Nethaera

We’re looking to get some feedback on the types of pets that hunters would like to be able to tame and the types of abilities that might be interesting for those pets to have. Is there a type of creature in the game now that you would like to be able to tame or an ability that you’ve always thought should be added? Here’s your chance to share a bit more about what you think could be great additions for the hunter class.

source

Head on over and make sure to get your ideas in! Personally, I’d been saying for months on the Hunting Party that they should make pet special abilities debuffs to allow hunters to use a greater variety of pets in end game raiding and remain competitive with those nasty melee classes. Wolves are cool, and all, but are boring as sin when they’re all you see.

So far, they’ve announced that, in Cataclysm:

* Wind Serpents will debuff spell damage taken

* Ravagers will provide a physical damage vulnerability

* Hyenas will provide a bleed damage magnifier

I’d like to see the whole list of debuffs available in some way from a hunter pet, if in slightly reduced form. Personally, I’d also love to see the Beastmaster spec’s third tier mastery buff provide lower penalties on debuffs in addition to increasing pet damage.

Of course, there would always have to be a personal DPS option. I think that the wolf’s Furious Howl fits the bill perfectly in its current form, and so long as the personal DPS option is one of the classic hunter pet archetypes (wolves, cats, or bears), I’ll be happy.

Another thing that they could do to make a lot of hunters happy would be to create a wider profile of not just debuffs, but buffs that pets could provide. Not to pick on shaman specifically, but if we could tame something that would act like a mobile Windfury Totem, or maybe provide a shorter/weaker Heroism, we could move that much closer toward bringing the player instead of the class.

As for PvP, right now the most commonly used pets have specials that stun or root opponents. If they wanted to broaden the pool of PvP abilities people use, they could add pets with specials that apply a Mortal Strike style healing debuff. I know, we already have Aimed Shot, but nobody has the ability to MS two players at once. If they needed to make sure this remained balanced, they could make it a little weaker than 50%, as well as prevent the uptime from passing some threshold. Or they could force the pet to channel it while stationary, so the target could escape the range easily. Either way, it would add some welcome depth to hunter PvP.

Lastly, I think we should be able to tame druids. Wait, don’t close this browser yet! Hear me out! I think that during PvP, hunters should have a short term Mind Control they could cast that would allow them to temporarily replace their pet with a druid opponent. We can already fear them, so this doesn’t go much farther than that. I’d totally support “Tame Druid” sharing a cooldown with Scare Beast. Now in addition to the druids’ cacophony, I hear priests screaming at me. You want to keep your signature ability? Fine, make a tamed druid only as controllable as a pet and immune to falling damage. There’s no easy way to throw your pet off a cliff in a battleground, short of Eyes of the Beast, and that could be made to not work.

What do you think? What new exotic pets or abilities should we have? Should we seriously be able to tame druids?

Did you know that there is a secret room in Dalaran that you can access only if you complete the achievement Higher Learning? I just found out about it myself. And while this piece of information is practically useless, it made me think … What other things don’t I know about? And then I started remembering all the times when I learned something so basic about the game that I said to myself, “How could I not have known that?”

There was the time before The Burning Crusade was released when I was happily making my mooncloth every four days and traveling to Darnassus or Darkshore to do so, when a guildie informed me that there was a moonwell in Stormwind. “Doh!” Then there was the time that I was grouped with a friend, happily traipsing around Eastern Plaguelands (so yes, I was almost level 60), and I would stop running every time I had to respond to an in-game whisper. My friend asked me what I was doing, and I explained that I had to stop running to type a response. He then informed me that I could use the mouse to auto-run and keep my hands free to type. “Doh!” More recently, I was in Dalaran exchanging Emblems of Triumph for Emblems of Conquest for Emblems of Valor for Emblems of Heroism … (big gulp of air) … in order to purchase Reins of the Wooly Mammoth. I needed 200 Emblems of Heroism, and I was exchanging all of my emblems one at a time. My guild was waiting for me to do a raid and asked what was taking so long. So I told them. And then they told me I could simply shift-right click on an emblem and pick the amount I wanted to exchange. “Doh!”

Why didn’t I know these simple things? How could I have been playing this game for five years and not know these things? I used to laugh when I saw the tips on the loading screen. The one that informs the player that she can eat and drink at the same time always elicits a mental response from me that goes something like, “Who the heck doesn’t know that? What a dumb tip.” But recently I have begun to realize that there are many people just like me who let the simplest nuances of the game escape them for some reason or another.

So what things are you embarrassed to admit that you didn’t know until you were well entrenched in the game? Don’t worry, we’ll never tell (wink, wink).

• Gray Matter steps back and covers the basics of playing a moonkin.
• I Sheep Things muses on about guild loyalty in PUGs.
• Holyform brings you tips on healing Lord Marrowgar as a discipline priest.
• Cynwise offers up this public service announcement regarding a bug with warlock imps.
• Vedalken presents his amazing LORD MARROWGAR R-R-R-REMIX (seen above).

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Icecrown Citadel’s third wing, the Crimson Halls.

Blizzard has been bringing their A-game in Icecrown Citadel, with each new wing’s difficulty greater than the last. The most recently released wing, The Crimson Halls, plays host to a quartet of vampiric elves who will push your raid to the limit. ICC has been gradually becoming less and less PUG friendly, with complex fights, tight DPS checks via innovative berserk timers, and about twenty different ways to die per encounter. Add in the fact that each end-wing boss has a limited number of attempts, and it’s easy to see why raid leaders only want to bring the best of the best to their runs.

The two boss battles we find in the Crimson Halls are night and day when it comes to how a rogue should approach them. The first, an unconventional ‘council fight’, will have your thief senses tingling as danger comes from every angle while you move about the room. The second, a DPS race of highest order, will have you drooling over the huge numbers that appear on your screen as you assassinate yet another member of royalty: the Queen of the San’layn?

The Blood Prince Council

After you clear up some Team Edward members in the foyer of the Crimson Halls, you’ll find yourself faced against the recently reanimated Blood Prince Council. I promise that will be the last Twilight joke this week, and I want you to know it took some restraint not to make any ‘Half Blood Prince‘ references. We’ve seen these guys already in our tour through Northrend, defeating them each in turn.

Prince Keleseth, the caster of the group, was defeated easily in Utgarde Keep, making him one the first bosses we toppled on our way to 80. Prince Taldaram loves to vanish, bringing back memories of my favorite rogue boss, Moroes! We were able to knock him out in Ahn’Kahet; his giant glowing fire orbs were no match for our daggers. Finally, we kicked Prince Valanar’s lifeless corpse out of the floating Scourge citadel of Naxxanar while cleansing the Borean Tundra.

These blood brothers have not forgotten our past deeds, and with their new-found power via the Darkfallen Orb, they’re ready to repay the favor. One of the three princes will be ‘empowered’ by the Orb at a time, giving them bonus power and possession over the group health pool. Since the empowered prince is the only one with HP to speak of, you will be focusing on killing whichever prince happens to be empowered at the time. It moves semi-randomly between the princes, and making quick target swaps between the various bosses will be the key to victory. The empowered boss will have a lot of red beams emanating from their body, and it will be fairly obvious who you should be attacking.

While attacking Prince Valanar, he will summon Kinetic Bombs, which are basically New Years’ Eve balls that will keep our caster friends occupied while the melee DPS do all the dirty work. The technique you’re watching for is Shock Vortex, a swirly tornado that reminds me of a warrior Whirlwind’ing with the original Unstoppable Force. If you run into one, you’ll take quite a bit of damage, and be thrown in another direction. This can result in tons of lost DPS time on the boss, so take special care to avoid these white, swirly effects on the ground. He’ll summon these whether he’s empowered or not, so watch for them any time you need to move around.

Prince Taldaram is back to his old tricks, throwing around beach balls full of fire. You’ll want to avoid these if possible, but if you’re the one targeted, only a Cloak of Shadows will save you from the hit. While he’s empowered, these fire orbs will do far more damage, but they can be weakened via a Meteor-like effect: every person they hit absorbs a small portion of the fire damage, making the final blow significantly weaker. While attacking the empowered Taldaram, you can use Feint and then put yourself between the boss and the target (it will be called out in a warning) to absorb some of the damage while only taking half of what you should. Your friend on the receiving end will thank you!

The last prince, Keleseth, will be tanked by someone who’s been busy collecting Dark Nuclei to absorb the Prince’s powerful shadow blasts. If you’re using a ranged tank or any other non-traditional tank on this boss, make sure that you give the tank Tricks of the Trade when attacking the empowered Keleseth. The tank will likely have low threat on the boss, and so Tricks will ensure the boss sticks to your chosen tank as all of the DPS move to attack it. You’ll continue this rotation of attacking each boss in turn until they all fall down.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel

The original wielder of Quel’Delar and the current ruler of the Crimson Halls, the Blood-Queen is one of the bosses that share the limited attempt pool in ICC’s upper floors. It’s a very quick and fast-paced fight for a rogue, with a hard enrage timer of 5:20 that we’re working to beat. Mathematically, it’s impossible to kill her in this time without any outside influence. However, the Blood-Queen’s own thirst for blood will be her downfall, as when she strikes out to drain a member of the raid of their red life juice, she also shares a bit of her power with them.

The bitten person will become incredibly strong, dealing double damage and healing themselves for 10% of the damage they deal. As a rogue, you can look forward to some nearly 20k DPS parses if you get this buff early enough. It’s beneficial to give this buff to whoever is dealing the most damage, which makes rogues an obvious choice to receive it first. In addition, rogue won’t see any mana issues prohibiting them from using their buff to the fullest potential, and we can Cloak of Shadows our way out of her ‘fire’ effect. Let’s go over her abilities in detail.

The first, and the most obvious, is Swarming Shadows. This works exactly like Jaraxxus’ Legion Flame: either Cloak it instantly or run like hell. Make sure you run away from the group, but stay in reach of your healers. There’s a constant AoE damage pulse going around that will drop you quickly if you run out of their range. While you’re bitten and attacking the boss, you’ll be healing yourself quite a bit to compensate, and so this AoE will be less of a threat. You also cause 0 threat while bitten, which means you can go wild and not worry about pulling aggro at all. Be sure not to run by your tanks though, the Blood-Queen will kill you if you’re too close!

The Blood-Queen can also link your mind with another player (or two), forcing you to run to each other to prevent certain death. You (and the other linked target/s) will be dealing damage to both yourselves and those around you. You can’t Cloak this move, be sure to run to your designated meeting spot to clear the debuff. It’s very similar to Yogg-Saron’s Brain Link, if you’re familiar with that encounter. We had the casters run towards the melee group to maximize their uptime, but your group may use a different strategy. Always keep your camera zoomed out enough to keep your eye on the meeting spot, which may be hard with all the huge 5 digit damage numbers splashed on your screen.

In addition to all of the awesome powers you receive while bitten, you also have the ability to spread the love to another player. After 60/75 seconds (based on difficulty level), you will go into a Frenzied Bloodthirst. During this phase, your action bar will be replaced with a big “Vampiric Bite” button that will allow you to bite a raid member, which will buff them with the same power you have, and will relieve your Bloodthirst for another 60-75 seconds. You’ll have to do this a few times during the fight, so coordinate with your raid leader on who you should be biting, and when. You can use Sprint for this, to maximize your uptime on the boss. If you fail to bite someone before your Frenzied Bloodthirst expires, you are mind controlled by the boss and will probably wipe the raid in short order.

The boss also has an air phase, which is short and simply a “don’t stand to close” AoE effect that will kill you if you’re standing within 6 yards of a friendly player. The melee should scatter for this part, and wait for the boss to return to the ground before engaging. Use Tricks of the Trade when she’s back down, as I observed threat issues when the other DPS started nuking her immediately. You’ll be feared as she enters the air, so once you’re back in control of your character, spread out. Try to save Cloak of Shadows for the Swarming Shadows move, it will give you the biggest DPS boost and highest chance of survival on this fight.

Conclusion:

This encounter is a showcase for some amazing rogue DPS, and with a 100% damage boost, it’s sure to be a DPS parse you’ll remember forever. While there are a few times where you’re not attacking the boss (biting someone else, the fear phase), for the most part this will be a straightforward tank and spank. It seems that Blizzard has implemented a few different tiers of DPS races in ICC: starting with Saurfang, Festergut continues the tradition, and Blood-Queen closes out the latest wing. I see it as a balancing act: ensuring that you gear and skill must be at a certain value before proceeding further into the citadel. Rogues must be ready to give their all, as our damage is vital to the success of the raid. It’s the core mechanic behind rogue raid utility: we make the boss’ HP go down faster than anyone else.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Relentless, Furious, Deadly, Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters on the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We’re especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. If you’d like to be interviewed for The Colosseum, please feel free to contact us — be sure to include your armory as a link!

Gladiator Bearzerk of US-Mannoroth won’t be wearing his gladiator title much longer — he’ll be upgrading to Relentless Gladiator! Our rogue interviewee today is team captain of a rogue-mage-priest composition named A B C that was able to go on a victory streak and get the coveted title on the last day of the season.

Read on after the break to see what Bearzerk had to say!

WoW.com: Who are your teammates?
Bearzerk: My teammates in season seven were Nobodyseven (mage) and Lfv (priest).

WoW.com: What’s your general plan against other 3v3s?
Bearzerk: Usually, our general plan for 3’s is to make clutch switches. When we get a kill, the opposing team doesn’t expect it at all. However, at times we do train a single target when a switch is unnecessary.

WoW.com: What challenges does your team have?
Bearzerk: I think our team honestly doesn’t have any challenges since we’ve played together more. When we first started the team it took us a bit to get along and get strats/coordination and play styles down — which got us off to a very bad start. We’ve progressed over time to play nearly at the top of our game.

WoW.com: You mentioned that your 3v3 team “got off to a very bad start” — why didn’t you stop playing when you were doing poorly?
Bearzerk: At times I thought we would not play anymore at the start. I’d have to say our team stayed together because Nobodyseven would influence us to keep going and that we’d only get better. Apparently, it worked out for the best.

WoW.com: What’s your opening strategy?
Bearzerk: Opening strategy for us mainly depends on what map it is and how the opposing team is positioned. If we get Ring of Valor, sometimes I will be able to get a Sap — but we don’t depend on it. On that map, our mage usually opens with a Frost Nova into a Psychic Scream from the priest. Any other map we usually know what we’ll do and when we’ll switch.

WoW.com: How do you work out target designation and swaps?
Bearzerk: Since we all know when to call a good switch, over time we’ve learned to listen to each other. It will be a good switch any time it is called. If a switch is called at a wrong time, the person calling switch will go back to our main target. At times we will call to fully dispel someone and make an easy switch to clinch the win depending on what setup our opponents are playing.

WoW.com: What signals that you need to radically change strategy midmatch? (And how do you accomplish that change?)
Bearzerk: Symbols we mainly look for is:

1. Someone is not dying for whatever reason.
2. Need to change the crowd control because of diminishing returns, or if the crowd control will be broken at the time.
3. Need to peel off of my mage or priest or even the need for my teammates to peel off of me at times.
4. Someone is fully dispelled and our target is not dying.

WoW.com: Do you have favorite classes to kill on the opposing team?
Bearzerk: I’d have to say my favorite class to kill is rogue, not sure why I just like to. Another two would have to be mages and shamans. We had numerous games this season where my mage would not do any damage. In those games, if he did any damage, it was very little — and I would end up soloing the opponent. This happens with other classes but rarely compared to these three.

WoW.com: What spec do you play? What advantages does that spec provide you that others do not?
Bearzerk: I play 44/4/23 assassination. I feel this spec gives the best damage I’ve tried of all specs thus far. I spec into Focused Attacks and gear for agility. I’m up to 46.03% crit unbuffed so my energy shoots up really fast for top damage.

WoW.com: Why did you choose to play rogue-mage-priest over other possible compositions?
Bearzerk: To be honest, I transferred to play with Nobodyseven as we have known each other for some time. We ended up getting lucky to have a great priest like Lfv. As a team, we became closer over time which kept us together more than any other players I have played with before.

WoW.com: How do you schedule your playtime? Do you try to play at times when lots of teams are queueing up?
Bearzerk: Our playtime was scheduled around my raids mainly, and when Lfv wanted to queue! We took a very long break from December 21st to January 18th (which was the final day of the season). Nobodyseven went on vacation and my computer was infected for three weeks. Luckily, I got it fixed on January 17th and was able to play the next day. My internet went down Tuesday (the 19th) from no payment as well! We were very lucky!

WoW.com: How does it feel to be a Relentless Gladiator?
Bearzerk: Almost makes up for not getting glad in season four or five for team hopping!

WoW.com: What are you trying to improve?
Bearzerk: I’d like to keep improving my win-loss ratios to the best of my ability.

WoW.com: What did you think of season seven in terms of balance?
Bearzerk: In terms of balance, I think it was the best in Wrath of the Lich King thus far — besides protection warriors.

WoW.com: What do you think about the resilience changes for season eight? Do you think it’s the right move?
Bearzerk: I think resilience changes will be a good move. I do think it is the right move as I hate losing to teams like death knight + warrior that don’t do anything but Charge and Bladestorm — they land kills without Mortal Striking anything. However, I believe they should take off the 47 minute timer for each arena game.

WoW.com: Will certain classes be affected more than others?
Bearzerk: I do not think certain classes will be effected more than others. They will just have to find new strategies to land a kill, mainly by draining mana and cooldowns.

WoW.com: What’s the biggest thing that differentiates a good player from a great player?
Bearzerk: I believe what differentiates a good player from a greater player is:

1. Knowing what to do and when to do it.
2. Quickness of abilities.
3. Knowing your position and role in the game.

WoW.com: What’s your advice to players who might be wanting to pick up arenas for the first time?
Bearzerk: My advice would be to watch PvP videos (I am looking into making one before expansion)! Also, duel classes to learn abilities and when your opponents would possibly use those abilities.

WoW.com: Thank you so much for giving us a great interview Bearzerk — is there anything else you’d like to say?
Bearzerk: Looking forward to another great season and hope to get rank 1 in all brackets.

What’s really interesting about this video, however, is the annotations. The video’s good, but Sabaska went above-and-beyond with his YouTube annotations. Using this feature, Sabaska outlined many notes, topics, and techniques he used in creating Octopus. This is especially helpful because it gives the audience a better look at the effort and work performed by machinima makers, and gives us a look behind the curtain. For many people just getting started with machinima, I’d wager it also gives them a little inspiration and useful tips. Octopus wasn’t meant to be a tutorial, of course, but it’s still awesome that Sabaska shared this level of information with us.

Octopus is a fun video, and it’s one for which Sabaska should be proud. I’m eager to see what he does next.

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Miss Medicina explains, exhaustively, why the Oculus experiment was a failure.
• Blame Squelchy explains how Heartpierce works and why Mutilate rogues should be all over it.
• Cold Comfort provides you the reader with a great post showing time-to-Emblem ratio in Heroic dungeons.
• WoW in an Hour explores the best class choices when you only have a small amount of time to spare.

• Torment of the Week: Frozen Investments.
• Check out Guilded Age’s 2010 Preview.
• Teh Gladiators: Enter the Eerily Familiar King.
• Daily Quests: In the Spirit of Giving. Daily Quests: Resolution: Impossible.
• NPC: Of Avatar and Avatars. NPC: A New Service. NPC: 2010 Predictions. That last line got me laughing! For the history behind it, see an earlier Sunday Morning Funnies published in May of 2009.
• Beyond the Tree: What We Need Is More Noise.
• LFG #317 and #318.
• Cru the Dwarf: All Choked Up.