The Queue: In your city, stealing your mailbox
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 7th 2008 at 7:00PM
Today's edition of The Queue is going to be short and sweet, but it's a Sunday and nobody really has much to say on a Sunday! So let's dig right in, starting with actodd's question...
Can you explain armor penetration a bit? Is it designed more for tanks or DPS (or even heals)? Where should it fit into the 'hierarchy' of stats say, a feral tank has?
Armor Penetration isn't especially good in Wrath, it's been gutted since The Burning Crusade. It used to be amazingly good, but made certain things downright imbalanced. Each point of Armor Penetration used to reduce 1 point of Armor, straight conversion. It was absurdly good in PvE, and it made PvP pretty broken. Melee classes stacking Armor Penetration ruined casters more than ever before because it had a much bigger impact on cloth wearers.
In Wrath, they changed the straight armor conversion to a rating and percentage system to try and fix that. So you don't pierce 125 armor or whatever, you penetrate 3% or 10% or 0.5%. Because of that and its weight in the item budget, it isn't worth it. For anybody. I was talking to some very, very good Melee players in my raid about Armor Pen, and the most positive thing said about it was, "It's least terrible for Warriors."
There are other factors in play, such as how it's affected by Sunder Armor and abilities like that, but that's a bit unnecessarily number crunchy for now. Basically, it isn't any good anymore, especially not for a tank (or Healer). Avoid it.
Xtian asked...
Why did they remove the western mailbox in SMC? My guild's current theory was that it was a Retbox, and so needed to be nerfed. Any confirmation?
You know how the Blood Elves stole Tempest Keep and M'uru from the Naaru and Draenei? Well, Aldor Rise needed a mailbox awhile back. Vengeance is ours!
Tib asked...
Is it possible to get the Icecrown quest acheivement without doing lots of 5 man quests? I seem to be stuck at around 119 quests done and can't find any more yellow exclamation marks - lots and lots of blue ones though.
You won't have to do all of the group quests, but you will have to do a lot of them. There are a massive amount of 5-man quests in Icecrown, but they're worth doing anyway. Very cool quests.
Ian R. asked...
How come all of the WoW Insider bloggers are so incredibly handsome?
I don't have an answer to that other question you asked, I haven't heard anything about it. But this one? We shower.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Elísq Dec 7th 2008 7:14PM
Is there anyway of making shield of Shield of Righteousness Imba? Can you stack your block value to hit Mad hits like 4k?
Jayus Dec 8th 2008 8:31AM
Its already pretty damn good.
In mostly blues with 3 epics at 80, I have over 1k BV, more with a shaman or DK in my team, and yes you can get it to crit for 4/5k easy.
So just keep building gear with str/bv on it, and watch those numbers build.
Clasifyd Dec 8th 2008 9:07AM
My gear is very mediocre currently, but with the new Libram of Obstruction, I can regularly crit a ShotR hit for 4.6k. I would recommended any prot paladin spend their first 15 emblems on that.
I've also thought about making a high strength/BV set for dailies and the like, and I think it would be pretty obtainable to get a 7k+ crit.
jr Dec 8th 2008 2:43PM
Yeah with the new libram and my Lavanthor's Talisman's "click to use" I've crit for over 6k and almost always crit for 5+k.
ElMouchoLoco Dec 7th 2008 7:16PM
Question for "The Queue":
¿Why did Blizzard, again, the main city to be shared for both factions, even when they know we will have double population, and double lag?
I hate the city just because my computer fall from near 60 fps to near 15... or worse.
Chris Anthony Dec 7th 2008 7:29PM
I seem to be the only player whose DPS goes *up* in Dalaran. I still have trouble in Shattrath, but Dalaran isn't a problem even on my laptop.
Hodder Dec 7th 2008 8:07PM
your dps?
Blasterion Dec 7th 2008 10:44PM
fps lag decreases dps so vice versa
Bionic Radd Dec 8th 2008 7:29AM
Upgrade. I have no lag in Dalaran, at all. If you have less than 4g of ram, that would be a good place to start.
Chris Anthony Dec 8th 2008 9:42AM
Yeah, I posted a correcting comment last night, but it didn't make it through for some reason. Bah.
Bionic Radd, you should probably qualify that statement. It's a fair guess that most people playing WOW are running 32-bit operating systems, which can't address more than 4GB of RAM - if you upgrade beyond that point, you won't see any improvement at all, and your OS won't even register that the additional RAM is *there*. Only 64-bit operating systems can use more than 4GB of RAM, and even then, different variants of the OS offer different RAM limits.
As a rule, if you're wondering whether your OS is 32-bit or 64-bit, it's 32-bit.
Hangk Dec 8th 2008 10:03AM
Further pedantry regarding memory limits:
- 32-bit versions of Windows can see a maximum of 3 GB of RAM. If you have four GB, the high GB will sit unused.
- A 32-bit process (ie, like World of Warcraft) running under Windows has a maximum process space of TWO GB of memory. This is true whether you are running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows.
What this means is that if you have at least 2 GB of RAM already, you will see very little, if any, performance gain from adding any more. If you're lagging in Dalaran, upgrade your video card and/or CPU.
Thrush Dec 8th 2008 4:00PM
I hate when people automatically say "upgrade" without knowing any further information. Have you tired turning video effects down? I play on a laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 128MB onboard video card. I have almost all of the Video Effects sliders turned all the way down and I have no FPS problems in Dalaran.
OSDeath Dec 7th 2008 7:23PM
Question about Tailoring. Did Tailoring get a bit short changed in WotLK? I see Alchemy with their weekly discover, I see Jewelcrafters with Perfect cut procs, Engineers can make BoE Motorcycles and I see Leatherworking being able to buy patters with leathers and furs. And then I look at Tailoring that is paying 3G a thread, specialty cloth that is hard to make and aside from a virtual BoP Flying Carpet nothing much fun for them. Is there anything coming down the pipe for them to make it a fun profession?
hedyd Dec 7th 2008 9:30PM
Don't forget Northern Cloth Scavenging:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=59390
It may not sound like as much fun as weekly discoveries or extra-quality crafted items, but it's a tailor-only skill, and it seems to add up to quite abit of cloth.
Of course, you need 5 cloth to make a bolt, and 7 or 8 bolts to make a (moslty useless) item... so it's a bit less of a buff and more of a requirement. It does go nice with enchanting, as you can then just DE all 200 of the items you crafted for skillup.
Or , you can also sell the cloth straight on the AH and make some quick gold (until everyone else is max skills, then turn around and buy it for cheaper)...
Joel Y. Dec 7th 2008 7:25PM
DELICIOUS VENGEANCE!
TASTE MY BACON OF LIGHT!
*Nom nom*
xtazey Dec 7th 2008 7:28PM
Well, depends on the spec ofcourse, but atleast I've been wreaking havoc with mace-combat on pvp with something between 20-to-40% armor penetration, which is quite retardedly much when going against plates.
thejavster Dec 7th 2008 7:32PM
i just hit 80 and was wondering where is a good place to do dailies?
Mayhew Dec 7th 2008 8:57PM
Zones that I like to do dailies in right now are The Storm Peaks and Zul'Drak. Icecrown also has quite a few, and Grizzly Hills has several for those who don't mind PvP.
The nice thing about Zul'Drak is the Troll Patrol daily and the 5 dailies that it spawns. Doing all six of these takes me roughly 10-12 minutes, and it nets me anywhere from 45-60g and almost 1000 Argent Crusade rep. Not bad for 10 minutes of work.
The daily quests in Storm Peaks are also pretty nice. There are up to 6 from the Sons of Hodir, 1 from the Frostborn (for Alliance), and 2 others in Brunnhildar Village. None of them takes very long to do and many of them give over 13g as a reward.
Once you get used to the quests, you can work out a rotation that lets you plow through them in short order.
Clasifyd Dec 8th 2008 9:20AM
I would recommend doing the Sons of Hordir, as well. They have something for everyone, and are the only place non-scribes can get shoulder enchants (post-bc).
My favorite dailies, however, are from Icecrown; namely the airship gunner ones you find on the ramparts in the north central part of the zone. I don't remember them earning any rep, but they do reward some cash, and are terribly fun. Oh, and the 'King of the Mountain' daily is fun and takes about a minute.
fatsephy Dec 7th 2008 7:47PM
Chris Anthony said...
"I seem to be the only player whose DPS goes *up* in Dalaran. I still have trouble in Shattrath, but Dalaran isn't a problem even on my laptop."
That would be because the only thing you can hit in Dalaran are the level 1 critters no? ;)