We've just completed a few runs of Patch 3.2's new 5-man dungeon, Trial of the Crusader, and we present you with our gallery of the loot we obtained. The items on Normal mode are item level 200 -- on par with Naxx 10 and Heroic dungeons. We've yet to complete a Heroic run due to bugs, but we'll update the gallery with whatever we get on subsequent runs.

The items look to be well-itemized given their level, and hopefully they'll fill some gear gaps that Naxx and Heroics have missed.

If you've completed the dungeon and have loot we haven't seen yet, send us a legible screenshot using our Contact form. Let us know on what difficulty setting you completed the instance as well.

---

Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

---

Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, a.k.a. Daelo, posted an updated testing schedule for the Crusader's Coliseum on the Patch 3.2 PTR today. The good news is that EU players get to try another set of bosses -- this time the Faction Champions. The bad news is that the US PTR instance servers are still broken following last night's aborted testing attempt. Not good.

The updated schedule is as follows, with Daelo's full post after the jump:

Here's the current schedule for Trial of the Crusader PTR testing:

On the European test realms:

Faction Champions - Saturday Night, July 11, starting at 19:00 CEST.

The issues that were preventing raid testing on the North American PTRs are still not fully resolved. We're looking into alternative means of enabling testing on these realms. I'll update this thread when I have more information.

As dear Wryxian announced earlier today, we're getting a new build on the PTR. The unofficial notes for this build are already making the rounds, and they're... not very interesting! Perhaps the most notable change is that the change to mount casting speed, previously only applied to ground mounts, now affects flying mounts as well.

When the casting time change to ground mounts in Patch 3.2 was announced, Eliah Hecht, Michael Gray and I had a long debate about why they wouldn't have applied the change to flying mounts as well. We ended up coming to the conclusion that they were avoiding it for PvP reasons; only needing to be out of combat for a second and a half to mount up and zoom off to escape a fight that's not going your way would be a little... cheap. The outlier here was the Druid Flight Form, which is an instant cast spell. Everyone but Druids hate that though, right? It's pretty freaking annoying when you get into a scuffle, you gain the upper hand, and then the Druid just runs in circles like a headless boomkin spamming their flight button and hoping it eventually takes. So we figured that didn't count. It was a perfect example of why being able to fly away quickly was a bad thing.

Boy, are our faces red. Flying mounts get the 1.5s cast time now as well. Sometimes trying to figure out Blizzard's reasoning doesn't really pay off. I'm not going to complain that much, though. I certainly appreciate being able to get into the air faster!

---

Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

---

I was just bemoaning that we haven't gotten a chance to see patch 3.2's new raid content yet. It looks like that chance will come sooner than I expected: tomorrow night!

Daelo has just posted a testing schedule for Trial of the Crusader (a.k.a. Crusader's Coliseum).

• North American realms: Lord Jaraxxus, Thursday, July 9, starting at 7 PM EDT
• European realms: Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane, Thursday, July 9, starting at 19:00 CEST

Both of these fights will be available in normal mode (10 or 25) only, not heroic. The new 5-man, Trial of the Champion, will be open "later in the PTR cycle."

He also notes that Koralon, the new Vault boss, will be up, and you'll be able to access it if your side has Wintergrasp. Tanking and DPS Patchwerks will make a return. Unlike the patch 3.1 PTR tanking Patchwerk, this one just hits really hard ("as hard as Algalon"), all the time (instead of ramping his damage up over time).

Oh, and one more thing: there is, apparently, no trash at all in this raid. Woot?

---

Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

---

We can't believe it either – Turpster has been let loose on WoW.com to bring you videos from in and around the World of Warcraft! You've heard him on the WoW Insider Show, and now see him on TurpsterVision right here on WoW.com.

First up a bit of housekeeping; thanks to all of you who took part in last week's contest -- over 500 of you! A winner has been chosen via the highly technical method of a /random in-game roll. Sorry to the others of you who didn't win this time, but who knows, maybe in the future we'll have another giveaway on TurpsterVision!

This week we take a trip on the PTR and experience the new Northrend Children's Week, doing the impossible and completing both sides of the event to show you what is on offer. Lesley Smith posted about the event before and we even put up a handy gallery if you would like to take a closer look at some of the quest text.

Another week, another Patch 3.2 PTR build with no access to the new instances yet. I'm sure they'll appear on the PTR when they're ready (™). In the mean time, what tweaks and changes have they made in build 10072?

Well, for one thing, they added in the Crusader's Coliseum versions of the Undying achievements. A Tribute to Immortality requires you to reach the end of the heroic-mode raid with 50 attempts remaining (possibly a placeholder quantity), and without any of the raid members dying during boss encounters. It doesn't say for sure, but I would guess this is calculated in the Ulduar style - if you down boss A without anyone dying one week, boss B the next, etc., you get the achievement.

In lieu of the now semi-traditional Proto-Drake mount fancy title, those who complete this feat are granted a black or white Crusader's Warhorse (as pictured above-right).

Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight class column, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb, who's still wearing mourning black for AE Unholy Blight. And also because black looks awesome.

I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes.

This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.

Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it's not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There's a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one's going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.

"Cower in fear, puny mortals! Maintenance time is upon you!"

Maintenance time ho! Yes Europe, it's nearly the middle of the week again. I'm honestly not sure how that happened but once more unto the breach. Unfortunately the downtime is a little longer than normal this week, hence poor Serisa quaking in fear in the picture above. Blizzard has announced that all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 1:00pm (CEST) tomorrow.

So, that makes a good few hours in which to kick your heels. Kind of annoying but it's a necessary evil. Once more coming to our rescue, Daniel W. has got a nice round up with a heavy focus on the cataclysmic news from last week. Cataclysmic, get it? Anyway, last week was quite news intensive and if you start to get withdrawal, what about hitting the PTR for a bit and trying out all the juicy Patch 3.2 goodness.

Each week Arcane Brilliance celebrates Independence Day in its own special way. Most people celebrate the 4th of July by setting off explosive devices of varying sizes. In similar fashion, Arcane Brilliance also enjoys blowing things up. The difference is that whereas most people tend to set off pretty fireworks, Arcane Brilliance prefers to cause Warlocks to explode. The result isn't nearly as pretty, but to Arcane Brilliance, it has its own very unique charm.

I don't know if you're trying out the patch 3.2 PTR or not, but if you are, you should go out and mess with Living Bomb. Like, right now. Go cast it on some things. That's right, I said things with an "s" on the end. As in plural. As in more than one thing. Watch those things burn to death simultaneously. Rejoice.

Yes, Blizzard's present to Mages on this day when the United States celebrates its Declaration of Independence from foreign rule is apparently the ability to blow up multiple targets with Living Bomb. On the PTR, you can now have Living Bomb up on as many targets as you can feasibly cast it on before its duration or your mana pool expires. The tooltip doesn't yet reflect the change, but Ghostcrawler has confirmed that this is not a bug, and that Blizzard is intentionally testing the idea.

How awesome would this change be? Read on after the break to hear my take on it, but let me just say that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not very awesome and 10 being more awesome than anything, this change would make the scale explode on a molecular level and then reform over billions of years into a new planet of awesome.

For those of us who like to collect stuff in WoW, one of the cooler announcements for patch 3.2 was the inclusion of a whole new set of raptor hatchling pets, dropped around the world by rare and elite raptors. Of course, it was also an announcement of dread for serious collectors who can tell horror stories of killing thousands upon thousands of slimes and dragons for rare pets before. But will it be all as bad as that? WoW fansites have been on the case.

Mania, maven of Hunter pets, has also been looking into the drop rates and drop mobs, and has compiled a handy chart on her blog. Between Mania and the news on Warcraft Pets, it seems we can mostly confirm that the rare raptors (such as, for example, Takk the Leaper) will always drop their pets, while those that drop only off elites have a very rare drop rate more similar to the aforementioned slimes or dragons.

As we've heard, patch 3.2 will seriously streamline the Emblems system, allowing players to pick up Ulduar-level Emblems even just by running Heroics. Though lots of the other patch 3.2 changes have taken the spotlight lately, the Emblems change is definitely still a big deal, and while lots of "hardcore" players are up in arms about the changes (they had to raid for the same gear that people will now be able to get just by running Heroics, and even the brand new Emblems of Triumph gear will be attainable through Heroic dailies), other players are just confused by the whole thing. Fortunately, if you haven't yet wrapped your head around what all the changes mean, Clearcasting has a really excellent, thorough writeup about the Emblems changes, both explaining what you'll be able to get from where, and why Blizzard has decided to do things this way.

The biggest fear seems to be that players who have never raided before will start walking around in Ulduar- or even Coliseum-level gear, and they'll get invited to raids based on their gear, only to find that they're clueless about what to do. But I like Arioch's point there: does that mean we don't have clueless raiders now? Of course we do -- the gear you're wearing doesn't say anything about what you've done now, and it'll say even less after the patch. Players are already requiring achievements, and even that doesn't necessarily guarantee you're a good player.

Will there be bad PuGs after the patch? Of course, and there are bad PuGs now, too. But this is definitely a helpful change for anyone with alts, and while yes, it will allow non-raiders to get better gear, and it will probably bring raiders back into Heroics more often, it still won't affect those who are raiding at the highest levels. They'll still get the best gear earlier than everyone else, so if that's what's important to them, they've got nothing to complain about.

---

Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

---

There's been a lot of speculation as to what Patch 3.2's new raid instance, the Argent Coliseum, will contain. We got a taste of what bosses we might fight a little while back when the 3.2 PTR launched and some Achievement information was datamined, but I've taken it all one step further.

As with my previous post on the 5-man content in the Coliseum, I've datamined a ton of information from the PTR game files, including NPC and spell data (another massive thanks to Boubouille of MMO-Champion for his help), to determine not only who we're facing up against (for sure), but how exactly the encounters will go down once we've gotten our epicly-clad heinies into the octagon Coliseum.

The same disclaimer as last time applies. The encounters could change at any time, datamining isn't an exact science, I could be misinterpreting files, etc, etc. But I'm pretty solid on what I've written down, and anything I'm speculating on will be noted as such.

Any spell or ability listed in this guide will likely be a random rank, given the spell database's knack for throwing me 10-man and 25-man spells in the same area! Don't assume that the damage values are accurate until you get killed by them!

Remember: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ready? Let's go!

Okay, gonna say this right now.

This article is so full of spoilers you'll think you're in a movie with Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. The Argent Coliseum will be so spoiled that its parents bought it a car before it could drive. There will be less mystery to the Argent Coliseum than in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village."

There. So. Thanks to Boubouille of MMO-Champion's help, I've spent the past few days digging through the spell and NPC data in patch 3.2's current PTR game files, slogging through thousands of new entries to find out how exactly the new encounters in the Argent Coliseum will be like (and who they'll be!). Well, I've been mostly successful in that regard, and I'm prepared to spoil about 90% of the Coliseum's encounters for you. But that's not all! This latest PTR patch was also kind enough to provide me with a ton of sound files related to the Coliseum and its set of instances, which has given me a very firm insight into what happens around the encounters. This particular article will focus on the 5-man instance.

Basic caveats apply: The encounters could change at any time, datamining isn't an exact science, I could be misinterpreting files, etc, etc. But I'm pretty solid on what I've written down, and anything I'm speculating on will be noted as such.

Any spell or ability listed in this guide will likely be a random rank, given the spell database's knack for throwing me 10-man and 25-man spells in the same area! Don't assume that the damage values are accurate for your favored raid size!

Remember, BIG SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP. But if you can't contain yourself, then go right ahead, dear readers. Let's go down the rabbit hole.