Posted on September 27th, 2008 by admin
Wowhead offers another chance to win Tyrael
Do you still need a Wrath of the Lich King beta key? Or perhaps you covet your very own mini-Tyrael (which you can now bestow on all your characters)? If so, you may want to check out Wowhead’s latest contest, which is once again giving away cards from the Worldwide Invitational with codes for the LK beta and for Tyraels. Happily, this one is open to both EU and US. It’s happening today, starting at 4:00 EST (1:00 PST), which is just under two hours from now. It’s a similar format to their previous contest (which unfortunately had to be cancelled), but with a twist:
· The goal is to identify five screenshots, figuring out which exact Wowhead pages those screenshots are displayed on.
· When you get all five answers, put the URLs of the Wowhead pages corresponding to the screenshots in an email to . Make sure your answers are in order.
· At 4:00, a heavily altered version of the screenshots are posted (seems to be run
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Posted on September 25th, 2008 by admin
Skill Mastery: The Art of War
For today’s Skill Mastery, we’ll take a look at a passive talent instead of a fancy button you can press. This has been my favorite talent ever since it was introduced in the Beta even though it has seen numerous iterations — so many, in fact, that it might be a little premature to write about it. On the other hand, this latest version feels like it’s almost in its final form — not overpowered and quite utilitarian.
The Art of War is a two point talent on Tier 7 of the Retribution tree that increases the Critical Strike damage of Judgements, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. For PvE, that’s a simple DPS increase that scales properly while in PvP, it helps to counter Resilience. Ideally, however, the number should be tweaked to completely negate it as Resilience damage reduction from crits is capped at 25%. The damage bonus is a good buff for the three main damage sources of a Retribution Paladin, but the better part of the spell is the reduction in the cast time of Flash of Light.
With the changes in Wrath, Retribution Paladins are no longer gimped healers and Flash of Light can heal for decent amounts. The
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Posted on September 24th, 2008 by admin
Vengeance back to 3 stacks
Vengeance posed a delicate problem for Blizzard. On one hand, the talent provided an amazing 15% damage increase for 5 talent points, which was cheap enough but offset by the fact that it relied on crits in order to be kept up. On the other hand, Vengeance scaled too well with gear because as the Paladin’s gear got better, his crit rating got higher, and it came to the point where Paladins could keep Vengeance up indefinitely.
The problem was two-fold — first, Vengeance in that regard was overpowered because it was never intended to be a permanent buff; second, most Paladins felt that they needed to have Vengeance up permanently in order to be competitive in raid DPS. Blizzard nerfed Vengeance to two stacks totalling +10% damage for five talent points. Of course, as they mentioned in a thread, a stack of two isn’t much of a stack at all.
Ghostcrawler also says that they’re looking at bringing the stacks back up to three, “because that just feels more fun than 2.” I like Blizzard’s repeated use of the word ‘fun’ throughout Wrath’s development cycle. This indicates that their design is geared
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Posted on September 23rd, 2008 by admin
Druid weapon skills
Night Elf Druids start the game with the Staff and Dagger weapon skills. Tauren Druids start with Staves and One Handed Maces. Druids can learn the skill they lack plus Two Handed Maces and Fist Weapons from specific Weapon Masters.
Of the weapons that Druids can use from character creation, only One Handed Maces tend to be readily available on the Auction House at levels 7 – 10. For the weapon skills you can learn from Weapon Masters, Two Handed Maces are the other most commonly found items on the Auction House. Daggers and Staves are very scarce, and Fist Weapons are nearly non-existent. For this reason, I recommend running off in search of One Handed and Two Handed Mace weapon skills.
New weapon skills can be learned from Weapon Masters right at level 1, and cost 10 silver each. You could get them at any time, but until you reach level 7, you’re just not going to find anything in the Auction House you could use.
Tauren Druids are fortunate. Not only do they start out with One Handed Mace skill at creation, but Ansekhwa, the Horde Weapon Master that teaches the Two Handed Mace skill, resides in the capitol city of Thunder Bluff, on the Lower
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Posted on September 23rd, 2008 by admin
Druid Specs
Feral
How to Spot: If they’re in Bear or Cat form when they cast Faerie Fire on you, they’re Feral. Leader of the Pack is another tell (and a great buff to have– it ups your critical chance, and Improved LotP now gives a chance to heal when you crit).
They Can: Tank, more than respectfully. In cat form they can churn out the damage now, too– Mangle, the 41-point talent, is a scary little ability that can rip you apart.
They Can’t: Heal as well as other Druids. Feral druids tend to spec deep into Feral– they play the class so they can be an animal, rather than a Tauren or a Night Elf, so you’ll rarely see them out of animal form.
Balance (a.k.a. Doomkin)
How to Spot: They’re in Moonkin form, and shooting lasers (a.k.a. Starfire) like mad. Unlike Cat and Bear forms (which all Druids can do), only Balance Druids can be Moonkin.
They Can: Spurt out damage like nobody’s business. Moonkin, formerly called oomkin for the fact that they burn through mana, are now called Doomkin and can top damage meters in both PvP and PvE.
They Can’t: Heal in Moonkin form. While Moonkin form does give them a nice armor boost
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Posted on September 17th, 2008 by admin
Tradeskill links coming in Wrath
Another fun little addition for tradeskills and crafters straight from the Beta realms is the ability to peruse the recipes that someone else knows. It works very simply, too. The crafter links his tradeskill like it were an item. You click on that link and a regular tradeskill window pops open, minus the option to craft, create or enchant what you’re looking at. You can see all of their recipes and the materials required for them.
This seems like it’s going to be especially useful for the tradeskills that have a large variety of things that people need. Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, et cetera. It would be much easier to link a guildmate the list of what I can do rather than look up everything they need myself. “Can you do Savagery? Vitality? Spell damage to bracers? MP5 to chest? Strength to gloves?” Maybe! Here, check and see!
Linking your recipe book over the Trade channel should help sell enchants and inscriptions as well, hopefully replacing the endless spam of three paragraph advertisement macros. Okay, so maybe those macros will never go away, but we can hope can’t we? By the way, you can click on the image to
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Posted on September 11th, 2008 by admin
Lichborne: PvP, grinding, the Unholy tree, and you
Every weekend in Lichborne, Daniel Whitcomb will take you through the ever-changing (Beta) world of World of Warcraft’s first hero class, the Death Knight.
With a new Beta Build on the test servers, Death Knights have received a massive amount of talent changes. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons, and I’ve covered much of them in last week’s Lichborne. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice’s Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here.
Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. In fact, I’d have to say that the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP.
As a disclaimer, there’s still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don’t seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases
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Posted on September 11th, 2008 by admin
Articulating Your Alignment
As mentioned in the last article, stereotypes can provide good examples, also. For instance, what image appears in your mind when you think of a monk? For me, it’s Kwai Chang Caine, David Carridine’s character on one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Kung Fu. What about a ranger? I have two images; one of course being Strider/Aragorn, and another being some fellow soldiers whom I served with in the US Army. Look into actual history at the examples of paladins, samurai, or the hwarang do warriors, if you’re looking to roleplay a combat character following an honored code. I remember in Dungeon & Dragons when clerics were forbidden to use edged weaponry, for they were adverse to shedding the blood of their enemies, for the most part. Mages, wizards, and the whole class of spellcasters are generally known to forego the use of physical weaponry in favor mental martial artistry. Then again, there was Gandalf, who was quite adept at both.
The point is, taking elements that are generally known and / or widely perceived about certain people can be a great addition to your roleplaying, provided they are used with a proper amount of tact
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Posted on September 1st, 2008 by admin
WoW: Military Stories
The World of Warcraft site has been updated with two stories from soldiers in the US military. Focusing on the friendship angle, here’s a teaser from one of them:
When my turn to deploy to Iraq came about, I was trying to think of a way to easily keep in touch with my family. We used to play Baldur’s Gate with each other back in the day so I thought World of Warcraft would be a great idea. I had a hard time convincing my father to step away from the game he had been playing, but he did it and loved World of Warcraft. Then after a bit my two sisters, my nephew, and my two nieces all decided that they wanted to play with my dad and me. We all rolled up Alliance characters to play together on the same realm, and now, due to my work shift in Iraq, we are able to play for a few hours four nights a week with each other. It has been a great way for us to stay in touch. Thank you for enabling this, Blizz–you’ve made my first deployment a lot easier.
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Posted on September 1st, 2008 by admin
We know sometimes it’s difficult to decide which is more important, the launch of our new season, or the start of the olympic games. During this tough time, we are here to offer you relief, by combining WoW Radio, with the olympic games, and giving you a chance to go for gold and win a fabulous prize. We have 20, yes I did say 20, WWI cards to give away, which feature an EU/US beta-key and the exclusive Tyrael vanity pet. What’s more, this contest is open to everyone, so even US players can get their hands on a Tyrael pet, and be the envy of their server.
So what do you have to do to enter? Simple. The contest will start on the 8th of August, and the winners will be announced on the 15th on Blue Plz!. 5 select shows will be our torch-bearers, and as the torch passes from show to show, will feature 5 ‘olympic rings’ (you’ll know them when you hear them), each of which contains a secret word. Once you know all 5 secret words, you will be able to form a phrase, which will be your key to the grand prize draw. Email the complete phrase to olympics@wcradio.com. Both live and podcast listeners can participate, so keep your ears open for the 5 olympic
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