Posts with tag loken

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. We're moving from the quarter-finals into the semi-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

Welcome, one and all, to the last semi-final match of this season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves! This week, we'll pit semi-finalists Anub'Arak (Azjol-Nerub) against King Ymiron (Utgarde Pinnacle). Both bosses enter on the wings of strong victories. Anub'Arak comes to the Thunderdome with a 64.5% approval rating from his last match, while King Ymiron brings a 64.1% rating from his own supporters.

But first, a big upset from last week's Thunderdome. In a spectacular reversal of their July deathmatch, Ley-Guardian Eregos pulled out a decisive victory over Loken. After being voted back in to the Thunderdome despite his earlier loss, Eregos showed new confidence to claim a position in this season's finals. A solid 56.5% of spectators gave Eregos the upper hand this time around, compared to only 36.9% the last time he faced off against Loken. We'll recap the battle as well as opening up voting for Anub'Arak versus King Ymiron, after the break.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. We're moving from the quarter-finals into the semi-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

This week, the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season of Two Bosses Enter moves into the semi-finals with a repeat match: Ley-Guardian Eregos versus Loken. If you believe voters cheated Loken out of his last victory against the Ley-Guardian based on their distaste for Eregos and The Oculus, now's your chance to set things right!

In last week's final quarter-finals battle, King Ymiron demonstrated the power behind his throne with a decisive Thunderdome victory over Krik'thir the Gatewatcher. More than 64 percent of the crowd roared its support for the King, while just shy of one-third believed Krik'thir could hold his own. Here's a sampling of the debate from the stands:

Dreamstorm: This is one complicated fight. I'm going to wait with voting until I read what others think and why.

Qot: Two Bosses Enter is sort of like the NBA All-Star voting. The people decide, but they usually decide based on reputation or history rather than actual skill. Xevozz was perfectly tuned to kill Loken, but Loken's a BAMF in the lore, so he wins the match.

Dreamstorm: If the king wins, we'll have ourselves a Nerubian, a Vrykul, a blue dragon and a creation of the Titans ... PIT FIGHT!! :D

Eddy: I was kind of thinking that. I feel like I'm biased towards King because then the fights would just seem so balanced -- the end bosses from a number of lore-intensive instances. I feel like the lore supports the king's victory.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the quarter-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

When the magical energies had died down, it was indeed Loken who remained standing in last week's Thunderdome matchup against Xevozz. The Dark Titan fought for every vote, claiming his victory with 52% spectator approval. We'll review how things went down after the break, plus you'll get a chance to vote in the last quarter-finals match of the season: Ymiron versus Krik'thir.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the quarter-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

In a barrage of wings, Ley-Guardian Eregos confronted Skadi the Ruthless in the skies over the Thunderdome last week. Let's just say it was no party for Mr. Skadi. Eregos took the match with a stinging 75.3% of the spectator vote, sending the hapless Frost Vrykul plummeting from the match. We'll get a view of the beat-down after the break, plus we'll set up this week's battle between Loken and Xevozz.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

Returning underdog Loken showed why he was among the fighters readers voted back into the season, downing Gal'darah this week in the Two Bosses Thunderdome. Fifty-eight percent of the vote went to the Dark Titan from the Halls of Lightning. Gal'darah brought in some positive comments but ultimately lacked the votes to carry him through.

Elovan: Gal'darah could easily shift to rhino form and simply Impale Loken anytime he tries to use his novas. That plus his insane whirlwind could take down Loken pretty easily imho

catharsis80: Don't forget Enrage, enabling him to attack 125% faster than Loken does, and considering the article says they have "comparative overall damage output"... Yeah, I think the results are quite obvious, since Gal can interrupt and Loken can't. PLUS, Pulsing Shockwave will do practically nothing to Gal, since he'll be all over Loken like white on rice.

Nolls74: This, plus Gal has his rhino buddies who will charge Loken and knock him around like a rag doll. All of you picking Loken have no sense of style and are only judging it based on "Loken sucks for players; he must be the ultimate boss."

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

This week's match in the Two Bosses Thunderdome makes the healer in me cringe: Gal'darah (Gundrak) versus Loken (Halls of Lightning). Gal'darah steps into the Thunderdome on the laurels of a solid 68.4 percent victory in his last battle against Moorabi. However fearsome his reputation, Loken creeps into the ring as an underdog, having lost his most recent battle against Anub'arak and subsequently re-earning a berth through the reader vote that brought back three vanquished combatants.

This week's ground rules:

• Assume that the opponents share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output.
• This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory, which shall in no way hinder either opponent from using his usual resources.
• Don't get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter.
• Don't neglect style, story and scale.

Let the doors open, let the crowds take to their feet. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to Round Two of the five-man originals Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

The results from the last match of this bracket are in: Anub'Arak (Azjol-Nerub) has clearly given Loken (Halls of Lightning) a solid pounding, 55% to 40%. While some readers seemed puzzled by this week's pairing (kozom: "bug + zapper = ???"), Sunsinger wove a lengthy tale of Anub'Arak's emergence as the victor:

Yes, he knew this presence. He felt it only few times before, but beings of metal and lightning did not forget things easily. After all, his body was a masterpiece, one that probably surpassed all of the Titans' creations left on Azeroth in terms of fine craftsmanship. Not only had he known the appearance of his guest the moment the latter stepped into the Halls, he also was easily reading his intentions. Even if not for his mind sensors, it wasn't hard to tell that the Spider King came here to kill him. For a being of such ambition, the Lich King was even late to try and eliminate his most immediate rival, the Old God, because both of them were not the type of beings that liked to share power, and the Prime Designate knew that he stood somewhere between them and that sooner or later he would have to face the forces of the Scourge. And he would defeat them.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to Round Two of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

Here we are: the final matchup of the second bracket of Two Bosses Enter, featuring the five-man bosses of original Wrath. Before we loose our competitors to one another's depradations inside the Thunderdome, we'd like to remind spectators that we'll have an extra vote next week to balance out the bracket. We'll be taking your votes from among every loser so far (including Round One). The top three underdogs will return to compete in the next bracket (for a total of 16 competitors).

And now ... Anub' Arak of Azjol-Nerub versus Loken from the Halls of Lightning. The ground rules:

• Assume that the opponents along with their minions share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output.
• This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory (or a Thunderdome facsimile thereof), which shall in no way hinder either opponent from using his usual resources.
• All the usual minions will be available to each boss.
• Don't get caught up in gameplay mechanics and what actual players might do in each encounter.
• Don't neglect style, story and scale.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

Loken. You knew he was going to win, even before you saw who he was going up against – he's just built that kind of a rep. As with all Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves matches, however, it's how they get there that makes it interesting. Apologies that I wasn't able to wrap up this battle for you last week while I was on vacation. Rest assured that I'd never leave our hungry spectators hanging! This week, let's look back at some of the lore-based points readers brought out about Loken versus Ley-Guardian Eregos.

Rai: Even if by some miracle Loken managed to win, due to Eregos' being faster, able to shift and most likely being more intelligent, he'd still die. Something so powerful that doesn't require five Drakes and coordination to take down the Ley-Guardian is bound to attract the attention of Malygos ...

Tridus: "Something so powerful that doesn't require five Drakes and coordination to take down the Ley-Guardian is bound to attract the attention of Malygos ..." But that's where it gets interesting!

Loken kills Eregos.
Malygos gets involved and kills Loken.
Loken, dying, summons Algalon.

I do believe Malygos now has a bit of a problem. :)

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

We've witnessed some pretty strange matchups during the first round of the Wrath five-man boss season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves. We think the first bracket has successfully set the baseline: it's not who wins or loses – it's how they play the game. You folks out there in the stands have been great. We've evolved beyond lame comments droning on about "X is a boss?!? HAHAHA Y wins, my group beats X every time," to recent battles, with truly captivating scenarios such as Bobobe's ironic twist at the end of last week's Anub'Arak versus Elder Nadox battle.

For the final match of this season's first bracket of battles, we present to you another unusual (even in TBE's terms) scenario featuring two bosses that are probably among players most dreaded bosses: Ley-Guardian Eregos of The Oculus versus Loken from the Halls of Lightning. Yeah, yeah, we know ... the Drakes ... Come on, you didn't really think we were going to perch Loken atop one Super-Drake with all the abilities, did you? It's a fantasy series! Loosen up your deathgrip on those Drake reins, and let's look at this week's ground rules.

• The Drakes are out. Poof – gone.
• Assume that Eregos and Loken share similar levels, health pools and comparative overall damage output.
• Do me a favor and read the previous bullet point again, please?
• This deathmatch takes place in neutral territory.
• Ley-Guardian Eregos will be able to summon his Whelps.
• Gameplay mechanics are significantly different here, since we have no Drakes. Don't worry about what actual players and Drakes might do in the encounter; they're not here.
• Focus on the three S's: style, story and scale.
  

Now, we all know who will probably capture the most votes – but without the Drakes and a comparatively level playing field for damage done, are you certain? Join us after the break to cast your vote and tell us how you think the winner pulls it off.

Heresy! A Veronica Mars quote rather than Firefly. Eh, who cares, it's a holiday weekend, so we're wild and crazy. We're continuing our march through Glory of the Hero, and today we're going to tackle the first of Wrath's "halls," the Halls of Lightning. Before we do, here's a round-up of what we've done previously in the OverAchiever: GotH series:

• Part I: Ahn'kahet
  
• Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme
  
• Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep
• Part IV: Gun'drak

HALLS OF LIGHTNING

Lightning Struck

As long as your tank and healer aren't in greens, this isn't an overly difficult achievement. Bjarngrim and his adds path around a series of 3 platforms and will pause at each, gaining a Temporary Electrical Charge that increases their damage. You simply need to pull Bjarngrim while he still has this buff. During the fight you can force him to lose it by killing his adds, and if you're still gearing up, that's a more reasonable option than trying to survive the damage. The abilities of note here are Mortal Strike, which is a fairly nasty hit in the range of 15-16K, and Whirlwind, which can two-shot melee DPS.

It's been some time since I last looked at the Top Lists on the official World of Warcraft site. I only thought to glance at it since I stumbled upon my own post about it from December of last year, when Loken reigned supreme as the most dangerous mob in the game. These days, Yogg-Saron's other minions have taken his crown from him. Interestingly, the most dangerous mob bounces back and forth between the first boss of Ulduar and one of the last bosses of Ulduar. Flame Leviathan is apparently far more deadly than I'd ever have expected, and either there are more players than I thought fighting General Vezax and Yogg-Saron, or the few guilds on those two bosses really like wiping. I guarantee that my raid added a thousand deaths to the Guardian of Yogg-Saron tally a few of those nights.

The correlation between Flame Leviathan being tops or Vezax being tops seems to be a matter of the day of the week. Monday night leading into Tuesday morning, Vezax and Yogg-Saron reign supreme. Wednesday and Thursday when everyone has a fresh Ulduar ID? Flame Leviathan is ahead significantly. Makes sense. 'Risen Ghoul' is consistently near the top, too. Nerf Death Knights plz k thx.

The most interesting stat of all of these this time around is certainly not most dangerous mob, though. No sir. The Most Completed Quests section is hilarious. You can see the effects of this past Tuesday's lengthy downtime for certain battlegroups. How can you tell? Well, the date of the data is when it was uploaded to the site. It's the data from the day prior, however. The data listed for Wednesday (which is what happened Tuesday)? There are no daily quests in the Most Completed like there usually is, no sir. It's the entire Death Knight starter quest chain. Yes, that's right, you can actually see how many people on North American realms rerolled throw-away Death Knights on different realms because their server was down. The very first quest, In Service of the Lich King, was completed 64,152 times.

Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week we look at which heroic encounters will help strengthen your new healers and why!

A question I get asked from healers is how can I prepare myself for raiding? On the other side of the spectrum, guild leaders ask me how can they judge or measure a healer in other areas other than healing output. Let's knock out two birds with one well timed stone.

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?

All this talk of 3.1 we've been seeing lately is fantastic! Class and talent changes everywhere, dual-spec announcements (see? I told you!), it's all great stuff. For me, though, the big draw of 3.1 is -- read my lips -- one new dungeon!

I know, I know, raids is raids, but I'm getting pretty tired of Naxx, and I want a nice long raid to sink my teeth into. New strats to learn! Setting a course through uncharted territory! Wiping because we don't know the fight yet! I'm just so excited.

Of course, the one thing we haven't found out about Ulduar yet is who the heck we're killing for their purples! Being a reasonable man who reads his quest text, though, I've been able to divine the identities of a few personalities we're likely to encounter. The Ulduar screenshots from beta, with their diverse wings and amazing architecture, also hint to these same folks. They'll be involved, and I'll put good gold on it.

Who's ready to rumble?