Do mages really need 3 competitive PvE specs?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane , fire and frost mages. This week, we’re talking about specs, and DPS, and possibly smurfs, though I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Patch 4.3.2 has dropped, and for mages, the only item in the patch notes is a 6% damage nerf to Fireball and Pyroblast , ostensibly to bring fire mages back in line with arcane mages for top prize in the What Spec Will My Raid Leader Expect Me to be Raiding With This Week Sweepstakes. For good or ill, every patch brings changes like this, as the spec balance carousel continues its eternal round. That’s been mage history, in a nutshell — fire and arcane take turns pushing each other from the top of the PvE heap, and frost just shakes its head and queues for an Arena match. It’s like a giant teeter-totter, with fire damage stacked on one end and arcane damage stacked on another. Blizzard goes back and forth between the ends, adding just a bit more of each type of damage or taking some away in an attempt to get the thing perfectly balanced, but try as it may, one end or the other is always sticking up in the air. The number crunchers crunch the numbers after every damage pass and crown one spec king … until the next pass, when the cycle repeats. And frost mages just watch and wonder when it will be their turn to go raiding. Continue reading Do mages really need 3 competitive PvE specs? Filed under: Mage , Analysis / Opinion , (Mage) Arcane Brilliance Do mages really need 3 competitive PvE specs? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read
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How to assemble a character history for your roleplaying character
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft , that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World’s a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW. Last week, we talked about roleplaying descriptions for characters and what should be considered a descriptor for your character. Along the way, I also mentioned that a lot of people make the common assumption that a character’s history should be a part of their description as well. After all, part of what makes up a person is everything that’s happened to them, right? Sure! But not when we’re using roleplaying addons that have a clearly defined spot for character history. And that clarification is important, because there are still roleplay addons out there that don’t have a character history tab at all. Does this mean you should type up your character’s history as part of your description? Absolutely not. Descriptions are for descriptions, and history is for history. If your roleplay addon doesn’t allow for a character history tab but you’re really gung-ho about writing up that history for everyone to read, I’d suggest finding a roleplay addon that has a spot for all that backstory you’re dying to tell. Except for one thing — you don’t want to tell everyone everything . Continue reading How to assemble a character history for your roleplaying character Filed under: All the World’s a Stage (Roleplaying) How to assemble a character history for your roleplaying character originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
The Queue: A giddy thing
Welcome back to The Queue , the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft . Mike Sacco will be your host today. This Queue is excellent. *throws the Queue on the ground; it shatters into a million pieces* Another! Ellyon asked: My main is a resto druid. Lifebloom triggers Replenishment and I keep a stack of Lifebloom on a tank for, ideally, the whole fight. Last night I was in Raid Finder and noticed that Replenishment kept falling off. I would refresh Lifebloom just to make sure, but Replenishment didn’t return until some other moment: a moment when I was not casting or refreshing Lifebloom. I’m wondering, is there a priority system that another character is the trigger for Replenishment? With my style of healing, Replenishment should be up the whole fight, but I regularly saw it fall off and was not refreshed at the moment I would have expected. Commenter metafarm answered this one really well, so here it is for posterity: “It gives 10 party or raid members (with the lowest mana left) 1% of their maximum mana every 10 second for 15 seconds, or 1.5% over the full duration. Each time it is triggered, the 10 most needy members are recalculated, and those people either receive the buff, or have it refreshed on them.” Continue reading The Queue: A giddy thing Filed under: The Queue The Queue: A giddy thing originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Around Azeroth: Vacation land for blood elves in love
“As a lowly level 24, I literally died to get to the cliff overlooking Un’Goro Crater, but the view was worth it,” writes Ravinne of SaDiablo on Vashj (US-H). “Shortly afterwards, Laizhensil proposed with a Flawless Diamond Solitaire and a Red Rose . It was a good day in WoW .” Congratulations! At level 24, I probably would have asked him to return the ring and give me the gold instead, but I’m a bit mercenary like that. Gallery: Around Azeroth 3 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. Filed under: Around Azeroth Around Azeroth: Vacation land for blood elves in love originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore?
WoW is a funny game, really. I was chatting about it to a friend at university the other day and explaining to them that there’s a lot of grinding in WoW . They wondered what on earth I meant by that. I clarified that you have professions that you need to level up, for example, and in order to do that, you have to go and repeatedly kill baddies in order to get the materials or do something that allows you to get enough gold to buy the materials on the Auction House. I added that it’s rather a chore. I also mentioned that in Rise of the Zandalari , there were only two dungeons that you had to run every week to get your points topped up in order to buy gear to raid. This, also, was rather a chore. He was baffled that a game — something that was meant to be fun — should have chores in it! So that got me thinking (like everything else does) about my friends. I have a friend in WoW who mines constantly; it seems to be all he does sometimes. Mining (the profession I’ve never leveled because I hate it so much) clearly isn’t a chore to him — or he thinks he really needs all that ore and quietly hates it! Ugh, that clink, clink, clink … What do you consider a chore in WoW ? What are the not-that-fun-but-necessary parts of the game? What are things that you just won’t do because they’re too tiresome? Filed under: Breakfast Topics Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Blue Posts: Dissertations on MoP’s existence and the future of raiding
Join us every weekday evening as Today in WoW runs down all the WoW news that you could possibly want. From comments from Blizzard’s blues to the latest datamining info — we’ve got you covered. Please Note : Judge Alex Zarhym will be presiding over this week’s blue posts. Court will always be in session. Don’t forget to check out The Daily Quest and our Weekly Podcast Roundup to find out what else is going on in the WoW community. And if you have a news tip, feel free to drop us a line and let us know. Blue posts WoW news from other sites News and features from WoW Insider Links from around the web Continue reading Blue Posts: Dissertations on MoP’s existence and the future of raiding Filed under: Today in WoW Blue Posts: Dissertations on MoP’s existence and the future of raiding originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
5 common mistakes paladin tanks make
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy , protection and retribution 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 Righteous Defense . I know this is not going to come as a very big surprise, but it’s not very difficult to tank as a paladin. As any warrior tank would gleefully assert, even a trained monkey can operate the 939 rotation and squeeze in a Word of Glory from time to time to boot. Indeed, as the old adage goes, a paladin tank is easy to learn but difficult to master, and in many respects, that’s very true. And very important. It’s not good enough to just play the class — we want to master it! There are several common mistakes aspiring (or even veteran!) tanks make that hold them back from hitting their full potential. These range from covering threat generation to gearing to survivability. And correcting each is an important hallmark on the path to optimization. 1. Not hitting Crusader Strike enough Crusader Strike can be accurately described as the heartbeat of the protection paladin rotation. With its 3-second cooldown, resource generation, and generous contribution to one’s overall damage numbers, Crusader Strike is situated in a hallowed place — essentially, the center of gravity of our threat and damage. Not Crusader Striking enough can easily and mortally wound your damage output and thus your threat generation. Continue reading 5 common mistakes paladin tanks make Filed under: Paladin , (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It 5 common mistakes paladin tanks make originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Famous poetry responsible for Cataclysm item names?
The incredible Perculia (content manager over at Wowhead ) has just put up one of my favorite posts about World of Warcraft ever — Cataclysm starter epics, justice point gear, blue drops from instances, and more are all named after or refer to famous lines and fragments from poetry by T.S. Eliot and John Keats . Truth be told, I want to know the story of the moment when all of this snapped into place for Perculia and it became about finding an item for almost every stanza from these poems. It’s a spectacular effort. As I read her post and clicked on items, it became abundantly clear that this is far from coincidence. For instance, from the blog, Perculia has analyzed this particular stanza from Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot , But being too happy in thine happiness, That thou, light-wing
