find its actually an excellent way to get to know people on the server and sometimes a handy recruiting tool. Depending on your guild rules, there are some raids to PUG and some raids to save your lockout for your guild.I had a guildie today all distraught because he was saved to Naxx 10 helping a guildie out. He apologized profusely when someone was putting together a "Badge Run Blitz" but couldn't heal it. At this point Naxx 10 is like running an extended heroic with more gold and shards. We've progressed beyond it, so lockouts are fair game.I get a wee bit crabbier when folks get locked out of our current progression. We're actually still working on Ulduar 10, and need to draw upon any available resources to move forward. Guildies can feel free to run Naxx, Vault, and Obsidian Sanctum to their heart's content. Usually when someone asks for my blessing to run with another group, I give it if they have to miss guild times or we're unable to get into the group.
"For the Horde" gets world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10
With the heroic versions of Trial of the Crusader going live yesterday, raiding guilds are already venturing into the more challenging versions of Tier 9. As of evening Tuesday EST, the European guild For the Horde has claimed a world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10 (a no-wipe full clear of the instance) on 10-man heroic Trial. Unfortunately, I don't speak German so I might be missing some of the finer points related on their website (anyone who can shed more light on this, please drop a comment!) but it looks like they weren't deliberately aiming for the achievement until they reached Anub'arak with all 50 attempts remaining, and then decided to go for it. Next in achievement progression? A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity -- repeating it without any gear from 25-man ToC, which is broadly equivalent to the Herald of the Titans achievement. Ouch.Boubouille at MMO Champion has since confirmed that the Swift Horde Wolf and its Alliance counterpart the Swift Alliance Steed are drops from the tribute chest upon completion of the no-wipe clear, and it's quite possible that the mounts also drop from the 25-man version as well. However, I doubt we'll be seeing A Tribute to Insanity-25 this week, as none of the guilds doing the heroic-25 mode have reported a wipe-free experience thus far.We'll keep an eye on guild progression for you, and congratulations to For the Horde!
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Trial of the Crusader, part 1
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Trial of the Crusader.Arthas looms over us from his massive tower in Icecrown Citadel, Our mission in Northrend, assigned to us by the brass at Ravenholdt, is to assassinate the Lich King. Unfortunately, all attempts to gain access to his fortress have been thwarted by the million or so Undead inside, whom Blizzard decided to grace with Stealth Detection. With our primary method of infiltration foiled, we've had to look at other options for our clandestine objectives.Tirion Fordring, the accursed leader of the Ret Paladin order, has summoned the leaders of the Horde and Alliance as well as any willing soldiers to compete for the opportunity to spearhead a mission into Northrend's most exclusive icy throne. The latest missive we received from Lord Jorach indicates that we are to disguise ourselves as members of a fighting force, and to enter and win the competition in order to gain access to Icecrown Citadel. The survival of our raid mates is secondary to the completion of the mission.
Guildwatch: "ur name is remembered"
Boyd of Order of the Oak was tooling around Storm Peaks on the Shadowsong server when he saw a pile of dead rhinos and swooped done to skin them. No sooner did he do that than he noticed a little AFK Mage of Riders of the Apocalypse sitting there, and when the person got back from AFK, as you can see above, they were quite angry. Quite angry indeed. Over two Rhino skins. We wonder whose reputation was hurt worse by this little transaction.Many more drama stories in this week's Guildwatch, which we apologize is a little bit late thanks to the BlizzCon aftermath here on the site. But worry not -- we've got your drama, your downed, and even your recruiting news. Sorry you didn't get it earlier, but maybe it'll be a little pick-me-up this late in the week. Want to send us a tip? Please do? Email it to guildwatch@wow.com!
The Queue: Exploits and dirty cheats
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.The video embedded in today's edition of The Queue isn't a silly music video this time around, I'm afraid. No funny business today. Today is for game faces. Today is for serious business. Today is for italic letters. Sashay asked... "I have found a glitch that has caused many people to have their hearts broken. This glitch is the "underground" mining technique that people use so they will not be attacked by enemies. Does this happen because they found a "Under Stormwind" glitch somewhere in Northrend? Maybe they put their toon in the tourney castle before it was built and now they are under everything?"
Crusader's Coliseum tribute rewards are ilvl 272
Patch 3.2 brought with it three new tiers of gear, corresponding to the various difficulty settings available for the Trial of the Crusader raid. The items coming out of the 25-man heroic version, at item level 258, are leaps and bounds above what was available in Ulduar -- and if you thought that those were pretty good, you're in for an even bigger surprise if you manage to complete the dungeon's tribute run. Boubouille, head of the Data Miners' Guild and captain of the starship MMO-Champion, pulled the full list of loot available in the raid from the official Armory site. Players who accomplish the feat of completing the full heroic 25-man dungeon without wiping once will receive a chest with one of several ilvl 272 cloaks in it. At ilvl 272, these cloaks are the best items in the game. Even ignoring their item level, they're extremely well-itemized, and offer something for even some oft-ignored specs ... even Elemental Shamans, thank God. And with the next-highest item level being 258, the cloaks are a full tier above the heroic 25-man's gear. To put that into perspective, moving from 10-man Ulduar to 25-man Ulduar is only a jump of 6 item levels. This also means that, if dungeon difficulties and item levels continue to progress in the same way they have been for the previous two content patches and no half-tier steps occur, we could be seeing the following approximate item levels in the Icecrown Citadel raid:Normal 10-Man: 258Heroic 10-Man/Normal 25-Man: 272Heroic 25-Man: 285, with probable level 298 super-rewards. Though Patch 3.3 is supposed to be WOTLK's last content patch, if it's not, we could see item levels bust 300 in this expansion. Crazy!
