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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Soloing Zul'Gurub like a Q
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 3rd 2009 at 2:00PM
As Alex mentioned yesterday, he and I will be taking turns with the queue. So don't fret, Alex will be back in your loving graces tomorrow. As this is my first post for the queue, I feel like I'm boldly going where no man (Alex is a superman) has gone before. And who better to welcome me than John de Lancie's iconic Q character? With Picard oddly facepalming himself... huh. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Anyways, I digress. On with the Q!
037 asked...
"Is it possible to solo Zul'Durub to farm the mounts? If it makes a difference, I am a 10 Man Naxx geared Enhancement Shaman."
Yes and no. The raptor boss you'll probably be able to take down pretty easily, but you might have some trouble with the tiger boss.
For the raptor boss, make sure you have your cooldowns ready for the tight spots and you know how to conserve mana when you're anticipating needing some healing. There were several people able to solo the raptor boss in BC. For those that don't remember the Bloodlord Mandokir fight (aka the raptor boss), you run up the stairs to kill the speaker, then Mandokir comes down and he and his raptor attack you. Kill the raptor first and then go after Mandokir.
With regards to the tiger boss, or High Preist Thekal, you'll want to get each add down to a very low health. Since each add needs to die within 10 seconds of each other, you'll want to bring them down to the range where it'll only take one or two shots to kill them. Save heroism for the end of the adds, since if you get an unlucky miss when you're taking down the add you're pretty much done for.
The other consideration with the Thekal is that you're going to be getting hit a lot, and taking a large amount of damage.
Yltharion asked...
"I haven't found a single titanium node in Scholazar Basin post 3.0.8. Did they limit the nodes only to Icecrown and Storm Peaks? I didn't see such change in the patch notes."
The titanium nodes are there, and I can attest to having several on farm myself. But therein lays the issue. With patch 3.0.8 came the hot new feature of one hit mining. Where titanium nodes might have required three to six hits to clear, it now only takes one to mine all the ore. That means people, especially Druids and Shamans who don't have to worry about dismounting, are mining the nodes faster.
Loudfiero asks...
"My laptop is running Vista and runs WoW-WotLK acceptably. I want to install Windows 7. I hear it offers better performance than Vista. Is WoW compatible with it?"
Yes! I am running Windows 7 on my laptop (along with Ubuntu) right now, and it works great. WoW runs about 10 FPS faster than it did in Vista. I should disclose that there were a few things I didn't do in Vista to increase the frame rate; namely I had Aero turned on, which makes all the windows have transparent borders, etc... But I have those on because my laptop primarily is used to do WoW Insider work in my comfy living room chairs and couch, and not play the game.
Besides the improvements to WoW, Windows 7 is a much much much better OS than Vista. Without going into lots of details, let's just say that when Windows 7 is released, everyone will want to upgrade. Vista will become the new ME.
If you do end up downloading and installing the beta of Windows 7, just be aware that despite its abundance of awesome-sauce, it still is a beta. And that beta is going to expire eventually, and you'll probably want to have all your data backed up or stored in a way so that you can do a completely clean reinstall of Windows when the final/retail version of Windows 7 comes out.
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!
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Athinah Feb 3rd 2009 5:07PM
I would like to ask if anyone knows when the heck blizz is going to put new druid skins out! i have heard many things a lot from blizz themselfs, They said they were not going to do it as soon as the expansion is out but soon after wards, its been months since its been realised and there is still no word of this. Is this going to end up like player housing or what?
Gavstar Feb 3rd 2009 5:12PM
I have a question regarding the Framerate issues. If you check out the wow technicals forums you can see its a major issue. It appears the graphics changes made in WOTLK are having a major impact on the playability of the game.
What is Blizzard doing to address this, my computer is way above the specs recommended on the WOTLK pack. Yet my FPS has dropped as low as 1. This seemed coincide with patch 3.0.8 not upgrading to WOTLk.
What tips can you give to help with this issue.
I hope Wow insider considers doing a feature on this issue?
Suzaku Feb 4th 2009 3:09PM
The only suggestion I can really give you is to try turning down your video settings a bit, especially spell effects, since some of the new smoke effects (bonfires and certain mobs) in Northrend seem to be really taxing on my system for some reason.
Shulkman Feb 3rd 2009 6:07PM
I've been thinking of getting some of these heirloom items for alts. What I'm wondering is, is there somewhere I can go to see exactly how these items scale throughout the levels?I want to make sure it's worth the effort to get them.
Bubsa Feb 3rd 2009 6:19PM
The shoulders alone (10% kill boost) are worth getting. IIRC, MMOChamp had a section showing how it scaled.
They're reasonable at 80, so I'm sure they'll be fine through the levels. It's particularly handy for levelling warriors, as an outdated weapon on a warrior when levelling can really slow you down.
Shoulders + Weapon should cover it nicely, heirloom wise, for any new alt.
ryanthered Feb 3rd 2009 6:45PM
Speaking of soloing content, is it possible for a higher level arcane mage to solo instances in the same way a mail or plate wearer can? Assuming equal character and gear levels. I ask because I'm used to playing melee and could really clear stuff quickly and now am leveling a mage and generally feel very vulnerable going into enclosed spaces ;-)
joey_da_bubbles Feb 3rd 2009 7:32PM
Soloing some content can be done by higher lvl arcane mages, but not much imo. (i play a arcane mage.) We are just way to squishy to survive any substantial damage that would come our way by soloing. Tanks and other melee classes have it much easier with soloing content because they can take a hit better than we can. But be happy knowing you can wipe a mob out before it gets to you, unlike melee :)
Belna Feb 4th 2009 8:52AM
I got the same feeling about my mage in caves. Mages need distance to keep the advantage. Although I notished that with a combination of Frost nova, Blizzard, Cone of Cold and Blast Wave I can finish a group that is a bit below my level before they can hit me.
I'm specced as Fire / Frost at lvl 63 (impr. Blizzard and Shatter) and the highest groups I could take out before they could hit me were level 61. I always count 10 levels lower for elite, so maybe around lvl 50 elite would be possible to AoE down this way.
joey_da_bubbles Feb 3rd 2009 7:36PM
from my encounters, 2 hand pallys tanking can get off more dmg due to the higher dmg of the weapon (duh), but cannot block, for they have no shield (duh, again). If the pally is well geared and can take several high damage hits consecutively, then going with 2 hand weapons is just fine. but if you really need to block those incoming hits due to 'wardrobe malfunctions" (lol) then a shield and 1 hand weapon is really what you need, and youll just have to leave the actual killing of mobs to the dps (which should be no problem as thats the dps's job anyway)
Quill2006 Feb 3rd 2009 8:20PM
I'm hesitating to ask this because it might be too complex of a question, but what are considered g00d to excellent leveling specs for each class at the moment?
I've got a few alts I'm thinking of leveling and after all the recent changes and patches I have no idea what talents to choose. I've never played any of the classes before.
Personally I'm interested in mage, pally, and DK, but I'm also curious about the other classes.
Aracross Feb 3rd 2009 8:56PM
Zul'Durub?
No, please, enough trolls in my wow for now.
teh_wild_knight Feb 3rd 2009 11:31PM
@Quill2006
For a leveling mage, you're gonna want to go frost spec. Fire has high damage output but not much in the way of CC or kiting ability. Leveling arcane means your gonna constantly be OOM. Frost is a good balance of damage and being able to control each fight. I've gone from level 23 to 71 in about three weeks of dedicated grinding.
skreeran Feb 4th 2009 12:33AM
Yeah, just look at the Titanium armor that Blacksmiths can make. It's BoE too.
skreeran Feb 4th 2009 12:36AM
Damn, I meant to reply to Aldheim on post ~15.
Drazer Feb 4th 2009 7:26AM
I'm a hunter on medivh server and I was wondering if they were going to do any buffs to MM spec because right after 3.0.8 came out I had tested my dps and it had gone down by 800!! Every other hunter that I know reported similar instances (besides those nub huntards) because of this and the nerfs to BM, it has basicly forced every raiding hunter that wants to do damage to go to survival. This sounds a lot like what they are working to prevent/fix with other classes
joey_da_bubbles Feb 4th 2009 7:52AM
well i hope there will be a patch to fix that, if not, raids will basically require a hunter to be survival just to do damage. and then MM and BM are SOL. What i would do, is respec to survival, play it until the patch comes to fix that nerf, and then when that comes, go right back to MM. you can always tinker around with pets for a while to pass the time. It's always fun to figure out which pet works best for you, (droning on and now i sound like a lvl 23 hunter giving advice how to play one)
Lynn Feb 4th 2009 1:37AM
I won't go into a long tirade about it, but I like Vista. I don't have the mythical problems that so deter the common man from running or even trying it. I run WoW with little issue; the only one of note being the integrated vid card on my laptop.
Windows 7 will no doubt be a better operating system, but Vista is about as buggy as any other MS OS, except maybe the tank that was Windows 2000.
zweitblom Feb 4th 2009 2:21AM
You also need a healer insane enough willing to heal through that. I wouldn't.
Cosmix Feb 4th 2009 3:01AM
This may have been said, I didn't read every comment. Druids can pick flowers in flight form, but they can't mine in it. They do have the advantage of instantly switching to flight form though.
Shandry Feb 4th 2009 4:38AM
Like alot of people already know windows media player speeds up loading times and sometimes even FPS in WoW. Myself i didnt know about this until recently and im surprised no one has a good explanation for it so i thought id give you one.
DirectX comes with a feature called DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) which allows certain CPU intensive operations to be offloaded to the GPU.
The intension of this feature was not to speed up gaming but rather to make iex. video decoding, rendering and video playback faster and smoother. And as a side effect it speeds up certain games.