Posts with tag Freya

The supply of Frost Lotus is and always has been low, however as I mentioned in my last column, there are ways to farm it. The most popular one was to get saved to an Ulduar raid ID where Freya's Elders (Brightleaf, Ironbranch, and Stonebark) have been killed, but Freya herself hasn't, allowing the herb nodes to respawn. Getting the nodes to respawn simply requires a "soft reset" of the instance, which means nobody zones in for 30 minutes.

Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.

Let's recap Ulduar so far, shall we?

You've wrecked the Flame Leviathan. With a touch of kindness in your heart, you euthanized Razorscale. In a moment of vengeance, you laid some justice down on Ignis the Furnace Master. Guffawing in humor at his odd voice, you looted Deconstructor.

Then it came time to "bridge your experience" by beating up Kologarn. The Assembly of Iron proved to be no difficulty for your incredible raiding prowess. Even Auriaya and her small legion of adds gave you little pause.

Perhaps you've even stepped up to the man, the myth, the legend: Hodir. But now, Ulduar's got a life. You're facing down Freya.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, another Ulduar boss dies to moonkin nukes, feral claws, and tree slaps.

Chase Christian from Encrypted Text recently started a series of guides on doing Ulduar as a Rogue, and I must admit that the relative ease and simplicity of describing the role of a pure DPS while raiding is enough to make me sob quietly into a hanky. Meanwhile, I'm driving myself to the nuthouse trying to describe four entirely different roles for a single class. Pardon my saying so, but this column was the hell of a lot easier to write back when we sucked at everything that wasn't healing. Damn you, multi-spec viability! Damn you to HELL!

Before we get started, I'm going to continue what I did with the last Ulduar preview column, link to general strategy guides, and assume you have a basic familiarity with the encounter before delving into more Druid-specific advice. Today we're going to confine ourselves to Freya, as it's one of the few Ulduar fights I have now seen outside of the PTR. With luck, my computer is going to cooperate for a full clear this week plus a few hard modes, so I will be revising (and, as necessary, expanding) our current Ulduar Druid guides to reflect changes that Blizzard has made to the fights and a few notes concerning hard mode issues. Any changes made will be noted in next week's column.

• European folks can win a trip to BlizzCon in Blizzard-EU's costume contest.
• OutDPS takes a look at the Freya encounter.
• While not strictly WoW related, many of you will like to know that D&D Online is going free to play.
• Lodur over at WoM looks and Friends and Raiders: Raider Accountability.
• Holyform writes the Complete Idiot's Guide to Discipline Priest Spells.
• Our friend Medros of All Things Azeroth has a new podcast out called Group Quest. Check it out!

I know, it's another Retribution post, but since we got hit with the nerf bat again (ever so slightly) I decided to devote one last column to the spec before I rotate back to Protection. Besides, my past month or so has been spent raiding Ulduar as Retribution (with the first few forays as Holy) so I think that's what I'll talk about for now. Rather than talk about specific boss strategies, we'll talk about the little things we can do to perform at our best in Ulduar.

Flame Leviathan
First up is Flame Leviathan. Obviously, none of the usual strategies will apply here but one key point players should remember is that the vehicles scale with gear. This means having to prepare an outfit set optimized for the encounter. One thing to note about vehicle scaling is that it doesn't look at stats, just iLevel. Optimizing a gear set for this means putting the highest iLevel item you have in every slot. For "pure" classes, this is usually their normal set-up, but for Paladins who keep several sets of gear, an iLevel-optimized outfit can be composed of healing items, a few tank items, some DPS items, and even PvP gear. Players can use AddOns such as RatingBuster to determine an item's iLevel and outfit managers such as Outfitter or Blizzard's new in-game equipment manager to quickly swap gear.

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 continue our discussion of tips and tricks for Ulduar.

Last week, we covered the first few tiers of Ulduar bosses, and what Rogues can do to maximize their performance on these fights. I was happy to see some great tips in the comments as well, such as using Cloak of Shadows when you are afflicted by XT-002's Light Bomb. If you have any advice to add to the conversation, please use the comments to give us your thoughts.

This week, we'll be talking about the Keepers, the real meat and potatoes of Ulduar. These bosses drop our coveted Tier 8 (complete with its fantastic 4-piece bonus!) and other loot that you'll want to get your hands on. These fights are also more technically complex, and so you'll want to be prepared before attempting to down these bosses for the first time.

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

The blogs are still aflame with Ulduar excitement, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. I'll be heading back in there myself tonight, and these guys probably will be, too!

• The Yogscast has released their latest video, a nearly flawless strategy for Freya, which you can watch above. This Yogscast is second only to their How To: M'uru.
• Spicytuna takes a look at Razorscale from a Frost Mage's point of view.
• Honor's Code knocked down Ignis and the Iron Council, now they're looking forward to what's next!
• Less QQ, More PewPew continues their Ulduar video series, this time with Kologarn.
• Startin' a Ruckus is trying out a brand new Holy build in Ulduar and has some thoughts on the matter.
• Fel Fire has cleared through Mimiron on Ulduar10, but Ulduar25 hasn't been quite as smooth.

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of The Queue will be pretty short and sweet. Many of the questions that were asked yesterday have since been answered in other places around the site, so I just went ahead and skimmed over those ones
to answer what hasn't been addressed already. Ready? Set? Let's go!

Becky asked...

"I may be wrong but it seems to me of all the in-game non-combat pets, there are no dogs but plenty of cats. What's with the lack of dogs? My mage wants a puppy."

You may have heard that a number of guilds have cleared Ulduar to Yogg-Saron already, which to me is perfectly fine. I like to think that a lot of good, properly-coordinated guilds will kill Yoggy this week, and the Blues agree with me. Of course, this week's Yoggy kills were on the easiest possible difficulty, so world first or not, it doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of fame and fortune.

This is the beauty of Ulduar -- if you want prestige (and the best gear), you have to earn it by flexing your raiding muscle and beating encounters on their respective hard modes. If you don't have the chops or the time for the highest difficulty content, then you can still beat the instance and see every encounter.

But, of course, you want those 239-level items.

So you should probably read after the jump and find out how to activate each boss' hard mode, yeah?

Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Naxxramas-10 or Naxxramas-25, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we do some homework.

With Patch 3.1 and the release of Ulduar fast approaching, it's time to sit down and prepare for the upcoming content. Now, you might be the sort of raider who loves a surprise or two, and as a result you haven't looked at any of the preview coverage of Ulduar; if that sounds familiar, you probably don't want to continue reading this article.

If, however, your guild is going to rush into Ulduar as soon as possible, aiming for server or even world firsts, you need to be prepared. Let's take a look at the resources you can use to maximise your chances of success against the unknown.

The last couple days of Ulduar testing have been a wash, delays and cancellations cutting things short. As mentioned by the developers when they announced the cancellation of the EU's Auriaya testing, recent tweaks and retuning hadn't yet made it to the PTR, they were contained in a future build that hadn't hit those servers yet. Really, it would be rather pointless to test those bosses. Due to this, they've pushed back all testing and changed up the testing schedule. Testing is now on hold until tomorrow, which means that either this evening or tomorrow morning, we'll be seeing a new build on the PTR.

North American realms:

• Friday, 3/13, 4PM PDT: Mimiron
• Saturday, 3/14, 4PM PDT: Hodir
• Sunday, 3/15, 11AM PDT: Flame Leviathan
• Monday, 3/16, 4PM PDT: Ignis the Furnace Master
• Tuesday, 3/17, 4PM PDT: XT-002 Deconstructor
• Wednesday, 3/18, 4PM PDT: Kologarn
  

European realms:

• Friday, 3/13, 19:00 CET: Mimiron
• Saturday, 3/14, 19:00 CET: Auriaya
• Sunday, 3/15, 19:00 CET: Flame Leviathan
• Monday, 3/16, 19:00 CET: General Vezax
• Tuesday, 3/17, 19:00 CET: Thorim
• Wednesday, 3/18, 19:00 CET: Freya

Again, this is the new testing schedule for the upcoming week, and the one that was passed around yesterday should be disregarded.

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Before we get started today I just want to thank everyone for participating in my Hawaiian Pizza poll. It was a silly, spur of the moment sort of thing, and it really made my day to see it creep up to around 11,000 votes! Thank you all very much for humoring me.

Again, there are a few Ulduar spoilers in this post, but only minor. Be warned. Also, vote Alex.

Adrexani asked...

This has always puzzled me, Arthas is a Death Knight, Death Knights are dead, yet no where in lore do I see that Arthas died, so did he die or is he still alive?

Daelo, our cloth-wrapped lead encounter designer, has just posted the schedule for which bosses will be tested in Ulduar on the 3.1 PTR this week. As you may be aware, they're not opening all bosses for testing at once (at least, not yet), and bosses are up only during certain hours, to let the devs watch players (try to) beat them.

This week, here's the schedule for the North American realms:

• Tonight, Tuesday 3/3, starting at 4 PM PST now: Flame Leviathan, the (in-)famous vehicle boss. Only the 10-man version should be tested, as the 25-man one is "not properly tuned." I'm really curious to see how this fight is going to work out.
• Wednesday, 3/4, starting at 4 PM PST: Ignis the Furnace Maker.
• Thursday, 3/5, starting 4 PM PST: Hodir.

And for the European realms:

• Wednesday, 4/3, 1 AM CET: Flame Leviathan, 10-man only.
• Thursday, 5/3, 7 PM CET: Thorim.
• Friday, 6/3, 7 PM CET: Freya.

Thorim on Thursday, Freya on friday? I think they did that on purpose. Daelo also promises that General Vezax and Razorscale will be soon available for European testers, and XT-002 Deconstructor for US testers.

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.