WoW.com

Lichborne: Blood, blood!

Matthew Rossi — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Leveling, Guides, Classes, Talents, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's death knight column.

Hi and welcome to this post Day of the Dead Lichborne. I'm filling in for Daniel this week to talk about my personal favorite death knight talent spec, namely blood. Blood! Over the past year blood has seen its ups and downs, often lagging behind frost for tanking and unholy for DPS (and at times vice versa) but as of patch 3.2 blood seems to be in a really good place, overall. Strong for soloing/questing as well as instancing as either a tank or DPS spec, blood can stand shoulder to shoulder with the other DK talent specs.

Blood's reputation was formed in the early days of Wrath of the Lich King as one of the absolute best leveling specs due to its very strong self healing options. While these were toned down from their beta and early release heights, the tree is still the strongest at creating opportunities to regenerate health of the three, and is often used by enterprising DK's looking to solo older content. But it's capable of far more than that, and of the three specs it's the most physical damage based tree with Heart Strike being purely weapon based damage. Furthermore, blood DK's have one of the nicest pure physical DPS buff abilities in the game with Hysteria. You can be selfish with it and save it for yourself, as you're almost sure to make back the health you'll lose to the talent, but if you choose to share it with a DPS warrior or cat feral druid, the raw DPS they can put out (especially druids) can be rather crazy.

So let us talk about blood. Blood is life... and in your hands, it can also be death.

Continue reading Lichborne: Blood, blood!

Lichborne: Blood, blood! originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I

C. Christian Moore — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Undead, Druid, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Classes, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, (Arena PvP) Blood Sport, Battlegrounds, Arena

Ahh, lovely Radiohead. The entirety of Scotch Mist (which is In Rainbows played live) will be our listening music, as I expect today's article to be somewhat...lengthy. Starting out with "Weird Fishes" is a nice touch -- you gotta love Radiohead's set order diversity. By the way, I'm going to continue supporting the Blood Sport column with listening music, due to overwhelming positive response. If you have any suggestions for songs, please let me know in the comments below!

Instead of talking about minor changes, I'm going to try to only hit the major ones here, as this is a giant patch. If you think I skipped something important, please let me know via the comments below and I'll reply.

Today, we'll be covering pet resilience, the Will of the Forsaken nerf, death knight, and druid changes, and what they hold for arena combatants. Expect the other classes and item/glyph changes soon! You can find all about Patch 3.3 here.

Check out what the last major patch of WotLK has for gladiators and challengers alike after the break!

Continue reading Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I

Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lichborne: Elementary death knight macros

Daniel Whitcomb — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Instances, Raiding, Guides, Death Knight, Macro Anatomy, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the world of the death knight. Your host, Daniel Whitcomb, is enjoying the most wonderful time of the year, when a death knight can hang around in his natural habitat all day long without seeming creepy. Or no creepier than usual, at least.

As you approach the end game of WoW, one thing you may find out quickly is that the proper use of macros is a great way to take your game to the next level. Sometimes they streamline moves, other times they allow you to perform actions that would be otherwise impossible. Death knights are definitely no exception, and though we'd be here all week if I went through all the ins and out of macro theory, or even death knight macro theory, I figure right now is still a good time to get you started.

Let's look at a few basic essential macros for the various roles and trees of the class.

Continue reading Lichborne: Elementary death knight macros

Lichborne: Elementary death knight macros originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ghostcrawler and the "hybrid tax"

Mike Schramm — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Raiding, Classes, Death Knight

Ghostcrawler has put a significant sticky up on the forums about what he calls the "hybrid tax" in terms of PvE play -- there's been some back and forth lately on the forums about hybrid classes and what they should and shouldn't be able to do, and GC wants to put any confusion about what Blizzard intends "hybrids" to be to rest. Very basically, he says that there are three roles in the game (tanking, healing, and DPS), and if a class can respec to perform a different role, it's considered a hybrid class. Otherwise, it's a "pure" class. This means a few things: pure classes, he says, should have slightly higher DPS ("all things being equal," and when does that ever happen?), because they don't have the option to switch out. There's no rule as to how much better that is, but as a tradeoff of rerolling being the only way for "pures" to switch, they get to be a little better. That's the "hybrid tax," and mages, hunters, rogues, and warlocks don't have to pay it.

Hybrids, however, do, and that means that paladins, druids, priests, shamans, and to a certain extent, warriors and death knights, will in Blizzard's view never be able to equal "pure" classes in terms of DPS output, with everything else being equal. You may love your ret pally, and he may be in uber gear, but he should never be able to pour out as much damage as an equally specced and geared hunter, because you can switch to healing, and the hunter can't.

Continue reading Ghostcrawler and the "hybrid tax"

Ghostcrawler and the "hybrid tax" originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Increase threat in five easy steps!

Mike Schramm — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Tips, Virtual selves, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs, Death Knight

It sounds like an infomercial, but actually Righteous Defense has a great post on how a pally (or any class, really -- his advice is for pallies, but it's common sense enough that any tanking class can use the tips) can step up and increase their threat as far as it will go. I always enjoyed tanking when I did it (and now that I'm leveling up a pally, I'll hopefully be bashing heads in and taking damage again soon), and the key to tanking is just awareness: awareness of where the mobs are, who they're targeting, and where they should be. Increasing threat is really a passive kind of upgrade -- as long as you're hitting your spells right, using the glyphs designed to keep you at the top of an aggro list, and specced and hit-capped for the gear and abilities you're using, keeping threat up is pretty simple. It's just the positioning and dealing with surprises that can be hard.

The last point on RD's list is worth repeating for everyone: use your trinkets, as often as possible. Imagine that, in the next patch notes, you saw a spell under your class listing that did what your trinkets did (added a ton of spellpower or increased armor by 500) and went on to say (infomercial style again) "... at a cost of no mana, focus, rage or ." Wouldn't you be spamming that sucker as often as possible? Get your gear straight, use the right abilities, and break out your trinkets whenever you can, and keeping threat should be no problem at all for any given class.

Increase threat in five easy steps! originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Breakfast Topic: Once more through the breach

Matthew Rossi — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Paladin, Shaman, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Leveling, Alts, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

You hear a lot of complaining about leveling up new alts. Having to see the same content again. And I've even said so myself from time to time and meant it. But recently, I dusted off my JC alt and decided to make a push to 80 with him, in part to have a toon to cut all these epic stam gems I need for my tank set now that I'm prot/arms... and also because, griping be damned, I missed fury. (Yeah, yeah, no one's surprised I caved and went back to Titan's Grip, not even me.)

Yes, that's right. My JC alt was a level 70 warrior. And now, he's a level 76 warrior. And I'm having a blast seeing all the stuff I've already seen four or five times now (depending on if you count my Horde alts and taking into account that they have different quests to some degree) on a class I've already leveled to 80 twice. (I also leveled my draenei warrior to 76 before abandoning him.) To be honest, part of it is the fun of trying out a fury spec designed entirely around as much self healing as possible with the Glyph of Bloodthirst and Blood Craze, and part of it is just that I missed these particular questlines.

Continue reading Breakfast Topic: Once more through the breach

Breakfast Topic: Once more through the breach originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

A macro for stacking parry or dodge

Mike Schramm — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Tips, How-tos, Death Knight

I haven't played a tank in a while, so I haven't had to mess with stats at endgame for a long time. Though my paladin is slowly getting there, so this little macro over at Honor's Code might come in handy. Parry and dodge are very similar abilities -- both of them help you to completely avoid damage from bosses as a tank. But they do have a very few important differences (Parry speeds up your next attack swing, and is affected by diminishing returns at higher levels of the stat), so when you're gearing up at endgame, you want to make sure to balance them out in the right way.

Continue reading A macro for stacking parry or dodge

A macro for stacking parry or dodge originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

GC clarifies ArPen's stat removal and others

Mike Schramm — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Odds and ends, Buffs, Death Knight, Forums, Cataclysm

Ghostcrawler's hoping this answer "gets read," so we'll help. A player asks why Blizzard is worrying about armor penetration with the Scourge Strike ability -- isn't, they ask, ArPen getting removed in Cataclysm like we heard at BlizzCon? The answer is basically no: Armor Penetration rating is getting removed from gear (along with Block value, Defense, Attack Power, and a number of other gear stats), but Armor Penetration as a stat is not getting removed from the game. Talents and other abilties will still depend on removing and penetrating armor, even if your gear selection won't revolve around it. They'll still be balancing it, but as players choosing gear, it won't be a part of our calculations there.

Make sense? Just because you don't see, say, Attack Power on gear doesn't mean you won't have an Attack Power number governing how much damage you do. It just means that the AP you have will come from stats like Agility and Strength (depending on your class and a number of other factors) rather than gear adding directly to AP. Of course, as Ghostcrawler says, these changes aren't even coming until patch "4.0" and the Cataclysm expansion, so there's still lots of gear choices and balancing to do before then.

GC clarifies ArPen's stat removal and others originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sneak peek at Tokyopop's Death Knight manga

Zach Yonzon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, Comics

Not long after Tokyopop announced its 2010 schedule, which actually includes a late 2009 release, BlizzPlanet unveiled scans from the first chapter of Dan Jolley and Rocio Zucchi's World of Warcraft: Death Knight. The story features Thassarian, an NPC first encountered in Ebon Hold and later in the Alliance airship flying above Icecrown. Jolley delves deeper into Thassarian's past, telling his history as a human Alliance soldier with dreams of rising through the ranks but who eventually becomes ensnared under the Lich King's employ.

Intended to give insight into the different World of Warcraft classes, the Death Knight manga is the first of a series of class-focused full-length stories. Rocio Zucchi is a 22-year old Argentinian female manga artist, and her work on this book is simply sensational, if the first pages are any indication. Jolley employs a lot of flashbacks in the preview, and Zucci handles the storytelling transitions deftly. The book hits the shelves on December 1, 2009, and if you enjoyed Tokyopop's take on the World of Warcraft universe, Death Knight looks to be an equally entertaining read.

Sneak peek at Tokyopop's Death Knight manga originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lichborne: The latest Patch 3.3 PTR death knight changes in depth

Daniel Whitcomb — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Talents, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's death knight column.

Remember when I said that it looked like Patch 3.3 was going to be relatively quiet for us? I may have spoken too soon. There's been a pretty major shakeup to Unholy DPS (again), and there's one or two other changes we might want to discuss, including news of some armor tier bonuses. Let's get to it.

Scourge Strike Rebalancing: The Neverending Story

So before we delve into this change, let's take a moment to review the star-crossed history of Scourge Strike. Scourge Strike is meant to be the basic Frost/Unholy attack of an Unholy death knight, and the hardest hitting of their attacks. In theory. Here's the thing with Scourge Strike: It does shadow damage. That means it completely bypasses all armor, meaning it does a lot more effective damage than you might guess just from glancing at the tool tip. The problem back in the early days of the class is that it was doing far too much, easily outstripping Obliterate. So, Blizzard nerfed the damage, and all was well for a while.

Continue reading Lichborne: The latest Patch 3.3 PTR death knight changes in depth

Lichborne: The latest Patch 3.3 PTR death knight changes in depth originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Breakfast Topic: With great power...

Matthew Rossi — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Rogue, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Breakfast topics, Expansions, Death Knight

Everyone once in a while it occurs to me that our various level 80 characters actually are, in terms of relative power, astonishing. We've killed Old Gods, fought a herald of the titans, even balked the Lich King himself. But to be honest, it's not any of those things that brings it home to me.

No. It's events like this weekend, when I was trying to get my level 41 paladin through Stranglethorn Vale as fast as possible (because, you know, it's bloody awful) and came upon a level 80 DK and his level 63 rogue buddy slaughtering all the quest givers. I couldn't see what levels they were (to the pally, they were skull level) so I decided to switch over to my warrior (after I got cocky and flagged hoping to draw them to attack me, which they did... level 41 pally went boom) and come clean them out. It wasn't until I arrived in Booty Bay I realized that the DK was wearing heirlooms and greens... well, to be honest, I only realized that when I hit him twice with my Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade and he fell down. The rogue died from the ancillary whirlwind.

The first thing I did after cackling and thinking about how to work this into a Wow.com post (which, as you can see, I managed - I realized about an hour later that I should have remember their names) was to think about how it rarely even occurs to me just how fast gear escalates. I can remember doing the daily quests for Knights of the Ebon Blade reputation out on the Scarlet Onslaught island, carefully pulling groups of one or two and stopping to eat or bandage between pulls. Now I pull groups of 8 to 10 at a time and don't even have to stop to eat, period. With patch 3.3 coming and with it a new raid of even more powerful gear, by the end of the expansion's cycle will we just pull the entire island in one go?

So once again I turn to you, readers - how much is too much? Are we even going to need to upgrade at all before we hit 85 in Cataclysm? Or are things progressing just as they should and the fact that my shaman can go resto and run through the Argent Tournament dailies letting his fire totems do they killing while he AFK's and trust Earth Shield and Healing Stream to keep him alive is just a consequence of gear evolution, nothing to be concerned about?

Breakfast Topic: With great power... originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part II and a half

C. Christian Moore — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, (Arena PvP) Blood Sport, Arena

I don't care for a lot of music that was made in the last decade. The Killers are something of a breather for me. They're one of those bands I'm glad exist. When I'm forced to listen to a terrible radio station, and hear change your mind sandwiched in between auto-tuned, unoriginal dross -- I'm satisfied there is still music being made that can intrigue. (Brandon Flowers has some epic bard tier 10 shoulders there too)

This is part two of part two of a three part article. Confusing? Join the fun! Surprising Patch 3.3 timing, i.e. wrenches in cogs, is a blast!

In our first installment, we covered pillars changing shape in great detail, and also mentioned a few other tweaks. Our second article dealt with five classes -- paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, and warrior. Warlocks were left out of the 3.2.2 patch notes. This article is going to talk about the other four classes - death knight, druid, hunter, and mage.

Being "TheArenaGuy" here at WoW.com lends to forcing myself to a very balanced perspective on classes. It makes me feel guilty if I understand armor penetration less than spell penetration. Well, actually, it doesn't because ArP is confusing. The main thing I'm trying to say here is that I don't want to write anything that is opinionated without being grounded in something. I don't want to make any mistakes when it comes to reporting to our viewers what changes will impact arena games (and how).

I'm satisfied to critique changes instead of having the responsibility to make them. The developers have very difficult decisions to make with regard to arena balance and we should applaud them for making decisions in the name of equity, even if some of them might be unpopular.

With that, let's get into the juicy, juicy 3.2.2 patch notes.

Continue reading Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part II and a half

Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part II and a half originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Phat Loot Phriday: Frostforged Ringhelm

Mike Schramm — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Items, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Phat Loot Phriday, Death Knight

We haven't done a piece of armor in a little while (it's been mostly weapons lately), so here's a cool helm from the updated Onyxia with an interesting historical twist.

Name: Frostforged Ringhelm (Wowhead, Thottbot)
Type: Epic Plate Head
Armor: 1925
Attributes:

+83 Strength, +154 Stamina
+10 Frost resistance, +10 Shadow resistance. These are on here because this is the updated version of the Tier 2 helm for death knights.

Gallery: Phat Loot Phriday

Continue reading Phat Loot Phriday: Frostforged Ringhelm

Phat Loot Phriday: Frostforged Ringhelm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Patch 3.3 PTR: Area-of-effect damage cap change

Dominic Hobbs — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Guides, Death Knight

The area-of-effect damage cap is something that doesn't get talked about a whole lot. The first time I noticed it having a real effect on gameplay was in Mount Hyjal ("Hey, warlock! Wake up and throw us another Seed of Corruption!"). So what is it and what is patch 3.3 doing with it?

When you hit a single mob or player with a spell, or some kind of crude inertia-based impact utensil, the game will work out how much damage that target takes. This is based on the various offensive properties of you and the spell or utensil, as well as the defensive properties of your target. The same is true for area-of-effect (or AoE) abilities, though these tend to do less damage to a single target. Add in some more targets and, while it's still fun to do lots of damage to one of them (with the casting and the poking with sticks), you may have a chance to do damage to all of them at once. Let's say that you can do 2500 damage to a single target with one spell or stab, but can only do 1000 damage to a single target with your AoE ability. If you have five targets that you can hit with your AoE, then that will do a total of 5000 damage. Already we're having more fun than just beating on the one target.

Continue reading Patch 3.3 PTR: Area-of-effect damage cap change

Patch 3.3 PTR: Area-of-effect damage cap change originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Breakfast Topic: Which class am I again?

Matthew Rossi — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Death Knight

Tonight, after Trials of the Grand Crusader (four down, bug to go) we decided to hop onto some alts, which led to back to back TotC 10 on my DK and Shaman. Then back to back Ony 10, also on the DK and Shaman. And because I'd spent hours in TotGC 25 on my warrior before that, by the end of the night, I had no idea what class abilities I had anymore. Between popping Army of the Dead when they called for Heroism (it's bound to the same key) to trying desperately to use Chains of Ice when asked to Frost Shock the Ret Pally, I was in rare form. And it wasn't just me, either: the druid healer is usually a mage, the warlock raids as a priest, and the holy paladin healing the second Ony attempt has something like 10 alts at 80. I'm surprised he even knows where he is. We got it all done, mind you, but you can really tell the difference in smoothness between our mains and our alts, even as well geared as the alts often are.

So now I put it to you, gentle readers. Do you ever suffer from class bleedover? Are you ever on your druid finding yourself mashing the Consecration button, or on your Mage trying to use Hymn of Hope? Or do you find it easy to keep it all straight?

Breakfast Topic: Which class am I again? originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

New official Jaina and Sylvanas character bios

Mike Schramm — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Quests, Raiding, Lore, NPCs, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard continues to leak out the official information about Icecrown (the raid, as you know, coming in patch 3.3), this time updating their Under Development site with official bios for Jaina Proudmoore and Sylvanas Windrunner, two ladies (one living, one not-so-much) that will likely have a large role in the fight against Arthas Menethil, better known as The Lich King.

Sylvanas, you'll remember, featured in the Lament of the Highborne video early on in BC, where the story of her death and resurrection at Arthas' hands made it clear she's got unfinished business with the onetime-paladin turned Lord of the Scourge. And Jaina... well, Jaina's had a front row seat to Arthas' undoing -- they were childhood friends who looked like they were headed towards being more than friends, until Arthas found a big bad sword that turned him into a big baddie. It's going to be awesome seeing all of these storylines start meeting up together in The Frozen Halls and the raid beyond -- we can't wait.

New official Jaina and Sylvanas character bios originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Patch 3.3 PTR: Tier 10 set bonuses

Alex Ziebart — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight

As you've probably heard, the latest build just hit the Patch 3.3 PTR. With it comes a ton of great stuff, including the Tier 10 set bonuses! The usual warning accompanies them, they might change, they're not necessarily final, they could be place holders, et cetera. They look pretty flipping good right now, though. Chase Christian seemed quite shocked at the staggering upgrade the Rogue bonus is from what they had previously.

All set bonuses are listed below, classes arranged in alphabetical order.

Death Knight

Death Knight T10 Tank 2P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.
Death Knight T10 Tank 4P Bonus - When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 sec.
Death Knight T10 Melee 2P Bonus - Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities deal 10% increased damage.
Death Knight T10 Melee 4P Bonus - Whenever all your runes are on cooldown, you gain 3% increased damage done with weapons, spells, and abilities for the next 15 sec.

Continue reading Patch 3.3 PTR: Tier 10 set bonuses

Patch 3.3 PTR: Tier 10 set bonuses originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ask Mr. Robot

Eliah Hecht — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Classes, Death Knight

Simulators for WoW are nothing new -- Rawr, for instance, has been around for years, and is steadily snowballing into a one-stop shop for simulating all classes (it's not there yet, but I still love it). In case you're scratching your head at this point, a simulator is like a spreadsheet, but much smarter -- instead of using some general approximations to calculate how your gear is going to change your DPS, it basically goes ahead and plays a model version of the game for you. Edit: apparently Rawr is not a simulator -- it uses formulas that come up with the same answer every time, much like spreadsheets. We still love it anyway.

What is new about the simulator I want to talk about today, which seems to be entitled "Mr. Robot," is that it runs on the web, in Microsoft's Silverlight framework (Silverlight seems to have come about because someone at MS saw Flash and decided they wanted one too). This means it's cross-platform and there's nothing to install (well, except Silverlight, but you may have that already). They're only doing sims for Death Knights right now, but the team says more classes are coming (I hear Warlock is next, but don't quote me).

Continue reading Ask Mr. Robot

Ask Mr. Robot originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lichborne: Death knight leveling 68-80

Daniel Whitcomb — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, Walkthroughs, PvP, Leveling, Guides, Death Knight, Battlegrounds, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's column for all things deathly, knightly, and death knightly.

So, death knight. You're through with Outland. You just dinged 68 in Nagrand and want to move on to whiter, snow covered pastures. Maybe those pastures are in Northrend. Maybe those pastures are in Alterac Valley. Either way, let's discuss getting through those final levels and pushing you through to the end game.

Continue reading Lichborne: Death knight leveling 68-80

Lichborne: Death knight leveling 68-80 originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Warcraft movie subtitled on IMDb, likely fake

Mike Schramm — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard, News items, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors

A few tipsters have alerted us to the fact that the Warcraft movie now has a subtitle on the Internet Movie Database -- instead of "Warcraft," it's now called "Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King." Though keep in mind what we've said before: almost anyone can edit those IMDb entries, which means this is less than even a rumor. It could be that some IMDb editor saw the title of the book somewhere and confused it for the movie's new title, or it could just be that an overzealous fan threw in a title of their own. Especially this early in a movie's pre-production, nothing is guaranteed.

Two other things to note here: back at the BlizzCon panel a few years ago, Chris Metzen did tell us that the movie wouldn't focus on Arthas anyway, so calling the movie "Rise of the Lich King" seems like it would go directly against that plan. Then again, we do know that when Sam Raimi became attached to the project, he brought his own set of ideas, so maybe he's convinced Blizzard to tell the story of Arthas yet again. Secondly, the IDMb crew page has been updated: apparently the Aaron Sims Company has been contracted to do some early character work for the movie. Unfortunately, their work is all over the map -- he's worked on Evil Dead II (great), Men in Black (pretty good), and Doom (whoops -- one of the worst videogame-based movies around). It's early though -- we do know Blizzard won't let Uwe Boll touch the movie, so hopefully they've chosen worthy talent here already.

Warcraft movie subtitled on IMDb, likely fake originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments