valithria-dreamwalker
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Watcher on changes to raid soloing in patch 6.0
.@HenkeLennartsso Changed in 6.0: Thorim won't trigger the deathball/reset when his arena is empty.- Watcher (@WatcherDev) March 11, 2014 If you're like me, you do a lot of older instances for transmog gear, and as such fights like Thorim are exceedingly irksome because they can only be soloed with certain classes or professions (a death knight or hunter using a pet, an engineer with a target dummy, and some good luck on getting through the gauntlet fast) due to mechanics that you can't really outgear. Now Watcher comes with news about not just the annoying Thorim fight, but this tweet about Valithria Dreamwalker as well. As a warrior who put together my Shadowmourne via running ICC 25 this past year, I hated Dreamwalker, the fight I had no chance of soloing and no way to get around. Making it skippable would at least allow me to kill Arthas for transmog loot and not force me to stop after clearing two wings. It's an excellent change and one I hope they get in.
Shifting Perspectives: Spring cleaning
Every week (sort of), WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, the bookmarks folder gets the root cellar treatment. I've been away from the game since the holidays due to what I will politely refer to as technical difficulties. (I have a variety of impolite terms for it too, but this is a family blog.) During that time, I've watched the game from the sidelines and have grown bored enough to do some maintenance on stuff that usually gets ignored until I'm rooting through it in a hurry. Add-ons were updated, dead blog links were sent to their folder, interesting ones were added, and then I turned to my collection of bookmarks in order to prune there as well. I have a pretty sizable cache of druid or druid-related links that's grown over the years, and a lot of them are still pretty interesting. In the absence of the ability to talk about what's actually happening in the game with any fluency, I thought it might make a decent stopgap Shifting. This is a selection that's kept me absorbed for many an hour on a snowy weekend, and it ranges from comparisons between druid and warrior tanks in the classic game to where you fall on a healer's priority list when you're a jackass.
WoW.com's Guide to Valithria Dreamwalker
Valithria Dreamwalker is the easiest fight to DPS. No, really, it's amazing. Unfortunately, your success with Dreamwalker has almost nothing to do with your DPS. The basic premise of the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter is thus: She is being held captive by the bad guys. She's more than capable of getting herself free ... if only she weren't damaged. So your job is to heal her to full. But that's a lot of health, so she opens portals into the Emerald Dream so that your healers can juice up their own healing. Then, they heal her. Meanwhile, the rest of your raid kills a bunch of adds. Table of contents Composition General strategy Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
Spiritual Guidance: Flaying Sindragosa (and friends)
Welcome back to Fox Van Allen's twisted, shadow-ish version of Spiritual Guidance, once again rescued from the diseased, holy mind of Dawn Moore. Presumably, she's currently languishing inside one of Sindragosa's Ice Tombs. I'd totally DPS her out of there, but according to the TV, this Slap Chop thing is a limited time offer, so I've really got to move if I want to get one. Bet she wishes she had Dispersion right about now. I could have sworn there was some kind of dragon encased in ice around here. Really. What's that? They chiseled it out of ice and moved it to Icecrown Citadel? The hell? When did that happen? December, you say? Those shambling horrors must shamble fast when I'm not looking. Or maybe I was just too drunk over the holidays to notice. Anyway. This bone dragon thing, it's not evil, is it? Oh. It is. Damn. Okay, I guess we'll go kill it. But first, we'll make this stop off and heal some generic green dragon we've never even heard of before, just to keep it from turning into some boss we'll have to fight later. Shadow priests, gather round as we storm the Frostwing Halls! We'll collect some fine loot! We'll also answer -- or at least ponder -- some existential questions. "Why can you Mind Flay a block of ice when it doesn't have a mind to flay? Why can you disease it?" All this after the break.
Scattered Shots: Hunting the Frostwing Halls
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. Having dealt with the goth boys and girls in the Crimson Halls, it's time to move on to the big leagues and start playing with dragons. The Frostwing Halls of ICC bring us some fun fights uniquely suited to the hunter skill set. After all, where other classes see big scary dragons, we see potential pets. All they need is a good home and a little loving and they'll become loyal and life-long companions. Probably the best part of the Frostwing Halls is that not only do we get to show off our badass hunter skills, but we even help out on the healing end. I tell ya, there's nothing that we hunters can't do! Join me after the cut as we take a look at the hunter tips for downing the Frostwing Halls. This article assumes that you are familiar with the overall strategies for the encounters and we're just going to be looking at hunter-specific tips and tricks. As always, if your raid leader tells you to do anything differently, always do what the raid leader says. Even if she's wrong.
The Light and How to Swing It: Healing Valithria Dreamwalker
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 how to tackle the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter in Icecrown Citadel. If you've been raiding much in WotLK, you've seen quite the spectrum of 'new' mechanics. While Naxxramas was just a refresh of the old level 60 dungeon, the other raid instances have provided some truly unique fights. The vehicle fight, which started with Malygos and was followed up by Flame Leviathan, gave us the opportunity to step outside our abilities for a few moments, and work with an entirely new (or even nonexistent) healing toolbox. We've also seen fights where healing was the wrong thing to do, with the case-in-point being Anub'arak (specifically on heroic). Healing the wrong target on that fight was literally anti-DPS, as it healed the boss. Icecrown Citadel brings with it several new mechanics, with one specifically that I am sure will be remembered for many expansions to come. That encounter, as you may have guessed, is the escape of Valithria Dreamwalker. Blizzard decided to try some role reversal on this fight, and put healers in charge of 'taking care' of the boss. Instead of killing the boss, however, we must heal her to full, allowing her to escape the dark, cold halls of Icecrown. The DPS are relegated to handling adds, which is their least favorite job, while we get to focus our efforts on a single, stable target, to whom we can do no overhealing. How can it get any better than that?
Know Your Lore: The Green Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Each flight of dragons is vouchsafed with an aspect of creation itself to supervise. The five Dragon Aspects were granted their powers and dominion over Azeroth's life, magic, earth, time and more by the Titans who created them from the massive proto-dragon Galakrond in long vanished times past. In the past few KYL's we've covered Alexstrasza's Red Dragonflight, Deathwing's Black Dragonflight and its offshoot the Netherwing, and deceased Malygos' Blue Dragonflight. This time we look at what might be the strangest dragons of them all. The servants of Ysera, the dragons of the Emerald Dream, the Green Dragonflight. In order to truly understand the green dragons, one would have to be able to understand the dream they all dream, but who can do that? How can one tell the dreamers from the dream? Easy. The dreamers are great honking green dragons that will kill you. It's relatively simple. If you doubt their power or their resolve, go to the Temple of Atal'Hakkar and ask the Atali, trapped in a complex smashed into the water by the fury and might of Ysera herself. Even when they themselves fall victim to corruption, the green dragons are fearsome opponents. While Alexstrasza and her brood concern themselves with life and living things, Ysera is effectively the shepherd of what Dylan Thomas called 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower' - effectively, that which makes life itself possible. This is also what often gets them in trouble with old gods, blasphemous troll deities of bloodlust, and the loathsome Scourge and its malefic master. (I have been waiting to use 'malefic' in a sentence for so long now.)
In-Game Fixes for March 4th, 2010
Bornakk has announced a handful of in-game hot fixes on the official forums today. They're pretty much all Icecrown Citadel boss ability nerfs and tweaks, and should fixes a few annoyances with some battles, stretching from Marrowgar to Sindragosa. The full list is after the break.
Lichborne: Frostwing and Lich King loot for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly death knight discussion center. This week, your host is playing it cool in more ways than one, what with the test server shakeups to frost DPS. Before we start into this week's column, I do want to assure any prospective frost DPSers that I fully plan to write a frost DPS 101 guide. In fact, up until a few days ago, I had every intention of writing that as today's column. Then I sat down at the computer on Friday, and we had a nice shiny new PTR with a whole mess of frost DPS buffs. It's probably going to take a bit for us to sort through those buffs, see how they affect speccing and gearing, and whether or not they'll make it live, so for now, we're going to focus on some other topics. This week, the subject is the loot in the final section of Icecrown Citadel, the Frostwing Halls. There's only a few bosses here, but you'll find some great off-spec pieces, a few best in slots items, and some interesting weapon choices. I'll offer my usual disclaimer here and recommend that you go back and review the opening paragraphs of our Lower Spire loot guide, since it lists some basic stat rundowns and philosophies that you should keep in mind as you read these guides. You may also want to review the stat weights discussed in blood DPS 101 and unholy DPS 101 as you pick out your DPS gear from these pages.
Raid Rx: Healing Valithria Dreamwalker
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 WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. Arguably one of the most unique encounters in the entire game, Valithria Dreamwalker is one where the success of the raid rests entirely on the shoulders of healers. After some more practice and attempts, I can pass on several aspects of the fight that I learned onto you.
Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site
Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We've translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut. Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We'll post the official English notes when they're posted as well. Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it. Dungeons and Raids Icecrown Citadel The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?) Halls of Stone Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he'll run faster during the escort event. Forge of Souls Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often. Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Valithria Dreamwalker impressions
I have never been more excited about a boss in my life -- especially from a healer perspective! I do believe this is the first time an encounter has been introduced where DPS doesn't play a primary role in beating an encounter. The spotlight is on the healers! I'll elaborate more after the break as the mechanics for this are very interesting and are of high relevance for healers. %Gallery-76227%
