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Weekly news roundup with Panser of TradeChat

TradeChat's Panser returns with this week's WoW Insider news recap, where we look back at the hottest news from the past week and whatever other kickin' rad things may have come our way. This week's topics include: If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Survival and the modern warrior

The Care and Feeding of Warriors Survival and the modern warrior
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I'm not looking for a buff to warrior DPS. Every time I talk about warriors as DPS (and half the time I talk about warriors as tanks) it comes back around to people assuming I want a DPS buff, but I don't. At least, I'm not asking for our damaging abilities to do more damage. What I am asking for is parity in terms of methods to be able to apply that DPS.

Quite frankly, raiding today has lots of methods to prevent a warrior from doing damage. There are mazes to run, debuffs that force you to switch targets, interrupts to hit, and conditions that will instantly kill you if you don't take them into account. To use one example, let's look at Heroic Jin'rokh. Both his Ionization and Lightning Strike force players to move out of optimal position (you don't want to be decursed of Ionization inside the Conductive Water, or you'll blow up the raid) and in the case of Lightning Strike, you'll spend half the phase dancing around. For a warrior, this is DPS death. We have no abilities outside of a couple of throws (one with a cast time) that can do damage at range, and we have no method to remove Ionization or prevent its application.

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Filed under: Warrior, Raiding, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

The Queue: A special Saturday special

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Alex is doing the Queue on a Saturday? What is this madness?

gazaa07 asked:

Is there any reason why Pandarans can't be druids? the Pandaran's main lesson was about balance so that (and the elemental - or alemental) are why they are shaman. Balance between light and dark is why they are priests. So wouldn't balance with nature and the giant turtle that is The Wandering Isle allow them to be druids?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

WRUP: Living Patch 5.3

WRUP Living Patch 53
For obvious reasons, we asked your intrepid WoW Insider staff how the new patch is going for them. It's always interesting to see how things go once the patch is live, versus the speculation and opinions before the patch.

This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend. To all the heroes -- in America and elsewhere -- who've done so much for us: thank you.

Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) My hunter is getting a lot of love right now. Having a blast finally playing through the horde side of things, although I think the horde population is kinda dead on my realm. May have to relocate...

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Around Azeroth: The straw that broke the Warchief's back

Around Azeroth The straw that broke the Warchief's back SATURDAY
He bombed Theramore. He stole the Divine Bell. He tried to have Vol'jin murdered. He killed Rhonin (although that may not have been such a bad thing.) But when Garrosh Hellscream sicced his Kor'kron on Gamon, the patron saint of vulnerable, oft-murdered NPCs everywhere, he went too far. Soon, an army of level 5 quilboars, gnolls, murlocs and other quest-bait will swarm on the Warchief, dying by the millions in a pointless assassination attempt. Such is the way of Azeroth. (Thanks to submitter Layonhooves of Drakkari [US-H] for the screenshot!)

Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

Filed under: Around Azeroth

Breakfast Topic: Where will your character rest for the last time?

Breakfast Topic Where will your character sit for the last time
Back in the era when playing an MMO was an all-or-nothing proposition, choosing a final logout location could be an emotionally overwrought event. Today, however, players drop in and out of games with regularity. We may skip patches or even expansions that don't particularly appeal to us. We may temporarily step out of Azeroth to focus on real-world goals. We may fall out of love with a character and pick up an alt, only to return months or even years down the line.

Even so, I confess to remaining sentimental about where I log out before an extended (or final) absence. I can still tell you exactly where each of my EverQuest characters is camped out, and I've bookmarked a couple of YouTube videos that run past those areas so that I can occasionally recapture their spirit even without access to the game. I'm a little less attached to logout spots for my WoW characters simply because I use nearly all of them at one point or another for screenshots or in-game contacts for WoW Insider. After this many screenshots, they've ended up scattered across some fairly odd spots.

Where will your main character log out for the very last time? Is it someplace you've grown comfortable with over the years? Somewhere representative of that character's adventures or character? A familiar spot behind the counter of a favorite vendor or banker? Or perhaps, like the screenshot above, somewhere holding a tinge of tragedy?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Review of Dawn of the Aspects, part four

Review of Dawn of the Aspects, part four
It is absolutely official, now -- I have no idea how the Aspects actually came to be Aspects. For that matter, Tyr's purpose seems to be just as mysteriously vague. However, there was far more light shed on both questions in part four of Dawn of the Aspects, now available for a variety of e-readers. Despite the muddied waters of draconic origins, it is apparent that more of these mysteries will be answered in full by the time the fifth and final installment rolls around.

What did we know, to date? We knew that the Aspects were empowered by various Titans and charged with watching over the world. But that's about it -- the process of how that empowering came about is by and large a giant unknown and has been for years. What surprises me is just how willing I was to let the origin of the dragonflights slide as something that wasn't terribly important, in the long run. But when one considers that their origin appears to be tied to the fate of Tyr, it suddenly bears far more interesting implications.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Lore

What's the best way to get Lesser Charms of Fortune?

What's the best way to get Lesser Charms of Fortune
What's the best way to get Lesser Charms of Fortune every week? Although Blizzard recently reduced the amount of Lesser Charms of Fortune players need each week (by lowering the requirement for the weekly quest Mogu Coins of Fate from 90 charms to 50 charms) we've still got to get them somewhere. So what's the best way?

Prior to patch 5.3, it seemed like everyone was swearing by pet battles. Players were claiming they'd earned hundreds to thousands of Lesser Charms just killing critters in Stormwind. A hotfix eventually nerfed the drop chance for Lesser Charms in lower level pet battles, but higher level pet battles are still rewarding charms to anyone who wants to put in the time. Is it still worth it?

Patch 5.3 has also added a couple of changes to Lesser Charm collection to really mix up the equation. Level 90 creatures that are outdoors in the world now have a chance to drop Lesser Charms of Fortune, while rare spawns in Pandaria and bosses in Battlefield: Barrens are guaranteed to always drop the charms. The result of this? Hordes of players in Northern Barrens farming Lesser Charms off the new Kor'kron mobs there.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

WoW Moviewatch: ROFLMAO!

I can't remember the last time we ran this video, which is a shame since it's one of the breakthrough machinima hits that brought the hobby to the masses. And by the "masses," I mean me. One of Oxhorn's biggest hits, ROFLMAO remains as hilarious to this day.

Enjoy a few moments of silly WoW song. Sorry if it gets stuck in your head all weekend. Then again, it's better to have in your head that Tik Tok. ROFLMAO!
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Have you done any heroic scenarios?

new scenarios

Have you done any heroic scenarios?


So, the new patch has been out for a few days now, and one of it's more touted features -- heroic scenarios -- has left us here at WoW Insider all scratching our heads a bit. See, surprisingly, there's no Dungeon Finder option to queue for them, meaning that currently the only way to do them is to get a premade group of three and zone into the scenario from its Azerothian starting point. Talk about a blast from the past! Suddenly visions of Shattrath trade chat in 2009 whirl before me, in which never ending whispers from those poor souls trying to get through heroic Shadow Labyrinth filled my chat log. "Will you tank?" they'd ask. "No," I'd respond. "I'm a healer!" (These were the days before dual specs.)

Ahem. In any case, trade chat has once more filled with calls of "LFM heroic scenarios," something that hasn't been seen around these parts in a while. We're all relearning how difficult it can be to round up a group without the Dungeon Finder around to grease the wheels. So, have any of you managed to successfully corral your groups and get through a heroic scenario or two?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

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