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Guildwatch: Easy as 1 2 3
Here's another fun guild kill shot, this one from Carpe Incursio, a raiding guild on Eitrigg. The guild actually has its own Flickr account, where you can see lots of other fun shots and pictures. Pretty groovy. Plus, we can't really pass up anything with that many voodoo Gnomes.Lots more fun guild stuff in this week's GW, including yet another YouTube Vent recording, and more Yogg Saron downings than you can shake an ilvl 226 stick at. Hit the link below to read on.
Guildwatch: Loot reservations required
The hilarious screenshot above comes from Blitzkrieg of Twisting Nether -- I think it's probably the winner of guild screenshots we've seen so far. It's too bad they didn't get the actual Flame Leviathan model in there, but the guildies' names above their heads are perfect. Very well done.Lots more downings (we're still cleaning up the ones before patch 3.2, but I expect after today, we'll be seeing some serious Crusaders' Coliseum progression), and of course the usual drama and recruiting news in this week's GW as well. Click the link below to read on, and enjoy.
Ready Check: Mimiron
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. T Welcome back to Ready Check. We took some time last week to take a look at the changes that patch 3.2 brought to raiding in Azeroth, but now we're back to burning through Ulduar. Today, we'll take a look at Mimiron, and then start working on the final portions of the instance with General Vezax. So far, you've wrecked the Flame Leviathan. You euthanized Razorscale. You gave a cold shower to Ignis the Furnace Master. You marvelled at Deconstructor. When it came to Kologarn, you damned well shall pass. The Assembly of Iron said court was out of session, and Auriaya and her small legion of adds gave you no pause. You've asked Hodir, "Who's your Daddy?" You've entered the mountain, and tackled Thorim.
Guildwatch: He makes everything better
Can you tell what's so awesome about this picture of Anarchy of Ravencrest's 10-man Yogg Saron down? Nope, it's not the fact that they killed one of the hardest bosses in the game, and it's not even that cool type effect on the title. It's the naked Gnome. Trust us, Horde or Alliance, every guild should have a naked Gnome standing front and center in their kill shot.Lots of naked Gnome-less downed bosses in this week's Guildwatch (which, we promise, has lots more actual text than the early version you accidentally saw today). We've also got drama and recruiting news as well -- hit the link below to read this week's column.
World of Warcraft Patch 3.2 Loot Guide
WoW.com has covered patch 3.2 extensively. Everything from the surprising changes to flying mounts, to the latest and greatest loot, and all the changes in between. In our patch 3.2 class, raiding, and PvP guides we take a look at exactly what changes and how the changes will affect your playing.New instances and raids are fun and all, but let's not forget what we're all here for: the loot. With the new patch out on servers, there's a whole slew of new items and gear to win and collect. Here's a quick roundup of everything we know about the new loot coming in patch 3.2, from the badges you pull from dead bosses' bodies, to the sweet epics you can turn them in to get.
Guildwatch: Just don't say "priceless"
We got quite a few good photoshopped victory pictures in the email after our suggestion that you send us some a few weeks ago, so you'll probably see a few of them here in the column over the next few weeks (assuming, that is, we don't get any hilarious chat logs that we need to show you). This one's from Tyranis, GM of The Arcane Council on Bloodhoof, who adds in some fun stuff to every screenshot his guild puts together. Go see more of them on their website.More downed news, as well as drama and recruiting notices, in this week's Guildwatch, which starts below. If you have news to send in, please do: drop us a quick note (the more you can emulate the format of the news below, the better) at guildwatch@wow.com. Meanwhile, read on for this week's column.
Hard modes and raider morale
Karl, writing over on the WoW Livejournal, has an interesting set of thoughts about hard modes and just how they work with raiders' morale. Hard modes are designed to give raiders something extra -- if you've conquered the normal modes of raids like Ulduar, hard modes are put in there by Blizzard to offer you some extra risk for a corresponding reward. But as they've become more and more routine, some raids are taking on the hard modes even before they've cleared the whole instance, leading up to a night of wiping on early hard modes, and then wiping on later progression. And wiping all night is never good for any raid's morale.Of course, this is one of the causes for the way the Crusaders' Coliseum in patch 3.2 is designed: instead of having both hard and normal modes constrained to one instance, you can run a 10 or 25-man instance in normal mode all the way, leaving the Heroic mode open when you're ready to do some wiping.But then again, think about what the mindset is here -- players are throwing themselves on early bosses' hard modes even when they haven't beaten the end bosses yet. It seems like most raids will take any opportunity they get for more loot, no matter how tough it is, and that's what's leading to all of this "glass chewing" Karl is talking about. Even if Blizzard gives players the option to run a normal instance without worrying about hard modes, won't players still just run Heroic anyway, for the better gear?
Phat Loot Phriday: Petrified Ivy Sprig
Let's do a wand! A really, really hot wand, too -- best in slot for most casters in the game right now.Name: Petrified Ivy Sprig (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic WandDamage/Speed: 414-719 Nature / 1.80 (328.6 DPS)Attributes: +19 Intellect, +22 Spirit, +26 Stamina. Which is actually less than that other big endgame wand, but wait, there's more: %Gallery-33600%
Guildwatch: They should ninja a dictionary
Blizzard's "new" approach to the endgame is nowhere more apparent than right here in Guildwatch: final endgame bosses use to only be the domain of world firsts and sponsored guilds, but one look through our Downed section this week shows that even casual guilds can now roll all the way up to Yogg-Saron and take him out. Sure, Algalon, that "destroyer of raids," is still no pushover. But the endgame is definitely much more accessible than before.That downed news can be found after the link below, along with all of the drama and raiding news we've received lately from around the realms. Click on to read this week's Guildwatch, and feel free to send us your tips at guildwatch@wow.com -- you might see them right here next week.
Ready Check: Thorim
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.You've wrecked the Flame Leviathan. You euthanized Razorscale. You gave a cold shower to Ignis the Furnace Master. You marvelled at Deconstructor. When it came to Kologarn, you damned well shall pass. The Assembly of Iron said court was out of session, and Auriaya and her small legion of adds gave you no pause. You've asked Hodir, "Who's your Daddy?"Now, though, it's time for Thorim.While the Thorim encounter may not be as wildly unique as the Flame Leviathan fight, I think Thorim is probably going to be a fairly novel fight for most people. It has a similar to dynamic to Gothik the Harvester, but only in-as-much as you need to split your raid in half. Here's the short, short, short version of the fight. You start the entire encounter by attacking the Jormungar (big worm) and associated adds in what's called the Arena. By finishing off the last of that group, you start the real fight. You'll note Thorim is standing up on a balcony. Thorim will become immediately ensconced in a sheath of power, which prevents even ranged DPS from really hurting him. To kill the boss, you need to get him to come off that balcony. But, how would you ever do such a thing?
Ulduar drakes not being removed anytime soon
Blizzard simply can't make up their minds about this, can they? The Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, which are rewarded for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider on Normal and Heroic, were slated for removal at an unspecified time in the future after patch 3.2's launch. The reasoning was that it would be easier to acquire them with Coliseum gear, and they were meant for cutting-edge players only. However, Eyonix has just announced that they are not planning on removing these proto-drake rewards from the achievement in patch 3.2, and furthermore, they don't plan to do it "in the foreseeable future." In the event that they do change their minds again, you are promised a one-month warning. So get back to those hard-modes! Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Breakfast topic: Are manually extended raid lockouts a good thing?
Hands up who remembers running Karazhan back in the days when it took a week to clear and you needed every one of those nights to do it? Are you currently spending your evenings raiding in Ulduar? Is Ignis taking more time to down than you anticipated? I think we've all been there, you're in the zone but just can't kill that pesky raid boss before the raid timer goes ding and everything resets. I've once did an early morning raid (we're talking like 2am here) through Kara, powering through all the bosses, because the timer was due to set that morning and it was fun, even if we didn't quite clear Medivh's tower out. I think we stopped after Prince as none of us could keep our eyes open. But there's something heartbreaking about getting down to that final boss and calling it a day, knowing that you have to start all over again the following day. It's kind of soul destroying.Patch 3.2 finally offers an answer in the form of a raid lockout extension. If you're mid-raid and haven't a hope in hell of finishing by the reset, you can manually extended it for another week. But I wonder, constant readers, are you going to use it? Will it motivate you to finish a raid or do you think it slow progression down?
Ensidia and Method to compete in Ulduar timed run
Live PvP competition is old hat. 2009 appears to be the year of PvE (if you ask me, every year should be that year). At the Games Convention Online, in Leipzig over the weekend of July 31 – August 2, two of the strongest PvE guilds in the world, Ensidia and Method, are competing in a timed run of Ulduar. It's going to be on 10-man, which is kind of strange, given that most people (and especially hardcore raiders) seem to think of the 25-man version as the "real" version of the raid. Maybe they wanted it to be easier for spectators to follow the action. Points will be awarded for killing end bosses of a "zone" faster than the other guild, with points increasing from zone to zone. I'm guessing that by "zone" the press release refers to the Siege, the Antechamber, the Keepers, and the Descent into Madness, but the translation is not perfect - I could be wrong. The Ensidia/Method matchup is going to be on August 2nd; as a prelude, two German guilds (Irae AoD and For the Horde) are going to compete on the same event on August 1st. Apparently the raids will be streaming live on allvatar.com, although I can't really get very far on that site - WTB English translation. Does anyone know if it will be free to watch or not?
Premonition grabs US-First Alone in the Darkness
Yogg-Saron's woes continue, as the Guild Premonition of the US Sen'jin server, Alliance side, becomes the first US guild and the third guild in the world to get the Alone in the Darkness Achievement, thereby also earning the Death's Demise title. Alone in the Darkness requires you to defeat Yogg Saron without the help of any Keepers, thereby eschewing the requisite buffs they give. They're hot on the heels of Paragon, which got the EU first kill, and Stars, which got the world first (and by extension, Taiwan first) kill.This is definitely a difficult achievement, and, some argue, possibly even harder than killing Algalon himself. Congratulations, Premonition!
Stars discuss their Yogg+0 kill
You've probably heard that the Chinese guild Stars has pulled off the world-first Alone in the Darkness, killing Yogg-Saron with no watchers helping. You may have seen the video they posted of their winning strategy. But here's something even more interesting, for me: a Q&A with the guild about their strategy and their experience with the fight. It was originally in Chinese, but a poster on the MMO-Champion forums did a translation. It's a really interesting read. For one thing, Affliction Warlocks turned out to be the most valuable class, since DPS have to turn away periodically in phase 3 to avoid Lunatic Gaze and a heavy DoT-based class doesn't lose as much doing this.
Stars' Alone in the Darkness videos
Taiwanese/Chinese guild Stars made a splash recently by nabbing the legitimate world-first kill of Yogg-Saron with no Watchers assisting them, granting them the elusive Alone in the Darkness achievement. Many sites and theorycrafters, including seminal calculus-required favorites ElitistJerks, said the fight was simply impossible at current gear levels and fight tuning, and Stars admits that their kill was based more on raid stacking and good luck than anything, but it's still an enormous accomplishment after the fiasco that was Exodus' kill. Stars was kind enough to provide videos of their killshot, which we've embedded for you below. See how exactly you kill a god without any help! Part 2 is after the cut.
Breakfast topic: How do you learn tactics?
I was never one for these tabletop strategy games or D&D but thanks to WoW I have become quite a tactician. Tactics are so integrated in the game that they come into play figuring out how to down Hogger without aggroing too many of his numerous minions, to sneaking through hostile territory and avoiding NPCs who want to kill you all the way to confronting KT in Naxx or Ignis in Ulduar. The latter is especially true, Ignis is a nightmare where a knowledge of tactics is life or death. When your raid leader asks if everyone knows the tactics and you all nod heads and mutter yes, it's not actually courtesy, he or she is trying to figure out how many people will survive long enough to down the giant er ... giant. Once upon a time all you had to do to learn the tactics was play. Wiping on bosses and the depression of death, failure and repair bills can be a great motivator. At the same time, there are few unique boss fights in WoW. They all follow some kind of pattern and sometimes phases are even borrowed from other mobs. Others, such as Shade of Aran's Flame Wreath go down in lore and legend, even getting their own ever-so-catchy (nay beautiful) theme tune. I challenge anyone to move after having heard that (I even have that in iTunes and would play it just in case my raid forgot. No one ever did.).So I wonder, constant readers, how do you learn tactics? I can read WoWwiki, for example, until I'm blue in the face but because of the weird way my brain is wired (don't ask), the only was I can truly learn tactics is in the fight itself. Yes, there's YouTube, there's the pre-boss-fight sit down where the raid leader does a run though the fight because no one bothered to take ten minutes to do some reading up. What methods do you use?
Guildwatch: Dodge this
Sorry for the low resolution on the pic above, but we thought it was still funny enough to share -- the guildleader of the guild (unfortunately, we weren't told the name or server) was a little unhappy when one of the raiders decided to leave a "whipefest" on General Vezax, and he decided to pull off a WoWBash-style /gkick.Lots more drama, downed, and recruiting news in our weekly Guildwatch column, which starts right after the break below. Have a tip for us? Send it along to guildwatch@wow.com, and you might see it right here next time.
Stars snag world-first legitimate Alone in the Darkness
World-first Heroic: Alone in the Darkness? "Didn't Exodus already get that?" you may ask. Well, they did get the achievement, but they used an exploit, and were slapped on the wrist to the tune of a 72 hour suspension. Which means: the stage was open for a legitimate world-first! In a break from the tradition of European guilds getting major world-first accomplishments, Chinese guild Stars (playing on the Taiwanese servers) has apparently completed the achievement legitimately. They got that nifty Mimiron's Head mount, too. In case you're scratching your head wondering what this is all about, during the Yogg-Saron fight (the last boss of Ulduar), the four Keepers of Ulduar (Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and Mimiron) help you out. You can choose how many of the Keepers you want to activate for the fight, and if you use fewer than all of them, it's hard-mode. "Alone in the Darkness" is Yogg-Saron with zero keepers: as hard as it gets. Congratulations to Stars on a truly impressive feat.
Ready Check: Hodir
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.Let's recap Ulduar so far, shall we?You've wrecked the Flame Leviathan. With a touch of kindness in your heart, you euthanized Razorscale. In a moment of vengeance, you laid some justice down on Ignis the Furnace Master. Guffawing in humor at his odd voice, you looted Deconstructor. Then it came time to "bridge your experience" by beating up Kologarn. The Assembly of Iron proved to be no difficulty for your incredible raiding prowess. Even Auriaya and her small legion of adds gave you little pause. Now, however, you're on to the big leagues. It's time for you to showdown against the Keepers of Ulduar. Immediatley after defeating Auriaya, you get to fight none other than Hodir himself.
