WoW quality

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you [hide]The Care and Feeding of Warriors[/hide], the column dedicated to [hide]arms[/hide], [hide]fury[/hide] and [hide]protection warriors[/hide]. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last week, I complained that I was still [hide]DPSing in ZA shoulders[/hide]. This week, Cho’gall finally dropped the tier 11 shoulder token. I got one day’s worth of use out of it. And then Majordomo Staghelm dropped the tier 12 shoulder token. The lesson? Complain about drop rates when writing columns. You know what else doesn’t drop enough? Everything I want, that’s what.

As you might expect, my recent fortune in terms of new gear (I also got [hide]a nice new hat[/hide]) got me thinking about how to best gem, enchant and reforge my gear in order to make maximum use out of it all. This is nothing new to this expansion, of course, but the cumulative effect of the variety of options we now have to customize our gear means it can all be somewhat complex to get everything lined up the way we want it.

This is where various gear optimization tools come into play. Much as we used to use (and still do use) spreadsheets to tell us which pieces of gear will provide maximum benefit, we now use gear optimizers to tell us what to do to our gear once we have it — what gems should we use, which socket bonuses are worth gemming away from our usual and which ones aren’t, what enchants in which slots will help us get maximum effect.

Sure, you can do this all manually, but with some statistics having hard caps and others having soft caps, and each piece of new gear changing each stat’s amounts, it can be pretty daunting. Whether you’re raiding in the Firelands or just beginning to get gear that can even take a reforge, it’s worth taking a look at a few resources.[hide]Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Reforging and gear optimization resources for warriors[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Warrior[/hide], [hide]Analysis / Opinion[/hide], [hide]Cataclysm[/hide][hide]The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Reforging and gear optimization resources for warriors[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for [hide]elemental[/hide], [hide]enhancement[/hide], and [hide]restoration[/hide] shaman. [hide]Josh Myers[/hide] once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

When I was a youngling, my family didn’t have a lot of money. As a result, we didn’t have a lot of discretionary income for video games. When my neighbors were getting Nintendo 64, I was getting Sega Genesis. Getting Pokmon the first Christmas it was out was a really big deal.

As a result, my first exposure to [hide]Star Fox 64[/hide] came nearly two years after the game was released. Star Fox 64 had everything 12-year-old-me could have wished for in a video game: anthropomorphized animals with annoying voices, epic space battles, and barrel rolls. I was in heaven. I slept over my friend Francis’ house every Friday night for three months just to play Star Fox. (I’d always skip the water zone, though. That place makes heroic Ragnaros look simple.)

When Blizzard released Patch 4.2 and [hide]Alysrazor[/hide] came out, I was faced with a fight uniquely suited to my skillset. Half of the fight, I’m an enhancement shaman: half of the fight, I’m flying through the air dodging incendiary clouds and collecting gold rings like a boss. Unfortunately, the half of the fight that doesn’t involve pretending to make fun of Falco over Ventrilo is the part that enhancement excels on.
[hide]Continue reading Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Alysrazor[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Shaman[/hide], [hide]Raiding[/hide], [hide](Shaman) Totem Talk[/hide], [hide]Cataclysm[/hide][hide]Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Alysrazor[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

We, the unliving, are marching to Stormwind to protest the living’s continued insistence on remaining alive. We begin in Deathknell and will end at the human capital. Join us in game on your undead character of any level on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H) or by watching the stream above and joining in the chat after the break.

Protest the living![hide]Continue reading It came from the Blog Live: The Night of the Forsaken[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Events[/hide], [hide]It Came from the Blog[/hide][hide]It came from the Blog Live: The Night of the Forsaken[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

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

I started playing WoW in February 2005 and haven’t stopped. Sometimes I look at my /played and shudder. But for all the hours spent, I’ve never joined the game’s community. I’m not in a guild. I don’t have anyone on my friend lists. I don’t know the names of my server’s ninjas or trolls.

To some extent, I’m a product of my environment. With a non-gaming family, friends, and girlfriend, my social circle is not predisposed to WoW. But the truth is that even if I had the support, I still wouldn’t spec «social butterfly.»

I blame my hyper-social job. Beyond a meeting-heavy 9 to 7, I’m expected to spend most nights out at parties, dinners, concerts, etc. I love my job, and I love being social. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But when I come home, all I want is a chance to unwind and pew-pew. As such, my only engagement between me and my fellow players is furry or icy death. No in-game social life means no schedules, no obligations, and no drama.

But when you read a certain WoW publication as much as I do, you begin to wonder about life on the other side, a world of guild runs, in-jokes, server reputations, and social engagement. On my darker days, after a particularly bad PUG or PVP match, it sounds kind of beautiful. I’ve played for six years now, and I doubt I’ll ever go social. But sometimes, when I stand on top of a mountain and look at the damage wrought by Deathwing’s passing, I wish I could /tell my guild that «I finally died in the fire!»

Do you go solo? Could you never imagine WoW without your social network? Have you found a middle ground?
Filed under: [hide]Breakfast Topics[/hide], [hide]Guest Posts[/hide][hide]Breakfast Topic: Are you a solo player[/hide]? originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

[hide][/hide]
All must bow before the One True Leader! Why? Well, all the cool kids are doing it. Don’t you want to be cool? Sure, you do. Now put on these white robes and be ready to storm the gates of Orgrimmar in an hour. The Leader will be guiding us spiritually from his mansion in Stormwind, along with the dancing women in bikinis and the purple demons. For the Alliance, and for the Leader! (Thanks to [hide]Lacrymosa[/hide] and [hide]Kishofdeath[/hide] of [hide]Denial[/hide] on Trollbane [US-A] for the screenshot.)

Gallery: [hide]Around Azeroth 3[/hide][hide][/hide][hide][/hide][hide][/hide][hide][/hide][hide][/hide]

Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to [hide]aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com[/hide]. 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.
Filed under: [hide]Around Azeroth[/hide][hide]Around Azeroth: My very own band of worshippers[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

Every week, WoW Insider brings you [hide]Shifting Perspectives[/hide] for [hide]cat[/hide], [hide]bear[/hide], [hide]restoration[/hide] and [hide]balance[/hide] druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday — learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to [hide]tyler@wowinsider.com[/hide].

Firelands comes and goes, boss strategies are created and refined — and with each passing encounter, players come up with different ways in which they can push the mold. What may be true for one raiding tier can quickly become the wrong way of doing things in the next, without any changes or direction from Blizzard. While we can sometimes point to spell scaling as the root cause of these alterations, often it is the changes within the design of the encounters that actually force players to adapt in ways that go against conventional wisdom.

In the past raiding tier, using DOTs as our AOE has been the one and only method to perform. Our more traditional AOE was mocked due to the constraints that were placed upon it. That has not changed in the least; what has changed, however, in AOE in general. Throughout the first raiding tier and even into Firelands, Blizzard has made changes to the mobs that we AOE and the strength of other classes’ AOE abilities, all of which impacts the way we perform. This week, we take a look at the new face of balance AOE.[hide]Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Letting go of DOT-based AOE[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Druid[/hide], [hide](Druid) Shifting Perspectives[/hide][hide]Shifting Perspectives: Letting go of DOT-based AOE[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

Every week, WoW Insider brings you [hide]The Light and How to Swing It[/hide] for [hide]holy[/hide], [hide]protection[/hide] and [hide]retribution[/hide] paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog [hide]Righteous Defense[/hide].

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find Baleroc to be one of the most intense fights to tank that I’ve thus far encountered in Firelands. You have three phases featuring varying degrees of speed at which you’ll be mashed into a fine gruel, all performed by a dual-wielding boss with a swing speed that barely lets you catch you breath from the one-punch before the subsequent two-punch comes screaming in across your sweat-drenched brow and knocks whatever remaining molars you’ve managed to hold onto right out of your bloody maw and into the general direction of the profanity-uttering feral druid beside you. Or at least, that’s how my active imagination likes to picture it while I’m laying on the ground waiting for my battle rez.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Despite his bag of tricks, Baleroc still comes up short in comparison to the raiding paladin, if only because our bag of tricks is actually a massive steel tool cabinet, and each drawer is packed with amazing tools that can cut right through whatever the boss might throw at us. We’re like the iPhones of tanking — there’s a cooldown for that. Continue on, and I’ll detail how to use each of your abilities to their optimum effect and thus achieve that hallowed nirvana of the boss fight: not having to get rezzed at the end.[hide]Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking Baleroc (and somehow surviving to the end)[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Paladin[/hide], [hide](Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It[/hide][hide]The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking Baleroc (and somehow surviving to the end)[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

If you are a warrior, DK or paladin looking to pick up the [hide]Masterwork Elementium Deathblade[/hide], well, you probably don’t care that it is simply hideous. [hide]Reusing the same model[/hide] as pretty much every blue sword outside of the crafted 2H blue [hide]Obsidian Executioner[/hide] (which, in my opinion, had a superior model) was bad enough. But a lot of people were still interested in it due to [hide]its stats[/hide] — specifically, a slow swing speed of 3.8 and a top-end damage of 3,256. (To give you an idea, the [hide]Skullstealer Greataxe[/hide], a weapon with nearly 100 more DPS, has lower top-end damage.) Top-end damage is often used to calculate special attacks for various melee classes, making the sword very attractive for the ilevel.

However, if you were looking to pick up the MED for that reason, don’t bother. As you can see from the original link, its top-end damage has been lowered to 2,769, while its swing speed has been increased to 3.5. Forum posters [hide]immediately noticed[/hide], and Blizzard’s Zarhym soon [hide]clarified the change[/hide].

Now, of course, there’s debate raging back and forth about the change and if the sword is even worth crafting anymore. My take on it is yes, it’s worth crafting — it’s just not better than Firelands drops for some players anymore. It shouldn’t be even close, which it was. If you’re crafting or buying this sword, you’re still getting a better weapon than drops in normal mode tier 11 raids, and that’s fine. It shouldn’t outperform heroic tier 11 and be able to compete with tier 12 weapons. It’s meant to help you catch up to Firelands, and it will still do that.

The news is already rolling out for the upcoming [hide]WoW Patch 4.2[/hide]! Preview the [hide]new Firelands raid[/hide], marvel at the [hide]new legendary staff[/hide], and get the inside scoop on [hide]new quest hubs[/hide] — plus [hide]new tier 12 armor[/hide]!

Filed under: [hide]News items[/hide], [hide]Cataclysm[/hide], [hide]Hotfixes[/hide][hide]Masterwork Elementium Deathblade hotfixed[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

Pop law abounds in [hide]The Lawbringer[/hide], your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. [hide]Mathew McCurley[/hide] takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

[hide]Microtransactions[/hide] are here to stay. We were wary and scared in the beginning — it was a brave new world, having the gall to ask consumers for a couple of bucks for horse armor. [hide]DLC[/hide] (downloadable content) and microtransactions evolved over time to include better customization, new missions and levels, convenience purchases, and more. The industry began to shape itself around the growing need for better revenue models, as well as conforming to the needs and wants of players while remaining (hopefully) pure in motive.

With the huge success of the free-to-play model in the United States and Europe, a feat which many said was not going to go over too well outside of the Asian markets, paying for your game over time instead of up front has become a staple, an afterthought, to gamers.

World of Warcraft isn’t going true free-to-play any time soon, of course. The subscription model works for WoW in a fairly unique way. The number of global subscriptions for WoW make up such a huge, defined income that removing that income from the table in favor of the «5-percenters,» the people who presumably pay for items in-game, would be almost criminal in terms of corporate mismanagement — unless, of course, you could make more money on those 5-percenters than you do on 11.4 million monthly subscriptions, which seems like a hefty move to make.[hide]Continue reading The Lawbringer: What World of Warcraft can learn from other microtransaction models, part 1[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Analysis / Opinion[/hide], [hide]The Lawbringer[/hide][hide]The Lawbringer: What World of Warcraft can learn from other microtransaction models, part 1[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]

No comments Posted in Без рубрики | 01.05.2013 

[hide]Ready Check[/hide] helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won’t drop.

Greetings again, chaps. It is time once more to continue with our plans of invading the Firelands, snuffing out the vile Ragnaros, and securing everlasting peace upon Azeroth. At least until the next raiding tier comes out. This week, we’ll be taking down the newest additional to Ragnaros’ army, the green dragon turned fire hawk Alysrazor. Aided in battle by her newly spawned clutch of children and their druidic keepers, this bird is one hot mama. What, I’m not allowed to make corny jokes?

Whatever. If you think you have what it takes to face down a former green dragon, then read on, heroes. Epic loots await you! If you are interested in the prior bosses, look up WoW Insider’s guides to [hide]Shannox[/hide], [hide]Beth’tilac[/hide], and [hide]Lord Rhyolith[/hide]. Steel yourselves — it’s about to get hot.[hide]Continue reading Ready Check: WoW Insider’s Guide to Alysrazor[/hide]Filed under: [hide]Raiding[/hide], [hide]Ready Check (Raiding)[/hide][hide]Ready Check: WoW Insider’s Guide to Alysrazor[/hide] originally appeared on [hide]WoW Insider[/hide] on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our [hide]terms for use of feeds[/hide].[hide]Permalink[/hide] | [hide]Email this[/hide] | [hide]Comments[/hide]