Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.

Warning: This week's topic is very much on the serious side and has nothing to do with WoW except that it occurs in-game a lot. Because it brings up some sensitive subjects and is very close to home for me (as you will see), I may be very heavy-handed with the moderating. I would appreciate it if you kept all of the comments constructive and non-trollish so I don't have to. Making fun of me, Robin, is ok though. I'm already laughing at me, so you can only laugh with me.

Drama Mamas, I recently went to ToC5 with my RL friend, and in the party there was a mage. A very chatty mage. I humored him and chatted away. Today the guy whispered me and talked about wanting to do some instances etc.. Nothing out of the ordinary, I guess. I think he said something about not having any friends as well. But later the same day, he started talking to me about how he hates his life because he has no friends, and his girlfriend just broke up with him.. He actually started talking about wanting to kill himself.

Zach first ground out the Battlegrounds on a PvP server on a shaman, refusing to spec restoration during a time when shamans were only brought to raids because of Mana Tide. Man, those days sucked.

This guide shouldn't take us very long unlike the past two weeks' unexpectedly lengthy detour into all manner of backstabbery and ambushness because, as we all very well know, shamans don't PvP. Alright fine, that's not true. But we just don't see them around much. Historically, shamans have always been underrepresented in Arenas and Battlegrounds although not necessarily because the class has serious failings but also because fewer players play shamans than any other class in the game if census numbers are to be believed. Rogue and warlock numbers dropped over the years, too, but shamans have always been in last place for most of the game's existence.

Shamans are great, but have never really been established as a threat in PvP and very few players really quake at the sight of a shaman entering the battlefield. Undeserved reputations aside (or lack thereof), shamans are a very versatile class and any player underestimating them could easily be on the receiving end of a fatal shock spell. After the jump, let's quickly go through the shaman's commonly used abilities in PvP before moving to the different specs and what to expect.

Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.

The above video has absolutely nothing to do with WoW or upcoming patches or even gaming. It's just a feel-good video that is currently at the top of my current YouTube favorites. Besides, everybody's doing it. Now, onward to the actual content...

So, rumor has it that patch 3.3.3 will be out either next week or the week after. The PTR seems stable-ish and the downloading of much of the patch has already been happening. So, let's talk about what we have to look forward to in the patches before Cataclysm, particularly 3.3.3.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of The Queue is one part off-topic and two parts on-topic, but each and every part is worth it. Trust me on that one. Oh, and there's a couple more bad words than usual. You have been warned. I hope none of you are too scandalized by it.

Windswept asked...

"There is this girl I like that works at the mall, I want to ask her out but I don't know how. What would YOU do?"

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. It's a brand new season and a brand new format, introducing judges from WoW.com and the WoW community at large -- and of course, your votes. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

The Thunderdome's no Bartertown, Krick and Ick are no Master Blaster ... and as many expected, Scourgelord Tyrannus dominated this week's Two Bosses fantasy deathmatch. More than three-quarters of the spectators anointed the Scourgelord with the victor's crown. The judges tied it up for Tyrannus as well, leaving the path clear for what's shaping up to be an intriguing match, Falric vs. Argent Confessor Paletress. (By the way, if you're a fan of the cage match genre, check out last week's match on Suvudu: Jaime Lannister vs. Hermione Granger -- yeah, it's so one-sided it's just mean, but sometimes those are the train wrecks we love to watch go down. George R.R. Martin himself weighs in, too; get back to writing, bud. )

Join us after the break for the judges' decisions, plus your chance to vote in Falric vs. Paletress. For in the words of Dr. Dealgood: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here."

I hear this all the time: "Hurrr! Undercutters are ruining this market! Durrr!". Today, we're going to talk about this. Undercutting doesn't ruin markets, high supply does. Also, if it's still profitable, the market's not ruined, it's just being taken away from you. Cut your margins and undercut back. Or buy them out if you still think they're wrong and you're right.

But markets should be protected from undercutters!

Balderdash. Markets are a place where people can sell their goods for any price they want. You're describing collusion between sellers to reduce "lost profits," where every time someone wants to undercut with a new auction, they do so by the smallest possible amount.

More often than not, all your competitors will have the same cost that you do, and as soon as they see you commit to an auction, they'll undercut you right back. If everyone is knocking a copper off the next highest auction, they only way to undercut successfully is to try camp the AH and make sure you're always the competitor who has visited most recently. Needless to say, this is a colossal waste of your time, and you would probably make more money per hour doing argent tourney dailies.

The only way to effectively sell your product in a market with a lot of competitors is to undercut by more than just a trivial amount. You need to make it just cheap enough that your competition is less likely to undercut you, but expensive enough that you're still making money.

Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, after saving the world, we end it for others. They were in our way.

Every so often I get the hankering to go stomp a place that previously rode my ass like Zorro, and I nominate Karazhan as being among the better places to do it. After wiping to heroic Icecrown bosses for a few hours, there's something wonderfully therapeutic about venting your frustrations on the tenants of an older raid, particularly when they cough up 1,000 gold, mounts, enchants, and gear that looks delightfully silly on a level 80.

You remember Kara, right? It's that place that used to be hard.

Doesn't narrow it down? It's the big building occupied by crazy dead people.

Also doesn't narrow it down?

Harumph. The place with the long hallway full of undead concubines?

I see that jogged your memory.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I feel I've done one of these far too recently to do another one so quickly, but we're going to do another listening music day anyway. In yesterday's Blood Sport, Colby introduced me to Pomplamoose, a musical duo from Youtube. Considering most of my procrastination hours are spent on YouTube, I am amazed I've never heard of them before, but they are great. Plus the girl is way cute. She practically emits that kitty face emote when she talks. Seriously.

So today's listening music is Pomplamoose's Little Things.

Grumbly Stuff asked...

"What's your (or anyone's, really) favorite proc or on-use effect for any piece of gear/weapon/trinket?"

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: Pomplamoose (i.e. Jack Conte and his girlfriend Nataly Dawn) with a Single Ladies cover (originally by Beyonce). Although you've probably been able to guess by now, I'm a huge Jack Conte fan. This cover is short, but very intelligent.

Last Week: We asked the question, "Should racials be removed?" A lot of interesting responses filled the comments section of that article, people have some very strong opinions and it's definitely worth a read.

This Week: We'll be discussing specific issues that plague Dalaran arena. This will be the first in a two-part series -- part two will be Ring of Valor. The author doesn't believe Nagrand Arena, Ruins of Lorderon, or Blade's Edge Arena need much work. Dalaran has already gone through several changes to improve its game play. Blizzard, however, would do well to make additional changes to the arena. I've included some problems with its current implementation as well as some possible solutions.

1) Problem: The waterfall is a major annoyance.

It doesn't come down frequently enough to impact the game in substantial ways -- other than being exceptionally annoying at times. The vast majority of most Dalaran Sewers matches are fought "up top." The ledge on the side doesn't provide great line-of-sight when compared with the boxes.

If your team is fighting near the enemy boxes, but your healer is healing at the other set of boxes and the waterfall comes down, your team needs to adjust position quickly. Sometimes, the opposing team will win games simply because of that waterfall. Yes, your team could make a more conscious effort to prepare for the waterfall -- but should that be what arena is about? EDIT: Arena should be player vs. player -- not player vs. environment. I hope that clarifies this last sentence.

Gear is fairly easy to get at this point in the expansion life cycle of Wrath. That's not a flaw. That's actually how things should be: there shouldn't be too many artificial limitations keeping you from jumping into the newest content and getting a chance to at least see, if not down it. With the rise of 10 and 25 man versions of every raid and heroic modes, however, we are looking at something fairly unique to this expansion, a somewhat drastic power curve to gear scaling.

This isn't a new idea, and it's not one Blizzard themselves haven't commented on. It's one thing to be aware of it in a general way, however, and another to sit back and look at it. That's a comparison of itemization on select 2H weapons from the first crafted epic (equivalent to a Naxx 10 drop) up to hard mode Ulduar 25, which puts it squarely in the middle of the current expansion cycle. What you're looking at is a steady gain that leads to a nearly 60 DPS increase between the starting weapon (Titansteel Destroyer) and the last one compared (Voldrethar).

It's the weekend again, and that means it's time for another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to continue its ongoing series of "Pictures of things you're hitting that warlock in the face with." In today's installment, we'll be hitting that warlock with a large chunk of ice. As you can see, the ice has sharp edges, pointy parts, and is hurtling toward the warlock at an absolutely painful rate of speed. Other things we'll be hitting that warlock in the face with in future installments include massive balls of flame, rapid-fire salvos of arcane energy, and of course monkey feces.

To contribute to the increasingly awesome collection of guides that make up WoW.com's class 101 series, I bring you Frost 101. As with the Arcane 101 column I did a few weeks back, let me begin with what this guide is, and also with what it is not:

What it is: A general overview of the spec from a PvE perspective, directed at relative newcomers to either level 80 or the spec in general. It will provide basic idea of where to start, how to spec, how to gear, and what to do as a frost mage.

What it is not: A guide to in-depth theorycrafting, detailed hard-mode raid strategies, min-maxing, which weapon kills Sparkman fastest, how to pull off an ultimate combo, or burn an entire quarter on one play with Bo Jackson. We'll cover all of those topics on some other day. Well, maybe not all of them. But definitely the Bo Jackson run, because that was crazy.

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

While some players are hailing the Icecrown Citadel "tugboat" buff (Strength of Wrynn/Hellscream's Warsong) as a great equalizer that will open up endgame content to the player base at large, others have spotted holes in its implementation. The most common complaint is that doing the encounters the hard way yields no bonus at all: no achievement, no title, no recognition.

Mennoknight: The issue ... is that there is nothing showing if they did it the hard way. Most people take kill shots with the UI hidden, so the buff will not show.

Our group wanted to do it "the hard way" because we could. But the more you look at it, there is no reason NOT to keep the buff. There is no in-game tracking of it, and while you could technically take a screenshot of every boss kill without it, who's to say you won't go and kill everything with it one week and then kill the next week (with much better gear and perfected kill strats) without the buff? (5% doesn't matter, but this will become easier in later weeks.)

Additionally, none of the other groups are trading in the buff, and we decided as a realm not to count it in the progression threads, so there is very little reason not to change it. This could be EASILY solved by a simple track (feat of str, no points) with something along the lines of "Achieve your first kill of Marrowgar without using the Strength of Wrynn" (because other kills don't count past the first). Just something in game to track the kill, so you don't have to jump through hoops to get it tracked. You don't need to give better loot, more badges or anything. Just the simple tracking would be enough to get groups like mine to run without the buff.

More reader perspectives on the Wrynn/Warsong buff, after the break.

This week, we have a healthy crop of WoW-related webcomics for your perusal. Before we get into that, let's look at last week's challenge.

I asked everyone to make some comments about the week's comics, hoping for some funny, astute, honest, and observant ones. Lots of you rose to the challenge, and to you I bequeath a virtual and imaginary collection of kaleidoscopic thimbles. I'll even throw in some chocolate flavored lemon drops and your very own pretend mini hippopotamus.

For this week, I want you to try reading a comic or two that you don't usually bother to read, or that you haven't paid much attention to, and let us know what you think about it. Next week, I'll give you guys another trivia question. Ready? Go!

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator 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!

This week, we interviewed a four-time rank one gladiator, Athlete of Mug'thol. The Merciless, Deadly, Furious, Relentless Gladiator talked to us about his very interesting and uncommon 3v3 composition of mage-warrior-holy paladin, as well as some basic arena advice for new PvPers.

WoW.com: You have four rank one titles! It's probably safe to say you know what it takes to be successful in arena. What's your advice to players who want to start playing arenas for the first time?
Athlete: My best advice would be to register an account on ArenaJunkies.com and read it often. There are many kinds of people on that website that would gladly go out of their way to help you out. They also have a really good recruitment tool to find teammates. Find some players that are on your skill level and build up a good friendship and some synergy with them. Make sure your setup can work and play often.

WoW.com: What do you think about warriors getting Disarmed while Bladestorming?