Ever since the Black Market Auction House was mentioned, people wondered what the heck would be in it. We were told it would sell rare items, but what we weren’t told was the extent of those rare items. It’s not just level 90 recipes and things along those lines; it’s also rare mounts and items that have been removed from game. This includes the elusive tier 3 that was lost presumably for all time when Naxxramas was changed from a 40-man raid to a 10- and 25-man raid and moved from the Eastern Plaguelands up to Northrend. As shown in the screenshot above, this also includes the Ashes of Al’ar, a rare mount drop from Kael’thas Sunstrider in Tempest Keep. And that seems to be a hot topic for a lot of players right now, particularly players who already have the mount and obtained it the old-fashioned way. It’s an even bigger topic among those who don’t necessarily have gigantic piles of gold stashed away, because it’s obvious the prices on these items are going to be incredibly high. Some have said that Blizzard is catering to the 1% of players who have stockpiled mass amounts of gold. Well, that’s not it at all, really. And the Black Market Auction House is something that we’ve needed for a very, very long time here.Bloggers have been chiming in about this topic as well, discussing the various merits of this new feature. The Harpy’s Nest takes a pointed look at all the rares obtained over the last several years and whether or not other people’s obtaining this items will have an effect on
05/18/2012
things you need to know about the Stormstout Brewery
The Stormstout Brewery is one of the two instances you’ll be running once you start on dungeons in Mists. It’s available at 85 and is probably the easiest of the ones currently available in the beta. So it’s a great place to start out your journey to 90! Being lovely, helpful people, we here at WoW Insider thought we would put together a short and sweet set of tips to aid you in your attempts to cleanse the Stormstout Brewery of its pollution. This isn’t intended as a full guide (although of course we have furnished you with one of those in the past) but more as a helping hand for those who don’t want a step-by-step walkthrough. So what does the brave adventurer need to know? 1. Watch your debuffs! There are a lot of debuffs flying around in the Stormstout Brewery, there really are. My favourite debuff is Bloat, which makes you shoot beer out of your ears. If you’re a melee player or a ranged player who likes to cuddle up to other ranged players, you’ll need to check if your healer’s able to keep up with the damage you’re no doubt inflicting on your teammates. If not, you should probably take your beery ears elsewhere. Bloat is definitely not the only debuff you’ll get. There are various others that inflict damage, stun you, silence you, slow you, and do all of the above. “But my healer can dispel me!” I hear you cry. Well, not if you’re standing in one of the debuff puddles. A what, now? Well, there are many puddles of bad in Stormstout Brewery, especially around the Alementals just after
05/17/2012
Blind panic
AbabakarOctopuce asked: I have two level 80 toons with vanilla gear (they got to 80 through free RaF levels). I use them mostly for professions, but if I were to ever level them up, where would I find the appropriate gear to send them into Cata zones? As readers mentioned in the comments, professions or the Auction House would be the way to go. All you need is a basic set of gear that will keep them alive long enough to complete some level 80 quests. The level 80 quests will bring you up to speed just find as long as you can live through them. mingusunt asked: The launch of Diablo 3 has been very… un-Blizzard-like. Several server crashes, two significant downtimes for over an hour each. Lots of criticism for releasing a game Blizzard has said themselves is unfinished. Should this give us reason for concern with MoP? Personally, I think Diablo III’s launch has been very Blizzard-like. The first day or two after a game launch is almost always unstable. Blizzard’s not very good at launching a brand new title. It underestimated the demand for World of Warcraft, so vanilla WoW was unstable for weeks after launching. The Burning Crusade was Blizzard’s first MMO expansion, and that launch was highly unstable. Wrath of the Lich King was much better because the company’d had experience. Cataclysm finally had a smooth launch because it was expansion #3. StarCraft II’s launch wasn’t super stable at times, either. Mists of Pandaria will probably be fine due to being WoW expansion #4, but unstable game launches is kind of Blizzard’s
How I learned to love tanking again
So yeah, I’m tanking again. There are a few reasons for this. Reason #1 is my experiences testing prot in the Mists of Pandaria beta. Quite frankly, I think it’s going to be much easier to level to 90 as a tanking warrior, what with the spec working quite well on the beta at the moment. Since I expect us to be doing so by August at the latest, I wanted to get a jump on things. Another reason is simple necessity. We needed a tank; I happen to be capable of doing the job and doing it well. Even back when threat was harder than it is now, I always knew I was a respectable tank. I pay attention to my positioning, I know how to use my cooldowns, and I’ve got a lot of experience with the role. When my guild found itself short a tank, it seemed like the right thing to do. It’s just plain easier to recruit a DPSer and have someone established doing the tanking. I’ve asked before if it’s time to kill tanking. Almost a year down the road from that question, here I am tanking again. I think what I’m learning is that, at present, it’s fairly easy to tank decently and not very hard to tank well, but tanking itself is now split into two halves, and one of them is actually more difficult than it has ever been. It’s easier to learn but not easier to master. Threat and the tank See, threat is not a tremendous issue. The threat changes we’ve been living with for almost a year have made it much, much easier to hold threat even against very high DPS. Now, ludicrously high DPS can still pull threat, especially very early in a pull
05/16/2012
the latest on priest healing in Mists
Well, we got it. I never thought I’d see the day, but we finally got the Trial of the Crusader Lightwell that shoots heals at allied players instead of requiring them to click. Holy priests will gain access to the new Lightwell, called Lightspring, using a glyph of the same name. Before you get too excited, however, I should mention that there is a catch. Apparently, automatic Lightwells don’t heal for nearly as much as a manual ones do, so depending on the fight and your raid members’ ability to use the Lightwell in the first place, you may choose to skip the Glyph of Lightspring now and again. Good ol’ Derevka has already written up a thorough first look at Lightspring in which he points out many of the spell’s limitations. In the post, he points out that Lightspring only heals targets at less than 50% of their health, and it has a 5-second cooldown between heals to prevent it from being used as a raid cooldown. To read the rest of Derevka’s write-up and see his comparisons on the numerical output of the two spells, head over to Tales of a Priest. Holy priests in need of more love Discipline has shaped up into a rather complex spec at this point, between the addition of Spirit Shell and the recovery of all their old talents as baseline abilities. I think there’s a lot of potential for different disc playstyles to surface in the next expansion that are both fun to play and viable to use in dungeons and raids. Holy, on the other hand, feels like it’s missing something. Ever since Atonement got snatched away from it,
Season 4 preview
Two Bosses Enter’s season finale was a big win for dungeon boss design, with End Time’s Murozond beating out the rest of the Hour of Twilight 5-man instance bosses and even some of the Dragon Soul raid bosses, thanks to the Raid Finder. The WoW Insider community connected with an all-around fun fight that wasn’t as punishing as some of the other fights in the 5-man heroic tier but made for epic moments and an important climactic battle. Murozond and his unique mechanic will have a lot to say going forward with encounter design, I would imagine, as this whole set of 5-mans has been remarkably successful, for the most part. Sorry, Arcurion. Now that we’ve got season 3 tucked away, it’s time to ponder the future, looking forward toward a brighter and more peaceful tomorrow. Sadly, that tomorrow isn’t looking so bright or peaceful, with the Horde and the Alliance preparing to descend upon the lost continent of Pandaria, bitter rivalries and hatreds newly reignited. With war comes heroes from every faction, giving us plenty of cannon fodder for Two Bosses Enter. Rather than do a beta season of Two Bosses Enter, we’re going to announce Two Bosses Enter Season 4 once Mists of Pandaria launches, let people have some time with the new content, and then start a new season. Until then, much like the experimentation of the exhibition season last year, we’re going to try something new. One of the best metrics we’ve found for the most involvement with Two Bosses is how much people understand and know about the characters that are