The Queue: Image related

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

The image above is most certainly related to a question in The Queue today. The question is ... which one!? You'll just have to read and find out! Mwahaha!

... that guy's kinda cute for a disgusting slime creature, isn't he?

Mal asked:

Is it just me or are many guilds dying lately?

I certainly don't have numbers I can provide as to how many guilds have died (or have been born) lately, but if you're experiencing that, there's probably an easy explanation for it.

One, while patch 4.2 is imminent, we've had largely the same content for half of a year now. If you're a raider, even if you haven't beaten all there is to beat in the current tier of raiding, you've been banging away on it since Cataclysm's release. You're going to be really damn sick of that content. I, personally, have not killed Sinestra. However, my drive to get there is almost completely nonexistent. I've been seeing the walls of Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight so often that if I had to be in there for another month or three, I simply would not be interested in playing the game anymore. I think I have a higher tolerance for tedium than most, so people with a threshold of, say ... four months? They're long gone.

Can you think of any other type of game where it's standard practice to kill the same things repeatedly for half a year? To break down for you how long I've been zoning into Blackwing Descent, I have 20 Magmaw kills. That's at least 20 weeks back-to-back of going into BWD. It doesn't matter if I've killed hard mode Nefarian or not -- 20 weeks of zoning into the same place is about 10 weeks too many. With how slowly Blizzard trickles out content, you're inevitably going to reach a point of burnout prior to every tier of raiding.

Two, it's summer -- at least in the United States. Even huge dorks find better things to do during summer. Either they drop raiding (or logging in) completely, or it becomes a weekly song-and-dance to figure out which of your raiders will actually show up and which of them decided to hit the beach or a barbeque or a festival. Some guilds don't want to put up with that so they just call it quits, either permanently or temporarily.

Mal also asked:

Everyone is saying that Dragonwrath is going to be bis for dps casters for this patch and maybe the whole expansion. But in this patch the tier 11 raids are being nerfed so more players can do them. So what will happen in 4.3? Will everyone be raiding the nerfed 4.2 raids for a chance at a weapon better than what 4.3 drops?

Sure. Even if Blizzard doesn't specifically nerf tier 12 content when tier 13 rolls around, the simple addition of tier 13 will go a long way toward trivializing tier 12 content. Legendaries always become easier to acquire after awhile. Val'anyr in Wrath of the Lich King was good for quite a while in the right hands, and you bet your butt it became easier to get when Trial of the Crusader loot rolled around.

Grigor asked:

Maybe this is too early to ask but I'm making my annual clothes shopping trip soon....do I need to pack shorts for Blizzcon or can I get by with just pants? Blizzcon is October after all.

Oh, dear god. Shorts, my friend. Take shorts with you. Even if you take nothing else, take at least one pair of shorts. I'm from Wisconsin, where it's usually freezing over by the time October rolls around, so my first BlizzCon was a huge shock to the system. It's still hot and humid in California in October, and you'll be doing tons of walking around in a tightly packed building full of other nerds. You want to be as cool and comfortable as possible.

Worst case scenario, it's cold and rainy. Pants still won't feel good once you get indoors. You'll get wet outside, then once you're inside ... your wet jeans will get heavy and stiff and cling to your legs. You'll sweat in your moist pants all day long, and with pant legs going all the way down to your shoes, nothing will be able to breathe or dry. You know what happens then? Crotch mildew. Do you want crotch mildew? No. You don't. Bring the freaking shorts.

If you truly and honestly never wear shorts at any other time of the year for some crazy reason, just find one decently fitting pair of shorts on discount somewhere. Hell, go to Goodwill or some other secondhand store. BlizzCon is full of people dressing up like elves, panda bears, and fish men. Nobody cares if your shorts are secondhand.

All you need is one pair. If you got sweaty and gross on day one of BlizzCon, don't even worry about it. Every hotel has a laundry room. Even teeny-tiny hotels have one washing machine. It might cost you a few quarters to get them washed, but that's no biggie. Throw them in the washing machine after BlizzCon day one, wear them again on day two, done.

After BlizzCon 2010, I spent a few extra days in California to hang with Mike Sacco and drive eels to extinction. We stayed at the Sheraton Park (which is absolutely gorgeous; I spent some time there in 2009 as well), and their washing machines were poolside outdoors. While my laundry was running, I sat by the pool ... and hunted snails. I had never seen a snail in the wild before. It was very exciting! I tweeted pictures!

Many asked:

Is patch 4.2 tomorrow?

I will neither confirm nor deny the arrival of patch 4.2 tomorrow. However, I will request that you lay the patch 4.2 questions on thick in the comments today. For ... you know. Reasons.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: blizzcon, facebookfeed, featured, guide, nefarian, patch-4.2, qa, question-and-answer, sinestra, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

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Tuesday Morning Post: By patch day be purged edition

Last week, Ahune busted our instance servers. This week, Ragnaros gets the chance to do the same as we fully expect patch 4.2 to go live as of this writing. Now mind you, I'm not saying servers will crash, but hey -- might as well be prepared, right? Yes, I know that's the wrong raid boss's catch phrase, but I used my only "by fire be purged" joke for the title.

As you might expect, downtime is currently scheduled for 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, so even if everything goes smoothly, you'll still have plenty of time to read up on patch 4.2 before the servers come up. I recommend starting with Mat's excellent patch 4.2 roundup. Then you can check after the break for a quick roundup of all the other good stuff from the past seven days. Don't stop once that's done with, though; we'll have plenty more piping hot patch 4.2 news and info for you in the coming days and weeks.

Hot news and features

Class news and guides
Dungeons, items, professions, PVP, and more Odds and ends
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!
Tags: downtime, extended-downtime, extended-maintenance, maintenance, patch, patch-day, realm-downtime, realm-maintenance, roundup, scheduled-downtime, scheduled-maintenance, server-downtime, server-maintenance, server-status, tuesday, tuesday-downtime, tuesday-maintenance, tuesday-morning, tuesday-morning-post

Filed under: Realm Status, News items

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WoW Moviewatch: How to Tell if Your BG Will Fail

Using similar themes to his classic How to Tell if Your Guild is Bad, Wowcrendor has turned his critical eye to the world of battlegrounds. How to Tell if Your BG Will Fail looks at those clear signs your PVP match is in trouble before the gates even open.

Using time-tested scientific method, we experimented with Wowcrendor's theory. Sadly, after a small handfull of Arathi Basin tests, it seems that Wowcrendor is right. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Tags: guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

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Breakfast Topic: Initiate epic character reboot procedure in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Standing outside the Caverns of Time, ready to go forth and disrupt your past. What would you do if you could do it all over again? Looking back with what you know now about the game compared to what you knew then, would you make the same choices? I started playing during The Burning Crusade but before a lot of the experience cutting from 0 to 60. I started with a druid on a normal realm because, being a newb, I thought "normal" meant you could get away with doing a little bit of everything, PVP or RP, whenever the mood struck.

Boy, was I wrong.

Personally, then, I would keep my character choices as they were (yay, druids!), but I would roll on a different server type (changing from normal to RP). Why not just reroll or pay to move now to a RP server? Because I'd have to spend $250 to move my entire crafter's network or cave in and finally rely on the AH with only one toon -- and then I'd miss my gadget-wielding maniac warlock gnome, and the rest of my army of alts would sit abandoned, collecting dust. Lonely. Not to mention the friends and family I'd leave behind.

What about your faction of choice? Horde vs. Alliance was a practical choice for me, since that's where my friend was who introduced me to the game.

So if you had that giant reset button and could slap your past self on the back of the head before doing something you regretted, what would you do? Or would you do nothing? Tags: facebookfeed, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

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Encrypted Text: Blade Flurry is broken

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article topics you'd like to see covered!

Whenever I think of the current state of combat, I recall rogue blogger Aldriana's insightful post from when the Blade Flurry change was first announced. Blade Flurry has always been the spec's signature ability, but now it's transcended into its only ability. Combat rogues currently fluctuate between "just ahead of subtlety" and "best in the game" based on whether or not Blade Flurry works on a particular encounter. Blade Flurry makes or breaks combat rogues, making it incredibly unbalanced.

Combat rogues are lucky that Magmaw and Halfus are relatively easy heroic encounters, because doing six-digit DPS on Sinestra would've certainly drawn the developer's attention. At one point in time, Blade Flurry was simply an extra perk of the combat tree. You could pick up some extra damage if there was something nearby to cleave, but it rarely decided your outcome. Even on ideal Blade Flurry fights like the Twin Val'kyr, combat rogues weren't that overpowering. The new BF design is impossible to balance against.

Blade Flurry is broken

There are a few possible balance options for Blade Flurry, but none of them are perfect. Consider the first scenario, where combat rogues do good DPS without Blade Flurry active. Once they turn it on, they'll be doing good damage to two targets, putting them way too far ahead of everyone else. In the second case, their single-target DPS is awful, but they're viable with BF activated. That's where combat rogues are today, but we're so reliant on having multiple targets to attack.

Blizzard can't design every encounter to have a convenient cleave target for us, and it hasn't. Except against Halfus and Magmaw, combat is inferior to assassination in every way, and that's not balance.

Applying penalties to Blade Flurry

The third scenario is where combat rogues have good single-target DPS, but where Blade Flurry cuts down our damage by a more significant amount than today's 15% energy penalty. If the penalty is applied to our Blade Flurry damage, such as cutting it to a percentage of our primary target damage, then the net effect is that BF is less important than it is today.

The issue with this design is that we typically want the majority of our damage on our new target (such as an important add) rather than the old target. In order to put more damage on the add, we're switching targets, which means losing Bandit's Guile and our Deadly Poison stack, which murders our DPS. One of Blade Flurry's biggest benefits is that we don't have to switch targets in order to hit the second target, preserving the advantage of the buffs/debuffs on the primary target.

The fourth scenario is where a larger penalty is applied to our damage against the primary target, with the end effect of splitting our DPS evenly between our two targets. I think this is probably the least awful choice, as it allows us to stick on our primary target while still dealing respectable damage against the secondary target.

The problem with the design is that PVE fights are so varied in their design. Some bosses and adds are designed to be killed slowly or simultaneously, making an even-split Blade Flurry ideal. Other mobs, typically adds, need to be killed swiftly, which again means a target swap. Doing 50% of our DPS against an elemental on heroic Cho'gall simply isn't enough, so we're forced to take the target swap and deal less damage against both due to the lack of debuffs and Bandit's Guile on the add.

There's a fifth scenario possible, where our primary target damage is cut to say 20% while the remaining 80% is transferred to our secondary target. We get to stay focused on our primary target, gaining the extra damage from the already-present buffs and debuffs, but we still get to do serious damage against the new add. In all honesty, 80% of our primary target damage is probably 100% of our damage if we were to switch targets and be forced to reset Bandit's Guile and wait for debuff applications that may never come. Combat rogues now have the ability to "swap targets" with little downtime. The design isn't perfect, especially since doing most of your damage to something other than your primary target isn't exactly intuitive.

Blade Flurry needs a nerf

In all of the scenarios I outlined above, Blade Flurry loses some of its potency from today. The fact is that it needs a nerf; otherwise, combat rogues are going to remain one-trick ponies. Combat rogues deal the majority of the damage as physical damage, and so today, Blade Flurry is boosting our DPS by around 60-80% while active. A DPS swing that drastic can't be allowed to stay in the game. If combat rogues were only 10% behind assassination rogues on single-target encounters and Blade Flurry only increased their damage by 20%, I think that ratio would be relatively balanced.

As it stands today, there's only one viable spec for 10 out of the 13 bosses in tier 11, and that's unacceptable. I think we've accepted as a class that subtlety is going to suck in PVE, but seeing combat down there with frost mages and beast mastery hunters isn't helping anyone. The design goal of "bring the player, not the class" is in direct contradiction with combat's current bipolar potential.

We can either wait for combat rogues to break some heroic encounter so badly that the developers are forced to nerf them, or we can hope that the Blade Flurry redesign is done proactively to ensure that the spell isn't simply nerfed into the ground.
Check back every Wednesday for the latest rogue strategies, from rogue basics and kicking your interrupts into high gear to how to handle your dual-spec rogue and how to pickpocket top tips from top-performing rogues. Tags: balancing-blade-flurry, bf, blade-flurry, blade-flurry-toggle, blade-fury, bladeflurry, class-help, cleave, combat, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-spec, combat-tree, featured, guide, guide-to-rogues, halfus, magmaw, multi-target, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-talents, talent, talents, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-guide, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues, wow-talent-guide

Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

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The Queue: Firelands FAQ

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mat McCurley will be your host today.

It's patch day, and with patch days come many questions. Luckily for you, we've gathered some of the most frequently asked questions about Rage of the Firelands in this handy, Queue-sized guide, so that you can embark on your patch day shenanigans without a worry in the world. Well, unless you happen to be on a PVP server; in that case, have fun doing your dailies.

With the extended maintenance and hints to read the patch notes, Blizzard looks to be setting us up for a fiery Tuesday. There's a lot of fire in our future. I know that it is too soon (ha ha, get it?) to start thinking about what's coming next before we've even sunk our teeth into this new stuff, but I have a feeling that after three to four months of lots of fire, whatever is coming down the pike is going to need a hint of refreshment and a fire-lite motif. Nonetheless, I am excited for all of this new content.

Follow along below for the answers to some of the most common questions about patch 4.2 and all it entails.

What's going to happen to my valor points?

All valor points will be converted into justice points. The justice point cap, however, remains at 4,000 points. So you'll be give justice points up to the cap. If you have any valor points left over, they will be converted into currency at a rate of 47 silver per point.

Let's say you have 3,000 justice points and 1,100 valor points. Since you cannot get over 4,000 justice points, 1,000 of your valor points will be turned into justice points, and 100 will be turned into 47 silver per point.

Do I need to be attuned to the new raid instance?

No. The Firelands is immediately accessible by heading to the Sulfuron Spire in Hyjal. Grab nine or 24 of your bestest friends and head in to punch new bosses in their loot bags.

Where do I go to start the new daily quests?

The new daily quests that open up the Regrowth and the Molten Front are available at the Shrine of Malorne in the southwest portion of Hyjal.

What quest do I have to complete to open up the new dailies in Hyjal?

In order to access these new quests, you will need to have completed up to and including the quest Aessina's Miracle, in which the ancient Aessina quenches the fires consuming the western forests of Hyjal. After you complete this quest, you should be able to access the new content at the Sanctuary of Malorne.

There're only like 4 or 5 quests at the new hub! How do I get more?

You start at the Sanctuary of Malorne and have a few quests a day until you get 20 Marks of the World Tree, the new personal currency you accumulate by completing these new dailies. After 20 of them, which is a few days of dailies, you head into the Firelands and the Molten Front proper. Keep doing dailies for more Marks of the World Tree.

How do I get started on the legendary quest chain?

Players must first kill a Molten Lord inside of the Firelands or have completed any one of the achievements for the previous raid tier (clear Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds, or Blackwing Descent) to open up the beginning quest for Dragonwrath, which sends you back to your capital city and onward to the Bronze Dragonflight.

Are there any new factions to gain rep with?

Raiders will be able to gain reputation with the Avengers of Hyjal. Reputation will be capped out early with trash kills in the instance, so many boss kills will likely be needed to reach exalted with the faction.

What are crystallized firestones, and why are people so excited about them?

Crystallized firestones are items that drop from heroic mode bosses in the Firelands and allow you to create heroic versions of items that never had heroic equivalents. For instance, items you purchase from the valor points vendors now have a heroic version that you can purchase with the regular item plus a firestone. This is great for relics, tanking guns, and other slot items that have trouble being put on loot lists because of their relatively class-specific nature.

Has the amount of hit rating gone up for bosses?

No. Blizzard originally was tossing around the idea to increase the hit rating needed to hit cap on the new bosses, but this is not the tier that that is happening. Perhaps next tier. Right now, hit ratings are staying the same.

What's the deal with all the hunter "taming challenges"?

Patch 4.2 is introducing 10 new pets for hunters to tame, including lava spiders, an obsidian cat, a metallic crab, a ghost owl, and more. Each potential tame has a gimmick or vulnerability that must be exploited before the hunter can tame the beast. These new unique taming challenges are scattered around the Regrowth and the Molten Front daily questing hubs.

Any 5-man content?

There are no new 5-man dungeons coming with patch 4.2. You can still get valor points from doing your seven weekly random Zandalari and heroic dungeons.

Does the new arena season start tomorrow?

No. The new arena and PVP season begins usually one week after the current season ends. After Season 9 ends, the numbers will be crunched and rewards will be given out, including titles and drakes, to the winners of the PVP season. This usually takes about a week. Once that is all done, PVP Season 10 will start up.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: facebookfeed, faq, featured, firelands-faq, guide, patch-4.2, qa, question-and-answer, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: The Queue, Cataclysm

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MMO Roundup: Farewell, Star Wars Galaxies

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future. Tags: featured, massively, mmo-news, mmo-roundup, roundup, star-wars-galaxies

Filed under: MMO Roundup

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Weekly Podcast Roundup: June 20-26, 2011

Every Monday evening, WoW Insider brings you a long list of WoW podcasts that were published the week and weekend before. If you don't see your favorite World of Warcraft podcast listed, just let us know in the comments. Be sure to leave a link to it, and we'll pick it up next week.
All podcasts and content belong to their owners. WoW Insider is not responsible for what you hear, and some of the content may not be safe for work.
The WoW Insider staff listens to a lot of other podcasts around the internet. Here are some we thought you might be interested in.
The Weekly Podcast Roundup brings you the preceding week's WoW-related podcasts. Don't see your favorite listed? Leave us a link in the comments. Also of community interest: our podcast listing, staff blog and Twitter listings and WoW websites and blogs (all part of our Guide to WoW Resources). Tags: facebookfeed, featured, podcast, podcasts, wow-audio, wow-podcast, wow-podcast-list, wow-podcast-roundup, wow-podcasting, wow-podcasts

Filed under: Podcasting, Weekly Podcast Roundup

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Breakfast Topic: Patch 4.2 is upon us

Finally, patch 4.2 is upon us. Azeroth has undergone many changes since Cataclysm launched, and finally, we are getting the first new "tier" patch for this expansion. Suffice to say, I am very excited. Patch 4.2 represents to me many turning points for World of Warcraft that are putting it back on the path to cohesiveness. Cataclysm's launch was a success, and we were wowed by the features and the set pieces, but patch 4.2 feels like the first time we are getting to see new content that encapsulates the drive and cohesiveness of the Cataclysm motif.

Patch 4.2 brings with it many new features. Players will be able to enter the Firelands, Ragnaros' domain, for a whole slew of new daily quests and player-specific progression. Seven new raid bosses await intrepid raiders, valor point gear will be knocked down to justice level, and the previous tier of content is becoming more accessible to raiders new and old. Loads of new companion pets and mounts await players willing to aid the Avengers of Hyjal's cause. Lucky raiders will also take part in an epic quest to forge the newest legendary item in WoW, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest.

I am especially interested and excited for the Molten Front and Regrowth daily hubs that are being introduced for max-level players in Hyjal, as the druids and sentinels break into Ragnaros' home turf, the Firelands, and lay siege for their survival. These dailies and daily hubs represent a philosophy that I love in MMOs -- your personal progression should matter just as much as the progression of the whole. You, individually, will be working with major lore characters and factions to put together the Hyjal offensive, and your decisions get to open up new quest areas and gear vendors in an order that you choose. Putting this type of control back in the players' hands feels like a Burning Crusade move, and I'm a man who loved him some Burning Crusade.

What are you looking forward to when we get to log into patch 4.2? What's your first move in the face of invasion from the Firelands? Tags: facebookfeed, fire-lands, firelands, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, molten-front, patch-4.2, ragnaros, regrowth, staghelm, the-regrowth, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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WoW Insider's Weekly Webcomic: Safe Passage

Welcome to another edition of WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage.

Hope really is sometimes all we have, especially when your entire world doesn't extend beyond your front yard. Azeroth is a brutal, war-torn world, and sometimes its citizens are forced to grow up all too quickly.

Check out the full comic right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

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Around Azeroth: The plunge

Remember, kids, it's not the fall that kills you -- it's the landing. Halrandir of Midnight Cartel on Elune (US-A) writes, "My mage has been finalizing his arcane experiments in non-portal interplanetary travel. Here we see him sliding through the space between spaces as he hurtles off into the unknown. Unfortunately, he has a terrible sense of direction and didn't so much reach another planet as reach a beautiful patch of nothing. Too bad those incantations need air to be recited."
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ss

Filed under: Around Azeroth

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The WoW Insider Show Episode 200: Live!

WoW Insider is pleased to bring you a special live edition of the podcast! Come and join Mike Sacco, Mat McCurley, Matt Rossi, and Anne Stickney for a lot of talk about all things Cataclysm and patch 4.2.

To participate in the live show, you need to be in our chat room over at uStream. Also, if you have a question you'd like answered on the air, please ask in the chat room as well; we'll pick some to talk about.

If you can't join us, we've missed you. But worry not -- a recording of the show will be up on iTunes tomorrow. Tags: facebookfeed, featured, podcast, podcasts, wow-com-podcast, wow-dot-com-podcast, wow-insider-podcast, wow-podcast, wow-podcasting, wow-podcasts, wow-show, wowcom-podcast, wowinsider-show

Filed under: Podcasting, WoW Insider Show

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Totem Talk: Watching restoration's cooldowns in 4.2

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the Raid Warning podcast), shows you how.

Last week, we talked about some of the gear options for your restoration set you can obtain without ever having to progress deep in a raid group. This included new reputation gear, new crafted gear, and new gear that is purchasable with valor points that you can easily obtain through use of the Dungeon Finder tool. What's really cool about this gear is that many of the pieces can be updated to heroic gear levels!

This week, though, with patch 4.2 imminent, I thought we could talk a little bit about preparing for a possible shift in how you do things. A few changes as well as a new set bonus are emphasizing tracking of your abilities and cooldowns just a little bit more. Oh, and this week's image is a sketch by yours truly about how I want to fight Ragnaros, dressed as a hammer brother from Super Mario!

Mana Tide -- or just mana trickle?

I've been getting quite a few emails about the upcoming changes to our dear old friend Mana Tide Totem. We talked about this a little bit before, but with patch 4.2, our dear old friend mana tide will be getting hit with the nerf bat. It will no longer grant 400% of your total spirit as mana regen to everyone in range of the totem, but rather only 200% -- quite a big drop, but honestly one that I think we all saw coming. A lone shaman could use high spirit and a totem drop to become a mana battery for an entire corps of healers, while more than one shaman with average stats could chain their totems and break the entire mana curve for an encounter. I freely admit I abused this mechanic in any raid fight when I had more than one restoration shaman at my disposal.

While other fixes are in place to try to normalize mana regeneration, the change does mean we'll have to make a few adjustments to how we use mana tide. We are going to have to be quite a bit more aggressive with the usage of the totem. Where before, you could wait until you were sub-50% mana to use it, you may want to consider using it more often and then whenever it's off cooldown. This goes for both 25-man and 10-man raiding, as well as heroics. Having healed through some of the new raid encounters, I can assure you that there will be plenty of damage to heal through, so make sure to maximize your mana returns.

Let 'er rip!

Riptide is back to stardom in patch 4.2, especially with the new tier 12 set bonuses, where it takes center stage. The tier 12 two-piece set bonus allows for a chance to restore 1% of your base mana every time your Riptide heals a target. Consider that at this point, you are likely past your first haste cap and likely approaching your second haste cap. Every time the spell's periodic healing ticks, it has a chance to trigger. This set bonus makes the Glyph of Riptide worth its weight in gold because it gives you a few more seconds to possibly proc the set bonus.

The four-piece set bonus is also quite spectacular. Having Chain Heal no longer consume the remaining charges of Riptide in order to get the healing boost is really quite good. This means you can roll your Riptides and Chain Heals with near-reckless abandon without worrying about clipping short your own periodic healing.

Now, you should already be keeping up Riptide every time it is off of cooldown (you are, aren't you?), but with patch 4.2, it has become even more important to make sure you're doing so. Once you receive your tier two-piece bonus, you should make absolutely sure that you are using it each and every cooldown. If you aren't doing so, you are missing out on quite a hefty chunk of mana return -- and trust me, you'll need it.

Time is on my side, yes it is!

Watching for your cooldowns on Riptide and Mana Tide Totem has just increased quite a bit in importance, and managing all that can seem pretty hard to keep track of. There are, however, many addons that can help alert you to your cooldowns' being up and remind you to use them, and these addons are quite easy to use.

Totem Timers [Curse|WoWInterface] This is a personal favorite of mine for totem management. It gives you a customizable bar for all your totem needs. I've gushed about it many times, but it really is quite wonderful. You can resize each button and move them wherever you want, and the addon has a full complement of timers. It can be set to give you a very clear countdown on when your totem will be available and gives you easy access to cast it. Really, any totem mod will let you do it, but TT gets my highest seal of approval.Power Auras [Curse|WoWInterface] This is another favorite of mine and many members of the community. Power Auras can be configured to show you any number of things with both visual and audio cues. Traditionally, it has been used to show when certain buffs have become active, and even in Cataclysm, a form of it has been built right into the game itself. It is, however, incredibly handy with tracking cooldowns. In the options for PA, you'll see a tab for activation. There's an option on that tab labeled "activation by" and a dropdown menu immediately below it; if you select "action usable," you can then type the name of the spell or ability you wish to track in the box right below the dropdown menu. There is also an option on this tab for "Show when not active"; if you remove the checkmark from this, it will show you whatever graphic or notification you have chosen when your spell is off cooldown and available again. You can then select any graphic, animation, sound, or even a timer bar to appear, and position it as you want on your screen.OmniCC [Curse|WoWInterface] OmniCC is an addon that I've had in my UI for a very long time, and it has served me very well over the years. This little gem places a cooldown timer on all of your abilities whenever you place them in any action bar. It is compatible with most bar mods, and the cooldown timer is very clear. Size, color, and text can be adjusted to suit your needs and help make sure it fits with your UI. One of the cool things about this addon is that whenever an ability comes off of cooldown, it will pulse and shine to draw your attention to the button. It's just enough to remind you the ability is available, without being too intrusive or obnoxious.ForteXorcist [Curse|WoWInterface] In Wrath of the Lich King, this addon became quite popular for tracking cooldowns and abilities. Not only does it give you a handy listing of your abilities and cooldowns, it has a main bar on which you can watch the icons for your various abilities and cooldowns move from right to left. Once they reach the end, they pulse in a way similar to OmniCC in order to draw your attention to the ability.
Basically, anything you can do to remind yourself to keep Riptide active on every cooldown and let you know the moment your Mana Tide Totem is off cooldown will help you out immensely in the near future. It will help keep your mana levels high, help you push through all the damage in the new tier of raiding, and help you compensate for the reduction in Mana Tide Totem in earlier content and heroics.

So how do you track the cooldowns on your abilities?
Totem Talk: Restoration will show you the basics of endgame resto shaman play as well as how to find the expansion's best reputation gear for resto shaman and tips for easier leveling. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful! Tags: class-help, featured, guide, guide-to-shamans, resto, Resto-Shaman, restoration, restoration-shaman, restoration-shaman-column, restoration-shaman-totem-talk, shaman-guide, shaman-healing, shaman-info, shaman-restoration-column, shaman-talents, talent, talents, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-guide, wow-shaman, wow-shaman-info, wow-talent-guide

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Blood Pact: Goodies for warlocks in patch 4.2

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you.

Today, class, we will begin coverage of the upcoming 4.2 patch. This patch contains the Firelands raid. It also has a new daily quest hub, both of which offer new rewards for you to work toward. There is also the introduction of the game's second caster legendary, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. Before we can begin, let me take attendance to ensure everyone is present. Bueller ... Bueller ... Bueller ... Bueller.

Right. Now that we got that out of the way, perhaps it's time that we can take a look at just a few of the things that you'll find in the next patch, which should be coming out the day after this post goes up. Even though this patch will involve quite a bit of saving cute, fluffy animals, we can still participate just like every one else. After you've finished running the new dailies, though, you may want to go bathe yourself in the blood of virgins or something to get the sweetness off.

Buying into the business

We will begin today's lesson by first delving into the new daily quest hub opening with patch 4.2. Before you are able to do anything in this area, you must first complete several of the initial quests in Hyjal. You don't have to complete the entire zone, but you do have to complete up to the saving of The Regrowth via the Aessina's Miracle quest. If you have not yet complete that quest, then the daily hub will be phased from you and you won't be able to get started. Once you have reached that point, you can begin gaining access to the new daily hub by picking up the starter quest located on the adventure boards in every major city.

Once you arrive in Hyjal, you'll find the druidic forces being attacked by a new wave of fire elementals. The first set of quests that you will complete will center around forcing these elementals back where they came from. From there, the daily quests will begin.

The quests you complete within this new hub reward you with a new token called a Mark of the World Tree. These will be essential in the new gating system that you'll experience. At first, there will only be three daily quests open to you, which reward you with four Marks in total. It takes 20 of these Marks to unlock the next stage of dailies. Since you gain some from the first quests you do here, it will take three days' worth of dailies to reach the next stage.

The second stage of the hub centers around entering the Molten Front itself and establishing a foothold there for the attack upon the Fire Lord and his minions. There will be another short quest chain before the dailies are unlocked, but the good news is that these quests do provide you with a few Marks of their own. This set of dailies, combined with the ones form the previous stage, provide of total of 14 Marks per day.

Despite how many Marks it may seem that you are getting, unlocking stage 3 requires a massive 150 Marks. With the few you gain from the startup quests, it should take 10 days worth of dailies in order to reach this point. This, however, is where your first choice comes into play.

The third stage involves unlocking either the Druids of the Talon or the Shadow Wardens. At this point, there is no difference in which you choose to unlock, as neither provides you with any rewards. The only thing you gain from this unlock is ... more dailies! In fact, you get around double the number of dailies that you've been completing up to this point. This will increase your Marks per day up to 24.

One snag, though: You cannot progress past this point until you have unlocked both the Druids and the Wardens, each costing you the same 150 Marks. Thankfully, with the increase in rewards, it should only take around seven days in order to get the second faction open. Unfortunately, doing this doesn't grant you any additional daily quests. You can only quest for either the Druids or the Wardens on any given day, so the second unlock only provides you with variety in terms of the quests that you do every day.

Now, you've finally reached the point where you can start getting stuff. After unlocking both the Druids and the Wardens, you'll be presented with three new unlock options: The Ancients, The Armorer, or The Moonwell. Each of these unlocks takes 125 Marks to get. You should be able to reach this in around five days of questing.

Which seat can I take?

For those of you at home who have been keeping score, it is going to take around 25 days of constantly doing these dailies in order to unlock the first rewards vendor. Each vendor that you unlock will provide a small increase in Marks per day, but it will always take five days' worth of questing in order to unlock the next vendor. You do not need Marks to buy anything from the vendors. Everything is bought with gold; the Marks are only used to unlock the vendors.

Which of the unlocks that you take first really depends on what it is that you need; however, each vendor is rather biased towards a certain archetype. Here's a list of the vendors and what they will offer you; which do you think is best?

The Ancients

The Armorer
The Moonwell
Sadly, warlocks aren't able to use relics, and there are no wand rewards from these vendors. That is actually rather upsetting, to be quite honest, because there is a relic option for every imaginable spec choice that would use it; adding in wands as well would only seem fair. Blizzard, however, just seems to have a thing against wands in this expansion.

Overall, the Moonwell offers the best personal rewards, so if you are looking for gear for yourself, then that is where you are likely to find it. The big "however" is that it is the Armorer who offers all of the new fantastic blacksmithing plans. If your warlock happens to be a blacksmith, then it could be well worth it to unlock the Armorer first in order to be one of the firsts to have those stellar plans. Everyone want new weapons, and right there is an easy alternative for new players to get. Even some long-term raiders may want to get their hands on them, depending on their drop luck.

Cry, raider, cry

That brings up the next big point. While these items are fantastic, they may only be of limited value to anyone who is currently in the raiding scene. From a raw ilevel point, they are situated comfortably between normal and heroic itemization from the current raiding tier. It might be that some of them are fairly useful to you, but overall, if you've been raiding already at this time, then you may not really find too much here that's great for you.

More than that, it'll be almost a month before you can even get your first item. During this time, your guild should be making some Firelands progression, and if not, then they'll hopefully be going back to attempt some of the easier tier 11 heroics. Either option would provide better rewards than what you could get from here.

Of most note is the Moonwell Chalice, which is a rather decent trinket, and trinkets are pretty important item slots in terms of the damage that they can provide. Overall, as a current raider, I wouldn't put too much stock in the tangible upgrades that you could get out of the new dailies. Getting better is just far too easy. Instead, I'd work more toward the pets and mounts and such instead.

This stuff is far more geared toward newer players or far more casual raiders who may only pug here and there when they get a chance -- which, in my opinion, is a great thing. Those players need their rewards, too.

How to avenge Hyjal

Just as with most other raiding tiers, this new raid comes with its very own faction for you to earn reputation with. The newly minted Avengers of Hjyal will be the ones leading the assault against Ragnaros, and any destruction that you end up causing in this raiding zone will curry some favor with them. Unlike working some other factions out there, gaining reputation with this lot is totally worth it. See, warlocks do like some people!

Each new level of reputation with the Avengers of Hyjal will offer you a new reward that you can purchase from their cute vendor lady (or dude; I can never really tell with these types). Thankfully, this is one thing that Blizzard did right when it comes to itemization.

Friendly -- Cloaks

Haste and hit all rolled up into one neat little package? Yes, please! There's not really much to say about it; this is an awesome cloak. While there's a dropped cloak in Firelands, why bother getting it? It doesn't have hit.

Honored -- Belts

Sitting at crit/haste, it isn't a bad belt at all. Considering that it's essentially "free," there's nothing really bad that you can say about it. I wish it didn't have a blue socket? One interesting thing, though, is there is no spirit option on the belts for anyone. Pures don't get hit, hybrids don't get spirit -- sounds fair to me.

Revered -- Trinkets

It's a little miffy that hybrid casters do get two options here with the spirit trinket, but overall, it isn't all that terrible I suppose. Hit trinkets, great as they are, generally aren't favored by anyone because of how much itemization they eat up. The Rune itself is a pretty decent trinket. An on-use to buff intellect is splendid, the crit is hit or miss depending on spec, but you can always reforge it to something else if you need to.

Exalted -- Rings

Another hit/haste item, which is absolutely fantastic, but more than that it has a gem slot! Oh, yeah, did I mention that it has the same ilevel as heroic Firelands gear? Well, it does. Reaching Exalted pretty much hands you the best ring that you're going to get from this zone. How much more could you ask for? Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DoTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through encounters such as Blackwing Descent and The Bastion of Twilight.
Tags: affliction-warlock-blood-pact, class-help, demonology-warlock-blood-pact, destruction-warlock-blood-pact, featured, guide, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, patch-4.2, talent, talents, warlock-blood-pact, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-guide, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-talent-guide, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

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Patch 4.2 hotfixes for June 28

Is anyone else kind of blown away by the lack of major bugs with today's big 4.2 patch? I know I am. Regardless of how smoothly things seem to be going, we do have some hotfixes today, fresh from the official World of Warcraft blog. Included are a few tweaks to the Elemental Bonds quest chain that starts in Hyjal and a tweak to Blackwing Descent:In the Elemental Bonds quest chain, Aggra's bubble during the Elemental Bonds: Desire event is now a lot bigger and a lot more sparkly. In additional, players should be able to turn in the quest Into Constant Earth to Therazane regardless of what stage of Deepholm progression they happen to be in.In Blackwing Descent, Atramedes' Sonar Pulses should properly move toward raid members when spawned underneath him.Follow after the break for the full list of hotfixes. Zarhym

June 28

Dungeons & Raids Blackwing Descent Atramedes's Sonar Pulses are properly moving toward raid members when spawned underneath him.Firelands Fiery Blood from Fire Scorpions now only affects other Fire Scorpions and Giant Fire Scorpions.Fire Turtles should no longer keep players in combat after their pack is killed.Items Alliance and Horde Guild Battle Standards cannot be used inside the Firelands raid.Both Faldren Tillsdale and Jamus'Vaz (Valor Point vendors) now display items grouped together in the following manner: rings, necks, bracers, relics, ranged weapons, thrown weapons, then tier sets.The Severed Visionary Tentacle is no longer infinitely applying to characters.Quests & Creatures Elemental Bonds Quest Chain Aggra's bubble is now significantly larger and has a sparkle effect, making it easier for players to locate her when on the quest Elemental Bonds: Desire.Players should be able to see Therazane and turn in the quest Into Constant Earth while at any stage of Deepholm progression without issue.

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The Daily Quest: Looking sharp

WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

Patch 4.2 is looking pretty sharp -- I don't know about everyone else out there, but I think this is, hands down, the smoothest release of a major content patch that I've ever seen. And what a patch it is. The new quest chains are fun for the moment, dailies don't look like they are going to get boring for me any time soon, and Firelands is very pretty, if full of all kinds of red.

Speaking of looking sharp, today we've got a few posts from around the blogosphere regarding looking good, among other things.

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Breakfast Topic: Borrowing features from other games

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

We've all cheated on WoW before. Whether it was Warhammer or Free Realms, we've all come back to the game. While Blizzard does a lot of things right, once in awhile, we play another game, see something cool, and ask ourselves, "Why doesn't Blizz do that?"

We've all seen talk about an appearance tab, where players can, for example, wear their Christmas clothing for looks while actually having the stats of their raid gear -- the only real difference is the looks. Rift recently announced this feature, so with any luck, much like with guild quests/challenges, the Blizz team will feel like borrowing this as well.

Housing's another idea that gets tossed around. It was actually being worked on in alpha, but Blizz decided not to go with it. In other games like EverQuest 2, player housing is also what makes towns. Why not allow players to use some space in capital cities and outposts to house their guilds?

In a similar vein, I'd love to see some world PVP that can be captured only by guilds. Darkfall's player housing is linked with a conquest system in which players get to keep their houses but the conquering guild gets some cash for their guild bank and their name in lights. Every, say, six hours, a town gets "hot." Imagine if guilds could "capture" Crossroads and have their guild advertised as its protector or take over a rival guild's home town to start some world PVP guild wars?

What features from other games would you like to see in WoW? Player-owned ships? Terraforming? Factionless PVP servers? Tags: facebookfeed, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

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WoW Zygor’s Leveling Guide 1-85 free (Updated for patch 4.1)

LINK IN DESCRIPTION – Last Updated: June 12th 2011 (patch 4.1)
Comment/Inbox if link is broken or not working correctly.

Sorry about low quality/slow video
Links are high-quality though haha

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WoW Zygor’s Leveling Guide 1-85 FREE (NO SURVEY)!
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Officers' Quarters: The strategy behind casual motivation

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

A guild's raiding suffers most when your players feel entitled to rewards without making the effort to earn them. Part of what makes leading a hardcore raiding guild easier in some respects than leading a casual raiding guild is that your players are always motivated to do their best to succeed. This week, an officer asks how she can motivate her casual raiders to meet some basic requirements and get a second team up and running.

Hi Scott,

We run a small casual raiding guild on a server that isn't very progressed. We currently have one successful 10-man team, and have been trying to get a second one off the ground since February. We have some lenient requirements for raiders to pass: they must be willing to listen on Vent, have DBM installed, be appropriately gemmed, enchanted and glyphed, and as of 4.1, have an ilevel of 346. The raiders in the current 10-man team had no problem with this at all, but the people who would comprise the second team, and complain about wanting to raid, have put in very little effort towards actually raiding. At the time of writing this, it's June -- we have endured 4 months of trying to get this team off the ground, 4 months of complaining, and 4 months of trying to help these people get a raid happening, to no avail.

We have tried recruiting but have been having a high turnover of people who HAVE put in the effort and found themselves without a team; they get frustrated and start looking elsewhere, and I really don't blame them. Meanwhile, the lazy members remain and continue to complain, but do nothing to progress themselves towards actually raiding, no matter how often we remind them. You can't walk into Blackwing Descent with an ilevel of 328, no enchants and only two glyphs -- these people don't seem to understand that! One member even told us he was "far too busy and important" irl to have time to watch a boss fight on Youtube, despite being fairly active and often online.

It feels like all of these people want something for nothing -- they want to raid but they don't want to put the effort in to learn any of the fights themselves or meet the requirements we've set out. And when they're frustrated at not raiding, it's the guild leadership they look to for blame. I'm completely at a loss for what to do here; the old adage of "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink" really comes to mind. Simply giving up and canceling the second team isn't the answer, because then it punishes the people who HAVE been putting in the effort. Everyone (including the officers) is incredibly frustrated at this situation -- it seems like no matter how many times we remind them to put in the effort, they assume that raiding will be like it was in Wrath.

Any advice you have on this would be great,

Frustrated

Hi, Frustrated. Boy, this is one of the most annoying parts of casual raiding, and I don't blame you for feeling that way. One question for you: Did you put these requirements in writing? Are they listed on your website somewhere? Such requirements never feel quite tangible enough if
they're merely understood.

The power of the written word

As I mentioned last week, writing down your policies is an incredibly helpful way to prevent drama and head off complaints. By formalizing your requirements in writing, you give your members a checklist of things to do. It won't get everyone to do it, but at least you can point to it when people want to raid before they've met these standards. The written requirements would also serve notice to people who are looking to join that they must do these things if they want to raid with your guild.

I would also suggest keeping a public list of players who are "approved" for raiding, so you have a black-and-white system for determining who gets invites and who doesn't. Ask players to request an evaluation for the list once they've met all the requirements and feel that they are ready.

Have an officer or a class/role leader look at their armory and give them feedback. It's a great opportunity for some constructive criticism before the player sets foot in a raid. Then the evaluator can either put them on the list or tell them what they still need to do to qualify.

You could even go a step further and post a list of required roles for this second team. Post the people who qualify in the appropriate spots and leave blanks for the spots no one can fill yet.

You'd be surprised how something so simple can serve as a kick in the pants for people to get things done. Seeing others on a list that they're not on is a stark reminder of their own laziness. Your requirements are so simple and reasonable that hopefully it shouldn't take much more than that to get people to meet them -- if they truly want to raid.

Consider other solutions

Until you get this second team off the ground, it might be a good idea to rotate into your first team some of the players who have been patiently waiting for the second. When patch 4.2 goes live, some of your first-team players will probably want to skip out on farm runs of tier 11 instances anyway.

If every player who qualifies gets a chance to raid, it could serve as more motivation to people who aren't yet approved. I imagine it may be hard to feel motivated when you know you'll just be sitting around waiting for everyone else to catch up.

In all honesty, depending on how many players you have that qualify to raid outside the first team, you may be better off in the long run working out a rotation and not bothering with a second team at all. Recruiting is very difficult right now. If you have only two to three extra raiders, then it's probably not worth building an entire team out of that until you manage to recruit more people.

Don't give in

As for the guy who says he's too "busy and important" to watch a 5-minute video -- wow. What a lame excuse! He has hours and hours to raid, but not an extra few minutes to prepare to raid well? I don't buy it.

Yes, it's casual raiding, but the fact that he thinks his time is more valuable than others' is the exact opposite attitude that you want to see in your raiders. That is one member who should never see the inside of a raid instance until he changes his attitude.

Maybe once the tier 11 nerfs hit with 4.2, your second-team players may see a surge in activity to get prepared and jump in. Don't count on it, however. And don't let them blame you for the lack of additional raiding, either. Make it clear exactly who is preventing these raids from happening -- themselves.

Whatever you do, stick to your guns and don't lower your standards. Outside of Vent and ilevel, your requirements are really just the minimum anyone should do when they're playing group PVE content in any form. It goes beyond smart play to a matter of common courtesy. The moment you give in to the laziness of your players, you'll put your guild on a slippery slope toward failure.

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Lichborne: Why the death knight blood tree needs tweaks

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Patch 4.2 will likely be on live servers by the time you read this, but I figure we've talked enough about the patch 4.2 in past columns. If you read those, you probably have a good idea of where everything is for death knights. This week, I've decided it would be a good idea to take a break and talk about something that didn't get much attention in patch 4.2: the plight of the death knight tank.

It's been sort of an undercurrent in the death knight community since the beginning of Cataclysm. The death knight blood tanking tree is just sort of gummed up. It's not that we're underpowered, per se. No, a well played death knight tank is pretty dominant in heroic dungeons and even normal raiding. You only start really falling behind in heroic raids, where the problem becomes really evident: You're doing twice as much work for the same results, more or less.

Most of the issues are centered around Death Strike and how it interacts with our resource system. The quirks of said resource system are so demanding that you end up staring at your rune bar more than the battle in front of you, trying to game the system just right to squeeze out one last Death Strike.

Spamming Death Strike works

In theory, Death Strike would be a great reactive ability. Getting low on health? Death Strike. Just took a huge hit? Death Strike, because you know that means you'll get a huge heal and thus a huge Blood Shield from the heal.

Unfortunately, in practice, all you really end up doing is spamming Death Strike. This is essentially because Death Strike and Blood Shield replace block, which shield classes get automatically. Without thinking, they just don't take as much damage at the base, because their shield automatically blocks it more often than not, especially once they get to decent levels of mastery.

As an example, consider a death knight and a warrior, each tanking the same raid boss. Let's say they have similar skill and gear levels, and they each take a huge spike of damage from the boss. Now, the warrior (thanks to high mastery) is going to end that streak of damage at 40% health because he had block. The death knight, in the meantime, is at 10% health because he can't block and is expected to make up that health gap by immediately throwing out a few Death Strikes.

Now, all well and good you say. Just spam Death Strike, and you're fine. In theory, this is true. The issue, though, is that in spamming Death Strike, you've immediately used 4 runes. That means 4 runes that can't be used for at least 8 seconds. Those runes could have been used to apply diseases or throw up Bone Shield or Death and Decay (or even, say, a Blood Boil or Heart Strike, if you were in death rune mode). Those resources are gone.

On the other hand, if you decide to use those runes to, say, refresh Frost Fever and Blood Plague, that's a whole mess of healing and blocking power you're giving up, and your healer either needs to pour extra mana on you or gamble that you won't get hit quite hard enough to die while you wait for those runes to refresh for another Death Strike.

In the meantime, the warrior is now free to throw up whatever threat-gaining abilities, defensive cooldowns, or debuffs he wants without worrying about wasting resources that should have been used to pull himself back from the brink of death. He will be, by definition, ahead of us.

Runic Empowerment: Surprisingly disempowering

Of course, even spamming Death Strike becomes a whole game in itself for a simple reason: Our rune system works against us when we try to get the maximum amount of Death Strikes out.

Most of this is due to Runic Empowerment. This ability regenerates runes at random when you use your runic power dumps. On the face of things, this is great. If you're lucky, you get a quick streak of runes up, and you can immediately use theme for another Death Strike, building your blood shield up and avoiding more damage.

Unfortunately, the wrench in the works here are your blood runes. They simply can't be used for Death Strikes, Blood Tap aside. Now, that might encourage you to leave them unspent; just let them pool so any Runic Empowerment procs go straight to your frost and unholy runes. That doesn't work well either, though, because you do want your blood runes spent for Blade Barrier.

Thus, what you end up doing is staring at your rune bar, trying to balance all your runes for optimum generation of the frost and unholy runes you need for Death Strike. This generally means you have 1 blood rune spent at all times, spending the active blood rune only when the second blood rune is about to refresh. This allows you to keep Blade Barrier up as much as possible, while still keeping blood runes up as much as possible so the minimum amount of Runic Empowerment procs get wasted on them. Then, you just have to hope that any Runic Empowerment procs give you the right combination of runes to get off another Death Strike -- the last thing you want is a combination of 2 unholy or 2 frost runes.

In addition, you need to watch your runic power. If it's capped and you're still trying to get your blood runes balanced so you don't proc Runic Empowerment on them, you're probably losing threat and Runic Empowerment procs anyway. This whole system is popularly called "rune Tetris" and is considered the #1 issue with blood tanks by many people, just because of how much more involved and stressful it is to manage.

It is interesting to note that, these days, blood is the only tree that has to manage runes like this. Frost now has permanent death runes, which means just about any rune that refreshes for them will automatically be useful for their main strike, Obliterate. Unholy can spec into Runic Corruption, which just offers a quick boost to rune refresh rate in general. Again, no worries about getting the correct rune there, because they're all correct.

The most obvious answer here, then, is to give blood death knights one of these workarounds. Making Runic Corruption baseline would go a long way toward ending rune Tetris and allowing death knights to glance up from their rune bars every once in a while.

Fighting against themselves

Even beyond rune Tetris, there are other aspects of death knight tanking that are clunky enough to make playing the class frustrating in ways that just aren't true of other tanking specs. In short, a lot of our defensive abilities cancel each other out or at least are constantly vying for dominance.

At the most basic level, you can argue that avoidance (and thus Bone Shield) work at cross purposes with Blood Shield. Since your Blood Shield is only as powerful as how much damage you've taken, any avoidance of that damage weakens Blood Shield. That's sort of a low-level annoyance, arguably, but it's there.

The biggest issue, though, is the application of diseases and the debuffs they cause. The damage diseases cause is actually pretty solid threat, but where they really shine is debuffs. The reduced physical damage from Scarlet Fever and the reduced speed from Frost Fever are both incredibly powerful tools for making you take damage. The problem is that casting them when Outbreak is on cooldown requires a frost and unholy rune, which means you lose a Death Strike. This in itself can be lethal in the short term, even if those diseases will protect you from damage in the long term. In addition, spreading them to multiple targets requires the use of Pestilence, which could unbalance rune Tetris when used and, regardless, doesn't generate any extra threat. Compare this to, say, Thunder Clap, which does AOE threat at the same time it spreads both extra damage and the slowing debuff.

Blizzard CM Zarhym has already discussed the possibility of solving this by giving blood a reduced cooldown on Outbreak. This would at least give DKs a chance to refresh diseases without giving up a Death Strike. Another possibility is to give Pestilence or Blood Boil the ability to refresh all diseases. This wouldn't specifically solve the rune Tetris issue, but it would at least allow blood death knights to use all their defensive tools to the something approaching the same level that other tank classes can.

Mastering mastery may merit mastery modification

Of course, there's also another, more nuclear option to be had. Just give death knights a different mastery, one that isn't so focused on using a single attack as much as possible. One solution is to possibly give us the ability to proc a Blood Shield from multiple attacks, similar to the druid's Savage Defense. Of course, if you talk to many druid tanks, they'll tell you Savage Defense has problems of its own. Perhaps then, there could be a move to return death knights more to the unholy avoidance tank model from the Wrath era. Turn Bone Shield into a sort of passive mastery ability that procs more charges every time an attack is successfully avoided and/or absorbs damage based on previous damage taken just as Blood Shield does now.

There are a lot of ideas to fixing mastery and a lot of ways to go about it. There are still some big roadblocks, though. Since death knights, even with their clunky playstyle, are still more than adequate tanks up through heroic dungeons and even in normal raiding, a lot of players don't even realize they have issues. As long as they're surviving and downing content, players don't care that the player behind the blood death knight tank is working twice as hard as the warrior tank.

In addition, Blizzard has said in the past that it likes the "active mitigation" aspect of the death knight tanking model and would, in fact, prefer that all tanking classes have it. Now, many members of the death knight tanking community have pointed out that it's not really active if the only optimal way of playing is to spam the active button. It's a tossup as to whether Blizzard will buy that argument, but we have seen some blue posts in death knight tanking threads, so we can at least hope that Blizzard is aware of these arguments.

The real test, of course, will be when the theoretical patch 4.2.1 rolls around. Will we see some meaningful death knight tanking changes, or will we need to keep queuing up the Russian folk music remixes? Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear.
Tags: blood, blood-death-knight-lichborne, blood-plague, blood-shield, class-help, death-knight-blood-lichborne, death-knight-debuffs, death-knight-diseases, death-knight-guide, death-knight-info, death-knight-mastery, death-knight-talents, death-knight-tanking, death-strike, dk-guide, dk-info, dk-talents, featured, frost-fever, guide, guide-to-death-knights, mastery, outbreak, rune-tetris, scarlet-fever, talent, talents, tanking, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-death-knight, wow-dk, wow-guide, wow-talent-guide

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Around Azeroth: Take a seat

Ah, the beautiful purple hues of the aggro warning. Deyalith of Steelbound on Moon Guard (US-H) writes, "My guild and I were attempting heroic Lich King for the guild achievement and we ended up having a very poor Val'kyr and Defile placement. Like the noble paladin I am, I ran for my life as everyone died and stole the Lich King's throne. It seems that he wasn't too happy about that."
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ss

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Amazon Deal of the Day: Cataclysm for $20

If you've started a new account recently or have been waiting to purchase Cataclysm, now's your shot to get the newest expansion on Amazon for only $20. Cataclysm is Amazon's Gold Box deal of the day, with a reduced price for only 24 hours. The deal is currently on the U.S. Amazon store, but the boxed copy of Cataclysm can be added or applied to any region's account.

With the recent sales in the EU for WoW and The Burning Crusade, as well as the free copies of WoW that were distributed to game veterans to give away, Blizzard is making a hard push at getting WoW into more peoples' hands and lowering the admittedly high barrier to entry of an MMO that's now 6+ years old. Hopefully, we will see this barrier come down even more over time as Blizzard figures out the answer to one of the more difficult questions in the MMO genre -- how will Blizzard deal with expansions once there are too many to reasonably expect new players to buy them all to get the full game experience?
Tags: amazon, amazon-daily-deal, amazon-gold-box, box, cataclysm, daily, deal, deathwing-on-sale, expansion, gold, gold-box

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Reader UI of the Week: Troubleshooting patch 4.2

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com.

Reader UI of the Week is a little different this week, considering it is patch time, which can be brutal on players who use a sizable amount of addons. For this edition of Reader UI of the Week, we're running through the patch 4.2 UI changes and giving you the tips and info you need to get up and running faster then ever before. This patch's UI changes were not as substantial (on the user end, anyway) as in the previous patch, so hopefully things won't be too difficult this time around.

The first thing you must always do in a patch day scenario is back up your interface. This is an easy thing to do -- just copy the WTF and Interface folders from your WoW directory on your computer, and put those copies in a happy, safe place. Sure, you may need to do some tweaking and changing back to your profiles if you ever lose your UI, but it is better than starting over completely from scratch. Replace your backup frequently, or whenever you make some big change to your setup.

What's new in patch 4.2

With the new patch comes new interface elements, including the Dungeon Journal and the War Games tab built in to the PVP window. There are also some quality-of-life changes dealing with the UI and a bombshell feature in changing the order of your characters on the character select screen. No joke -- this is one of the best things to happen in WoW.

The Dungeon Journal

Getting to the Dungeon Journal is easy. Either press the new button on the mini menu (it's got the little computer icon for latency, the spellbook, etc.), or press Shift J to open up the menu. From there, you can tab between dungeons and raids and get all of the information you need on the bosses in whichever dungeon or raid you pick. While the Dungeon Journal won't tell you how to beat the boss or how to deal with boss abilities, it will let you know what you're up against. Tell a man to not stand in the fire and he won't burn for a day; teach a man to not stand in the fire and he won't burn forever.

War Games

War Games was a feature introduced awhile back, but it was a convoluted mess to get going with. Players who wanted to partake in War Games had to form up their groups and then input ... get ready for it ... text commands to get the whole thing up and running. What is this, the 20th century? Ugh. It was not the most elegant way of implementing War Games, but it got the job done.

Now, Blizzard has updated the PVP interface to add a War Games tab for easier facilitation of what I like to call "crush your friends time." War Games are a good idea in spirit, especially if you want to break your raid in two after some particularly fun boss kills and just beat the crap out of each other.

However, since there are no rewards for participating in War Games over the fun of it all, I think more than a few people will be unwilling to participate. Rewards are not really the focus of the system, to be honest. You can access the War Games menu by hitting "H" for PVP and selecting the War Games tab.

More interface changes

There are some cool new changes coming and one potentially problematic one, but it doesn't seem like this round of additions is going to break anything major.

My character selection screen is a mess, to be honest. There is no plan, no order -- it is complete and utter chaos. As someone who does enjoy the occasional neat and tidy thing, my character select screen is finally going to become home to a perfect order of characters.

Rearrange your character orderThe order in which characters are listed at the Character Selection screen can now be rearranged and saved.
This is one of those changes that players have not only been asking for for an extended length of time, but also one that shows how the simplest problem can aggravate people for long. Finally, finally, I can live in a world where the order of my characters on the selection window can be changed. The psychological effects of this change are going to be monumental for me. I wish I was in any way kidding.

Macro quality-of-life upgrade

Macro creation got a nice quality-of-life upgrade coming in the patch which allows players to have both the spellbook and the macro window open at the same time. This allows you to shift-click abilities from the spellbook to insert them into the macro window text box. It's a great change for when you want to easily add new skills to a macro or just don't want to write the whole thing out before you punch in the macro. Also, it works great for #showtooltip [Whatever] syntax, as you can see the icon of the ability you want to set the macro as before you create it.

Macro Quality of LifeThe Macros window and Spellbook can now both be open at the same time to allow for more intuitive macro creation. In addition, the Macros window has a Save/Cancel button.
The "save" button was a long time coming. Remember how when you wanted to save your game of The Legend of Zelda, you sort of had to press the power button and the reset button on the NES at the same time? Something to do with SRAM and power to the cartridge ... Anyway, macros never really "saved," and to me it always felt like a gamble. You sort of just closed the window and, however nebulous it seemed, they worked. Now, there's a save button. Yay!

Getting addon-ready for the patch

Here's where things get crazy and potentially tricky. When patch 4.2 hits, more than likely a few of your addons might stop functioning as normal or feel broken. Your game might run sluggishly, and a million other things might crop up. Step 1 is to not panic. There are a few things you can do before, during, and after you load up the patch to make this transition smoother.

Many addon authors have created beta or alpha versions of their addons in anticipation of the patch, using data and testing on the PTR. This is a good thing! These alpha and beta versions are ready to work with the patch at minute zero.

If you update your addons manually, head over to Curse or WoWInterface and grab some of the alpha versions of your critical addons and update your 4.1 versions. If you have a UI compilation, you may be out of luck until the authors release a pack update for their custom skins and all that, so you may have to wait and use your backup. You have a backup, right?

Curse Client users have it even easier. If you're a Curse Client user, you can set a preference on each addon for what release you want to be downloaded into your folder. Just right-click on an addon in the client, select "Preferred Release Type," and set it to alpha. Again, only do this for addons that are updated frequently or "big name" guys, and only for the ones critical to your play experience. DBM, for instance, has great alpha releases and will most likely work when the patch hits. Remember to update everything once you've made those new selections.

After the patch hits and you log in, addons hot, there are a few things you might notice. Here's how to deal with the most common.

Too many error messages If you're getting a huge amount of Lua error messages or stuff starts freaking out on you whenever you press a key, take note of what the error is saying. If you can discern from the text of the error which addon is giving you trouble or what part of the UI is freaking out, you can disable that addon until it gets a fix or a new alpha or beta release. Disabled addons can either be done on the character select screen or using an addon called Addon Control Panel, which I recommend getting.Sluggish frame rate If you normally get a great frame rate and things become sluggish or suddenly come to a grinding halt, you potentially have an addon problem. This was the symptom in patch 4.1 of the damage log change that affected addons like Mik's and other scrolling combat text addons, as well as the repercussion for having AVR installed after it was forcibly broken by Blizzard. If you feel the sluggish framerate, first disable all of your addons and see if the problem clears up. If it does, you have an addon problem. Start turning on addons a few at a time (or even one at a time) until you can pinpoint which one is giving you the issue. Leave it disabled until a new alpha or beta release of the addon fixes the issue.Vanished settings Settings sometimes just ... magically disappear. If an addon's settings have reverted to default for absolutely no reason or chunks of your UI have reset themselves, don't panic. First, check to see if you can swap the profile back to the character you are using. It's possible the profile just got screwed up; reset, and you're back in business. Second, make sure the addons are updated. You never know. If you can't find the exact solution to get things back the way it was, you might have to spend a couple of minutes rebuilding. The information is all there, though, so it just might be some aesthetic customization that you need to redo.
Stay safe on patch day, kids. It's a rough world out there. Remember, update your addons, look for alpha or beta releases of known, constantly updated addons, and only trust known addon sites like WoW Interface and Curse. Thankfully, Curse is back up after an massive architecture failure, just in time for us to get our interfaces ready to roll.

Reader UI of the Week will return next week in its usual format, so get those post-patch UIs submitted! You can send submissions to Reader UI of the Week to readerui@wowinsider.com. In the meantime, browse through our past reader UI submissions and highlights for ideas and inspiration for when your UI completely and utterly destroys itself during the patching process and you run screaming from the room. I kid, of course.

Maybe.

Tags: add-on, add-on-configuration, add-on-examples, add-on-guide, addon-configuration, addon-examples, addon-guide, addons, featured, guide, patch-4.2, patch-addon-problems, troubleshoot, troubleshooting, ui, ui-configuration, ui-guide, user-interface, user-interface-guide, world-of-warcraft-patch-4.2, wow-add-on, wow-add-on-guide, wow-add-ons, wow-addon-guide, wow-addons, wow-guide, wow-patch, wow-patch-4.2, wow-patch-4.2-news, wow-patch-news, wow-ui-configuration

Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week

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Zygor WOW Leveling Guide – Level 80 In Under 4 Days! + WoW Gold Guide and PVP [Review]

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WoWathon 3 begins June 30 for Child's Play charity

WoWathon, an event raising money for the Child's Play charity, is kicking off its third annual fundraising broadcast on June 30, 2011. So far, both WoWathons have raised a combined total over $13,900 for Child's Play. The event hopes to bring in even more this year.

WoWathon puts a team of rotating players through the paces of leveling from 1 to 85 without stopping for almost 2 weeks, broadcast for the world to see and to share their trials and tribulations. Here are some quick details:
When It starts June 30, 2011, at 8 a.m. It ends when the gang hits 85 (an estimated two weeks).Where Lightbringer (US)Who There are about seven participants. The characters are named Chylds and Playy.We've covered WoWathon in the past and encourage the community to come out in support of our brothers and sisters in arms to raise money for a good cause.

I asked Alex Guerrera, one of the members of the WoWathon team, about this year's event, and he was most excited to answer.

WoW Insider: When did you start the Wowathon? What do you think draws people into wanting to watch you guys play WoW for charity?

Alex: We started WoWathon back in the summer of 2009 after one of our friends introduced us to the Mario Marathon. We had a lot of time to kill and we figure "we're pretty good at WoW; let's play that and try to do something good with it." From there, WoWathon was born.

As far as what draws people in to watch, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that watching us stream WoW is a lot like hanging out with us. We're generally pretty funny people, and when there are five of us just playing WoW and chatting with our audience, it has a very friendly atmosphere. We also make chocolate pudding at four in the morning, and after a certain point in the night, we all get extremely tired and insanity starts to set in, which we're told is great to watch.

How much have you raised so far for Child's Play?

Alex: With WoWathon '09 and WoWathon '10 combined, we've raised $13,926.87. We used goal-based leveling to try and encourage people to donate (X amount of money to get to Y level), and a couple of times we almost didn't make it, so this year we're going to try and find a way to rework the goal system.

Why do you think the WoW community responds so well to charity? We've seen huge outpouring of support for charity pets from Blizzard and the charity dinner. What about our community is fundamentally awesome about giving and helping?

Alex: When you have 11 million people in a community, there are bound to be charitable people out there. That being said I think a lot of Blizzard games attract a bit more maturity from their audience than the average game, as most of their games require a lot of personal investment.

I also think a lot of the people feel largely the same way we do and want to give back to the community they love. The community is self aware, for lack of a better term, and understands that they're going to get back what they put in. If you're nothing but a troll, no one's going to want anything to do with you. If you show a lot of respect and work to contribute to the community, you'll gain a lot of respect in return. With a user base as awesome as this, community building is inherently encouraged and rewarding.

What's the goal for this year?

Alex: This year, we don't have a set goal in mind because we're worried that we might run into a situation where we don't meet our goal before a certain level and are forced to either continue on despite not meeting our goal or ending early. Overall, though, we're shooting for $10,000 before the end of the event.

What's the best way people can help and where can people tune in?

Alex: If people want to help they can:
Donate to Child's Play, of course! This can be done by going to our website at Wowathon.com and clicking the ChipIn! button on the right-hand side of the screen.If you play on Lightbringer and want to follow us, hang out with us, or play with us, our characters are Chylds and Playy, and we'd love to have you come along on the journey! We party with characters around our level so that our audience can play with us, but we try to avoid getting party members too far above or below our level because of the effect it will have on our leveling.Chat with us in our Ustream chat.Drum up awareness on blogs or websites.Make characters to whisper us and cheer us on! A lot of our team members are new this year and have never done something like this, so words of encouragement are extremely appreciated.So there are plenty of ways people can help. Obviously, we'd love it if everyone donated, but we appreciate everything down to the whispers people send us cheering us on! To me, this and our chat room is the coolest part of the experience, because it lets our audience get involved.

Thank you very much Alex, and good luck to the WoWathon team. I know I'll be watching! Tags: charity, childs-play, childs-play-2011, childs-play-charity, wow-a-thon, wow-athon, wowathon, wowathon-3

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