Frost Mage 2v2 Arena Video

All you mages out there that have been feverishly waiting for the first good PvP videos can rest easy tonight, the wait is finally over! A good friend of mine on Smolderthorn, Xtk, recently released his first 2v2 mage arena video with his partner, Xmo. The video is shot from Xmo’s PoV and features the duo against a wide variety of 2v2 teams. Both mages play the 20/0/51 frost talent build.

Overall I really enjoyed this video and feel that it gives and excellent overview of how to play the combo, and arena mage in general. That said…there were a few things that bothered me.

What Annoyed Me?

1. To say the music was bad would just be inappropriate, the first track is the single worst song I’ve ever heard in a WoW video. The others weren’t much better, but at least they didn’t scream at me for a solid 4 minutes.
2. In true Neilyo-esque fashion Xmo insists on the continual zoom in on the “impressive” stuff. This type of narcissistic and egotistical crap just flat out pisses me off. I don’t need a special close up on every God-forsaken iceblock and counterspell to “prove” that you’re good. In all honesty if the other mage in this video wasn’t my friend I would have turned it off immediately.

What were the pros?

1. I loved the variability of teams and the overall excitement of each game. It was a great video to watch both from an educational and entertainment perspective.
2. Great tempo throughout the video, once things actually got going it moved at a nice pace.
3. Excellent introduction, really liked the music used here and crispness of each cut. Well done.

Video Details

• Category: Arena PvP – 2v2
• Classes: Mage / Mage
• Talent Specs: Both Frost, 20/0/51
• Players: Xmo & Xtk
• Download: Filefront
• Stream: Below

Note from Author, Xmo:

Xmo and Xtk 2v2 Double Frost Mage Arena

Two Undead Males mindlessly zerging to extremely emo music.

****HIGHLY RECCOMEND DOWNLOAD****

All clips taken around 1700-1800 on BG1.

*At the time of rendering we were highest double frost mage in the world, this is no longer true.
*In no way do we think double frost mage is a great combo, it’s powerful but often extremely frustrating.

Songs -
Start Something by Lost Prophets
I’m a Fake by The Used
Vitamin by Incubus
Madness6(Remix) by Cheshyre
Worth Dying For by Rise Against

Contact us on Smolderthorn realm forums for questions/comments.

Thanks for watching and enjoy.

The Craft of War: Blind, Amazing WoW Fight Sequence

There are few World of Warcraft videos that leave me with a feeling of sheer and utter awe. To say The Craft of War: Blind left me amazed would be an injustice. It’s without question the best World of Warcraft video I’ve ever seen. It was created by Percula, a professional animator who clearly has some skills in high end video editing software. I really don’t know what else to say…it’s amazing, watch it, tell your friends!

Hopefully this is the first of many videos from Percula.

Note from the Author, Percula:

Earlier this year I got pretty bored and decided to do something creative in my spare time. I’ve been wanting to do a fight scene for a while and decided to develop a story using World of Warcraft. Animation is what I do and I decided to use my skills in making something.

This is only the second personal creative work I’ve ever posted so I’m a bit nervous about it. The first being an image I painted years ago which…um… we don’t talk about. :) It’s a bit nerve-wracking to post creative work for others to judge.

I’ve thought about making this a series but I’m faced with an impending layoff so my future is unclear. If I get a positive reaction I’m sure I’ll be working on something else in the future.

Four Horsemen 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Make sure to check out the complete Naxxramas 10-Man Instance and Boss Strategy Guide.

The four horsemen are the final bosses of the military (aka Deathknight) wing of Naxxramas 10-man instance. The four horsemen are a part of Kel’Thuzad elite guard, representing the most powerful Deathknights in all of Azeroth. This encounter was largely inspired from the four horsemen of the apocalypse, part of the Christian Bible’s book of Revelations.

Four Horsemen Abilities

• Mark of the Four Horsemen – each horsemen will apply his respective mark, these marks stack infinitely and deal more damage with each successive mark.
• 1 Mark – 0 damage
• 2 Marks – 500 damage per tick
• 3 Marks – 1500 damage per tick
• 4 Marks – 4000 damage per tick
• 5 Marks – 12,500 damage per tick
• 6 Marks – 20,000 damage per tick
• 7 Marks or more – adds 1,000 additional damage for each additional mark at this point. Note: you will never get to this point.

Than Kor’Thazz

• Meteor - deals 13,775-15,225 fire damage split amongst as many people as the meteor hits in a 8 yard AoE. Cast every 15 seconds.
• Applies the Mark of Kor’Thazz

Baron Rivendare

• Unholy Shadow – deals 2160-2640 shadow damage to primary aggro target. Additionally, applies a shadow damage DoT which deals 4,800 shadow damage over 8 seconds.
• Applies Mark of Rivendare

Lady Blaumeux

• Shadow Bolt – deals 2350-2650 shadow damage, range of 45 yards. Cast on the closest player to Blaumeux.
• Void Zone – Summons a shadowy area on top of a random player, deals 2750 damage per tick to anyone within the void zone. She casts one every 15 seconds, lasts 75 seconds.
• Applies Mark of Blaumeux

Sir Zeliek

• Holy Bolt – deals 2350-2650 holy damage, range of 45 yards. Cast on the closet player to Zeliek.
• Applies Mark of Zeliek

Four Horsemen 10-man Strategy

The Raid Setup

Ideal Raid Setup:

• 3 Healers
• 2 Tanks
• 5 DPS, with at least 1 ranged DPS

Possible Raid Setups:

• 2 Healers
• 2 Tanks
• 6 DPS, with at least 1 ranged DPS

Note: duo healing this encounter is certainly more difficult than 3 healers, but it is possible. I don’t recommend duo healing it if it’s your first time attempting the encounter, but after a few clears you could give it a try.

Raid Position and Setup

I want to preface this section with a short note, that is that there really is no right or wrong way to setup this fight. The only real encounter requirement is that you don’t want any one mark to stack more than 3 times. That said, I’m going to discuss the strategy my guild uses in addition to another variation you can use to complete this encounter.

Map Diagram Explained

• Pink Circle – Kor’Thazz position
• Green Circle – Rivendare position
• Red Circle – Ziliek position
• Blue Circle – Blaumeux position
• Red Box – zone to stand in to take holy bolts from Ziliek
• Blue Box – zone to stand in to take shadow bolts from Blaumeux

There are going to be 4 individual groups on this fight, one for each horsemen.

Front Groups:

• Kor’Thazz: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 DPS (preferably melee dps)
• Rivendare: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 DPS (preferably melee dps)

Back Groups:

• Blaumeux: 1 Healer, 1 DPS (preferably ranged)
• Zeliek: 2 DPS (preferably ranged)
• Note that the healer in the back will be responsible for healing all of the DPS in the back.

My guild uses this particular raid position setup for the purpose of completing the associated achievement. Said achievement requires you kill all of the horsemen within 15 seconds of each other.

Additionally, my guild often only uses 2 healers on this particular fight. This certainly adds a new level of difficulty, but between HoTs, self-heals, and healing during swaps most healers can handle it. I know I said it once, but if this is your first time on the encounter I strongly recommend you use 3 healers.

Optional Raid Position Setup

There are going to be 4 individual groups on this fight, one for each horsemen.

Front Groups:

• Kor’Thazz: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS
• Rivendare: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS

Back Groups:

• Blaumeux: 1 Healer, 1 DPS (preferably ranged)
• Zeliek: n/a
• Note that the healer and DPS in the back will be responsible for both Deathknights in the back of the room.

Group Rotations Explained

The most difficult aspect of this encounter to initially learn is going to be the group rotations. Both the frontal and back groups will rotate throughout the fight as the marks stack up. Note that these marks apply at random, for this reason you’ll want to have a different group transition caller for both front and back groups on vent.

When the mark hits 3 you’ll want to call the switch. When the switch is called both the groups on the respective side (front or back) must transition together. This will prevent any double marking and will lead to fewer headaches for your tanks and healers.

The front groups are the more tricky transition as a taunt is required. If you’re the tank on the a front Deathknight you’ll want to pull both mobs to to a central location between the 2 sides (note the map above), both you and the opposing tank will taunt each other’s boss and you will continue to drag that death knight to its original location.

The back groups are a bit easier, as no taunt is required. If you’re using my first raid setup (with 3 ranged DPS and 1 healer) you’ll simply swap the 2 groups. Since you’re probably dealing with ranged DPS in the back here you’ll want to be very cognizant of your position, IE…make sure you are not eating both marks.

As the healer in the back you’ll simply be healing who ever is taking the bolts on each side.

Interlude on Meteor

While none of the deathknights hit particularly hard the meteor still has the potential to drop a tank or dps if the group does not stack. Everyone who is on Kor’Thazz absolutely must stack up on the tank, particularly if you only have a total of 3 players on that side.

Killing the Four Horsemen

If everything goes as planned with the rotations you should have no problem in completing this encounter. That said, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind to ensure a successful kill.

1. Do not let the marks stack up beyond 3
2. Make sure you are not eating double marks
3. Stack up on the Kor’Thazz so the meteor is always split
4. If duo healing be very aware of your mana efficiency, this fight will test you

Gothik the Harvester 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Make sure to check out the complete Naxxramas 10-Man Instance and Boss Strategy Guide.

Gothik the Harvester is the 2nd boss of the Military Wing (aka Death Knight wing) of the Naxxramas 10-man instance. This powerful necromancer uses his powers to raise the death and pour out his corruption and destruction across Azeroth.

Gothik the Harvester Abilities

• Health: 839, 000
• Live Side (phase 1)
  • Spawned Mob: Unrelenting Trainee – 10,000 hp, applies death plague which deals 85 damage ever 3 seconds for 15 seconds, stacks infinitely, this is dispellable. 24 will spawn.
  • Spanwed Mob: Unrelenting Deathknight – 34,000 hp, intercept stuns for 3 seconds, applies shadow mark via whirlwind. Anyone hit by the whirlwind will get the mark, which deals aprx. 8,000 damage (mitigated by armor). 7 will spawn.
  • Spanwed Mob: Unrelenting Rider – 55,000 hp, deals unholy aura which deals 250 damage per second to all raid members within a 45 yard range, continues until he is killed. Also shoots off shadow bolt volleys to anyone with a shadow mark (see unrelenting deathknight). 4 will spawn.
• Undead Side (phase 2)
  • Spawned Mob: Spectral Trainee – 10,000 hp, casts arcane explosion which deals 700 damage in a 20 yard AoE.
  • Spawned Mob: Spectral Deathknight – 33,000 hp, whirlwinds for aprx. 6,500 (mitigated by armor)
  • Spawned Mob: Spectral Rider – 55,000 hp, deals unholy aura which deals 350 damage per second to all raid members within a 45 yard range, continues until he is killed. Also casts drain life, which steals 6,000 hp from the highest aggro target.
  • Spawned Mob: Spectral Horse – 16,000 hp, casts stomp, which ceals 2300-2700 damage in a 10 yard radius, also slows movement speed by 60% for 10 seconds.
• Shadowbolt – Deals 2800-3500 shadow damage to primary aggro target.
• Harvest Soul – Reduces the stats of the entire raid by 10%, cast every 15 seconds, stacks 10 times.

Gothik the Harvester Boss Strategy

Encounter Spawning Mechanics

First and foremost let’s discuss exactly how this encounter works. Unlike traditional encounters you don’t get even attack Gothik until you’ve killed all the mob spawning waves. Mobs spawn on the live side (the side which gothik’s balcony is over) and once they are killed they spawn on the undead side as ghosts. Mobs will continue to spawn for the first 3 minutes and 44 seconds of the encounter and Gothik will come down at the 4 minute 34 second mark.

Note: the sides will be physically prevented from crossing over when the encounter begins, a gate will close in the center and will remain closed until Gothik comes down.

Setting up the Raid

Since the door splits the raid we’ll need to assign specific players to each individual side. My guild and I split the raid as follows:

• Live Side: 4 players
  • Put your DPS casters on this side
• Undead Side: 6 players
  • Put your melee DPS on this side

Completing the Spawning Wave

This phase of the encounter is not difficult, simply kill the mobs as they spawn and avoid taking damage when possible. The only mobs that you really need to be worried about are the riders. These do a lot of damage and can quickly 2-3 shot a DPS or healer if they are not picked up quickly by your tank.

• Purple Circles – spawning locations
• Blue Box (in middle) – center gate
• Red Line – center dividing wall

Killing Gothik

At the 4 minute 34 second mark Gothik will come down off of his balcony and to the living side. At this point the central gate is still closed, and generally the undead side will just be killing their final spawns. At this point harvest soul will start being applied to the entire raid. After a few seconds on the live side Gothik will teleport to the undead side. This rotation will continue two more times and then the gate will finally open.

After Gothik completes 4 teleports the gate will open and the entire raid can DPS him down. At this point the only thing that can really wipe you will be the harvest soul stacking up too high. For this reason you’ll want try and save all your biggest damage cooldowns for when Gothik comes down. Just keep your DPS high and burn him down as fast as possible.

Zygor’s 1-80 Leveling Guide Review

Zygor’s 1-80 leveling guide is one of the original and longest standing World of Warcraft power leveling guides on the market today. This WoW leveling guide has stood the test of time, being one of the most widely used and recommended leveling guides since it was release. That said, I’m not here to heap the accolades on Zygor’s Guides just yet… so let’s get down to business.

…don’t like to read walls of text? Check out the Zygor’s 1-80 Leveling Guide Video Review below instead!

What is in Zygor’s leveling guide?

Well, as you might expect it’s a speed leveling guide, designed and maintained by John Cook, otherwise known by Zygor. Zygor’s leveling guide differs from most other leveling guides in that its delivery method is via in-game addon. When you purchase Zygor’s leveling guide you get access to his member’s only page, where you can download the guide (for both mac and PC), request support, and access Zygor’s other features and bonus products.

The guide plugs directly into your World of Warcraft client via your user interface. You install the guide just like you install an addon or U.I. mod…if you haven’t installed an addon or mod before it’s really simple, check out this short video tutorial here.

Once you have the guide downloaded and installed it comes up just like any frame would in your World of Warcraft user interface. There you can see the step by step process of the entire Zygor leveling guide.

How does the in-game guide work?

The in-game features are incredibly easy to customize and setup. The entire guide is 100% automated. It will literally point you to your next questing objective via a directional arrow and yardage marker. As soon as you log into the game the guide will bring up its automatic quest tracking user interface frames. Within this frame contains the entire Zygor step by step leveling process, which indicates which NPC you’re to talk to, mobs to kill, quests to pickup, complete, etc.

This step also contains an associated mini-map location coordinate, which is tied into the second automatic quest tracking element, directional arrow. This arrow quite literally points you to the next location you’re supposed to go to. It’s pretty much like having Zygor hold your hand the entire way, showing you the fastest possible leveling route.

Anything bad about the Guide?

There really wasn’t anything in the guide that just failed to deliver. The only major annoyance for me was I had to back track several steps. Since I didn’t start using Zygor’s guide until I was level 73 I had completed many of the steps out of order in addition to some quests that Zygor didn’t include at all. Obviously the automatic quest tracking isn’t perfect, that said it’s about as damn close as you’re going to get. It took me around 30 minutes to get back on track with the guide, and once I did it went perfectly.

Conclusions

I’ve read virtually every World of Warcraft guide on the market and in my opinion you just cannot beat Zygor’s 1-80 leveling guide. With Zygor’s guide you get the entire package, for a price that isn’t too bad either…

• Automatic Quest Tracking
• Free Updates for Life
• 24 Hour Technical Support
• Members only areas, including forums
• 4 Free Bonus Guides

Get your copy of Zygor’s Guide!

Daily Blue Posts – Wintergrasp, DPS, & Class Changes

The daily blue! Most of these changes will be implemented in the upcoming patch 3.0.8, which will be on the PTR very shortly.

Melee Haste

We are looking at the benefits of haste (or lack thereof) for all melee right now. If anything there aren’t enough stats available to make items distinct, so rather than swap out a less desirable stat with a more desirable one, we’d rather make the less desirable one desirable.

Wintergrasp Changes

It is slightly confusing. Wintergrasp has been reworked in 3.0.8. From what I have been told, players start off at Recruit Rank if they are in the zone and require a certain number of kills to get to Corporal and use vehicles. They get 1 Mark at Recruit, 2 at Corporal, and 3 at 1st Lt. So the only change is that being in the zone now gives you a mark.

Enchanting Materials Changed

In BC we thought that dust was too common and enchants were basically gated by the cost and availability of shards. We wanted to adjust this for LK and in retrospect overcompensated, such that dust is now the rare, limiting reagent.

As Excrusiate points out, this should be better next patch.

Paladins

Protection in PvP

Ultimately, we’d love to get Prot paladins as viable as Ret or Holy, but we realize we have long way to go.

Priests

Upcoming Hymn Changes

We still have plans to make some changes to the Hymns, but changes like that typically A) require a lot of discussion, B) are more technically intensive changes (which also can lead to bugs if not thoroughly tested) or both.

PW: Shield Bugs

Absorbs not (always) working is a known issue and should be easy to fix.

General Utility Discussion

You can only take that “priests are versatile” design too far or yes you will get into them either being better than everyone or jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.

You have to look at the tools the priest has. Prayer of Mending is an amazing spell, and nobody has anything like that. Binding Heal is an interesting spell that will perhaps see more use after the Circle nerf. PW:Shield, SW:Death, Mass Dispel and Shadowfiend are all unusual mechanics that don’t directly map to another class.

For us, it always comes down to questions such as: Will Holy priests get invited to heal 5-player groups, raids and (in a perfect world) Arena teams? Will a raid feel like they are giving up something to bring a priest instead of a druid, paladin or shaman? Do groups do different things when they have healing priests? Do priests care about the same items, buffs, debuffs and mechanics as other healers?

I don’t beleive groups really organize themselves around healing niches in the sense that they want one hot guy, one AE guy and two direct heal guys. We just want enough distinction that you consider bringing e.g. a druid as your third healer once you have two priests.

Shaman

Elemental Discussion for 3.0.8

This is why I am often reluctant to post actual numbers. I think they end up launching more questions than actually providing answers.

The 10 to 12% number I quoted was the additional amount we wanted to add with the changes post-Shamanism. If you recall, we did two rounds of buffs on Elemental. The first juggled the talent tree a little bit (and introduced Shamanism). The second changed a couple of additional talents (Elemental Oath, Elemental Mastery and the change to the Lightning Bolt glyph).

For an Elemental in Naxx 25 gear, *each* of these rounds should have increased dps by about 10% between patch 3.0.3 and patch 3.0.8, for a total of about 20%. If you are in heroic blues and don’t have as much spellpower, then you won’t see quite such a lift from the first (Shamanism) round of changes.

Note that the build on the PTR only contains the first round of changes, IIRC.

Spirit Walk Bugged

This issue has been documented internally and is one of the major bugs we have scheduled to fix. That said, it won’t be ready in time for 3.0.8.

Warlock

General Discussion on the State of the Class

I did post a list of what we wanted to do with warlocks in LK and now that we have done those changes, we have a new list of what we want to look at in warlocks next. A few players linked it. I could have found the quote myself but I figured the community would be able to do it faster, which they did.

I am sorry if my communication sometimes seems disjoined. Reading all of these threads takes a great deal of time that I try to squeeze in during my other responsibilities. To some extent you’re going to get what you’re going to get. That may not sit well, but the alternatives are to give up on posting altogether or at least post a lot less frequently. I don’t see a way I will be able to spend more time here than I do already. (As most of you know, I’m not a CM. I also don’t want to hire people to read the forums for me, because that defeats the purpose. But I do have a lot going on.)

I think there is some truth to the notion that after enough tweaks here and there that you need to step back and take a big look at the class as a whole. I think we’ve reached this point with warlocks. We are satisfied with the changes we wanted to make in BC, which included things like giving Affliction more competitive damage, giving Destruction more than one button to push, and getting Demonology to consider more different types of demons. When I say we want to make some changes to the class, I would not interpret this as burning warlocks to the ground and starting over. Overall it’s still a really cool and distinctive play style.

I’ll reach for an analogy here, which can be illustrative but will also break if streteched too far, as all analogies do. We’ve spent some time checking the tire pressure and vacuuming out the interior, but every few thousand miles you want to actually pop the hood, check all the belts and hoses, and possibly even rebuild the engine. That is not the same as driving her off a cliff and then hitting the dealers for a newer model.

PvP Talents

In an ideal world, we don’t want Demonology (or any spec for any class) to be THE PvP tree. This is tougher with the pure dps classes because any spec that sacrifices all for dps feels like a PvE spec and any spec that has survivability, crowd control or escape tools feels like a PvP spec. Long term though it is definitely a goal.

Additional PvP Discussion

That is the goal. I think we’ve done better at Affliction wanting the felhunter, Destruction wanting the imp and Demonology wanting the felguard, at least in PvE. We would like to get the succubus and voidwalker into Arenas more. We have some ideas….

On fear….

We still like the change to how fear works overall. Because it can be broken it’s less of a long-term CC, but it’s also more consistent in the short-term.

However, I think a lot of the consternation about warlock PvP comes from losing fear as an amazing source of CC (probably replaced by stuns now which probably isn’t a good thing), coupled with losing some of the “tankiness” locks had before, but without giving you all of the get out of jail cards that a mage has.

Ultimately I think we actually do want locks to survive through mitigation (when compared to survival through CC or escape mechanisms). The trick is nailing this compromise between plate-wearers who stand and take it and glass cannons who run away. There is probably something to the fact that locks and hunters both feel like they can’t stand and fight and can’t get away from melee. It’s the mail-wearer paradox. I know you don’t wear mail per se, but we’re pushing you closer to that than we are the slippery mage.

Warrior

Protection in PvP

Prot warriors are better at PvP than they used to be. They still aren’t as attractive as Arms and Fury.

Prot Bugs

These are known issues. I can’t recall off the top of my head if we’ve been able to fix them for 3.0.8 or if they required technical changes.

Mostly I wanted to add that we fix several hundred bugs in patches like this. The patch notes typically only record big changes — the kinds that might confuse players if they weren’t explained. We usually only call out bug fixes if they were so common that people had really gotten used to the buggy state.

Dual Talent Spec Q & A

Will the current respec costs be reset or will they stay at the current 50g max?
If you mean will respec costs be changed permanently, no. If you mean will the costs be reset or will you get a free respec when this goes live, possibly.

How about the cost of our second spec? If the respec fee starts out at 10c or 1s (I forgot what it starts as) shouldn’t our “main” respec fee be reset?
A respec should be a respec.

In regards to hunters and exotic pets. If I spec into the 51 point talent and I go to switch to survival how will I change pets? You said you wanted it to be somewhat easy to switch between specs but nothing trivial. Will we have a second pet that is automatically summoned when we switch specs? What about the extra four points our pet’s talent trees have? How will those be taken away or replaced when changing specs?
We have a solution for pets, but we’re not ready to announce it yet. You’ll like it.

Are there any plans to make switching gear sets easier? Healers, tanks and dps roles usually carry more than one set of gear. It can take up a lot of bag space and can be rather annoying at times. Is there a way to have your gear automatically switch when you change specs?
Not automatically, but we’re aware of the issue and dual spec would be a really opportune time to examine it.

How do you think dual specs will affect addons that modify the action bars? It seems like it will be a hit and miss. The addons will either become broken or no harm, no foul and the addons work as intended.
I’m sure the addon authors will figure out how to make them work with the new system. Things can sometimes be a little rocky just following a patch if you use a lot of addons.

Dual-spec mechanics
We haven’t finalized the design, because ideally we want to be able to get it on a PTR and have players try it out.

Our thought at the moment is that swapping specs (going from A to B) will truly be free in towns and possibly during the prep phase of PvP. In an instance it may cost a nominal fee (think reagent level). We want you to be able to do it when you want to do it, but we also don’t want to slow things down if everyone is constantly flipping spec from fight to fight. But if it’s free in town, then obviously it can’t be more of a burden out of town than just hearthing and being summoned back is or nobody will use the remote option.

Someone helpfully quoted our response on why we are likely to launch the feature with “only” 2 specs.

Source: Blizzard

Loatheb 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Make sure to check out the complete Naxxramas 10-Man Instance and Boss Strategy Guide.

Loatheb is the 3rd and final boss of the plague wing in Naxxramas. Loatheb is a unique encounter that features a healing mechanic unlike any other. This mechanic, which we’ll discuss below, is intended to force healers to be more than just a “healbot”…note Healbot is an anagram of Loatheb, an intentional joke on the part of the original Naxxramas developers.

Loatheb Abilities

• Necrotic Aura – Every 20 seconds Loatheb will cast this on the entire raid. It’s a debuff that reduces healing by 100% for 17 seconds. This means your healers only get 3 seconds to heal the entire raid back up.
• Deathbloom – Every 30 seconds Loatheb will cast this on the entire raid. It deals 200 damage per second followed by a 1200 damage “bloom” at the end.
• Inevidble Doom – Deals 4000 damage after 10 seconds. Loatheb won’t start casting this until the 2 minute mark of the fight, at which point it will only be every 30 seconds. After 5 minutes he will cast this ever 15 seconds.
• Fungal Creep – Increases critical strike by 50% and reduces threat by 100%. Applied when you’re in range of the spores upon their death, lasts 90 seconds. A maximum of 5 players can get the buff from a single spore.

Loatheb Boss Strategy

Starting the Encounter

First, you’ll want to setup the raid so that your best DPS are all in group 1. Everyone needs to know which group they are in, as we’re going to use these for the spore rotation (discussed below). The tank will want to hold Loatheb in the middle of the room, with melee players stacking near the tank and all ranged healers / DPS stacked up together in front of Loatheb. It’s important to stay close together so your AoE heals will have maximum effectiveness.

Spore Rotation

Almost immediately orange spores will start spawning randomly around the room. If you’re nearby when these spores die you’ll get a buff that increases critical strike chance by 50% and reduces threat by 100%. These buffs are crucial to your success during the fight, so it’s important the entire raid always have this buff. Generally you’ll want to have group 1 get the first spore and group 2 get the second (excluding the tank of course).

Understanding the Healing Debuff

Necrotic aura will be applied to the entire raid for 17 out of every 20 seconds. This will leave us with a 3 second window to heal the entire raid. So right away we need to get a little help from the rest of the raid in the way of staying close together. If the raid is too spread out you will likely have trouble getting the entire raid healed up before the next round of necrotic aura is applied. If you’re healing this fight you’ll want to be watching the debuff tick down, when it hits 1 second go ahead and queue your heal and select your second target for heal number 2.

Generally you can get 2 AoE heals and 1 instant cast heal during the 3 seconds (depends on your class). Don’t bother casting any HoTs during this time as they will have little effect. Just get as much healing out in the 3 seconds as you can. Here are some possible healing rotations you could use (and the one I use as a shaman).

• Shaman – Chain heal, Chain heal, Riptide
• Priest – Circle of healing, Circle of healing, Circle of healing
• Paladin – Holy Light, Flash of Light, Holy Shock
• Druid – Regrowth, Nourish, Nourish

Let the DPS Race Commence!

When it gets right down to the bottom line this fight is a DPS race. For this reason it’s extremely important you always keep the spore buff up on you, otherwise you simply aren’t going to have the damage necessary to kill him before 1) your healers run out of mana or 2) he starts inevidble doom every 15 seconds. Healing on Loatheb isn’t all that difficult, it’s just a matter of timing your first heal to go off the moment necrotic aura lifts and spaming during the 3 second healing period.

Once you’ve mastered these basic mechanics you’ll be well on your way to your first Loatheb kill!

Daily Blue Posts – Arena, SOTA, Class Changes

Last days worth of important blue posts, most of which speak specifically on changes for the next major content patch on the PTR, 3.0.8. Make sure to check out the complete patch 3.0.8 notes here.

PvP Related Blue Posts

Arena Burst Damage Balancing

We definitely hear you that you think Arena burst damage is too high and it’s too difficult to heal. You don’t need to keep shouting.

Gear Rewards for Arena

It’s certainly not a system for everyone. I personally don’t favor the arenas either, so I make the choice not to spend much time with them. I think the issue most people have is that the arenas provide the only source for the best PvP gear in the game. We are working on an improved system by which we can measure skill and contribution in battlegrounds so that more competitive rewards can be obtained via means other than the arena.

Strand of the Ancients Balancing

Actually SOTA originally did start with the factions randomly attacking or defending. But there were issues with it; it wasn’t quite as cut and clear as it seems in theory. It turned out it worked out a lot better if Horde were always starting in defense. So the way it is now was a somewhat temporary fix to that issue. If it’s really not working out so well, of course we’ll be looking into reinstating the random start.

Potential Vehicle Changes

We are talking about making PvP vehicles susceptible to all player damage spells. They would still be immune to roots and other forms of CC, but could be poisoned, cursed, etc. It’s wacky, but the way the classes have been designed it isn’t worth the balance issues just for flavor in this case.

PvE Related Blue Posts

Dungeon Difficulty

The content you’ve mentioned is all content that is meant to be an introduction to raiding in Lich King. It’s not meant to preclude people and set a false standard. That being said, we feel that the difficulty of the content is in line with the rewards. While you may find it to be a bit less difficult than you woud like, I assure you a great many others do not.

Class Specific Blue Posts

Druids

Feral Druid Tanking

You’re not making a terribly fair comparison here. Warriors can block etc., true, but Ferals have Barkskin, Survival Instinct, Demo Roar and Enraged Regen as defensive abilities. You have Swipe and Berserk (and the nice Maul glyph) for area threat generation (and I still see bears pulling with Hurricane too).

I do think it is a fair concern that you can spam nothing but Swipe, but to fix that for other tanks we put a cooldown on their AE ability to force them to hit something else. I’m not sure we want to do that for druids.

While you may think of yourself primarily as a bear, we still think of you as a druid. Druids have a lot of abilities. I have played a bear (a lot) and I know it’s already hard to fit all of your buttons on the default Blizzard action bars, even just considering the bear ones. Now I’m not going to suggest you Innervate or use Rebirth or Regrowth while tanking, but at the same time, even bear MTs do sometimes use those abilities. They still count as abilities. When you pick a tanking druid, you are still a druid. We don’t want any class to have 300 spells just because they can use them in very different scenarios. Make sense?

Armor Trinket Changes

There will probably always be a best in slot item. The difference is that Offering was insanely better than the alternatives, to the point at which you either sucked without it or were OP with it. Greatness is a nice trinket, but can you do your job without it? Absolutely. We’re talking about degree of best in slot here.

Feral Gear Itemization

I agree with that overall, and it is something we’re working on. By the same token however it is very easy to take your argument and say “There will always be a best in slot item. I will always want that item. Therefore choice is always an illusion.

Druid Forms Note

We are working on an update to druid forms. It is long overdue. But we want to do it right, which means it takes time. The Ravenlord and Epic Flight Form models are the level of quality we are shooting for. We’d even love to add some customization, but we can’t promise that.

Hunters

Major Hunter Issues

I would agree that some of them fall into the quality of life or minor annoyance category. While those are still good things for us to look at (and sometimes great things since they can often be fixed pretty easily) it leads to a long list, which you even called a manifesto. An outside reader might conclude every aspect of the hunter class is broken (which is not true) or that hunters need all of those changes to be Arena viable or fun. I’m not asking you to cull out the minor suggestions, but you do want to make sure we see the ones you really, really want us to see.

On combining Viper and Cheetah, I would be concerned that you are accepting a penalty (decreased damage) that isn’t really a penalty. When you want to run away, you want to run away. Think of the PvE implications of removing the daze. Even think of the PvP ones. When you want to fight, you fight, and when you want to escape, you escape. Now consider a Cheetah where you take extra damage if you run – now that is an actual decision. You might get away, but you also might get clobbered. (This isn’t a change we are making – I’m just trying to show you how we think. Hitting a situational button should generally be a decision, not something you would always do in a given situation.)

We’re not interested in giving hunters stealth of any sort at this time. Even the Shadowmeld-like functionality is supposed to be handled by Feign Death.

We’re also pretty unlikely to remove the minimum range on hunter ranged attacks. Casters don’t have them, but casters are also very unlikely to stand there and keep casting when you close to melee with them. We don’t want to see hunters ever ignore or shrug off melee who are attacking them. Attacking them back is a different story, as long as we could guarantee the hunter felt like they had to attack their attacker and not just keep shooting whoever they were shooting.

Shamans

Elemental Damage

1. Yes, it is too low on live.

2. I can’t speak towards the PTR specifically. It takes awhile to create a build, so they are often a few days (or longer) behind our changes. I can say that in our internal testing all of the changes together gave Elemental something like a 10 to 12% dps increase for Naxx 25 geared characters in full raid buffs. Elemental dps should be very close to Balance druid dps, which we used as the standard we wanted to reach.

We discussed several of the concerns that have come up over the last few days and ran some additional tests, but we are still satisfied with the numbers produced by the new changes.

Spirit Walk

Spirit Walk is supposed to break roots and snares on the wolves and the shaman. I know we’ve had a bug on that. I’ll need to do some research to know if it’s fixed.

Warlocks

Major Issues and Changes

Bevelton, the reason you’re not seeing changes yet is for exactly the reason you suggest. We don’t want to tweak a few numbers here and there. We are taking a comprehensive look at all three trees of warlocks and then we plan to unleash all of the changes at once. The downside of this approach is that the work takes longer to complete.

I know there are a dozen threads swearing that THE PROBLEMS ARE OBVIOUS and THE SOLUTIONS ARE OBVIOUS and DEMAND CHANGE NOW!1!!. What should be obvious is that we don’t think the situation is that cut and dried. I did post fairly recently (within a month or two perhaps) on what we thought the major warlock issues were. Players seem to have a hard time finding it or perhaps they are just impatient.

We don’t consdier things like tweaking glyphs and changing Ritual of Summoning as major changes to the class. We don’t expect to see a huge difference in how you play the game. They are just small quality of life issues. The Felhunter glyph was just a bad glyph — a trivial amount of dps. It was a relatively easy thing to fix.

Archavon the Stonewatcher – Wintergrasp 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Archavon the Stonewatcher is the first and only boss located in the Vault of the Archavon, more commonly known as the Lake Wintergrasp boss. This boss fight is fairly straight forward and can be easily pugged so long as your raid has sufficient healers and tanks. You should note that you’ll only be able to enter archavon’s instance when your faction controls wintergrasp.

note: the instance is located within the fortress at lake wintergrasp

Archavon the Stonewatcher Abilities

• Health: 2.3 million
• Rock Spikes – Sends rock spikes flying at one random member of the raid. These spikes will continue to pelt this player and will deal AoE damage to any other players near by.
• Smoke Clouds – Archavon will occasionally put down a smoke cloud somewhere in the room, this cloud deals AoE damage to anyone standing inside of it.
• Tank Toss – Archavon will cast AoE stomp stun on the raid and then grab your main tank and hold him in his hand. At this point your off tank will need to taunt and hold aggro on Archavon until he tosses your main tank from his hand and re-aggros him.
• Enrage timer: 5 minutes

Archavon the Stonewatcher Boss Strategy

This fight is fairly basic, it’s really more of a DPS race than anything else. Start the fight by simply running into archavon’s chamber at the back of the lake wintergrasp instance. Your main tank will get the initial aggro, at which point the remainder of the raid should spread out around the room. It’s important to spread out as much as possible (not including melee players), as this will prevent the raid from taking unnecessary AoE damage during rock spikes or the smoke clouds.

As I mentioned above the 2 key AoE aspects of the fight are the rock spike and smoke clouds. These occur periodically and can be easily healed through. If you’re a DPS or tank just make sure you aren’t standing in these AoE attacks, thus putting additional pressure on your healers.

The Tank Switch

The big thing many groups might struggle with the first time is the tank switch. Periodically Archavon will grab your main tank and pick him up with his hand. At this point Archavon must be taunted by your off tank. If he’s not taunted fast enough he will simply go down the aggro list and kill off your top DPS 1 by 1, so it’s important that this taunt is quick. The off tank only needs to hold Archavon for a few seconds. Soon Archavon will toss your tank back down and resume aggro.

Beating the Enrage

The main concern with this fight is centered around the enrage timer, which is set at 5 minutes. It’s not a difficult timer to beat. Your raid will need to put out approximately 7,666 DPS as a whole, which if we assume you have 6 total DPS in the raid (less your 2 tanks and 2 healers) we end up needing 1,277 DPS per person. This is a very reasonable number for players of even the lowest gear levels.

Just stay focused, stay alive, avoid AoE, and conduct propper tank switches and you’ll be well on your way to your first kill.

Archavon the Stonewatcher Video

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