Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Hodgepodge
by Adam Holisky 
May 13th 2009 at 1:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.
Lots of good questions this week, and like yesterday's Queue, we have a full set of them today as well.Boreddruid asked...
"Is there any particular time that my guild should start 10-man Ulduar hard modes?"
Once you're geared and know the fights start the hard modes. Some might be easier than others. Either way though, you'll want to have the basic fights down very solidly before you begin working on hard modes. Don't try to run before you can walk. You'll just fall flat on your face and become grumpy.
Medros asked...
"I was wondering if there was any new recipes learned via research in alchemy or inscription added in 3.1? I had stopped doing the researches before hand, and forget if there was new stuff added to make the uses worthwhile."
Not for alchemy. For inscription, you'll want to try to get your hands on the Book of Glyph Mastery to learn a new recipe from patch 3.1. There's several new recipes, so you'll need to get multiple books.
Emagen asked...
"Is there any way to make a macro that will not use a glyph that you have?"
No, once you have a glyph in the only way to cancel its effect is to remove it.
Alerexis asked....
"I know honor caps at 75,000, and marks from battlegrounds cap at 100, but is there a cap for Stone Keeper's Shards?"
Either the cap has never been found, or it's so high you'll never reach it. Very likely the cap rests on the same grounds as the gold cap – the upper limit of whatever sized integer the Stone Keeper's Shards variable is. My guess is it's 2,147,483,647. That number is the upper limit of a signed 32-bit integer as represented by a standard C compiler. If that is all Greek to you, I'll put it another way: it's big. (Before people decide to nerd rage all over me because of a computer fact, remember that the gold variable is a signed integer as well, and we've seen other signed integers in WoW besides that. There is no indication that the variable would be unsigned, and every indication it would be signed - even if a signed 32 bit integer doesn't make sense logically. Live long and prosper, geeks.)
Richard asked...
"Imagine you're reading the story of World of Warcraft. What race & class would be the protagonist? It seems like it would naturally be human or orc since those leaders are quite clearly the main players in the storyline. Human Paladin? Orc Warrior?"
I've been re-reading all the Warcraft stories lately. It's pretty clear to me that there are two main actors, someway somehow connected to everything: Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall. In this regard I'll say that those two are the closest things we have to universal protagonists. And to answer your question specifically, Jaina would be a Human Mage, and Thrall would be an Orc Shaman / Warrior (argue away lore nerds... argue away.) A case could also be made for Rhonin the Ro-ho-ho-nin, but to that I just say "nahhhhhh."
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: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
Drow May 13th 2009 3:46PM
Exactly. The last time we saw that was a easy T5 boss with a noob cannon. And you would see mostly Paladins with them back then, not Warriors. Hunters can equip swords but how often do you see that?
Bel May 13th 2009 3:40PM
Admittedly it's been a while since I was in T5 instances, but I seem to recall a lot of tanks, not just pallies (were pallies still going for +spell? I think this was before that change that made them move toward these types of maces?), drooling over this mace for the expertise and threat gen it was pushing.
Your point on the lore behind Lurker, however, is more than valid.
fatal May 13th 2009 2:57PM
What's the lore behind Algalon?
Ulduar is a gaint prison for yogg saron, who corrupted his keepers. He's the big shot in there normally.
Who is Algalon, who is aparantly infinite times stronger?
Bel May 13th 2009 3:43PM
Some of the lore behind Algalon, beware of spoilers though.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Algalon
mac May 13th 2009 4:12PM
spoiler alert i suppose:
Algalon is The Observer, his job is to observe the events of Azeroth to make sure no really really bad things happen, like the release of Yoggy. He can contact the Titans directly and will do so if any of the really really bad things happen telling them to get their slacky arses down here and re-do all of Azeroth and whatnot.
Golruk May 13th 2009 3:10PM
"argue away lore nerds... argue away" = "run away little girl... run away"
Someone has deadly boss mods/opera event floating around in their head!
Croe May 13th 2009 5:23PM
Speaking of which, I've seen that line used three times now.
In Opera / Karazhan, OS, and VoA (new boss).
So here's a question for the Queue:
Why can't Blizzard come up with new lines? Surely it can't be that hard.
Auldrin May 13th 2009 5:58PM
That's deadly boss mods, not blizzard. Blizzard doesn't take sounds completely out of context and play them during boss fights... Instead, they throw fel reavers at you every time you get magically dismounted.
drewfus0929 May 13th 2009 3:21PM
The hard-mode for 10-man XT is bugged atm. We tried it last night, and when we killed the heart it reset XT's health to 12.5 million (a 150% increase from the 5million he starts with). It's only supposed to be a 45% increase. Recommend staying away from this hard-mode for a bit.
Funia! May 13th 2009 3:31PM
*I've been re-reading all the Warcraft stories lately.*
I just recently picked up the Arthas book (first actual book concerning Warcraft I've read) and have spent many hours reading through Lore and such on WoWwiki.
Arthas is taking me to new heights as far as wanting to read further the stories that have built the 'World of Warcraft'. Is there any suggested order of reading to the Warcraft books out there? (I like Chronological but maybe knowing something about so and so before reading this would be helpful type stuff?)
Shade May 13th 2009 3:55PM
Chronological would be best, if you're going to go through them all - I skipped around and read all the Golden stories first though. Since she's the one that wrote the Arthas book you enjoyed, you may want to snag her stuff first, then jump to the other authors and books that are available.
Talyre May 13th 2009 3:34PM
Question: what do people think are the best two-man leveling class combos? Considerations are survivability, ability to take on groups of mobs at or above level, and fun.
A friend of mine and I enjoy leveling toons together, and have a great time with our warrior/druid combo (the warrior switched from fury to prot around level 50, the druid is dual speccd to resto but mostly plays balance to level). We tried out a rogue/priest combo but didn't enjoy it nearly as much. Just curious as to what other combos people would recommend.
Taladan May 13th 2009 5:48PM
Two paladins (but I'm a paladin, so take this with a grain of salt.)
If you take dual specs, I'd suggest prot/holy and ret/holy. That way, you always get one healer and one tank.
Also, keep in mind that prot isn't very good for leveling before level 50 (or 60, I can't remember.) I was holy, but in Northrend I switched to prot and it was awesome fun, till the healing factor called me again.
AyaJulia May 14th 2009 1:33AM
There's no real reason to have a specific healer except for res if something goes wrong or leeching dungeon invites. If you have two good dps, you can still do pretty much anything you like; things die just that much faster.
That said, my husband and I leveled a hunter and priest together. Whenever we came to a group quest, his pet tanked pretty trivially. It was basically like having three people. Any healer would work. I remember feeling pretty useless as a mana user vs. a dps completely unconcerned with mana; I basically leeched a lot, which is why I'd recommend two dps. But I leeched my exp and he leeched his invites, so it all worked out....
Make one a character that is melee-focused but CAN heal if necessary, if you want to tackle the big meanies with no issue. (i.e. Ret Pally, Enh Shaman.)
zweitblom May 14th 2009 2:06AM
You do not need a dedicated healer or tank unless you want to run instances (which probably are not a sufficient way to level in most cases). I found a melee / ranged pair works quite well, especially if one of them can off-heal and the other do some AoE, like a Paladin / Mage combo.
The reason why I would shy away from same class/spec combinations (like Paladin/Paladin) for levelling is potential overlaps of interest in loot and professions.
Talyre May 14th 2009 7:19AM
The mana issue is a pain--my friend (the warrior/rogue) just goes from mob to mob, and sometimes doesn't notice that i'm out of mana. As a warrior, its not a big deal--he can hold the mobs while I drink--but its a much bigger problem with the priest/rogue combo.
I also agree that dedicated healing is not really necessary outside of instances--I prefer playing resto, but I found that I really didn't have much to do as resto--the warrior only occasionally needed heals and my dps was too low to be worth the mana. Dual speccing to balance lets us blow through mobs much faster, still makes my heals and rez available, and let's me switch to resto for instances.
Leandar May 13th 2009 4:02PM
If hogger is a boss in icecrown he'll have to say "elwynn forest was mearly a setback"
Microtonal May 13th 2009 4:21PM
I've been leveling my shaman as enhancement (I dinged lvl 53 last night), but I'd really like to dual-spec her resto once I get to the higher levels. The problem is that I've never played a healer of any kind before (I'm not counting my judicious use of Mend Pet while soloing old-world dungeons). I'd really like to find some resources on the web dealing with healing strategies in general and shaman healing in particular. Any suggestions?
RedRubberBall203 May 13th 2009 9:11PM
I would suggest waiting until northrend and work on making a resto set with quest rewards and dungeons if you run them. Then once you have a decent set, try doing a dungeon with friends that will be patience with your learning. Also check the official forums for shamans. I personally have a shammy and I would personally recommend if you want to off spec, maybe doing elemental otherwise you will more often be healing than doing your enhancement.
Dood77 May 13th 2009 4:32PM
Currently there are 10 player classes, and the maximum number of characters per-account on a given realm is 10. With the likely release of a new hero class in the next expansion, is it plausible that blizzard will increase this number to 11, or maybe even more?