Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket … for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right … Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

The first week of raiding after the release of patch 4.3 has more or less come and gone by this point, and while raiding isn’t everything, it is the primary focus on this tier. Not only do we finally get to tackle with Deathwing himself, but Blizzard also introduced the Raid Finder tool in order to bring more players into the raiding game. Another part of this patch was an effort to bring destruction’s damage up to par with that of our other two specs.

While there is still much more time needed in order to tell how exactly things are going to play out, for now it is time to lay down the initial impressions that raiding within this recent patch has left in my mouth. Some are good, some are bad, but the common denominator is that, hey — at least we aren’t mages.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Initial impressions of 4.3 raiding as a warlock

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Initial impressions of 4.3 raiding as a warlock originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

WoW Insider’s on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining
WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

One of the highlights of the new 5-man heroics was hearing Illidan affirm the fact that yes, I was prepared. It was a nice little wink back to the Burning Crusade trailer, and it made a heroic that was already wildly entertaining even more fun.

So how are you liking the new patch? We dug up a few posts from around the blogosphere with some first impressions of the patch, the raid, and more.

• Priest With A Cause shares some first impressions of the new heroics, void storage, and transmogrification.
• The Grumpy Elf is actually not grumpy at all about the new Raid Finder feature.
• Cannot Be Tamed has a first look at the Dragon Soul from a healing druid’s perspective.
• Big Bear Butt did not have everything go as he expected.

---

Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.

---

Filed under: The Daily Quest

The Daily Quest: 4.3 impressions and more originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

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 Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading on the Matticast.

Firelands is here! Yay! The other night, my raid took down entry bosses Beth’tilac and Lord Rhyolith. Both have their share of intensive healing phases. This week, I’ll walk you through a little bit of the threats involved and approach the two encounters from the mindset of both a healing leader and a healer. I’ll let you know when to save and when to use your cooldowns.

How much have the encounters changed since the last time I faced them on the PTR? I have to say not much, since the mechanics and damage are about the same. To be fair, when I tried them out on the PTR, it was done with a 10-player group. I found the live version 25-man to be much more forgiving at times, despite the high output of damage.

Continue reading Raid Rx: Lord Rhyolith and Beth’tilac healing impressions

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Raid Guides

Raid Rx: Lord Rhyolith and Beth’tilac healing impressions originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday — learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you’d like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com.

The patch has been out for a few days now, and surprisingly, it went extrodanarily well. Not saying that Blizzard is bad or it sucks at patching, but I don’t think there was ever a major content patch, especially one that introduced a raid, in which everyone was actually able to raid that day. Not only that, but maintainence wasn’t even extended for hours upon hours. Everything went well, at least on the technical end. For druids — well, it was a bit of a different experience.

Going into this patch, we knew that we were in for some changes, but there was some hope that Blizzard might at least do those changes correctly, that it would at least attempt to address the problems it sought to fix. Alas, we were not so lucky. Despite that, balance druids adapted, evolved, and carry on as we always do. Here’s how.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.2 impressions as a balance druid

Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.2 impressions as a balance druid originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

Pssst. Hey you. Yeah, you. Come here. Do you like clearing trash? Is clearing trash, like, the best? Do you love trash respawns on tight timers? Well, have I got the raid for you!

Patch 4.2 has been live on servers for a little over 24 hours now, which means that the Firelands raid is just as new. Hardcore raiders that we are (well, some of us), a team of WoW Insider writers headed into the raid instance on its inaugural night with the intent of offering our first impressions.

How would the new encounters test healers? What kind of issues would tanks face? Would crowd control efforts would be necessary? Matt Low of Raid RX, warrior tank Mat McCurley, and enhancement shaman Josh Myers all headed into the Firelands to find out. What follows are their insights and opinions from the point of view of a healer, a tank, and a DPSer, respectively.

Continue reading Firelands: WoW Insider’s first impressions

Filed under: Raiding, Cataclysm, Raid Guides

Firelands: WoW Insider’s first impressions originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

Do you like driving? Have a thing for coordinating DPS? Then you’ll want to raid lead this bus of a boss. This oversized, flaming rock guy is a fairly unique encounter that involves much driving. If you can navigate through those driving cones on a track, then you should be able to master this guy in a timely fashion. On the other hand, it feels like a 10-legged potato sack race. Some tight and precise control will be needed here for coordination. If even one person deviates and isn’t listening properly, everyone dies.

Again, spoiler warning on this one. If you don’t want to know what’s hot, just moooooove on.

Continue reading Patch 4.2 PTR Firelands Impressions: Lord Rhyolith

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding

Patch 4.2 PTR Firelands Impressions: Lord Rhyolith originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 18 May 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

When I was younger, I absolutely loved the Donkey Kong Country franchise. So when I got wind that one of the new bosses in Firelands was a flaming spider, the first thought that leaped into mind was “Oh my god, I get to fight Squitter!” He first appeared in Donkey Kong Country 2 as an animal companion for players. He had a goofy grin and had 8 sneakers.

By the way, that game came out in 1995 on the SNES.

Now that I’ve managed to remind some us how old we are, I’m going to move on and describe my first impressions with the Bethi’lac encounter after the jump.

Spoiler warning — don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Continue reading Patch 4.2 PTR Firelands Impressions: Beth’tilac

Filed under: Raiding

Patch 4.2 PTR Firelands Impressions: Beth’tilac originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 14 May 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

Greetings, one and all, and welcome to the patch 4.1 PTR, where I am happily testing out the new death knight flying ability — that, or I’m lagged to hell. I’ll let you believe what you want. Seriously though, the PTR for patch 4.1 is out and active, and there are death knight changes to be had. These changes are large enough that I figure it’d be a good use of our time this week to take a quick look at them and figure out what they do and what they’ll mean for our class if they go live.

Continue reading Lichborne: Preliminary patch 4.1 PTR impressions for death knights

Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Lichborne: Preliminary patch 4.1 PTR impressions for death knights originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider

• Tree Bark Jacket would like to let you all know that the green stuff you’re supposed to stand in is changing to different-looking green stuff you should be standing in.
• Righteous Defense has a few words to say about the Word of Glory changes.
• Totem Forest takes a close look at the 4.1 patch notes in regards to restoration shaman.
• Pink Pigtail Inn thinks patch 4.1 may be gum we’ve already chewed before.

Filed under: The Daily Quest

The Daily Quest: First impressions of 4.1 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WoW Insider