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[1.Local]: Making ourselves at home


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.

Welcome home to WoW.com. Moving into a new place can be hectic, but we think our new digs at WoW.com are pretty darn comfy. In addition to a fresh face and identity for WoW Insider, we've introduced the beta launch of WoW.com Profiles. Show off your characters with a profile on WoW.com. By downloading the WoW.com addon, you can also keep all of your friends up to date on what you're doing in game, and make blog posts and upload screenshots directly from your game client.

Not a big fan of the social media scene? You don't have to change a thing – WoW.com offers all the old content you know (and hopefully love) so well. "If I'm being honest, when I first saw that the site had changed, I didn't really 'feel it,'" commented reader Retropally. "After days of it sinking in, I'm loving it. The new theme is awesome -- and really, nothing has changed in the way of the posts that are written ..."

Join the [1.Local] gang and add your thoughts about our new look and social features -- and hop on across the fold to see what else readers were chatting about during the past week.

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Seals? In MY purse? It's more likely than you think

Amidst all of the cost rebalancing for Champion-level rewards in the Argent Tournament, the CMs have indicated that there would soon be new ways to obtain Champion's Seals. With the advent of patch 3.1.2, it seems Blizzard has started to follow through on that!

We received a bunch of tips in the mail over the past day or so, all letting us know that their Champion's Purses -- one of the reward choices for Champion dailies -- could randomly contain a whole 'nother Champion's Seal. This is a pretty big deal, especially since you have multiple chances per day. Players are reporting the percentage to be somewhere between 25% to 50% per Purse.

Not too shabby! This also means that those mounts you want -- including the recently-reduced Argent Hippogyph -- might be a little more within your reach, and faster at that.

We'll keep you informed of changes sure to be forthcoming, given that the CMs also mentioned that the Hippogryph cost reduction was (in part) due to their desire to add even more rewards in future patches.

Secrets of the Tuskarr: The Cheena Vala


I have to say, I still have a pretty soft spot for the Tuskarr. They're sort of minor players in Northrend, overall. You help them kidnap some kids and fight off some vikings, grab a penguin pet and a fishing pole, and you're done, and on to bigger and better things in other zones. They don't even merit art for their females. Still, they're always pretty jovial, they look like big fat and happy dudes, and they got turtle boats. It's difficult not to like them.

One of the things they did is spur me to finally get a character maxed out fishing. I was always sort of planning to, one of these days, seriously, but it took the Tuskarr to push me over the edge, just because they made it so chill and awesome. Ok, so the epic fishing pole probably had something to do with it too, but still.

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Breakfast Topic: What do you want to see in the Argent Tournament?


So here's the deal. We've been told we have more Argent Tournament content coming, that's a given. As late as a couple days ago, Blues were telling us, for example, that we'll definitely see more ways to earn Champion's Seals.

In short, come 3.2, it seems more than likely that we can expect the Goblins to be done building that coliseum, and the next phase of the tourney to be underway. So the question is, what exactly will we see?

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Scattered Shots: The Hunters of lore

Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a wide variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be looking at some prominent historic figures in Hunter lore.

For Hunters looking to get into role playing, a good place to start is to look at the Hunters that came before you to get a feel for common themes upon which you can base your character concept. There are many prominent Hunters in Blizzard lore that spans multiple Warcraft titles, both for the Horde and the Alliance, which you can look to for inspiration. Today, I'd like to spend some time getting to know some of the great Hunters of Azeroth.

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The OverAchiever: Insane in the Membrane

Most of you are excited for 3.1 so you can start raiding Ulduar, or take advantage of the new class changes. But I know what some of you are on pins and needles for. It's the new title The Insane.

Insane In The Membrane is exactly what it sounds like -- an achievement for people who are completely nuts. To earn this title you must be willing to spend a lot of time destroying and raising obscure factions in Azeroth. I mean a lot of time. It requires that attain the following:

Honored with Bloodsail Buccaneers
Exalted with Everlook
Exalted with Ratchet
Exalted with Booty Bay
Exalted with Gadgetzan
Exalted with Ravenholdt
Exalted with Darkmoon Faire
Exalted with Shen'dralar

Yep.

If you want to get started on this brain-breaking journey, just follow the jump.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Building Up To It


First off, this week's PTR news: basically, nothing new from the last time we talked about it. Arms warriors can pick up Juggernaut now. It's fun. I'm already sick of the macros I'm seeing with it, although I haven't had that much time to do more than charge and then Bladestorm a few mobs just for the laughs. As soon as I get a chance to PvP with the changes I'll tell you if the caster debuff on Overpower from Unrelenting Assault makes any difference.

I get a fair amount of email asking me what target numbers a warrior should be aiming for when he hits 80 and is ready to tank or DPS in instances. It's kind of a hard question because for some stats the best answer is always going to be "as much as you can get" - you're never going to hit a number on stamina where you should be satisfied, you'll always want more and more and more of it. However, there are reasonable suggested minimums for these things, based around what will be possible or impossible to accomplish. A lot of this depends on the folks you find yourself running with, of course. If you're just starting heroics but the healer you'll be running with has best in slot raid epics from all the 25 man content in the game, it's likely he'll trivialize the content to such a degree that you can be significantly lower than normal and still do fine. For those of us who don't have a pocket god coming along to heal our runs, however, you may have to pay attention more to your gearing.

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Breakfast Topic: Emotes to improve cross faction communication


Some days, I just don't feel like playing my main character, so I hop onto an alt. Before long, I encounter some poor clothie of the opposite faction camping an elite quest mob hoping that someone else will show up and offer to group. Usually, the ground is speckled with skeletons.

Then the dance ensues. I salute, and the Mage waves. The Mage starts /saying things that I don't understand. I shrug. I wait for awhile, hoping that this will signal that I am willing to let the Mage go first. I'm hoping that my politeness infers that I will help.

Finally, I point at the Mage, then at the mob. Taking a leap of faith, the Mage tags it, and I run around behind to help, perhaps with a guildmate at my side.

After our parting farewells, I sit down to await a respawn. Personally, I think it would be much easier if I could say "I'm here to save the day!" or "I come in peace." Of course, there is some charm involved in finding a way to use our current emotes to communicate other messages, especially after Blizz added new ones in 2008.

How do you communicate to a player of the opposite faction messages that aren't directly built-in to emotes? Are you aching for a certain emote that would help you do this, or do you enjoy having to puzzle it out by piecing together existing ones?

Argent Tournament rewards found

MMO Champion has posted some of what are believed to be rewards from the Argent Dawn Tournament coming to the servers, and they are pretty awesome. All of the rewards will apparently be purchased with a new currency called Champion's Seals, and those will be earned from doing dailies, some instanced activity (likely a type of mounted combat -- think PvP-esque, but against mobs), and all of the other various tasks the Argent Dawn is lining up for us. The Tournament itself will appear in 3.1 (and Alex has already posted a great gallery of what it looks like on the PTR), but other activities won't appear until a later content patch.

There are epic weapons for everyone (right now priced at 25 seals, though that may change -- the weapons seem to be a little higher 5-man Heroic level), as well as blue boots, belts, gloves, and neckpieces for most classes and specs (all just 10 seals -- about equivalent to the Revered options the endgame reputations). Additionally, you can get tabards for each faction city (at 50 seals, that seems expensive, but they could have a special proc or ability granted with them), you can buy specially colored faction mounts for 100 seals, and at the top of the heap is an Argent Hippogryph for a whopping 250 seals. Seals, it seems, will also be able to be exchanged for reputation commendations, so if you just want to rep up with a certain old faction rep, you can do that, too.

Pretty enticing. We have yet to see how exactly seals will be earned or how easy they'll be to come by, but it seems like Blizzard is planning to make this a catch-all option for endgame in terms of picking up rep, mounts, or gear. Just like the champion tabards let us choose just how we could earn rep for the endgame factions, the Argent Tournament appears to be a chance for folks at level 80 to pick up whatever rep or options they like by doing whatever the Tourney offers.

The Daily Quest: Of Commandments, insane faction grinding and a little Johnny Cash

The Daily Quest took a break for a few days to stare longingly at Tier 8 armor and try to process the myriad class changes coming. But we're back with a list of great WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
And in honor of the Sarth encounter enjoy the Shade of Aran flame wreath pic above.

The Queue: Sea shanty edition


Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Good afternoon, everyone! I'll waste no time trying desperately to be funny today, we'll just jump into this thing.

Carda
asked...

Which heroic dungeon provides the most rep? Of course, this will probably vary depending on the amount of trash pulled (full clear vs. "just the pats, ma'am"), but accounting for bosses and essential trash pulls, where can I farm to max out my rep as quickly as I can?

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Encrypted Text: Guide to Rogue gear for new raiders

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'll discuss gearing options for a Rogue who wants to break into the raiding scene.

Last week, we looked at what stats are important for a PvE Rogue, and how those stats interact with each other and why they're important. To summarize, hit and expertise ratings are very important until you reach a few key milestones, after which the pure damage options like Agility and Attack Power become more attractive.

The key is to be over 99 hit rating (the Yellow Hit Cap - YHC) but under 315 hit rating (the Poison Hit Cap - PHC) and to never be over 214 expertise rating (the Expertise Cap - EC)? If you look in the right places, reaching these numbers becomes fairly simple. Bind on Equip Leatherworking goods, Heroic drops, and reputation rewards will form the core of your gear as a newly 80 Rogue. Let's explore where to find the right type of gear to prepare you for that Naxxramas raid next weekend. Much of this information can be found at Shadow Panther, however I have collected the pieces that specifically sport Hit or Expertise that can be acquired in 5 man Dungeons or below. Remember that the PHC and EC are "caps" and not necessarily goals, and that you shouldn't sacrifice other stats to reach these goals unless you have used a spreadsheet to determine which is the better piece of equipment.

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The OverAchiever: Completing the Lunar Festival Achievements [Updated x2]


Every week The Overachiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession.

Saturday marks the beginning of this year's Lunar Festival, an in-game event celebrating the real life celebration of the Lunar New Year. With plenty of quests, party favors and, of course, shiny clothes, you'll have many chances to complete the meta-Achievement To Honor One's Elders. Not only will this result in the title "Elder", but you'll be another step closer to a Violet Proto-Drake,

Having experienced this event twice, the big question is what's new this year? Though all of the Achievements are new, they cover older quests. The only difference is the brand new Elders of Northrend Achievement and the additional elders added to the Elders of Dungeons Achievement.

After the jump, an overview of how to complete To Honor One's Elders

UPDATE: Looks like the minimum level needed to complete the meta-Achievement is 80 as one of the Elders can only be found in the Heroic version of the Wrath instance Gundrak. According to this comment on WoWHead, you must kill Moorabi to open the secret tunnel to the Heroic-only boss Eck. Standing in the same room as Eck is Elder Ohanzee. Also, Omen has been verified as a level 80 raid mob this year.

UPDATE v2: Updated a few directions and added link to player list of other Achievements to grab while pursuing coins.

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Reputation gains on grey mobs changed in 3.0.8

3.0.8 just keeps giving us more surprises. The newest patch note update tosses us this fun number: Reputation gained from mobs no longer deprecates based on your level! This means that even if you're level 80 and killing mobs in Stratholme for rep, you'll still gain the full amount of Argent Dawn rep you would've gotten if you were level 60 (or the mobs were 80). Good news for those of you trying to get Argent Champion, Guardian of Cenarius, or Diplomat, although the folks that already ground those reps without this change might feel it trivializes those titles. For those of who you haven't started the grinds yet, maybe you should consider waiting a little bit and taking advantage of this change to save your sanity a bit. This isn't the first time a change like this has been made, but it's a welcome one.

WI reader Ray actually notified us of this change on the PTR a few days ago, but apparently I'm so slow that the change managed to make the updated 3.0.8 notes before I posted it. This is me hanging my head in shame. I'LL MAKE IT UP TO YOU, RAY.

(Pictured: A grey [kangaroo] mob)

Arcane Brilliance: Gearing your Mage up for Naxx



Each week, Arcane Brilliance commandeers a cannon atop one of the towers in Wintergrasp and launches flaming balls of explosive Mage content down upon the unsuspecting masses below. Deadly, deadly Mage content. You may not know this, but Arcane Brilliance gets a tenacity buff whether it's outnumbered or not. Suck on that, Warlocks!


Patch 3.0.8, and all of its unabashed Arcane Mage love, is just around the proverbial corner. If you missed Arcane Brilliance's coverage of the changes, you can find it here, still preserved in its original state. We have other business to attend to this week, though. Last week, we finally rounded out our series of leveling guides by going from level 70 all the way to 80. Now comes the age-old problem: what to do once you've hit the cap?

As it has ever been, hitting the current level cap--much like graduating from high school or college--only serves to show us how far behind the curve we really are. We go from the top of one ladder to the very bottom of another. No self-respecting raid-leader is going to invite a Mage to Naxxramas who is still sporting the mismatched greens and blue quest-rewards he had on when he dinged 80 somewhere in the middle of Zul'Drak. The good news in Wrath of the Lich King, however, is that the power gap now isn't as difficult to bridge as it has been in previous incarnations of the end-game.

After the break, we'll go over some of the changes and list a selection of pre-Naxx gear and where to find it.

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