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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Editorial: Thoughts on the Ensidia ban

Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cheats, Bugs, Guilds, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Paragon scores world-first legitimate 25-man Lich King kill

GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed.

Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!

Filed under: News items, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Saronite Bombs and similar items disabled [Updated]

We do not know whether or not this was used in the Lich King kills we've seen so far (Ensidia's kill screenshot suggests they did), but Daelo hit the European forums to make the announcement that they've temporarily disabled Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. What does this have to do with the Lich King? Well, Daelo says...
We just made a hotfix that disables the siege damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. The siege damage of the bombs was causing the Frozen Throne platform to rebuild, which greatly decreases the difficulty of the encounter.

We'll reenable the siege damage in a later update when the issue with the Frozen Throne is fixed.
It is a longstanding tradition for end bosses to be exploited in the most hilariously awful of ways, so seeing something like this isn't all that surprising. Here's hoping nothing else like it crops up.

Update: Ensidia has released a statement regarding their use of this bug.

Update, take 2: Ensidia's raiding crew has received a 72-hour ban from the game (as well as loss of loot and achievements) for using Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics."

Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Ensidia scores world first 25-man Lich King kill [Updated]

Last night was the world first 10-man kill, tonight it's the world first 25-man kill. The infamous Ensidia of Tarren Mill-EU has scored the kill, and there's a news post on their website confirming it. (Ensidia's site seems to have fallen offline, but you can still read their story via Google cache.) They walked away with Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand and Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas. Well done, crew!

WoW raiding is a bit strange these days, because this kill is actually just the beginning of the road. Now we get to watch the hard modes, which is likely to take quite a bit longer. That's our hope, at least. Will Ensidia walk away with hard mode Lich King as well, or will a group of underdogs come from behind? Will Stars show up in the spotlight again? Only time will tell.

Update: Ensidia's raiders have received a 72-hour ban from the game for "abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." A hotfix was applied last night to prevent the use of Saronite Bombs (which Ensidia used) in the encounter and Ensidia's loot and achievements have been removed. So that world first? Still up for grabs.

Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Daelo and Ghostcrawler discuss the Lich King

The latest edition of Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's very sporadic email newsletter (and no relation to our old name, WoW Insider) has been released. Issue 32 features a note that the Starcraft II: WIngs of Liberty site has been revamped, blurbs about the mobile Authenticator and the Armory app, and some calls to buy their merchandise.

More interesting for WoW fans, though, is an interview with Scott Mercer (Daelo), WoW's lead encounter designer, and Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), a crab who needs no introduction. They discussed the arc of Arthas and the Lich King from Warcraft II through World of Warcraft (congratulations again to Blood Legion on their 10-man world-first).

Please note that here there be spoilers for some details about the Arthas fight, so stay away if you want it all to be a surprise.

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Filed under: Interviews, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Blood Legion scores world first Lich King kill

About one hour ago, WoW.com was notified that Blood Legion of Illidan-US has scored the world first of 10-man The Fall of the Lich King (as well as The Frozen Throne.) Ten lucky Blood Legion members walk away with the Kingslayer title, and a... statue of Tirion Fordring? Well... okay. Why not? Congratulations, Blood Legion. Good luck on the hard modes next week!

Before everyone jumps to conclusions and bemoans WoW being easy mode, keep in mind this is only the normal mode of the 10-man difficulty. Blood Legion is a high end 25-man guild, so this kill was not what you would call "pure." A kill this quickly doesn't mean the encounter was trivial, because if that were the case we'd have seen many more kills last night. It simply means Blood Legion had an edge, to say the least.

Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Enigma's Lich King encounter livestream

Enigma is already hitting the Lich King this evening, and they're livestreaming it for all to see. As of this posting they have 15 attempts left, so we're in for quite the show. Considering it's a livestream of the raid encounter there are bound to be spoilers in it. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't watch.

The embed has been placed behind the cut, because there are autoplay issues happening. The last thing we want is the stream starting up automatically for people that don't want to see it. As a note, if the video is not playing correctly for you, just hit pause and then play again. If that doesn't work, refresh.

Update: They've ended the stream. That's all, folks!

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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Patch 3.3.2: Fall of the Lich King sound files

We're in heavy spoiler territory yet again with datamined sound files straight out of Patch 3.3.2, so we've hidden the video containing them behind the cut below. Do not click through the break to watch the video if you do not want to be thoroughly spoiled. The sound files contain lines spoken before, during and after the final confrontation with the Lich King. If you do choose to watch/listen, please don't run around spoiling your fellow players. Let them make that decision on their own.

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Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Spoilers: Fall of the Lich King cinematic

Be warned, there are incredibly massive spoilers for the end of Icecrown Citadel beyond the cut below, and in the embedded video. We will say no more until you've clicked through. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading right now. Seriously!

Update: The video has been removed due to a copyright claim by Blizzard.

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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Spiritual Guidance: Food, flasks, and potions


Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

I'm the fish girl.

I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it's a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it's a woman. I guess it's a maternal thing, or maybe it's wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn't always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader's wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better.

Then one day, after I had moved onto another guild, I found myself surrounded by raiders who were lacking vital nutrients in their diets. That's how it began: first I was helping with the fishing, then I started spending my own precious spices. The first day I laid a feast in a raid, I felt my feminist side cringe. But before I go off on that tangent, let me clarify that this article isn't about fish (not exclusively anyway), it's about the various consumables available to priest healers.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Wrath of the Lich King

Spiritual Guidance: Paying the hybrid tax



Every Wednesday, Fox Van Allen uses his dark, shadowy powers
to take the reins of Spiritual Guidance, causing severe harm to others in the form of large, yellow five-digit numbers. Holy and disc brethren, alike -- come join the dark side before his shadowfiend eats you.

Fact: Priests are pretty much awesome.

It's because we're versatile. We can DPS the living snot out of Lord Marrowgar in shadow, and then change to discipline so we can cover the raid in Power Word: Shields and Renews for Deathbringer Saurfang. Heck, we can even do both. We're just that awesome.

But awesomeness comes at a price, my friends, and that price is called the hybrid tax. It's the term commonly used to explain why our DPS is designed to lag behind that of mages, warlocks, hunters, and rogues -- the pure DPS classes. If you're a jack of all trades, you're supposed to be a master of none.

(It's cool though, they need the handout. It really sucks not being a Priest.)

We can be forgiven, though, for looking at Recount or a World of Logs parse and thinking that whatever the hybrid tax is, it's just way too high. But is it really? Are we finally doing the kind of damage that we should?

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Wrath of the Lich King

We have our pony: Invincible revealed

Guys? We have our pony!

The Warcraft twitter account just linked to a new page on the official World of Warcraft site regarding Invincible. This stallion served Arthas in life as his mount. Unfortunately, Arthas worked his mount a little too hard and slipped on ice. Arthas had no choice but to give Invincible a merciful death. (You can find more details about the story if you've read Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden.) When Arthas became the Lich King, he visited Invincible's grave and raised him from the dead in order to serve him.

How do you get him?

Oh, it's fairly simple to get. This pony can't get hungry, tired, or feel pain. Great for a Lich King to use when traveling around, right? All you have to do is pry it from Arthas' cold, dead hands. Beat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel on heroic mode, and Invincible will serve you.

But we don't know if everyone in the raid is going to get one (like Ulduar drakes) or if only one mount will drop (akin to killing Sartharion with 3 drakes up or the Mimiron head mount from Yogg-Saron).

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

Stats on updated T10 tank plate revealed

If you like tanking (sure, we all do) you may be interest in this update to yesterday's post about tier 10 tanking gear: the dodge on gloves and defense on chests is being removed and the armor is being increased to bring them in line with the off-set tanking pieces due to the popularity of higher armor in Icecrown Citadel, and we now finally have hard numbers. So far, it looks as if the armor increases are pretty significant (882 armor on iLevel 251 gloves, 1064 armor on iLevel 251 set chestplates) and should make up for the dodge or defense lost, especially as armor has increased in popularity due to the Chill of the Throne debuff in ICC. We're told that the armor increase scales with iLevel so the iLevel 264 and 277 versions will also have proportionate armor increases. This is a patch 3.3.2 change so don't panic if your gear doesn't have the armor yet.

This makes me even more happy that I chose to focus on my tier set over offset pieces to get the four piece bonus as soon as possible. It makes these pieces far more attractive when compared to the high armor offset Cataclysm Chestguard and Gauntlers of the Kraken. (the Sanctified 264 versions should have exactly the same armor). I'd like to have seen a little more armor on the pieces, myself, but it's still pretty solid.

Filed under: Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site

Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We've translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut.

Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We'll post the official English notes when they're posted as well.

Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it.

Dungeons and Raids

Icecrown Citadel
  • The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?)
Halls of Stone
  • Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he'll run faster during the escort event.
Forge of Souls
  • Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often.
  • Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.

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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Upcoming tier 10 tank armor stat changes


With Icecrown Citadel's unpopular Chill of the Throne debuff, or as we like to call it, "Getting out of Dodge," tanks have had to re-prioritize in terms of avoidance and mitigation stats to the point where tier 10 gear might not be as desirable as Blizzard intended. Thankfully, they appear to have realized this, and change is coming! To tier 10 tank gear, anyway. Blizzard CM Zarhym posted a note on the official forums announcing their plans for said gear:
"We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they're provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces."
He also noted that Emblem gear will continue to be comparable to the tier gear in terms of stats and, for those concerned about Feral tanks, they'll be keeping an eye on gear scaling on druid tank gear as well.

Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

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