Posted on July 27th, 2009 by admin
Karl, writing over on the WoW Livejournal, has an interesting set of thoughts about hard modes and just how they work with raiders’ morale. Hard modes are designed to give raiders something extra — if you’ve conquered the normal modes of raids like Ulduar, hard modes are put in there by Blizzard to offer you some extra risk for a corresponding reward. But as they’ve become more and more routine, some raids are taking on the hard modes even before they’ve cleared the whole instance, leading up to a night of wiping on early hard modes, and then wiping on later progression. And wiping all night is never good for any raid’s morale.
Of course, this is one of the causes for the way the Crusaders’ Coliseum in patch 3.2 is designed: instead of having both hard and normal modes constrained to one instance, you can run a 10 or 25-man instance in normal mode all the way, leaving the Heroic mode open when you’re ready to do some wiping.
But then
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Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by admin
So you’ve got your computer, your input device, and maybe some specialized keyboard. The only thing you’ll need now is some sound system. In the conclusion of this series, we’ll take a look at what you use for game sounds. For general gaming purposes, your computer’s default sound system, if any, should really do fine. On the other hand, if you’re serious about your PvP, you might want to invest in a good headset. If you normally play at home and have the luxury of playing indiscreetly, a great sound system is an awesome thing to have.
Personally, I don’t play external background music (e.g., through iTunes) whenever I PvP. It’s cool for PvP videos, but it’s generally a bad idea. For one thing, music, even the one found in-game, tends to obscure important PvP sounds. In particular, the stealth sound is one of the most important sound effects in World of Warcraft PvP. That sound will often, but not always, precede visual confirmation
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Posted on July 20th, 2009 by admin
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column, with your host Daniel Whitcomb.
The patch 3.2 PTR continues on apace, and with the background downloader now delivering content to the live servers, we can only hope that the release date is creeping closer. With that in mind, I am continuing our preview of the loot of the new 5-man Crusader’s Coliseum loot, which is all epic all the time, and perfect for any Death Knight who just hasn’t quite managed to break into the raid game.
Admittedly, this loot is a bit less outright spectacular than that tank loot, if only because it has a lot of haste and armor penetration, which are less desirable for certain specs of Death Knights since we do so much of our damage with instant abilities or with frost and shadow magic which bypasses armor penetration altogether. Then again, if your rotation is heavy on Blood or Heart Strikes and Obliterates or Death Strikes, you’ll still get some nice use out of the armor
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Posted on July 16th, 2009 by admin
Good day folks and welcome to Scattered Shots. The column that take a good look at what it takes to be a Hunter in the World of Warcraft. I am Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington from the Hunting Lodge. This week we’ll be discussing the best pets to use while playing solo. So grab your traps, check your ammo and let’s go Hunting!
For the last couple of weeks I have been going over raiding specs. First, we reviewed the suggested specs for each all the Hunter talent trees. And last week we discussed how to spec Ferocity pets to partner with you as you raid and down bosses.
But we all know that there is much more to World of Warcraft than just running round min/maxing your character with best in slot items and downing bosses. For example, what do you do when you are out there leveling content? How about some way to take on multiple mobs at a time as you grind through for those twelve dozen Murloc eyes or maybe you are farming Arctic Fur for that Death-warmed Belt.
So I
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Posted on July 13th, 2009 by admin
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
The phrase “best in slot” has taken on an almost untouchable mythos. It’s not hard to see why. The experts spend a large amount of time crunching numbers and evaluating items for every spec of each class. They write software just for the purpose of telling you what items are better. When those people say that an item is the best in slot, that’s the one. That is the item for the slot, and no better item exists. Anything else is just a placeholder until you get the best.
Of course, a lot depends on what other gear you are wearing. Even so, as raiders, those best-in-slot pieces are highly desirable. But what if our best in slot isn’t our main armor type?
Hi Scott,Recently my guild has gotten into what’s turning out to be a hot debate.
It all started when a Paladin and Shaman both rolled on a mail belt; now this item was a best in slot
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Posted on July 10th, 2009 by admin
Once again, it’s time for a Class Q&A with Ghostcrawler! Today Paladins get their chance to shine (previously: Shaman, Mage, Death Knight, Warlock).
As with the other Q&As, this one starts with a bit on what the idea is behind paladins, with a glance at their history and at their present.
In the beginning: paladins were a “defensive buffing class…buffs were pretty much the entire reason you’d want to group with a paladin.”
End-game classic WoW: paladins were healers only.
BC: paladins could tank, but were still mostly OTs.
Wrath: “finally embraced all three specs.”
Paladins still have several unique facets: bubbles, strong dispels, plate armor as a healer, and the Seal and Judgment system.
Itemization: so far in Wrath, MP5 wasn’t particularly valuable, and they claim it wasn’t inteded to be. They still think MP5 is undervalued right now, though, hence the buffs coming to it in patch 3.2. They also think Int/Crit based
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Posted on July 7th, 2009 by admin
The other night I was chatting to a friend of mine on Skype and she casually mentioned — because she knows I play WoW – that she was about to roll a character (Elfly) for the first time. Elfly had had an account for a while but had never been able to try it out while at university and now she has the whole summer stretching out in front of her. Yes, I suspect you know where this going, especially when she twittered a few hours later expressing her new-found love for Azeroth.
But there’s a catch. Like me, Elfly is disabled. I’m a VIP (disabled shorthand for visually impaired person) and she’s (in her own words) a blindy (shorthand for, well, a blind person). This means we play with our noses touching the screen and get lost. A lot. To give you an example for what the world (in-game or real) is like for me, nip to your nearest Azerothian tavern and quaff flagons of mead until you get completely smashed and the screen goes all blurry, alternatively just
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Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by admin
Each week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors looks at the warrior class, the dizzying highs, the devastating lows, and the agony and ecstasy of plate wearing, rage using toons everywhere in Azeroth, Outland and Northrend. Matthew Rossi is our slightly demented, hirsute guide to all things warrior. We’re not kidding, the guy’s really hairy. Like a sasquatch, really.
Okay, first off, a confession: I’m cheating on my fury spec.
I have been since the option to have dual talent specialization came out, actually. See, I tanked all through original WoW and The Burning Crusade (to be fair, I tanked as an arms or fury warrior because I could in MC and BWL) and so I figured, what the heck, I’ll go prot for my offspec and tank some heroics. After an initial hiccough where I actually specced arms for some fights and fury for others, I settled back into a standard prot build for tanking heroics for friends. Then summer hit, and we all know what happens in summer: people
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